#and his design really just screams his name to the point i cant imagine america with another name lmfao (i too dont know why)

[hetalia-fannn]

Dunno why but I REALLY love Aph America's name, Alfred F. Jones. If this ain't the most stereotypical American name then I don't know anything lmao.

[pumpkinpaix]

You were paging Saint Seiya fans? I’d lay serious money that someone involved in the production of “The Untamed: The Walking Dead” was an Andromeda Shun fan; watch how they have WQL using his chains.

(anon,,,, you unlocked hidden dialogue,,,,,, i’m. sorry, but also?? not sorry. im literally listening to nebula chain on repeat right now, and I can still fucking sing along to like, every lyric and i memorized this back when i was 12 and couldn’t speak japanese lol)

GOD MY LITERAL EXACT THOUGHT as SOON as I saw the trailer!! when i say i screamed!!!!! :’D

i mean check out my tags on the post;;;

[ID: screenshot of my tags on the trailer for cql: the living dead. relevant tags read: #cant believe my character type remains soft boy who controls pointy chains #wen ning #or #andromeda shun #you decide HAHAHA /end ID]

in case anyone is wondering what we’re talking about:

[ID: screenshot of wen ning and sizhui from the trailer of the living dead. wen ning is holding glowing orange chains that float around him like snakes or ribbons with triangular pointed ends, dressed in a dark cloak. /end ID]

[ID: screenshot of andromeda shun from saint seiya (omega), holding a glowing pink chain that floats around him like a ribbon/snake with a pointed triangular end, dressed in a dark cloak /end ID]

(got a little uhh, deep in the weeds, so here’s a readmore)

andromeda shun remains a really important character to me, for both his embodiment of kindness and the radical gender space he occupied. like!! look here. hyoshun was the very first queer ship I let myself care about, and I felt enormously transgressive about it when I wrote them having a single kiss in a oneshot i never published because I was scared to. I still have it in a notebook upstairs! maybe i could post it now, ahahahahah. baby’s first queer story!! :D

i was really disappointed with the decision to cisswap him in the netflix adaptation because it felt like an undoing of so much that made his character compelling. there was something so extraordinarily powerful about a character who was completely confident in his masculinity, regardless of what other people said, regardless of what kind of gender roles he occupied: he cried easily and freely, in happiness and sorrow, was violent only as a last resort, chose kindness over everything else, fought under an explicitly female constellation, with an extremely feminine armor design (pink with pseudo-boob plates LMFAO), but was also the most powerful member of the team, the first bronze saint to access the eighth sense (i think?? oh my god someone canon-check me, it’s been a LONG time since I read/watched it), and canonically the purest soul on earth!!! 

(this is not to say that saint seiya was like, gender radical~ to be clear. it remains wildly misogynist LMFAO like. mother FUCK kurumada!! there was SUCH potential for interesting character beats with every fucking woman, and none of them got them 8)))) like, every girl in that story had excellent potential!!! i will FOREVER be pissed about how we didn’t get shun & june friendship development HHHHH i have been bitter about this since i was 12 and no i will NEVER stop!! do i have specific hcs about how they fell into a relationship bc of shared trauma + proximity and then realized they were better off as friends, broke up amicably, and remained extremely close for the rest of their lives?? yes, don’t worry about how the canon timeline is so fucked it wouldn’t allow for that since shun canonically spends like, 95% of his time post andromeda island in life-or-death battles, on life support, or the host of the ultimate enemy. and then i think 250 years in the past, maybe?? i haven’t read next dimension L O L)

what i would have GIVEN for fem Ikki or Seiya or Shiryu instead!!! (i’m excluding hyoga for a couple of reasons, but he still would’ve been better than shun) god imagine the POWER of phoenix/andromeda sister/brother dynamics! for all the reasons that a gentle man is compelling, a vicious, arrogant, selfish, cruel woman that refuses to die ALSO would have been incredible as a protag. (basically, what we COULD have had with shaina goddamn it!!) imagine sapphic ikki/esmeralda!!! or shiryu/shunrei, or seiya/any woman that the series decided to throw at him lol.

anyways, circling back around to the original point, I would say saint seiya was one of the most influential animes of the 80s, and remains listed with series like dragonball, sailor moon, ranma, etc. in most parts of the world that experienced an anime boom, except the united states?? like, asia obviously, and I know it was popular in europe (particularly france and belgium) and latin america (latin america truly carries this fandom outside of asia like damn), but somehow, the states really missed out :’) i suspect it has to do with cartoon network botching the release of the dub /shrug

saint seiya definitely occupies a culturally significant position in china (i remember when I was obsessed with it in middle school, I visited china and several of my family members were like what??? saint seiya?? that’s such a violent show!! for boys!!! whereas in the states, almost no one recognizes the name) so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it was an intentional reference. or ripoff AHAHA

as an aside, wen ning and shun also have pretty easily comparable character notes: eg. kind and soft, but extraordinarily dangerous when either pissed off or fighting seriously; perceived as enormously weak/shy/sensitive, but are secretly very talented in a specific martial skill; the whole “harbors a horrific evil force within” thing and fighting for control over it--so frankly, i love it, even if it’s 100% Not That Deep. i understand that this is a somewhat generic character archetype, but i am just like. That archetype with Those chains? 👀

IF ONLY THE LIVING DEAD HADN’T BEEN ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE,,,,,,

i was literally so excited for it, and i was so terribly betrayed :’)

another parallel: neither living dead nor saint seiya had any respect for women eyyyyy

tl;dr, i love andromeda shun, and we were robbed by every production team >:c