randomaccount12352346

[randomaccount12352346]

Why is timeskip Norman drawn so grown up?

I have seen this question floating around a lot, and I know there is plenty of speculation going on about it, but I thought I would share my two cents as well.

Obviously, spoilers for anime only readers for future content, before you read on. Not all my posts are spoilery, but most are 😜

So timeskip Norman looking like an adult is pretty much an aninomous observation by now. I know that plenty of people have suggested growth experiments, and I have argued against that in my Norman is a Ratri genetic experiment born at Lambda theories, but I am not here to talk science today.

Haha, I guess I do enough of that in my day job.

What I want to talk about is the symbolism and poetic meaning behind making Norman look older than he is. There is an artistic purpose, and it’s not the first time Posuka-sensei uses this tool.

The same thing, though the opposite way (and much more drasticly) was used in these panels:

We all know that both Yuugo and Lucas are definitely grown up, and there is no logical reason why they would suddenly transform into children for mere moments, just before their death.

In my opinion, it’s a visual tool to invoke that feeling of, “Ah, 15 years passed, they grew up physically, but in their hearts they are still the same children” without having to use a narrator spell it out to us.

I think there is also a secondary purpose of making this statement just before they fall to their death. After all, this is a manga about Neverland, a place where children can never grow up… because in this promised Neverland children die before they grow up.

By reminding us that Yuugo and Lucas are still stuck in that past, that they are still those bright children at heart, the message is that they couldn’t escape this cursed, promised Neverland, even if they physically grew up: they died as children at heart.

I am sorry if I have made you sad with that thought, but I wanted to make the point that the way Norman is portrayed is with this theme in mind. And it’s all because of this part:

Norman intends to break the Neverland curse, but it isn’t just a literal destruction of the farm system. There is an added layer of symbolism in the fact that him CHOOSING to GROW UP already breaks the theme of this Neverland.

The irony of the situation is that while this 13 year-old barely teenager is literally surrounded by a group of adults, he is the one who actually behaves the most adult out of them. Experiment or not, they are all physically grown up, yet Zazie seems hardly capable of more thought than a toddler, then Cislo and Barbara pretty much behave like small children, shown when talking with Emma and Ray, with Vincent acting like a snarky teenage brother who was left in charge by the parent to babysit them…

If you look at those panels again, you can actually see how the art illustrates those behaviours: the baby toy tiger on Zazie, the childish expressions on those two’s faces and Vincent’s deadpan expression as they squabble with him.

Well, it’s no surprise that Norman ACTS so GROWN UP, after all, he is literally and figurately trying to fit the clothes of James Ratri, and carry the mantle of William Minerva. (If you ask my friend @vobomon about the topic, I bet you will hear a really good explanation of how this parallels Peter Pan in scarlet, the sequel to Peter Pan, where Peter Pan tries to wear the coat of the gown up, James Hook… and ends up with an identity crisis. I won’t comment on it more though, since I don’t know it well enough).

Both of these roles are that of an adult, so Norman can’t afford to be seen as a child by others. Technically there is no way for him to age his body, but body language, mannerism and clothes can do wonders, and Norman, ever the perfectionist goes to town on this with a full blown business suit that literally couldn’t scream more ADULT and RESPONSIBLE visually speaking. 

He is so successful at it actually, that he manages to convince a full crowd of children, and even his followers that they should see him as a depenable adult, rather than the teenager he is in reality. Actually, it goes as far as him getting compared to a god… and being viewed as a superhuman being, or having all those expectations of a saviour piled on someone must be an awful lot of pressure even for an adult, and Norman is only 13…

I don’t want to dwell too long on this, but I do want to comment how super unhealthy this situation must be for his mental health, how it must make him feel isolated and under an insane amount of pressure to succeed and keep this image up… The only way I see it heading is a mental breakdown, possibly with a full on panic attack followed by anxiety disorder… yes, unfortunately I’m speaking from experience.

Guys, seriously, the ominous thing about Norman isn’t that he might be evil, but that he is trying to do too much, trying to do humanly impossible things, trying to not make any mistakes, all by himself, without an emotional support system, and we are basically watching in slow motion as he heads towards a car crash once things don’t go his way… Just look at his expression when he finds out Mujika is alive despite his calculations… That expression isn’t just simple fear, but a full blown punch in the gut by anxiety that HE WAS WRONG AND WHAT ELSE COULD HE HAVE GOTTEN WRONG OH NO… HE CAN’T AFFORD MISTAKES NO NO NO…

Right, but lets get back to my original topic, and to the fact that Norman can act as adult as he wants, he can’t actually change that on the inside he is still basically a child, and certain situations make his adult mask crumble and revert him back to a child. One of the best examples is how when Emma sees him after almost 2 years, he appears at first, calm, collected, ADULT, but as soon as he calls her name, he can’t hold himself back from actually breaking, and crying like a KID, as he hugs her for dear life (not illustrated here, cause I have enough pics lol).

Posuka-sensei chooses to visually illustrate the contrast, and this is what some of you have observed as an “inconsistency” in her recent Norman art. However, the truth is that she is VERY CONSISTENT. Every time Norman is shown looking older than his actual age, he is behaving as if he was older. E.g: while talking politics he is drawn like a middle-aged politician.

But every time his adult mask breaks, or every time he allows himself to relax around people (which is mostly just the Gracefield kids, and especially Emma and Ray), he is drawn like a child. Like in the panel that everyone loves, it goes as far that it almost looks like those adult clothes are too large on him, and don’t actually fit him…

So that’s it. In summary, I think Norman is only symbolically drawn as older than his age, and only as a visual emphasis when he is actually acting adult, and trying to look grown-up. But in situations where he acts like a child should, we can see the real him drawn by Posuka-sensei.

Just look at these two panels side by side, they are even the same pose, but one of them shows Norman with his walls down around the GF kids, and the other is of him among demons he knows want to eat him.

(P.s: I tried writing this post on the PC to be able to include more than 10 pics without reblogs, but now I don’t know how to format the pics to not be so giant… D,: yes, I know I fail, sorry…)

[randomaccount12352346]

Azula apologists are stupid

For starters, here's a list of some of the shitty stuff she did:

-attempted genocide of the earth kingdom (she proposed the plan and tried to participate)

-throwing people in concentration camps

-trying to make two old ladies duel to the death

-sadistically smirking when Zuko was maimed and celebrating when Lu Ten died and laughing when Ozai threatened to kill Zuko

-brutally threatening and banishing her own servants for fun (remember the girl who left a pit in the cherry?)

-manipulating her "friends" under threat of death

I could go on, but you get the point.

Some crimes should not be forgivable nor forgettable. Those who would compare her to Zuko or Iroh are comparing apples to oranges; none of their crimes are on this magnitude, and more importantly, neither were motivated by literal sadism and cruelty for the sake of cruelty.

Zuko had a heart and a sense of remorse from the start and it shows. He was banished for advocating against using soldiers as bait. He never harms anyone unnecessarily. He is against stealing from the weak and even distributes food to the poor earth kingdom refugees. Azula proposed the earth kingdom genocide; Zuko was so horrified by it that it compelled him to finally switch sides.

Ozai raised her poorly, and she would have turned out better under normal parents. But genocide is genocide. "I was just indoctrinated/following orders" wasn't a good excuse for holocaust perpetrators and it shouldn't be one for Azula either. There is a point of no return.

Let's be real: if someone did what Azula did in the real world, we would all be (rightfully) calling her Hitler and screaming bloody murder.

Those who excuse her are looking for excuses when there are none. We literally see around 1 minute of her childhood, yet we have wild extrapolating theories about how Ursa and Iroh were neglectful, how she was molded completely, etc etc etc. And the thing is, we only do this with Azula. We don't overanalyze Azulon explicitly threatening Ozai and come up with armchair theories of his abuse. We don't make up theories about how Zhao felt stifled into being aggressive and honor seeking to the point where he was willing to sacrifice his own life.

The truth is Azula showed a disturbing disregard for human suffering from a young age. Nature and nurture both play a role. Mental health is not our fault but it is our responsibility.

The ONLY valid point going for her is the fact that she's an adolescent. Even so, teenagers being tried as adults is not uncommon for crimes orders of magnitudes less severe than what Azula has committed. The wave of people clamoring for an Azula redemption (or, even worse, denying that she did anything wrong beyond "being a bully") is baseless. It probably comes from overzealous devotion to Azula and a soft spot for over-romanticized tragic backstories.

One final point is that speaking practically, it is too much risk and too politically unacceptable to allow a deranged and powerful bender responsible for bringing the world to its knees back into society where innocent people can get hurt. Azula's life is not worth more than anyone else's.

TL;DR: Indoctrination is no excuse for crimes against humanity.