#Kaze's Journal

[fawnl3t]

Art dump from sketchbook I got at dollar tree 2 days ago🍎🐛🍎

[artofsamothrace]

I feel like a 90s middle school girl.

What do you think, do these month old nocturnal ramblings have potential? (Text out of order)

Ask if interested in full text in order.

[speakeasy8]

[004] Fujii, K. (through the eyes of Zuzzu, his manager)

Kaze’s Autumn Fest  

(TL: This is a 4-part entry covering the LASA Concert @ Panasonic Stadium Suita of which I’m only doing the second one, because it’s the most interesting.) 

- Staff journal entry dating 28 October 2022, by Zuzzu 

The first time I saw Kaze perform live was at a show with an audience of about a hundred. Advance tickets were sold out. Setlist was comprised of well-known covers and the original songs he was already performing live back then were NaN-NaNw and Choshinochatte.  The immensity of his skills needs no introduction, and whether it be witnessed within videos on YouTube or live in front of an audience, his desire to entertain and deliver high quality enjoyment to the audience is an overpowering one. 

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From that point at the very beginning to the LOVE ALL SERVE ALL Stadium Live four years later, it’s been a long journey of carefully finding ways to introduce the existence known as Fujii Kaze to the world. It’s a process that involved many long discussions, sharing of ideas and working around issues which were all done as a team (Kaze himself included, of course), and it still continues to this day.  I could tell from the get-go through the very first performance I experienced that Kaze already had it all: singing ability, piano skill, audience engagement, you name it. But the more I learn about him as a person, the more apparent it became that he isn’t somebody who can or should be simply thrust to the world, as the chances of it leading to grave misunderstanding is pretty high.  As such, I figured it‘d be wiser to first show people what he is able to offer as a musician, instead of simply suddenly unveiling to the world who he essentially is as a person. It was just a gut feeling I had. 

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Another aspect I had to consider was the fact that he’s been uploading videos of himself performing piano covers on YouTube since little, so anyone who knew him from those would only know him as a cover artist there, as he hadn’t shared any of his own original works. As someone who got to hear his original songs pretty early on, I had to tackle the issue of how and when best to present them, as I felt the initial performances that would introduce him to the world should be centered on them and not the covers that he does.  If a number of people got to hear his music first, then perhaps the time for us to introduce him to a wider audience would come. But would people really understand simply from listening to his music? 

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See, even for me, it took a while before his nature finally sunk in. In the earliest stages, I didn’t know anything apart from what I was able to see on the surface. Even now, I cannot confidently claim that I know everything there is to know about him.   The way he thinks and lives and the fact the he is a vegetarian, I couldn’t help but to stop and ask myself how old this kid really is. Based on physical appearance alone, he doesn’t look particularly out of the norm age-wise, but the moment I got a better glimpse of his mentality, the number my mental calculation came up with was 109. And the more I got to know him, the more certain of it I became. What’s scary is, this was the impression that I got right from the time I first met him and, even until now, it hasn’t changed. I know I sound absurd but even as the depth of his soul seems bottomless, there are also very simple things that he’s somehow managed to remain completely ignorant about. This yawning gap that he has, it‘s pretty astounding.   This is veering off topic a little but here’s a recent example:  Kaze: Would ye mind stoppin by a convenience store? Ah wanna withdraw me some monies.  --At the parking area of a convenience store-- Me: Aite, imma wait here for ya.  --5 minutes later-- Me: (What’s taking him so long? He said he was only gonna make a withdrawal.)     --A wild Kaze then hesitantly appears at the entrance. Looking lost, he shuffles his way back.-- Kaze: Ah couldnae wit’draw nothin. None o’ these cards seem ta work. :((   Me: Wha? Why? It clearly says ATM there on the entrance.  --And so I ended up going in with him-- Kaze: So ah wuz tryna insert mah card in ‘ere... Me: ...this is a Loppi. It’s a ticket machine, not an ATM.  Kaze: Ooooh! No wonder it wuz spittin out tix instead~~!  And this isn’t the only example. Things like this happen a few times on an almost daily basis. Anything that doesn’t bear a significant interest to him, he is completely ignorant about.  

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HELP EVER HURT NEVER was released in 2020.  And in 2022, it was followed by LOVE ALL SERVE ALL.  Both albums carry his core message. It is delivered musically-- embedded within the words, melodies and music videos. According to him, everything he feels he wants to sing about up to this point, has already been sung.   The LOVE ALL SERVE ALL Stadium Live in October is where we wanted to showcase everything Kaze had to offer musically. But just as we were thinking that, in came the docomo future project “KAZE FILMS,” through which the song “grace” was born. What’s even more amazing is that the director, after listening to the song, proposed that the music video be shot in India, a place that bears significant meaning to Kaze, being a big part of his roots. (I’ll be talking more about the music video itself in another entry.)  The origin of Kaze’s mindset, I feel, lies in India, where his family visited while he was still just a foetus sleeping within his mother, and where they went again to give thanks not too long after he finally came into the world.  

When the idea to hold this stadium concert was greenlit, Kaze and I first spoke about making it something that introduces both albums, with an emphasis on LOVE ALL SERVE ALL, and we’d base the infrastructural setup on Kaze’s mindset, turning it into a visual representation of sorts.  All the things that make Kaze who he is: his vegetarianism, his love for animals, and his Indian-based mindset, how do we apply these concepts to this stadium concert?  All other aspects other than the musical one were still only WIP right up until the beginning of September, and while whatever we could move forward with we did, the design aspect was still cloudy so it was absolutely serendipitous that we somehow ended up actually being able to visit the country mid-September.  

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I intend to journalize this trip here someday but for now, I’ll just say that the people who went with us were the film crew who shot NaN-NaNw in NYC, Universal’s Higashi-san, the graphic designer behind all of Kaze’s professional releases and merch so far, Motty Marui-san, the cameraman Ono-san, and the hairstylist-cum-makeup artist Matsuno-san, who was joining a Team Kaze project for the first time. With the creative team in tow, and through the sights that we all took in together with Kaze in India, we were finally able to determine the direction of the overall thematical design to take for the show.  The LASA flag, the staircase leading up, the décor in the SERVE ALL Area, the fresco decorating the stadium itself, the décor in the LOVE ALL Area, the smaller flags and banners, the sounds and the smells.   

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With this, the time where we can finally show to the world Kaze's inherent nature in the most visual form possible is finally upon us.  

Photos by: Yosuke UEYAMA 

[canmom]

Animation Night 169: Sex. 2.

So. Storytime.

Two years ago, we had a joke. "We should totally show some hentai on Animation Night 69." we said. Having said that, we were honour-bound to totally commit to the bit. Teaming up with @mogsk, I wrote a massive post on sexuality in animation and the history of 'hentai', from the hentai seiyoku discussed in 20th-century sexology journals to the modern subcultural kaleidoscope.

It is, genuinely, one of my favourite posts I ever wrote in this project. It's definitely not perfect - the sections on BL and the lolicon boom are especially weak, but still! There's no way I'm beating that.

Mogs, meanwhile assembled a perfectly pitched playlist of animation dealing with the theme of sexuality, from classic oldschool BL like Kaze to Ki no Uta to charming little comedies like Oruchuban Ebichu, and a scattering of actual h-anime like Weather Report Girl. For my part, I led with the genuinely classic film Kanashimi no Belladonna (Belladonna of Sadness).

So somehow - somehow! - we managed to make the idea of getting together with your online friends to watch a bunch of anime about sex just... plain fun and uplifting, to the point that @footsteps-on-the-dance-floor will tell me years later how much she enjoyed it. Not to mention, we got a pretty good cross-section of the different dimensions of sexuality in animation as well!

I didn't even get banned on Twitch.

This week, the counter has drawn the sex number. So can we do it again? Well, my friends, we're gonna try~ Tonight, @mogsk and canmom present: the long-awaited sequel to sex. Sex, 2.

This time we're narrowing our focus a bit. One of the distinctive elements of eromanga, by the analysis of Kimi Rito in The History of Hentai Manga, is how particular images get encoded as signs that can be reused by other mangaka, and these signs can become the seed for particular subgenres. So, our selection tonight is in part designed to give a brief cross-section of some of these visual tropes.

So let me introduce you to our program. CWs: sex, obviously; also a couple of these films (Cleopatra, Parade Parade) cw for rape. Here's the programme, read on for brief descriptions of each item and a lil cultural context~!

Cleopatra (1970) - oldschool Tezuka weirdness

Boku no Sexual Harassment (1994-5) - 90s salaryman BL

Interspecies Reviewers (2020) - monstergirl sex comedy, and an instance of the trend of recent cable TV h-anime

Agent Aika (1997-9) - panty shots to the most ludicrous degree

Comical Psychosomatic Medicine (2015) - ONA comedy framed as fetish education

Parade Parade (1996) - futanari + yuri

Golden Boy (1995-6) - 90s sakuga and a classic comedy

Queen's Blade (2009) - kyonyuu

Colorful (1999) - panty-centric comedy skits

after that: if you still have energy, I might take requests~

[n.b. a lot of these are TV series - we will only really be getting a 1-2 episode sample of each one, for runtime's sake.]

Cleopatra (クレオパトラ), 1970

Last time we led with certified classic, genuinely moving and good as hell film Belladonna of Sadness. This was part of a last gambit by the struggling Mushi Productions, the studio of Osamu Tezuka, credited with inventing TV anime back in the day with Astro Boy. Long before there would be such a thing as an h-anime subculture, Tezuka experimented with creating erotic animated films based on history and mythology.

Belladonna is the best remembered of the three, and with good reason. Tezuka was largely not involved by this point. The others, though... are some plain fucking weird movies, I'll tell you that much. So tonight we'll be watching Cleopatra (1970). I may have shown you the trailer before - this is the Caesar trampoline movie. That is only the beginning.

I recently finished reading Osamu Tezuka's manga Ayako, written in 1972-1973 - not long after this movie, actually, during Tezuka's gekiga phase. I'm sure it's common knowledge by now, but Tezuka was one horny old guy! Ayako has all manner of skulduggery: incest, murder, gangster stuff, more murder, etc., but the core story is about a girl who is imprisoned in an underground cell for 20-some years by the machinations of her family. As she grows up, she ends up in an incestuous relationship with her protective brother - and once she finally escapes, she is highly agoraphobic but also throws herself at nearly every man she meets.

It's very much a story of the sins of the past echoing down into the future, shot though with post-war history and gangster movies, but its central fixation is the figure of Ayako herself: the soft cloistered object of obsession and attraction. Whether they want to protect Ayako, seek absolution from her, fuck her, or exploit her.

But it's also in places a really wacky manga, with a lot of very comical contrivances or hyper-cartoonish panels with extreme squash and stretch. It's a completely different way of displaying action.

I think this gives me a sense of the sort of wavelength Tezuka was on when he draws a scene where Cleopatra is tied down by stakes and a bunch of guys line up to rape her while she shouts at them defiantly. It's all very theatrical, a huge contrast to the much more internally oriented Belladonna. Just a plain strange movie, but it's one I've been fascinated to watch for ages.

Whatever we make of Cleopatra, we'll jump into the program that Mogs drew up! Once again she's come through magnificently.

My Sexual Harassment (僕のセクシャルハラスメント), 1995-6

Our next act is some old school yaoi! One day I'll get to do that big effortpost on the history of BL, but not this day. In any case, Boku no Sexual Harassment is an OVA from the mid 90s about a young man called Junya Mochizuki trying to fuck his way up the company ranks for the sake of himself and his partner Kazunori Honma. In particular, he has an affair with his boss, Mr. Honma, running across the whole OVA.

This is perhaps best known for an infamous scene involving corn. It's here as a window into this period of BL - not quite as high-mindedly aesthetic as its 80s predecessors, and with its erotic focus being on like... 90s salarymen, which is quite a specific thing!

Interspecies Reviewers (異種族レビュアーズ), 2020

Next, a series which has the dubious distinction of proving too steamy for Crunchyroll. Interspecies Reviewers enters the general milieu of modern videogame-inflected fantasy anime, a comedy dancing along the line of whether it's too overtly porn to air on TV. The story tells of a group of fantasy characters who are the clients of monstergirl sex workers, hoping to encounter as many different species as possible. This is a frame device for a series of episodes focused around what it would be like to have sex with various kinds of monstergirl.

This is an example of a recent trend in TV anime, namely very overtly sexual cable TV anime such as High School DxD, which have in a way come to fill the gap left by OVAs. This is a niche that also includes the likes of Goblin Slayer and Redo of Healer. In contrast to those series' "big grimdark plot with a side of rape" approach, Reviewers is light-hearted fantasy sex comedy mixed with (if you live in China) a certain amount of actual porn, which fansubbers have kindly spliced back in to the censored release for us.

Agent Aika (AIKa), 1997-9

The panty shot is one of the more popular visual tropes in eromanga, to the point that Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga dedicates a whole two page spread to the history of the trope. (Surprisingly, I can't find any more substantial account in Kimi Rito's History of Hentai Manga).

You'll see it often enough in anime, overtly or subtly, and certainly in the early works of Katsuhiko Nishijima, who debuted in 1986 with Project A-ko, a classic Kanada-inflected OVA that still bears signs of its hentai roots. But there is nothing that takes the panty shot to the same extreme as Agent Aika (1997). The degree to which the camera in this action anime contrives to show panties at a machinegun rate... it crosses over into a level where it feels less like outright fetish material and more like experimental art.

This is a series that is only coherent through the erotic focus. And yet, it's not generally categorised as porn. Nobody actually fucks. Lines are very arbitrary...

Comical Psychosomatic Medicine (アニメで分かる心療内科), 2015

This ONA adapts a gag manga series themed around the idea of an education series on fetishes, paraphilias, and so on - not so different in concept from Peepoodoo and the Super Fuck Friends, from the sound of it! The ONA is produced by Shin-Ei Animation, a venerable studio known for beloved characters like Doraemon; it's a bunch of five minute bite-sized chunks which I plan to sprinkle in between the other stuff we watch as a palate cleanser.

Parade Parade (パレードパレード), 1996

Having warmed you up sufficiently, this is the point in the evening where we pull out the futa porn.

Parade Parade is an OVA by the studio Pink Pineapple, one of the giants of the 90s erotic OVA scene - I wrote about them a bit last time. It's a relatively "tasteful" example of the futanari (二形) trope, literally 'two forms', referring to basically a character with a mostly cis woman-typical body except for a penis (generally in addition to a vulva), which she will typically use in penetrative sex. This is typically represented as either the result of magic, an intersex condition, or just a fantasy world where it's not unusual.

Depending on your subcultural corner, this might be further distinguished from other niche variants of dickgirl (e.g. a futa must have both sets of genitals).

In anime and manga, the futa trope apparently traces back to the introduction of American trans porn magazines to Japan, inspiring mangaka such as Kitamimaki Kei to start drawing futanari characters. Futanari manga first spread through dōjinshi in the 80s, and became popular in eromanga in the 90s, before circling back to the West. So actually yeah I guess this one is on us trans girls! I always assumed it was like, an independent invention. The more you know...

Here we have succesful idol Kaori, who's secretly intersex - and only her girlfriend Yuko knows. She's very careful to let nobody know, for the sake of her career, but a rival lesbian idol is about to find out...

Golden Boy (1995-6)

Now here is a true classic.

Golden Boy is a comedy series about a wanderer named Kintaro, who dropped out of uni to travel around Japan getting into sexual escapades. Each episode, he runs into someone and hopefully falls for them while coming across as an idiot pervert, but gradually reveals that he's actually a decent and resourceful guy - and yet, having found love, there will always be a reason he must move on. A setup to hang all sorts of plots, carried by some honestly unreasonably impressive animation from the realist school, most notably Mitsuo Iso. It's just... very very well done.

The above clip did the rounds on here a while ago (I think maybe the dubbed version), and we will indeed be watching episode 4 to put that in context.

Queen's Blade (2009)

So this is a studio ARMS OVA - the guys who did stuff like Mezzo Forte with Yasuomi Umetsu - a fantasy story about a warrior tournament. But for our purposes it's standing in for the 巨乳 kyonyuu subgenre - meaning 'huge boobs'. So if you wanna do the meme in Japanese, that's the word you need.

This has a rather specific history in eromanga, recounted by Kimi Rito in The History of Hentai Manga. Per Rito, the popularity of the term dates back specifically to 1989, where it was used to promote porn star Kimiko Matsuzaka, as well as Western gravure porn magazines. Gradually displacing other terms like 'D-cup', the onomatopoeic ボイン boin and portmanteau デカパイdekapai, kyonyuu soon became cemented as the term for a type of character design. It grew in popularity in the space opened up by the bishōjo genre established by the lolicon boom.

So under the pen of mangaka like Kei Keitamimaki (him again!), designs with massively exaggerated boobs became very popular, defining a subgenre of their own. Artists would sometimes express anxiety over whether they would be 'allowed' to draw such extreme designs, but it became widespread in seinen magazines. Gradually, these genre boundaries dissolved and boob size started to become a symbol of characterisation.

Queen's Blade is a fairly longrunning series but as far as I understand, it's broadly a silly ecchi anime about women with very large boobs fighting to become queen. It's not the most comical example of this trope necessarily (nothing can really beat High School of the Dead's supersonic bullet dodging tits) but it's pretty up there.

Colorful, 1999

Colorful is a comedy series of brief (~7 minute) skits about boys trying to see panties and suffering many consequences. As a late 90s anime it's got some interesting stylstic Y2K stuff - look at that rotoscope clip! - as well as strong animation from people like Norio Matsumoto of Naruto fame.

So!

Mogs's encylopedic knowledge of weird obscure horny anime once again coming to the rescue: I'm fascinated to see where this night will take us. And whether I'll still have a Twitch account tomorrow.

I realise this is a much later start than we'd like with such a big programme, but I hope you will come join me for some weirdly educational sexy animation! Dip in and out or stay for the whole programme, the choice is yours - see you at twitch.tv/canmom, going live now, programme starts in about 30 minutes at 22:30 UK time!

Animation Night 169 is gonna be a little postponed - we'll be going at 7pm UK time on Tuesday (29 August) at twitch.tv/canmom! Hope to see you there! I will try to write a little more interesting info as we lead up to that~

[the-unending-journey]

B A S I C S

Name: Kiyo Himemitsu de Haillenarte

Nicknames: Little lady (what a lot of people tend to call her), brat (courtesy of her brother), Kiki (only permitted by people she's super close to and family)

Age: mid/late 20's

Nameday: 15th Sun of the Second Astral Moon

Race: Au Ra (Raen)

Gender: Cisgender Female

Orientation: Bisexual

Profession: Adventurer, traveling healer (white mage), Alchemist

P H Y S I C A L     A S P E C  T S

Hair: Black hair with stark white streaks mixed throughout (from events of Shadowbringers)

Eyes: Lavender-colored with a light glow caused by overabundant aether leaking through

Skin: Light peachy tone

Tattoos/scars: No tattoos, but she does gain light aether scarring along her body after the events of Shadowbringers. These often have a faint, goldish white glow to them that can briefly intensify depending on how much of her magic she uses

F A M I L Y

Parents: Kousuke Himemitsu (biological father - deceased), Nobuko Himemitsu (biological mother - deceased), Lucinne de Haillenarte (adoptive mother - alive) and a currently unnamed adoptive father (deceased)

Siblings: Ryunosuke Himemitsu (older biological brother - alive) and Evianne Beausoleil (older adoptive sister - alive)

Grandparents: Currently unknown

In-laws and Other: N/A

Pets: Kouji, her pet Gaelicat and Natasha, her pet Nagxian cat. She also has her two chocobo, Yuki and Nuit

S K I L L S

Abilities: very talented in various healing techniques, identifying medicinal plants vs. poisonous ones, decent artist (mostly for recording her findings in her botany journal, making stuffed dolls and mending clothing

Hobbies: exploring new places, studying and recording the varieties of plants the star has to offer, reading (especially romance), dancing, gardening, making herbal teas

T R A I T S

Most Positive Trait: Extremely kind to just about everyone

Most Negative Trait: Very, VERY low self-esteem to the point she'll often self-sabotage any relationships that might form (platonic or romantic)

L I K E S

Colors: soft pastels, deep blues and white

Smells: sweet florals, fresh laundry, earthy/herbal scents and fresh-baked goods

Textures: anything soft - feathers, fur, cloth

Drinks: typically just prefers a good ol' Ishgardian brandy and just about any sort of tea. Hot chocolate is an absolute favorite too

O T H E R    D E T A I L S

Smokes: Absolutely not

Drinks: Only socially... or if she's having a really bad depressive episode

Drugs: Only natural ones to alleviate pain or aid sleep

Mount Issuance: Just her two Chocobos and I guess technically her father's old horse, Kaze. But he's mostly taken care of by her brother and isn't really meant to run around too much anymore

Been Arrested: Almost by some temple knights trying to accuse her and Lucinne's family of heresy due to Kiyo's draconic features and sort of illegally living in Ishgard. It got sorted thankfully... mostly by Lucinne's sword arm

Tagged by: @archaiclumina (I'm so sorry it took so long!)

Tagging: I'm pointing at YOU reader. Do it

[indigoelegy]

amane gymnasium is a deconstruction of early bl

pictured is part of the back of volume 3 : )

amane gymnasium follows the title character, the dollmaker amane, and chronicles her life after her creations come to life. it hasn't been fully translated yet (though the first chapter can be read here on mangadex) but based on what i know about it (from being in a fortunate position where one of my friends can translate), aside from being really charming on its own, it unpacks and questions the bl genre from around the time furuya would have been engaging with it. (spoilers under the cut - i'll try and keep discussion of specific plot events to a minimum but i will definitely be spoiling like, the overall plot direction and concept)

on the surface level, the plot that follows amane's dolls and how they relate to each other has a lot of similarities to works by hagio and takemiya that set up the shounen ai genre and are often considered the 'first bl'. there's bullying, exploitation, and relationship struggles, all set against the backdrop of a european boarding school; all things that were typical to these works. even theo's design (in particular) seems to call back to that earlier time. but this story is within her story - 'amane gymnasium', the story that her dolls ultimately end up following, was written by amane in her journals; we see as she reacts with horror to the things she wrote that befalls these characters, and how she scrambles to fix things between them.

amane's horror, along with the way furuya portrays the events happening in the gymnasium, call into question the aestheticism and beauty these events are treated with in earlier works. it's easy to forget the horror and get lost in that beauty and relish the brief moments of 'respite' a work like kaze to ki no uta presents you with - but amane gymnasium doesn't allow you to forget. you watch these things befall them, you're a helpless onlooker, and it's distinctly not beautiful, and then you watch amane fall apart about it during her daily life. the events are the same - but furuya strips back the rose coloured filter and leaves you with the horrifying reality contrasting against the same elegant background, and amane's dolls who are beautiful in the same way. it doesn’t end there either - eventually it’s revealed to us that all of the things written were things that happened to amane herself, and the story was a coping mechanism of sorts - and it manifests in front of her through her dolls as the most literal reminder possible that all of it is unresolved and festering within her.

in the end, though, amane gymnasium is a story about facing your past and overcoming it, and moving forward. and despite digging in to that genre, it’s evident that furuya has a lot of love for it - and a lot of love for the people who consume it, as well (a similar situation can be found in genkaku picasso, too!). and I think that’s who should be attempting something like this - we see it often that somebody creates an edgy, cynical parody of a genre and then other people who hate that genre pile in and be like wow…. so cool and deconstructive….. and I don’t think they’re qualified to do that. the hot take of this post is that people who earnestly love (or have earnestly loved) and understand genres of media are the only ones who are truly fit to deconstruct them

might come back to this post later when it is in fact translated and make some more specific insights (there’s something with zepp I feel like has some significance but I’m not 100% sure enough to comment in case it’s misinformation) but who knows <3

[yukarishoodie]

Vocacolle 2023 Spring Listening Journal

If I didn't spend my time listening to all Yukari entries (that I can find on vocadb anyway) this would've been done much quicker, but priorities.

Yuzuki Yukari Corner

Sheeno Mirin - I Can Never Be (Apart From) You (ft. KAFU, Yuzuki Yukari) [absolute fave entry from this event.]

K-chi - Tokeyuku, Tooku [fave solo Yukari entry]

gakuta - Kimi to Utau, Shoki Rettou Shoudou (ft. KAFU, Yuzuki Yukari) [fave non-solo Yukari entry that isn't Sheeno Mirin's]

Mada Setsunai Sekai o Ikiru (orig. cosMo@BousouP) - Yaminabe!!! (ft. various) [no. 1 Remix category winner]

Shirai Kurako - Chowww Omawwww [went in expecting a joke song from the title, got a surprisingly heartfelt bossa nova instead]

Gomennasai ga Ienakute, Mata Setsunai Sekai o Ikiru - Soshite 「　　　」 ni Te o Futta (ft. Kagamine Rin, Yuzuki Yukari) [the song's great but the producer name combo is an absolute mouthful, they have to be stopped...]

Yosukenchos - Distance

Sodeno Arawa - luv drama (ft. Hatsune Miku, Yuzuki Yukari)

Kashuu Ryousuke - 夜亡蝶々 (he has another entry but this is my fave)

Yaduki - Mou Ichido, Boku to Kimi wa Saikai suru (ft. KAFU, Yuzuki Yukari) [there's more KAFU-Yukari duets than I expected, wonder where people get the combo from]

Ashiya Coffee (song: Kashimoto Meiha) - Kounai Housou [this is an MMD entry and the song is from last year's Mushoku Toumeisai, but I like the PV]

Everything Else

daraku - tougenkyo (ft. Kagamine Len)

INE - Offer (ft. Ci flower)

A4。 - dear music (ft. KAFU)

BCNO - Ethos (ft. ROSE)

marasy, jin, kemu - Shinjinrui (ft. Kagamine Rin)

rinri - Usureru (ft. RIME)

Yunosuke (orig. yowanecity) - Tensai (Yunosuke Remix) (ft. Hatsune Miku)

0-9 - Dadadaidadada (ft. MEIKO)

r-906 - Catchy !? (ft. Ci flower)

Nejishiki - Copyright (ft. Ci Flower, flower)

Mizore - Kaze mo Tsuizui (ft. Hatsune Miku)

EN0N - forfeit (ft. RIME)

Kitto, Zutto, Bocchi - Warauna (ft. Yamine Renri)

315 - 18 Sai ni Narenakatta Kimi e (ft. Hatsune Miku)

namigroove (orig. Meddmia) - Kikkai Kettai -Electro Swing Remix- (ft. Hatsune Miku)

Osanzi - MOViNG ON (ft. Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin)

IMO - Ika no Tempura_DonkBass (ft. Kagamine Len, MEIKO)

IDONO KAWAZU (orig. Kanaria) - Identity (Kaeru Hen Remix) (ft. KAFU, Fukase)

[ididnthearyou]

Thank you @mcperold I love answering questions

Last song: now listening to Matsuri by Fujii Kaze.

Last show: Beyond Evil.

Last movie: ummmm Pinocchio? The Guillermo del Toro one. That was on New Years and maybe the only movie I watched last year lol

Currently reading: yotsubato! in Japanese. It’s my first manga in both English (found it in the library in grade two) and Japanese!

Current obsession: Dragon Quest Builders 2. Why did I wait so long to play this, I guess I thought it would be the same as the first one which was pretty tedious? But it scratches the exact itch of “building game with no consequences but still has objectives” that I have been looking for for so long

What hobby/craft are you working on right now: Journaling, but like mostly sticking fancy stickers and making myself draw or write something every day.

Tagging: no one bc I don’t know anyone who hasn’t already been tagged

[scarlettcandela]

Content warning: A DSBM song about abuse & suicide

Credits: Original music by Nova (Nova Blackwell) Cover lyrics & tuning by Scarlett_Candela Vocals: MEIKO V3 (ENG)

~~ 「風に吹かれて」

How the wind flows past me It sways with me, carries me My self-imposed punishment: KOUSHUKEI 絞首刑

Thirteen steps to the gallows Accounted for, one by one It all began long ago when I understood my role in this world

How the wind flows past me It sways with me, carries me What's their form of punishment? KOUSHUKEI 絞首刑

Thirteen steps to the gallows Accounted for, one by one All their lies, their ridicule and the neglect They pierce me endlessly like thumbtacks in my shoes

I remove my tattered clothes in front of the mirror Still searching for the person, the one I was yesterday

Will the wind that flows past me sway with me, carry me, under the subtle strain of the sun and trees? Will I be able to smile now?

The wind that flows past me It sways with me, carries me My parents condemnation: KOUSHUKEI 絞首刑

Thirteen steps to the gallows Accounted for, one by one I've been beaten, vilified and was abandoned My journal doesn't lie

The wind that flows past me It sways with me, carries me The sentence you gave to me: KOUSHUKEI 絞首刑

Thirteen steps to the gallows Accounted for, one by one Gather 'round this funeral procession of broken toys

I remove my tattered clothes in front of the mirror Looking for the reason as to why life turned out this way

I felt the wind that flowed past me It swayed with me, carried me Beneath the gentle and soft strain of the sun and trees Even now, I still remain diffident

Tell me why am I so unlike the others? Why do you always compare them to me? What is the reason behind my conception? Why was I born into such a perverted world? Is my existence such a blight on this world that you feel the need to compare them to me? Why should I torture myself like this for you?! Should I die? Is that the solution?!

Feel the wind that flows past me It sways with me, carries me underneath the warm filters of the sun and trees I will fade away when this song ends When this elegy finally ends. . . . . . .

[kyaruun]

Since when did the graphics suck they're literally so cute

This one is literally embedded in my mind like I ASSOCIATE this with you

It isssss literally so cute but your other graphics are also so cute wthhhhhhh

Buuut I can do some tutorials on things you wanna know that I can do? I've been wanting to make a tutorial for a while now actually

. Me too like I don't have a schedule and while I write on a "rotation", I spend so muxh time and energy on irl things that I don't get much time to write. I literally haven't gotten through my reqs from last August. Rip my 800 event from. Before then??? Cannot even keep track it's been like a year

My follow count is only that high bcs I wrote for haikyuu (in 2020 its peak) then I joined the genshin bus kinda early (?) Which is still huge and I wrote misc fics for whatever else, and it was also my edit blog??? And now I'm here shitposting so I got followers from like lots of places

The way yours is in the 700s and a loooot older than mine pls I'm also in the 700s in nazukisser.... insanity

Well personally i love your leo so I think that it should happen because you deserve it. And writing a series.... yes.... smaus are so fun I have domicile on nazukisser for reference if you want it and my fav smau ever is club stupid by tumblr user kodzuvii highly recommend I just become a redhead kita's cousin and tendou's best friend number 1 miracle girl and down bad for suna rintarou whenever I read it.

WAAAA I can't wait to see your revamp !!! Thank you.. I always try to have some sort of match (character/color/style) all throughout!! If you need help/opinions/etc lmk!!!

Right like what happened . We were thriving. Then we boomed for a second and died. Like I see the nazuna x reader tag and ME AND KAZE ARE THE ONLY ONES like bruh? And my fics have been flopping tho it seems everyone's have been flopping too

Yeah the only thing keeping me tied down here is the server..... it's like my lifetime... come back we miss you

I MISS NURI TOO... bee has arknights now....I miss.... and runanananna....... ate swanee's writing.... SHE DOES THAT TO US TOO not that I hate it but she drops like a couple of lines in snippets and dips and I'm like *SCREEEECHES*

If you come back to my server we welcome you back we miss you :(((

I can only be grateful that some of us are left tho.... i7 is so dead and e7 LMFAO??? I was legit the only one it was so darned sad

THAT'S THE ONLY ONE I LIKE!! i love watching vids about journaling and that kind of thing and they make the cutest decorated polaroids so i wanted to do something like that but very cutesy themed,, spring made me think of picnics so gingham <3 i actually played around with a few similar concepts like polaroid + random stickers and i planned to make banners with that but uuuu there are so many characters,, can't keep my focus for too long. i think they came out cute but it's probably too late to use them </3

i always wonder about what do people use to edit their pics because i was born a ps girlie and i still don't know how to use ps properly oops making your themes look nice and cohesive,, those cute pinned etc etc people who edit icons and make them look super aesthetic

i think i never tried to promote my blog because followers don't feel like an integral part of the process for me. i just write what comes to mind and share it with the world: if people like it i'm absolutely delighted and if they don't well,, at the end of the day most of my writing has been fun for me ^^ like come on i've written things that are silly and self indulgent and they worked fine and i'm here like. wow

i have considered writing for more series but the thing is the media i like has a fandom of like. 2.5 people on the good days. so it really doesn't make too much sense to even try that <.< genshin fandom scares tf out of me so i'll keep my extra fluffy albedo thoughts to myself. the bazillion "childe being a dumbass in love" posts. kazuha writing poetry. oops. getting flashbacks to the time i almost made a hypmic blog but i stopped myself at the last second out of embarrassment

i'm torn on whether a) people just aren't interested in that kind of content anymore (no way) or b) people DO read our stuff, they simply don't interact. not even a like. the migration of people from other social media into tumblr,, like sorry but i've been here since 2016? and it gets worst for writers every day </3

i have an immense amount of cute enstars thoughts a day and i feel like if i can't share them i will combust (my best friend has to deal with me every day),, it's mostly cute romantic stuff with my favs and my ocs, for obv reasons so i'm like uuuu should i even tell this to someone it's just embarrassing. like only other enstarries could understand why i keep rotating this bunch of dorks around my brain and getting the biggest serotonin boost out of it ueeee

i kind of miss being in a server with other people. i've been feeling very lonely lately due to uni so i think that'd be good for my mental health but at the same time,, i don't want to go back to talking once in a blue moon you know? ooo to be an anxious mess every day of your life.... like i get nervous so easily and i know i'll make someone uncomfortable so i simply keep quiet or i don't know how to join conversations because my social skills are -1. i'm a bit of a mess TT

as a bonus for reading all of this, wips of some of the banners/wallpapers? i was working on the last time. rei was meant to be a light pink/purple ish kind of shade but i don't mind how these came out either ^^ i need to print the cgs as polaroids again

[artofsamothrace]

Hello, another Liliath collage! He's not (that of) a bitch in my sick fantasy, okay 😀

A pretty tag ~

[speakeasy8]

[003] Fujii, K. (through the eyes of his manager, Zuzzu)

Rehearsal

- Staff journal entry dating 28 April 2021, written by Tomonori Kawazu (aka Zuzzu)

Good evening.

Yesterday was the final rehearsal for the Viva La Rock 2021 stage!  

So stoked cause it’ll be a reunion with some of the stage crew whom we hadn’t worked with since the last show of the HEHT tour at Okayama Civic Hall! 

(image taken from Kaze’s app) 

This time, we’ve got a small crew comprising of stage director Ono-chan, sound PA Momi-san and Keisuke-san who’s in charge of sound monitor, Le Manipulator Ishii-chan (who stood in for Hiko-san), lighting specialist Suzuki-san and the Daichi-crew, the professional roadie crew in charge of instrument handling, and last but not least, Dachio (tl: Kento Yamada, director of a bunch of Kaze’s MVs and his concert documentaries and basically Team Kaze's go-to person for anything visual-related, aka Dutch or Dachio). 

However, Elizabeth Miyaji showed up at the studio as well, even if I don’t remember asking him to come.  

Me, confused: Eh? Why are you here? 

‘zabeth: I’m here because Yamada-san asked me. He said, “Everyone’s gonna be there! So you gotta be, too!” 

Wow! This is really heartening to hear! 

Very few things feel better than people showing up without you having to ask! 

Thinking back on it, this was what it was like back when they were shooting Running for Budokan. 

Back then, when I first asked Kento Yamada-san (the guy we like to affectionately call Dachio) to shoot the concert footage of the Budokan show, I remember also asking him something along the lines of, “It’d be really great if you could also shoot some backstage footage as well.” (At this point, we didn’t actually have any real plans to release backstage footage yet.) 

And ‘zabeth, he just showed up at the studio along with Dachio one fine day. 

Come to think of it, ever since I first laid eyes on him, I’ve never seen him without a camera  hanging 'round his neck. 

‘zabeth, does this mean you’ve been snapping shots and filming us all this time even when we weren‘t aware?  

Because it wasn’t just Kaze, whom we expected the footage to be centered on, but there were also countless pictures and footage of the rest of us BTS staff, almost all of which were taken candidly. 

From the endless amount of footage, then came the passionate editing.  

Which eventually led to the documentary itself. 

From ‘zabeth’s positioning and Dachio’s direction, the wonderful piece of work called Running For Budokan was born.  

‘zabeth and Dachio, you guys are awesome! 

Given how frequent I appear in it, though, I think it's best that I explain some things.

In the documentary, what people will see is a loud-mouthed middle-aged man, and a somewhat timid, rather shy and quiet, but pleasant-seeming young man. Just for the record, Kaze isn’t usually as quiet and timid as he comes off in there, no sir. He gets agitated sometimes by certain things and even I, at the grand old age of 46, get told off by him at times! 

But I digress. Under the ever-changing circumstances, we finally came to the stage where we wrapped up rehearsals, with nothing but hope to go on that the show will be able to go on without a hitch. 

Here’s the van loaded with equipment after rehearsal, along with the hopes and prayers of Kaze and his team! 

(image taken from Kaze’s app) 

Fujii Kaze’s all packed and ready to impress! 

...just, you know, saying. 

--

[jinseibluetooth]

April update that almost happened before Watcher's April schedule! Since last time I've read:

Not My Problem - Ciara Smyth

A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers

A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin

She Who Became The Sun - Shelley Parker-Chan

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers - Jesse Q. Sutanto

The Book Eaters - Sunyi Dean

The Bedlam Stacks - Natasha Pulley

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy - Becky Chambers

The Great Passage - Shion Miura

I feel like I'm diversifying genres now but also a silly dumb YA title once in a while feels like a palate cleanser, like the equivalent of watching Bridgerton or an Emily in Paris episode: low brainpower investment excellent for kick-starting my reading motivation.

Anyway The Bedlam Stacks almost made me cry and I really had to bit back tears with The Great Passage, who knew the passion involved in dictionary making would hit me that hard? I actually read The Great Passage because Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru doesn't have an English translation and I really didn't expect to feel so strongly about it.

I'm either really easy to please or really good at picking books that I know I'll like, but considering that as a child one of my favorite books was a journalism manual, I don't think I'm very picky...

Anyway I'm currently reading Wayfarers 1.

This year I'm keeping record via Goodreads/Storygraph plus a reading journal but last year I actually liked also keeping track via a Tumblr post, so here is the first batch of books I've read in 2023:

A Restless Truth - Freya Marske

Astrid Parker Doesn't Fail - Anne Herring Blake

Midwinter Murder - Agatha Christie

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley

Might actually go for Tana French's The Likeness next, but I'm sorta sitting on my feet about it because In The Woods was such an intense experience that I'm afraid it's going to just stop my reading momentum.

[windywhispers]

when kaze protects corrin from harm: 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

when you realize its bc of a seated self hatred so he’s doing it to sacrifice himself to make up for something that isn’t his fault: 😡😡😡😡

[normalweirdoboy]

Thanks for tagging me @sulfurousmirrorscapes 

Rules: Put your favorite playlist on shuffle and list the first 10 songs, then tag 10 people.

So here it is... (kinda embarrassing heheh)

Be Kind - Marshmelo, Halsey

Ho Hey - The Lumineers

Monaco - Smooth Lounge Piano (Well it was there in the list so...)

Mo-Eh Wa - Fujii Kaze

Rare - Selena Gomez

Tomake Bujhina Priyo - Prasen Mukherjee

You Need to Calm Down - Taylor Swift

Obokashbelay - SHOUBHIK GHOSH

Prayer X - King Gnu

Tum Hi Ho - Arijit Singh

I’m tagging @art-for-every-heart @strongfiercestworld @creativespacetime @quaelearns @shayraeh420 @sarrrrrrrah @shreyabhadauriya @oneiridescent @mialuvscats @dancelover45

[babayjaga]