#Like that was years ago during kizuna???? I think?????? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blueeyeswhitegarden · 2 years ago

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I posted 30,592 times in 2022

18 posts created (0%)

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I tagged 19,578 of my posts in 2022

Only 36% of my posts had no tags

#pokemon - 3,558 posts

#pokemon starters - 2,562 posts

#pokemon trainers - 1,899 posts

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#legendary pokemon - 1,068 posts

#pikachu - 1,010 posts

#pokemon scarlet/violet - 923 posts

#yugioh dm - 922 posts

#arc v - 880 posts

#pokemon journeys - 837 posts

Longest Tag: 39 characters

#digimon adventure last evolution kizuna

My Top Posts in 2022:

Thank you for responding to my ask, and for that answer, Really, I mean it. I've dealt with bad fandoms before, but the majority of the YGO Community is probably the one that would drive me insane the most. I can understand where they are coming from and why they are upset, like Zuzu not getting her own Pendulum Monsters (Which I'm still confused over because logically, it doesn't make sense for her not to have it. Then again, I don't know when she would get them, maybe Synchro?).

But that doesn't make it less painful. I'm a late newcomer to the series, I only just started getting into it 2 years ago around this time, so I wouldn't know any better about this stuff, especially YGO"s weird, and quite frankly, unnecessary female duelist problem. Like this shouldn't be an issue in the first place, yet it is. But, Arc-V, despite not exactly fully delivering, was a step in the right direction.

You're welcome! I've been familiar with the YGO fandom for a long time and I saw a lot of Arc V hate as the series progressed. People insulted me, as well as my friends, for still liking Arc V before and after it finished, so I can definitely emphasize with how bad and insane the fandom can be. There are a few reasons as to why I try to avoid the online community as much as I can and that is one of them.

I would have loved for Yuzu to get Pendulum cards, but I can see why that didn't happen. In-universe, the only way she could have gotten Pendulum cards was from Reiji and I don't think he would have made Pendulum cards for her deck. She wasn't officially a Lancer, even though he did say that her skills where on par with the other Lancers during the Synchro arc, and considering they didn't know where she was or how long it would take to find her, I don't think it would have made sense for Reiji to have Pendulum cards for Yuzu on standby. That being said, I am baffled that Konami hasn't made Melodious Pendulum cards yet. Her deck relies on her monsters being special summoned and having Pendulum cards would really give her archetype a much needed boost, as well as a couple of more Fusion monsters. I don't know if they'll do that when I'm not sure how popular Melodious monsters are in the OCG, but I love playing Melodious monsters in Duel Links as Yuzu, so giving her archetype some much needed love and support would be so cool.

To be fair, it isn't a problem exclusive to YGO in regards to their female duelists. It's more of a problem in shonen series since female characters in general typically aren't given the best writing or treatment. One could argue that this has been improved upon over time some of the more popular shonen series, but by how much is pretty debatable. Still, I'm not surprised that people see this as a YGO problem considering that there are questionable to sexist writing throughout the franchise for its female characters. It's been a pretty big talking point about the series pretty much from the start. Although, I've also seen plenty of sexist reactions from the fanbase towards the female leads too. It's kind of a complicated topic because there are plenty of issues with how the franchise as a whole has handled its female characters and plenty of ways for it to improve, but at the same time, I do think that the fanbase can be much harsher towards the female characters compared to male characters. With Yuzu in particular, I still remember seeing people wish for her to get hit or hurt because she stopped the Dragon Boys from merging in Synchro. Even before then, people were upset that she kept Yuya and Yuto apart for so long, despite how she wasn't doing that on purpose and there was a really good reason why they didn't meet for awhile. That isn't to say that there aren't any valid criticisms from fans, but just that I've noticed that some reactions over the years can also give off some sexist vibes.

I do agree that Arc V was a step in the right direction in regards to female duelists. I still think that the franchise has a complicated issue with female leads based on the series following Arc V, but ideally, they can continue to improve in the future.

4 notes - Posted September 3, 2022

🔥

The Synchro arc was a good solid arc. I've rewatched Arc V a few times and while I love every arc, which in itself is probably also an unpopular opinion, this one is still my favorite. The world building was great and made the Synchro Dimension feel distinct from the other Dimensions. The pacing was solid. Every episode was important from a story and/or character perspective. Little, if anything, could have really been cut out or reduced. I loved how Jack and Crow were handled. They were prominent supporting characters as opposed to taking the spotlight away from the Arc V characters. Plus, they were incorporated into the Arc V universe extremely well without making people feel like they had to watch 5D's first. Knowing their characterizations and history from 5D's definitely added to their personalities in Arc V, but it wasn't a requirement.

The Friendship Cup was a great tournament arc. There were plenty of great duels. As much as I missed the unique Action Fields, getting to see Riding Duels again was great and they worked extremely well with Action Duels. Yuya, Sora, Reira and to a degree Shun had some terrific character development. While I do wish that they got to duel more, Yuzu and Serena's personalities shined nicely with their duels too. Serena understanding more about enjoying duels even after losing to Yugo was especially nice. Yuya vs. Jack round two is easily my favorite duel in the entire series and there is a lot of competition for that considering how many good duels there are in Arc V. They was quite a bit of foreshadowing with Zarc from how close the boys were closed to merging together and even Yuya's first duel in the tournament was extremely similar to how Zarc started to become a more violent duelist.

The backlash during and after the arc finished always seemed way too extreme to me. I can understand not liking it. I think that the world building is great and engaging, but I can understand not liking it or having a tournament arc. Dismissing the arc as filler, saying that the series was in a 5D's fever dream or claiming that they wasted time with 5D's fanservice just makes me roll my eyes and think that people really missed a lot of key points of this arc. It doesn't help that there are other arcs with much worse pacing issues, including in other series I like, and there are far worse tournament arcs in this franchise too. I just find it baffling that people still get so up in arms over an arc that, in my opinion, was pretty great.

Thank you for asking. ^_^

5 notes - Posted May 16, 2022

Plenty of people have talked about what Kazuki Takashi and the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise as a whole have meant to them over the past couple of days, but I figured that I’d try my best to convey my feelings into words.

I woke up yesterday morning to the news of his passing and it still feels unreal to me. Just the shock of seeing the headline on ANN and processing it throughout the day was just so overwhelming that I didn’t know what to say or do. It was just such a tragic and sudden passing.

I’ve been a fan of the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise since the DM dub. I had seen a few episodes early on in season one, but the Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon duel, particularly its ending, grabbed my attention and I’ve been hooked ever since. This series has been such a huge comfort and constant presence for me for years. Arc V is my absolute favorite series in the franchise and it, as well as all of the other spin-off series, would not exist without the manga. I do have a lot of nostalgic fondness for DM too. As much as I do like Atem, Yugi being the shy kid who loves games and just wanted friends was a lot more relatable to me and I’m sure to other fans as well. The DSOD movie was such a terrific anniversary movie and a great way to send off the DM cast. It lead to so many good scenes that I just adored like Yugi and his friends talking about their futures and Yugi’s brief reunion with Atem. I didn’t know I needed that extra bit of closure until I watched the movie in theaters. The whole movie made me happy that I’ve been a fan for all these years. While he hasn’t been too involved with the franchise since DSOD, it was still nice to see him occasionally post some new artwork. Seeing his artstyle evolve over the years was impressive. Knowing that he won’t be able to do more drawings, something he clearly loved to do, is quite sad too.

I’ve made so many wonderful friends through this series. I met my best friend in middle school not too long after the DM dub started and we still talk with each other all the time. I’ve met even more people over the years through this franchise. I think that’s one of the reasons why his passing has hit me so hard. Without the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, I wouldn’t have met so many of my friends and I would be a much more unhappy person as a result. Knowing that the person responsible for creating the franchise that has brought me so much joy and comfort over the years and has allowed me to make many dear friends is suddenly gone is just heartbreaking.

This quote from one of the manga volumes has been going around since the news broke out: https://twitter.com/danajiru/status/1544966774130544640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1544966774130544640%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=

I’ve seen that quote before over the years, but reading it after trying to process the news for awhile finally made me start crying. Just the thought that people becoming friends through his manga brought him the most joy felt so bittersweet to me. I have jokingly say that “friendship is magic” is the theme of the franchise, but it’s true. The power that comes from forming friendships has always been a central theme of the series. I think that’s a big part of its appeal. The characters creating strong lasting bonds with each other can make it easier for the audience to be invested in them and having the cool and dramatic flare of duels with monsters on top of it can be a good hook.

I truly hope that Kazuki Takahashi knew how much his work meant to people, that it did allow many people to form friendships and that it continues to make people happy. I wish I could thank him for creating the manga, for allowing me to meet so many wonderful people and for all of the precious memories I have thanks to this franchise. I’ve been struggling to find the best way to convey how much this franchise means to me for days and I’m still not sure if I pulled it off. For now, I think this is the best I can do. I hope that Kazuki Takahashi is at peace and his family and friends will be okay as well. Thank you again for everything.

11 notes - Posted July 8, 2022

Howdy. I don't know if you still do asks, but I gotta try. I saw some of your comments on Pxiao's posts and I agree with a lot of what you say. But I'm curious: Why don't you think Zuzu (Yuzu) is a plot device? I'm not asking because I disagree, I just want to know you're reasoning is. On the surface, it looks like that's the case for Zuzu and the other Bracelet Girls, especially Rin and Lulu (Ruri).

[quote=]I know you said Zuzu was the only one able to reach to Yuya, but unfortunately that doesn't exactly help that argument as it only insinuates that Zuzu only existed just to fuel Yuya's motivation at the end. I know that Zuzu, Celina (Serena), and the others could be given more screen time. That is an objective flaw of Arc-V. But even then, I like Arc-V and I'm sick of seeing so much hatred and disappointment for it, even if the other series have the same flaws that are just as bad or even worse.

I hope I'm not bothering or upsetting you by asking this. I'm not asking to be mean or patronizing, I'm just genuinely curious (Also, sorry for the long asks, not much I can do with the text limit)[/quote]

You're not bothering me and the text limit on asks can be tricky, so it's okay. I still do asks as you can tell and I'll try to explain myself as best as I can.

I don't think Yuzu is a plot device because she doesn't just exist as motivation fuel for Yuya. He clearly wants to save her and spends most of the series trying to reunite with Yuzu, but that isn't her only impact on the plot or even her only important relationship. Her friendship with Sora played a key role in his development. Yuya's first interaction with Sora in Synchro started that development in motion, but I don't know if that would have been enough to make Sora change sides without his meeting with Yuzu, especially when he was trying to help protect Yuzu and somehow stay loyal to the Professor at the same time. Their conversation was pretty vital for making him understand that Academia would be endangering more innocent people. Without Yuzu's intervention, Serena wouldn't have learned the truth about Academia and most likely would have been captured during the Battle Royal. While they don't have a relationship, Shun would have been carded by Sora if Serena didn't show up, which would have been bad given the role he had for the rest of the series. I'm not sure how Yugo would have reacted to seeing Yuya in the Synchro Dimension if he didn't meet Yuzu. He could have been more of a wild card without knowing about Academia or that Yuri was the one who kidnapped Rin. As much as people wanted Yuya vs. Yugo after seeing the third opening, that would have been pretty bad considering that regardless of the outcome, they would have been 3/4 Zarc and Yuya was struggling with being 1/2 of Zarc for most of the series. Even her relationship with Shuzo was pretty vital considering he was the first one to remember her after Standard had been transformed into the Pendulum Dimension.

Yuzu also really does not get enough credit for effectively saving the universe twice. The first time was unknowingly when the Dragon Boys were about to merge in Synchro, but knowing what we know about Zarc, Ray and the original world, it would have been game over if they had merged during the Synchro arc. They would have had no knowledge about Zarc, Ray or the original world. There would have been no way to revive Ray and they would have had fewer allies to help fight against Zarc. Yeah, she was focused on Yuya, but considering what her bracelet lighting up usually meant, it was not unreasonable for her to be worried about her friend. Yuzu was the one who was finally able to reach out to Yuya when Zarc had revived. Because they had been shown throughout the series as inspiring each other, Yuzu calling out to Yuya wasn't Yuzu being motivation fuel for him at the end. It was about how two people cared about each other so deeply that their souls were crying out to each other even after they had merged with their counterparts and been revived as their original selves.

Basically, I think Yuzu has too much of impact on multiple characters, not just Yuya, and too much of vital role in the storyline to be labeled as a plot device. I wouldn't consider any of the Bracelet Girls plot devices either. While they aren't as fleshed out as Yuzu, I think that still ignores a lot about their personalities. Serena doesn't have a lot of connections, but she still gets some solid development, so she isn't just the basis for Reira's development or extra motivation fuel for Yuya when she is captured by Academia. While we see Rin through flashbacks for most of the series, we still learn that she is smart enough to make a D-Wheel with Yugo and she wanted to defeat Jack, which at least shows that she has goals outside of being Yugo's friend. Ruri is probably the least fleshed out of the Bracelet Girls, but she still had other relationships besides Yuto and Shun and being the first one interested in Yusho's dueling philosophy, even if it was through Sayaka instead, showed her own personality and interests. Yuzu herself wants to be an Entertainment Duelist just like Yuya too. While this doesn’t get as much attention given that Yuya has more emotional conflict with his goal over the course of the series, it still shows that Yuzu has her own goal too.

I'm sadly not surprised that some people see the Bracelet Girls as plot devices. I think that is a poor surfaced level reading of their characters that is a massive disservice to them, especially Yuzu and Serena, as well as the storyline for Arc V as a whole. There are valid criticisms as to how they were handled, but most of the complaints I've seen throughout the years with them, especially with Yuzu, usually feel like missing the point or misreading their characters. Yuzu in particular is often reduced to being Yuya's motivation fuel or that her entire world revolves around Yuya. I adore their relationship, but there is more to Yuzu than just her relationship with Yuya and there is examples of that throughout the series.

I've been sick of Arc V hate for years, so I empathize with that. I would have hoped that it had cooled down over the years, but it probably hasn't. I still adore Arc V, it is my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! series and Yuzu is still my favorite female lead in the franchise by far.

14 notes - Posted September 2, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

It’s 2022 and I’m still seeing people treat DSOD as a scapegoat for their problems with Arc V. Unbelievable. As both a bit of a vent and a possibly futile way to combat misinformation, the writers for Arc V were not working on both the show and the movie at the same time, at least not as far as I can tell. According to Anime News Network, Kazuki Takahashi, Satoshi Kuwabara and Masahiro Hikokubo were in charge of the script. Hikokubo was the only person from Arc V out of the three and he’s done the duel layout for everything since DM. There may have been people from Arc V working on the animation or other production aspects for DSOD, but as far as the writing goes, they had mostly different people working on it.

To be clear, I’m not saying that DSOD couldn’t have had an impact on Arc V’s production. Given what happened with My Hero Academia’s third movie during its fifth season, it probably did to some degree at least. My problem comes from how people have acted for years that every problem they had with Arc V was due to the movie or that the series would be drastically different if they weren’t working on DSOD. Since Arc V had the same head writer for its entire run and they had a lot of foreshadowing for major reveals from pretty early on, I highly doubt that the series would have been drastically different without DSOD. If people didn’t like the decisions and directions Arc V took, that’s fair, but treating DSOD as their scapegoat like that just has always bothered me. Spreading misinformation about the writers putting more focus on the movie instead of the show when none of the writers from Arc V were involved with DSOD is also pretty annoying.

23 notes - Posted May 9, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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anon--h · 2 years ago

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AI: Nirvana Initiative. Closing Thoughts

That was a lot of fun. I beat the game in 72 hours because it kept demanding my brainspace. Spoilers underneath the cut. Let’s dig in the good, the bad and the strange.

The Good

Strong, strong setup. Finding two halves of a corpse appearing seemingly out of nowhere would make any murder mystery enthousiast salivate..... In the game I mean, not in real life.

Ryuki is incredibly likeable as a protagonist. At first he appears to be the straight man to the wackier characters, but he might just be the most feral one there. He has horrible taste in men though.

One of the themes, Unreality / Simulation Theory gets explored through Ryuki and his Breakdown moments are fittingly unnerving. Making him go through the Nihil Number ending seems to ensure he will never psychologically recover.

I liked Tama way more than I expected to like her. She’s less dommy mommy and more emotional support.... Who just happens to enjoy tying Ryuki up..... So no, I guess she actually is dommy mommy.

There’s a lot of discourse to be had about Kizuna and Lien, but I thought they were pretty sweet together. I guess I am a sucker for this kinda thing. Lien was pushy, but not forceful and never quite reached the creepiness of Ota.

Speaking of Ota; returning main characters (sans Mizuki) were used sparringly. We got an update on their lives, but they were barely involved in the plot. Which is good. It allowed the new characters their chance to shine.

The AI-balls and their partners are still hilarious and the game delivered multiple laugh-out-loud moments. Maybe my sense of humor is just that bad.

Date and Tama would be a pair made in hell and I kinda wanna see it.

I enjoy that this serie keeps flirting with high concept Zero Escape things like alternate timelines and space/time displacement without confirming their existence in this world. In AI1 it was Date remembering things from 8 years ago; in NI it is the player’s misunderstanding of the timeline.

For the longest time, I was convinced the masked woman was the Boss, based on her color scheme, mannerisms and way of speaking. Having it turn out that she was adopted by the boss made complete sense to me. Also, don’t think I didn’t notice the boss’s profile say that she’s an adoptive mother to Mizuki. That was incredibly cheeky. I appreciate it.

I really liked thinking along with the mystery this time. I managed to figure out that the killer used Carbon Nano Tubes by paying close attention to the AI-ball trivia and deduced the existence of a second killer pretty early on. It was a lot easier to pick up on than the hints towards bodyswitching in the first game and made me feel very clever.

The Somniums feel so much more varied than before. We have escape rooms, 999 references, quiz shows, pokemon go and cooking contests. I really enjoyed going through them this time.

The twist of the killer being dead in present day was interesting, and made the reveal of their killer very tense and emotional. Mainly because I hoped it wasn’t so. It felt sad and a little anticlimactic to have someone that feels like a bystander be the final culprit. An unfortunate fate indeed.

Mizuki and Date still have amazing dysfunctional father / grump daughter chemistry.

The Bad

Mizuki and Date don’t share nearly enough scenes together.

The timeline *not* being symmetrical seemed like a missed oppertunity that annoyed me way more than it should have.

The lack of an ‘annihilation’ timeline, wherein the bad guy wins (or at least does as much damage as humanly possible) also feels like a missed oppertunity.

Bibi’s existence does make me question a few things about the timeline of the first game. She must have been out sick that week. It also puts a very new, horrible perspective on Shoko’s abuse of Mizuki. “Our child is abnormal”- yeah, she sure is.

Controls for the Switch version get screwy during Tokiko’s Somnium. Especially during the hand puzzle. I just kept getting pushed away from the desk for some reason. It left me too little time to complete the Somnium and turned a haunting dream into a frustrating one.

One of the most memorable moments of the first game was the confrontation with Saito. He got to gloat and explained his motives while filling in some of the gaps. Tearer never got to do that. In fact, the player gets barely any interactions with Tearer at all. As a result, he never feels like much of a character. Tokiko feels like more of a character; even Chikara feels more three dimensional.

Tearer being another illegitimate son of So is hilarious to me, but I am not sure that it was the game’s intention to be funny.

Fuck the Red Room puzzle.

Mama is a delightful character, but I felt they really cheapend them in NI. Having them tell the future was a little weird already, but having them talk directly to the player felt especially janky.

The finale felt like a lengthy power rangers fight. It had a few fun moments, but it felt really out of place for a murder mystery game.

The Strange

I am not sure how to feel about the reveal of Mizuki. I feel like her superpower needed sóme explanation, but her being a result of genetic experimentation was probably the least interesting way to take it.

For a game with a very obvious arc-number (that being 6), it feels very incomplete that there are only 5 victims. I kept anticipating a final victim that never appeared. Not bad, just weird.

I am grateful that minecraftheads are genetically recessive.

Ending on a bombastic song and dance number seems to be a tradition now, which is fun. Unfortunately only the choreography improved. The song itself had some bizarre turns and twists.

The twist of the timeline being different than initially presented isn’t bad, but it feels clunky. Because of course we misinterpreted the timeline, Nirvana Initiative. You misrepresented it.

#nirvanai #aitsf #ai: the somnium files

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kaysutcliff-michaelis · 4 years ago

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SOUMA-HEN 2021 CAST

Hi, humans and oni, all fans of Hakumyu!

Since Souma-hen is a thing again I’ve recovered my original cast announcement post and updated it. The info about the actors is a mix between what I’ve found about them and info from the official cast page, but I haven’t included every past myu/stage play in the official info, so I’d recommend checking it if you’re interested in seeing more of any of these people.

Without further ado, I present you the official cast for the 2021 version of Musical Hakuoki Souma-hen:

Mizuki Umetsu (梅津瑞樹) is Kazue Souma

28 years old, his Twitter is @MizukiUmetsu, and he’s been in Musical Touken Ranbu and the Sanrio Boys stage play .

Risa Matsuzaki (松崎莉沙) is Chizuru Yukimura

She’s a member of Roys, a Japanese female duo chorus group. Playing Chizuru in this myu will be her first time as an actress. Her Twitter is @risadegozaimasu and she’s 24 years old.

Hidetoshi Kubota (久保田秀敏) is Toshizo Hijikata

Has worked in films and dramas before, also has myu/stage play experience (Sengoku Basara stage play , Moriarty the Patriot myu, etc.). He’s 33 years old and his Twitter is @kubotahidetoshi.

Shuji Kikuchi (菊池修司) is Souji Okita

First difference with the 2020 cast! Shuji Kikuchi replaces Shogo Yamazaki, who first appeared in Hakumyu in Shitan Hijikata-hen. He’s 25 and his Twiiter is @kutisyu. He’s been in some stage plays before, like the Pirates of the Frontier UtaPri stage play .

Shoichiro Oomi (大海将一郎) is Hajime Saito

His Twitter is @shoichiro_oomi. The protagonist/”your” character in the Fate/GO Babylonia Myu, also has some experience as a seiyuu (in fact google doesn’t list him as an actor but as a voice actor) and is/was in a group called "Hi! Superb"

Yuta Higuchi (樋口裕太) is back as Heisuke Todou!

His first Hakumyu was Shitan Hijikata-hen! He is 25 and he won a Junon Superboy contest (Most Photogenic) and according to Anime on Stage he’s been in other myus/stage plays, like Ensemble Stars and Yona of the Dawn. According to the cast page he’s been in Ao no Exorcist and Hitman Reborn stage plays too. His Twitter is @higuchi24yuta.

Ryousuke Koike (小池亮介) is Nagakura Shinpachi

Second change in the cast, he’s replacing Yuta Kishimoto, who was Nagakura in both Shitan Hijikata-hen and Shitan Kazama-hen. He’s 25 and his Twitter is @ryosuke19951117. He was Akito/Agito in the Air Gear myu, and according to the cast page he wants everyone to think that Nagakura Shinpachi is cool (literally, 「永倉新八カッコいいな」kakkoii and everything)

Shouta Kawakami (川上将大) is Sanosuke Harada

He’s been in Tenimyu, Rice on stage, Hitman Reborn and Touken Ranbu stages/myus, among others. He’s 27 and his Twitter is @rjpmission. An anecdote: a few weeks ago someone I follow on Twitter went to see Rice on stage and he was one of the actors performing, which made me wonder if Souma-hen would happen since people from the cast were working on other things and I supposed that meant the situation in Japan was good enough to resume events like stage plays, included those that had been cancelled.

Teruma (輝馬) is back as Keisuke Sannan!

Sannan since Hakumyu Reimeiroku, he’s been in Kuromyu (William T Spears), Bungou Stray Dogs stage play, the Nanatsu no Taizai stage play and Tenimyu. His Twitter is @teruma_060 and he’s 31.

This makes me really happy! I still prefer Ryosuke Mikata, but he’s showed that he deserves the role, so I hope he stays in Hakumyu for many years to come! And I’m still mad that Teruma wasn’t in the Tango on the Campania Kuromyu...

Taizo Shiina (椎名鯛造) is back as Susumu Yamazaki!

First appeared in Shitan Hijikata-hen, and he’s been in some Sengoku Basara and Danganronpa stage plays, among others. He’s 34 and his Twitter is @TaizoShiina.

Taira Imata (井俣太良) is back as Isami Kondou!!!

Best dad since Okita-hen (second Hakumyu) and by this point, everyone’s senpai, what else can be said about this man??? If you’ve watched any Hakumyu other than Saito-hen, you already know him. Great man and actor, he’s 45 and his Twitter is @TAIRANT1975.

These are the characters/actors & actress that I covered in my first Souma-hen cast post. I actually wrote another one with the rest of the cast, but thanks to a broken mouse the whole post got deleted when it was almost finished. Time to redeem myself!

Syuya Sunagawa (砂川脩弥) is Saburo Miki!

Replacing Allen Kohatsu in the role of Miki, he’s 26 and his Twitter is @suna_syu_. It’s his first time in a musical, but he’s in the Kamen Rider Zero One drama. According to the Kamen Rider Wikia, he won the Avex Boys Award in 2016.

Masashi Sonomura (園村将司) is Risaburo Nomura!

He’s 22 and he’s @masashisonomura on Twitter. He’s been in Tenimyu and has done some stuff on TV (the cast page lists some things but I’m not familiar with them ;_;)

Masafumi Yokoyama (横山真史) is Kyuju Amagiri!

He’s 34 and he’s @masafumi21yoko on Twitter. He’s been in Touken Ranbu, Ikemen Sengoku and Toki no Kizuna stages.And as my friend and Amagiri’s biggest fan Lawrichai pointed out, he played Amagiri’s grandpa/relative in the Toki no Kizuna stage.

Takuma Sueno (末野卓磨) is back as Kyo Shiranui!

He’s 36 and he’s @sueno0724 on Twitter. His first Hakumyu was Shitan Kazama hen. Has been in the Sengoku Basara stage play and the Rantaro Shinobu myu (this one wasn’t that long ago so I remember seen funny pics of this on Twitter).

Hiroyuki Kawamoto (川本裕之) is back as Kodo Yukimura!

Egg dad since the times of Harada hen, he doesn’t have a Twitter account and apparently there isn’t that much info about him on Google D:

And... drum roll a big round of applause for our returning demon, the original, the one and only, SHOGO SUZUKI (鈴木勝吾) AS CHIKAGE KAZAMA!!!

I already spoiled this in my Souma-hen is back post but I’m sooooooooooooooo happy to see him back. He’s @Shogo_Suzuki_ on Twitter (where he’s posted photos of his Hakumyu-watching sessions more than once),he’s 31 and he played Kazama from the very beginning in Saito-hen until Live 2. During his absence from Hakumyu he didn’t stop acting, some of you may remember my post about his appearance in the Moriarty the Patriot myu.

Not that I dislike Yoshihide Sasaki (Hijikata in Reimei, and Kazama in Harada-hen and the 2020 Souma-hen cast), but I will always see him as my dear Viscount Druitt from Kuromyu. And let’s be honest, Shogo has his “own brand” of Kazama. He took the character and made it his own, having a unique way of portraying him and enjoying every last bit of it.

And that was the complete main cast! This time we had all the info from the start so I don’t think a follow-up post will be necessary.

As an ending note, I would like to dedicate this post to Serizawa’s actor, Akira Kubodera, who passed away last month. I’m sure he would love to see that everyone has been hoping for Souma-hen to return and that the Hakuoki Shinsengumi, or at least its spirit, can’t be defeated.

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lacktastrophe · 4 years ago

Text

Daisy MegaPost Pt1

Update: 3/7/2021

This one’s been in the shop for a couple of years now. I think I started this way back in 2019 but I just became just far too busy to work on huge posts again. I had anticipated to have all of Daisy written up during the break that BCB had, but I became in need of a break myself too. Part two was written up, but I never went further.

I had come back to this recently and made some changes. I wasn’t too happy with the way I used to write and I’ve been editing this over and over, until I noticed it wasn’t keeping them. I’ve published it now since there wasn’t any point just keeping it in drafts and it’s more or less done, just not in this state I’m perfectly happy with, but it seems to be keeping my changes now it’s in this state. I anticipate I’ll still be making some edits. Before I continue on with Part 2. As for part 3 and onwards, I can’t give a time frame.

With the webtoons version way ahead of the chapters here, I’ll probably make progressive updates and start using those over the old Volume 1 art, I’d anticipate the webtoons version is a retelling of the story and thus there might be some retcons, like how Kizuna was replaced with Stacy. I’d anticipate some changes might make different meanings for the future.

I still enjoy examining the story and characters. I still plan to do some introspections to the other characters I haven’t come to, but it’ll be far fewer and in-between than years ago. I have other projects and those need priority.

But I’m happy that people still enjoy reading these.

---

We’re onto the main characters now, things are going to need to change with the way mega-posts are going to be published from this point forward. My previous mega-posts are usually just one long post, hence the name. Though they’re starting to become uncontrollable, and Tumblr is clamping down, or at least not really working with excessive word counts.

Uh oh. . .

Well, the old mega-posts can still be accessed but you’ll need a direct link, they won’t show up on the mainroll and I’d be surprised if they still show up these days, and I’d have to guess this has something to do with the anti-spam detection on Tumblr.

If you were interested in the previous mega-posts, they can be accessed on their own page from my blog’s front page. I just wouldn’t try reading some of the earlier ones on an app, it’ll struggle.

The other problem was with the word count, even without the characters being the prime focus, they’re starting to get long. Abbey’s alone was a 16000 behemoth. This surprised me, as despite him being a secondary character there was an awful lot to discover and talk about. Augustus, despite being a character who appeared much more in-between chapters but much fewer than Abbey, was nearly 21000 words. If there was that much to talk about with the secondary characters, the same method of just dumping as much as I can into one post is clearly not going to work when we start approaching the main characters. I had to split both of them up for my own convenience.

The main change is to make these smaller so they’re friendlier on the app and the website; maybe aim for 2000-5000 words without focusing too heavily on trying to get through on as many chapters as possible and see how far we go.

The plan from this point forward is to do a large collection of write ups but then deploy them progressively. That’ll also give anyone who’s keen a chance to give feedback or who wants to talk further about something.

Sound good?

Me too! So without further ado, let’s get a move on and have a look at Daisy.

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So, our first protagonist, where do we start with Daisy?

How you’re first introduced to Daisy really depends on whether you read the book or followed the comic through the site. The book’s opening chapter, ‘Like a Bittersweet Candy Bowl’ introduces you to Daisy as a massive bookworm who does well in school. She’s pretty smart!

Book in hand, we’d pretty much believe that right off the bat. She appears like the most studious in this group of friends. And we’d be right! She even puts the ever-perfect Mike to shame. She’s nothing less than a perfect student.

‘Perfect’ could be an understatement, Daisy is a literal freak of nature when it comes to her academics; as when Daisy and the kids transition to Roseville high, we find her already in classes well advanced than her peers.

Daisy is just that incredible!

Through the website, ‘Simple Pleasures’ aims to introduce the kids in much the same way, but there is far less in the way of monologuing and we’re introduced as the characters interact. In much the same way as the introduction chapter in volume 1, we learn that Daisy is quite the bookworm and school-obsessed student, even during weekends. But that’s not the only thing dominating her thoughts, as when Lucy goes out on her walk, the first person she runs into is Daisy who is looking for someone else in particular!

You guessed it!

Oh GOD, does Daisy like boys! Can you guess who she’s got her eye on?

Of course it’s Mike. Are you surprised she’s got a deep crush on the boy who seems very perfect himself? Everywhere that Mike goes, you can be sure that there’s a shadow in the shape of Daisy not too far behind. . .

Wherever he goes. . .

Daisy doesn’t shy from showing her interest in him when the convenience calls for it. Ah, young love.

Eventually, Daisy would find love, though it wouldn’t be with Mike. It would however be the second longest running relationship in the comic if you consider Mike and Sandy, with an admirer of hers.

Still, suffice to say, even after every attempt gets shot down in the most spectacular way, Daisy bounces back -- Like a daisy. Her shining ray of positivity follows her everywhere. It’s all in the name, after all. Daisy still manages to rise up with her sunny disposition.

But not every time.

As the story progresses, little by little, we start seeing that there’s more to Daisy. We start to see that not everything is bright and happy like her name-sake despite appearances. Things would be far from perfect, and underneath that smiling face is a character suffering with low self-esteem in that very same area; her appearance; believing their Ragamuffin/Selkirk-Rex heritage is letting them down and putting them in misery. This tends to be particularly true on rainy days, when all the hours she spends of a morning brushing down her fur become undone when the droplets causes it to fluff up and the curls start showing. Daisy attributes these traits to the reason she isn’t quite as easily noticed by the boys as the other girls, setting up for a number of stories involving her in Volume1, and opening her to be taken advantage of in the pursuit of attention and affection.

Not all the characters gain admirers or attention and for most of these characters, this is fine. But Daisy is not one of those and this above all things has an enormous impact on her. She wants to be noticed and receive affection, particularly from Mike, and others to a degree.

It’s when faced with multiple rejections from her dream boyfriend we also progressively discover a side of her shown to be more envious if not resentful of a few others who have it so easy, particularly with one such character inside her friend circle.

As you can imagine, these weaknesses will eventually put Daisy in danger as she tries her best to come up with ways to cope and make changes in order to improve her life, especially if the means are at the cost of logical reasoning like taking advice from the seediest boy in the school to attain her goals. She isn’t infallible; Intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean smarts. Even with someone who does as well in school as Daisy does, there’s always room to grow.

But until that happens, Daisy often finds herself in trouble when her personal feelings, ambitions and dreams do the talking for them on pursuit of happiness, for herself and others.

And oh boy, doesn’t Daisy make more than her own fair share of mistakes.

Let’s move onto the story, it starts with Simple pleasures, the first chapter.

This chapter serves to introduce us to the main group of characters central to the story and so features the aloof and prickly Lucy, the playboy Paulo, the ever-perfect Mike and the bookworm Daisy. It starts with Lucy on a morning walk and progressively running into each of them. With Daisy specifically, it starts with Daisy coming across her first and greeting her by shouting ‘Hey’ behind her.

Except...Lucy ignores her, and we don’t know why -- Is Lucy doing this intentionally? She’s in a world of her own at the moment with her singing. Are they friends? Is she just so aloof she doesn’t realise she’s there?

Well, Daisy isn’t going to let herself be ignored so easily and she really needs Lucy for something. So she goes to get her attention by impulsively grabbing onto Lucy’s tail. This would turn out to be a very critical mistake that one of the other protagonists just can’t stop helping himself from doing, and because of that we notice that Lucy isn’t as aloof as she seems, and reciprocates by twisting around and kicking her in the face.

Only to find that the person she was expecting was actually Daisy, much to her surprise. There’s a reason she never noticed her.

The first chapter has a number of objectives, it serves to set up the tone of the comic by showing the dynamic between the main group of friends, but also displays their characteristics. We already learn a couple of things from Daisy and Lucy’s interaction here. We learn that Lucy has a short fuse when it comes to unwanted contact. She appears aloof, but the main reason for Lucy not acknowledging Daisy initially is through the understanding that she’s partially deaf, unable to hear out of her left ear in similar in characteristic with her breed, the Khao Manee. Many of the other characters will make this mistake too and often at times Lucy doesn’t make it obvious she can’t hear what’s going on around them and needs to ask about what transpired much later. Lucy’s aloofness will be questioned in time as we start seeing more of her.

Daisy had forgotten about Lucy’s disability because something else was more important. And naturally, we learn that Daisy has, no less; a bit of a crush on the forefront of her mind. And we learn here that crush is on Mike, one of their friends at school, and her reasoning for bothering Lucy is that she’s only looking for him. What we come to learn later is it’s a little known fact that wherever Lucy is, Mike is often not too far away. In fact Lucy is never off on her own by herself.

Sadly for Daisy, Lucy doesn’t know where he is, so Daisy runs off in the opposite direction. That’s about as much of Daisy as we see until the next chapter.

Before we move on, let’s talk more about their interaction. As brief as it was, the interaction gives off more in the subtext into the status of the relationships between these characters and the others. I anticipate as new readers many of the details of this interaction just fly over heads, accepting these two are friends and this is just how they are. But being as late into the comic as we are, I feel we’re already seeing some of the signs of what’s to come in the story through this short interaction. Not everything is as it seems.

Most of this payload of information is laid in the question that Daisy poses after Lucy asks her what she’s after. When Lucy states she hasn’t seen Mike, Daisy asks ‘Oh no, did you upset him?’

Immediately we’re given some insight into the triangle that exists between these characters and their relationship between one another, and insight into the state of these relationships.

Starting with Mike and Lucy’s relationship as the question is directed about the two of them, we learn that the friendship isn’t without it’s issues, and we’d be quick to pass this off initially as something that happens from time to time. Fight’s happen, it’s a fact of life, and it happens more so when you’re a kid and figuring things out, yourself and life. Reading through the story, we would find the two inseparable in the later chapters and we never look at Daisy’s question again. But reading through BCB again from as late in the comic as we are, we have to wonder why this question specifically.

What we learn much later in the comic as we progress through is that Mike and Lucy’s relationship is much more complicated than what it appears to be. Much later, we see that the two do argue from time to time, until we get to the point where the plaster and apologies aren’t mending the cracks. The friendship isn’t quite as clean cut as it was made out to be and we start seeing some back stories into the characters. What appears to be a competitive rivalry through volume 1 between two friends is really something more sinister. By the time we reach Volume 4, we learn these two are really anything but friends.

For the moment, Daisy’s casual interaction gives off a sense of normality in their environment and understanding the answer to the question would actually help plan out her next move if we were to consider that maybe there was some intent behind the question. But we’ll get to the nature of it soon.

Without knowing too much about the kids as early in the story. I’d feel we’d put our trust in the kids to tell the story for us, and Daisy does come off as being quite perceptive and trustworthy immediately being the positive bookkeeper she is, she would be the expert for us until such a time as we become the experts.

One thing we’d discover much later on our own is that the Mike and Lucy are inseparable. In one way or another, they will find each other and act like close friends again. And Daisy knows this too without specifically pointing it out. Already suggesting that they’ve fought, it would only be a matter of time before they made up again, whether that takes minutes or hours. No matter how big the town is again, so long as they’ve got each other in their thoughts, they’ll stumble upon each other in no time, almost like a six sense.

It could be said that this is for the sake of convenience in the story in getting them to interact faster in the comic and resolve disputes, and that would be right. But BCB takes this and turns it into a running gag between just these two characters. There are more than a few jokes that exist in Volume 1 to make this seem like these two are made for each other in the way that they will eventually run into each other no matter how big the town is. One such joke is seen in Volume 1 through Mike’s inability to surprise Lucy on her Birthday. It’s so powerful, even Lucy’s auditory disability doesn’t stop her from catching him just before he can do it, even if the hiding spot isn’t obvious.

We’ve only seen this fail once, and that was in ‘Its all in the mind’ when Mike does sneak up on her, but Lucy has very much moved on from Mike at this point, so we’d have to wonder if this is something to do with them both being in Sync, we might not know.

The question Daisy asks doesn’t just pertain to Mike and Lucy’s relationship however, it also begs the question to Lucy and Daisy’s relationship at the same time. In fact, if it wasn’t for Daisy’s sunny disposition and Lucy’s stone-faced responses, the entire interaction would appear quite rude; Daisy’s question isn’t whether or not she’s seen him, only if she’s upset him, shedding some poor light on Lucy’s personality.

It’s important to remember that while these two are friends at our current point in the comic, they did not start out as friends, especially when you consider Confrontation, as we’re coming up to. Daisy, while she was amicable around Lucy and quite hospitable to her in the friend group, has to contend with her as being this roadblock to getting to Mike. Lucy seemed more aloof around her, but there’s more than enough to suggest that Lucy had other mutual feelings.

Understanding now that there is a rivalry between the two (or a one-sided rivalry, take your pick), we can understand why that particular question had been asked. Its tent though is to give more reason to Daisy’s next move: If Lucy did divulge she had fought with him; then it would only be a matter of time before Mike showed up, as Mike would feel the need to apologise and through their innate ability, would find each other, it would just be a matter of time. If she hadn’t; then Mike could be just about anywhere.

It turns out to be the later. And too infatuated with Mike (or not interested in hanging out with Lucy, take your pick), Daisy does not simply stay with her to wait and runs off in the opposite direction, hoping to find him first.

It’s when Daisy is no longer in the focus, we can see that Lucy isn’t exactly as stonewalled as she initially appeared to be, blushing from the interaction.

As possible that Lucy is only reacting because of her stupid head-over-heels attitude for that other idiot, as Lucy is yet to realise her feelings for Mike, we could wonder if it might not also be because Daisy has rudely pointed at the elephant in the room in Lucy and Mike’s relationship. Who’s to say?

(2021 edit -- The webtoon has this piece of dialogue changed. This time Daisy asks ‘Awww, are you both fighting still?’, which makes this even more pronounced that things aren’t all quite sunshine already. )

Finally, Daisy and Mike. Now that Lucy’s interaction with Daisy is done, Daisy is running around town looking for Mike, for whatever reason it just can’t wait until school.

Ah love. I’m sure it won’t be a problem in the future, right?

Mike is a real nice guy; lending Daisy his math workbook to Daisy.

We really need to look a bit deeper into this. We know much later in the story we that Daisy is well in advance of her peers in her studies. When she starts Roseville high, we find her in no more than two ahead of the others in her grade, with the juniors, and Tess.

And in the first few chapters of volume 1, we learn that Daisy often tutors Mike, so there’s no way Daisy even needs that book.

Unless...

O---Oh. It wasn’t for Math after all.

We’d come to learn that boy troubles are generally the source for all of Daisy’s grief. We’ll find that Daisy’s crazed obsession over Mike is used to justify a lot of the actions she’ll take in the future and we don’t know how bad this is until the much later volumes. Volume one step over this lightly as just a girl wanting her crush’ affection. But it becomes more pronounced in the much later volumes, especially when Abbey makes a point out of it when Daisy is less inhibited to keep her real feelings secret after getting drunk off Alcohol at Rachel’s party in a very late chapter.

Getting back to the current chapter, Lucy will notice that Mike eventually did find Mike, but she’s not with him. So maybe that was all she really wanted.

We’d be saps for thinking that.

But without anything concrete, we can only presume that was it. So thanks for returning Mike’s book, Daisy.

Daisy appears again in Merry Snow Day, the following chapter. This is a very short chapter where the kids are going to school after Lucy (begrudgingly) accepts schools not out, and walks with Mike to school. Daisy appears not long after and the first order of the day is to talk about homework, including offering to tutor him. She’d do anything if it meant helping her fellow students.

It’s at this part we’re introduced to the subtle idea of the rivalry for Mike’s affection between Daisy and Lucy. It’s subtle since it’s very one-sided and Lucy and Daisy don’t directly interact with one another or show that they’re fighting. Their interactions for most of the early chapters happen through Mike like you can see above when Lucy adds herself into the conversation. We’d have reason despite Lucy’s aloofness that such a rivalry does exist subconsciously and there are some reasons to believe this we’ll touch on. But for the moment, we can be sure that Lucy doesn’t consider Daisy a threat for one main reason: Mike will come back, so there’s no problem.

Daisy wouldn’t make a point of the rivalry either but Daisy would take advantage of the convenience of Lucy being out of the picture to seek attention from Mike, as she does when Lucy continues to school, and Daisy directly copies what happened just seconds ago when Lucy was about to fall on the ice, and Mike catches her.

Nice.

This chapter also introduces Yashy, Lucy’s pet Lizard and her surrogate daughter into the story line. The earlier chapters of Bittersweet Candy Bowl are ripe with slap-stick humour, and Yashy is the general source of this with her outspokenness and wise-ass personality. She’s there to rile up the others and break all the ice with her innocent demeanour. This will be the case up until the kids go to Highschool when the comedy starts being turned down in place of focusing on the rifts coming between the kids.

Unlike the other pets, Yashy is integral to the plot involving Lucy and Mike’s relationship, as she’s partly the reason for the friendship going on as long as it has. Having known Yashy for as long as Lucy, Mike takes on the role of the surrogate dad in Yashy’s life and this ends up having Yashy taking on the belief that Mike and Lucy are an established couple. But this isn’t true, and it plagues Mike as this is anything further than the truth. But with Yashy’s innocence, he can’t find the means to break this to her.

Yashy’s insistence of Mike and Lucy’s eventual destiny of being husband and wife comes at Daisy’s expense, as despite Lucy not necessarily seeing reason to stop Daisy’s attempts at trying for seek Mike’s affection, it’s Yashy who perceives her as a real threat and will shout obscenities at her when she doesn’t get her way, with a particular choice of word in mind. Though it doesn’t stop Daisy. But we can’t help but wonder much later if those words Yashy chooses to throw don’t have some kind of an effect on her much later.

That completes this chapter. Daisy doesn’t have much of an impact in Unfit for Education, appearing more to just be a participant in Sue’s obsessive thoughts game. But she gets a larger role to play in the following chapter; Burden of Parenthood.

This chapter has the kids going through sex ed. and being given the responsibility of raising a robotic baby, which they will be graded on based on their performance. This chapter starts off quite unexpectedly, as when the teacher begins pairing off the students, Yashy’s expectations that Michael and Lucy will be paired together, doesn’t actually happen for a change.

This time, Daisy is paired up with Mike, and Lucy is paired up with Paulo.

As you could guess, Yashy isn’t thrilled in the least bit. But neither is Lucy particularly when she spots Paulo pleased at the results himself.

Again I still don’t think Yashy’s abuse is really doing much for Daisy, I can’t help but wonder what that will do for her self-esteem?

Oh, I bet she’ll be fine, she’s like a Daisy, remember?

It’s during lunch we find Daisy is positively happy with the result when she confronts Mike with their baby. Although there’s just one problem. The baby is a glaring defect, a very...interesting feature about it that has Mike freaking out.

And he’s not playing ball because of it. Even Lucy is having a hard time with the baby’s smile.

But Daisy, Daisy couldn’t care; it’s Mike’s child.

The Daisy x Mike compatibility really doesn’t take off as Mike wants absolutely nothing to do with the newly-named Alegria, which Daisy is quick to point out after keenly watching a maternally-skilled Lucy teach a very clumsy Paulo how to properly hold a child, something she learned when raising Yashy. Daisy is by all means entranced by the romantic exchange.

But where’s hers?

Trying to get Mike jealous by thrusting her baby in Paulo’s arms, and Paulo taking to the baby. Mike sees his chance and gets Lucy to ditch the two and work as a team again.

There is a momentary issue when the teacher discovers the pairs do not have their correctly assigned baby, and through a quick suggestion they were giving a realistic portrayal of divorce and custody, get extra marks on their assignments.

You’d think Daisy would be quite depressed with her chance to work with Mike not going the way she planned and the opportunity going out the window. But to receive additional credit on their work, she’s actually more than ecstatic at the results!

It’s fine, there’ll be more chances. There’s still 4 more years of school!

And in the meantime, Daisy x Paulo was born. One would have to wonder if it would bear fruits.

...Nah.

Daisy has a role to play in the next chapter; Prom Preparation. She’s tasked with organising the 8th grade prom.

The first order of the day is to survey the music selection for the evening, starting with genres. Daisy gets ideas from a number of the students, almost forgetting she hadn’t asked Mike yet.

Apparently Mike doesn’t have a favourite genre of music that comes to mind. Not being a fan of new music, Daisy fills the gap and suggests he’s into much older stuff which she tries to bond over, infuriating Yashy.

When Daisy asks Lucy for her favourite music genre. Lucy wonders why she should bother since she’s not planning on going. . .

Leaving Mikie easy pickings for the evening. Daisy sees her chance for a bit of romance that evening, and Yashy is not at all pleased about this.

It’s worth talking about Yashy at this point, as even though we’re technically focusing on Daisy, there’s something we might be able to gain from both Yashy and Lucy that might give more insight into Daisy and Lucy’s relationship. You might notice, (2021 -- Especially in the Webtoons version), during each outburst by Yashy we can see Lucy blushing as her child unleashes hell upon Daisy, and we’d have to wonder why that is, because Lucy doesn’t seem to be initially the kind of person to care too much about anything going on around them, right?

But what if Yashy was this mouthpiece of Lucy’s impulsive thoughts that she doesn’t act on, and that’s why Lucy appears to blush from embarrassment? Yashy’s impulses are not something she’s able to control, only her own through her own inhibitions. Later in the story we start seeing hints that Lucy’s stonewall-straight faced demeanour is very much a facade and she’s actually quite sensitive, but when she’s fighting her emotions inside and she doesn’t have the answer, a blank expression is all you get so she can’t be hurt in one way or another.

But having been raised by Lucy, we could assume that Yashy is very much Lucy’s child and we can expect that having been raised by Lucy, much like every other kid out there, sometimes kids pick up traits from their parents.

(2021 -- The problem of Yashy’s language was also bought up in the more recent chapter, Dinner time, when Lucy’s mum points this out as Lucy and Jordan are fighting. While the person who was called out for this was Jordan. Can’t help but think that despite Jordan pointing out something embarrassing about why Mike might not be over more, Lucy is instead more blushing over the problem with Yashy, as Yashy is still embarrassed at being called out over it too. It’s hard to imagine the problem is just Jordan as Lucy has quite opinionated language as well, and lastly, because Yashy spends more of her time with her. There’s just an awful lot of body language going on in that scene and it’s hard to tell.)

Yashy is quite innocent in the story as she is one of the fewer characters who meets with rejection and doesn’t undergo the same hardships that Lucy underwent in her youth, so where this language and outspokenness has come from, you’d have to wonder if it’s just a quirk, or something deeper at this stage. Like as if Yashy is actually Lucy without the inhibitions.

Daisy doesn’t back down from Yashy when the golden opportunity arises even despite the name-calling. It’s when Mike believes both girls are fighting over him for Lucy to set the record straight -- she isn’t; Yashy and Daisy were and makes a point out of it. This causes Mike to walk off embarrassed since Lucy doesn’t reciprocate the same feelings. It’s only a little later towards the end when Daisy is turned down along with several other girls who learn of Mike’s availability. That ends that chapter. No romance for Daisy.

The next chapter is Helping hands, this chapter stars Daisy and Paulo who appear to have become closer friends since their pairing together in Burden of Parenthood. The chapter begins with Daisy and Paulo walking through the street, with Daisy talking about how Katie had a sleep-over the previous weekend but wasn’t invited, she was sure she must have misplaced it.

Though why missing out on Katie’s sleepover is the highlight of Daisy’s weekend is anyone’s best guess, right?

Daisy screams out suddenly as she points out an injured bird on the road, appearing heartbroken at the events. Paulo points out an arriving car that is about to put it out of its misery causing Daisy to become further distraught by this. At the very last minute, Paulo saves the bird, almost putting his own life in danger.

Expecting her to be elated, Daisy is not at all pleased in Paulo’s recklessness and scolds him, before being otherwise thankful he did it to save the bird.

But the next question is, now what?

With a hospital being too far away, Daisy suggests instead to take it to Lucy’s house as a last resort. Bringing up Paulo’s crush however, garners a reaction from Paulo that, well. . . Daisy’s not to pleased at seeing.

Oh, we’re going to see more of that.

Daisy thinks about whether or not Lucy would end up adopting the bird as she has quite a number of pets herself. Daisy would herself although her mother wouldn’t allow it.

Suggesting Paulo could with how well Paulo did at looking after Alegria, Paulo finds the talk far too embarrassing for his ever-masculine personality. Daisy tries to persuade him that girls are into boys who can be shown to have a caring attitude. Sadly, Paulo thinks he’s already at this level.

Oh, how Paulo x Daisy is teased so.

The weather starts to take a turn for the worst and threatens to rain down much to Daisy’s horror, as we learn something interesting about how her fur reacts to the rain. Paulo tries not not to give this away but Daisy then realises and starts showing how self conscious she is about her fur, a fact we learn more of in an intermission, where Daisy spends quite a number of hours brushing it down. When Daisy asks whether he’s grossed out by her curls, he avoids the question by telling them they have to hurry, or the bird won’t make it!

Unfortunately for Daisy, Paulo isn’t the last person when they arrive at Lucy’s house. Leaving the bird in her care, Daisy immediately runs into the bathroom only to run into Mike, it’s an absolute nightmare scenario.

Feeling devastated, Paulo comes in with some saving words and tells her if Mike was really worth her time, he’d wouldn’t care no matter how she looked. Which does wonders for her esteem.

Lucy arrives down shortly thereafter and lets the two know the bird will make it, having only been attacked by another creature and not so much struck by a car. Lucy will nurse it until its better, much to the joy of Daisy and Paulo.

At that point, the conversation switches as that matter is taken care of. Noticing that Mike is at Lucy’s house studying with her. Daisy tries to invite herself to stay over and help out too.

It turns out, simply asking means you’re outstaying your hospitality.

Yeah, they’re not really tight friends are they?

On the Monday, Daisy and Paulo ask Lucy about the bird, first mistaking what Lucy says meaning that the bird passed away, it healed over the weekend and left the following day.

But not before giving them a gift.

After all, they’d need it for their baby. The bird seems to think they’d make a good couple. Ah, PauloxDaisy again. If only they both felt that way about each other.

Daisy appears in show and tell, in this chapter we are introduced to the specific breeds the characters are.

Naturally, Yashy is not at all pleased about Daisy when she arrives.

When it comes to Daisy’s turn, we find she’s Selkirk Rex cross Ragamuffin.

Which would explain a lot of Daisy’s features, Selkirk and Ragamuffins are both very people-oriented and akin to Teddy Bears. Both breeds can get along with nearly everybody.

And, well that’s true for Daisy.

Daisy appears in Pep Rally, a chapter focusing on the sports carnival. Daisy appears as one of the school’s cheerleaders next to Amaya, Stacy, and her rival, Katie, who is not at all happy that she’s not the captain. Daisy is not about to give up being the center of attention.

This chapter has more to do with Mike’s super sensitive hearing than anything else. Even so, Daisy is more than capable of being able to amp up the crowd, especially when Mike lands a win.

Daisy appears in the next chapter ‘Off to the Movies’, when Mike invites Lucy to the movies, only for Paulo, David and Daisy to show up at the same time and suggest they all go see a movie together (Lucy reluctantly agreeing). When it comes to selecting their preferences for movies, Daisy goes for the mushiest movie that’s available. Paulo and David wanting horror, Mike wanting comedy and Lucy. . .well, she wants to see a love story. It seems like they all can’t decide, but Lucy chooses the jack of all trades movie as a compromise; the ‘epic suspensful, romance thriller with lots of jokes’.

Win-win, right?

Daisy’s in heaven when the seating arrangements are chosen, right next to her crush, she couldn’t be more optimistic.

A number of things happen during the movie, but nothing got by Daisy when the movie ends as she notices Paulo on the brink of tears following its conclusion. Daisy offers to forget that she ever saw it, on the condition he explains his phobia to barking, something else that happened earlier when Paulo tried to steal David’s popcorn.

Predictably, Paulo is far too masculine to talk about his feelings.

Eventually Paulo balks to the peer pressure (from Daisy) and explains what happened. When the others make fun of Paulo over it, Daisy leaps to his defense and tells them off. There’s a lovely moment between the two as Daisy reassures Paulo that she appreciates his forwardness and openness to the things that bothers him. And Paulo decides to talk about everything.

The PauloxDaisy content just keeps coming.

But it’ll never work. I--I swear it won’t.

By the very end, the kids all say their farewells to each other and go their separate ways.

Daisy appears in the next chapter ‘Puppy Love’. Mike finds a love letter in his locker from a secret admirer (It’s Stacy). Mike chastises Lucy who finds the whole thing hilarious and reads the poem aloud. Mike wants to find the person responsible. Suddenly, and out from nowhere, Daisy appears suggesting they do some detective work, all in the name of romance. But Mike reveals he just simply wants to reject them.

With much similarity to Prom Night, this chapter is more to point out with how much of the school has an interest in dating Mike. It’s not just Daisy, but also Sue, Amaya, Katie, those three random girls. The only exception is dear old Lucy.

The next chapter is Confrontation. This chapter opens with Mike and Lucy doing what they do best when something unfortunate happens; they argue, with Lucy blaming Mike for having them miss their stop. Daisy begs Paulo to get them to stop, and they do, albiet, for a short few seconds before they start arguing again.

With no sign of it ending, Daisy and Paulo day-dream of a better alternate reality where they both get their desires. Mike and Lucy are just awful for each other. Things would work out better if it was just Mike and Daisy, and Paulo and Lucy, Just think of the romance. What could go wrong?

The kids get off at the next station which unfortunately for them turns out to be a bad idea as they end up in the roughest neighbourhood a few towns over from Roseville. With Lucy suggesting they find a phone to call their parents, they go out in search of an open store. With Mike and Lucy still at each other’s throats, Daisy tries to take advantage of the situtation by suggesting that Mike could in fact stay over at her place seeing as how late it was, especially if his house is a bit too far. hoping that Lucy having been quite bitter to him will cause him to think about coming around to her advances. But Mike rejects her advance. When Daisy becomes fed up enough to suggest he’d go to Lucy’s house despite their fighting, he agrees it likely would happen, frustrating her even more.

She loses her temper, exploding about Mike and Lucy’s friendship being just horrible and suggests any investment would never be returns. Prompting a reaction from Mike for a short moment, until Mike twists that around and tells her to stop chasing the same stupid feelings, walking ahead and leaving Daisy to sulk to herself.

She’s joined shortly after when Paulo’s escapade in trying to woo Lucy goes as well as anyone would expect. Daisy, frustrated in how Mike always seems to show some compromise with Lucy, argues with him over his bad taste in women too.

Daisy’s thorns are on full display here as she starts to openly show her resentment towards Lucy who has it all so easy with both Paulo and Mike due to her looks. Daisy’s frustrated that despite her best efforts to be more appealing in every other way; Lucy has the looks, and that’s all that matters.

With Daisy being too frustrated from being inhibited from displaying this side of her, it’s clear neither she nor Lucy are good friends at all. Daisy has shown such a low opinion of her because of her attitude, knowing full well that often times Mike gets beaten up by her. Lucy’s aloofness could be confused with disinterest and both of them suggest that Lucy wouldn’t really care if either of them suddenly caught alight.

But Mike overhears this thanks to his superhearing and tells them there’s more to her than what they know. But neither of them take the comment seriously.

Lucy also overhears, and is a little distraught at how the others think of her.

The kids find a bar and Sue manages to call ther mother to come pick them up. Problems arise when Mike takes on a dare to eat as many liqueur chocolates from a stranger, and is quite positively drunk out of his mind. Lucy comments on this having watched on and Daisy chastises her for letting him do it.

She might have wished she had done something about it, as Mike is all over her, uninhibited from telling her how he feels about her looks.

And that does nothing for Daisy who sucks at all the attention Lucy’s getting. The world’s just unfair.

Though, Mike notices Daisy’s state, and goes over to give her attention too. What would be a dream for Daisy is sadly shortlived, as Mike’s attention switches to ice-cream truck music, and suddenly takes off towards it.

The kids are find themselves backed into an alley, as the stranger who Mike took the bet from comes to get his money back.

The ordeal is quite terrifying to Daisy. Paulo tries to defend her. But he gets a little too in over his head, not realising these two were the people who created his phobia of barking .

When Paulo is kicked aside, Daisy goes to him and asks if he knows the two. But Paulo doesn’t recognise them.

Not considering herself a fighter, Daisy is only able to come to her friends’ comfort as each one is assaulted one by one. Paulo first, then Sue when she cops an arm to the nose.

She can only watch when Mike tries to defend them, actually having some martial arts experience, but being too drunk to be effective.

And finally Lucy, as capable as she was finds herself unable to fend off Alejandro. Daisy calls out, but Lucy tells her to be quiet, or to hide as Lucy bears the brunt of the assault.

Mike regains consciousness at the very last moment and saves her before both team up in a last stand against Alejandro. Alejandro realises he’s bitten off more than he can chew and runs away. Daisy watches on as Lucy breaks down having realised how close they all were to having someone lose their life.

Sue’s mother arrives and all the kids are on their way back to Roseville. Paulo can’t help but notice that Daisy is really in the dumps over the night. Lucy did something completely unexpected in coming to their aid at the last minute — the ever uncaring Lucy put herself on the line so no one else would get hurt. And she feels awful knowing she was wrong — about Lucy and what she said about her to Mike.

Paulo tries to reassure her that Mike probably doesn’t remember what she said, and that turns out to be true as Mike is willing to accept her apology the next day.

Things are back to normal it seems, luckily for Daisy.

Or are they?

I figure we’ll stop here and resume next week. Look at that! We covered 12 chapters of 127! There’s a lot more of Daisy to come!

#bittersweet candy bowl #bcb #megathread #daisy

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rockthistowninsideout · 4 years ago

Text

Never Too Late For A Leap Of Faith

Part 1

(Part 2)

Five times Taichi only feels the presence of Digimons and one time he actually meets them (again).

Words: 2126 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Tags: 5+1 Pairings: Taichi Yagami/OC, Sorato, Jyoumi

Inspired by this youtube video talking about how the end of Kizuna fits into the narrative of the Epilogue in 02, posted by TheDigiKnow. It’s in my opinion a thorough and yet personal analysis.

When there was a baby’s cry from the labour room, Taichi broke down in tears. He’d been pacing to and fro in the hall leading to it, but only after his wife Kana had dislodged some knuckles in his hand by holding it too tight during a contraction and he had to be treated for it. Afterwards he hadn’t been allowed in again because, and that was something he didn’t like to admit, he had been on the brink of fainting before Kana’s force had jerked him back to consciousness.

A nurse stuck her head out the door and smiled. “Congratulations, Yagami-shi, you have a son!”

Taichi wiped away his tears, smile a little lopsided, and entered the labour room. His wife Kana, whom he had met at a diplomatic meeting three years ago, looked pale and drained, but smiled broadly. She mopped her sweaty brow with a neckerchief, pushed her long black hair that looked a tad greasy after her exertions behind her ear and leaned forward to receive a kiss from Taichi. Then she pulled away the duvet that had been drawn over her to reveal their newborn son. He had chestnut brown hair just like Taichi but his mother’s bulbous nose and when he opened his eyes they were a startling clear blue.

“Most children have blue eyes when they’re born”, the nurse explained. “They’ll darken over the course of the first year.”

Taichi hadn’t said a word yet, he was too transfixed on this small bundle of life that he helped to produce and that he was now responsible for. That realization suddenly felt heavy on his shoulders but when he looked into Kana’s soft yet endearing black eyes, the very eyes he’d been mesmerized by from the very beginning, he felt the weight ease.

“Do you want to hold the little egg?”, Kana asked and lifted the bundle towards Taichi who’d been instinctively forming a cradle with his arms. Something at the back of his mind stirred to life, something about a green yard full of cribs with colourful eggs, the way it never had before when the word “egg” was mentioned, but Taichi didn’t give it any notice. Tears were running down his face again as he watched the miracle before him. With a scratchy voice he whispered “Hello Hotaro, welcome to the world.”

The first days were reserved just for them so the three could get to know each other. After the tiredness of being born had worn off, Hotaro was a very awake child. In every sense. He had trouble sleeping through, which caused Taichi, suddenly becoming self-conscious about his appearance, to use Kana’s concealer. She had taken a year off from work while Taichi went back to the office after three days. His colleagues welcomed him with a round of applause, a light blue greeting card, and a big stuffed and, for some reason, snow white teddy bear. As he looked the bear up and down, suddenly a cold breeze swept over him and gave him goosebumps. He immediately knew how he would name the bear.

“I am Frigimon”, he muttered under his breath.

***

Hotaro loved Frigimon. He had accepted the name without hesitation, affectionately calling him Friggi, and never going to sleep without him. Once Frigimon had entered the Yagami household, something had shifted within Taichi. Usually he was highly alert in his meetings but now he started dreaming away. Dreamt of a tram that didn’t need rails, of an island ruled by an evil bat-like looking creature, and vending machines in the middle of nowhere.

He also started dreaming away at the kitchen table when having dinner with his family. At some point he was so far gone that it needed a gentle slap on the shoulder by his wife. When he looked at her questioningly, she said “Muchomon”.

He tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“Muchomon was my Digimon partner. He vanished when I was 24 and had just finished my degree.”

“You were a DigiDestined?” Taichi’s eyes went wide as saucers.

She nodded. “It’s been a while but since you brought Frigimon here the memories have boiled up again. You should talk to your friends again, and more than just at their birthdays and about irrelevances. I thought you’d been so close? To be a DigiDestined, and having fought numerous battles, welds together – for life.”

Taichi took a deep breath. He kneaded his hands. He hadn’t wanted all this to happen – to let the contact cool down or even freeze. It had just happened. Because. Because of life, he guessed. At some point work and his little family had become more important than his long-term friends. He didn’t even know how many children Sora and Yamato now had!

He banged his fist on the table.

“Dad!” Hotaro exclaimed frightened. He had never seen his father so agitated. Immediately, Taichi regretted his outburst. He had never wanted to scare his son, become violent around him. And now he had. Because of his own shortcoming. “I’m sorry, Hota”, he quickly said, tearing at his hair. He got up, walked around the table, and lifted his son in the air.

“It’s okay”, the four-year-old said, gently touching his father’s face. “Can you let me down, please?”

Taichi complied, a bit confused.

Hotaro took his hand and led him to his room. “Sit down, Dad. I’ve found something while playing in the attic a few days ago.” He handed him a box which Taichi instantly recognized, and his heart ached. He didn’t need to lift the dusty lid, sprinkled with little fingerprints from his son, to know what was inside. But he did it anyway. Coming to light was a round pair of goggles and a smouldered Digivice. He only noticed he was crying when the first tears hit the Digivice, just like they had done many years ago when Agumon had to say goodbye.

For good.

Or so he had thought. But Digimons were reborn. He had witnessed that many times. Maybe it just hadn’t been the right time until now.

He lifted his head to look straight into his son’s open, curious, beautiful face. When also Kana had been a DigiDestined, then maybe their child should also supposed to be one. Or no, no he shouldn’t. He should choose if he wanted to become one.

They had been thrust into this world without having been asked first. They had had to come to terms all on their when they’d been mere children and the forces who had chosen them had never offered much aid. He wanted this to go differently.

He noticed that Hotaro held up Taichi’s phone. Koushirou’s name was on the display, it was already dialling. “Call him”, Hotaro said. Taichi shook his head. That kid was much smarter than was good for him.

***

“Oh!! It’s soo good to see you all again!”, Mimi exclaimed, as excited as ever.

Taichi had to dial down the volume of his computer as the audio overmodulated. But he smiled, genuinely, because he felt just the same. Before him, the screen was split into five segments, all filled with bright smiling faces.

“Jou, come over, they’re here now!”, Mimi called, her face turned away from the camera. In the background there suddenly was the sound of glass crashing on a tiled floor, followed by a stream of swear words. “Jou, I told you not to swear in front of the kids!” She turned back to the screen. “I’ll be back in a minute.” With that, her segment got empty.

Her friends chuckled. “I see you were cleverer”, Taichi pointed out to Sora and Yamato, who were sitting together in front of the camera and holding their two children on their laps. Their son had inherited Sora’s maroon hair while their daughter was as flaxen-haired as Yamato. They were both visibly bored, wriggling about on their parents’ laps trying to grab office supplies that were clearly not toys in their vicinity.

“I’m not so sure about that”, Yamato remarked, dryly as ever, as he pulled a stapler away from his son’s hands.

“Dad, have you seen my hockey stick?”, someone called in the background of Koushirou’s screen segment.

He sighed. “I thought you put it in the cabinet beside the shoe rack. You know, where it’s supposed to go.”

“I did but it’s not there. And Yui and her mom will be here any minute to pick me up for training.” The voice grew whinier and more urgent.

Koushirou bowed apologetically to his friends. “I just have to help my daughter.”

Meanwhile, Mimi had reappeared, Jou and their two sons in tow. “Hiroshi, Sasuke, say hello to Mom and Dad’s friends.” Mimi nudged them a little forward.

The older one, taking remarkably after Jou with his blueish-black hair and the glasses, hesitated but the younger one, sporting a daring chin-long bob with a middle parting, grinned and brightly said “Hi, I’m Sasuke.”

The DigiDestined greeted him back with a laugh. “Say Sasuke”, Taichi started, “does your mom and you go to the same hairdresser?”

Sasuke looked at him in surprise. “Yeah, but how do you know?”

More friendly laughter.

“My brother’s good at guessing, is all”, Hikari remarked, absentmindedly fastening her hair-clip. She wore her hair the longest it had ever been but subconsciously she itched for a cut. But her daughter always said that she looked so nice with the long hair even though Rika couldn’t stand long hair herself. Hikari had even caught her once as she had cut her middle brown hair with kids’ scissors.

“Oh, I see”, Sasuke said, tilting his head. “But you don’t look like siblings at all.”

“Sasuke!” Jou turned red in second-hand embarrassment. “Sorry, my son can be a bit blunt sometimes.”

“I wonder whom he has that from”, Takeru mused, hand held on his chin as if he was pondering a very difficult question.

“I heard you are a writer”, Hiroshi suddenly said, nervously adjusting his glasses.

Takeru’s expression turned smug. “And a pretty successful one at that.”

“Yeah, but Dad thinks you’re exaggerating at times.”

Jou turned even redder. “That’s… that’s not what I’ve been saying!”, he sputtered. “You just sometimes spend a little too much time on one detail.”

“That’s not what you said, Dad!” Hiroshi turned to his father, affronted. “I’m not a liar!”

“Of course not, my dear”, Mimi said soothingly. Then she leaned in closer and whispered “Sometimes adults don’t like the truth very much.” Louder did she say “Why don’t you two go and get your guinea pigs to show our friends, mmh?”

“Oh yeah!” They bounded off out of the frame.

“And where’s your kid?”, Yamato asked his brother.

Takeru shrugged. “At band practice. Don’t know where he got the musical talent from but he certainly has some. And no, Yama, he hasn’t gotten it from you. Because he’s better.”

Yamato dramatically inhaled. “You didn’t say that!”

“I’ve got a round of witnesses who can confirm that I just did.”

“Sorry Takeru, my connection was a bit wobbly for a few seconds. You said something?” Taichi asked suspiciously innocent.

Takeru shook his head. “And you call yourself my friend.”

Before anyone could reply to that, Koushirou plonked himself down on his chair breathlessly. “I’m back!”

“Did you find the hockey stick?”, Sora asked, glad about the diversion. She had already feared that the mood could be slipping.

Koushirou nodded solemnly. “Yes, just in time. And it was actually me who had misplaced it because I had cleaned out the cabinet and didn’t put it back.”

“Tststs, Kou. I hope your daughter doesn’t have to put with too much.”

Koushirou shook his head. “Of course not. Being a single parent isn’t easy but we have a cleaning lady who comes in two days a week and I can bring Koyuki to my parents if need be.”

Yamato muttered something under his breath which earned him a jab in the ribs by Sora. “In this house we don’t judge”, she breathed into his ear, only audible for him.

He reluctantly nodded.

“These are Tom and Jerry”, Hiroshi and Sasuke announced, diverting the tension once again.

Taichi chuckled. “They don’t look like a mouse and a cat to me.”

“We weren’t allowed to have a cat and a mouse”, Sasuke replied.

“You wanted a mouse?” Sora could hardly hide her laughter.

“Unbelievable, right?” Jou seemed to shiver just at the thought of having a tiny and cunning rodent in the apartment. And a slightly dumb but very persistent cat chasing it.

Takeru laughed, too. “Most certainly.” Then he leaned forward. “But have we just come together to get to know your pets or is there a more pressing matter?”

#digimon adventure kizuna #digimon adventure #digimon last evolution #taichi yagami #yamato ishida #sora takenouchi #mimi tachikawa #jou kido #koushirou izumi #takeru takaishi #hikari yagami #original character #sorato #jyoumi #digimon adventure 02 epilogue #5+1 fic #my stories

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lightchildofthespring · 4 years ago

Text

Everything

Pairing: Post-Kizuna Taishiro (aromantic Taichi)

Summary: Taichi calls Koushiro to his apartment. He has something important to say.

This is not a typical taishiro story, but I hope you like it.

Everything

Koushiro got to Taichi's apartment by 9 o'clock, like Taichi had asked. Agumon was the one who opened the door. He had been living with Taichi full-time ever since his rematerialization, just like Pyiomon was living with Sora and Gabumon with Yamato. Koushiro suspected that was due to the trauma of their separation, but never commented on it. He didn't want to remind his friends of their anguish, especially because he didn't think he could really understand what they had gone through. After all, Koushiro had never lost Tentomon.

“Taichi is waiting for you in his bedroom,” Agumon said, smiling largely. “I'm going to watch some TV while you two talk.”

“Do you know what he wants to talk to me about?” Koushiro asked. “Taichi-san was really mysterious on the phone... did something bad happen?”

“No, no! Nothing bad happened! He wants to tell you something good! Something very important!” Agumon told him. “But I'm not telling you anything more than that!”

“Alright, then...” Koushiro said, entering the apartment. After taking his shoes off, he headed to Taichi's bedroom, which was a lot tidier than usual. The sheets covering the bed were clean, his books were organized over the desk and the only things on the floor were two pillows and a short-legged table, on which there was a large plate of rice balls. Taichi was standing up close to the open window, looking at the starry sky as the cool night breeze messed with his hair.

“Hello, Taichi-san,” Koushiro greeted. Taichi turned to him and smiled, which made Koushiro's heart skip a bit.

Taichi was wearing black pants and a white long sleeved orange shirt with buttons; his hair was still a bit wet, indicating that he had taken a shower not long before. Koushiro also noticed that Taichi had put on cologne, which made him self-conscious for going to his friend's apartment straight from the office, still wearing the same dark blue pants, white shirt and tie he had put on that morning. I should've taken a shower and changed clothes... Koushiro thought. But Taichi had such a serious voice when he asked him to come to his place, how could Koushiro not head straight to his apartment? There could be an emergency!

Taichi silently sat on a pillow and waited for Koushiro to sit on the other one, across from him. After Koushiro sat, the other looked into his eyes for almost an entire minute without saying anything, bearing a nervous expression.

“Did something happen, Taichi-san?” Koushiro asked, worried.

Taichi took a deep breath before replying:

“Do you know how in the movies people who are in love act in an odd way?” Taichi questioned. “They get nervous around the person they like, they think about them all the time, they blush and get butterflies in the stomach among other things, you know?”

“Yes,” Koushiro said. That was how people who were romantically attracted to others usually were. Koushiro didn't need to take examples from movies to know what Taichi was talking about, though. For years, he had felt that way towards him. However, Taichi had no way of knowing about Koushiro's feelings, because the redhead had decided a long time ago not to burden his friend with his unrequited love. Taichi had already so many things going on in his life, he shouldn't have to worry about turning down unsolicited affection.

“I never felt that,” Taichi confessed in a pained voice. “I've never fallen in love... I've tried to go out with people since I entered college but never got past the first date with anyone... I don't think I've ever felt the thing everybody else feels... that euphoria... and I'm starting to think I'll never feel that... there's something wrong with me and I can't fix it...”

To see Taichi in such sorrow was breaking Koushiro's heart. There was no need for him to feel bad, ever!

“There's nothing wrong with not feeling romantic attraction, Taichi-san!” Koushiro stated. “There are many people like that in the world, they call themselves aromantic!”

“Aromantic?” Taichi asked, as if he found that word strange.

“A few years ago, when I was trying to figure out if I was bisexual or asexual, I visited several blogs about sexual and romantic attraction and made some aromantic friends,” Koushiro told him. “They're wonderful and loving people. There's nothing to be ashamed about being aromantic, Taichi-san! Even if you don't feel romantic love, I know you're full of love for your family and your friends! You've always cared so much about everybody, you've always tried so hard to do what was best for everybody... I don't know anyone with a bigger heart than yours! You don't need to be fixed! You're not wrong in any conceivable way!”

Koushiro stopped talking when he noticed that Taichi had begun to cry. What had he done wrong? Was he insensitive by accident? What could he do to make the other feel better?

“Thank you,” Taichi told him, wiping his tears with the back of his hands. “You've always been so kind and supportive... I don't know how you still put up with me...”

“I don't 'put up' with you, Taichi-san. I like you and I care a lot about you!” Koushiro affirmed. Right after saying that, he worried that he had let his true feelings for Taichi come to the surface, but Taichi's warm smile put Koushiro at ease.

“This is kind of embarrassing... I had called you over and prepared everything because I wanted to tell you something else... but then I felt so much guilt and ended up saying all that...” Taichi muttered.

“Guilt? Why would you feel guilty?” Koushiro asked.

He gazed at him, studying every aspect of Koushiro's face. Taichi seemed more relaxed than before, but still a little nervous.

“Koushiro, I...” he hesitated, “I never got nervous around you. It's actually the opposite... your presence calms me down... you center me... I don't have the faintest idea what butterflies in the stomach are supposed to feel like, but I'm pretty sure I never felt that... I don't think about you all the time, but when I think about you... when I talk to you... it makes me happy...” Taichi smiled. “Not euphoric, just... it's a calm happiness... I'm at peace when I'm with you... I don't get flustered when I'm with you nor do I fantasize about kissing you or holding your hand... I think you're good-looking, but I don't think you're the most handsome person in the world because... objectively speaking that would be Pedro Pascal...”

Koushiro couldn't avoid but giggle at that last part. But then, he thought about the reason why Taichi was telling him those things. There was only one logical explanation.

“Listen, Taichi-san...” Koushiro said. “I think I know what you're trying to tell me... you must've figured out my feelings for you, right? You don't have to worry about explaining yourself to me. I would never hold against you the fact that you don't like me that way. It's alright, really! We can still be friends!”

Taichi stared at him, perplexed.

“What are you talking about, Koushiro?” Taichi asked. “What do you mean I figured out your feelings... OH MY GOODNESS, DO YOU LIKE ME?” he shouted once he finally understood. “DO YOU LIKE ME ROMANTICALLY? ARE YOU IN LOVE WITH ME?”

Koushiro felt his heart sink.

“You didn't know...?” he asked in a weak voice. “But, Taichi-san, you... you were turning me down gently, weren't you? You had to... why would you say that if you didn't know?”

“Turning you down? Do you think I called you over, dressed nicely and got those rice balls because I wanted to turn you down?” Taichi asked.

“B-But then... what were you... what are you trying to say to me?” Koushiro inquired, confused.

“I'm trying to say that I love you!” Taichi stated. “I love you in a way I don't love anyone else! It's more special than what I feel for my other friends, but it's not like what's portrayed in movies! I love everything about you! Your kindness, your caring personality, how hard-working you are, how I can always be honest with you and how you understand me so easily! I love how excited you get whenever you learn new things and how patient you are when other people don't immediately understand what you're talking about! You are wonderful! Koushiro, you make me so happy! I'm so glad I got to meet you and be your friend! I love you with all my heart... I love you as much as I'm capable! During the time Agumon was gone, you were by my side all the time and I understood that I wanted you to be with me forever... but that's very selfish of me, isn't it?” Taichi frowned. “You deserve more than the love I can give you... you deserve someone who will be nervous around you and blush and be euphoric... someone whose heart beats faster when you're around...”

“Taichi-san, stop saying that!” Koushiro told him, startling Taichi. “Do you realize how nonsensical you're sounding right now? You keep talking about how I deserve better than what you can give me, but have you ever asked yourself what I wanted?”

Taichi kept his eyes on Koushiro, not daring to say anything. The other continued:

“I love you and you love me! Who cares if we don't feel the exact same kind of love for each other? I certainly don't mind that! I don't care if you don't want to kiss me or hold my hand, nor do I care if you don't get nervous around me or if you don't desire me in the same way other people might! I honestly don't care about those hypothetical people! I care about you! And I want to be with you!”

Taichi's eyes widened after hearing that. Nevertheless, there was still a glimpse of fear in them.

“What if my love isn't enough for you?”

Koushiro smiled and told him in an assured voice:

“Your love is everything for me!”

Taichi smiled back at him, which made Koushiro deeply happy.

Suddenly, Agumon showed up at the bedroom's door.

“Taichi, if you're not going to eat the rice balls, can I have them?” the digimon asked.

“Agumon, were you spying on us?” Taichi asked, sheepishly.

“Of course I was!” Agumon admitted. “You were really worried about confessing your feelings to Koushiro and I wanted to make sure everything went smoothly.”

“You say that, but it's not as if you tried to stop me from blurting all my insecurities to Koushiro earlier,” Taichi accused.

“I didn't stop you because it was a good thing that you opened your heart to him,” Agumon explained. “That way, you won't have to worry about Koushiro not fully accepting you.”

Taichi and Koushiro exchanged looks and smiled at each other. Agumon was right. Thanks to Taichi's honesty, the two young men could be sure of how profoundly they loved and were loved by each other and of how happy their relationship would be.

#taishiro #taichi yagami #yagami taichi #koushiro izumi #izumi koushiro #koushirou izumi #izumi koushirou #aromantic Taichi #Koushiro doesn't know if he's bi or ace #mostly because I don't know if I'm bi or ace #and I projected that on him #and I project my aromanticism on Taichi #qpr

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linaa-vera · 4 years ago

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Digimon Fanfic Recommendations PART 2 BABYYYY

Now this list, is shorter? Uncompleted? More one-shots?

Also, this has more…mature content? +18 some of them, but I’ll put if it is something explicit.

Here are on ao3.

SO YOU WERE ALIVE by ahiddenpath (One-shot. COMPLETE)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23620636

Summary: “Greymon meets Garurumon in the network and is glad to see that his friend is alive. Explores the possible (if unlikely) connection between the Agumon in the Digimon Adventure Reboot (Digimon Adventure:/Digimon Psi) and the Digimon Adventure Agumon.”

Thoughts: When I found this, I didn’t watch Kizuna (WHICH I THINK IS BULLSHIT, I CRIED A LOT >:C ) but then I did, and if this happened after it, it would connect everything pretty well.

TIL THE END by Higuchimon (One-shot. COMPLETE)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24727381

Summary: “Daisuke and Ken are Jogress partners. That’s good – right? Perhaps not so much in this case. At least not when ImperialDramon fights their friends.”

Thoughts: I always love when they show that Jogress, Fusion or whatever not only affects the digimon, but the digidestined as well. And this shows what could have happened to Daisuke and Ken during Tri, and their thoughts (or Daisuke’s) about Imperialdramon fighting their friends, and the fact that they were forgotten by the other children.

GTA (IS NOT A GAME) by ToastyToaster22 (One-shot. COMPLETE)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23632969

Summary: “Natsuko brushed it off the first couple times Takeru said something concerning. Maybe she shouldn't have, but in her defense, he seemed to be brushing his confusion off too. However her son was getting confused more and more often, and with it came a sense of anxiety she'd never seen in him before.

It was time to stop pretending he was fine.”

Thoughts: THIS WAS THE BEST FIC I’VE READ OR ENCOUNTERED IN AGES. I Swear. Guys. This fic is amazing, I was never a fan of TK, don’t know why, but I really like him in this fic, the problems he’s facing really put in perspective his personality and everyone around him is so nice because of what’s happening. VERY EDUCATIVE FIC. 10/10.

A BOND BETWEEN TWO PARTNERS by direneed (Short-Story. COMPLETED)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/5387540

Summary: “Tailmon and Agumon have a bonding moment while Taichi is sick.”

Thoughts: Although it’s a sickfic, it’s not really very angsty but it’s for the purpose of Tailmon and Agumon to have their moment. It’s…a good way to have both of they personalities shown in a more private way.

SHAKEN by ToastyToaster22 (Short-story. COMPLETED)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22307935/chapters/53282458

Summary: “They said the shaking lasted 17 seconds.

Takeru shook all night.”

Thoughts: Really good characterization and emotions. I myself live in one of the most seismic countries of the planet (Chile), and although Japan is obviously more organized than us, it shows the fear, the “what the fuck do I do now” “Do I leave? Stay? My Mom?dadfriendsdogs-”. But also the kindness of strangers, and your love ones who are there to support you. Also represents how much the digidestined love each other, really sweet.

I’LL BE THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION by Curiosa (One-shot. COMPLETED)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13848828

Summary ““Okay.” Yamato nodded and swallowed. He felt like there was a thick lump in his throat. He felt like if he stopped looking at Taichi he'd disappear any second, just dissolve and puff, fizz out of existence. Canon divergence of episode four”

Thoughts: this was amazing. It’s a missing scene of Tri. If that concern we felt when Tai disappeared and also that “the fuck” feeling when he returned like it was nothing. Incredible way to show their friendship. Love it. (also gay haha)

MERMOIRS OF A ROYAL KNIGHT by Alycoris (Series of one shots. COMPLETE)

https://archiveofourown.org/series/19145

Summary: “Dukemon's life as a Royal Knight. Needless to say, between duties he thinks about a lot of things.”

Thoughts: Very well written. Dukemon has memories of other life and when you discover who he was, well, dang it’s amazing.

DROWNING MEMORIES by Shara Raizel (Long Story. UNCOMPLETE. Dormant since 2017)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/635169/chapters/1149870

Summary: “Davis Motomiya has been burdened with the memories and residual voice of his cousin Takuya Kanbara. As he continues to discover the tragic events surrounding an accident eight years past will he finally silence the voice or will he loose his mind to them?”

Thoughts: This was my favorite fic EVER. Until they stopped updating. :c It has everything. Horror, adventure, DRAMA. ANGST FOR DAVIS. He really doesn’t know what to do. It’s also on Fanfiction.net, and I think it has 2 more chapters there?? This was the fanfic that made me look for more all those years ago. YOU NEED TO READ IT AND SUFFER WITH ME BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN DORMANT—

SPARK, FIRE, INFERNO by Verse (Short story. COMPLETE)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15669015

Summary: “Sometimes, it feels as if there are three of his brother.”

Thoughts: I always though that in frontier they could have made the “sharing a body” dynamic really well, but they never did it, so I found fanfic about and this is the one that remembered me of it. THIS IS AMAZING. And Shinya’s reaction to being more of his brother.

THE ULTIMATE GATHERING OF THE DIGIDESTINED by Shara Raizel (Long-story. UNCOMPLETED. Dormant since 2017)

On fanfiction bc I forgot to put it on the other one.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6475633/1/The-Ultimate-Gathering-of-the-DigiDestined

Summary: “Have you ever wondered what would happen if the casts of Adventure 02, Tamers, and Frontier of Digimon were to meet? This is the Ultimate Adventure of the DigiDestined!”

Thoughts: At first I thought it would be only shenanigans and silly unconnected chapters—but OH BOI WAS I WRONG. It’s very mature, there’s a lot of character (obviously) but all of them get their time to shine. Really. Death, adventure, angst, comedy, relief, I recommend it 120%. 10/10.

At this point I think I made you a favor. Your welcome. If you pick any of the fics then I love you and go give your kudo to the fic because they deserve more recognition.

#Digimon #Digimonfanfic #Digimonfanficrecspart2 #Digimonfanficrecs #fanfic recommendation #digimon adventure #digimon adventure tri #digimon adventure 2020 #digimon frontier #digimon tamer #fanfic recs #digimon fanfic recs #digifans #yeahh boi

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a-student-out-of-time · 4 years ago

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Connections Review Part 1

Happy 2021 everyone! Well…the year’s off to a terrible start due to how bad last year was but I hope that most of 2021 will be good and not be 2020 Part 2: Electric Boogaloo. But enough of that, another arc ended, another review due. Now I am quite conscious of length here and I’ll try to make these reviews a bit easier to read, it will still be split into 3 parts as there I can cover the main themes which are; Time Travel, Harems and Maverick ‘Motherfucker Hellspawn’ Storm. My initial plan was to have a quick lightening recap of everything that doesn’t fit into these categories and then review the Time Travelling and Harems but Storm became so big he needed his own part. Oh, and it should go without saying, but I will not cover the Mistletoe Asks. They are not relevant to the arc and are basically shipping fluff. No in-depth analysis required there. And with that said and done, let’s get right into it.

Its Recap time

So, as I mentioned before we get into the 3 big themes of this arc, I’ll cover really quick, and I promise it will be really quick here, anything that doesn’t fit into those categories. So firstly, we see that Kazuichi went around the Void Warehouse and helped fix their lights. Now that all of Class 77-B are aware of Void’s existence, they can help out with any problems they might have in their living quarters, which leads to a funny scene of Kazuichi getting attacked by a crow. This could be random but given what has happened with another seemly random event (more on that later) and the fact that Monocrow exists, this could be sinister foreshadowing for things yet to come. We also see Kazuichi getting ideas to build a robot with Chihiro as that’s his way of romance. Given Chihiro’s crossdressing tendencies, I wonder when the truth comes out and how confused our shark boy would be. But yeah, Kazuichi out all of the new Class 77-B members seems to have the most focus in this arc, not that I’m complaining as he was the most ‘pointless’ survivor from DR2 so him getting actual character development and focus I’m more then welcome for! There’s also Yoruko rekindling her relationship with her mentor Minako. This went better than expected then again it happened years ago, both Yoruko and Minako had time to reflect on it and both wanted to make up, but thought the other wouldn’t accept it. We also see some parallels here with Hiroko from UDG as Kizuna is revealed to be the result of a teenage pregnancy. As I mentioned in an ask, not to bog you down with personal details but teenage pregnancy is a serious problem where I live and too many people I know fucked as teens, didn’t use protection, and boom! Babies! Good thing I have a passion for Danganronpa so I DON’T get wrapped up in that kind of stuff eh? So, I completely understand Minako’s rational here, and Kizuna’s more troublesome behaviour as one of my RL friends was also the result of a teen pregnancy, and this led to her having…issues. And yeah, Kizuna shamelessly flirts with the Anons and talks about Josuke, no not THAT Josuke, simping hard for her. Naturally we have bigger problems to content with but once the weather calms down, we need to sort out Kizuna, especially now that Yoruko and Minako have made up. And that’s the two things that happened which weren’t relevant to the main themes. Now they are out of the way, time to move onto Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff. Hey, Emma made a Doctor Who joke already, so it’s okay!

Back to the Visions

Despite Time Travel being one of the main themes of this blog, not a lot of research has gone into it at the moment, so in this wind down time, it’s the perfect time for Umeko to do some experiments into time travel. Last Arc dropped the reveal that Mikako has being getting dreams of the future, and as Koroko and Umeko pull up at the Kisurugi household, we see that Mikako just had a dream of the Tragedy, which understandably horrified her. Because of this Umeko and Koroko were forced to tell Mikako, Yamato and his father the truth about the future. They omitted Kasugano and him changing the timelines as its not needed but well…when one dreams of an apocalyptic future you know is coming, there’s no sense in lying about it. Umeko then explains about the time travel and basically that since the brain surgery, Mikako’s brain has become a tachyon receiver that can pick up tachyon from different timelines, not just the one you are on. But it goes beyond being able to see the future via her dreams as if Mikako focuses, and someone touches Mikako during this time, they are hit with a vision of the future that involves them. The first vision was with Koroko and she caught a glimpse into a future much more distant then the 2017 that Hajime, Yoruko, Sora and the other 2 time travellers came from, as it seems to be from the Year 2020-2022 so pretty close to our time then. Here Koroko and Kanata, who not only went through a growth spurt like Hiyoko (Poor Hibiki, she is forever going to be the short one) and has married Nagito, are giving vaccinations to a young girl named Sayuri Hinata. Sayuri herself is very familiar to some people as during the last Arc when Akane was trying to comfort Nikei, one Anon asked about a timeline where she and Ayame had a child. This was a reference to Nextgenronpa which is a Nextgen AU on Instagram created by Mikwithnoando, if you happen to have an Instagram account, I highly recommend reading it, it’s really good! The character in question is called Sayuri Otonokoji the Ultimate Sculptor and in Nextgenronpa she’s the child of Hibiki and Iroha. Koroko looking through her medical records noticed her mother’s name is Hibiki Hinata so Hibiki obviously changed her last name, makes sense as she wants to probably be as far away from Otonokoji as possible now but no mention of the father and yes Sayuri looks a lot like Iroha. This has a few possibilities.

The first theory is that Sayuri is Hibiki and Hajime’s child, but both are very busy. Hibiki would have very likely restarted her musical career around this time and we don’t know what Hajime would be doing but he would be very busy as well, and thus not a lot of time to raise Sayuri. Now Iroha would have a very sedimentary lifestyle and given she is looking after Jataro at the moment, this would probably make Iroha one of the more experienced caretakers/mothers of the cast, so maybe Sayuri was often babysat by Iroha, and if Sayuri was spending a lot of time with Iroha at a young age, she would start to view Iroha as a second mother and start copying her behaviour and mannerisms. But that doesn’t evade the fact that Sayuri PHYSICALLY looks like Iroha as well. The second theory is something happens to Hibiki or Hajime and they are unable to reproduce but want kids. With Kyoji, making kids would not be an issue, but a surrogate mother would be required and maybe Iroha volunteered to be a surrogate. However, the big issue there is that Iroha is much younger than the Goodbye Despair cast, and as Mikan later points out legally, you need to be 21 to be eligible. Sayuri looking to be 8-10 years old means Hibiki and Hajime must have banged around now-2014 and Iroha won’t turn 21 until 2017 and Sayuri looks way older than 3-5 years old. But there is one more theory and the one I believe in. Just because Mikako can see the future, doesn’t mean it’s the timeline we are currently on, and you guys remember that awful, awful period during Oncoming Storm when Iroha was crushing on Hajime and wanted to join the Cuddle Puddle despite there being a significant age gap between him and Iroha? In our timeline, Yoruko was able to slap some sense into Hajime, he was able to see he was developing a Saviour’s complex and was able to grow and develop, and it also system shocked Iroha as well as she learnt that she needed to grow up as well. But what if that didn’t happen? I think that timeline is from one when the sense slapping didn’t happen and Iroha did wind up being part of the Cuddle Puddle, and Sayuri was the result of science from Kyoji and Iroha and Hibiki wanting kids. In addition to this we also see Kotoko in her teen years and she looks brilliant all grown up and the way she talked about ‘our mothers’ and Sayuri referring to Kotoko as a big sister, makes one believe that Mikan is successful in adopting Kotoko. Overall, while Sayuri is going to be a headache to decode, that future was nice and sweet, even if it gave Mikako mild seizures.

After Mikako recovered, Yamato wanted to see the future as well, and thus we get the second vision which is from the OG Timeline in 2014, as it shows some Class 79 tomfoolery with Haruhiko ‘testing’ Yamato’s jetpack and crashing into a tree, and Teruya being concerned for his bro. I know its 2014 because Class 79 was formed then and they didn’t bond for long before Utsuro showed up with an army of Monokumas and was like ‘Knock knock, it’s the upupupu train’ and we get the Proto Killing Game. At least Yamato gets to see his future friends for the first time. And Mikako doesn’t get that much of a headache this time so it seems that the further in time she looks, the bigger the side effects. The first vision was a decade into the future so the side effects were quite big but the second one was only a couple of years so the effects were reduced. It remains uncertain if Mikako has to trust the person in question for the vision link to be done because as much of a force of good this seer ability is, it can also be used for evil. Overall, lots of discoveries on Mikako’s abilities and some hope that not every future out there is filled with despair and there exists a timeline where the Quantum Crew do win. Now it’s a case of seeing if that’s the timeline they are on or not.

That summarizes part 1 with the recapping of minor details and the time travelling science! It’s a longer part then I wanted but with the recap at the beginning it cannot be helped. When we come back, I’ll talk about the Harems and the events surrounding them and hopefully that would be the new length I wish to aim for because this is more of my old length. Stay tuned people! - Review Anon

#danganronpa #a student out of time #submission

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shihalyfie · 2 years ago

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Hey so this isn't an Ask/Meta but I just wanna thank you for making a blog like this! I've fallen back into the Digimon hole due to a mix of recent (Digimon Survive and the Cyber Sleuth duology) and adjacent things (Joined a Tabletop group thats playing Animon Story, which is inspired by Digimon and it's ilk), so reading several years(?) worth of catch-up on fandom/public perception and analyses has been a big help for this revived fan.

Thank you so much! Welcome back to Digimon as well! I myself only started this blog here (or technically the first version of it before it got flagged and I had to remake it) in mid-2020 based on the combination of Kizuna and the reboot inciting discussion, plus the pandemic making me really bored and thus leading to a rewatch party, so I understand exactly what you mean in this regard. I wrote more than I thought I would ever be capable of in the last two years, so I hope the backlog isn't too intimidating, but I also hope it can be useful for your needs! This is mostly 02 (and by logical extension Adventure)-centric, but there's a bit of everything, and I'm still working on a Survive thing back here.

Most of the stuff on this blog came out of discussions springing from my group rewatch two years ago (...and some other groups' watches; seems like rewatching Digimon during the pandemic was a pretty popular thing to do) and current discussions with the group chat I discuss it with, so some of it is derived from observations over the years, some of it comes from observations others have made, and some even from friends showing the series to people completely new to the series to hear what they have to say. (There are fandom mantras that don't have good basis but are taken for granted just because they've been circulating in the echo chamber for 15+ years, so outside opinions from outside the chamber are valuable, and it's also very necessary to constantly reconsider whether something is actually accurate or whether it's something questionable that everyone just happens to repeat all the time. Some of the things I've been saying here probably come off as me making really hot takes because they often go against fandom conventional wisdom...but really I think I just have too much conviction for my own good ^^;) It's ultimately just my way of seeing it in the end, I can only speak for myself and what I agree/disagree with after all, but if it can be interesting or useful in any way then I think I've done my job.

I haven't been able to do long-form meta the way I used to ever since I stopped working from home, but I am at least still preparing the Survive stuff, and I'm trying my best to stick around to talk about shorter things here and there as much as I can. Either way, I'm glad to be helpful in any way! Once again, thank you so much for reading!

#shiha's ask box #toblo1

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jippy-kandi · 5 years ago

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Digimon Adventure 2002 → 2027: Yamato Ishida & Sora Ishida (née Takenouchi)

“Yamato and Sora got married. They began a relationship at Christmas in 02 episode 38. After that, their love blossomed into marriage.” -- Hiromi Seki, Digimon Producer

Headcanons:

Before tri., I had Yamato and Sora being middle school sweethearts all the way up to marriage, with only one minor hiccup (a very brief breakup after high school to ~find themselves). But they only dated each other. Well . . . these are now my headcanons after tri., I suppose:

Yamato and Sora have been in an on-again, off-again relationship since they were 14. This is mostly because one or both of them would get scared when things “got too serious” and so they would break up for a while . . . only to find themselves back together again. This is a pattern that would repeat until they were married.

They lost their virginity to each other straight after high school graduation. This was NOT a decision that they took lightly -- but, seeing as they’ve been dating on-and-off since they were 14 . . . to them, it was time. They discussed it at length and decided after graduation was “right”, before their new lives started in college where they might not be able to see each other often, as they were going to different colleges and they weren’t sure of their workloads, how their timetables clashed, etc. (FYI: “Most” Japanese teens who are NOT having sex are those who do NOT have partners . . . but Yamato and Sora obviously do. And, chances are, if you have a partner, you’re having sex just like every other hormonal teenager around the world. Japan’s “sexless” reputation is from super shy nerds who can’t even get partners, and not those in the relative minority who do date.)

As it turned out, they didn’t get to see each other as often as they’d like once college began, and thus decided to put a break on their relationship to focus on their studies.

Yamato dated about five other girls (one in high school, the rest in college), and had sex with three of them in college. They were all casual relationships (less than three months). Sora was his only serious relationship and he thought about her all the time, so much so that he even said her name once during sex with one of his other girlfriends. Yamato never initiated the breakups with those girls; instead, they would break up with him saying things like he “was too distant”, “broods too much”, “was clearly pining after another girl”.

Sora ended up dating two guys pretty seriously (six months to a year); one in her first year of college and one in her second-going-onto-third year. She even had sex with the last boyfriend, to prove to herself that she could fall in love with someone other than Yamato -- but instantly regretted it. She constantly compared both of them to Yamato and couldn’t commit to them more because she was always thinking about him, so she broke up with them after she admitted to herself she couldn’t love them like she loved Yamato. She still remained friends with both exes, however.

Sora and Yamato got back together for a few months in their second year of college, before getting scared again at the intensity of their feelings (should a relationship really be this serious at their young age?), and breaking up again to date other people more “casually”. But they eventually, finally, found their way back together again in their final year of college. (To me, they are together during Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna.)

They got married at 24 on Christmas Eve, 10 years since they first started dating. This was a spur-of-the-moment decision that surprisingly made sense to them. It was shortly after they both admitted exactly how they felt about each other and what they truly wanted; that they were 100% serious about each other, despite what others may think of their young age, and were in it for the long haul. Their marriage was their “promise” to each other to stay and work through their fears, insecurities, etc. no matter what.

Their “early” marriage also symbolised their commitment to each other while they had to be apart for long periods of time, as Yamato had to train to become a military test pilot, and Sora was busy preparing to launch her own fashion line within 3 years.

Sora became an Ishida because taking the male surname is the overwhelming norm in Japanese society. Sora also struggled with living up to the expectation of a Takenouchi so much (especially in Kizuna where she just wants to be herself, free of expectations) that she didn’t want to put the significance (burden) of the Takenouchi name on her own children. She may also use Takenouchi professionally, but legally she is an Ishida, as are her children with Yamato. It takes the least mental gymnastics to come to this conclusion.

Sora does not take over as iemoto for her mother, but branches out and begins her own journey as a fashion designer with her own identity. Her mum is still so proud of her.

Sora and Yamato both agreed to focus on their careers before thinking of having children so that they were financially secure enough to raise them. But they both strongly wanted children eventually and were very clear about that to each other from the start. They planned to have two children so that the siblings would be playmates.

Yamato was selected by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to become an astronaut at around age 27. His past experience as a Chosen Child fighting digimon threats gave him the edge over other highly skilled pilots. He begins intensive training for three years to become an astronaut, with the intent to go into space for the first time around age 30, but he passes on his first offered mission because Sora becomes pregnant and he wants to be there to support her (and also to be present at the birth of his first child).

Sora is 31 when she gives birth to their first child, a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. They name her Yuki (”snow”) because of her porcelain skin, which is just like Yamato’s.

Yamato goes on his first space mission to the International Space Station (ISS) when their daughter is around a year old, which takes him away from home for about six months. It was especially hard because he had a daughter now, but they had lots of video calls and before he knew it, he was back home with his favourite girls.

For the next two years, Sora and Yamato raise their daughter together as a pretty normal family unit, taking lots of photos and recording lots of videos of their little girl. During this time, Yamato is still training for future missions and Sora is growing her fashion business.

At age 34/35, Sora becomes pregnant with their second child. Around the middle of this second pregnancy, Yamato goes on his second space mission, this time to the moon for one month. He is back with plenty of time for the birth of their second child, a son with Sora’s colouring, that they name Shou (“soar”).

Sora has been holding down the fort at home with help from her parents and in-laws to look after the kids when Yamato goes away for weeks at a time to train. She runs a pretty successful local fashion business that she hopes one day will go worldwide when she’s able to put more time and resources into it.

Because Natsuko helps out quite a bit with the Ishida kids, she and Yamato actually become closer than they’ve ever been. This makes Sora happy that Yamato has finally reconnected with his mother. He does appreciate her help and, now that he’s a parent himself, he sympathises more with how she must’ve felt having him “reject” her. He even tells her he loves her one day, at Sora’s encouragement.

Hiroaki has a super soft spot for Yuki because he’s only had sons and she is his only granddaughter. The love is mutual and Hiroaki is Yuki’s favourite grandparent! She adores him and he teaches her how to play the harmonica, just like he taught Yamato many years ago.

Toshiko and Haruhiko are both retired and actually live with Sora and the kids when Yamato is away on missions. This also greatly reassures Yamato that Sora doesn’t get overwhelmed and that her parents are there to support her when he can’t physically be there.

As Yamato’s partner, Sora is used to feeling apprehensive every time he would pilot fighter jets in his 20s and now rockets in his 30s. The feeling never really goes away, no matter how many thousands of hours Yamato has clocked as a pilot. But she has always tried to put faith in Yamato and JAXA that everything will be fine. However, shortly after Shou’s birth, there is an accident at JAXA where several astronauts (including friends of Yamato) unfortunately died, and this scares Sora so much that Yamato decides to lay low at work and not take on any missions for about two years, for Sora’s sake.

Eventually, after JAXA has a few more successful missions and no incidents, Yamato feels as though Sora would be ready for him to accept another mission and so brings up the topic one day. But they probably have the biggest argument in their marriage over this. Sora even asks Yamato to quit JAXA, out of fear of losing him -- and she even throws the topic of their kids at him (is he OK with making them fatherless?), which she never thought she’d do, but . . .. It’s huge and explosive but, in the end, the two work it out and emerge stronger than ever. Sora just doesn’t want him to die, and Yamato completely understands that, but he reassures her JAXA knows exactly what went wrong during the accident and that their safety measures have improved dramatically because of it. He also promises her he’d do everything in his power to stay alive for her and the kids.

At around age 37, Yamato goes on his most important space mission as Commander, this time to Mars for two years, after lengthy discussions about it with Sora. Two years is a long time to be apart from each other and to miss out on his kids growing up. But it’s Yamato’s dream, so they decide that, at his age, this is his last chance and he has to take it. Yamato and Sora (as well as their kids) miss each other terribly, but accept that two years will be the longest they’ll ever be away from each other. They did have voice calls while Yamato was on Mars, but it took more than half an hour each way for their voices to reach each other, so contact was definitely not as easy was it was on the moon or the ISS.

Thankfully, Yamato is never gone for more than a few weeks after that. Well, maybe he has one more stint for six months at the International Space Station a few years later -- but that’s it!

Yamato and Sora have a surprise third baby (a son with blond hair and red/brown eyes named Kaito, meaning “ocean” and “fly”) about five years after Shou, born when Sora is around age 40. Yes, Kaito was conceived on Yamato’s return home from Mars. Things got really heated in the bedroom for a while after that return!

Yuki is a very energetic and outgoing tomboy in her childhood. Sora and Yamato are surprised they managed to create such an extrovert. She doesn’t seem that protective of her brothers (unlike Yamato was of Takeru) -- until someone threatens them, then she goes into Big Sister Mode. She’s a social butterfly who makes friends with everyone and, like Sora, outgrows a lot of her tomboyishness when she becomes a teenager.

Shou is a shy boy who often hides behind his mother, sister and cousin (Takeru’s only son). At first he is even shy around Yamato, because Shou is only four years old when Yamato returns from Mars. But he quickly gets used to having a father (he doesn’t even remember this brief period of thinking Yamato was a stranger to him, when he’s older) and becomes super attached to Yamato. Yamato is glad and indulges him, as he was a bit heartbroken Shou treated him as a stranger for his first few weeks home. Shou tells bullies at school that his father is huge and can beat up their dads, so they shouldn’t try anything.

Kaito is a nice balance of his two older siblings, and is very curious about the world and is always asking questions. He’s more of an introvert like his brother, but he isn’t shy at all. Despite the age gap between him and Shou, the two are extremely close brothers -- Shou always included him, even when he was a teenager and Kaito was literally just a kid. As the baby of the family, Kaito also managed to get away with things his older siblings didn’t growing up.

All the Ishida kids are incredibly creative and athletic. Yamato feels like he hit the jackpot and brags about them all the time to Takeru, Taichi, Jou, etc. Sora is always amused, if slightly embarrassed.

All the kids idolise Yamato “the famous astronaut” who went to Mars. But Yamato makes sure they appreciate Sora too -- and they do, because she’s the one that was always there for them when Yamato was away.

Yamato is feels incredibly thankful that Sora supported him and his career; he honestly doubted he would’ve achieved his dreams without her by his side, encouraging him and making personal sacrifices to take care of their children -- which was his other dream, to have a close-knit family. Even though he’s been to space and saw truly amazing things, he still feels as though his greatest accomplishment was having and raising three kids with Sora, his soulmate.

Sora’s fashion kimono line truly blooms after Yamato’s return from Mars, where he is a more permanent fixture at home and he can help take care of the kids more often, while she can put a lot more effort into running her business. Her fashion kimonos eventually hit big worldwide and she now runs a very successful business that turns over millions of dollars. She is definitely the breadwinner and Yamato couldn’t be more proud of her. He especially likes that she allows him to have a small collection of motorcycles (he can’t wait until his kids grow up to appreciate them with him).

Despite several periods of zero physical contact (six months/one month/two years/six months), Yamato and Sora are actually closer than most couples simply because of their personalities and how they both operate on pure emotion. They support each other fully and are each other’s rock. Because they both grew up pretty lonely, they make an effort to always stay connected no matter where they are, and to never feel alone. With three kids and each other (as well as Gabumon and Piyomon), they find it hard not to accomplish this.

They lived happily ever after. And if you don’t think so, you can come and fight me.

(Note: I’ve written about Sorato a tonne over the years. If you want more thoughts on Sorato, you can find quite a bit here.)

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kazarinn · 5 years ago

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Roundup of all the things I’ve translated within the last month

Those who have been following me for a while might know that the last month saw me be very unusually prolific with translation (especially Digimon-related ones), to unprecedented extents. I'll be very honest about the fact that it's because of the current quarantine, which has left me with not a lot to do and a sense of boredom that translation somehow happens to satiate a bit ^^;; That said, the very large number of translations I'd been posting has caused things to get a bit buried, and has made things easily missable, so I've decided to make a bit of a roundup post summarizing everything I've done in the last month.

Of course, there's probably still more to come in the near future -- I have two books (the Digimon Official Super Encyclopedia and the Gakken Digimon Adventure tri. Memorial Book) hopefully coming in the mail soon, and I still have some stuff lying around I might take up if my mood warms up to it, but since I've finally cleared up a ton of the backlog I felt I should take a breather to summarize stuff. (Although, every time I say I've cleared the backlog, suddenly more interesting things pop up...^^;;)

Digimon Adventure, Adventure 02, Tamers, Frontier

Digimon Adventure 02 Drama CD "Armor Evolution to the Unknown" I will be honest in that this is actually my favorite thing to have translated in this past month. Actually, fiction translation has a higher level of difficulty for me than things like interviews -- because I want to be careful with what real people have said, I tend to be less stringent about rewording things, whereas with fiction I hold myself to a higher standard to make things flow well. But that's actually what makes it so much fun, because I can challenge myself to play with wording and broaden my horizons, and moreover Adventure 02 has a ton of characters, and it's really fun to try and make unique "voices" for all of them. That said, translating this was a bit of a wake-up call, because the sheer amount of pop culture references (to things made before I was even born, at that) and wordplay everywhere led me to the very harsh realization of why so few people have attempted to translate this drama CD into so few languages over the past two decades ^^;; I give my thanks to the anonymous Japanese commenters on Nico Nico Douga who pointed out many of the really old and obscure pop culture references, and I ended up spending several hours on Japanese Wikipedia looking up things like said old anime and British punk rock artists. I might not have gotten everything, and I'm sure there are people out there who probably would have been able to pull it off better than I did, but it ultimately became a test of my abilities as a translator, and if it's fun and entertaining and enjoyable, then that alone makes me satisfied. But I think this will be the last time (at least for a while) that I try translating something audio-only with no transcript -- my hearing is not that great, not even in English ^^;;

The Mystery of the American Box Bug A story from Adventure and Adventure 02 director Hiroyuki Kakudou that has some very tangential (at best) relation to Digimon, but is amusing nevertheless.

Digimon Adventure Character Complete File -- Future Encyclopedia Little "dialogue" snippets from an Adventure/Adventure 02-related book, checking in on the kids-turned-adults during the time of Adventure 02's epilogue. I actually translated this a long time ago, but I lost the transcript for it and I'm pretty sure (given how long ago it was) it was probably pretty embarrassing by my current standards, so I went ahead and did this over again. There are some other things in this book that are interesting and/or amusing, like further background info on the kids' family lives and room layouts, so if I have some spare time I might do some of those in the future, although naturally doing the entire book would probably be practically impossible.

Digimon Series Memorial Book: Digimon Animation Chronicle — Special interview with Hiromi Seki, Hiroyuki Kakudou, and Yukio Kaizawa An interview with some perennial Digimon staff members about Adventure through Frontier (and a bit of X-Evolution). We've had no shortage of these kinds of interviews over the years, but this one happens to summarize a lot of things that used to be considered "obscure" in the Digimon fanbase outside Japan, even though this book (and thus this interview) is one of the most prominent resources for diehard Digimon fans out there. Also, Frontier-related development info tends to be somewhat rare, so it's nice to hear about it. The Digimon Official Super Encyclopedia that I'm hoping to get my hands on soon allegedly has a similar interview with the same three people. I don't know specifics about it yet, but I'm informed that it mostly covers similar territory to this one, but also allegedly has some very fascinating details that weren't in this, so I'm looking forward to that as well.

Message from Digimon Adventure producer Hiromi Seki, to Toshiko Fujita Posted by Adventure producer Hiromi Seki to the LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna Twitter on February 8, 2019, right before the 49th day (last day of mourning, in Japanese tradition) after Taichi Yagami voice actress Toshiko Fujita's passing.

Mimi Tachikawa and Lilimon Posted by Adventure director Hiroyuki Kakudou on his blog, talking about the intent behind Mimi Tachikawa's character and her corresponding track in the drama CD Digimon Adventure: Two-and-a-Half Year Break.

Digimon Adventure tri.

On Creation and Production for “Super Evolution Stage: Digimon Adventure tri.” A post by Director Kenichi Tani about his work on the Adventure tri. stage play. Despite technically being under Adventure tri. branding, the stage play actually has surprisingly little in common with the Adventure tri. anime in terms of both content and production background, and moreover Digimon hasn't had a lot of contact with the stage medium all that much, so I thought it'd be interesting to translate something about its production, especially since this tends to be a lesser talked-about part of the franchise.

October/November 2018 Gashapon Blog interviews with Kenji Watanabe This is actually two interviews, one where Digimon franchise creator and character designer Kenji Watanabe talks about design for a Digimon gachapon set, and one where he talks about Adventure tri.'s Omegamon Merciful Mode, but I'm categorizing it under the Adventure tri. section because I figure the vast majority of readers will be reading the interview for the latter.

Digimon Adventure tri. voice actor comments (Part 1: Reunion | Part 2: Determination | Part 3: Confession | Part 4: Loss | Part 5: Coexistence | Part 6: Our Future) A series of voice actor comments that were posted to the official website prior to each Adventure tri. movie being released. I'd actually had it on the brain to try my hand at these when they were first posted, but various circumstances happened and I never got around to it, until now. In retrospect, though, I think it turned out for the better that I didn't attempt them on the spot. Adventure tri.-related interviews tend to be much more difficult to translate than most Digimon-related ones, and although there are a few reasons why, the biggest one is that, during its run, it had a very tight spoiler embargo, resulting in a lot of vague language being used, and so when you translate from a language like Japanese -- where having proper context can be life or death -- not knowing the original context behind what was being said can throw the end result into completely incorrect and misleading interpretations. While I was working on these, I did actually end up having to pull up the movies again and reference what scenes were being referred to multiple times just so I could phrase the sentence correctly, so yeah, I think it did ultimately work out. Incidentally, this is also the first direct Adventure tri. production-related thing I've translated since 2016 (mainly due to the expenses incurred by importing magazines and my difficulty with translating print media at the time). Looking back at it, I'm honestly kind of ashamed at my own inexperience from back then, but sadly, I don't have the original magazines anymore, so I can't do much to fix it, and so I'm kind of glad to have these as my sort of attempt at "redeeming myself".

Digimon Adventure tri. — Yoshimasa Hosoya interview on “To Me” Also from the official website, discussing voice actor Yoshimasa Hosoya's involvement with the ending theme song from part 3 (Confession), "To Me".

Digimon Adventure LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna

Anime! Anime! interview series (Director Tomohisa Taguchi interview | Natsuki Hanae and Chika Sakamoto interview | 02 human cast voice actor interview | 02 Digimon cast voice actor interview | Producer Yousuke Kinoshita and supervisor Hiromi Seki interview) I didn't actually know this was a series until very recently, so you'll have to forgive me for translating these out of order. Technically, all of these were posted in February to March 2020, after the movie was released in Japan, but it's pretty much spoiler-free. It's got a huge amount of development and background info behind LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna, so I recommend them as reading for anyone interested in seeing the movie.

"In regards to the new Digimon project" Otherwise known as "what happened when Hiroyuki Kakudou accidentally revealed that they were making another Digimon Adventure-related movie". Since the news that original Adventure director was recusing from LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna due to some kind of creative difference over lore ended up naturally being a hot topic, I felt like having a proper translation of his statement on the matter would be a useful thing to have. Despite technically being LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna-related, it also has a transcription of his tweets regarding Adventure/Adventure 02 background lore along with some surprising production details, so it may interest fans of the original series as well.

Digimon Continues to be Loved Thanks to its Creator’s Commitment — With Digimon Character Designer Kenji Watanabe An Asahi &M article (sort of a half-interview) with Kenji Watanabe over his involvement in LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna, which, unusually for a Digimon anime work, actually had him directly involved in production from beginning to end. I put this on the post already, but this article gets a lot dangerously closer to outright spoilers than you'd expect for this kind of material, so if you're particularly keen on going into the movie "completely clean", best to maybe avoid this one until you've seen the movie.

Digimon Adventure LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna — Website messages from Hiromi Seki and Yousuke Kinoshita It's just a short greeting message on the official website. I wanted to translate it mainly because it's not on the official English site.

Animage Plus interviews with Yousuke Kinoshita Also something I'd wanted to translate for a while but never got around to (until now). A triple set of interviews with LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna producer Yousuke Kinoshita, who also talks about Adventure's 20th anniversary and the "Memorial Story" short story collection crowdfund.

Digimon Adventure:

Interviews with Yabuno Tenya and Atsuhiro Tomioka (Part 1: V-Jump Web | Part 2: Digimon Web) A two-part interview (each part on different websites) with Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01 artist Yabuno Tenya and Digimon Adventure: lead writer Atsuhiro Tomioka, discussing their respective works and Adventure:'s surprising relation to V-Tamer.

Digimon Adventure director Hiroyuki Kakudou’s initial comments on the Digimon Adventure: reboot A triple set of blog posts from original Digimon Adventure director Hiroyuki Kakudou about the Adventure: reboot and what relation it has to him and the original Adventure (along with some fun trivia about the latter). I figured some people out there might be curious about what the original Adventure director thought about Toei rebooting his series.

Digimon games

Explore the Secrets of Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode’s Evolution! Interview with Habu and Tomono Decode is rather inaccessible to the West right now (being unlocalized, and on the region-locked 3DS at that), so the idea of translating too many things relevant to it is pretty low-priority to me at the moment, but it's still a game of significant interest to the Digimon fanbase outside Japan, and is also notable as one of the first major titles spearheaded by Digimon game producer Kazumasa Habu, so I felt that there'd be quite a few people interested in this one.

Interview with Producer Habu of Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory: Highlights and Future Prospects A 4Gamer interview that I'd wanted to translate since I'd first read it, but never got around to. Incidentally, I decided to go back and make some revisions to the wording for the Famitsu interviews I translated for the original game. They were some of the first things I ever translated, and it...kind of shows. ^^;; Normally I don't like to lock myself into a habit of constantly going back and revising old work, as doing so tends to be a bit of a black hole, but since the original Cyber Sleuth is still quite the hot topic among the fanbase right now (and especially with Complete Edition being recently released), I thought it might be worth it this time.

Famitsu.com interview with Kazumasa Habu on Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory Another Hacker's Memory interview, a bit less detailed than the above but still fairly informative.

Other

Iwata Asks #14: Hatsune Miku and Future Stars: Project mirai Somehow this ended up the only non-Digimon thing on the list ^^;; The version of this game that eventually did make it to the West (Project Mirai DX) is so different from the original game that it meant this Iwata Asks was never officially translated, so I thought it'd be worth taking a shot at this one. I don't have any plans to translate any other Iwata Asks at the moment, mainly because it requires me to have more than a passing knowledge of how each game works for proper context, but I hope you can at least enjoy this one.

#Digimon #Digimon Adventure #Digimon Adventure 02 #Digimon Adventure tri #Digimon Adventure LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna #Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth #Hacker's Memory #Digimon Adventure Reboot #Digimon Adventure V Tamer 01 #Digimon World Re:Digitize #Digimon Tamers #Digimon Frontier #Vocaloid #Project Mirai

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