"Sometimes I wonder, if there is more to this game than everybody thinks there is. Like there is something bigger in all of us, just hidding out, watching us. Wouldn't you want to know?"
Originally called TVTome Adventures (full-name rarely used), TTA is a flash series created by Chris "Kirbopher" Niosi, using as inspiration a Self Insertion RP which took place on the TVTome.com forums (now TV.com).The plot centers around a group of players in an future MMORPG named "TOME" *
and their fight against the D-Bug organisation, a group of hackers seeking a mysterious "Forbidden Power"..TTA started as a humble and amateur sprite-animation series, which during it's long run naturally kept on getting better. As a matter of facts, TTA is notable for its great length (a total of 73 episodes over 3 seasons and a three-part movie), specially for it's media.
The remake
After it's somehow sloppy early stages, the series used an unique combination of sprites and hand-drawn graphic, while the voice acting was mostly done by the writers of the original RP (each one voicing his/her character).The author has openly admitted the heavy influence of both .hack and Megaman.EXE. References to Anime are also frequent—Dragon Ball Z being the most common (for example, the character of Zetto, fact which is frequently Lampshaded by other characters).After Niosi entered college, he had less time for the series (at first, the fourth 27-episode season was shortened to a handful of OVAs, then scrapped altogether). He continued it with smaller projects, such as the three-part Super Freakin' Parody Rangers, which features Expys of the characters Zetto and Ruri.However, on 11/11/11, a fully animated Continuity Reboot of TTA re-titled TerrainOfMagicalExpertise was released, this time with a huge cast of stars (including LittleKuriboh among it's voice actors) and heavily promoted by Newgrounds.The remake feature an unique style in which the animation is set to resemble video games like Megaman Battle Network or The World Ends with You, and it looks just that cool. So far four episodes have been released.TTA and TOME can be seen at Newgrounds.com.This show provides examples of:
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / Gratuitous Japanese: Kalasu Angel does not mean "angel of death"; many characters use Japanese phrases like "Yoshi!" (Okay!) and "Shine!" (Die!); and don't get me started on "Kageryuken".
Author Stand In: Almost all of the characters are based on "authors"—the creator of the series actually has two avatars, kirbopher15 and Zetto.
Awakening the Sleeping Giant: The D-Bug Dragon at the end of Season 2, although the good and bad guys don't so much join forces to stop it as they do just happen to both be trying to kill it for different reasons.
Blood Knight: Many of the characters, but mostly Zetto.
Chekhov's Gunman: Darkeyesofanubis, the villain of Season 4 makes a cameo appearance in Season 3, though Season 4's cancellation negates the effects of this.
Cluster Bleep Bomb: Bling Bling's character in the remake, Doubling, does this. His sister, Splat, prefers the Precision F Strike version.
Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Nailock. He's off-the-wall, zany and doesn't seem all there at times, but he also defeated one of the main villains in record time, defeated the strongest of a group of the strongest players in the game, and is one of the only people to defeat Zetto.
When first facing Kirbopher15 in his transformed state, EXE knew he had the D-Bug virus within him, and planned to make it his own. He convinced the Webmaster to make an '1111' item so Kirb could trigger the state, and would only do so if confronting his accomplice Zetto, by letting the heroes go covert at the D-Bug Org. II base while keeping the other Netkings ignorant. Absorbing too much viruses while transformed, Kirb unleashes the D-bug, that seeks to fight the strongest fighter in TOME, and eventually makes its way to EXE's room, which had a stash of 10 virus fragments, and manages to control the dragon by fusing it to the Super Computer.
Evil Twin: The "Shadow Users" are (mostly) nonsentient copies of every user of the system.
Expy: Zetto is one of Vegeta.He even has his hairstyle!
The Faceless: Voltarius in late season 2 (The Voice beforehand), and an unnamed season 3 villain...though Anidoug was the villain of Season 3.
Fan Boy: Zetto is a Dragon Ball Z fanboy, and has an avatar and personality resembling Vegeta. This tends to annoy the other characters, even though plenty of them seem to like the show as well.
Filler Villain: The Flux Gang in the movie. Not quite. Flux himself was to make a reappearance in season 4 in a similar body to that of Neomutant's.
Fire, Ice, Lightning: Stated by the man who created the battle system to be "the game's top three elements".
Heroic Sacrifice: Season 4 was to have one of the Anubis Guild's members, Fauna, pull a Heel Face Turn and sacrifice herself by overclocking her powers to destroy the barrier surrounding the stronghold so that the final assault could begin.
Specifically, a lot of the the Player Characters in the RP that TTA was based on had ice-related abilities. "Shoot an icicle" seems to be a common low-level attack which a lot of characters use though, even if they are not ice-based.
Improbable Age: One of the game's programmers was a teenager.
The Man Behind the Man: Had season 4 come to full fruition, it would've been revealed to be Darkeyesofanubis, who was responsible for the creation of the Kagemamoru Virus, the D-Bug Virus, and generally has masterminded the events of the series as a whole.
Also the climax of season 2: While Zetto was indeed Voltarius, the boss-man of the group, EXE was the one really in charge of the D. Bug (original and II) Organization.
Noob: (Quite a bit of characters, but the most blatant ones are Raccoon and Sojojo. Their voices are even modeled after DBZ Dragon Villains Cell Junior and Kid Buu to drive home how childish they are.
One-Winged Angel: Zetto. Twice. Then there's Ravenfreak, Racoon, Sojojo and Simdragon. All have been subject to the Virus Frags at one point or another, and each has taken on a different form when they utilized one.
Those Two Bad Guys: rac000n/Rockoon and Bling Bling/Doubling. Their TTA counterparts were hard to understand and quick to vengeance respectively, while TOME takes a completely different route; their voice actors had so much fun making them into a comedic duo that they pretty much took Kirb's planned script and ran with it.
Transformation Trinket: Kiropher15 goes superpowered anytime he cuts '1111'. The first time he did it when his EXP reached that number, and then used it again when facing Webmaster and his Deletion Beam (a collection of 1s and 0s), which he would later use to help Alpha beat Kagemamoru. In the second season, Webmaster gave Kirb a '1111' item that he could use in a pinch, but one time only. Kirb does so, but awakens the D-bug virus fully in the process.
What Could Have Been: As noted above, there was supposed to be a season 4,but it has been unceremoniously canceled because Niosi has had a lot less time to work on the series, and presumably, loss of interest in the series as a whole (possibly due to Fan Dumb). A good portion of the fanbase was definitely not pleased with this outcome. And it's a shame, considering the material prepared would've been grand in scale and epic as hell.
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