(Some wording borrowed from B_Munro.)
This is a world where, in the summer of 1940, anime characters begin materializing in our world. For ASB-ish reasons, they materialize mainly in the world's great powers, save the Soviet Union. They spawn in like
Minecraft mobs, appearing randomly within the borders of Germany, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, France, and the United States. At first their arrival is seen rather strangely, as two-dimensional beings in a three-dimensional universe is rather a hard concept. But soon they begin spawning in large, and eventually unsustainable numbers. The Third Reich, Italy, and Japan respond by placing them in ghettoes (the Germans planning to liquidate these
Zeichnung along with the Jews). France, being occupied by Germany, has its anime population quartered into ghettoes, as well, whilst Britain and the United States look on with a worried tone about the ever-increasing number of animated characters arriving in their territories.
And then the Event happened.
Calling themselves the
Longinus Dreizehn Orden, this group of Nazi-fied, mystical-loving, yet half-insane and existence-denying anime characters launched a daring raid into Berlin, infiltrating the German High Command and slaughtering practically the entire Nazi leadership. Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Bormann, and many other high-ranking Nazi officials were slaughtered by the Orden, who attempted, in their insanity, to seize control of the Reich. The Wehrmacht, however, had other plans, and they quickly captured the Orden and had them hung from the Reichstag soon after their attempt to establish their rule for Germany. The Wehrmacht eventually proclaimed the restoration of the old German Empire, dropping the swastika and flying the old black-white-red of the German Empire. The old Kaiser Wilhelm was invited from the German-occupied Netherlands to assume the throne of Germany once more, which he readily accepted.
At this stage in history the Germans had already occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, as well as their allotted half of Poland. Without Hitler to drive them on, the Wehrmacht ended their military gains. While they continued to occupy the northern half of France, as well as Belgium and the Netherlands, they quickly ceased further hostilities and concluded the now-famous "Peace With Honor." Germany would gain Alsace-Lorraine from the French, and although there would be no war reparations like the kind France had forced on Germany in World War 1, the northern half of France would continued to be occupied until a later date, with the southern free zone as the current government. German troops completed their withdrawal from Belgium and the Netherlands, though they stayed in Luxembourg, soon to be incorporated into the German Empire, even as the royal families of the other German states returned from exile to assume their places as the kings, grand dukes, and princes of the German Empire.
But Germany wasn't the only place afflicted by the anime revolts. In Italy, the animated people launched a massive breakout from their camps, and with the Italian army deployed in three different fronts- in the former Yugoslavia, Greece, and Africa- in could not respond effectively to more than three million animated characters rampaging through their countryside. A similar debacle was enfolding in Japan, where Japan's four million anime characters launched an open revolt, necessitating the withdrawal of the Japanese Army from China to deal with this threat. Britain's 2.2 million anime characters were slower to react, unlike their cousins- after all, they were being treated better (somewhat) than the Germans, Italians, and Japanese, but anime characters still rampaged through London in a bloody orgy of chaos and looting for at least a week before the British army could put them down. In the United States, the 880,000 anime characters that had appeared hence mostly stayed put, although some protests almost (and some fewer did) turn bloody.
In their campaign of repression the Japanese did perhaps the bloodiest work, slaughtering most of their anime refugees. Bodies upon bodies of waifus and husbandoes lay rotting as the Japanese army fought to put down the revolt, with it at last settling in the summer of '42, with most, if not practically all of Japan's anime characters dead or dying. The remaining 30,000 or so that managed to flee Japan found hardly better conditions in China, with Chiang ordering the survivors, again, into camps. Though there was no love lost for the anime characters, the United States and the British Empire both objected to the ferocious slaughter of the anime characters. Accounts (mainly from those 30,000 survivors) told of the Japanese overrunning anime-held towns and slaughtering all inside, brutally, with bayonets. In one case a woman was hung while being raped and stabbed at the same time! Stories like these resounded over the American and British press, and though the anime characters were resented for their attempts to overturn the established government, the United States and the British Empire could not help but feel some form of sympathy for them, even as the Japanese army slaughtered them and the Wehrmacht (renamed back to the Heer) brutally repressed them. The Jews now found the concentration camps that they had just been released from being filled, once more, by anime characters.
In East Asia the Japanese army, finished with killing as many anime characters as they could, looked over the East China Sea, only to find that Chiang Kai-shek had managed to triumph over his enemies, end Manchukuo, and even occupy Korea. Many in the Japanese army seriously considered fighting Chiang, as advantageous a position he held, to reclaim their colonies, but with the end of Nazism and the restoration of the old German Empire, which was being rather quiet on the global scale, pragmatism won through, and the Japanese grudgingly settled into an unofficial ceasefire between themselves and the triumphant Chinese. (At least the Japanese kept Taiwan!)
Of course, it wasn't that easy to keep down anime characters in concentration camps. Many of them in northern Germany broke free to other nations, with the large majority of refugees fleeing to the neutral Netherlands. However, a select few had state-building in mind, as following the LDO's example. An ambitious anime character, Aurion, crossed the Kiel Canal with an "army" (read: a horde of bedraggled refugees, some of which who were belligerent, most of which who were simply seeking safe shelter) and stormed Copenhagen with his forces, overrunning the Heer there through sheer surprise. By 1944 Aurion had concentrated his rule over most of Denmark, though he was perhaps blissfully unaware of the fact that the only reason why he was ruler of Denmark was simply because the Heer had its hands full with the northern French occupation zone, being occupied with both the nascent French Resistance and unhappy anime characters. In any case, the Heer had made plans to reestablish its control over Denmark by the time Aurion had proclaimed himself the first Emperor of the Restored North Sea Empire, and attempted to rebuild such an an entity by attacking Norway, and then, (hopefully) to conquer England and Iceland. Such an offensive quickly failed. The anime "troops" (armed with the weapons they'd taken from the local Heer and Danish army) failed miserably against a smaller Norwegian force, and although they remained loyal to Aurion, the populace did not. Coupled with a German offensive into Denmark, the anime invaders quickly collapsed, though Aurion established a ragtag resistance on Zealand with what remained of his anime armies. This was not for long, however, as Aurion and his movement came to end when the Germans made another push into Zealand, with a collaborationist (human) general thinking quick on the draw and executing Aurion, thus ending the threat of the Restored North Sea Empire and its half-insane 'emperor'.
However, anime did succeed, somewhat. Through Aurion's brief tenure as Emperor of the North Sea Empire, a large group of anime refugees had made use of the friendly borders to invade Sweden, and led by their leaders, the Twenty Titans, they mostly succeeded. Despite their terrible armaments, they managed to evade the Swedish army through what would become famous through the anime community as the "Long March", and captured Stockholm in less than fifteen days after that. Putting down resistance, however, was much harder, and the anime characters took a significant amount of casualties before at last they managed to capture a significant amount of arms and use them against the Swedes. The Twenty Titans established themselves as the new rulers of Sweden, though they retained the Swedish government and monarchy as a facade as to which to rule Sweden from behind. And unlike Aurion and his North Sea Empire, a rather large amount of anime characters had arrived in Sweden, making it possible for the anime characters to retain their rule over Sweden. And also unlike Aurion, the anime characters did not attempt to press their rule over the Swedes, instead keeping mostly to themselves and not bothering the Swedes. Even the Twenty Titans' own control over the Swedish government waned with time, and at last the anime characters themselves became refugees in the country they meant to rule in the same kind that Aurion tried to do. The situation there could best be described as oppressed eventually getting the better over the oppressor.
In the anime community, the attempted takeover of Denmark and the successful one of Sweden are surprisingly not called the "Conquest" or the "Victory", but rather as the "Desperation", for it was in desperation that anime refugees attempted to overthrow governments and save themselves from what they saw as human oppression. Although the German Empire did not carry out devastation against the anime characters like the Japanese did, being sequestered away and constantly watched by the Germans did not help much towards animated sentiment towards the Empire. Much of the same was happening in Italy, where the Germans (appeared) to wait until '46 to intervene, at which point the anime characters had established substantial control over the Italian countryside. It wasn't until 1949 that the last rebel hold was finally rooted out, a date held in infamy in anime communities worldwide as the "Fall", the day that the last dreg of anime resistance outside of areas already held by the anime characters faded.
The map of Europe had changed, once again. Yugoslavia had been broken up into the several Balkan states, while Austria expanded and regained its Habsburg monarch, in keeping with the conservative German mindset (though the Germans also made sure that Austria could never challenge Germany). France lost Alsace-Lorraine, while Belgium lost its German-speaking eastern territory to the Germans. Italy lost Tyrol to the Austrians, a fact which continues to piss the Italians off to these days, and they were not really sated by the slices of territory they had acquired in Croatia, as well as mastery over Albania as a puppet.
Overseas, the Germans forced Belgium to sell the Congo to them (for a handsome price, mind you, but still) as well as making the new French government sell French Equatorial Africa to the Germans, as well as Senegal, former German Togoland, and Benin, thus fulfilling the old World War I-ambition of a
Mittelafrika. Germany became the dominant power of Europe, and while the US made it clear that they wouldn't stand for a German assault on the UK (some alternate history changes before the anime characters started showing up included Roosevelt not becoming president and the US road through the Great Depression was bumpier and rockier than OTL.)
Germany looked rather overwhelmingly powerful for a while, especially after the British bomb was quickly followed by a German bomb and the means to deliver it, and there was a Cold War of sorts even more anxious than OTL's. The US ended up supporting the Soviets against the Germans, with both parties keeping a wary watch on their mutual borders, with dozens of divisions ready to swing either way if the Cold War turned hot (in a conventional manner.) A mild economic depression in the '80s forced the Germans to at last begin decolonization, though they still have quite a few overseas provinces and allies and puppets in what used to be the dominions of the German Empire.
The Soviet Union, not suffering a German invasion, is doing quite rather well, especially after the post-Stalin firing squad did their work. For a while the Soviets were dependent on the American nuclear umbrella, but they eventually managed to develop their own bomb as a deterrent towards any German ambition. In later times the Soviet Union has emerged as its own power, funding Neo-Bolshevik states and revolts across the world in defiant opposition to both the conservative German bloc and the more leftist US and allies.
China, despite being plagued by massive corruption, rallied, and has built the East Asian Defense Pact, an alliance of right-wing countries, which, despite being right-wing, don't really like the Japanese, as a preventative measure against future Japanese militarism. Japan, in response, is working on ways to get around said pact, with (insofar) little success.
In 1999, Germany is still rather stuck in its old conservative mindset, but even the old Kaiserreich was more or less democratic, and the new one is hardly any different. Although there is _genuine_democracy, though there are some points of view that are simply not tolerated, and the army and secret police are still there to make sure they do not drift too far from what is permissible. The Kaiserreich still dominates Europe, though it's less more of a neo-colonial outlook nowadays and more like the European Union of OTL, though the massive power of Germany in comparison to the other European states makes it seem like (and it basically is) a German sphere of puppets, allies, and protectorates. (The Polish "general government" and Slovakia would really like to be US allies, but since they're surrounded by Germany and German allies to the west, and the Soviet Union to the east, don't actually have any choice.
The US is in better shape than OTL, a more egalitarian state with lower economic inequality and a political spectrum shifted a bit to the left by a long struggle against those "damned conservative Prussian jackbooters." It’s a more technocratic state with a greater appreciation of actual expertise, and a strong suspicion of “irrationality” of whatever sort. It’s also more militarized (it still has the draft, more out of that egalitarianism than actual need for huge numbers of soldiers), and for all its anti-racism tendencies less exercised by the notion of white people ruling directly or indirectly over brown ones, since the conservative Germans
are so much worse.
. Currently, there is a sharp political debate over whether to discontinue the traditional US practice of putting the screws to the Kaiserreich by whatever means, given that this Germany is leagues behind the Third Reich OTL in oppression and cruelty, and instead put more attention on containing the Soviet Union, which is an absolute military dictatorship (Neo-Bolshevism having been replaced by essentially pure pragmatism at this point) pushing for at least it’s 1914 borders in the west and has a ten million man army, not to mention the Chinese, which have seen double-digit economic growth in recent years while remaining fiddly about American influence in the Philippines.
The British Empire, though encouraged to decolonize by the US, retains far more power and control over its former colonies than OTL, with a handful of Dominions, protectorates and overseas territories scattered throughout the globe.
India, like OTL, tried to support a democratic-leftist “third way” aside from German conservatism, US capitalism, and UK neo-imperialism, but without too much success. It retains a close and friendly relationship with the East African federation and an odd sort of contempt towards the Chinese, who still have that "sorta-fascist vibe", which makes a lot of sense, since the two are competing for influence in SE Asia.
The Dutch managed to keep a better hold on their empire than in OTL. Anti-Dutch sentiment still broke out as in OTL, but with the secret removal of Sukarno and other prominent Indonesian nationalist figures, as well as no Japanese invasion and dismantling of the Dutch colonial structure, the Dutch managed to break up Indonesian nationalism into a bunch of different regional areas, as well as concentrating power in the hands of the preexisting sultanates and kingdoms. The resulting Federation of the East Indies is a federation within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, alongside Suriname, Aruba, Curacao, and the other bits of the Dutch Caribbean. Conservative Dutchmen are still grumbling about the fact that the Dutch East Indies is mostly administered and ruled by non-whites now.
Technology is only a bit more advanced than OTL 2017, German science spreading across Europe having had their effect on that part of the world’s intellectual contributions. Space tech is a bit more advanced, the US-German space race having kept going long enough to put people on Mars. Admittedly, nobody has been there in over two decades, but there are some Moon bases and a bunch of manned stuff that probably could be accomplished better by robots in orbit.
Although the Cold War has largely died down between the two blocs, who are not really existential enemies, a big question between the two is "what to do with the damned anime characters?" Germany still retains World War 2-era sequestration of its anime population, though a new bill in the Reichstag has proposed giving limited rights for them to work and live in normal German society, the first such bill concerning those who had changed world history irrevocably in the last sixty years. In the United States and the United Kingdom, freedom for anime characters is considerably higher, with the popular anime show
The Idolmaster (stylized as
THE iDOLM@STER) wildly popular with U.S. and British audiences. "Anime" itself is a genre name for the plethora of television serials, films, comics, and literature produced by the anime community, featuring a wide range of tropes that are recognized by many who follow such a genre. (Not surprisingly, the Germans look down on the anime genre, as does the rest of Europe, toeing Germany's line). Despite the fact that many anime people who either fought in or were alive around World War 2 are still around (the average age for anime characters is 170-200 years, though no one's realized just exactly how long they live, except for the anime characters themselves, who keep that fact to themselves), and hope to claim more countries for themselves (Sweden being surrounded on all sides by German allies, and besides, as mentioned above, power has mostly reverted back to the native Swedish government), the recent anime generation has grown up questioning their grandparents' and parents' values about hating Germany, Italy, and Japan, and to be honest they find their grandparents' belligerent attitudes towards the Axis Powers rather tacky and antiquated.
With the fall of the Nazi regime, European Jewry was mostly left untouched. Although anti-Semitism still is a thing (a _big_ thing), of late in Europe, people have started to look down on hating Jews, for the fact that all humanity must be united in a common front against the Animated Menace. Although there was immigration to Israel, the lack of support from the Western powers meant the plan largely fell through, and Palestine fell under joint Arab Federation-Egyptian administration, though currently Egypt itself is facing problems from Palestinians not happy with rule from Cairo.
The more conservative anime leaders are on the rise, seen by many anime people as the only hope of "genuine" anime culture surviving in the West, not the American _bastardization_ that has emerged in later years. (In truth, it's kind of their fault; the strict rules that the first generation imposed on the second led the second to feel more guilty about doing so to the third, allowing the current anime generation to explode in its own counter-culture movement, complete with yuri, yaoi, harems, and all kinds of fantasy shows that, despite being revolting to older people (anime and human alike) are readily devoured by the younger (Western) populace (again, both anime and human).
In a lab in China, scientists have established contact with what they believe is the anime characters' home dimension. Time will tell what they will learn from this strange, two-dimensional world, and the horrifying reason behind why anime characters started fleeing to three-dimensional space.
Wolfgang Kortzfleisch, leader of the LDO's failed attempt to seize power over the Third Reich
Aurion, self-proclaimed Emperor of the New North Sea Empire
Tachibana Makoto, anime historian living in China (possibly?) MC
