Tenchi Muyo!:
During a fight with a major villain, Ayeka is mortally
wounded. Ryoko is with her at the time, and the only
way she can think to save her("*why* am I even doing
this?" she thinks) is to absorb the princess into
herself. As an unexpected side effect, now whenever
Ryoko splits herself off, her double looks exactly like
Ayeka.
What if Ayeka retains a seperate consiousness within Ryoko?
What if she doesn't? How will Ryoko deal with the fact
that the two of them are merged, and she is now starting
to act a little like Ayeka?
In both cases, will Ryoko(and Ayeka?) try to hide this
fact from the others, playing the role of both Princess
and Pirate? What if Washu or Sasami finds out?
What about Tenchi?
Actually I kinda like this idea. It's interesting and
inventive. Personally I think a good addition to this
idea would be like a metamorphisis of sort.
I.E. Ryoko and Ayeka kinda blend as one in both mind and
appearance. So even though the now Ayeka/Ryoko person
is of a single mind and body which was formed from a
combination of both, She is aware of the the two seperate
people she once was and shows behavioral aspects of both.
And though Ryoko hadn't expected this to occur, the new
"Princess Pirate" doesn't want to seperate, thinking of
it as a kind of death. So she's thinking that if the
two woman who joined to make her seperate she'd be destroyed.
And now the rest of the Tenchi crew has to deal with this
new person and the strange and sometimes chaotic events
that are bound to happen.
I agree that this idea is worth pursueing; done right, it is
a very good way to explore the cast's characterization. I'd
recommend an approach similar to Jussi Nikander's "Half a
Sorceress", where Aeka's separate consciousness still resides
inside Ryouko. The two have to negotiate over who gets control
of the body when merged. When split, both are tempted to
fight the other, but if they ever did the other real harm,
they'd both die.
I'd recommend against an attempt to hide this development;
fruitless against Washuu, anyway. And you could get some
interesting mileage with Sasami, realizing that any plan on
her part to keep Ryouko and Aeka fighting until Sasami is
old enough to marry Tenchi is now in real trouble. You might
get some laughs if Tenchi is oblivious to the development long
after everybody else has realized it, though.
This might work better as a TV Tenchi plot than an OAV, although
you can certainly write it either way. But you get more
mileage exploring Aeka and Ryouko contemplating sharing marriage
to Tenchi with the other in TV Tenchi, since Aeka may not have
been brought up to accept polygamy there. Also, Ryouko kicking
herself for saving Aeka has more drama (although it's harder to
justify her decision to do it). And showing the two having
to resist the temptation to fight when split has more drama
in TV Tenchi.
Greg's suggestion is interesting, though not the way I'd do it,
at least initially. But it is quite interesting as a plot
complication about halfway through, say when the split girls
recombine, but for once don't do it quite right.
Damien ==> Re: your other ideas, the Ranma idea has been done,
including the later affair with Akane, perhaps most notably by
Vincent Siefert in "A Man Among Women". Doing it again in a
memorable fashion would be quite difficult. Ranma marrying
someone other than Akane has been done LOTS of times.