Monday, April 14, 2014

The Influence of Anime on Solar Echoes (part 1)


A variety of anime and other TV shows, as well as several movies, had a definite influence upon Solar Echoes. Long before I first started thinking about designing an RPG, I had just started to get into anime. I remember during my childhood when "Voltron" was on TV, and I assumed all anime was the same. I'd tried "Akira," and though I thought it was impressive, the anime bug still hadn't bitten me. A fellow role-playing gamer, convinced I had too narrow a perspective on anime, introduced me to "Cowboy Bebop," and I was suddenly hooked! Many years later, I've watched more anime series than I can count, and I can look back at a few that had a definite influence on the direction of Solar Echoes. Consider the anime Cowboy Bebop, where criminals had more influence than police forces. It always made sense to me that the more we expand across space, the more difficult it would be to govern and police. Though Cowboy Bebop focused on crime fighters that were actually bounty hunters, the concept of a force that operated a little outside the law was appealing, especially when the intent was to stop crime using whatever means necessary. The Union Guard of Solar Echoes are not bounty hunters, but the methods of this special force aren't entirely different—they just have government funding to back them as well.

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