New Manga Idea #4

When I was younger, I just knew I was going to be a mangaka. This was the first manga that I wrote, drew, and inked on my own. It made it to a chapter before I slowed my pace, and a few more pages before I could be considered to have stopped work on it.

I promised myself I wouldn't give up on this manga, so I feel a bit bad about never going back to it, but my drawing style is different, I no longer have the patience (in lieu of screen tones, I hand-dotted a lot of area on several pages), and I just don't feel like I'm ever really going to get into the idea again. Still, as a tribute to my younger self, I'll post the idea here.

Title: The Colony of Avlain

Genre: Shounen

Protagonist: Talia, a 16-year-old, slightly air-headed blonde with high ponytails and grey eyes. She has rather efficiently blocked memories of her earlier childhood—she was very much a test tube baby and subjected to all sorts of experiments to make her the ultimate Elemental Restraint-Opener. While she can't open any restraints, she's okay with it. She's been living on her own for a while but is still perky about it.

Other Main Characters: Jikuri, a 14-year-old girl with curly, black hair and green eyes. Her mother died giving birth, and while her father was very supportive, he became rather harsh and almost abusive when Jikuri failed to open her first restraint. She pushed herself extremely hard every time he was away at work (guarding the local representative of the empire controlling the island of Avlain), becoming serious and battle-hungry, until she finally managed to become a Spectral Restraint-Opener. Upon coming home that day, she learned her father had died protecting the governor and has been on her own—learning to open even more restraints—since.
Amora, an 11-year-old girl who is technically Talia's twin/triplet sister. She is rather emotionless and serves the research branch of the governor's complex as a successful Elemental Restraint-Opener.
Caden, a 16-year-old boy with curly, black hair and green eyes. He is a Spectral Restraint-Opener that likes joking around. He serves in the junior league of rebels, where he first meets Talia.

Antagonists: Various people who just like to fight, including the Physical Restraint-Opener Kitana in the introductory chapter.
The governor (whose name I forget, though I know I wrote a lot of information on this down a while ago), a Control Restraint-Opener, and those that serve him, including the twin Form Restraint-Openers whose names I have also forgotten.
The government over Avlain in general, though represented best through the governor.

Setting: The island and colony of Avlain, a place with intermediate technology. In lieu of more advanced weaponry, Restraint-Openers are used. In each person are thirty-six restraints, six of each type. Once the first of a type is opened, only restraints in that category may be opened by that individual. The types are Elemental (Ice, Fire, Wind, Stone, Dark, Light), Spectral (Invisibility, Intangibility, Flight, then greater degrees of the previous three), Physical (Strength, Speed, Endurance, then greater degrees of the previous three), Mental (increasing degrees of intelligence), Control (increasing degrees of control over animals, then humans once into the last three), and Form (increasing degrees of flexibility/shapeshifting).

Plot: Jikuri picks a fight with Kitana, who was mugging a helpless Talia, and wins. The two end up sneaking into the governor's complex, where they are discovered. After much fighting, both girls are captured; in an attempt to force Talia to open a restraint, Jikuri is killed. It doesn't work, but Amora takes the opportunity to free Talia and escape with her, leaving their third triplet Amore behind. They try to recover while staying away from government agents until one night when a spectacular fire engulfs the house of a city governor. A teenager, shouting to onlookers how this is proper justice for the tyrannies of the government, flees the scene. Understanding, Talia and Amora follow him to eventually find the underground (literally) camp of children training to overtake the government (there was something about the empire keeping a tight watch over the adults, but not the children up to eighteen years). There they find Caden—Talia avoids him because he looks a lot like Jikuri. He gets a crush on Talia, but between her avoiding him and her being enrolled in the non-Restraint-Opener training, it's difficult. They get together by the time the big revolt date comes along, when they invade the governor's complex in battle. Talia finally opens her first Elemental Restraint and immediately plows through the other five to take out a lot of the opposition with Light. The rebels win, though with heavy losses, and the country of Avlain is established.

I get a bit nostalgic about this, but I really don't think I'm going to pick it up. I may end up doing something fiction-wise with either the Restraints (inspired from the gates in Naruto, by the way) or the universe, though I don't feel I did enough world-building for it to make sense.