Despera

	"Spoilers Ahead"
	This character or verse has been very recently made and spoilers for the story and the fate of said character are inbound, avoid reading if one would like to pursue the verse without any spoilers for themself.

Series Made by Same Creators
Series	Serial Experiments Lain - Despera

Background

Despera (ですぺら, Desupera) is an anime project conceived by writer Chiaki J. Konaka, with character designs provided by Yoshitoshi ABe. This marks the third creative collaboration between Konaka and ABe, following their work on Texhnolyze and Serial Experiments Lain. The series was originally set to be directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura, best known for directing Serial Experiments Lain. However, Nakamura sadly passed away before the production could move forward, putting the project on hold.

The name Despera is derived from a poem of the same name by Jun Tsuji, a notable figure in Japan’s Dadaist literary movement. While the title carries associations with "despair" or "desperation," as reflected in the poem’s tone, the official anime blog also noted that the name may evoke the Spanish word desperado, suggesting themes of rebellion or isolation.

A light novel connected to the planned anime was serialized in the pages of Animage, a well-known Japanese magazine, running from July 2009 until July 2010. It was later given a light novel that combined all the separate chapters into one book. Though the anime remains unreleased, the novel serves as an early glimpse into the envisioned story and tone of the project.

General Information

Official Date: July 2009

Company: Tokuma Shoten

Creator

Writer: Chiaki J. Konaka
Illustrator: Yoshitoshi Abe

Genre: Steampunk, Adventure, Science fiction

Cosmology: Universe (In the context of the series at least, it merely takes place in one universe, though it may be higher if it is a true prequel to Serial Experiments Lain)

Number of Series: 1 with an anime in development hell

Number of Chapters: 12

Status: Ongoing (The anime has still be in production and has had been noted in 2021 that the production funding scheme is 80% completed, though the project has been restarted. The anime is essentially in development hell)

Reception: Unknown (No real sites makes much mention on the reception that the novel received)

List of Misconceptions

Ain was a hallucination

This comes from the reveal that Ain was actually a doll the entire time^[1], however she is directly shown to be able to influence and affect the real world when she took down the entire tank squadron^[2], and at the end of the story it's noted by Takeshita himself that she does indeed exist and is alive^[3].

Power of the Verse

The verse possesses regular humans, with Ain being an entity with electricity based powers and imprinting powers.

Knowledgeable Members

GiverOfThePeace

Characters


Ain

References

↑ Despera Chapter "Day of Prophecy": "One night, Takeshita waited for the old doll-maker to fall asleep, broke down the door of the workshop and went inside, where he clutched the doll in his arms and ran off with her.
In his arms, the doll turned to look at him and said “Thank you.” He was first shocked, and then overjoyed.
From then on, he began to call the living doll Ain, and to him, she became like a living human being.
In Conversation with Viscount Fuenokouji
“A certain Takeshita, eh? I don’t remember him too well, but I remember he had gone to America to study, and I was interested enough in his stories to invite him over. Did he bring a young girl with him? (He laughs for a while.) You must be talking about his doll? I remember hearing stories of Mr. Descartes bringing a doll around in his bag, but that man walked around with the doll clutched in his arms. Sometimes he would talk with the doll in a low voice, so my wife and I would half-heartedly try to play along, but…”
In Conversation with Lady Journalist Mayumi Igarashi
“Ah—yes, that’s right. After Takeshita was released by the Tokkou, I did go to meet him. At that time, the doll you mentioned was not present, as one would expect. But in a conversation I had with the female pilot Noriko Inbe, who I had covered previously in an article, she mentioned that Takeshita petitioned her for a sightseeing flight, but in actuality put that doll on the plane—he called her Ain, but in any case, he only put that on the plane, and it seems that he himself did not fly with them.”
In Conversation with Toyama Military Research Laboratory’s First Lt. Enoki
“Originally, I was conducting research at the research laboratory in Shinjuku Toyama, on radio weapons already developed by the Navy. I heard that there were radio waves emanating from Asakusa that surpassed the Navy’s machines in strength, and when I went to Asakusa to investigate them on my own, I got to know Mr. Takeshita. His daughter, Ain? Eh?...I met her. A doll? What insolence are you spouting? She was a person. Yes, definitely.”"
↑ Despera Chapter "The Electric Girl vs. the Tank Squadron": "Accompanied by a thunderous roar, three boorish tanks were en route to Ueno Forest. Unlike the rhomboid tanks built in England that had previously been experimentally introduced by the Army, the France-built Renault tanks were hardly larger than a one-yen taxi; but in these tree-lined groves that would prove too dense for the taxis to enter, these tanks carelessly trampled the trees and open-air stands that blocked their progress. After all, the owners of these open-air stands were only in business illegally, so even if evicted in such a violent manner, they had no grounds to voice their displeasure.
The commanding Army Infantry School Guidance Officer brushed off the Ueno residents’ complaints, explaining that the deployment of the tanks into the city was merely part of a practice exercise.
Witnessing this state of affairs from a distance, Lt. Enoki of the Army Sciences Institute spoke with amazement.
“This is hardly the Aoyama parade grounds—what a ridiculous thing they're doing. Don't you agree?”
Startled by Lt. Enoki's voice, a man also dressed in civilian clothes and a hunting cap, turned to look at him.
“...it's an initiative of the Army Cavalry Company.”
The man with the hunting cap, testing Lt. Enoki, said only this.
“Hahaa, then big shot with some influence over there must be thinking there's something mighty rotten in this neighborhood.”
The man with the hunting cap gave a slight smile of agreement.
“You're a member of the military police, aren't you? I'm Enoki, from the Toyama research institute.”
“...Military police, Sergeant Yamanoi.”
“You were looking into the matter of the man who seemed to be living at the Juunikai, weren’t you?”
Enoki, knowing he was higher than Yamanoi in rank but about ten years younger in age, continued to speak in polite Japanese.
“This must be training for later use on the continent, but to run tanks through the middle of town like this is insane, isn't it?”
“They couldn't match its power without using tanks...was probably what they were thinking.”
Lt. Enoki cocked his head.
“Against Takeshita alone? Even though it's just him, and that girl?”
“Girl?”
“Weren't they living together?”
Now it was Yamanoi who cocked his head in puzzlement.
“Don't know...I didn't see her myself.”
Weren't they together when you were tailing them, too, though? Enoki prepared to say, but Yamanoi changed the subject before he could speak.
“Most likely, it’s a connection with the suspicious radio waves, but lately in the Juunikai's basement, there's been a mechanism that—well, I'm not sure how to explain it, but it's strangely humanoid, but also not humanoid, almost like a two-ken (3.636 meter) rabbit, walking around.”
Enoki was completely shocked. Was this another creation of Takeshita’s?
At that time, below their gaze, there spread a dazzling light.
“That's the girl—!”
The light spread immediately in front of the tanks. In the middle of the light, it's Ain—!! thought Enoki, sure of what he saw, but it seemed like Yamanoi was totally unaware of her presence.
As the light died away, the tanks began to move around frantically, firing their machine guns at each other. What a truly outrageous spectacle, thought Enoki, even as he knew it would never appear in any newspaper."
↑ Despera Chapter "Showa": "The next evening, Takeshita walked towards Shiinamachi.
It's not as if he had much interest in the atelier village, but after hearing the poet's story, he may have wanted to see it once, at least.
He quickly found a street lined with distinctive triangular roofs built of red concrete shingles.
In the afternoon, as expected, the artists were hard at work on their individual projects, and the whole area was blanketed with a death-like quiet, completely different from the liveliness of the West Exit at night.
Walking around with no particular goal in mind, he may have been struck by some premonition.
Around the sculptors’ ateliers, plaster figures, perhaps studies or pieces already retired from exhibition, were strewn about.
Many of them were human figures, and in the gloomy, shadowed alleyway, the numerous pale figures left a somewhat horrific impression.
Lazily stopping to stare at the sculptures, he was suddenly stunned by a feeling as if a cold hand had grabbed hold of his heart.
Among the discarded statues, he found himself staring at something he couldn't believe.
It was a life-sized nude statue of a young girl. And no matter how much he tried to disillusion himself, that girl was the very same one he had once lived with—it was impossible to see her as anyone other than Ain.
He must have been wrong. After all, Ain was only a doll. Before the great earthquake, he had spent a period of time believing that Ain was a living human being. But it's not as if she disappeared. She had never existed to begin with.
Even after telling himself that for so long, it was nevertheless true that Takeshita, believing that no matter where he went, Ain might possibly be waiting for him, continued to unconsciously search for her.
Takeshita stumbled away from the statue of Ain, trying to distance himself from his frantic thoughts, and he found himself looking into the window of another atelier.
It seemed to be the room of an abstract painter who had been swept up by the Surrealist movement. It seemed that the owner of the room was away. In the room there was a painted canvas left on an easel, and this was not an abstract painting but a realist one.
Takeshita wondered if his sanity had finally abandoned him.
On the canvas was a portrait of Ain. Ahhh, I want to see her again… he wondered if such thoughts had strengthened until they finally caused him to begin to see phantoms.
I see…well, if that's all it is, then that's all well and good. Thinking that, he picked up his heavy feet and began to find his way out of the atelier village.
Then, he saw, behind the last atelier, a bronze statue of a little girl. This was made by a completely different artist from the previous works, but it was still unmistakably Ain.
After staring at the sculpture for a while, Takeshita softly touched it with the tip of his finger. He felt the cold surface of the bronze.
No...! It wasn't a phantom.
He finally understood, clearly, that it was a statue made using Ain as a model.
He turned back toward the atelier village.
Ain was here.
Just as Montmartre in Paris had their muse, Kiki, this atelier village had Ain.
With the exact same appearance as she had before the great earthquake, Ain existed somewhere. And those who existed close to that place continued to feel some sort of inspiration from her.
To the man named Takeshita, such influence was no longer present. He was conscious of that fact.
But, Ain still exists… Just by being sure of that, Takeshita felt the warmth return to his heart.
He began to walk toward the lights of the town, and what happened after that no one knows."

[1] Despera Chapter "Day of Prophecy": "One night, Takeshita waited for the old doll-maker to fall asleep, broke down the door of the workshop and went inside, where he clutched the doll in his arms and ran off with her.
In his arms, the doll turned to look at him and said “Thank you.” He was first shocked, and then overjoyed.
From then on, he began to call the living doll Ain, and to him, she became like a living human being.
In Conversation with Viscount Fuenokouji
“A certain Takeshita, eh? I don’t remember him too well, but I remember he had gone to America to study, and I was interested enough in his stories to invite him over. Did he bring a young girl with him? (He laughs for a while.) You must be talking about his doll? I remember hearing stories of Mr. Descartes bringing a doll around in his bag, but that man walked around with the doll clutched in his arms. Sometimes he would talk with the doll in a low voice, so my wife and I would half-heartedly try to play along, but…”
In Conversation with Lady Journalist Mayumi Igarashi
“Ah—yes, that’s right. After Takeshita was released by the Tokkou, I did go to meet him. At that time, the doll you mentioned was not present, as one would expect. But in a conversation I had with the female pilot Noriko Inbe, who I had covered previously in an article, she mentioned that Takeshita petitioned her for a sightseeing flight, but in actuality put that doll on the plane—he called her Ain, but in any case, he only put that on the plane, and it seems that he himself did not fly with them.”
In Conversation with Toyama Military Research Laboratory’s First Lt. Enoki
“Originally, I was conducting research at the research laboratory in Shinjuku Toyama, on radio weapons already developed by the Navy. I heard that there were radio waves emanating from Asakusa that surpassed the Navy’s machines in strength, and when I went to Asakusa to investigate them on my own, I got to know Mr. Takeshita. His daughter, Ain? Eh?...I met her. A doll? What insolence are you spouting? She was a person. Yes, definitely.”"

[2] Despera Chapter "The Electric Girl vs. the Tank Squadron": "Accompanied by a thunderous roar, three boorish tanks were en route to Ueno Forest. Unlike the rhomboid tanks built in England that had previously been experimentally introduced by the Army, the France-built Renault tanks were hardly larger than a one-yen taxi; but in these tree-lined groves that would prove too dense for the taxis to enter, these tanks carelessly trampled the trees and open-air stands that blocked their progress. After all, the owners of these open-air stands were only in business illegally, so even if evicted in such a violent manner, they had no grounds to voice their displeasure.
The commanding Army Infantry School Guidance Officer brushed off the Ueno residents’ complaints, explaining that the deployment of the tanks into the city was merely part of a practice exercise.
Witnessing this state of affairs from a distance, Lt. Enoki of the Army Sciences Institute spoke with amazement.
“This is hardly the Aoyama parade grounds—what a ridiculous thing they're doing. Don't you agree?”
Startled by Lt. Enoki's voice, a man also dressed in civilian clothes and a hunting cap, turned to look at him.
“...it's an initiative of the Army Cavalry Company.”
The man with the hunting cap, testing Lt. Enoki, said only this.
“Hahaa, then big shot with some influence over there must be thinking there's something mighty rotten in this neighborhood.”
The man with the hunting cap gave a slight smile of agreement.
“You're a member of the military police, aren't you? I'm Enoki, from the Toyama research institute.”
“...Military police, Sergeant Yamanoi.”
“You were looking into the matter of the man who seemed to be living at the Juunikai, weren’t you?”
Enoki, knowing he was higher than Yamanoi in rank but about ten years younger in age, continued to speak in polite Japanese.
“This must be training for later use on the continent, but to run tanks through the middle of town like this is insane, isn't it?”
“They couldn't match its power without using tanks...was probably what they were thinking.”
Lt. Enoki cocked his head.
“Against Takeshita alone? Even though it's just him, and that girl?”
“Girl?”
“Weren't they living together?”
Now it was Yamanoi who cocked his head in puzzlement.
“Don't know...I didn't see her myself.”
Weren't they together when you were tailing them, too, though? Enoki prepared to say, but Yamanoi changed the subject before he could speak.
“Most likely, it’s a connection with the suspicious radio waves, but lately in the Juunikai's basement, there's been a mechanism that—well, I'm not sure how to explain it, but it's strangely humanoid, but also not humanoid, almost like a two-ken (3.636 meter) rabbit, walking around.”
Enoki was completely shocked. Was this another creation of Takeshita’s?
At that time, below their gaze, there spread a dazzling light.
“That's the girl—!”
The light spread immediately in front of the tanks. In the middle of the light, it's Ain—!! thought Enoki, sure of what he saw, but it seemed like Yamanoi was totally unaware of her presence.
As the light died away, the tanks began to move around frantically, firing their machine guns at each other. What a truly outrageous spectacle, thought Enoki, even as he knew it would never appear in any newspaper."

[3] Despera Chapter "Showa": "The next evening, Takeshita walked towards Shiinamachi.
It's not as if he had much interest in the atelier village, but after hearing the poet's story, he may have wanted to see it once, at least.
He quickly found a street lined with distinctive triangular roofs built of red concrete shingles.
In the afternoon, as expected, the artists were hard at work on their individual projects, and the whole area was blanketed with a death-like quiet, completely different from the liveliness of the West Exit at night.
Walking around with no particular goal in mind, he may have been struck by some premonition.
Around the sculptors’ ateliers, plaster figures, perhaps studies or pieces already retired from exhibition, were strewn about.
Many of them were human figures, and in the gloomy, shadowed alleyway, the numerous pale figures left a somewhat horrific impression.
Lazily stopping to stare at the sculptures, he was suddenly stunned by a feeling as if a cold hand had grabbed hold of his heart.
Among the discarded statues, he found himself staring at something he couldn't believe.
It was a life-sized nude statue of a young girl. And no matter how much he tried to disillusion himself, that girl was the very same one he had once lived with—it was impossible to see her as anyone other than Ain.
He must have been wrong. After all, Ain was only a doll. Before the great earthquake, he had spent a period of time believing that Ain was a living human being. But it's not as if she disappeared. She had never existed to begin with.
Even after telling himself that for so long, it was nevertheless true that Takeshita, believing that no matter where he went, Ain might possibly be waiting for him, continued to unconsciously search for her.
Takeshita stumbled away from the statue of Ain, trying to distance himself from his frantic thoughts, and he found himself looking into the window of another atelier.
It seemed to be the room of an abstract painter who had been swept up by the Surrealist movement. It seemed that the owner of the room was away. In the room there was a painted canvas left on an easel, and this was not an abstract painting but a realist one.
Takeshita wondered if his sanity had finally abandoned him.
On the canvas was a portrait of Ain. Ahhh, I want to see her again… he wondered if such thoughts had strengthened until they finally caused him to begin to see phantoms.
I see…well, if that's all it is, then that's all well and good. Thinking that, he picked up his heavy feet and began to find his way out of the atelier village.
Then, he saw, behind the last atelier, a bronze statue of a little girl. This was made by a completely different artist from the previous works, but it was still unmistakably Ain.
After staring at the sculpture for a while, Takeshita softly touched it with the tip of his finger. He felt the cold surface of the bronze.
No...! It wasn't a phantom.
He finally understood, clearly, that it was a statue made using Ain as a model.
He turned back toward the atelier village.
Ain was here.
Just as Montmartre in Paris had their muse, Kiki, this atelier village had Ain.
With the exact same appearance as she had before the great earthquake, Ain existed somewhere. And those who existed close to that place continued to feel some sort of inspiration from her.
To the man named Takeshita, such influence was no longer present. He was conscious of that fact.
But, Ain still exists… Just by being sure of that, Takeshita felt the warmth return to his heart.
He began to walk toward the lights of the town, and what happened after that no one knows."

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[2]

[3]

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Contents

Background

General Information

List of Misconceptions

Ain was a hallucination

Power of the Verse

Knowledgeable Members

Characters

References

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Background

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List of Misconceptions

Ain was a hallucination

Power of the Verse

Knowledgeable Members

Characters

References

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