HOME | DD

Description
Second Arrival was my first attempt at manga, and oh, what a sad attempt it is. I mean, come on. Who among us does not hang their head in shame thinking of some aspect of their first comic? I was guilty of so many webmanga sins that it wasn't even funny. Use and abuse of Japanese character names, overabundance of bishonen, yaoi, vaguely Evangelion-rip-off-esque art style, cheesy story, cheesier name, the whole gamut. Even used that tired plot device of leaving 'em all orphans. Parents are annoying to deal with in these stories, best to kill 'em off.
But I sketched these randomly in about fifteen minutes, total. Labeled them so you could tell who's who. And for the bored, I shall go through them. I remember little (very poor memory, not helped by loss of stories on hard drive) but I'll do the best I can. It will be long, convoluted, and make no sense because my thoughts are long, convoluted, and make no sense:
Cathy - rough home life, her only confidante being Derek. At some point in the story she had a younger sister who I eventually got rid of or forgot. Dunno which. Very athletic, enjoys basketball and has lots of fun beating the unholy crap out of the triplets in three-on-one. Somewhat quicktempered. Reborn Goddess of Battle. Wound up looking a bit Love Hina-ish in this sketch and I think I like it.

Derek - College student, met Cathy while he was still in high school working in a student counseling program. They became friends, though what exactly I was going to do with their relationship down the road remains a mystery to me. Probably have him fall for her or something trite like that. Reborn God of Peace. I know a guy who looks like him in real life (sorry, he is taken).

Akira - Poor 'kira. Besides being stuck with the most cliched name in all of anime fandom, his life just flat-out sucks. Dad died when he was little, mom dies at the beginning of the comic, the WRONG SOUL gets stuck in his body, which means he eventually goes completely nucking futz. Would not be a problem except for the fact that by that time he is essentially a demigod, meaning he is a very, very powerful lunatic. And a dangerous one. So they have to kill him. He also has the extreme misfortune of having a longtime crush on his friend Kameko, who has a bit too much to deal with to even think about it. And he also gets to jockey with Kenji for her affections - and facing off a demon is no fun at all. Add to that the fact that a former lover is after him (in his new body) and you get problems. Supposed to be the reborn God of the Sun. Winds up housing the soul of the God of Fate. He also looks like less of a scrawny little twerp than I remember in this sketch...

Kameko - the heroine with the required Japanese name even though she doesn't really look Japanese, now does she? Hell, in their world, there really isn't a Japan... *sigh* Oh well. Plot holes. Kameko is unique in that she is not a reborn Goddess, she is a reborn Prophetess. Unfortunately, this particular Prophetess is, to her knowledge (and she was a full-trained priestess at age 12, thanks to her parents. They were killed in a riot of sorts at some point between then and now), nothing but a fairy-tale. She also has a certain immortal lover out roaming the world who has been waiting for her reappearance for centuries. Naturally, this creeps her out very much. Not every day a demon with white hair and ice blue eyes shows up on your doorstep explaining that he's been waiting for you for milliniae. To her advantage, demons cannot break a promise, and Kenji makes the mistake of swearing to her that he will not touch her against her wishes. This makes even doing something like helping her when she is wounded very difficult, as the only memories Kameko's 'alter ego' have of the demon are of him as a cold-blooded, heartless bastard who took her daughter. I enjoy drawing hair and Kameko displays this fully. I hate being told she looks like Asuka. I hate it. She was never meant to resemble Asuka. When I designed her, She orignally looked like Shampoo (and I have the REALLY BADLY DRAWN sketchbook pages to prove it). And her hair was originally black, I think. But yeh. Had not seen Evangelion back when I first designed her.

Kenji - half demon from the icy underworld, half god, Kenji is the half-brother to the god of the Underworld and worked under him long ago, serving as a messenger and guardian of the whole place, keeping people in or out. At some point in his travels he encountered Adara, a Prophetess granted immortality by the gods as reward for her services. It is possible for demons to fall in love, and he did. Hard. Eventually she somehow returned the sentiment. At some point a prophecy made clear that Adara would have a child by Kenji, and Kenji's master ordered the child brought to him. Kenji was forced to lie to Adara, telling her (for she is completely unaware of what she says when she prophesies) that she had said she would give the child to him. She was not happy about this. But she did it. And then Dante (Kenji's half-brother) messed with her mind, altering her memories of Kenji and leaving the poor half-demon very confused as to why his lover suddenly hated him. It was never explained to him what happened. During a great falling-out between the gods, Kenji was forced to 'kill' Adara. Now, being granted immortality does not mean the body lives forever, it can be killed. But it means the soul can be reborn infinite amount of times, usually in rapid succession. Kenji managed to hide her soul, remembering how painful life itself was for her. She did not live her own life but served as little more than an object, an oracle for the gods. Without her they were without direction. They wasted much of their powers in a great battle and the world remained moderately diety-free for a few hundred million years while they recuperated and waited for the Phrophetess - who could bring them back - to be reborn. During this time, Kenji wandered the earth. He is a wee bit bitter. Kenji's appearance has changed a lot, I was accused of copying him, and since there is really no way to prove otherwise, I just changed his hair. There. The characters were otherwise totally different, so there was no longer any problem. I'm actually friends with the guy who accused me, now... Anyway. Now I get told he looks like Sephiroth. Damn it. I cannot win.

Andy - Eldest of the Parker triplets, Andy is a baseball fanatic and basically as 'normal' as you can get in this group. He and his brothers have been shuttled from one boarding school to the next, running off Jesse's athletic scholarships or Kiem's academic ones until one of them pulls something dumb enough to get them expelled. Andy is the rather unwilling crush of Kameko, which means he faces Kenji's jealous wrath on a constant basis. Trying to explain that he does not particularly care for her affections does not help matters much. He is the reborn God of Death. Uh, he usually doesn't look that much like Ranma. Really. I usually am told he looks like Duo from Gundam Wing, actually...

Jesse - Jesse Parker, the youngest triplet (by about seven minutes) adores being the center of attention. Melodramatic and absolutely abnoxious to Kameko, Jesse seems to be an eternal three-year-old with boundless energy only slightly abated by the cross-country track running he does. He irks Kenji to no end yet somehow manages to remain unharmed, much to everyone's surprise. At some point he develops a crush on Akira, of all people. Supposed to be the Reborn God of Fate, wound up being the God of the Sun. Kameko managed to fix what went wrong with Akira, so Jesse does not go crazy. Arguably.

Kiem - Quiet, studious, and a good deal more mature than his brothers most of the time, Kiem is the middle triplet who is perpetually hiding behind the loud antics of his brothers. Kiem tends to remain in the background, spending a lot of his free time hanging out and chatting with Derek, which makes Cathy somewhat jealous. Kiem is the reborn God of Wisdom and Judgement.

There ye go (wow, that was long), all the cliches you can stomach, wrapped up in a nice little cluster of sketches. Took me longer to write this than it did to draw them. Jeez.

Description
Second Arrival was my first attempt at manga, and oh, what a sad attempt it is. I mean, come on. Who among us does not hang their head in shame thinking of some aspect of their first comic? I was guilty of so many webmanga sins that it wasn't even funny. Use and abuse of Japanese character names, overabundance of bishonen, yaoi, vaguely Evangelion-rip-off-esque art style, cheesy story, cheesier name, the whole gamut. Even used that tired plot device of leaving 'em all orphans. Parents are annoying to deal with in these stories, best to kill 'em off.
But I sketched these randomly in about fifteen minutes, total. Labeled them so you could tell who's who. And for the bored, I shall go through them. I remember little (very poor memory, not helped by loss of stories on hard drive) but I'll do the best I can. It will be long, convoluted, and make no sense because my thoughts are long, convoluted, and make no sense:
Cathy - rough home life, her only confidante being Derek. At some point in the story she had a younger sister who I eventually got rid of or forgot. Dunno which. Very athletic, enjoys basketball and has lots of fun beating the unholy crap out of the triplets in three-on-one. Somewhat quicktempered. Reborn Goddess of Battle. Wound up looking a bit Love Hina-ish in this sketch and I think I like it.

Derek - College student, met Cathy while he was still in high school working in a student counseling program. They became friends, though what exactly I was going to do with their relationship down the road remains a mystery to me. Probably have him fall for her or something trite like that. Reborn God of Peace. I know a guy who looks like him in real life (sorry, he is taken).

Akira - Poor 'kira. Besides being stuck with the most cliched name in all of anime fandom, his life just flat-out sucks. Dad died when he was little, mom dies at the beginning of the comic, the WRONG SOUL gets stuck in his body, which means he eventually goes completely nucking futz. Would not be a problem except for the fact that by that time he is essentially a demigod, meaning he is a very, very powerful lunatic. And a dangerous one. So they have to kill him. He also has the extreme misfortune of having a longtime crush on his friend Kameko, who has a bit too much to deal with to even think about it. And he also gets to jockey with Kenji for her affections - and facing off a demon is no fun at all. Add to that the fact that a former lover is after him (in his new body) and you get problems. Supposed to be the reborn God of the Sun. Winds up housing the soul of the God of Fate. He also looks like less of a scrawny little twerp than I remember in this sketch...

Kameko - the heroine with the required Japanese name even though she doesn't really look Japanese, now does she? Hell, in their world, there really isn't a Japan... *sigh* Oh well. Plot holes. Kameko is unique in that she is not a reborn Goddess, she is a reborn Prophetess. Unfortunately, this particular Prophetess is, to her knowledge (and she was a full-trained priestess at age 12, thanks to her parents. They were killed in a riot of sorts at some point between then and now), nothing but a fairy-tale. She also has a certain immortal lover out roaming the world who has been waiting for her reappearance for centuries. Naturally, this creeps her out very much. Not every day a demon with white hair and ice blue eyes shows up on your doorstep explaining that he's been waiting for you for milliniae. To her advantage, demons cannot break a promise, and Kenji makes the mistake of swearing to her that he will not touch her against her wishes. This makes even doing something like helping her when she is wounded very difficult, as the only memories Kameko's 'alter ego' have of the demon are of him as a cold-blooded, heartless bastard who took her daughter. I enjoy drawing hair and Kameko displays this fully. I hate being told she looks like Asuka. I hate it. She was never meant to resemble Asuka. When I designed her, She orignally looked like Shampoo (and I have the REALLY BADLY DRAWN sketchbook pages to prove it). And her hair was originally black, I think. But yeh. Had not seen Evangelion back when I first designed her.

Kenji - half demon from the icy underworld, half god, Kenji is the half-brother to the god of the Underworld and worked under him long ago, serving as a messenger and guardian of the whole place, keeping people in or out. At some point in his travels he encountered Adara, a Prophetess granted immortality by the gods as reward for her services. It is possible for demons to fall in love, and he did. Hard. Eventually she somehow returned the sentiment. At some point a prophecy made clear that Adara would have a child by Kenji, and Kenji's master ordered the child brought to him. Kenji was forced to lie to Adara, telling her (for she is completely unaware of what she says when she prophesies) that she had said she would give the child to him. She was not happy about this. But she did it. And then Dante (Kenji's half-brother) messed with her mind, altering her memories of Kenji and leaving the poor half-demon very confused as to why his lover suddenly hated him. It was never explained to him what happened. During a great falling-out between the gods, Kenji was forced to 'kill' Adara. Now, being granted immortality does not mean the body lives forever, it can be killed. But it means the soul can be reborn infinite amount of times, usually in rapid succession. Kenji managed to hide her soul, remembering how painful life itself was for her. She did not live her own life but served as little more than an object, an oracle for the gods. Without her they were without direction. They wasted much of their powers in a great battle and the world remained moderately diety-free for a few hundred million years while they recuperated and waited for the Phrophetess - who could bring them back - to be reborn. During this time, Kenji wandered the earth. He is a wee bit bitter. Kenji's appearance has changed a lot, I was accused of copying him, and since there is really no way to prove otherwise, I just changed his hair. There. The characters were otherwise totally different, so there was no longer any problem. I'm actually friends with the guy who accused me, now... Anyway. Now I get told he looks like Sephiroth. Damn it. I cannot win.

Andy - Eldest of the Parker triplets, Andy is a baseball fanatic and basically as 'normal' as you can get in this group. He and his brothers have been shuttled from one boarding school to the next, running off Jesse's athletic scholarships or Kiem's academic ones until one of them pulls something dumb enough to get them expelled. Andy is the rather unwilling crush of Kameko, which means he faces Kenji's jealous wrath on a constant basis. Trying to explain that he does not particularly care for her affections does not help matters much. He is the reborn God of Death. Uh, he usually doesn't look that much like Ranma. Really. I usually am told he looks like Duo from Gundam Wing, actually...

Jesse - Jesse Parker, the youngest triplet (by about seven minutes) adores being the center of attention. Melodramatic and absolutely abnoxious to Kameko, Jesse seems to be an eternal three-year-old with boundless energy only slightly abated by the cross-country track running he does. He irks Kenji to no end yet somehow manages to remain unharmed, much to everyone's surprise. At some point he develops a crush on Akira, of all people. Supposed to be the Reborn God of Fate, wound up being the God of the Sun. Kameko managed to fix what went wrong with Akira, so Jesse does not go crazy. Arguably.

Kiem - Quiet, studious, and a good deal more mature than his brothers most of the time, Kiem is the middle triplet who is perpetually hiding behind the loud antics of his brothers. Kiem tends to remain in the background, spending a lot of his free time hanging out and chatting with Derek, which makes Cathy somewhat jealous. Kiem is the reborn God of Wisdom and Judgement.

There ye go (wow, that was long), all the cliches you can stomach, wrapped up in a nice little cluster of sketches. Took me longer to write this than it did to draw them. Jeez.