Unfinished Eroge - "Punks and Picket Fences"

Another unfinished project I wanted to share, but unlike the last I actually "know" the full story connected to this one. Once again, this project uses placeholder music, so please consider contacting me before requesting its removal, I WOULD prefer to actually license the music I used if you are willing to be reasonable. :)

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Now on to the story: My goal with this game was to make a "shonen" eroge that was kind of like what I was HOPING "Kill la Kill" was going to be like. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Kill la Kill, and I get what its fans see in it, but it wasn't what I wanted when I decided to pick it up. You see, I consider Kill la Kill to be an "11/10 Opening" stuck with a "6.5/10 cartoon." The reason why I picked the show up was I saw a clip from it in an AMV. The uploader seems to have removed the original, but it was set to this song, and had the lyrics on screen, which is how I found it. (I was trying to find out what the fuck the opening English lines were, which is "can't stop now it's kicking my brain"). 

By the way, this song is from the sequel to one of my all time favorite visual novels ever, "Nekonade Distortion." If you're even THINKING it'd be cool to learn Japanese to play games and watch anime untranslated, that game alone is reason enough to try. :D

Anyway, the original AMV included a clip from the second opening of Kill la Kill "Ambiguous," which is an anime opening that's almost on par with the AMV I'm referring to. 

The clip the AMV used was the one at the 0:52 mark, where the hero and her rival turn to face each other and lock blades in epic combat! They begin violently slashing at each other, to the point that their blood paints the title, yet they stay locked in combat regardless of the pain they must be feeling, motivated by their passions and convictions in their mortal duel. I absolutely loved that idea, so I watched the anime.

Suffice to say, I was disappointed. Kill la Kill is a fucking goofy series. Objectively I'd give it a "6.5" out of 10, but to me it was a "4" out of 10. I wanted something a lot more serious, and with much more realistic depictions of violence and combat, more along the lines of "Devilman," but still with badass combat scenes like the one in the opening. Therefor, I decided to make that project myself.

If you play the unfinished "game," you'll notice something very evident and deliberate: There is absolutely no indication that this is a "shonen" series whatsoever. It has a relatively somber tone, and depicts a teenage "delinquent" getting picked up from a police station. That was to establish something right off the bat regardless of how I presented the "finished" version of the game: it was set in the "real world," and not a depiction of a "power fantasy." Justin is just a punk who chooses to do punkish things which CAN get him in "serious" trouble. The title "Punks and Picket Fences" is based on the setting portrayed in Green Day's music video for "Walking Contradiction" where Billie Joe Armstrong drags a stick across a white picket fence because he wants to. That's the basis of Justin's character. He's VERY obviously an author self-insert (of me), but I deliberately wrote "myself" into a situation I had never been in, yet was a realistic consequence for the actions I WANTED to enact. (As Justin says, the "crime" doesn't actually matter, the title and the nature of his character make it evident what kind of things he gets up to). So I wrote how I thought I'd feel if I ever "got busted" for doing something "punkish" like spray painting graffiti or something like that (I think that's what the backstory of that night was going to be if I recall correctly), and I think it came out pretty damn good which is why I'm sharing it at all. The game cuts off after he gets up and is about to go to school, but the twist was going to be that since this was an eroge (IE not restricted by the publication requirements for depictions of what the "hero" can and can't do) I was going to write "myself" into situations I had never been in, and depict how I would handle them. Since I don't have to answer to any editors, MY battles can go anyway I think they should, and MY "protagonists" can do anything I think is in their character. And since I wanted this game to be sexually explicit, I wasn't going to hold them back. In other words, Justin was going to hit every "shonen" trope in the book, but he actually WOULD fuck the cute girl sidekick who clearly wants him if "he" (you, yes, you the player!) chose to. And his little cast of "punks" (IE "people who do what they choose to") he hangs out with would all become cool demon hunters worthy of any good shonen magazine if they'd just stop fucking like rabbits on camera.

So who was this cast demon hunting misfits? You're in luck, because I think I can recall virtually all of them this time.

Justin: I've already explained him pretty thoroughly (he's just me in situations I have never been in, doing things I wish I was doing). Though I do want to explain what the actual differences between us are since when I showed what I had to my brother ages ago he DIDN'T understand his character. He saw the similarities between my insert and me and argued that "he's not actually a punk, he's a libertarian." This is a total misread of the character, regardless of whether you are using a more classical or more modern definition of "libertarian." Something "Justin" (the fictionalized me) and I have in common is that we are entirely apolitical. No amount of money could make either of us vote on any issue because we just don't give a shit. The reason he dislikes authoritative figures like police or his father not because of beliefs in regards to "personal freedom/liberties" but rather in regard to how they treat him personally in the moment. If you follow the writing, you'll notice that he points out that his absente father would treat him the same way he thinks the cops would WANT to treat him if they could, though he can't be sure. The reason why I wrote his father as an absente was to make his environment less like mine, so that "Justin" (I chose that name because it's a common Roman name like mine if you're wondering) could be somewhere he could follow the natural instincts I had to suppress since my father is NOT an absente, and WOULD treat me the way Justin describes his father's disciplinary actions if I tried to pull off "actually" being a punk. It also gives me the creative license I need to make Justin a little "tougher" than the actual "me" since lack of authoritative familial figures typically produces troublemakers. So Justin is not actually "me" he's just my wish fulfillment character, even though I write him as "myself." Ultimately though any visual novel is going to reflect more on the player than the author, so when the player makes the decisions they CAN make, the author only tells them what the consequences of those decisions are (in other words, Justin's thoughts on the situation are my holy judgement on the player). BLA BLA BLA, let's move on. Since this is a shonen, obviously each character gets an "unofficial" theme song. I can't quite remember what I originally picked for Justin, it might've been "Chosen One" from Shadow the Hedgehog or the unused "Broken" but looking on what I wrote I think the "correct" choice for his character (HIM not me) is "Where Eagles Dare" by the Misfits.

Justin's Mom: She's everything the narrative describes her as, but there is a little more to her that players would've learned in the final product. She DOES have a repressed son complex that she doesn't act out since she's too "nice." However, even though she's a doting housewife now, her backstory was that she met Justin's father at a Grateful Dead concert, and her favorite band is The Butthole Surfers. Justin is a mommy's boy anyway, so the "oyakodon" route was going to see him spending time with her on totaaaaaaly not "dates" learning more about her youth and exploiting that to make her sluttier and enact her repressed sexual desires towards her son. So even though she isn't one of the "fighting" characters she's still ultimately a "punk" who just needed to remember how to be one. Even though her "vibe" is "LSD Rock" the song that best describes her character and character arc is definitely Avril Lavigne's cover of "Basket Case" by Green Day. (PS If some how Avril Lavigne ever saw this utterly retarded blog post, PLEASE make a studio version of this, it's amazing!!! :D)

The mysterious "That Girl": She was going to be the one that turned this into a shonen series about battling demons. Ultimately this is the part that needs the most revision, I needed a more concrete heaven-hell system to describe where the demons were coming from. They are NOT ghosts though (I fucking hate how overused that trope is). The demons in this world are ultimately "mini-kaiju," and have more "personality" than a lion or tiger, but are ultimately animalistic engines of destruction. GMK Godzilla has a "purposeful grin" and clearly is enjoying being an evil asshole, but is entirely flesh and blood, and can be killed with entirely scientific means by ordinary humans. Jaws has a "terrible sound" but other than that no powers beyond that of a large great white shark. That's what the "demons" of this world would be. ANYWAY, "That Girl" is an angel sent to hunt demons, and has a run in with Justin when he's in the middle of spraypainting something, and ultimately their brief encounter leads him to a situation where he gets caught by the police. She may be an angel, but ultimately she's a "coffee and cigarettes" type angel who's DEFINITELY not "playing" hard to get. If Justin wants to fuck her, it means she'll forsake her immortality and have to remain on earth forever. So in a way she's the "real" final boss isn't she? Her theme is this all time classic.

Zelladine: This was going to be Justin's best friend, and "partner in crime." She's a party girl who despises the fact that her parents make her go to church and does anything she can to make them mad. She does everything in her power to destroy her father's "pure" image of her (openly smokes, drinks, and acts like a slut), and has screaming matches with her mother if she dares to question her lifestyle. Her big scene was going to be a house party where she tells Justin just how much she gets turned on by partying. Obviously there could only be one theme song for a character like this. 

She was also one of the characters I actually had a sketch of, though I lost it at some point. She has auburn hair, and is VERY SPECIFICALLY wearing a white jacket, sepia colored polo shirt, and denim skirt that is laced like a shoe. It's based on outfit JAV actresses Serina Hayakawa wore and it's one of the coolest outfits I've ever seen, and belongs on a badass anime character. I swear to FUCKING GOD I am going to make a character with that exact outfit one of these days. Also, there was going to be a scene after the houseparty where she's feeling a little tipsy and falls down the stairwell and injures her foot on a sharpened pencil in the process. The purpose of the scene was to take her out of the fighting for a bit since they actually have to treat her wound, and it hurts as much as you think it would. But that's so that when she gets back to fighting it shows just how cool these characters really are. (Again I want to EARN that scene from Kill la Kill with this game, even if I can't have it exactly).

Keiko: One of my favorites, she's the group's home room teacher. She's a Japanese immigrant who speaks English fluently, and has long since gotten US citizenship. The reason why she came to the states was because she wanted to start a real gun collection, and has a thing for white guys. Obviously her fighting style is "gun kata" like Christian Bale in "Equilibrium." She also is the star of the game's defining scene where it's revealed that the game is actually a "shonen" battle series. "That girl" doesn't actually come back for a good four chapters while the cast is being established, the first encounter with a demon is actually with Zelladine and Justin who are unprepared to fight it. Luckily Keiko happens to be in the area and of course has a "conceal and carry" license to keep a Beretta M9 in her purse. She gets the very first "fight scene" in the game, and I imagined it to a theme song like this: 

The Rival: This would be the other angel, and he would be the "Gary Oak/Kyo Kusanagi/Lego Batman" type character. In other words, a cocky arrogant asshole, but one who actually has the skill to back up his cocky attitude. His goal is the same as Justin's, stop the demons and fuck "That Girl."  His theme would be this.