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Goodbye Heavensward ~

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(no spoilers) 

I just want to express how Atlus outdid themselves with Akira’s character. I love him. Compared to the protagonists from the last two games, he didn’t feel too… vacant – at least, in my opinion. They gave him a little personality, but not too much for us players to feel emotionally detached. They gave us insight to his character: from what he trudged through waist-deep in his past to what he felt in its aftermath.

I found myself gushing whenever he reveals a small smile around his dear friends or being a badass in the Metaverse. It gives him personality.

But he isn’t always like that. There’s a calculating character to him – often grim. He’s silent. His thoughts are galaxies compared to what he chooses to say. Takemi, Iwai, and Sojiro point this out: “You look pretty serious.” or “You always have a scowl on your face these days.” He has been treated so poorly in the past, perhaps he has an inevitable grudge against adults? Who knows, but it makes him human. 

 He can be a little bit of dork sometimes, that’s for sure.

Upon writing this, I realized that whatever I felt towards Akira, it was sympathy. As I went along the story of the game, I couldn’t exactly pinpoint how I felt playing this character. Was I supposed to embody the protagonist entirely? To see, feel, and live the moments of the story in his shoes? Or see him as another character of the plot? I experienced both simultaneously, in a way. Akira Kurusu was cast away into a situation he never asked for, yet he found precious moments wherein he can freely express other sides of himself with his friends. 

As mentioned before, he was given a considerable amount of character as opposed to the past protagonists; that resonated well within me as he and I experienced moments throughout the game as his thoughts, emotions, and expressions matched my own. I didn’t feel too detached, but I certainly don’t see myself as him. 

 Also: sassy Akira is best Akira.

Well, that about sums up what I’ve been thinking about all night. Let me know if it struck you with new insight, heck even debate with me on it. Thanks for reading.

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Ann: Fine! Then I guess we're boyfriend and girlfriend!

Ryuji: Fine!

Ann: Fine!

Ryuji: One condition!

Ann: What?

Ryuji: I get to be the boyfriend!

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i guess the thing that draws me to persona so much is how the themes of the games are very much tailored to humanity’s shared issues persona 3 is a game about death, about hardship, and how you crawl out of it with bleeding hands and exhausted bones, but you still do it. its about finding the strength to continue to live even after severe hardship, and overcoming the desire to simply give up. every social link surrounds a character going through a hard time, the most extreme probably being akinari coming to terms with his own inevitable death. each character feels hopeless and wants nothing more than to give up and cease trying, but all overcome it with help from the protagonist. the end of the game sees you fight nyx, the effective personification of this desire of humanity to succumb to hardship and simply end it and die, and you overcome it with the equal of humanities desire to overcome and survive.  persona 4, comparatively, is a game about acceptance, about recognizing your own flaws and accepting that they are as much a part of you as your skills, and coming to peace with that, and learning to not worry about what others WANT you to be, and simply be happy with who you ARE, showed best by kanjis complex about his reputation as a thug, and his actual interests being traditionally female, which he learns to just accept and embrace as himself regardless of what others think. you fight izanami, a goddess trying to enact what she believes humanity wants, influencing them to be something theyre not, when the protagonist allows humanity to choose their own fate by fighting her off.  persona 5, however, is a game about rebellion and denial. its about seeing the hand youre dealt, and deciding, fuck this, flipping the table in the dealers face and telling him to fuck off. every character is in a situation they resent, but accept, as they feel they have no other choice. the game follows them learning that they DONT have to simply accept it, and to find the strength and drive to reject how things are, and change their own situation. in the end you literally shoot god in the face with satan, the ultimate rebel, cause god wants to kill humanity and fuck that noise son.  idk where i was going with this but i just…. love the themes of the persona games.

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#RelatableNoctis | a sequel of (x)

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Still 5 months left.

And if you’re playing it right now, have fun lucky ones. =D

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Still wainting for the western release. I can’t help but continue to draw for this game. My hype’s gonna kill me. =( But I’m succeeding at avoiding spoilers. =D

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Nanako Dojima’s Persona, Tokuhime

Lady Toku, or Tokuhime, was probably the most well known daughter of the infamous sixteenth century Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga.  She’s best known for being responsible for the deaths of her mother in law, Lady Tsukiyama, who she detested, and her husband, which was an unintended consequence of getting the former killed.  Oops.

The specifics aren’t really all that important here, as I mostly chose Tokuhime because she was the daughter of a terrifying warlord, which I thought was a good enough callback to her own fears of her father in her shadow.  I dunno.

But, funny thing, this Persona’s design.  I have really good ideas for basically every other Persona I have left to design, and I hit a roadblock with Nanako for a while.  I only really knew two things–one, that it was to be a navigation Persona, not a combat one, and two, that I wanted it to be angelic looking.  You can see an earlier attempt on the bottom left of the lower picture.

However, I felt nothing was really working until I just looked at the design a completely different way–Personas don’t have to be big, monstrous things, do they?  That’s when I realized the direction I had to go.  Some more brainstorming, and I came up with this.

I wanted it to look like a cartoon, kid appeal character, something that Nanako would really like.  Soft, cute, and cuddly: and what soft, cute, cuddly thing does Nanako like the most?  Teddie, of course!  So the design became sort of what Nanako would imagine as a female counterpart to Teddie.  And I really wanted to sell what I thought would be Nanako’s personal excitement at helping the Investigation Team, so I gave it a magnifying glass (I know she’s also a fan of some detective show or manga in the adaptations I think).

I didn’t really pull anything from Tokuhime’s tale from the design at all (as there isn’t much to go on, really), so I decided to use the Oda clan symbol as her belt buckle and tie its flower motif into its dress, which helps connect it to Nanako more I think, what with her fond memories of her mother picking flowers at the riverbank.

Anyway, yeah, Nanako is intended to be a navigator.  She would use the magnifying glass to see what’s going on.  I briefly, briefly thought about giving her a combat role but that just felt so very wrong.  Like, gross child negligence or something.  You just don’t make a six/seven year old fight.  Plus, Nanako’s too sweet of a girl.

Go here to compare to Shadow Nanako.

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The Fox’s Persona, Tamamo-no-mae

Tamamo-no-mae was one of the names taken by a fox spirit who was supposedly responsible for corrupting royalty all over eastern Asia.  Specifically, Tamamo-no-mae was the identity it took of a courtesan under Emperor Toba.  She was said to be beautiful and extremely intelligent.  But when the emperor mysteriously fell ill she was exposed as a fox in disguise and the one behind the illness and she fled.

But really, the reason I chose Tamamo-no-mae is because she was a fox interfering with human affairs, though obviously the fox in Persona 4 was a helpful figure, not a malevolent one.  Oh well.

When it came to designing this thing, though, it was a little tricky.  I mean, I had a pretty good idea right away, but I don’t have very much experience drawing foxes, and I wanted it to be recognizable as a fox, so I had to do some research and practice.  But like I said, I had one idea right away–the mask.  Typically you see people wearing fox masks (as is the case in my design for the fox’s Shadow), not foxes wearing people masks, so that felt like a fun reversal.

I don’t know how I ended up first drawing those lips but after I did along with the visor shape for eyes it kind of reminded me of a female spy from like a 60s movie or something, so that informed the rest of the design.  She also needed nine tails, of course, being a fox spirit and all, so I had to do something there, but I always seem to arrive at a design solution that’s the most difficult to draw.  Those things were a pain, I’m not going to lie.

For the fox’s weapon I had to mull on it for a while, as I definitely wanted a proper weapon and I didn’t want to just copy what Koromaru had.  Four legged creatures are obviously limited to what human weapons they can wield, so I gave the fox a kusarigama (a sickle with a chain and ball at the end).  A rather…  short kusarigama, but a kusarigama nonetheless.  I’m not entirely sure how it wields one, as real ones require two hands, but it sorta looks cool in the picture.

Here’s the fox’s Shadow for comparison.

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Here’s to 20 glorious years of Pokemon!

FIRE - WATER

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Here’s to 20 glorious years of Pokemon!

GRASS - WATER

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Here’s to 20 glorious years of Pokemon!

GRASS - FIRE

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Lock this attractive thief up. He’s under arrest for stealing and breaking millions of hearts.

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Beautiful Eorzea

So, so beautiful <3

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I’ll just be leaving that here. / Je vais juste laisser ça là. :( #brussels #bruxelles #belgique #belgium #prayfortheworld

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Dark Souls - Jolly cooperation!

Commission work