[1:14 AM] Rook: [12:32 AM] Rook: Basically, the framing of the show is a conventional magical girl show. Peppy girl with magical hoverboard works for organization that goes into what's basically the Dreaming-without-Morpheus, runs into a girl lacking direction in her life.
[12:33 AM] Rook: She drags her along and in and they have fun, and it's a very whimsical adventure show about the two of them developing a relatinoship.
[12:33 AM] Rook: They are there to collect fragments - Amorphous - and if you can get all of them there's a wish you can get.
[12:33 AM] Rook: The organization is run by a pair of personality-less bridge bunnies and budget Gendo.
[12:33 AM] Rook: Over the course of the story the girl without direction, Cocona, finds her best friend is a part of a rival organization, as are two of their classmates. She grows closer to her new friend Papika.
[12:34 AM] Rook: Over the course of the series they grow closer and Cocona tries to figure out what she wants in life; Papika begins to hint that there's a lot more to her than she tries to play off.
[12:34 AM] Rook: Cocona has recurring dreams from episode one of a girl that looks like her called Mimi.
[12:35 AM] Rook: Eventually it's revealed that Yayaka's organization is trying to take over the world, and it comes out that Cocona's mother was a medical slave, essentially, of Yayaka's organization. So was Papika. Her father is the Gendo-dude.
[1:14 AM] Rook: [12:36 AM] Rook: The girl, Mimi, was someone who could access the not!Dreaming and they kept trying to find her a partner to go over and be a magical girl there. They failed because people kept fucking dying until Papika managed it by beind obnoxiously friendly. Time passes, not!Gendo is an intern whose father runs the organization, he gets Mimi pregnant.
[12:36 AM] Rook: Mimi tries to run away with Papika, Salt (the Gendo) and Cocona, but fucks up so badly they stop her and take her newly born, at which point her grief is so psychically potent it literally manifests and takes over her personality and obliterates the program.
[12:37 AM] Rook: And Papika's mind and body are completely regressed to that of a teenager.
[12:37 AM] Rook: Cocona gets raised by her 'grandmother' and then they end up exorcising Cocona at the climax of the series because her mother's grief posessed her.
[12:37 AM] Rook: Also, Yayaka is basically part of the program Papika was.
[12:37 AM] Rook: Anyway, this whole horrible involving soap opera is like
[12:38 AM] Rook: Basically the overarching plot that gets NO attention except for the ending of the series and isn't remotely done well enough for how interesting it ought to be.
[1:14 AM] Rook: [12:38 AM] Rook: So, what I'm going to do is rewrite it.
[12:39 AM] Rook: Magical girl adventure+story about medical ethics and actually go in all the way on the whole "this is a series about children and adults deeply warped by horribly unethical human experimentation".
[12:46 AM] Tempera: That sounds way more interesting than I believe it is tbh
[12:47 AM] Rook: It's affecting and interesting at the end but the problem is?
[12:47 AM] Rook: The show is completely uninterested in the story beyond giving Cocona a way to have a story arc.(edited)
[12:47 AM] Rook: That's it. It exists to have her and Papika's relationship have wrenches thrown it, and in their own development.
[12:48 AM] Rook: The show has a lot of tangible good aspects. Visually it's really interesting and that's what most of the appeal is. How the story is told is super cool oftentimes.
[12:48 AM] Rook: I don't believe that they made the anime for the story, or that anyone watches it for the story.
[12:48 AM] Rook: Beyond "omg cute gay girls I WANT THEM TO GET TOGETHER AND BE HAPPY" which is what got me through it.
[12:48 AM] Rook: I love both of the main characters to bits but they're basically 2D cutouts.
[12:49 AM] Rook: So that's the other thing I want to do: add depth, make their growth meaningful, and make them interesting.
[1:15 AM] Rook: so
[1:15 AM] Rook: yeah
[1:15 AM] Rook: instead I figure I'll just lean in on prose experiments and impressionist stuff
[1:15 AM] Rook: one other thing I liked a lot is that every episode was a different genre oftentimes
[1:15 AM] Rook: so one episode was horror, one episode was basically Fist of the North Star/Mad Max, one was cyberpunk+mecha
[1:15 AM] Rook: so i wanna lean into that
[1:16 AM] Rook: so there's going to be a noir, a western, there's going to be a big sendup to Kirby and Lee in SPACE
[1:16 AM] Rook: shit like that
[1:16 AM] Rook: it'll be fun
[1:16 AM] Rook: but also, yknow
[1:16 AM] Rook: an actual story
[1:17 AM] Rook: one thing I'm considering is basically doing a riff on the Illiad and having Papika have to break Cocona out of being mind-controlled and so she does this through the power of SUDDEN SLAM POETRY(edited)
[1:17 AM] Rook: in the midst of a battlefield
[1:17 AM] Rook: and they'll have basically a rap battle in the midst of this the way that you'd see in the Illiad
[1:17 AM] Rook: not in Greek lyrical meter though
[1:17 AM] Rook: i'm not that crazy
[1:18 AM] Rook: part of what I think is that every fragment/'world' of Pure Illusion has a story that it wants to tell
[1:18 AM] Rook: so to get the fragments, Cocona and Papika have to tell the stories and resolve the issues that this little bubble-world is formed from
[1:19 AM] Rook: which of course incentivizes me running all the way in on the HELLO GENRE ROMP every other chapter
[1:19 AM] Rook: or how often I end up doing it
[1:19 AM] Rook: Make sense?
[1:20 AM] Rook: also they're both really really autistic