#but also maybe to remina as well?

[mycomori]

what junji ito character am i? i actually wnana figure that out in my reread of all his books

[eyedelater]

junji ito post

this is a diary post of my thoughts while reading various works by junji ito.

i found the beautiful hardcover edition of GYO at my local library, so i borrowed that on a whim. i read that. then i thought i would watch the movie version because i wanted to see how they would tackle, you know… all aspects of the work. the movie was so lousy i quit watching less than halfway through. maybe i'll pick it up again sometime. but i'm a stickler for honoring the source material, and they inserted so much weird and dumb fanservice, it was intolerable. then i wondered what other anime adaptations existed of junji ito works. so i watched the 2022 netflix series JUNJI ITO MANIAC. i thought it was, on the whole, somewhat weak, but i did watch every episode. then i got more junji ito books from my local library, including TOMIE, UZUMAKI, DESERTER, LOVESICKNESS, REMINA, and VENUS IN THE BLIND SPOT. i also watched the series JUNJI ITO COLLECTION and read more stories online. i wanted this post to encompass all of ito-sensei's works, but after reading most of them, i decided to read the rest some other time. you can scroll to near the end of this post for an incomplete list of ito-sensei's works that i find to be worth reading. this post contains some spoilers, but i think spoilers don't matter too much for horror manga, as it's the visuals that really count.

i should preface everything by saying that i have known of junji ito for many years. when i was in high school… well, a short summary would be that in 9th grade, i saw a traumatizing gory video that messed me up and made me afraid of the dark despite being 14 years old, and i was especially afraid of dark spaces like the cracks between things. i slept on a mattress pressed into the corner of a room, and i was still afraid of the gap between the mattress and the wall. i wouldn't face my back to it all night. the cabinet door under the bathroom sink didn't shut all the way, and i would watch that dark gap through the clear shower curtain for 100% of my time in the shower to make sure nothing came out. (i made my dad get a clear shower curtain for that reason.) i was mentally ill, you see. did you know that sometimes, knowing a fear is irrational does nothing to make you not afraid? (i'm better now.) so there's the baseline, and then, due to the whims of my internet friend group, i felt compelled to read junji ito's THE ENIGMA OF AMIGARA FAULT. it struck the worst possible chord with me: now i knew that what could be lurking in the dark cracks between things is a stretched and disfigured human body being blissfully, eternally compelled through its own personal tunnel. THAT is what's in between my mattress and the wall. THAT is what could slip through the crack in the bathroom cabinet door. can i put into words how awful it was to think about? but of course, being rational at the same time, i acknowledged even then that the manga itself was kinda good. to come up with such an unpleasant idea is worthy of praise in itself. so i came to respect junji ito. but i haven't read that story again, and i won't. (they had the nerve to stick it in as a bonus story at the end of the GYO hardcover. i didn't even flip through. i will not read that story again.) several years later, i read UZUMAKI and thought it was good. and i think i read one or two TOMIE stories and then lost interest. (oh and i read the cat diary with yon and mu with no hesitation because i knew it wouldn't actually be scary. it was fun.)

so i had the impression that junji ito was very powerful and worthy of my respect. that's why i picked up GYO at my local library. i was pretty sure it was going to be good, and there was also a distant element of facing my fears.

GYO was pretty good. the way humans became disfigured after infection reminded me of Mermaid Swamp, an RPGmaker game i played a while ago and lost sleep over. i can't say i recommend it, but i do like RPGmaker horror games… anyway, GYO was well-composed and certainly Extensive in Scope. you know, it just keeps piling on and on. but it all came together… kind of. but when we got the circus part, i had to be like, "seriously?"

then i watched JUNJI ITO MANIAC. i find that netflix-produced animes have a certain flavor, a tinge that says, "netflix execs really really really really want to make money from this!!!" so to the extent that there is production value, it feels like it has been expended for the sake of making it Look like the anime is good, and not for actually making the anime good, if that makes sense. i feel that there is some heart missing… some loving devotion to the source material. at least some of the time. after watching the whole series, i came across many of the source stories in the short story collections i read. the anime adaptations were generally faithful to the short stories, and i appreciate that. but there is a difference between "turning a manga into an anime" and "turning a manga into a good anime." it is the difference between "this manga scene is now happening in motion" and "the tension and emotion of the original scene has been successfully translated into motion." and actually, it kind of felt like… for some of these… we didn't need to animate them? the thing about horror manga is that your own feelings of horror set the pace. maybe you are pulled quickly forward by suspense, but your eye lingers on the most hideous pages against your will. if the scariest part flashes up too briefly when translated into anime, it won't have as much of an effect. so it felt as though the timing for the scariest parts was weirdly rushed in some of the anime episodes. even watching without knowing the source material, i got the distinct impression that the manga had to be much better than this. [note added in later: sometimes, they actually weren't much better.] they got some of the faces wrong, too. you know how junji ito has his distinctive style where sunken eyes are expertly depicted with many small lines? it's a striking look. it looks great. classic. the way they showed those sunken eyes in the anime was unbelievably lame. it was an airbrushed look. i know they couldn't have animated it with many small lines, but shading it with a harder edge would have looked a thousand times better. or cel shading. come up with a creative solution to capture the effect. also, some of the voices were really annoying. i mean, i guess souichi's voice being annoying is appropriate. (what is souichi's deal? isn't he just really annoying? i haven't read any of his short stories yet.) anyway probably the best story in this series was the hanging balloons. i haven't read that story yet either. i have a feeling the manga is much scarier. but the anime has the advantage of showing the movement of the balloons. the way it will loop around your neck and fling you away in a second was well done.

(revelation) i see… so basically… the JUNJI ITO MANIAC series was the second junji ito series netflix made. so these are all the second-tier stories that they didn't care to animate in the first series? is that right? that makes sense. i'll have to watch the other series soon. [note added in later: wrong. JUNJI ITO COLLECTION was about the same.]

some of ito-sensei's stories are bizarrely anticlimactic. because it is horror manga, i set aside my usual expectation of a happy ending; i am expecting an ending that is either disastrous or faintly hopeful despite everything. but i was expecting an ending, and some of these short stories don't have much of one. like "the bully" (ijimekko). i thought it wasn't very good. i thought it was a miss. i think maybe that one didn't need to be animated, for that reason. but after reading several, i have come to accept that an anticlimactic ending is standard for his short stories. i got used to it. i guess his intention is to end a scary story without much denouement, before the terror fades away, so as to leave a stronger impact. [note added in later: it turns out that in an interview, he said pretty much exactly that.] but i think it wasn't executed successfully every time.

i read the LOVESICKNESS collection of short stories. the story of the beautiful boy at the crossroads was pretty good. i find it kind of strange how romantic love is a strong and frequently recurring theme in ito-sensei's work, and not just in this particular collection. well, the whole way he depicts women has a certain flavor, doesn't it.

i read REMINA. i don't have very strong feelings about this one except that remina the girl sure doesn't have very much agency as a character. all she does is get pursued and picked up and pulled around by everyone on earth. i thought that as a climax, there might actually be some fun and exciting link between her and remina the planet, since at first that it seemed to attack the most when she was being crucified or whatever, but there was no such thing. remina the planet just made a beeline for earth and then started taking its time on the devouring part for no reason.

i spent my whole saturday reading TOMIE from cover to cover. it was pretty good. i think it's really funny how tomie herself evolves (in terms of character development) to be such a needy brat. and i think it's funny how all the tomies want to kill each other. i like how a tomie regenerating under certain circumstances takes on some characteristics of her surroundings, like the ashes tomies and the sake tomies and the carpet tomie. i also think it's really funny how tomie really doesn't want to split into more than one but she's sooo prone to it and she haaates it. overall, i was more amused than really scared by TOMIE. important note: there's probably quite a lot to be said if you read these stories through an explicitly feminist lens, but i don't care to do that right now.

i'm looking at wikipedia now and realizing there is a nearly endless supply of junji ito short stories. my local library does not have all of these. they have six or seven volumes, which is a ton given the extent of their manga collection, and i kinda thought that was all, but it's not. i'll have to read some of these online. however, there is a dilemma. given my history of getting afraid of the dark and its debilitating effects on my life, i want to avoid giving myself that feeling again (and i know it is possible), so i never read or watch anything scary at night. but i don't read manga online unless it is on my laptop or ipad. and i don't have my laptop or ipad with me in the daytime, only in the evenings… maybe i'll bring my ipad to work…? [note added in later: i made it work by reading in the early evening. this is the kind of thing i really worry about.]

i guess i've had a complicated relationship with horror media in that i like it, and most of the time it doesn't Hit in a bad way, but i need to make sure to take precautions when i consume it or else i could seriously lose a lot of sleep. even just typing out that paragraph about my ordeal in high school left me with a terribly nervous feeling because i wrote it at night and relived unpleasant memories. but i can still turn a lightswitch off and then walk out of a dark room without pressing my back against a wall. so i'm miles ahead of where i was back then. that's a relief.

i will note that this whole time, i kiiinda thought junji ito's "ito" miiight just be ito 糸 (thread). i mean, i knew his name (romanized) long before i ever learned that "ito" means "thread." it's only natural that in my ignorance, i might form some association between them. but it's totally not thread. who would be named that? (there's probably somebody.) it's actually itou 伊藤. junji itou. itou junji. but no one romanizes it like that. it's the same itou as the itou in delicious ITO EN jasmine tea, which goes really well with unfrosted blueberry pop tarts. if you're planning to try it with frosted pop tarts, don't even bother. oi ocha is good too.

while watching MANIAC, i was like, what is souichi's deal…? now i'm watching the first episode of JUNJI ITO COLLECTION and i've realized that souichi could be an enjoyably ridiculous character but they gave him a completely insufferable voice actor and thus made him insufferable. i wonder if they had the perfectly reasonable thought, "we can't make his voice nice or else he could become sexy to teen girls, and that idea is apprehensible," and then they overcorrected. perhaps they could've made it less awful and safely unsexy by giving him a realistic teenage boy voice. they could even make it appropriately obnoxious without going too far. i have to read the souichi series and then i'll be able to love him. i can't love him with this shitty voice <3 [note added in later: it turns out souichi is in 6th grade and 11 years old. he's not even a teen. that means my sexy voice hypothesis, by all rights, ought to be moot. i still think they made the wrong voice actor choice. i mean, not that the actor didn't give it his all. but he sounds like an annoying man or teen, not an annoying kid. souichi needed a kid voice.]

JUNJI ITO COLLECTION failed to successfully adapt the story of the beautiful boy at the crossroads. as a multi-chapter story with a relatively strong narrative, it should have been given at least a whole episode or an OVA-length animation to tell the whole story at once, but instead, they abbreviated it and never followed up with the rest. that being said, the main problem was that they didn't make the narrative as clear as in the manga. well, whatever. i'm going to watch through COLLECTION even though it's lousy.

i read the compilation book entitled VENUS IN THE BLIND SPOT. apart from noticing that they had the audacity to include the enigma of amigara fault again, none of the stories especially stuck with me except the cute love letter manga to kazuo umezz. i'll have to read some of his stuff next. speaking of other horror manga, i bought and read the english translation of "inuki kanako no daikyoufu" (Be Very Afraid of Kanako Inuki!) by inuki kanako because i wanted to support my local comic book shop. i kinda picked it at random based on the cover and paid full cover price. i kinda didn't like it. i don't have much to say about it except that her perfectly neckless art style is fun. maybe i'll read her tatari series sometime.

i'm remembering that when i read UZUMAKI for the first time, despite having watched many horror movies, i failed to consider the narrative expectations for works in the horror genre; that is, i had not resigned myself to a bad ending, which i now understand is very much to be expected. so i was really rooting for kirie and shuichi the whole time, and at the end, when they fail to escape the spiral, i was like "ok fuck me then i guess." i was pissed. but what i'm saying is that i was wrong to be pissed because my expectations were unreasonable. in retrospect, it was an appropriate ending.

there's that one tumblr post making fun of kirie and her fucked up boyfriend. it has a couple of panels where shuichi's looking deadened and she puts her head on his shoulder. i think that post is mean. i'm on shuichi's side! be nice to him! you saw what happened to his dad! have a heart!

JUNJI ITO COLLECTION episode 7 was probably the best so far, just because they did a pretty good job with the used record one. if the singer hadn't done a good job, it would have flopped. the song adds so much that is impossible to portray in the form of manga. it spooked me enough that i'm not going to watch any more episodes tonight, which did not happen with any other episodes of COLLECTION or MANIAC.

i was right. manga souichi is much more lovable than anime souichi, because though their faces are equally obnoxious, manga souichi has no obnoxious voice. the souichi stories are kind of refreshing because we get to see junji ito's strange sense of humor without anything too scary happening. my first souichi exposure was the 4 walled room episode in MANIAC, meaning i missed his introduction that appears in COLLECTION, so i was like "who the fuck is this? our protagonist, kouichi, is going to die in the gap between these walls. what? nothing in particular happened at the end. (souichi appears in another episode) this guy's in more than one??" but in the end, i kind of like how he's in 6th grade and his main powers are supercharged annoying personality and also being able to administer real curses. and despite the horrible voice, most of the souichi segments seem to have been adapted with incredible accuracy. souichi's recurring associated sound effect in the manga is "gachu gachu," the slightly clankety sound of him sucking on nails. one scanlator translated it as "munch munch;' another as "nom nom." i've never seen "gachu gachu" before.

ito-sensei's art peculiarities: he is the master of the "lovely face looking concerned." great skill with sunken eyes looking upset and exhausted. in the profile view, everyone has that distinctive frown. poses are sometimes a little awkward as if drawn from a clumsily posed posable model. chins sometimes don't make sense if the perspective isn't straight on or in profile. occasionally, his unique sense of humor shines through in the facial expressions. he's very good at drawing cutely styled hair and plain, elegant clothes. he also draws scary things.

the short story "fashion model" features fuchi, the fashion model. she debuted in the souichi story "rumors." i love fuchi. i'm on her side. when she's riding in the car with everyone much shorter than her and politely excited to go to the deep woods, that's cute. i like when she hitches up her long dress to run quickly in the woods. in "fashion model: cursed frame," fuchi appears in a magazine shot with two other models smiling happily, and that's cute. i want more fuchi content. (also, fuchi is pronounced the same as huci, the ainu word for grandmother. irrelevant.)

junji ito short stories are really hit-or-miss, i've decided. UZUMAKI, GYO, and TOMIE are essentially hit, and that's why he's popular, but a lot of these one-shots, they do not hit.

many of the strange evils in ito-sensei's works seem to be town-restricted. it seems that in most cases, if you get out of town, everything's fine. town where bodies turn into tombstones. town where everyone needs maps to navigate. town where it's foggy and everyone does fortune-telling. town contaminated by spirals. let's all exit towns.

i think ito-sensei can tell when an idea is good and when an idea is bad. generally, the better ideas are longer stories, and the worse ideas are shorter stories. i guess an exception would be hell doll funeral. that one was short but good. another exception is the bully. that one was bad but long.

i think ito-sensei's stories would be better if he applied his skill at drawing unique face shapes to drawing main characters instead of using unique face shapes only for the sake of showing "ugliness" in comparison to the uniformly beautiful main characters. as if ugliness is horror.

most of the characters in his stories are very shallow, but that's okay; they are only here in service of the narrative, to react to whatever hideous sights are laid before them... or to take part in them.

he is really a master of rictus...

it's funny, i just read a ton of ito-sensei's works from the 90s and very early 2000s, and then i accidentally jumped to one from the past few years because the entries on his wikipedia page aren't in chronological order (someone fix that), and now youtubers are appearing and twitter is a plot point. also, the quality of the work is quite visually different, as he switched to digital. it feels very, very polished now. i wonder why they don't have these at my local library.

here are the junji ito works that are worth reading, in my view (not in any order) :

the hanging balloons - this vision is truly inspired. you can also read "return of the hanging balloons," but it's hardly anything.

souichi's series, including: fun summer vacation, fun winter vacation, souichi's diary of delights, souichi's home tutor, mannequin teacher [probably the best], souichi's birthday, souichi's selfish curse, the room with four walls, coffin, rumors, souichi's beloved pet, secret of the haunted house, and the souichi front [also known as secret of the haunted house: souichi's version]. - not every single one of these is fantastic, but some of them are quite good. if you only want a little taste, read "souichi's home tutor" and then "mannequin teacher," as they distinctly go together. you can also read "souichi possessed," but it's hardly anything.

splatter film [also called smashed] - another truly inspired vision. if you don't get it, the joke is mosquitoes.

used record [also called secondhand record] - read it and then watch episode 7 of junji ito collection.

fashion model - get to know my girl fuchi. you can also read "fashion model: cursed frame," but it's not much.

village of the siren - this one has a unique feeling, i think.

gyo, tomie, and uzumaki are all about as worthwhile as each other.

lovesickness is slightly less good than the three listed in the previous bullet point, but still pretty good

the chill [also known as coldness] - if you want to experience trypophobia hell. don't take that warning lightly.

groaning drain pipes - just because the perfectly anticlimactic ending cracks me up

blood bubble bushes - uhh something also similar to trypophobia in this one, but it's striking

oshikiri's series, including hallucinations, bog of the living dead, pen pal, intruder, further tales of oshikiri, and further tales of oshikiri: walls - some of these are pretty good.

house of puppets - it's a house of puppets.

the town without streets - goes in an unexpectedly atmospheric direction. interestingly a mishmash of many different ideas, unlike his usual one-note short stories.

gravetown - another inspired idea.

the story of the mysterious tunnel - can't decide how much to like this one.

frankenstein (adaptation) - very well done. there's a scene where victor and the monster make eye contact and then the monster immediately turns around and scales a sheer cliff face. you made his body really strong, victor. he can scale a sheer cliff face. i should note i only read around the first half of frankenstein the novel. i know, it's a failing on my part. so i can't judge the accuracy. i don't know if the monster scales a sheer cliff face in the novel. anyway someone should cosplay as reanimated justine. you just need to really build up your limbs onto some stilts and stuff.

hell doll funeral - it's a hell doll funeral

fixed face - ending cracked me up

weeping woman way - i like this one. it's so wet.

madonna [also called the witch] - i enjoy a story that offends the church.

spirit flow of aokigahara - this one is really good. i love their bodily transformation.

sensor - the first chapter makes you envision getting hairs in your mouth so you go "pfuh! pfuh!" and the rest is like, oh, so god really does exist. i really appreciate how much he wrung out of the creepy natural phenomenon of volcanic hair, which i didn't know about before this.

i wanted this to be a comprehensive list, but i'm sick of reading these for now. maybe i'll read the rest of his works some other time.

in conclusion, despite the inexplicably strong urge i felt to read as much of junji ito's body of work as possible, i'm not in love with his stuff. i certainly don't care enough to compare any translations. however, i do really respect his art skills and horrific ideas, and i enjoy his inscrutable sense of humor.

(i am really looking forward to the black and white uzumaki anime if it ever comes out.)

[tawneybel]

Note: Ten favorite monsters, part four. Part three. Once a month sounds good for a top ten list, yeah? Only it’s hard for me to actually rank cool monsters. Cuphead has an absurd amount of great character designs. I’ve decided to limit one Disney entry per monster list. Oh, and it was hard to get a good photo of the Time Dragon. This one doesn’t show his horns, multi-story theatre, or the mob of Munchkinlanders. 

1. Aylmer from Brain Damage

Vaguely phallic… brain eating parasite drug metaphor.

2. Two-Mouthed Wall from Cuphead

Architectural monsters are a fave of mine in their own right. (See Baba Yaga’s house.) Bonus points for being part of a funhouse and letting his friends drive through him.

3. nuts from Face Like a Frog

This is one of my favorite cartoon shorts. It came out before Rugrats, but its music and deranged animation reminds me of my childhood fave, only more surreal. And Face Like a Frog’s surreality is easily explained: the house is occupied by nuts.

4. Planet Remina from Hellstar Remina

Look, I’m headcanoning this planet as a lady. Because there needs to be more female eldritch abomination representation. Also, she has a pretty name. Like, yeah, she was named after the daughter of the male astronomer who discovered her. Anyway, like Junji Ito manga in general, it’s better just to see for yourself how horrifying the antagonist is.

5. siren from Martin Mystery

They opted to make her whole body more avian, so there’s a mass of feathers covering her mammaries. (If she even has those in her true form.) The addition of a beak is another feature I like. Also, the reptilian tail is a nice “ancient” touch.

6-8. werewolves

Ginger Snaps trilogy: If you want interesting female-led horror, watch the first two films. Unleashed is one of the best horror films ever just for the characters’ multilayered moralities.  

Hemlock Grove: The dialogue is so odd. But it contains one of the best gruesome transformations. And male nudity.

Teen Wolf: You’d think I wouldn’t like a series where most werewolves can’t fully transform into a wolf. Or the fact they’re vaguely cat-like, with roaring and retractable claws. The Alpha-Beta-Omega hierarchy is clearly (wolf)man-made, but still fun. A supernatural drama that doesn’t take itself too seriously is a beautiful thing. Maybe I should add the Chimeras to another list, because I love “mix-and-match” monstrous humans.

9. Clock of the Time Dragon from the Wicked Years

Clockpunk meets puppet theatre and dark fantasy.

10. Heffalumps from Winnie the Pooh

The spooky ones from “Heffalumps and Woozles” as well as Lumpy and co. The Hundred Acre Woods has cute living stuffed animals.

Note: I didn’t realize Remina’s eye was so yonic. XD Clawdeen Wolf is a runner-up for werewolves because she’s a hairy-legged fashionista. Expect more wereanimals on future lists.

[crayonurchin]

To write good horror, you gotta write about what truly scares you. We’re all scared of this like abandonment, loneliness, dark concepts- but those aren’t physical things, they’re states of being. And when you get older, there’s less ‘physical’ things to truly frighten us, unlike children who will look at certain objects and get paralysed by fear by them.

I am terrified of two physical things.

Being alone and on life support in a void (either outer space or the bottom of the sea)

Being eaten alive by a gigantic creature (like a whale)

If anyone here’s read ‘Remina’ by Junji Ito, that book legit scared the crap out of me. The planet being eaten by a giagantic living planet with a mouth, knowing damn well you’re going to be eaten, the hopelessness of being tiny and out of control, and spoilers for the ending, but then being stuck in a life support pod floating through space knowing you’ve got maybe one year until your body fails and you also die- and knowing there’s nothing at all that will ever possibly save you.

THAT

That is my biggest physical fear. Obvs I fear torture, assault, accidents, but being eaten and being alive in voids are two things I likely will never experience, yet still terrify me.

But I can’t make any horror content about being eaten alive.

Because I don’t want people to think it’s a vore thing e_e

[thoughtsofaseabass]

Naphtaline

"Hello everyone, thank you for tunnin' in to Southern City Hall Radio, your first stop for Honky-Tonk, Country, Bluegrass and much much more. As you know we are completely independent and we rely on your kind donations to keep advertisement off the air and provide you with nothing more than that sweet sweet music we all know and love, haha. Next up we have another hour of uninterrupted Honky-Tonk, Country and Bluegrass tunes sponsored by you, the listener. Me and producer Helen wish you a great night and a blessed weekend. Thank you." (Guitar Shorty's rendition of Hey Joe starts playing.) The song on the radio begins to drown out the odd sounds made by the 1998 Ford Ranger, which has seen better days. Inside it, the driver, a man about 50 years old, drives peacefully in what seems to be a slow night. Although it was Friday, he had gotten off work late. He takes off his cap and places it gently on the vacant passenger seat. It is a classic American cap, one maybe a trucker would wear. It seems worn out but it's unclear if it's by style or by wear. The man taps gently on the steering wheel following the rhythm of the song, probably to keep himself awake. He arrives at his destination and parks his car on the driveway. He turns off the truck and holds on to the steering wheel for a while. He lets out a large sigh and gets out of the car. As he approaches a small suburban house his pensive expression is replaced by a soft smile. He reaches the door and knocks. The door opens, and from inside a child emerges and jumps at the man with such force he almost loses his balance. They embrace. - Dad!! - Hey champ! You're getting stronger, you almost knock'd dad out! - I've been eating my carrots. - Have you? - Yeah but mom said they don't make you strong that they just make your eyes b- ahm, see better. - Well it could do both, right? (The child nods and they both enter the house) - Is mom making dinner? - Yeah I'm STARVING! - Haha, I know champ, dad was a bit late today. The Father goes to the kitchen where his wife is making dinner, they kiss just as any couple who has been together for a long time would. - Hey. - How was work? - Oh you know, they can never fix anything themselves. - Yeah, that's why you're there, you're their savior. - Ha. Ha. The mother, although sharing the same age as her husband, is incredibly jovial, both in appearance and demeanor. - Smells good. - Here's hoping it tastes good too. The mother stops for a second and inhales. - REMINA DINNER IS ALMOST READY SET UP THE TABLE PLEASE - Nice pipes... - Oh and you'd know. In the living room a girl about 17 years old appears. She begins to organize the dinnerware that was already on the table. She has very short hair, only noticeable because it's painted pink. The Father sees Remina, but his expression is of surprise. He freezes up for a second before turning to his wife again. - Did she... I mean, what is it now? - Dan... - No really, I'm trying to understand. Does she think that looks good? - Dan... She's going trough a very emotional stage in her life. - Oh Jesus. She's such a beautiful girl I mean... She doesn't need this, right? - I think it makes her feel special. Don't worry about it, I've also cut my hair short before. - Yeah but not bald. - She's not "bald". - Well might as well. I hope she's not enlisting. The mother huffs slightly and shows a scolding smile as she shakes her head. - Listen, she wants to talk to us after dinner, please try to be understanding, okay? - Why after dinner? - Probably doesn't want Riley to hear. - Alright, alright... With the meal and table ready, the family can now sit down to have dinner. The Father goes up to Remina and kisses her on the forehead, he then embraces her. - How are you doing, princess? - Fine. Dad your hands are all greasy. - Ah. I'm sorry. I'll be right back. Just, go ahead and eat, don't wait for me. Dan goes to the bathroom while his family begins the dining procedures. He washes his hands vehemently as if washing away a sin. He looks at himself in the mirror, on his face, concern. He washes his face. Having regained his smile the Father joins his family for dinner. - And she says I took the crayons and it's not true and that I broke them but they were mine. - Did you take them? - No mom they were mine. The Father joins in on the conversation. Father - So, what are we talking about? Remina - Some girl took Riley's crayons. Father - Your crayons were broken? Riley - Yes. And they were mine. Father - Diana you knew this? Diana - What? Father - His crayons were broken. Diana - Yeah I know. The Father pauses for a second. His smile trembles a bit. Father - Listen, dad's gonna get you some new crayons tomorrow after work okay? Riley - But I want mine. I liked mine. Riley isn't angry, or sad. He's simply stating facts with acceptance. Dan stutters, unsure how to solve the issue. Remina - Dad, why don't I talk to this girl? Dan is caught off guard. Father - What? Remina - You know, I talk to the girl, I can get her to give Riley's crayons back. The Father smiles, stricken by a small sense of pride. Remina - I have my father's silver tongue after all. Diana - Silver tongue? Where does your dad have a silver tongue? Remina - Well, he tricked you into wedlock. They laugh.

Father - You have your mother's wits as well. Remina - What can I say, I'm perfect. Diana - You're welcome. Riley - You cook nice mom. Diana - You like it? Riley - Yeah Father - Ah. Of course. It's great, Di. They finish eating, plates scraped clean. Diana - Riley can you give mom, dad and Remina a second? You can go watch TV. Riley - Are you going to be angry at Remina for having no hair? Diana - No, love, we just need to talk about school things is all. Riley - Booooorinnnnngggg. Riley leaves the table and sits on the couch, going crazy with the amount of power trusted upon him: The remote. Father - Is anyone hurting you? Remina - No? ... Father - Would you tell me? Remina - Of course! Diana - Dan, let her- Father - Yeah, right, sorry. Remina - Okay, so... Remina - I don't know how to say this very well but... I've thought about this a lot, about what I feel, what I am and... I feel... I am non-binary. Diana - Well, that's nice you know you always have our support and love. Remina - I know, I know. I love you guys too. They seem happy but the Father has the strangest look on his face. It's as if his face froze after getting electrocuted. Remina - Dad? He snaps out of it. Father - Yeah yeah. I'm just trying to process... Father - What- What- What does it mean? Like? Remina - It means I don't really identify as neither male nor female. Father - So like... you're asexual? You don't feel... Remina - No, no. That's sexuality. Father - And this bi thing, what is it? Remina - Non-Binary. It's gender identity. At this point Dan looks like an old man lost at a train station, his eyes begging for someone to tell him what year it is. He looks at Diana, perhaps hoping for an answer to the existencial crisis he's experiencing. Diana - Dan are you okay? Father - Yes. I'm just... I'm really trying to understand. Diana - I think it's a bit complicated to understand when you're not "in the know". Remina - Yeah, our understanding of gender identity was very low until just recently. Father - Was it... Remina - Only now do we really start to experience it. Father - So. Father - Me and your mother put you in this world. You have a vagina, you're a girl. Right? But now... You become this "nothing"? Remina - It's not "nothing". Within the non-binary spectrum there are many different gender identities. I, personally, am genderfluid. Father - What the hell is that? Diana - Dan... Father - No I mean, Remina, sweetie, you know I love you. You mean the world to me. And to your mother. But I really think this... necessity to complicate such a simple concept is absurd. Remina - Of course it's absurd to you. All you know is work. That's all you know. Silence. It's quite apparent Dan is taken aback by his daughter's comment. Diana - Remina, I don't think your dad is judging you or anything, he just wants what's best- Remina - Of course you have to defend him. He was insensitive! Remina - I knew this wasn't a good idea but whatever. I just want you guys to know my pronouns and how to refer to me. And I will eventually ask you not to call me Remina anymore, but not until I find a genderless name I'm comfortable with. Dan seems to be severely taken by his thoughts. His presence almost completely extinguished from the conversation. Diana - But Remina is such a beautiful name, It's unique it has a story tied to it. Remina - I know about it... Maybe I'll use something related... Maybe "Hell." or similar. By the look on Diana's face it's understood that she has quite an affection to the name and is saddened to see it go.

Diana - Okay. I understand. "Hell" is not too bad, but maybe it should be pronounced different like "Elle". Remina - No... I kinda' like "Hell". It's powerful. The conversation is cut short when Dan emerges from his self induced coma. Dan - By the time I was your age I had already been working for 5 years. 5 years of carrying steel on my back. Of getting people tools. Of carrying buckets of manure. Because my father had left and my mother was all alone. We were 7 in that household. And my mother couldn't work on account of her health. So we had to work. Or we'd starve. Even so, we had dreams. Your uncle Marvin would spend the night playing guitar near the fishmonger after his shift. I'd sometimes skip dinner just to hear him play. He was the best. He could have been one of the greats. But he died of lung cancer having never touched a cigarette. And I was left here. I was left here to work steel. To fetch tools. And carry waste. As I grew older I found my only joy in life. You. You three. Remina, I worry. All I've ever done was to make sure we made ends meet. That you wouldn't have to feel what I felt. And that you wouldn't grow up to be like me. And I worry. I worry that you get lost in these new "thoughts" and lose focus in yourself and your future. I worry that maybe I failed. That I didn't provide you with enough challenge in your life to make you stronger and able to survive when me and your mother are no longer here for you. You know I stand by you. I don't care what you feel like, who or what you are. You'll always be my little girl. But I'll call you whatever you want to be called. Whoever you turn out to be I'll love. I just don't want you to become a failure. Like me. Silence. Dan looks at Remina with a small glint of grievance. The Family looks at him, even Riley, trying to understand what his father is feeling from the safety of the couch. Dan gets up from his chair and makes a conscious effort to have his smile return. The Father smiles once again. Father - Well, I really need to get to sleep. They need me tomorrow. The Father kisses his wife and goes to meet his son at the couch. He caresses his hair. Father - Hey champ, your sister is going to help you with your crayons okay? Riley - Are you sad dad? Father - No, you always make me happy. The Father goes up to Remina who is still sitting in her chair, unsure of what she should say. He kisses her head softly. Father - See you tomorrow Hell. I love you very much. Remina - I know. I love you too dad... The Father's figure begins to fade as he walks the shadowy path that leads to his room. After a few seconds Diana tries to break the silence. Diana - So what about your pronouns, you want us to change that? Remina - Yeah, they/them is fine. Diana - Okay. Nice. Remina looks back to the shadow that was once her father. Diana - Don't worry about your father. He'll come around. Remina - I think he already has... They get up and clean up the table together. Then they join Riley on the couch who is watching a superhero movie. Riley - I think Batman looks like dad.                   [The night may be dark]                                                                             [The ground may be cold]           [But a man lives forever]                                                                 [While his stories are told]

[fadecrow]

By fancop logic, I’m not only supportive of real life abusive/illegal relationships because of ships, I’m also a supporter of real life cannibalistic demon worshipping murder assholes because I made a cannibalistic Namira worshipping murder asshole in Skyrim and he was one of my favorite profiles.

By their logic I would be happy if I met Tomie or if Hell Star Remina came to devour us, or if the Spiral from Uzumaki consumed the world because Junji Ito’s works are interesting to me and are some of my favorite horror comics ever.

Or heck maybe I’m a deranged serial killer myself because I draw aesthetic gore and body horror. (Usually neon/glitter/candy gore, sometimes stuff inspired by hanahaki disease, sometimes realistically colored, and sometimes leaning towards guro/extremely unhealthy masochism on the characters’ part.)

Obviously if Dominic Skinner, the grimy Namira-worshipping assassin trash-can existed in real life, I’d hate him and also be terrified bc he’s basically a god. Junji Ito’s stories would be a horrible torture to live through and knowing that he isn’t an evil reality bender is the only way I can sleep after binge reading his works. And I would never torture people IRL even if they literally walked up and asked for it because that’s fucked up.

Enjoying fictional content does not at all mean or even imply that you would be pleased with something similar if presented with it in person. I am well aware that some of the things I like are too gritty for reality. But the morality of it doesn’t mean much in regards to fake people made of lines on a page.

[8bitsupervillain]

The Disappointments of 2017: Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony

Ha ha, wow this was a massive disappointment let me tell you. It is so very rare that I encounter the latest installment in a series that completely, and utterly retroactively kills a series for me. The last thing that did that was Burial At Sea part 2, but wow I did not expect it was going to be this game that made me re-experience that sheer gut-wrenching awfulness. Please be warned, there are spoilers after the break.

Before I get into my complaints I will now list for you the things I like about Danganronpa V3. The music is great, I adore just about every song that is in this game, Let's Killing is one of my favorite tracks with the Scrum Debate being a close second. I liked the twist when Kaede Akamatsu was revealed to be the killer in Case 1, it was effective. That's it.

Let me get this out of the way first, it is not entirely because of the plot twists of Trial 6 that caused this. It is but a major, major, MAJOR factor that led to this being such a vile and loathsome letdown. I started having some doubts about how this game was going to stick the landing as early as Case 3. Shinguji killing Yonaga, and Chabashira just so his dead sister he was in love with could have friends started to strain credibility.

Case 4 when Iruma gets killed with toilet paper in a virtual world and then it transpires that the "school" was in fact a rocket ship meant to take these sixteen kids AND ONLY these sixteen kids to a new world, added to the strain. Although I kind of took the notion of there being a virus from meteors to be a nice little nod to the Zero Escape series, even if it wasn't actually a reference.

Case 5 when Oma is somehow able to write a script for how to act like him for Momota, even down to how THE REST OF THE CAST WOULD RESPOND TO HIS STATEMENTS was what tipped this over the edge. It was fucking ridiculous and I hated damn near every aspect of this fucking case and EVERYTHING THAT FOLLOWS IT. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's rewind my complaints to when it transpires that Oma is in fact a secret traitor whose betraying everyone because of the notion that Earth is uninhabitable. Fine, whatever, people can be pointless dickheads at the best of times. Maybe he got his personality re-written with the flashback light, fine, that's fine. Why would the people of Earth go out of their way to hunt down the Ultimates when it's suggested that they're what would fundamentally save mankind? Why would they try to hunt them down to kill them? Why is this plot-point just a rehash of Hellstar Remina (a fascinating manga, it's worth checking out)? Did Oma somehow find out about the fact they're on the fifty-third Danganronpa season?

I hate it when stories try to pull the "everyone loves this character so you do as well" card. Despite everything the game tries to do I just cannot bring myself to care about Kirumi Tojo. She was a flat, uninteresting character, her being the secret prime minister really doesn't add much to her character because it's brought up roughly ten seconds before she dies anyway, and never gets into the ramifications of this plot development. I also felt that the game tried a bit too hard to get me to care about the fact that Yumeno and Chabishira were going through a rough patch and Yumeno was spending time with Yonaga. With the exception of the pivotal characters every other character felt flat and really underdeveloped. Amami could've been a decent character had he not died in the opening hours of the game, he could have been a decent posthumous character. Gokuhara was uninteresting and ridiculously one-note, and Hoshi was just an utter black hole of a character.

Even a fair amount of the characters who make to chapter five are uninteresting. K1-B0, despite being the hero of this story has pretty much no character until he becomes a danger to the rest of the cast in chapter 6. His plot reveal that he's basically the cameraman for the events adds nothing to his character. Harukawa is perhaps the single worst character in the entire game however, they basically play her as a Kirigiri type of character with absolutely none of the redeeming characteristics of such a character. It would've been more interesting if she actually did deal the fatal blow to Oma, but I guess she had to live for reasons.

Then of course we arrive at Chapter 6, the denouement to everything this game has been building up to. The interesting characters are dead, and we're left with what we have left. Saihara, Yumeno, Harukawa, K1-B0 and Shirogane. And of course Monokuma and the Monokubs. The chapter starts, and K1-B0 has started using his upgraded weapons that Iruma gave him (or had in her lab) and is now set to tear down the Ultimate's Academy. Fair enough, a final thing to drive forth the fact that the cast is in a bad-way and they'll all die unless they can solve the mystery. This is also unfortunately where the game decides to dive into batshit lunacy. As you're investigating to find out the truth about the Academy you find several clues about the whole "the class was shot off into space to save humanity" thing. You find the room where "the cryo-stasis pods for their journey are," and you find a document that puts forth the notion that Akamatsu has a near-identical twin sister who might be roaming the halls. This is all a smokescreen of course, because when it comes time for the trial it comes to light that his has all been an elaborate con.

The class was never shot into space, there was no viral outbreak, the Ultimates Academy was simply the latest group of teenagers for Danganronpa season number 53. Everything that has transpired has simply been a televised event and none of what happened was real. There's some revelations that the personalities of every single person taking part in the show has had their actual personalities over-written by the flashback lights that the cast has been routinely subjected to over the course of the game to "give them back their memories." Which is a lie, the personalites are apparently just something that Team Danganronpa have cooked up prior to the events of the game.

On the face of it I don't have a problem with the notion that the game was all a big ruse. It's the way the game conveys the twist and everything that happens in this trial that I find to be a huge slap in the face. There's a point around the end of chapter five where the game cuts away to some random person named Makoto. Makoto, you see is a bit of a lonely boy, he has seemingly no friends, his school life is in pieces, and it all seems gray and grim for him. But he has one thing that makes himself feel better: Danganronpa, the one thing that gives his life meaning. And this is you, the audience who buy and play these games, and it illustrates just how little they care about their actual audience who buy these games and play them.

The whole entire ending, the last two hours or so of this trash fire is more or less a prolonged "you need to get a life, Danganronpa is shit and bad and you're just as bad for liking it. Fuck you." The ending is a complete slap in the face and just utterly ruins and destroys everything this whole franchise had built up until now. It is a complete and utter insult, and frankly it killed this series for me. It rates up there in the pantheon of abysmal and shitty endings. For all the shit people like to throw at Bioware for Mass Effect 3's ending at least it never outright insulted you for liking the games up until that point.

The fact the game goes out of its way to invalidate the previous entries in the series is just disgusting. See Danganronpa 1, 2, Ultra Despair Girls, never actually happened in the universe of Danganronpa; they were merely seasons in the “Danganronpa show.” Any stakes the series could have been building up to is null and void after this revelation, and as such any investment on your part is simply a waste of time. Then there’s the fact that the game deliberately goes out of its way to point out several plot points that it will never bring up again is just a cherry on top for wasting everyone’s time.

It mentions the notion that the personalities everyone has is in fact fake. Including Shirogane’s personality, the person the game assures you is the mastermind behind this particular game. It’s never elaborated on that she is in fact just a pawn in the greater scheme of things. Ha, whoops she’s dead now, smashed by a rock, oh well! It’s implied at the very start of the game that the kids used in the game were in fact actually kidnapped to be in Danganronpa V3. Whoops, the plot point’s been lost and will never be revisited.

This is all while the game is just throwing out its arm patting itself on the back for how brilliant and great the writing is. It’s annoying, and loathsome and a complete and utter insult to everyone who gave a shit about this series.

"It wasn't their intention, Kodaka said so." I don't care, I'm quits with this series after this game. What a shame.

[dreamypassionprecure]

Dreamy✰ Passion Precure Ep 1!

                      Lovely Performance! Cure Pointe's Debut!

                                        Also available on ffnet

  A young boy, no older than fourteen, ran through the crumbling halls of Remina Palace. His footsteps echoed off the walls and mixed with the sounds of his frantic breathing, his pale blue hair disheveled. In his arms, a baby girl slept soundly. He burst through the doors to the throne room.

   “Mother!”

   A tall woman with long white hair looked up from the conversation she'd been having with a guard. She rushed over to her children, a worried expression painting her soft features. She crouched down to talk to them.

   “Luna, I thought I told you to stay in your room with your sister. It's not safe out in the open. What are you doing here?”

   “They attacked us, Mother! They're in the castle!”

   The queen gasped. She stood up to her full height and pointed her hand to the guard.

   “You! Go gather the rest of the soldiers! And alert the Precure while you're at it! We're going to need everyone we can get!”

   “Yes, Your Majesty!”

   The guard left the throne room in a hurry. The queen turned back to the children.

   “Luna, I want you to run. Take Sol and run to the Dream Gallery. I want you to go through the main veil and hide until I can come to find you.”

   “But Mo-”

   “That's an order! I promise you'll be safe there. I'm going to go help the soldiers.”

   Luna nodded, taking his sister and running out of the room. Once he left, the queen readied herself to face her subjects.

                                                   Snap!

   Temura Akiko shot up from her desk, a loud noise having woken her from her dream. Said noise had been her teacher whacking a ruler to the surface of her desk.

   “Temura-san, I understand how tiring basic mathematics can be. But I would appreciate it if you at least made an attempt to stay awake.”

   Muffled giggles resounded from the class as Akiko apologized, her cheeks matching her maroon hair much closer in shade now. She sat down and proceeded to hide her face in her hands. This had to be the third time this month she'd fallen asleep in class and had that exact dream.

                                             Insert op here

   The rest of the class was uneventful. Akiko kept her head down, toying with her single side pony tail nervously, until the bell rang. Then she packed her things and approached her best friend, Ishikawa Jin.

   “Jin, ready to go?”

   “Yeah,” Jin said, straightening her large glasses. “Do you have ballet class today?”

   “Mhm,”

   “Okay then, I can walk you there, but I need to get home so we should go fast.”

   The two looped arms as they traveled down the hall and out of the school. They chatted about this and that until-

   “Whaaaaaa!”

   “What was that?” Akiko stopped, looking around. She'd heard a tiny scream, almost like a child falling from the sky!

   “I didn't hear anything. Come on, Akiko, neither of us can afford to be late.”

   “But-”

   “You can check it out but I'm not coming with you. I need to get home!”

   Akiko paused. She wanted to see where the voice came from, but...

   “Help!”

   There it was again! Okay that was it, she needed to check it out.

   “Just go on without me, Jin. I can make it to ballet class on my own.”

   “Fine, I'll see you later then.”

   Jin jogged off on her own while Akiko went searching for the source of the voice. There was a small cluster of rustling bushes just a little down the road. That seemed like a good place to start looking. She got down on her knees and started rustling through the leaves

   “Anyone there? I know I heard something... Aha!”

   Akiko felt her hand hit something small and definitely breathing. It was a humming bird! A humming bird with odd proportions and a pink ribbon...

   “Wha?”

   The humming bird opened it's big adorable eyes and looked up.

   “Ah! A human! I knew I'd find one! Now, take me to the Precure vi!”

   Akiko stared at the bird.

   “...You talked?”

   “Of course I did! What do you expect me to do vi?”

   “Tweet, I guess. Or do whatever humming birds do.”

   “Humming birds? I am not a bird vi! I am Vivid, Royal Fairy of Remina, servant of Queen Stellia!”

   Akiko sat in silence for a good minute before pinching herself, hard.

   “Ow!”

   Vivid responded with a shocked squeak.

   “Vi! Why did you do that!?”

   “To make sure I'm not dreaming.”

   “...You humans are so weird vi...”

   Akiko shook her head a little, just for a bit of extra reassurance that she was definitely awake. There was just a talking humming bird, claiming to be a fairy, asking her to take them to the “Precure”. Wait, hadn't she heard that term before?

   “Earlier, did you say 'Precure'?”

   “Yes I did vi! Do you know where they are?” Vivid perked up a little.

   “Um, maybe. I might remember if you tell me about them.”

   Vivid looked at Akiko disappointedly.

   “Fine, vi, I'll tell you. Humans are so forgetful... The Precure are legendary protectors of Remina! Their powers allow you humans to sleep without having your dreams stolen! Geez, how disrespectful of you to forget about them. Honestly-”

   Akiko tuned out at that point. So the queen in her dreams had called for legendary protectors of dreams...

   She absentmindedly glanced at her watch while Vivid continued to shame Akiko for supposedly forgetting about these important figures. And she noticed the time.

   “Uwhaaahhhh! Late! Look, I'll show you whatever you want later! I need to get to my ballet class!”

   Akiko picked up Vivid and shoved her in her school bag. She ran down the street as fast as she possibly could, yelling about how she needed to go fast.

   “Viii! W-what are you doing vi!?”

                                         Insert eyecatch here

   “So your kingdom was taken over by...?

   “Queen Mara vi!”

   Akiko sat in the corner of  the ballet studio, holding Vivid in her hands while other students arrived and changed into their leotards. Turns out Akiko had been early for once. So now she had a chance to talk.

   “But didn't you say you were a queen's servant before?”

   “Yes, but I'm Queen Stellia's servant! Mara is a usurper! She stole the throne from Queen Stellia after her disappearance!”

   “...I'm confused.”

   Vivid groaned, face-palming, or wing-palming? Whichever. The ballet teacher entered the room and Akiko jumped.

   “Okay okay, I need to do class now. Stay quiet please.” Akiko placed Vivid on her folded clothes and stood up, going to line up with the other students. The teacher took role call and they launched into warm-ups, and then to the basic routine.

   “Akiko-chan, posture!” The teacher scolded. “Akiko-chan, watch your foot placement! If you don't you'll-”

                                                  Crash!

   “Owowowoww...” Akiko whimpered, now lying on the ground. She really should've paid attention to where her feet were, as well as the feet of the other students...

   “Oh dear, this is the fourth time this week... Why don't we take a break?”

   The students all milled about, getting water and talking with friends. The teacher left the room. Akiko limped over to Vivid and her things, disheartened by her mistake.

   “Wow, you're really bad at this vi!”

   “Shut up!” Akiko said, grabbing her water bottle and taking a long drink. She sighed, trying to listen to her classmates' conversations to make sure they weren't laughing at her.

   “Sensei is so nice! My old teacher would have made the whole class start all the way over if someone tripped like that.”

   “Oh yeah, I remember her! You were so afraid of her!”

   “I was not!”

   The girls giggled, teasing each other. Akiko was just glad they weren't making fun of her this time...

   “How silly,” said a mysterious voice.

   The room went silent. The source of the voice relieved itself as a boy with spiky red hair and teal skin, floating in the air.

   “Such a simple fear. An old teacher, ha! But it should be good enough.”

   The boy pointed at the girl.

   “Sleep tight!” The boy said, snapping his fingers. The moment he did, the girl fell to the ground, her eyes closed and her face contorted in fear. Her friends rushed to her side, trying to wake her.

   “She won't wake up, silly. Not until I'm done with her.”

   He held out his hand, to which a cloud of dark glittering... something seemed to fly from the girls body to his hand. At that point, the rest of the students ran from the room in fear.

   Vivid flew up and around the boy angrily.

   “Brux! You stop that, vi!”

   The boy, Brux, apparently, waved his hand around, trying to hit Vivid.

   “What? You're here too, feather duster? What are the odds?”

   “Leave that girl alone vi!” Vivid pecked at Brux with her little beak.

   Brux just laughed, swatting Vivid away from him. Akiko caught her in her hands. Vivid groaned, rubbing her head with her wing.

   “You gonna stop me with that little beak, feather duster?”

   Akiko looked around worriedly. She had absolutely no clue what was happening, who this kid was, what he was doing, or what that stuff was.

   “Vivid, what's going on? Who is that guy and what is that stuff?”

   “That's Brux! Queen Mara's evil servant! He's stealing the energy from that girls dreams!”

   “Her dreams?”

   Akiko paused, considering her options. Vivid was too small to do much and her classmates were all gone. She took a deep breath.

   “Hey! You leave that girl alone! Dreams aren't something for you to take for yourself!”

   Brux looked at Akiko like she was an annoying pest. But he seemed to be weighing his chances against her. She was a lot bigger than him, so a fist fight would go to her. Oh but he had another idea.

   “You want her dreams back so bad, take 'em.”

   He reached into his pocket and pulled out an oddly shaped crystal. He took the sparkling cloud stuff and somehow placed it inside the crystal.

   “Hallusion! Make this world a living nightmare!”

   The crystal started to glow and shake. Then it started to grow, cracking, more and more. It exploded in a flash of light!

   When the light cleared, there was a large monstrous thing. It had long teal legs like a ballerina, arms even longer than the legs, and a greyish old lady bun and glasses. It all connected by a pale blue, devilish mask.

   “Take care of her for me, 'kay?”

   “Hallu!”

   The monster advanced towards Akiko. Yeah, she'd lose a fist fight to that thing.

   “Run, vi!” Vivid squawked, flying away.

   The beast threw a kick at Akiko, who dodged, causing the kick to collide with a mirror, breaking it.

   “I can't run! I can't let her dreams be used for this! And this is my dance studio! This place is important to me! I can't just let this thing run around causing destruction!”

   Just then, a bright light began to emanate from her chest. It formed itself into a heart-shaped ornate lock.

   “What is?...”

   Akiko brought her hand up to touch the lock. But then another light appeared in her palm, forming into a key.

   “Vi! It's a Passion Key! Quick quick, put it in the Dream Lock!”

   Akiko warily placed the key in the lock and turned it. Nothing happened.

   “Why isn't it doing anything?

   “You have to say something vi! I... forget what though.”

   Well that was helpful. But Akiko felt something in her heart. Something was calling to her.

   “Precure! Stardust Unlock!”

   Light surrounded Akiko. She waved her hand, a ribbon of light and sparkles trailing behind. With it, she made a dress. A red tutu-like dress that faded from red to magenta at the skirt. Then she made a pair of ballet shoes and frilly gloves. Finally, her hair lengthened and turned from maroon to bright red. Her single side pony tail turned into two with a red ribbon connected to a gold sparkle emblem. The same emblem appeared  by her collar with another ribbon.

   “A preformance worthy of applause! ” Akiko said, twirling and striking a pose. “Cure Pointe!”

   The light faded, leaving Akiko, or Cure Pointe now, posing without really knowing what had just happned. She looked down at herself and saw what she was wearing.

   “W-what happened!?”

   “You're a Precure vi! Go, fight!”

   “P-Precure? Me?”

   Brux grit his teeth. This would be a bit harder now.

   “What are you waiting for? Get her, Hallusion!”

   The monster advanced. It didn't seem to care about what the girl in front of it looked like. It threw another kick, sending Pointe through the window and into the park next door.

   To Pointe's surprise, she wasn't really all that hurt. Any normal person would probably have cuts, bruises, and broken bones from that attack. But She felt fine, maybe a bit scuffed up, but nothing she couldn't handle.

   The monster jumped through the broken window, ready to attack again. But Pointe wasn't going to sit by and take another blow.

   “Take this!” Pointe yelled, leaping high into the air. She kicked the monster in it's mask-face, making it stumble back.

   “Hallu!” The beast came right back at her, punching at her. Pointe flipped backwards, landing on it's arm as it hit the ground. She ran up the arm and kicked it with a pirouette.

   “Oh! How did I do that?”

   Vivid flew to Pointe's side frantically.

   “Who cares about that? Just purify it already!”

   “Purify it?”

   Pointe put a hand over her heart. She felt like she knew exactly what to do now.

   “Precure!” Pointe shouted, holding her hand up.  Light surrounded her body and she began to dance. She pointed her hand at the monster in a finishing pose. “Pirouette Burst!”

                                                Boom!

  As the words left her mouth, an explosion enveloped the monster. It yelled before dissolving into dust.

  “You jerk!” Brux growled. “I'll get you for this!”

  Before Pointe could say a word, he disappeared in a puff of smoke. She sighed, at least things were done now.

  Pointe changed back into Akiko, the fancy clothes dissolving into sparkles.

  “You know what... I think I need a nap now...”

                                           Insert ed here

   “What do you mean I have to fight now? I can't fight alone!”

   “There are more Precure vi! You just need to find them!”

   “More? Cool! I'll start looking right away! Hm... I wonder where they could be...”

   “U-um, e-e-excuse me?”

   “Not now, Shimizu-san! I'm looking for Precure!”

   “Next time on Dreamy✰ Passion Precure!  An Artistic Encounter! Cure Mural's Creation! See you next performance!”

[souichipresents]

Lotsa Ito/blog thoughts...

I’ve just read through your reviews, and I’m grateful for the insight, humor, and exposure to Ito’s work you’ve provided, and I’ve been able to articulate some of my own opinions now.

1. Tomie. I never really had any appreciation for the stories before, and I still find it odd how…episodic the stories are. Surely the world should be overrun by now, but the tales never really amount to anything. However, the abuse metaphor gives me a newfound interest in the series. One thing I picked up on is the “methods” side of it; namely that old adage. Violence is not the answer. Killing Tomie just makes the problem worse (she heals and replicates), but so does passivity (she still replicates). Leaving her alone allows the problem to grow naturally just as allowing an abusive situation to continue gives the abuser more power, so there’s really two “wrong ways to deal with abuse/Tomie” presented. 

2. I know you haven’t gotten to her yet, but I wanted to share my thoughts on Fuchi. What I like about her (besides the fact that she’s a monster-woman) is that she’s very humanlike. She’s off-human in appearance, and her behavior is human, if not unpleasant. She’s got some sense of humor, and she enjoys nature. She’s just very petty and jealous. The danger with her comes not from her morality, but from her means of solving problems. She’s not outright evil, but she’s easy to piss off and that’s the end of you, even in a dream universe. I think that’s an interesting idea for a monster, and I’d sorta like to see what her life is like in the modeling business. Also, why does her height fluctuate. Souichi (in Rumors, not the dream stories) sees her as about ten to eleven feet, but Fashion Model has her at about 7 or 8?

3. Uzumaki is amazing and thank you for finally getting me to take a look. I love the symbolism of the spiral, a constantly moving force that moves out and draws in, and the protagonists are nice. Also, Azami’s transformation is probably the scariest Ito thing I’ve seen. It’s not gory, just supremely unsettling, and deterioration is scarier to me than anything else. I’d like to see a more faithful new adaptation of the story. 

4. You’ve also helped me figure out what I don’t like of Ito’s work. Hellstar Remina just feels very…underwhelming to me, and a couple of the one-shots are not that great.

5. Are you going to look at the tales of the Bizarre Hizikuri Siblings? It’s something I found genuinely difficult to read due to all of the beyond-dysfunctional cruelty, and I know that’s not your thing. 

4. Less importantly, when did you switch romanizations to include the “u” in “Souichi?”

Thank you for this blog- I was looking for something just like this, and I’m glad you delivered.

Ahhh gosh, this is a real sweet message! I appreciate that this blog picked up your interest. <3 I also apoloize that the update schedule has become so shaky, but things go how they go. And I still plan to keep this up as long as I am able! 

A well thought out submission certainly deserves answers. 

1- I’ve actually been thinking about this! And I come to think, well, what if we imagine that every Tomie story isn’t being told to us in a chronological order? Instead, maybe everything after the ‘origin’ story, each chapter like that, is happening at the same time? So while she torments the photographer here, she’s also in the snowy mountains there… that could certainly make an interesting narrative. Mind, it’s also totally spoiled by the events i the last story, but…. woof. We’ll get to that one. 

And I do agree. There’s no solution to Tomie, in some ways I think, because the problem was never her. She is not the greatest evil; rather the teacher who originally abused her; he is the nexus of this. What it means that her ‘pattern’ seems to re-create him over and over….? It’s hard to say. But there’s a melancholy tint to it all somewhere. 

2. Ahhh, Fuchi! The beautiful model~ Truth be told, I’m rather fond of her, because she just… shows up sometimes, without any real rhyme or reason. To me, she feels the most like… yes she’s certainly going by some other set of rules then ours, doesn’t she~? As for her height… I honestly figure it’s because Souichi’s a kid. To him, she might as well be 30 feet tall. Or maybe she’s as tall as she wants to be. 

3. Ahhhh, I’m so glad that you gave it a look! Uzumaki will always and forever be a classic to me… there’s so much nuance, so much variation. Seeing the threads of apparently disparate unnatural events wound slowly together… gorgeous, just gorgeous. I think to me after all this time, the ‘ridiculousness’ of the horror, coupled with the genuinely TRAGIC nature of it’s effects… just lovely. 

I always think it could make a really gorgeous anime. Especially one with experimental animation… it could happen, right? There’s a new sailor moon after all… 

4. Yep- sometime’s he’s hit or miss. It’s interesting because it’s not like it’s as simple as ‘oh when there’s unlikable characters’. Nobody in, say, all time favorite ‘Secondhand Record’ is LIKABLE. 

I think the difference is when his usual sense of…sympathy, I think. Even when the characters aren’t nice people, a lot of time, you can feel that sense. Its not the same as kindness, and it’s not ‘empathy’. It’s just a sense of caring. 

I think ‘Dying Young’ might have the strongest of that sense, as well as Uzumaki. The narrative is sunk deep into what matters to these characters, and whats happening to them. It’s harder to be scared if you don’t care. 

5. You nailed it right on the head- as creative as they are, they’re also really the kind of Itou story I can’t stomach. I’ll likely just give a general overview of them as a series. 

4. There’s a gap in the time I was making these! I did I think a few when I first had this idea… and then a year, year and a half later, I had decided I needed a way to force myself to keep writing, and came back to this blog! I think it’s sometime in there I noticed that most people translated it as ‘Souichi’. I switched over because it seemed widely accepted, and reads out easier in english to me. I seem to drift wildly between ‘Ito’ and ‘Itou’, however.