#i read the manga but i never watched the anime

[kujakumai]

Ok, question. I’ve been following your blog for a while now and while I’m not really that into Yu-Gi-Oh itself (haven’t read the manga or seen the anime outside of the stuff you’d usually find on Tumblr) I have been drifting around the periphery and reading fanfics. However there’s one thing I just don’t get - who or what is Yami Marik? It’s pretty well established that both Yami Yugi and Yami Bakura were people once, back in ancient Egypt (Yami Yugi being Atem and Yami Bakura being the Thief King) and they’re now possessing the millennium items, but while Yami Marik share some similarities with them he or it was never a person, it seems? Like, he/it isn’t a ghost or a reincarnation, just a sentient conglomeration of bad vibes without a proper descriptor or name. I might be way off base with this, but you probably know better than I do (like, I always assumed Yami Marik was a priest or something in Atem’s court who was involved in the coup that got Atem killed). I’m also ok with spoilers if there are any involved

Yami Marik is Marik's split-personality/alter which formed after Marik's father forced him to go through traumatic ritual scarification. He is not a ghost and he does not have nor ever has had an existence outside of Marik's psyche. I would recommend simply reading the source material.

I don't want to sound snappy but this question reads to me like saying "I have never watched or played Pokemon but I read a lot of fanfic and they sometimes mention Pikachu, who I have always imagined as a 6'11" Albanian man. But sometimes people seem to imply he is some kind of mouse, which confuses me. Can you explain this to me?" I mean...I guess, I could, but the answer is very much just reading/watching the thing you are asking about.

[otomesakura20]

Akane and Ranma request

A request from Instagram!

I have to admit I’ve never watched Ranma 1/2 before but since I’m a Rumiko fan I knew about it. I’ve honestly haven’t expanded past Inuyasha lol.😅 I did however explore another series she did called Mermaid forest. I did read a book of the manga but I haven’t found anymore since. I’ve been looking when I go to book stores and second hand places but no luck. I also was lucky to come across a dvd of the anime and I have that but it only has like 5 episodes which is disappointing lol. I do plan on watching Ranma 1/2 and Urusei Yatsura though. I wanted to start with the old ones first like I did for Cardcaptor Sakura but since Ranma is available on Netflix right now I guess I can start with it first and see how I like it.😊

[xbuster]

You remind me of Yaguchi Haruo from high score girl because of your knowledge of fighting/retro games

Woah, High Score Girl? It's been like 5 years since I really thought of that manga. I really loved how accurately games like Street Fighter 2 and Final Fight were represented. That manga is absolute gold for retro arcade game fans.

I even have an Oono Nendoroid!

This thing was going for like over $80 at the time, but that year I went to Japan and found the same Nendoroid in Japan for like 4,000 yen. It was a total steal, so I bought it on the spot.

[keii]

Drew a nalu sketch bc for some reason my old ass art of them is making its rounds again on here lol

[hiibe]

just a girl and her pet weird nerd

[antirepurp]

the way jolyne breaks so much convention as a jojo protagonist from not being introduced as an inherent badass and having to earn the right to be called that over the course of the story to her life being over from the moment that story begins while still not painting the events of it as a soul-crushing tragedy but rather a journey through which she reconciles and finds new meaning and purpose to herself as a person. i love jojo stone ocean i wish women were real

[rox-of-iu]

my old blorbos are back in my brain

heart pirates my absolute beloved. shame theyre chillin somewhere in the ocean lol (do not mention the pre-time skip hats of penguin and shachi I'm still attached even tho its already been a million years since then)

anyway every time i remember that Law and Kid are assigned german and Scottish by Oda i gain one hundred years

[boobilby]

I think about them all the time

[chelacadude]

[frobby]

Nothing is stronger than the bond between a girl and a piece of media they brushed off 10 years ago that they now realized is the greatest thing ever made

[asukachii]

(I don’t like putting watermarks so, PLEASE, if you want to post this gif somewhere GIVE CREDITS! Also, don’t use it in edits/videos. Thanks~)

[irregularbillcipher]

the "paul is richie's uncle" headcanon is really cute but i really love it in tandem with the idea that ted is surprisingly involved in his little brother's life while paul is more just vaguely fond of his nephew, but doesn't really know all that much about his friends or his day-to-day life

like, the idea of ted knowing all his geeky little brother's friends really well, like letting them chill in his apartment every now and then to watch movies or driving them home when they have their stupid library study sessions or whatever is already pretty fun, just the idea that the Local Bastard has accidentally and begrudgingly been saddled with these two loser highschoolers because they're his little brother's dweebus friends that he doesn't want to admit he has a soft spot for, but it's made doubly funny if paul just has no idea that his nephew's best friend is the little brother of the Worst Guy In His Office. ted comes over to paul's desk one day with a stack of dog-eared manga like "pete forgot to take these this morning, so you give 'em back to richie for me, okay? also, ruth's right, stein and spirit are definitely fucking and i want him to stop fighting with her about it when i pick 'em up from the library" and paul is just like. okay. i have several questions about this.

[shannonsketches]

he's so important to me

[thesirenwithnovoice]

Thoughts about how different mediums of a same story may give you different views (and rambling about the Tower of Heaven)//TW: violence

Lately I've been wondering about how manga readers might have very different visions than anime watchers of a same story, because althought the plot remains the same, some little details can change our whole perception of a story.

This reminded me of the first time I read Fairy Tail and how terrified I was at how cruel and dark the Tower of Heaven's arc is.

Jellal's face (that by that time, were only an 11-years-old kid) drippling blood while being tortured shocked me so much as a kid and I still find it one of the most disturbing scenes in the manga, lol.

In the anime, the content itself is the same. We know the kids are slaves that go throught different kinds of abuse, however, I find the manga way gloomier and more graphic. And althought part of it might be just a personal opinion, it's not entirely without basis: Mashima uses different techniques in his art to represent facts whitin the story than the animators, and it leads to a topic I really love: semiotics - how we interpret images, and how detais can be used to convey a certain felling throught art.

Colors and composition helps A LOT creating an atmosphere and causing a feeling on the reader. Proportionally speaking, a manga doesn't have colors, but it has it's own alternatives - the Tower of Heaven arc, in comparison to the rest of the manga, uses a lot more black and hatching.

One can argue some scenes are still "visually darker" in the anime, since it has the advantage of being able to play with shadows and colors in a broader aspect; however, since Fairy Tail is not an anime that changes it's saturation or colour pallete, the loud colors in most scenes end up not helping building the same dreadful atmosphere.

(It doesn't mean you can't make a scary story using bright and colorful tones, tho. A great example is the movie Midsommar. But it's not an easy task!)

Erza's childhood memories in the manga also carry a "dirtier" feeling; the kids are always covered by bruises, and the background is rougher. Also, the anime chooses to represent slavery in a more fanciful way: the kids wear stylized handcuffs and are assaulted with magic attacks, what inevitably softens the scenes by distancing them from real life slavery.

In a story, an act of violence will always be more shocking if your brain is able to automatically make a connection with real life. Seeing blood conveys a feeling of disconfort easier than a character being hit by a wave of magic, even if the author tells you "this is painful"; that's why some people say they started to find difficult to watch horror movies involving kids after becoming parents, because after experenciating something in real life, they connect with fiction harder.

The above scene causes me very different feelings in each media. In the manga, the despair in Jellal's face when seeing they removed Erza's eye is much clearer, and his skinny body, his eyes filling up with tears (he doesn't cry in the anime) shows not only a feeling of worry, but of utter dread and helplessness. All that helps endorsing the fact that, doesn't matter how brave he is, they are still just fragile kids, unable to protect themselves from the cruelty of the world around them.

I want to make it clear, though, that this is not in any way meant to be a critique to the animation team, or an affirmation that one type of media is better than another. We all have our personal preferences, but each media has it's target audience and objective. Fairy Tail's animators certainly do know how to convey the same feelings on the public, they just choose not to, for a variety of reasons. Probably because the anime is aimed for a broader and younger audience, many scenes have been softened or censored somehow. Also, animation consumes more labour than a manga page, so unless you have a lot of time and investment, the art tend to be simpler.

So do you think it affects the plot, Siren?

In my opinion, yes, even if just in a subtle way. In the manga, I think this raw brutality helps Jellal's character to gain a more interesting complexity. To me, he feels less like a hero and more like what he actually is: just a really kind and brave kid trying his best to protect his friends.

Another major change they made in the anime was removing the ambiguity (something that happened more than once in Fairy Tail's adaptation, such as in the famous kiss scene), leaving clear since the beginning that Jellal was a victim of a mind controlling spell; while in the manga, until Urtear's confirmation at the end of the arc, we do not know for sure if he have been brainwashed or just convinced to adore Zeref.

And as much as I can see why some fans might hate it because it leaves room for people to see Jellal as a bad man, I (as someone who is not afraid of loving evil characters, heh), find it interesting and somehow enriching to the plot, because it gives the whole arc a reflection: is extreme suffering, specially at such an young age, capable of changing someone so much?

We are left questioning what did "Zeref" say, or do, that made him change so much. And having so many real life examples where despair has made people easy victims of manipulation throught faith or falling into extremist ideologies, after we seeing Jellal's pain and fragility in a tangible way, it's not that hard at all to understand how he went insane and managed to drag all the other slaves along with him.

Also, I think it makes it easier to understand Erza's empathy towards him. Jellal and Erza are characters connected not only by the affection they nourish for one another, but also for sharing the same pain. She is the only person that fully understands the horrors he lived in the tower, since they were the only kids that have been in the torture chamber. And althought she never tries to justify Jellal's actions, Erza does not only show him compreension, but she feels guilty for not being able to retribute his protection and prevented him from losing his mind.

That doesn't mean, tho, that there weren't many other clues he was not acting on free will: be it his grotesque change of personality, his hysterical laughter out of nowhere or his motivations that doesn't hold (because they were never his to begin with). To me, all that at first glance makes him closer to Batman's Joker, someone that grew insane after so much suffering, than a villain that's genuinely just plain selfish and thirsty for power. And that only makes me find him a creepier villain, since personally, I find sadism and insanity way scarier than ghosts.

So this is just a looong collection of thoughts about how small choices can change a lot the "feeling" we get from a scene or a character. I hope someone can find it interesting too. There are many other examples of adaptations where it happened, and if you remember one you'd like to share, I would love to hear!

Last but not less important, all the love for Mashima's art, the Tower of Heaven arc (that is a personal favorite) and Jellal, a character I deeply love and one that holds for sure the strongest spirit in the manga for being able to become such a kind and mature man despite everything he has been thought. ♡

[gaybuttyogurt]

I still haven't seen dungeon meshi but I observe it from afar, and the discovery of this soggy man fascinates me. I think him and my own wet paper towel blorbo would get along splendidly. I think fanart is in due order. I shall follow you and await more of this individual. I admire your dedication my friend.

"the discovery of this soggy man" reads like a paleontologist musing about their favorite prehistoric fossil. i love that so much. i'm sure mithrun would get along with the wet paper towel you speak of as well! :3

and thank you!!

[blondeaxolotl]

Small gift I did for my non-kuro enjoyer friend