01/30/09 (I was supposed to post it on this date, but oh well. Posted 02/01/09)
Hi! First blog and I dunno what to say. Well, what I could speak right now is that I'm so exhausted from yesterday's Chinese New Year Parade since we had to assemble like 1:30 PM (actually I got there 2:23) but the parade was to happen 4:00 PM. The Tagaytay Sun's (the cold weather actually) gone and we had to wait even though it was so hot.
Today is so boring. It feels good that I'm back here at home. I just came back from my lola's house since she's leaving for Los Angeles tomorrow. What I want to do is study my little Dutch book, read some manga online, and work on my doujinshi (it's been updated like how many weeks ago, tsk tsk).
I'm so pissed that I only finished (or partially for that matter) four pages of my doujinshi. It's actually a fanfiction of the manga, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei only that I revamped it into something with lesser 'revealing' content', you know what I mean. It's got lots of references too especially to the 50s culture and the game Fallout. Here are the details below.
Title: Nagasaki, Nagasaki (this isn't final yet though)
Setting: Nagasaki in a militarist, conservative, 1950s-like, Art Deco, Red Scare Japan in 2007, though not like the one in Red Alert 3
Characters:
Hatsumoto Family:
Ichirou Hatsumoto
-the first person Akemi meets while she's walking in Nagasaki Hills on her way to her first day in the Kirishitan Memorial Academy or International Roman Catholic Academy of Nagasaki (this is fictional). He's shown hanging himself until Mishu stops his untimely death. He's Akemi's class adviser and English teacher who's a samurai but extremely nihilistic with no regard of the bushido code. This is due to some incident years ago. He wears glasses, has mustache, and parted hair. He's based on Zetsubou Sensei's Nozomu Itoshiki, only armed with a wakizashi & katana. He later falls in love with a new teacher (Asami Fujimori) , who is the opposite of him. He's from an affluent samurai family in a remote town outside Nagasaki, but has become nihilistic after he lost a championship finals in karate against someone he forgot (actually, it's Akemi's father).
Age: 33
Likes: death, shaming his samurai status Dislikes: anything positive, Mishu
Weapon of choice: wakizashi (though he may use his katana)
Hobbies: looking down on the world, trying different methods of suicide (except seppuku/hara-kiri since it's honorable)
Sae Hatsumoto
-Ichirou's youngest sibling, a fourteen-year-old fashion designer featured in Vogue. Even though she possesses exceptional talents, she is ever paranoid of being targeted by paedophiles, be it man or woman, young or old. She can't wait to be eighteen in order for herself to get married to abandon her last name as it makes her, as she thinks, famous. She moves to a dorm in Nagasaki where she feels safer.
Age: 14
Likes: fashion, chocolate, houte-couture
Dislikes: her last name
Chikako Hatsumoto
-Ichirou's second-youngest sibling. She's a geisha and wears a ribbon on the back of her head. She usually handles the household tasks much to the annoyance of the househelp who can't get their pay without doing a single job. She becomes offended easily when she's called a geisha girl since it signifies a prostitute. Also the term onsen geisha (the town is close to the mountains with hot springs) is offensive towards her since it treats her like a low-class woman. She observes her brother, Kenichirou practicing with the naginata and practices the style with her broom.
Age: 22
Likes: kimonos, ikebana, kagura, fellow geishas
Dislikes: being called a geisha girl
Hideki Hatsumoto -the third-youngest-sibling. Hideki looks somehow similar to Ichirou and works as a doctor in his clinic in Nagasaki. He studied about nuclear radiation and found out how it can be used to treat ailments. He gathers radiation from certain radioactive spots in the city which were caused by the atomic bombing in 1945. His clinic is rarely visited because of his radiation treatments and is nicknamed Dr. Strangelove which causes him to lose control of himself. Unlike his brothers, he didn't choose to become a samurai.
Age: 28
Likes: radiation, history about the Cold War
Dislikes: Dr. Strangelove
Kenichirou Hatsumoto
-Ichirou's second-oldest brother. He is a samurai and taught Ichirou his first steps in bushido. He's an expert in pop art but tends to create his works through photoshopping. Kenichirou, unlike all his siblings, is a Buddhist & Shintoist, following his father's beliefs but he still respects his siblings. He wears a kimono (with the sleeves longer than Ichirou's) and a hakama. He bears a somewhat similar appearance to Ichirou, though older and taller.
Age: 36
Likes: Andy Warhol, pop art, bushido, sake
Dislikes: postmodernism, his brother's radiation treatment
Kenichi Hatsumoto
-the eldest brother of Ichirou who has become unseen through years. He chose to become a ninja (no it's not about those samurai vs ninja stuff) which is against the Hatsumoto tradition and disappeared. His father had him erased from family records. He will appear sometime later in the doujinshi.
Age: 41
Likes: ???
Dislikes: ???
Shinzo Hatsumoto
-Ichirou's father who is a member of the Japanese Diet. He is a Buddhist unlike his wife and his children except for Kenichirou. He is very traditional is usually away in Tokyo.
Age: 67
Likes: Japan and its government, tea
Dislikes: those who oppose the government
Kuniko Hatsumoto
-Ichirou's mother, who is usually away with her husband in Tokyo. She is a Catholic unlike her husband and Kenichirou. She's a bibliophile and prefers staying in remote areas away from noise.
Age: 62
Likes: reading
Dislikes: noise
Daisuke Hatsumoto
-Ichirou's nephew and a son of his disowned brother, Kenichi. He was left in the manor when his parents left. He is a classmate of Akemi's younger brother, Taro, and eventually becomes best friends with him when he introduced bushido to him. He looks up on Ichirou as his role model and sometimes comes along with him to the school. Although quite boastful, he is quite fearful towards Ichirou's students when they display their bizzare personalities. He has feelings for Victoria/Carey, sending her old books of English authors such as George Orwell & hard-to-find Beatles records. He apparently looks like a younger version of Ichirou, only with messier hair.
Age: 8
Likes: shonen manga, samurai, bushido, learning his parents' whereabouts, Victoria/Carey
Dislikes: bizzare happenings, failing to search for his parents, losing
Students:
Akemi Shotekino
-the protagonist of the story. She's a normal Catholic girl from Osaka until her life changes when she and her family move to Nagasaki. She dresses conservatively but with a touch of fashion (though she doesn't like wearing pants). Her family consists of her dad, a samurai (there's a new bushido code here); her mom, a former enka singer; and her younger brother, who is curious with finding inspiration and learning bushido. I made her hair like that of Asuka Kazama of Tekken 5.
Age: 14
Likes: doujinshi, sakuras, the Kansai region, her family, her bag, enka
Dislikes: cocky people, anything that seems unnatural to her, heavy metal music
Weapon of choice: her bag
Hobby: creating her doujinshi
Mishu Rakkanteki
-the first classmate Akemi meets who's overtly optimistic with everything (she's based on Fuura Kafuka from Zetsubou Sensei). Even in the most negative of situations, she still looks on the bright side, even if there is none. She looks similarly like Kafuka, only her bangs are lengthened and that she usually wears clothing similar to that of Lili from Tekken 5.
Age: 14
Likes: the world, God
Dislikes: feeling of sorrow
Hobby: preaching
Ayame Junzen
-one of the first classmates Akemi meets in school. At first she thinks she's normal but she's overtly a perfectionist. She doesn't seem to like Mishu at all because some of Mishu's ideas don't seems to be precise though Mishu views her positively. In one chapter of my doujinshi, she, like Zetsubou Sensei's Chiri Kitsu, will be wanting to marry Ichirou for a certain incident at the school clinic. She looks similar to Chiri.
Age: 14
Likes: sheer perfection, conservatism, Ichirou
Dislikes: loopholes of society, Mishu
Mazda Suto-similar to Zetsubou Sensei's Abiru, she's always in pain though the bandages are lessened. She seems to agree with Ayame on her ideas but is often clumsy which leads her to injure herself. She's an animal-lover but loves to pull their appealing parts (eg. ears, tails) which in turn makes the animals hurt her.
Age: 14
Likes: animals and their appealing parts
Dislikes: plants (they're boring)
Haguri Yamashita
-based on Zetsubou Sensei's Harumi Fujiyoshi, she's a fangirl but not on yaoi (no offense, but yaoi's illegal in my fictional Japan). She's rather obsessive with lolita, cosplay, and video games. She's the daughter of a general who's a son of the World War II general Tomoyuki Yamashita. She's a Neo-Nazi and her idol is Hitler. Before you criticize me, I'm not a Nazi and I'm don't admire nor do I dislike them. I just want to spice the manga up with something majorly controversial.
Age: 14
Likes: Japan, lolita, manga, video games, the military, the Red Scare, Hitler, the power of the atomic bomb
Dislikes: communism, the US, losing a doujinshi contest
Tsuki Mawasu
-based on Zetsubou Sensei's Matoi Tsunetsuki, she follows the person she loves everywhere and changing her style to match that of the person. She falls in love with Ichirou after misinterpreting his statement on love at such a young age. She starts wearing a kimono with a short skirt and clips her hair like a ponytail when wearing it.
Age: 14
Likes: whom she loves, interests of the special someone
Dislikes: losing the person she loves, people who love the person she loves
Hitomi Shiriyoshi
-based on Kiri Komori, she's a hikkikomori. Only, she became one after her mother died in a car accident. She eventually mistakes Ichirou's ways as a way of getting over her grief until she meets the school counselor, Ai Chiemi, who thinks of her as a good mother figure.
Age: 13
Likes: her mother, Ms. Chiemi
Dislikes: sunlight
Yashu Dokomodake
-based on Meru Otonashi. She's quiet and doesn't speak often but is very violent in her text messages. Any attempt to speak causes her to undergo a possesed state, blurting out vulgar words. Except for her hime hairstyle, she looks similar to Meru.
Age: 13
Likes: cellphones
Dislikes: her cellphone's battery & signal running out
Victoria/Charisma "Carey" Kipling
-based on Kaere/Kaede Kimura, she's an English exchange student suffering from dissociative identity disorder due to her frequent world traveling with her father as she tries her best to keep her English culture in tack while in other nations. For this, she is mocked and then tries to conform to the nation's culture leading her to be mocked in England. One of her personalities is Charisma "Carey", that of a very gentle, budding tourist who easily conforms to the nation's culture and also looks for the exotic males of the country. The other is Victoria, a stern, stiff upper lip lady who always thinks of England and despises the nation's culture and at times even makes up outrageous tales of England's culture to make her country feel superior though she ends up ridiculing herself. Victoria is easily offended threatening to sue someone and calling her father's lawyer. Her father is a relative of the famed author Rudyard Kipling. Her natural attitude which she adopts in her two personalities is that of a beatnik who listens to 60s music and wears 60s fashion which made it popular in England thanks to her beauty. She often wears a headband and is blonde. She is a rival of Tsuki for Ichirou's affection after thinking of him as an exotic male.
Age: 15
Likes: -Victoria: England, 60s culture, fish n' chips, Mary Poppins, Stanley Kubrick films, the UK's recent separation from the EU (well here it did), tea
-Carey: world travel, 60s culture, international cuisine, foreign films
Dislikes: -Victoria: the European Union, foreign cultures, disco
-Carey: disco, ultraviolence, war
Colette du Poulain
*update*
-she's no longer a Snow White girl anymore. She's now a religious Ye-Ye girl who's views somehow contrast with Carey's. This is the only change. Other than that, she still keeps the orphan thing.
*old Colette*
-she's totally not based on any character except for Amelie Poulain of the film Amelie. Colette is a French country girl who was raised in an orphanage run by nuns after being saved from abortion. She knows Victoria/Carey while doing charity work in another country. After learning about her ill fate, she becomes overtly religious and nice. She's also an exchange student assigned to do charity work in Nagasaki. Colette is very gentle, much to the annoyance of others and is also very imaginative. She is brown-haired and wears it in a ponytail. She also wears 50s styled clothing and decent attires with usually white leggings. Because of her gentle demeanor and optimistic personality, she goes well with Mishu. She always wears a smile and prays for sinners each time she sees someone doing wrong.
Age: 15
Likes: God, the countryside, violins
Dislikes: violence, anything that threatens God, frogs
Anneliese Lang
-Anneliese is an exchange student from Austria who's passion is fashion. Unlike most of Akemi's frequently met classmates, she's near to normal. Her father is a nationalist politician who is against Austria's union with the newly created Nazi Germany (again, another controversial topic I've added) and her mother is a former beauty queen who became a photographer. Anneliese later learns of her mother being Dutch which causes her to go traumatic due to some incidents when she visited the Netherlands such as falling into the cold water. This can also be expressed of her fear of going back to her home in Vienna after realizing the Danube has been cleaned which she refers as "Netherlandified/Hollandified".
Age: 16
Likes: fashion, Hugo Boss, Looney Tunes, Vogue
Dislikes: jeans & denims, T-shirts as a fashion (it's all too common), pornography, the Netherlands (not the waters!!), "Netherlandification (it's Europe's worst nightmare!!)"
Young Hye Ji
-based on, well, various Korean girls I've seen on TV. She's naughty, boyish, and always gets what she wants. She, unlike most of Akemi's classmates, is somehow normal and gets along well with Akemi. Her uniform is the typical South Korean-styled uniform and she sets her hair into two buns. She came to Nagasaki to visit her Korean relatives living there, but is ostracized by some girls who call her "Nijiru (a pun on Zainichi meaning staying)" whom she eventually beats up. She despises Ichirou after one incident in the classroom, because he spoke against the upcoming marriage of Japan's crown prince to a Korean (I'll be making a fanfiction of Goong too) and involved his racist ideas against Koreans. She, after certain experiences, develops an attraction towards Ichirou, usually overpowering Ayame, Tsuki, and Carey, but he still turns her down. She is skilled with menial tasks, especially in repairing machineries. She is also close to the headmaster, who thinks of her as a role model to Japanese girls.
Age: 14
Likes: manhwa (Korean manga), jobs of men, men's stuff, learning new stuff
Dislikes: Math problems, girly-girls, cocky people
Hadriana "Aly" Pobre
-based on Maria Sekiutsu, the illegal immigrant from Zetsubou Sensei, she is an illegal immigrant herself, from Brazil that is. Ms. Chiemi, who is substituting Ichirou, is shocked to see a Brazilian girl instead of a Japanese boy. Akemi, Mishu, Ayame, and Colette followed her to the partially renovated but open penthouse Colette is staying in. She was seen staying in a room in the still renovating area with a bunch of illegal immigrants and tells her new "friends" to report them to the police since police are supposed to "help" people which Ayame eventually does much to Colette's opposition who eventually prays for divine intervention. She bought the birth certificate of the student bearing the name Akira Sawakuro whom Colette "helps". They eventually drop her by the room of a rich Brazilian widow to whom she can be registered for adoption and legally enrolled. Though she has a wild personality such as walking barefoot (wears socks if cold) and scavenging from full garbage bins (which are very rare in Nagasaki's squeaky clean streets), because of her status as an illegal immigrant who has witnessed many gang wars in Rio de Janeiro's favellas (which she refers to as people playing on the streets) the nationalist students of the school usually sympathize for her sake. Her last name, Pobre, means "poor" in Portuguese. She also displays an optimistic personality too, allowing her to get along well with Colette & Mishu. The three always accompany each other.
Age: 10
Likes: Japan, scavenging for discarded materials
Dislikes: the feeling of sorrow
Xin Ying
-a Chinese exchange student, who is even much more shy than a hikkikomori but shows herself outside, always looking down and ignoring people. This shyness was due to her traditional family expecting her to be extra shy and to undergo the footbinding process (though this has become generally taboo). This led her to flee from her traditional village in the Jiangsu Province and hitchhiking to Beijing. She doesn't speak much and if she does, only speaks in Mandarin. She usually goes with Julia. Her hair is like that of Xiaoyu from Tekken 5 and has a certain affinity for pandas & rice. Her name can be made into "shining" which explains her being noticed even though she's extra shy.
Age: 14
Likes: pandas, rice, cold weather
Dislikes: sunburn, the countryside (it reminds her of her hometown)
Julia Arañes
-funny, I used my middle name. Julia's an exchange student from the Philippines and is the only other normal person in the gang. The only problem with her is that she's too normal, even more normal than Akemi. She's the daughter of a succseful businessman from Iloilo City (my hometown, hehe) and a woman of Chinese decent. She knows Mandarin and is more of a comforter to Xin Ying. She knows she's normal but considers "ordinary" derogatory towards her.
Age: 14
Likes: rock OPM (Original Philippine Music), Noli Me Tangere, Baguio City
Dislikes: teleseryes (boring, mass-produced dramas here in the Philippines), romance movies, OFWs (they leave you and never come back, sniff)
Ai Chiemi
-the school's counselor, she usually helps Ichirou in dealing with the students. Though mostly emotionless, she tends to the needs of students exceptionally. But her monotonous lifestyle was caused by the loss of her daughter who was born out of rape while in Hawaii. She meets Hitomi sometime later thinking that the latter bears the appearance of her late daughter. They develop a strong mother-daughter relationship later on, helping Hitomi to crack out of her shell.
Age: 29
Likes: What does she like?
Dislikes: unfaithful men
Hiroshi Katsute
-the Catholic school's headmaster and a samurai. He's a former president of Japan from 1977-1982 and used to be a member of the nationalist political party, Asobigoto no Nihon, in English the Pursuit of Japan (fictional) which created rapid development in Japan's military, living condition, economy, and liberation from the United States. He's very nationalistic, but is very concerned for the welfare of the students and even exchange students in his school. He's a Catholic, but his only problem is his addiction to money. His ancestors ran this school since the time of the declining Tokugawa Shogunate. He usually wears traditional Japanese attire like Ichirou and he wears glasses. He's got a balding hairline, mustache, and is armed with a katana.
Age: 68
Likes: his country, Japan, tea, keeping his samurai honor, money
Dislikes: the US, spending money, fat girls in sailor uniforms or lolitas
Asami Fujimori
-though she will appear in the middle part of my doujinshi, she plays a major part in the story. She serves as Ichirou's love interest. She graduated from the University of Antwerp in Flanders and is the new history teacher for Akemi's class. Though unnoticeable to Ichirou, she truly loves him which makes the other girls jealous (Ayame, Tsuki, Carey, and Hye Ji). Though she came back from Flanders, she's heavily traumatized by the events of her stay there since she witnessed the Belgian civil war, a very destructive war that caused the independence of Flanders, Wallonia, and the Flemish occupation of the Brussels area. She will be often kidnapped by the school's rival whose headmaster is Katsute-sama's mortal enemy and a fellow samurai because of her perfect personality & teaching skills. This leads Ichirou to rescue her.
Age: 28
Likes: novels, traveling in Europe, seinen & shoujo manga, Vogue
Dislikes: ships (makes her seasick), pollution, anything that makes her think of the Belgian civil war, the power of the atomic bomb
Shotekino Family (Akemi's up there in the students):
Kentaro Shotekino
-Akemi's father who's a samurai. He is highly praised in Osaka for being successful in his samurai ventures (eg. never losing in any martial arts tournament). After defeating his opponent (it's Ichirou, but he forgot who he was) in the championship finals, he decides to escape the coverage he's getting and flees to Nagasaki to start a new path, which is setting up a sushi restaurant. He also buys a modern house in a neighborhood by the beach for his family to live in. Though he seems really gentle and hospitable, he can get violent when provoked. Akemi & her brother Taro have only saw him angry once five years ago when they were playing and accidentally broke one of his authentic katanas. Later on, he meets Ichirou and remembers him from the tournament and treats him gently though Ichirou still despises him. Actually, he met Ichirou way back when they were children in a samurai school in which he usually wanted to help Ichirou. He usually wears a waistcoat with his polo's sleeves rolled up & a newboy hat outside or he just wears a kimono & a hakama (he usually wears this indoors) with a katana. He's the future doshu of his family's martial art.
Age: 34
Likes: bushido, peace, manga about samurai (though without the anime aesthetics)
Dislikes: martial arts for show instead of self-defense
Madoka Shotekino
-Akemi's mother who's a former enka singer from a family of actors. She claims to have been tutored by enka legends Misora Hibari & Eri Chiemi when she was little as her mother was close friends with the two. Unlike her husband, she's not from the Kansai but from Kyushu. After they moved to Nagasaki, she's now keeping close contact with her family in Fukuoka. Her outfits usually involve skirts which Akemi adopted. The outfits she wears are somewhat 40s & 50s like.
Age: 31
Likes: enka legends, vintage films from the 50s, dreaming of going back to her grandmother's time
Dislikes: wearing pants, roaches, roses (she's allergic)
Taro Shotekino
-Akemi's younger brother whom she usually refers to as "Bozu (squirt)". He seeks inspiration in life until he discovers bushido from Daisuke when in school. He's being taught by his dad upon asking about it. He seeks help from Akemi when in need.
Age: 8
Likes: reading, bushido, Akemi's guidance
Dislikes: candies (they make his teeth break)
Actually, I've got like a lot of characters. I can post them later though. Right now, I want some suggestions. And please, if it sounds too controversial to you, I can tone it down. And also, I'm not a NAZI or a FAR RIGHT. But honestly, I'm a national conservatist. Good night!
