I just read a handbook of Japanese mythology that some dude posted on Veeky Forums...

I just read a handbook of Japanese mythology that some dude posted on Veeky Forums. How would you do a space opera based on Shinto mythology without going pure weeb?

You have just mentioned Japanese and Shinto in a single line. As far as the people who care whether something is "weeb" or not are concerned, you have already gone full weeb.

Make the gods AIs, kami into intelligent tools and weapons, prayers are activation sequences, rituals are systems for utilizing virtual input devices, and youkai are various programs, robots, and assault systems helper AI's that are less than gods but more autonomous than kai.

Good luck.

>all aliens are in fact humans
>Japan is a giant space station coursing throught the universe, seeding planets with life.
>it runs on an AI with lots of failsafe mechanisms, so you gotta go through a lot of rites to get and keep the AI's attention
>Every community/colony/seeded planet that managed to get to sentinence gets a fabber that's stored inside a communal temple

You've already gone full weeb. Drop the shitty tiny countries mythology and pick something more interesting/relevant.

This.

NOPE

GO MAXIMUM WEEB INSTEAD

AND PLAY TENRA BANSHO ZERO

IN SPAAAAACE!!!

well for a start forget any and all anime/manga influences in design. Try and imagine a mature setting without epic scale. Crime, horror, politics, art, business or medical are more mature settings usually. War is always immature because writers can't grasp how it functions and the scale is too large for them to adequately appreciate without it looking shallow.

You also need more than a superficial knowledge of shinto, and should think more about the faith side of it rather than absurd fantastical monsters and gods. Maybe Onii are just a human faction with a capitalist military complex political agenda whereas Kami are obsessed with technological progress.

Care to share this book with us, OP?

Why is "going weeb" a problem? You clearly think Shinto+Space would be cool. That how animes are born, son.

Someone had a similar idea about the Aztecs a while ago and again I must wonder how sun gods work in space

You got that handbook handy OP?

Sounds exactly like Tenchi Muyou except for the not pure weeb part.

Just saying.

Tenchi Muyo. The PCs quest is to find Washu and bribe her into making Ryokos for them.

Well, one, post said handbook.
two, if you strip away the ritualism and the history, and get deep into the core of Shinto, you uncover a mutualist relationship between Human and Kami with a focus on Human becoming Kami. Shintoism is a very transhumanist naturalist religion at its core.
The Kami that exist in all things? Guiding spirits for the physical item. Or the metaphysical structures of energy flow, depending on how small you get.
Humans worship Kami as recognition of their status, Kami help humans in recognition of their potential. Both sides are responsible for making sure the natural flow of the world continues.
Does this help with giving you some basic ideas to start from?

Where is Sheska poster when you need him?

To avoid the weeb, either
>Do enough research to be able to appreciate and properly utilize the aspects of the civilization you draw on
or
>Don't give a shit and don't bother with people who dismiss your fun project as "weeblol"

You might also need to include a plot.

oh look, a tumor

Just to put in perspective how stupid this is, consider the fact that if he had talked about using any non-asian mythology in the same way no one would complain. There's no logic with these people. Why would you call a country's mythology uninteresting anyways? What would count as more relevant?

I don't actually want to hear your answer because you're stupid, the question was rhetorical

>Don't do the thing you want
>Do the thing I want!
t. Manchildren.

So basically he makes the Admech and Machine Spirits?

>What would count as more relevant?
Most likely Elves and Dwarves and Orcs and Goblins and Kobolds and Dragons and all the other trite, overused garbage that characterises modern fantasy.

That, or wanking off to Ancient Greek or Norse mythology, because God forbid anyone take an interest in ideas from outside Europe.

What does t. stand for?

Ever played Asura's Wrath? Something along those lines.

The Five Star Story

From what I gather, that one's Buddhist/Hindu, which is SUPERBADWRONG WEAKENING THE MORAL FIBER OF OUR HOLY COUNTRY BLESSED BY AMATERASU EVER SINCE FOREVER.

OP here. I didn't check back until just now. Here is the PDF I mentioned in the first post.

Space Operas Best Operas

See, Space Japan would be an awesome setting. Something like the warring kingdoms. A bunch of small, feudal systems in close proximity to each other constantly bickering and attempting to one up each other. It's a space opera, so palace intrigue and !notlightsaber duels between nobles are a must

>say space japan
>post Space BD

BD?

Bangladesh, maybe?

French comics.

It's probably possible to make space japan, but you'd still be accused of weebiness.

Kitsune as shapeshifting aliens fit easily though.

Honestly, this would work fine. Just refluff steel to magic space steel. It's already got cyborgs, androids and cyborgs. Turn all the spirits into aliens.

Who would Space Japan fight? Space Mongols?

This but Shinto themed instead of Hindu/Buddhist.

The malevolent embodiment of nature come to fuck them in the ass. And/or the Moon.

Notice that most Japanese stories and media tend to revolve around the idea that Nature is out to get them like some kind of slasher monster boogieman. Especially the ocean and rivers. Not surprising given all the tsunamis, earthquakes, and so on that happens in Japan on the regular.

The moon is also an ill omen and an evil fucker in Shinto. Explains why in most of their JRPGs and storytelling, most bad things come from the moon or during a full moon.

That seems kind of bizarre. Doesn't Japan have a thing about divine winds protecting it?

Each other!

Sengoku period best period.

The ocean wants to kill them, the rivers flood and want to kill them, the mountains want to kill them, the earth itself wants to kill them.

That mostly came from the Mongol fleet being sunk by a bad storm. Nature still wants to murder them, but they should revere it as much as fear it.

This is pretty cool. A sci fi/space opera with Shinto overtones. Feuding small systems, and then another faction that's utterly alien like storms and the sea would be to feudal Japan. Futuristice fey. A Moon Queen who's bright, terrifying moon can appear in any system without warning

>Moon king

ftfy

He's right, tho.

True fact: To the Japanese, the moon is a dude and the sun is a lady. So yes, Moon King.

There it is

So make Summer Wars? Or Kyousougiga, technically. Both of those are anime, so they're pretty weeb.

I've always liked the idea of really futuristic technology but set against feudal systems. So you have FTL travel and lasers and personal shields and giant capital ships, but also obscenely opulent court life and majestic fashion. So grungy, gritty sci fi right up until you get to the elite class, and then it's royal colors and classic architecture. Mind you behind the bamboo walls are hi tech security systems, but you wouldn't know until you put a plasma kantanna through one

Battletech does that in full for a pretty significant chunk of its timeline and keeps a lot of the trappings of it after that.

Change literally nothing, but erase literally every name that sounds japanese or vaguely oriental. Change them for english names (or french, or swahili). Also change the japanese aesthetic, remove everything that looks vaguely asian.

If you really enjoyed shinto (or any mythology) you'll see that almost nothing of value has been lost.

"regards" in finnish

Just play Asura's Wrath

Don't you mean Our War Game?

>full weeb
Do you even know what weeb means?
>shitty tiny countries mythology
First, check your grammar/spelling. Second, you are fucking retarded. Your classification for what counts as "shitty" and non-shitty is non-existant and if I were to take a guess you probablly think European mythos is infinately more interesting.
>more interesting/relevant
Why does relevance have anything to do with this? And whether something is interesting or not is entirely subjectively. Some people love Middle Eastern mythos, others like Native American, others like French, ect...

And you're wrong. What a coincidence.

>change everything about it so that it's not Japanese/Shinto anymore
>this will be fine if you were ACTUALLY interested in it
No it's not. Fuck off.

Dennou Coil?

Repeat after me:
WEEB
DOESN'T
MEAN
ANIME

It all happens inside a supercomputer that controls the whole station that is cut off from any planetary settlement and full of morons completely dependant on technogy for all needs. The "spirits" are malfunctioning and insane AI.

Space Japan would be really weird.

What would they even obsess about? Vacsuits?

No, weeb is a subset of anime; weeb includes manga, daikamura(body pillows), kemono(furries with human faces), and otaku(asian NEETs).

Weeb doesn't mean anime, but anime means weeb.

Technical and artistic precision in paperwork, piloting, long-range shooting(Iado), and anything else they want.

And the precise details of their vacsuits and movement jets. All the little details about how a person should be perceived can be read in what they wear and how they wear it, in space or on base.

>daikamura
It's dakimakura

>>it runs on an AI with lots of failsafe mechanisms, so you gotta go through a lot of rites to get and keep the AI's attention
Genuinely good idea.

It's. A. Fucking. Pillow. For. NEEEERDS.

Thank you for the correction.

You can pull a neuromancer and let people who have died continue to exist as uploaded conciousnesses. Some become almost godlike because they have adapted well to disembodied life over the years. Others were legends when alive and are highly sought after programs in death, passed down from family member to family member.

There. Ghosts and ancestor worship.

>otaku (asian NEETs)
otaku are not NEETs. They are nerds, but not in the western sense. They are the outcasts of society, but that doesn't necessarily mean JUST anime. Movie, gun, and all other forms of hobbies have their own otaku. They are not NEETs, but otakuNEETs do exist.

And weeb means someone who puts Japan on a pedestal and is obnoxious about their like for Japanese things (overwhelmingly anime in most cases). It is NOT a catch-all term for anything Japanese.

Otaku is just a reference to a person having an obsessive area of expertise that is typically, but not always, related to Japanese nerd culture.

There are, after all, botany otaku. (for example)

Hence my saying that WEEB isn't anime, but anime is weeb. Now >>a/

So oriental anoraks.

I'm not sure what anorak is slang for (I'm from New England, where it just means rain jacket), but if that's the comparison you like, go for it.

You aren't wrong. In England, anoraks were common among trainspotters, so it sort of started becoming slang for "trainspotter" and then "person with any sort of obsessive hobby".

Op-san, if George Lucas could create Star Wars with western and samurai references you can create a good space opera setting to your game
GAMBARE!!!

Discarding the autist definition of weeb, you're only weeb when you're embarrassingly overenthusiastic about the culture of GRORIOUS NIPPON despite only knowing anything about it from anime.

Try to stick to the actual spirit and tone of the mythology and try not to fuck up, something good might result.

Oh. Yes. There are definitely train otaku.

Ironically a character I have planned for an upcoming game is basically a shinto priest tech support. In the setting digital ai's based on mythological creatures and spirits were developed, eventually became self aware (after running through a megaman x-esque failsafe procedure that simulates, you guessed it, 100 years of philosophy and mental testing) and are basically ubiquitous elements of technology. Every little.thing will have one of these cyber spirits governing it in some way or another, like self aware su routines. Shinto techpriests job os to tend to and debug these spirits, he's essentially a coder.

1. Everything has its own AI spirit/subroutine governing it. Vending mavhines, trash cans, the ship's engine - anything digital.
2. These subroutines are self aware but benign
3. Properly debugging and maintaining these ai spirits is important to the functions of anything technological
4. Add in family/clan political drama. Make it the sengoku jidai in space. Everyone is vying to become the ruler of the Empire of Stars as Decentralization has led to the military elite being the only true authority
5. Martial castes trained from youth to fight
6. Ship combat is mostly long range bombardment or boarding actions. Why? Electronic warfare fries fighters/drones/whatever so the only pragmatic way to attack a ship is either from range with some sort of mass catapult (aka a gun) or by throwing a boarding ship at it at it and taking it over from the inside

If you understand where the image comes from, that was the joke he was making.

Not OP, but I feel like you can do better than "AIs as kamis."

You don't. Just fucking make your space weebshit campaign and have unironic fun running it you dork.

Alternatively, run a game in EVE universe and have it set in Caldari space.

Yes it does.

>I stop liking japanese things when I can't name my character Hiroshi and my sword is not called a katana

Fucking weaboos I swear. If this is your thought process you don't like Japan or any country for the matter, just the theme park version of it.