#THE FACT. THAT LIKE YATO NORAGAMI HE NEEDS BELIEVERS TO BE POWERFUL

[crehador]

brother crab's fall 2024 first impressions: maou 2099

i think i forgot to make a post after the first ep because my first impressions of it were just. not that deep. i do remember going in with zero expectations and thinking hey this is actually better and more interesting than what i'd imagined! but it still wasn't That interesting

HOWEVER

SECOND EPISODE ELEVATED EVERYTHING

first of all peak bishounen demon lord design here. nothing revolutionary but a solid classic. 10/10 no notes

and like okay so the premise of a ye olden fantasy times demon lord being defeated then resurrected into a far future sci-fi world sounded really fun with the potential to be super funny. it made me think of paripi koumei which was basically incredible

the first ep was a little higher on the drama than the humor imo, but the second ep? second ep, the humor really hit

i'm absolutely loving the demon lord's extremely loyal, faithful follower who worked for centuries to resurrect him and is also his number one simp. like this poor girl almost got outed as a demon king otome doujinshi otaku. right in front of her demon king

demon lord's job hunt and the outcome of it is also just. i won't even spoil it because. hilarious. truly

the worldbuilding is also reasonably interesting, i think that was one of the things that impressed me most in the first episode

overall, really pleasantly surprised by this one and looking forward to more!

[echodrops]

First off, I love your noragmi content and how you analyze things and brings facts up.

I was wondering if you have any theories about how yatoa nd hiyori would be abel to be an actual couple because they have both admitted to having feelings for each other, but I don't think they would be abel to date as they are now wirh hiyori being a human and yato be a God (plus the age gap) so do you have any idea or theories about how this would possibly work out?

There’s a lot of possibilities for where Adachitoka might take the Yatori plotline from here on out, and they have a tendency to make surprising choices so I wouldn’t say that I can really predict where things might go, but based on what we know right now, I would say there’s several different possibilities, some where they could be a couple and some much sadder than others:

1) Hiyori dies and becomes a shinki, possibly one who is immune to god’s greatest gift and therefore gets to keep the memories of her past. Personally I hope this doesn’t happen because shinki are viewed so much as tools by others in the story that there’s a constant undertone of angst and “I’m not worthy!” to any god/shinki ship. I feel like Yato wouldn’t worry about that kind of thing at all, but I’m not sure how Hiyori would feel about it. Then again, I would love to see what kind of shinki Hiyori would become, soooo maybe this wouldn’t be that bad. Since her brother is spiritually aware as well, she could still also maintain some ties to her family.

2) Hiyori dies and is deified, becoming a goddess. This might feel a little bit more like a long shot than just becoming a shinki; however, I feel like the story has an opening for this. In Shinto tradition, it’s not that uncommon for a business or location to take on a “patron god/goddess” by enshrining someone meaningful at them (re: Tama, the cat who was enshrined as the goddess of a train station). If Hiyori did die, she might theoretically be able to be enshrined as the patron goddess of her family’s hospital, which would tie into the dream she mentioned earlier of wanting to become a doctor--although she might not be able to be an actual doctor, she’d be able to be the guardian spirit of the hospital and protect everyone within it, while also standing on equal or more popular footing than Yato as a goddess. Then, she could also take Nora as her own shinki, keeping her in the “family” as they say. And she’d continue to have access to her own family via the hospital and her brother.

3) Hiyori’s status as a half-phantom grants her some powers that haven’t been revealed yet that mean she won’t age past a certain point or that she will somehow be able to continue to interact with the supernatural world with a youthful appearance even without technically dying in the real world. Since we don’t really know what it means for someone to be a half-phantom, given that Hiyori is the only known one in the series (since Father is currently believed to be something else), Adachitoka could pretty much make up whatever weird powers they want for her and we, the audience, would probably just go along with them readily, since it would make Yatori possible. This is honestly probably the easiest route, since nothing special needs to happen to make this route possible, but it might also feel the least narratively sound.

4) Nothing happens to Hiyori, and she continues to age normally. She and Yato could be together for as long as they felt it would be appropriate, probably could have a family of little demigods, and Hiyori’s children and grandchildren would continue to be watched over by Yato, Yukine, and probably even Nora throughout time. This would be very bittersweet, as Yato and Hiyori’s time together would be so short in the grand scheme of his life, but bittersweet endings can still have their own kind of appeal for the audience, and the authors wouldn’t have to jump through any hoops to make this kind of ending possible. I’m not sure I’d really be happy to have this kind of ending, but as a reader, I don’t think I would be really “let down” by it either.

5) Instead of something happening to Hiyori, something happens to Yato--maybe his Father really is his last reliable lifeline, and he will only live as long as Hiyori does after defeating his Father, so it doesn’t matter that she’s going to age and die as well. Or maybe he gets reincarnated, basically ending the possibility of a relationship. Or maybe all along it’s going to turn out that Yato wasn’t a god of anything and his Father, as a dead spirit himself, didn’t have the ability to create a god in the first place, so Yato is some weird half-and-half being for whom the rules of the existing plot don’t even really apply. They could basically pull anything out of a hat regarding who Yato really is and what he really can or can’t do at this point, so it’s entirely possible that something could happen to Yato that would make it possible for him to be with Hiyori in a different capacity than immortal god and mortal human. Whatever might happen to Yato though, it would also require Yukine to get a happy end somehow too, so this alternative seems a little less likely to me than others.

6) The story just ends before the question of mortality/immortality ever comes up. We get something basic like “For as long as we can be together, I can’t wait keep sharing my life with Yato and Yukine!” and the story just cuts off there, leaving us to just assume whatever comes next in their relationship.

Overall, I am inclined to trust that we will get either a happy or at least a bittersweet ending out of Noragami. Nothing in the story up to this point in time has suggested that Adachitoka intend to delivery a horrid tragedy where no one gets their happily ever after. I’m very hopeful that Yato and Hiyori will manage to have a romance, even if it does end up being the sad-but-still-sweet variety where Hiyori’s time with Yato and Yukine will be limited. I don’t know that Adachitoka will deliver a pain-free Yatori ending, but I know that whatever they have planned will be good!

[honestlynoragami]

Humanism & Acceptance of Past Mistakes (Part 3)

Touma

Like Yato, the Goddess of War, Bishamon, also has a Regalia dear to her that she would never forget. Touma was one of the children Regalia from the 'Ma' clan and Kazuma's precious friend. Contrary to how she was introduced, Bishamon is a really kind and compassionate deity, she sees every each one of her spirits she took in as her cherished children. Touma's vessel form was said to be a pot lid so unlike the others who could assist Bishamon in the battlefield, she didn't get a lot of chance to talk let alone spend time with her.

To Kazuma, even though they started out awkward at first but with Touma's active encouragement and constant support to get him to the top with her so they could be of more use to Bishamon, she was his tutor, closest friend and sister. Because that Kazuma's vessel form was only a nail that could penetrate Bishamon's ear like an earring, he was considered worthless and would bring nothing but bad omen for piercing their master's body. This pushed Kazuma and Touma to become closer as they had a lot in common with each other.

In my previous post 'The Relationship Between Master & Regalia' that heavily focused on the relationships within the Bishamon's household, I mentioned how punishment by ablution upon the suspected Regalia guilty of blighting their master is a principle that has been strictly followed by Bishamon's Regalia, led by their exemplar. This can be seen when, one day, Bishamon started feeling unwell and showed signs of being blighted. The exemplar at the time was a stern elderly woman who Touma called 'Grandma,' threatened to have every single Regalia go through a purification ritual if the one responsible for Bishamon's ailing state refuse to expose themselves.

The threat did nothing but accelerated Bishamon's pain and suffering as her Regalia started to restlessly suspect one another. On top of refusing to listen to other Regalia and blaming anybody she could think of, she had her attention fixed on Touma who advised her to "unite everyone in the search for the culprit" and accused her for blighting their master. To make matters worse, instead of performing a purification ritual and giving her another chance, Touma was mercilessly thrown off of a cliff and into a pit of evil spirits and Phantoms where she could be devoured without even a piece of her left.

By using the incident involving Touma's unfair death, AdachiToka depict the abuse of power and authority which can be seen from the exemplar's ignorant and self-centered attitude. As the guide for Regalia and their God, she claimed to be a figure who could never make mistakes nor errors so thus, her words were supposed to be just as absolute as the Gods'. Touma's character and her brief appearance in the story made a significant impact to not just Bishamon and Kazuma but also the victims who have suffered from power abuse and mistreatment. I believe Touma was employed as a voice for the said victims who fear to speak up or whose voices are silent due difference in class or position.

The tragedy left everyone dead in the slaughter by a certain God of Calamity and only Kazuma survived. As a survivor of the now deceased Ma clan, instead of changing his name to fit her newly formed clan Bishamon wanted to keep Kazuma as an evidence to the existence of the Ma clan and a reminder of her "mistake" for failing to protect her people as their God.

Even though they are divine beings, AdachiToka portray them to be full of flaws, bear humane emotions and dreams as well as capable of being emotionally attached to the Near Shore. Considering the fact that, in the series, the nature of the gods’ existence began from a single human wish until a god is materialized, the way the Heavens and the Gods are drawn with human characteristics too further show how they are no different than the Near Shore and mankind has their own capabilities. In fact, it has been brought up by one of the Gods of Fortune, Ebisu, how humans don't always need Gods to solve their problems, the Gods only provide while humans help one another and are capable of developing further with what they were given. Thus, the representation of such respected and worshipped divinities to have human characteristics and flaws show how significant it is to embrace mankind and appreciate the achievements as well as advancements in the world. that were done by our own hands. 

References:

https://noragami.fandom.com/wiki/Touma

https://noragami-mangaa.com/manga/noragami-chapter-23/

[catboyyukineapologist]

Guess who had finals thrust in the way of manga shitposting again? Yeah.

hello my good bitches and welcome to this month’s episode of “screaming about noragami instead of doing my actual schoolwork”

as always insanity is under the cut (also there’s a meme in this one again)

Warning! somehow I managed to fit The Magnus Archives spoilers into this mess so uhh be careful if you need to (they’re marked though).

-

Adachitoka have been testing the fandom’s emotional stability for years but i would like to have a word.

another emotional rollercoaster. I can’t I truly can’t pleASE THE ENTIRE KAZUMA BIT THIS IS WHY I’M EMOTIONALLY STUNTED

me, thinking Yukine was actually going to go fully feral on trash dad this time: ��

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: fuck trash dad’s little power trip. his characterization reminds me a lot of light yagami, actually. “The world has wronged me personally so I get to decide what happens to it: I am better than the gods for it, and all my fucked up morals don’t apply to me because i know better than everyone else”. Fuck you.

Also did he fucking hit my son do we need to call cps on his smug fucking smirk (again)?

“You're not allowed to have desires and wishes” Uh. The objective, empirical fact that he does begs to differ, my man.

(TMA spoilers?) I’ve been listening to The Magnus Archives a lot and trash dad also reminds me a lot of Elias. It’s just that very specific brand of self-centered grandiosity that Does Not Give A Shit what happens as long as they come out on top of it.

IT’S OFFICIAL THEY BROUGHT BACK THE BOX FUCK

It’s rare that i notice because the manga art style is Like That, but man, Kazuma really is a kid, huh.

HOW DARE THEY SAY SOMETHING LIKE “KAZUMA’S LOVE IS UNFATHOMABLE“ AND PAIR IT WITH THAT FUCJING VISUAL IM SUING

HE SLICE HE DICE FUCK HIM UP THAT’S MY SON HE LITERALLY WENT RIGHT FOR THE JUGULAR AS HE SHOULD

Ah, yes. The Brotherhood of Trashy Doujin. (Of course Kazuma was wearing earplugs I love these idiots)

can’t say i didn’t miss Kazuma lecturing Yato

The fact that Kazuma is literally just a shapeshifter fills me with so much joy. Like yes he can be a sword, he can be a bow, he can be another, separate sword. the only limit is your imagination he’s like She-ra’s sword.

Yato rn:

I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY DID THE FUCKING JAWS THING

And as always, this is your monthly reminder that Trash Dad Has No Rights, And He Shall One Day Feel The Terror And Despair He Has Inflicted.

[noragami-ru-manga]

Soul summoning and Father’s return from Yomi

For someone who supposedly hates Father, I sure talk a lot about him, huh

While I was flipping through the pages of the manga, I once again came to a stop at the soul summoning scene in chapter 37. Specifically at Nora’s tale about Father escaping from Yomi, which I, apparently, did not pay due attention to.

I��ve never had a single opinion on how Father got in and out of Yomi, so I toyed with a few.

1. When Father was still human, he was already interested in researching ayakashi (like Ebisu, for example), somehow learned about the kotonoha (the Word of Yomi) and decided to get one for himself. He voluntarily ventured into Yomi but asked the pock-marked girl to soul call him beforehand, and she did just that.  

2. The pock-marked girl died, and Father got mad at the gods for being directly or indirectly involved. He went to Yomi to get her back, stumbled upon Izanami, saw the brushes in action, and either stole or wheedled out one of them.

3. Father was the one who died while the pock-marked girl lived. While in Yomi, Father encountered Izanami, learned about the brushes, and got his hands on one of them.

In this post I want to examine the last option – the one in which Father died and was resurrected by that girl of his through soul summoning.

First of all, let me remind you that soul summoning isn’t something Adachitoka came up with specifically for Noragami, but an actual Japanese tradition.

I think it’s reasonable to assume that whatever exists in our world is also a thing in Noragami universe. All the locations that we see in the series, specifically shrines, are real places (with the exception of the characters’ houses, Takamagahara and Yomi, obviously).  This means that the tradition of soul summoning can easily exist in-universe.

Maybe it’s just me (or the translation), but the way Kofuku talks about soul summoning seems to imply that she knows what it is and expects others to know about it, too. Apparently, they just never thought of using it on a god because it’s a human tradition.

And it goes against everything both Father and Amaterasu say.

Amaterasu says humans can’t (mustn’t) come back to life at all, Father implies he is the only one who’s managed to return from Yomi/come back to life. How do we reconcile these statements with people climbing on roofs and staring down wells trying to revive their loved ones? The answer is – people did all that, they just weren’t successful. Except for the pock-marked girl.

I’m absolutely sure she was the one who called Father back from Yomi, thanks to a discussion I stumbled upon here on Tumblr.

@sayaka19fan​ gave an alternate translation of this scene that differs from both the official transalation and the fan scanlation: “Even if he said I was a girl with pock marks I wonder if she was his loved one”. Aka “he was cold to me, even if I had her appearance”. So Father being distant made Izanami question her choice of appearance and wonder if she impersonated the wrong person.

If the girl was alive, then Father not being swayed by Izanami is easily explained, he simply knew that whoever was in front of him couldn’t have been that girl. This rules out her dying first and Father coming to Yomi to retrieve her the way Izanagi came after Izanami (not to mention that this particular scenario would require some other person to call Father’s name). So between the two of them, Father was the only one who got into Yomi.

The thing about Yomi is that it’s unclear whether it’s really a place where people go after their deaths. On the one hand, you have this word “yomigaeru”  - to come back to life = to return from Yomi. On the other hand, there are opinions like this one:

In no ancient Shinto textual source is it explained who exactly goes to Yomi and why. Some historians suggest that the concept of a life after death was not a familiar one to the ancient Japanese and it only took form with the introduction of Buddhism from China in the 6th century CE. Yomi certainly has a very limited place in Shinto thought where a life after death is only vaguely alluded to and where there is an absence of a general concept of punishment and reward for souls in the next life as found in many other religions. The only suffering of souls in Yomi, if indeed there is any at all, is their separation from their living loved ones. The noted Shinto scholar and theologian Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843 CE) explains Yomi and its limited significance thus,

“The old legends that dead souls go to Yomi cannot be proven. Then it may be asked, where do the souls of the Japanese go when they die? It may be clearly seen from the purport of ancient legends and from modern examples that they remain eternally in Japan and serve in the realm of the dead governed by Okuninushi-no-kami. This realm of the dead is not in any one particular place in the visible world, but being a realm of the darkness and separated from the present world, it cannot be seen…

The darkness, however, is only comparative. It should not mistakenly be imagined that this realm is devoid of light. It has food, clothing, and houses of various kinds, similar to those of the visible world. Proof of this may be found in accounts…in which a person has occasionally returned to tell of the realm of the dead.

After death the soul leaves the body and resides in the area of the grave, a fact attested by countless accounts…of both ancient and modern times of miraculous occurrences by spirits in the vicinity of graves…Some say that the soul goes to the filthy realm of Yomi, but there is not a shred of evidence that this is the case”. (Scott Littleton, 94)

Even in the manga itself Yato and Ebisu didn’t encounter a single soul when they were in Yomi, only ayakashi and Izanami’s maidens. Then again, we learned in chapter 86 that where souls go in their afterlife depends on what they believed in when they were alive. So technically, if Father believed that dead souls end up in Yomi, that’s where he could have gone after he died.

Why do I now think that he died and didn’t venture into Yomi as a living person specifically to get the kotonoha? Again, it all comes down to the pock-marked girl. I think that her death could have been, in FMA terms, an “equivalent exchange” for Father’s return from Yomi.

See, gods in Noragami are pretty powerful, I give them that. They can, for example, turn into giant spiders (Ookuninushi) and lightning (Takemikazuchi). And while the series never really explains how exactly Tenjin goes about helping students get better marks, or how Ebisu helps businesses, I’m pretty sure that gods can alter reality to some extent. However, they aren’t all-powerful, and there’s one thing they can do nothing about – death.

Of course, we should take into account that Yato isn’t exactly a god of healing to at least theoretically be able to postpone someone’s death (he can totally do the opposite though). I do think, however, that any other god would have said the same, because this is the one thing the gods cannot change. They can’t postpone death because the circle of life is the nature of things and shouldn’t be meddled with. Not because “Amaterasu said so”, but because that’s how the world is. Who made the world like this is a tricky question to answer, since to extent to which the Japanese cosmogoniс myth is applicable to Noragami, aka what came first, the egg or the hen, is a topic for a discussion of its own.

Bottom line is, if Father came back from the dead, something had to balance that out, and that something was the pock-marked girl’s death. It wasn’t a punishment from the Heavens for his breaking out of Yomi, which the Heavens, apparently, don’t even know about. It wasn’t an injustice that some god committed, ‘cause gods had nothing to do with it all. Father became bitter at the world for taking the pock-marked girl away from him, at the gods who didn’t help him when he needed them, and at humans who created and support those useless gods. The clothes Father was wearing when he was escaping from Izanami are the same ones he was in when he was hugging the girl in chapter 60. If this is how things went, then the effect of his return was immediate – as soon as he came back, the girl died.

There’s one more thing that bothers me about Father – how he’s survived after his return from Yomi, specifically how he changes bodies. It’s hard to tell if he had a body in the scenes from Yato and Nora’s childhood, since Far shore beings can interact with the real-life objects (food, clothes) just fine. All we know is that he’s had the same appearance in Yomi, in Yato and Nora’s childhood, and even now; and also that he doesn’t just possess bodies, but their souls as well. His current “host” Fujisaki is a third year high-school senior, meaning he’s roughly two years older than Hiyori. If Father is reborn in a new body each time, then Yato hasn’t seen him for 17-18 years now. And that Yato has never seen Fujisaki before his father made himself known when he and Yukine were walking down the street is apparent not just from their exchange in Fujisaki’s house

but also from the very first scene Father was in. Yato saw how Fujisaki caught Hiyori, and if he knew that the guy was his father, he definitely would have warned her to stay away. Granted, Yato probably didn’t see the guy’s face, but it doesn’t change the fact that Yato first saw what Father now looks like in the year the events of the manga currently take place – after 2010.

Except we see in the Volume 8 omake that Father collected articles about the “Yatogami miracle” from 2000′s, too – when Fujisaki was barely in primary school. (I don’t know if I need to explain this, but just in case it confuses you. I’m not talking about who and when was collecting the papers. What I mean is that Yato worked as a magatsukami in 2000′’s when Fujisaki was only a child).

Could Nora have been the one to make Yato go back to his work as a magatsukami all on her own on those occasions when Father couldn’t command him, being a grown man in the body of an infant or a child with all the restrictions that come with it (also, gross)?  She was able to deliver him to Father using the masks, but for the most part she was just following his orders. So I’m really curious what Father meant when he said that he “didn’t get to chose”. Does it mean he has to be reborn as a baby each time he dies?  Or maybe two souls are just too much for one body to handle, thus he has to switch them quite often and at the most inconvenient times, so he just uses whoever is available? He had to change schools to spy after Yato and Hiyori because Kouto didn’t live in Tokyo, and he seems to somewhat care about his “sister” and “nieces”. But his being out of Yato’s life for a solid decade after each rebirth (before he at least has some freedom of movement, being a child and all) is too good to be true.

And even though I’ve said we don’t know for sure if he had a body after his return from Yomi, I’ll just go out and say that he had – his own body, no less, the one we saw in Yato and Nora’s memories. He had to be human to have wished Yato into existence in the first place, and since his appearance back then matches his current looks, he could have initially returned into his own body.

After all, time flows differently on the Near shore and on the Far shore. Although so far we’ve only seen that the passage of time is slower both in Yomi and Takamagahara.

Is the opposite possible? Could it be that while Father was in Yomi, very little time has passed in Nakatsukuni, so instead of burying Father the girl tried calling him back and succeeded? It’s a wild guess, but if day and night don’t have a set length on the Far shore, then it means that one day in Yomi can also be shorter than one day on Earth.

In any case, if Father did come back to his own body, it lasted for a while – at least until Yato was a teen.

Another thing that bothers me is how come Yato didn’t know what Father looked like after an entire month of staying in that cottage. Did Yato never look at him during that whole time? Or would Father come to the cottage as himself? We know that his soul can separate itself from Fujisaki’s, but is it accidental or intentional?

Look at his latest encounter with Hiyori.

Father showed himself for a split second, distracting Hiyori and letting the ayakashi bite her. Did he accidentally “slip out” because of his strong emotions, or did he do it deliberately to make Hiyori lose focus and be an easy target for his doggies? The second one is a very Father thing to do, and if he can separate himself from Fujisaki from time to time, it explains why Yato didn’t know he looks like a student now. However, he was Fujisaki when he came to collect Nora after the whole ordeal with Ebisu.

Maybe Yato only saw Father that one time during his entire stay at the cottage – when Father ordered him to go to Yomi. This way it’s possible that Yato indeed never looked at his face. Except chapter 29 seemingly disproves that.

The background to Yato’s thoughts is Father putting down the bucket with purifying water in it. If this is just to remind us that this person is Father, I’m fine with it. But if this is Yato’s memory, something he saw with his own eyes, then it can only mean that Father did not look like Fujisaki then.

TLDR: I think that Father came back from Yomi because the pock-marked girl resurrected him via soul summoning and died in exchange, accidentally or voluntarily. I’m not overly attached to this theory and I won’t be surprised or disappointed if it’s never confirmed. It was just fun to dig into Father’s possible past once more.

P.S. while I was reading the soul summoning scene, the inconsistencies in Amaterasu’s actions and words (“call him like in a soul summoning” – “people can’t come back from Yomi”, “call him by his real name” – “are you the one called Yatogami?”) made me entertain the idea that the girl who helped the gang wasn’t Amaterasu, rather her lookalike. Like her twin sister Tsukuyomi? They weren’t twins according to the Japanese mythology as far as I know, but in other mythologies the sun and the moon are twins *cough  Greek cough*, and we’ve already seen that Adachitoka don’t exactly retell mythology but adapt it however they like. I did cast away the thought since there was too much focus on the sun during the scene, but it’s still a fun little idea.

[fangirl-1523]

My Sworn Brothers [Luffy x Crossover!Sister!Reader x Ace x Sabo]

A/N: Hey, so I want to write a High School AU of the many, many anime I have watched/ read. Bleach, Blue Exorcist, Devil is a Part-Timer, Durarara, Fairy Tail, Fullmetal Alchemist, High School of the Dead, InuYasha, Kill La Kill, Magi, My Hero Academia, Noragami, One Piece, Ouran High School Host Club, Pokemon, Saiki K, Sailor Moon, Seven Deadly Sins, Soul Eater, Sword Art Online, Vampire Knight, Your Lie in April, and Yu Gi-Oh. And I was wondering who would you like to be apart of your friend? And would you like to have a relation to any of the characters of the world. 

Summary: [Y/N] is the oldest sworn sister to Luffy, Ace, and Sabo. And after finding Ace and Sabo aboard Luffy’s ship, the Thousand Sunny, she explains to them who she is, her other sworn brothers and sisters, embarrasses the three of them (a regular Tuesday for her), and threatens them with a chalkboard for interrupting her. Multiple times. In this story, most of the anime I am into is in the same world (Bleach, Blue Exorcist, Fairy Tail, Fullmetal Alchemist, InuYasha, Magi, My Hero Academia, Naruto, Noragami, Seven Deadly Sins, and Sword Art Online.  I might do a part 2. 

Warnings: spoilers for the above mangas and animes, also, even though this is along the timeline of after the time skip (at some point), I took the creative liberty to have Ace alive during this meeting for a quad family reunion, might be language

Word Count: 1, 668

“How the hell am I suppose to believe that my three idiotic brothers would be in the same place at the exact same time I’m trying to find them?” the girl with [H/C] hair, old enough to be Luffy’s age, maybe a year younger or a year older than him. 

“[Y/N]!!” the rubber boy flung himself at her in a hug.

She fell down on her butt from the impact of the hug. She groaned before pushing the boy off of her and standing up, dusting herself off. “Geez, Lu. I was on a job, just finished, and I heard something about a Straw Hat, a Fire Fist, and a blonde with a top hat that put the mad hatter to shame. I just came to see if the rumors are true.” 

“What job did you have, sis?” Sabo said as he sipped a smoothie created from Vinsmoke Sanji. 

“Well, you see. In the ten years I’ve been gone, I’ve been busy. Both with being lazy and being diligent.” the girl explained. “I am a member of Fairy Tail. Dragon Slayer Magic, particularly fire, water, earth, air, and plant. Requip the Knight. Some space jumping there and vortex opening here.” 

“You got the two mixed up, kid.” Ace said from his spot next to Sabo. 

The girl grinned an evil grin. “Oh, did I, Ace of Clubs?” 

The raven haired pirate groaned at the nickname while Luffy’s crew members wondered after the nickname. Ace kept giving her the don’t-tell-them-anything look with a cut-it-out motion. She, like most people she knew, did not listen to reason. 

“Well, when we were younger, I attempted to teach the pour unfortunate souls that you call Luffy, Sabo, and Ace golf. And we played mini-gold. First hole we went to, the club flew out of Ace’s hand and crashed into the window where the pour lady working the club stand was clonked on the head and fell unconscious. Another fun fact: I’m overly competitive and therefore master of mini gold. Luffy on the other hand... beat my bowling high score of just a little over four hundred points.” [Y/N] explained. 

“THAT’S NOT HOW YOU PLAY GOLF, YOU IDIOT!” Usopp shouted at his captain. 

“Ace was a lot worse. However, on the eighteenth hole, got a hole in one. Although with team sports, I always sided with Luffy ‘cuz he was the baby of the family.” she explained. 

“Never play Volleyball with her unless you’re Luffy.” Sabo warned the Straw Hat Pirates. 

“Could you... possibly.... explain who you are?” asked Nami. 

“That’s an easy and excellent question, m’lady. I am [Y/N] [L/N], the daughter of the Demon King from the Demon Clan, Niece of Solomon, adoptive daughter of the great dragon, The Curse of Depravity, a mage of S-Class ranking, the best older sister anyone can have, a Shinigami, and the Pirate Fairy.” [Y/N] said with her hands on her hips like wonder woman. 

“You’re not wonder woman, dumbass.” Ace muttered. 

She scowled at the boy (who was now physically older than her). “I know that, asshole.” Ace shrugged his shoulders at that. “Anyways, I should get going. I’m here with my teammates. And Salamander will have a cow if he finds out I’m on a Pirate Ship. Which may or may not include Natsu asking you all to fight him at once for his sister.” [Y/N] shrugged. 

“SISTER?!” Luffy screeched. 

“YOU ALREADY REPLACED US?!” Ace and Sabo said in unison. 

“This is why I never took you to Amusement parks or sat next to you on a ride.” she clenched at her swollen ears.  “No, I was merely saying that I have something called [Y/N]’s Council of Brothers. They’re basically a band of boys I feel need my protection, wisdom, and power to embarrass them until they’re six feet under and rotting.” 

“She’s dark.” Nami said. “But can you explain this whole Council of Brothers thing. Because I’m not sure they,” the ginger pointed to the three brothers, “understand.” 

“Alright! I will go over a lesson here!” and suddenly a white board appeared by her side with writing already on it. 

“Where did you get the white board?” asked Luffy. 

“That’s not important right now.” she scowled. “Yes, Sabo.” 

“Was that Whiteboard always there and we just never noticed it?” the blonde asked. 

“No. Ace if this is a question about the white board, I will smack you with the same gold club that flew through that window. All questions about the stupid whiteboard will be answered after I explained everything. Got it?” 

The three brothers grumbled out a, “Yes.”  

“Good. Anyways, to start it off I have two half-brothers. Meliodas and Zeldris.” she slapped a pointer stick against the whiteboard. 

“Did she always have that?” Ace asked, whispering it to his two brothers. 

“I don’t know. I’m just glad someone noticed it besides me.” Sabo murmured back. 

“SILENCE, YOU INSOLENCE FOOLS!” and she threw a frying pan which hit Ace in the head. 

Why does she have a frying pan in her requips? Sabo wondered in his head, not wanting to get hit in the head with anything else she might have to throw at them. 

“Anyways, Meliodas and Zeldris are my half-brothers. Zeldris is the captain of the Demon Clan’s ten Commandments while Meliodas is the captain of Liones’s Seven Deadly Sins of which I am co-captain and the Phoenix Sin of Darkness. To be fair, I look more like my mother and I think the only thing me, Meliodas, and Zeldris share is our dumbassery we inherited from our father. Second off, my cousin is Magi Aladdin since my mother is his father, Solomon,’s sister. Now, that’s enough of my actual biological family. Now, I won’t go into detail about those three. Because you already seem well-acquainted with one another. Anyways, onto the next one. The next one on my list of brothers is a half-demon named Rin who is the son of Satan along with his younger brother, Yukio, but he doesn’t really need protection. next is Kazuto Kirigaya also known as Kirito. I prefer to call him that. He got stuck in a game where if you die there, you die in real life, but he defeated them. next, we have Satan himself, a king of demons, Sadou Maou. He works as a part-timer for a fast food chain which is sad to be honest. Next, we have Alibaba Saluja, a prince and a king’s candidate, also my cousin’s best friend. He wields the fire djinn, Amon. Also, he’s trying to be a gladiator while figuring out his feelings for Fanalis and former slave Morgiana. Next, we have actual God Yato who is a former god of calamity and a current god of war. I think. I’m not quite sure. But he and his two regalia, Yukine and a Nora named Kazuma, but also Kazune under Yato, must be protected by me at all cost. Then, we have Edward Elric, a alchemist missing both a leg and an arm because he wanted to see his mom’s smile again which kicks me in the heartstrings whenever I hear it. His brother, Alphonse, is an honorary member of the Council of Brothers. And he used to be entirely a soul attached to a suit of armor. No joke.” 

“Does no one else notice that they are mostly raven haired or blonde?” Nico Robin commented. 

The Straw Hat Pirates turned to the three sworn brothers who just shrugged their shoulders at that. “I admit I am guilty for that. But my actual brothers are raven headed and blonde, so that may be the reason. Anyways, off to the next people. Now, this person could make Luffy look like a genius. Sometimes. Natsu Dragneel, a salmon haired fire dragon slayer, is the brother of Zeref Dragneel, the black wizard, and also simultaneously END, the most powerful demon of the book of zeref which makes him one of the top fifteen most powerful demons. Next, we have strawberry boi, Ichigo Kurosaki, a shinigami who I’ve been helping train. He could see the dead and then he discovered his spiritual power, stole the shinigami powers of Rukia Kuchiki, and started to exorcist hollows and send souls to the soul society. Then, we have my favorite band of brothers since they could literally be in a band. Broccoli Boi, Izuku Midoriya, kinda has a power augmentation quirk, best way to describe it without giving too much away, Porcupine Katsuki Bakugo who can blow things up with help from his sweat. Zuko Wannabe Shoto Todoroki who can wield fire and ice. Also, his brother Touya may or may not be Dabi. Then, Pikachu Kaminari Denki who can utilize elctricity, but too much and he makes Luffy look like a genius. No joke. Well… maybe… I don’t really know. Anyways, then we have speedster Tenya Iida. Oh, there’s sharkboy Eijiro Kirishima. He can make himself go as hard as rock, but he has limitations. Then, we have spidertape Hanta Sero that can shoot tape out of his elbows. Then, half-demon InuYAsha who is the son of a dog demon and a mortal woman. There’s also Shippo who is an adorable little kitsune. And I think I got everyone.” the girl looked at her board before smacking it again as she noticed Luffy had begun to doze off while Ace had totally fallen asleep. 

The action alerted the two boys to wake up at once and glare at their older sister. And then, a silver haired undead man with a flying blue cat landed on the floor of the ship. “Thank goodness we found you. C’mon. We got a mission and you and your ‘Team Natsu’ have a job request from the old man and a princess.” 

“So Hisui and Bartra both agree to have us do something, but what is this so-called mission?” asked [Y/N]. 

Ban smirked. “We’re fighting slave-trading pirates.” 

“I want in!” Luffy cheered.

[hamliet]

Who are your top 10 female villains? And your top ten male villains? Thank you!

Oooooh. Well, in this list I am including antagonists (people I see as conflicted/not committed to like, the bad side, if there even is a bad side, but basically oppose the protagonist at some point). Also, they are in no particular order:

Female Villains:

Cersei Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire)

She's sympathetic enough so that we understand how she came to be the way she is, yet terrifying and depraved enough that we fear for the characters around her. I don't think that's an easy balance to strike for a character: if you make them likable it's hard to keep audiences from rooting for them, but the balance is struck perfectly with Cersei.

Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

As @aspoonofsugar wrote recently on Azula, I think she is a fantastic female villain. I think she is sympathetic despite her actions, and I wish the story had explored her redemption, which was clearly hinted.

Claudia (The Dragon Prince)

The first three seasons have kind of been Claudia's fall. While as a whole I don't think TDP is very well-written, I do think that Claudia, Viren, and Soren's family dynamic is a polished gem of writing that literally carries the story. I fully expect to see redemption for Claudia down the line, but not until she spirals further and further. At the end of season 3, Claudia resorts to killing someone to save her father's life when she has nothing and no one else left, and she makes this choice after her brother Soren (now redeemed himself) chooses to kill their father in front of Claudia, devastating her. Their choices are clear parallels and both are somewhat negative, somewhat sympathetic. Soren can't kill his past: he has to live with it, and Claudia can't cling to the past: she has to let it go.

Delores Umbridge (Harry Potter)

She is awful and I hate her, but you're also supposed to hate her. Her comeuppance is hilarious ad perfect, and just--I think she's a fantastic villain because she reminds every single one of us of an albeit exaggerated version of a teacher we all know.

Karren von Rosewald (Tokyo Ghoul:re)

Karren is TG:re's best written character in my opinion. Her tragic arc takes place throughout the first three arcs, which imo is also the highest point in the series. Karren just wanted to be loved, and if she had to die, at least she got to die as herself. 

Nora (Noragami)

Nora! The reason I read Noragami is pretty much for Nora and her redemption arc. The fandom hates her for... reasons, but she's always been primed for redemption. Her name is in the title (which yes also refers to Yato, etc.) She's important. I wrote a few metas on Nora, notably here.

Enoshima Junko (Danganronpa)

Despair. It's fun to find a character who is, well, just plain fun, but who is also bored, despairing, cruel, and terrifying. She's unique and a brillaint character.

Toga Himiko (Boku no Hero Academia)

I'm not the first one to say that Toga is BNHA's best written female character, but I do agree that she is. She, like Junko, is fun and interesting, and she has an arc that is compelling. Her actions directly move the plot; she’s bloodthirsty and yet uniquely empathetic and compassionate. 

Yoshimura Eto (Tokyo Ghoul)

Eto's backstory and her motivations were fascinating. She was one of the most complex characters in the entire story, and despite the fact that you understood why her father gave her up, you also understood her pain and justified anger at his doing so. She perfectly illustrated the divide between human and ghoul.

Male Villains:

Shigaraki Tomura (Boku no Hero Academia)

BNHA's best-written male character, imo. His backstory and the current chapters that focus on him are extremely well-done, thematic and full of character development, and detailed artistically. He gets so much focus that I can tell he's important to Horikoshi, and I'm excited to see where he goes.

Dabi (Boku no Hero Academia)

I'll admit there's a lot missing here. Namely, we don't know his identity for certain, but it seems basically certain that he's Todoroki Touya; however, we still don't have his backstory. Still, his fury at the presumed father who destroyed his family and yet has the audacity to be a "symbol of hope" is fascinating to me, and I'm excited to see how he develops as well. (Both Shigaraki and Dabi seem primed for some kind of redemption).

Adult Trio: Illumi Zoldyck, Hisoka Morow, Chrollo Lucilfer (Hunter x Hunter)

Am I counting these three as one so that I can get extra characters? Of course I am. In all honesty I really think all three of these antagonists are really well done, sympathetic and/or likable. They're the shadows of the three MCs they foil: for Illumi, Killua, for Hisoka, Gon, and for Chrollo, Kurapika. They represent the traits the three protagonists (sorry Leorio) don't want to acknowledge in themselves, and therefore their encounters with their shadows are particularly thematic and powerful. Also, one doesn't usually kill their shadow, but instead integrates with it, so I highly doubt the three of them will be killed by their respective protagonist.

Meruem (Hunter x Hunter)

Yes, again, HxH. It has great antagonists. But Meruem's development is literally one of the most powerful I've ever read about. I don't know anyone who starts his story not loathing him, hoping he dies, and then by the end of it, ebfore you've even realized it's happening, you're crying for him and Komugi. His arc explores human nature at its finest, most horrific, and ultimately most beautiful.

Furuta Nimura (Tokyo Ghoul:re)

Furuta's a fantastic villain whom I wish got a better ending (not even redeemed really, but just... something more). He was so damaged by the system of an unfair world that he made it his life goal to become the villain and burn the system down, destroy it no matter what it took--and also hoped to destroy himself in the process, as he was born knowing he would die young and longed for it. I wish he had been forced to live.

Mori Ougai (Bungo Stray Dogs)

Mori's utilitarianism is chilling. He's not exactly unlikable, despite being absolutely morally repugnant, and the Beast AU from Asagiri himself shows us that Mori is certainly capable of a positive life and positive change; however, within the canonical story, I don't see that for him. He's been set up IMO as the final boss of the series, and his habit of targeting the most vulnerable (especially children) to control people is almost certainly going to bite Dazai in the ass eventually.

Eren Jaeger (Shingeki no Kyojin)

I can't believe I'm writing this. I don't know what to call Eren: he's the protagonist, and he's sunk to becoming the final boss. While it's possible he, like Furuta and like Lelouch of Code Geass, is playing the villain, I really hope not, as I think the themes are much more powerful if Eren sincerely believes what he proclaims to believe. He's a kid who has always wanted to fight for freedom and for the people around him, and now we're seeing the dark side of those traits, wherein he's destroying the world via genocide to save the people close to him. He's driven by fear and by anger at the cruelty and unfairness of the world, and he's forgotten the beauty of it. I hope Mikasa can  remind him before the end.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Bungo Stray Dogs)

MY BOY. Look if a character is named after my very favorite real-life author, I must stan. But actually I do think Fyodor is well written and a master manipulator. He's modeled after my favorite character in all of fiction, Dostoyesvky's Demons' Alexei Kirillov. He really seems to want human connection, to live, and has forgotten that empathy is an important and necessary part of both of those. I hope--and think it is likely given BSD's prolific redemption arcs--that he will remember eventually.

Lee Yut-Lung (Banana Fish)

Again,, he's less a villain than an antagonist. Like Ash, the main character, he is a teenage boy betrayed by the people who were supposed to protect him and abused his whole entire life. He's driven by a desperate need to be loved and jealousy that Ash is loved while he is not. His ending, when Sing finally tells him he will in fact be staying by Yut-Lung's side and will help Yut-Lung redeem himself, "because you're in pain... your soul's bleeding, even now" is literally the perfect ending for him.

Jin Guangyao (Mo Dao Zu Shi)

I've written a lot on Jin Guangyao, but he's a walking tragedy. He ties with Wei Wuxian, the protagonist, as my favorite, and the reason is because they are two sides of the same coin--in fact, they're the same side of the same coin. They're not very different, and the fact that he finally at least got empathy in the end and was able to push the person he loved most to safety because of that--well. Brb time to cry.

[petri808]

Fandom: ノラガミ | Noragami (Anime & Manga) Rating: Mature Relationships: Iki Hiyori/Yato

@noragamisecretsanta2018  Merry Christmas! @justebisuthings   Yatori angst with a fluffier ending.  I have no idea what city Noragami takes place in lol, so I just set this is Tokyo and nearby Kanagawa.  I guess you could set the timing of the story after the latest chapter.  I had fun writing this one so I hope you like it too :)

Echoed in the Night

It was Christmas Eve in Japan, but unlike in the west it was a day for couples…. Sharing a meal at KFC, maybe a Christmas Cake or some Wagashi…  Strolling along the park hand in hand amidst the lighted displays of the Sagamiko Illumillion….  But, for a lonely young girl saddened by the disappearance of her first true love, it was like her heart was being ripped to shreds by all the festivities surrounding her.

Bless his heart that Yukine had tried to cheer her up by taking her to see the show and ride the rides. He too missed the days when the trio would venture forth like a family, all smiles and laughter through the streets of Tokyo and its surrounding cities.  If it wasn’t for Heaven’s stupid wars or this ‘Father’ guys desire for its destruction, the young Regalia believed those moments wouldn’t be like a fleeting memory and ‘he’d be damned if he was gonna let it die just because Yato was too stupid to realize how much pain he was causing them by keeping them in the dark about it all,’ end quote.  

And so here is where she found herself, feeling like a third wheel behind Yukine and Nora who’d decided to come along.  They were kind of cute, Hiyori realized as the two children sat in the forward sky lift tittering and giggling to one another…. Oh, how sweet, now Nora had her head on the Yukine’s shoulder, and a blush no doubt flushed along his cheeks. Just wonderful, Hiyori glances away and focuses on all the lights gliding by below them.  As much as she wanted to support their increasing rapport, all Hiyori wanted to do was cry, scream, and run as far away as she possibly could.

Once the ride was over, Yukine points out the swings and Hiyori just smile’s hiding her true feelings from the boy.  “You guys go on ahead and have fun, I’m kind of tired of going on rides.”

“Are you sure Hiyori?” The concerned young man was hesitant to leave her side.

“Yeah, go have fun, show Nora what it’s like to be a kid,” the crinkling around her eyes seems to reassure him.  “I’d like to just relax here for a spell and look at the lights.”

“Okay,” he grabs Nora’s hand and heads off towards the swings.

Hiyori’s body deflates against the bench and she pulls the coat tighter around her frame.  The evening air was definitely cold, but it was the chill through her soul that left her freezing.  She closes her eyes, unwilling to allow any tears to be shed lest it reflect the icicles growing in her heart.  Yato….  Things were so much easier when she’d been blind to her budding love of the stray god.  Why did Kazuma have to dash her hopes like that!  At least Tenjin alluded to the possibilities of a god loving, like he did for Tsuyu.  Let Yato himself tell her he didn’t care for her!  Yato….  Where the hell are you!

~~    

Since late that afternoon he’d felt a powerful sting in his chest, like a thousand daggers running their blades through his flesh.  At first, he thought maybe Yukine was upset and blighting him again, but a quick check around his body revealed no tell-tale marks.  It wouldn’t have surprised him if Yukine had been behind the stings for he knew his young Regalia was very upset by his actions of late. Though the longer he thought about it, and the deeper the pains began to center in one location, maybe this was something completely different.

What day is it, Yato wondered as he travelled along the tops of the buildings, noticing a flurry of activities and lights near Midtown. Holiday’s didn’t mean much to him aside from all the delicious seasonal treats that abounded during this time, so of course he hadn’t realized today was December 24th.  Hundreds of couples of all ages were gathered on the streets, some with families, many without.  Aww, look at them, he first thought, I wonder if anyone has any wishes…. And that’s when it finally hits him…. The couples…  The families….  Yukine…. Hiyori….  

Another sting, worse than any before it stabs him with such ferocity, he almost falls off the powerline he’d been running along.  Yato drops to the ground, clutching his shirt above his heart.  Oh, Heaven’s, was this because of Hiyori!  Was she the cause of all the pain he was experiencing?  It was hard for a man who didn’t quite understand human emotions such as love.  He knew what it was, he wasn’t blind to it, in fact he was pretty sure that’s exactly what he’d been developing for the young human girl, but since he’d never been in love before, the idea that it could actually cause pain was enigmatic. Hiyori wasn’t a spirit he was attached to, so she couldn’t blight him.  Then how is she reaching out to me like this?              

“Are you okay?” Kazuma drops down beside his master.  “You don’t look so well, should we return to the shrine?”

“I think….” Yato turns to his friend, “I think I need to find Hiyori…”

“Hiyori, Yato I don’t think…”

“I’m sorry Kazuma, you head back to the shrine, but I need to find her!”  Another deep sting pierces through him and Yato buckles at the knees, cringing through the pain.

“You are not in any condition to travel, let’s just go back to…”

Yato grabs Kazuma’s ankle, “If you’re really my friend,” his voice strained from the searing pain in his heart, “you’ll help me find Hiyori now!”    

“Just call her or Yukine,” Kazuma helps Yato to his feet, helping to steady him, “or can you feel where Yukine might be?”

The stray god closes his eyes, “He’s not too far… if we take the train to Sagamiko station.  He won’t always answer my calls right now, but he texts me if he leaves the area…”  

~~

After an unknown amount of time, Hiyori finally glances up from the ground at her surroundings. Considering how brightly lit most of the area was, the young girl had barely given any of the attractions much attention.  It wasn’t worth it to take in a sight, only for a young couple around her age to walk by and dim the view.  At least if she looked at the ground, she wouldn’t notice the hands being held, the embraces being shared, or worse….

She shivers again, if only the memories of her first kiss wasn’t such a hurtful one.  Fujisaki had stolen what he had no right to take, but like an idiot, she had been too shocked and nervous to pull away.  Maybe if he’d been just another classmate it wouldn’t be as painful.  Ugh!  ‘Father’ knew the knowledge of stealing my first kiss would enrage his son and that just isn’t right!  I hate him!  Hiyori’s fists clench at her sides, she needed to do something to take her mind of…. everything.

Once a quick text was sent to Yukine so he didn’t worry, Hiyori heads down the path towards the illuminated forest hoping that all the bright colors would shine a bit of light into her otherwise dreary mood.  The dazzling LED’s covered trees in a rainbow of hues, even the ground was swathed in light so mesmerizing she had to shield her eyes or be blinded.  Reds, Orange, Yellows, Purples, Greens, and Pinks…  But strangely no blues.  

Through twists and turns, up slight inclines or valleyed displays, Hiyori continued along the forest path, following the signs towards the exit.  Rounding another bend, she reaches the famous tunnel of light, but the spectacle was not what made her pause.  Blue.  Light Blue.  Just like Yato’s eyes.  Heaven help her now she knew why the color had been devoid along the way!  There was no way to avoid passing through it unless she wanted to walk all the way back to the entrance.

Hiyori merely sighs and trudges forward, keeping her eyes low to the ground.  Pulling up the edges of her collar, Hiyori hides her peripheral view.  She should have guessed that the color would reveal itself sooner or later.  And why not to throw a wrench in her mood that had actually been a little better for the last 20 minutes or so…  the rest of her life was throwing her curve balls one after the other.

As the tunnel curves slightly, something catches her attention, a scent she’d not expected nor picked up in weeks and it was growing stronger with every step she took forward. Hiyori shakes her head, it must be her imagination.  Maybe there was a flower or plant nearby, or someone who just so happened to smell similar to him.  He’d had no reason to be in the park, didn’t know she’d be there… Right?  But as the exit appears, a shadowed outline of a man leaning against a pillar comes into view.  Her breathing stills, feet still moving forward despite reservations telling her to run in the opposite direction.  Fear that her mind was playing tricks on her run rampant.  No, it could be, it shouldn’t be….  Her hands raise up to cover the gasp she didn’t know she was making.  It was.

“Hi Hiyori,” Yato smiles weakly.  

It was obvious from the look on the young girls face that his appearance was triggering a multitude of emotions.  From surprise to anger, her blood begins to boil red hot!  This bastard disappears for weeks with no contact and suddenly appears with just a Hi Hiyori?  

“Is that all you have to say to me!” she screams uncaring of any onlookers.  “You leave me all alone then show up unexpectedly with just hi Hiyori!?   What about I’m sorry Hiyori, or better yet please forgive me Hiyori!”

He’d expected a bit of anger, but this girl was furious!  Yato flinches back a step, though he knew the pain in her heart wasn’t from anger.  Her fury was hiding the real emotion that had brought him there tonight.

“Please Hiyori,” he reaches out tentatively, “I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”  She draws back causing a new ripple of stings to attack his body. Yato’s drops to his knees, keeling over in pain.  He was right, it was from Hiyori’s shattering heart.

But seeing the man she still cared so much about fall to the ground in anguish flips a switch in her brain. She was angry yes, sad and hurt most definitely, but she had no idea that those feelings were somehow being conveyed to him.  Was it because their fates had been entwined?  Tears flood her vision as Hiyori drops before him and throws her arms around his body.  “Oh Kamisama, am I doing that to you?  Yato I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you…”

“S-Stop apologizing Hiyori. It’s not your fault.  I don’t even understand why this is happening but it’s just… it’s not your fault.”  He cradles her face in his hands as the waves of painful stings slowly subside. “Everything that’s happening to you is all my fault.  If only I’d cut your ties immediately, none of this…”

“Don’t say it!” she shakes her head.  “Don’t you dare say it Yato!  If you had granted that first wish I never would have fallen in love with you, I never would have met Yukine, or Kofuku, or been a part of this amazing realm.  I don’t want to lose you!  Don’t you get it!”

“But you wouldn’t be sad right now, you’d be living a normal teenage life with your friends.”

“I don’t want a normal life!”  Hiyori slumps in his arms, sobbing heavily.  “I understand why you left us Yato…” her voice trailing and softened, “I know you are just trying to protect us and that you think it would be okay if you were reborn, but that’s not what we want…” She looks up and fixes his eyes upon hers, “we want you as you are now!”

“But Hiyori…”

“Could you just shut up for a moment Yato and let me process all of this.”

Yato opens his mouth to retort but quickly slams it shut.  She was right, he’d caused her enough grief, so the least he could do was let her vent and figure out how to deal with it all.  But as he glanced around and realized the spectacle they were making, he bundles her into his arms to find somewhere a little more private. Hiyori makes no move to resist, simply resting a hand on his shoulder and turning her face into his shawl.  

Once out of view of any onlookers, he makes a few leaps until he spots a secluded area along the waterfront just outside of the resort.  Hiyori takes out her phone, remembering that Yukine must be wondering where she might be.  “Don’t worry,” Yato puts her down and gently places a hand over it, “Kazuma went to find them.”  

A soft, “Oh,” is all she responds with and turns away to stare out over the water.  The far shores were ominous, but the lake itself was glistening from all the lights of the park.  It’s gently lapping waves shimmering, creating beautiful reflections like the stars above them.  Hiyori was still so confused about it all, her feelings, humans, spirits, gods, and all the rules that seemingly bound each world.  She was but one young girl just trying to navigate it all and she knew what her heart desperately wanted, but was that enough to somehow override everything that was working to keep them apart?  

He just stood back and let her settle into her skin.  This whole situation was something Yato had never in a thousand years has ever had to deal with, so he too was trying to process it all.  In fact, it was basically unheard of for a God to fall in love with a human, at least not romantically.  Sure, Gods cared for humans, Bishamon truly loved her Regalia’s, but they didn’t fall in love with them like he had for Hiyori.  There wasn’t any God he could even consult with over this predicament which left him to handle it all on his own.  Obviously, he wasn’t doing such a great job.

As he watched her eyes shutter through a light sigh, and the coat is pulled tighter against the chilly air, Yato moves in closer to wrap his arms around her waist.  She startles at first but the added warmth along with his scent calms her enough to settle against him.  This was the first time he’d held her like this and although awkward, it felt nice.  He closes his eyes too.  If only they were simply two humans bumbling their way through life and not star-crossed beings from separate worlds.  For a fleeting second, he almost wished he could just be human.  

Yato releases a vested sigh into her hair.  “I don’t know what to do Hiyori,” he finally relents and lets all the fears locked away in his mind pour out.  “I need to stop my father, I need to fight against Heaven’s stupidity, but all I really want to do is make you happy…  And I don’t know how to do it all without someone getting hurt.”  Another sigh escapes, “I’m so tired of people I care about getting hurt…”

Hiyori sucks in a breath and hesitates before placing her hands over his arms.  With an exhale, she squeezes, “I don’t know what to do either.” She tilts her head back slightly, resting it against his chest, “I wish I could say just let it all go, let Heaven deal with your father and we go back to the way things were before it all started…. But I know that’s not possible anymore. I wish I could say that pain is just a part of life and we just have to learn to deal with it…. But that wouldn’t be fair either when there is something that can be done.”  Hiyori let’s out a drawn-out exhale, “it’s selfish of me to force you to endure this just because I don’t want to let go…. But I can’t bring myself to severe our bond….  I don’t want to lose you…”

“I don’t want to lose you either Hiyori.”

Her eyes squeeze tight as a flood of emotions threaten to spill out.  She takes a shaky breath, “Yato…. What am I to you?  I-I mean, how do you feel towards me?  I need to just know the truth because everyone is telling me that Gods are incapable of…”

“Love,” he finishes her sentence, “I love you Hiyori.”  Yato buries his face into her hair.  “If there’s only one thing that I am sure of it’s that.  I don’t know what will happen….  Everything is so chaotic right now, but I don’t want to lose you either.”

“Then why is everyone saying God’s can’t love?”

“I don’t really care what everyone is saying,” he turns her around, “all I can know is what I’m feeling.” Yato tips her face up as a few drops of tears leak down her cheeks.  “Hiyori open your eyes,” she shakes her head.  He kisses the tears on either side of her face, “why won’t you open your eyes?”

“In case this is all just a dream, I don’t wanna wake up from it.”  Yato chuckles and pinches her cheek, “Hey!” her eyes fly open, “what was that for!”

“It’s not a dream.” Pulling her face up to meet his own, Yato presses his lips against hers in a soft kiss.  Hiyori freezes momentarily, the sudden warmth and knowledge that he was kissing her almost too much on her psyche.  But as his hands weave around her body, smoothing against the small of her back in comfort, her own encircles his neck, fingers lacing through his hair.  Small sighs and mewls of contentment, break the otherwise silence of the moment and remove any lingering doubts that what they were feeling were genuine.  

He wipes away any traces of moisture from around her eyes, placing chaste little kisses on her lips before pulling back to gaze upon the flushed young woman standing before him. Yato smiles sweetly, “you are so beautiful to me Hiyori.”

“Oh stop!” her cheeks growing ever more crimson and heated, “I’m sure you’ve met plenty of pretty girls over the years.”

“Yeah, but you’re the first one I fell in love with in a thousand years, that makes you pretty friggen special don’t ya think?”

“I…” Hiyori gives up, there was no way to respond to that!  

Yato just laughs, knowing he won that round.  He takes her hand, squeezing lightly, “come on let’s get you home.  I don’t need you catching a cold.”

“Where do we go from here?” she wonders aloud, “you’re just gonna disappear again aren’t you and leave Yukine and I in the dark again.”

He sighs, “I’m not doing it because I want to.  It’s to protect you both from father and from Heaven.  Kazuma is determined to fight no matter what I tell him, but you two…. It’s safer that you stay away.”

“Yukine is your blessed Regalia, surely…”

“Yukine means more to me than just some Regalia and that’s exactly why I don’t want him anywhere near my father if I can help it.  Father’s just too dangerous.”

“You’re talking about the God’s Secret thing?”

“Yea… how’d you know that?”

“I figured it out.”  Hiyori pulls Yato to a stop, “you need to realize we’re not stupid.  Why don’t you just try talking to us for once because not knowing anything only drives us to think the worst and end us up in predicaments like tonight.”

“But…” Yato exhales and hangs his head, “you’re probably right.”

Hiyori leans in, pulling his face down to rest his forehead to hers, “come on, let’s go get Yukine and go back to Kofuku’s.  We’ll sit down and figure this out as a family.”

Yato closes his eyes, Heaven’s was he really deserved of this girl?  “I’m so sorry I ruined your Christmas Eve.”

She smiles and pats his cheek, “You managed to make it up to me in the end.  Now let’s go home…”

KFC & Wagashi info https://favy-jp.com/topics/1421

Sagamiko Illumillion info https://www.japan.travel/en/spot/1606/

[ais-n]

Current favorites

So, nobody asked for this... I just think it’s kind of fun to stop and think sometimes about what my favorites are. This list is for primarily anime/cartoons and similar media. After the title, I list if there are pairings or not - to be clear, that’s not based on if people ship anyone in the series. It’s just based on the story itself and if it has pairings directly included in the main storyline.

In the gifs below, I tried to highlight funny/cute parts + badass parts of each.

Favorites:

NO PARTICULAR ORDER (except One Piece which is rightfully at #1)

One Piece *on this one, I do prefer the manga to the anime. Also, couldn’t decide on a gif so I did a few ohoho that’s what you get for my fav! :D No pairings - sort of a background m/f love interest, sort of. But also there are basically a bunch of trans and gay characters in the background. As for reason: I mean. It’s One Piece. I fucking adore One Piece. But for the 5 people in the world who haven’t heard of it, or maybe skipped over every time I mentioned it - one reason I love it so much is it’s super great storytelling. It’s SO good at bringing plots together even across literal years and decades. Also, the characters are really good, and it spans the emotions really well - from humorous, to sad; from super dark and fucked up, to light and dorky. I love range like that, and I love complicated plots, and I love interesting characters that actually have development over time. Therefore, One Piece is A+ #1 fave.

Avatar: The Last Airbender M/F love interest. I was soooooooo late to the party on this one, but I LOVE IT SO MUCH JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! It’s incredible! Aang is one of my favorite MC’s, period, across all genres and media. You never get to see characters like him... and rarely have I seen anyone since. He’s a wonderful combination of pure cinnamon roll sweetheart and someone who is totally willing to stand up for his morality and his beliefs when needed. I love his monk aesthetic, I love that he values all life, I love how strong he is not only in his powers but also in his heart and soul. I just. UGH. I LOVE HIMMMM T___T (Also the other characters are great too! Don’t get me wrong. That absolutely adds to how great ATLA is. It’s funny and endearing, sad and interesting. But if I had to choose one thing that makes me love ATLA so fucking deeply, it’s 100% my boy Aang)

Noragami M/F love interest. Noragami is SOOO GOOODDDDD UGGGGGHHH. Again, like most of the things I love, it has a really wonderful range. It’s very sad in places, heartbreaking even, and in other places it’s so unexpectedly funny. It volleys so effortlessly between those and more emotions that it gets me right in the feels. The anime is absolutely beautiful - very well animated - and the manga is drawn very well. Yato is a favorite of mine in general in anime/manga characters. He tries so hard, and sucks so much so often XD But he doesn’t let him ever stop it. I am currently stopping myself from starting the series all over again just because it’s ridiculous to do that. If you think this is just another anime/manga, give it a chance first. You might love it like I do.

Beyond the Boundary / Kyokai no Kanata M/F love interest. GODDAMN THIS FUCKING SERIES IS SO GOOD ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?? This is a funny one, because legit the reason I watched it was I saw someone on my tumblr feed post some pretty animated gif and I was like, what’s that? Looked up the name. Didn’t look AT ALL what it was about, just popped it on when a friend was over. We both got so obsessed we watched the whole thing in one sitting. Later, we tried showing the first eps to mutual friends - and THEY got so obsessed that we watched the entire thing in one sitting again. It is absolutely not your typical anime where one character has special powers in high school. It’s just. jfc. I can’t really explain it without going into spoilers or details, but this fucking show gives me SUCH GODDAMN FEELS. I loved it so much I immediately bought the entire series the second we finished it. Also, the animation is absolutely beautiful. But it isn’t just that - it’s also the story, and the characters, and the fact that for once in life, an anime I watched bothered to make a m/f love interest that I actually believe in and 100% ship and root for, and that gets me so emotionally invested that I can’t stop watching. It’s a really great series. Try watching the first episode or two, just to see if you get into it. If you do, you will not be disappointed by the rest.

Honorable mentions:

Natsume Yuujinchou / Natsume’s Book of Friends No pairings. So, I love Natsume. This is one that I almost didn’t add just because it’s been so long since I watched it, but because I love Natsume so much I wanted to make sure it stayed on the list. Natsume is such a sweet and sad character, and the stories that are told are so bittersweet. I love this series which manages to be, at once, gentle, heartbreaking, and uplifting. Haikyuu!! No pairings. To be fair, it’s been so long since I watched this that I almost forgot to add it. But I loved the fuck out of this before so it probably will go right back onto the main list when the anime comes back, or when I finally read the manga. I’m still only as far as the anime.... -_-

Bungou Stray Dogs No pairings. So, this was one where I was recommended it and I went into it not sure what to think. But I ended up loving it SO MUCH that I couldn’t stop watching! I obsessively watched the whole thing as fast as I could, and then later went on to buy some things connected to it. It’s a great series. Great characters. I thought the animation was really nice. I got the manga too, but it’s throwing me off how one MC’s speech patterns are like a 180 difference between anime and manga so I’m slower to read the manga. I still really recommend though!

Adventure Time No pairings / M/F love interest. I super didn’t get into Adventure Time the first 2-3 times I tried, but the fourth was the charm. I LOVE Finn omg. It has great characters, fun stories, is both dark and humorous, and just generally I heart it.

One Punch Man No pairings. It’s just so frickin funny XD I absolutely love the MC, but all the characters are pretty great. I appreciate the satire. I read the manga more than watch the anime on this.

Aoharu x Machinegun M/F love interest. This one is more iffy. I like the manga a lot. I liked the anime. I’m a bit undecided on if it should be on the list or not, but since I thought of it, I’m adding it.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood M/F love interest. Another one I almost forgot to add to the list because it’s such a given and I haven’t watched it in literal years. But this series is super good, and although I liked the first FMA anime when it came out because it was fun to watch, there’s no question FMA: Brotherhood is by far the better anime. The animation (especially of the fight scenes) is just so *___* and the story itself is one that I feel will continue to age well. I haven’t reread/rewatched in years and years, but I continue to remember loving it. It’s just... such a good story for things that are massively fucked up, but also super cool.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? & re:Zero

M/F love interest, more or less. For both of these - my friend and I almost didn’t watch them because we thought they would be too full of tropes. They’re very different stories, but they’re both really good. Both of them impressed us. The story of re:Zero is really great, and the characters in Dungeon are great. I recommend them both. Especially if you wouldn’t have otherwise given them a chance. Seriously, dungeon especially surprised me.. I really thought it would be kind of gross because of the title, but that turned out to be an unfounded bias on my part.

[noragami-ru-manga]

A couple of thoughts on chapter 79 translation differences

This was actually written a while ago but I’m posting it now ‘cause I’m bored.

When I first read chapter 79 from the official American release, I found three translation differences that caught my attention and made me think quite a lot. And no, this isn’t an attempt to find out which version is more accurate; believe me, I’m the last person who has any authority to determine that. What I can do is look at how they work in the context of Noragami and maybe make a couple of speculations about what each version has to offer regarding our understanding of the lore, the characters and the themes of the manga.

1. Commemorative ceremony vs wedding

I’m pretty sure I’ve had the same reaction to this particular part of the manga as everyone else who’s read both versions: “Wait, wedding? Where did that come from?” I know that the reason this difference even exists is because the Japanese word that is used here simply means both. So fast-moon chose the first one, and the official translators went with the other one. If I knew Japanese and had to translate this sentence, I probably would have opted for the broader term, aka “commemorative ceremony”, both to be on the safe side (after all, if there will be more Kazuma backstory and turns out it was a wedding, the translation will still work perfectly - a wedding is a commemorative ceremony) and because it sort of works well with what was said a little earlier - that Kazuma was made an heir to his family’s business by his father’s decree, which sounds like a cause for celebration as far as I’m concerned. So why would the official translators choose a more specific term? 

I started thinking around that, and to me, it all boils down to the purpose of this alleged wedding. If I had to guess, some people might have interpreted it in this way: Kazuma didn’t have the chance to marry the girl he wanted, so he decided to move on and marry someone else. But the way I see it, it’s far more likely - if it was a wedding - that it wasn’t his choice, but his father’s. After all, marriage was always tied to inheritance rights; in fact, the reason why it even came to be as a social phenomenon is because it allowed people to determine who could inherit their fortune and who couldn’t. I’m not saying that people who were married and in love didn’t exist back then, but the connection between romantic love and marriage definitely wasn’t as strong as it is now. So I can totally see Kazuma’s father making him marry some other merchant’s daughter both to increase the family’s fortune and to validate his second son’s position as the heir in the eyes of the society. After all, there are historical precedents for boys being forcefully married to a girl their family chose for them for exactly this purpose - like the first Russian emperor Peter I being married off at the age of 15 so that he could become a man, inherit the throne and succeed his older sister. 

I don’t think we’ll see more of Kazuma’s past to know for a fact if it was supposed to be a wedding or a celebration of his becoming an heir though. 

This is actually getting pretty long, so the rest is below the cut.

2. Yato’s thoughts about shinki

The next big translation difference comes right after the first one, when Yato starts thinking about Kazuma and Yukine both being murdered by their closest relatives.

In fast-moon’s version, Yato’s thoughts are limited to Yukine and how everything he’s done so far reflects on the boy. As a weapon shinki, Yukine was has been put in dangerous situations over and over. Now that Yato’s abandoned him, knowing that Yukine is vulnerable, especially after his time in the box during the trial, to go and kill his father, his lifeline no less - that’s a “mutual destruction” alright. So the logical conclusion is that it can’t go on like this any longer, and that maybe if Yato was a different self, without all the baggage he had now, then Yukine wouldn’t have to live such a dangerous afterlife.

But man, the official translation... Yato doesn’t think just about Yukine here, but about all shinki, especially those who transform into weapons. While it was never outright said that a shinki is someone who’s necessarily died violently, all the shinki whose past has been revealed so far had very tragic deaths. And while gods don’t deliberately make their shinki into weapons, to know that, and to still use them in battles, making them kill each other a second time, is beyond cruel. The accompanying pictures here all have one thing in common: in all of these situations Yukine had to fight other shinki, not ayakashi. He was put in danger, but so were his opponents, too - all these people who’ve already died a horrible death once. And what drives it home even more is that literally a chapter prior Kazuma started saying how ungodly it was of Bishamon to take an innocent girl, Nana, and to use her as a disposable weapon, and then he had to correct himself and say that that’s exactly what gods do. 

And the saddest thing? There’s hardly any solution to this dilemma. Gods need shinki to survive, because shinki kill ayakashi. As powerful as gods are, it’s their shinki that enable them do their duty as gods - grant human wishes and protect people from evil thoughts incarnated. 

3. Gods and “something irreplaceable”

The difference here lies in who waits for whom. And I have to say that I’m really biased in this particular case, because I really like how the official translation works in the context of what we know about reincarnations. While it is a mechanism that exists in Noragami, and we even have an example of a god who keeps reincarnating over and over - my poor boy Ebisu - I don’t think that multiple rebirths are a norm. Ebisu’s frequent reincarnations are actually frowned upon by other gods - Ookuninushi even commented how strange it was that his shinki kept allowing that to happen. And as we know, Takemikazuchi’s senior shinki had to hide the fact that he was replaced, because the death of a celestial deity is a disgrace (although I suspect that it was less about Takemikazuchi’s image and more about  their own safety. After all, the best way to not let anyone know that they killed their own master is to not let anyone know that he died at all). So I imagine that for a god to find someone who will stay by their side, even if reincarnation is shameful and each time they (potentially) die, they aren’t quite themselves anymore, would be the best thing that could happen to them.

Also, I don’t know if the phrase for “irreplaceable someone” used here is the same one that was used in chapter 22, but if it is, then it’s a nice callback.

That’s really all I had to say about the thoughts caused by these translation differences. Also, it’s funny how the second one hits differently after the recent chapter. 

[echodrops]

Noragami 78 Notes

Okay, I put this off long enough (I was busy grading; life is hard).

Here are just a few brief ha ha almost fooled you into thinking I could be brief for a second there thoughts on Noragami chapter 78 under a cut to avoid spoilers.

95% of what I have to say boils down to:

Calm down.

Hey remember that time Yato went off a life-threatening journey and the only thing that saved him was us NOT sitting around waiting for him to come back?

...Yeah, me either. HE’S EVEN WEARING THE SAME OUTFIT AS BACK THEN.

I don’t want to say that Yukine has whatever is coming coming... But when this is how he responds to threats, he sort of has whatever is coming coming. Yukine knows for a fact that Yato’s life is constantly in danger, that he has dangerous enemies, that he gets into trouble at the damn drop of a hat... And he’s still being lax here. This is a prime example of not learning from past mistakes, and that classic Noragami karma is about to smack him hard as hell for it. The manga is literally sending glaring warning signs: You should be with Yato. WHY aren’t you with Yato? What happens after this is going to absolutely be a product of the failure on both sides--Yato’s failure to stay with those who are important to him, and Yukine’s failure for not fighting harder to stay with Yato. Hiyori got smacked already at the end of this chapter for forgetting Yukine and going off on her own to chase Yato, a selfish decision that she paid for with her happiness.

The manga is setting up a very purposeful parallel here, I think:

Just as Bishamon and Kazuma become lost the moment they are separated from each other, Yato’s sense goes out the window the moment he’s separated from Yukine and Hiyori. Noragami repeats this lesson over and over again: We need each other. We need to rely on others. We need to have guidance, and trust, and support.

And Yukine and Hiyori’s failure to do that over the last couple chapters--as well as Yato’s failure to accept their closeness--is going to send them all straight into another crisis. I’ll eat my own post if things aren’t about to go from bad to downright terrible again, with this issue of failing to rely on each other at the very heart.

How much of Nora’s “emotionlessness” is a result of this line of thinking? If she doesn’t think that she should behave like a living girl, does that allow her to think and act in ways that other shinki, who cling to their human lives, can not? Is her ability to transform potentially linked to her casting aside humanity? I am interested to see how far this dismissal of being alive impacts a shinki’s abilities.

Iwami and Kiun are other shinki who might share this mindset to a certain extent, and we certainly know that Kiun is powerful...

Is it just me, or doesn’t this scenery looks very similar to:

The scenery we saw on the page where Father was holding his dead lover/wife/whoever Freckle Girl was to him?

Is it possible that that’s her body? That he didn’t even bury her but went right on living right next to her corpse? JUST HOW MESSED UP IS FATHER? Veryyyy interesting.

Also, the fact that Mizuchi says there were only three people in the beginning implies that she never met the Freckle Girl and that Freckle Girl was not around at the time that she and Yato existed.

Father was only “playing house”--to replace the real home and happiness he lost?

The concept of “playing house” in Noragami is very interesting. It only comes up in the context of gods and humans; we’ve seen it three now in the context of (what is likely) a god playing house with a human: Kofuku hurt Daikoku by trying to “play house” and raise a child; Bishamon hurt her shinki (and was hurt by her shinki) for trying to foster a motherly relationship with them; and Father pretended at kindness and care for his “children” while they were all aware of the real truth.

You could argue that one of these things is not like the other--both Kofuku and Bishamon did what they did out of love, while Father is evil--but I wonder if the third case is really that much different than the first two. Why did Father raise Mizuchi and Yato like his children? Was this a one-sided endeavor in which he bought their loyalty with occasional moments of kindness? Is that all there is to it? Or is there something else going on here?

How much of Father’s “playing house” was pure cruelty... and how much of it might stem for a desire for the very thing Heaven denied him?

Let’s see where this goes, hmmm!

It might be too early to call it, but I’m going to put this out there right now: Mizuchi is a child who died without ever being named.

She’s not affected by god’s greatest secret because she has no human name to remember. Father never said that she knew her name, only that she knew her own last moments. This is why she acted so surprised when revealing Sakura’s name turned her into an ayakashi--Hiiro did not understand the power of names back then because she had no human name of her own for reference. Her power to inflict Liberation on others stems from the fact that she has nothing to tie herself to the Near Shore. She was an unwanted child in her human life and continues to feel like an unwanted child in her life as a shinki.

Holy shit Adachitoka, COULD YOU NOT??? I mean, I don’t know if this is right but it FEELS right and nnnnnnnnnnnhhhhhh I don’t want this; it hurts.

(By the way, the top two leaves fluttering in the wind appear to be gingko leaves, a powerful symbol of endurance and duality in Japan.)

An innocent symbol of child-like play with three people in the boat to represent the family she longs to have but never will? Just kill me now, okay? Just kill me now.

Although this is interesting because we see her first boat fall apart and the people tumble away as she’s talking about playing house. So either this is a second boat, or she put the first one back together sometime during her talk with Yukine. So perhaps this second boat represents a new bond, such as between she, Yukine, and Yato? Mmmmm, who knows???

I’m glad that I was right and Yato chose not to name Kazuma. It was the right choice, even though I’m sad we didn’t get to see what Kazuma would look like as Yato’s shinki. (Well, then again, there’s still time, isn’t there?) We got trolled hard by Scissors-kun, lol.

The line up there is very interesting, isn’t it--because it’s such a Father way of thinking! This is Father’s exact ideology, that humans have no reason for loving the gods and yet they do anyway, accepting the cruelty and abuse of Heaven without question. Kazuma is tripping over the same issue from a different perspective--instead of having something taken from him by Heaven, he’s suffering because of something Heaven is not capable (or perhaps willing) to give. It’s a dangerous line of thought that leads down a dark path. This is honestly the scariest thing Kazuma did all chapter to me!

Is he thinking of Hiyori when he says “people like me” here? Or is he implying that Yato has hurt him in ways similar to Bishamon? The ambiguity of the references here is worth noting. Also worth noting: Yato has no idea what Kazuma is talking about here. Yato doesn’t share his father’s mindset and he doesn’t share Kazuma’s either. I don’t think that Yato sees a huge divide between the love gods can give and the love humans long to receive. He knows they’re not the same (maybe they’re not the same), but I don’t think he would let the issues that Kazuma is dealing with separate him and Hiyori... Or perhaps I’m just too hopeful. XD

All right, all right, now to the thing everyone is freaking out about...

Why are y’all so anti-Kazuma??? He’s not attacking Hiyori out of cruelty--he’s trying to protect her.

He even says it himself--he recognizes the signs of Hiyori’s infatuation. He sees her inability to avoid getting tangled up in the calamity that surrounds Yato. Who the hell do you think he’s really talking about here? He’s not just talking about Hiyori--he’s talking about himself.

The suffering that he has felt from loving Bishamon and not having that love returned is a pain akin to a curse. It’s enough to drive him to want to die, to fill him with such deep despair that he is willing to forsake all of his morals, his name, his “life”‘s meaning, everything he stands for. Since falling in love with Bishamon, he’s faced catastrophe after catastrophe, seen and dealt with things no human should ever have to face--witnessed friends murdered and murdered a friend, betrayed Heaven, turned his power on literal gods... There is NO DEPTH Kazuma will not sink to out of love for Bishamon, and that’s agonizing. He’s in pain, guys.

And he sees the whole damn cycle about to start again. He sees Hiyori’s feelings. He sees her love... And he sees how much Yato is ruining her life. He sees her forgetting her human family, ignoring their concerns, ignoring day-to-day human activities, being exposed to all the risks that Yato brings along with him, actively suffering at Father’s hand because of her involvement with Yato...

Kazuma sees that Hiyori is going down the exact same path of suffering, of “playing house” that he’s been on for hundreds of years, and so he does the only thing he can do to try and dissuade her: he tells it exactly like he thinks it is. He’s not lying to her here. He genuinely thinks what he’s saying is the truth. He genuinely believes that gods cannot return human feelings in the way that he and Hiyori desire, and that her pursuing Yato will only end in sadness and pain for everyone involved. He’s not wrong to want to stop that by separating them from each other forever.

The problem is, Kazuma STILL thinks that he’s always in the right. He only confessed with “vague words” and yet seems perfectly certain that Bishamon--who has never exactly been a pro at picking up signals from others--totally understood him and rejected his feelings of amorous love.

It hasn’t occurred to him that perhaps his vague words just didn’t reach Bishamon the way he wanted them to, and that she doesn’t understand that he loves her in a way different from just a normal god and shinki loving comradeship. That perhaps all this time she did have more love she could have given, if only she’d known it was needed or wanted. He’s her guidepost, but in this he didn’t guide her.

Maybe Bishamon does know, and maybe she did reject his romantic feelings. Maybe he’s right and gods really can’t love humans. (Kofuku and Daikoku are over here in the corner waving frantically though.) OR... MAYBE Kazuma is being a giant freaking idiot like always and leaping to conclusions he should never have drawn based on incomplete information and “vague words,” and passing his pain and suffering on to others, mistakenly believing he’s doing the right thing while actually just screwing everyone else over hardcore.

One of these two things somehow seems more likely than the other...

Not sure why anyone is freaking out about Hiyori’s tail? He missed (he was only trying to scare her anyway, it seems pretty clear, because if Kazuma can hit lightning in the sky, I think he could hit a target five feet in front of him)--the white stuff around her tail is snow spraying off the roof.

ANDDDDD here we go!!

So Hiyori admits she’s in love with Yato, finally. AT WHAT COST. I hope this didn’t really take anyone by surprise, since it really has been in the works for some time now.

I actually discussed how I felt Hiyori’s feelings were changing and how she was slowly coming to accept her feelings for Yato more than a year ago, in this post: http://echodrops.tumblr.com/post/164900791646/ive-read-different-opinions-on-whether-yatos

Adachitoka did a fabulous job of building up to this moment, very slow, incremental changes in Yato and Hiyori’s relationship. From the moment that Hiyori flashes back to here, where she told Yato she wanted to spend more time with him, to the Capyperland crisis where she envisioned Yato beside her instead of Fujisaki, then actually going to Capyperland and telling Yato that she wanted to be with him longer, to the scene where she allows Yato into her room while she’s undressed, to calling Yato her family to Fujisaki’s face, to seeing her plaque tied to Yato’s--making them soulmates--and NOT rejecting that or demanding Kofuku untie them... I mean, especially that last one.

Like I mentioned last year, Hiyori has spent at least a couple in-series weeks now living under the impression that she and Yato are now soulmates, and the moment she didn’t freak out about that and demand to be set free from that just screamed it to me that, deep down, she was okay with the idea of being in a relationship with Yato, even if she wasn’t quite willing to express her feelings out loud yet.

But now she’s over it. And theoretically, things should get better from here.

EXCEPT LOL JK, IT’S NORAGAMI; NOTHING’S EASY.

Yato and Hiyori are gonna have to WORK for their happy ending.

But you know what? I think it’s coming. Now, more than ever, I think a happy ending is coming.

Calm down. Deep breaths. Have faith.

[echodrops]

A random thought I had what if the final “boss” Of Noragami turns out to be not father, but Izanagi. And the guy who set up the Shinto system was the worst Child abuser of them all? (Ebisu and Kagatsuchi could vouch for Izanagi’s propensities) Would that change your thoughts on the Tsukiyomi Theory? I admit I don’t have much to support it. Just I think that in a series that deals with child abuse as seriously as this one. It’s weird that Izanagi would fall off the radar like he does in myth.

Gonna answer two asks in one here, since they’re both about the Tsukuyomi theory.

I’ve toyed around with the idea of Father being Izanagi for a while–there are definitely some connections there:

1) “Father” as a name and a role in the story; as far as dads go in Japanese mythology, Izanagi is definitely the most well-known.

2) The idea of “culling the herd” is so opposite of Izanagi’s stated goal of giving life to 1,500 new humans for every 1,000 Izanami claims that it almost seems to fit with Noragami’s theme of the gods being completely different in “reality” compared to the way humans perceive them (Izanami only wanting friends, Bishamon being a gorgeous lady, not a bearded warrior male lol)

3) The complete lack of mentioning Izanagi in the manga so far has been a bit odd, given that we have seen Izanami and others related to that family.

4) Izanagi does basically deserve “shit dad of the era” award, so if Fujisaki doesn’t have anything to do with Izanagi, then they should totally take it behind the nearest Denny’s and fight it out for world’s worst dad title.

But especially with the events that have unfolded lately in the manga, I’m leaning away from this idea. Mostly because of this:

We’re shown a corpse beside a lake at the same time we’re shown Father holding the woman he (very likely) was in love with. Considering that it appears shinki who die without turning into ayakashi don’t leave bodies behind and we know gods don’t leave bodies, the woman Father loved was more than likely really a human. While I don’t think it would be completely impossible for Izanagi to fall in love with a human and end up standing against all of Heaven for that somehow, that feels like a somewhat unlikely series of events, particularly because it would mean that Amaterasu would have subjugated her own father, which is kind of iffy in terms of the tradition of Japanese filial piety.

We also got a couple more hints about what Father might be over the course of the recent chapters:

Father repeatedly describes himself as being “forsaken” or “forgotten” by Heaven. Yato mentions that “normal” humans shouldn’t be able to use the Koto no Ha. Amaterasu, who clearly knows gods can come back from the Underworld freaks out because she didn’t think there was any way for humans to return. Father can name shinki, possess human bodies, control ayakashi, recognize spells, and battle (almost) on par with Bishamon, the strongest god of war. He knows about the concept of god’s greatest secret, understands the inner-workings of Heaven (aka what determines which gods will reincarnate and who won’t, why Heaven needs humanity, etc.). Furthermore, Father repeatedly expresses concern that Yato won’t be able to reincarnate…

What is the “threshold” for reincarnating? How much belief/how many followers does a god need to really reincarnate? Is being in even one human memory enough, or do you need a ton of people? This isn’t clear. But I do think it’s odd for Yato’s self-proclaimed “lifeline” to be thinking his pet god can’t reincarnate. Maybe it’s because Yato doesn’t have enough followers–or maybe it’s because Father isn’t human at all, and therefore couldn’t help Yato reincarnate even if he wanted to?

Honestly, I really don’t know what Adachitoka have up their sleeve. They’ve done a fantastic job of keeping Father’s identity and motivations a secret–even when they reveal things like the flashback above, the “reveals” tend to bring up more questions rather than answers! There is so much conflicting evidence supporting either side at this point that it’s really just a matter of “We have to wait and see.”

Father could be a human who found some way to seize the powers of the gods for himself, possibly by being a holy man (such as a buddhist monk, I saw a pretty convincing post about this) or just out of sheer hatred for the gods lol. He clawed his way back out of the Underworld with the Koto no Ha, and is now taking corrupted souls aka ayakashi out of hell and unleashing betrayed and upset former-humans on Heaven and the living world.

Or he could be a god who was punished for doing something against Heaven’s rules, was subjugated/killed by Heaven, and subsequently ignored and allowed to stew in his hatred and desire for revenge to become the monster we know today, but I would somewhat doubt whether he really could be Izanagi without anyone having noticed.

Making a long story longer, ultimately I don’t really think that Father is Izanagi, so I personally wouldn’t be leaning on that for the Tsukuyomi theory. (And even if Father was Izanagi, Tsukuyomi and Amaterasu are like… some of the only children Izanagi didn’t treat like shit, so wouldn’t it make more sense for Father to be more directly connected to other children he mistreated aka Kagutsuchi?)

So what about Yato’s fate if his Father is defeated and Yato isn’t Tsukuyomi?

Well, that whole thing hinges on whether or not you believe that Father really is Yato’s lifeline in the first place. If Father turns out NOT to be a human, then the whole lifeline thing would have been a lie in the first place, and Yato will be in no more danger (in fact, significantly less) after defeating his Father than he would have been otherwise.

If Father really is his lifeline, Yato states that he has Hiyori. He’s also becoming an increasingly well-known god with a new official godly name, etc. If Yato continues to do good work with Yukine and increase his status, he’ll probably begin to work his way into the consciousness of the human world and gain enough followers to secure his safety. Hiyori could also establish him as the personal god of her family or something. He has options.

And anyway, as I mentioned in my original post on the Tsukuyomi theory, just because I don’t personally like it doesn’t mean I don’t think it has some basis. I honestly could see it happening–but that doesn’t mean I have to like it when it does. XD

The other thing I wanted to address was the idea of “change” that was brought up in the second ask, which I think is odd, because as far as I’ve seen, one of the number one things that Tsukuyomi theory fans say is that “Yato won’t change even if he is Tsukuyomi!” Like, if we’re talking about the moon god having to do with change, then that’s one thing, but as far as I can tell, the number one defense of the theory being okay story-wise is that it wouldn’t actually cause Yato to change, so…

Just on a personal level, I don’t understand the viewpoint that Yato wouldn’t change significantly if he was revealed to be Tsukuyomi. To me, this is the equivalent of saying “This poor person had amnesia for 15 years… Now they’ve suddenly remembered their entire past, who they were before, and all their previous lifestyle… but nothing about them is going to change, promise!”

Even if we completely ignore the possibility of Yato having to go back to being Tsukuyomi in the future, just revealing that a character had a whole other life is enough to change who that person is in the readers’ minds and how they think of themselves. Revealing that Yato was really Tsukuyomi all along would mean potentially revealing previous relationships with other gods, previous shinki, previous homes, previous worshipers, previous powers, previous attitudes… Unless we just collectively agree to pretend that Tsukuyomi sat in the same spot and never interacted with anyone else for thousands of years, then revealing that Yato is Tsukuyomi would mean revealing that he had a previous life, and that would be a big change in how we view his character–and what his current friends, beliefs, and situation actually mean in the grand scheme of the story.

Honestly I’m kind of confused about the whole thing anyway–people want Yato to be Tsukuyomi… but then multiple people who support the theory say they don’t think it will cause Yato to change, so… People want him to be Tsukuyomi, but not live like, act like, or in any way fulfill the role of Tsukuyomi in the Heavens? Doesn’t that just actually mean “I want Yato to become the god of the moon,” rather than “I want Yato to be Tsukuyomi”?

I just personally can’t imagine any reveal of Yato being Tsukuyomi that doesn’t also include some kind of flashbacks to the person he used to be–or Yato somehow regaining knowledge of his “true self”–and I can’t see how people think this won’t affect who he is and how he thinks of himself. The only way I could see that happening is if Yato actively chooses NOT to return to being Tsukuyomi.

(But in that case, what’s the point of being excited about the theory if the only thing you want out of the reveal is for him to reject that past identity?)

And I mean… are there fans that are okay with the idea of Yato flat out refusing to do Tsukuyomi’s job? Do people really want him to find out who he is and just go “Nah, thanks guys, but I think I’ll just stay Yatogami and let that whole Tsukuyomi thing sort itself out?” To me this seems not only contrary to Yato’s own wish to be a well-known and loved god, but also contrary to his powerful sense of duty.

One of the most central facets of Yato’s character growth has been learning to look beyond his own self-serving ends, to put aside his own wants and needs in order to genuinely serve and help others. From the boy who is willing to kill for praise to the boy who covets money to build his own shrine to the boy who selflessly risks his own life to save a friend in need–Yato’s whole track as a character has been learning to do what’s right, even when what’s right doesn’t have any immediate benefits for himself, such as when Yukine told him to keep killing ayakashi and Yato wondered how that would help him become a god of fortune.

I can’t see Yato in his present state (as a character who has grown to the point of being selfless enough to risk his life to save Heaven from his own Father), being completely okay with ignoring Tsukuyomi’s role or responsibilities. He would be expected to return to Heaven among the other ancient gods. He would be expected to answer the prayers of people at Tsukuyomi shrines. He would expected to conduct himself like a god known by every single Shinto believer in Japan. He’d likely have to like… do something with the moon…??? And I just can’t see Yato looking at all this and going “I think Heaven should just deal with not having Tsukuyomi around despite the fact that I’m technically back.”

I think that if Yato discovered he was Tsukuyomi, he would do his best to fulfill the role he was apparently born to fulfill–and as a reader, I don’t think I’d be happy if he didn’t, if he shirked his duty to humanity intentionally.

If we buy into the idea that the gods exist for a reason–that they exist to fill important roles in human consciousness and life–then I can’t imagine as a reader that I would ever be okay with Yato finding out he’s the god of the moon… And then refusing to be the god of the moon and all that entails. And that would mean that he would change, not gradually, but abruptly. 

So that’s my two cents on the whole “change” and Tsukuyomi theory. As I mentioned before, as possible as I think it is, the whole thing just confuses me entirely from a writing/narrative standpoint.

[echodrops]

Potential Noragami Predictions?

Watch out, this post isn’t spoiler-free!

I never try to predict Noragami really, mostly because the things I think are going to happen often happen, but only in the weirdest and most roundabout ways that I most certainly did not predict! XD

However, this chapter in particular has so many ways it can go, I’ve really been swept up in thinking about where things could possibly go. I’m sure none of this is how it will actually unfold, but I was excited thinking about it, so I want to share.

Will Yato name Kazuma?

I think there’s three possible paths here:

1) He does, immediately. He takes Kazuma and goes charging in to try to face his father directly, without asking Bishamon if he can make Kazuma a Nora. He undoubtedly will feel guilty for this, especially because there’s no guarantee that Kazuma would even be able to survive Liberation anyway. I could only see him choosing this out of desperation, as this path would likely spell the end of Yato’s friendship with Bishamon. I can’t see any situation in which she would be okay with Yato doing this, especially after we saw how dramatically Arahabaki reacted when Yato requested Nana’s help, even though Nana is no longer Arahabaki’s shinki. That Yato would willingly risk the life of her hafuri without her knowledge feels really bad, man. If Yato takes this course, I can only see the story coming down hard on him for it; one of the things we’ve consistently seen in this series is that the characters are brutally punished for their poor choices, both big and small. Making bad moral decisions always, always has serious consequences in Noragami, and this would be a doozy of a morally bad decision.

2) Yato turns Kazuma down because he’s grown enough as a person to recognize the wrongness of the situation. For one, hafuri shinki are powerful because of their desire to protect their masters, but at this moment, Kazuma has no desire to protect Yato--he actively wants to kill him, which is the DEAD opposite of a normal hafuri and would likely result in some sort of terrible backlash in battle. Second, it’s a massive violation of the trust Yato has built up with Bishamon. Third, it’s a massive violation of the trust Yato has with Yukine, who is still sensitive about Kazuma because of the way Kazuma betrayed him before... So he refuses, despite Kazuma’s protests. However, even after turning Kazuma down, somehow in the course of the coming chapters, Yukine is kidnapped or taken out of the action, and Yato is forced to turn to Kazuma, possibly in the heat of the moment, as he has literally no other shinki. This way, it’s slightly less of a morally bad decision because Yato would have been actively forced into it, and therefore he (mostly) dodges the bad karma bullet.

In either case, it seems very likely to me that we are soon going to see a situation in which Father has possession of Yukine, so if either 1 or 2 end up being true, we will likely get a showdown of Father+Yukine and Yato+Kazuma. However, if that is the case, I do not think Yato and Kazuma are capable of winning on their own, because their motivations will be completely at odds. Yato will be fighting to save Yukine, whereas Kazuma, who has completely gone over the edge, will be willing to go straight through Yukine to get to Father. We’ve seen that sometimes Yato loses control of his own body while fighting with his shinki; it was Yukine who dealt the blow against Bishamon using Yato, not the other way around--if Yato takes Kazuma into battle against Father+Yukine, it is entirely possible that Kazuma might be able to control Yato into doing something terrible, potentially breaking Yukine (again). Then again, this might be an opportunity for the long-awaited second power-up for Yukine...

(There’s also the less likely third potential path: Yato turns Kazuma down and sticks to those guns, ending up never giving him a name. Instead, by some other plot contrivance, Yato manages to rescue Yukine from Father and Nora’s clutches and uses Yukine in a fight against his Father. Yukine will probably experience Liberation due to his cracking name, but will survive because of his willingness to die for Yato, and after viewing his past and deciding that being dead with Yato is still better/more meaningful than his own mortality, Yukine gets a power-up to become Nana-levels of ass-kicking. The heavens tremble before everyone’s favorite snow puff son! This is actually the BEST route... And therefore probably the least likely. XD)

So then the other important question: What’s up with Mizuchi?

There’re a lot of reasons I’m fully convinced that Mizuchi’s names have only been suppressed and are not actually gone (I mean, Fujisaki is standing right there in the last panel of the chapter, lol), but really the number one reason is that, from a narrative sense, it makes no sense for Yato to team up with Kazuma at all if Father no longer has access to Chiki. If Father really released Mizuchi, he would have permanently lost access to--from what we’ve seen so far--his only weapon and his primary means for enacting Liberation. Why would Yato even need a hafuri who can counteract Liberation... if Father couldn’t use Liberation anymore?

And of course there’s the whole thing about how other gods would likely not have released her, especially not Takemikazuchi and Ebisu, etc. etc.

So anyway, this is 100% a trick. (I don’t hate Mizuchi for this and I do believe that at least some of her tears were genuine--I think she really feels the things she said to Yukine, even if she is trying to trick him otherwise.)

Suppressing every single one of her names puts her in an incredibly powerful position actually, because remember: shinki spells do not work without names. Yukine, who is currently isolated from Yato and cannot take his sword form, will have absolutely no defense against her, because she no longer has a name for him to control, while she still has his name and will have access to all her spells against him. He’s literally a sitting duck, while she’s effectively untouchable.

So what’s she going to do? Personally, I don’t think Yukine is in immediate life-threatening danger. It seems unlikely that she would want to kill him, as Father doesn’t gain anything by doing that. The most likely plan to me seems to be kidnapping, with the intention of getting Yukine to Father and making him a Nora so that Father can use him as a tool to control Yato’s behavior. This loops back into the potential paths above--if Father gets a hold of Yukine, it’s almost impossible that we won’t see a Father+Yukine vs. Yato+Kazuma showdown battle, with all the aforementioned possible endings.

The fact that Fujisaki brought the ayakashi wolves to the underpass too tells me that he and Mizuchi are likely in a hurry. I don’t think they’re playing the long con here. I could be totally wrong on that though, but something tells me that Fujisaki is feeling a bit of pressure right now and wants to secure, at the very least, a bargaining chip, as soon as possible.

It seems possible to me that the next chapter or at least some chapter soon will be a Yukine vs. Nora showdown that Yukine loses miserably, and the chapter may end with Yato and his new shinki KazuWhatever-ne plowing dramatically on to the scene... a second too late to stop Fujisaki from naming Yukine and calling him triumphantly to his side. Mm, how epic would it be to just end on a giant one page spread of Father wielding whatever new form Yukine takes on as he grins down at the helpless, horrified Yato??? Even if this doesn’t happen, I had great fun imagining this...

In short, I really don’t have any clue where Noragami is going, but mannnnn is it exciting to think about! Can’t wait for next month!!