Personal Reference Material
America: An RP Ref Sheet
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Character Notes on America as a character, written by the author, Hidekaz Himaruya, originally translated here.
■America■
• Perhaps because he's quite young, he's a "going my way" type of young man overflowing with vitality. However, he has a complex about his country's lack of history.
• Because of England's influence has no taste, no matter what kind of colours it has he'll just settle with "cute".
But I think he has some more taste left than England. Lately he has been getting into sushi.
• He has such superhuman strength that he can go looking for England while dragging a car behind himself.
• Lately being worried about his fitness he hasn't been doing nothing but exercise and has gotten too much strength.
Being so afraid of his rising weight despite exercising, I wonder when he'll realize it's muscles...
• He likes scientific things but he also likes yet unknown things like UFO and UMA.
• He is friendly with the space aliens even though they make horses fly and leave mysterious patterns on the fields.
• He went to Japan to open it up for the world because he was demanding for whales.
• He's quite much quantity over quality.
• Thinks Lithuania is somewhere where you can get by American highways.
• At any rate, since he likes heros and happy endings, he's sure his future willsurely be like that too.
• In fact it's not that he can't read the situations but that he doesn't on purpose.
• Before he was a little brother like crybaby who would immediately rely on England or France but
Getting blown at by the harsh wind of the Wild West, at some point he grew abnormally quickly both mentally and physically.
He became somewhat unspoiled child.
• He took reference for making his own house from the houses Sweden and Finland used to live in.
• Has mingled a lot with German people's blood.
[Meaningless things]
The model of his outward appearance was a Canadian. He was really kind and friendly person and unreasonably kindly made contact with me who couldn't speak good English and got teary eyed quickly when we arrived at America.
The model for his interior was my teacher at school. The disinterest towards geography is from this teacher.
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Important comic strips
■Cleaning Out the Storage■
America's backstory. This is the first time in the series that we are shown a truly somber America. The fact that he's never able to fully clean out his storage room, no matter how many times he tries, is because of the sad memories that the objects inside of it hold. Symbolically, he chooses to "store" bad memories away inside of himself, preferring not to let them surface.
■Happy Birthday■
Touching lightly on the events of the first strip, this comic shows how the subject of the American Revolution affects America and England and their relationship with one another years later. Both still seem to feel pretty awkward about being together on this day, yet England cares enough about America to push past such feelings in order to give America a gift and make a short appearance. The strip also provides a good reference to how America interacts with other countries, such as:
- Russia - mutual hatred masked by pleasantly catty words and fake laughs
- Germany - with Germany trying to set a good example for America and America effectively using Germany's serious side in order to tease him (America seems to be having a lot of fun here; Germany, not so much)
- Switzerland - America seems to think Switzerland was trying to be nice; Switzerland simply uses this as an opportunity to insure that America has no more excuses for being late to meetings. A watch that doesn't come off... great gift....
- Lithuania - years after Lithuania goes back to living at Russia's house, a small bit of distance seems to have grown between Lithuania and America. However, it's very clear that Lithuania's presence is truly missed.
■The Battle for America■
An even earlier backstory than the one seen in "Cleaning Out the Storage," it shows how America acted as a child. Striking points of the strip include the way that America chose England to be his guardian personally, the unusually mature thought process of young America ( "You're not going to run away?" "Mm, I'm fine. I've figured out a lot about myself lately." ), and the realization by England: "could it be that this boy is... doing perfectly fine by himself...?"
■America's Situation with Ghosts■
■Fly, Canada-san, Fly!■
■Why Americans Love Spring■
■Who’s Been Drawing These Pictures?■
■Estonia's Independent Film■
■Traits of Japanese People that America-Kuns have noticed.■
■America's strange invention■ (the last strip on this Comic Diary page)
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Other links
America's first site profile
America's second site profile
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America in History
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Full, online documentaries on the Cold War and WWII
A wonderful collection of quality documentaries. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find full, online documentaries like these?!
More to come as used/needed
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