The great what if... (spoilers)

[TheWebbuilder]

If you were put in charge of Ryuusei's third season, what would you have happen, what would you change and how would you go about doing it?

I've got a pretty long list of ideas here, so I'll kick things off if you don't mind.

1) Ditch the two-part 'episode' format and stretch it out into three parts- then stop killing off villians right after their appearance. Ryuusei and Tribe have proven that a villian cannot appear and be killed off within two episodes.

The pacing also needs to return to it's Ryuusei 1-6 roots. Characters must be introduced ahead of time and woven into Subaru and Misora's lives. And they must remain the central figures throughout their arc. Their struggles and desires must be explored and dissected as the story progresses, they get possessed and beat back.

2) Revamp the characters, creating more depth and personality in each one. Each character must have some flaws and strengths, and display them throughout the course of the season. I'll explain how I would trigger this character development later on.

-Subaru would need to be brought closer his RnR1 game self. He needs to be the reluctant hero, not the eager warrior we have right now. Subaru should be hesitant about trying to rescue others, and believe that the task is better suited for others. He's competant and capable, dependable, but that is tempered by his reluctance.

-Misora, oh Misora... First and foremost, she needs a concrete reason to be Rock's sidekick. Outside of a reason to do what she does, she needs to retain her confidence and ability to do battle and come out on top. A dash of anger or desire for revenge wouldn't hurt either. She needs to be a dual-sided coin, friendly until you touch upon FM-related matters and then it's a whole 'nother ballgame.

-The three stooges can, for the most part, be left alone. They're more comic relief than anything else, but I still stand by my statements that Luna needs her crush with Rock/Subaru fleshed out.

-Cancer. Cancer needs some serious life-giving, he deserves to be more than a Misora junkie. How is he coping with living as an FM amongst humans? What does he really think of all that goes on? These issues need to be explored, delved into and his psyche examined.

3) Develop a tighter story beyond 'X' wants to revive 'Y' so he needs 'Z'. That's been done to death and needs to be put into the grave. The story I have in mind revolves around Apollon Flame and the alternate world (thus conveniently providing FM fodder for the episodes).

Apollon Flame, a warlord from an alternate universe, has set his sights on Planet FM. Problem is, he and his forces can only emerge on Planet Earth- thus forcing Subaru and Misora to act as guards and preventing any of Apollon's forces from reaching planet FM.

Now, Apollon can NOT be the generic villian we've had up to this point. He needs to evil beyond anything EXE or Axess has thrown at us. He needs to be rotten to the core and just as ruthless- but at the same time he needs balancing. He needs to have something to dote over or care for so that his character is not one-dimensional but becomes enigmic and he becomes a curiousity.

Apollon must have some sort of prior interaction with Ceaphus, creating a motive behind his actions. Even if it's something as simple as being banished to the other dimension because of war crimes (although preferrably something deeper).

It would also be revealed during the season that Gemini Spark knew that Apollon was preparing for war, and that is why Sparky was so heck-bent on destroying Earth- to prevent Apollon from returning and challenging Ceaphus. His motives were right, but his method was flawed.

Auriga General would also appear as Apollon's opposition- however he would not be on Subaru and Misora's side. He should be more of a maverick, bent solely on destroying Apollon and not caring who ends up in the crossfire and what is destroyed in the process. Possibly, he'd overcome this and become a 'good guy' by the end of the season. His motive is being betrayed by Apollon some time in the past...

The old FM's would indeed return, although they would be the alternate universe's counterparts, and revisit their counterpart's host, thus forcing some development in that area. These encounters cannot have anything to do with the plots set forth in RnR1, but must instead be totally new meetings.

As the season winds down, Apollon would be forced to go for a hail-mary. He would decimate Auriga's forces, destroy the General and then fuse himself with Auriga to produce the final baddie of the season- thus seperating the anime from the games and adding a dose of tension.

The above paragraphs can NOT be revealed in one episode. Instead they must broken down and scattered across the season, producing a jigsaw puzzle that gradually reveals the entire plot and makes everything come together.

Now, here's the most crucial part of the entire plot. Misora's mother must be introduced, learn of Misora's dual identity in episodes 1-5 and then be killed around episode 15-20. (Props to Tachyon and ComicX6 for the idea). This opens the door to all of that character development I spoke about earlier.

Subaru could become grief-striken that he failed in his promise to Diago and become more hesitant about battle- Misora could evolve as a character and be burdened with grief over her mother and anger over the FMs leading to her character being a bit unstable. Cancer would be forced to confront Apollon, thus fleshing his character out. Boom, character development occurs and everyone begins to become much more interesting.

4) Ditch transformation.

You read that right. The Tribe On forms and Tribe King need thrown aside and used very rarely, if at all. Emphasis on battles needs to shift away from power-grabbing and beat-downs to being clever and chaining combos. Spur-of-the-moment stratagies are much more impressive than new transformations.
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[ComicX6]

Well, I've kinda been toying around with the idea of writing some fic involving some kind of FM myth that turns out to be real, but I have a list of stuff to do beforehand.

If the Ryuusei anime has a revival a la Axess, the first item on my wish list would be, of course, to stretch the timeslot of to the normal 25 minute length, but at the same time, retain the quality of art that we got for Tribe. And it would be nice if Nomoto didn't do half the episodes either. I'm currently rewatching Stream, and at only 21 episodes in, I'm already getting tired of both him and Shimizu, as the two were basically clones of each other back then. The only real difference was that Nomoto used thinner lines.

The second item would be to have more character involvement. In Tribe, only about five or so characters were consistant, active participants. Amachi and Utagai, the new Yuuichiro and Meijin team, barely did anything until the end. Luna and co. were pretty pointless as well. I've mentioned this several times, but Tsukasa, hyped in the previous season and game as one of Subaru's core friends was dropped like a hot potato. As a result of all this, most of the cast came off to me as rather shallow. Bly, who was pimped out quite a bit in the beginning, ended up not being all that important. I wanted to see him use more battlecards and see his entire arsenal. That didn't happen.

Third on that list would be to stop leaving out important game elements, like Tsukasa's DID-ness, Subaru's somewhat loner nature (all but dropped by the end of Ryuusei), Misora's late mother, and Luna's parents, who provided development that pushed Luna out of the rich snotty girl archetype. I will give the anime credit for compromising on the whole Orihime/Empty thing though.

Fourth would be more Phantom Black.

Fifth would be some action in outer space. For a series about space, there was depressingly little space action going on. The only time anyone was in space was when Subaru was chasing down Spark White.

As for transformations, I wouldn't mind if they dropped that concept and just kept Thunder Berserk as Rockman's main shonen transformation, like Ichigo's Bankai or Luffy's Gear Second. The catch to this would be to make it less...broken.

I suppose they could do a season involving Apollon Flame and his alternate universe. They could replenish their villian stock that way without copping out and reviving any of the FMs Gemini Spark took out. Of course, it would be nice if Subaru and Misora got some more fighting allies. The obvious third hero would be Bly, and I suppose Goat Kung-Fu could work too. For the fourth seat, remember how Harp mentioned how Gemini and Tsukasa was completely synched? Well, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine that Tsukasa's got a bit of Gemini still in him. Bam, there's your Hikaru, and that could also bring back Gemini Spark, this time good, though Spark Black would still be the more aggressive.

Maybe us fans should've snuck into Xebec's studio at night and altered their scripts.
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[Robin.exe]

Umm..Not to go off topic, I really like the ideas you two have but one question that I would really like to ask.

Who in the world is Apollon Flame?? Is he fan made? Or mentioned in RNR 2?

[Nenji]

Apollon Flame is the boss of the secret area in RnR2. I didn't get much of what happened in there so I'm sure others can clarify but it wasn't a happy place. There were no humans in it, everything was Denpa. The few Denpa-kun that you found also seemed very sad or didn't want to continue existing much. It was basically a universe of power, kind of like the Chaos world from Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.
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Previously known as "HiKaizer"