Battle Orchestra-Chp 1

Started: 07-15-03 Completed: 08-01-03

CHAPTER 1-MEETING FOR THE DUEL

The world of the cartoons and anime was in total disarray. Cartoons of the West were having disagreements with the animes on their ratings for their shows.

“Come on, guys, admit it! Our ratings are far better than your silly old-fashioned 2-D features!” Sha Gojyo, from Genzomaden Saiyuki, yelled and banged the table of the conference room.

“Excuse me, Mr. Know-It-All!” Max, Goofy’s son, banged back at him, louder than before. “You guys have some 2-D features too, like Slam Dunk, for instance, and I don’t see your ratings going up!”

“You watch your mouth, you punk, or I’ll…!” Sakuragi growled as he was ready to pounce on him from his side of the table but was pulled back by Kokure, Miyagi and Mitsui. Sendoh grinned in the background and Sakuragi’s team was excited to see a fight going on.

“Besides, we have also embraced the 3-D features, like Treasure Planet, Toy Story and the recent one Finding Nemo. And our ratings got up quite well!” Mickey tried to reason with them.

“Hah! That didn’t last very long, did it?” Tasuki, from Fushigi Yuugi, waved his fiery fan at them. “You should check out our Final Fantasy: Spirits Within! Now that’s what I call a good rating!”

“Yeah, but if it weren’t for the sound dubbing from our side,” the Beast (Beauty & the Beast) growled, baring his fangs, “you wouldn’t have a great international rating now, would you?”

“We did most of the anime work! You guys just stepped in and put in your voices! You didn’t do much in contributing to the artwork of the features!” Doraemon and Nobita argued in unison.

“Oh yeah? Well, you guys butted in the artwork that was purely our idea to create it!” Clover, from Totally Spies, argued back in her outspoken way. “Look at us now! I am so anime-d by you guys! We had a feature of our own and yet all our attitude and style are practically polluted by your Japanese anime features.”

“Mind you, you guys came here to Japan to learn our way of creating funny, fast-moving and great features, not us!” one of the crew from Vandread yelled at the background. “We didn’t ask you to come over and learn our art so that you can apply it to your features! You’re lucky we didn’t sue you guys for it!”

“Furthermore,” Hiroshi, from Jigoku Sensei Nube, challenged, “if it weren’t for our knowledge, you Spies would’ve been bland and uninteresting 2-D cartoons!”

The fight began to get pretty heated up, from Kim Possible’s arguments to Ayashi No Ceres’ rebuttal to Donald Duck’s yapping protests to Rave’s loud yelling to Scooby Doo’s howls to Akazukin Cha Cha’s squeals. It was like a great war between the East and the West as they both shouted their disagreements. If this scene was made into a TV show, you could see fire in the background as the two parties compete to out-talk each other.

“SILENCE!!!!!”

Everyone stopped abruptly, including Genjo Sanzo who was about to pull out his gun to silence everyone. They all turned to the people across the conference table. There, sitting at the end of the table, were the people who were in charge of holding this meeting. They were new executives who monitor the progress and the ongoing situations of the cartoon world. They were no other than our local Malaysian comic and cartoon characters, namely Mat Gempak from Gempak magazines; Misbun Sidek from the Anak-Anak Sidek comic book and Pak Cik Din from Ujang magazines.

“Thank you,” Mat Gempak said as soon as the conference room was silent enough and that all have taken their seats. “Now that I have your attention, let us all continue our meeting like we’re supposed to and not get at each other’s throat.”

“It has come to our attention that you have some doubts of whose shows’ ratings are better, the East or the West,” Pak Cik Din said as he acknowledged both sides. “Really, there is no doubt that both of you have done a great job in entertaining the humans in the reality world, but really, you don’t have to fight amongst yourselves. All of you have done a perfectly good job.”

“Thanks, Mr. Din,” Goofy, our resident simpleton chuckled absent-mindedly. “We’ve been trying very hard to impress those kids…”

“Come on, Dad, you can’t be satisfied with that,” Max groaned. “We are doing so much better than those cheapskate animes and we sure that were far better than all of them combined. They’re just jealous of our recent success in the new movie ‘Finding Nemo’ and are trying to say that they’re better just to psychologically trick the humans out there.”

“We did not!” Detective Conan’s team shouted. “It’s true that your show sucks and it’s only a piece of cake compared to our standard features! You guys can’t even act in a comic right!”

The fight would be even more heated up if Mat Gempak hadn’t cleared his throat deliberately loud enough to pacify them.

“People, people. There’s no need for a fight. You have done your share of the work fine for the community of humans. Why would you want to fight?”

“BECAUSE WE KNOW WE’RE BETTER THAN THEM!!” the East and the West shouted in unison, forcing the meeting chairpersons to cover their ears.

“So what is it do you want that can make you change your mind about each other?” Pak Cik Din asked exasperatedly.

“We want a duel!” Archie yelled. “A duel that can determine us fair and square!”

“Yeah! We want the greatest duel that can show these numbskulls who’s the big guy around here!” Luffy and Zoro said in unison.

“We want a fair duel!!!” For once, the East and the West agreed on something.

“Alright then,” Misbun, who was silent throughout the whole meeting, said with an air so mysterious, everyone including Mat Gempak and Pak Cik Din turned to look at him.

“What do you have in mind?” Katsuya (Jigoku Sensei Nube) asked.

“I have a perfect duel that can both challenge your skills and also prove your worthiness in this field and also dare you to see if you have the guts for it. I’m sure it’s something you guys have yet to master or encounter. It depends on you now, and that means no help from humans whatsoever. You have to do this yourselves.”

“Come on, man! Stop speaking in riddles! What’s the big duel?” Chicken (Cow & Chicken) asked.

“You guys are going to compete in orchestra.”