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One Piece Animator He Ziwei shared a beautiful art for episode 1119:

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🎩✨You There! Top Kaito(u) Artist!✨🎩

So in case you missed it: there's a Redraw Zine brewing for Gosho's favorite son, and it's still not too late to make your interest heard! Step right up as we crack open Magic Kaito Vol. 1, and dare to enjoy, explore, engrave your one-of-a-kind mark on the very pages that birthed our dashing daredevil magician—and DCMK fandom as we know it!

Form Closes May 1, so don't delay. Fill (and reblog) today!

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possibly the only time ill draw hakuba properly 😓

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Drums of liberation 🎵❤️💙💜💛💚🎵

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Giftober 2024 │ Day 24: Summertime

I'm by your side

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ＧＡＭＥＳＴＡＲＴ

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I see youre still getting your ass kicked without me

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just started watching kabutoooo lol doodle

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Боже, Боже, разве я не ангел?

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sorta lewd thiefshipping doodle under the cut LOL

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Finished my Ennies Lobby Robin Piece!! And it looks so good next to my Fata Morgana illustration 🥹🥹🥹

I love these ladies so much! I am very excited to do more One Piece Redraws ☺️

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does anyone else think about kyle giving donna the construct necklace. does anyone think about that and then think about the zero hour 50th anniversary special and donna giving kyle her pendant . does anyone feel a little sick. .

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In the Beginning...

In the beginning, God made phantoms and thieves.

If you're reading this in English, there's a 90% chance you first learned the word Kaitou from Kaito himself—and only slowly come to realize just how many corners of Japanese pop-culture it's really bled into, from Tezuka to Tuxedo Mask to Princess Peach. There's thieves, there's thieves with style, and then there's phantom thieves. A law unto themselves in their own worlds and ours, a breed of gentlemen who can magically stay gentlemen while doing the most ungentlemanly things known to society.

You'd need a book—probably a whole shelf—to properly explore all the ancestors of this proud archetype, never mind all the twists and turns it's taken in modern times. But we're a bunch of poors in money and time, so let's settle for just one tonight.

Fun fact, there's a doctor in Japan who runs a full-time clinic, lectures for one of the top med schools, and still finds room to blog about his fifty-odd niche interests. With him lighting the way, we tracked down this: the oldest book Japan's National Library has ever picked the word Kaitou out of.

Not a gentleman sort of book, you'd assume—and be absolutely right. Dated 1908 (just a little after Leblanc's Lupin, just a little before his first Japanese translation), Eishirō Suzuki's Strange Worlds is a loud, proud freakshow, trotting out ghost story after tall tale after Believe-It-Or-Not article about some wackos in America marrying in a lion cage. Our story of interest comes about halfway in: six pages and change, unmistakably headed 怪盗.

What lies within? A tragically forgotten ancestor to this great and greatly profitable archetype? Or a dead-end that happens to share the name and damn little else? Or, despite all odds, a combination of both?

Why don't you see for yourself?

Pull up a seat, grab a drink, and enjoy our exhaustive translation of history's first...

Phantom Thief

In the days of Jōkyō,¹ near Shitaya's Ikenohata-town, a pawn-shop called Yamaguchi Place² stood rich beyond imagining. Its master, with eleven vaults to his name, was a long and proud worshiper at the Benzaiten³ shrine on Shinobazu Pond. Now, it happened that this man heard the Shogun’s offices had recently surveyed the pond for land-filling, and grew troubled.

One evening, having closed early and settling the day's accounts, the boy tending the shop heard a tap at the front door, and opened to look. Lo and behold—there was a magnificent palanquin, inlaid four-square with silver, bound on every side by tens of fine, sentinel-eyed Samurai. Shocked, the boy ran to his master telling all. The master, no less shocked, came out with warm greetings, asking the company into his home.

Then from the palanquin emerged a most exquisite woman, so noble and divine of bearing that she might have been taken for a celestial maiden, with face sweeter than any peach or plum, and dress of the richest twill brocade. With hardly a sound this beauty sat, drew open her vermilion lips, and bade all listen—

“To begin, my being is not of flesh, but an envoy of Her Lady Benzaiten, in whom thou hast believed all thy life. The Shogun's men mean to bury Shinobazu Pond, and Her Ladyship suffers no small distress hearing this, for Her own power may well draw sanctuary from any ladle's-worth of water, but Her kith and kin—some hundreds upon thousands of scales—must wilt and suffer without mires to call home. “Deep ran Benzaiten's pity, and with it a divine will to bring salvation of some, of any kind. Mercifully, thy garden declares a most generous pond, and in behalf of those kith and kin I call upon thee to guarantee it as their new sanctum. If thy faith in Benzaiten be strong and true, take not these words in vain. Know only that Her Ladyship wills a night of storm and squall, fast approaching, to lay Her kin. Come that day, thou shouldst make fast the doors of thy home, withdraw to thine own room, and put no eye at door-slit, nor foot outside to enquire. Heed this, and Benzaiten will grow thy riches ten-fold in reward. Such is my message, in sum.”

Hearing this, the man grew ecstatic—rapturous, even. He spared nothing treating his guest, servants and all, to the very end of their departure.

In less than a fortnight came a dawn with greying skies, and by afternoon rain was falling, the wind slowly rising. On this day the man chose to fast, thinking it the day Benzaiten would descend, and so admonished his family and cohorts, warning them to keep the doors firmly shut and let no-one out after dark.

As the night crept toward second-watch,⁴ the wind grew wilder and wilder, until all the trees and bamboo in the garden could be heard thrashing, and all the water in the pond roiling. Now every breath was held, every head bowed, every heart thundering, thinking it time for She to come. Gradually the rain stopped and the wind ebbed, and the master, unable to wait for dawn, immediately threw open the door, eyes cast on the garden and its pond. There, he saw fish darting—more than the prior day—and thought, Benzaiten, your fellows are sown. Then, thinking of the promised reward, he rushed to check his stores. But as he swept up and down the row of vaults behind his shop, what did he find? Every lock undone, and every door open! Now uneasy, he entered, and found nothing left! Not the pawn-goods, nor the furniture, nor the thousand-ryō boxes. Floor to ceiling, everything was nigh-bare. He stood alone, dumbfounded and gaping.

Now, it happened that a shrine sat in the mountains on Kōshū-Kaidō Road, and before this shrine came men in packs, reeking of banditry, laying down their fresh and ill-gotten gains, eager for a proper portioning.

Onto this the shrine opened its doors, and who should be shocked to see the bandits' chief! No older than twenty-eight years she stood, with beauty to shame the sky and stars. A beauty that laughed aloud and said—

“My, what lovely work, boys!”

It was this very enchantress who had gulled the shop-master by claiming to be a goddess's envoy—and then, catching the slightest storm, sent all these men to his shop in dead of night. Some had hitched ropes to trees and bamboo all around his garden, and whipped them to bluff the sounds of a roaring wind, while others had beaten at the pond to affect waves. Under such clamor they had cunningly hidden any sounds of vault doors opening, of wares being moved.

A most unusual—most phantasmic—thief, no?

—Eishirō Suzuki, Strange Worlds: Tall Tales and Oddities (1908).

¹ Approx. 1684–1688 CE. ² No relation to Kappei. That we know of. ³ Wealth goddess strongly associated with rivers and lakes. One of Japan's Seven Lucky Gods. ⁴ Approx. 9—11pm. Adapted from Old China's gēng-diǎn system, each "watch" marking one-fifth of the time between sunset and dawn.

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And I'll meet you again and again

timelapse>>

my file crashed midway of coloring... aahaa

Happy First Encounter~

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