Vision Design - Author-kun Wants to Write Harem Comedies!

It's that time of the year again, time for Author-kun to write a new story!

I am starting out with a new story idea, and the very first step is to get it past the Vision Design stage. That's when I start throwing everything at the whiteboard to see what sticks. But what kind of story will author-kun write about?

THOUGHTS

For starters, I would like something with wide appeal. What has wide appeal these days?

I thought I would start off with “what are things that author-kun likes these days”? Things like SpyxFamily, Lycoris Recoil, and Kaguya-sama Wants to be Confessed To really got off this year. I think that trying to emulate a small part of their success might be good.

For the first two, my initial thought was that a big common point is that the glowies, or secret agents are the good guys for once, and they pulled it off really well, despite my personal dislike for glowinthedarks.

Maybe a cool action story about glowies would do the trick? I've always wanted to do the counterpart to /Conspiracy/ Girls, maybe a /glowie/ girls to build up a reasonable opponent for Madison. So perhaps a story about glowies doing glowie things, but the glowies are cute girls so it is very palettable. Of course, because it is set in the floating city of arcadia. I planned for Arcadia to be a floating cyberpunk city in the sky, it's the perfect spot for a tragedy.

But zanen, /glowie/ girls will not be entering production this year.

One reason is that I don't know very much about cyberpunk, or I am not that into cyberpunk to want to write a sci-fi. Plus I think that a lot of my initial concepts leant WAY too close to Psycho Pass for my liking. At one point there was a genki orange-haired goat girl, which DID not get past editorial.

If I do the Arcadia arc, I would really have to think long and hard about my themes for Arcadia arc somewhere later down the line.

Then what exactly is, the thing about these shows that author-kun likes?

After doing some vision design for the Arcadia arc, I came to realize this: It's pretty hard to write a popular tragedy. I think the world has had enough tragedy/despia and the people who enjoy them (cough author-kun) are in the minority now.

There's not enough MONEY to be made in that! I do think that well-executed tragedies like Demons Roots are great, but they don't exactly have the appeal that I am going for, nor is Author-kun skilled enough to pull off a Demons Roots alone.

REASONING

Lycoris Recoil is at it's heart, a story about cute girls doing glowie things in a dystopia world. But the main character, Chisato is so genki and lovable, it kind of overpowers the world setting. Kind of like Madison in a way, but Madison's influence in the story reaches far more than her personality.

SpyxFamily is a family story, with glowie moments mixed in sometimes. The slice-of-life definitely overpowers the glowie side of things, otherwise we would see more of Yor in action. Instead, the focus is on the daily life of the Forgers and Anya in particular. So the stakes are pretty low, despite world peace being threatened constantly.

A note on SpyxFamily. While I like the idea of a low-stakes setting, I've already reserved that for the mainline /Conspiracy/ Girls stories. Madison and Ayano never get into any real trouble that they cannot wriggle out of, and even when their lives are threatened, you can always count on them to pull a Totally Spies or Nancy Drew move out of it. So if I were to write a story, it would NOT be a completely low-stakes story.

And finally we come to Kaguya-sama. As of recording, Kaguya-sama finally reached the end of the festival arc. I think up until this point Kaguya-sama realyl is the best example of a well-executed premise and payoff. The premise, a pair of student council members who obviously like each other try to force each other to confess, and through many trials and tribulations and errors, they finally express their feelings to each other at the climax of a school festival. If you told me that the series ended at that point, I would say that it was an EL PERFECTO ending.

PLAN

After analyzing the shows that Author-kun likes, I have come to a conclusion. Author-kun really likes comedy. The key lovable thing about those three shows is that they are really funny.

I might be falling into the shitty bakuman editor trap, but the more Author-kun thinks about it, the more Author-kun realizes he likes and understands anime comedy more than more people. Maybe. Author-kun has watched so much anime and almost most of the memorable ones have loads of funny moments.

At the same time, there are a lot of cute girls in those shows. Most of the time Author-kun remembers not the plot of a show, but the cute girls that make it up. I've already talked about Chisato being a happy-go-lucky ball of Sunshine, Anya's cute and innocent demeanor, and for Kaguya there's something cute in the contrast between how she acts in public and what she thinks in her mind.

So at this point, if I were to combine the two elements together, comedy and cute girls, and considering that I would like to avoid any overlaps with /Conspiracy/ Girls, I end up with a funny conclusion:

Author-kun wants to do harem comedies.

Author-kun

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