Spoiling the Overture

No big story about yesterday. Got called in to work unexpectedly again so I didn’t have time beforehand to finish up what I had planned. It’s that time of year where you get a lot of people calling in sick. So, put that on the back burner a little bit, and move on.

The next couple days I plan to share a couple of the working plans I have for some of the other stories in the Book of the Shadows saga. Today’s entry is Book of the Shadows, Overture.

Overture is the “final” saga. Relative to the entire saga it is intended for now to be the last of the sagas. It has its own self-contained story, but in reality the main role of the story is in bringing together the various members of the group I call the Two-Six. The internal story functions as a driver for explaining some of the details about the Two-Six that went unexplained in the course of the other individual sagas.

The lead character of Overture is named Yukito Tsukishiro. A high school kid in his first year at Avalon Academy, he is the president of the fledgling astronomy club; a club he himself is the founder of at the school. He also becomes the class representative, a job he takes on mainly because it seemed interesting. Only a couple months in to the school year, he is stargazing on his roof when he sees something strange in the sky. He recalls falling from the roof and seeing someone come to his rescue. The next day he wakes up in bed fine.

At school his homeroom teacher has left on maternity leave so a new teacher comes in for the year. Her name is Mana Anzai, and though she looks a lot like the person Yukito saw come to him, she denies having seen him before. Ms. Anzai eventually becomes the advisor for the Astronomy Club.

The club eventually gains several members; fellow first years Tomoyo Daidouji and Kouichi Tsugasa, and second year Karen Okushiro. They manage to organize a trip to the national observatory during the summer break, and cap it off with a nighttime stargazing trip to the school a couple days before the end of the break. That night they witness a fireball streak through the sky, landing in the hillside nearby, in the general area where Yukito’s house is.

Despite the urging of the club members and Ms. Anzai not to, Yukito runs off to check on his home. Avoiding responding police and other safety officials he makes his way to where his house should be, only to find it completely leveled. He is attacked from behind and knocked unconscious. When he comes around, he is tied up and being dragged across the floor by a woman with a large snake draped around her body. He is taken before a large gathering of women, three women in particular at their head; the Kuja Pirates led by Hancock Boa, empress of the Kuja.

The Kuja are space pirates who have found themselves stranded on the planet after their ship was damaged and crash landed on Yukito’s house. From there Yukito is held prisoner while they try to gather information about the area. The damaged ship is cloaked so surveying helicopters are unable to spot it, but when they respond by shooting at the helicopters, the military is eventually called on.

A day later Yukito manages to escape his cell and finds himself wandering the ship looking for an exit. He stumbles onto Hancock’s private chambers, catching her as she is bathing and glimpsing a mark on her back. He runs away, being captured once again. He is brought into the great hall as he was before, this time Hancock determining he will be executed. Before Hancock’s sister can kill him, he manifests an unusual power that calls forth a sword and a water-based attack to defend him. They pirates are ready to fight to kill him when their ship comes under attack, the military having arrived and commenced with attacks on the area where the attacks against the police originated.

As the ship starts to fall apart in various areas under the attacks, Yukito ends up helping the pirates, protecting many of them from large chunks of falling debris with the power he just awakened to. He soon passes out from using this power. When he wakes up his is in a small state room. He has been out for several hours, during which the ship was powered enough to be moved to the other side of the mountain under cloak to escape the military.

Yukito is brought before Hancock in her private quarters. She thanks him for his help during the previous day’s incident. Later, she informs him that his execution has been indefinitely postponed as restitution for his destroyed house, and that he will further be allowed to come and go as he pleases in exchange for information about the planet, and for obeying various rules, particularly in regards to her and her sisters’ secret he viewed on their backs.

Thus, Yukito begins to live with a band of space pirates who are getting used not only to this new planet, but having come from a planet of only women, used to having a man around.

From here Alex gets swept up in a number of other matters now entirely his own. He accidentally saves a queen from another country while on an island vacation insisted upon by Hancock and her pirates, helping to uncover a plot by some in her government trying to assassinate her. His cousin, he discovers, is herself a demon, in service to the heir of one of the Demon World’s royal families, and ends up fighting to help thwart a plot to overthrow another of those royal families. He gets sucked into a different universe where humans and monsters are in the midst of long-standing war with one another, and ends up targeted by the ruler of the monster faction. He ends up being viewed as a potential anomaly on Earth, a danger to the universe, and the victim of a careless promise by his grandfather, all of which leads to his being engaged to a member of the Jurai Royal Family. Finally, he finds out that his power was the result of an experiment conducted by one of the Two-Six.

At its heart Overture uses the formula of the Tenchi Muyo series as its basis. However, while it hits on a few of the highlights (the encounter with a notorious space pirate, the engagement to a Jurai princess, Yukito’s grandfather is actually named Yosho) it isn’t meant to directly mimic it. It is mostly a product of the fact that the Tenchi story in its grandiosity allows it to mesh well with a number of other concepts. The Two-Six are much like the three Goddesses, and if you want to have a number of characters who may otherwise not likely easily gravitate to one another to make an appearance in a single story, having a convenient foil like a Yukito (Tenchi) is very helpful. The result is that the story itself ends up in this sort of motif.

I will state that there is a harem at play in Overture, but it will only involve two of the Two-Six. It will also more likely end like GXP than like the OVAs.

I have only done a limited amount of story writing for Overture since beginning the planning for it at the end of 2011. Given that and the fact that it technically needs me to flesh out the appearances of the Two-Six in the other sagas, Overture is probably a long way off from any real progress. Anime/manga I have planned to include in the eventual story so far are as follows; Tenchi Muyo, Cardcaptor Sakura, Star Driver, High School DxD, Yu-Gi-Oh, One Piece, Aquarion Evol, Hekikai no Aion, Persona 4, Princess Lucia, Onihime VS, Black Cat/To Love Ru, Zero no Tsukaima, Renai Idenshi XX, Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari, and BlazBlue.

Those are my plans for Overture. Tomorrow I’ll drop some spoilers about the Third Moon Saga. Until then… later.