My subconscious mind at work.
Mar. 4th, 2010 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snarpI had a very detailed dream that there was a non-existent new sequel series to a non-existent popular mid-90s-era anime. My mind provided all kinds of information about these two non-existent anime.
The original series's protagonist was an incompetent, money-hungry wizard named Deathle Thompson, who wears a black cape and witch's hat, but with a buckle on the hat like whatever those hats that Puritans wore are called. His costume underneath the cape was puke green because the show was entirely lacking in color sense, as demonstrated by hot-pink deserts populated by rust-orange-wearing nomads in an infamously hideous season-one episode.
Deathle's vaguely Westernish-fantasyish-sci-fi-ish world has been overrun by plague zombies, and Deathle, whose magic nearly always backfires on him, goes from one encampment of survivors to another, pretending to be a great wizard and trying to sell his useless zombie-fighting devices. Being the easily-distracted-loser-type anime protagonist, Deathle nearly always does something stupid to reveal himself as a charlatan and get driven out of town, thrown in jail, or otherwise embroiled in shenanigans. Unusually, unlike most male examples of this character type, Deathle doesn't get in trouble by chasing women - he's more like the female version of the character in that he's obsessed with food, alcohol, and possibly clothes. (He's definitely quite proud of his hat.)
(My dream gave me a good deal of detail about his name. In Japanese it was pronounced "Defuru," and in the fansubs it was romanized "Deffle" because one of the writers for the show had mentioned in an interview that the name was a cross between "death" and "duffle." But at some point the author of the original light novel series explained on her blog or somewhere that she thought of it as being romanized "Deathle." The official translators decided to use this spelling, which the dub ended up pronouncing "Death-ull."
Largely because of this inexcusable blunder on the dub's part, the purists still insist upon calling him "Deffle." Spelling it "Deathle" proves you're not an trufan! BNF #1 will not read BNF #2's epic 7-volume h/c fic because she just can't trust the sincerity of someone who spells it "Deathle"! This conflict has doubtless made it to dream-world![[journalfen.net profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fandom_wank.)
Early in the first season Deathle is forced to team up with a tall, intense cyborg guy who is convinced that Deathle's uselessness is just a front, and bromance ensues. Cyborg guy keeps getting hurt being heroic, and Deathle has to nurse him. Later in the series Deathle gets into the habit of gazing at the cyborg in a sparkly manner, admiring his noble spirit. He also sparkles at some other male characters because he is promiscuous. In addition to all this, Deathle has long hair and is comfortable cross-dressing and flirting with guys when it suits his purposes, but is constitutionally incapable of either flirting with women or responding to the one who seems to have a romantic interest in him. (A waitress who's around for a couple episodes in late season 1.) And he has a secret pain.
So the dream was at pains to assure me that this series produced a lot of slash, basically.
The series started out pretty similar to Slayers in tone and visual style, but gradually changed. I think the dream specified that it was three seasons long, and at the beginning of either the second or third season the creative team decided they needed to Get Serious. The Serious arc annoyed some people because, poor color sense aside, the first arc was fairly visually inventive and funny, but Seriousness apparently required that the fantasy setting be largely dumped and a lot of uninteresting mecha and airplanes be imported from some less-successful series the studio had been working on.
I think the Serious Plot had to do with there being some implication that magic caused the zombie plague, and that crappy wizards like Deathle were thus treated as scapegoats, while people would welcome stronger wizards regardless because - hey, they can kill zombies! It's hinted from the beginning that at some point in the past Deathle wasn't such a loser, and something bad happened that made him abandon or lose his real magic.
(The dream was fuzzy about the actual plot, but my reasoned assumption, as someone who is awake, is that Deathle was the apprentice of the Dark Lord who created the plague. Because there's got to be a Dark Lord! This is a fantasy story! Plagues don't just happen! And this would explain why Deathle seems to be the only human immune to the plague - the Dark Lord didn't want to lose his apprentice's services. (I've just arbitrarily decided that at some point there is a flashback to Deathle trying to distill a vaccine from his own blood.) In all likelihood Deathle's issues are because the Dark Lord sacrificed a loved one of Deathle's to his evil god, and Deathle did not realize his master's treachery in time to stop him!
...Or something of that nature! The dream seemed to feel that Deathle's backstory was what kept people coming back to the series after it devolved into boring mecha battles, so whatever it was must have been executed fairly well.)
At some point during Serious Arc, Deathle ends up getting his magic back, and he and his cyborg friend team up with a larger group of cyborgs who are either trying to cure the zombies, or just kill them all for good. The cyborgs initially don't trust Deathle for various reasons - he's the only human? - but he finally he ends up saving the day. Except I think that after he saves the day there might have been another six or seven episodes where they were just kind of reprising the first season except without zombies and with more people sweatdropping and going like "Th-th-th-th-this is the great hero!?" Apparently the writers weren't good at pacing.
And, see, that's just background detail that my brain provided! Because the dream was actually about the first episode of the sequel series, in which Deathle isn't even the main character. The main character is a grumpy blond cyborg/android woman sniper with an airplane and a narcissistic robotic teddy bear who pilots the plane for her. This is a major departure for the franchise, because there were only two female characters in the original, and they were both waitresses.
In the sequel, the writers have realized they have no idea how to handle this series without the threat of zombification, so now there's evil electrical inferference that is making the cyborgs and robots go insane. In the first episode they take their plane to transport Deathle and his cyborg friends somewhere, but the interference hits everyone except the woman and the teddy bear. They are for some reason immune! Deathle makes them abandon him with his friends and go warn the military (the military in question did not exist in the original series).
The episode ends with the woman reaching the military base, and Ominous Signs abounding in the way the Obligatory Bald General gives her the run-around about rescuing Deathle. My brain explains to me that despite signs to the contrary, Deathle actually isn't going to show up much - he's off training or doing research in the mountains, and there's a cut-away to him looking intense once an episode, but most of the series is about cyborg woman shooting things.
I unfortunately woke up at this point, and so can't tell you whether the new series was really worth watching. I guess you can check out some clips on YouTube and see if it's your kind of thing.
My purpose in writing this up is basically requesting that somebody actually make this series. Or at least produce some high-production-values Deathle/cyborg guy doujinshi.
The original series's protagonist was an incompetent, money-hungry wizard named Deathle Thompson, who wears a black cape and witch's hat, but with a buckle on the hat like whatever those hats that Puritans wore are called. His costume underneath the cape was puke green because the show was entirely lacking in color sense, as demonstrated by hot-pink deserts populated by rust-orange-wearing nomads in an infamously hideous season-one episode.
Deathle's vaguely Westernish-fantasyish-sci-fi-ish world has been overrun by plague zombies, and Deathle, whose magic nearly always backfires on him, goes from one encampment of survivors to another, pretending to be a great wizard and trying to sell his useless zombie-fighting devices. Being the easily-distracted-loser-type anime protagonist, Deathle nearly always does something stupid to reveal himself as a charlatan and get driven out of town, thrown in jail, or otherwise embroiled in shenanigans. Unusually, unlike most male examples of this character type, Deathle doesn't get in trouble by chasing women - he's more like the female version of the character in that he's obsessed with food, alcohol, and possibly clothes. (He's definitely quite proud of his hat.)
(My dream gave me a good deal of detail about his name. In Japanese it was pronounced "Defuru," and in the fansubs it was romanized "Deffle" because one of the writers for the show had mentioned in an interview that the name was a cross between "death" and "duffle." But at some point the author of the original light novel series explained on her blog or somewhere that she thought of it as being romanized "Deathle." The official translators decided to use this spelling, which the dub ended up pronouncing "Death-ull."
Largely because of this inexcusable blunder on the dub's part, the purists still insist upon calling him "Deffle." Spelling it "Deathle" proves you're not an trufan! BNF #1 will not read BNF #2's epic 7-volume h/c fic because she just can't trust the sincerity of someone who spells it "Deathle"! This conflict has doubtless made it to dream-world
fandom_wank.)Early in the first season Deathle is forced to team up with a tall, intense cyborg guy who is convinced that Deathle's uselessness is just a front, and bromance ensues. Cyborg guy keeps getting hurt being heroic, and Deathle has to nurse him. Later in the series Deathle gets into the habit of gazing at the cyborg in a sparkly manner, admiring his noble spirit. He also sparkles at some other male characters because he is promiscuous. In addition to all this, Deathle has long hair and is comfortable cross-dressing and flirting with guys when it suits his purposes, but is constitutionally incapable of either flirting with women or responding to the one who seems to have a romantic interest in him. (A waitress who's around for a couple episodes in late season 1.) And he has a secret pain.
So the dream was at pains to assure me that this series produced a lot of slash, basically.
The series started out pretty similar to Slayers in tone and visual style, but gradually changed. I think the dream specified that it was three seasons long, and at the beginning of either the second or third season the creative team decided they needed to Get Serious. The Serious arc annoyed some people because, poor color sense aside, the first arc was fairly visually inventive and funny, but Seriousness apparently required that the fantasy setting be largely dumped and a lot of uninteresting mecha and airplanes be imported from some less-successful series the studio had been working on.
I think the Serious Plot had to do with there being some implication that magic caused the zombie plague, and that crappy wizards like Deathle were thus treated as scapegoats, while people would welcome stronger wizards regardless because - hey, they can kill zombies! It's hinted from the beginning that at some point in the past Deathle wasn't such a loser, and something bad happened that made him abandon or lose his real magic.
(The dream was fuzzy about the actual plot, but my reasoned assumption, as someone who is awake, is that Deathle was the apprentice of the Dark Lord who created the plague. Because there's got to be a Dark Lord! This is a fantasy story! Plagues don't just happen! And this would explain why Deathle seems to be the only human immune to the plague - the Dark Lord didn't want to lose his apprentice's services. (I've just arbitrarily decided that at some point there is a flashback to Deathle trying to distill a vaccine from his own blood.) In all likelihood Deathle's issues are because the Dark Lord sacrificed a loved one of Deathle's to his evil god, and Deathle did not realize his master's treachery in time to stop him!
...Or something of that nature! The dream seemed to feel that Deathle's backstory was what kept people coming back to the series after it devolved into boring mecha battles, so whatever it was must have been executed fairly well.)
At some point during Serious Arc, Deathle ends up getting his magic back, and he and his cyborg friend team up with a larger group of cyborgs who are either trying to cure the zombies, or just kill them all for good. The cyborgs initially don't trust Deathle for various reasons - he's the only human? - but he finally he ends up saving the day. Except I think that after he saves the day there might have been another six or seven episodes where they were just kind of reprising the first season except without zombies and with more people sweatdropping and going like "Th-th-th-th-this is the great hero!?" Apparently the writers weren't good at pacing.
And, see, that's just background detail that my brain provided! Because the dream was actually about the first episode of the sequel series, in which Deathle isn't even the main character. The main character is a grumpy blond cyborg/android woman sniper with an airplane and a narcissistic robotic teddy bear who pilots the plane for her. This is a major departure for the franchise, because there were only two female characters in the original, and they were both waitresses.
In the sequel, the writers have realized they have no idea how to handle this series without the threat of zombification, so now there's evil electrical inferference that is making the cyborgs and robots go insane. In the first episode they take their plane to transport Deathle and his cyborg friends somewhere, but the interference hits everyone except the woman and the teddy bear. They are for some reason immune! Deathle makes them abandon him with his friends and go warn the military (the military in question did not exist in the original series).
The episode ends with the woman reaching the military base, and Ominous Signs abounding in the way the Obligatory Bald General gives her the run-around about rescuing Deathle. My brain explains to me that despite signs to the contrary, Deathle actually isn't going to show up much - he's off training or doing research in the mountains, and there's a cut-away to him looking intense once an episode, but most of the series is about cyborg woman shooting things.
I unfortunately woke up at this point, and so can't tell you whether the new series was really worth watching. I guess you can check out some clips on YouTube and see if it's your kind of thing.
My purpose in writing this up is basically requesting that somebody actually make this series. Or at least produce some high-production-values Deathle/cyborg guy doujinshi.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 04:04 am (UTC)(It's probably more relevant that I was looking at Left 4 Dead screenshots, which is where all the zombie stuff came from. LEFT 4 DEAD SCREENSHOTS ARE NOT SOMETHING IT'S SMART TO LOOK AT BEFORE BED.)