#but manga and original anime Rem has NO EXCUSE

[lost-technology]

I am now imagining a crewmember in Project SEEDS gifting Rem one of those little cow-child figurines as a joke in regards to naming one of her adopted children "Vash." The same crew member could not find one for the other kid and is busily spending time in their quarters crafting scrap metal and sculpture clay into a baby dressed like a butter knife.

Worcester Savers

[chibivesicle]

Trigun Stampede: Episode 1 review

To avoid being lazy and falling into the subgroup of a bitter nostalgic fan who watched Trigun on a fansub VHS tape before it was dubbed or on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, I have decided that I will faithfully review Trigun Stampede.  This will be naturally in comparison to the original anime as well as the manga.  Perhaps, I will become bitter and annoyed, perhaps not.  However, I will do my best to review it as someone who has a soft spot in her heart for the original.

It goes that I will have spoilers for things if for some odd reason you haven’t seen the original so just keep in mind it will be in context to how Stampede compares to the original.

Episode 1 starts out in space with the Project Seeds ships flying near a desert planet.  Vash is greeting all the people in the cryotubes and the ship is quickly met with disaster.  Rem has Nai [Knives] and Vash go into the escape pod, Nai tells Rem to get in but she refuses and tells them this.

She doesn’t tell Vash to take care of his brother or there is no confusion as the door shuts leaving Vash to spend 130-150 years trying to determine what Rem told him to do in regard to Knives.

Rem just cries and makes it clear that they were import to her and her life.

Thus, the anime let’s the viewer know right from the start that people crashed on the planet and we know that Vash and his brother survived and it then cuts to a SUV in the desert with Meryl driving.  Yes, the manga also starts off explaining that people crashed on the planet. But it isn’t revealed to be shown in relation to Vash, so, at the beginning of the anime we don’t know how he fits in this part of the narrative.

Meryl Stryfe is with her older colleague Roberto DeNiro and they are reporters for November Broadcasting.  It is immediately apparent that Meryl is a recent college grad and this is her first job.

We can also see she has some lofty goals to change the world for the better as a reporter.  However, she has to work with jerkass Roberto who rubs snot from his face on her resume, crumples it up into a ball and tosses it out the window.  He refuses to call her by her name, is drinking on the job and chain smoking.  Overall, I hate him and I want Milly back.  The fact that some how anal retentive detailed oriented Meryl Stryfe forgot to charge the battery (and the fact they don’t have a spare to swap out in such a place) makes me cringe.  When they walk up to Vash and she freaks out that he’s not dead cowers behind Roberto.

They are quickly found by the July Military Police (note to the subtitle peeps at CR who wrote it as JuLai) and the bad guy of the week hands them the wanted flyer.  Vash looks much more like manga/anime Vash and he’s got a six million $$ bounty - not the sixty billion one that starts both the anime and manga.

Meryl sends them off his trail for a scoop.  When Vash well, is Vash and all chatty with them, Meryl becomes such a flirty/flattered/ditz.  This is only one of her facial expression/poses of over the top cuteness and - I hate it!

Why is a professional woman, who has to prove herself acting like this?  Face it, women in the workplace deal with enough gendered shit and they went and made her all ‘Oh me? Reeeallly?? I’m just too cute uwuwuwuwu’.  Excuse me while I go barf.  Our man Roberto is already three sheets to the wind with his shirt tail sticking out as he looks resigned to be stuck with his stupid newbie and a weirdo outlaw.

Anyhoo, somehow they make it to Jeneora Rock with Vash’s wandering skills I guess.  Meryl is looking rough as they walk to the main gate.  Interestingly, she’s framed for a brief bit by a man with the weird emu/ostrich (not a thomas) creature with what appear to be metal coffins.  Are these empty waiting for bodies or already full?  Unclear.  Is this man related to the Eye of Michael or just showing the wild west images from media of old?

This leads to the first time Meryl enters a saloon (sans Milly) and it attempts to recreate that first time of a petite professional woman out in the ‘frontier’.  And it falls flat.

Yes, she gets made fun of when she enters similar to the original anime but we don’t have Meryl walking up to the barkeep, pounding her fist down and declaring the following:  A banana sundae!

This is a woman who knows what she wants and she is fucking asking for it with authority.  The animation pans to the shocked expression on the mens’ faces before showing this.

Milly may be the junior but she also knows what she wants!  This then leads to the men heckling and intimidating them which comes to a complete stop when Milly’s strap breaks on her giant stun gun and the men decide to not mess with them.  Keep in mind later in the episode when they are tied up, the minor villain, also realizes that Meryl is packing heat and backs off a bit as well.

Instead, junior reporter Meryl can barely ask for a simple water and gets mocked, by Rosa, not some burly male barkeep!  Jeez, makes for a bad taste in my mouth when she is gushing about how great Vash is and gives Roberto a pass b/c he looks wise and hardened who tries to order a whiskey - like the man he is.

They notice that the city lacks clean water (if they set up a still they could clean it FYI) but it seems the creative team wanted something super obvious for Meryl to realize she isn’t in December or November anymore.  Again, they introduce the role of plants from the get go instead of how the anime had the slow reveal about the giant light bulb things which were one of the few visual cues this isn’t an ‘old fashioned’ western.  Along with the twin suns and extra moons.

While at the dying plant the July MPs are able to show up (they left the main door open?) and want to arrest Vash for the bounty, noting it would allow the town to get a new plant.  Roberto decides to fix the solution, flask in hand by having the hot headed man duel Vash.  Honestly, his argument is tepid at best but the unnamed MP goes for it and will reveal himself to be bat shit crazy.

The reporters hang back since the quick draw is on and Vash waves looking goofy and we do get a rapid shift in his facial expression when he’s no longer in line of sight from below.  Roberto points out that Vash is a fool.

Meryl wants to help but he points out that she’d have been dead several times already.  Which is factually accurate, but he wasn’t doing a good job of mentoring her to not die either.  Compared to the original where we get a full five episodes of Meryl thinking Vash is a total goof and fool and couldn’t possibly be the legendary gunslinger, this one is quick to point out he’s not able to fit in this place.

Of course, Vash runs into the exact same issue from the original but revealed in a different way - he’s out of bullets.  However, in the first one, he’s escaping the bounty hunters in search of him and he slowly knocks them out to steal ammo from them.  This time he has a complete melt down and Rosa is willing to give 1 single bullet to Meryl to throw to him. 

Honestly, this goes for the most epic badass how the hell did he do it with a single shot blah blah blah which - didn’t give me the feels. That’s the problem, we know that Vash is going to save the day and the town seems indifferent to him if he does or doesn’t.

His arm, which has already been identified as lost technology, could break solid rock and rip it out of the ground.  I’m going to guess it likely doesn’t have a hidden machine gun in it anymore for extra protection.  Current opinions on such topics have shifted and I can see Vash having the hidden machine gun as not being as cool anymore.  

Trigun is like other anime/manga of that 80s/90s that were made for firearms nerds.  Specifically, I’m thinking of Gunsmith Cats with Rally Vincent and May (I know that I’m really dating myself know bringing up this seinen series).  Both Kenichi Sonada of Gunsmith Cats and Yashiro Nightow are seinen manga authors who are the right age to have been influenced by the western media that included crime noir/pulp/spaghetti westerns/dukes of hazard/gunsmoke etc etc stuff and it shows.  I remember an interview with Sonada which I’m 99% sure was in Animerica magazine (now, I’m really dating myself) about all his research into firearms and making trips to the States to use them at a range and all sorts of crazy stuff like that.

The crisis is averted and the July MP are sent packing and Vash pretends to be a lucky bastard yet is still chatting with Meryl and Roberto.  Roberto immediately calls him out on what his concern is and Vash just info dumps that he’s got a brother called Millions Knives.  Wow, spare us the suspense and build up Vash.   We get the flashback to the crash where it reveals in episode one that Nai orchestrated the crash, but don’t worry he saved the ship with all the plants so it is okay.

Vash can’t believe this happened and Nai makes it clear that Vash is his partner in this insanity. One of the insect birds flies to a very obvious bad guy layer where Knives is playing dramatic piano music as he learns that Vash been found and that he is to be brought to him.  Stampede is throwing down the end from the start, Knives is the big bad and he has a plot to suck Vash into his orbit.  He might have well had the long bad guy speech about how he formed the Gung Ho Guns and all that as well.  Knives, why don’t you just monologue to your crew in episode one and save us all the mystery?

For someone with a great hatred of humanity, why is he playing the piano?  He found everything about humans to be disgusting so why would he embrace a side hustle with music?  I bet Midvalley the Hornfreak has been eliminated - saxophone is too 90s.  It is 2023, bad guy with piano is in and badass sax is out.

The episode then ends with the scenes of Vash wandering and lots of sand.  It seems alright.  This was episode one, so we didn’t get our usual opening and ending so I can’t say anything just yet about the combo of both.

It seems just to mess with us, the episode doesn’t end with a philosophical preview but just this artwork.  Vash is sitting on a rock outcrop looking at a ship that has crashed in a desert landscape.  The background includes an actual photo, I wonder where it was taken.  However, it indeed does look like the desert; I lived in one for over 7 years.

At the point where the mid episode commercial break was, we got a map of what they are calling the Seven Cities.  The orange dot is showing the current location in Jeneora Rock. We can also see that July is still on the map.  Did Vash not destroy it then in Stampede?

There is also an orphanage on the map as opposed to the one associated with Wolfwood in the anime/manga located in December.  Which in both the anime and manga, December is alluded to be the most cosmopolitan and developed of the cities. 

In the anime during the two year break when Vash disappears after Augusta and the Fifth Moon Incident, Meryl and Milly are back at the Bernardelli Insurance Society’s headquarters in December. It looks like a Gilded Age East Coast American city with paved streets, proto-skyscrapers and lots of motorized vehicles.

Note that the manga points out in volume 1 of Trigun Maximum that Meryl’s coworkers celebrate her birthday. And it reveals that when Meryl first encountered Vash and Wolfwood with Milly, she was 21!  So yes, Meryl was a straight A student who completed her education and landed her job as an insurance adjuster/investigator when she was 21 and likely a recent grad and was the senior colleague to Milly!

I’d also like to note that the blonde colleague here Karen is pretty cool in the anime and manga recognizing that Meryl is an excellent employee and supports her either by preventing the other workers from being weird - or by her monologue in the anime about being happy that Meryl is chasing her career goals. 

Episode 1 conclusions:

Vash - Vash appears to be pretty much Vash.  I didn’t like his screaming/crying meltdown when he realized he had no ammo.  Somehow, realistic tears seemed weird to me.  In the anime he had the more of a comedic expression of horror.

I think the ‘Oh shit, I’ve got no bullets!’ gag worked better when it was low risk - Vash knew he could escape and no one else was involved.  Taking the stakes up to for some odd reason try to save everyone from the cluster bombs which would fall next to the town (?) when it isn’t even clear it was a necessary action makes for a weak plot beat.

He also is info dumping left and right instead of his ‘fake’ smile which isn’t called out until episode 9 ‘Murder Machine’ when Wolfwood remarks that he can actually smile. 

Apparently, Vash doesn’t like donuts anymore.  I am sad if this is the case for Stampede.  I will forever love his ability to eat half a box of donuts while running and also have a full conversation.  It makes the scene where Vash gets the large bag of fresh donuts only to break down and weep openly in public hit you so hard.

I’m not keen on how he looks in Stampede, again having a red jacket that says Project Seeds which is still in pristine condition would make the backstory obvious.  We’ll have to see if he moves the same way as super lanky Vash, but the toned down look and obvious replacement arm aren’t giving him much of an air of mystery.  It was a nice touch when Vash runs into the room where Rem has the photo of them next to an actual germanium in a terrarium with red flowers though.  We are keeping the red germanium = perseverance and tenacity.

Meryl Stryfe - As of episode 1 is the ‘worst’ of her anime/manga original chara and Milly as well.  Derringer Stryfe wouldn’t have walked into a frontier saloon and mumble she wanted a water b/c she forgot to charge the SUV battery and pack a spare to swap out!  She’d walk in and demand her banana sundae!  None of this - the real world outside the big safe city is scary, hiding behind your drunk superior.  The whole uwu bit with Vash was just bad, it makes her look shallow and self-centered.  Jumping behind Roberto more than once - not cool, not cool.  Anime Meryl had a high opinion of herself which occasionally got her in trouble but it was valid; she was a capable person who got the job done and used logic to solve her problems.  For an anime that came out in ‘98 Meryl is a character ahead of her time.  I never found her annoying, I liked her.  Only now that I’m much older, I can see that my younger self - who was younger than her at the time I saw it, she was a good strong female character who was representation for someone like me still not yet in the real world (though I avoided it with graduate school too).

For her character design, I’m also disappointed.  They kept her suit coat, earrings and navy blue tights but that’s it.  The puffer jacket/windbreaker is weird along with the beret/newsboy cap thing, jean shorts and high top sneakers.  If you are going to be in the desert and you want to wear a hat, wear one with a brim.  Okay?  Those finger less gloves - WTF?  

Milly Thompson/Roberto DeNiro - Wow, wouldn’t I as a young professional woman love to be assigned to teamed up with a chain smoking, on the clock boozing, jerkass partner who refuses to use my name?  I’m sorry, I hate his character, he’s lazy writing, decreases the female characters for the main cast and his suggestions barely move the plot in a logical direction.  You really think that July MP guy would honestly have taken is bait to quick draw against Vash?  No!  In the Trigun manga he’d just riddle Roberto with bullets and take Vash.   Hell, if it were the anime, he’d riddle Roberto with bullets.

Roberto is just Don Draper from Mad Men but bitter reporter.  He’d smell terrible from all the cigarettes and booze and sweat.  They are setting up the ultimate cheese plot point where Roberto is like, “Nice job Meryl!  You really nailed it.” and Meryl will have feelings b/c her boss who should have respected her from the start has finally decided to respect her!  The emotions!  The payoff! [excuse me while I go barf some more]

Why am I saying Milly = Roberto?  Let’s look at the preview poster again. We’ve got our four main cast members right here. Vash is riding the bird creature.  Wolfwood is holding onto Vash’s jacket sort of.  Queue the Vashwood shippers.  He’s got Punisher by the strap and he’s losing his right shoe to reveal - no socks!

What’s with the slip on shoes in the desert?  Sand, so much sand and grit and crap is going to get in your shoes and you don’t even have socks?!?!  Where are your white socks with your tan oxfords?  The anime was cheap and made them look like some sort of penny loafer, but they did animate his white socks underneath and yes, I noticed them Madhouse. 

Wolfwood you are unfashionable with your dorky white socks, but I kinda love them.  The manga has lace up oxfords which makes more sense that he’d at least wear dress shoes as a wandering priest/clergyman.  It was visually striking and didn’t make him look as somber with the all black from head to toe.  The tan shoes broke that vibe in a good way giving him a visual pop/interest and also letting others know he isn’t quite what he seems.

It might be that they want to make Wolfwood look younger and hipper and he actually looks like Wolfwood as a kid here when he killed his parental figure.

It zooms out to see him from above (sort of a ‘God’ angle) and transitions to him entering the room through him physically stepping through the door and into his new career.  He looks like he’s wearing hand-me-down shoes as a poor kid.

It goes with the hidden message, that he at least has shoes even if they aren’t the best for going outside of a small town or city.  Poor orphaned kid with his second hand too large for him shoes.  I love how we can even see that as an adult with the white socks that Wolfwood’s shoes fit, the white sock is flush with the tan while in the flashback we can see a gap between his sockless feet and the too large shoes for him.  Nice detail, nice detail.

Meryl has a camera which she’ll shoot with.  No Derringers.  In the manga there is a short several page reflection/commentary from Meryl about the use of firearms.  When I re-read it I’ll make sure to remember where b/c it was top tier writing.  She explains how her father made sure she was trained in the use of firearms as it was a necessity on the planet.  But she takes it a step further and explains what it felt like the first time she ever shot a man.  The power of her monologue keeps brings the reader back to reality and to not focus on the sheer number of people someone like Wolfwood has likely killed and how it would be tearing him apart if someone like Meryl can articulate what it feels like to have this responsibility for the rest of your life.

And Milly’s replacement is Roberto as on the poster artwork, he’s got a small pistol in his left hand.  Therefore, under that boxy ill fitting brown suit coat, Mr. Jaded and Bitter is packing heat.  Ta daaaa!  This means that with Vash, Wolfwood and him, Meryl doesn’t need to dirty her feminine little hands and use a gun.  What will his backstory be if he has one?  Former police officer? Or local sheriff or marshal who gave up and went freelance?

Kuroneko-sama - is missing!  Where is God?  What is she doing?  I have watched the first episode three times and is she there?  No!  The horror, nya!

Last thoughts!

I’ve spent the past few days watching and reading other reviews about Trigun Stampede.  This includes articles on media sites, ANN, Youtube reviews, Reddit and so forth.

Here’s what I’ve gathered

1.) There may indeed be a gender split on Meryl and Milly.  As in female fans are disappointed at the putative smashing of Meryl and Milly into one character as opposed to having two women in the main cast of four.  Roberto is also a jerk and not getting very positive reviews from women.  I think a lot of fans regardless of gender are upset at Milly’s absence but the Meryl/Roberto combo is rubbing a lot of people the wrong way for very valid reasons.  I just notice less male reviewers calling out how toxic and unprofessional Roberto’s behavior is and female viewers not keen on him at all.  Or they think Meryl is the exactly same serious career woman (sir, are we even watching the same show?).

2.) Many people were first introduced to Trigun via the dub on Adult Swim.  They were younger than me when they saw it and are from after the flex point where anime was more common and more accessible.   Some of them never watched in with the Japanese cast and didn’t get the experience of Wolfwood’s Kansai accent which gives him a bonus gold star for me.  I was already done with Trigun before the fandom had likely really solidified.  Watching things like Noir, reading Paradise Kiss, and FLCL dropping hard cash for the official DVDs after watching a file shared fan sub.  I have been told the English dub is good, but no Kansai accent.

3.) Excited by learning about the reboot at AX last summer, I watched all of the original to see if it still hit the feels.  It seems a lot of the people reacting to it haven’t gone back for a recent refresh which might make critiquing it a bit harder since several reviewers said that Meryl was a reporter from the start or can’t exactly remember what happened at various points. 

4.) Character designs are ruffling feathers.  I don’t have an issue with the CG.  I’m not a huge fan of it for animation, I prefer 2D but that is just style preference.  But the character designs for very distinct characters which have been tamed for sure.  Studio Orange is leaning hard into the sci fi element.  The manga and Madhouse were western first - by a long shot with sci fi in a distant second. 

5.) More major character role changes might be coming up. Meryl is a reporter.  And then in PV 2 we have a black screen where we can hear a voice say. “Who me?  I’m just an undertaker.”

Undertaker is specifically a British English term for a person who prepares bodies for burial or cremation.  The screen then pans to a wide expanse of the desert and we can see a figure carrying a cross.

As he walks closer it reveals Wolfwood walking forward with his fairly accurate humor.

However, if this is how he indeed introduces himself in the anime, it will have changed his actual job besides being an assassin/hired gun.

I’m not sure it could equal the comedy gold that this sequence was in episode 9.  You just know that Meryl skepticism is on the mark when she doesn’t seem to believe he’s who he says he is.

Fingers crossed, Wolfwood still gets that air of mystery by introducing himself as a priest/clergyman and not undertaker.  Vash already blew his mysterious background a bit in the first episode, at least let Wolfwood have some since there is the possibility they include the Eye of Michael in Stampede.  I saw you Livio in PV4.

Well that is all for now.  Episode 2 comes out tomorrow and we’ll see how it goes!

[gryphon982]

For the character bingo: luida from tristamp?

Original HERE

Alright caveat that I watched tristamp in a knives-fueled fever dream two months ago and havent been back since I've been working my way through the og anime and manga instead and so my memory is hazy.

Luida! what a fascinating character. Totally capable of imprisioning an adolescent indefinitely until they find a use for him. Either unaware of or or unable to stop the harassment of her prisioner by her crew. Vash is only let out once he shows himself to be useful. If Vash hadn't been able to hear/help the dependant plants I genuinely wonder if he would've ended up in a similar situation as Tesla on tristamp!home.

Once he's allowed to be a person and not a circus exhibit, he is treated with kindness and respect. She clearly cares for him, and cares for her people on board the ship, and for keeping them safe. That- and the eventual introduction of flora to the planet they crashed on (!!!) is her main goal. It's so, so easy for humans to take a look at their social group, and then take a look at an outsider, and decide that one outsider is an acceptable sacrifice to keep the group healthy. I think this is what happens at first with Luida and Vash in tristamp. She even has the excuse of knowing from the beginning, before he even wakes up, that this is not a human being. That he is in fact a member of the species (?) whose main use is as a resource for humanity. Given that, I can understand how she got to "the best decision is to lock up this sentient being".

And despite all this, Vash adores her. (this isn't necessarily notable- Vash loves humanity and his guilt complex is the size of the planet. He will forgive all sorts of abuse.) But he does. Some of this may be him imprinting on a Rem-shaped object. He loves her and she loves him. She and Brad and the other members of Home are one of the few constants in his life- a century and a half later, he can still go and see them. How rare that must be for him! Here is a memory of what life used to be like. Here is hope. Here is home.

* the green dots are for trimax only- I liked Luida's design fine in tristamp, but I recently met her in trimax and her look is SO MUCH COOLER there. I love how Nightow draws some of his women. Its not even necessarily that they're gnc, its that they're Just People. These are ladies I've passed on the street.

[fuzziemutt]

I can't get over how dedicated knives is to his haircut despite hating it...

I haven't gotten that far in the manga but in the anime like he cuts his hair off and says it's wrong in anger then sticks with it so vash didn't question it and just... Keeps it ??? For years ??? Even after vash booked it ????? Like he had no reason to stick to that haircut yet he just was that dedicated to it despite hating it ???

Did it like fuel his anger towards vash and give him motivation to make vash's life a living hell ??? Because of the original "reason" of it making it easier to define himself as different from vash ???

This panel from the trigun manga looks like his hair grew back to being long while he was resting... Which means he purposely cut it to the super short cut again afterwards....

Vash has an excuse as he didn't want to let go of any bit of rem (i mean the whole red coat screams that) but even then he did let himself have a different hair style for a lil bit when he was ericks then styled it up again to be that iconic vash™ when he had to take up that life again but knives literally has no excuse that i can think of

[royalxweirdo]

Wtf, Netflix??!

I am about to fucking RANT! 😂😂😂

❗️❗️Spoilers for the Death Note movie ahead (if you haven’t already seen it)❗️❗️ _====================_

Okay, so… I haven’t done a review on anything in almost a year, but that isnt the reason I literally can’t think of a way to start my review on this, besides “FUCK THIS REMAKE!”. I really wanted to start this review (and any reviews i do) off in a more… i guess “professional” way, but there’s absolutely no way I can think of besides that. I’m probably going to skip around a but, all in all i wanna try to keep events in order. So starting from him just sitting there watching the football players and cheerleaders practice, the Death Note falls, blah blah blah, and then a random storm just happens, at first I’m thinking maybe they did that as a excuse for the DN showing up, so i let that slide, although i know its an Americanized remake, i would’ve really liked for them to at least keep him seeing the DN fall from the window in his classroom the same as the anime/manga, I digress though. Then theres the random fight and Mr. Turner (I’m not even gonna fucking call him Light… he doesn’t deserve it) tries to jump in and “save” this girl from these bullies, he gets knocked out and then gets in trouble for doing other people’s work & gets detention 😐… Kay. So this is where I start drifting away from it. Instead of “Turner” meeting Ryuk in his bedroom like he does in the anime, Ryuk shows up in the classroom and to add another layer of bullshit… “Turner” proceeds to scream like a baby back bitch. Thankfully Willem Dafoe was there to actually add something to that scene. Ryuk then makes “Turner” use the DN on the bully that knocked him out (I have to say i kind of enjoyed that scene, strictly for gore lol). Afterwards, he goes home and has a particularly awkward dinner with his Dad to set up his reason (His mom’s murder) to use the DN to rid the world of criminals like his Mother’s killer. Okay, good enough I guess, but then the scene after is where i was completely fucking done. He goes to to talk to Mia Sutton (Misa, who is now his classmate instead of a ‘Kira’ obsessed celeb🙄) and flat out tells her about the DN, lets her watch him kill someone and then brings her back to his house so they can grope each other. Now to get started on my problem with Mia/Misa in general, the first problem of course being the name change. Secondly, as I stated before, she’s his classmate and he is romantically interested in her. In the anime/manga/other live action remakes, Light Yagami used Misa and wasn’t interested in her in any way other than a pawn. He was supposed to be ready to throw her life away like a squished spider wrapped in tissue, the second she fucked up. They completely disregarded something that we are supposed to be consistently reminded of so it shows he is a power crazed nut job with a God Complex. Third, Mia/Misa shares “Turner’s” DN. She doesn’t find one and meet Rem. Which was a fucking critical part in his killing L and clearing his name (she also doesn’t get the shinigami eyes, which was upsetting to me because they were awesome in general lol). Basically Mia/Misa is a sidekick he makes out with and she occasionally gets to write in the Note🤷🏽‍♀️. Shortly after, they find a way to come up with the name Kira and the killing spree ensues. This is where the fucking beacon of hope comes in, people! KEITH MOTHER FUCKING STANFEILD aka L. Lawliett finally enters stage right, and I honestly almost didn’t make it this far, but my overwhelming want to see Keith body his part as L kept me going strong, and he did not disappoint! The mannerisms were spot on, he eats sweets almost every waking minute, the way he sits, slouches, and take off his shoes almost every where is fucking perfect, and also the scene where “His” dad comes to meet L and Watari hands him an ice cream come upon arrival (i was actually happy to see that they did that part, even with the changes to the scene). The only problem i had was with the press conference scene. I would’ve really liked to have seen them do the part where he sets up a criminal on death row and has Light kill him on live TV, mostly because that was where you really see the first small glimpse of just how cunning L is, and that, in turn, sets up the epic Potato Chip scene 😂. “Turner” ends up being followed and they stop writing in the note for a little bit. Mia suggests they kill the person following him and he disagrees, thats when the dynamic changes with Mia & “Turner”. She takes matters into her own hands and kills off “Turner’s” father’s team of detectives. They hold another press conference and this time his father is the one speaking. Mia suggests they kill his fucking father😐. For lack of a better description… im just going to say ‘thats where shit hits the fan’ (although shit hit the fan long before L even appeared). They don’t kill his dad and thats how L finds out “Turner” is Kira. L finds him in a small diner and tells him he knows he is Kira… “Turner” proceeds to fucking dry snitch on himself THE ENTIRE CONVERSATION.!! If it was that easy in the actual anime/manga… the shit would’ve been over in season 1, probably about 10 eps in. So after that painful scene Light decides to use Watari to get L’s name by writing Watari’s name in the DN, but he only has 2 days to do it and Watari will die. He sends Watari out to find the orphanage he grew up in and find his file so he can give “Turner” L’s real name, he tries to use one of the DN’s rules (If the page with the name is burned before time is up, they dont die) as a loophole to save Watari before he dies, but he can only use that one time on one person. L finds out Watari is gone, goes batshit and heads to “Turner’s” house with the force right behind him. Mia is asked to leave so she heads upstairs. She, of course, eavesdrops and while “Turner’s” dad is busy choke-holding the fuck out of L, she runs upstairs to do sneaky shit. The police raid the house to find the DN, but Mia has it. The next day, theres a dance and thats where she decides to give it back to “Turner”. He heads somewhere to check up on Watari’s progress and he starts to say “forget it” when he thinks Watari isnt going to find it in time. “Turner” goes to find the page with his name on it and lo & behold, it’s not there, Watari is shot and killed. Light does a little writing himself, and when he goes back to the dance he confronts Mia and she hits him with the bullshit! She ripped out he the page AND wrote “Turner’s” name in the book. Im not going to lie to you… I was shook 😂. She tells light to bring her the book and relinquish it to her and then she’ll burn the page with his name on it. This kinda pissed me off because Light wouldn’t have even let this shit escalate this far, Misa would’ve been dealt with the moment he sensed any type of insubordination. He does do some smart shit and ends up living in the end but the way it happens is all over the place… its just… bullshit, like the rest of the movie. The ending…. im just going to sum this bullshit up. “Turner” gets the book, the police come, he has to go to the ferris wheel to meet Mia, he gets chased by L, some crazy Kira fan knocks L upside the head with a 2x4 and “Turner” gets on he ferris wheel with Mia after making sure no one else gets on. Mia finds out he wrote her name in the book and she would die if she took the book from him, the ferris wheel fucks up and Mia falls to her death after “accidentally” ripping the page with “Turner’s” name on it out of the DN, and it, all too conveniently, falls into a burning trashcan *gasp*. L finally gets there after waking up, sees the page burning and reads it before its gone. “Turner” falls into the ocean, is eventually saved and hospitalized and the DN is returned to him by one of his pawns. His dense ass father shows up and finally puts 2+2 together, which is where he tells his dad everything. Meanwhile, L finds out where Mia hid the page with Watari’s name on it. Theres a cliff hanger where L is contemplating writing “Turner’s” name on the page. Ryuk laughs, “Turner” asks why and then Ryuk says “ You humans are so interesting.”, then it ends.

This was so underwhelming it was upsetting to me. It leapt over so much of the original plot and changed so much that I almost didn’t even make it to the scene L was introduced. The only reason I even watched until the end was my unbridled want to see Keith Stanfeild play Lawliett and to see how Willem Dafoe did portraying Ryuk, and to say “they did good” is a FUCKING UNDERSTATEMENT! They were the saving faces if the entire movie. There are people out there that actually enjoyed the movie and thats okay, to each their own, but I could not deal. They get brownie points for the gore, Ryuk’s design, and Keith & Willem’s performance. Other than that, it was steaming garbage. To end this review/rant, I would just like to reiterate what I said at the beginning. Fuck. This. Remake!

That is all…😒

[laidbackmarco]

As uncomfortable as it is making art and putting yourself on display, in order to grow and improve as an artist you have to start getting familiar with that feeling. The mix of chemicals and neurons firing you experience when having awkward conversations with that girl/guy you like, before going on stage, or trying to draw something you are uncomfortable with is often described as fear or nervousness, but I’ve been trying to look at those moments when you can feel your blood pulsing through your body with a new lens. I think that feeling is actually the feeling of excitement which through social conditioning has been transformed into that of anxiousness. I think deep down people are excited to be talking to that person, performing, or learning different ways to approach art.

One thing that’s not hard for me to do,  because of my terrible self esteem, is admitting that my art is bad or needs improvement. . . actually it’s much harder for me to accept a compliment about my work then anything else. Which is also bad, because if you deny someone’s compliment it’s like telling them subconsciously that their point of view doesn’t matter, don’t devalue them just smile and say thank you. Although I do wish they would stop using the “It’s better then I could do” seriously stop saying that to your friends who do art because that doesn’t make us feel better. Back to the main point! I know I needed to improve my digital art skills, but I had no idea how to go about doing it. There are a lot of resources online that are available, but the problem was there was just so much free information out there that I had almost drowned in it. I stumbled across this website called https://www.ctrlpaint.com/ which seemed to have everything in a nice organized fashion, had a plethora of free content, and I liked the way Matt Kohr presented both his philosophy and lessons.

I began plugging my way through the lessons one step at time. Although I had taken art classes in college, I figured that like in League of Legends, Fighting Games, Basketball, and now art fundamentals are extremely important and it can never hurt to refresh and sharpen those tools. So I started from step one and worked my way through the Digital Painting 101, Traditional Drawing, And Most of the Drawing 2 segments until I reached this challenge called When In Doubt, Draw 100.  Before I watched it I thought one hundred is a pretty large number, I mean I tried to do Inktober and a thirty day original character drawing challenge and I couldn’t even manage to do those, there is no way I could manage to draw one hundred of something I’m uncomfortable illustrating.

As if the challenge itself wasn’t hard enough, I had trouble even getting started on it. What should I draw? How many drawings a day should I try to do? What medium should I use when illustrating? Were all questions were allowed me to procrastinate and satisfy the instant gratification monkey in my head with some League of Legends. It took me a couple days browsing twitter and looking at amazing art to become honest with myself and say that it doesn’t matter what I draw because I’m so bad at everything the improvement alone will be worth it. But two areas I know that every artist struggles with, even my better peers on the social networks, are hands and feet. I mean just look at some of my earlier work

The feet and legs are more like blobs and the hands are pretty much mittens, both needed to be improved, but I decided to go with drawing feet first.

And I know what you’re thinking eww feet gross, people find feet gross, and repulsive for some reason? Maybe because you walk on them all day and they are close to the ground? I  don’t know, but I’ve been looking at feet my whole life. . . my view of the world is often looking down at the ground. Most people will look at other people’s faces when communicating, which is something I’m trying to do now, but my whole life I’ve had terrible self esteem and probably some form of depression so I’ve gone through it avoiding eye contact. The easiest way to avoid eye contact and not run into everything and everything is to look down at the ground. This way you can still see where people are going and where objects are in the world. If you do make it out into a more open area looking up at the sky isn’t a bad option either, but your neck would get tired after a while of stargazing.

They say a lot of information is conveyed through the window to the soul, the beautiful eyes human beings, and that probably  is true, but for me I got my information by looking everywhere, but people’s faces. Which mostly was their feet. Which can convey feelings all by themselves. You can tell by the motions of legs and feet whether someone is excited, proud, or tired by the way they walk or tap their feet nervously during the middle of class. Even the type of shoes they wear can tell you a little about their personality. For girls you can tell who the pampered rich ones are by how often their toenails are perfectly painted or if they are chipping. I remember a  girl I was crushing on in highschool got a pair of fresh new white vans. . . still my favorite pair of shoes to this day. All the super liberal art theater kids wore toms. . . to help the world out or something. But yes feet can tell you a lot about a character, I think a big influence on me is my favorite animation studio Kyoani, where one of the animation directors Naoko Yamada uses images of feet and legs to describe human relationships and interactions on a regular basis.

Legs and feet can be cute,  should  be able to describe the whole character,  even actions and motion are able to be extrapolated by through the feet by are posed,  or be fetishised(but I mean what can’t now a days am I right?), but you have to be able to illustrate them well for that to happen. Some of my favorite illustrators and animators can draw characters performing a variety of actions and because they can draw feet well the characters appear grounded and real. Even actions such as falling and being weightless have the feet react in some way shape or form.

This drawing challenge began six months ago in march of 2017 I had begun this challenge thinking  I’ll be able to knock this out in 10 days if I draw 10 feet a day. Which doesn’t sound to hard and in a perfect world that might have happened. These are probably just excuses but it was a combination of school, waning motivation, frustration, and laziness that I hadn’t finished as fast that I had wanted to. The challenge also started out being a way for me to learn to digitally sketch better, and probably woulda paid off too if I stuck with using my wacom or my surface pen to do the drawings. One drawing was even in color, which I don’t know why I decided to draw that one in color? I think it had a pretty night background, that I couldn’t execute well because it was wet pavement and streetlights.

I used a variety of sources for the feet in this set here, some from anime still frames, twitter drawings, League of Legends fan arts, and even some pictures of real life subjects.It took another four months before I started to make more drawings towards the study, but eventually I decided to start doing them in my sketchbook, because there are so many extra steps involved when drawing in a program that my procrastinating self couldn’t be bothered to deal with. First of all as much as I love my Surface Pro, the battery life is not ideal, the pen has a battery that runs out, and I don’t think my version of the surface is powerful enough to draw at the resolutions I like to illustrate digitally at. The only program I have for illustrating on my surface is manga studio, which isn’t bad because one of my favorite artists redjuice999 uses it, but it is different than what I am used to. Also when drawing on the go, which I do a lot now, you have to create a new folder, file, choose the resolution/document size, save it then find it again. It was a hassle to say the least so with an investment of  a little under 10 dollars I saved myself all those extra steps and got a new sketchbook and some mechanical pencils because no sharpening pls. Another reason that I stopped drawing was I was just getting too frustrated with drawing things I’m not comfortable with, not getting anything out of LoL streaming, my art and music had netted nothing for all the work put in, I really was just frustrated with life and started hated everything I was and was doing.

When I picked it up again four months later I started looking at comic books I enjoyed, both american and Japanese artists I admired I looked at more closely. The two main ones being Pokan8 illustrator of the Yahari Ore No Seishun Love Come Wa Machigattiru and Hiro Illustrator of Akebi Chan’s Sailor Uniform. I did look at the illustrations of an hero I could not read being as the whole page was in Japanese, but it was a random stroke of luck that I found his image on Pinterest. An interesting thing happened to me a third of the way through the drawing challenge. At about the mid thirtyish drawing I found myself enjoying the process and having fun drawing feet. This really showed I think in the 30-40 drawings of the “Gothic Loli” shoes as they were called. I don’t know why but those ones turned out really good I think? Maybe I liked Rem more than I thought and no I’m not a Lolicon those were literally what the page called the shoes. During the later 25 Drawings I found myself frustrated again I thought it was because the overall proportion and drawings seemed to be off, but that wasn’t it. Looking at the drawings the overall shape is pretty good, but upon retrospection I had realized that I was getting angry at the smaller details of the foot that I had completely brushed off before. All the small curves and nooks of the feet were becoming something I was aware of at those moments, and because my mind couldn’t wrap my head around some of the most subtle curves I was frustrated again.

I drew some feet even without photo reference, but looking at people as they passed by downtown on the street. Something that would have been not possible for me doing this challenge I was able to take a quick glance at pedestrians walking and make a quick sketch of the shoes they were wearing. I tried to do some without any reference at all, but they turned out super bad so I stuffed that Idea real quick. My later drawings I tried to look for more challenging angles, and gave more attention to clean linework and putting down darker lines where I wanted and I think that shows. The lines are less chicken scratchy than the previous drawings. I’m glad that my final drawing in the challenge had a tiny bit of shared joy as I had a viewer on my stream while completing the final piece. Thanks Zukeyni!!

For some reason I felt when i completed this challenge I would be able to draw feet with no reference easily and that I would feel like a better artist. Like completing this would give me a noticeable stat in some sort of rpg, but sadly that didn’t happen. I think that I would still need a lot of reference to draw a foot that would count as passable to my current standards. But I did improve!! Maybe? I don’t know you be the judge. To get more value out of this drawing challenge I think next time I would include more more shots from movies, challenging obscure angles, and action poses where people are in motion. As feet change when people are doing things like in one of the drawings up there I used a drawing of Akebi’s Little sister Kao chan throwing a paper airplane, and because Hiro is a good artist he captures the excitement of a kid throwing a paper airplane all the way down to her cute sneakers with little birds on them.

What I learned: I could’ve got this done much faster, you get faster as you go, take it one step at a time, lastly I still have a long way to go!

The next challenge I will do is drawing 100 hands, but I will wait until doing some other art tutorials on CtrlPaint before doing another one of these tasking, but rewarding challenges.

  Thanks to my stream that Supports me mentally during my fiascos.

SpectralFire, Derpiestder, Lord_Vath, and DirgeofRuin,

P.S. I think They all have secret foot fetishes . . . they watched the entire time.

The Draw 100 Art Challenge Feet As uncomfortable as it is making art and putting yourself on display, in order to grow and improve as an artist you have to start getting familiar with that feeling.