#i haven't fleshed her out she's basically the stand-in for a female character in the comic

[mashirodayo]

[ave-cave]

Lucy in Chapter 118: an Analysis 🫧

Hooo boy

Chapter one-eighteen. Where do I even 𝓫𝓮𝓰𝓲𝓷?

Unlike a lot of folks in this fandom (all more imaginative than I could ever hope to be), I had basically no solid predictions for this chapter (or… any chapter thus far, really, and I've been following the manga religiously since 103, so… yeah, there's a reason I'm a BSD analyst, not theorist, lmao). Needless to say, 118 is heartbreak and bombshells galore: Tanizaki and Kenji’s Ame-no-Gozen-ing, the possibility that all of those “Jun'ichirō and Naomi aren't really siblings” theories were just proven dead right, the protagonist and main villain finally meeting because it's about damn time, so on and so forth.

But because a) the fanbase is already abuzz with talk about those things + no doubt already in the process of doing them analytical justice, and b) I'm annoying, I’ve decided to dissect the ever-loving hell out of the chapter’s three most innocuous pages: this interaction between Kyōka Izumi and Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Inhales

MY GIRLS ARE BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

Does a little jig 🎶

Sorry, just had to get that out of my system

No, but seriously. We haven't heard from Kyōka since chapter 91. Three whole years; definitely too long for a character of her importance. But Lucy… Lucy’s been out of the picture since chapter 81. That’s four whole years. So in other words, two significant female characters, sidelined for ages, are back. That’s kind of huge, IMO.

Of course, we have a vague idea of what they’ve been up to. Anne's Room has been shown more than once serving as the ADA’s safe haven and base of operations, and so per the rules of AOAR, Lucy must be nearby if not inside herself. Kyōka we see in silhouette form in Anne's Room in chapter 92. But this is the first time in a hot minute we've seen either of them in the flesh, let alone gotten dialogue out of them. I nearly choked on my cereal when I turned the page and saw their faces, lol.

So then, pray tell, what does this long-awaited appearance in the flesh entail? Well…

Lucy and Kyōka:

Right off the bat, the girls are seen in Anne’s Room (where they’ve ostensibly been this whole time), standing in front of the white door (i.e., the door opposite the prison, which – unless linked to a surface in the real world – will cause those who leave through it to experience amnesia. Not relevant to the scene, just thought I should give a refresher.) The exit is blocked by rubble; the airport, as well as the surrounding buildings, have all been devastated. How to leave Anne's Room at this point is anyone’s guess.

Kyōka suggests Lucy deactivate her ability, but Lucy points out that, chances are, they'll be flattened by rubble as soon as she does. In response, Kyōka does her signature knife-unsheathing and insists, rather ominously, that they'll just have to take a gamble then. Lucy grabs her wrist and tells her to stop, and when Kyōka asks her why, she replies solemnly, “Because… if you died… it would crush him,” this followed by a picture of Atsushi’s smiling face.

YES. YES. YES.

Now THIS is what I love about Lucy and Kyōka’s dynamic.

In essence, they're rivals. Thing is, they're not your generic “two girls fighting over the same guy” rivals. Kyōka’s feelings toward Atsushi aren’t even romantically-coded.

Their shared love for Atsushi doesn’t divide them; it unites them. After all, since the Guild Aftermath arc, the “rivalry” aspect of their relationship has had almost nothing to do with him. There, they were only at each other’s throats because Kyōka didn’t like how Lucy, still angry about the Moby Dick, was treating Atsushi, and Lucy didn’t like how Kyōka was standing in the way of her talking things out properly with him.

But once a much-needed heart-to-heart was had between Atsushi and Lucy and the latter turned over a new leaf, there was no longer any reason for her and Kyōka to bicker. Kyōka didn’t have the full context of Lucy’s actions, and was thus within her rights to assume she couldn’t be trusted, but Lucy proved that she could be when she led them to the right boat.

Later on, Lucy showcased that she didn't resent Kyōka when she advocated for her, forcing Atsushi to leave her to her thoughts upon learning the truth of her parents' deaths.

The next chapter, Kyōka calls Lucy’s coffee mediocre, but Lucy herself admitted that she's not much of a barista, and so the comment is more Kyōka not mincing words than actively trying to be rude. Moreover, Lucy is offended at first, but then concedes without any real hostility.

In the Cannibalism arc, Kyōka is shown bowing politely to Lucy while enlisting her help, even if she is just following Atsushi's lead (and later does the same for Mushitarō).

Fast forward to the Sky Casino arc, Kyōka is miffed by Lucy’s hot-and-cold behavior around Atsushi, but that’s not exactly unique to her...

... and besides, they agree without resistance to work together to infiltrate the casino. In chapter 81, i.e., the last we saw of Lucy until now, the Agency reunites and Lucy encourages Kyōka to join in on the celebration.

Perhaps most notable is chapter 78. Here, the two are lumped into the same category by Ango: he recognizes them both as people who would choose Atsushi over the good of the world, and this nearly drives him to kill them on the spot for fear of what their loyalty could turn into.

In this latest chapter, however, it’s underscored that, while Lucy and Kyōka may be the same in their care for Atsushi on the surface, they’re still – at the end of the day – foil characters.

Both are orphans. Both were taken in – and subsequently exploited – by criminal organizations for their abilities. Both found their place in the story by virtue of meeting Atsushi. Both are undyingly loyal to Atsushi because of what he’s done for them. But that’s about where their similarities end.

Kyōka was introduced as a remorseful killer seeking atonement by death. Atsushi managed to save her (twice, for that matter) in the conventional hero way, cementing himself as her savior and playing into the reckless heroism by which he determines his worth.

Lucy, on the other hand, was introduced as a bitter villain who believed she was justified in lashing out. Atsushi tried, but he couldn’t save her in the traditional hero way. Only his vulnerability managed to get through to her, and if anything, Lucy saved him. This utterly subverted the philosophy by which Atsushi had begun to define both himself and his relationships.

Since then, Lucy has been trying at every turn to get Atsushi to see himself as more than just a hero. She reprimands him for his reckless heroism when she sees it. She stops him from inserting himself into other people’s plights uninvited. She confronts him when he fails to understand his relationships beyond the framework of hero and savior. Kyōka, meanwhile, has been doing more or less the opposite; she’s passively allowed Atsushi to keep playing the perpetual hero, and this wouldn’t be the first time she’s taken on his philosophy of self-sacrifice herself.

To these ends, the girls’ thought processes here are perfectly in line for them: Kyōka tries to push forward without care for what could happen to her, whereas Lucy emphasizes self-preservation.

One might perceive Lucy replying the way she does to Kyōka’s question as callous, but I don’t really think so. She isn’t saying “the only reason you shouldn’t risk your life is because it would make Atsushi sad.” She’s applying her philosophy of self-preservation to Atsushi and Kyōka at the same time. She's encouraging Kyōka to be more than just a hero by telling her to think of how it would affect Atsushi as a person if she died.

If Lucy is good at anything, it’s communicating what she wants from people in a way that she knows will get through to them. She did this with Atsushi on the Moby Dick when she bluffed about waiting on his salvation, knowing that he would be more motivated to stay alive himself if he thought there was someone counting on him to save them. Here, she communicates with Kyōka in a way that highlights the reason they get along; the reason they’re both here in the first place. And if the way Kyōka resheathes her knife without a word is any indication, it works.

Lucy knows that she and Atsushi are close, but she knows that Kyōka and Atsushi are closer; losing her would be the last straw for him. She recognizes their relationship as something beyond hero and savior, something precious. This is nothing out-of-character; to the contrary, it’s in keeping with who she’s been all along. All that’s different now is she’s acknowledging it out loud.

Lucy and Atsushi:

When Lucy pictures Atsushi in her mind’s eye, she sees the spirit that would undoubtedly be broken if he were to lose Kyōka. This in and of itself is heartbreaking, but when you consider the greater implications, well…

In the Sky Casino arc, a huge breakthrough was made in Atsushi and Lucy’s relationship: her elusive “impossible” debt to him was finally repaid, though not in the way you'd expect.

At the time, all Lucy felt she could give in return for Atsushi’s turning her life around was conventional heroism – or in other words, many a close call and many a trip to Anne’s Room. This conventional heroism was a worthless currency in her mind – it wasn’t the kind that saved her, after all – but on the other hand, the vulnerability she so valued in its stead she wasn’t capable of giving; where she came from, being vulnerable was a death sentence, after all. Because of this, how she could ever come close to repaying Atsushi’s ultimate favor was a mystery unto itself. All she knew was that she had to do it one way or another, and that’s where her most glaring flaw – her quid-pro-quo mindset – came into play, eventually driving her so far as to override her own philosophy and embody the reckless hero she so discouraged Atsushi from being.

But when Atsushi saved her from Nathaniel – thereby repaying her for her acts of service as he’d promised so many times he would – she realized that, just as her care for Atsushi doesn’t depend on his being a hero, Atsushi's care for her doesn’t depend on her being vulnerable. The illusion was shattered.

From this point forward, Lucy is no longer helping Atsushi out of a sense of indebtedness. She's doing it because she wants to. Because she truly, genuinely cares. Not the artificial kind of care that comes with repaying a debt, but the care that she showcases when she stays by Atsushi’s side after he faints, pressing a cold towel to his face. The kind of care that involves refusing to hurt Atsushi in any way, even to jog potentially vital memories.

Lucy considering what Kyōka’s death would do to Atsushi’s psyche is a perfect continuation of this new leaf she’s turned over, but it also goes to show that her shared arc with Atsushi is far from finished.

Lucy’s character development has always been structured in a rather unique way: each arc she’s appeared in has worked either to establish or address her current most glaring flaw, more often than not in unexpected ways. Her appearance in the first half of the Guild arc established her villainous façade being just that – a façade – by having it crumble as she realized the kind of person she was up against in Atsushi. The second half addressed her unhealthy attachment to the Guild by having Atsushi dissuade her from villainy via empathy. The Guild Aftermath arc added the finishing touch to all of this – the last little push needed to propel Lucy into her new role – by addressing her and Atsushi’s “promise” on the Moby Dick. The Cannibalism arc subtly established her quid-pro-quo mindset, which the Sky Casino arc would then go on to address.

Another great subversion of the tropes usually involved in these dynamics is that, despite Lucy being the closest thing to Atsushi’s “love interest,” only he's managed to bolster her development, not the other way around. This isn’t for lack of trying, of course; Lucy tries. But Atsushi is a tough nut to crack. The fact that she’s still, nearly fifteen chapters later, trying to steer Atsushi toward personhood instead of heroism – albeit indirectly – is testament to this.

If she could reach him now, she’d no doubt be trying even still. She’d be conveying to him that none of his friends’ deaths so far has been his fault – that he can’t be expected to carry the burden of hero to all when the world is going to hell in a handbasket. But she can’t reach him. She’s trapped, and so is Kyōka. Thus is the cruel irony.

Anne's Room:

Anne of Abyssal Red has played a key role in pretty much everything plot-related up to this point. It’s only appropriate, then, that its owner finally appearing alongside it would give it all the more significance.

Lucy’s last line in this chapter is as follows: “So the enemy… even took this into account.” She’s right; Fyodor had countermeasures against her ability. That said, I don’t think this is attributable solely to Fyodor being, well… Fyodor.

AOAR is in the same ballpark narrative-wise as, say, For The Tainted Sorrow in that it’s overpowered to the point of detriment. It’s Lucy’s playground; the product of an imagination run wild due to crippling loneliness. This in and of itself is scary. A power having rules that malleable is automatically dangerous, because it means that, while its wielder can bend and exploit said rules, so can an enemy. In both major fights Lucy has been a part of, the rules of Anne’s Room being molded to favor her opponent has spelled either victory or loss on her end: Atsushi used the prison room loophole against her, and she indirectly used the transportation loophole against Nathaniel. Hell, her capture by the Guild following her betrayal was thanks to the loophole that, while Anne couldn’t be defeated, she could be restrained.

So basically, for as powerful as AOAR is, underneath that power is a shaky foundation. Power doesn’t always mean stability, and this is underscored by the fact that, at the end of the day, Anne is only infallible in terms of strength; she could only do so much to alleviate Lucy’s loneliness growing up (which is honestly a pretty clever mirror to her conflict of strength vs. vulnerability with Atsushi.)

With Anne’s Room nullified by Fyodor, Lucy has truly nothing at her disposal. She's not physically strong (she’s 165 cm and 44 kg, so… yeah ˙◠˙), and while by no means stupid, she doesn’t repeatedly say in this chapter that she doesn’t know what to do next for no reason. Anne’s Room is all she’s ever had. While at the orphanage, it was her only comfort. While in the Guild, it was her only value. With Atsushi, it was all she had to offer in return for his ultimate favor.

This, I feel, could be the establishing point for the next portion of her arc. She could strive to find a way out of the rubble, working together with Kyōka, and in the process learn to break away from her ability as what defines her role in all of this. One thing's for sure: something has to be done sooner or later, otherwise, they'll starve.

I dunno, maybe that’s wishful thinking given how much is already going on. But either way, I’ll hope against hope that this isn’t some one-off return, because Lucy has proven time and time again that she has a lot to offer to the story, both plot-wise and thematically.

[rockybloo]

About that Nova and Pluto height difference picture (this is gonna be a long post y'all)

I deleted the picture I drew of Nova and Pluto kissing on every one of my social medias save for Tumblr because people have been expressing their discomfort with how Nova looked like a child compared to Pluto who looked like a fully grown adult.

And I completely understand all the upset reactions since Pluto makes everyone look way more tiny than they truly are. It definitely didn't help that I was being lazy when I sketched and lined everything since I dread full bodies sometimes and tried to cheat by hiding most of Nova's with her big gamer jacket.

So that, mixed with Nova's height in comparison to Pluto, and me not focusing more on her anatomy led to a picture that, if you are already familiar with the characters, looks cute and fluffy. But if you are new to them, looks a lot less cute and more gross.

After talking to a friend as well as a mutual about the picture, I decided that deleting it and fleshing Nova's design out more would be the best.

Unlike Jack, Nana, Sweetheart, and Bitterbat, I've been slacking on drawing Nova and Pluto. And the latter couples have had whole make-overs and an established way I draw them that makes my brain go "YEP THIS WORKS". But Nova and Pluto have been neglected in my head so I haven't been updating their looks alongside my art style like I have been with the others. Which means I still draw them based off the designs I made of them back in like-2020 or 2021???

BASICALLY THEY'VE BEEN LONG OVER DUE FOR SOME TINKERING.

Specifically Nova. Pluto I am very happy with. But Nova's design needs more lovin' in it.

I won't be completely overhauling her since I love her current look-I just want to do a better job at her design.

When I first designed Nova and Pluto, they were meant to be based off retro anime designs for a cute girl and handsome boy (even though Pluto is nonbinary). Sadly, cute anime girls often look very less mature than their male counterparts and so Nova suffers the same problem by default. I also wanted Nova to stand out from my other adult female characters and have her lack the same amount of curves and basically be flat.

This is something I will still be keeping because the idea that "curves=adult" is genuinely a shitty concept. Same as "short=child" since there are PLENTY of shorties out there that are grown adults. I am one of them-it's why I keep making my girls so short. I need some representation down here 😭.

When it comes to Nova's current default outfit-I will technically still be keeping her gamer jacket in her wardrobe closet but I'll be giving her a new jacket that will serve to be her new default one that shows her build more so she won't look so "childish" compared to Pluto. It'll help to avoid a repeat situation (I hope) as well as solve my constant frustration at having to cover up good ass anatomy with clothing (I DO IT ENOUGH TO JACK-I PLAYED MYSELF WITH NOVA'S JACKET)

OVERALL-Nova just needs the same love I gave to Nana and Sweetheart when they went through their original tinkers.

I will continue to draw Nova and Pluto together because I care about them and their story a lot. But with the themes that occur in the story and the relationship Nova and Pluto have together, it's definitely important that I make sure that cat girl looks more like a cat woman in future art I draw of her.

As for why I didn't delete the Tumblr post of the original picture-this entire site is an internet archive which means if someone reblogs something from someone, and then that someone deletes the original post, the reblog doesn't go down with it and remains. So it'd be useless to delete it. I just settled for turning reblogs off.

In the future I definitely want to redraw the picture but I'll hold off until I give Nova the touch ups she very much deserves.

[cina-full-moon-xanadium]

This is a genuine question as I haven't watched Ex-Aid or 01, but in what way is Yuya Takahashi writing women that they're somehow notably badly written in his shows despite him giving us a decent chunk of our female riders? Geats is my first brush with his work and I feel like they're alright here. I really can't stand certain brands of misogyny and I want to know what I'd be getting into if I watched his other work.

Hmmm thinking about it it has been a LOT less present in Geats than his other works. Perhaps he's been put through the Inoue Re-educator...

I feel his brand of misogyny is similar to what you'll usually see in Rider but like to an even further extent. Major female characters frequently find themselves without any of their own agency without the aid and guidance - or, often, the command - of a man and are very often turned away from very obvious plot beats that would capstone their story (which would have been special one-episode things so it's not even like Bandai's need to sell toys to boys would likely get in the way of it).

He also tends to just never let them transform (I think you can like count on one hand how many times Poppy actually used her belt after her evil arc), or flesh them out in the same way as male characters (it took until the post-series V-Cins for Valkyrie to get even the slightest hint of a backstory), or even just write them in a way that's natural? Like, just, he seems to have this thing of not recognising women as people who have just as much autonomy and complexities as men, and constantly they get shoehorned into having no personality or very one-note tropes? Not like Kamen Rider has a track record of perfectly-written women or anything, but even looking at adjacent examples like Ghost's Akari, or Saber's Mei, or Build's Sawa and Misora; there's absolutely criticisms you can have of their treatment and how they don't get to transform but they're all very well-realised characters with their own personalities and ambitions and have their own journeys and interesting character dynamics in the show and their place in the themes and... and I just look at someone like Izu or Yaiba and I despair? Or maybe that's just a Takahashi problem in general actually, I don't think he ever figured out a second character trait for guys like Tycoon or Snipe

I'm trying to describe things in more general terms here but I think taking basically any of his female characters under a microscope is much more telling because they all have their own specific issues. For me and a fair few others Izu's treatment in 01 (from being a subservient robot secretary who wants for nothing more than to be Aruto's subservient robot secretary, has no more character development or even really character interactions beyond that, gets fridged for easy character drama, and then in the finale Aruto just builds a new Humagear from scratch with the intent of molding it into Izu) was the breaking point that made us realise he has a pattern of how he treats women in these shows. Na-Go scared me at first because, wow, he sure is characterising a woman purely by how she wants to fall in love with a man... and actually some of that is starting to come back now with how Weird her supporter feels. But she has certainly been a marked improvement over her predecessors so maybe the guy's learned something

[kurozu501]

so i'm rewatching UBW and i'm curious, bc of your posts the other day about mentioning how it's not good and how it doesn't give closure to anyone other than like, shirou and rin, and i'm curious what you mean like that? i haven't played the game bc i've had a hard time figuring out how to download it so my only real exposure to fsn is through the anime.

i guess i should clarify that when i wrote this post i was mostly joking. there was a funny post on twitter that talked about advent children in a similar way and i thought it’d be fun to use the flawed ubw anime for a fate version of that post. i do think that ubw’s core, the stuff with shirou and archer, the ideals, their struggle, was done well. the show looks good and its fights are a ton of fun to watch. 

however, the show is deeply flawed because while that main core is done well, they basically failed with the entire supporting cast. Some of it comes down to them following the vn too closely when the anime really needed to stand on its own, some of it is their own baffling adaptation choices. ill put the rest of this under the cut since it got long

Lancer is a good example of the former. They adapted all of Lancer’s scenes pretty much exactly the way they were in the visual novel. But the result is that the audience never really gets what his deal is. A lot of people were confused when Kirei was revealed as his master. In the VN there was no confusion bc you had to read fate route first and it revealed that lancer’s original master, Bazett, was killed by kirei. lancer then reluctantly became kirei’s servant while hating him. The ubw anime could have added in scenes explaining that. they could have had lancer mention Bazett as he lay dying in the fire, at least. (fate/unlimited codes has some excellent dialogue they could have used) But instead what we get is that flashback mentioning “Lancer’s female master” and then actually its kirei with no explanation. They followed the VN to the letter, but failed to take into account that this anime isnt the second chapter of a three route mega story. it needs to stand on its own, and they should have made changes to accommodate that.

moving on,

Caster’s a great example of the latter, a character who they just utterly failed with some deeply confusing adaptation choices. In the VN, after she’s captured Saber, Caster gets a really compelling flashback to her original life as Medea. How she was charmed by Aphrodite into loving Jason and betraying her family, how jason used and mistreated her, how the public came to hate and blame her for everything as a witch. We get this really moving tale of someone who was wronged, labeled “villain” “witch” and then finally said “fuck it, if no one’s ever going to see me as anything but a witch then i’ll be a witch.” The stuff in the present with the grail war is just the final straw breaking the camel’s back. Just when she hopes that she could have a new life and things could be better, the mage who summoned her mistreats her like everyone else. Meeting Souichiro is basically the one good thing she’s ever had in a life of utter misery, and we see that that’s why she’s so desperate to win the war.

In the anime we see nothing at all of Medea’s original life in ancient greece but spend nearly an entire episode on the pointless details of how shitty her summoner was, and how she eventually killed him. And none of that matters. The fact that Medea’s first master was a bastard was not supposed to be the focus of her story, he was just one more shitty person in a long line of shitty people going back to her youth. I can only think they assumed their audience already knew Medea’s backstory and figured it’d be fun to flesh out her first master? a very baffling choice. They also make her motivation confusing and unclear since they bring up this idea that Medea wants to “go back to her home country.” In the VN she’s long since accepted that will never happen and just wants to be able to live a peaceful life with Souichiro. The anime adds this stuff about her “wanting to go back,” but then has her death scene be the same as the VN where she implies just being with him was “making her wish come true this whole time.” Its extremely incompetent.  

I could go on. I could talk about how they amped up Rin’s tsundere scenes + physical violence towards Shirou (the part where she pointlessly twists his arm and slams him into a tree, the part where she shoves him into the dirt during the confession scene, both of which weren’t in the VN) while also still not really giving her any character development other then “becomes shirou’s girlfriend.” I could talk about how they bring up the interesting idea that Iri’s grail remnant has been haunting Illya and helped make her into the murderous unstable girl she is today and then do nothing with it before killing her off. But this post is long enough. 

Suffice to say, ufotable is good at nailing the core of the story, but aren’t good at handling the supporting characters. The heaven’s feel movies have been the same, with the films doing a really good job with Sakura and Shirou while cutting tons of other characters scenes.