Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I come to find almost all High Schoo AU fanfics tend to be terrible.
I don't think the idea of taking characters from their canon plot and transferring them to a high school like setting is bad by default. Gurren Lagann even had an official manga that did that and it was pretty good.
However, most of the ones I've read tend to make the following mistakes:
1. Strip the characters down to the barest essentials, in worst case, names and appearances only.
2. Maintain hardly any original flavor from the original canon.
3. Original characters, or worse, self inserts are added that utterly dominate the plot.
The result usually tends to be horrible Mary Sue riddled wish fulfillment where the author interacts with the characters, the plot is just there to help the author live out their fantasies, and the characters are just cardboard cutouts reading from a badly written script, their source characterization be damned.
Me, I'd like to think not all stories in this genre have to be terrible, but then again, maybe I'm just too much a cynic, so I was wondering if anyone else had any other opinions on the subject.
I don't think the idea of taking characters from their canon plot and transferring them to a high school like setting is bad by default. Gurren Lagann even had an official manga that did that and it was pretty good.
However, most of the ones I've read tend to make the following mistakes:
1. Strip the characters down to the barest essentials, in worst case, names and appearances only.
2. Maintain hardly any original flavor from the original canon.
3. Original characters, or worse, self inserts are added that utterly dominate the plot.
The result usually tends to be horrible Mary Sue riddled wish fulfillment where the author interacts with the characters, the plot is just there to help the author live out their fantasies, and the characters are just cardboard cutouts reading from a badly written script, their source characterization be damned.
Me, I'd like to think not all stories in this genre have to be terrible, but then again, maybe I'm just too much a cynic, so I was wondering if anyone else had any other opinions on the subject.