coma-coded

[coma-coded]

Some summery Kiryuichi that I drew in August

I recall working on the lines for this at a cafe in Johor Bahru with a lot of cats…never had I been more productive.

[coma-coded]

good to see you again

[coma-coded]

「人生親像桃花枝，有時開花有時死， 花有開花再開期，人若死去無活時。」

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This excerpt is from 《桃花泣血記 (trans. the tale of peach blossom weeping blood》, a Taiwanese classic from the 1930s. It roughly translates to:

/ Life, like a bunch of peach blossoms, blooms and withers in its time.

Though flowers may bloom once more, when a soul departs, there is no returning to life. /

Very esoteric reference I know, but these lines vividly captures my thoughts on Episode Aigis (or, P3 fes reload). 

I didn’t finish P3 fes when it first came out because it was exceedingly grindy. Heck, I didn’t even finish Persona 3 back then (sorry, the original P3 gameplay…is really not my thing). But I was fully aware of that this DLC carried the same narrative thrust like P3, one of the heaviest in the modern persona games. 

I thought it was ingenious to let Aigis front the pursuit to find the answer to “life”. I always thought she was one of the most intriguing characters in the game, as she is a non-human whose sole purpose is to destroy shadows, but now being imbued with the mission to find her own answer to many of P3’s core philosophical inquiries anchored in existentialism, mortality and the search for meaning. And she did in the end; the realisation that life is defined not by her pre-determined design, but by relationships, choices, and embracing the complexity of human experience — even when faced with the inevitability of death, helped her to live — and not just to exist. 

Aside from Aigis herself, I appreciate each SEES member manifests multi-faceted, difficult reaction when confronted with the death of a friend. (I was told that in Episode Aigis the writers made some alterations to “soften” the tension among SEES members, but not a problem for me since I didn’t play the original oops).