Marller Gets a Spinoff
- Episode aired Dec 28, 2018
Kevin talks about the origins of Marller Gets a Spinoff, starting with a detailed explanation of The Hellsing Peccadillo.Kevin talks about the origins of Marller Gets a Spinoff, starting with a detailed explanation of The Hellsing Peccadillo.Kevin talks about the origins of Marller Gets a Spinoff, starting with a detailed explanation of The Hellsing Peccadillo.
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Kevin from the Other Dimension: Where were we? Ah yes... NOW we can get to Marller Gets a Spinoff. The idea for Marller Gets a Spinoff started back during the Bad Goddess Fan Club episode. I had just completely killed it as Mara Marller attempting to roast random Facebook users online in fan mail responses. Quite ironically, given I fell flat on my face during the Ian McKenzie roast. Only it was a day late and a dollar short. I had accidentally skipped over and omitted Mara Marller from the entire second season. I was too focused on that Ralph Bakshi crossover episode that depressed the shit out of me and took forever to photoshop, and the character development episodes for Stephen Geoffreys Doctor What. In fact, I felt like the series ended without Stephen Geoffreys being given his due. He needed a real Doctor Who adventure story to help pay off his character. Something epic that would outdo the stories I had previously done with Charlie Day. Because for some reason, I just couldn't seem to hit the right empathetic inspirational dialogue when I was writing Stephen's character. Not in the same manner that I had done with Charlie.
Kevin from the Other Dimension: So the plot revolves around Mara Marller getting kidnapped by Doctor What and Sayoko for unknown reasons. Marller was about to be given the CEO position for Fry's Electronics, the most evil retail outlet on planet earth, the place where all evil comes from. And now she's been sealed away on the Demons CD from Ah My Goddess Season One, and finds herself stranded in the Dark Ages. This is where Welsper comes into play. In the Ah My Goddess Manga, Welsper was a villain who showed up out of nowhere, revealing himself to be Belldandy's Doublet, attempts to stop time, and ultimately pays for his crimes by being reincarnated as Belldandy's housecat. I've got to tell you though, that housecat is kind of annoying. I like the demon kid version better. And I had the perfect way to bring him back. Doctor What is a time traveler and finds Welsper centuries into the past, long before he would suffer the effects of the curse he put on himself to remember Belldandy. I was going to give Welsper an alternate reality where he gets to be Mara Marller's comic foil and snarky voice of reason. In Kosuke Fujishima's world, Welsper was a villain whose life was ruined. In my world, he'll get a second chance to become a hero.
Kevin from the Other Dimension: So slowly over the course of this story, the Marller Gang gathers together and meets each other for the first time, and finds themselves battling a warlock called The Dragon Eye, which was really just an excuse to get Stephen Geoffreys and Chris Sarandon back in the same movie together. Just when they think they've won, The Dragon Eye unleashes Thirteen Demons into the alternate universes via the Tardis, a blatant steal from the Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby Doo, and now only the Marller Gang can put them back. What are the Demons? What is their plan? Who gives a f**k really? This is all just a fake plot device to get Mara Marller and Welsper to jump into other people's anime shows and maliciously mock them like the existential comedy roast from hell. But Marller is so mean... Yes. Exactly. Writing Mara Marller allows me to vent my rage and say all the ugly mean things that I really want to say with no guilt or conscience. Making this series sure made me feel a hell of a lot better.
Kevin from the Other Dimension: A majority of the Marller Gets a Spinoff cartoons are ten minutes comedy skits involving a crossover character from another anime series. The crossovers follow the rules set down by the Family Guy/Simpsons special. When the Simpsons visited the universe of Family Guy, they didn't do the PG-13 Simpsons humor, they engaged in the Vulgar Borderline R-Rated Family Guy humor. Likewise, you do not want crossover characters like The Guyver or Najica Blitz Tactics or Bubblegum Crisis or A Certain Magical Index to be canon to their shows or follow the rules of their creators universe, because they already do that all the time. This is their one chance for those characters to engage in a different kind of show. This is an existential comedy skit where the characters are self aware of their existence, question their place in the anime industry, and use Foul Language like South Park. It's like when Saturday Night Live does a comedy skit about The Avengers, only one of the actors is played by a real Avengers actors from the MCU films.
Kevin from the Other Dimension: The first pilot film made for Marller Gets a Spinoff, The Hellsing Peccadillo, is actually the third story when place in proper chronological context. Back when I was editing Anime Mashup 2000, I was scanning through the anime episodes with the soundtrack on mute, and came across the tv series Hellsing. I had no context for who Alucard was, but I digged his look, and immediately saw his potential as a crossover demon in the Ah My Goddess universe. I would want to see that crossover movie even if it wasn't Bad Goddess. I also realized that Alucard was a vampire hunter with a cult fanbase, and my current Doctor What, Stephen Geoffreys, was famous for his demonic/vampire roles in Fright Night and 976-Evil, also with a cult fanbase. This could be my anime version of "Freddy vs Jason". It was perfect. I could pay off Stephen's regeneration into the next Doctor What actor, by having him tragically self sacrificed in a showdown with Alucard. Because there is no f**king way my comical idiot time lord could ever actually defeat Alucard. Have you ever watched that show? That character gets blown to dismembered pieces, then turns into smoke, puts himself back together again, and laughs in his attackers faces. There is no way to kill him. And that is a fascinating challenge. How could the Marller Gang realistically defeat Alucard without killing him? I immediately jotted down a few loose sketch jokes, mostly revolving around Alucard's red suit looking like Carmen Sandiego.
Kevin from the Other Dimension: When it came time to make the photoshop the first Marller Gets a Spinoff episode, I decided to go for The Hellsing Peccadillo first because that was the character dynamic that most intrigued me. Here we have three different variations of demons. Doctor What is a former demon who abandoned his job, switched out his license, and repeatedly to tries to make amends and find the best in people. Mara Marller is a malicious demon, but she's not 100% evil in the way that you would imagine a demon to be. In the Ah My Goddess universe, the Goddesses and the Demons are presented as two different flip sides of a coin. They are presented as working for two different departments of the same company, who are competing with each other for a market share of humans souls. They both go to school, they both have to earn a license to practice their magic responsibly, and if they wish to switch sides, all they have to do is file for a license change and get a transfer. And they're all connected by the Doublet System, a sharing of the souls. As children, each Goddess has to make a soul connection to a Demon, and then they are forced to forget each other. When a Goddess dies, her Demon Doublet dies with her, and vice versa. Because nobody knows who their doublet is, everyone is afraid to kill each other, otherwise anything goes.
Kevin from the Other Dimension: The Doublet System is a well meaning invention of Kosuke Fujishima's own making, a variation of the "Eye for an Eye" law, but it wouldn't really work in real life. Because in the end, a person who's completely lost it to the point of killing someone is never going to stop in the heat of passion and say, "Oh wait, if I kill this person, someone from my own race is going to die with them." Serial Killers don't give a f**k. If one of those Goddesses or Demons decided to go on a killing spree, then the Doublet System would not be deterring the violence, it would be doubling their body count. In a manga series where Kosuke Fujishima would repeatedly introduce rules and then drop them whenever they became boring, it is somewhat ironic that this ended up being the one rule that he stuck with to the bitter end. It was never featured in the anime series, but I chose to revive it in Bad Goddess as my series was an unofficial sequel to his manga. You can make fun of Kosuke Fujishima's rules all you want, but in the end, you still have to follow them. Even if your world gets destroyed in a Nuclear Holocaust and turns into a parody of Doctor Who.