The Lightning Awards Season 3 [IN SESSION]

IE: Take Over

Judged by Shawn (Snowwhitewolf09)

Category: I'm Not A Mary Sue

[ Author: Zack_Hunter ]

>Title (3/5): Alright, let's start off with the title. By no means is it a bad title; the title of your story is straight to the point and that has its strong points. Right off the bat, the fact that it's something related to Inazuma Eleven is gotten out of the way. And the latter part of the title has its relevance shown early on. However, it doesn't particularly strike me. It was as if I had a product that was a hamburger with a new type of cheese, and advertised it as 'the (insert cheese name) burger'. Sure, it got straight to the point and told what was needed, but it was simply that. Not leaving enough to the imagination or giving a sense of enigma in the mind. If I was skimming through books, I would have skipped yours because it sounds awfully basic and plain, and not in a way that made me think. Again, it does its job. But a lot about it could be improved.

>Summary (7/10): Just like the title, you give basic information from the first moment of reading. I like how you immediately raise up a big turning point from the canon we know—building up intrigue—then working on that intrigue by giving these mysterious details, such as The Founders and the Utopia. The final paragraph ends with an eerie, occult statement that gives a sense of jitters. But your writing here sort of broke the build up and flow at times. The way that the Football Frontier International was described was ominous, but it seemed to be chopped up, not a flowing paragraph—this lessened the effect of the build-up, though it did not completely abolish it. The second paragraph does not suffer as much, though I believe that there's a way to polish it. Finally, the transition could have been more natural, instead of the skull emojis. One point taken away for the transition, two for the writing and build-up problems. It can easily be fixed by reading it over another time, this time trying to get how the feelings of dread increase with each grim sentence. It might lengthen the summary a little, but I know you'll manage it. Just polish it up a bit, and you're all dandy.

>Plot (20/25) -> (15.2/20): I was quite lenient here, since the story's just at about half a dozen chapters (As of the time of this critique) and it would be unfair to criticise your plot so much without seeing how far it'll go and what spins it'll take. The trend of being straightforward continues here, and you immediately toss people into the problem—sort of. The first chapter gives us a look at one of our OC leads, and at the end, we bump into the mysterious Pandora's Box in the Suicide Forest. And in the first five chapters, we immediately find out who the 'antagonists' are, as well as the mission for the main characters: they must get back the bodies of the five Inazuma Japan members from The Founders. Obstacles are immediately presented. The owner of Gouenji's body isn't really a 'bad guy', and possibly the rest of The Founders. Our Inazuma Japan players don't have bodies to move around and interact with, so they cannot really do anything about it. In this world of 2150, the Utopia have already taken control—how is Endou, his friends and his willing hosts going to talk to the Founders peronally? We also get to the resolution of that. Since one of the OC leads is going to personally have a dinner, the opportunity has presented itself. Do you see the problem? It's quite fast. In one chapter, Endou nearly beat up a guy, and in the next, the body he was possessing had a fervent desire to help. It was as if they had been friends for years, though there was little to no reason for any of them to be helping these guys. We aren't even sure if they play football yet—where had this desire come from? We had just come from a suicide attempt, and now the group are going to try and get back the bodies of the InaJapan players. It was waved off quickly—perhaps some time did pass, but it was unreasonably quick and it made those arbitrary. Ryosei's actions and tendencies were easily waved and Gouenji's feelings were pointless because of the off-pacing that made it seem like everything was just happening. There was hardly any time to get invested into some moments, because the chapters start off with some sort of off-track moment, then cram in some sort important plot detail at the end. This would be more reasonable if there were more events between the beginning and the end, but the chapters are too short to make it comfortable. It makes the work seem rushed. Of course, there are many good points. I like the Utopia and the Founders, and other elements such as the culture of their time and the diversions from canon. It's a little brutal, but we see a strange world built upon that singular change. I'm a little off-put by the number of spiritual matters, but that can generally be waived, as it is an interesting concept to explore.