Hyper Fighting Machine Marmalade is what happens when a bored writer decides to see what would happen if he combined Moe with Humongous Mecha. It can be read here
. Not happy with how the novel turned out, Rizzo adapted it into a comic, available here, with the first chapter deliberately uploaded to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the original story.
Moeko Paddington has a problem. She is shy. Not the ordinary form of shyness, but rather so much so that the typical Shrinking Violet would look outgoing next to her. Of course, this means that almost nobody at her school knows she exists, especially not the boy she has a crush on, Reginald Darcy.
It also turns out that her father works for the government, and has designed a top-secret new weapon in the shape of a gigantic, humanoid robot, the Hyper Fighting Machine Marmalade. (Nobody knows why it is called that.) Moeko is so shy that she is only really able to deal with the machines in her father's workshop, and so volunteers to help him with his projects. As fate would have it, on the day that Moeko is putting the finishing touches on Marmalade, the workshop is attacked by the mysterious Antilovers, who also have mecha, and are opposed to all love and goodness. Their arrival causes Moeko to quite literally fall into the cockpit, and so, even though she is the worst person for the job, has the responsibility to fight the Antilovers.
Also present is the mysterious man known only as Aniki, who is a walking stereotype of mecha protagonists. Just what is his secret?
Provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adopt the Dog: Ursus spends most of the beginning sending out teenagers to do the highly dangerous work of fighting the Antilovers. But when the heroes' school gets attacked, he comes to the rescue in the only unused mechs and beats two Antilovers with only minimal assistance.
- American Robot: Peanut Butter, which even looks like Uncle Sam.
- Better than a Bare Bulb
- Decoy Protagonist: Despite being the focus of the first four chapters, Moeko is not the hero of the story. Reginald is.
- Falling into the Cockpit: Parodied. Moeko literally does this, which is why she is the one who must pilot the mecha.
- Giver of Lame Names: For some reason, Moeko's father named all the mechs after culinary spreads.
- Gratuitous Japanese: Parodied. Even though the work is set in England, Moeko uses the Japanese words that an anime fan would be expected to know, and nobody else finds it agreeable.
- Humongous Mecha
- Lemony Narrator
- Sarcasm Mode: The narrator engages in this trope a lot, often when lampshading the absurdity of the situation.
- Shrinking Violet: Moeko, of course. This is lampshaded at one point.
