The Dismember Club Story Pitch

MajorKerina - Manga-style Story Concept
"The Dismember Club"

I’ve had a few of these ideas. For instance, the Project Tan idea I’ve been cooking for a while involves turning inanimate objects into cute girls because of a science experiment. I still want to do that one and I could potentially do it as part of my frantic creation push lately but we’ll see.

This one I am casually calling “The Dismember Club”. The idea is this: first-year high school boy finds himself transferred to a new school. Once there, he hears about and is suspiciously courted to join a club that everyone refers to as "the dismember club". By the end of the initial chapter, he walks into the club room to discover a dismembered female corpse. Horrifying moment and then he sees a quiet girl from earlier looking like a murderous yandere. Before he can escape, she starts attacking him with brutal results until she finally takes his head.

Unfortunately, this now gives away the surprise as he wakes up in the room completely fine with not even a scratch on him and two girls sitting at a table and setting out tea. When he screams at them in shock about what the hell happened they’re casually impressed that he retained his memory and think he might be a good candidate. A few other members of the club show up and restrain him there only to give their particular pitch to join their club.

They are the dismember club and they wield magic knives which can slice through viscera and bone easily. Each of the knives are soulbound and when they drop it, all their cuts done before they last picked up the knife are undone. The club president found the first soul knife when he was cleaning up this room and it told him what he needed to do. This club is tasked with saving people and clearing dark miasma.

Sort of like dark magical girls but far more violent, the knives they wield, which choose them, are able to sense the dark energy inside of people which can corrupt and hurt and bring suffering. By slicing them to pieces and resetting their life force, they actually save them. And there are other entities and rivals out there their knives fight as well. The girl cut pieces shyly confesses that she likes to relax as body parts after a long day.

The main boy acknowledges that he was feeling depressed lately and now he feels much more energetic but very unsettled and unsure. They tell him that if he doesn’t wanna join them then they’ll have to apply a very special cut which will absolutely remove his memories of encountering them and any interest he had in joining the club. There is a scene on the roof of the school where he’s considering it and the girl who cut him talks to him about it and the scene suggests some romance in this bloody narrative as well. Of course, he’s ultimately going to join them, but that’s just the initial setup for the story.

I can easily see why no manga group would ever publish this concept for a story. It’s strikingly violent and there’s a lot of elements which any concerned audience would raise their eyebrows over. It could be played with very little blood and the dismembering being more like taking apart a mannequin. I’m just intrigued by the kind of characters who would join the club, what their feelings and motivations as well as backstories are and how the narrative would progress with surprises and dark reveals. I tend to really make concepts for violent things when there’s not TG involved more.