(Image Source: Pixiv)
The picture above was drawn by one of Mihoyo's (now Hoyoverse) house artists CiCi for the game Honkai Gakuen 2. The three girls in the picture are the game's protagonists, Kiana (white braids), Mei (dark hair) and Bronya (spiral twintails). It is over 10 years old. I was a ripe 25 year old when I first saw this picture. At the time it was just a nice picture-- I didn't really know that in a few years I would become so enamored with this series of games I would basically have a PHD in its lore and dream about its characters. I really liked Bronya's drill tails. I still do. I loved this picture-- I loved the style of it. I still do. I think about it a lot. I still really like the style of old CiCi drawings for Honkai Gakuen, you can find them on his pixiv, linked above. It is incredibly evocative to me. The eyes, the coloring, the shading on the clothes, and the overall simplicity of it is very different from how Mihoyo's games are now.
Hoyoverse games now have a very glitzy, "overdesigned" and uniform house style now. CiCi's art is lovely, and what I love about it is that its a lot rougher around the edges than the Hoyoverse house style in a really arresting way as well. It's "imperfect" in a beautiful way, not in a pejorative sense-- I wish my work could be seen as imperfect in the way I find this art imperfect. I love that this art is polished but has a roughness to it too. Don't get me wrong, I do love the style of the new Hoyoverse games. There are many characters I really love in them. But we all have something former, now succeeded by something current and quite unlike, that we will adamantly look back on and go "the old thing was just better than the new thing."
When I think about Unjust Depths, in a sense I think about this picture. I imagine the world looking like this picture. The colors are bright. The uniforms are simple. The girls are pretty. They have inviting eyes and simple facial details but they each have something distinctive about them. It's not "90s anime," its not "2000s anime," in fact I would struggle to necessarily pin it to any "era" of "anime." It is kind of a platonic ideal of what "anime" is to me as someone who grew up with it and with "anime-inspired" games and is still steeped in that space. Nobody else sees thinks this exact way though. I've had people tell me they view Unjust Depths characters through the lens of 70s and 80s cinema. Some people view it as their own favorite anime. Some people have posted, adamantly, unknowing of my gaze, that Unjust Depths is meant to evoke the style of hard-edged 90s anime OVAs, or that it is meant to just straight up look like Gundam in the mind's eye. There is an undeniable magic in those interpreations-- that's what reading a book is all about. Using your own imagination.
However, if you were trying to suggest that was *my* intention, and that you successfully decrypted it out of the story-- nope lol.
Everyone always asks: what is your inspiration for this or that? And those conversations have this kind of friction for me.
Maybe it was just pure neurosis on my part but I never felt like I was being understood in what I wanted people to take away from those conversations. When I was in the "official Unjust Depths discord server" I used to have a channel on it where I had conversations about this. Many of those conversations I kind of regret having now because I felt like showing people examples of my visual imagination has largely led a bunch of them to ask things like "what gacha game girl is Madiha obsessed with this week."
I'm not saying that's a necessarily wrong thing to think, or that I'm offended anyone does necessarily-- it's just a boring way to look at it. It doesn't do anything for you. You're not playing those games and I'm not properly communicating the magic they hold for me and the universes that open up for me whenever I experience the glossy high-res art those games are replete with. So I'm leading you down paths I never intended to-- I always wanted people to read more into what I was saying but in a way that I could never properly communicate.
My request is that you forget those things and instead just look at the picture on this post and dream a bit with me.
When it comes to the aesthetic-- there you go, there's a picture. Go into that picture and warp some of its restraints. Forget anything else I have shown you.
Good, are you with me? Great. Anyway here's the list you've been waiting for.
I'm dividing the list into two big categories: ANIME and GAMES. In each, there are things that I think are worth some kind of comment, and then a list of a bunch of other stuff that will go uncommented on. All of it is sort of important to me but some things are more important than others. If I talked about everything in detail then you and I would never leave here. We'd never get to watch the Cyberangel video on the Honkai Impact 3rd youtube channel for the 900th time. Where would we be at that point? Why even go on living?
ANIME
Betterman (1999): This is my favorite japanese anime of all time. It is, distilled down to its essence, a bio-horror mecha show revolving around a transforming human cannibal, meat monsters, psychics, and a virulent mental illness that feels almost like a weaponization of the id when viewed through the effects it has on the characters. I mean-- yeah, right?
Crest of the Stars (1999): Do you support the beautiful elven empire ruled by beautiful elven autocrats that simply want to control space movement and logistics in our sector in exchange for their military protection, giving you planetary autonomy in everything but space assets and military development-- and that, and I must stress this, is ruled by extremely beautiful elves? Or do you support the kinda fashy and weirdly racist human alliance that is hollering about something called The General Morality of Mankind and loves democracy or whatever? Yeah I thought so. Thirteen year old me watching this show being like "I don't understand why they hate the Abh, who are great rulers and incredibly, insanely hot." Fun fact, you can absolutely see shades of Lafiel having to hide on that one United Mankind planet in like, any scene where Elena is in disguise. Moments that just remained embedded in me forever.
Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (2007): You'd be correct to note the influence of Gundam on my work. I love Gundam! But my favorite Gundam is actually the first season of Gundam 00. I also really like Zeta gundam-- there have been direct references to Zeta gundam for funsies. But Gundam 00 really paints a fasctinating little picture of Gundam in a "post-9/11" world (i know this is americentric but you understand what I mean?) Also, Sumeragi Lee Noriega. God. Love that lady, huge fan, she's such an inspiration to me. Season 2 is fun and goofy but not as good for me.
Honkai Impact 3rd animations: Mihoyo would often post these animated shorts on youtube as capstones for story chapters of Honkai Impact 3rd. I love these so much. Cyberangel in particular is one I watch a lot, along with Lament of the Fallen. Without the context of playing the game these will not make sense, you will not understand why they are cool, and why I care about them so much. But just understand that for me, following the game as these stories and animations were coming out, it was so exciting and emotional for me.
Martian Successor Nadesico, Full Metal Panic!, The Soultaker, Spice & Wolf, Code Geass, Black Rock Shooter (2012), The Price of Smiles
GAMES
Zone of the Enders The Fist of Mars: When I was 13 years old I played a game about righteous terrorists deposing a cruel racist government using mecha and at the time I don't think I understood exactly how much I would come to love terrorism and hate cruel racist governments. Myona is insanely Maryam-core to me. Also what was up with Philbright huh?
Arknights: Aesthetically I really like Arknights, and I really like a bunch of characters in it. I am kinda darkly fascinated with the way it tells stories but I also don't like its narrative decisions much at all. This is one of those "I wouldn't tell that story that way!" things where it inspired me to tell my own weird industrial sci-fantasy.
Girls Frontline: Unlike with Arknights I really like the weird politics of GFL. I love the idea that both the ally and enemy factions are fighting for their interpretation of the same weird doomed ideology that we see to be objectively doomed in Bakery Girl, where both the ally and enemy factions, far removed successors of the original ones, are still fighting over their interpretation of the same weird doomed ideology in a dead world that is dying even more as they speak. Their wars throughout requiring the vast exploitation of the bodies of systemtically servile weaponized women who can't help but wonder why, if they are made to be weapons, do they also have feelings and the ability to understand their commodified condition. I just love sad robot girls. The aesthetics for GFL are probably second after Honkai Gakuen 2/Impact 3rd in terms of things that roll around in my head when I'm imagining the worlds I write. If you can, look up the artbooks for GFL and for Codename Bakery Girl (2024) sometime. You can probably find them somewhere-- Bakery Girl's art especially is super compelling to me.
Honkai Impact 3rd: its just fucking goated. go read Second Eruption and watch the Cyberangel animation on youtube. have room for wonder in your heart. i don't want to have to explain this. it would take like its own essay to explain the feelings of wonderment and joy that this game inspired in me at a time when i was almost completely lapsed on playing games. it inspires how i think about stories and storytelling and content delivery and a lot of shit today. if that sounds crazy to you then thats fine. this is all crazy anyway.
Lost Planet: I just think its cool for worlds that have mecha in them to have a variety of fucked up Kaiju in them too. I think they complete each other. Anyway I really like the Tri-Seed.
Command & Conquer, Valkyria Chronicles, Azur Lane, Starcraft, Warhammer 40k, Deus Ex, Ace Combat, Front Mission, Armored Core
OTHER
Lovecraft: I lied. I lied to you about there being only two sections. Am I always lying to you? Are your faculties betraying you? Anyway. The racism squid man. Do I like his writing style? Not particularly. Do I like his politics? I mean, no, you know that. Are the stories still fascinating to me? Yeah. Yeah they are. And I think honestly that more people ought to just play in the space of a bunch of weird horror that is in the public domain now. We should be able to do whatever we want with it because his estate can't really do shit about it lol.
Oh my god what the fuck do you mean "conspiracy theories and pseudoscience" Madiha?: As I said in the Unjust Depths discord I have a bit of fixation with pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, including flat, hollow, and other alternate earth geographies; various flavors of millenerianism and young earth creationism; theosophy; lost continents, ooparts; duginist eurasianism; nazi mysticism; alternate histories and pseudohistories. I don't believe these things are true obviously they are just interesting to me as artifacts of culture and history. Some of these are conveniently awful political mythologies and I like to examine the people that might hold them; and some are just quirky stuff that makes for fun worldbuilding.
History: I read a lot of history, particularly military history, and there is a ton of allegorical work in Unjust Depths.
MISCONCEPTIONS
Star Trek: I hold your chin in my fingers and force you to meet my eyes. With a dark passion I whisper to you: there was a *fourth* category. You tremble, unable to look away from me. There is something unsaid between us-- you know that you will never escape. Anyway-- a common misconception I have seen people have is that Star Trek was part of Unjust Depths' inspirations. It's not-- I'm watching Star Trek *now* in 2024, but I had not really watched it in 2020, it was not particularly on my mind like people think. Now, I did have like, some osmosis, some cultural zeitgeist, related to Star Trek. I kind of had the idea that this was a show about a spaceship crew with like, a really ethical and inspiring captain surrounded by a bunch of technical professionals. So *that* particular idea of the bridge and the officers, which is not unique to Star Trek but is a kind of core of it, that is evident in Unjust Depths.
Shoujo manga kind of generally: I am not conversant at all in shoujo stuff. People sometimes compare Unjust Depths to Rose of Versailles on some aspects, but I think what they're seeing is my degree in the English novel with a concentration in the 17th and 18th centuries. I love old romance novels. Like there's a bit of weird stuff that's actually a reference to old old old British literature tropes. Other than that I think like, the lineage of stuff that bled from shoujo manga into japanese GL tropes is what people are seeing.
Visual novels (any): I don't really read Visual Novels. Just not my medium. So no Umineko or w/e in here.
Films: I'm not really a film lady. I watch movies and have fun but they don't like, excite me creatively or give me a ton of ideas.
There you go. Here is another attempt at doing This Sort of Thing. However, think about this too-- sometimes I'm just browsing pixiv and I see a picture and I just wander in its universe for a few minutes and an Unjust Depths scene just comes to me like that. There's a lot of the story's DNA up there, but it's not all of it. It's not even most of it. Because all of it comes from me, and ultimately, there are so many things that prompt me to dream of different worlds. And that's the real reason why I want to write fiction, and why on my best days, I'll always love it.