#but i like this thing being more gradual

[general-grey]

i finished Lucio's Reversed ending the other day, and i am incredibly weak so I immediately began a new run to do an Upright ending again.

But thing is, the way this game works, I still got the dialogues skewed in the Reversed ending's favour, right?

Turns out that Lucio can be an absolute twat very early on and I am LOVING IT

This pretty much fixes my need to see him more at his most unpleasant 💕💕💕💕 I love to see him as a lil bitch.

[captainhysunstuff]

22 more images (with some saucy shenanigans and immature "seduction" tactics towards the end) below the cut:

Ryuk makes his grand return and is brought up to speed with Light and L's immoral union. The date seems pretty successful~.

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Transcript

[project-sekai-facts]

How are we feeling about ensekai’s emu3 translation!!! (I’m mad)

(if you remember the 3 whole posts i made when asahi got de-gayed on EN you'll know i am mad too and that this is probably going to get long)

i don't like to be too cynical but it was so obvious that they were going to change that line, i had a feeling since the event first released on JP and after the incident with Asahi where I went through and tracked down multiple other examples of EN removing queer subtext it became clear to me that in no way shape or form was "emu-chan really loves nene-chan" making it to EN without getting changed. what i didn't expect was them changing Nene's line after Luka's comment, which actually makes this whole situation far worse than many of their other instances of toning down queer subtext.

for anyone who isn't aware of what happened, in chapter 5 of the current Emu event, there's a scene where Nene, Rui and the Virtual Singers are talking about what would cheer Emu up. The vsingers all talk about how much Emu loves spending time with Nene, leading to the following exchange

If you look for them, any fan TL of this scene will be something similar to this:

Luka: ...Fufu. Emu-chan really loves Nene-chan, doesn't she? Nene: Th-that's nothing special...

EN's official translation is this:

So what's the issue? I'll start with Luka's part. In the original text, she uses the word daisuki, which can mean to "like a lot" or "love". It's a word you will see frequently in the idol/idol-adjacent genre of games, due to its ambiguity in that it can be read as either platonic or romantic when used towards a person, and often will be used in ambiguous situations so that it's harder to confirm the writers' intentions either way. so here, fans of the emu/nene ship could view the fact that emu loves spending her time with nene as more on the romantic side, but people who don't like the ship could view it as platonic and move on.

while they didn't translate daisuki directly, Luka's line still works, and still contains the ambiguity that works as ship tease in the original text. it's a perfectly fine localisation that still conveys the original intent. despite that, there is something to be said about EN's consistent refusal to translate daisuki as love in most instances when it's not used on An/Kohane (but then again, EN has literally teased An/Kohane on their twitter account so is it all that surprising?).

Here's some examples:

Aibou no koto ga daisuki de / he loves his partner -> he cares about his partner very much (The Power of Unity chapter 7 when Kaito is comparing Arata to Akito and Toya)

HARUKA-CHAN, DAISUKI DAYOOOO!!! / HARUKA-CHAN, I LOOOOOVEEE YOU!!! -> You're the best!!! (Dear Me, As I Was Back Then chapter 4 when minori is at an ASRUN concert. this one isn't actually that great of a localisation)

Honachan no koto daisuki dakara. Kore de iinda yo. / I love Honachan, so this is fine. -> I want what's best for her. And this is it. (Leo/need main story chapter 14 after Saki tells Honami she won't bother her anymore)

Minna daisuki de - taisetsuna tomodachi na no / I love them all - they're my dearest friends -> They're all amazing, and very dear to me. (Leo/need main story chapter 17. this isn't good either)

What's particularly amusing about that last one is that there's a second official translation for it that I assume was done by JP staff (since EN never promoted doing the Journey to Bloom subs like they did back when they provided subs for Petit SEKAI) that actually keeps the word daisuki as love.

Yeah. I love all my friends - and they mean the world to me.

It's a better localisation than the official EN team one.

Questionable localisation choices aside, Luka's line is fine and is actually in line with the original. The issue with this localisation very much lies with Nene's part, because that is an entirely new line.

In the original text, Nene's "that's just normal" or "that's nothing special" or however you choose to TL it, is meant to be her questioning Luka's statement, since all the things that the other vsingers said that Emu liked were pretty normal things like going shopping and playing video games with nene. To Nene, these things are normal activities for them to do together, so she gets embarrassed by the fact that Luka concludes from that information that Emu loves Nene. When I dissect it like that I think you can really tell what the writers were going for here lol.

"That's just us being friends" does still convey the idea that Nene thinks these activities aren't anything out of the ordinary and she isn't sure why the vsingers are picking these out as some of Emu's favorite things to do, but it's very different from the original line. "But those are just normal things we do together" is something I just came up with on the spot, but it's a lot closer to the original text and still conveys the same meaning. The fact they changed the line to "that's just us being friends" is, honestly, not even subtle that they're covering up queer subtext. The original scene was very clearly written in as ship tease, and EN mentioning "friends" for no reason, especially since the word nor anything close to it was not used in the original, is instantly a red flag because it's like the go-to for queerbaiting and censorship. This was intentional. There was no need for them to specify that the relationship is platonic, Luka's part is ambiguous for a reason so that fans can view it how they like.

Just to top all this off, here's Rin's original line just before that Luka+Nene interaction:

Oh, and! And! She said that playing games with Nene-chan is also super fun!

And here's Rin's line from the official EN translation:

That's not the same thing, but even more weirdly, the incorrect part (super fun->really loves) is a correct translation for the part changed in Luka's line. So, they can do it, they are willing to say "really loves", just not in the right places. Maybe because Rin's part is less personal than Luka's part? It's strange actually, this isn't the first time they've done this either. Off the top of my head I can think of an example from Shiho's Varied Kindness 2* story where they translated the word "suki" as really loves, despite that being much stronger than the original word used (and the fact that daisuki is used a lot in the Leo/need stories and it's incredibly rare if not entirely unknown for them to translate it correctly).

It's not subtle that they're trying to remove implications of the characters possibly being queer, they did it in curtain call and they did it in walk on and on, and multiple times before then too. And considering some of the content in this year's events and the amount of times they say daisuki alone, it's gonna keep happening. honestly i hate the fact that i keep trying to justify the translations in these posts. these translations are intentional. what happened in the curtain call translation back in october says enough. when a character who uses explicitly romantic language towards another guy passes as a straight character in the translation you know they're doing it on purpose.

oh and once again, it's only the EN server that has this issue. The scene in question was translated almost word-for-word on the TW and KR servers.

read fan translations. they're better than what EN gives us and people put a lot of effort into them.

[cyb-organ]

happy lesbian visibilty week to her. i gave her a little bird

[swan2swan]

Brooklynn: "Thanks so much for letting me crash here, Darius. Oh, wow, sorry about the smell--I've been driving since Texas, and I am SWEATY and I need a shower SO BADLY, but I know you'll let me use yours. Just gimme a few minutes, okay? Oh, dangit, I totally forgot my towel at Sammy's...it's cool if I use one of yours, right? The rest of my laundry made it, it's all in the bags, mind going through and getting me a fresh set? They're all matched in order, so just take it from the top, shirt, jeans, underwear, tops and bottoms in the same bag...don't worry about the socks, you look like you keep the floors clean enough for me to get my own socks. You're the best, Dino-Nerd!"

Darius:

[batsplat]

after 2015 until 2018 it seemed that things had calmed down a bit between valentino and marc, in the sense that they had started to be polite between them again and valentino no longer seemed to be on a war footing. then after argentina obviously the situation worsened again. in the podcast where valentino spoke in 2021 if I'm not mistaken, when he talks about marc,however, he only refers to the events of sepang and not to what happened in argentina which instead seemed to have been the final “divorce”. so my question is, during 2016 and 2017 did valentino just pretend to put up with marc? because in that podcast you can feel valentino's resentment is still a lot even after many years, so I imagine it must have been even greater in the two years immediately following sepang, even if it didn't seem if you see how he behaved

well. look. it was reflected in how valentino behaved... I think sometimes if you see isolated photos and gifsets, you can maybe be left with a bit of a mistaken impression of what that dynamic actually looked like for those two years. they got to a point post-catalunya where they were civil to each other, and maybe they'd exchange two lines in greeting, at podium celebrations, when somebody in a presser made a joke... and maybe marc at the very least was sincerely hoping they could get back to something like what they had before 2015. in reality, though, it was still very very far away. it wasn't open hostilities... at some point in 2016, valentino realised he simply couldn't go on like this. I talked about it a bit here:

you get this discrepancy in his 2016 output, actually. if you compare what he's saying that autumn for written press interviews vs what he's saying with marc right next to him... he'd clearly decided there was zero point in directly fanning the flames. at the sepang 2016 presser when marc and him are quizzed on what had happened the previous year, he just goes with marc's response and decides against reopening the controversy by adding anything from his side. but he still made it clear he hadn't changed his mind in interviews from the exact same time period! at times, he tolerates marc's tentative advances - at other times, he's almost accidentally sucked in, like he can't quite help himself from laughing at something marc has said. but there was never a period where he forgave marc for what he'd done... for various reasons he just decided he wasn't going to harp on about it too much. he did basically say as much post-argentina 2018:

but yeah, argentina 2018. it's an interesting one, isn't it? the stuff that valentino says there doesn't actually feel... quite in line with anything else he's said about marc. typically, when valentino criticises marc, it really is all about sepang 2015 - it's very focused, very specific, he's talking about being unable to forgive marc on a personal level for something marc had done to valentino... but it's not like he's really coming at marc for anything else... when other riders have gotten into spats with marc, he's stayed out of it - and generally he remains pretty neutral when he talks about everything else concerning marc. so, for example, there's a world where the moment alex rins is saying marc doesn't respect other riders in 2019, valentino immediately jumps at the opportunity to offer his hot take... but he doesn't do that. and yes, he had criticised marc's riding before, in particular in marc's moto2 days, but obviously those criticisms were considerably more restrained and sounded at times quite worried for marc's sake. (he also got close to that in silverstone 2016 when he remarked marc had 'something special' for their battles, but a) he's not wrong, except insofar as it's clearly mutual, and b) he explicitly said he didn't have a problem with that fight and considered it hard but fair). in 2017, when valentino was criticising other riders for being too aggressive... well, he wasn't doing so with marc, and he even conceded the point to marc in subsequent races after marc had obliquely criticised valentino at cota for his rhetoric not matching up to his own riding. when valentino's young riders have gotten into their own spats with marc, he's not waded in either, at most saying stuff about marc's fight with pecco that from his lips sounds almost like something akin to praise. radio silence after bez's run in with marc at the end of last year... argentina 2018 is the exception not the rule

and you know... at the end of the day, that was an emotional reaction. valentino might be wearing the habitual smile on his face during the media debrief and sound reasonably calm and composed, but he was furious. which, it's always worth remembering, isn't an entirely unreasonable reaction to that specific situation. yes, valentino doesn't have a clean track record either, but you're going to struggle to find such a... weaponised carelessness, a blatant disinterest in his fellow riders while shoving them aside, in the way marc was exhibiting that day - and indeed that whole weekend. looking back, of course argentina 2018 ended up being an isolated blot on marc's track record that he's not come close to repeating since (yes, he's made high profile errors that took out other riders, but it's different)... but we didn't know that at the time. also, I doubt valentino much appreciated being treated just like an obstacle in marc's path! the fact that valentino wasn't the only marc victim that weekend kind of has an interesting effect, because you have to doubt whether it would have helped if valentino felt like he was being targeted specifically by marc, but on the other hand... well, it's almost disrespectful, isn't it... being singled out is in a way still better than being brushed aside like any other rider

still, valentino's pushing it with his criticisms, he's out of line, and he clearly did lash out in the heat of the moment - which was of course largely a product of the resentment he'd been holding onto those past two years. calling marc's behaviour that day dangerous? sure, you'd find a lot of agreement for that. saying that marc was ruining the sport? that he was intentionally causing other riders to crash? ... well, hold on one moment. I reckon the simplest explanation is the best one here: valentino was angry and said stuff he wouldn't otherwise say, which we know because he's not done so before or since. of course, he was never going to retract what he said about marc that day - he wasn't ever going to apologise for it. not with their history, not when there was still just enough about those argentina comments that he meant... so he wasn't going to feel too much regret about the bits he wouldn't have said under any other circumstance. the problem post-2015 for valentino is that constantly signalling his fury to the world wasn't doing him much good... but pretending like everything was just fine clearly also took a bit of a toll. argentina 2018 wiped the slate clean - even though they gradually crept back towards basic civility after that. and valentino really didn't continue with that line of critique... since then he's basically completely reverted back to a sepang 2015-centric approach. maybe a few hints at it... in 2021, he said something along the lines of how he doesn't feel good when he's on-track with marc, but that's pretty generic while also crucially being personal - he's not saying marc is a problem for the series, he's saying it's them specifically that have an issue with each other

which doesn't mean he didn't believe what he said in argentina 2018 in the moment... when they reconvened in cota and had marc and valentino do separate media debriefs from the main presser, valentino said he stood by his comments - but also didn't actually repeat them or elaborate on them or anything. he's back to terse short responses to the press' questions, saying he wants to focus on the race ahead: kind of the go-to approach when it comes to marc post-sepang (with notable exceptions). he's walked his strongest comments back as much as he was probably ever going to - by simple virtue of the fact that he's left it at that. and you know, he's a complicated guy... 2016-17 was both pretending and it also wasn't. he didn't act like everything was forgotten, but he certainly was willing to let people believe that this relationship might end up being mended - which quite frankly was probably never going to happen. mostly, he was just sort of sick of the whole thing, struggling to enjoy himself in what had become such a charged, hostile environment for all the riders involved. at the same time, look - fundamentally, the interpersonal chemistry with marc was always fine. they click as people! they click as riders! marc makes valentino laugh! sometimes, that line between 'pretending' and 'letting yourself pretend' and 'actually not pretending at all' can be quite thin. when valentino talks in that time period about how much he enjoyed a battle with marc, of course he isn't lying - because he really does enjoy those fights! that's what racing is all about for him, and that's something him and marc still share! as long as marc isn't barging him aside and causing him to crash, that is. maybe it'd be easier if it were all a pretence, but it wasn't... sometimes, when you say you thought a race was hard and fair, you really do mean it and you really did have a lot of fun. sometimes, the struggle isn't actually acting nice for the cameras, it's trying to bite down the temptation to laugh alongside your sworn enemy

see also assen 2016... like, isn't this kinda wild? you've just had catalunya the race before, you've just had the mere semblance of a tentative start to a possible reconciliation - then they return to the place that was really the beginning of the end for them. they go on a few track familiarisation laps, including to check out the resurfaced final chicane (aka the scene of the crime). they race each other on said track familiarisation laps. then marc brings it up in the presser, giggling about the whole thing, and apparently valentino also finds it pretty funny - before he visibly swallows up his grin. later that weekend, marc pointedly decides to try out valentino's final chicane move himself during the warm up session. this is all obviously deranged, but it's a type of deranged where they are fundamentally on the same wavelength. it's the kind of ridiculous behaviour they're both incredibly fond of... you see it in how valentino shrugs off the towing at catalunya 2019, and thinks it speaks to marc's smarts and wiliness - unsurprising, really, because they're so similar in that regard, and valentino has never shaken his admiration for marc as a competitor

valentino can clamp down on his animosity towards a rival during his direct interactions with them... lord knows if you watch a few of the casey and valentino face-to-face interactions over the years, you really wouldn't match that up with the sheer vitriol of some of the stuff they were concurrently saying about each other in the press. that rivalry was never really personal (on valentino's end), it was never fraught in the same way (for valentino anyway) - still, it shows he's theoretically capable of separating this stuff out when he needs to... and he just about managed with marc for two years. if he had just been waiting for an excuse, surely you would have heard at least a hint of that when him and marc swapped paint in 2017. you never quite knew how he was going to answer the inevitable questions about marc's riding, but no direct criticism was forthcoming at any stage. the post-argentina 2018 rhetoric wasn't in any way premeditated from valentino's side, and personally I don't think he was just waiting for an excuse either. it was the result of a constant internal conflict between knowing that engaging in any more active beef with marc wouldn't do anyone any good, and the fact that he still hadn't forgiven marc... and then a race came along that simply pissed him off enough to push him over the edge

from 2016 onwards, valentino both very much wanted and very much did not want further conflict with marc, and neither of those impulses ever quite go away. usually, he's disciplined enough to avoid stoking the flames any further... potshots to the press outside of the paddock are essentially a free and harmless outlet in that regard, and even there you can tell he was trying to scale it back in the years where he was being forced to directly interact with marc. he was pretending and not pretending and sometimes pretending like he wasn't pretending and sometimes pretending like he was pretending. maybe it would have always just taken one major on-track confrontation for things to fall apart between them again... but you do kinda have to acknowledge the whole thing was really unfortunate. I've long thought that something like sepang 2015 was pretty inevitable as long as valentino managed to put himself in title contention once marc had joined the premier class, but I don't actually feel the same way about argentina 2018. an awful marriage of circumstance and coincidence and bad choices caused the relationship to fall apart again this badly. valentino might have had some more or less sincere misgivings about marc's riding, but at the end of the day he wasn't going to ever express them unless it got personal - because all of these people are incredibly self-centred and valentino wouldn't have felt like it was worth it. he lost his temper, he said some stuff he might partly but not fully believe, he's not inclined to bring it up again. that's that

[twinsyy]

typing away at a small thing atm. cuz im lowkey invested with the photoshoot sagau brainrot i posted abt navia recently

[hauntswitch]

Im so sorry but the L word is absolutely fucking hilarious - none of these women have an ounce of morality between them and yet they're all somehow still loveable characters. Despite the atrocities. And the bad 2000s haircuts. And the deeply questionable fashion choices.

[setaflow]

A friend is trying very hard to convince me to start donating plasma (he gets a referral bonus if he signs someone up) and ngl the idea of using it to pay for less important things like books and art commissions is appealing if only for the fact that I get to say "Yeah I'm paying for this with blood money"

[mercless]

🗡 mad cowboy disease....

[skrunksthatwunk]

hitting this article with a rolled up newspaper. bad. stop it

sigh. exhaustive argument that none of these shows grouped together have the same art style below, complete with images and whatever

oh also im not the type to comment on articles so idk the etiquette but don't like. go over there and say "ur list sucks >:P" that's just gonna bring more traffic to it. i linked it so people could ratio me if need be not so that you guys could dunk on this random listicle writer. it's pointless and kind of cruel. just so we're clear on that

edit: the quote above uses "time period" instead of "era". i quote it as saying "era" a lot. i'm not fixing that

note: here i'm assuming "art style" refers to, generally: character designs (facial and body proportions, how things like hair is dealt with, etc), lighting, color (palette, saturation, value), line weight, etc [and mostly excluding things like shot composition, direction, etc because while those probably count my personal experience with these shows is mostly limited, and because most people focus on the previous things i've listed in their discussions of art styles. the analysis within the article is incredibly shallow, and if they think samurai champloo's art style is "rehashed and reused", i don't think they're like. super deep in the art analysis sauce. anyway]

code geass vs death note. what are you saying. what are you talking about

code geass' approach to color is more vibrant, and dn's is more washed out. dn takes a more realistic approach to faces and bodies, both in proportion and in shape (namely how curved their features are (as opposed to cg's far more exaggerated sharp faces, large eyes, and lanky bodies. note how lelouch's lips barely jut out in profile, for instance)). i shouldn't have to explain this they're not even close

that's the most extreme example, but samurai champloo and cowboy bebop aren't That similar either

it's hard for me to speak on bebop for the most part because i've never seen it (vs my ~8 eps of samurai champloo knowledge), but from what i have seen, bebop often has a sort of delicate intricacy to a lot of its linework (especially its backgrounds) that champloo tends to sacrifice in favor of bolder lines and higher contrast. it was hard to find great examples, but the silhouettes champloo's characters cut are often sort of.. choppy and wild, and usually lanky and stretched-out, while bebop's are more realistic (focus on the shoulders in the last image set, for instance). there's overlap, sure, but there are clear and intentional differences in the designs, to say nothing of champloo's higher saturation and the natural differences between hand-drawn and digitally-drawn animation

(and if "art style" is referring to the direction rather than just character design, lighting, color, etc, it's because these two have the same director, which hardly creates an "era". that's like comparing two miyazaki films from the 90s and saying "this is what 90s anime movies looked like", it's nonsense. also, i feel like lumping these two together because they look a little similar is unfair because they're pretty unique from their contemporaries in their own right. they may resemble each other a bit, but how much do they resemble other late 90s early 00s sci-fi/historical anime? does samurai champloo look like outlaw star to you? or trigun? or evangelion? does cowboy bebop look like ninja scroll? or samurai 7? or sword of the stranger? etc etc etc?? if we're claiming that cowboy bebop and samurai champloo share an "era", then what of their contemporaries, and what about differences across bebop and champloo's very different genres? more on this point later)

even fruits basket and ouran, the ones i initially felt were most similar, have clear distinctions

ouran's got a distinct abundance of pastels in its color palette, tending towards pinks, blues, yellows, oranges, etc. its use of black and brown is very limited. fb's palette is a bit more relaxed, and while its colors are often pale, i wouldn't call them pastel (they also skew more towards natural, earthy tones). fb's characters have noticably.. flatter skulls? in some shots, and their heads are so squat that they can seem consumed by their eyes. anyway this is a trait ouran does not quite share, for a number of small reasons, like how their cheeks bow out, greater emphasis on noses and mouths, and its use of highly variable line weight (vs fb's very stable line weight). hair is more voluminous and multilayered in ouran, and features like lips and noses (esp noses) are fuller, more three dimensional (in general, ouran's approach to shading hair and faces makes the characters feel rounder). the sharp edges and bell-sleeves of ouran's uniform blazers are actually far more reminiscent of the designs in code geass than fruits basket, imo. (actually.. i'm not sure how to express this but a lot of the poses in ouran resemble code geass poses, in their locked-joint arms-stretched kinda way). ouran forgoes hair-shine, while fruit's basket adds them in either jagged points (see most of the images i included) or a sort of triangle wrapping around the head (not pictured here, just trust me)

(note: i'm assuming they are referring to the 2001 anime adaptation of fruits basket rather than the 2019 one, because not only does the 2019 adaptation resemble ohshc even less, but because they are closer in time period, and the grouping is supposedly based on era).

my point is none of these shows look rehashed from one another. there's sometimes overlap, but each has a unique aesthetic based in many small choices made in their design.

now let's look at their use of "eras" a little more. this is the timeline of air dates for the first episodes of the six shows mentioned (for their original japanese runs, obviously):

cowboy bebop, april 1998

fruits basket, july 2001

samurai champloo, may 2004

ouran high school host club, april 2006

code geass, october 2006

death note, october 2006

code geass and death note being paired by era is, at least, accurate. same month, same year. it's about as close as one can get. however, the other two groups are far more removed from each other. fruits basket and ouran have five years between them, and bebop and champloo have six. this wouldn't be such an issue if there weren't other anime within this list that came between them. if bebop and champloo are in the same era, why is fruits basket grouped differently? ouran came out in 2006 just like code geass and death note, so why is it grouped with something that came out five years prior instead of them?

i think it's fair to say that eras are not purely chronological, that there's overlap between them. one doesn't begin as soon as (and not a moment before) its singular predecessor ends. but era feels like an incomplete distinction here. this list alone shows quite a lot of variety for what someone can mean when they say something "looks like 2000s anime". most anime fans have a picture in their head of that, and, to be so honest, i don't think samurai champloo is it. using only time as a distinction rather than movement, genre, etc is simply not enough. the fact that 5/6 of these shows occur within 2001-2006, and yet they're set apart into three different eras, and each pair (in ways i'm sure the author of this piece would admit) does not resemble the other, is proof enough that 2001-2006 did not have one repetitive art style, at least not in a way these anime exemplify. that's to say nothing of whether or not the anime within the era-pairs look the same, which we've established i don't. but since they don't actually tell us what their eras are, we can only speculate. personally, i speculate that they didn't think about it too hard at all, or even look up the release dates, going off vibes instead, if that.

when this person is talking about "eras", i think "eras within certain styles or genres" is more accurate, but even with these in mind, matching shows up like this makes a lot less sense than i think they realize. death note and code geass are sometimes lumped together because they're both mind-gamey thrillers with megalomaniacal protagonists with a single unique power that they use to try and fix/control the world, not because of their art styles. trying to say they look the same just because they share plot elements and came out around the same time is just... really weird. fruits basket and ouran both fall into early 2000s shojo, which is part of why the comparison fits more. target demographics and what magazines cater to those demographics (and thus the aesthetics of those magazines, which you have to fit into enough to get your manga published, and which also just influence what you want, what readers want, etc through exposure) (<- oversimplifying) are an actual valid point of comparison, at least more so than "idk 2006 lol". even if the result is more like "romcom for girls, 2006"

it doesn't help that many of the choices they made for unique art styles don't feel particularly "unique" to me.

choices like mononoke and land of the lustrous i get. and i'm not saying any of the examples i've just pulled or in the article are bad art styles, or that they don't bring anything unique to the table. i'm sure many of them are beautiful, and help elevate the tones of the stories, and all that jazz, whatever. but if the name of the game is "unique", then i don't think these cut it from what i can see. it doesn't help that most of the analysis comes down to "it looks really really cool" or "you don't normally see this art style with this genre/tone" (which is not the same thing as being broadly unique, imo)

it could be that we have different impressions of what "art style" means. it could lie somewhere in the bits of art style that i cut out, like shot composition and direction, etc. and some of it is probably a difference in what constitutes uniqueness, both between our differing experiences with media and personal taste/philosophy. but i don't think i'm wrong here when i say that the assertion that samurai champloo is era-typical in a way that beyond the boundary (2013) isn't is just fucking wrong.

look i know that bit that i screenshotted that started all this was a filler paragraph. i know it was the mandatory setup for the listicle you scroll to immediately, the parts you're supposed to ignore. i usually ignore articles like this completely because they're kinda bullshit. but i think this hunt for what looks the most unique is a flawed and confused one, at least to some extent. especially when all of the justifications are like "it supports the vibe well", which is something that all art styles are supposed to do, no matter how "unique" they are or are not, and i think that when people discuss things like art styles and anime and what looks generic and what looks unique, lumping things together too much often removes the nuances that really do influence people. i'm an artist. it's gonna sound dumb, but the way things look matters to me, even if it's stuff like how shirtsleeves or noses are drawn. to ignore all these little differences that make each piece unique is to blend so many singular, unique things into this easy-to-categorize mush that just... does a disservice to the choices every artist makes, i think. even if it is a pretty mild disservice. again, i cannot stress enough that this article is not important, and that this post responding to it is also not important.

look, what i'm trying to say is stop and smell the roses. notice the differences in the art you consume and think about it. looking for something that's so different it jerks your brain around is cool and good and fine and normal, but to disregard things as "basically the same as xyz" is reductive and icky and i don't like it. if you want something unique idk go watch kaiba (2006) have fun it's really good. i'm going to bed

nvm miscellaneous gripes section + i go to bed at like 5am lol i LIED:

the only thing said about beyond the boundary's art style is "it's hard not to fall in love with the art style", and the rest of the comments are other elements. that's too vague! i'm docking points!!

a lot of this seems based in the color palette now that i'm rereading it. not that my analysis doesn't also involve that, and not that that's invalid, but it makes me think there uh. might not have been Too too much thought beyond that. (example: "Though the dark and cool colors provide a sense of dullness, these colors cater to the tone of the story, which is dark and representative of its heavy content." like. that's not. unique. that's not unique to solo leveling y'know to have a dark story be awash in dark and cool colors that's pretty normal actually. maybe how they do it is unique, but we'll never know bc i haven't seen solo leveling and the author didn't care to elaborate :/ oh well)

this one's petty but i actually think ohshc's art style is pretty unique. maybe it's just because i've seen it several times and certain details like how the bottom-lip-to-chin shadow is done have caught my attention but like. pouting crossing my arms huffing >:( i think it's unique wth...

demon slayer's an alright choice i agree. idk i barely watched it a few years ago and it still wrenched my art style in a new direction. i dunno anything that looks quite like it. i'm not mad about all these choices per se it's just hard to whittle something like uniqueness down to a top ten list, i guess. and to say samurai champloo's generic while violet evergarden is the 5th most unique anime you've ever seen is like. weird. you're setting yourself up for people to go ehhhh... idk...... if you're not picking stuff that's like. Clearly Out There (i.e. mononoke)

"It’s no surprise that Demon Slayer is an anime with some of the best art styles." i might be fighting something that was written by ai now that i think about it...

oh god this was totally written by ai. or it went very unedited. man i spent like 2 hours on this (<- LOSER LOSER). they can't decide what the plural of anime is

they insist that chainsaw man's art style is weird enough to maybe put people off, and the only reason i can think that is is bc it's cg. but don't do the same for land of the lustrous, which is also and much more obviously cg. idk

they phoned it in but didn't even include that ping pong anime smhing my head. y'know the one everyone includes. which means whoever wrote this actually did stick to personal choices over crowd-pleasers, or chatgpt goofed or whatever. idc. guys they didn't even put flcl (<- but they put gurren lagann? as a gurren lagann fan im confused) oh my godd

ik i said this before but im saying it again: a lot of their pros and cons come down to whether or not an art style is typical for that kind of story, so like whether something gritty in tone has a more realistic art style or whether it has something visually cutesy instead. art style is more than just those things, but even that analysis is like. pretty much as bare-bones as what i just said. yucky

oh also part of my issue with this (didn't phrase it right sorry) is like. "unique" is a broad term. a really broad term. it can mean anything. there is no top 10 anime with unique art styles article that would escape that problem, and my analysis here does not escape that problem. i find the term a little unproductive (same with the concept of "originality"), so just know that i guess

[hassianlovebot]

"When she got sick, I felt my life losing its purpose. I’d do anything to save her. And I did! I don’t regret it!" this is one of reth's dialogues and like,, do you see what i mean when i say that the dialogue is So conflicting at times? like it's Just vague enough that it can very easily imply that tish Just got sick as an adult and that reth took action quickly afterwards. like it's worded in such a way that it doesn't Quite fit the vibes of tish being sick as a child. i'm not saying that reth wouldn't feel that strongly as a kid, but i am saying that it's worded in a way that implies a quicker passing of time between tish getting sick and reth getting into debt to save her life.

i feel like the devs really need to sort out the timeline and fix the dialogue to match up with it. either their parents died when they were like 5-10 or when they were teenagers/young adults. either tish got sick as a child or right before they moved to kilima. like,, you can't have dialogue that implies Both :')

[opens-up-4-nobody]

The way that the sun hits leaves and clouds. I feel like I could watch the colors change forever. If I could slow down for that long.

[thrilling-oneway]

There’s something about how a lot of project sekai fans approach found family that just. I dunno, rubs me the wrong way i guess? I feel like a lot of people are missing the point.

950 something words of me rambling like hell about frienship under the cut

Sibling HCs are very popular in this fandom and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing (i even have a couple myself) but the way people treat them is very nuclear, and agh I just really feel like you’re missing out on the nuanced platonic relationships that come with found family.

Like found family doesn’t fit conventional “nuclear family” dynamics. That’s the whole point! You can have a deep familial platonic bond with someone but that doesn’t always equate to siblings. I’m talking about this more in a fanon sense, because in game the Tenma’s and Toya consider each other like siblings, but I feel like especially on twitter people are overdoing it, for lack of a better term, with the sibling HCs.

I’m not trying to say it’s bad, have your fun HCs no one’s stopping you, but so many people I’ve seen recently where like every platonic ship they have (especially m/f ones) they consider as a sibling duo/trio/etc. And you are seriously missing the point of found family when you are building a whole extremely nuclear mum/dad/siblings dynamic between cast members. It’s all about the unconventional yet still familial bond. Found family is so good to explore because of the fact it isn’t the “default” family structure. You aren’t quite siblings or don’t have a parent/child dynamic, but you are family!!

Like just to talk about the fact that sibling HCs are something I see constantly with platonic m/f relationships as well. I know not everyone does this but so many people completely write off m/f friendship - either you are a couple or you are siblings. And maybe this is because of heteronormativity and the expectation that men and women who are friends must have underlying romantic interest in the relationship and if they don’t then they’re biologically related but maybe it’s not but still! Don’t overlook it. Normalise platonic m/f relationships they don’t need to be romantic or familial they can just be friends and I feel like this is such an underutilised dynamic in prsk fanon content, which is unusual considering it is so fucking prominent in the game particularly with VBS and WxS.

And even outside of m/f, platonic relationships of all gender combinations within the fandom are so so so overlooked. “But they’re not” okay you can’t just say “they are all besties <3” and get a pass because it feels like you have a very idealistic and blatantly unrealistic idea of how friendship works to the point it feels almost ingenuine. Like placing them all on that same level of frienship when friendship is so nuanced and truthfully you’re not gonna be that close with everyone. You grow distant from people or just never grow that close to people but these interactions can still be incredibly important even if they aren’t connected to a deep personal bond. On the other side of things you can have an extremely deep bond and close attachment to someone and it can be entirely platonic and just platonic. Not romantic not familial not queerplatonic. It’s just friendship and this game is all about platonic relationships even if it does delve into ship tease at times. Literally the theme that ties everything together is unity and friendship and community.

And this is getting offtopic from found family so I now present to you: Wonderlands x Showtime - the unit whose underlying theme is literally found family and I am willing to fight people on this. According to wikipedia (unreliable source, i know), found family is "a non-biologically related group of people established to provide ongoing social support". And while this applies to every unit in the game to some degree, it perfectly describes the WxS dynamic. Yes I know Niigo fits that definition too but their overall dynamic is a lot more centred around emotional support and some of their dynamics are still somewhat detached because of their individual situations and mental health problems. But WxS is about the social support aspect and it is staring you right in the face. Everyone in WxS was a weirdo or outcast or alone in some way but they find solidarity and a place to belong with each other. Nene was too shy and insecure to face people, Emu wanted to be taken seriously, and Rui was shunned and outcast for who he was. Tsukasa had a dream to become a star, Emu found him and hired him so she could fulfil her dream of revitalising the stage, which led to Rui being brought along and finally giving him somewhere where he was accepted, who got Nene to go with him so she could overcome her insecurities and perform again. They have each other when they don't have other people, they support each other in achieving their dreams because they share the same passion even if their goals lie on different paths. And it's just so fucking good. They aren't siblings, they aren't love interests* - they are friends. They are found family by definition and by example and it's not nuclear - it doesn't fit a familial structure at all they aren't siblings, it isn't a parent/guardian-child dynamic. It just is and that's what matters most.

Uhh I'm still bad at ending these things. Platonic relationships in Project SEKAI are important and you shouldn't water them down to fit nuclear family dynamics or idealistic expectations and accept that they have nuance and aren't always going to be perfect without flaws. Also heteronormativity bad, m/f friendship good, WxS is found family and you can anon hate me on that (also that was meant to be part of a different essay that has been in my drafts for months but the demons won).

If you made it this far congrats. I'm sorry you put yourself through reading whatever the fuck this is.

*i know a few of them have ship tease but shhhh it's not nearly as prominent as other units like MMJ/VBS anyway because guess what - the unit is much more focused on the platonic stuff. this is literally why L/n and WxS don't have as clear quote-unquote "most pushed pairings" as other units do because frienship is the main theme for those two units. this is not confirmed at all (according to colopale there is no ship tease in the game) but it doesn't take much to work out.

[pochapal]

I wish you the best of healing and that you are assisted by competent doctors who care about you and will ensure you have a good quality of life and lots of life to live. you deserve it (everyone deserves it of course, but specifying 'you' so you know that I believe you are a person whose thoughts and continued literature sparks joy and enriches the world)

also I hope that you are as of this moment doing well or that you will be doing well in the future.

aahhh this is very kind thank you!!!! <3

[edettethegreat]

10/10 manga for pulling a “we’ll defeat you with the power of friendship!!” “That’s… incredibly ignorant of you. I’m significantly more powerful, whether or not you have friends won’t impact this fight”