I don't know how many of you have been following the Battle Fantasia thread, but if you've been following the main thread over on SpaceBattles.com you might have noticed a few mentions of a spin-off idea I've had and which I'd like to develop. The idea in question concerns the cast of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, specifically Nanoha's friend Arisa, and her transformation into a magical girl.
The idea originally came up during a discussion of whether Yu Yu Hakushou would be admitted to the list of series included in the main project, and it was rejected because it wasn't a magical girl show. The suggestion of magical girls based on YYH got me thinking about Bleach, however, which has a stronger connection to the genre at least in the Karakura Town arc (Seriously, Ichigo transforms into a ghost to fight hollows, Rukia is a human substitute for the magical girl/boy's familiar, he fights a lot of monsters of the week... think it over a bit). Rather than create new characters for the role, however, I decided on using Arisa, since she has a past history of being a ghost during her debut appearance in Triangle Heart and I rather like her personality.
The tough part has proven to be developing the concept in a sufficiently original way. It would be easy to stick to an organization like Soul Society but I'd rather not make such an obvious Bleach rip-off, especially since I'm not overly fond of the series past the first arc or so. I'm similarly wary of making any sort of absolute god-like power for Arisa to answer to because I've never liked all-knowing Yahweh-like God figures with absolute authority over the salvation or damnation of souls or what have you. I also have to work this around the various cosmologies involved in Battle Fantasia, several of which like Sailor Moon confirm the existence of souls but not necessarily of an afterlife. I've given some thought to the idea of the god figure being something like the source of life energy on the material plane, but I think this may conflict with one or more of the involved series.
There are several things I know I do want, however:
The idea originally came up during a discussion of whether Yu Yu Hakushou would be admitted to the list of series included in the main project, and it was rejected because it wasn't a magical girl show. The suggestion of magical girls based on YYH got me thinking about Bleach, however, which has a stronger connection to the genre at least in the Karakura Town arc (Seriously, Ichigo transforms into a ghost to fight hollows, Rukia is a human substitute for the magical girl/boy's familiar, he fights a lot of monsters of the week... think it over a bit). Rather than create new characters for the role, however, I decided on using Arisa, since she has a past history of being a ghost during her debut appearance in Triangle Heart and I rather like her personality.
The tough part has proven to be developing the concept in a sufficiently original way. It would be easy to stick to an organization like Soul Society but I'd rather not make such an obvious Bleach rip-off, especially since I'm not overly fond of the series past the first arc or so. I'm similarly wary of making any sort of absolute god-like power for Arisa to answer to because I've never liked all-knowing Yahweh-like God figures with absolute authority over the salvation or damnation of souls or what have you. I also have to work this around the various cosmologies involved in Battle Fantasia, several of which like Sailor Moon confirm the existence of souls but not necessarily of an afterlife. I've given some thought to the idea of the god figure being something like the source of life energy on the material plane, but I think this may conflict with one or more of the involved series.
There are several things I know I do want, however:
- Arisa's outfit and powers are loosely based on the Burning Arisa doujins, so Arisa has a katana and some manner of fire magic for her chief weapons. Some similarities to Konpaku Youmu may make their way into her fighting style as well, but because I know jack-all about Touhou it probably won't be anything tremendously obvious.
- The fire which Arisa is using isn't due to a magical alignment, but due to a symbolical alignment between fire/heat/warmth and life energy (contrast cold/death as the absence of heat/life). Since she's a Nanoha character, she's a very strong fighter by necessity, none of this "running-away-from-the-monster-waiting-for-the-obligatory-male-to-show-up-and-save-her" deal that anime-version Sailor Moon and similar girls have.
- Arisa becomes a magical girl by transforming into a phantasm, shifting her body and life energy into an ethereal state between life and death. In this form she is invisible to people with no spiritual awareness (including a surprisingly large number of magical girls), but is capable of interacting normally both with solid matter and with other spirits, though she can also choose to phase through walls and such like a proper ghost. Weapons charged with spiritual energy can hurt her in this state, as can other spirits.
- Arisa's chief enemies are necromancers, evil spirits, various forms of demons from other franchises that feed on life energy (youma from Sailor Moon for instance). Her ultimate adversary is probably something/someone like the Lich King from Warcraft, given the parallels I mentioned between heat/cold and life/death.