alevolpe

[alevolpe]

hiii! I love your Amimako artworks!! I have a question for you, when do you think Ami and Mako would get married?

Hello! Thank you so much!

Even tho I tend to draw Mako and Ami wearing engagement rings by the time Ami is in med school, her early 20s, I personally don't think they'd get married til Ami was out of school. (I just draw cause it's cute)

I believe they'd have a conversation about it and they'd both agree to hold it til Ami graduates. It would be just too much stress, a distraction from Ami's studies and they would not get to fully enjoy it. So I see them actually getting married around their very late 20s.

That said, Mako probably wasn't thrilled about waiting, but that's what relationships are all about, sacrifices and understanding.

[alevolpe]

Honeymoon sake 🍶

[alevolpe]

Are u a furry

[alevolpe]

Drew Cyprine for that one anon.

[alevolpe]

I don't think I understand why the can exploded in the last frame. Adorable comic still though.

Hello, thank you.

Just think of what happens if you forget your ur soda in the freezer. It's pretty much that!

[alevolpe]

Of course the drawing is adorable and youre very skilled, but the chubby sailor moon isnt chubby at all. 😭 her face is round sure, but her waist is still the same thickness as her calf...

I knew that I'd wind up getting some type of message like this and that's why I put the disclaimer in the tags.

I have 0 interest in debating what is and what isn't chubby. If this isn't chubby to you, I'm sorry, I'll just ask you to move on.

Also, I felt like I had to at least speak my mind about this one thing you said, that her waist is the same size as her calf when it's pretty clearly not the case. I don't wanna get into technicalities cause that's not going to make anyone happy here.

[alevolpe]

Working on a sort of spiritual successor to my very old Mako panels. It's also an excuse to work on a comic again (I'm so bad at them)

[alevolpe]

My books and manga. I'm aiming to expand it this year!

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Also Makoami bonus cause I'm normal about them

[alevolpe]

Hey I just thought of something for the request I made. If you do do them is it like a commission? If so then you can cancel my request. I won't be able to pay for it.

Sorry.

Hi!

No, requests are NOT commissioned. (I'll make an announcement soon-ish about comms, srry, my move just messed everything up)

I take art requests from anybody, but there's a couple things I'd like people to know before they submit one:

You might need to wait, a long while. I look through requests and if I feel like warming up drawing one of them I'll do it. The SpongeBob Ami crossovers art was submitted about 6 months before I did it, or the most recent Usagi art was waiting in the inbox about a year. (If u submitted once, I've seen it!)

I can change stuff about the request. These are meant to be mostly warmups or fun things for me to draw along with being a small ty to all of u. Though if I feel like it, I might take ur request and spin it the direction I want or I might simplify it. (Srry, but again, these are not commissioned. I do them for free)

I can refuse asks. If it's something offensive, distasteful or very unrelated to this blog, I won't draw it. (i can maybe draw some nsfw stuff by request, but I'm VERY picky on those)

Don't flood the inbox with tons of requests. Basic etiquette :)

[alevolpe]

The new banner is actually pitch perfect especially paired with the little pic of big green kitty Mako

Your SM is much stronger in tone, something like Naruto, but it still has the fun, cute, sillies

The pair up tells you exactly what to expect from the blog, in what order 👌👌

Much love! 🫰

Also srry, but I found it funny that you called the green cat Mako. IT'S SUCH A CUTE THOUGHT! LOL but the cat I use as an avatar is an actual cat character from the series.

Best boi Rhett Butler!

[alevolpe]

I'm so glad I decided to sketch this ask. This might be my fav Usagi I've ever drawn. Biblically accurate Usagi.

And I got the puffy skirt design in there too!

I love her.

Since you take art requests, can I ask you for a sketch of chubby Usagi? I was really happy to find out you headcanon her as chubby and ever since I've imagined how it would look like in your art style and I'm excited for the opportunity to possibly actually see it(´◦ω◦`)

[alevolpe]

thoughts on ReixAmi?

I've already spoke pretty in depth about my thoughts on each possible relationship between the senshi in this post here but since it's been a bit since I wrote it l, some of my opinions have changed, even if very slightly.

I've grown more fond of Ami and Rei together. Even tho I still don't believe it would work in the long run, it would be a very good first relationship experience for both of them.

They would learn a lot about not only each other, but I think also about important aspects regarding relationships, like.. communication! Which is something neither of them is especially good at.

Overall I think it'd be a nice experience for both of them, which, despite ultimately not working out, would teach them a lot.

[alevolpe]

Since you take art requests, can I ask you for a sketch of chubby Usagi? I was really happy to find out you headcanon her as chubby and ever since I've imagined how it would look like in your art style and I'm excited for the opportunity to possibly actually see it(´◦ω◦`)

[alevolpe]

A Word on Rei Hino's Anime Characterization

Okay so this is a take I have seen a LOT of Sailor Moon fans make, and it is really, really aggravating. There's a tendency within the fandom to take the manga as being holy writ that reflects author Naoko Takeuchi's "true" and "pure" vision, that the anime subsequently ruined through various means. This has popped up in, for example, baseless rumors that series director and Revolutionary Girl Utena co-creator Kunihiko Ikuhara hated Takeuchi's work (of which has already been debunked previously) or spinning a narrative of Takeuchi versus the animation team.

Now, the notorious take I'm referring to is the character of Rei Hino being mistreated by the anime and "ruined" compared to her manga portrayal. This is partly because, while the rest of the five main girls carry largely the same portrayal from anime to manga (some tweaks here and there because of the format), Rei is very different.

In the manga, she's cold but firm, old-fashioned and upper class, the embodiment of a traditional noblewoman. She cares very little for pop culture, she's very focused on her duties as a miko, and she's a bit of a stick in the mud with a gothic streak. She also does not like men and has no romantic interest in them.

In the anime, she's a fiery hothead who's loud, sarcastic, and easily frustrated with Usagi's antics. She's kind of pathetic, her moments of grandeur easily undermined with slapstick, and while she is focused on her duties as a miko, she's also in-tune with pop culture and regularly reads manga. She also does like men and does show some romantic interest in them.

Yes, these are both different characterizations. But the assumption that malice had anything to do with the reason for Rei being so different is bizarre because it relies on assuming some kind of conspiratorial effort to undermine Takeuchi's vision. The fact of the matter is...the reason for Rei's different characterization was down to a simple error in communication within a very haphazard production.

One has to keep in mind that Sailor Moon's entire existence wasn't some quest by Takeuchi to make an amazing work of shoujo manga. Her editor, Osano, had a meeting with Toei sometime after the original Codename: Sailor V one-shot was published, and pitched them the idea of a full series based on it. Takeuchi didn't know anything about it. She was basically brought into a production that, yes, she made her own, but it also involved a lot of companies wanting a franchise to make merch and money. This would evolve into the start of Sailor Moon.

What's more, keep in mind that the Sailor Moon manga began publishing at the end of December 1991. The first episode of the anime aired in early March of 1992. Keeping in mind the amount of time that would've been involved in producing the first few episodes, things were going at a tight pace. The whole idea was a mixed-media production where the anime and manga would be tied together with merchandise for the girls watching the series. It would've been impossible to make the anime a one-to-one adaptation of the manga. Even Takeuchi was making things up as she went along, it's very well-known that she had no idea where to take things after the first arc.

How does this tie into Rei?

A Brazilian fan documentary that personally interviewed series director Junichi Sato answered this question back in 2018, and it's so simple that I'm baffled none of the "Anime!Rei sucks" brigade know about this. But this is right from the mouth of Sato, the man who was the series director for the first season and a half of Sailor Moon. To paraphrase it simply: the animation team often had to meet with representatives like Osano and others, who were acting as middlemen between the anime team and Takeuchi. Takeuchi was busy with the manga, she wasn't always able to meet with the anime team. But by the time Rei had finally appeared in the manga, the anime team had several episodes in development where Rei was depicted differently than Takeuchi's vision. The lack of communication was what ultimately led to this divergence in portrayal. At the very least, when Takeuchi informed them, they tried meeting with her again to compromise.

That being said, there's a couple things here. While the format of the manga was monthly and introduced characters relatively quickly, the anime was weekly and allowed for more stories and episodic adventures. The anime also took a more comedic tone, so you had funny slapstick and hijinks. The first several episodes are Usagi by herself, with Luna as the straight man playing off her antics. Then you get Ami, who's more straightlaced, but has a calm and reserved personality.

And then you get Rei. Rei, who's loud, fiery, combative, regularly snarks at and belittles Usagi's antics, and engages in a dynamic with a lot of back-and-forth pushing.

That's entertaining. It changes the series up from just Usagi being silly and only having Luna to reprimand her, to having an actual teammate who she has to fight beside and who reprimands her. Regardless of any personal feelings regarding Rei's characterization, it works. This is memorable. Rei's more reserved and calm personality in the manga just wouldn't work the same for the tone the anime was going for.

There's one rumor that blames the change solely on Kunihiko Ikuhara, even though he wasn't even the head director by that point. Now, Ikuhara does like Rei as a character. And he did play a part in how Rei was characterized in the anime, insofar as he directed several of the episodes she appeared in. You can definitely see some similar DNA in Rei's haughty but easily-humiliated presentation and compare it to Nanami Kiryuu from RGU. Two completely different characters, granted, but there's some similarities there. But this also ignores that animation is a collaborative effort and Ikuhara wouldn't have been the one making the scripts or directing every episode where Rei is characterized the same way, never mind how it ignores Sato's previous comments about the tight production. At most, while Ikuhara likely played a part, he wasn't the only one in the room, and there were more genuine reasons than anything conspiratorial afoot.

Did Takeuchi hate this change? Honestly, I don't know, but I don't think she ever openly disliked it. We know for a fact that she had friendly relations with the voice actors, including Michie Tomizawa, Rei's VA. We also know that she cried during the final episode of the anime. At most, she admitted to having some frustrations with the Sailor Moon R movie (ironic, considering it's held as the best of the three movies), but she didn't seem to hold any ill will towards the anime crew. I've heard more about her having issues with the higher ups at Kodansha and Toei than anything to do with the actual animation crew.

One last quibble is the accusation that, with Rei's manga portrayal being against dating guys and her anime portrayal being boy crazy like the other girls, that it amounts to straightwashing. But uh...y'all know Takeuchi wrote Rei crushing on a guy too, right?

This is from a story Takeuchi wrote called Casablanca Memories. It does one thing that the anime never did, which was explore Rei's background. Her dad is a sleazy politician who doesn't care about her, her mom died when Rei was a little girl...and there's this guy named Kaidou who's her dad's assistant. Rei has known him since she was a little girl. Rei is actually in love with him.

Yeah, she's in love with a grown-ass man, I'm not about to get into all the weird stuff in Takeuchi's work.

But the idea that Rei was "straightwashed" in the anime is complete nonsense. Sure, I don't really like that she's made to be boy crazy, but it's pretty clear that Takeuchi's intent with Rei was more of a "Had one love and her heart was broken" thing than making Rei a lesbian. Rei being a lesbian is a very popular headcanon, but it's not what Takeuchi intended. Straightwashing is taking a character who's queer in the source material and making them straight in an adaptation, which...isn't what happened here.

So, to give a tl;dr, the way the anime depicted Rei wasn't "ruining" Takeuchi's vision, the production of the anime was a mess and miscommunication largely caused the change in characterization, and Rei wasn't straightwashed. I'm not going to argue that the anime adapted things perfectly, there's a lot of issues with how other characters are handled (Mamoru and Setsuna are done far better in the manga and lord I would take the Dream arc in the manga over most of SuperS), but I think it says a lot that in my experience, every time I've gotten someone into the Sailor Moon anime, it's been that characterization of Rei that's stuck with them.

Something was done right.

[alevolpe]

finished them! 💙❤️💚🧡

expressions practice p1

[alevolpe]

"Haruka??" they might be thinking about the dub where she was 'cousins' with Michiru

I HOPE SO! Gosh, like to each their own and I’ll say anime Haruka was a bit dickish (which to some is a negative thing, to me, I love spicier characters) but in NO universe was she a downgrade.

I’ve stated before manga Haruka is my least fav character from the series, not to get too into it, but idk how people can so easily forgive her super creepy and disrespectful predatory behavior.

[alevolpe]

I’m sorry… Haruka almost leading..?? HARUKA?! Are we talking about the same character??

Plz reblog!