Curiepolis

In March 2011, the great Tohoku Earthquake struck northeastern Japan, reactors 1-3 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant suffered meltdowns due to loss of coolant and...

...ANIME BECAME REAL.

The corporation Melonpan Entertainment Inc. had figured out how to get Japan out of economic bogs of the "lost decade": the ultimate pop-cultural consumer product -- real-life anime girls. Combining cutting-edge bio- and nanotechnology, two prototypes -- artificial organisms in the shape of moe characters -- were created. The first product generation was to be equipped with only very limited intelligence, just enough to look cute, make meowing noises and brew tea. (Additional intelligence packages were intended to be sold later via downloads.) But the corporation had not reckoned with Carmen Heckenrosental and Alexa Nimitz, two girl hackers from Berlin, Germany.

Using a homebrew quantum computer to break Melonpan Entertainment's firewalls, Carmen and Alexa uploaded their consciousnesses into the prototypes, boosting intelligence to superhuman levels in the process.

Thus, a new hominid species set foot on planet Earth: Homo Superior Lepidus. In their new bodies, Carmen and Alexa started a new, separate nation on an artificial island off the Japanese coast, using spent and molten fuel from the Fukushima reactors as an energy source. This island state, called Curiepolis, was to become Earth's first transhuman nation, a place for living anime characters (and, as rumor has it, some even weirder entities...) to flourish.

Fast forward to 2023. Annika Palmstroem, sixteen-year-old genius inventor girl from Germany, runs away to Curiepolis, escaping her boring hometown and school. Nanomachine-laced cookies with the writing "Eat me!" on them transform Annika into a Lepidus (i.e. an anime girl). Thus adapted to her new surroundings, she sets out to explore the world's first transhuman nation...

Curiepolis is a large novel-in-progress (written in German): the story of what Annika found in Curiepolis and her further adventures. The first volume will be finished on March 1, 2023, Annika's sixteenth birthday.

Enjoy Curiepolis artwork and illustrations here!