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

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

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

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 kind of anti-forum-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...

Tropes used in No Matter What Happens, I Still Won't Become An Anime Character include:

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

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

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 defensive capabilities of the school, among other things.

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.

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.

  • Red Shirt/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

(While hanging out with allies): You're not sure, but you could probably do something with pepper spray in this situation.

"CLOOOOUDS."

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

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.

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