#Karakara Kemuri

[x0401x]

[thepasteldyke]

maid day drawing that never got finished cus i was waffling with the bg forever, so i ended up cropping it and skipping it.

takeuchi love of my life

[cloudy-reverie]

Artwork from Karakara Kemuri's newest series!

[sleepy-monochrome-prince]

[chisaiyume]

Title: Donten ni Warau/Laughing Under the Clouds [ anime - manga ]

Author: Karakara Kemuri

Genre: Action, Historical, Shoujo, Supernatural, Tragedy

Synopsis [baka-updates]: In the eleventh year of the Meiji era carrying swords was forbidden by the government and those known as samurai were slowly fading away. However there were plenty that didn’t like those changes taking place in Japan and inevitably the crime rates increased. Japan’s only resolve was an inescapable lake prison. While the prison had no other way to access it but only through water, the 3 boys of the Kumo family were assigned to transport the criminals to their new "home". Although… is that the only thing they were doing…?

[rzarich]

[choujinx]

UTAKATA NI WARAU (2018-2019) by karakara kemuri

[ciitrinitas]

i am so fucking tired after going to new york yesterday, but ahhhh, i was in kinokuniya, and i bumbled into a copy of karakara kemuri's artbook!!! it's absolutely beautiful, and just having something rengoku ni warau-related to display is wonderful. there was some artwork i hadn't seen before in it! i need to read karakara's other manga mars red at some point...

[yupuffin]

There's just something about villains.

Namely: Kagami Naoto from Donten ni Warau (A.K.A. Laughing Under the Clouds), Griss from Fire Emblem: Engage, and Scar from Wuthering Waves, among others.

I'm not attracted to them, necessarily, like I'm attracted to my favorite characters -- probably because I find them intimidating, which, for an antagonist that's meant to pose a threat to the protagonists, is a good thing! -- but when their character design elements come together in a certain way, it gives them a distinct magnetism that scratches an itch in my brain, so to speak.

Maybe not all of it, but I think part of it comes from less pressure on villains' character designs to look beautiful or attractive. In the case of a protagonist, ideally, from the outset, an audience will like them as a character, or at least trust or empathize with them to a certain degree; therefore, a protagonist's design must leave a positive impression. When it comes to a conventional anime-type art style, then, which typically centers on idealization, with clean lines and visually appealing features, I think there can be a tendency towards a certain degree of sameness; some visual patterns will be more aesthetically appealing than others, so protagonists' designs will tend to repeatedly utilize these specific patterns within and across media.

On the other hand, while villains can be attractive and leave a positive first impression, it's not, by necessity, a function of their character, so their designs have a lot more flexibility and variation; they can utilize features and patterns that, by convention, aren't as readily available to protagonists.

(Why this is the case is its whole own separate post, so I won't go into that in-depth here. If it were solely my choice, I'd love for characters all across the protagonist-antagonist spectrum to have all sorts of physical features. 😛)

I can't help but think of one interview with Karakara Kemuri, the mangaka behind Donten, I read a few years ago. In said interview, they talked about which of their characters they found most difficult to draw and which they found easiest to draw.

Now, the art style they use for Donten is beautiful, and is the primary reason I got into the manga; they mentioned that their main characters are most difficult to draw because they have to focus on ensuring that they look beautiful.

Conversely, they cited a few characters, among which Kagami was one, that they found easiest to draw precisely because they didn't have to worry about making them look beautiful -- and the characters they mentioned were the very same ones whose designs stuck out to me because they were different from those of the other characters, and that made them interesting.

I mean, yeah, I love a beautiful protagonist, but when the main characters all kind of look the same or at least similar by virtue of having to look attractive, personally speaking, I'm much more liable to notice and remember the gremlin in the corner who's got wild-looking eyes and sharp teeth and doesn't stand up quite straight all the time (that's Kagami), or the shirtless guy covered in tattoos and piercings with a certain punch to his movements (Griss), or the guy with such a bright red hue he's in all likelihood both poisonous and venomous and whose range of facial expressions makes it look like he's constantly trying to perform to the back row of a theatre (Scar).

Those characters are distinctive, and I think the uniqueness of their designs, while not necessarily considered conventionally beautiful, gives them something analogous to attractiveness, or perhaps a different, unconventional form of attractiveness.

Like I said, if it were my choice, I'd give so many protagonists this kind of magnetism, too, but in the meantime, this can be my post where I appreciate villains.

[x0401x]

[thepasteldyke]

forgot to upload this on SNS earlier oops

[cloudy-reverie]

[sleepy-monochrome-prince]

[chisaiyume]

 Series: Donten ni Warau [anime]

Author/Artist: Karakara Kemuri

Synopsis [baka updates]: Under the curse of Orochi, the great demon serpent reborn every 300 years, Japan has been shrouded in clouds for as long as anyone can remember. The era of the samurai is at an end, and carrying swords has been outlawed. To combat the rising crime rates, an inescapable prison was built in the middle of Lake Biwa. When brothers Tenka, Soramaru and Chutaro Kumo are hired to capture and transport offenders to their final lodgings in this prison, they unexpectedly find themselves faced with a greater destiny than any of them could have imagined.

Rengoku ni Warau

Utakata ni Warau

Donten ni Warau

Donten ni Warau Gaiden

Yamainu no Zangyou ni Warau

[rosalinescanlationgroup]

CƯỜI DƯỚI BẦU TRỜI U ÁM

Tên khác: 曇天に笑う, Donten Ni Warau, Laughing Under the Clouds, Gia tộc Kumo

Tác giả: Karakara Kemuri

Nhóm dịch: Rosaline

Nhà phát hành: Mag Garden, Tokyo Pop, Vàng anh

Thể loại: Action, Historical, Shoujo, Supernatural, Tragedy

Trạng thái: Đang tiến hành

Tóm tắt: Vào năm Minh Trị thứ 11, chính phủ ban hành lệnh cấm đao khiến các Samurai gần như bị xóa sổ. Tuy nhiên, vô số người bất bình trước sự thay đổi của Nhật Bản và chính quyền mới dẫn đến tỉ lệ tội phạm tăng cao. Để đối phó với lượng tội phạm cao ngất ngưỡng, chính phủ đã xây dựng một nhà tù khổng lồ ngay giữa lòng hồ Biwa. Ba anh em nhà Kumo gồm Tenka, Soramaru, Chutaro là những người áp giải phạm nhân đến nhà tù này. Ngoài những tình huống nguy hiểm xảy ra trong lúc áp giải phạm nhân, ba anh em nhà Kumo còn phải đối mặt với số phận hiểm ác khác đến họ cũng không ngờ được.

Đọc tại: Rosaline Scanlation Group

[choujinx]

DONTEN NI WARAU (2010-2013) by kemuri karakara