Samurai Steampunk

[Prof Marvel]

I am quite fond of that anime series actually, and is where i originally drew the idea of this story. However the only thing I am drawing from it is the idea of samurai steampunk, nothing as far as automatons with human brains or floating castles, the only EPIC portion of this story is the god machines, with the story I want to draw it to the ground battles and have that almost correct history. Whereas the anime was based off of akira kurosawa's very famous and well directed film seven samurai in which I am also a big fan of that film and the director.

Gomennasi my good Daisuke -san
I  did not mean to imply that your concepts were derivative of Samurai 7 

I too am a longtime fan of Kurosawa's work (as well as a modest collector of select historical anime ) and I am intrigued by your project.

I admire your use of Nobunaga and  the famous "One-Eyed Dragon" ! ( altho I am amused that poor Nobunaga has been blamed for connected with some wild things, including some pretty crazy demonic stuff simply due to a few witty lines in one of his famous letters ).

Regarding your "god-machines" -
since historic Nippon has long made use of bamboo and other materials in laminated forms you might have a  scientist such as Hiraga Gennai invent a new glue and apply it to form new high-strength light weight  laminates instead of heavy steel. You might make use of a fictional breakthrough of his famous electrical experiments ( the  Erekiteru ) to power the god machines; or you could add mystery and have them powered by archane arts of Onmyōdō under the Tsuchimikado clan.

btw - welcome to Brass Goggles
Dewa mata
your humble servant
prof marvel

[Daisuke_sanada]

Daijobu Marvel-san,
all those ideas though i will say are quite intriguing, and has me going through much more research on how to enrich the story, so you have my due gratitude Marvel-sensei.

[MWBailey]

Here's a working (though rather ungainly) steam cannon from a mythbusters episode:

http://youtu.be/1UtYNOfSzXE

It'll have to be a pretty gigantic ship/automaton to carry a repeating version of this.

[Daisuke_sanada]

well it is kind of the idea, i want to make them almost mountain size so to a warrior he would think the gods themselves came from heaven to fight in the battle. With weapons though i am thinking more a long the lines of giant halbreds or swords, or naginatas. Though the amount of steel to make one of those would cost quite a bit I figure...

[Daisuke_sanada]

I'm probably going to have to say that the battle will be the hardest part of this entire story...

[RodDuncan]

I'm probably going to have to say that the battle will be the hardest part of this entire story...

I find complex action scenes, such as battles, tend to resolve into prose much more easily if you restrict yourself to a single point of view per scene. Much of the complexity falls away when you describe only what a single character can experience. That leaves us with the frustration of not being able to reveal certain information. But the immersive feeling it usually gives to the writing is a rich reward.

Forgive me if this is an obvious comment.

All the best.

Rod   

[Daisuke_sanada]

Rod-san

No need for apologies but currently I do have the story going from at this time just the perspectives of the two generals Ieyasu Tokugawa, and Mitsunari Ishida. When it comes to the battle I will more then likely have multiple POV as well but I do like the idea of restricting it away from as many POV that I originally had thought of.

Arigato goizaimasu for the input

[akumabito]

Star Wars has thought us that giant walking machines are rather suceptible to being toppled by little guys with ropes so yeah.. there's that..

Also: the bigger the machine, the slower it will mov,e pretty much by definition. (inertia adn all that jazz..) so aside from being spotted from miles away and possiblybeing made out of flammable materials, the enemy could move aside and avoid the machine rather easily I'd think..

[Daisuke_sanada]

On a side note got my first pair of tinker goggles for Christmas, WOO!!!!

[oldskoolpunk]

You may not want to have a look at Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff.  It's the first novel in the Lotus War series and combines steampunk with feudal Japan. 

Stormdancer and Kinslayer are quite good. It's Edo Japan through gaijin eyes with steampunk features, yet comes together quite well.

So far, not much good steampunk has come out of Japan that's set in Japanese culture. There's good anime such as Steamboy and Steam Detectives, but both are set in England.

A bit of samurai steampunk is in Log Horizon, an anime now airing. This is an anime of the "trapped in MMORPG" genre, like Sword Art Online.  There's magic and swordfighting and ninjas, but it's not primarily about fighting or questing. The lead character is working out how to get things done in the world. While on a tough journey, he finds out how to make better tasting food. Then he gets together with a guild leader and a woman who has an MBA in real life and sets up a fast-food stand, which is very popular. He uses that to cut a deal with other guilds to get capital for the next phase, which is a leveraged buyout of key real estate which gets him control over the city. He sets up a council to rule the city. Then some of the craft guilds who funded the buyout realize they can push the building capabilities in the game much further than previously thought, and build a steam engine. Now they're working on a paddlewheel steamer. Meanwhile, the lead character is visiting a nearby city on a diplomatic mission, where it turns out they have a transportation problem and have heard about the steamship project...