So, Kawashiro Plot is over! And what a ride it was. When I first conceived of the idea of "do a plot all about the kappa", I never thought it'd end up like this!
But we might as well look over everything start to finish, huh?
ORIGINS
The basic idea of Kappaplot and its format came about from a conversation with one Gooper Blooper. In it, we were discussing the kappa and their meteoric rise in popularity, and Goops mentioned that a plot where each kappa got some focus would work well for them. So I clung to that idea and held onto it - I didn't yet have a central idea to tie it together beyond the kappa, though, so it didn't seem like it'd go anywhere yet. However, once I rediscovered the Big Five from Yugioh, I realized I could easily make them into evil counterparts of the five kappa, and with my passion for business stuff (thanks college degree!) I could go hardcore into making them various unique corporate plots about the companies waging a war of their own. I had my basic plot, I was easily able to come up with my framework of Kappa vs. Big Five counterparts, and I was all set!
THE BIG FIVE
These five corporate goons! In the original source material, naturally, they were all playing children's card guards. Here, naturally, they're moving a little differently. My first action in taking them was to rename one - Randolph was originally named Crump, but I knew that would get immensely confusing after I used Lord Crump in the Alliance for two years. After that, it was just a matter of looking at the various jobs they had in canon and expanding on that for the business. Business strategy, lawyer, and technical expert were all easy enough, but considering my desire for business jobs I put the chief accountant as the CFO and the "right-hand man" as the executive vice president. The Big Five were basically the movers and shakers behind this plot, and were originally the only major part to it, but I decided to expand on it with four others worth talking about...
VERA CAVALIERI
The big evil boss... who barely got settled on for a while! Part of why the CEO was out of the picture for half the plot was simply because I didn't yet know what to do with her. I knew I wanted her to be a lady to contrast better with Nitori, and I knew I wanted a big boss rather than just doing the Big Five, since that would both make for a better final boss than just somehow shoehorning Five-Headed Dragon from Yugioh into the mix, and would allow for a big event starring ALL the kappa rather than the one vs one matches of the rest of the Big Five's events. One thing that was running me into trouble was the difficulty of finding pictures of cool business ladies that weren't overly sexualized - eventually, the head of COOLLADYPICTURES.COM himself, Brine, was able to provide me with the picture I used for Vera's appearance. The mech fight was because I didn't want to go "relatively normal human gives self superpowers" after Commander Bradley pulled it off last year, so I just had her use a robot - different one than had already been confronted. While I do think Vera could have used a little more buildup, I think I did well enough with her.
KEMO SARUWATARI
The big security guard himself. Having the Chief of Security as a character was mostly me thinking that "hey, if I do a big storming the castle finale, the security chief would probably be relevant". So I pulled on Yugioh again, and used a character who canonically worked for the same company as the Big Five (at first), and just had him show up. Originally he was going to have his big scene in the Gansley event, but since people didn't want to fight him then I didn't have him fight then. So I was just going to have him be important in the finale, but Ven provided me the perfect opportunity to give him a chance to strut his stuff with the pirate raid on Azure Sea, which was enough setup for the finale. Kemo died as he lived, really wanting to fight the Kobbers.
GINA MORITA
EVIL KAPPA! Evil Kappa went through a bunch of ideas. My first idea was to pull a full surprise and introduce Gina as a new normal kappa, who would be a normal character for a couple months and then pull a full-blown heel turn at the trial plot. I decided not to go with that because knowing me, either I'd end up with a Maria situation where I didn't want to have the heel turn happen, or I'd do it anyway and people would be upset with me over it. So I thought about having the kappa just randomly appear at the trial, but... that wouldn't have any impact. So then I planned to get rid of the idea entirely. But THEN I hit upon the idea of having her fired before the season started, and then showing up for this! Switching her to Mitori form was a lategame idea to give her more abilities to fight with, and there's a bit of irony that hasn't shown up in RP yet - she's stuck that way! Gina is permanently the form of someone she hates, in a final dash of comeuppance.
SCOTT IRVINE
Not an asshole! Despite being a huge asshole in one of the video games! Scott was mostly my method to show that no, Azure Sea was not 100% pure evil top to bottom, and most of the lower staff were being mislead. He also was a way to mix up the trial without having to put one of the other Big Five on the stand, and to provide that interlude during the finale. Don't worry about him - he decided to join Kawashiro after the plot was over and done with. He'll be fine.
THE EVENTS
Printed In Blood (Intro)
The opening event! The idea of evil pamphlets came to me pretty quickly as a good first shot - something relatively low-key, yet definitely dangerous for the kappa if it continued on for too long. The reason for using Speed of Sound Sonic was mostly because I had watched One Punch Man sometime before this plot and thought he was an entertaining and memorable total jerk. My idea was the usual "informant is killed before saying something" except that with the Kobbers and their powers to revive the dead, that's not going to stop them! I didn't expect Sonic to be quite so... ridiculously successful, however, and I got some feedback that the plot was considered more serious than I expected for a first plot... but, ultimately, I feel it worked out pretty well. Even if I killed Komachi. And later killed her again.
Stocking Up (Chiharu vs. Randolph)
When you think business, what do you think? The stock market! That was my main motivation for doing this plot in this way, although until the day of the plot I actually wasn't entirely sure how exactly I was going to do it. I knew I wanted Randolph to drive himself out of money, and that I wanted the kappastock to go up despite his efforts, but it wasn't until the day of that I actually put all my ideas together and basically just decided to have it be a playground type of plot, where people did tactics they came up with to boost the power of Kawashiro stock. I was really happy to see other people adding their own companies and ideas, as well! Ultimately it ended up being exactly what I hoped for - a fun, noncombat business-centric plot. Isn't it nice when things go right like that?
Battle of the Business (Nitori vs. Gansley)
Man, this one ended up being big. But I suppose when you say "go nuts to advertise a huge business expo", that's what happens, right? This plot is also what solidified Mother 3 music being a thing for this plot - honestly, it didn't have any fancy reason. I just noticed Mother 3 music worked well for the final boss, Gina's planned fight, Nesbitt's planned fight, Sonic, and the float showing up, and I decided to run with it (except for the Ace Attorney event). The main thrust of the event was like the stock market, but even more "come up with your own ideas", and oh boy did people not disappoint! I loved seeing everyone's wildly different ways to promote Kawashiro and blow Gansley out of the water, and while the Kemo fight didn't happen, that wasn't a problem - things worked out well there too, so it was all well. Honestly, after the finale, this is probably my favorite Kapplot event.
Super Robot Wars (Mitsuo vs. Nesbitt)
A good old fashioned robot clash! Perfect Machine King was a really cool design for a trading card monster, so I wanted to bring it in somehow. So why not have a big robot for a straight up fight? It also helped me break up the noncombat shenanigans with some old-fashioned combat, which was something I wanted to do. Nesbitt being the technology man made him an easy contrast to Mitsuo, which also gave me the R&D hook and allowed Azure Seas their first real shot by damaging a lot of R&D. If it was ALL the sunk cost fallacy, that just might be weird! So it was mostly that, instead. It was a fun romp of a battle, although it was kind of funny how much Cornwind wanted to #comeuppance Nesbitt afterwards. Don't worry, Cornwind! He got some!
The Tropical Turnabout (Kasumi vs. Johnson)
Unfortunately, this was by far the weakest plot of the group, I feel. It mainly suffered from a few things that kept me from really giving it the attention it deserved. The first was that my computer blowing up in April really killed my chance to properly plan out this event more than "I'll send Irvine, Kemo, and Gina", and the second is that having a lot on my plate on the day and starting late but still needing to do so to accommodate people didn't work out. The plot's content was pretty fun, really; I did enjoy the contrast between the innocent Scott Irvine and the villainous Kemo and Gina, and the Gina reveal was fun. My main disappointment is that I had to compress and rush Gina; I planned to give her two or three testimonies, and ran out of time so Johnson ended up looking completely incompetent. At least if Gina had held up under pressure he might have been better off? Still, Ace Attorney plots are fun even if I did it better with Anderson, and I think I might try one again... wiiiith a little more preplanning, next time. At least I got a full-on courtroom plot; no Devil Ed or Mengsk curse here!
Kappa Trapper (Mizuki vs. Leichter)
Fun fact! This event? Made up the entire idea on the fly the night before it happened, which I only had time to do because that was a really bad day for me and nobody was showing up anyway so I decided to delay it to get better attendance. The original idea was some form of computer situation, which I had a hard time figuring out. First, I considered the idea of simply doing a "go inside the computer and fight the virus" plot, like Ghost was last year. I decided that didn't mesh well with my plan to make over half of this plot noncombat, so next was the idea of a literal puzzle plot - trying to disable the virus by handling a bunch of puzzles. Of course, that raised the question of why Leichter (working with Gina) would even have any way to disable the system - that's why my original plan was to have Chaos interfere! With Cornwind's permission, naturally. He'd want to level the playing field and give Mizuki a chance... but the day before the plot (which was originally the day OF the plot!) me and Bree were talking it over and came to the conclusion that this made it too much like Mizuki vs. Chaos. So it ended up being scrapped and entirely overhauled into resort of death - after I made sure to check with people, considering that this was relatively hardcore by comparison. I felt resort of death still counted as a good noncombat plot anyway, considering it was entirely about avoiding traps and there was no Leichterpunching yet. At least Leichter got some hardcore comeuppance the next day!
Boil The Ocean (Finale)
Hoo boy, THIS was a huge one. And to think, it started off as just planned to be a traditional finale! It originally would basically be just the kappa and friends vs. Vera, but then I got the ideas for both Kemo and Gina and decided to go with the split boss format. I considered a dual boss, but I decided it'd be more interesting if each one got to do their own thing - originally I was going to have it be that Kemo and Gina each held a key to head down the basement, where Vera was waiting, or I was going to go full Porky and drop everyone from the top floor to the basement. Ultimately I decided I preferred "villain fights in room they started in" and went with just a straight shot up, as well as having them simply block the path.
Before Bree suggested the idea of using Mitori somehow, Gina was originally going to fight by using a lot of mechanical minions. The Mitori idea ended up meshing perfectly with my other idea regarding the Big Five. Originally, at the meeting they were fired at, Kemo and his buddies would have dragged them off to jail, and that would have been the end of it! However, a couple conversations with Goops where he theorized they would eventually become the monster forms seen in the videos of their themes made me realize "hey this would actually be a really cool idea." So I got his permission for Plague Knight potions, and had the Big Five become the five monster forms! Well, four of them; I couldn't figure out how to justify a human -> robot transformation from the potion, but I had the perfect excuse to have the fifth potion be swiped by Gina instead, so Nesbitt just wore the armor of the Robotic Knight. They were brainwashed primarily because I didn't feel them being betrayed and force-transformed worked with them fighting willingly for Vera. At least you got to murderalize the big boss lady, right?
The giant army of security was added before the Big Five but after everything else, as I thought it was a cool way to get the Kappa Mob involved and allowed for a lot of fun army stuff... and hoo boy, did it go better than expected! Between the army, the Big Five getting their proper fight as guardians, the double Kemo and Gina battle, and Vera's own fight, that was the biggest plot (and longest, hey there NINE HOUR FINALE) I've ever done... and probably will do. Man, did it wear me and everyone else out. But hey, I feel it went really well and really covered all of Azure Seas! Certainly preferred it to just a generic fight against Vera!
CONCLUSION
Kappaplot is really my first major character-centric plot (since I'd say Space Pirates and Coalition of Malice weren't super dependent on Samus and the Alliance the way this one was), and man, what a start! Ups, downs, noncombat and combat - this plot had a hell of a lot to it, and I'm really glad I did it! The kappa are one of my most successful sets of ZFRP characters, and they deserved a good solid plot - which they sure got. Thanks for participating and making it an excellent ride!
