Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Beneath the Surface
By Lewis Smith
OSIMIRI is a story I have been working on, whether I knew it or not, since 1996, and I'd been working off and on until 2019, when I finally sat down and started writing the first chapter. In days since I first drew Manta back in 1996, the story has gone from not existing, then existing as something different, then existing as something else, then probably not going to be done at all, then finally done in a fit of inspiration. In the time since I've been working on it, it's changed even more and probably will all the way up until the end of the series with the fourth and final book.
So, let's start at the beginning. In 1996, I drew a picture of a character named Manta, based on black and white lineart I'd seen for an anime mech in a magazine. I should mention here that the picture that inspired me was barely the size of a business card, so what ended up on my page was substantially different from what was depicted in the anime.
I was big into anime in those days, and one of my favorites was Guyver--the story of an average kid, who gets bonded to an alien bio-armor and gets all sorts of ass-kicking powers. The basic idea initially attracted me, but I also liked the thought put into the bio-technology--they were formidable, but had certain weaknesses and defined functionality and the thought and care put into that really caught my imagination.
Manta came from that initial concept--the shape looked more biological than mechanical to me, so Manta's initial conception was a bio-armor designed for underwater use.
I was designing a lot of characters in those days, and very few of them spun off into their own stories. I liked Manta's look a lot, even if it was very hard to draw correctly the second time (his wedge-shaped head gives me fits even today) but I didn't have a story for him yet.
I should also mention that his genesis came along not too long before I drew the initial design for Darken Blackangel, who gripped my imagination almost immediately, got re-drawn a bunch of times, and very swiftly spun off a little story called SEVEN SPHERES LEGEND.
And Manta waited in his file.
Oh, he'd pop up a couple times--a sketch here, a re-draw there (which, owing to his vexatious design, always looked different every time) but these were few and far between and as the century gave way to the 2000s (and I started another series, GUNMETAL BLACK, with another character who sprung forth with a cool design and a story that grew swiftly) and I think Manta had two new pictures--one in 2004, and one in 2008, more than 12 years after the initial design.
The 2008 version is quite important, because Manta's design stabilizes into a more easy-to-draw and consistent version (the 1996 version was fused with another similar character called Devil Ray), and because I had the first inklings of a story I wanted to tell: There was a young man with no memory, a link to the bio-armor, and an endless ocean.
From here on, Manta refuses to wait in the file anymore. And the story starts evolving fast.
Two years later, another idea occurred--The Guyver anime had multiple Guyver armors, what if Manta's armor wasn't one of a kind? I settled on seven different armors (because of seven seas) and each of the armors would evolve in a different way in response to their environment.
Now, things begin moving faster. The Kraken, who'd soon rise to the lever of deuteragonist in the story gets designed, Amisala (initially called Demon Stinger) Vatoz (nee Stingray) Magtesi (formerly Dynama) and Nkhanu (previously Vise, and a different gender) and the Chimera. Each of them uses the base Manta design as a point of departure and further pointed the way toward how the design of the world and the cast.
To give the character of this world a unique look and underlie the more biological bent of the series, I made a rule that anything I'd source for a design would be borrowed from actual aquatic creatures. Some designs hew to that more tightly than others, but it helped guide the evolution of the story, though I didn't know that yet.
More intentional changes in my usual method of working--sourcing character names from languages and nationalities separate from what I usually go to, pacing the combat and motion in the story a little slower to reflect the sense of moving through water, and many other decisions yet to be revealed because, well, spoilers.
Still, the idea for the story wasn't quite gelling much beyond the initial concept. I kept trying to flesh it out, finally designing the map for the world ocean (and, as I soon learned, having to think up new words for cardinal directions for a world that had no poles or landmasses as such. As each book covers Ihitai's journey through the levels of the world ocean, going from the outermost level in the first book to the very core in the final one) and this was unusual, as I rarely designed the world of a story prior to actually writing it. Typically, I liked letting it happen on the page.
But this story was so stubborn, it required that I try new ways to break it open. That was intimidating, because I was so used to the way things had worked on GMB and SSL.
But I decided that was necessary. OSIMIRI had to be deliberately different from GMB and SSL, not just because having a story have its own unique voice is a good thing to justify it as a tale worth telling, but also, personally, I don't want to stagnate as a writer.
So one of my rules of thumb has always been to be open to changing up my technique, in the hope that if I'm doing something different on the conceptual end it'll show through on the page.
And so, OSIMIRI had a reason to be written: to not be either GMB or SSL, and to try to find an angle to make this story different, and make it matter.
No way to do that, except to write it.
And in February 2019, at long last, I did. Deep 1 (all the OSIMIRI chapters was called "Deep"--again, making differences) rolled off the keyboard, and I sent it out for reactions
And the first chapter was . . . not well received. Despite my attempt to make this story different, I hadn't really managed it. Too many familiar beats, not enough of a hook early on, no real character to speak of. I'd shot for alien and unreal, and just come up with something alienating.
I didn't quite have the story, just a starting hook. But I kept writing, hoping something would come up and show me the way through. Sometimes you have to fail a bit first to get all your wheels on the right road. Deep 2 was written soon after, and was a little better, but there needed to be more.
Initially, the idea was we'd follow Ihitai from the beginning, and not cut away to the other characters. That would have led to some very slow and, I was afraid, very boring, storytelling. But I decided to have the Kraken's hunt for him run parallel to Ihitai's journey, and that turned out to be the key.
In the writing of a story, you untie the knot you made for yourself by asking questions. If the two of them had parallel stories, and had two of the bio-armors, then why? What was the common thread between them? What was it all about it?
And that led to Deep 3, where I decided to quit being coy and start playing some of the details of the mysteries of the world-ocean, which helped me to frame the story and build in the larger plot that carries through all 4 books, piece out some of the mysteries of the world-ocean, and do so in a way that suggests more and deeper questions.
Once I had that parallel structure in place, everything started fitting together, not just the plot of the first book, but the entire structure of all four, plus the various character beats. Even more important, OSIMIRI finally had its voice, and a theme of its own--the influence of the past, the choices we make today, the will to survive, what it means to live, and how these drives affect the larger world.
And so, here we are. After starting as a cool-looking design in search of a story, a story grew up around it, a story sufficiently different from the other big sagas that occupy my time in telling, going to places I've never tried to reach before.
And I very much hope you're enjoying reading it.