readingsfrommars

[readingsfrommars]

Journey to Myself - Help Get This Manga about Gender Identity Licensed

Over the past decade, publishers like YenPress and SevenSeas have allowed us to see a greater diversity in manga titles that get licensed. Both in particular have sizeable LGBTQ+ libraries which have led to some incredible works being available in English, such as Adachi and Shimamura and Our Dreams at Dusk.

Unfortunately, many LGBTQ+ stories still remain unavailable in English. One such manga is “Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made.”

Summary:

Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made (roughly “Until He Becomes Her,” “The Girl He Would Become,” or “Until I Become Me”) is a “gender-bender” manga written and illustrated by Satou Hatsuki. It is a coming-of-age story focused on Fujimiya Akira, a young second-grade boy who bullies the girls at school before waking up one day as a girl due to a rare affliction. The boys in class immediately turn against and abuse Akira, while the girls he once harassed shun him completely. With no friends left at school, Akira is forced to move away and live as a girl. Initially resistant to her new life, a budding friendship leads Akira on an emotional journey towards growing up, forming bonds, and learning to be kind while understanding who she wants to be.

For those unaware, “gender-bender” is a genre of fiction wherein a character, through some means – bodyswapping, magic, etc. – becomes another gender. Many of these works do not depict the trans experience per se, but are based in the perspective of tying gender to sex and play around with it in more crude or simplistic terms. They can play into foibles like gender essentialism, but also offer a space to break down societal ideas of identity. As such, some trans people may sometimes see their experiences reflected in these works, while at other times finding them distasteful or overly simplistic in their portrayal of gender and identity.

OreWata is, despite its inciting incident, very grounded in its exploration of gender identity. Early on in the story Akira is told that if she wishes to return to being a boy, she could start puberty blockers and later on use hormones to transition. The acknowledgement of not only gender dysphoria but medical interventions to alleviate that dysphoria are rare in stories in general, and a refreshing inclusion in a series such as this. As Akira adapts to her new life and grows into adolescence, she learns joy in being called cute, wearing skirts and dresses, and being able to express her emotions more vividly with her friends. Meanwhile, she also struggles to tell her mother about these feelings, afraid of her family's expectations and uncertain how they'd react to her desire to remain a girl. These aspects end up feeling deeply resonant with a trans experience, and we wish for more people to be able to read it.

How to help:

YenPress can be contacted via either Twitter/X (@YenPress) or via Email (yenpress@yenpress.com).

1. Contact via Twitter

If using Twitter, be sure your message is being sent via a public account. Include a picture of the volume 1 cover as attached above. Additional anecdotes help, but are optional. (Special thanks to BehindTheManga for base templates!)

Templates

Hello! I'd really love to see オレが私になるまで (Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made) by Satou Hatsuki licensed in English! @yenpress

Hello. A friend of mine recently recommended a manga to me, but it’s not available in English. The manga is オレが私になるまで (Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made) by Satou Hatsuki. Is there any chance we could see it licensed? @yenpress

Hello! There’s an LGBTQ+ manga that I’d really like to read, but it’s not licensed in English at all. It’s called オレが私になるまで (Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made) by Satou Hatsuki. I would really like to see it in your catalog, if possible! @yenpress 

2. Contact via Email

If possible, it could help to add additional writing or anecdotes are encouraged. This is optional, though.

Basic Template

Subject: Manga Request

Recipient: yenpress@yenpress.com

Message: Hello, Yen Press. I have a manga title I wanted to submit for your company to request.

Title: オレが私になるまで (Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made)

Author: Satou Hatsuki

Japanese Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten

Templates for Extra Messages

As an LGBTQ+ reader, I really appreciate your wide selection of stories highlighting experiences of those like myself. It is important to me that stories like this are accessible to as wide an audience as possible, and given the quality in your releases of other LGBTQ+ works like “Adachi and Shimamura” and “I Want to Be a Wall,” I believe your company would be a great fit for bringing this manga to overseas audiences.

I have a lot of transgender friends, so I’m really interested in seeing more manga on the subject of gender identity. A friend recommended this story to me, but it’s only available in Japanese, so I’m not able to read it. I’ve enjoyed your other releases that play with gender in the past, such as “Magical Girl Incident” and “Miss Savage Fang,” so I believe your company would handle this manga with the care required for it to reach a wider audience.

This story has resonated strongly with me, but when I talked about it with some friends that seemed interested in reading it, we sadly found out that it had not yet been licensed in the US. I have read your releases of LGBTQ+ series’ including "Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl" and enjoyed it, therefore I think you would handle this manga well too.

(Please change or add other works if there are other titles you feel strongly about, and expand messages if you have more to say. These are just examples, and we want to avoid spamming identical messages.)

3. SevenSeas Survey

Manga can be requested to SevenSeas via their monthly surveys available in the right sidebar on their website. https://sevenseasentertainment.com/ 

Under “What non-licensed *MANGA FROM JAPAN* would you like us to license and publish in English? Type it here,” fill in with “オレが私になるまで (Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made) by Satou Hatsuki”. Complete the survey, filling out the rest however you see fit.

How else you can help:

If you could share this post to your friends, especially other LGBTQ+ folks who might be interested in the manga and ask them to participate and share as well, it would be greatly appreciated! The important thing is that the publishers need to know there’s an audience who really wishes to see this published in English, both so that we can support the creator and so that this story may reach a wider audience and get the love it deserves.

Thank you so much for even a small amount of help. We hope that with your support, we can see an overseas release for this story.

[readingsfrommars]

So, I've been wanting to talk about The Prince of Egypt for a long time now. But with current events, I fear that it may be interpreted as support for the atrocities that are being committed by Israel. But I believe that the story that The Prince of Egypt tells is more relevant today than ever before, and it is one that sympathizes with Palestine.

If I were to write such an essay about the Prince of Egypt, would anyone be interested in reading it?

[readingsfrommars]

A Hero in a City Full of Giants, Part 2

Alright, I've done Shi Association and Blade Lineage, now it's time for Lobotomy Corp and W Corp! These two will probably be relatively brief (they were not), but if you know the context, it won't come as a surprise.

After this will be Don's Middle and N Corp IDs!

Oh, Lobotomy Corp Don. You silly thing, you. I will say, on a completely unrelated note, it's cool to see how abnormalities look without the cognition filter active.

The Walpurgis night IDs feel slightly less "canon" than the others, to me, although that's more of an opinion thing. I'd be happy to explain why if asked.

Anyway, the fact that Don received a Lobotomy Corporation ID instead of one of the Library of Ruina ones is interesting here, as we know this specifically is the Lob Corp facility we play through in the game. So, we get the benefit of knowing a bit more context toward her working situation, although to be perfectly honest, the only thing that actually matters is the knowledge of her assigned abnormality, O-04-84, or Meat Lantern.

For those who don't know, Meat Lantern can be a rather frustrating abnormality to work with. First of all, it doesn't like if a work session with it ends too early, and is a fairly common escapee when shit hits the fan. Now, if it were any other abnormality this would be fairly manageable, it's just a matter of suppressing it and that's that, but Meat Lantern is a special case.

Firstly, you will not be notified that Meat Lantern has breached containment. Secondly, once you do realise, you will notice that it isn't roaming the facility. Instead, it has teleported somewhere in the facility and is waiting with its lantern sprouted out of the ground like a flower. If someone walks over the flower, they are killed instantly. You will need to find it before it kills too many people, or, worse, kills one of your important agents. It is a deceptively lethal abno with the right circumstances.

So why did I take the time to explain all of this? Well, if you were someone who, for example, aspired to be a hero that helped the weak and were given the responsibility of dealing with an abnormality that when left to its own devices can kill dozens of employees without being noticed, you would probably place a lot of importance on making sure it didn't do exactly that.

Lob Corp Don has a different way of seeing things, comparing it more akin to a game of Hide and Seek and punishing it for the "mischief" of killing multiple people by smacking its backside before placing it back in containment.

While, Don has always been an oddball case, this feels... strange to me. The most likely cause of this in my eyes is the armour she's wearing. As we have been shown through a number of different stories in Project Moon's catalogue, wearing E.G.O is not without its side-effects upon one's psyche. Obviously there is also the working conditions, as multiple instances within Lob Corp show that the body count is very high in that place (Lookin at you, Queen of Hatred). The way that it appears to have affected Don's mind is that she appears to have a great deal of affection towards the abnormalities, calling Meat Lantern (which outright eats people) cute and struggling to punish it for, again, eating people.

Suffice it to say, Lobotomy Corporation Don Quixote is no hero, although she has a commendable work ethic at least.

W Corp Don is a prime example of the speed at which The City can and will bring Don to ruin.

If you know how WARP trains work, you know why I don't need to explain much here. If you don't...

WARP trains are a form of near-instantaneous public transit, which is all well and good until you remember how time works when moving at or close to the speed of light. If you are not in first class seating, you will discover a few things.

Firstly, the train does not, in fact reach its destination instantly. Initially, people on the train may think this is the result of some sort of breakdown, and that, once the train is fixed, they will be able to get out at their desired stop soon.

Secondly, you do not need to eat or drink while on the train. This is not immediately apparent to the passengers, but when minutes becomes hours and the train still hasn't reached its destination, this will eventually be noticeable.

Eventually, hours will become days, weeks, then months. People will begin to panic, some may become violent, and if you are unlucky enough to see someone go past the point of no return, you will learn the final, terrible truth of WARP trains.

You cannot die within a WARP train. No matter what happens to you, you will still be conscious. You are forced to experience the full journey, even after a hundred years and you've watched countless people, who were once strangers, but have become life-long friends in the countless years since. Even after three thousand years, when you have long since forgotten your name, language, and what you were when you got onto the train. You will live through it all.

At your destination, a functionally identical reconstruction of you will leave the train at its destination, completely unaware of the eternity they experienced behind them.

This one does not need much explanation, although I will happily point out one very interesting detail about the ID story.

W Corp Don's ID story does not show her Uptie 3 art at all. All we see after her initial ID art is a black screen as it describes that Don's reaction of disgust and horror is the same reaction anyone has upon learning the truth of the trains.

Instead, the Uptie 3 art gives us the aftermath.

It shows us what the revelation has turned Don into.

Do you see a hero here? Because if you ask me, I don't think the word "hero" will appear in W Corp Don's thoughts ever again after this point.

[readingsfrommars]

A Hero in a City Full of Giants

So I just got positive on my covid test and have nothing better to do. I figured I might as well get started on the Don Quixote analysis of each of her IDs.

Please note that I am not infallible, and can very well get things wrong. Additionally, I might not do it all at once. It's kind of a lot.

I will also not be going over T Corp and Cinq Association in too much detail here, as I have already covered them in earlier posts.

For now, I'll discuss Shi Association and Blade Lineage. They're both pretty clear cut, so they're unsurprisingly the most brief explanations.

With that sorted, let's begin.

To start, it's important to remember the setting of Limbus Company. To summarise a lot, and I mean a lot, The City is a hyper-capitalist dystopia, one in which the best way to survive is to look out for yourself first and foremost. It is a place where in order to get anything meaningful done, one must be strong. The systems in each wing exist to benefit the rich and powerful, while exploiting the people beneath them.

Altruism is an endangered concept with The City. In a place where you have to give everything you have to merely survive, the ability to help someone else for no benefit to yourself is a luxury. Any who try will, assuming they aren't killed first, inevitably discover the futility of their actions.

Suffice it to say, heroes don't last long.

And yet, Don Quixote is still here. Still trying, despite everything that has impeded her path. Throughout the story, we have seen her time and time again going out of her way to help the weak and downtrodden, to varying degrees of success. And, while she might not be an actual hero - at least, not yet - her identities provide an interesting perspective on her motivations.

With every ID of hers we've received, we have seen a Don who, in one way or another, failed in her journey towards Heroism.

I'll start with Shi Association. They're assassins whose lethality also extends to themselves. They tend to excel when they're on the brink of death, which means that any mission they're in is likely to get very, very bloody. In Don's case, the ID story shows us that, while she acts jolly and upbeat around her colleagues, she is a deeply traumatised woman by this point.

Her ID art should tell you exactly how heroic she feels at this point. Shi Association Don is no hero, only a weapon that is on the brink of breaking.

Moving on...

Blade Lineage Don is an brief one. Don seems relatively sane compared to a number of her other IDs, even more so than LCB Don, but it is explicitly stated within her ID story that she has long since given up her quest for heroism.

Pretty straightforward, honestly. Don has lost the will to fight for others, instead deciding to act in her own best interests. In the context of The City, this would be considered a good ending for her. She's alive, still has her sanity, and is a part of a syndicate that has an above average level of morality. Not that being above average means anything, really...

So that's those two IDs done. I'll try to get the next few done by tuesday, but I can't guarantee that. If you've read all the way to here, first of all, thank you very much, but second of all...

Should I include Don's Lobotomy Corp ID? It feels a bit like an outlier, but I expect I could probably find something to talk about with it.

[readingsfrommars]

I can only really speak for ADHD because it's the only disorder (THAT I KNOW ABOUT) that I have, but even then, there's a lot to talk about with it.

I've always found it saddening how much ADHD is reduced to "oh they're just hyper and disruptive" as if there aren't some seriously debilitating aspects of its countless symptoms.

Take for example, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or RSD for short. This is a greatly increased sensitivity towards perceived rejection. Things like not being included for group activities, or even something like not being somebody's first choice to ask for help. Obviously, as is the nature of ADHD it varies from person to person, but it is no exaggeration to say that RSD can be devastating to someone's ability to form meaningful relationships. And this is putting aside that, in the cases where they know they have ADHD, they already have a potential source of feeling alienated from their peers.

The other huge source of difficulty for most people with ADHD, at least from my understanding, is executive dysfunction. This is where the disorder goes from slightly disruptive to outright destructive to a person's ability to take care of themself. ADHD can make even the most basic of tasks a huge struggle, because the act of starting that task becomes incredibly difficult. From things like doing laundry, dishes, general maintenance stuff, to hugely important assignments for school or work, ADHD can make even the smallest task painfully daunting.

I'll stop there, but I implore anyone who read this and went "Oh, I didn't know that" to go and do some research. Obviously my perspective on ADHD is inherently biased and might not apply to someone else with the disorder. But it's important to keep an open mind with these things. I didn't even mention things like the extremely addictive personality that is exploited by predatory marketing practices like FOMO and preying on gambling addictions, or the fact that ADHD has a high co-morbidity rate with other conditions like anxiety and depression.

ADHD is not something you can explain in three sentences, and anyone who believes otherwise has no idea what they're talking about.

i feel like a lot of people don't take ADHD/ADD as seriously because they water it down to the quirky hyper disorder when in reality it's so much more grueling and crushing then what others think. to the point is affects your physical health.

The same can be said with OCD, "ohhh don't you like, want to clean things and keep them neat constantly haha" it's more than that, it's genuine compulsions and thoughts that actually consume your life but nobody is ready to take it seriously unless you have these disorders yourself.

[readingsfrommars]

At this point I think I'm just gonna go over every ID Don has and explore how they align with Don's aspirations of heroism. It might be a video essay. It might not. It will, however, definitely be far longer than it probably needs to be.

[readingsfrommars]

About T Corp Don

Well folks, we've got a new ID, and a new perspective on Don Quixote, so here I am! T-corp Don is an interesting one because not only is this yet another identity where she is still sane, it's also the closest we've seen to her ideal.

I'll warn you now, this one is long.

Unlike Cinq Association, Don is not acting a mercenary, but a time collector, meaning that her allegiance is not dependent on the highest bid. This means she is able to punish the rich just as much as the poor, which is a significant improvement compared to her other IDs.

Sure, this might sound a bit superficial. Sure, while there is the possibility that a rich tax evader will get caught and punished, the much more likely that the target of her collection will be someone too poor to pay the time debt. Any good intention is drowned out by the reality of The City, right? And normally, I would agree with this.

But that's where our beloved hero Don Quixote comes in. While her work may not be as noble as we'd like, it's in the way she treats her work that we can see how much of a difference it makes.

This might not seem significant to everyone, but T-Corp Don's dreams of heroism are still intact. In her ID story, there is a vital detail that we get to see about Don and the way she treats her work.

Don shows a clear disdain towards taking from the poor, despite the fact that, according to T-Corp, they have broken the law and must be punished. This is interesting for a few reasons, and I'll try to show this through Don's other IDs.

Like I mentioned in my examination of Cinq Association Don, most of her IDs involve two themes.

Don is indoctrinated by the group she is with. This can be seen with N Corp and W Corp (initially), but is present in most of her identities.

Either Don's dream breaks, or her mind does. Again, N Corp and W Corp are both fantastic examples of this. (A subtle but nevertheless notable example of this is Blade Lineage Don. It is never explicitly stated what has happened to her, but the simple fact that she no longer wields her blade for others speaks volumes as to how her dream is long gone.)

However, with T Corp, we see Don actively trying to avoid performing her duty as a collector when it comes into conflict with her ideals. This tells us that she has not only managed to avoid being indoctrinated by T Corp, she has managed to keep her dream and mind intact.

Like Cinq Association, she has found a way to pursue justice in her own way, albeit with a few compromises. And, in my personal opinion, she seems more fulfilled by her work for T Corp.

As stated before, she spares no expense in her pursuit and punishment of the rich tax evaders, who exploit the poor and vulnerable. In her ID story, it shows her risking going past her allotted work hours to expense justice.

Meanwhile with the poor, she will try to delay their punishment as much as possible. Delaying anything in T Corp, where time is everything, is something that should not be taken lightly.

Compared to her earlier IDs, this is a huge improvement. For Don, who in most IDs would fulfill her duty without question, to show clear resistance towards doing work (which according to T Corp involves punishing wrongdoers) demonstrates that she has managed to keep her ideals of heroism far more than ever before, to the point of her own personal code clashing with the law.

In my opinion, this is something to celebrate. Within the grim reality of The City, being able to maintain noble ideals is laughable, even for those strong enough to defend them.

T Corp Don keeping hold of her desire to fight for justice sounds too good to be true, considering all of the other ways we've seen her story go very, very wrong.

And if you did think it was too good to be true...

You'd be right.

Just like in Cinq Association, T Corp Don represents a failure to achieve her dream. And in this case, it's built into the very foundations of this ID. The very fact that she is working for T Corp is proof that she has, perhaps without knowing it, given up on her idea of justice.

Oh, and when I said Don wasn't indoctrinised? I lied.

T Corp is one of the most extreme places in terms of inequality between the rich and poor. When time is literally money, you'll be lucky to get ten hours in a day, while your employer likely has upward of 50 hours a day. If you don't understand what I'm saying by this, you'll get it if you complete Canto 6.5.

T Corp would already be an awful place - even to the standard of The City - if that was the only thing the poor were robbed of, but anyone who has played Limbus Company knows that I have missed out a very important detail about the place.

In T Corp, colour is a luxury. I'm not talking colourful clothes or furniture, I mean you are literally monochrome unless you pay for it. If you are poor, not only do you have less time between grueling work shifts, your world has no colour. Every day is mind-destroying work, eating, and sleeping. Nothing changes. Everything you look at is some shade of brown, and there is nothing you can say you truly own.

To live in T Corp is to accept the most brutal inequality the human mind can conceive. You don't question the awful working conditions, the way the lower class are exploited and discarded by the rich and powerful, or the fact that a will to live is something that must be bought. You accept all of that because that's life for you. The idea of being treated any better is something that is only possible by getting more wealth, which means you need more hours in the day to work, which you get by working. There is no life for the poor of T Corp. Only Survival, work, and death.

To work for T Corp is to not only accept the way things are, but to assist them. Any semblance of equality in Don's work is illusory, and the truth of the matter is that her work continues to secure the future of that brutal cycle. The game even states as much in her story.

I haven't played Final Fantasy 7's remake, but there's a line from that game that feels very relevant to T Corp Don.

"A good man who serves a great evil is not without sin. He must recognise and accept his complicity."

T Corp Don is potentially the most tragic ID Don has. She has allowed herself to become something that can only be described as evil in order to find the slightest bit of good.

So what does she do? She gives her everything to punishing the people she believes are more evil than her, in order to vent her frustration and validate her path, while at the same time trying in vain to distance herself from the evil she must inevitably commit to maintain the status quo.

But someone who only does good some of the time is not a hero, and deep down Don knows it.

[readingsfrommars]

Another Very Normal Rant on Aventurine and Sunday (Patch 2.2 spoilers for Honkai Star Rail!)

So I've been wanting to write about Star Rail for a while. The game's writing is, especially lately, top notch and I have been enjoying it a ton. Be warned, I may have talked too much this time.

As the title says, there's a fascinating comparison between Aventurine and Sunday that I wanted to talk about. I'll skip over the frankly thesis-worthy amount of details you could write about when it comes to the interactions those two have, as well as the way aventurine acts during his time at penacony. Maybe I'll come back to it someday. For now, what I want to talk about is Aventurine and how he fits into Sunday's philosophy on life.

To recap, Sunday's view on life (according to my interpretation and simplified A LOT) is that it is better to for the weak to give up their freedom if it means they never have to go through hardship. Better to stagnate than to suffer, as he sees it.

The prime example he uses for this is an analogy of a baby bird that he and his sister, Robin found when they were children. The bird, too young and weak be able to fly, would certainly perish if left to its own devices. The pair, unwilling to let such a thing happen, come up with two ideas:

Build a nest on the ground for the bird, increasing its chances of survival, but ultimately leaving it to its fate

Build a cage for the bird to mature in safety, allowing it to heal until it could survive on its own again.

As we all know, Robin went with option 2, raising the bird before letting it go free upon reaching adulthood, only for it to die a few days later. Unable to fly against the wind currents, the bird had crashed to the ground.

This, alongside other experiences Sunday went through that left his faith in humanity all but gone, led him to the conclusion that trying to let the weak help themselves was a futile endeavour. In his mind, the only way to truly help the weak and less fortunate was to keep them in a cage, safe from harm at the cost of their freedom.

One of the interesting things about this analogy is that both Sunday and Robin are both examples of that second choice. Both children were left orphans until they were taken in by Gopher Wood, Dreammaster of Penacony. After this, they were raised with every need met and every problem dealt with. A more metaphorical cage, but a cage nonetheless.

Where Robin and Sunday differed is in how they saw the cage. While Sunday would continue to stay within his cozy, safe home, Robin would spread her wings and take off, never again letting herself be caged. When Sunday received news that Robin had received a bullet wound in her neck after going into an active warzone, it only served to strengthen his beliefs that the way of the Harmony was futile. The way Sunday saw it, if the reward for all of that compassion is nothing but pain, then there is no point in trying to help people find their happiness. (I'm paraphrasing to an extent)

But you might be asking: "Mars, what about Aventurine? You've only talked about Sunday, and for way longer than you probably should have."

And to that I say "Fuck. My bad"

But also "I'm glad you asked"

Aventurine is a character I don't think I have the attention span to fully delve into. So I won't. At least not yet. And considering how much you've read to get here, that is something you should probably be thankful for.

Aventurine is the last member of his people, the Avgins. Almost immediately after becoming the last of his kind, he is then put into slavery, with a brand placed on his neck (an interesting parallel with Robin's bullet wound). It is only through his own efforts that he was able to break free of his captors and become a part of the IPC, a place that would go on to become a home of sorts for him.

As a self-admitted gambler, he is always willing to take risks to reach his goals, but don't let appearances fool you. His risks are calculated, and tend to involve him receiving the brunt of the punishment while the people around him capitalise on the opening he provides. That's how he operates both in story and gameplay, mind you. The only thing he really bets is his life more often than not

While that does make him seem more like a nihilist than anything else, there's a lot to unpack with his actions and motivations and I'll get to that some other day. But at the end of the day, his plans revolve around his faith that others will be able to finish what he started.

Between his childhood and upbringing, as well as the way he operates, Aventurine is the antithesis of Sunday's beliefs. It is the suffering that made Aventurine into the person he is, and allowed him to ultimately overcome Sunday's conspiracy.

It was Aventurine forcing Acheron to unsheathe her blade that led to the express was able to learn the truth of the dreamscape, and subsequently allowed them to save Penacony. And once all is said and done, what recognition did he receive? At best, he'll be demoted from the position he worked tirelessly for.

When you think about it, Aventurine embodies the Harmony better than Sunday does. But then again, isn't that the point?

[readingsfrommars]

hunters college AU w/ orcabirb

[readingsfrommars]

SARIA SILENCE HAPPY MARRIED LIFE I AM SANE

[readingsfrommars]

For some added context, this is a page from chapter 2 of my favourite of Mori's manga, Otoyomegatari (A Bride's Story).

When they say they're having fun, it really shows. I highly recommend this mangaka's works, they tend to make stories focussed on specific times and places, putting a lot of effort into accurately depicting the culture and lifestyle of the people there.

from the “Afterword” of Emma, vol. 5 by Kaoru Mori

[readingsfrommars]

well I’d like to see you look better after having your balls stolen Tatsu

[readingsfrommars]

if you got like a 100kilo bag of glitter and opened it up and left it in the path of like a tornado i think that would be interesting. i dont care abt ecological damage btw

[readingsfrommars]

Anon and Sakiko have a number of incredibly interesting parallels in relation to Tomori, but the most important one for me is in the way they resonate with the phrase "Once again, I have failed to become human."

We all have seen how Sakiko ended up with that parallel, but I feel like Anon's side of it is less obvious. One of the ways you could interpret that is through the song Noroshi, where the two voices share that they feel like they're from a different planet.

I've always considered this song to be about Tomori and Anon, as they very much both struggle with feeling like they belong, as well as the fact that they are both very heavily implied to have disorders (Tomori has autism and Anon has ADHD)

However, one way that Anon (and Sakiko) relate to the feeling of "I failed to be human" can be seen in their flashbacks. Anon and Sakiko show many, MANY signs of Gifted Child Syndrome. This might not sound relevant, but in truth, it is integral to my point.

Putting someone on a pedestal is a form of de-humanising.

Constantly praising someone for succeeding while putting higher and higher expectations upon them creates a brutal feedback loop that can be outright crippling for them later down the line.

Anon's struggle with learning guitar, that has her give up on it because it didn't come immediately. Sakiko's inability to interact with anyone from Crychic except Mutsumi because she doesn't want to risk them seeing her current state.

Both of them are subject to this, and they are shown struggling with it to the point of tears. Anon nearly has a panic attack upon seeing her classmates from middle school. Sakiko runs out of a live because she doesn't want her old friends to see how much pain she's going though.

Both of them have "failed to become human." However, much like with her guitar skills, Anon is still trying, thanks to having people who will support her and hold her accountable for her goals. Anon has learned to get up from the ground and try again.

Sakiko, however, has given up entirely on "becoming human" and is trying to get back up on that pedestal. Sakiko will do anything to go to that place where she belongs. Even if the doll that eventually returns to that pedestal is broken beyond repair.

[readingsfrommars]

People be having sex because they're afraid to die a virgin

Call that shit FOMOsexual

[readingsfrommars]

About Cinq Don Quixote

So we finally got a Don identity where her mind is intact! It's really nice to see her actually, genuinely be happy. But, the more I looked into the identity and thought about Don as a character, the more I noticed that Cinq Don Quixote is actually more similar to her other IDs than it would appear.

So what do we know about Cinq Don? Firstly, she goes around, settling disputes and keeping the peace. However, it's the way she does it that set off alarm bells for me. Don settles disputes by representing one of the two parties and dueling the other in return for a commission fee. A mixture of a lawyer and a mercenary, if you think about it. And, as many people can see, it comes with a great deal of glory, as she seems to be well-loved for what she does.

So why does it feel off to me?

It's quite simple. If Cinq Don is only settling disputes for a fee, then what about the old shopkeeper in Canto II, or the family being separated in Canto III? Would Cinq Don have tried to save them? I don't think so. And additionally, because of the nature of her work, it's very likely that Don has ended up helping the wrong people, because that's how she gets paid. If Don's base identity saw Cinq Don, I don't think she'd see a hero. And upon looking at the art, I realised that Cinq Don would agree.

Look at the shadowed side of Don's face here. The way the smile doesn't match the other side. The complete shift in expression that she hides beneath the hat. Instead of the dashing duelist that she puts forward, the expression here feels more like she's mourning.

Don knows that she has failed to fulfill her dream.

Don's ideals are constantly in a battle with the bleak reality of the City, and each of her identities represent a different defeat. And each case was a result of something in Don breaking. Her spirit, her rationality, her very sense of self. However, Cinq Don is wholly unique in that Don is still sane and happy.

So what broke in Cinq Don?

Her resolve.

Cinq Don represents a defeat in which, instead of latching onto something to the point of breaking her mind, she simply gave up her dream of being a hero, to become something that resembles one. She gets the glory, the love, and the praise, but she knows it is ultimately hollow.

[readingsfrommars]

YEAH FINE WHATEVER SYNONYM MAKES YOU HAPPIEST