#THE MORE I WORKED ON THIS the more i was like......... the themes of jsrf actually fit..... quite nicely with kh..... like......

[swiftthecardinal]

Jet Set Radio Redux!

So, this is the first post about the silly AU, aside from past drawings. Unlike other AUs, it's more like an AEU (alternate-expanded universe) and doesn't have a specific theme. It's more my weird remix of Jet Set Radio and whatever things I find neat I mixed in built up into a wild little alternate universe I call my own. So yeah, let's get to it.

The actual going ons of this world

This alternate universe is split up into a trilogy of theoretical games, each with their own sort of style and what I'm doing with them.

Jet Set Radio Milennium

The OG JSR of this universe. Sticks pretty close to the original game in the base plot and gameplay style and was basically the original sprout that resulted in the AU, but the fridge horror is very intentional and much more clear than in the real OG JSR, but it's still portrayed in a pretty comical way due to whose point of view it is exactly and keeps the sweet, saccharine, fairly simple artstyle of the source material. Gameplay-wise, it's much faster than OG JSR and isn't momentum-based anymore so the tagging QTE doesn't feel like it's slowing things down too much and you don't slow down on rails like JSRF. I'll explain further about it with the JSRM gameplay post.

Jet Set Radio Overclock

The replacement for JSRF and the sequel to JSRM! Why you're all teenagers still in 2024 needs a pretty damn grand explanation of the lore behind Graffiti Souls, rudies and related magicky hijinks, but we'll have to skip that for now as that'll be explained in a future post.

Basically, 23 years after the events of Jet Set Radio Milennium, Goji's successor and son, Masashi Rokkaku, has totally changed Tokyo-to, now Neo-Tokyo, to a pretty bland metropolis completely absent of real rudies, as in the type of haunted teenager that was present in JSRM. Now it's just a bunch of kids who think they're cool, paint on legal graffiti walls and call each other gay until you bust onto the streets once again in your fresh new bodies like the big damn spooky badasses you are.

Why did no rudies return before? Well, Masashi Rokkaku was using netrium, basically magical Graffiti Soul power as a clean energy source for his big awesome city. Thus, no Graffiti Souls could come around to make any teenagers spooky again because they were getting juiced. This is getting long, so I'll elaborate in a further post.

I'm not sure what to do for the actual gameplay, but it'll actually be momentum-based now. So yeah Jet Set Radio Overclock. This one's plot is... wild...

Jet Set Radio Retro (title in progress)

A prequel game in the 1970's shamelessly filled with OCs. Not done too much work on it, but I have ideas in mind and it's title won't have Jet Set Radio in it because the titular radio station in it at all for obvious reasons. So, this'll be one you get to watch and evolve in real time!

Other Video Games

Ollie King is canon, basically being rudie culture for non-haunted peeps, and lacks stuff like actual vandalism. The predecessor to the "rudies" in JSRO. It's more so me just thinking about the funny skateboard people tbh.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is non-canon in all forms in JSRR to avoid even more comparisons to Jet Set Radio. It's a thing of it's own. Honestly, I would love to but this is more for the sake of Team Reptile's cool game not just being compared to JSR constantly even if it is a spiritual successor.

So yeah, beware and adore my abominable brainchild.

[p5x-theories]

Since we have all these new party members, how would you rate them and their personas’ designs? Are they all hits or are some of them misses? Give the people your thoughts! *holds up microphone patiently*

Aw, I'm touched you want to hear more of my thoughts on the party member and Persona designs! Alright, sure.

Same as the last posts, I do really like all the newbies! Actually, this might be some of my favorite Personas yet, in particular.

And same disclaimers as last time as well; For thieves, I'm just commenting on what the design looks like it's doing/trying to do, and whether I think it works and I like it. For Personas, I'm not really taking into account how well they do (or don't) represent the figure they're supposed to be, just how well I think the design gets its concept across, and does (or doesn't) match its thief.

Starting out with Bui and Apseudes!

I love Bui's whole vibe, honestly. It feels lightly sci-fi/futuristic, and a little unreal, which is perfect for a teammate who's based on their video game avatar rather than their real real-world self, without being too much. My favorite part is easily the rollerskates! She gives me a vaguely Jet Set Radio Future vibe with them, though I wouldn't say she literally looks like a JSRF character, haha.

I do wonder about those... hair decoration... bunny ear things she has going on? She has them as Yui as well, but I'm very curious if that's a game thing or just a distinctive detail they chose to give her. It's not a problem, per se, just slightly strange in the way where looking at it, I feel like I want an answer for what it is/does? Same with that partial ring/collar thing that floats around her neck. It looks kind of unreal/sci-fi, sure, but it can look a little strange if you focus on it, and raises that same "what does this do?" question for me.

As for Apseudes, I do have to say, I love that it also mirrors her weird hair decoration/bunny ear-shaped things. Also, big fan of the hexagon half-dome thing, and the whole hydroelectric arms and legs thing she has going on. I'll admit, she looks notably more sci-fi than Bui, but I think they get away with it, because she also sort of looks like a power plant or something, which kind of goes with Bui's tech (as a power source), and also clearly reflects Apseudes' element.

Next, Puppet and Nemertes!

My favorite parts of Puppet are probably her visor, that strap thing going around her back and the little forked (almost coat tail-like?) thing around her waist that it appears to hook onto, and the thick, kind of water shoe-like soles of her shoes. Especially with her "weapon", she immediately gives the kind of sea explorer vibe I'm sure she's supposed to, so I think they're very successful on that front.

I do think her design can come off as just a tad boring overall? I think the grey on black isn't the best for helping someone to immediately notice the details. But we don't know her that well yet- this might honestly be fitting for her, for all I know right now! I think the only thing I actively dislike about her outfit is the sort of... grey fabric thing stretched over her chest that ends like halfway over her breasts? It just looks weird to me, like if her shirt was riding up or something, haha. But that might just be my personal opinion, I don't know if that's really a problem.

(My biggest question about Puppet is actually why her codename is Puppet, honestly. I really like it as a codename, I just wish I had more context for it!!)

Now, Nemertes compliments her sea explorer vibe perfectly, as far as I'm concerned. She does admittedly look a little more like a car wheel than a submarine, but the sea creature-theming and water around her more than makes up for it, at least for me. That's definitely my favorite part of her, actually- the tail and fins, along with those pink eyes (or eye-like) structures, and the shape of her head. Those pink eyes, along with the silvers and whites on her, also help to make Nermertes stand out actually a bit more than Puppet does, which ultimately makes sense when you consider Puppet spends basically all her time inside her Persona as a navigator.

On to Riddle and Daeira!

I really love Riddle, she's cute, immediately comes across as a prospector/miner (which, while this joke was probably not intended, makes it really funny that she's the youngest minor on the team), and also still feels entirely competent despite being much younger than the others, especially with all the machinery she wields. My favorite parts of her design are probably her mask (which doesn't make me think "miner" on its own, but somehow really works with the rest of the outfit), her clunky boots and gloves, the double collar going on (probably a shirt underneath the suit), and the puffy sleeves and shorts.

There's really just one detail of her design that bugs me- the weird gap between the tops of her socks and the end of her shorts. It's certainly not as bad as it could be, because her skintone at least isn't a major contrast that draws your eyes to this random bare skin on her thighs (as opposed to Violet in P5R, who does do that), but it still just feels unnecessary. I guess maybe it helps sell the idea of her shorts as shorts instead of pants, but... I don't know, it just bugs me a bit I suppose.

Daeira, then, is interesting because her colors are different from Riddle's (a lighter pink, more orange instead of yellow details, and then a dark blue instead of dark brown), but it still works with Riddle overall. I think it's because of two main things: 1) the pink and orange make Daeira feel a bit brassier, which matches the vibe of an old-fashioned prospector/inventor's big robot that she pilots around, and then 2) it makes Daeira feel a bit more like a big robot toy. I wouldn't say they're the best aesthetic match of the entire cast, but they definitely work together better than it feels like they should.

Last but not least, Sepia and Gorgyra!

Sepia's the one thief out of these four that I don't feel like I can immediately get a beat on what they were going for. He sort of has a gentleman... highwayman... vibe to me, maybe? It feels vaguely cowboy-era to me, and yet I wouldn't call him a cowboy. And the super fluffy cape collar seems to just throw off anything I'm thinking, haha. I like the design (other than maybe the extent of the cape fluff), I just can't quite read what the intention with it was. Maybe he's meant to be some kind of charlatan? He sort of gives the impression of someone a bit overconfident, but maybe not entirely infallible... I'm not really sure, though, so I think whatever the goal was could have been a bit clearer.

I do like the silver/copper lining on his outfit, though, and the hints of purple that are kind of subtle compared to the red gloves and tie (despite the fact that even the red gloves and the tie are desaturated compared to the other thieves). He does absolutely feel like a teammate who would use curse skills to me, even if I don't know exactly what's going on with him.

Sepia aside, I love Gorgyra's design. The pointed glass bottle shape, the scrolls of pink-purple text wrapped around it, the huge hat, the glasses and grin. It's so fun and distinct! It feels like some kind of literature wizard, but also that grin makes it seem just a bit less than trustworthy... I'll admit, I don't quite understand how all this is meant to go with Sepia's outfit, but they do at least share a similar color design (though with Gorgyra being lighter overall), so against the odds, they manage to feel like they go together anyway.

-

Aaaaaand that's everyone! I do really like these four, my individual nitpicks aside. I wish we got to know them better in this beta!! But I suppose that's something we'll have to look forward to in the future, at least.

[nyrator]

been feeling like venting, so just some random vents- then afterwards, JSRF ramblings because I just beat that game

turning 29 at the end of the week, not looking forward to it- turning 30 next year terrifies me

mother’s funeral was friday, got that out of the way relatively painlessly (other than having to spend an extra 800 dollars just to bury my sister with her, about $4500 by the end of it

gofundme raised about $2000, other donations about $1300 last I counted (probably higher), so most of it was covered

yesterday my mother’s 70 year old best friend held a party at a bar for my mother’s friends and I was obligated to go, bunch of crazy old women talking like sailors, drinking and smoking pot and laughing about all the drugs they did and all the times they got raped (yeahhhh), the only person I was comfortable around was the best friend. And then the party ends two hours late, we’re getting kicked out of the bar, and this friend falls bending down to grab a picture of my mother that she dropped, smashes her face into the floor, and collapses with a pool of blood under her face, unmoving, right in front of me. I couldn’t get the words out that I’d go and pick the photo up for her before she went to get it, and I regret it

Thankfully, she only had a concussion and a broken nose, she started responding after about a minute of just lying there, but it messed me up, I think.

I’ve been debating if I want to start drinking. I never tried before, mainly because my father was an abusive and violent alcoholic. The other reason is because I’m afraid what I’d do to myself if I had no inhibitions in place, I feel like I’d be very dangerous to myself.

neck has been stiff for two days. Probably slept on it wrong. Also keep feeling like I get different symptoms of covid every so often after exposing myself to the public (that bar was packed with old people who wouldn’t wear masks and had no concept of personal space). Today my throat’s been sore and I can barely breathe.

my boss told me I can go back to work as soon as the funeral’s finished- not sure if I should call her to remind her or wait for her to call me, she texted me last week and I told her the funeral was on friday. But my coworker was also wondering and asked me today, and I didn’t know what to tell her, since my boss doesn’t want me to let her know just yet because of how limited they’re open (three days a week, four hours a day)

relationships are very hard

I’m a terrible person who does the bare minimum to help someone who’s terribly lonely and depressed, and it’s like I’m backed into a corner in desperation from being unable to do anything about it. I’ve caused so much harm to this relationship that I wonder if there’s any way it can survive sometimes

It’s always the case, though- I can’t get myself to do more than the minimum effort it takes, and my social anxiety prevents me from ever initiating anything, which has cost me so many people that I shouldn’t be surprised at this point. And I can feel that awful, selfish bitterness inside of me, that part of my father and my sister that’s in me that I try to suppress, and I hate it.

my diet is going well enough, lost over five pounds since starting it late August. But it’s mostly because I just dislike eating, so eating in portions is easier for me. And then there are days like today, where I just don’t eat at all. Just ate one slice of bread, 30g of peanut butter, and a small cup of ice cream today, and I don’t even feel hungry. Normally I try to get some food in me, but today I’m just too disgusted to even try to make dinner.

My sleep’s also been weird, still. Been going to bed later and later again, but can’t stay asleep. Usually only sleep in bouts of 3-4 hours, then just lay awake until I’m half asleep long enough that I feel the urge to give up and get up. It’s been like that for weeks now, I can’t remember the last full night of sleep I’ve gotten.

In lighter news, finally got back to playing JSRF. Beat it the other night after 24.5 hours of game time, just have a few more challenges left (did everything from Dogenzaka Hill to the Bottom of the Sewage Facility so far), got all graffiti and souls possible before beating the final boss. Played it via emulator (which worked great except for crashing when entering the graffiti selection occasionally) with a Switch Pro Controller, felt really good. I own it and the original Xbox for it, but just am spoiled by a PC experience, I suppose.

The gameplay is great, but the level design leaves a funny taste in my mouth. Aesthetics are worse than JSR for me, while music... it’s tough to say, it’s different than JSR, but really grew on me. Sometimes it felt more like noise (I remember the Sewage tracklist not speaking to me too much at first with the more ambient-ish tracks), but it did grow on me a lot. Baby-T was my Garage theme the entire game, such a great track.

Naganuma’s music in the first game was definitely the weakest of the original’s OST (still good of course), but in Future I feel he really stepped up his game. Teknopathetic is one of my favorite songs in the new OST.

speaking of favorite music, here’s mine from each game:

Bout the City

Dragula

Magical Girl

Miller Ball Breakers

Mischievous Boy

On the Bowl (A.Fargus Mix)

Rock It On

Super Brothers

Yellow Bream

Aisle 10

Baby-T

Birthday Cake

Count Latchula

I'm Not a Model

Like It Like This Like That

Rockin' the Mic

Statement of Intent

Teknopathetic

The Scrappy

(shout outs to Girls from the one JSR CD, haven’t listened to much of the other exclusive songs to it, but Girls was good)

but yeah, my minor gripes with Future

Linear level design was a bit painful (missing a jump and not being able to backtrack a lot was bleh), and the later levels were very painful (the sewage area and the rooftops are come to mind, skyscraper to a lesser extent but I liked the skyscraper one a bit more), but at the same time, they force you to get good, which I can appreciate, so hm. Still, a checkpoint system (especially since there are save points) or unlocking shortcuts would be a bit more convenient, if not entirely necessary.

Not having a way to stop auto-grinding, even if just holding down a trigger or something- the way I latched onto rails especially in the sewage area was painful

Points challenges mainly being “find the special points rail and just spamming Y” on it was a bit odd (mainly for the Jet Techs so far, just five minutes of spamming Y...), but I like how the combos feel in this game, especially X combos to speed up. Has a rhythm that’s hard to explain but just feels natural.

Also street challenges should’ve been explained better in general, had to look up most of the special ones (and glitched out the Shibuya Terminal one many times until realizing the fix was just “hop all over each platform multiple times and hope it counts”, the second one next to the tilted platform specifically for me

Mew/Bis/Rhyth’s redesign still hurts, but you better believe she’s the character I used throughout the entire game after unlocking her

Storywise, I think I like JSR’s take better- Professor K being a neutral party and more amusing/less insulting, Onishima > Hayashi, and the character designs and artstyle I overall prefer from the first game

Felt like it tried to add things that just didn’t really work sometimes (Death Ball comes to mind, though I haven’t messed with Versus yet, the story mission was very easy compared to how they hyped it up), and the boss battles were all... strange. Tagging enemies on that roller coaster level, having to grind up to that one Hayashi boss fight over and over and over, then even moreso for the final boss... never got much use out of targeting enemies, spinning circles around them, or things like the railgrab for high jumps or skidding to slow down for graffiti, either, but maybe they have their uses.

But man, the game did feel fun to play, just frustrating to explore, I think. I still like the idea of making Skatered, even more after playing this game. Maybe I could learn modding, or something...

Oh yeah, also got all the pieces of my costume together (minus some eva foam), we’ll see how that goes. Not looking forward to assembling it, honestly, but I can’t back out now. Main regret I think is the tights, being unable to find striped ones (and the solid ones I bought being a bit too see-through, I should’ve bought a size up maybe). Still not confident enough in my makeup abilities, either.

and one last bit of light news- I finally got my Kuja figure, he’s so beautiful and detailed and I need a good place to put him

[yuli-ban]

Anarchy in Prague/Belle Grand-Mär Megapost

See, now this is a megapost. The goth one was only about two unique pictures. This one has three.

Current theme song for Anarchy in Prague. Harkens back to the days when it was described as a “Stoner Rock Scott Pilgrim”. 

Drawn by @dalf

She’s 27 at the time the story starts. She is literally on the edge of being a Millennial (I’m one of those who thinks the cut-off between Millennials/Generation Y and iGeneration/Generation Z should be 2001, but some say it’s actually 1996).

Drawn by @alouissever 

If two people share a 1-Up, how would that work? Also, you can tell they’re getting close to 30 just by how stoned they look when, in fact, they’re trying to stay awake for New Year’s. I love this aspect of Anarchie, rambling about how Millennials are growing old and are no longer the dominant youth generation. In 2024 (which is 7 years away), there will be 40-something Millennials. I’ll be 30, holy fucking mother of fathers.

Drawn by @dalf

Muriel and Malfiore. Pan’s goth “girls”. Muriel’s, like, 28. However, Malfiore/Marie is 37. She’s still a Millennial, yo. 2024-37=1987. She’s a fucking ‘90s kid and she’s already growing some grays and finding the protoforms of what will one day become wrinkles.

Drawn by @alouissever

Arthur and his sister, Daria (yes, I know it was Darya; deal with it). Daria’s nonplussed about how childish Venus remains.

Drawn by @alouissever

I actually couldn’t find the bottom image for the longest time, so I think this is the first time I’ve posted it to Tumblr. See? It’s not all reposts. I kinda like how Venus looks like a ghost in the second picture, but Dalf forgot about the Saint Vitus logo! And yes, that’s a Pepper robot. I imagined that they might gain a bit more utility between now and 2024. Also, funny thing about Venus being a “hipster”. She’s actually not. She’s more of a moddie than a hipster. But since Arthur’s a hipster, she sometimes tries to be one ironically.

Drawn by @dalf

Arthur Tartakovsky, Venus’s ultra-hipster boyfriend. This was before he gained his ironic mustache. He used to be in an indie pop band in an earlier draft, but nowadays he’s still in an indie pop band. The actual change was his other hobby: before, he was a comic artist. Now he’s an indie game dev specializing in retro games and VR cyberpunk. The world of indie game devs can get hectic, especially in a tight job market. He has to deal with rival devs sabotaging each other and himself sometimes, which is why he developed electrokinetic powers.

Early sketches of the original trio. Only Venus has really changed visually. She was much less notable.

Drawn by @dalf

I already did the posts where @pan-pizza gets his nuts crushed. I see no reason why I should post them again other than to goad Pan into reblogging this megapost. Pan, do not  reblog this.

Drawn by @alouissever

Drawn/animated by @spookyfishcakes

Drawn by @nicolas-px-art

Early form of Malfiore. She always wears Ed’s clothes (a la Ed Edd n Eddy), but it was much more faithful in the earliest sketches. Just ask Alouisse-Ver. Also, she used to have Daria’s hairstyle.

Muriel’s first sketch, back before she had her top hat. I created her as a loveletter to Pan Pizza and his gothosexual tendencies; Malfiore was always going to be a part of the story.

Drawn by @alouissever

Anarchie’s still got a lotta stoner rock in it (Venus’s band and their scene mates are all either stoner rock or heavy rock), but even back in 2014 when I first created the story, I left some room for indie rock. Nowadays, they both take up an equal amount of space. If it ever becomes a movie or a cartoon, it’ll probably be the only one in history where the OST consists of Nebula, Kyuss, Radio Moscow, and Orange Goblin right alongside The Pillows, Kodaline, Arctic Monkeys, and Porno Mags. Radiohead one second, Pentagram the next.

And, for now, that’s all for Anarchie. I’ve yet to commission pictures of Kalo, Syd, Adamski, or Azura Meco, but those are coming. I’m just actually working on the story. Shocker, I know. Even I’m surprised. I just did a 30,000 word outline in about 10 days; the real rough draft should be finished by April.

And now for BGM, which is basically “Anarchie + Cyberdelic Pharmaceuticals”. The early posts here don’t show that off well, but the world will know...

Title card still pending.... I made that 3 yea— holy fuck, I made that three years ago?! How is it 2017 already? 

Pure stardream. It sounds like dreamrock, honestly. The moment I heard this, I knew I had found BGM’s BGM. No pun intended. It was either this or Stand Up. 

Belle. Belle Grand-Mär. British moddie, real name “Indira Elizabeth Jones”, elective mute, severe and antisocial, freeskating and freerunning traceause, yadayadayada. If Venus was a female Scott Pilgrim fused with Murdoc Niccals, Belle is Ramona Flowers + Haruko Haruhara + Ryuko Matoi + Garnet + a mime + Neku Sakuraba + a silent cartoon character. I’m glad I’m a writer. Try creating a silent character! You’d better have mastered visual emotion.

Aurora. Real name “Farideh Moradi”, Persian-Briton moddie, freerunning traceuse, Belle’s closest friend and whatnot. She literally got her name from the reference to the Aurora Borealis in A Flock of Seagull’s uber-80′s hit “I Ran (So Far Away)”. The 2020′s are basically the ‘80s with more cyberdelia, after all.

Bomb. Real name “Madeleine Violetta Dumont”, French moddie, actually dead and works as a psychokinetic grim reaper whenever she feels like it. Also Belle’s rival and foil. Freeskating traceuse. She was created in 2009 as the lead character in a story that was literally “JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future + The World Ends With You”. This is why she seems like someone badly took a character from each of those games and fused them together.

Drawn by @alouissever

Parov Stelar’s beautiful little electroswing track. It’s so 2020′s.  BGM has much more of a stardream atmosphere than the down-to-earth feel of Anarchie. There’s a lot more chiptune, dreamier rock, electrofunk, and whatnot. If you took the soundtrack to Super Mario Galaxy and Steven Universe, mixed it with the soundtrack to Jet Set Radio Future, and made it thrice as eclectic, you’d get something like BGM’s presumed BGM.

You may have noticed that all the characters for BGM thus far are moddies. That’s no mistake or coincidence— it’s a moddie story. It has a stronger character than Anarchie, to the point I can even call it when aspects of Anarchie “seem like something out of BGM”.  Moddies are already getting started, though no one’s yet calling them moddies. But you see how vaporwave’s gotten so big? How neon and pixel art is dominating Tumblr? Seapunk and dyed hair are everywhere, everyone loves hallucinogenics, and everyone loves the ‘80s once more. Major Lazer, for the fucking win. Right now, we say that these are signs of hipsterdom. But in the 2020s, we’re going to look back and realize what it really was— the birth of the moddies. We’ve not yet reached the moddies— we still need a Transhuman Be-In, cheaper OLEDs, and a Sgt. Pepper moment for electronic music (where people stop seeing it as purely dance music). And I don’t see anyone who owns a robot like Pepper or ASIMO yet either. And while luminescent hair is definitely a thing, it’s not yet become a common thing. Nor has leaving up Christmas lights all year, or being obsessed with bright primary colors.

But we’re getting there. And the thing that will trigger the final separation between post-hipsters and moddies isn’t a Transhuman Be-In, but simply time: us Millennials are indeed growing older. I was born in ‘94, and I’m 22 going on 23. Millennials brought back hipsterdom, but ‘10s hipsters suffered a brutal blow due to the loss of Bernie Sanders and the rise of Donald Trump. Our whole zeitgeist became fragile. Hence why people are looking for harder music instead of the previously comfortably twee indie pop and nu-folk. Being vintage and authentic hasn’t helped us one bit, and the kids— those younger than ourselves— don’t believe in our ideals. They just see a blizzard.  Some may mock the hair colors, but they secretly love it. They want something more than what Millennials are offering. They are loving several aspects of what’s big— aforementioned things like vaporwave, electronic music, dyed hair, cyberpunk revivalism, ‘80s and ‘90s love, etc.— but other aspects, they are eager to discard. There’s a strain of neo-futurism in the iGeneration, which isn’t surprising considering they were raised as something of a proto-cyborg generation.

And that’s the moddies in a nutshell. Kids who recognize they live in “The Future™” and wish to own it. They don’t just listen to electronic music because it’s cool; it also aids that whole sense of living in years that previous generations thought were purely sci-fi. They don’t see electronic music as just dance club/background music. They want electronic versions of prog rock and conscious hip hop. They’re more than happy to drop acid and fuck robots. They don’t love the obsession with a minimalist future with sterile colors— they want neon. Neon lights, neon paint, and a cyberdelic attitude. If that means making cities look like one giant rave, so be it. Because ha ha, they live in the Future.

You can forgive them for their incredible optimism; they’re just kids. And they want you to know it.

[yuli-ban]

Anarchy in Prague vs Belle Grand-Mär: A Moddie Death Battle

If you invaded my home, I’d send you 12 gauges up the arse. However, if you wasted me and stole my laptop, you’d undoubtedly find copious evidence of two stories that have a very similar style but ultimately shoot off into two wildly different directions. So I’ll spend this post detailing how the two are similar and different.

Anarchy in Prague (Anarchie) and Belle Grand-Mär (BGM) both occupy a style that doesn’t seem to have a proper name, for better or worse. The inspirations are the same: start with FLCL, draw a line to JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future, connect those to Scott Pilgrim and Kill La Kill, add stupid amounts of retro video gaming, and sprinkle with the likes of The World Ends With You, Gravity Rush, Steven Universe, Mirror’s Edge, Star vs. The Forces of Evil, Powerpuff Girls, and various other shows, video games, and comics.  Both of them star downer female protagonists with somewhat similar personalities— Venus in Anarchie, Belle in BGM. In both cases, you could easily reframe the story to turn them into an antagonist and suddenly realize that they’re probably villains. 

The differences are in presentation. I’ve called Anarchie “a spiritual successor to Scott Pilgrim” for a damn good reason— if you were to compare the two, you’d quickly notice quite a bit of crossover in themes. For example, one of the reasons Scott Pilgrim works is because it abuses the Willing Suspension of Disbelief clause by having people casually responding to extraordinary events occur in an ordinary world. In any other story, if Matthew Patel burst in from the ceiling and demanding a battle to the death with Scott Pilgrim, there’d be immediate chaos in the audience (after people put away their smartphones, but this was before that era). Scott Pilgrim, the movie and comic, just ran with it. It was like an everyday event that people couldn’t be arsed to care about. A robot is kicking Scott’s ass? Yeah, whatever, there’s free pizza. It’s so deadpan, it’s beautiful. But it’s not so “taking nothing seriously” as to become obnoxious. It was not the first to use this trope (hell, the mainstream comic industry is pretty much built off of this sort of thing!), but it’s my favorite. 

The fact it was a loveletter to gamers and music fans was a plus. Scott Pilgrim and Anarchie are crazy, definitely. Hopefully I can make Anarchie that good that others “get” that it’s meant to be a spiritual sequel. 

BGM is on another level of insanity entirely, at Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann tiers compared to Anarchie. The characters are still meant to be relatable and recognizable, but they’re also not.  Anarchie plays with the moddies as a counterculture, but its main characters are still purely aging Millennials. BGM’s characters are iGeneration-esque moddies in full. The world is far less recognizable and more video game-esque (making it fun to deconstruct it), and the events are flashier and more over the top.  Anarchie, I'd say, is like 'Scott Pilgrim meets Regular Show', if you also threw in a sprinkle of ワタモテ and set it to synthy riff rock. It’s also more of an action-oriented slice of life/Bildungsroman.  BGM is like Scott Pilgrim meets Steven Universe, with a hefty dose of Star Vs. The Forces of Evil, Fooly Cooly, Kill la Kill, and Tank Girl and threw in a whole league of old school Nintendo games and gave it a Jet Set Radio Future-ish, chiptune punk inspired soundtrack. It’s a more straight action-adventure story,  a la Teen Titans, or Young Justice. It's Young Justice with a cutesy artstyle.

I suppose one could even argue that Anarchie is a hipster story, or at least a rocker story, while BGM is a moddie story. But now I’m just rambling. I think it would be better to show you what I mean.