One of the advantages to the way your powers worked was being able to genuinely multitask. It wasn't something you'd always been able to do with it, it was a skill of sorts, to disconnect your conscious mind from the superhuman processes and just achieve
flow, your fingers moving like they were programmed while you paid attention to something else. It was something you'd only really started to get good at when you started switching places with Athena, but it'd be a hell of a timesaver during your last few months of high school. Your fingers could just go through the motions, typing, assembling, grabbing parts and tools, soldering, screwing, testing, manipulating with the phantom energies of technopathy while you read a book, watched a video, held a conversation, like two distinct parallel channels running simultaneously.
It was creepy, but also
awesome.
You had at lot of anime to watch, so it might as well be productive, right? Which is why anyone who'd looked into your room during those hours while you worked would have seen your hand dancing across a keyboard and adjusting the device you had in a vice on the table, yet your eyes only ever glancing away from the video for brief moments. Didn't want to miss any subtitles, right?
To start, May's first recommendation, and a series from last year. Marionette Vampires. You'd had
absolutely no idea what to expect from the titles or the screenshots, and the description was pretty vague too. Something something transfer student, something something secret. You knew
nothing about anime and you already knew it was a cliche.
What it turned out to be, however, was a sort of weird all-girl superhero thing? Like Sailor Moon (your mom
loved Sailor Moon) but with a distinctly more grim edge, the girls were vampires, which apparently meant that they could transform from regular high school students to gothy superpowered monster-fighters with fangs, and... yeah, it was actually pretty cool. The animation was a seamless blend of hand-drawn, 3d models, and AI-generated interpolation which created smooth movements while still making everything look remarkably hand-drawn, though the effect was pretty janky in a lot of places where it was clearly still too rushed for the system to compensate. The less hand-drawn keyframes there were, the less the motions made sense playing out, and some of these were choppy.
You didn't exactly know where the Marionette thing came in from the title, but presumably that'd come up over the other twelve episodes? Whatever. It was interesting enough, you supposed, but you weren't exactly compelled to watch more
right now. Maybe you should check out another show from the list?
"
So what are you doing over there?"
"Low-key gear. I'm going to a new city, and trouble follows me. I don't want to be like one of those superheroes in the movies who gets caught in a life-threatening circumstance and can't do anything because he doesn't have any of his stuff. Gonna be smarter than that. Remember the taser web special?"
"
The gun you built Nat?" Athena asked, and in response you slide the wristband on, pointed it at the wall, and tapped the central button. A glob of synthetic silk shot out and struck the metal plate you typically used for such target practice, which sparked for a moment.
"Yep." you responded simply, setting it aside. "Going for a distinct
not to be fucked with vibe. Let's check out Kill la Kill?"
You lay your arm out in front of you to get to work and set the video playing.
"Holy shit, Nazis?" you exclaimed, "The fuck is this show- WHY IS THAT GUY SO HUGE."
Instantly, the show launched into an utterly absurd fight scene, establishing the basic facts of the universe (that there is apparently school uniforms of
such incredible power that they'd make you superhuman) and holy shit that gave you an
idea. And who was that mysterious lady with the samurai sword and
why was her theme so fucking baller.
... okay you weren't normally this sort of lesbian but sword lady
? Please steppy.
You pulled the roll of smart fabric out of your closet with your artificial hand just as the hero showed up and started
straight up eating a lemon, like biting into it like an apple, holy
shit. She was cool as
heck... why couldn't you be that cool? Then, moments later, out flies a girl made of pure energy. Oh, that must be Mako, who you knew primarily through May gushing about her.
This show had an
energy to it. You sent May a message that you'd met her favourite loud idiot anime friend as you started laying out lengths of electric muscle fibres. Cool main girl and steppy lady started arguing over some scissors, which ended with Cool Girl getting her ass handed to her by a tiny boxer and
holy shit this show ruled.
"
Oooh, dramatic rain scene... what the hell are you making now?"
"Dunno yet. Weird idea." you said. You had enough leftover material to actual pursue these sort of wild ideas these days.. "... This scene with the uniform is really uncomfortable."
"
Urgh. Yeah. Superpowered outfit?"
"Maybe, if I can make it work?"
"
No, I mean in the show- oh?"
You shrugged as Ryuko arrived to rescue Mako and do battle, but then you had to stop and adjust your glasses as she pulled off her cloak.
"What the
fuck is she wearing? What is this
show?" you declared, gesturing at the screen. " Are you seeing this shit?"
"
This is so dumb." Athena declared, and then Ryuko fucking
demolished the boxer dude so hard his clothes exploded, "
Holy shit, this is awesome."
"Yeah!" you declared. Feminist brain was skeptical, but lesbian brain was
extremely here for this. As the episode ended with a splash of blood on steppy lady's cheek, you were grinning ear to ear. "This show is completely absurd and I love it."
"
More! Next one!"
"... nah, I wanna jump around more, but def coming back. Hmm..." you said, mouse hovering to the top of the screen. "Let's go with
random."
You clicked the little dice icon.
This was a mistake.
----
For the next four hours, you watched eight episodes of an anime called GATE. You were glued to the screen. You had to keep watching.
Not because it was good.
Not at all.
GATE was, transparently, imperialist propaganda of the most blatant sort. You knew the term
isekai because it started to be a thing in Hollywood movies too, stories about people who get transported to fantasy worlds and promptly take over it or fuck it up as the perfect heroes because of their super-awesome skills from the real world or whatever. Power fantasy shit, it was always gross and weird.
GATE was isekai except the protagonist was the Japanese military and the super-awesome ability was to just effortlessly murder thousands of fantasy creatures with impunity using modern weapons in order to conquer a fantasy kingdom and presumably incorporate them into a Greater Multidimensional Co-Prosperity Sphere or some shit. Like that wasn't the
actual plot, of course the Army... uh, Self-Defense Force was only hopping the border between worlds to secure peace and their enemy is a bloodthirsty dictator who one hundred percent thinks that he can take on a modern military, and also to prevent any other nations from doing it, nations who wouldn't be as
enlightened a set of fucking colonizers.
... you'd actually learned about World War Two in history last year, and given you absolutely didn't trust the official US narrative on
anything you'd kept up your policy of independently researching, and like... invading places so that other nations didn't get them first was
literally the justification that Japan used to invade China. Like just straight up the ideological justification for their imperialism. This
fucking show was just straight up Imperial Japanese apologetics with a coat of fantasy paint.
And on top of that, it was just
shit! It cold opens on an army of orcs and shit being illuminated by flares, opposite of a bunch of Japanese soldiers with machine guns, and like... what's the fucking tension there? Oh, I wonder how these medieval dudes will do walking into machine guns? Let's ask the fucking French or whatever, worked out really well for them in the world wars where they did that.
The protagonist was some useless piece of shit nerd dude with delusions of grandeur and an addiction to exploitative phone games who was out shopping when a fantasy army suddenly burst through a magic gate or whatever and got to slaughtering all the cute anime people (as you do). Of course he was too busy having weird prophetic dreams of all the hot fantasy ladies he'd presumably bang later in the series or whatever, so that was cool. The dude literally cared about his con more than the fantasy invasion, but also for some reason he's a super-competent murder guy?
Of course it turns out it's because he's part of the Japanese Self-Defense Force when he's not being a dweebus (which is to say, when he was being an even bigger dweebus), and they hole up in the fucking imperial palace you think? (You don't know Japan) and there's a big dumb battle that hardly qualifies because it's an entirely one-sided slaughter with absolutely no drama whatsoever. Like literally the whole invasion is resolved in a fifteen second montage of machine gun fire at the midpoint of the episode.
For some reason he gets a bunch of medals or whatever for stabbing one guy and being around being an Army Mans (sorry, Self Defense Force Mans) which is honestly just favouritism probably. See, this, this is why there shouldn't be fucking
states. Because it's just a fucking circlejerk between the army and capital, and this show was a circlejerk
inside a circlejerk. An ouroboros of jerkery.
"You know people actually use shit like this to justify military spending? Like yeah we need five hundred trillion billion more dollars for a nuclear powered drone carrier, what if aliens attack?"
"
Yes, I know, you've complained about this before Liv." Athena said.
"Seriously! People say that shit, and they think it too, it's why they keep making all those movies. So people are like, yeah sure, spend all my tax money on fucking hypertanks, and they're just going to get dropped on brown people to advance the interests of Coca Cola or whatever the fuck." you continued.
"
You realize that being invaded by aliens is actually a much more realistic possibility now that we know aliens are real?" Athena pointed out.
"Yeah, but people don't actually know that! But anyway, this is the same shit! This is basically like, the Japanese version of Transformers."
"
Transformers are Japanese I think?" Athena said, "
Like, originally I think?"
"Maybe? I meant the original Micheal Bay movies though." you clarified. "Just with uuuuh... who's the super hot girl they treat super terribly in those movies?"
"
Which one?" Athena asked.
"Uuuh... okay yeah, just with them as like, anime elfs or whatever. Jesus, tanks versus guys on fucking horses.
I wonder who's gonna win?!?!? Fuck this. Let's watch the next one."
You skipped past the weirdly upbeat ending music to episode two. You had to see the kind of shit that they poisoned Gen Z's weebs with. Maybe that'd explain why they were all such a bunch of fucking boomers.
---
By the end of the night, you are exhausted, angry, and you have a cool device made of smart fabric. What is it?
[ ] It was an enhancement to your regular Arachne suit, basically a sort of soft powered exoskeleton using the smart fabric. It wasn't a lot comparitively, but it'd make you a little stronger and reduce the impact of heavy lifting a little, which would give you more combat endurance. Also, weirdly and hilariously, it could move independently of you, you'd just have to puppet it every step with your tech sense and that'd suck.
[ ] It was an enhancement to your Arachne suit that essentially gave it additional armour, as the suit would selectively stiffen or relax around impact points using the smart fibres. The whole suit would be knife-proof now, and greatly reduce the impact of a lot of blows even to soft parts. Plus, it'd be even better against bullets, which would hopefully reduce bruises.
[ ] It was a new version of your prosthetic arm, one which was stronger and could actually, convincingly hold the shape of a regular arm. Not that you needed that for day to day anything, but it meant you wouldn't have to switch arms to become Arachne, reducing the amount of shit you had to carry around for that. Your new steel arm would still be better, but this would do in a pinch.
