Had this idea swimming around in my head the last two years...


A kind of plot starter goes something like this.


Young man, arcade shooter craze maniac of a guy.... is out on the town at night... Comes across something suspicious... investigates.
Finds an unconcious police officer and then comes across a magical girl fighting a demon. The demon's obviously not stupid, and is 0wning the girl... character decides to help, nearly gets 0wned himself. He grabs the gun from the downed officer... but the demon pins him to the wall by the left shoulder with a spike attack. It would go for the kill, but he raises his other arm, with the gun, and puts a bullet between the eyes of the demon before he passes out from blood loss and shock.

He wakes up in a daze hearing doctors and some unknown men talking about the incident and how it's all hush-hush now. And that his arm has to be amputated.
Later unknown man from the group asks him what he wants.
The demons took his arm... now he wants to take them out.

He gets a cybernetic left arm and a powerful hand gun... and he gets to help the Magical Girl, who's life he saved, win a war against demons who are smart tacticians and intelligent. Add more people as the story progresses.

I figure it could mix in a revenge plot, and evolve into a bit of a love story before too long.

It'll involve a few things most Magical Girl plots don't normally have... as far as I've seen.

- SMART villains. You know, they learn from that first episode, and you're likely to be dead by episode three if you don't get smart too.

- Guns... If a spike can kill a demon, so can firearms.

- Some reasons: For example, a reason as to why these demons and villains choose Tokyo of all places to launch their attack.

- Non-episodic plotline! No more monsters of the day, instead, you'll have your high end generals, their subordinate demons doing things, and sub-demons running around, flowing each plan and monster fight from one episode to the next!

- Interruptions! These villains were smart I had said, they know enough to try and interrupt those powerful magical girl attacks! Or even use espinage to locate the magical girls, discover their identities, and launch attacks!

- HELL: The hero and heroine are really going to have to pull out all the stops to survive this series concept. And it'll be hellish doing so....

Thoughts? Ideas? Flames? *Makes ready with a bucket of water...*

Interesting concept. A few not-quite-random thoughts:

Story tone is going to end up grimmer than a David Drake novel - with near-EoE levels of angstiness.

I forsee a lot of tension between Magical Girl and Shooter, particularly if you're starting from classic archetypes. "I am the Warrior for Peace and Love and - oh, that's what a youma with its brains blown out looks like. Eeeww! <retch>" plus "Headshot, High Score! - ack, the game left out how gunsmoke, blood, brains, and shit stink so bad when they mix! <retch>" IOW, death of innocence, blaming each other, blaming themselves, etc - a really potent mix of negative emotions that those kids are going to have to overcome, if they can overcome the mix.

Add in at least one of the Magical Girls who's going to go spastic over, "he's got a Gun! ZOMG GUNZ TEH EVIL1!!!!11!1!!!!!" (One possibility: resist the temptation, and don't kill her off. Instead, give her the harsh object lesson, where she watches people die that Shooter could've saved.

(Vice versa, Shooter is going to start getting the big head sooner or later. He's probably going to need the object lesson that there really are problems you can't solve with ammunition. Meh, it's all very yin-yangy... )

At some point, if the bad guys are learning, they're going to start doing magic to resist bullets, and/or get guns of their own. You're going to see a weapons arms race and a magical arms race side-by-side. The good guys had better be fast learners, too.

Subplot: Who/what's sponsoring Shooter for his new arm, new gun, and new license to kill, and what's in it for them? Global Domination conspiracies are rather over-done, but having a hero team on a leash would appeal to certain types of bureaucrat, at least as a just-in-case.

Library assignment for mental prep: read Grossman's texts on the psychology of taking lives and battle: On Killing and On Combat. Also read Drake's Hammer's Slammers stories, Hackworth's About Face, James Webb's Fields of Fire and so on... You're dropping a Magical Girl and a Gaming Otaku into a warzone and giving them smart and tough enemies. I don't see how it could conceivably be light-hearted fun.

[EDIT: but, Good luck with the project - I'll look forward to what you put out, kiddo]

reminds me vaguely of arget soma.


in order to keep it unique. here are some things that have been overdone/ should maybe not do.

the MG or the gunner are from eachother's past, though they don;t remember.

the MG and G fall in love. ( at least not from the start. have them fall in love with other people. the mg with someone she's known for a long time, the G with someone on the otherside)

destiny.

the mg has a cute companion creature. or has some disembodied spirit.

the gunner's arm can make itself look like a normal arm for purposes of going outside.

the gunner does not have to go through training.

the mg is a young teen. (mg being older than gunnder ahsn;t been done much)

member of the otherside (OS) falls inlove with one of the good people.

brainwashing of the gunner/mg.

~~~~~~~~~

and maybe, have a reversal of the other mg gunner people joining up later.

have the mg been kicked out of a magical girl group because she was willing to do what needed to be done, whereas the other's are younger and see them selves as pretty magical girls of love (when have they ever seen the full brade of justice?)

i'd maybe put some sort of blocker preventing all of these enemies from sprouting out like mad. maybe an old magical seal or some crap, that prevents any of the weaker enemies from breaching our world (tokyo being a dimensional nexus point would mean the seal would be looser)

thus for the first while there'd only be one or two 'smart' general type people. later, when the seal is reduced, we'd get lower class soldier guys and technicians. wich would mean that attacks would be more coordinated, but easier to beat with the MG&G being used to taking down generals.

another thing. trained military staff. helsing like.

also, don;t just have the guy who offered him revenge vanish and only show up in flashbacks/mind events. have him be a verteran warguy with almost total bionic conversions (make him really old) have him not just pop in a ndhelp ffor a fight, but have him be fighting these in other places. a smart general does not send all his forces to one place.


yeah, i really like this concept.

oh! make the ARM start killing him.

Well... I wasn't going to make the guy a young teen... he's a well leveled college kid who likes gunshooting games. Unfortunately, when that demon took his arm, it was his gun arm... his favorite arm.


The purpose of course, of being offered the bio-cybernetic arm in my eyes, is that the Benifactor (who's been scoping out this underground demon threat for some times...) has had nobody who could use the specially designed anti-demon close in hand weaponry. Reason being, is that normal guns just don't pack enough wallop to kill a demon without wasting a whole clip on them, or geting a 'between the eyes' headshot... Thus the specialty hand gun has the concentrated power of a fifty calibur sniper rifle. That kind of recoil compressed into a hand gun means that nobody without enhanced strength can fire the thing without it breaking their wrist. The other advantage of this young man is the reflexes he has from being a 'shooter whore'... (Plus Most of the guys working with the Benifactor are older and don't have the reflexes.)


- Of course, he will be trained... The Benifactor ain't no foo'. A few experienced military people will be on the protagonist side.
- No, no past relations between the Gunman or the lead magical girl.
- The Love interest just starts out as him protecting someone who needs it, gets covered by revenge for half the story... Evolves into love later on as things get harsh.
- That cybernetic arm looks slightly normal because of the coating, but you can tell it's not normal... especially looking at the hands.

- Destiny is for the weak minded... We make our own destiny through use of heavy firepower! In fact, the magical girl can go on about destiny... the gunman could be a bit more sober minded. (He lost his friendly edge with his arm, and part of the story is trying to get him to soften up...)


I actually drew up a hand gun two years ago when I originally thought up the basic concept and had nothing better to do. Took me a second to find the scale sketch here. (Love graph paper...)

Thunderstar Lightning M.C. 12 Anti-demon hand gun.

Length 12.25 inches
Barrel Length 8 inches
Muzzel Velocity: 2000 m/s

Written Note: "High power handgun designed with mechanism built in that increases muzzel velocit of rounds to sniper-rifle speeds. Magazine auto adapts to one of four popular handgun rounds. Weapon designed to be a small high power personal armament strong enough to kill a demon in one shot. The higher muzzel velocity is required due to the toughness of many demons. Characteristic of firing this weapon is the contrail left by the rounds at their velicity." (Think HALO sniper rifle.)

Other Notes: Physically it looks like a desert eagle with a longer barrel, and a small extension hanging along the underside of the barrel. It combines the use of a slightly longer barrel, plus a strong pulse induction unit to accellerate the bullets being fired. The drawback is that though bullets come out like a sniper rifle, the gun kicks like it as well. So nobody can really shoot it without something reinforcing their hands... or a bionic arm.




A climax concept for the story I belive is having the entire team getting an insertion into the enemy's forward real world base on one of the many islands near okinawa to rescue the magical girl, who'd been captured... Via helicopter HALO jump while the benifactor launches a distraction low to the ground using some 'acquired helicopter gunships...' The distraction meets destruction, but the group of heroes get in there.

The heroes would Metal Gear Solid their way in to confront the master planner of the villains, big showdown that goes very badly... Heroes survive barely to beat the badguys and rescue the girl, but they aren't in condition to get out of there. Luckly... A U.S. Aircraft carrier with someone who knows the Benifactor (Actually, the Marine who is in the benifactor's group with the hero was a mole to keep tabs on this group...) had an E2-C Hawkeye in the air and saw the whole helicopter distraction event go down on radar and real military power is deployed for a rescue and mopup.

The master villain tries to escape, but the heroes are evacuated and the evil bases is obliterated VIA Airstrike. (F-18 Carpet bombing anyone?)

The benifactor dies in the distraction attempt, but we don't find out until later.

Essentially, the final mission is a fiasco that barely meets with success because they got damned lucky some serious firepower was there to help.

Okay, roll with it. Holler if you need a beta reader.

Just a premise still, I'll have to come up with a serious number of characters.

I thought I'd see what we've got as far as oppinion.

(Hmmm... maybe If I made his right hand his normal gun arm, but he has to learn to shoot with the opposite since it's the bionic arm that isn't his good one.)

sounds really good. maybe (focusing on benefactor and bionics) have the benifactor be a ghost in the machine type remnant, and have in the epilogue type thing them find out that he had 'died' and long time ago, and how they knew him was through the echo remnant of him in the bionics.

i like that in the end the military ends up defeating the enemy.

uh, progressive bionic evolution. sorta like, what's that show, where, when he kills a demon, the arm alters/ evolves a bit, based of what advantages this demon had. and maybe, instead of the villain dying in the carpet bombing, he escapes. there can be a little monolgue at the end saying they never found his remains, and something like " they tell me those that we fought were only the vanguard. they tell me that the war is still brewing. whatever happens, I know that i've been tasked with protecting this world from them, and until my dying breath, i shall." or something like that.

I don't want it to be too dark though... I'm a fan of upbeat endings.

I'm thinking that at least one of the DEMON commanders will betray the World Domination wanting demons... Reason being that Demons are 'human' too... Sort of. You know, someone who doubts the whole master plan and thinks what's being done is far too vicious and even wrong.

Depends.

I'll keep a repository until I can imagine a plot.

i was gonna suggest maybe make the magical girl a bit hard warn cynical and cold or something along the lines, hard worn and what not since the happy cute magical girl image is used too much with out much vary... but i guess u want it to be typical magical girl with a twist by the looks of the posts

too me all this sounds like Blood+ with Cobra element (the arm) in it...

i await till the day u have something to show us although i want ask... why tokyo?

i like the idea of her being cold and cynical. or even better: bipolar.

the entire thing doesn't have to be tokyo, but that;'s where most mg's converge so.

Why Tokyo?

Well, the element of evil needs something from humans in order to break their seal or invade in full... whatever.

As the Benifactor who has no name as of yet explains.

They dare not openly attack the population of Earth, lest they want to meet the combined forpower of a world Coalition military force. (Or nuclear strike.) And in most major population centers, it's hard to determine how much of the general populace is armed. (Go to the U.S. try this stuff on humans and you'd have a gang do a drive by shooting.... So places like New York or LA are right out.) Other population centers are too small to provide easy targets over time. Tokyo is the chosen target because it is the largest population center in the world with an armed citizen ratio that's laughable. (Guns aren't legal... and the Japanese are pretty law abiding. Just look at violent crime statistics.)

In short, a target rich environment with minimal physical hazzards to covert operations. Perfect place for demons to sneak about.

thats only because most Magical girl cartoons/anime are made in japan... the anime itself based in japan because they're more familiar with it 'knowing their own cultur' and stuff...

i'm just saying wouldn't it be better to have the setting in a place ur more familiar with rather then some foreign place?

hmm. germany. we could make the final battle a 'horrors of war' war opera and have it all in german.