kaibutsushidousha

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Someone requested this analysis and I always wanted to explain the appeal of Kuzupeko. I'm not good with writing at all but maybe I'll try again in the future.

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No need to choose. If read Sagrada Reset, you can get adult Aoko with both the brown hair and the white shirt and jeans aesthetic.

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Nasu once said something to the affect that the 3rd Magic is the core theme of the Fate franchise, or something to that effect. Can you explain what he meant by that a bit, or at leas your interpretation of it?

I don't know where this statement is from, but without context, it doesn't sound like a thematic statement. Third Magic is central to Fate/ more in a practical level, since it's what makes the Holy Grail into something with a physical form.

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What are your thoughts on Super Aoko—or should I say, older Aoko?

What is there specific to talk about her? The most this specific version has in terms of story is arcade modes in fighting games. Her personality only really means anything as a conclusion and extension to Mahoyo's Aoko and their differences are already covered in the Mahoyo main characters post.

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★ 【中西 達哉】 「 モルガン様　貴族風 」 ☆ ✔ republished w/permission ⊳ ⊳ follow me on twitter // bsky

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What are your thoughts on orihime?

Ichigo's little group of friends exist to be basis of Bleach's arcs. The Soul Society arc is envisioned as Rukia's arc, which is a no-brainer because Rukia is a Shinigami. The Lost Agent is envisioned as Chad's arc, and even if it fails that role, the choice is understandable due to Chad being a Fullbringer. The Blood War is envisioned as Uryuu's arc, obvious again because Uryuu is a Quincy. But Orihime is a Fullbringer, so realizing what makes her fit at the center of the Arrancar arc requires a little more thought.

Well, I'd say the answer can be found about as early as possible. Orihime simply isn't like any other character in the good side. A whole lot of characters in Bleach have tragic pasts, but only Orihime is shown having a tragic present. The other Karakura people have comfortable houses with providing families. The Seireitei is a high class place directly contrasted with the poor Rukongai. The Visored and Xcution are united communities. Unclear about the Quincies in Silbern because we never the status quo there before the times of war.

Meanwhile, Orihime lives alone thanks to cutting ties with her parents at age 4 and losing her brother at age 12. She survives out of part-time jobs and financial support from distant relatives who determine how much money she gets based on her grades. The status quo of Bleach is pretty rough on her, and if I'm not forgetting anyone, her alone. She's doing what she can to survive under a constant threat of hunger, which is something Bleach otherwise only portrays as the lifestyle of a Hollow. I'll get back to this later.

The point here is that Orihime's life sucks. But that's not a thing that ever shows. Orihime in public is just a silly airhead constantly presented as the most cheerful person around. Her screentime in normal school situations is marked by her filtering her unpleasant reality with outlandish imagination. Her antics make her look really stupid, but we're shown that she isn't as she has 3rd best grades in their school. Intentional as her silliness is, she can't afford to be a bad student because that affects how much bread she gets to every month, as mentioned above.

And Bleach wastes no time explaining why she's like that. Still in volume 1, it's already established that Orihime spent her whole life being protected by others. First Sora, then Tatsuki, and now Ichigo. And because she grew up like this, her greatest wish is to not be a problem.

She let Sora bite her because life going on without him was being a problem to him and having to protect her was being a problem to Ichigo. She puts on a smile at school and keeps her conditions a secret to avoid being a problem to anyone who could care about her living situation. She let Ulquiorra take her because she didn't want to be a problem to anyone willing to fight Aizen for her sake. Her experience in Soul Society should have told her that this last one would backfire tremendously, but in her moment of weakness, she couldn't fight against her ingrained habit of avoiding being a burden.

Another key point of her early characterization is obviously her relationship with Ichigo. He was just a cool funny guy at first, until Sora's incident made him interesting, so she asked Tatsuki about him, and only really started caring after hearing about Masaki's death. This happens in a volume where she takes the cover and her opening poem is "If I were the rain [...] could I tie hearts together?". The rain is the symbol of Ichigo's grief, and Orihime falls for Ichigo by associating the lost of his mother with the loss of her brother. She connects best by relating to suffering, which shows later in the many, many, many times she's shown healing Arrancars after years practically living like a Hollow when in the world of the living.

This is kinda of a sudden change of topic, but things are sorta moving in chronological order here and the next big checkpoint is Orihime's first fight, so I'll conclude the talk about her position there and now talk about her powers.

Orihime gets Shun Shun Rikka, a Fullbring centered around rejection of events. Like Bleach abilities tend to do, this power goes incredibly well with Orihime's established characterization. Reality sucks for her but she keeps things by rejecting it through her filter of imagination. She can attack with this power, but it's best suited as a shield (preventing causing problems for others) or healing (making people forget their problems).

She then proceeds to not do much in Soul Society, then early into the Arrancar arc, she loses to Yammy and gets to negatively compare herself to Rukia, who did well in her first on-screen fight ever. Her feelings of uselessness pile up and compound into the 5 lives scenes, which as I already told you before, I consider the emotionally powerful dialogue Kubo has ever written. Not much to comment on it, the moment speaks for itself.

For Orihime, the bulk of the Arrancar arc is spent interacting with Ulquiorra. It's a really challenging experience for her because Ulquiorra has zero emotional depth. He was an ancient Hollow with no eyes, ears, nose, or mouth, being unable to perceive the outside world until Aizen broke his mask. Starrk, Barragan, and Grimmjow's backstories establish that Arrancars inherit experiences from their Hollow selves. Breaking their masks didn't change who they are. But Ulquiorra has no experiences because his Hollow life was spent entirely in the nothingness of himself.

Orihime has always been engaging with people through a smile-shaped web of lies, social conventions, and bravado, but Ulquiorra still haven't experienced humanity enough for that to work on him. He responds only to cold truths, so Orihime's typical conversation strategies are proven useless. It forces her to change her ways. She can only teach him about the heart by being honest and direct. Arrancars are about literal broken masks, but Orihime makes herself part of their story by having her metaphorical mask broken.

After that, we have the Lost Agent arc, which doesn't really take Orihime further (and doesn't really need to since Arrancar was her main focus arc) but does an amazing show of progress for post-Ulquiorra Orihime by introducing Riruka, a tsundere who hangs with Orihime a lot. While Riruka is as full of walls and bravado as Orihime originally was, this Orihime gets to be effortlessly vulnerable, recapping her horrible backstory to her new friend, being called creepy for her apparently fake smile, and clarifying that she actually can smile for real because she was already saved from her past.

The final arc doesn't do much with her aside from putting her in the final boss battle, so I guess I'll use this space to talk about how her progression in combat participation feels really well-paced. She goes from being squarely away from major action in Soul Society to not interfering with the fight but making a point to stay near the battle vs Grimmjow to start tactically throwing shields vs Ulquiorra to getting Ichigo actively ask for her help vs Ywhach.

Ok, that last is probably more about Ichigo himself having learned to ask for help 10 minutes ago after cringing at Uryuu's inability to rely on his friends and taking him as an antithesis model (pun intended).

But still, I love this kind of step-by-step character growth model, it reminds me of how Yugi and Atem's dynamic grew from Yugi unaware to Yugi aware to them starting to talk to them working together vs Pegasus to Yugi dueling alone to Yugi defeating Atem. Always great to see an author commit to a flowchart of development like that.

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Thoughts on Angra Mainyu?

It's really funny how the first post in the Angra tag is a post from only 3 weeks ago that says "just read the tag".

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There are a few times where in DR1’s English release, Naegi (or some other characters I forget) erroneously calls Jack “Toko”, but is never corrected. Is it the same in the Japanese release? Is Jack (or Sho in this case) fine with being called by the Fukawa family name?

Geno's introduction is played like

Base text: アタシが“超高校級の殺人鬼”ことジェノサイダー翔！本名は腐川冬子って、ダセー名前だけどね！！

Official localization: I'm the Ultimate Murderous Fiend, Genocide Jack! Or better yet, let's go with Genocide Jill!

My translation: I'm Genocider Shou aka the Super High School Level Serial Killer! Though I got Touko Fukawa as my lame-ass legal name!

It's common knowledge that Genocide Jill is an invention of Miyawaki's translation, but not much attention is called to the fact that there was more dialogue there that had to be replaced to make space for the Jill addition.

In both versions, Geno's default name is a moniker created by her investigators, based on a common male name to demonstrate that the police are assuming the culprit to be a man.

English Geno adopts the Genocide Jack moniker as maybe her own name, but chooses to amend it to Genocide Jill because that she's a girl and Jack is a male name. Meanwhile, Japanese Geno immediately shows that she only views Genocider Shou as something akin to a super cool stage name, and acknowledges Touko Fukawa as her official name, tacky as she finds it to be.

If Geno ever had to sign a document, English Geno would sign it as Genocide Jill and Japanese Geno would sign it as Fukawa Touko, is how I feel the difference in portrayal here is.

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Would Van Fem's magecraft be considered Age of God's or Man's? If it's AOM does that mean that the Clock Tower could potentially produce spells that could also be able to severely damage Bai Ruolong? Or even if Van Fem's is not using AOG magecraft his spells were created so long ago that spells of that caliber can't be created in the more modern era?

Probably the latter. Depends on how old Van-Fem really is. Going by pre-remake lore, Strout, Fem, and Ortenrosse are the three oldest Dead Apostles still alive, so depending on when Brunestud first visited Earth, there's a chance that he's older than Solomon and Western Magecraft. Even if he's younger, he lived in a time when AoG magecraft was more prevalent, so that's more likely.

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How do you think Aoko's magic circuits work given her profile in FGO? Did the 5th magic give a 2nd set or caused some sort of mutation to the ones she was born with?

Aoko is characterized by her inability to do any complicated magecraft despite her amazing proficiency with plain destructive beams, her Circuits are described as exceedingly simple, and the precise craftswoman Touko was denied the Fifth because she had the wrong Circuits for it.

Then her FGO profile says in relatively plain terms that Rotation Circuits are different from normal Circuits because only them make Fifth Magic possible. So that's practically confirmed that the Fifth and intricate magecraft are incompatible with each other.

And Revolution Circuits only appeared after her first use of the Fifth, but whether they were hidden there before or were added when her hair turned red doesn't really matter in any way. Though I do think they can disappear, considering Aoko's hair can get brown again.

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What are "stories" in the Nasuverse? The Deinos of Lostbelt 7 don't have the concept of it, and don't Scheherazade and Aesc weaponize stories for their Reality Marble/Magecraft? Summer Fairy Knight Tristan Bond 10 CE said something about writing stuff in a book and mastering it as magecraft is a form of mysticism that Panhuman History mages have forgotten.

That's never really explained because it's mostly self-explanatory. Stories are just stories. If I were to give a technical definition, they're collectively remembered events, be they actual past events or completely made up.

Thinking in terms of Gaia/Alaya, stories (or just civilization in general, as Altera uses the word) are products of mankind that weren't part of Earth's imagination. Being able to weaponize those concepts that nature didn't envision is what sets witches like Aesc and Alice apart from other fae.

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You mentioned a “pun” about cutting in Iori’s big speech for Chapter 3 NG+ of Samurai Remnant, can you explain it a bit? Is the term that’s used interesting?

切り替える. Cut + exchange. It's the common expression for this kind of switch, but it has the slashing verb in its roots. Nothing complicated.

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Do you think there's a chance of Seimei showing up/becoming playable or is he a character best used looming over the narrative without appearing?

Seimei feels like a somewhat important element of part 2, so if he'll be in FGO, he should come before the end of part 2. With January already filled, February being Valentines, April being OC4, May being a collab, August being Summer, the finale being maybe December, and OC5 also taking a month somewhere along the way, I'd say Seimei still has 5 chances left for a playable release.

Regardless, my faith still lies more in the Douman backstory manga.

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Probably a repetitive / obvious ask but what are your thoughts on orihime?

She's funny.

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There is a whole other essay hidden in crumblingsugarcookie's tags. I can't even fit it in one screenshot.

What are your thoughts on orihime?

Ichigo's little group of friends exist to be basis of Bleach's arcs. The Soul Society arc is envisioned as Rukia's arc, which is a no-brainer because Rukia is a Shinigami. The Lost Agent is envisioned as Chad's arc, and even if it fails that role, the choice is understandable due to Chad being a Fullbringer. The Blood War is envisioned as Uryuu's arc, obvious again because Uryuu is a Quincy. But Orihime is a Fullbringer, so realizing what makes her fit at the center of the Arrancar arc requires a little more thought.

Well, I'd say the answer can be found about as early as possible. Orihime simply isn't like any other character in the good side. A whole lot of characters in Bleach have tragic pasts, but only Orihime is shown having a tragic present. The other Karakura people have comfortable houses with providing families. The Seireitei is a high class place directly contrasted with the poor Rukongai. The Visored and Xcution are united communities. Unclear about the Quincies in Silbern because we never the status quo there before the times of war.

Meanwhile, Orihime lives alone thanks to cutting ties with her parents at age 4 and losing her brother at age 12. She survives out of part-time jobs and financial support from distant relatives who determine how much money she gets based on her grades. The status quo of Bleach is pretty rough on her, and if I'm not forgetting anyone, her alone. She's doing what she can to survive under a constant threat of hunger, which is something Bleach otherwise only portrays as the lifestyle of a Hollow. I'll get back to this later.

The point here is that Orihime's life sucks. But that's not a thing that ever shows. Orihime in public is just a silly airhead constantly presented as the most cheerful person around. Her screentime in normal school situations is marked by her filtering her unpleasant reality with outlandish imagination. Her antics make her look really stupid, but we're shown that she isn't as she has 3rd best grades in their school. Intentional as her silliness is, she can't afford to be a bad student because that affects how much bread she gets to every month, as mentioned above.

And Bleach wastes no time explaining why she's like that. Still in volume 1, it's already established that Orihime spent her whole life being protected by others. First Sora, then Tatsuki, and now Ichigo. And because she grew up like this, her greatest wish is to not be a problem.

She let Sora bite her because life going on without him was being a problem to him and having to protect her was being a problem to Ichigo. She puts on a smile at school and keeps her conditions a secret to avoid being a problem to anyone who could care about her living situation. She let Ulquiorra take her because she didn't want to be a problem to anyone willing to fight Aizen for her sake. Her experience in Soul Society should have told her that this last one would backfire tremendously, but in her moment of weakness, she couldn't fight against her ingrained habit of avoiding being a burden.

Another key point of her early characterization is obviously her relationship with Ichigo. He was just a cool funny guy at first, until Sora's incident made him interesting, so she asked Tatsuki about him, and only really started caring after hearing about Masaki's death. This happens in a volume where she takes the cover and her opening poem is "If I were the rain [...] could I tie hearts together?". The rain is the symbol of Ichigo's grief, and Orihime falls for Ichigo by associating the lost of his mother with the loss of her brother. She connects best by relating to suffering, which shows later in the many, many, many times she's shown healing Arrancars after years practically living like a Hollow when in the world of the living.

This is kinda of a sudden change of topic, but things are sorta moving in chronological order here and the next big checkpoint is Orihime's first fight, so I'll conclude the talk about her position there and now talk about her powers.

Orihime gets Shun Shun Rikka, a Fullbring centered around rejection of events. Like Bleach abilities tend to do, this power goes incredibly well with Orihime's established characterization. Reality sucks for her but she keeps things by rejecting it through her filter of imagination. She can attack with this power, but it's best suited as a shield (preventing causing problems for others) or healing (making people forget their problems).

She then proceeds to not do much in Soul Society, then early into the Arrancar arc, she loses to Yammy and gets to negatively compare herself to Rukia, who did well in her first on-screen fight ever. Her feelings of uselessness pile up and compound into the 5 lives scenes, which as I already told you before, I consider the emotionally powerful dialogue Kubo has ever written. Not much to comment on it, the moment speaks for itself.

For Orihime, the bulk of the Arrancar arc is spent interacting with Ulquiorra. It's a really challenging experience for her because Ulquiorra has zero emotional depth. He was an ancient Hollow with no eyes, ears, nose, or mouth, being unable to perceive the outside world until Aizen broke his mask. Starrk, Barragan, and Grimmjow's backstories establish that Arrancars inherit experiences from their Hollow selves. Breaking their masks didn't change who they are. But Ulquiorra has no experiences because his Hollow life was spent entirely in the nothingness of himself.

Orihime has always been engaging with people through a smile-shaped web of lies, social conventions, and bravado, but Ulquiorra still haven't experienced humanity enough for that to work on him. He responds only to cold truths, so Orihime's typical conversation strategies are proven useless. It forces her to change her ways. She can only teach him about the heart by being honest and direct. Arrancars are about literal broken masks, but Orihime makes herself part of their story by having her metaphorical mask broken.

After that, we have the Lost Agent arc, which doesn't really take Orihime further (and doesn't really need to since Arrancar was her main focus arc) but does an amazing show of progress for post-Ulquiorra Orihime by introducing Riruka, a tsundere who hangs with Orihime a lot. While Riruka is as full of walls and bravado as Orihime originally was, this Orihime gets to be effortlessly vulnerable, recapping her horrible backstory to her new friend, being called creepy for her apparently fake smile, and clarifying that she actually can smile for real because she was already saved from her past.

The final arc doesn't do much with her aside from putting her in the final boss battle, so I guess I'll use this space to talk about how her progression in combat participation feels really well-paced. She goes from being squarely away from major action in Soul Society to not interfering with the fight but making a point to stay near the battle vs Grimmjow to start tactically throwing shields vs Ulquiorra to getting Ichigo actively ask for her help vs Ywhach.

Ok, that last is probably more about Ichigo himself having learned to ask for help 10 minutes ago after cringing at Uryuu's inability to rely on his friends and taking him as an antithesis model (pun intended).

But still, I love this kind of step-by-step character growth model, it reminds me of how Yugi and Atem's dynamic grew from Yugi unaware to Yugi aware to them starting to talk to them working together vs Pegasus to Yugi dueling alone to Yugi defeating Atem. Always great to see an author commit to a flowchart of development like that.