About the Comic

In this age of a confused young world, the sages have felt the spirit-plane stirring, tempesting as it had not for centuries. The Senshuu, the embodiment of the dissension that comes every thousand years, is on the wake!

Having known and anticipated this since her youngest years, a girl prepares to set out to meet with this Senshuu and set right what may go wrong...

A long-form story-based online graphic novel, rated PG. An original adventure fantasy and cartoony in nature, it chronicles the adventures of two young Magi who head out from their small village in order to seek out the Senshuu, a vague natural phenomenon that has evidently occurred once every thousand years. To do this, they must wake the four Spirits that reside in their land and ask them for help. And they have to do it soon: the dawn of year 3000 approaches. Will the Spirits know what's been going on? And who are the people who're already in the know?

The Tale

The story, a massively planned twelve arcs (not counting the prologue and epilogue, an estimated total of 1200 pages), unfolds from there. But why did I create this comic? What is it really all about? And why is it so dang long?

I'm not entirely sure how I came about being inspired to do this comic or how I managed to develop so many ideas for it, aside from my initial inspiration - discovering the meaning of my one main online alias in Japanese. (After I just made it up, too. My made-up names sounded Asian for a long time!) One meaning of the word "Senshuu" is "last week", the more common one; another is "thousand years," which I took to mean a millennium originally.

To this day, despite my planning, there are so many directions this comic could take, because of its one "X" factor..."the Senshuu." Even I don't know how far it could go - but it's pretty far already. You'll discover the bulk of information about the world through the comic itself. Some of its general bits will be told about it outside the comic (in the About and Development sections, which houses a lot of nice info), but not much.

Around summer 2007, I realized my growing dislike for continuing the comic seriously with how it started. I didn't dislike the comic, but I couldn't keep going as I was - it was like stacking larger blocks on top of smaller ones. There wasn't a proper foundation. So, leaving the old archives online, I decided to start the comic over, with an actual refined script and concepts tied to future planning. Events still resemble the old comic, but now it is actually like a story, not just a gag comic full of chibis! I decided to show respect to the characters I had grown to love and redesigned them and everything relating to them, so that they seem more real. I do love this comic, and I want it done right.

This comic is majorly self-fulfilling, but I also gain joy when others enjoy it - especially when others enjoy something I've created, because it seems so strange to me sometimes that anyone else would like this (lol). Hopefully it'll bring some smiles, and maybe, eventually, some tears.

We'll just see how this goes, won't we?

Why Fantasy, Then?

I personally like fantasy because it's all Back to Basics. No advanced technology - all the characters are living with the Earth, and barely anything is driven between them and it. (This is one of my big factors.) The thing that makes up for it is Magi-mani, which is entirely different than technology but can be used similarly, and can't be harnessed in our reality. But, in the same way people feel it's great that graphic design is slowly going back towards gruff, hand done things away from the clean perfection of computer-generated graphics, I feel that a natural fantasy setting is much more enriching and interesting than urban. It's different, at least, from anything I've known personally. A lot of us are living real super-urban. I don't want to make an autobiography. And since fantasy Isn't Real, it really allows for your infinite creativity. A lot of fantasy follows certain patterns and guidelines (forests and magical beasts!), but that, my friends, is part of genre, and everything has genre. I have little desire to follow anyone else's set path (including the set paths of "high fantasy") - I'm just flying with my characters.

The Secret Origins of Millennium

So, a while back, I think I rediscovered the origins of Millennium - because I sure as heck don't remember what spawned it. I found a few old, old, old, ooold sketches, and stuff for Pipe Dreams (the comic that preceded Millennium but never started; too many different characters, not really Fantasy but sort of, no relations, no focus, no plot, all badly-drawn chibi), while going through boxes of old sketches.

I found a mostly empty sheet of paper that said:

"Name: Millennium
Characters:
Setting: Semi-ancient fictional land ("Magi-Ra")
Time: Turn of the Milennium
'You've been training hard to be a strong fighter, but maybe not enough. It may all be for naught, anyway. Do you know what's approaching soon? The Senshuu, boy! The turn of the Milennium! It always brings about [sudden] change. Prepare yourself, for anything may happen.'"

Notice how I misspelled Millennium 2 out of 3 times.
I remember writing that. It was during extreme boredom my early Senior year in high school (a very boring year indeed). I had something really cool for that blurb and forgot it. Ah, my memory holds strong.
There was also this tiny, ugly sketch of Ronou below in my chibi style then (which I was also using for Pipe Dreams) but with cooler, straighter fountain hair.
Really, though. Magi-Ra? Well, this was very vague. Very me, back then.
I think it'd have been cool if I'd started off with something like that blurb, though.

Inspirations

As mentioned above, I have no idea what inspired me to make Millennium, apart from a few words and the sudden vehement desire to create a webcomic. There's nothing that directly inspired me to make the comic or influenced my style - maybe the Pokémon games, if you count a few animal characters I made back in the day. However, during Millennium's downtime (2007 and 2008, not-so-great years for updating), I watched a show that challenged me and the directions I wanted to take the story.

Avatar: the Last Airbender

Probably one of my all-time favorite animated series and one of the best out there, it is a thoughtful, well-written, well-designed, well-animated three-season adventure covering the quest of the last Airbender, Aang, to reunite the world. There are four nations centered around the classical four elements, and tension among them since the Avatar's disappearance a century prior; there are also plenty of amusing hybrid creatures and Eastern-inspired locales. It's sharp, it's clever, it's ingenious, even - and it's also a lot of the things I had sort of wanted to do with this comic "first". But I can still distinguish between them; the comic I'm making is still the comic I want to make, a new comic that I want to see and read. This show, which I wholly respect, caused me to reevaluate my ideas and goals with Millennium and pulled me into focus. Thank you, Avatar Team.

Official Site

Gankutsuou

Also, a stylistic influence. I'd like to be able to do what it did with flat foreground color and texture - perhaps not as extreme but still full of impact. A very dramatic story full of intrigue and revenge, it's based on The Count of Monte Cristo, and while I've never read the book or the manga version of this, I enjoyed this very strange anime interpretation of a classic story.

Official Site

Disney's Hercules

I love this movie. Why? Not only is it colorful and stylish: it's FUN. You even like the side characters and the environments...and the songs are infectiously catchy. If Millennium were an animation, I'd want it to be infused with this sense of fun, even when facing subjects as dark as classical Greek mythology usually did.

Official Site