Harem Hijinks (Field Trip Group to Anime Harem TG) (Patreon)

Enjoy this new ongoing, my wonderful Deluxe patrons!

By FoxFaceStories

A Commission for Al

After a landslide claims the lives of Ken and several other archaeology students on a field trip to Japan, the great Creator himself apologises for this accident and gives them a chance for a second life. But when Ken talks about his love of harem anime tropes before the others can speak, this ditzy creator sends them all to a new world that operates on anime principles . . . and where Ken’s fellow students and his professor are now all cute anime girls who are desperately trying to fight off their new roles, and their new attraction to him.

Harem Hijinks

Part 1: The Wish

Ken was having a real good time up until the point where he and the rest of the field trip all died. He was an archaeology student, only twenty years old, who didn’t quite know what to do with his life. The subject itself didn’t hold immense value to him other than being an interesting elective to take, and the fact that it promised a field trip to look at the tectonic instability in Japan. He had always been a massive Japanophile, obsessed with anime ever since he had been eight years old. In many ways, he looked like a stereotypical western Otaku: he was slightly overweight, had permanently mussed up hair and a slight acne problem, and struggled to keep his voice from sounding hoarse and just a little too excitable when he got onto a topic of interest to him.

As a result, he didn’t have too many friends, and those friendships he did have were mostly based on a shared love of anime - often the subgenre of harem anime - and general nerdiness. It wasn’t that Ken was an isolated individual or a total offputting one, he simply struggled with social engagement in a way that others found naturally fluid. To put it simply, his excitement got ahead of him, and when the excitement really got going, it was difficult for him to notice that others weren’t particularly interested or wanted to talk about other things. On those moments he did realise, he would clamp up tight, go red-faced with embarrassment, and usually um and ahh himself out of the conversation, feeling like an idiot for not noticing sooner.

This was a pattern that had repeated on the Japan trip, and the vibe was set from the beginning during the long flight over. He was more excited than most, and while on the flight over he told his Professor more than once the many things he wished to see in Japan when they had off time.

“Yes, well, that’s very good Ken,” Professor Thomas Greene said, “but don’t forget our interest here is primarily part of our course.”

He was an older professor in his late fifties, and true to his name often wore a dark green suit. He had dark grey hair and thick black glasses that made him look like the classic professor. It was clear that he didn’t really understand the ‘young kids’ of the day, but his passion for archaeology and teaching was clear. He’d done this trip numerous times, and was overconfident in his approach, though his frustration with Ken was repeatedly clear.

“Oh, I know, I know,” Ken replied. “I just can’t wait to see the Ghibli Museum, and look at Tokyo Theatre, and also-”

“Well, we likely won’t be near those locations, depending on what we find at the sites. Just remember, we’ll be further south, Ken. I don’t want you getting your hopes up.”

At this Ken just nodded eagerly, and continued to read his manga, occasionally giggling to himself and hoping that he too would meet a cute Japanese girl who could fully understand him and be totally into him as her senpai. It was a long shot, even he knew that, but it was something he dreamed of, particularly since he often fantasised about being the kind of protagonist of a harem anime with girls all around him, practically suffocating him with their amusing personalities as they fought over him.

Of course, the actual personalities around him were not exactly anime girls. In fact, they weren’t girls at all, except for Alison. She was a tomboy and an activist through and through: short black hair and no makeup, shirts with anti-capitalist messages on them, and a habit of starting debates on topics no one wanted to touch with a ten foot pole, least of all because she’d mop the floor with them. If there was anyone that was going to take down the Patriarchy that she so strongly opposed, it was Alison. Already, she was pissed that the rest of the group was male, and determined to make sure that as its sole female representative, she was going to strive above and beyond the rest, just to prove the folly of the ridiculous gender statistics at play. She’d already caught Ken reading one of his harem mangas earlier in the year and openly berated him for it, much to his embarrassment. The other guys weren’t so fond of her either: for someone so short (just five-foot-one), she could be damn terrifying.

“Not that I care if the men on this trip mind, but I’ll be listening to my latest Femme Fatal podcast for the duration of this trip. Their newest release is a multi-episode treatise on sexism in Japan, so I hope you all realise that your dreams of flirting with Asian women is rooted in toxic stereotypes based on desiring feminine and submissive traits combined with oriental racist stereotypes.”

The others on the trip were a motley bunch as well. Mark was Alison’s opposite. Where she was all passion, politics, and anger, he was a forever calm stoner archetype who was cool as a cucumber and as relaxed as a beautiful beach sunset. The others called him ‘Shaggy’ on occasion, because he really did bear a resemblance to the Scooby Doo character. His hair was a little darker, but otherwise he had the same scruffiness, the same bare whiskers, and the same lanky height and poor posture. He even wore green shirts just to lean into it a little. Ironically, he was allergic to dogs. Not to weed, though. Try as he did, Professor Greene had been unable to kick Mark out by proving he was always stoned, though it was clear he was. He’d chosen archaeology, allegedly, because ‘bones are pretty cool.’

“I’m just gonna go to sleep, and chill out, man,” he said. “Have a good flight, prof.”

“I’ve told you before, Mark, I’m Professor Greene.”

“Sure thing, prof.”

He didn’t even say it with any malice, just pure naivete and utter chill.

Harold, meanwhile, was fuming. He was stuck next to Ken and clearly not enjoying the flight. If Alison was the passionate tomboy activist, and Mark the lazy stoner, then Harold could easily be summarised as that dejected student who hated the course, hated the trip, and generally seemed to hate most things in general. He had sunken eyes and pale skin to contrast his dark hair, and tended to play a lot of online games where he apparently fumed through the headset at everyone and everybody. No one was quite sure why he had taken the course in the first place, least of all himself. Harold didn’t seem to have much passion in life, and had the unique and cynical power to see the cloud in every silver lining.

“Fucking hell,” he complained as the aircraft left the country. “We’re probably going to find the same boring shit as every other class that’s gone there, and not see anything nice at all.”

“Well, actually,” Ken interjected, “we’ll at least be close to some beautiful mountainscapes and country horizon. There’ll a restored feudal village we can visit, brimming with-”

“Dude, I don’t give a shit. It’s all old, boring shit. God, the plane will probably drop out of the sky before we make it, the way this turbulence is kicking up. That would be a relief over hearing old Greenie yapping on about the fascinating nature of uncovered Sengoku Period bedpans recovered from earthquake sites or whatever.”

It bummed Ken right out to be sitting next to someone who not only - somehow - wasn’t interested in going to Japan, but actively scoffed at the place. His attempts to talk about TV shows and movies - particularly anime ones - had gone just as poorly as with the others, if not more so.

The only other remaining member of their expedition was Professor Thomas Greene’s prize student, and apparently his one sole remaining reason for sanity with this small class: Ryan. He was a confident, athletic, strong individual, the kind who could believably exist on the football team, and in a leading position at that. He had a charming smile, and his dirty blonde hair was always immaculate. Unlike most of the others, he was intensely charismatic, and everyone could see he would go far in life, not least because of his work ethic: the young man was twenty years old just like Ken, but whereas Ken struggled socially and still obsessed over his teenage shows and pop culture, Ryan had shed these things in favour of wanting to get the best possible college results and catapult himself into a successful business career. He wanted a diverse resume, and to experience a great deal of life’s variety, in order to do this. It also meant that he frowned upon things he saw as childish and nostalgic. Unfortunately, this meant that he tended to deride Ken’s interests somewhat openly as well. This was in no small part due to the surprising fact that once upon a time, the two had been the best of friends.

The two had bonded over their love of anime, manga, science-fiction, Japan, even their interest in girls. This was back when they were only thirteen years old, and their friendship had lasted all the way up until they were eighteen, at which point Ryan had started to develop into a handsome young man, while Ken . . . hadn’t. His success with girls also contrasted Ken’s awkwardness, and slowly but surely he had drifted out of Ken’s orbit, distancing himself due to viewing him as rather embarrassing to be around. Ken knew this, because after continually trying to reconstitute their friendship, Ryan had just come out and outright said it. He sat silently on the plane, sometimes talking to Professor Greene, but otherwise watching arthouse films on his screen or reading classical literature. For Ken, it was painful to be around Ryan, knowing how much his friend had changed and largely refused to acknowledge him.

Still, Ken tried to remain positive. This was his dream come true! Sure, the company could be a bit awkward, and he might not get to see all the geeky sights he was interested in seeing, and the likelihood of getting a cute Japanese girlfriend was in the ‘fairytale dream’ likelihood, but it was a trip to Japan, damn it! He was going to get as much out of it as possible. He would get to witness the gorgeous countryside, eat the local food, visit whatever museums and feudal places he could. And, if he was really, really lucky, he was going to get to unearth an actual Sengoku era artefact. That would be the highlight of his life. Even Ryan and Professor Greene would have to admit that it was amazing.

And indeed, Ken really was enjoying the field trip. He was bouncing with anticipation, at least as much as his larger body could, when they were going through customs at the airport, and talked Harold’s uncaring ear off when they took a hired van down south. They would be located not too far from Osaka, and so it was with even greater excitement that they took the Shinkansen. Alison was quick to point out that some carriages were female only due to upskirting being an issue, “yet another example of why Western men idolising Japanese culture is actually pretty fucked up from a feminist point of view,” as she put it.

The site itself was fairly unremarkable. It had been deemed safe, located at the base of a steep hill where an earthquake several months ago had disrupted the upper layers of the landscape. Several Sengoku artefacts had been uncovered, and now that they were likely all in possession of the Japanese government it had been opened to college field trips to see how such undertakings were done, peruse the artefacts that were still stored locally (including a genuine katana and half a samurai set), and have a go at replicating archaeological techniques.

“Don’t expect to find anything,” Thomas Greene had reminded them when they began investigating the site, “but please do your best to engage in the techniques and principles of archaeology that I taught you. This will be a graded expedition, after all, not a holiday. Especially not one based around modern pop culture, Mister Ken Samuels.”

Ken blushed a little. Ryan chuckled in the background, which only made him feel more embarrassed. Harold’s own sigh wasn’t as shaming - he was always sighing dramatically as if, as he said, “everything was shit.” But Alison’s own haughty scoff hurt too. Something about the only girl mock him, even if she was a constantly political tomboy, just hit harder, especially when so many of his personal fantasies and pop culture interests were about the nerdy guy getting the girl. Or girls, given his harem anime obsession. And there was the other kink he liked in overlap as well . . .

“Hey, like, I think I’ve got something, or whatever,” Mark said.

Professor Greene turned. They’d barely arrived, and somehow Mark had already slipped out of sight and travelled partway up the steep hill in a stoner-like trance. He was pointed at a cleft in the hill that was difficult to see at any other angle.

“Mark, get down from there!”

“It looks like a flute.”

“Ugh, I’ll come have a look. Stay here everybody, and don’t wander too far. Remember the principles of teamwork and discovery.”

Ken did. Despite his nerdy overeagerness and the constant intrusion of his niche interests, he was actually quite a good student. He decided to ask Ryan if he wanted to partner up, just in case the new environment had fostered a feeling of friendship in his old buddy, but the other man had already gone off on his own. Instead, he was stuck with Alison, while Harold sat down and tried to get reception.

“Well, shall we explore?”

“So long as you don’t talk my ear off about your patriarchal entertainment based on the subjugation of women, sure.”

“I mean, it’s not that bad, is it?” he asked as they climbed up a different part of the hill. “Like, it’s all just for fun. Like a fantasy.”

Alison rolled her eyes and folded her arms. “Puh-lease. The perpetuation of vapid stereotypes and expectations of women are deeply ingrained in anime and manga. All those ridiculously big-titted girls with impossible hairstyles, always expected to be in pretty outfits and fawn over the useless protagonists. It’s what the world of men wants people like me to be. I refuse to be like that.”

Ken couldn’t help but think that Alison definitely wouldn’t fit in with some anime stereotypes. The whole ‘big titted’ thing especially. She was flat as a pancake all over, and seemed proud of it. Maybe suspiciously proud, in a ‘lady doth protest too much’ kinda way.

“Well, I really like them. It’s just a fun escapist thing for me.”

“Of course you wouldn’t think further into it. It’s all just vapid entertainment for you. Such a typical man. I pray I never become that materialist and shallow. Not that I would. I don’t even own a dress!”

But Ken’s mood wasn’t too dampened. It was just Alison being Alison, which meant he had licence to be Ken. And while she clearly had a distaste for his interests, he could at least talk about them with her because she loved to debate and argue. In its own way, it was a fun back-and-forth, and allowed him to discuss his favourite shows while scanning over the area. In the distance, Mark and Greene were having their own amusing back-and-forth - Mark claimed he’d seen something but had already lost where it was. Harold was finally following Ryan but contributing nothing, and the latter was acting like he was on a time-sensitive mission.

“There it is!” Mark proclaimed. The rest of them, Ken included, turned to look to where the somehow eternally blazed man was standing. He’d reached into the cleft and had pulled something out. Professor Thomas Greene had an expression of astonishment.

“M-my God! It is a flute! And it looks old! It looks genuine! Come here everyone! Come and see!”

They moved quickly, and while Ken was not athletic in the least, he moved his tubby body as fast as he could. The professor was overjoyed, and Mark just looked self-satisfied in a totally chill way. Ryan burned with visible annoyance that Mark of all people had found something, while Alison was just astonished.

“I cannot believe this!” she said.

“Who cares? It’s just a fucking flute,” Harold added. “Just lame music.”

“You hate music now?” Ryan asked.

“Most music is shit and overrated. People get way too much into things.”

But nothing was putting a damper on the Professor’s day with this find, or on Ken’s as he looked at the item.

“This is amazing,” they both said at once, and an understanding seemed to pass between the professor and the student he was often frustrated by.

Unfortunately, that was when the landslide occurred. There was a sudden loud rumble, a roar of the earth as the ground beneath them quaked. As one, the group looked up, only to see that the hillside was quite literally shaking. Half of them fell over, Ken straight on to his stomach and face, while the others rocked backwards. Another quake, even more powerful, and then another. It roared like some great kaiju beneath the earth, erupting out to destroy them all in a wake of carnage.

“We need to get to safety!” the Professor called. “With me, everyone!”

Alison screamed. Ken screamed. Harold screamed. Ryan yelled. Mark chuckled.

“I just remembered a hilarious joke,” he said.

“Fucking save it, man!” Harold exclaimed, grabbing him and pulling him down the hill.

They made a run for it, but great fissures in the earth opened up beneath them, tripping them up again and again. The hillside tore apart, immense boulders and rocks and heaps of dirt sliding and rolling and colliding down the great incline. Ken’s heartbeat a thousand times a minute. He was falling behind the group, but they were all equally unsafe. To his left, Harold was hit first, buried beneath a catastrophic wave of dirt. The Professor and Mark were next, the former screaming in terror, the latter confused and only just beginning to realise the true stakes. Ken watched in horror as a boulder collided with Alison, crushing her instantly. He didn’t see the gory parts, thankfully, and simply focused on continuing to run. Ryan was the last one left, and pulling far ahead.

“Ryan!” Ken screamed. “Please! Help me!”

Ryan looked back, but only for a moment. His expression was terrified but determined, and for just a fraction of a second it was flooded with concern for his former friend. But then it rallied.

“I’m sorry!” he yelled. He continued to run, outpacing Ken, who could do nothing but watch the man who used to be his friend reach safety.

Well, almost reach safety. At the second he hit flat ground and was about to outpace where the landslide could fall, a crack opened up in the earth with shocking rapidity. It swallowed Ryan whole, and the young man screamed as he fell into the void.

“Ryan! NO! NOOOO!!”

Ken yelled. It was a nightmare. A horrible, impossible nightmare. He wept, barely able to see as dust was kicked up all round him. But his muscles were failing him, and his own path was about to be overtaken by the landslide. He was hit from behind by the powerful force of it, and it rolled over him, crushing and suffocating him.

The last thing he thought of before he died was how much he wished life was more like the shows and visual novels he read. In that kind of life, things would have played out better.

***

The Creator was deeply embarrassed. She didn’t normally drink, especially on workdays, but the Celestial Bureaucracy had ground to a halt after the latest election, and while she technically had full override and veto power, she didn’t like to use it. But by the stars she had crafted, it was a nuisance to deal with, and so occasionally a strong tonic made of starstuff and a little bit of black hole matter could really hit the spot. Unfortunately, it also meant that when she got a bad hangover the next day, she could sometimes make some small . . . errors. Namely, that little localised earthquake and landslide in Japan, when she’d actually intended for it to be a much smaller slide that would be entirely non-fatal and reveal a treasure trove of artefacts for the Western field trip. It was part of the Design, one which had a whole chain of consequences like the proverbial butterfly wings causing a hurricane in Miami. Which she had also caused once, after a headache. That had been a mess to clear up, particularly since the damage caused meant she’d had to hastily conjure up a lot of celestial reparations for the poor mortals.

And now, once again, she was in the same situation.

‘Oh me, what have I done this time?’

She snapped her fingers, and the knowledge came instantly and embarrassingly.

‘Oh me! Oh me again! Six mortals? Six!? This is worse than last time. I can’t just let them go to the afterlife after this colossa stuff up.’

She snapped her fingers a second time, and in the great luminescent golden chamber. Several of them yelled, particularly when they regarded her own brilliance. She chose a more suitable form to appear before them: a gorgeous woman with darker skin and an elaborate white and gold dress. She stepped off of her throne, wobbling only a little due to the hangover she was nursing, which was positively cosmic in size, and put on as warm a smile as she could muster.

‘Hello, mortals. I do so apologise for your premature deaths. It was not part of the Design that you perish as you did. There were, erm, mistakes that compounded things. Rest assured I will do everything in my almighty and infinite power to restore you to the best of my ability.’

The contradiction was not lost on the Professor, who was looking around in amazement. “Wait, infinite power but the best of your ability? Are we dead? Are you God? What is this place?”

‘Yes, you are dead. And yes, I am the Creator. And, well, there are some things I can’t do. Or won’t, if they threaten the Design. I cannot, alas, restore you to your old lives. But I can grant you new ones with complete lives, as adults, for your to prosper in! Would that work? It worked for the last group!’

“Last group?” Ryan said, gaping.

“You’ve done this before!?” Alison said.

‘Only once or twice a century! Really, I do run all of creation!’ The Creator threw up her arms, which felt like noodly appendages. She much preferred being made of incandescent matter and a series of wings with eyes on them. ‘Look, I want to give you another chance, and incorporate that into the Design. If there is a wish for a life you would like, I can grant it to you, simply say the words.’

“We’re fucking dead,” Harold said, his angst now supercharged. “This is fucking joke! We were killed by rocks because of a stupid fucking field trip. This is a goddamn joke. I was right to not want to go. The Professor got us all killed.”

“Um, is there, like, drugs in heaven?” Mark said. “And are you God?”

Alison slapped his shoulder. “She already answered that, you idiot! Oh, and God is a woman, ha! Maybe I’ll wish to go to a feminist paradise, if this isn’t already one.”

The group bickered, Ryan trying to suggest some sort of game plan. He looked distraught, as if all his prospects and ambition had been reduced to ashes. Ken was left out of the discussion, and so it was him whose mind raced alone, imagining all the possibilities. Which was not to say he wasn’t horrified at what had happened, or haunted by what he’d seen in his last moments. He wanted his old life back, for all of them. The idea of getting a new one was utterly alien.

And yet . . . his imagination ran wild, and he couldn’t shake a certain image from his mind. Something he’d thought of at the moment of his death.

“Well, I don’t know what the others want, but I really wish we could have a second life like in my harem anime.”

The Creator frowned. ‘Harem anime? I think I’ve heard of that in my omniscience.’

“You know, with the normal everyday protagonist who is surrounded by different kinds of women who are all super into him and competing over him and have to share him. Like the tsundere, school idol best friend, the moe, the ojou-sama, the older teacher crush, the yamato nadeshiko and so on. I think it would be amazing to live in a world like that, with all the stylistic design and comedy, and also, I guess, I have a bit of an interest in them ending up-”

‘PERFECT!’ the Creator announced. ‘A remarkable solution. There is just such a world in mind. I hope this reparation serves you all well-”

“All?” Alison said, looking alarmed.

“Um, does she mean all of us?” Ryan said.

‘-and you enjoy your new lives! Best of luck in your new roles! I’ll give you some compulsions and instincts to help guide you to best enjoy your future harem hijinks!’

Ken went wide-eyed. “Oh, I didn’t mean everyone, I just meant-”

But it was too late. The Creator snapped her fingers, and the group disappeared entirely. She reverted her form back to her original radiance, glowing brightly in her vast chamber, and was satisfied.

‘Another job well done. Now, where did I put that constellation I needed?’

***

Ken, Professor Green, Alison, Mark, Harold, and Ryan were all catapulted across space and time. It was like being shot through a vast kaleidoscope filled with numerous shifting colours and exploding star systems. They screamed as one, barely able to come to grips with what was happening to them as they turned head over heel through this tumbling bright void. As they did, something shifted in the very matter of their surroundings. Everything seemed to become more . . . flat. Stylised. Cartoonish. Texture simplified, and black lines surrounded the edge of surfaces that were filled in with a base colour that appeared to have little gradient. As they cried out, dark lines appeared briefly on their faces, their pupils contracting to exaggerated little blue dots of horror. Ken had seen these effects before. They were the exact expressions often seen in anime when something terrible was beheld, but it looked ghastly on a real person’s face!

Fortunately and unfortunately, reality was catching up to them.

“Oh God! Oh God! I f-feel sick!” Alison cried. “S-something’s h-happening to m-mee!”

Her body began to twist and warp, and before their very eyes her limbs lengthened, torso too. Her hair spiralled out to become long and elegant, turning a gorgeous honey-blonde, and her face gained some elegant makeup. She squealed in shock as her clothes rearranged to become a bright yellow stylish European dress, while her figure became much more feminine and lithe.

“She’s changing!” Ryan declared.

“More than changing, she’s turning fucking 2D!” Harold cried. “Look! She’s becoming, like, a cartoon or whatever!”

“Nice,” Mark said.

Alison gritted her teeth. “Not nice! Stop this! Stop - OHHH!!!”

She did indeed turn cartoonish, appearing just like a woman in an anime. It didn’t seem to affect her movement, thankfully, though she was tumbling through a void anyway, but her own appearance was utterly alien to her, and foreign to the rest of them as well.

“No! NO! I don’t want to be like this! It just won’t do!”

She clamped her hands over her mouth. She had just sounded French in accent.

Mark coughed. “Um, not to distract people, but I’m feeling, like, super weird as well.”

As they continued to arc towards a great star burst in the far distance, the others gazed upon Mark. He groaned in his low, awkward way as his body began to rearrange as well. In contrast to Alison, his limbs were becoming shorter, and his features softer. He lost his facial hair, and his scraggly hair turned black and formed into a cute double-buns. His skin darkened noticeably, his eyes talking on an almond shape even as his face softened. His clothes altered to become a college uniform, complete with skirt and blouse, which were quickly filled in by a changing figure that took on a slight hourglass. The impression of two small but obvious breasts was left.

“OHhhhh - ACH!”

He clutched his crotch, spinning over in circles in response to the obvious disappearance of his penis. In mere moments, he had been transformed into an Asian woman, and like Alison he also cartoonified. He even gained a set of red pencil marks on his temples to indicate his embarrassment.

“Okay, this is really weird!” he said in a Chinese accent.

But as overwhelming as this sight was, it was not the end. The others began transforming in sequence as well, all of them becoming women and then proceeding to alter to become animesque in nature. Some gained small knots on their forehead, a classic animator’s signal of anger, while some got brief blood noses that disappeared the next second to indicate their attraction to one of the others before they collected themselves. But all were turned, even Professor Greene, who was most embarrassed of all and tried to get Ken to turn them back. But Ken could only tumble through this void with them, unable to believe what was happening, regretting his words to the Creator, and wondering what anime girl he would become. Certainly, the others were already filling up a variety.

Harold’s apathetic form shifted to become a bright green-haired woman (the kind of green hair that was long and bouncy and literally impossible to have in ‘real life). She was dressed in a bright outfit with dance shoes and gloves, and her voice was divine, even as she literally sung about how much she hated this, as if she were a peppy idol singer. Of course, she also developed a very large chest, and it was already bouncing and jiggling as they fell through the void in a way that no real pair of breasts could ever possibly be so active.

Professor Greene de-aged, the clock winding back until he looked to be only nearly thirty or so. Definitely older than the rest of the group, who still all looked about twenty after their changes. She gained long purple hair and a mature woman’s figure, complete with a not-unimpressive set of breasts that outlined against her professional female suit. She had a pencil skirt, and Ken personally found the look deeply attractive. She had clearly become the older love interest type, the college tutor who falls for the younger protagonist. Greene wasn’t a fan of this change, though at least she got to keep her glasses.

Lastly, there was Ryan. He tried to fight the changes more than anyone, hurling curses out at Ken the entire time.

“Damn you! Just - damn you, Ken! I can’t believe your love of freaking stupid anime is turning us into - NNGHH!!!”

There was no other way to describe Ryan’s change: he became very, very cute. His hair turned brown, falling down over his shoulders while the rest of him slimmed down dramatically. He grew breasts, and an hourglass figure, though his body wasn’t as mature as Greene’s nor as busty as Harold’s. But his face was utterly beautiful, with a sweetness to it that seemed to mark him - appropriately enough given their shared past - as the Childhood Best Friend archetype. His short stature seemed to confirm this: the new Ryan was half a head shorter than Ken, and her exasperation sort of adorable as she tried to cling to anything - even him - while she anime-fied as well.

“Why am I so small? What the hell did you do to us?”

Ken couldn’t answer. Besides, it was his turn. He felt the tug of changes across him, and knew that soon he too would become an anime woman just like the rest. He racked his brains for what archetype remained. There were so many, after all. Would he become the athletic one? That was missing so far. Or perhaps the hyper nerdy moe? He could only hope that the Creator didn’t include part of the harem fetish he secretly enjoyed, because if he too was becoming a girl . . .

Only he didn’t.

Much to the frustration and anger of the rest of the cohort, his body retained its maleness. It slimmed down, losing its overweight aspect, and his clothing re-shifted to become a college shirt and professional pants. His ethnicity changed to become clearly Japanese, and he actually looked quite handsome, if a bit of an ‘everyday’ kind of handsome. A boyish kind. The kind of looks that one would expect the protagonist of a harem anime to possess. And while the rest of them weren’t as familiar with such tropes as he certainly was, they were no idiots.

“No,” Ryan said.

“Oh, zis is not acceptable!” Alison shouted.

“Ken, you need to convince the Creator to turn us back!” Greene exclaimed, before we hit that - that thing! I’m meant to be a man, damn it!”

Harold just shrieked in amazement, while Mark - of all people - began hurling insults.

“You idiot! You - you baka!”

Ken blushed, cheeks turning dramatically red before fading instantly. A group of anime women were suddenly very mad, exasperated, or confused by him, their focus shifting entirely upon him. It was just like a harem anime already.

“Um, sorry?” he said, grinning sheepishly.

But it was too late for anything else. They hit the portal, the starburst exploding in a cascade of colours. They had entered the other world, and their new lives and roles.

***

Kenji opened his eyes. To his surprise, he was sitting on a bleacher overlooking a baseball game in progress. The sky was stylised in deep hues of impossible morning pinks and oranges, and the distant figures were more like stick figures as they played, like they were cheaply drawn to save money.

“That - was that a dream?”

Someone yawned in his ear, startling him. He nearly jumped out of his seat, except that he couldn’t, because a head was resting on his lap, and another someone slumped against his back on the bleacher behind him. In fact, he was pressed in on all sides by others, and it didn’t take him long to piece together from the multi-coloured hair and very female bodies all around him exactly who they were.

“Oh my God, it actually happened,” he said to himself. “We’ve entered a harem anime. And I’m the protagonist. Oh God, they’re going to kill me.”

One of them stirred at his left. Alicia opened her eyes, her honey-blonde hair resting on his shoulder.

“Mhmm, Kenji, I just had the most wonderful dream! We were touring Paris - very typical, I know, but it truly is the best city in the world - when suddenly . . .”

Her eyes - now bright blue - went utterly wide.

“What - what was I just saying? Merde! What am I doing!?”

Rika lifted her head from his lap. The former Ryan looked adorable and doll-like as she fluttered her eyes. Her cheeks were rosy red, her stare into his eyes utterly beatific.

“Kenji . . . I must have fallen asleep. I didn’t mean - why am I calling you Kenji? You’re Kenji! And I’m Rika! I mean, Rika! Oh, no!”

The others stirred as well, still pressed against him. Harold had become Haruka, and she was bobbing her head to the K-pop tunes in her earbuds, tapping on Kenji’s back with her eyes closed, taking much longer to realise what was happening. Her breasts bounced dramatically as she tapped to the beat. Professor Greene was now Tutor Tomoko, and she was draped across Kenji’s back, numerous books and journals and tutor notes having fallen on the bleachers. She stirred slowly, but then started to quake with utter humiliation.

“A professor would never - Kenji, I didn’t mean - it’s so inappropriate!”

Mao was the one that broke the pattern. She looked a little different from the Japanese girls, and she soon realised it was because - judging from her different uniform - she was an exchange student to the college. She leapt to her feet, seething with rage, eyes going far too big for real life.

“Stupid! Baka! You let me fall asleep and turn into a woman! Kenji, you ruined everything! I - why am I so angry?”

“Why am I so damn sweet?”

“Why am I listening to this dumb, oddly catchy music?”

“Why am I no longer old? And horny - I mean, younger!”

“Why is he the only male one? And why are we clinging to him?”

There was a silent pause for a moment as each of the women exchanged glances. Then, as if blown by a dramatic wind, they rocketed backwards so that they were all parted from him, all except Ryan/Rika, who just shuffled slightly, keeping close to her former friend. There was an instant sense of embarrassment from everyone involved, but also something deeper they couldn’t explain. It was like Kenji, somehow, was a black hole at the centre of their new lives. Rika was already finding him oddly entrancing, feelings of friendship rising up and up and up in her mind. Tutor Tomoko, formerly the professor, was agape at how strangely attractive the younger man was. She could feel her loins tingle in response to that attractive, her libido powerfully inappropriate. Mao was furious, wanting to strangle the sole remaining man. And yet . . . part of her wanting to do other kinds of things to him. Alicia’s mind was stirring with thoughts of fashion and art and culture and materialism, all things she was meant to hate as Alison, but there were also thoughts of making Kenji more refined. Making him try on fancy suits too. The only one that didn’t find Kenji attractive in this way was Haruka, formerly Harold, but it wasn’t from lack of passion. Music and song was dancing through her being, and she needed to express it.

The fact that all of them were being hit with new instincts and memories only made this transition all the more wild. They were at Takahiro College, living as senior students within Osaka, which apparently existed in this universe even if the school was ‘made up.’ They were senior students, not far from graduating, which made no damn sense because they were all twenty years old, but anime logic was clearly in charge of this universe. It wouldn’t be the first harem anime Kenji had experienced that found some loophole to ‘age up’ the protagonists in order to justify things getting naughty. But perhaps that was just his mind getting naughty in response to being surrounded by so many pretty women of different personalities and shapes and sizes. Either way, they were all aware they had class soon.

“You better explain this, fast!” Mao said.

Kenji winced. He looked up at the five women who surrounded him, trying not to be blinded by their beauty. They were just like the anime archetypes of his dreams, right down to the elaborate and colourful hair, the different personality types (all of which seemed oppositional to their original selves), and the way they practically pressed in against him, suffocating him with their wonderful presences. He had to remind himself that these were his former classmates and professor, and that it was partly his fault that they were turned into this!

“Um, okay, I’ll do my best. I think due to my wording, and also because she was impatient or something, the Creator turned you all into women.”

Alicia rolled her eyes in her newly haughty manner. “We figured out zis already, Kenji!”

“Okay, that makes sense. But the specific reality she sent us to is one where anime harem tropes are an actual thing.”

“What are anime harem tropes?” Tomoko asked. She already had a pad out, and was writing furiously. She had a new habit of sticking her tongue out a little from the corner of her mouth, and it was oddly cute.

“Well, promise not to get mad, but it’s basically a, well . . . um . . .”

He blushed red. And it was an impossibly deep red. The others all waited for him to keep going but it was Rika, formerly Ryan, who finished instead. She didn’t even mean to, but she placed her hand right next to his - digits almost nervously touching - as she spoke.

“It’s a type of Japanese manga and anime storytelling that Kenji and I used to enjoy, before I grew out of it and he didn’t.” She instantly felt bad about the insult. It rankled her, how sweet she now was. “In it, the protagonist is a young everyday man who is often nervous and inexperienced with women but also quite kind and . . . proficient. By coincidence, a group of women of different archetypes surround him, all becoming obsessed with him in some way. They get into embarrassing, flirty, sexual, or otherwise romantic situations with him, often by accident, depending their relationships. By the end of the story, the protagonist either chooses one girl to be with, or . . .”

“Or? Or what, damn it!” Mao exclaimed.

“Yeah, I’d like to know the ‘or what’ too, since this is my future at stake!” Haruka added.

“Or sometimes he chooses all of them,” Kenji admitted.

Each of their jaws fell. Their eyes became the shrunken blue dots of terror for a moment, even Tomoko’s.

Mao fumed. Literally; there was smoke emerging from her head. Her teeth became briefly sharpened in that classic manga display of viscous anger. “No way! Bèndàn! I mean baka! I mean idiot! I am not sleeping with you!”

Kenji threw up his hands, a large drip of sweat going down his temple before literally fading away. “I - I never said anything about that! I would never want to sleep with you, Mao!”

“Hey, that’s rude! I mean, it’s not like I’d want that at all. You’re just some insecure ridiculous boy.” She harrumphed and folded her arms, before looking off to one side as if she didn’t care whatsoever. Kenji immediately recognised this as a total tsundere moment. It was almost uncanny, and not at all like the Mark this woman had once been. The rest of them sensed this, because Rika approached her and tugged on her sleep almost passively, despite her own original forthrightness.

“Mao . . . are you okay? You’re acting . . . different.”

“I AM NOT!” she cried, scaring the normally fearless Rika - at least when she was Ryan - backwards. It seemed to finally startle Mao out of her role. “I mean . . . Gāisǐ de! Why am I acting like this? I’m meant to be smoking weed and chilling out. I hate arguing with people, it’s pointless. It’s like I’ve taken bad acid and it’s making me trip out in anger or something. Ugh, this sucks! Does anyone have weed?”

“Japan isn’t the most drug-friendly country,” Alicia said off-handedly. “Now ze French on the ze other hand, we know how to party properly, even in the most high-class ways. We don’t have such tawdry bigotries towards a little fun there, of course.”

She grinned, then she too realised that the ‘mask’ had come on a little too tight, and was in danger of sticking. “Merde! Zis ridiculous new life is making me act like some cultured French tart who only cares about looking good and acting all materialistic. I bet she’d cozy up to the patriarchy in a hot second if it gave her a really nice dress, particularly a black slimming one that contrasted her frankly gorgeous blonde hair and nice hips and . . . merde! Kenji, you have to change us back!”

The group immediately began to squabble, each of them trying to fight off their new instincts. The closest to their original selves was the Professor, but even as tutor Tomoko, she was struggling with a high libido that was already rising at the sight of her former student, as well as an inherent clumsiness that kept putting her in attractive positions: twice already she’d dropped her notebook, only to bend over rather enticingly to grab it, stretching her professional blouse and making her pencil skirt pull tight against her delightful rear. Kenji was straining not to notice, and thankfully the squabbling of the overenthusiastic Haruka, who hated her new optimism and boundless energy, and Mao, who was telling her to shut up or get into a cat fight, was enough to distract him. In the end, it was up to Rika to play peacemaker; she fought against her new instincts to be submissive and shy and brought forth her Ryan self to lead the group.

“Everyone, please just listen! Stop fighting! I hate it when we fight! At least, now I do. Look, I’m pushing against my new nature here, so I need you to hear my words. Only together can we fight this. Clearly the Creator thought we all wanted this future, when it was just Kenji and his own perverted fantasies!”

“Hey!” Kenji said, though it wasn’t exactly wrong. Mao certainly looked at him with derision, while Haruka just looked awkward and annoyed. Alicia was snobbing him, and Tomoko just looked confused, trying to keep all her journals in her clumsy arms.

“We need to try to adapt to these new lives and get to know this world. Only by sticking together as a - I can’t believe I’m saying this - as a girl’s group, can we fight against the logic of this world and what Kenji’s wish accidentally set us up for. We are not becoming some ridiculous harem, that’s for sure!”

“Hear, hear!” Alicia said, waving her hand as if she were her old revolutionary self.

“Agreed!” Haruka said. “No matter how passionate I am now, I’m not that passionate!”

“I think it would be rather taboo, in fact,” Tomoko said, blushing.

Mao pouted. “Wouldn’t even dream of it!”

“I mean, I’m not that bad,” Kenji said, blushing. In fact, he was feeling his own strange compulsions; to protest vehemently that he wasn’t looking for a relationship, that he just wanted to be friends, and to treat all of these girls in a gentlemanly manner that would have been impossible for his previously socially awkward self. Now, he was only partly socially awkward. More nervous, in fact. Who wouldn’t be, with so many beautiful women surrounding them?

“That settles it then,” Tomoko said. “Rika is right. I’m still a professor at heart. We must play our roles, use our new knowledge, and adapt as best we can until we form a plan. We won’t play by the rules of this setting, and the Creator might even realise her mistake. For now - Good lord! We need to get to class! I mean, you all need to get to class, I need to get to my office space.”

“Who cares about being late?” Mao said, which Mark also would have said.

But Rika swallowed; she felt a deep-seated need to obey the rules, even if Haruka didn’t care. Alicia too felt less rebellious, though she was prepared to arrive stylishly late in some manner.

“Let’s make sure to stick together, and keep strong. Separate when needed. And Kenji, you need to behave, and help us, okay? This is your fault, and we are not ending up like the manga we - I mean, you - used to read. Got it?”

Kenji nodded, eager to please and not wanting to take advantage of anyone.

“Of course! I would never want to . . . I just want you girls to be happy!”

All five of them blushed, until finally the next bell went, and they all realised they needed to hurry. The group moved, partly separating as Mao and Haruka lagged behind, while Kenji moved in the middle of the pack. The girls still gravitated around him, doing their best to resist their new selves, their minds working furiously on maintaining their original habits. Their bodies were alien to them - the bouncing of their new breasts, the absences between their legs, and even for Alicia her new height and fashion sense and beauty. But already there was that tug, that desire, to fall in line with the harem anime tropes.

It was only a question of which would be the first to break.

To Be Continued . . .