Robert Kelly

As an anime fan, I still have an interest in a lot of stuff coming from the land of the rising sun. So when fansubbing really took off and anime could be downloaded, I was pretty happy, until I discovered that it coincided with the moe boom, and that a lot of the anime out was mostly shounen, or harem anime based on erotic games.

So, along with there still being a bit of a recession going on, and my apparent inability to do anything but surf the net and eat, I haven't actually been doing much in anime watching. I'm trying to correct this, but I still haven't really cracked into any of the anime DVDs that I bought at Minamicon this past March. Why? I don't know!

ilthit has finished her commission for me, and after I'm done with an essay on postmodernism on film, I should try and force myself to write something. Hopefully I'll be able to actually see through it to the end...

Some time ago I talked about "Urusei Yatsura: the Senior Year", an UY fanfic that's pretty well known to some people for it's epic length and scope that centres on several alien races and civilisations... And turns Ataru from a goofy lecher into a powerful Gary Stu. Well, it turns out that the writer of that infamous series is on the Anime Addventure site, and he's basically doing the same thing with all of the threads that he's writing...

Obnoxious Sentimental Princesses? Ataru becomes a girl, and becomes the most powerful of the Sailor Senshi, Sailor Earth.

The Doctor Is In? Ataru becomes a superhero who can apparently seduce anyone he pleases.

Faking It - Great Guardians? Ataru has the Saikou Jinseijitsu from the "Senior Year" series, which makes him the most powerful person on the planet and a twin sister. Oh, and he becomes a girl, too.

Totally Alone? The entire casts of Ranma 1/2 and UY are killed except for Ataru and Ranma, but they get female clones to act as love interests!

I find it fascinating that almost all of these threads share the same common theme: Ataru or Ranma have their entire personalities changes, so they can leave their previous relationships and rivalries behind and just become better than the canon characters. Basically, they become gigantic Gary Stus all the time, treating most of their canonical friends or enemies with either utter, outright hatred, to the point of several injuring them any chance they get or just plain condescension and looking down on them.

But the one thing I hate about this guy? Endless, endless, endless exposition! In practically all of his posts, people do nothing but sit around and talk. They talking about this, they talk about that... In his latest thread, Great Guardians, they've made mention of what could be a massive antagonist in the shape of the Lum-worshipping Niphentaxians (his own creation), and all we know of them is what the characters say about them. And considering that most of the fight scenes are of them squashing other canon characters, I fear they'd just be targets for the Marty Stus to destroy effortlessly.

The Anime Addventure however, gives readers the ability to write their own episodes to threads written by other people. I have to say, I tempts me quite a bit to rain on this guy's Stu parade...

I just signed up to do an essay on Ship Manifesto, no prizes for guessing what pairing I'm going to write about.

As it is, this should be an opportunity to finally managed to get something out about this ship, because damn, I can't stop thinking about it.

The worst part of it is that, because it is, after all, an obscure pairing for an anime over 20 years old, there is next to nothing about it. Sure, you could probably get scads and scads of fics with every possible pairing over in the Ranma 1/2 and Inu-Yasha, but trying to find anything yuri in the Urusei Yatsura fanfic world that's not written by Fred Herriot? Impossible.

Hopefully, by writing about this pairing, I can get at least some attention from other people...

In order to truly break in my journal for my first-time Dreamwidth experience, I've gone and done something I think should have happened some time ago: I made my very own fan community. I've been thinking that Urusei Yatsura hasn't had much of a following these days that I really know of, apart from skye  and me. So, here's a little something to alleviate the problem...

Let's have a big hello for hello_tiger !