Foes of the Superwomen of EVA #17: Maxima
"The superpowered young woman named Maxima was oldest child of the royal family of the planet Almerac. Once she had completed her education at the star-roving Crucible Academy (a spacefaring organization which trains the finest individuals of some planets to better become the protectors of their home worlds), upon her return to Almerac, she was tasked with taking part in the chief royal tradition to continue the bloodline, wherein she was presented with two options: agree to an arranged marriage, in this case with the Almeracian warrior Ultraa, or seek out a mate herself within a set period of time. Maxima opted for the latter (to Ultraa's subtle chagrin), and, accompanied by her handmaiden and advisor Sazu, she set out to find an alternative mate. Her search eventually brought her to Earth, which had been going on a few years after the battles with the otherworldly creatures codenamed 'Angels' had been won and the respective conspiracies of SEELE and Gendo Ikari had been thwarted.
Maxima and Sazu would land in a nondescript prefecture on the third-largest island in Japan, Kyūshū, and on hacking into the nation's communications systems, issued a challenge to determine the man she would select as her mate. Numerous men, young and old, immediately made their way to her ship to attempt her challenge, with all of them failing to meet her standards. (Among those Maxima unceremoniously shot down was a rather unlucky teenage letch by the name of Ataru Moroboshi.) Maxima would soon find herself confronted by Earth's recently-formed team of superhumans, the Justice League (whose membership consisted of certain women and teen girls directly or peripherally involved in the battles with the Angels), who asked that she explain herself. Blithely ignoring them, Maxima found herself facing off with one of the League's strongest members in Supergirl (former NERV Evangelion pilot Asuka Langley-Sohryu), with the half-Kryptonian girl in for quite the fight due to Maxima's psionic abilities, their battle taking them nearly across the entirety of the other islands making up the nation. Their fight came to an abrupt halt after Sazu relayed a distress call from Almerac, which had come under attack by the biomechanical entity known as Brainiac.
Shocked by the sudden assault on her home world, Maxima rushed back to her ship, only to find herself accompanied by Supergirl and some of the other members of the Justice League, and became further surprised when they offered to help her repel Brainiac. Citing their own experience with stopping the knowledge-accumulating alien from shrinking their home city of Tokyo-3 during the battles with the Angels, the League members vowed that they wouldn't let it happen to another people, something that greatly touched Maxima's heart. With her agreeing to their assistance, the group immediately set off for Almerac, and made it in time before Brainiac could shrink the planet's capital city; the resulting battle forced Brainiac into retreat after Maxima and the League members managed to do significant damage to some of the critical systems of Brainiac's ship. Hailed as heroes by Almerac's people, the League members were thrown a celebration in their honor by the royal family.
At one point during the celebration, Maxima asked to speak with Asuka in private, and once alone, the princess informed her that she would drop the challenge and leave Earth be as thanks for the team's help against Brainiac. It was then that Maxima further revealed that she'd personally grown tired and disillusioned with her culture's royal tradition, with her time at Crucible Academy having had a hand in this; as such, Asuka found herself quite surprised when Maxima confessed that she'd grown attracted to the Girl of Steel. Asuka did her best to let Maxima down gently, politely telling her about her own boyfriend, Shinji Ikari. In the end, the two parted as friends when Asuka and the other League members returned to Earth. Several years later, Supergirl and the League would be back on Almerac to help Maxima retake her world from Ultraa, who was bent on covering up the secret history of the planet: that it was actually originally founded as a matriarchy, with its two founders being a female couple. Once Ultraa's takeover was dismantled, Maxima was free to take up her title as queen and propose to the woman she loved-ironically, said woman being Ultraa's sister, Primaa, who'd been one of the leaders of the rebellion against her brother's coup."
*Author's Note(s)*
At last, we have a new wave of foes...both of whom happen to be redheads (I swear this isn't intentional), and with names that begin with an 'M'. For the DC half of this wave, I thought a take on a mildly-obscure 'frenemy' from the Superman corner of that universe would suffice. I did my best to blend elements from the three different interpretations of Maxima, from her original post-Crisis characterization by original co-creator Roger Stern, to the more recent takes seen in the New 52 run of the Supergirl comic (as well as Steve Orlando's run on Wonder Woman). For the anime character I'd use as the visual basis, inspiration came once again from an obscure OVA reviewed on "Kyoto Video" by Kaiserbeamz, the OVA in question being the 1986 adaptation of the manga Prefectural Earth Defense Force. Specifically, one of the chief alien characters in the show, Ryūko Harataki (aka Colonel Baradagi), who made me think of Maxima the more I pictured her with the Queen of Almerac's usual colors. (Given how I threw in a 'cameo' from one of the two leads from the unrelated Urusei Yatsura, one would've probably thought I would've based Maxima on Lum Invader; not really the case, as Ataru's 'appearance' was just a tiny Easter egg.) A little Photoshopping later, and the results speak for themselves. (NO, that is neither Mera or Phoenix-besides, the latter's from the Marvelous Competition.)