Xanny's Curse

Welcome to the About page of Xanny’s Curse! This is Hibiki Takami, the creator of Xanny’s Curse, and I will be guiding you through this section of the website personally. Sure, I’m really not here physically to talk about all this stuff, but it’s the closest you can get (save for email and private messaging on the forums) to actually talking to me in regards to the series.

The Origins of Xanny’s Curse

There are many people who try to come up with ideas by reading a lot of anime, watching TV, or listening to their favorite songs. The story of Xanny’s Curse, surprisingly enough, evolved from a nightmare.

I woke up in the middle of the night, exactly at 3:00 in the morning, and because I felt so icky and sweaty because of the heat, I decided to get up and get to the shower. When I got out of the shower, my eyes were a little soapy and so I blindly grabbed my towel and put it around my body and to dry myself when I got out of the shower. So there I was, standing infront of the medicine cabinet (with mirror, of course), and I see this beautiful young woman — who was extremely attractive and had a really sexy look. I looked around to try and find this girl — only to realize that this girl was indeed ME.

The nightmare was recreated in the old version of the current page 3, which can be found below. In the variation of the event found in the comic, I actually had Xanny get up and go to the bathroom, completely oblivious as to what happened to him. In the revision of the page, I strategically positioned a vanity infront of his bed so he wouldn’t miss his “change” even for a second. The two pages mentioned are posted below for you to compare and glance over.

The page on the left closely resembles my dream. Obviously, the dream was in first person so the account was really done through my eyes. And yes, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, my nickname is Xanny. Put these two things together and you’ve got the title: Xanny’s Curse!

But surely, there has to be another influence as to why this dream turned into this massive storyline that’s already been preplanned and prescripted? Well yes, as a matter of fact, it has a very well reknowned and well known influence.

Back when I was around 14 years old, anime had come back into my life. I watched Deimos and Voltes V when I was a little kid and so anime didn’t really seem too different from the conventional cartoons people are used to seeing. For years, I’d watch Macross and then its Robotech incarnation, followed by more cartoons and such but it wasn’t until 1994 (yes, when I was 14) that I came back into the whole anime watching frenzy again. I began watching three anime series: Vampire Princess Miyu OVA, Devil Hunter Yohko OVA, and one other anime by the title of Ranma 1/2. If you know Ranma 1/2, most of you are probably “ahh”ing and getting what I meant.

Ranma 1/2 is one of Rumiko Takahashi’s (Inuyasha, Maison Ikkoku) mangas, and it features a young teenager named Ranma Saotome who went with his dad on a training trip to China to the Training Ground of Cursed Springs at Jusenkyo. To put a long story short, Ranma and his dad fell into one of the cursed springs and so, from then on, Ranma would turn into a girl when he is doused with cold water. When doused with hot water, he turns back into a guy. During the series, he meets several different individuals with these same traits, but transform into different creatures or individuals.

So with these two as combining factors, Xanny’s Curse formed into a short three volume comic that i drew on binder paper back when I was young and which I almost had an offer to publish it in the Philippines when I turned 18. Unfortunately, it never happened as I immigrated to the United States and stayed here. Fortunately for me, I later found out that there are other opportunities to share this story with people…

The Evolution of Xanny’s Curse

The first “real” created version of Xanny’s Curse was a mix of Ranma 1/2’s sci-fi aspect in addition to a somewhat forced yet seemingly natural mythos that surrounded Xanny’s dilemma. The main theme of this version was that despite being granted this opportunity to relive his life, the main character is cognisant of the fact that he has been given this as an opportunity to set the wrong things as right. In addition to this case, I also introduced Diane Reme, who if you just spell her complete name as D.REME (say “dream”), you’ll actually get the in-joke that now is revealed to you, who’s reading this section.

Diane Reme was introduced midway in the end of Volume 2 to raise the importance of Xanny’s existence in the world. Diane taunts and tries to kill Xandy because she thinks that individuals such as Xandy alter the destiny of different beings by altering the universe that surrounds them. Diane’s lineage isn’t really mentioned much, save for her expressions of her views and what not. The end of the fight — which climaxed with Xandy using her “untapped” powers — manages to defeat Diane, who then in turn told her of what Xanny should really be thinking while back on Earth. This completely changes Xanny’s perspective in return and the Volume ends just right after Xandy goes to the prom with her friends, new and old.

In a way, Diane’s death was sort of preachy but a really good plot device. However, the story doesn’t really elaborate as to how Xandy came upon her powers — not to mention WHERE it came from. Naturally, this was one aspect of the story that was going to be scrapped. Bye bye Diane Reme!

The second incarnation of Xanny’s Curse came when I started learning how to make webpages back in 1996. The Internet was young and tutorials on how to create webpages were shown on TV and were splattered all over websites. Internet Explorer and Netscape were two very different web browsers back then, and the Internet comprised mostly of text at the time. Any amount of pictures on the Internet was too slow to even try to download on a 28k modem.

Under a pseudonym, I created my website simply by just grabbing a black silk tile background and placing it on a simple webpage that contained yellow Times New Roman font. The main page had a simple yellow “Xanny’s Curse” heading with a couple of background information in regards to the story… a gist, if you will. It was then that I started out with once again, a blank canvas, and recreated Xanny’s Curse from the concept it mutated from.

The new story followed Xanny even further into his new life as a girl, eventually leading to a *gasp* marriage to a guy! The online fiction had a total of 14 chapters split between 14 webpages and people could readily view any of the pages if they wanted to. The story still had the concept of St. Peter and Lucifer being at the gates of Heaven and Hell, both of which were present in the first version of Xanny’s Curse, and at the time, it really didn’t seem necessary to change these figures. Also, new characters arrived as well… illustrious names such as Bernard, Kennedy, RJ, and Angeline littered the pages. There was an equal pairing of men and women in the story and it was fun to give each girl a guy whom she had a relationship with.

But it would disappear in time. My hosting provider at the time, who had hosted the webpage, had deleted all their webpages prior to their new account structure around 1997/1998 and in doing so, I’ve lost the entire manuscript to their irresponsible handling of accounts. However, the idea of having Xanny’s story progress throughout the years from high school to college really attracted my attention and PART of what I wrote has stuck in my mind. I came up with several ideas as to how to implement this, ultimately leading to a suggestion of a friend of mine to reintroduce Xanny to the world of webcomics.

My friend posted a short sketch that she did of what she thought Xanny’s Curse was going to be on a forum on an anime fansite and the reception of the comic was pretty good. It was then, on January 2003, that I decided that Xanny’s Curse should return to its roots.

But on June 2003, Xanny’s Curse would once again face a hurdle and barely had an update. There would be an update every three weeks and the schedule wasn’t very tight. With my friend backing away from the project because of personal problems, there really wasn’t much room to work with her in regards to any new additions to the storyline. My friend originally had a refined vision of some aspects of Xanny’s Curse, including an idea to break down the story into story “arcs,” with her new story for Xanny somehow coming in the middle of the overall storyline.

This sci-fi story arc had a weird twist. It had Xanny turn back into a guy and everyone reversing their gender - and willingly know of it. A struggle with the sisters of FATE apparently occured, and Xanny has to figure out a way to set things right. This was a litmus test as to the feasibility of inserting a sci-fi story into Xanny’s Curse, but in the end it was deemed to inappropriate to the delicateness of the issues that are going to be talked about.

And so Xanny’s Curse and its domain name would lay dormant … until September 11, when I began to pick up where the series left off and I found a great web host that will actually let me post my comics online while maintaining an awesome amount of quality to their service. This, coupled with a renewed, profound interest in creating webcomics, did I want to pursue telling Xanny’s Curse one more time.

The Future of Xanny’s Curse

Xanny’s Curse can spin off to any direction it wants, provided that I actually know where it’s going. Fans are encouraged to dwelve in the lives of the other characters that I will be introducing and just to inform me whether they are pursuing them or not. I would like to see other people’s representation of the storyline and how the dynamic of the characters lend themselves to their storylines.

I would love Xanny’s Curse to turn into a live action TV series or even get animated by J.C. Staff and turned into an anime. We probably will never know, since things are uncertain depending on the situations surrounding something like this. A movie is negotiable, only if it is a spin off of the actual TV series. But let me stop now and say that I am dreaming - most of the webcomics out there are even more incredible than mine, but I urge on to satisfy both myself and the audience that I write and draw these comics for.

There are many other great webcomics out there, however, that Xanny’s Curse has been affected by indirectly. The webcomic artist community is steadily growing, and a lot of great storylines and people who have these great ideas are just a mouse click away. If you’d like to sample some of these, please don’t hesitate to jump into the Links section and check them out.