The Anime Appreciation Event (3)

꒰ঌ The Anime Appreciation Event 3

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After I done practicing my bass, I was walking home while gazing lazily up at the sky and yawning. Well, now. Shall I read a magazine, or take an afternoon nap? I have plenty of time to do what I want before dinner. As I was thinking these things, I arrived home, and found some shoes in the entryway I was not used to seeing. They were small and decorated with a fluttery pattern. However I looked at it, these shoes didn't fit Naruko's tastes.

Now that I think about it, today was the day they were having that 'anime appreciation event' or whatever here. Naruko's otaku friends had come over to play. Going up the stairs, I put down my bass in my room. I washed my hands, rinsed my mouth out, and then deciding to go drink some juice, headed in the direction of the living room where the refrigerator was.

It's really quiet, isn't it? Isn't this a bit strange? Knowing them, those people should be making a lot of noise around here… When I opened the door, the inside of the room was dark. It seemed like the curtains were drawn closed. If they weren't here, they probably were in Naruko's room playing. I turned on the lights. The lights blinked. The fluorescent lights may have been dying. I'll have to replace them…

"Wahh!" The instant the lights fully came on, I almost jumped back in surprise. The reason was that right in front of me on the sofa, there was a girl dressed in a cosplay costume sitting calmly. Just like a queen sitting on her throne. She watched me with a penetrating, icy stare. As I stood there speechless, she grinned at me.

"Hm… so you've made it this far, hero… I give you my compliments."

"This is my house," I retorted instantaneously at Ruby. What was up with her acting like she was some demon king?

Why was it that, even though she was supposed to be here to play with Naruko, she was sitting alone in the pitch-black living room? I asked her this question which I should have asked from the get-go. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing really." She quickly turned away from me. I hadn't the slightest idea what she was thinking, but she seemed almost a bit sad about something. The living room fell dead silent. It was uncomfortable. I mean, I was standing here in complete silence with one of my sister's friends, you know? What should I do? As always, she was a hard person to deal with… shouldn't she at least give a proper greeting to her friend's brother at the house she came to visit?

Faced with this strange set of circumstances, I couldn't settle on what I should do… for now, I opened up the curtains and brightened up the room. The evening sun chased away the dimness in the room. When I looked back, I saw that Ruby had closed both her eyes tightly. She had completely lost that air of coolness she was carrying before. She looked more like a kitten who had just gotten her forehead poked.

"Sorry, is it too bright?"

"I do not do very well with sunlight."

You a vampire or something? Or maybe she was just quoting an anime again.

"Well, just make yourself at… well you already have I guess." I made do with those words, but really, what should I do here…? For now, I should probably figure out what was going on, so I asked, "By the way, where's Naruko?"

"In her room."

"And Mio-san? Is she also in Naruko's room?"

"She didn't come."

"Eh? She didn't come? Why not?"

"She had urgent business to attend to. Yesterday, she came to my house with an 'I'm really sorry. I suddenly have to go out of town, so please hand this over to Orange-chan,' and leave this behind."

Ruby showed me a manga of 'Zodiac Angel Lucifen'. It was probably the signed book or whatever Naruko had mentioned earlier. I don't know what kind of urgent business had popped up, but she sure was someone who kept her word.

"Please hand this over for me."

"Alright."

I began thinking while Ruby handed me the signed book. Mio was absent on urgent business. Hmm… was that so…? For some reason, I had a bad feeling about this. Hold on, wait wait. So that means…

"So you were alone here with Naruko today?"

"Yes…"

Somehow… I knew what was going on… so… it was like that, right? Because Mio had not come, today's anime appreciation event became one in which only Naruko and Ruby were in attendance, right? That was absurd no matter how I thought about it! Wasn't that just asking for World War? It would be unusual if they got together and didn't break out into an argument, right? There was no reason this would have gone well. I see… I see I see I see. I knew exactly what was going on! I knew it all!

"And what?"

"You got into an argument with Naruko, didn't you?"

"Hm, aren't you sharp? Yes, precisely."

Facing each other, we fell into silence. So, in other words… Ruby came to this house for the sake of the anime appreciation event. But, Mio, who usually handled the disputes between Naruko and Ruby, couldn't come due to urgent business. And then unexpectedly, Ruby and Naruko had to play by themselves… and just like always, they got into a huge argument. And without anyone to mediate the dispute… Naruko became sulky and shut herself up in her room. Ruby faded into the pitch-black living room. This was just my guess, but I probably had guessed correctly for the most part… geez, why did it come to this? After they had finally found time to play with their friend, didn't they think that they should try a bit harder to get things to go well? It's just that there were some points that should be examined in this case. In spite of breaking out into an argument in our home, Naruko had not driven Ruby out of the house. In spite of knowing that Mio would not be coming today, Ruby still came over and had not returned yet. What was up with that? Was I reading too much into it? Well, I personally don't think so.

"You're thinking something pointless, aren't you?"

"I'm not doing anything like that." I denied her statement with a stiff, twitching smile… she's pretty sharp, isn't she?

Well, at any rate. This had nothing to do with me. I couldn't stay here and take this damn heavy atmosphere. I had just gotten home and I was really tired after practicing my bass since this morning. It came at the exact moment I thought that. With almost suspicious timing, the cell phone in my back pocket began to vibrate.

It was an email. I had a bad feeling about this… and as I thought, it was from Mio.

Haruto-chan. I leave the rest to you.

Gazing at the LCD screen of the cell phone with dead fish eyes… "Are you being serious, Mio…?" I wearily muttered.

"… Hm, suddenly you're speaking funny… are you going crazy or something?"

"It's nothing." I responded dejectedly to Ruby, who appeared to have perfectly made herself at home and was flipping through my magazine that had been lying around.

Alright, what should I do…? I turned the situation over in my head to find the best solution. At this point, abandoning the situation as is and going off to do my own thing was no longer an option. Because, over these past few months, I had accumulated a great deal of debt that I now owed to Mio. If she wanted me to do this… I couldn't refuse. I had to do something about it.

That woman. Sending me this email with this timing, as if she were watching us through the window…

Mio definitely had good intuition. When she found out that she couldn't come due to urgent business, she probably guessed what was going to happen. And then she, thankfully, passed her duties down and depended on me. I might be exaggerating, but that's what I thought… geez. Well, there was no helping it. And so, the settlement of this anime appreciation event business was left to me.

Alright, first… I'll listen to both sides of the argument, figure out why they were arguing, and somehow smooth things over… and I'll stay with them until they agree to watch anime together. But then, they might get into an argument again, so I'll smooth that over as well. I'll manage to allow them to have fun, and then to allow their relationship to deepen. In Mio's place, I would become the buffer zone between them.

"Just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt."

She was always doing things like this, wasn't she…? But she always did it with her trademark curvy smile… heh, it wasn't until she was gone that I understood her true value. Honestly, I should be thankful. Once again, I thanked Mio for being friends with Naruko.

"… What hurts?"

"Nothing."

Alright, let's begin. Pulling myself together, I started to act. The first person I had to deal with was the one right in front of me.

"By the way, uh, today… why did you argue with Naruko? I guess it was anime…"

"Wrong." Ruby emotionlessly butted in. But without having a subsequent sentence to connect her rebuttal to, she fell into silence. When I waited very patiently, she finally gave a sigh that seemed to be loaded with hidden meaning. "… You know, it's not like I wanted to get into an argument when I came here… if Mio wasn't going to be here, then I would take that into account in my actions. So, even though I came here to watch anime, I tried to talk about anime as little as possible. She… probably also tried to do the same."

"I see."

"You have a problem with that?"

"There's no reason I would."

I didn't have a problem, but I was surprised. But I see… she had come to a friend's house to play, right? So she wouldn't deliberately talk about a topic that was likely to lead into an argument.

"So, why did you get into an argument?"

"Webnovels." Ruby spat that out irritatedly.

Webnovels… what were those? Umm… they were novel-like things that were written and read on the internet, and were pretty popular with the young crowd, right? That might have been a bit off, but that was the general picture I think. Certainly, I think recently, some webnovels have been turned into books and movies too.

"So, what about webnovels?"

" 'Kyahaha, I wrote a webnovel, you know. Certainly, you've made things like manga and novels too, right? Want to take a look at mine? Well, it's a masterpiece though, if I do say so myself∼,' she told me."

Honestly, it was a pretty spot-on impersonation. It was an inspired performance, down to the irritating way she said "kyahaha." But, to think Naruko had written a webnovel… that fit her almost spookily well. It definitely seemed like something trendy girls would do. And, she seemed strangely confident about it… but it was probably her first novel, right?

"Was it bad?"

"I wanted to kill her."

It was that bad!? Exactly what did she write!? Suddenly, I wanted to know! I could understand how reading a boring novel or manga could get you into a pretty angry mood. But wasn't it a bit excessive to want to kill the author? Perhaps she could infer from my expression what I had been thinking, but Ruby began to explain expressionlessly.

"First of all, the protagonist was the spitting image of the writer, and even referred to herself with 'atashi'."

"Kill her!" Suddenly, at that moment, I could give a pretty good valuation as to what the high-and-mighty contents of that novel were!

"T-that's not all… she would be fine with starting a new line even though she only had written two or three characters, and then would start a new page when she felt like it. She used more emoticons and had more types of symbols than punctuation marks, although punctuation was few and far between in the first place, and she would switch from third person to first person without warning, making it hard to read, she filled it with cutaways and point-of-view changes, the first person portions matched her vocal patterns exactly, half of the contents were just her praising herself, the author and the characters would start meta conversations with each other… and to top it all off…" Speaking completely indifferently, Ruby paused slightly, "And then there was a Ruby character that was clearly modeled off me who was raped and killed."

"That's terrible!" She did that deliberately, didn't she!? If she showed that to her friend, then not only would she get angry, a fight would definitely break out!

"Hey, I'm really sorry about that…" Ruby nodded, and once again fell into silence. At this rate, nothing would move forward. I desperately tried to keep the conversation going. "I mean, you sure do know a lot about writing. You also draw manga…"

"Not really… I'm just a bit above a complete beginner…" Ruby glanced back at me. Alright, looks like I'm onto something here.

"I mean, I think it's pretty impressive. You could say what you did because you know the accepted… or should I say, right way of doing things. You really know what to look for!"

"Hm. You're misunderstanding a bit." Ruby had turned to face me head on. It appeared that she had taken the bait.

"Whether for manga or novels, there isn't really a 'completely correct' way to do things. Even if you put in a lot of onomatopoeia, even if you have a lot of line breaks, even if you use a lot of pictographs and emoticons, no matter what you make and how you make it, nobody can tell you that you're definitely doing it wrong… that's what I think. This goes for webnovels especially, since they're such a new written form."

Imitating the experts and just making things based completely on conventional rules and customs was not necessarily the correct way of doing things, she continued.

"In a way, you could certainly say it is 'correct' to be able to take in the grand traditions developed and polished for a long time by our predecessors, to be able to take in the newest trends and learn the clever strategies for making your work popular. There's no mistaking that. But, just because that's true, that doesn't mean it's right to just categorically reject every other way of doing things. Looking down on everything and preaching tradition is something an idiot wannabe-expert would say. They're on the same level as the dumbasses who pay no attention to fundamentals and fill their writing with 'gdgd' and 'sense of wonder and so on'. It's natural that why people write what they write varies from person to person, and for a hundred people there would be over a hundred million things they could want to make… so there is no absolutely correct way of doing things. Hm, this is certainly an amateur speaking… but it's not like we're doing this for a living, so we should just write the way we want to write."

Just like Naruko, when it came to talking about her own field, she was quite talkative. But this aggressive style of speech… she seemed to be pretty annoyed.

"The hatred I expressed before along with all those points I listed were, to the very end, just things that did not fit my own personal preferences. I would like you to please not misunderstand that point."

"… I see." I had no idea. But because of her being able to get that all out to me, Ruby seemed refreshed. The previous depressing atmosphere had lightened. First step, complete… so, the next step is… "Well, leaving that aside, I'll go prepare some juice and snacks… hold on just a second."

"Why is it that even though I came here to see that girl, I ended up spending time with her brother?"

"Don't ask me." Leaving the living room, I ascended the stairs. I wasn't going to prepare snacks, but was going to talk with my sister instead.

"Naruko… hey. You're in there, right? Open up." Trying not to be heard by Ruby, I spoke in a soft voice and knocked. After I continued to knock for a while, the door opened violently. With a facial expression that seemed to be disappointed that she had missed. It was as if she was trying to hit me in the face by opening it that way, but I had predicted it.

Bam.

I stopped the door with one hand, and Naruko clicked her tongue. "What?"

"Naruko, your friend came today, so I think you should keep her company, right…?"

"Shut up."

"Naruko… your friend came all this way to your house, so play nice. Don't get into fights with her."

"It's not like we're good friends or anything… and she was the one who started the argument."

"Liar. She told me that in the webnovel you wrote, there was a character that resembled her who was raped and killed. You're clearly the one at fault here."

"Huh!? What the hell is she saying!? That's completely wrong!"

"Huh? What's wrong about it…?"

Without responding to my question, Naruko went into her room. From inside the room, Naruko beckoned to me with her finger. "Come in."

Naruko threw herself down on her bed with a thump, and pointed to a black book. "Read a bit of that."

"What is this…? This… what does this have to do with what we were talking about?"

Just as my sister had ordered, I picked up the black book and flipped through it. On the front cover of the book, there was a painting-like illustration of a silver eyed girl with long black hair that gradually shifts to red and reaches past her waist, and the title was written in stylish, cursive English letters. And inside of that book was…

"Manga… and… a novel…?"

"And after that, a thick mess of production materials."

"What is all this?"

"Doujinshi. A derivative work Ruby made for Xgate Online." Naruko spoke irately, and thinned her lips.

"And… what's wrong with this doujinshi?"

" 'Hmph… then, while I read this webnovel that clearly stinks of rubbish, you can read this. You said that you had watched all of Xgate Online anime, right?' she said."

"I see."

Honestly, it was a pretty spot-on impersonation. It was an inspired performance, down to the condescending way she said "hmph." But… so this was a doujinshi that Ruby had made, was it…? It really didn't seem to fit Naruko's tastes…

"Was it bad?"

"I wanted to kill her."

It was that bad!? Also, this is pretty similar to the exchange I had with Ruby before!

"What kind of story was it?"

"Tch, it was a so-called 'time retrogression story'. And, what's more, the protagonist was definitely in the 'U-1' category."

"Why are you speaking in code?"

I know what a 'time retrogression story' is but I couldn't make heads or tails of the word 'U-1'. Did it have something to do with fighting tournaments or something? Perhaps sensing my confusion, Naruko began to irately explain.

"Both 'time retrogression story' and 'U-1' are terms that are used in relation to derivative works. 'Time regression stories' are, just like they sound, stories in which the protagonist travels back in time. Taking Dragon Ball as an example, you could have a story in which Goku travels back to the timeline of the first episode from the time he first met Bulma while retaining his memories and experience, and repeats his fight with the enemies… those kinds of stories are what we call 'time regression stories'. It's crucial that the person in question retain their memories and experiences, and that's why the author and the protagonist can freely change history as they wish. Not only does the author of the derivative work destroy all the previously established plot from the original work, they can make a completely different story."

"Yes I know that, but is that something wrong?"

Well, I understood at least what Naruko felt, a story in which the protagonist began the story again in extremely favorable circumstances, and a completely different story unfolded. Maybe she didn't like this kind of story.

"And then, 'U-1' refers to a story in which the protagonist has a bunch of random things added to him, and becomes overpower nonsense and the strongest character. Like, maybe he had inherited the powerful mystic eyes, or maybe he could bewitched the opposite sex with his luck and have a super large harem army, or maybe when he's serious the world will destroy by his power, or maybe he's an S-rank super-powerful Adventurer but he's only B-rank because he never sent in the right application… this kind of thing was used heavily in a famous derivative work of Isekai genre, so the term 'U-1' is a warping of the name of the protagonist of that work. Another term, 'supashin', refers to the same kind of thing."

"I-I'm having a hard time understanding this, Naruko." But you sure do know a lot about this!

"So… in other words, the doujinshi Ruby made fit into those 'time regression story' and 'U-1' categories."

"Yes. After her favorite character was killed by the series's hero, the vampire queen Blackrose was returned back to the time of when she was still a child with a nonsense method while retaining all her previous memories. She then gain a godlike power without explanation, and got close to all male characters in the series and made them her harem boys… what kind of bullshit is that! That shitty vampy always acts as Blackrose, so isn't it pretty obvious that she's projecting herself onto the protagonist of her doujinshi? At that point, it was just painful to read, and goosebumps had already… ugh."

You told her that to her face, didn't you? That's why you got into an argument. As I thought, you're the one at fault here.

"So, how exactly did that become 'I wanted to kill her'? The artwork too… I mean, it bothers me a bit that the chins all look so pointed, but I think the art is pretty good… and from what you told me, the story seems relatively interesting, I think."

"Why are you talking like you actually know what you're talking about after just looking at the artwork and listening to the outline of the story? This doujinshi's bad points aren't on the surface like that."

"… So where are they?"

"You can't figure it out after flipping through it? All the pages are incredibly difficult to read." Naruko muttered frankly. She pointed to one of the pages in the book. "Just look at these completely black pages. More than ninety percent of them are buried under text. She needs to use more linebreaks! And what's more, she uses so many hard-to-understand kanji and phrases, she just fills up space going on and on about things that nobody cares about, and doesn't think about the reader in the least. Especially during the battle scenes! They're so hard to read! I mean, for example, if there's an explosion, can't you just write 'dokaan!' or something? Just use a sound effect like that? Anyone who reads that would understand what was happening. And when someone's attacking, you can make them say 'Waah!' as a battle cry or something, and when they take damage you could make them scream 'Gyah!' or something! That's definitely easy to understand, easy to read, and everyone would read that, right? If you ask me, the stories she writes don't go an inch past self-gratification."

I haven't read the entire thing, so even if you say that, I can't really say I understand where you're coming from. But the way you talk is incredibly irritating. Also, to the very end, that was the writing method of the 'Naruko school of webnovels', wasn't it? If the genre or the medium changed, then the most effective way of making the work probably changed as well. And it's not like you're running a hotel or something, so I don't see anything wrong with prioritizing self-satisfaction over everything else.

"And what's more, there are around two hundred pages of production materials that come with this doujinshi. Reading those in advance, there are a lot of original, incomprehensible technical terms that don't even exist in the original work, and because of that I can't even understand half of what's going on in the actual story. The technical terms themselves all stink of immature BS… stuff like Divine Demonic Destructive Drill! I can't read that at all! And what's more, she puts little 'stylish'-looking rubies in katakana above these terms! And it turns out to be some weird German or something! And, also, there's one thing that I can't swallow most of all…" Naruko ground her teeth with all her might, and after pausing for a second spit it out. "There was a red haired female character that was obviously modeled after me, who had a magical 'charm' spell cast on her and became the protagonist's sex slave."

"Now, that's something to get pissed about!"

Until a few moments before, I had thought that Naruko was the one at fault here, but instantly I lost any desire to continue defending Ruby. What exactly is that gothic girl doing to my sister!? Both of them were at fault here, weren't they!? Also, you two, you both sure did similar things to each other, didn't you!? You both wrote each other into your stories and did terrible things to them. You both read each other's work and bashed them condescendingly. And then you got into a fight and both of you started sulking… and that's how we got to where we are right now. But, Naruko… you…

"Did you seriously read all of that incredibly thick packet of production materials?"

"Huh? What are you saying? That's obvious, isn't it? If I didn't, I wouldn't be able to say anything."

And, that's that. Well? Doesn't it make you want to scowl? Just look at how close they really were. If Mio were here, she would definitely hold her stomach and burst out laughing right here. Geez, they're a troublesome pair, aren't they… anyhow, I now understood both sides of the story. The second stage had been cleared. So, for the next step, I should take them from this situation to the point where they can hold the anime appreciation event, right? I don't know how much I can do to that end, but I was going to give it a go. And, I'll just say one last thing. Teenage girls shouldn't just suddenly start babbling about things like sex slaves! I'm definitely going to stop her before she does that next time!

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