#also I have no access to the manga so the show is the only way I’m finding out what’s going on in this story

[danzsoldier]

I know I watched only the 1st episode of Oshi No Ko, but Ai Hoshino is peak character design and for some reason I’m confused on why reincarnation is apart of the story

[lurkingshan]

Japanese BL Starter Pack

It’s been awhile since I dropped a rec list, so I am here today to share one that is very near and dear to my heart—a Japanese bl primer for those who are new to the jbl game. I created this for @neuroticbookworm to help her on her journey when she decided she wanted to start getting into Japanese works. The fandom (on Tumblr and generally) tends to focus primarily on Thai shows because they are the easiest to access for international fans, since Thailand is working its way toward world domination via ql media and wants us all to be able to watch. But there is a lot of great stuff to watch beyond the easy access Thai channels, and Japan is the country where this genre originated, so its shows are important for anyone who considers themselves a bl fan. Japan doesn’t cater nearly as much to the international audience so tracking down the shows sometimes takes some ingenuity and can-do spirit, but that’s part of the fun!

And so, the list! Bookworm is about halfway through it and having a ball, so I figured it was time to stop hoarding it and share it with anyone else who would like to dip their toes into jbl and isn’t quite sure where to start. A few notes: 

I am not here to teach you about the deep roots of the jbl genre or give you a primer on yaoi manga. I am by no means an expert and there are other places to find that information. Start here with this great post by @nieves-de-sugui and then maybe wander over to @absolutebl to read up more on the evolution of the genre.

This list is by no means an exhaustive accounting of every important Japanese bl ever made; it is simply a nice sampler platter of the cream of the crop among various styles you will find in jbl. Watching through this whole list will not only expose you to some fantastic shows, but also give you a sense of what makes jbl unique and how the country’s style differs from others, and point you toward the types of jbl you’ll like most (they tend to put shows in pretty specific style and tone lanes and once you find the ones you like there are lots more where that came from). 

If you’re coming to this post as a jbl lover and you don’t see your favorite here, I promise it’s not because I don’t love it very much; I simply had to make some choices to get this down to a reasonable shortlist. Feel free to leave extra recs for others to find! 

I’m putting these in a loose suggested watch order that will take you through the various jbl lanes in a kind of popcorn style, because I always think it’s good to change it up so you don’t get too stuck in one mode, and it works its way up to most of the extremely Japanese stuff (you will know what that means by the time you finish). But do what’s in your heart and change up the order if you want, friends, I am not the boss of you! 

Cherry Magic (Crunchyroll or grey)

gif by @liyazaki

I believe everyone on Tumblr is pretty familiar with this one, which is not a coincidence—this is one of the most accessible jbls. Not in terms of actual access to watch it, mind you (we’ve all jumped through shady internet hoops to watch it) but in terms of its content and style. Cherry Magic is a classic workplace romcom with a magical twist, and it is charming af. It’s a great exemplar of Japan’s light and zippy comedy lane for bl—a lane in which, importantly, the romances stay chaste even when the actual plot is about sex, or lack thereof. My friend @waitmyturtles would kill me if I didn’t make sure you know that Cherry Magic also has a lovely follow up film. And bonus: there is now a Thai remake airing so if you watch the original you can get in on the discussion about the different adaptations between countries. This is pretty easy to find these days in all the usual places, but I strongly recommend watching it here.

Old Fashion Cupcake (Viki)

gif by @liyazaki

Moving on to a slightly more mature workplace romcom. Old Fashion Cupcake, another Tumblr favorite, is an age gap boss-subordinate romance, and it’s both very adult and somehow wholesome af at the same time. Sure, there is a lot of carnal desire going on here, but there is also a lot of wooing via fluffy pancakes. It’s a tight five episodes and a fantastic example of what Japan, with its extreme technical precision in writing, directing, editing, pacing, and acting firing on all cylinders, can do in two hours. There’s not an ounce of flab on this thing and you’ll want to watch it over and over again.

Utsukushii Kare (Viki)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

Time to get a little weird! Weird is a key feature of Japanese media, and lots of jbls explore unusual relationship dynamics rooted in complex psychology. This is the first show on the list that will likely feel very Japanese if you’re new around here—my advice is to lean into it and finish the show, even if you get uncomfortable along the way. In Japanese media, discomfort always serves a purpose. This is a high school story with a twisted relationship at its center, and I’m not saying any more than that. Don’t spoil yourself and go watch it! This one also comes with two sequels—one short second season and one movie—that continue from the original story. They are less essential but still excellent.

I Cannot Reach You (Netflix)

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Next up, another high school tale, but with a totally different vibe. This show is kind of a revelation in its willingness to tell a story about overwhelming desire—including sexual desire—with young protagonists. It’s rooted in a classic but often misunderstood trope, friends to lovers, and takes the angst of it seriously, giving us a low stakes story that feels extremely high stakes to our leads. It’s also gorgeous and uses a classic Japanese visual style (bokeh) that you’ll be dying to learn more about. 

His (Viki)

gif by @gabrielokun

Time for a break from high school, and we’ll sprinkle in a movie for some added flavor. His is a jbl film featuring a second chance romance between a stoic, introverted man who moves to a remote town to start over, and his ex-boyfriend who follows him there unexpectedly, adorable child in tow. Importantly, this movie does not take place in what we often refer to as the “bl bubble” where homophobia doesn’t exist; the leads’ experiences of being gay men in a homophobic society are hugely important to the plot and themes of the story. It’s a beautiful film and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it. @bengiyo would surely also like me to tell you that this film follows a brief prequel show called His: I Didn’t Mean to Fall in Love about the characters originally meeting in high school; I do not think it’s really necessary to watch it but completists can start there.

The Pornographer series (Gaga)

By now you should be ready to get into some classic Japanese fucked up psychosexual material, right? Right! The Pornographer series is told in five installments in this order:

The Novelist, a six episode miniseries

Mood Indigo, a six episode prequel series

Spring Life, a 15 minute short

Pornographer: Playback, a two hour film

Spring Life Continued, a 15 minute short

Confused by that distribution model? So say we all; sometimes Japan likes to make us work for it to make sure we really appreciate its many gifts to us. The story across these installments is about a very difficult to love protagonist, what makes him the way he is, and the also-unhinged-but-in-a-different-way man who finally gets through to him. It’s an extremely satisfying love story and one of the best character arcs I have ever seen, full stop. For this one, you’ll want to just pull the word problematic out of your pocket and store it in a drawer; nearly everything that happens in this story is problematic and that’s the point. Lean in! All of these installments except for the film are on Gaga, if you get that far hmu and I will supply you with the final puzzle piece.

Our Dining Table (Gaga)

You could probably use a break after those last two, so it’s time to shift over to a heart-tugging twofer: family trauma mixed with the cutest shit you’ve ever seen. ODT is an example of another classic type of Japanese show: the food drama (you will see the GOAT in this category at the end of this list). In Japanese culture, food is love, and the act of preparing food for your loved ones is a common path to romance. You’ll love this story about an isolated office worker who meets a pair of brothers, learns to cook as a way of connecting with them, and begins to heal from his own trauma as a result. The image above is a scan from the manga, which @troubled-mind curates to make extremely cool comparison sets like this one. Many jbls are faithful adaptations of yaoi manga source material, so it’s good to have a bit of familiarity with them.

Minato’s Laundromat (Gaga)

gif by @liyazaki

Japanese media loves to explore taboo, and often manages to do it in a way that is surprisingly light and chaste. This is an age gap romance between a teenager and his adult neighbor that explores internalized homophobia, emotional repression, and falling in love across seemingly impossible social chasms. It’s also a great example of old school yaoi seme-uke dynamics that still show up across the bl genre. Also, take my advice: end your journey with this one with the first season and just pretend season 2 doesn’t exist.

Eternal Yesterday (Viki)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

Remember what I said about weird? Time to do that again, but with a heaping dose of grief and pain on top. It’s not a spoiler to tell you this show involves a major character death; a major character death is, in fact, the root of the entire story. This is a magic realist tale of first love turned tragic, and it will hurt and heal you. It is one of my favorite dramas of all time.

Restart After Come Back Home (Gaga)

And now for a break for your poor exhausted brain. This film is basically the jbl version of a Hallmark original movie, about a city boy who goes back home to the country and falls in love with a total sweetheart while working together on a farm. Enjoy it, bestie, you’ve earned it! 

Tokyo in April Is… (Gaga)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

You’ve probably noticed by now that emotional repression and failed communication are big themes in Japanese works. This second chance romance has plenty of both, and it’s a great example of a kind of muted emotional style that Japan does so well, where the surface of the story seems almost placid and calm even as deep emotion roils underneath. This one (and Eternal Yesterday above) are part of a special line up of jbls on Japanese channel MBS called Tonku (Drama) Shower. The shows air one after another in the same time slot on Fridays (in Japan, perhaps Thursdays for you depending on where you live) and you truly never know what you’re gonna get, but they’re all interesting. Warnings on this one for sexual assault and trauma. 

The End of the World With You (Viki)

Time for sexy and weird again, but even more so! This has to be one of the most unique bls ever made; it goes to some truly divine and strange places, and it feels incredibly queer while doing it. Made by the same screenwriter/director of the Pornographer series with a lot of the same sensibilities, but in a more heightened apocalyptic setting. This one has existential angst, a road trip, a redemption tale, and a variety of interesting side characters in the mix.

What Did You Eat Yesterday? (Gaga)

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Congratulations, you’ve reached the end of the list and your reward is watching one of the best bls of all time, and a perfect slice of life food drama to boot. WDYEY now has two seasons (along with a couple specials and a movie that fall in between) because the universe clearly loves us. You can now get it on Gaga for easy access but I’m partial to the versions over at @kinounaniresource for better subs. Wherever you watch, settle in to get cozy with Shiro and Kenji and make sure to always eat before you hit play.

[bafvkun]

I just feel like talking about how deep Mikayu’s bound runs don’t mind me (HEAVY spoilers ahead).

Lets get this straight : i don’t care if you ship them or not (even if you would be a fool not to) but no one can deny that they’re literal soulmates and I’m gonna show you exactly why.

Yu and Mika were ALWAYS bound to find each other and reunite. I’m not saying that because I’m delusional it’s literally canon. Their relationship is as old as dinosaurs and once again : this is canon.

Yu (or should I say Mika but like whatever if you didn’t read the scans it would take an eternity to explain) was literally created for Mika. The sole purpose of his existence was to look after Mika and be his only friend. Since day one they were ment for each other.

They swore on every stars and defied fate itself that they will always found each other again no matter how many times they die or get taken away from the other in a way or another, no matter their race, age or era.

There I was talking about the first versions of them, but let’s talk about the main one, the one we all know in the anime and throughout the whole manga, Yuichiro and Mikaela Hyakuya.

Mika was the first one in this life to get Yu to open his heart, to make him accept his fate and push him to make the best of it. Yu was just a traumatized child that almost got killed by his own parents yet Mika made him feel like he belonged somewhere, he showed him that family wasn’t always meant to be bound with blood.

When Yu lost Mika it was like he lost all hopes, for the longest time Yu was suicidal, already from young age and this loss just made him feel so much worse. Yes the loss of his whole new family, including Akane and the kids was bad for him, but deep down what truly broke them was the loss of one another.

Years later they reunited, Mika like Yu both changed deeply because of their own experiences and yet their relationship stayed unchanged. Just the dynamic between them switched, Yu was now the one to convince Mika that he could trust his new family (Glenn and his own squad).

One day my mom told me « if when you reunite with a long lost friend and it feels like not even a day has passed, then it’s real friendship » and it’s been proven to me that this is true, Mikayu being yet another exemple of this.

As a vampire Mika doesn’t feel much anymore, it’s said loud and clear that turning into a vampire takes away from you any vulnerability, any love or lust. Yet Mika feels so vividly for Yu, it runs so much deeper than his own nature. His loyalty towards him is beyond any words could ever describe.

And it’s also so damn obvious how Mika is just so grumpy with anyone but smiles whenever Yu is around. He didn’t smile for anyone else than him throughout the manga, Yu is his literal everything, he is the only one that brings him peace and joy.

Now we skip forward a bit, Yu and Mika are in a deadly situation and against everything Mika dies. First let’s get the obvious out of the way, his last words were « Yu, I love you. ». I mean. There’s nothing more straightforward than that.

But then, when a vampire dies he becomes a demon, so of course Yu had to take him as his cursed weapon. So that’s exactly what he did, after so much struggle that I will pass here he finally got to talk with Mika and have a contract with him.

But the thing is when a vampire dies and becomes a demon he loses all his memories from his previous life, so Mika didn’t remember Yu at all. Yet, despite everything their bound didn’t die, quite the contrary. Even before they did the contract, so before Mika had access to Yu’s memories, there was still something inside him that screamed « that guy is important to me », even if he didn’t understand where it came from.

All the memories Mika had of Yu after that was again : from Yu’s own memories.

And what Mika saw broke him, the desire to die was so overwhelming even in his demon form he found himself speechless and hurt. He didn’t remember Yu but he knew that he was important to him more than he could ever tell. And he didn’t only see their memories together, he saw Yu’s whole life, the moment with his parents, the years they spent apart, Yu and Glenn’s relationship and his new family, he saw everything.

He swore his loyalty to him yet again, ready to do anything for him and face the end of the world hand in hand with him. And of course, even when he lost his memories Yu never once doubted him and that he would still follow him.

Now. I’ve been talking a lot about Mika’s love for Yu but what about the other way around ? Moving forward in the story again Glenn revealed something to Yu, his squad and Mika that left a dilemma hanging in the air. Yu had to chose between humanity and Mika. And what did he do ? He chose Mika, betraying not only Glenn, the man that save him physically and psychologically and that he respected the most in the world, not only his squad with who he shared ups and downs like a family but humanity itself for the survival of Mika.

If this doesn’t speak volumes to you I don’t know what will. Yu sacrificed EVERYTHING down to his own survival just to spend one more day with Mika. Now not only vampires, demons and angels were against him, but humanity too all for the sake of one man.

Both of them constantly put their whole life and universe on the line for the other and they always do it in a heartbeat, like any other decision would just be unthinkable.

They had so many discussions that made clear how deeply their feelings for one another go, no matter if you interpret it as brotherly or romantic love. They confessed to each other so many times how they can’t live without the other, how life is meaningless if the other isn’t around. How there’s not even a point in trying to live if it isn’t to face tomorrow together and how each other’s happiness is more important than anything else in the world.

Both of them held on solely for the other, both of them are still breathing and living their truth thanks to nothing else than one another.

Their love is so fucking beautiful and pure, it stayed untouched through generations and generations of them.

Mikayu is an amazing ship and anyone would be a fool to not read Seraoh of the end just to witness such utter and raw love.

[bengiyo]

Hi, i'm a newish bl drama watcher from thailand that just started watching thai bls. i'm a bit ashamed to say that for a long time as a gay man living here i've been avoiding bl shows like the plague cuz of both the fandom reputation and of misconception from my yaoi era which i leave far behind. i'm just want to ask how did you got into watching thai bls and what were you preconception before you got into it.

Welcome to the Tumblr side of BL fandom. I'd actually like to also hear more of your experience with yaoi and BL as a gay person growing up in Thailand if you're willing to share.

For me, I'm a Black American from the Gulf Coast (the South). I grew up in a Catholic city and spent my entire adolescence in the closet. Despite having a sense of who I was as early as 8 years old, I kept most of that to myself. Because I didn't talk about it much with people, I found out most information about queer media and queerness from the internet.

I entered BL via queer cinema. I think the first explicitly gay character that I remember from TV was Marco from Degrassi: The Next Generation. There were probably others, and definitely more subtle expressions, but when I think about the oldest gay character I remember and connect to, it's Marco. I don't like counting things like shipping Shawn and Corey on Boy Meets World or Tai and Matt on Digimon for oldest gay characters. Sailor Moon can't even count because we got a censored version of it in America.

I got access to satellite television away from observing eyes around age 16 and started watching content on Logo back when they aired gay content regularly. I watched basically whatever I could late at night. It's how I saw movies like Get Real (1998), Beautiful Thing (1996), and Bent (1997). It's also how I saw Queer as Folk (2000-2005) Noah's Arc (2005-06).

After hitting adulthood I mostly got lost in video games and standard American TV for a while, but I did basically show up to any Gay Event in TV. I appreciate that Stef and Lena from The Fosters (2013-2018) were some of the only TV lesbians to survive the horror of 2016.

I watched a bunch of movies in this time, many of which appear on the Queer Cinema Syllabus I made for a hypothetical Westerner new to BL and queer cinema, which @wen-kexing-apologist has decided to try to complete.

I got into Thai BL in 2018 accidentally. I started seeing gifsets of Kongpob telling Arthit he'll make him his wife passing around Tumblr and was basically like, "Right, what's all this then?"

I had watched a few Thai gay films, mostly notably Love of Siam (2007), Bangkok Love Story (2007), How to Win at Checkers Every Time (2015), and The Blue Hour (2015), but this was the first time I was seeing a long series made available so easily from any Asian country.

From there I got into Make It Right (2016-17) and Love Sick the series (2014). Once I realized that yaoi had moved beyond manga and a few anime adaptations, I went looking for a lot more. I basically haven't left since I started in about 2016 with SOTUS.

There's my basic entry into the genre. I don't think I was as worried about fandom and worries at the time because so much of being a fan of queer cinema was a mostly-private experience for me for so long. I didn't realize that BL fans active in the space would predominantly be women or queers figuring themselves out. It took a while to adjust to that, and also to adjust my expectations of the kinds of queer stories BL distributors were willing to fund.

That being said, I tend to agree with @absolutebl that BL has a useful role in normalization for non-queer audiences who encounter it. I like cheering BL when it does things I think work really well, and also deriding it when I think it does things that are offensive to help nudge the genre and offer my perspective as a gay man.

I like the place we're at right now where there's way too much to watch for any person with other hobbies and responsibilities because it means that people can pick and choose what's to their tastes.

More often than not, I'm probably most-invested in something airing from Japan because of my melancholy nature, but there's so much variety these days that it's okay if you don't like everything. I certainly don't!

I'm glad you joined us on Tumblr and look forward to your thoughts!

[piracytheorist]

There's just something about reading the Spy x Family manga in a printed version that the digital version can't beat no matter how more easily accessible it is.

Depending on what platform people use to read the digital version, they may get one page at a time, and even if they get two, most people don't have screens big enough to properly "enjoy" two-page sets.

That isn't a problem with a physical copy. You instantly get the two page spread every time, and can easily adjust how close you're holding the volume in order to read the dialogues.

And that has a great impact in experiencing the story in the way Endo (probably) intended.

Like, look at this two-page set. The very first things that catch your attention when you turn to those pages are Anya's and Yor's smiling faces. There's very little dialogue all around those pages, and the two bottom panels are the biggest, with the main focus being how happy and relaxed those two characters are. The last panel is Yor's face - the reader is meant to turn the page with that being their last image of the set - so practically the "experience" of those two pages starts with those smiling faces and also ends with them.

And then you turn the page, and the only silent panel is of Twilight's eyes; only him, only his eyes, with a yearning, melancholic expression.

A stark contrast to the previous spread. Anya and Yor side by side - Twilight is alone. Anya and Yor full-face - Twilight's eyes only. Anya and Yor smiling - Twilight brooding. Anya and Yor get nearly half their pages' length - Twilight gets about 1/5 of his. Anya and Yor in bright light - Twilight shown in a darker light.

Panel placing plays a huge role in graphic stories. You don't just place any panel wherever, from whatever angle and with whatever dimensions. It's a whole part of the art and so I don't doubt that that placement of Anya and Yor's faces was done in order to contrast the small, "sneaky" placement of Twilight's eyes in the next spread.

This is a moment that Twilight has no idea how much vulnerability he's exposing, just by the way he's looking at Yor. And even that is tied to the way his panel is shown - small, quick, as if not really meant to be seen. Because he's a spy and all that.

Again, contrasting Anya and Yor, because they don't feel the need to hide their emotions. They feel free to express their happiness, and that's why they get a full focus on their respective pages.

Also, Anya and Yor are side by side. Anya accepted Yor as her mother from the very beginning, and Yor has also accepted her place in the Forger family, and so they're shown next to each other to show how they already consider each other family. On the other hand you've got Twilight, who is still deep in denial and feels he has to keep his distance from them, and so he's shown on his own.

Along with watching the anime first, I've also decided to have my first experience of the manga in a physical form, and that has been a very telling experience in that matter. It really hit home, to see those beautiful, detailed panels of a happy Anya and Yor side by side, and then to turn the page and to see a melancholic Twilight on his own and only his eyes, as if he's hiding - even though I knew it was coming, since I'd already watched the respective anime episode!

Anya and Yor feeling free to enjoy and relax and feel, and Twilight closing himself up despite the yearning in his eyes.

There's so much that can be said with silent panels, if one knows how to place and present them correctly. And it seems like Endo has an amazing grasp at that, and the printed version of the manga makes that even clearer.

(again, anime "only" here, don't spoil me for the rest of the manga please 😁)

[browniefox]

The (New) +Anima Au Guide!

A few months ago, I made a post about the basics of +anima, and now I realize it was kinda bad, so I'm making it again! So, here's a little guide to the basic world of +anima - mostly how anima work - in hopes to inspire people to create +anima aus!

What is +Anima?

+Anima is a ten-volume manga written by Natsumi Mukai. It is very good and cute, you should read it! It revolves around a world where certain people have something called an anima.

When a child is put into a life-threatening situation, there's a chance that they will get the abilities of a nearby animal - granting them wings like a bird, or tail of a fish, for example - in order to survive the situation. It's like if trauma gave you cat ears!

Nana, for instance, was running from her drunk and angry father in the woods at night, and got a bat anima. Natural anima only happen to children.

Getting an anima, or seeing someone with an anima, is rare enough that, even if people are aware of what anima are, those with bird or fish anima are often confused for angels or mermaids. Those with anima are usually treated poorly and feared as something dangerous and scary.

Those with anima are able to look like normal humans most of the time, accessing their anima and transforming back and forth at will. When appearing like a normal human, however, there is still proof of being an anima by way of a marking(s) somewhere on their body. The marking reflects the animal/trait that they have, the location usually correlates with there or how the trait shows up.

As an anima is connected to survival, children with them usually lose their anima as they grow older and find themselves in better situations. In the manga, most of the anima are either kids or teens. There are a few cases of adults with natural anima, two being seemingly homesless men (one seems to be a rat anima, while another is a bison), and a few who are of the Native American-Coded group in the manga, the Kim-un-Kur, who are known to keep their anima through adulthood seemingly because 1. it's less ostracized against, 2. their life style probably is better with one, and 3. they're more in tune with nature and their anima.

(^this is the the buffalo anima and a crow anima)

There is also such a thing as 'fake' or 'manufactured' anima, but only in a sense. There's a way to extract the anima from a person, though if the person is not willing the anima will not remain after the procedure. When willingly extracted, however, the anima can then placed into another person, though the connection between human and anima seems to be tenuous, and the anima may choose to leave.

Outside of a 'manufactored' anima, in canon there is one instance of an anima hopping from one human to another, though in that case the anima was that of a vicious and vengeful bear.

While in-fiction it's mostly hinted at and a little vague, it seems that the anima - as in the animal power itself - seems to have some degree of sentience, as it seems its the anima that makes makes the choice when to leave the human. It seems to be that the spirit of the animal literally ends up in the human that gains the anima.

Those with anima also seem to be able to do a further transformation into a more animal-like form called metamorphosis.

As you may have noticed me doing throughout the post, those with anima are usually just referred to as ‘anima’, though the animal spirit in the is also called their ‘anima’.

In the world of +Anima, there is also a side of the continent that has big market in anima slave trade, so make of that what you will.

Anyway, I find the world of +Anima FASCINATING, please talk to me about +Anima and make aus I love it.

(These are the four main characters of the manga! Cooro (crow), Husky (fish), Senri (bear), and Nana (bat).)

[yuurei20]

Hello! I know all the students at NRC use the dark mirror for going certain places during events and going back home on holidays. However, is there any instances where they mention how they get back to NRC? I do know both Ace and Deuce came back on boat and bus but is that the same for everyone? can they cast portals to come back through the mirror?

Also, thank you for all the hard work you put into this blog!♥️

Hello hello!! Thank you so much for this question, you are too kind! ^^♡

On the subject of transporting to NRC from outside of NRC, these are the only two references I have been able to find: Halloween and Book 4!

Ace says that they had to take public transportation back to the school in Book 4 because "the mirror gate wasn't open," and in Halloween he says, "the school mirrors let us go home and back instantly for holidays and stuff," but I am not sure we have heard anything about logistics!

During Spectral Soiree Leona explains that mirrors are often used in magical artifacts, listing the examples of the Dark Mirror, the Hall of Mirrors, and the viewglasses. We know that the viewglasses require at least two mirrors to work, and Malleus transports the students via the Dark Mirror using the mirror that is the disco ball.

This makes it sounds as though maybe a mirror should be required for returning to NRC, much in the same way that a mirror is required for leaving it, but the students tend to appear in curious places for mirrors to be:

They show up just outside an abandoned cottage in the prologue and for Vargas Camp, and on what appears to be the outskirts of Epel's village for the Harveston event.

They then appear in the middle of city centers for Firelit Sky, White Rabbit, Tapis Rouge and Tamashina, while they step directly into a lecture hall at Noble Bell College.

Is it possible that all those city centers, the outskirts of Harveston, the outside of that abandoned cottage and the lecture hall all have a mirror set up specifically for mirror-based transportation?

It might not be impossible!

The Dark Mirror is "one of Night Raven College's most prized magical artifacts," requiring Crowley's permission to use.

Being so well guarded, setting up similar mirrors in public spaces might be unlikely, but it seems that the Dark Mirror is special (according to Vargas), doing more things than teleportation.

Maybe the mirrors in places like the woods and Clocktower Square (assuming they exist) are more generic?

I found a recent Twst Soku thread on this same topic, where some interesting points were made!

In the first novel a ghost tells Yuuya that "high-quality mirrors can be used for transportation." So maybe any mirror at all will do, so long as it is of a certain quality?

If that is the case, it would explain why the students appeared where they did in Firelit Sky, Harveston, etc.: they were the most convenient locations for Kalim and Jamil to introduce the city, for Epel to show off his village's orchards, etc., but maybe they could've teleported directly into their own bedrooms if they'd chosen to?

But that introduces a different question:

Jade, Floyd and Azul do not go home in Book 4 because of ice floes that make travel difficult--but why do they need to travel at all? Do they live an inconveniently far distance from the local transportation-mirror?

If any mirror can be used, does this mean that they do not have mirrors at home? We know that underwater-mirror-travel is possible because of Book 3, where characters go to both Octavinelle dorm and the Coral Sea via mirror.

Things might still be vague as of this post, but it is almost conspicuous how the game, manga and novel have all expertly avoided answering this question 👀

Commenters in the Twstsoku thread above generally seem to agree that it might be something of a bus-stop situation, with public mirrors that can access NRC during pre-determined time slots, but I do not think anything is official at this time!

Looking forward to an answer one day :>

[tofixtheshadows]

can i ask a thing about kabru as an anime-only... it's become kinda obvious at this point that there's a larger explanation for how he behaves that we haven't reached yet, but i was curious specifically in regards to those corpse retrievers that his party came across during their initial introduction. it makes sense that kabru would want to kill them considering their shady dealings, and we know that people in the dungeon can be revived, but his party did throw their bodies in the water afterwards, seemingly so they wouldn't be found and brought back to life? i was kinda waiting for this to be brought up again, but it wasn't...

Sure. The way I see it, the corpse retrievers are a seriously dangerous group playing with other people's lives for profit. Kabru in particular sees this behavior as unforgivable, and looks down on people who treat the dungeon as a "money pit" and not as a deadly threat that needs to be neutralized as soon as possible.

I'll add some visual aid from the manga, since I'm not gonna go hunting for gifs, but I won't include anything past the point we're at in the anime.

This interaction was cut for time, but early in the manga (after the Tentacles chapter), Namari explains the hazards of resurrection to the twins (and the audience):

...which ups the stakes for us during the corpse retriever confrontation, when Kabru says this:

Which shows that the corpse retrievers aren't merely killing people to revive them for profit- already really fucked up- but doing so in such a reckless fashion that they could easily botch the job and end up with corpses unable to be revived. Imagine if this had been Marcille with her trigger-happy explosion spells? They would have bemoaned the lost payday, then probably just looted what was left.

And then their leader tries to rope Kabru in on their murder-for-money scheme, on the guy's own companions, just to get Kabru to keep quiet? Kabru clearly decided these people were too dangerous to live.

With the threat to report them hanging over their heads like that, I don't think it would have boded well for Kabru's party if they had given the corpse retrievers a chance to be revived and come after them.

Even if they had miraculously decided not to hunt Kabru's party down, they were just going to keep preying on other adventurers, reducing the dungeon's own imported immune system meant to keep the ratio of monsters stable.

Which is not even as bad as it could be.

Making the choice to execute them is harsh, but honestly I can't judge Kabru that much, as a character in a story whose day-to-day includes life-or-death stakes.

In a storytelling sense, it's also helpful to see the way that Kabru is counterbalancing Laios's story: while Laios is journeying through a biological ecosystem and showing us the dungeon as an organism, Kabru shows the audience the human ecosystem that surrounds the dungeon, the political and social machinations working on it, and how these things are just as deadly as monsters. He's a big picture thinker.

More on that in ... a few episodes, probably?

On the off-chance you'd like to read it, the manga is easily accessible in its official translation here and is a very quick read. You can also see about checking it out through your local library; my roommate read it all on her e-reader that way!

I hope I helped!

[versaphile]

I’ll never kill. Ever again.

OK, so I didn't catch the significance at first, but after having absorbed the other Trigun canons, it really stands out to me. From "Millions Knives":

In the English dub, Vash's words are similar: "I’ll never kill. Ever again."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the manga and 1998 canons, Legato is in fact the first person that Vash ever actually kills.

Though arguably he does hurt people very badly in the manga, his pacifism is generally about doing the least possible amount of harm to resolve a situation.

So when Stampede Vash says he HAS killed in the past, what is he referring to? Is it his guilt over The Big Fall? Nai did a number on him by retroactively making Vash feel as though the blood of that is on his hands, by showing Nai the access code to the SEEDS05 computer. Or is there something else that happened that we haven't seen yet, something where Vash ended up actually killing someone himself?

I think either way there's a difference between the Vashes here. 98 Vash is the most pure in his pacifism. He even goes out of his way to avoid harming anyone at all, if he can. He seems almost paralyzed by it at times, it even makes him freeze up in situations where he is faced with the choice to kill. 98 ends with him rejecting his obsession with Rem in order to stop Knives.

Manga Vash is frankly not afraid to draw blood, though he avoids it if he can. He has a lot more anger and escalates his willingness to harm with the danger of the situation. His refusal to kill is very tied up to his refusal of his own suicide and Rem's blank ticket speech. After Tesla, he chose to live because of Rem's love. Rem's love also saved the humans of NML. There's a whole transference here with him, where he needs to save the humans as part of him continuing to save himself from that suicidal urge that hasn't really gone away in all that time. And when he does finally give in to that suicidal urge at the end of Trimax, he does it with the mental context of giving his tomorrows to humanity just like Rem did. He embraces Rem’s path even more.

Stampede Vash though-- There's still a lot we don't know about what happened after Tesla. We know Rem gave the blank ticket speech. In the more limited examples we have, Vash absolutely minimizes harm to others, largely by drawing fire and running from it, and minimizes harm to himself. He is extremely controlled and precise in his use of force, again escalating only as much as absolutely necessary. He is actively trying to defuse situations and bring people together. The only times we really see Vash threaten anyone are his confrontations with Knives, and there's no sense that his heart is in actually harming Knives at all.

So is his pacifism a mixture of guilt over the Big Fall, and a need to carry on Rem's work and keep the humans and plants of NML alive just a little longer? Is that really about pacifism at all? If he did try to kill himself after Tesla, which is likely, how much is that driving him here? He is carrying a lot of pain, guilt, and shame, given his regular self-punishment.

And then there's this, in the same scene:

Brad tells Wolfwood that Vash's desire to save everyone on NML including Knives, is actually right.

This is absolutely fascinating to me. In 98, Brad is deeply antagonistic to Vash, partly out of jealousy over Jessica, but also because Vash goes out into NML and fights while Brad and the others in the Flying City hide in fear of "outsiders." Brad is a narrative critique of Vash's violence, and in the end he switches over and defends Vash, dying to save him.

In the manga, Brad is deeply antagonistic to Vash again out of jealousy over Jessica, but also he explicitly calls Vash a monster for his part in July and the Fifth Moon. Again, Brad serves as a critique of Vash, this time about the extreme destruction he's capable of. This is similar to Wolfwood's post-Dragon's Nest moment of doubt, where he seriously considered killing Vash to prevent Knives from using Vash's power ever again.

Stampede Brad is a narrative voice again, first antagonistic as his other counterparts, suspicious of Vash's very nature. But quickly enough he comes around and ends up as one of Vash's parental figures. And when Wolfwood doubts Vash for wanting to save everyone, Brad defends Vash. He says Vash is strong enough to find a way to make his dream happen. In contrast to so many others, instead of telling Vash to take a side, Brad says everything isn't black and white. And in fact SEEDS03 is actively working on a solution that will help Vash's dream happen, by trying to terraform NML with flora.

I think more than anything, Stampede Vash is defined by hope. He has people already trying to make a better NML. He goes out into the world and helps people and stops violence in order to keep plants and humans alive long enough for Luida's terraforming plan to succeed.

Roberto is another narrative voice. In "Humans", when Conrad shows off his work, all in the name of remaking the human race for survival without plants, Roberto calls him out, saying that his dream is not worth the cost of his monstrous abuse of innocents. Knives and Conrad's "dream" is one of humans and plants living completely separately, without depending on each other.

All of which is to say, in 98 the core inner conflict was Vash's fixation with Rem, and his refusal to kill reflected that. In the manga, the core inner conflict was the transference of Vash's denial of suicide, and his refusal to kill reflected that.

Stampede's core inner conflict so far appears to be abuse and isolation vs love and connection. The struggle of finding a way to survive while minimizing harm to others. This changes Vash's refusal to kill yet again. And all the more fascinating if Vash has already broken that ideal, if it's not a psychological block or obsession like 98 and the manga, but the choice he makes from lived experience and regret. Vash as a kind person having suffered greatly to learn his kindness.

All of which has massive ramifications for story elements that are entirely focused on Vash's refusal to kill. Such as Wolfwood. Perhaps that's part of why Wolfwood's story arc from the manga has already been largely completely by "High Noon at July". Wolfwood might still have no obvious compunction against killing, but Vash has already started to open up his heart. Wolfwood killed Rollo because he had no hope for Rollo or himself. And then Vash gave him hope for Livio, which is far more important to Stampede Wolfwood than what level of violence he should use. Even Livio shooting himself didn't take that away. Despite the destruction of JuLai, Wolfwood ends Stampede S1 with hope, for Livio and maybe even himself.

And also such as Legato. Perhaps that's why Legato's 98/manga obsession with Vash has been refocused towards Wolfwood in "Once Upon A Time In Hopeland/WOLFWOOD". Though I could certainly see Legato plotting a Death Game in revenge for "High Noon at July". Wolfwood is a safe target for Legato to transfer his anger at Knives. The big brother who needs to have his little brother taken away from him for his own good, to purify him.

Fascinating that Legato actually feels anger at Knives here, vs manga Legato who seems to be willing to accept any denigration with the eternal hope that Knives will show him a tiny speck of approval one day. Manga Legato wanted to destroy Vash as a gift for Knives, as proof of Legato's faith. Stampede Legato wants to punish Wolfwood because he can't punish Knives.

[beanghostprincess]

You know, I was thinking a bit about the monster trio and how they all respect food a lot. And it got me thinking about their respective reasons to.

Sanji started resoecting it after being stranded and starving for 6 months, he knew how it felt to be hungry and he doesn't want anyone else to feel like this again. You also got the fact that he is a cook so of course he respects food.

Zoro I am not really sure since I don't remember any specific incident in his life, but its probably due to the strict discipline and culture he was raised in. After all he got raised with Wano costums and Wano is inspired by east asia, mainly Japan. And I might get it wrong but there is some kind of occurence where its rude to not finish your food, and its considered preciois.

Luffy has his whole thing that he just loves to eat and its mostly a gag but I dug in more deeply and...

Did Garp use to fucking starve that child?

I mean, its mostly an assumption, but when Luffy first went to Dadan's place to live she only gave him a bowl of rice and a cup of water and told him he had to work for his food. She excpected him to cry but he just went "Ok. Better than my grandad treats me".

Did Garp just fed Luffy if he completed his trainings (that involved him doing near death experience as a <7 years old CHILD) and/or only made him eat what he hunted? Is that what it is? This whole gag, of Luffy being a glutton, cherishing every piece if food he eats DEFEATING THE WORLD'S STRONGEST CREATURE, FOR A BOWL OF RICE comes from the fact that, as a child, food was quite literally just a rewards, and to him food = freedom, and he loves freedom?

Garp, I swear to Nika-

I've always loved the way OP treats food. Not gonna go full analysis on that because I'm pretty sure one already exists, but Oda keeps wanting to put food/eating in a good light. Food means life and happiness and whenever there's an important scene going on, somebody's eating. It's beautiful. It's surprisingly one of the main traits of Luffy's character. I find it beautiful how the manga keeps showing that food brings happiness and fulfillment. That everybody deserves to eat and that it could never be a bad thing.

We know already why Sanji respects food so much so there's no need to explain it. But you know. Starvation? The way his mom kept hyping up his passion for cooking? His whole character revolves around food and how nobody deserves to starve. Eating shouldn't be a privilege but most of the time it is and people should be thankful they're able to enjoy their delicious meals. So he doesn't waste food because he sees it as a life and happiness source that not most people have access to and it shouldn't be wasted.

Zoro's views are really respectful when it comes to everything. Traditions and rules? Zoro respects that. He's the one who knows the most about pirate language and tradition, so of course he's gonna respect Sanji's views on food. But it isn't just because of that because he already respected food way before joining the crew. It comes from his views on life. Food is necessary for people to live and he respects death a lot (ever since what happened to Kuina) and mortality is something real and present to him constantly. He respects food the way he respects death and life and mortality.

And Luffy... I'd say yes, perhaps it does have something to do with how Garp raised him. It makes sense although I've never actually thought about it that way. But it does look like he has always had to fight for food. But he doesn't only see food as something to fight for because Makino also prepared meals for him. I think the whole point about Luffy and food is freedom (I mean, obviously. God of the Sun and Freedom. We know how it goes). Eating is something necessary to live, but Luffy doesn't see it as a threat. It isn't "Eat or Die" for him. For him, he chooses to eat because food is good for his body and it's delicious, and eating out of pleasure and not just hunger is also part of his character. He's a man who's always starving but for more experiences and tastes and freedom, and he takes food without hesitating once because you shouldn't apologize never, ever for eating.

While Sanji sees food as something he can do for others (he's always starving and making food for everybody else because he's selfless like that and the show wants you to see it), Zoro respects food the same way he respects mortality because it's something necessary to live, and Luffy loves food because it's... Because it's just good, you know? Maybe it isn't that deep. Maybe he eats because he wants to and that's okay. He unapologetically eats and he's selfish about it and that's how it should be.

[gatoraid]

Rakugo references in One Room Angel

(Alert: this post includes spoilers)

One Room Angel, the BL drama directed by Eda Yuka, based on the manga of the same name by Harada, features quite a lot of references to rakugo. Angel seems to enjoy performing rakugo both now and in his past life, and a famous rakugo reference ends up being the key for uncovering Angel’s past memories.

So, what is rakugo and what are the rakugo stories referenced in One Room Angel?

In short, rakugo is a form of traditional comedic storytelling, that was born during the Edo period. It’s been around for about 300 years now. In a way it could be compared to stand-up comedy, except in stand-up, every performer has their own stories/jokes, whereas in rakugo the performers (rakugoka) mostly perform existing rakugo stories, bringing their own flair to them. Rakugoka use only their voice and expressions, plus simple tools like a paper fan (or chopsticks in Angel's case) and a folded tenugui towel to evoke different characters, settings and items in the story. 

Since rakugo was born during the Edo period and was considered entertainment for ordinary people, many classical (kotenrakugo) stories make references to everyday Edo life. There are also new rakugo stories (shinsakurakugo) being written and performed by rakugoka nowadays. 

The two rakugo stories referenced in One Room Angel, Manjuu kowai ( まんじゅうこわい, ”I’m afraid of manju”) and Jugemu (寿限無/じゅげむ) are both classical rakugo. My Japanese teacher told me that these two stories are usually taught to kids at school, so even without ever seeing a live rakugo performance, most Japanese people would be familiar with them.

Manjuu kowai is the story that Angel is repeatedly seen performing. The story starts with an introduction talking about how different people have different tastes, likes and fears. The story itself is about a man who claims that he is afraid of manju (a bun filled with sweet bean paste), and when his friends try to play a prank on him by filling his house with manju, proceeds to eat them and then wonders if he should next tell them that he’s afraid of tea. I really don't think there's any deeper meaning for why they chose this particular story, other than that it's so well known.

Jugemu is a story about a boy with a ridiculously long name. When he was born, his parents asked a Buddhist monk suggestions for a good name that would ensure a long life. After getting a list of names, the parents couldn’t choose just one, so they ended up naming their son Jugemu Jugemu Goko no Surikire Kaijarisuigyo no Suigyomatsu Unraimatsu Furaimatsu Ku Neru Tokoro ni Sumu Tokoro Yabura Koji no Bura Koji Paipo-paipo Paipo no Shuringan Shuringan no Gurindai Gurindai no Ponpokopi no Ponpokona no Chokyumei no Chosuke.

The comedy of the story partly comes from the rakugoka’s ability to recite the long name with amazing speed, and from how inconvenient such a long name is when you just want to have a normal conversation.

Jugemu is referenced in the twitter username tks_jugem2, and Kouki is able to guess the password for the account based on Jugemu’s full name (ie what comes after two Jugemus). 

The irony that a boy who ended up dying so young had a username based on a boy whose million names were meant to ensure a long life is not lost on me. I’m not sure if that was actually what Harada intended in the og story at all, maybe it’s just me overthinking, but it makes this whole thing even sadder.

Fun fact: in the manga, the password was not spelled out for the reader like it was in the drama, you had to figure it out yourself if you wanted to access a website that is linked at the end of the manga that features a special bonus drawing. I think you can still find the link at the end of the english edition of One Room Angel manga on MangaPlanet’s website.

If you want to know more about rakugo, I definitely recommend checking out Descending Stories/ Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu. It's a story about two rival rakugoka, and it showcases the culture and stories of rakugo with love and detail. The original manga was drawn by the famous BL mangaka Kumota Haruko, so even if it’s not strictly BL, I think BL lovers will enjoy it (I sure did). The manga has been licensed in english by Kodansha and there is also a beautiful anime adaptation and a live action drama!

Online sources: JP and ENG wikipedia, NHK for School

[tobiasdrake]

(Re: The Ginyu Post) 1. If Ginyu had only ever body changed with other mutants, then that might explain why he hadn't encountered the same problem he did with Goku. Goku's power requires a lot more skill to access. 2. Not really relevent to anything but I just want to note that we also see someone who may be a Namekian Mutant: Nail, who Friexa clocks at about 42,000. Though he's also the personal guard of the Grand elder, so it's also possible he reaped the benefits of unlocked potential like Krillin did

Yeah, Nail is pretty amazing for such a short-lived character.

Vegeta should be grateful that the Ginyus showed up because this was probably about to end badly for him.

Jeice's line here has been through some fixing. The original version had him astonishedly reading that Vegeta's battle power is coming up to 20k. This, of course, doesn't seem that impressive since he was said to have been 18k on Earth and, in fact, read at 24k earlier in this very arc.

The line was later revised to set Vegeta's current BP at 30k, following his zenkai from Zarbon.

Viz hedges their bets here by using the original 20k number, but adding "And still rising!" Which is still kinda janky because now Burter's reacting with astonishment to an explicitly lowball estimate of Vegeta's ki.

Either way, uh.

Yeah, if Vegeta had succeeded in starting shit back there, he was about to find out real fast and in a hurry why you don't fuck with the Grand Elder's bodyguard. Nail was about to happen to Vegeta in very much the same way that Recoome later did.

Pictured: An approximate estimation of what Vegeta didn't realize he was volunteering for back at Saichoro's home.

It is a pretty popular theory that the reason Nail is this powerful is because he's already had his dormant power drawn out by Saichoro. It is the logical conclusion. Saichoro can draw out a person's dormant ability from someone and there doesn't seem to be any reason he wouldn't do that for his personal bodyguard and attendant. He does it for Krillin, Gohan, and even Dende.

This is never confirmed nor refuted in the manga. The only explanation ever offered for Nail's power is that he's Senshi Taipu or a "Warrior-Type Namekian". This sets him apart from those earlier 3k BP Namekian fighters, as Saichoro notes that he's the only Senshi Taipu on Namek.

Viz says "true warrior" in place of Senshi Taipu which is kind of a slap in the face to those other guys. Now it just sounds like he's shit-talking the dead. Rude.

But the idea is that Senshi Taipu is the other special class of Namekian. The other being Ryuzoku or "Dragon Clan", the sorts of Namekian mystics who do things like create Dragon Balls. The Nameless Namekian was Ryuzoku - and a prodigy Ryuzoku, at that.

It's weird to me that one is a "Taipu" and the other is a "-zoku". We have Ryuzoku, the corrupted Mazoku, and Senshi Taipu. Why isn't that one a -zoku? But I digress.

Something interesting to note about this is that it retroactively implies explanation for how Piccolo was able to reincarnate himself stronger.

"He broke off a piece of himself that's even more powerful than he is because, uh, of reasons." Kind of a weird thing for him to be able to do, right? Why doesn't our Piccolo ever spit out an egg and make Piccolo III who's 8x more powerful than Piccolo? If spawning copies of himself that are superior to the original is a thing he can do then that implies some brand new options.

The Namek arc implies some explanations. During the Frieza battle, Dende explains to Piccolo that he's Senshi Taipu, so he can't learn mystical arts like healing magic.

But the Nameless Namekian and by extension God and PIccolo were Ryuzoku like Dende. So the implied retroactive explanation for how Piccolo was able to make his new self more powerful is because he reincarnated as Senshi Taipu, trading in the mystical package for pure battle power.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super Manga ch.91-93

Last time, we covered the "prequel" story of Goten and Trunks adopting superhero identities and capturing Dr. Hedo. Now we get into the events of the DBS: Super Hero movie itself. I already liveblogged the movie extensively in September (here, here, here, here, and here), so for the manga adaptation I'll be focusing mainly on whatever changes Toyotaro made to the story.

First off, Chapter 91 opens with Piccolo picking up Pan from school, and when she talks about wanting to be a superhero like Goten and Trunks have been doing recently, Piccolo offers to train her just like he trained Gohan in Dragon Ball Z.

Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing we can expect from this adaptation. It's mostly a straight retelling of the movie, and the little extras that get added in don't really add much to the story. I mean, the movie established that Piccolo has picked up Pan from school in the past, but there was no need to show it. Also, the movie didn't really explain why Piccolo started training Pan, probably because it didn't need to. I think the manga pretty much proves my point, because it attempts to tackle the question, but only comes up with a fairly pat answer. She wanted to fly and shoot hand energy like Goten and Trunks, and so Piccolo offered to teach her and she said yes.

Then we get to this scene, where Krillin's boss in the West City P.D. holds a briefing on the Red Ribbon Army and their plans to recruit Dr. Hedo. This takes the place of the flashback montage that opened the movie, and it sucks.

That montage was awesome, and Toyotaro could have drawn his own version of it here, but instead he did this. We could be looking a Goku punching Tao Pai Pai, or 17 killing Dr. Gero, or Cell smirking like a boss, but instead we're in a boring conference room reading walls of text.

Look at this fucking page! It's awful! A lot of this one serves as a stand-in for Carmine's report to Magenta about Dr. Hedo. I get it, this is a lot of information to go through, and Toyotaro probably wanted to move on as quickly as possible, but part of what I loved about the movie was the way they showcased the characters and visuals during the infodumping. Carmine's report is pretty dry in the movie, but Magenta's office is interesting to look at, and Carmine and Magenta themselves are visually compelling characters. While they talk about Hedo, Carmine shows off his video editing skills and Magenta keeps screwing up his snacks

This police briefing, however, sucks all the fun out of it. This place looks like a hotel conference room with hardwood floors. All of the cops look exactly the same, and why the hell are they wearing helmets and sunglasses indoors, anyway? Krillin's boss, Sergeant Nutz, has some potential, but she has nothing to do with this story, so featuring her so prominently here is just a waste of time.

What really irks me is that the next scene shows Carmine and Magenta talking about Dr. Hedo, just like in the movie, except there's not much for them to say because Krillin and Nutz already covered it all! That's really dumb! We have two scenes designed to set up the plot of the movie, and one of them was in the movie, and actually features the main antagonists. But Toyotaro chose to emphasize the other scene instead.

So the idea here is that the police are already aware of Magenta's scheme to revive the Red Ribbon Army, and they know he plans to recruit Dr. Hedo once he gets out of prison. They also know that Hedo had that disc containing data on Dr. Gero's bioweapon, although I don't see how they could know that, since Trunks couldn't access the data on the disc and it was destroyed before anyone else could try. Hedo told Krillin in Chapter 90 that he memorized the contents of the disc, but he never said what it was that he memorized. This also goes against the storyline in the movie. In the film, Magenta had Gero's data on Cell, and the reason he wanted Hedo was because his own scientists couldn't do anything with it.

Anyway, the police seem to know everything about the Red Ribbon Army already. The only thing they don't know is where the Red Ribbon base is, so they send Krillin to follow Magenta's limo and spy on him. So we get the limo scene from the movie, except Krillin's clinging to the side of the car the whole trip, and then Hedo spots him and sends his cyborg bee, Hatchimaru, to attack him.

The gag here is that Magenta and Carmine don't even know Krillin is out there, and Hedo doesn't particularly care. The scene plays out almost exactly like it does in the movie, but with Krillin spliced in like Jabba the Hut in the Star Wars Special Edition.

Of course, Krillin gets shaken off so the base's location remains a secret, so this whole bit is completely pointless. It's just so dumb. I assume Toyotaro needed to pad out the story for one reason or another, or maybe he just wanted to add some new details so he wouldn't get bored retelling a movie like this. But if this is the best he can come up with, why bother? So far, this manga keeps "expanding" on the movie by answering questions nobody asked, like "Why did Piccolo start training Pan?" or "Why didn't the authorities stop the Red Ribbon Army?" or "Why is Gamma 1's cape red?"

From here, it's a pretty faithful retelling of the movie, which kind of makes the "filler" scenes even more conspicuous. It's refreshing to see the actual story move along without all these pointless diversions. On the other hand, it's kind of dull, because I already covered the movie and there's nothing else to talk about here.

There is some extra stuff in the Gamma 2 vs. Piccolo fight. Piccolo loses an arm, but then he grows a new one and makes it all long to catch Gamma 2 off guard. It doesn't slow him down much, but it's something we didn't get in the movie. I do find it a bit strange how Gamma 2 notes Piccolo's regeneration ability like it's this new data to add to his files. Shouldn't the Red Ribbon Army have all of this intel programmed into Gamma 2 by now?

Moving on, when Piccolo infiltrates the Red Ribbon base, he gets stopped by his superiors, who remind "94" that he isn't assigned to this area, but another soldier offers to switch assignments so "94" can gain some valuable experience watching Hedo eat cookies.

Again, what is the point of this? We're just derailing the story so Toyotaro can waste a page explaining how Piccolo managed to get this far into the base. In the movie, nobody notices or cares that "94" is in the command center instead of the hangar. That's because they're all faceless, interchangeable henchmen. They wear masks and refer to each other by numbers, for crying out loud! This is why Piccolo disguised himself in the first place! If Toyotaro wrote Star Wars, he'd do a whole scene where Luke Skywalker has to rewrite the Death Star's duty roster just so "TK-421" can get reassigned to prison detail. Nobody cares!

Okay now this is more like it. We get to the part where no one can reach Goku and Vegeta because they're training on Beerus' planet, and so Toyotaro gives us a little more of the sparring match Goku and Broly had in the movie. It's not a lot, but this is the sort of thing filler is good for. Toyo also does a whole montage recap of the DBS: Broly film, which is perfectly serviceable, but it annoys me because it demonstrates that he could have done the same thing with the Red Ribbon Army flashback in Chapter 91, but instead he did the briefing scene with Sgt. Nutz. Ugh.

We see the same scene where Vegeta explains the importance of mental training, although when he talks about all of their recent opponents, he adds manga-only characters like Moro, Gas, and Black Frieza. And that's fine, although it's strange when he talks about Jiren and Black Frieza in the same breath like this. In the manga, Vegeta has gotten pretty good at "Ultra Ego", his answer to Goku's Ultra Instinct. And Goku's learned to tap into UI at will. So I'm pretty sure Jiren and Moro aren't really an issue for either of them anymore. I mean, the only reason Goku couldn't defeat Jiren by himself at the Tournament of Power was because he lacked experience using UI, and now he's much better at it.

The point I'm getting at is that in the manga, Vegeta doesn't need to do "mental training" to defeat Jiren because he's already surpassed him. And he might need it to surpass Broly and Black Frieza, but he speaks as though that's their secret, and he needs to learn how to do it himself. I'm pretty sure Broly isn't "relaxed" between attacks when he's using his full power. He was kind of freaking the fuck out back then. Black Frieza might have been doing something like that, but he only hit Vegeta once, so I'm not sure how he could be certain.

So then we move on to the part where Piccolo wishes for a power-up from Shenron, and we just skip the part where Dende upgrades Shenron to do that. The implication here is that DBS-manga Shenron always had the ability to make Orange Piccolo, and no one bothered to ask before. Kind of annoying.

Anyway, while Piccolo and Bulma are getting their...ahem... enhancements, Trunks sees them and calls Goten. They make plans to sneak out and play superheroes again, even though Goten's grounded and he really doesn't need to run up a bigger bill with his mom. I guess this is the throughline for Goten and Trunks in Dragon Ball Super. No matter what happens, Dragon Team tries to keep the boys out of it. It's not just Chi-Chi wanting Goten to study. Back in Resurrection F, Bulma tells the others that she doesn't want them fucking around during the battle with Frieza. And Vegeta ices them out of the tournaments with the other universes because he doesn't want them turning into Gotenks and being dorks the whole time. The Saiyaman X-1 and X-2 caper probably didn't do much to convince anyone that Goten and Trunks have matured.

But they still crave the excitement of being in the thick of things. They know the adults are trying to keep them out of it, and that just makes it more exciting. I suppose this is the legacy of the Buu Saga, where they had to get involved because there was no other choice, and they've had the bug for DBZ mayhem ever since, but their parents said no.

And maybe that's why Goku and Vegeta were so determined to train the boys in the End of Z episodes. Sometime after Super Hero, they came back home, heard about the Saiyamen costumes and the battle with Cell Max, and decided that they needed to be toughened up. Like, okay, you want to go fight bad guys like we do? Stop doing the poses and quit relying on fusion and learn how to do it right. And if the sparring sessions are too hard for you, you can always go back to doing your homework like your mom wanted."

That's why Goten's so frustrated in DBZ 289. He just wants to go on dates or screw around, but his only options are a) homework and b) fight for-ev-er *clap clap clap-clap-clap*.

And now that I think about it, this is where GT dropped the ball with Goten, because he doesn't really seem to have gained anything from that. Hitting the books and getting hit by Goku should have made him a bit more serious about his life, but instead he's just constantly talking to girls on the phone, because that was the only thing GT's writers seemed to think of for him to do.

I mean, they kind of got it right with Trunks, who went into GT with a lot of responsibility and skills. He didn't enjoy his position, but you could tell he'd grown a lot as a person since the end of DBZ.

So yeah, maybe I'm beginning to appreciate Big Goten more than I did before, but this newfound perspective still doesn't do much for this part of the manga. There's just a lot of nothing happening here, and throwing more Krillin, Goten, and Trunks at it doesn't help matters.

[swallowerofdharma]

Yashiro’s Cruel God part two

Intermission: romanticizing trauma or Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.

Most people looking at someone like Yashiro would feel deeply sorry and they would make a wish for him to find something or someone good in life. But when we start talking about healing we forget or we don’t know what trauma is. Manga can actually help us understand much better in what terms trauma really works: the word we use in several european languages comes from the Greek word for wound τραῦμα. I don’t have the same linguistics insights for the Japanese words - it would be great to have that insight if someone can provide it - but I have access to visual representations, because a number of mangaka associated traumatic events/memories with physical injuries, and the very severe ones with a lost limb, a lost eye. I have talked about this briefly here. The earliest in life or the most severe or prolonged or repeated traumatic events or experiences - the deeper the injury is registered, written in the brain. In the case of a lost limb, there isn’t much healing to do, that part of the body is forever changed, but there are other things to do: relearning how to do things in different ways according to the changes and forgetting about what you could do before or what other people can do with their limbs intact and fully functioning. Of course you can get a prosthetic, an aid, you work around the injured parts. But they ache, they give you phantom pain, they don’t grow back, and the healing is only possible in the parts that are left. Thinking about trauma like this is how we don’t romanticize it. I really think that Yoneda-san is intentionally making a point to show how difficult this process of adaptation is and also how common is for the people around Yashiro to not fully understand or care or know what can be done and what can’t be done. Only Yashiro knows himself that well, can properly determine his boundaries. First he went through a long phase of trial and error and he progressively learned to regulate his impulses quite successfully I must say, because we see that he was alone, lacking guidance, and he did end up naked in an alley, but at least he was sober and drug free. That is when Misumi came in and, although he had also his selfish motives and interests, he cared enough and offered Yashiro some guidance and most importantly conditions so that Yashiro needed to learn how to restrain himself and only indulge his sex drive more safely and more intentionally, setting new rules and adapting to a life full of other responsibilities and commitments. Remember that the premise here isn’t to assign blame or make moral judgments or excuses, but to understand how these characters grew, matured or changed or how they developed their expectations and interpretations of the world around them.

There were areas where Yashiro, as a full formed adult, still refused to be challenged, mostly because he had adapted and learned how to be self reliant, but unfortunately also because he interiorized an image of himself as someone unlovable, as a consequence of his parents’ behavior and later his unrequited feelings for Kageyama. Yashiro can absolutely find love. He fell in love twice, other people have fallen in love with him before, he doesn’t want to hurt others, he generally cares, he has gained much better social skills than those he had as a teenager, he is still an eccentric but not unreasonable or crazy. The problem is that he doesn’t know how to accept romantic love because he doesn’t recognize the feelings of being loved. The new experience is confusing, disorienting and scary, nauseating, because he lacks points of reference. He can’t go back to a foundation in love, an original self that is pure and secure and healthy, because his parents didn’t help him build it or deliberately destroyed and reshaped it with fear. Romanticism poses love as a good, natural, inevitable human thing, implies an ideal world where everyone has that pure healthy self and if pain and hardship are inevitable in life and each person is wounded, they must get to heal normally or simply by reaching back and restoring that pure and secure and healthy self as much as possible. If it was parental love/care and responsibility to offer the best condition for the self to be that way, then it will be the love/passion and commitment of a romantic partner to help healing the inevitability wounded self later in life.

I don’t think it was pure coincidence that in the same chapter you have these two different scenes not far from each other. Doumeki has been left behind and he is reminiscing about the events that brought him to this point. I am still focusing on Yashiro now, so that I haven’t properly talked about Doumeki, who has his own wounds within him, but as I mentioned last time, Doumeki experienced betrayal, especially regarding his father, after he already had a foundation in a family with a sufficient amount of care. Even if his parents weren’t especially doting or his experience was so much at odds with his sister’s experience inside the same family, he still developed normally, if not very reserved or able to express himself only through controlled physical aggression at kendo practice. We see in this memory another element, Doumeki playing normally with other boys and having fun. When the chapter goes on showing Yashiro in a flashback, we see him spying on Kurobane’s nephew on Misumi’s order. But we also see him as this uncomfortable nineteen years old who is an outsider and feels like one when confronted with normal children playing normal games.

I’d really like to write a proper analysis of the confrontation between Yashiro and Doumeki in the car in chapter 32, because I think that conversation is a very good example of two people coming from completely different places and confronting each other without reaching a solution that would work for both of them, because of lack of understanding and the extreme difficulty to communicate. We see very well here how the dynamics older/younger and realist/romantic play out. Scenes like these, where they talk, get to know each other, they are there and they were frequent even.

For now, I just want to underline another example of Yashiro looking at children with a foundation in love/safety from the outside and having to wrangle with that feeling of alienation. How can he take part in that same world as these people, how can he be part of the same world Doumeki lives in? Since he is going to meet Hirata and he doesn’t know what might happen there, his only choice is to leave Doumeki behind, but since he doesn’t obey anymore, Yashiro has to push him away and, if necessary, intentionally hurt him. Doumeki tries different strategies to stay, and Yashiro seems to relent on occasions, but when the time comes, he takes the gun and shoots.

Again a long post, and I don’t know how much I have accomplished with this. Between phone calls and my cat giving me the stinky eye because I am two minutes late to feed her, although I had mentally prepared to tackle the part about Doumeki, I recon I am going to leave this part as it is and continue the analysis later. Hope you don’t mind, I am not great at planning things out. So this is again to be continued…

[chouhatsumimi]

FYI for followers interested in J-E translation

(This post is most relevant the weekend of April 6, 2024)

If you're near Toronto or can get there for a weekend, consider registering for the IJET conference, organized by the Japan Association of Translators. The early bird discount ends in 24 hours, though registration is still open until May 17.

I first went when I had tried my hand at translating a few things, but had very little experience and by no means would have called myself a pro. I wasn't sure if I'd be welcome there, but everyone was very friendly, and I met a lot of people who I'm still in touch with and showed me that translation is a real career path. There is also a student price for a discount, so even if you're on the fence about whether translation is for you, I'd recommend coming to check it out.

Honestly it may even be best suited to new translators, because you learn about a lot of things you may have never heard before, like patent translation, ATA certification, agencies vs. direct clients, general translation vs. specializing in a field, how to manage a business, etc. etc. etc. Personally I'm most excited for the session on entertainment translation by Katrina Leonoudakis, the keynote speaker by a rakugo-ka (I've been following the manga Akane-banashi pretty religiously) and a few sessions on interpreting, which I always really wish I was better at.

SECONDLY and just as time-sensitive,

The same org (Japan Association of Translators) runs a... maybe month long? seminar on translation every year, where you translate text(s) and compare them to translations by fellow learners in the seminar, and get feedback from more experienced translators. I think you get out of it as much as you put in. I participated way back in 2017 and didn't really know what I was doing, but @kanpeki-bekki just participated last year, and can probably tell you more about it.

The most important part is that the application period is only open for like a week or less every year in April, so if you want to sign up, do it NOW, or keep an eye open in future years!

You do have to pay and register as a JAT member, but honestly that was probably the most beneficial part of it for me, since being a member also means being in the JAT directory, which is how I got recruited for my current job in translation. Other benefits are access to a job board, forums to interact with other translators, videos of past educational sessions, and cheaper registration for other JAT events. JAT also has special interest groups, so if you're interested in Pharma, Legal, Patents, Literature, or Entertainment, it's a good way to meet people interested and working in the same fields.

[piracytheorist]

"Sy-on boy" vs. "Second son"

As someone who a) watches the anime first and then reads the manga (and doesn't read manga chapters that haven't been animated yet), b) is quite cautious about Damian's character and c) doesn't even like Damιanya as a ship, I think I have a very different perspective on Anya's view of Damian - at least, according to the point the anime has reached - to the point that I can get VERY confused whenever I see some shippers talk about that. To the point I go like "Is there something I missed?"

And there IS something I miss. And that's manga-only (or at least manga-first) context.

In Japanese, Loid thinks about Damian being the second son of Donovan Desmond, using the word "次男" (jinan) which literally means "second son".

Damian uses the same word for himself later,

and Anya picks that up from then on (though using hiragana characters instead of kanji, as she does in general). And maybe because of that use of simpler characters, the manga translation team decided to have her call Damian "sy-on boy" - a mispronounced "scion boy" - instead of simply "second son".

The thing is, though "sy-on boy" makes Anya's speech sound simpler and more imaginative, fitting her age more, it can also sound more endearing, cute and affectionate, if you lean towards that. Meanwhile, "second son" can range from neutral at best to derogatory at worst - especially considering that Damian is not dealing very well with the fact that his older brother is already an accomplished Imperial Scholar and has raised the bar very high for Damian.

Again, my first contact with the story was from the anime, where Anya simply calls him "second son".

Which, if I'm honest, already sounds appropriately silly. Who calls someone, even the second child of a family, that? Anya's use of "haha" for mama and "chichi" for papa is already kind of incorrect when she talks to them, she's young and has still got lots to learn, in the same chapter/episode she called Becky "milady" until Becky reminded her of her name, and also Damian pissed her off so she has no reason to refer to him with his name (yes I'm fully taking her side on this, bully victim for bully victim). She heard both Loid and Damian use "second son" in their thoughts, so same way she called Becky "milady", she picked that up as a way to call Damian.

I actually wonder why the manga translation team went for "sy-on boy". There's no indication that Anya heard the word "scion" ever before, so it sounds out of place, and honestly, with what I said above, out of character for her. In a weird way, though, it actually fits with how she manages a decent score in her "Ancient Language" test many many chapters later.

(I am aware that there was a fan translation of some chapters before the manga got picked up for an official translation. I have no access to the fan translation, so maybe "scion" was used there and it passed on to the official translations in that way?)

Anyway, what I mean to say is that the use of "sy-on boy" may have encouraged a more lenient and even "encouraging" view of Anya's feelings for Damian, even though through her actions and words she keeps showing that she would rather not be around him, but she has a mission to accomplish.

And with that, though I don't know any Japanese myself, I'm leaning towards the conclusion that "sy-on boy" is not a translation that accurately communicates Anya's sentiments.

And as someone who is very passionate about defending Anya's mistrust of Damian, the use of "sy-on boy" in the manga translation sounds... misleading. Maybe it just feels that way to me because I am a bit more cautious, but it also explains why some fans are so passionate to the point of saying Damian never actually bullied Anya - or to tell me to my face that I shouldn't call Damian a bully because it upsets his fans. If the manga has her use a nickname that could show she's on equal footing with him and could betray, under a certain interpretation, some hidden affection for him, then you kind of understand why people reach that point. It doesn't mean it's right to say Damian was never a bully, or to tell me that after I've shared I still carry scars from having been bullied, but you know. Fandoms will be fandoms.