ISSUE GUIDE > ISSUE SIX

"Be warned that what you are about to hear cannot be taken lightly."

"The Abolition of Certainty" Part One
Published May 2002
14 pages
Re<Verse date: March 20, 1023

In White City, a fortune teller senses Emri's advanced magical powers and informs Kouen that they could go seriously out of control. Kouen is forced to make an impossible decision to save the world.

ON-LINE EDITION
For details about what was changed for the on-line edition, go to the Revisions section.

NOTES

• The pictures in the Cast box are from this issue. (Printed version)
• Little Wang's Chinese Buffet was thought up by my one of my former roommates.
• The entire Emri predicament which drives the plot of the issue has close parallels to the anime Groove Adventure Rave. This issue was written and almost completely drawn before Japan aired the episodes where Haru must decide whether or not to kill Elie. Upon watching that story arc of Rave, Jim became very disappointed with his "original" idea, particularly because Rave was one of his favorite shows at the time and he did not enjoy the thought that the plot for Unfamiliar Reflection would be percieved as theft. (See Tenchi Muyo! reference below.)

REFERENCES

• The Hoopla booth from issue 2 is back: Page 1, panel 2.
• June 13th is Jim's cat's birthday.
• Behind Emri and Kouen on page 3, panel 1 is Saito from Rurouni Kenshin.
• The SAB booth is derived from the Ithaca College Student Activities Board. (Ithaca was Jim's first college.) They have regular screenings of movies every weekend.
• Madame Estrella was a creepy fortune teller with zombies in her closet and a shifty lackey named Ortega in Ray Dennis Steckler's B-horror film The Incrediby Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Though carrying her namesake, the woman in this issue bears no visual resemblance to the original Mde. Estrella.
• There is a PlayStation in the corner of the tent on page 4. This is a reference to Cowboy Bebop. In episode 26, Jet goes to a shaman's place. There is an overhead shot of the two men, and you can see a PlayStation among various junk on the floor.
• Page 9, pannel 4: To the left of the gang you see Captain Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation (wearing his movie uniform) and R. Dorothy Wainright from Big O.
• The Kanji on the side of White City Motel is the Japanese title for the anime series Slayers.
• There is a PlayStation2 in the other corner of the tent on page 10. This is a nod to the previous Cowboy Bebop reference.
• The cliffhanger was inspired in part by the Dr. Clay story arc in the second Tenchi Muyo! OVA, where a Ryoko clone holds an energy sword to Tenchi as he sleeps.

GOOFS

• Kouen's katanna appears and disappears from his back throughout the issue.