#design of yuichi usagi probably

[zipper-vhs]

for those of you not on instagram i have drawn @slushglow’s design of yuichi usagi a LOT so here’s the most recent one and expect a lot more of emo usagi 💀

[fabuloustrash05]

Some of My TMNT Hot Takes (PART 2) 🔥

Warning: More Opinions

Part 1 Here

I don’t like that in Mutant Mayhem Donnie is not a “science guy” but instead is more of an anime and pop culture geek. I’m not against him being an anime fan (I love anime too) but I wish we saw more of his science and being a tech genius side instead of him just liking stereotypical “nerdy stuff”. If that makes sense.

I don’t like the Punk Frogs (any version).

The 87 crossover episodes in the 2012 series (as much as I did enjoy them & are great episodes) should not have happened. They leave no real impact or development to 2012’s overarching story and just waste time. These episodes could’ve covered more important things that 202 was desperately lacking like like character exploration and character dynamic development. It was just nostalgic fanservice. The arc in S5 specifically would’ve work better as a movie instead of a 3-4 episode arc in the (most likely non canon) final season.

Shinigami being Mikey’s second love interests ruins her character a bit (for me personally). That was a pointless decision that did NOT need to happen. She would’ve been our first recurring female character to not be a love interest, but nope!

People are allowed to like/ship Donnie x April in ROTTMNT (this is coming from someone who’s not crazy about April being shipped with the Turtles).

I ship Yuichi with 2012 Leo more than Rise Leo (still ship Rise Leoichi, but I just think 2012 Leoichi is way more interesting, plus 2012 Leo deserves a good love interest).

The humans in Mutant Mayhem look ugly af (I know that was probably an intentional design choice but still. It looks bad.)

I hate Raph x Casey (any ver). I’ve stated in part one that I don’t like Raph (any version) being in a romantic relationship with human characters and yes, that meant him with Casey. Not only that but Raph and Casey being a couple ruins their whole dynamic and iconic friendship I love so much. I’m all for friends to lovers but they are a line that should not be crossed. Not every friendship needs to turn romantic.

2012 Karai’s hair looks bad.

Fans often over exaggerate Rise Donnie’s character and badly mischaracterize him in fanfics and fan comics to the point it makes him feel like he’s an entirely different character.

Shinigami should have been revealed to be a villain.

Rise Donnie was just as mean to his brother as fans claim 2012 Raph was to his. Yes, they both do love their families and I’m NOT saying either of them are abus!ce (they’re not), but fans praising Rise Donnie for doing similar things fans criticize/hate 2012 Raph for doing just makes them hypocrites.

Venus does NOT need to be in every iteration of TMNT. It gets kind of annoying when fans keep on saying that she should be in all the other iterations when in truth her presence would not make sense based on the already established canon story. The only (recent) version of TMNT where I think her being included would’ve fit the best and deserved to make her comeback in is ROTTMNT.

The side plot of 2012 Karai being mutated and later getting brainwashed by Shredder was a waste of time and the most boring arc in the series.

2012 April, Donnie and Casey being in a poly relationship does not fix anything with their problematic dynamic and massive flaws with one another. I'm not saying you can't ship all three of them together, you do you! Idc But in reality their relationship would be a train wreck, that's why I personally don't ship 2012 Capriltello.

Renet is probably one of the most powerful allies the Turtles have in the 2012 series.

Rise Donnie would NOT hate 2012 April. He’d go crazy over her psychic powers and want to study them to help her explore them more.

From what I've seen so far, Leo x Usagi seems like the only GOOD ship in the 2003 series (this hot take might change tho).

Raph had the best character arc and development in the 2012 series and changed the most out of the four brothers. Next would be Leo. With Mikey and Donnie have little development (or none at all sadly).

[angelpuns]

Official references with colors/age/extra info for Finch in the Window!

This is more or less a master post to keep everything organized!

These are just the rough refs but lined and properly colored, along with one for Splinter that shows him in his suit ( I'll add a ref of him in his naval uniform later ).

Anyway this is gonna be the master post for this au since the comic is coming out soon!

The ROTTMNT rural au is set in 1930s-40s Japan and is essentially just an au about the boys living in the Japanese countryside and dealing with the effects of pre-war ( and then later postwar) Japan. I'm making it in the same vein as Grave of the Fireflies, This Corner of The World and The Wind Rises in that it mostly deals with the effect of the war on citizens and how it upended their lives in the smaller ways ( rationing, losing loved ones, etc )

I'm putting a lot of research into this au, but of course if there as anything that needs to be changed or is wrong please let me know.

Time to ramble about some design choices!

Starting with Splinter: he's totally human in this au, but has much of the same personality as Rise Splinter, save for the movie star thing. He's a lot more contemplative, I think. His first outfit is a simple suit - Japan in the 1920s and 30s was starting to introduce more westernized fashion, at least for the men. Many women still wore kimonos, even in the cities. Since Splinter is a decently high ranked officer as well as moving from the city to the countryside, he would definitely have a suit. I also think that color wise, he has a more subtle blue-grey palette than everyone else. Because I just thought it looked nice. Later on in the au, as he settles into country life, he typically wears a yukata around the house. He also has another outfit, which is essentially just an old naval uniform that er wears to work in the garden. He's 30 at the beginning of the au, in 1932, but since that's when we see him the most I haven't added his later looks just yet.

Raph: so Raph is kind of the main character in this au. He's the eldest and originally he's the only one who really knows what's going on. In my original design he was a bit shorter, but realistically he's probably a lot bigger than all his brothers. Design choices! So, when they were kids Raph typically didn't wear a shirt at all, though sometimes when they went to the village he would wear a yukata and some simple monpe pants. He prefers just wearing an undershirt and the monpe pants, since he's ripped a lot of yukatas with his spikes. He also tends to roll his pants up because he doesn't like when they touch his ankles.

Donnie: so Donnie is the older twin to me always. He's a little taller than Leo, too, but it's barely noticeable. He has super thick glasses that Splinter had to really work to find when he was young , thankfully the prescription was good enough. Nowadays there's a yokai doctor in the village that can help with that stuff. He gets cold easily and tends to bundle up with a more traditional yukata, except he ties the sleeves up to keep them out of the way. He also typically wears monpe pants to do the housework. He does most of the household chores along with Mikey. They're really close due to spending so much time together. He also sucks at sewing.

Leo: Leo is hard of hearing, but usually only has trouble when someone speaks too quietly or there is too much stimuli, like the rain or thunder or things like that. He also has a tendency to wander around their farm at night and frequently falls asleep on the roof. He wears a combination of undershirt + monpe pants and a regular yukata. Typically its the undershirt and pants combo, even when he goes to the village. He also gets cold easily and has a bad immune system, but he still helps Raph with most of the outside labor. Mostly cause he's reckless. He has a long-standing friendship/rivalry with Usagi Yuichi, who I have left out of this post for now since we won't really see him in the comic til later. Leo is great at sewing and has made most of their clothes/patched them up.

Mikey: baby of the group, and spoilt rotten by EVERYONE. Mikey wears mostly a yukata with monpe pants that he rolls waaaaaaay up. Leo keeps telling him to just wear shorts, but Mikey is stubborn asf. He does a lot of the cooking, since Donnie taught him. He is also the closest with their father, if only because he used to spend the most time with him. Yoshi gave him his hat for safekeeping and Mikey has barely taken it off since. His favorite food is watermelon! Mikey is very interested in humans and likes to sneak away to the nearby human village. He also likes to go into the yokai village with Leo when he can.

So that's just me rambling about design choices, clothing things, stuff like that. If anyone has questions I'd be so willing to answer! Keep an eye out for announcements about the comic within the next week or so!

EDIT: here's some helpful links for this au

Finch in the Window comic

Apples Leosagi fanfic

FITW Comic (social media version)

[daedelweiss]

Will mona be in the life mission au and will sunita be different?

Will tiger claw be someone’s mentor? If so will they end up teaching him more than he teaches them?

Or will Alopex be involved?

Will Yuichi of Miymoto Usagi be in the battle nexus?

Will big mama’s assistant play a role?

One thing I am certain about: Hueso is very tired and stressed.

i've said it in the website's FAQ but i'll say it again here to clarify to newcomers:

if it doesn't exist in canon, it will not exist in life mission

any previous tmnt iteration characters will not play a part. i have a different form of usagi but he will remain in side content because i don't want romance in life mission's main plot (at least not at the forefront. there will be hints of splints/drax and april/cass but all of it is very surface level).

if there's a design for it already or it ties into the main plot/characters but never made it to the show, it will probably make it tho. since big mama's assistant, jennika, venus, mona, etc. don't have a design nor do they tie in the existing plot, they won't be included.

life mission is a homage to rise, not tmnt. so i will only be using what material rise gave (or was going to give) for life mission. if i've added something, it's just to stack the lore we already have and to tie it to thematic relevance. i won't take much away (only the details that aren't too important like minor villains) and i won't add too much either.

everything in life mission follows canon to some degree. i just twisted the narrative to fit the theme of found family, loss, fear, and leo's determination 💖

(side note: just because i follow canon, doesn't mean what will happen in life mission is a "what if" to canon. life mission is still its own story and is different enough from canon. i won't include every episode, just pay tribute to them. life mission has an entirely different vibe and feel to canon but i just wanted to use it as a blueprint~)

[usagiverse]

Final explorations of relationships between Shuji, Yuichi, and Mizuki. I started to get pretty set on designs here, but I ended up changing more stuff about them anyway in the final references. The brothers were too similar, too redundant. They did not need to have the Usagi Clan Crest on their designs as many times as they did. I got so wrapped up in it I even gave Shuji an extra finger, that's how you know it was time to stop (at some point). I think Mizuki is.... fine, most likely. She's wearing a Kimono and she isn't originally part of the Usagi family, nor is she a Samurai (or wanting to be one) so she looks out of place, but probably for good reason. She is the least fleshed out design wise and character wise, but I'll keep thinking about it for the next few days. She's Shuji's wife / Miyamoto's mother.

[drawnaghht]

hmmm one thing I really like in SR, is how most of the body types we see are fairly stumpy/strong or just overall, don't feel fragile (since they're based on animals moreso than humans, I suppose that must be the influence there)

The only characters who we could even call "skinny", are Usagi himself, and then the Shogun, lord Kogane (who is short under that outfit of his). Both their body-shapes are still different (Yuichi's triangle shapes VS Kogane's bell-shape) but are also more-or-less closer to that stick-figure shape we don't see in the other characters

usagi and kogane

vs the other cast

since it's primarily a more "action anthro" or "funny animals" show, but also 3D, it's sorta nice to see this change of pace compared to other modern cartoons where the girl or women characters are always skinnier or less bulky, even if they do action, or often even male characters will be the same height/similar body type and there's not as much variety in the cast. But here they're all different animals so it's a nice excuse to add more variety according to character and inspirations heh. Now, with Chizu and and Kitsune, they might not be very bulky, but they are at least the bare minimum of "very ordinary-looking body types) and also different heights from each other. With Gen and Toshiko on the other hand, even if it's a cost-saving method to keep the budget for the heavier/costlier and more necessary scenes, I like that Toshiko is allowed to basically, be just a person but in a way that's realistic for this world, so she's still the same build as Gen and the rest of her family, with the only difference being that she wears ear-rings as a show of character.

also, like I'd said b4 in an older post, I appreciate they didn't do the "boobs on animals" design choice either (all the female cast, but especially characters like Chizu or Toshiko) cuz well, it's not a game or something hyper-realistic, but also, seems like the visdev crew was really smart and aware abt this sorta stuff. So with the exception of Lady Fuwa, the rest of the female cast do not really have detailing or design aspects that would make them seem close to cartoons or 3D games that do add more visible chests to their anthro characters (like, for whatever reason, it could be anything). just a nice change of pace.

tho I guess like, it *is* aimed at kids, so the designers were aware of some of this stuff probably and steered the designs into something easy-to-draw (I'm thinking of visdev and storyboards) as well as model and animate.

[seasaltcosmos]

Question. Will we get to see more LeoSagi art from you in any time soon?

i have a few wips! but life has been kicking my ass and other projects have my attention atm @_@

and honestly a personal…kinda petty reason i haven’t been posting leosagi lately…not gonna lie, the constant flood of yuichi content getting mixed into the tag, my version of usagi being confused for him, and the insistence that leosagi shippers “stop shipping leo with miyamoto usagi” even though this has been their tag for 2 decades now…it’s been really demotivating. and i’m burnt out from my rise!usagi design because of it too. i’m more interested in drawing leo with the ACTUAL usagi if anything, because i’m honestly tired of this wave of fans trying to change the tag and what ship it was created for.

tl;dr, i’ll draw leosagi, probably not with my usagi design, it’ll just take time and motivation ;;

[nerves-nebula]

i love the fact ur usagi design looks like he’s dumb like logically he probably has an iq higher than 4 but he looks like he has an iq of 4 in the best way possible <3

while i believe IQ is mostly nonsense, I understand where you're coming from. he's suppsoed to look kinda spacey because I firmly believe that Yuichi Usagi NEEDS to be a bit spacey. hes a silly guy. he's only ever had a bad thought about his dad and he felt guilty about it immediately afterwards. hes a sweetheart by nature <3

[drawnaghht]

sdfsdfs i love this little mini-fic under the cut xD Also I just think it's so funny that Usagi can read the fictionalized account of his ancestor but doesn't know what the big city thinks of him at all so he has this very idolized version of Miyamoto Usagi in his mind hehe.

here's something one of the character designers (and the person who did a lot of the layouts in the 2nd season 2D sequences), Andry Rajoelina, drew as fanart in the same style:

(Original on facebook)

Quote: "i've immediatly pictured Yuichi telling the story of his ancestor Miyamoto Usagi [..] meeting four turtles like he did in the comics and almost every TMNT animated series."

Now, maybe the show itself would never get to have the TMNT (whatever real-world reason netlfix and nick have) but I think it's pretty cool that it's a thought that the TMNT fans among the show's crew probably were also having as fans of both Usagi Yojimbo and TMNT haha x3

Since Yuichi Usagi canonically reads his show’s version of Usagi Yojimbo comics, he probably has read the series where Miyamoto Usagi reunites with “turtles from another world” (granted that Miyamoto first met Leo in the TMNT 1987 comics, “Turtle Soup and Rabbit Stew”). 

And that his ancestor is mostly close to the turtle that wields two swords.

(panels from Usagi Yojimbo Volume 2, #2)

And Yuichi is probably well aware that they’re different from kappas thanks to his comic books:

(panel from Usagi Yojimbo Volume 1, #6)

But when I think about it, Yuichi probably assumes at first that the turtles are a mythologized part of his ancestor’s life. However, he would probably think it’s plausible after discovering yokais existing and aliens opening portals. 

Take it as you will ;)

My shitpost on this take below:

Keep reading

[secretsocietyxmen]

Since it’s kinda become my thing, here’s an overview of the weapons used by the main characters in Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles.

Usagi

The Katana: A standard, if stereotypical samurai weapon.

Honestly, it’s more impressive how he uses it, being very agile and adaptive in combat. He’s always bouncing around, staying moving, outthinking his opponent. It’s more ninja that traditional swordsman, but don’t tell him that.

Gennosuke

Twin Kanabo: The Japanese spiked club. Most commonly associated with Oni. (Probably not exactly what his weapons are, but the designs don’t translate all that well. This is the closest thing I could find.)

From what I can tell, he does use it correctly, if a bit too much like a baseball bat. Doesn’t really seem like a him weapon, as even with his abrasive side, he’s a bit too chill for a weapon like that.

Kitsune

Dual Tessen: The Japanese war fan.

Honestly, with the kind of personality she has, she uses them perfectly. She’s more defensive, using them as shields and deflectors, and going for the occasional slash. If she used them as batons, then they’d be the best portrayal of tessen in pop culture ever. I’m not even joking.

Chizu

Collapsible Naginata: A Japanese spear.

Not really a ninja weapon, it’s more associated with Onna-bugeisha, but the fact it’s collapsible is really cool, fits the aesthetic. it’s used pretty well, both as a a bladed weapon and staff, probably indicative of her personality.

Also love her hidden crossbows and shuriken. Makes you feel like her whole suit is actually a weapon, it’s pretty cool.

————————

The fact that, aside from Yuichi, all of the main cast use more atypical weapons then just the sword/bo staff/tonfa mix that other martial arts shows would use is kinda awesome. When was the last time a main character in a western cartoon used a kanabo? I like it.

[lackablazeical]

If you seen it, what are your thoughts on samurai rabbit the usagi chronicles? And your take on Usagi?

I haven't seen it! It was on my list but then I heard some... interesting things about it, so it moved a bit further down lol. I like the design of Yuichi, at least! Not a fan of most 3d animated things, tho. It's. Sigh

As for my take on Usagi, he was honestly not ever planned to be in the AU! He was just there for a doodle I wanted to do for Leo, as the character already has connections to Leo, but it just spiraled and now we are here, lol!

Usagi was kinda always supposed to represent someone who leaves one toxic situation for another. He's a model of someone who is codependent and depressed. He's strong, he's always been one to get up after falling. But Leo just kinda absolutely breaks him. He's supposed to give representation to that, and people who do fall in love with people who hurt them to cope, if that makes sense?

My take on Usagi is a lot more feminine then other takes I've seen, but I'd probably contribute that more to my art style where I accentuate hips and really like big long eyelashes then anything else, lol

I have seen takes where some people don't like Usagi as the tmnt fandom mostly sees him as there for shipping, which I do agree with. This Usagi isnt meant to be shipped with Leo, ofc, but obviously a lot of his story revolves around Leo in a similar way. I hope that me fleshing Usagi out outside of Leo worked out kinda well, at least!

[drawnaghht]

tag guide anyone? + differentiating between usagis (thinkpiece)

I'm really just curious now if something like a "tagging guide" would help? If you would like this, or know if anyone else has posted something like this, sound off in the comments or like/reblog to agree ^^ 

I posted a poll about this on twt and it looks like 13 so far really want one, so I’m putting a lil test post around here too. I also found while researching for this post that apparently on tumblr, the first 20 tags show up in search! so I guess they changed that from 5 to 20 at some point. huh. that’s a bit more helpful than just 5 tags!

I’ve noticed sometimes people have no idea what to tag with a show like Usagi Chronicles that is less than 2 years old and is based on existing IP, but also that ppl use a lot of tags in general, perhaps confused about what is the “main tag” or most used tag for a character in rottmnt for example. So I started writing a little tag guide, which I’ll post the draft of at the bottom this thinkpiece. The main issue around tumblr seems to be excessive mis-tagging or multi-tagging i.e when a character isn’t there. I think I’ve seen this in some other fandoms too (primarily bigger fandmos), but I’m not gonna get too deep into it. You can skip to “tagging guide” via CTRL+F to search it on the page. I’ve also included a little character “separator” part with graphics, cuz it seems some are having trouble seeing the characters differently from fanart alone. I thought it would help to post more of the “source” materials ^^

Also if you have problems differentiating between the two in general…aside from both being white long-eared rabbits they are almost as different as night and day, at least on the surface ^^;; Here is a helpful post by Freakova, about how to tell the difference between Miyamoto Usagi and Yuichi Usagi, ancestor and descendant respectively: 

https://freakova.tumblr.com/post/707461151549702144/i-made-this-for-my-besties-to-help-explain-the

But I kinda get it! Especially if characters are intentionally obfuscated a bit (e.g. there are characters in the show who can’t tell between Miyamoto and Yuichi Usagi, but it is mostly used as plot hook/humor). But they have different names and characteristics and slightly differing fanbases on a site like tumblr, so separating them in tags is helpful. I think part of it also comes from the name confusion, but I already wrote a post about that. Imo, if you have your own design already and it looks like neither of the two characters, you can just use “Rise Usagi” or “rottmnt Usagi” or other variations as tags, those are popular and used enough already that you don’t need to use the main character tags ^^

Personally, I would only like to see Yuichi Usagi in his own tags when it applies (he’s in the pic/fic), but if he’s not, well, what are you doing tagging him there?

I also get that some newer/younger TMNT fans apparently didn’t know the Usagi characters are from their own franchise for a short while last year (but ppl probably learned, right? I’ve literally only seen posts/tweets asking what the series is abt and unrelated posts exasperated that ppl don’t know) but visually they’re quite distinct, even if they are all white rabbits. I’ll post these comparisons just so I can use the tags properly and not piss off anyone else.

We have the original Usagi and his 1000-years later descendant.

Stan Sakai based Miyamoto Usagi largely on his childhood inspiration of samurai films, mainly “Samurai Trilogy” starring Mifune Toshiro playing Miyamoto Musashi, a real-life samurai who inspired many other films and adaptations. You can hear more about how Stan created Usagi here in this Portland Art Museum video where he explains and draws his Usagi. The story usually goes that he drew a rabbit with a chonmage (the edo-period top-knot) and suddenly, Usagi was born.

In the show he has a slightly older-looking design? but in the comics his look varies slightly because the series has been going for 40 years and the character has developed over the pages. so he can look slightly different cover to cover, page to page, but mostly it’s all him, the same character, just different situations, life periods and emotions. So he can look different in official material depending which publication period you start reading from, but mostly the same. 

Then we have both the Miyamoto Usagi’s in different animated mediums,

And Yuichi in different media (show itself in 3D and 2D and merch by Stan)

And then there’s also Jotaro (very important Usagi Yojimbo character introduced early on/vol 1) and Yamamoto Yukichi(introduced in later stories/vol 4), who I think people aren’t mixing up with any of the previous rabbits yet, but who knows, i don’t look through absolutely all the tags myself after all and tumblr seems to have a problem of not showing much older posts in the public tag search anymore, so I can’t find older posts I used to see anymore ^^;

More thoughts on tagging + being a fan under cut. 

This … is not really a vent or analysis post, I can't get that upset about it myself. with real life worries etc - fandom is supposed to be a fun outlet for creativity, at least for me. So I try not to feel anything about it. But tagging has always seemed fairly straight-forward to me and it’s mostly to organize a blog/find other people with similar interests. Writing non-structured non-essays is basically how I interact with a piece of media when I feel like fanart is not enough. And because tumblr posts now apparently Do Not HAve Limits, this is a better alternative to tag rambles.

-------------------

So when I saw the post about the Miyamoto Usagi tag I remembered that this was why I didn’t use the “follow tag” feature + the “your tags” tab as much myself (aside from not having it before and not being used to it on tumblr). Because usually with bigger fandoms, people do mis-tag or tag their other shows/fandoms into it without including the main character, this happens on occasion because there are a lot of people using the tag. I also don’t follow the Leosagi tag anymore for the same reason, that people can’t seem to differentiate between the characters and it becomes hard to tell what they want to post or which character they are talking about/drawing ^^;

As pointed out by Tamalinvonpineapple's post about it, people mis-tag Yuichi Usagi and Miyamoto Usagi and that’s a problem for people who would like to see just one of those characters but not mis-tagged as the other. I’m not gonna assume these are made in bad faith e.g. intentionally to piss off other fans, cuz there can be so many different reasons for people doing this. This post is also not gonna get into ship tags much because that is a contentious topic and tbh, left for a separate thinkpiece (I also already wrote smth abt tags for myself).

I tried to find out more possible reasons for mistagging in general or what the general consensus on tumblr is about tagging but it seems (or we can assume) it is a “bad practice” from how social media sites have given a slightly different use for tags tiktok/instagram/twitter - “tag for reach” - so like those social media accounts for companies that spam other tags. I do see this in anime/manga fandoms occasionally. Not just for the different spellings of characters (e.g, when a dub would give the character a new name; japanese vs western way of writing names) but specifically when 1 character is the only one there and the tags then have 30 other characters listed as well so the post/media would show up in search. But I wonder where this habit is from? Aren’t people curious to see what other tags their character/show have? I remember that on sites like blogger, we only tagged so that we could find things later, so people often made their own custom tags, i.e. "my work on the show" or "midnight doodlies". if a show got tagged, for example TMNT or Usagi, it would probably get 1-word/1-phrase tag (i.e. “turtles” “turtlies” “mutant turtles”) or just the series title tag - either the abbreviation or full name of a series/comic/cartoon depending on content. When it comes to tumblr tags, I remember getting annoyed at NOTPs permeating the tags as well. Or just posts about other seriesM multi-crossovers where your blorbo is only there to die, but then is still tagged after that; edits that have no relation to the character but they share a name or tag for whatever reason and you keep seeing these unrelated posts in the tags. I’ve seen more than enough from almost any of the fandom tags I’ve visited on tumblr. So I get how annoying mistagging itself can be.

But basically in regards to tags on tumblr itself, it seems people misuse them mainly because they don't know or don't like the tags for the other shows. Folks also like to see their posts get to as many people as possible, which I understand, I do the same on instagram, cuz that’s what I’ve learned by other artists example. Seems to make sense that more tags = more views. On tumblr, this sort of doesn’t always work this way. I could post a drawing from a popular cartoon and get maybe 5 notes total in 12 years, while a scribble I deemed too ugly to tag properly might get 54 notes on it’s first day. It’s almost like a Murphy’s Law of Tumblr that what you expect to do well, doesn’t. It’s just how it is here and I’m so used to it, it feels weird to complain about it, even on other sites with actual algorhitms and working apps etc.

Well, as a fan of the Usagi Chronicles show, perhaps what makes me more sad is that this has had the adverse effect of older TMNT/Usagi Yojimbo fans being so angry that they can’t stand the show/character itself now, even if they already disliked it before seeing other fans post about it. Which is just plain sad because some people even make up stuff about it just to discredit it as a show that Stan Sakai worked on. I understand that people have different reasons to dislike the show, most probably valid, but they also assume many things about it, to the point of stating them as fact when the opposite is true. I have… a different post about it. In general, we can say that being online seems to be the common thread between fans annoyed at fans.

In some ways, what’s even sadder however is an empty or unactive tag. Imagine that the last post you saw in that tag is still the one from 2013 you made yourself. It’s a bit annoying seeing people mistag or post unrelated fanart in it but hey, maybe this means they also read the tag? A chance to educate or get more views on your own fandom? Just a chance for communication? I know that doesn’t seem very appealing when those same fans are the ones mis-using the tag, but it just seems better than something completely empty. Of course, this is not a problem for TMNT fandoms perhaps, but from my experience in smaller fandoms, or being a fan of smaller/less popular media. And with how much there is mainly ship-related posts in almost all the Usagi Chronicles tags, this seems to be a matching experience I’ve been having so far in the Usagi tags. The comic series tag itself is also often full of other things, or only ship things, or sometimes only TMNT things for a short bit, but overall, I guess at least people use it?? But I would still like it that Samurai Rabbit, SRTUC, etc stuff gets tagged with those tags so I can actually find it instead of combing through multiple tags at a time just to see something new. While the newer “Your tags” feature on tumblr makes this a bit easier, I can see the easy annoyance at when people tag a character but then don’t include the character. and to add insult to injury, they tag a different character, but without acknowleding the first character at all.

But this is now like a joint fandom for a crossover for two franchises which have had crossovers before and now… there’s sort of a joint fandom? Sort of? So because it’s a bit bigger, it feels nice when other fans are considerate of small things like tagging. Now, on the whole, while many do still mistag and the leosagi tag is still mainly yuichi x leo for many, I’ve also seen in my own tagscrambles that not as many do this as much anymore, or going through a tag in time, the newer stuff seems to do this less. So like I’ve written in previous posts, my honest hope is just that fandom will adapt and grow into healthier online habits. Still, there are a few other things in the tags that I just can’t help but notice each time. it’s also why I don’t bother too much with repeat-viewing tags unless I’m looking for something specific.

It often feels like people just make up their own versions of any Usagi and/or write off the show as “too bad to watch”. And. idk, this just makes me feel sad about it because as mentioned above, I’ve seen it before in other smaller fandoms I’m in. In transformative works, it’s fairly normal that people make their own versions of a show or it’s characters, because that’s something fun to do with fanart and fic. But to openly hate a character? idk man, just feels weird to me personally. Like I don’t have the energy for hatedom. I know my little sibling really gets into hating one series that really disappointed her as a viewer, but even she now says that it’s an odd way to spend time, when she could be making fanart of something she likes instead. And I get that. I also spent my earlier non-internet days being more hateful of new media I disliked at the start, and while expressing that isn’t always bad (it’s just an iopinion), it became weirdly detrimental to me actually enjoying stuff in my tweens. Everything me and my friends and their friends ever talked about, was related to somehow being more above others or knowing better than others, being hateful of anything new or popular. And without quite realizing it right away, that was really tiring. Even if I spent time on things I did like, hobbies I enjoyed, that hate and childhood snobbishness sorta simmered there. I remember that for me it mainly came from “oh, I want to be a real animator one day, I should act like a real profesional adult and always be critical of the media I view, because that’s how I see adults treat real serious film.” Fast-forward 15 years, I’ve been through making comics as a tween, making fanart as a teen, I’ve been making a lot of different kinds of “cartoon art” in general as well as some actual art education, thinking, maybe I want to have some more general art schooling too. Later in my mid-twenties, I met someone with this similar mindset to my childhood self, who at first I got along with. We laughed at cartoons we didn’t like and made fun of the bad endings of those we did. At some point, I listened to them talking about getting to visit a big animation festival. And how they completely unironically expressed their hate directly at a leading crew member of a cartoon they didn’t like. And then I realized like. Wait a fucking minute. I don’t wanna act like this to other people! And this is why I don’t really “shoot the shit” about cartoons I don’t like as publicly anymore as I maybe once would have online on tumblr etc. Like I just don’t get it anymore. At most I’ll write down my thoughts somewhere private or to friends and try to understand why I don’t like the thing. And if it’s a very simple dislike, I just don’t spend time on it.

So like, I don’t get the hate the show (SRTUC) and character(Yuichi Usagi) get. Like I can understand sort of where people are coming from. but I don’t get why they gotta publicly tag it, announce it, or put it in the reblogged tags sometimes. the og poster sees that after all? so that’s like a bigger thought for me when it comes to tags.

I believe people can learn to be nice about a show they don’t like, but if they start to feel annoyed at fandom parts of the web they see online, they also start to feel hate toward a specific show, even if the show or thing itself might not be as bad. Example - I have this toward Star Wars for example, it’s a big fandom. I feel indifferent now, but in my youth, I found it annoying that everyone was talking about it as if it was the best thing ever, when it was spoiled for most of my childhood for me, and also felt like a generic movie series after all that. Something growing in popularity, or being really popular in a niche fandom can make ppl dislike it in general and that’s fairly ordinary as fandoms go. Often, people just don’t like a popular thing. Just think of series of like GoT/ASoIaF or HP. But then again those go down the cultural road so easily, I suppose in countries where western-media is really popular/common, it becomes like a cultural osmosis and fans can assume *everyone* likes it, even if not everyone does. I’m thinking about the fresh 30+ dads from 10 years ago I read about who only interacted with their kids through their own nerd interests. Pokemon is such a culturally permeated thing, it’s everywhere and everyone seems to assume everyone has played it or at least knows about it, even if at some point, some of us were big fans of Digimon instead, or some don’t like it at all. At some point, my dad gifted me a Harry Potter book, even though I (non-vocally) disliked it, but it was in the cultural osmosis here so strongly that it was everywhere and he just assumed I was into it (bless his heart, he genuinely didn’t know). HP was something that I initially disliked because it was so popular, but the idea of a “basic magic premise, but extended” seemed interesting, and it was required reading in my middle school, so at 11, I went to see the movie and thought, alright, maybe I’ll give it a chance. But reading the book I found things that didn’t make sense to me, that didn’t match what seemed like the themes of the book (the whole slave freedom plot for example) so I always sort of kept it at arms-length - not quite getting into it, but also not turning it away if I found anything, not saying anything upsetting to people who were fans of it. Everyone at my school read it though to varying degrees, or at least everyone knew things about it even if they weren’t fans or weren’t invested at all. (This was all before we knew JKR is a vocal TERF, so now I feel a bit validated in my dislike, even if I feel sad for the fans who got something positive out of the series).

So point being, fandom can have different types of people in it. A type of media will often accrue a specific type of fan and sometimes it won’t match what the show itself puts out. E.g. fans acting in ways that go squarely against what the media talks about (Steven Universe is a popular show with many fans that comes to mind), or a show having an unexpected viewership next to it’s intended demographic (us 90s kids still being cartoon fans in our late 20s/30s/early 40s). It’s slightly unpredictable in a general way. 

Of course, TMNT fandom is a bit different from those bigger properties because it was an indie comic made in the 80s that was so different and off-the-wall indie for a comicbook, it sold out and gave its creators Eastman and Laird a hefty legacy, lasting careers and actual money. Good for them! Personally I think it’s thanks to how genuinely creative and collaborative their work was then. Like Usagi Yojimbo, it’s an old comicbook/franchise now, so the “fandom” as such differs from generation to generation, from childhood to childhood. I met the turtles for the first time with the 87 series in the early 90s, then the next time w the 2003 series, which i initially hated as that angry, cartoon-critical tween, but was surprised at how much it seemed to take from the comics. I think I was initially angry about it for different reasons, mainly, “why is it so serious? why are the jokes so lame?” and also because I had invested so much emotionally into the idea of seeing something as good as the 80s cartoon again... but then found that it grew on me and now 20 years later I can look at it with nostalgia. As a result, my reaction to the 2012 series was mostly “wow another TMNT cartoon?” and “huh it looks interesting” and “oh I’ve seen this person work on another cartoon before”. My little sibling on the other hand only saw the 2003 cartoon and their reaction the the 2012 adaptation was “Wow, THEY’RE FINALLY TEENS” because as kids, we thought the 2003 TMNT looked and sounded “too much like boring adults”. But from many online fanspaces back then a lot of the more vocal reactions was around “THE 3D IS SO UGLY” and “WHY ARE THEY SO YOUNG”. You’ve probably heard similar sentiments of various degrees if you’ve been a fan or viewer of any TMNT cartoon. 

Usagi Yojimbo is unique in this sense because Stan Sakai has been the only one drawing and writing the comicbook for 40 years. Some of the visual style and writing tone change from book to book, but it’s gradual because Stan has changed as an artist and writer too. If you look at any comic series like this, it’s actually a natural part of many comics i.e. webcomics used to be a prominent example of this, as the creators were often complete novices at the beginning and graduated to a more consistent style. But even from a surface level view, lets say, reading other people’s reviews, you can see that people really enjoy Usagi Yojimbo for how consistent it is with it’s treatment of its characters, story and Edo-period culture. Stan Sakai really does his research and puts respect back into fiction inspired by samurai. Even though guides will often tell you that you can jump into the series from any point in the series, there’s just something really consistent about it as a whole. Sakai gets to do whatver he wants with his books and what he does seems to be thought-out usually. Even if the early animated adaptations were a bit incorrect, comic readers in general have a lot of respect for Stan and his work. My favourite part about this all is how Usagi Yojimbo is actually used to teach about japanese culture in a college course in the US.

Because both TMNT and UY are originally creator-owned comics (still so with UY regardless of publisher or adaptations but not so much TMNT as Viacom bought the rights in 2009), perhaps the general fan experience is more similar to original comics fandoms in Japan. Although whether a series is creator-owned varies from series to series, the manga and magazines culture in Japan seems wholly different from what US comicbooks were in the 80s and even what they still are now in that regard. Because a series will more often be written and illustrated by the same creator/artist/team, there are less variations and book-to-book differences both visually and tonally. In the US, a comicbook series can start with an artist-writer team, but then switch if the editorial decides some change is needed. This is something that often affects consistency and a story or character’s canon eventually and in a convoluted way, it’s the reason why we got “alternate earths” and “multiverse crossovers”. Which, while fun, make american comicbooks hard to read for some newer readers. Even with TMNT, once Eastman and Laird started having less time to make the comics and their other problems, it led into breaking off their creative partnership and never speaking again. But they had to continue the comic. If before the feud, they would just have fun passing the pages between each other, now they actually  so they wrote it he series became different based on who was writing it. One more sci-fi leaning and one more martial-arts and mysticism leaning. You can see this difference in the TMNT animated adaptations as well. The 2003 series namely is more based on Laird’s storylines in the comics and he was also consultant on the series. After the 2009 sale of Mirage to Viacom, we get the 2012 series, where Eastman acts as consultant, so it’s more heavy on his ideas of what the TMNT are. In 2019, the documentary series “Toys that made us” brought them together for the first time in almost 2 decades. And then we fans got to have The Last Ronin, a collaboration between the two again.

(What I’ve paraphrased here is mostly based on this video overview of how the comic became a franchise “How did a violent indie comic become a $15,000,000,000 franchise?” by matttt if you’re interested in seeing and hearing a more picturesque summary of this)

So getting back to fandom, because it’s mostly been one comicbook series, both the more avid and casual UY comics fans might not be used to there being adaptations of Stan’s Usagi. Yes, even with the visual examples I brought up above, perhaps some simply haven’t seen the animated adaptations because these are still marketed “for kids”. This is like the only reason I can think of that people who are 30+ adults, go online to complain about the Chronicles series online, even though it’s obviously for kids, meaning they probably didn’t even watch it. Folks are “surprised” Stan “let Netflix ruin his series” etc - even if it’s explicitly in a new futuristic setting to avoid affecting the comics canon. It will be interesting to know how people react when or if Sakai puts out his “Kagemusha” anthology, where the idea is about different creators telling different Usagi stories.

Even TMNT fans, many of whom don’t know Usagi beyond the animated adaptations, might jump in with this similar mindset of “different = bad”. Maybe there’s a manga/anime adaptation out there with the fans having similar concerns about their adaptations. Sailor Moon comes to mind, but as always, people’s grievances with an adaptation may have good reasons underneath. But also I’ve personally never seen an avid Sailor Moon fans be as annoying as the casual Star Wars fan. It might also depend on the age and lifestyle of the fan. Someone who is a teacher or parent, maybe they’ve met more people, put more thought into it, might feel milder about new or different things vs someone who is used to going online to see people angry and enjoys getting into arguments.

If I start to think about it, I can get a similar reaction out of myself. It was hard to look at mid-00s fanart of Usagi because it always felt a bit “extreme” like fans changed things about Usagi to suit their own understanding or image of samurai, which was always more based on popular movies or anime rather than the comic. I think this is just a general thing about fanart over the times. I still balk at some fanart, either UY or SRTUC, if for example the sides of the clothes are opposite - right over left, for burials vs left over right, like the letter ‘y’ - because it just means the fanartist didn’t bother to look up even references. Most times people just don’t know about this sort of stuff, they might be anime fans or they might even be part of a different asian culture, but it it’s not something that’s taught, of course it won’t reflect in something like fanart. But then, it’ll just be something new to learn. To me it also speaks of a wider annoyance of people liking things only for the surface-level appeal.

Usagi Yojimbo I’ve noticed has much more of a fanbase than fandom. I know fanbase doesn’t get used much as a term these days as more and more media gets an active fandom rather than staying at a fanbasem but it’s a term I’d like to use in this case. “The Wilkes Beacon” in 2014 defines the difference so: “Not everything with a fanbase has a fandom, because a fandom is a group of committed fans who are always vocally interested in their “thing,” usually expressing that on a social website such as Tumblr. Just because you’re a fan doesn’t mean the fandom will accept you.” Indeed sometimes fandom feels almost like being in a separate part of the club, only for people in the know about it. The origin for fanbase is attributed to early 20th century baseball fans. The origin of fandom, most well-known as a portmanteau of fan + kingdom, is often attributed to the original Sherlock Holmes fans who actually gathered to mourn the character when Arthur Conan Doyle decided to kill him off (bless your hearts and souls, sometimes it feels like fandom has never changed) but also from early 20th century sports fans and 60s Trekkies, who saved their show. A lot of different sources give different origins and histories for these words and many will also equate them as synonymous.

My own experiences tell me that a fanbase is more general - any fans of a thing, whether they attend conventions, buy the media or no (i.e. Sherlock Holmes readers, sports fans) and will comprise the “base” of any activity - the larger number of fans that exist for a piece of media/sport/celebrity. A fandom will be the more “active” part, more interested in being connected with each other within that fanbase. Of course, to any other person outside of fans, both of these will be synonymous and a fan will look weird and fanatical regardless of how little they invest themselves into a media. But I’’m making this distinction to describe what I see as more casual and more active “fanbase as a whole”. Fanbase as a word feels more general, while Fandom sounds more specific. So as an example, the One Piece “fanbase” might feel large and more everywhere, like with pokemon or Sherlock Holmes the book, but the OP fandom can feel more active and particitative, like the .It’ll depend entirely on what way each person interacts with the media. Do you have friends who are also fans of the series? it’s like a fandom. You just watch it but don’t participate as much? You’re in the fanbase, but you might partake in fandom activities if you feel like it. You might be a more casual fan, but you might have more avid feelings about the series as well, but you’re not that interested in making fanworks or posts or reacting to other fans at all. A fandom might be big, but more ubiquitous, more silent and conversely, some fandoms may be small, but still very active and vocal. I’ve often theorized that this is because So UY online fandom sorta feels like the latter, but more under-the-radar. Small and active but also more silent and appreciative. With the previous “big fandoms” example, it’s also the juxtaposition between Old and New that comes into play. An old Spidey fan from the 70s might have become an official Spiderman fanartist, but they might not partake in all the fan stuff they used to anymore. Still a fan, but maybe the newer and younger “fandom” as such is just not appealing to them in the same way.

The larger or more advertised a TV series or book is, the larger and more annoying its fanbase in general. If a piece of media has less popularity, it will ergo have a smaller fanbase and sometimes no “active fandom” at all. So now with the Samurai Rabbit: the Usagi Chronicles TV show as an animated spinoff-adaptation, we have a similar problem that TMNT fans have been familiar with over the decades. Thanks to the show, there’s a more active, slightly younger fandom who want to connect over the series and maybe even read the comicbook, know more about the source and origins, they might want to even know how the show was made, make fanart or fic. So fans like any other, but just that the media they’re a fan of now, is still relatively new. Maybe these newer fans act or write differently online from how older fans are used to. Maybe they even treat the original source comic differently or just don’t know anything about it. In any case, new series and new fans will generally seem annoying because culturally that’s what we’ve started to associate some of fandom with. Otaku culture etc. So it and it’s fans might get the “new thing” treatment as mentioned above with the TMNT animated adaptations.

The difference here is that Stan Sakai has been wanting his own animated adaptation for a long time (just look at the Space Usagi pilot for proof) and while many suggested projects to him before, this one actually piqued his interest bc they did something new with the characters. You could say that what people don't like abt this series are some decisions resulting from this being a netflix cartoon for kids. the decision to set it in a near-future with a new younger for example, was made in the beginning by netflix and I haven’t found any articles yet that’s found a legit reason for why it stayed this way. My guess based on interviews with Stan and crew is that Stan found it interesting as a possible new way to get more readers to the comic. Something for the younger generation. Although many readers and even parents will attest that the comic is child-appropriate (and really, it is), the TV-Y7 ratings and so on exist for a reason. And while I would love for more western studios to get funding for more adult animation in general (I’m not from the US myself and animation such a large medium, the way that genres are explored or what gets made for adults vs kids feeks so different elsewhere), I think it’s good that the first full series based on UY is this “non-violent” (your mileage may vary). Because a lot of the more vocal adult fans of UY seem more focused on the violence vs what kids might get out of it. A popular quote from Sakai is “Once, a mother asked me, 'What is Usagi Yojimbo about?' and before I could answer, her son said, 'It’s about honor.'"   (Komai for JANM, 2011). Sometimes it seems like the “older adults” or the “more casual” fans of UY sort of don’t get it.

Even the naming of the series and character has reasons, which I’ve seen some Rise Leosagi shippers make their own reasons for. So the various hate from “older fans” I see about it is strange because all evidence points to the show having Sakai’s approval and his full involvement. Of course, I could also be wrong, but watching the series, it doesn’t feel to me like an “empty cashgrab” as one angry TMNT fan put it. It feels more like something made by other UY fans, those more familiar than I was at the time, with both Usagi Yojimbo lore as well as the culture and lore behind it. In their quest to properly honor the comic series they loved, crew put a lot research hours into making sure both edo and post-edo periods got to be part of their show. Like “trips to japan during a pandemic” type of research. The show is an interesting fusion of old and modern in futuristic setting and feels wholly unique as an experiment.

Another aspect of course is also the shipping parts of fandom. I can never quite get my head behind this “arguing about ships” because it just reminds me of my Grandma and her older sister fighting over their soap operas and who should get together with who. And alright, maybe this was fun for them...? I’ve never been that invested in this myself but it can be fun to have a pairing you root for in a show, when it’s just a bunch of connected ideas over the story, there really seems like a real genuine connection between the characters or if there’s a chance to connect with other fans over it. That’s kind of what fandom is for me in general, but with crossover ships, it’s like a strange and interesting combination of “oooh what interesting similarities and differences” and “lets find out” with fanworks. 

This is the main way I enjoy making crossovers in general work, even if I’ve never finished an actual fic (I’m more of an artist) and even if the works sometimes don’t go together (it’s like a fun challenge). I wonder sometimes if the SRTUC crew also imagined crossovers with TMNT? As in this fanart post on facebook by Samurai Rabbit character designer Andry R, I wonder what that could have been like. After all, if many of the crew are fans too, it just makes sense to think about that? it’s fun to think of crossovers after all! And since it’s fanwork, I personally don’t feel as obligated to make some of the quality as insanely good as I would have in my younger days. I want to enjoy the art making process too, so putting research and sketches into a piece is sometimes my own “enough”. So I don’t really care about views either because I know even now, tastes might still just be not geared toward something sketchier that I make.

Even so, despite the experience with online sites and social media people have in general, or other artists/fans encouraging to feel a bit less worried about socmedia algorhitms, it might be frustrating that posts are not as popular even if your idea feels great.

So connecting all of that fandom talk, I can only assume people mistag between a popular and non-popular series for similar reasons. As said earlier, fans might assume everyone prefers the popular thing and that it’s better to tag that popular/bigger/older thing. Because at least that So in our case, I’ve noticed more that ppl tag Yuichi Usagi with the Miyamoto Usagi tag. From the surface, it seems like people don’t know about the Yuichi tags/show or they just don’t like it for some other reason. Now Tumblr is more a “home of fandoms” than casual fans, as most of the user-generated content is entirely by people who get much more invested in a series than a casual fan. Similarly I’ll see people tag their TMNT 2012 inspired fandesigns as ROTTMNT as well, because that is simply seen as the popular fandom at the time ergo, more attention on your post.

Maybe a solution for the mis-tagging could be smth as simple as fandom outreach, something active to unite the different types of fans into using tags correctly, but of course, something more active and social might feel more unnatural, as most of us are more wall-flower than social butterfly - working off the assumption here that most fans are shy. I used to be pretty shy as a fan and now I’m more active and out-going in general in my adult years, but at the same time, doing something socially more active is still a scary thought in my brain so I can understand that it’s easier to just tag and hope it’s correct. Or easier to make ticked off posts vs something with a different kind of effort. But then again, as brought up in my examples of other fandoms, being a fan can make people very active in taking part in similar fan activities. As we all enjoy the same thing in different ways or different media in similar ways, we are all still fans at the end of the day. Whether casual or more involved, that’s a unique experience that should unite us. So I’ll have my peace with the older cartoon-hating fans who only view Usagi Chronicles as an empty children’s cartoon etc etc. 

So, because I’m an adult, but also an artist and animation fan, this is how I’ve been approaching TV cartoons for the past 5-10 years. Against my first reaction of “oh, this is too slow for me” the way I chose to view the series once I saw more of it was “I’m an adult, and this is a cartoon made my other older adults, for kids - let me see what it’s about”. It’s more about curiosity and seeing what other creatives have done to put connective tissue between one idea to another.

Personally when it comes to tagging I try to keep to a general amount of “minimum amount of tags possible” bc I’m a bit lazy but also, I will never find anything on my own blog later if I used more than 20 tags about a simpler fanart post. So maybe like 1-2 tags for show/series, 1-2 tags for characters and my own art tags. I am lazy but I also like being considerate with other people. But also because of my previous experience with blogging, I like to keep tags I re-use as consistent as possible so I have the same experience. Of course, sometimes I forget what I’ve actually used if there are many tags i.e. many characters. so keeping the tags short is a boon for that end.

Here is the draft version for the UY and Usagi Chronicles tag guide, i'm gonna change this more but this is mostly how I've been tagging stuff (or have tried to so far) and I wrote a small guide back in march before all this, but have been coming back to it now with more general and character tags in mind. 

== Tagging Guide ==

Hello Rise of the TMNT and Usagi Chronicles joint fandom! Here’s a guide on how to tag Usagi Chronicles/Samurai Rabbit stuff! Mostly it’s my own view on how to tag things based on how I interact w the fandom stuff posted here but also from my experience of using tumblr and older blogging platforms - how I see the most common/make-sensical ways to tag characters/shows. But maybe you will find this useful too, fellow fan!

Usagi Yojimbo - the name of the original comicbook series - I decidedly reserve this for posts and reblogs ONLY about the Usagi Yojimbo comic (pages covers,, screenshots, memes), or general fanart of the comic or its characters. This helps me keep it separate so I can find posts about it later.

Usagi Chronicles - personally I use this for all content for the show, but especially the crossover stuff and my own art posts. This seems to be the most commonly used unique tag about this show.

SRTUC - acronym, good for short posts, for quick tagging. but I also use this to tag general reblogged posts about the show

Samurai Rabbit - I only try to use this if it is about the official stuff, like interviews and GIF/screenshots in bulk (more than 2). This tag gets used a lot for both the series but before that it was also used for posting general UY comics content and alternate covers by other artists, as well as for original samurai rabbits unaffiliated by UY. It is too general for me to use it on my own posts outside of text posts maybe.

Samurai Rabbit the Usagi Chronicles - mostly I use this tag for more general posts, but also reblogs if someone else has made something directly related to the series.

SamuraiRabbitNetflix - lol I only use this one on twitter, bc I saw someone from the crew use it and it has stuck for most of my more finished posts I guess ^^ Literally nobody else on tumblr uses it which is fine, but I think it’s a good way to separate the series and the more general posts people make about the comic or guest art of it (or sometimes original art unrelated to UY)

Characters:

Miyamoto Usagi - I try to mainly use it for just comic Usagi and fanart, but occasionally I will use it for fanart depicting

Rise Miyamoto Usagi - Any Rise!versions of comics Usagi. Usually these are fandesigns, but sometimes fans will adapt it wholesale (usually adapting him from his younger years). Sometimes it is unclear which version it is based on or it is a completely original version so I simply tag these as Rise Usagi.

Yuichi Usagi - pretty self-explanatory! I only use this for posts/fanart including Yuichi Usagi (but not when he is only mentioned in passing). Sometimes it is hard to differentiate between these versions however, 

Usagi fandesign/Yuichi Usagi fandesign/Miyamoto Usagi fandesign - I use all these tags to organize the fandesigns ppl make of all these characters, reserving “Usagi fandesign” when it’s really an original design based on various canon Usagi concepts or more of a “general” Usagi than a specific one i.e. meant for the Rise or 2012 TMNT crossover AUs. This counts for me in reblogs also when the OP hasn’t really decided what the character is and has tagged both characters. Lol there is a lot of different fanart of these characters and for my own sake, I tag these separately where possible so I can find the fanart easier later (especially if the posts themselves have text which doesn’t use these names, or if tumblr search is not working on blogs)

UY character - I use “UY” as the common acronym before characters from UY, but I also generally tag their names in reblogs. idk, this just makes it easier for me to find them later in my own blog and that’s all (Kenichi and Mariko for example are quite common Japanese names)

Tomoe Ame - This character just deserves her own tag, but also, I think the 03 version, while quite different, can fit in the same tag because people don’t post about them as much ^^;;

--

And now for the TMNT tags!

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - the official name! long, but good if you are tagging official stuff i.e. screenshots, gifs, concept art, tweets from crew etc

ROTTMNT - good short catch-all tag, lots of ppl use this to tag their reblogs quickly, but shorter posts can also go under here

Rise of the TMNT - Slightly longer tag than the full acronym, but more descriptive, if you wanna make sure people know it’s a TMNT show

Rise TMNT - I’ve seen a few ppl use this as a tag and it’s a valid way to tag (short and unique) but it’s not as popular as the others

2018 TMNT - again, general tag for the series. Common way to make a tag for a TMNT series - adding the year of airing before the TMNT acronym. Same with TMNT 2018. Same for the comics! I’ll use IDW TMNT as a tag for example, bc it seems widely used and understood.

TMNT18 - same as the previous one, but shorter! There are a lot of TMNT media besides the comics, (movies, animated series, etc) so it’s a general easier practice to tag via year. Ppl also sometimes use the variation 18TMNT. Anything is basically fair game with these general tags as long as the author of a blog finds stuff later.

Characters![I’m not sure about the characters yet bc I use the tags differently than other people apparently. my blog my rules i guess!]

rottmnt [character] - reserved for when i tag this character in crossovers, eg rottmnt April, rottmnt donnie. I generally use nicknames for the rottmnt boys cuz I am lazy.

Rise [character] e.g. Rise Leo, Rise April - I try and use this just for 

April O Neil (full name) - for when I’m tagging them in general and just want to see them in this tag with the other versions

12 April or 12April - for the 2012 TMNT versions of the characters. I often write the tags together bc I am just lazy but in the case of numbers, I can also forget. On tumblr I try to remember to use spaces cuz that is allowed here lol.

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And that’s it! I have more in the list, but that is the gist of the style of it. Basically hust explaining what I’ve seen and if/how I use it on my own blog. Let me know if you have more thoughts about this. I’m curious to know what other fans of both series think!

[drawnaghht]

there is a tag for it on AO3 tho! it's "Leonardo (TMNT) x Yuichi Usagi" (I'll link it in the replies since tumblr seems to eat links sometimes).

I think your post is really clear and sounds polite so I don't see any problem with discussing the whole "ship name" topic in this way. I just wanted to write a reblog-reply bc I think it's something to think about more + talking abt it might help things along. Tho I'm sure thing'll sort themselves out eventually, as fandom tags usually go. Sorry in advance for my extremely lengthy reply! I tried to structure it so it would be easier to read. But as goes the fandom saying, "I've been rotating this in my brain" ( or: this has been on a spin-cycle in my head for a bit of time now and I have more thoughts about it)

I agree! both ships are great and it's nice that people like it and there is more fic and art of different kinds online of either now. But the mischaracterization and mis-tagging is really confusing in general.

I'll put this post under a readmore out of courtesy for everyone else reading my blog bc unfortunately I find a lot of ways to be extra wordy ^^;

The great thing about AO3 is that it has general/common tags for both characters and ships. When a tag becomes more used, it will become a "main tag", so it will be suggested in the filter sidebar if you search it there, for example. Annoying for smaller fandoms where there are <16 fics total and none of the character tags are recognized by the system, but with both TMNT in general and Rise of the TMNT, that isn't a problem. So tags like a newer relationship combo (Leo x Yuichi) become a suggested/common tag if many people use it (I don't know the rules of this exactly, but it's just something I've noticed/read about re:AO3 tags).

When just searching through the tags, I see that there's quite a few fic which tag both ships? and that's confusing because which version of the character are you going to use then? or even if there are a few which have both featured (multi-fic, AUs, multiple timelines etc), so yes, just excluding one character would probably not exclude all these fic with confusing tags (i tried for a few moments and it doesn't seem to work like that - both relationship tags remain ^^;)

So yes, a bit of a problem if people want to read fic of just one, but find that both tags have been used, they pick a fic and maybe they just don’t find that it caters to either ship. I suppose this is sort of a bigger fandom problem. My experience with fandom is mostly seeing recommendations from friends and writing fic with friends, but I’ve always mostly had rarepairs, so going into AO3 I already prepare myself for not finding anything catering to my tastes (and so I write my own fic).

So in my mind I'm looking at this from a different angle (I mostly post fanart on tumbrl and twitter, i try to treat these platforms as archives even if not meant for that). What's confusing for me is when people tag both characters in fanart when only one is present. Or lets say, they tag both, but clearly the look/design is inspired by one character in particular. Lots of earlier posts before the Samurai Rabbit show came out were simply fans’ own versions of Rise!Miyamoto, but later fanart started incorporating more elements from Yuichi (the hair, the clothes). But why did people still tag it as both? Or why do fans still do this? I’m a fan of both the comic and the Usagi show and I like it when I don’t see too many repeating arts in the tags, mainly because then it’s easier to find new posts, so the multiple tagging system becomes annoying because that's not what i'm looking for ^^;

The ship names I can kind of let pass on account of the Yuichi/Leo ship being still relatively new, and people still learning how to tag properly on tumblr. So I want to trust that people will get used to their own separate tag which they'll use more than the other now. I get it, leosagi is an older ship name, easier to say/use if you already knew smth about TMNT before Rise. But it’s still sorta annoying cuz sometimes you wanna see the 03 leosagi ship - what are you supposed to do when the tag is only full of arts about the newer one? lol tagging both just makes it confusing and makes it feel like the newer tags are obsolete by default - but the leosagi tag is still abt the Leo/Miyamoto Usagi ship, so it’s just a lot of tag clogging still. I think after ppl started posting abt the difference in the two ships more, there’s been less posts/twts abt either ship in general, it’s like fans are busy + just have other interests (which is normal) but it could also just be that ppl are thinking abt how to tag stuff now (but haven’t checked anymore bc busy myself too + tired of fandom stuff in general)

In other fandoms I've seen people put things on vote if there are too many ship tags (like YugiOh! or Pokemon fandoms) because the fandom is big and everyone used different nicknames throughout that media's history. Or there's different names for the same ship, bc there are different flavours for that ship, making each feel separate for the searcher (miraculous ladybug comes to mind and YGO as well, with multiple "versions" of the "same" character), which is a valid way to tag ships if people like being more specific. Makes things easier to find when googling and/or using a websites custom search! I ship both Leosagi and Yuichi/Leo so I very much like to separate the two so I don't have to go through 40 pages of one tag just to find one post ^^;; I did not really know in the beginning either that there were separate tags at all. So I think for a while, maybe that's been the main reason for the confusion in the fandom.

I'm not sure I'd want to vote bc the Leochi/Leoichi tags are confusing for me. Which one to use? so I'm the annoying person who made their own tag bc I think the Yuchi Usagi x Rise!Leo crossover ship is unique and feels like it needs it's own searchable keyword to make things simpler. so i made up "yuinardo" for that. But AO3 doesn't really need tags like that. this sort of tagging or "ship smoosh" sort of name is more usable on tumblr or sites like youtube/twitter which dont seem to have a very good tagging system. But the main problem still seems to be here that for fanfic, people will write Rise!Leo and make up their own Usagi based either Miyamoto Usagi (the og) or his descendant Yuichi (from the cartoon). And I honestly haven't browsed with this in mind as much myself, but I have noticed that people for example tag it as "general TMNT" without specifying if it is 2003 or 2018. Now that's confusing. There's no way to filter these sorts of fic then either and a reader wouldn't know which Usagi they're reading until they read it OR unless it's tagged properly. i can't really think of a solution for that other than - create the general atmosphere in fandom that it's better to tag correctly vs over-tag or tag in-correctly. That's all I can really think of for that because well, fandom feels like it should be inclusive as a space. but it also could do with better organization sometimes.

I also think it's interesting how many people combine versions or elements of both Miyamoto and Yuichi Usagi for their Rise fics. Tho it implies that basically fans either got inspired by the 03 ship or different parts of the comics and decided to combine them for fun, or they made a new character/story up for their own version/AU. but also this makes it feel like fic authors don't look further into either series/comics or any versions in cartoons. ^^; I call this phase "people don't do research" bc I don't see that curiosity from fans for a lot for newer shows in general. So for example, I genuinely like the Usagi Chronicles show and it's making me want to continue reading/looking up the og comic more. But I also like learning more about how the show itself was made and what concept art looked like or how the actors felt about their roles etc - this gives something like "extra value" in my mind to the show but also helps me see the characters and world a different way. I don't see it so much as "bad" for a fandom, it's just a bit sad for me as a fan bc there's always so much to find about a show that's interesting or can be used in fanworks as inspiration. Usagi Yojimbo is a really cool comicbook series and Miyamoto Usagi is a very neat and unique character. And it's a bit weird seeing ppl treat the character like he's just part of the TMNT verse Doesn't happen as much anymore but I imagine with fanfic it must be different. I suppose the 2003 show sort of imprinted its own younger version of Usagi onto the TMNT fandom in a large way and we can still feel that influence on fanworks to this day haha 😂

I think this is how I first encountered the "Rise version of Usagi" in the wild too, before finding the Samurai Rabbit series and seeing there was a new Usagi character+ og series as well. I knew about the 03 version, knew about the comic, then saw a bit of 12 and eventually saw ROTTMNT. I forgot the Usagi series was in development and thought, "huh, people are making their own versions of Usagi for Rise. Cool!"

As long as things are respectful re: other fans, I think that ignoring of original texts can also be fine for the sake of creativity within fandom, but it makes things confusing later or in the case of a more organized place like AO3, because these fans don't seem to actually know which character is which ^^; It makes things confusing to tag+find. And I guess in the case of some of the multi-tagged AO3 fic, it just makes it feel like the authors are switching out one character for the other, but not changing anything to make the character fit into their new role.

And again, OC versions can be fun and interesting too, but then those should not be tagged with either Miyamoto or Yuichi character tags as that is confusing as hell for the future reader.

Like that, it's interesting to think that so many are not sure what to tag it either and so, both leosagi and leoichi/leochi get used. As mentioned before by other fans, and mentioned in RabNerd28's video "Why do we all ship Leosagi", the most likely reason is that people remembered '02 Leosagi, then thought Leosagi was an umbrella term for all Leo/Usagi ships, (2012 show didn't really have as asimilar relationship to 03) or that it would be cute to continue the "tradition" of Leo/Usagi crossovers, since Rise missed out on it.

+ We also have the whole aspect of social media having become a bigger part of our lives over the last 15 years. It's become more commonplace for anyone trying to "reach" a larger audience to tag with "all tags" on media platforms that use tags. This was a thing on blogging site for a while too (tag clouds became a big thing for a short while). And in fandoms, it's become even more common, bc now we're sort of used to seeing it, so depending on the person and how their internet experience is, they might think more tags = more reach inside the nebulous social media algorhitm. But this becomes a bit weird for both blogging sites like tumblr or fanfic archives like AO3 because these don't have "algorhitms" like many social media platforms have become known for ^^;

Personally, I think on Tumblr, it would be simple for the Yuichi x Leo shippers to switch over to either leoichi or leochi since both are fairly popular tags and the fans using it wouldn't lose out on that "reach" - if ppl already know that it's the ship tag for Leo/Yuichi, they'll keep tracking that instead. As already hashed about it in other ppl's posts, it doesn't really make sense to use multiple tags if they don't count for those characters. Overall I think it's just up to the fandom in general to decide what people want to call a ship, and that's I usually just read what the OP of a post has tagged it and decide from there what it goes on my own blog.

I think AO3 on the other hand makes things simpler because there will always be a common ship tag using both common names for the character (so Leonardo (TMNT)/Miyamoto Usagi for example) and then people can use their own custom tags for flavour/exclulding from search (Future!Leonardo for character or Future!Rise Leosagi for specificity) and this makes things easier to filter in/out depending on interest. I also like that it has easier sorting options compared to say, FF.Net or tumblr itself (only "top" and "latest" options and you can sort thru post type). But yes, it becomes a bit hard to sort through fanart/fic when ppl tag a different ship under an older ship's tags ^^; I like both 2003 leosagi and the various versions of rise!leosagi and leochi/leoichi, but it's way too much work to use that many tags for one ship lol, especially when there's multiple "versions" or "flavors" of the same crossover ship idea. I'm not gonna find anything like that! And that's why now on my own blog I just keep the leosagi nickname for the 2003 ship, yuinardo tag for the show/show crossover ship and the rest for any variations.

Sorry if this sounds rambly, it's just been on my mind since january, rotating as a disctraction and I thought maybe trying to reply to this would help continue the conversation in a more constructive or positive way. English is not my native language either so please ask if anything sounded confusing ^^;

Annywayy, it's late and I wrote enough I think, but I'll probably mull it in my head in later posts too and have new thoughts haha :'D

I know the leoichi and leosagi problem has been talked and everything but I feel we should talk about the problem that exits in AO3 too and it's the tagging, again.

It has been stated that Yuichi and Miyamoto aren't the same character, one it's descendant of the other, so it confuses me why Yuichi is the Usagi that appears in the Leonardo/Miyamoto Usagi tag, as it sould be Miyamoto and Leonardo/Yuichi Usagi sould have it's own AO3 tag. It confuses a lot of people bc someone wants to read something with Miyamoto and Leo and has to browse through a thousand fics that have Yuichi instead.

And someone could say "Just exclude the Yuichi Usagi tag and it's done" but it isn't the point, Yuichi is a separate character so he sould have his own tag with Leo, hence avoid the mischaracterization and confusion of both characters as I have seen lately. Don't get me wrong, I love both ships, both are so cute and wholesome but they aren't the same ship.

I don't want to cause a ship war nor attack the leoichi shippers. I want to find a middle ground for both shippers as any other so we can both enjoy our ships in peace.✨💕

[Pd: English is not my first language so if there's any mistake here let me know ^^"]