Saijiki Stories



Saijiki Stories is a collection of five Web Comic Fairy Tales by Leanne Opaskar, currently in progress. Saijiki is Japanese for dictionary of season words in haiku. There are five seasons therein, so there are five stories in the series: Autumnside, Winterside, New Year, Springside, and Summerside.

Autumnside (ended in Spring of 2009) follows the story of Mala, a human girl, and Jack Bales, an animated scarecrow, who find a strange glowing ball. They set out to discover what it is, but encounter a number of difficulties, including a big bad wolf, an angry race of golems, and a rotten pumpkin.

In Winterside began in April of 2009. Mala's father returns home after a storm at sea, and the pumpkin people suffer from severe snowstorms. Mala becomes an apprentice to the witch Baba Yaga to investigate the reason for the bad weather.

New Year (began in March 2010) picks up where Winterside left off, with Mala  trying to save a  village from a hungry monster and an oppressive governor.

Springside began in November of 2010, and is currently underway. Summerside will follow upon its completion.

Tropes in this series include:

 * Abandoned Info Page The About and Cast pages seem to have petered out around early Winterside.
 * Big Badass Wolf
 * Hat Shop (Hayworth's top hat is indicative of his gentility... and is magical).
 * Holiday Nonupdate Just once, and it served as the introduction to a new story, but it wished people a Happy Halloween on October 29th. Throughout the two-a-week Autumnside and three-a-week Winterside and New Year cycles, Saijiki published standard updates through two Christmases, two New Year's, Halloween and Thanksgiving ... and who knows how many federal holidays.
 * MacGuffin
 * Talking Animal
 * Webcomic Time Each season (which actually has a storyline of several days) appears to take just under a year to complete. Considering that the protagonist matures considerably with each story, this is actually one of the gentler examples.