Roleplay / No Matter What Happens I Still Won't Become An Anime Character

When I was 13, a sword threw itself up out of a lake. I handed it in to Lost and Found.

No Matter What Happens, I Still Won't Become An Anime Character would like to apologize that it is still, in fact, not an anime. As an apology, please accept this TV Tropes page.

The JSDF has been in a constant battle with The Monster Formerly Known As Godzilla for an unspecified amount of time. Magical Girl duels are a semi-regular occurrence. Ancient Conspiracies make move and counter-move against each other in the dark of night. At least one Alien Invasion is implied to have happened in the not-so-distant past. This is the world of Anime, and don't you ever forget it!

But in the middle of it all, one unfortunately-pink-haired girl just really, really wants to have a normal life.

No Matter What Happens, I Still Won't Become An Anime Character is a Forum Quest that's kind of an anti-roleplaying game, where the objective is to avoid any and all plot progression. Player Character Kokoro Sakura (yes, really) has had the universe trying to rope her into one adventure or another for her entire life, but her encyclopedic knowledge of tropes has allowed her to unfailingly thwart its efforts thus far.

Now, however, there are 10 weeks left until Sakura's sixteenth birthday, which has her very, very worried...

The story was cancelled and then rebooted here. It is currently on potentially-permanent hiatus.

---

This story provides examples of:

Tropes that are Exploited:

• The Aversion of Adults Are Useless. When mafia goons show up on Day 4, Sakura calmly tells the teachers, the student council, and the police, then sits down and drinks her coffee like nothing's happening. Kumiko's reaction is priceless.
  Kumiko hasn't drunk any of her coffee yet. It pulls free easily from numb hands as I flop back into my seat, it's taste bitter, but sweet [sic].
• Always in Class One + Idiot Hero + The Lancer: Sakura decides to set up Kiyoshi Kita to be the protagonist in her place, because he fits these tropes. Then abandons the plan when circumstances change.
• Knight Templar: If all else fails, yell "HEATHEN!" and duck. The Homeroom Teacher Who Is Definitely Not A Nun With A Sword will take care of it.

Tropes that are Defied

• The overarching goal is to repeatedly defy The Call Knows Where You Live until it gives up.
• Crash-Into Hello
  I maintain a careful, arms-length distance from every other person around me, keeping an eye out at doors, junctions and broom closets on the off-chance someone is about to burst out from there on a collision course.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Upon waking up on Day 4, Sakura makes sure to immediately forget the dream she had the previous night.
• Mentor Mascot: Sakura has turned away 17 of them as of the beginning of the story.
• Tempting Fate: Members of the Red Shirt Gang never, ever keep family portraits in their pockets.
• Through His Stomach: Sakura always packs a lunch exactly large enough for herself, so that "nothing can get mysteriously offered in any direction."

Tropes that are Invoked

• Off the Rails: Sakura's main goal is to invoke it In-Universe.
• Plot Armor
  • Sakura makes a point of learning the names of members of the Red Shirt Gang in order to increase their chances of survival.
  • Sakura encourages Hideaki to ask out the Mysterious Transfer Student in the hopes of getting him into a "romance subplot," because when the guy in a relationship gets beat up, there is never permanent damage. The plan backfires catastrophically.

Tropes that are Deconstructed

• Comedic Sociopathy: When The Transfer Student "comedically" overreacts to Hideaki's advances just off-screen, we hear no less than three explosions in quick succession. We later learn that this was fatal to him, and Sakura solemnly adds his name to her Red Shirt Memorial web page.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The universe is throwing every fantasy related plot starter at her, from mentor mascots to special swords appearing, to ominous dream to monsters causing trouble in her neighborhood. The defensive capabilities of the school, show the results of this trop as well
  I...look up at the incredibly bland exterior of concrete, barbed wire and sandbags that make up my current choice of high school. Because all the other ones closed down...There's a few craters here and there but honestly it's lasted the longest out of any school I've ever been to.
• Negative Continuity
  Completely wrecking a classroom first thing on a Monday morning is the type to make the Student Council irritated; they can only mysteriously repair any and all damaged faculty buildings over the weekends, after all. The construction teams take not being seen as a point of professional pride... we think. Having never seen them or anything.
• RedShirt / Red Shirt Army: In addition to literally wearing red shirts, members of the Red Shirt Gang know exactly how short their life expectancy is. They post (extremely jumpy) lookouts whenever they gather in a group. Many have large numbers of scars from the times they not-quite-died. Some seem to be in a perpetual state of shock, whimpering and mumbling to themselves.
• The entire premise of the work itself is deconstructed in the non-canon Spec Ops: The Line-inspired ending.
  Amidst the smoking rubble and twisted steel, her boots crunched against the broken glass. Heresy, mind-control, mecha, magic... everything had brought down everything in the end. A broken equilibrium that could never have been met...
  "Well?" The figure asked, regarding the ruined vista spread out before them. Fire, smoke, rubble, water. An entire city with shirts painted red. "Do you feel like a normal person, yet?"

Tropes that are (merely) Lampshaded

• The All-Solving Hammer: Jumping out the window, interpretive dance, and especially pepper spray.
  (While hanging out with allies): You're not sure, but you could probably do something with pepper spray in this situation.
• Cloudcuckoolander: The literature teacher. Emphasis on Cloud.
  Literature Teacher: CLOOOOUDS.
• Duct Tape for Everything: Because it's duct tape.
• Dramatic Wind: In Day 2 Part 8, and again in Day 3 Part 7. Both times, they're indoors but with a conveniently-broken window and open door to provide the cross-breeze.
• Empathic Environment
  From a nearby open window, the Piano Club unintentionally starts providing a mournful piano solo.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: The People We Suspect Are Secretly Pigeons. Evidently seen through by Sakura (and, given the word "we," presumably others?), since she's the narrator.

Tropes that are Played With in other ways:

• Crazy Enough to Work: ZigZagged in Sakura putting a bucket over her head to avoid being accosted by Kumiko. It works, but also prevents her from plugging her ears to avoid learning Kumiko's name when the teacher calls it. And then the fumes from the cleaning chemicals that used to be in the bucket get her high. And turn her hair even pinker.

Tropes that are just Played Straight

• Ascended Glitch: On one occasion, the GM accidentally called Hideaki "Hideyoshi." By the time anyone noticed, so many players had already gone along with the new name that the GM decided to have Sakura misremember it too.
• Big "WHAT?!": In Day 3 Part 6, by Kumiko when she learns that Sakura already knew that something big and terrible was going to happen on her sixteenth birthday. Accompanied by Flipping the Table.
• Break the Scientist
  After Homeroom, the morning session is Science; which consists of a physicist standing in front of the blackboard and crying.
• Crapsack World: An inevitable result of Deconstructing Fantasy Kitchen Sink. Kaiju are coming out of a portal in the pacific, one of the teachers at Sakura's school is constantly hiding a sword, the student council has brainwashed students called drones, and redshirts bite it by the dozen everyday.
• Darker and Edgier: The GM originally categorized it as "comedy," but it didn't take long for the players to notice that they'd inadvertently made Sakura pretty clearly sociopathic, and that in her all-encompassing desire to be normal, she's missing the forest for the trees.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: The mafia, black holes, name whatever you would like. Literally everything has tried to kill Sakura, or at least will try to kill her in the future.
• Flipping the Table: Kumiko uses a table to express her shock that Sakura knows her 16th birthday is an event flag.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Sakura, her parents, and the Red Shirt Gang are all aware of event flags and such. It's part of the premise.
• Hive Mind: The student council drones all think and act alike Borg-style.
• Humongous Mecha: Giant robots are mentioned in passing a couple of times. Sakura is definitely falling into one of their cockpits.
• Irony: For somebody trying to avoid darn well every plot-starter for every genre she can think of, Sakura just landed headfirst into the one genre she never considered: the Fantasy Kitchen Sink Academy of Adventure. If she just picked something, the world would stop throwing every genre in the book at her and her days would be relatively average if not for the odd call every now and then, according to standard genre conventions. In a world where abnormal is the norm, she's actually standing smack-dab in the middle of her world's equivalent of a Slice of Life — the one genre she likely would have wanted to accept.
• Japanese Delinquents: From a certain point of view, the redshirts look like these because of their pompadours.
• Killed Off for Real: So many redshirts. A few even died permanently on screen.
• Local Hangout: The Red Shirt Gang hangs out at the bike sheds at lunch, because nothing plot-related ever happens there.
• Loophole Abuse: Since Word of God says Sakura won't be getting any more pepper spray before the end of the quest, some players have taken to discussing the feasibility of having her buy hot peppers to make her own.
• Overly Long Name:
  • The school: St. Mary's Coed We-Swear-We-Didn't-Build-It-On-A-Hellmouth-This-Time School for The Vaguely Catholic Militant Church.
  • Kumiko (see Characters page).
  • The Homeroom Teacher Who Is Definitely Not A Nun With A Sword.
  • The Rich Girl With Curls Who Owns Most Of Europe.
  • The Small Dog That Wandered In One Day.
  • The People We Suspect Are Secretly Pigeons.
  • The Whips, Cowboy Hats and Archaeology Teacher.
• Royal Brat: The Rich Girl With Curls Who Owns Most Of Europe also owns a lot of snobbery.
• Shout-Out:
  • Apparently, they really didn't build the school on a hellmouth this time.
  • Sakura doesn't ride bikes because they "have an irritating habit of trying to fly to the moon whenever I crest the hill."
  • The People We Suspect Are Secretly Pigeons have a table in the cafeteria.
  • The phrase, "life, the universe and everything" is mentioned multiple times.
  • There is a Whips, Cowboy Hats and Archaeology Teacher.
  • Every day begins with the declaration, "Dawn of the nth Day." On Fridays, "24 hours remain" is added for good measure.
  • Sakura sees TV news reporting on a dimensional portal opening up in the Pacific, and her reaction is to be mildly annoyed that her next shipment of pepper spray will probably be delayed.
• Tastes Like Friendship: Sakura eventually offers a very tentative olive branch to Kumiko in the form of coffee.
• Too Awesome to Use: Sakura started with 20 doses of pepper spray. Still hasn't used it once.
• You All Look Familiar: The Red Shirt Gang all sport red shirts and pompadours.