A school of souls after death, where they study who knows what but also have contracts with different gods(?) or something like that. The main goal is to basically try to launch yourself up some sort of weird-ass warp shaft to try and make it back to the living world. There are warp gates that you can aim for that can speed your journey up, but there’s a

catch with them. They only work as the speed-up warp gates some of the time, and other times, without warning, they flip to corruption gates and either eat the souls trying to pass through, or corrupt them into monsters based off of the god/element that they had contracted to. Either way, it’s the end of the soul.

F
That does sound really cool!

It’s possible to make it back to life without using the jump gates if you’ve got enough starting speed and determination and luck, and you choose to dodge them all in the climb. However, when those people return to life they have no power, they’d be just an ordinary, regular soul, nothing from your patron.

The more jump gates that you successfully hit, the more power that you’ll have in the living world.

All flavored based on the elements of your patron, of course. And not like the four elements thing, but like colors and themes and good and evil and emotions and the like.

Superheroes and supervillains often result, of course.

Autistic_Ace: And that’s just the setting!!

The main character, sorta the “me” character but not entirely, was this purple-haired pretty anime protagonist guy that I don’t remember the name of. Very androgynous, mostly referred to himself as a guy, had definitely been a guy before his death. Had actually been incarnated into a female body after his death when he arrived at the school, but no one there

actually cares about what sex someone physically was, because they were in a damn school of magic-training post-death souls that could be eaten and damned to the greatest depths of hell or nonexistence if they weren’t careful or failed their attempts to forcefully return to the living world.

So he was just a very pretty guy, the loner-type, and I think the purple-themed patron he was bound to was the stealth/assassin-type. You know, typical anime protagonist.

The dream picked up at the end of the senior year, and he had a name, I think that it was....Len? Something like that? Single syllable, smooth and easy to say. Gonna call him Len.

But yeah, everyone was preparing for their final test, the “invasion,” the trip to the living world where everyone went pretty much at the same time with the idea that at least some of them would make it, plus all of that necessary anime high school competition.

For some reason, he was hiding out and trying to figure out how to bring some various fruits? that he’d stolen back to his dorm room, possibly things that would give him more power or something. He meets up with a dark blue-themed “ghost” patron girl who is injured and Fading after an attack by other seniors, and she basically tells him that she’ll merge

with him because she’s probably gonna die anyway, but he’s always been at least vaguely decent to her and she can help him “ghost” his bounty out to safety because that’s part of her powers, and she’d rather give the rest of her soul and powers to him than have them taken by the jocks/jerks.

So she does, and he saunters out under a ghostly illusion of a pretty and sweet-looking catgirl in a modest uniform, because of course you can be a catgirl after death if you want to, with his appearance shifting sorta between his own and a much more bluish-tinted, long-haired version.

Because this is an anime-themed dream, someone (possibly the jocks) sees this vision of the most beautiful girl in existence and promptly declares her the School Beauty, which goes viral on the school internet that totally exists after death, and Len’s in just as much trouble as he started with, if a different kind. Cue the hijinks getting back to his dorm.

Then the dream skipped ahead a way, including some of the other students’ preparations and Len falling in with a group of variously-colored other misfits, and he’s still got the ghost powers from the girl that he ends up learning, so he’s got a secondary patron. This isn’t too unusual, but most student just take the power, and ignore the patron.

For some reason there’s a faction of the weird/creepy kids with a friggin’ neon-themed patron, who are planning to basically try to hack a work-around invasion back to the surface with this weird neon-themed tower filled with all of their followers-goons that will be the sacrifices to the corruption and they’ll follow behind and have a whole team of

monster minions when they return to life, plus all of the accumulated power as well.

Then the day of the invasion comes! The students launch, and there’s bright colors and flashing lights, and battles between them all as they try to time the good launch gates correctly and dodge the evil ones and shove each other into the walls to fall forever into the deep well that basically leads to hell!

The power of friendship is on display as the protags help each other out and try to foil the evil students, and almost at the top Len takes a hit for one of his friends that would have killed them. While the friend survives, unfortunately it means that the bad guy has slipped by to finish reaching the living world to seize power...and Len is falling.

Because past the level of the afterlife where the school resides, the tunnel continues on into Hell. There are gates there as well, but they’re gates that go directly to the realms of the patrons. So the only choices are Hell, becoming a sacrifice to a patron that most likely isn’t your own, or possible non-existence.

Len, the self-sacrificing protagonist that he is, chooses to fall past the portals of both of his patrons who would at least be kind to him in his personal afterlife, and instead aims for the portal of the very last patron before the entrance to Hell: Destruction. Who, as many students like to dismiss in favor of the destructive powers, is also Creation.

(This patron is colored a rich royal purple-red, for anyone wondering. Think Regal Purple, if you know FFXIV)

And, because he’s the badass protagonist that has already managed contract with two patrons, right before he hits the portal he offers another contract: to the Destruction/Creation patron. All that he is to be able to bring a massive display of the patron’s power to the living world. The patron, pretty much amused at this audacity, accepts the contract.

When he touches the surface of the portal, he’s enveloped for just a moment in the mists and swirls of power, soaking it in, transforming his Magical Person outfit even more, and then it’s like hitting the world’s most powerful trampoline and he’s absolutely Yeeted back the other way.

On the surface there’s been combat, there’s been suffering, the Big Bad is laughing at the team even as they’ve managed to take out some of his seconds because the city that they’re in has had all power cut and so many things destroyed and it’s Looking Hopeless.

Meanwhile Len is a fricking rocket with a costume that kiiiiiiinda makes me think of a recolored Meowscarada from Pokémon, but stylish and meant for a human body, and he’s basically powering through jump gate after jump gate. One flips and tries to corrupt him and he literally shatters it instead. The Dramatic Entrance happens, Len blasting into the living

world and straight into the BBEG, and the Big Fight occurs, with the Power of Friendship ruling all because it’s that kind of anime.

After the BBEG falls, the city is still a ruin, regular people are still in distress, but that’s okay, because Len made his contract with a very specific deity. He allows the Creation powers to come out and run rampant, restoring the city, healing the people, healing his friends, bringing back Light and Life to the world!

ohhhh, that sounds VERY tokusatsu anime, I like.

(and Young Wizards, but that may be because we both like those books.)

There’s a beautiful visual and musical sequence that has him all all but dancing along, light and restoration following in his wake, until everything is restored again and he has to finish his contract with his final patron, the one that he made instead of dying, the one that’s probably means he’s going to die now anyway but it’s worth it.

A final display, not of Creation, but of Destruction: he destroys his own powers. There’s a great flash of light, and when he’s left lying there, he seems powerless, like any other soul...but not quite.

All three of his patrons rather like him, you see. And they want to see him keep living on and fighting alongside his friends. So all three of them reach out, and re-gift him their powers - not anywhere near the levels he had at the end, but balanced with his friends. His costume and looks shift again to reflect all three of his patrons now, and he wakes up.

Cue the teary reunion with his friends, the end sequence that shows them fighting off regular villains in the future and just being happy together!!

Len ends up recognizing that he’s pretty genderfluid after all the nonsense that his soul has gone through, and sometimes presents make, sometimes female, sometimes androgynous. Whatever’s on the table for the day. The friend group doesn’t care.

Autistic_Ace: Hee hee, sankyuu! And thanks for reading through the wall of text, too. >.> It felt very anime like that to me when I was going through it and woke up from it, and I loved the idea of the deliberate sacrifice that doesn’t mean that he’s inevitably an over-leveled powerhouse at the end, just versatile.

And the patrons like being treated well too, and respectfully, so they’re like, “You know what, kid? You’ve earned this.”