#hq manga liveblog

[eurydicees]

sakusa is so interesting like imagine you're one of the best aces in the country in only your second year of high school, and there are all these expectations on you, and you live in a constant state of anxiety that you're going to get hurt or injured or be sick, or anything that will make you lose your spot as one of the best--after all, what worth do you have if you aren't the best? and you work hard and train hard and you do everything right--as methodic and dedicated as you can be--but then you watch one of the other best aces, one of your friends, lose his final shot at nationals because of a team you've barely heard of before, and you just know that that could be you one day, because there is an entire country's worth of players who want to take your spot.

and then you get to nationals and you've done everything right, you've clung to your title among the best in japan, but your team loses anyways. and you don't want to be pitied when your captain's injury was ultimately an accident and unpreventable, but you don't understand either, because you may be a realist but you're also sixteen and you lost at the thing you were supposed to be the best at. because ultimately, you were lucky. you have a great team, you have strong muscles, you have a drive to win. but who knows how long those things will last. how long can one person be the best? and you don't ever want to be pitied for losing that title. but maybe the only way to avoid others' pity and grief is to never lose.

and then you grow up and you know--for sure, now; it's something coming eventually, you know--that these things will not last forever. but you still: you had them. you worked for them, and you were strong, and you had them. everyone has their ideal games and ideal ways to go out of the sport--because eventually, there will be a last game. but if you can keep working hard, keep training, keep doing things methodically and truly and with all your devotion and dedication, won't that make it all satisfying when it ends anyways? there's nothing to pity about that ending, really, is there? when you've devoted yourself to something, when you've done your very best, when you have loved something?

aren't you one of the lucky ones? to get to do that?

and then people like. completely reduce you to being sexy and atsumu's miya's boyfriend.

[theclearblue]

This is what I look like every night at 2 a.m. btw

[galaxynajma]

Oh… he’s just a little gremlin 

[daisyachain]

Mm Daiya and Oofuri are fun to compare as an example of the same series going in tie very different directions.

Strong and insecure player leading a weak team as a united front. Weak and overconfident player infighting his way to the top of a dominant team. Earnest hotblooded shouting VS calculating inner monologues. Vague rules and cartoony play styles VS detailed breakdowns of the logic behind every play. Rotating signature character moments VS slow, steady build of characterizations through background dialogue.

What stands out most is that DnA’s characters are super strongly sketched with arcs that seem to fizzle out, while Oofuri’s characters are far more normal and temperate with steadily-shifting stories. Oofuri delivers on every promise it makes. You watch games and games go by with ease and then you hit Sakitama II and get a payoff to an investment that you didn’t even know you made. Even within the course of the show, there’s a real sense of completion within each arc. It all makes sense. The Bijoudai-Sayama (Saiyama?) arc still feels satisfying because it nails down the characters.

Contrast Daiya, it has a lot more flashy moments and a lot more moments of ‘wait. What are we doing.’ Chris is the focal point of cour 1 and gets demoted to talking head soon after that. Furuya is introduced as the foil the rival the kindred spirit and spends so little time interacting with Sawamura that it’s an in-series joke. Miyuki occupies an odd spot as the second POV character who doesn’t actually do much for two dozen episodes.

The whole thing feels slippery. Who are we supposed to be following, with Sawamura doesn’t get to do anything and Furuya doesn’t get to say anything? What’s the point of Miyuki if he’s just reading other characters’ thought bubbles? Why bench Chris when he’s been Sawamura’s most interesting scene partner to date?

Best way I can describe it is that in Daiya, you can tell what each character’s role is supposed to be at a glance. The third-years’ personalities broadcast loud and clear from the start despite splitting screentime so much. In Oofuri, you’d be hard pressed to tell Suyama and Nishihiro apart by the end of season 1.

On the other hand, every character in Daiya falls short of their title. They can’t do what they advertise for. Ryousuke as an example is supposed to reckon with his inferiority complex, his relationship with his brother, his treatment of his own bestie. All these things do come up to trouble him. Then…he’s ushered off stage left and you never really resolve any of that, because all he says in his sole cameo is that it stings a little. Contrast Oofuri, the Boring Guy Suyama’s arc from 0 to the unexpected delight is one that keeps happening. He hits once and then you start noticing it more and more, then once he’s become a pillar of the team you get it lampshaded that he’s been trying for it all along. Daiya as a story makes loud promises that don’t always come true, Oofuri as a story never says anything it doesn’t mean

[foxstens]

when do i get like 2 weeks free to rewatch some anime

[monstrsball]

#my headcanons (mainly hq, sometimes mob psycho)

#hq pokemon au (masterpost)

#hq atla au (masterpost)

#single dad!iwa au / #into the kiddoverse

#fic recs (my iwasuga fic recs)

#kennedy liveblogs

sideblog: @hqrarepairtournament

recommend me anime/manga!

[coralsweep]

wwaIT IS IT THE KINOSHITA & NOYA EP????

[shoyowo]

maybe im reading too much into this but the flashback scene during their first match w ukai being on full offence and nekomata being on defensive might set the tone for the karaneko match (w karasuno being offensive focused and nekoma v defence focused)

[stardivinefinale-moved]

I’M AN IDIOT I THOUGHT HAIKYUU SEASON 4 WAS GOING TO BE THE END

[froggggggggggg]

[eurydicees]

it's fucking crazy how like. haikyuu started more than ten years ago. and now it's only occasional special one-shots that come out. and yet furudate has yet to miss with any single panel. every chapter since 2012 has hit and i am not joking.

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 51-56

This is the “Seras Coming of Age” part of Hellsing, but the chapters are all one-off titles: “Last Mission”, “Get Away”, “Yaksa”, “The Man I Love”, “Ogre Battle”, and “Angelous,”

Last time, Zorin Blitz’s company invaded the Hellsing HQ, and Seras managed to kill them all except for Zorin herself, and then she used her psychic whammy, forcing Seras to relive some traumatic moment.   We saw one of the Wild Geese get this same treatment, and he briefly saw his dead daughter before Zorin killed him.  As for Seras, she relives the deaths of her parents.   Years ago, two guys barged into their home and shot them.   The circumstances aren’t entirely clear, but they must have had some forewarning, since Seras’ mom hid her in a closet and told her not to come out no matter what.   But when she saw what they did to them, Seras became so enraged that she attackedthe men and stabbed one in the eye with a fork.  

The other guy shot Seras, and while she must have survived, she remembers laying on the floor as the guy she stabbed decides to rape her mother.   I’m not even sure “rape” is the right word, since she was already dead, but the guy doesn’t care because the body is “still warm.”   You’d think he’d be too upset about losing an eye, but maybe he’s high on cocaine or something.

I don’t think you need me to tell you this, gentle reader, but hol-ee shit this dark.   We knew Seras’ parents died when she was young, and it wouldn’t be hard to speculate that they died in some violent crime, but Seras watched it happen, and she stabbed a dude in the face, only to get shot herself, and she watched her mother’s body getting molested before she passed out.  

And this gives us some insight into what Alucard saw in her that night in Cheddar.  There, Seras was surrounded by ghouls, many of them her comrades in the police department, and a vampire who promised to rape her before drinking her blood.   Alucard found it remarkable how she persevered in this horror, but now we see that may not even be the worst thing that ever happened to her.  It’s not even the first time she got shot!  

And from the earlier flashback we saw, Seras was hellbound to become a police officer like her father.  After a trauma like this, it’s amazing that she’d want anything to do with the police, since those men killed her father for digging “too deep” into whatever they were involved in.  But Seras quietly, defiantly chose to follow in her father’s footsteps, only to suffer a similar fate. 

Because, let’s not forget, Seras is dead.   She died in Cheddar, because Alucard had to shoot through her to kill the vampire who had taken her hostage.   Then she agreed to become a vampire like him, and join the Hellsing Organization.   Once more, she has quietly, defiantly, chosen to carry on in this life of public service.  

But none of that matters to Zorin Blitz.   She just wanted to dredge up all this trauma to keep Seras preoccupied long enough for Zorin to do this...

Oh, also she lopped off Seras’ left arm, but I liked this impalement panel better. 

On top of that, Zorin slashes Seras’ eyes, which was pretty gruesome and shocking.   When I started watching the Hellsing Ultimate OVA, I couldn’t wait to see what happened next, so I trawled YouTube for clips of Seras, so I had a pretty good idea where the character was headed, and noticed that late-story Seras was missing a left arm.   So Zorin cutting it off didn’t surprise me much, but everything else she did to her was a surprise.

Then, just as Zorin seems to be ready to finish Seras off, Pip Bernadotte gets the drop on her and whacks her with the butt of his rifle.    Machine gun?   Semiautomatic?   I don’t know from guns.    He hits her with it, is my point.   Then he shoots her with a different gun to put the exclamation point on it.

There’s two other guys left in the Wild Geese, and they toss smoke grenades to cover Pip as he tries to carry Seras to safety, but he’s wounded, and then a Millennium soldier wakes up and shoots him in the thighs.   Was that guy playing possum?  The Geese take him out, and Pip even makes it back to them, but I’m not sure what good that does anybody.   Then Zorin gets back up and cuts him down with her scythe.    I don’t think she chops him in half or anything, but he’s not getting back up again, that’s for sure. 

Seras calls out to him, and he steals another kiss.   I guess he forgot about the last time, because he acts like he “finally” managed to do this.   Then he asks Seras to drink his blood, which will allow her to win.   I guess someone must have explained enough vampire lore to Pip for him to have figured this out.    Maybe Seras herself told him how it worked, which makes it doubly-meaningful for him to say this to her now.  

And Seras starts wailing with grief, before Zorin finally mocks her for it, calling Pip an insect.   I’ve seen a few people poke fun at this scene, because it’s kind of weird for Zorin to just stand by while Pip and Seras have this final moment together, but Zorin’s a sadist.   Much of what she’s done in these past several chapters has been about reveling in her enemies’ suffering.    She took her sweet time with Seras earlier, which was the only reason Pip managed to help her, and now she’s taking her sweet time again, like she’s enjoying this drama. 

So Zorin uses her psychic whammy again, but this time it doesn’t work on Seras.   Maybe because Seras is already in the middle of a terrible trauma in the here and now.   She couldn’t do anything to avenge her parents back then, and she was powerless against the Cheddar Priest, but this time?   This time she knows exactly what to do.

VENIT AEVUS ILLE, O MESSIAH, O MESSIAH

YUDULIYA-VELE YUDULIYA-VELE

EN ESE MOMENTO ZORIN BLITZ SINTIO EL VERDADERO TERROR.

So yeah, this rocks.    The anime version does this cool thing where all the blood soaks up into her clothes and stains them red.   Maybe the manga was going for the same thing, but it’s harder to tell in black and white.   I find it kind of strange how Seras’ eyes grow back, but her left arm does not.    I’m pretty sure she could reform her arm, but chooses not to.   Instead, she’s got this black ectoplasm-y thing, like the same black stuff that Alucard uses when he’s not holding back as much.

Then Seras starts slaughtering Zorin’s men.   Didn’t she already kill them all?  Yeah, but there’s more.   The anime tries to cover for this by having Zorin explain that some “late arrivals” showed up.  Well, they did have to enter the building single file to get past the mines, so it makes sense that Zorin would keep some in reserve in case there were more traps inside. 

Seras is my favorite character in this whole thing, and since these pages of her kickin’ ass speak for themselves, I guess I’ll talk about why I like her so much.    I’m pretty sure I saw a cosplay photo of her on tumblr, and I found the design intriguing.   She’s a vampire, but dressed in something like a military uniform, kind of like the “Bridge Bunnies” in Macross. I looked up Seras to find out what she was from, and I was like “Oh, Hellsing was the show Team Four Star has been abridging, I guess I need to watch that anyway so I can watch the Abridged version and get the jokes.”

Mostly, I just like the idea of a vampire with a very professional mentality, as opposed to the whole Lost Boys/What We Do in the Shadows/Buffy kind of aesthetic.    Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we see that sort of thing all the time.   I’ve also seen a lot of “reluctant” vampires in my time.    Vampires who try to avoid doing any vampire stuff, or going about their business like the vampirism is just this inconvenient obstacle.   Hellsing presents this other option, where vampires like Alucard are used for the purpose of anti-vampire countermeasures.   He’s been turned into a weapon, but he’s basically just Dracula with a fresh coat of paint.   Seras is more firmly rooted in the concept.  Alucard was a vampire who became a sort of cop, and Seras is a cop who became a vampire. 

And while I liked the idea of Seras being like “Oh, well I didn’t want to be a vampire but I’ll try to make the best of it”, I quickly found out that she wasn’t just a cop with pointy teeth.   There’s moments where she can be scary and creepy too.   “Sir, yes sir, my Master.”  It sums her up very neatly.   This is a vampire who can be polite and respectful and professional, but she can also get very deep into the more horrific aspects of this thing.   She’s got layers.  Zorin Blitz tried to peel them back, and look how that’s working out for her.

Once the rank and file goons are dealt with, Seras goes after Blitz, and just wrecks her shit.   Blitz tries to punch Seras in the face and it does nothing.   Seras just bites all her fingers off and spits ‘em out.   Then she announces that she refuses to drink Zorin’s blood, not a single drop. This is important, because Seras was always reluctant to drink blood.  She said she feared that drinking blood would mean the end of something inside of her, but now she’s crossed that Rubicon.   One might suspect that she’d suddenly want to drink more blood, but no.  She drank Pip’s as a means to an end.   Zorin’s blood would serve no higher purpose, and I think there’s an implication that she doesn’t want to dishonor Pip’s sacrifice.  Desperate, Zorin tries to use her power on Seras a third time, and then this happens:

  Okay, so at first Zorin sees Seras’ memories, like before, but now there’s all this stuff from Pip’s memories, and then Warrant Officer Shrodinger, of all people, shows up.   Zorin is confused by this, but he explains that he’s “everywhere and nowhere,” which means he can appear in this psychic vision just as easily as he can teleport between Brazil and England.

Schrodinger is here to pass along a message from the Major.  See, Zorin disobeyed his orders, and he would normally punish her for this, but he and the Doctor are busy with a “most interesting toy”, so they’ll just leave it to Seras to take care of punishing Zorin.  

Yesterday, I think I figured out what Zorin’s disobedience was.    Before I was confused because she didn’t start attacking until Seras opened fire on her blimp, and that only happened because Seras was shooting at the rockets fired by the Major.   Everything that Zorin did afterwards could be considered a matter of self-defense, but therein lies the problem.    Namely, what was Zorin’s blimp doing in the line of fire to begin with?  

Because once Seras shot her down, everything Zorin did next was sort of her only option.   She pretty much had to attack the mansion, and brave its defenses, whatever those happened to be.   And the Major knew that this was a big unknown.   He warned Zorin about Seras Victoria and while he didn’t seem to know exactly what her abilities were, he regarded her as an “arch-enemy” on the same level as Alucard.  That’s why he wanted Zorin to hold off and wait for the rocket attack.   It was intended to probe the mansion’s defenses, and once it became clear that they had anti-aircraft guns, and that Seras was eagle-eyed enough to shoot down their rockets, then the Major could have ordered Zorin to find a different way.   

But instead she was too close and gave Seras a target, which precipitated everything else, up to and including this:

Yeah, Seras just drags Zorin across the walls until her whole head smears apart.   Cool!

With Zorin dead, Seras delcares her intention to take the fight to the enemy, and the last three Wild Geese salute her before she leaves.   One way or another, they realize that Pip has become a part of Seras now, and they pay their last respects to him through her. 

Then Seras flies toward London, using her left arm-thing to make cool bat wings.    And this is a good illustration of what Seras is all about.  Once, she might have been horrified at the thought of doing something like this, but now she sees it as a way to carry on with her duty.    This was what Alucard had been trying to get her to understand, but sometimes you just have to work these things out in your own way.   Seras is about utility, and now that she has a use for these vampiric powers, she’s finally prepared to embrace them as her own.

In London, Schrodinger reports back to the Major and informs him of Zorin Blitz’s death.  He’s not surprised, and even declares “our ruin has begun”.   Schrodinger points out that he’s leading everyone, friend and foe alike, into destruction, and the Major simply observes that this is war.   Millennium didn’t come to London to win, they came to London to fight.

Then the Ninth Crusade shows up.  Recall that, earlier, Enrico Maxwell organized a military response to deal with the Millennium invasion of London, but he hasn’t come here to save the civilian population.   Instead, he’s treating them as enemies, just like the Nazi vampires.    Somehow, there’s still living people in the city, and as dawn approaches, they see Maxwell’s helicopters putting off some sort of light show.  I don’t know what you call this, but the people on the ground think it’s angels, and then Maxwell orders his men to open fire.

I want to point out that the newly promoted Archbishop Maxwell is riding into this battle in a special truck with a glass box for him to sit in.   He’s surrounded by microphones so he can address his troops and the people below.   Also the truck is hanging from a helicopter.   It’s stupid and pointless and over-the-top, so naturally the Major is highly impressed with Maxwell’s style. 

[foxstens]

also u know what. i really love ‘ninja shouyou’

[monstrsball]

ok maybe i get it now

[blennie]

I’d liveblog my reading of the hq manga bc I’m revisiting a hyperfixation but I don’t wanna spam so y’all better thank me or else your dash would literally all just be mangacaps.

Anyways all I can say is:

Hinata Cute

Kageyama Cute

Yachi Cute 🐹

Bokuto Big and Cute

Akaashi.......!!!!

Kenma Cute

Kuroo 😈

Oikawa and Iwaizumi (do not separate them)

I Love All These Characters

Thank You Furudate

[shoyowo]

btw blacklist 'magic's hq' if u don't wanna see me liveblog the hq manga <3