Fluff: Similiar Plots

[robkelk]

It's often been said that there are only seven (or eight, or twelve) basic plots in the world, and originality comes from what you do with them.

Sometimes, "what you do with them" sounds a lot like what somebody else already did with them... especially if one deliberately writes a description that could apply to more than one story.

I already mentioned this one over in the current Crossovers That Should Not Be thread:

A beautiful woman with unusual abilities (played by Kikuko Inoue) comes to Earth, where circumstances beyond her control force her to live with a male student. The student quickly realizes that his friends must never find out about his new lifemate's secret. The woman and the student eventually fall in love. But before they do, the woman's female relatives -- one sultry, the other younger and somewhat bratty -- come to visit, and the newcomers' misunderstandings cause problems in the previously-established relationship.

Please Teacher? Ah My Goddess? Could be either! (And http://robkelk.ottawa-anime.org/seiyuu- ... megami.jpg]this image, which inspired me to come up with that description in the first place, doesn't help matters any.)

So... anybody have any more Similar Plots?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[WengFook]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamotte_Shugogetten

This was introduced to me last week. A summary in four words would be, Ah! My Goddess lite.
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

[DHBirr]

Neither fantasy nor science fiction (nor, for that matter, manga/anime), but:

In the early aftermath of World War II, the Soviets are searching Europe for lost/hidden artworks they can steal and then sell to unscrupulous collectors,
using the money raised to finance subversion and espionage. A message from a military intelligence colonel sends the hero searching to beat the Communists to
one such treasure trove. This was the plot of Andre Norton's At Swords' Points, which came out in 1954, and Helen MacInnes' Pray for a
Brave Heart, published in 1955. I've wondered if both authors were inspired by some real-life incident, but I never found any evidence of such. (I
think, by the way, that in both books the colonel was murdered by the Reds shortly after passing on the message, but I can't at the moment prove it for the
MacInnes book.)

Life imitates art (I mentioned this one a few years ago in another thread):

To battle enemy attackers, the Japanese pack airplanes with supercharged engines full of explosives and ram them into the enemy's ships. The enemy response
includes atom-bombing Japan. John W. Campbell, Jr., used this as part of the backstory for his story "Frictional Losses," published in July 1936.

And life imitates life:

On the morning of Sunday the seventh, a force of carrier-launched planes came out of the wall of cloud that frequently builds up over the Koolau Range just
north of Pearl Harbor. The clouds had masked the planes from visual detection, and they caught the defenders napping, shooting up neatly parked rows of
airplanes on the ground and dropping bombs to devastating effect. Nine years and ten months later, it happened again; this second
time the pilots were Japanese rather than American, the bullets and bombs they used were all too real -- and the defenses were equally unready.
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.