About the NERF Teams
One thing about Ikari's NERF demon-hunting teams is that he's trying to model them on the AMP from Silent Mobius and, to a lesser extent, similar series that exist as manga or anime in the Muyami world, ie Blue Seed, Ghost Sweeper Mikami, Phantom Quest Corps, etc. Most of these can trace their roots to the Ghost Busters and things like Scooby-Doo or whatever. To quote directly from Chapter 9 of my story:
"What I find most interesting," Gendo Ikari said, "is the organization that is formed to help deal with these entities. They call it the 'Abnormal Mystery Police' department, or AMP. A silly name, but... the idea of forming a strike force designed to counter or contain demonic manifestations... that part I find quite intriguing."
Chief Ido snorted. "It sounds like a variation of that American show... the X Files."
"Indeed," the Principal said. "There are many shows with the same theme... Blue Seed, Ghost Sweeper Mikami, Phantom Quest Corps... all leading back to the movie Ghostbusters, I suspect, and even further back to the long legacy of mystery novels. Of course, Silent Mobius and the X Files are much different from Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Drew."
"But surely these are just cartoons and stories?" Chief Ido said. "You can hardly take them seriously...."
"As I warned you," Principal Ikari said, "I take everything seriously."
In any case, in Silent Mobius, every person on the team has a unique talent or ability -- Kiddy is the muscle (a cyborg), Nami is a Shinto priestess, Katsumi is a sorcoress, Yuki is an ESPer, Lebia is a futuristic super hacker and computer tech extraordinaire, and Rally is half demon.
Principal Ikari has tried to build the NERF teams along similar lines, but so far it hasn't been very exact. The tanks/muscle characters match up with Kiddy pretty well, but what of the demon hunters? Like Nami they are all priests or priestesses of a sort, but as magic wielders they are really the closest to Katsumi Liquer the sorcoress. For the Nami priest/priestess role we have a goddess, a Shinto priestess, and the daughter of Cologne, who knows a great deal of Chinese magic. Between these two, Ikari figures to have priestess and sorceress covered. For the other team members he's added Tenchi, Lum, and Ayeka, which he refers to as "Artilery and Support". All of them have energy attacks of some sort (as does Ryoko, of course).
For the hacker/computer types, I had to pull characters from series not set in modern-day stories. There really weren't any good choices from the present-day high school series that I've been using, so we have Lain, who is a very GOOD hacker, Tokiko aka Key, who has a strange afinity with computers, and Kohran from Sakura Taisen, who is a budding mad scientist. I have plans to develop Yohko's friend Chigako into a computer hacker as well -- she seems to have some talents in that direction, even moreso than Nabiki (who often gets portrayed in fanfics as being computer savvy). Also I've thought of borrowing Ruri from Martian Successor Nadesico, who is after all a pretty cool character. ^_^
Principal Ikari doesn't have an equivelent to Yuki the psychic, although in Silent Mobius she's a very inexperienced psychic. The only psychics I actually have on campus are Kyosuke Kasuga and his sisters. Hitomi Kanzaki has some minor psychic abilities I suppose. I'm not sure what series I would want to borrow other psychics from -- Mai the Psychic Girl? Miracle Twins? Please Save My Earth?
Anyway, here's a little chart of our NERF teams, just because I like to make cool-looking charts.
Please note that I have not written a delta or epsilon team into the story and may never do so -- I just threw those up to see what characters might possibly make up other teams. ^_^
Maybe I should list the other people involved in the NERF Project at some point. Getting pictures of all of the various temple elders... some of those might be tought to find, particularly the one from Sailor Moon and the one from Here Is Greenwood. Also Ushio's father from Ushio & Tora.
It's interesting to note that every team has a "demon" of some sort helping them. Since there isn't an official "demon" position in the NERF teams, I don't show Tora, Zenki or Inu-Yasha, but for what it's worth, Alpha Team has Ryoko as a member (said by legend to be a demon, but that's not exactly what she is). Beta Team has Tora, a full-fledged major demon who follows Ushio around. Gamma Team has Lum, who is an oni but in this case she's really an off-world alien Princess, not an other-worldly demon. Delta Team, if it existed, would have not only Zenki, who as I recall is a full-blooded demon of some sort, but also Ifurita who again was said to be a demon by legend, but is really an artificial, self-aware construct (and weapon of destruction). And of course Epsilon Team would have Inu-Yasha, a very powerful half-demon (the other half is human of course). And perhaps, should Urd help out, Delta or Epsilon might also have a half-demon/half-goddess.
Most of the other demons that show up are going to be quite a bit more malevolent... but Mara, from Ah! My Goddess, would be another type of demon who, while not as helpful as Tora or Inu-Yasha, would not be as destructive as the sort usually found in Devil Hunter Yohko, Ushio & Tora, or Inu-Yasha.
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