#i miss you dearly and once i've fully bounced back i'm going to annoy the hell out of you (affectionate)

[sunnishine]

아니 (Any) felix for my dearest @babycatlix

[dreadreverendryan]

I can't believe Akira Toriyama is gone. I know everyone's going to be more upset about Dragon Ball, and I'm sad that Daima will be his last work, but Chrono Trigger means so, SO much more to me. I didn't get it at first: I'd never played a turn based RPG before and didn't understand the menus. I could have read the manual, but I only looked at the character section because the designs were fucking awesome. Hell, the only good memory I have of my great grandfather was him flipping thru the manual and saying Lucca's name. I have no context as to why he was reading it, I was fully capable of reading it myself and he had no interest in video games, but it's something. My best friend, Justin, saw my copy of the game and asked if he could borrow it. I was so annoyed with the menus that I told him he could HAVE the game, but he gave it back after he was done and he'd shown me how the game works. Once I got it back I was HOOKED, but stuck on the first boss, Yakra. We didn't have dial up internet yet, so I just threw myself against that wall so much that when my sister decided to literally sit on her controller and bounce on it to randomly select commands I was all for it (no clue why I didn't just ask Justin). It worked, somehow, but her controller... Well, let's just say that I have *my* original controller and had to replace hers many, many years ago. Luckily we got dial up not too long after that, so if I needed help I could go to GameFAQs, and I found Icybrian's RPG page, which had fanart and fanfics for Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. The message boards there became my first online community and the older members of the forums mocked my typing so hard that to this day it pains me if I don't type properly. It was still fun, and I was pretty annoying so I don't blame them for it. My other early internet community included a Star Wars RPG forum, the Star Wars Council (SWC for short). Everyone made their own OCs and I really liked Frieza (but just him, I wasn't into the show enough to care about anyone else yet because I had no consistent way to watch it), so Frieza Omega (shut up, I was like 11 or 12 and it was cool back then), leader of the Bounty Hunter's Guild was born. A bit after that I also joined an actual DBZ RPG group with my cousin and his friends as Trunks. That group was less fun because the fights were judged by other people, not co-written like the SWC. All those little interlinking pieces of my life (and other bits I left out) started with Chrono Trigger and I can honestly say I wouldn't be the person I am today without it. And while the music, mechanics, and story were all amazing, the art Toriyama did gave the game so much charm. I honestly don't know if I'd have gotten into DBZ without Chrono Trigger. Even when I saw Super Sayin God for the first time my brain immediately went "that's literally just Crono!" It's kind of funny to imagine the silent protagonist Crono screaming before doing his techs, or Goku losing his voice from all the screaming and becoming a time traveling mute stuck in Super Sayin God. I'm also really surprised that I've got more to say about Akira Toriyama than I did about Kentaro Miura, the author of Berserk. I mean, I have a Berserk tattoo because of how much the story resonated with me, but then again I also have a clock tattoo because of my time obsession that started with Chrono Trigger. It's like... Berserk changed me and has an extremely warm place in my heart, but Chrono Trigger is in my bones, my veins, my DNA, and my soul. Also, I do have one piece of DBZ merch: the Devil card from the Dragonball tarot deck, which has first form Frieza on it. Now I'm thinking about buying a copy of the full deck when I can afford it, but anyway...

Rest easy, Toriyama-san; you will be missed dearly and remembered fondly.