Congo Gum

In this article I’ll be taking a look into Location and also taking a look into the reasons behind each section and what to take into consideration.

Most stories will take place in a variety of settings, depending on the genre of the story and the author has decided what the characters will be doing. For example in a Romantic Anime the characters may only live and move around in one town so the area that needs to be covered considerably smaller than say a Action Anime that revolves around the characters moving through different parts of the world. The biggest and most time consuming genre to create would have to be the Fantasy genre. Most of the time everything will have to be created from scratch and this isn’t a short process by any means.

Location

Once an author has decided on what genre and story they will be writing they can then decide on where to locate their characters. Now as I said before it is totally dependant on what type of story and where the author wants it to be placed. In many genres it’s a lot easier to take examples from real life situations. You can study maps, ready up on the location and what type of terrain is involved and then either modify it or use it in your story.

Now what I’m going to do is take an example and skim the top of what you should consider. Just for simplicity I’m going to take a look into a Romantic Comedy Anime set in the suburbs of Tokyo, Japan.

Example of a town with features such as hills, river/ocean - Samurai Champloo

So even in that first sentence we can break it down and look at what we need to cover under location. If you’re story is set in a suburb of a mega-city such as Tokyo there is no point in taking inspiration from, say, an American city or something in Eastern Europe unless the genre allows for it. (more…)

The first main couple of articles are going to be based around the basics of any fictional world. I may reference certain shows here but more in depth looks at certain anime will come a bit later. It may not seem clear at the moment, but this is all very important to the show and how things can and usually do happen on screen.

The main topics to look at and consider when you’re creating a fictional world are as follows;

Location and Topography

Landscape and Terrain

Weather Systems

Other (more…)

Welcome to the very first post on my very new blog. It’s going to be an interesting project to say the least and i have a few goals i hope to achieve.

Over the years of watching Anime and Reading manga i’ve found myself more and more watching an episode or scene twice or three times. But not actually for the characters or that amazing one liner, but because of the background or the “world” in which the characters live, eat, fight and generally get upto no good.

(more…)