...Fuck.
So anyone seeing this update is probably wondering, "You said you were going for an update after 2 years, it's now been over 3 years. What happened?" To put it bluntly, I think I Deku'd myself a little bit.
Basically I was all set to finish the update, had most of the thing newly typed up but then I decided to start sketching out the plan for the fanfic overall arc by arc...that was my mistake. Because of how much this story hinged on OCs mostly from the ground up, I started to overthink how to utilize each character and their story arcs but I still wanted to do a story similar to the regular My Hero Academia anime (stuff like a villain attack, Sports Festival, internships, etc.). Then I fell down the rabbit hole of wanting to change things enough to where I wasn't just copying the anime too much while also maintaining being a "prequel", bouncing between how much to insert and how much to avoid adapting.
Eventually, I mentally crashed out and had to step away from thinking about it, instead focusing on another personal project of mine that really took off and warranted my attention. But when I decided to come back is when the bigger issue came because after a few months of letting things sit, somehow everything I wrote for the update was gone. That destroyed any and all motivation I had to do anything with this story anymore...until now.
A lot has happened, Godzilla has become top of the world with Minus One, Godzilla x Kong happened, My Hero Academia ended, a lot of cool things on both sides. Now at the peak of Godzilla hype with the 70th anniversary and My Hero Academia also in full swing between the latest season and You're Next (Peak, by the way), I finally am willing to give this another shot.
But to avoid what happened before, I'm overhauling the project and instead of being a confusing "prequel AU", I've decided instead Rise of the Monster Hero will be a normal adaptation of My Hero Academia focusing on a handful of OCs being part of the main cast. Yes, meaning it will revolve around Haruo Serizawa interacting with the likes of Midoriya, Bakugo, Todoroki, etc. Not only him, but also a handful of the already introduced OCs as well.
I figured going through familiar territory and adapting it would cause me less of a headache and be better for some readers to latch onto rather than what I did before. But that doesn't mean there won't be original content, plenty of the characters and story arcs I planned already will be inserted into the My Hero Academia story and some canon events will definitely be altered.
But of course inserting new Class 1A students means some of the previous characters will be taken out (don't worry, they won't be 100% gone. They just won't be the major characters they were originally, perhaps they'll appear every now and then). The ones I chose were characters I felt don't add much to the original story and could be swapped out rather easily, with one exception. To lay it out, these characters will be:
Mashirao Ojiro/Tailman
Toru Hagakure/Invisible Girl
Koji Koda/Anima
Rikido Sato/ Sugarman
Mezo Shoji/Tentacole
With these six out of the way, the new members of Class 1A will be:
Haruo Serizawa (Godzilla)
Shoichi Cooper (King Kong)
Miana Tomoyuki (Mothra)
Shinjiro Hayata (Ultraman)
Hidemi Tomoyuki (Battra)
Unfortunately I did decide to exclude Katsumi Oda (Anguirus) and Akuma Honda (Rodan) since effectively they were meant to be parallels to Kirishima and Bakugo, so I didn't want to have both of them together. They won't be fully gone though.
But with this established, I would like to talk about what's been left behind. I'm aware of the emptiness of not knowing what was planned with an unfinished story, especially when it gets cancelled so I would like to talk about what some of the original ideas were for Rise of the Monster Hero that won't make it to the reboot.
First I want to mention the original "Class 1A". Originally when I had to fill out a roster of 20 students, I wanted to go with a theme of movie genres and specific movie monsters between both OCs and canon characters. For example I planned to feature Vlad King to represent vampire films, Hound Dog for werewolves, Fat Gum for "The Blob", Yoroi Musha for samurai films, and Manual for "The Creature from the Black Lagoon".
That's also where Yuri Shimizu came in as an OC to represent ghost films (Also undecided at the time but I had the idea where she would either be the mother of Reiko Yanagi or a relative) and Eddie Brock obviously being adapted from Venom as a monster-like superhero.
Additionally, one of the cut characters who did make it to the writing is a character based on Gremlins. They were the kid who had a quirk based around electrified clones which caused the 0-point robot to go out of control.
Speaking of that, while I do plan to bring Teruo Kusanagi (Gamera) back in some way, I may have to leave behind the planned class 1-B teacher known as "General Hero: Gyozen". He's basically Captain Gordon from Godzilla Final Wars as a school teacher, which would be fun but I don't think it'd work too well to shove him into canon UA's staff.
To talk about the update I mentioned last time and what would be changed, originally I was going to lower the class count to 10 (I originally said 12 but lowered it more) and the newly included characters would be based on the mech Tempest Galahad from "Dawn of the Monsters", Rohana from "Gigabash", a character based on "Shin Kamen Rider" (a mix of Rider 1 and Rider 2), and Miana's Battra-inspired brother Hidemi.
The Tempest Galahad character would've directly replaced Mako Mori while the Kamen Rider would replace Eddie Brock.
Now onto what would've happened in the unfinished Chapter 5, here's the bullet notes:
- Haruo vs his teacher Gammera, where the school teacher wouldn't actually fight too much and instead uses a training room to create obstacles (think like a floor panel popping from the ground to block an Atomic Breath). The aim was to get Haruo frustrated and see how he would act upon raw power not being enough whilst also making it clear Kusanagi is aware of who Haruo's famous father is.
- Meanwhile, Shoichi would be heading home from UA only come across a robbery being made by a trio of villains based on the Space Amoeba kaiju (Kamoebas, Gezora and Ganimes). While reluctant to fight without a license, a young Mirko jumps in (not unlike she does in the Vigilantes manga) to fight them which prompts Shoichi to step in and help. After winning, both are forced to get away before the cops arrive and see they don't have a license.
And to be clear with that, Shoichi and Mirko were planned to be a romantic pairing throughout the story. I think dappling with romance in a story like this is fun to do and I do plan to have romance in the reboot with some canon characters as well (even if they aren't canon pairings), although not all of them are decided as of now.
I should also mention that along with all that, a long term plan I had is that once the full story would be completed, there would be at least 2 "epilogue movies". They would take place about 20+ years afterward and take place within the main canon, adapting expanded versions of the movies "Two Heroes" and "World Heroes Mission".
That's basically what I had to make public right now but for anyone curious to learn more, feel free to DM me or leave a review here to ask more questions in which case I'll DM the answers back. I did have a lot planned and a good amount will be in the story but I don't want everyone's curiosity unanswered if things never get far enough to get those answers, so spoilers are free to ask regarding character plans, how interactions would go, and even the expected "how would you use BLANK from BLANK in the story".
And unlike last time, this isn't an update for nothing as the first official chapter of the reboot will be released within a few days! I was thinking of posting this the same day as the update but I figured at least a few days of breathing room would be better.