Saber Marionette Post-SMJ to X: what will become of them? *SPOILERS*

Okay, it's time to breathe some life into this board. I ask you, SMJ fandom: what's in store for everyone after the end of J to X? What would their futures look like? And I'm not just talking about the girls, though they're undoubtedly the most important ones to consider here. I'm talking about Otaru, Hanagata, Lorelei, the Saber Dolls, Faust, you name it. This could cover what you'd like to see happen as well, not just what you think would happen.

It's been so long that I wouldn't reckon spoiler tags are necessary, but perhaps Matt has something different to say about this? Lay down the law as you will, Matt. 8D

I suppose this could also encompass that age-old question of "who gets Otaru" in this case, but for that I would think that more of a debate format would be most pertinent. A person can hem and haw about how it should be all they want, but it's nice to have canon evidence to back up one's claim. XD; Well, whatever. We'll see how things develop.

 

My vote is that Otaru marries Lorelei, and perhaps, the marionettes will have a little sister - or even brother!
Or maybe two of them. I think it could also become a chance for a new series (romance / adventure), about the typical guy befriending one of three princesses.

Perhaps Lime could grow up and befriend Tiger, who is still a marionette, and they'd become best friends. She'd be like Lime's older sister, who knows?

 

I would love to see a sequel of SMJtoX!
I would prefer that a new series (perhaps named "Saber Marionette X") starts first without Lime, Cherry and Bloodberry and with a new girl. She could be the daughter of Lorelei and Otaru, who was the shogun by the time. But Otaru died a long time ago (just like any other legendary hero) and so she was raised without Otaru. And one day she mets with Lime (now 18 years old and of course human) and they become friends. In the meantime an other country starts up a war against Japoness (as usual) and Lorelei was kidnapped, so suddenly her daughter was thrown into the role as a shogun. But she was helped by Lime and Cherry and Bloodberry, who she mets later on. And at the end this girl is in some kind of trap and can only be rescued by Marionettes with the Maiden-Curcuit. So Lime, Cherry and Bloodberry must choose beetween their own humanity or to become Marionettes again to save the girl... I think this could be very dramatic. Just to think about it I must hold back some tears... ^^

 

It's an interesting idea, I'll give you that, but I'm curious as to what exactly supports Otaru marrying Lorelei other than a sort of "he picks that one!" statement. Of course, I also tend to rely on canon evidence and support to back up this issue, and it's entirely possible that you're only doing the wishful thinking part of it here, in which case go nuts. XD So if I'm looking through the wrong lens here, then pardon me.

As for me... mmm, I dunno. I think a younger sibling-- especially if it were actually Otaru's, and especially another girl-- would really detract from the "center of the universe" way in which the girls tend to live. I think it is important that that dynamic be preserved until they grow up naturally and distance themselves from Otaru in order to start their own lives. I think we get to witness this process in the series, in fact. They start out bickering like children in an effort to be the sole focus of his attention, then grow to respect both him and one another (kids, just getting used to the concept of sharing), then grow beyond him and forget him momentarily (teenagers, anybody?), then remain beyond him but still inexorably bonded to him, as adults ideally do with their loved ones. If Otaru were to have a child of his own via cloning or biological means, I think it would be best to wait until the girls were teenagers or older. Three kids at once would be enough of a handful for a single father anyhow. :sweat2:

I could ramble in this topic forever, but. I guess I'll just take it as things come up. X3

I do think, though... SOMEONE'S gotta hook up with an older Yumeji. He's young enough when women return to Terra II that I think he'd end up more progressive than your average adult man of the time, and more open to a relationship with a girl. You have to remember: as dauntingly heterocentric as the series is, realistically speaking, we're talking about a planet of nothing but men and soulless marionettes for three hundred years. Homosexuality is the norm there. I really can't be convinced otherwise on this. :sweat: So I admit, diverting from the topic of Yumeji for the moment, that I sometimes worry for the sake of the new female population on the planet. Lorelei's already been faced with multiple kidnapping attempts, for what could really be all variety of reasons-- ransom, being the first country to clone women, possible murder at the hands of those who want to maintain the status quo (we can't presume that everyone in society necessarily wants women back, considering how smoothly things are running as it is), and... well, more unsavory reasons than that. I'd prefer not to believe that the first few women wouldn't suffer disrespect or worse at the hands of some-- perhaps many-- men, but the fact remains that there are bad seeds in every society, especially when the status quo is being challenged. It's a distressing thought, though, so I don't always tend to think about it. ^^;

 

Aye-aye, captain!

That's just it, though. I think it's the ruminating on the NON-notable parts of their lives that makes them so... complete. To me, anyway. What will the girls grow up to be? How will Otaru deal with fatherhood? Has Lorelei finally let go of the past? Will she ever be able to walk around freely without fear of kidnapping?

...Man. Lorelei as a character makes me kinda sad sometimes. XD; I do have some real sympathy for her. What exactly happened with the whole her and Faust thing, anyhow? Somebody remind me. It's like, it was there, and then it sort of vanished in favor of Faust/Tiger.

I see real potential for tragedy there, too. The good kind, I mean. Not that Faust and the Saber Dolls aren't already great tragedy fodder. XD

True enough. Though I was hoping to sort of draw the distinction between "this could be their future" and "this could be a series," you know? XD; One can afford to be boring, while the other can't.

 

I have the idea that with the return of the woman, many female clones (or test tube babies) would be "manufactured" - Lorelei could program "babysitter" marionettes to take care of the females, something like a primitive society where females are separated from the males. Perhaps it could be the best in a world where females aren't known.

So maybe Lime, Cherry and Bloodberry were the first, but others were the first generation, too. Perhaps the infrastructure of all the countries could be used to "produce" enough females in the world in only one generation. This could be "enough" to avoid a "minority of females" scenario.

 

You might be right... but at the same time, there's something very bleak and depressing about a world in which women are cloistered away from the men like that. In a way, it's not much better than putting them right out into the world where they could potentially be harmed.

That's possible, but I mean... consider the tremendous monetary resources that would suddenly need to be allocated to the funding of programs to specifically clone females-- it'd undoubtedly be a central concern for the whole world, but it's one that was totally unplanned for. I'm not so sure that they'd have the budget for that sort of thing right off. It might take a great deal of time. I can see a mass-cloning project like that causing a great deal of unrest, actually. Which is interesting to think about.

Also interesting to think of is this: would they try to introduce the genes of various men for variation's sake? We couldn't very well have thousands of pure Lorelei clones running around, right? I'm a bit unclear on the whole pure clone vs. secondary clone business, but my idea of it, like I mentioned elsewhere, was perhaps that a pure clone is a direct clone of one person, while secondary clones are created through the combining of the genes of two people. Again, for the sake of variation.

It must be really odd for Lorelei down the road, to have all these young women running around... all of whom are, for all intents and purposes, her daughters.

 

Actually, that seems like a very good way of going about it. Also a bit ironic, yes, and I think some feminists would argue that it's no better to place women on that pedestal than it is to keep them in harm's way or subservient. Personally, though, I think that protection is both necessary in this case and better than enforced subservience. XD;

I mentioned below (I'm kinda jumping around with my responses in this post) that Faust is a character who ultimately refuses to be ruled by his biology. Not only does he cast off the memories of his predecessors, but he also defies the whole notion of the biological "norm" of reproduction by choosing Tiger over Lorelei-- a marionette over a human woman. That said, it's interesting to me that the leaders of those countries have so valiantly sought to restore that biological norm. And why? Because they have the memories of men who existed at a time when that norm was still active and necessary. But the cloning system Terra II has, while somewhat cold and mechanical, really seems to be working for them. From a reproductory perspective, women are obsolete by now. And yet... the men of Terra II do seem to feel a certain longing for something they can't quite recall. Maybe this is due to the leaders, who are full to the brim with ideas that women must be restored... but for what purpose, then, if not biological? Companionship? I wouldn't say so, as we pretty much know that homosexuality is not uncommon at all. Then what?

I think it's so interesting. Through the desires of the leaders to reunite with women, they seem to have spread this massively idealized conceptualization of the human female that hangs above the heads of virtually every man on the planet. The laws that would probably have to be put in place to protect them upon their restoration wouldn't help much with that, either, and neither does their beloved Marionette trio, extraordinary as they are. So I wonder what the result might be when the men of Terra II finally discover that these women are not the higher beings they've been made out to be, but rather simple, incredibly flawed human beings just as they are.

You get to see so many perspectives about this GARGANTUAN societal change embodied in the characters of this series that it blows me away. This is getting long, though, so I'll probably touch on that later.

Though I suppose that's admirable in itself. While Otaru sort of separates but eventually and inevitably returns to his roots (Ieyasu and Lorelei, Otaru and the marionettes-- which results in the "reunion" of Otaru and Lorelei... I should note that I'm basically taking it as a given that Otaru is a raw genetic successor to Ieyasu nowadays), Faust goes the opposite path by proving to himself and whoever else that he will not be ruled by his genes-- at least, not by the thoughts and the sense of his progenitors' history being allowed to repeat itself. (If you've ever played the Metal Gear Solid series, you see that they place a lot of importance in one's genes having a hand in not only biological attributes, but also in ideas and experiences. I believe they call that a "meme." I don't know if it's a purely Japanese concept or what, focusing so heavily on this, but I've never really seen it anywhere else.)

That still bothers me, though. Because weren't the female clones the girls' were essentially placed into also clones of Lorelei? Or did I miss something here? Though I suppose it's obvious enough that some tweaking or alteration had to be done in order for the girls to look the way they used to. Or soemthing. It's all very complicated and unfeasible for our own technology currently, so it's a bit hard to imagine. XD

 

They don't have to clone LORELEI. Just her EGG cells. The rest goes in vitro.

 

Wrong, that's a story about marionettes fabricated with nanomachines. They have skin, bones, etc, but they're still androids. Their blood types contain information, but it's not genetic per-se.

 

True enough. But in any case, they'll still be her biological "children." Which must be very strange for her.

 

Remember also that everybody in Japoness is a son of Ieyasu, and everybody in Gartland is a son of Faust (eek). And so on.

 

While this is true, enough time has passed where there's much more genetic variation between them all. So you're getting clones of clones of clones of clones, rather than everyone being a direct clone of their particular country's leader.

 

I posted an info link over your other thread.

Anyway, about genetic variation, Perhaps there could be some genetic combination of different chromosomes between Lorelei's eggs and the different people of Terra 2.