#i think about golden kamuy and i cry

[table-aa]

[table-aa]

Fuck it, lets get into hockey

Have we met before?

[every-ogata]

Since we're finally on his chapter, what do you think about Ogata and what he did to his family? You have a lot of thoughts about him so I'm curious what you think about this?

Oh boy. So I could be funny and make a joke about how we all think about killing our parents and brother and building a complex about it, but I kind of don't want to make light of this? I think what he did is deserving of both disgust and pity.

Ogata is a terrible person. There's no pretending otherwise. He has done some really atrocious things in order to get what he wants. Ultimately, the things he wants all circle back to childhood trauma. All he wants is attention, and proof that he is worth something despite the circumstances of his birth. All I can think about is in the final volume where we get to see the Tome and Hyakunosuke moment and he reaches out for her, wanting her to pay attention to him. It's almost like he's never progressed past who he was as a kid and it's sad.

I could genuinely write a whole dissertation on him, but all I can say is he's an extremely tragic character and I wish things had been better for him. A lot of things could have been avoided if Koujirou Hanazawa hadn't been such a piece of shit.

[likelockedhorns]

will you let me lose on losing dogs?

[bowietiee]

it's still us.

part 1 || part 2

god i love golden kamuy as much as i love creating things that make you think and feel and cry and think even more about the story

it took me a while (a day) to find all these panels and GOSH im obsessed

[ummmlife]

Because you asked for it!!! literally no one ever asked for this

here are my...

Nanami Kento headcanons

Warnings!; none... maybe mention of nsfw?

My man here is fucking blind, like, he needs glasses to read. He also has prescription sunglasses, and has more than those ugly glasses he wears.

Started buying Rolex watches when he worked as a salaryman. He simply saw a man with a fancy watch one day and said "Oh, I want one of those".

Although he's a foodie, he often skips his meals, not intentionally though.

Has a great collection of alcohol in his home, that's not a surprise for anyone, yeah. But Nanami also owns a small barista kit to make cocktails.

He's not a virgin but the last time he had sex with someone was a month before leaving his salaryman job. Poor man.

Calling him "daddy" won't have any effect in him. He will probably be confused if you call him "daddy" like ??? why are you calling him father?

Now, if you call him "husband" or dirty talk to him like a good housewife (even if you're not a woman), gurl, he'll go feral.

Also, Nanami really wants to get married. The whole idea of being a family man and have his own spouse and children makes him happy.

He's cancer, duh.

Cry baby, also.

Nanami usually bottles up all his emotions to simply lay down on his bed at night and cry himself to sleep.

Unless you are not his partner, you won't see his clingy side. Nanami is needy, he needs to give and receive a lot of love.

He's the kind of man that sleeps all curled up with his partner, the more physical contact there is, the better.

Don't forget that he's a millennial. Nanami can't start his day without a coffee.

Yeah, he likes Harry Potter and shit.

His Instagram is: 8 post, 6 of them are about food.

He's more active on twitter tho, but not like you think. He uses twitter as his second newspaper.

Nanami seems like a very correct man who listens to classical music all the time, but we all know he's an emo at heart. But he also enjoys bossa nova a lot.

Since his grandpa is danish, he knows like 10 words in danish.

He's not blond, he started dying his hair when he was recruited into jujutsu high. Surprisingly, his hair is in a very healthy state.

Yeah, he knows how to dye hair.

Nanami had a lot of intrusive thoughts, some of those makes him very afraid of his own mind.

Only watch weird philosophical movies from unknown european directors... Unless you find him on a sunday's night watching the most cheesy romcom you've ever heard about.

He also reads manga, but occasionally. Probably likes something like Golden Kamuy or Vagabond.

His favorite sport is baseball.

He once tried pilates (Gojo's recommendation)... never more.

Loves edging himself when he has to relieve stress

Has a lot of plants, all in perfect health.

If his partner gets pregnant, he will ask to try breastmilk... Why? I dunno, he's probably curious.

His favorite position is missionary, boring af, but he likes to see his partner's face when they cum.

If he's in a relationship, don't expect him to jerk off. Even when he was single didn't jerk off unless he was incredibly horny, the plus of a relationship is that he will ask his partner to make love together to ease his human needs.

Likes cats more than dogs for pets, but he'll definitely have fishes or a turtle if he can.

Very sensitive, with everything in general. Textures, noises, flavors. If there's something that overstimulates his senses, he will have a bad day.

That's why he buys one specific brand of condoms and also 99% cotton everything that has fabric on it.

Very clean for the same reasons, he can't stand visual noise.

Nanami also cleans his home spiritually. Does he believes in that? Not necessarily, but it feels his home cleaner.

Loves being kissed on his forehead and jaw.

Also likes the sensation of being protected, he's always protecting people but he likes also to feel safe and cared.

If you ask him to wear a skirt, with a bit of struggle, will agree.

Has never tried anything sexual like bdsm or something like that. Just the basic 4 positions of sex.

Nanami is just a sweet guy who only shows his cute side when he's comfortable enough with his loved one.

That's all for now!

[strawberrystepmom]

Whenever I'm looking for a new anime I come to your blog and see what you're talking about bc it's always good and also bc I hate picking new shows to watch. So like you're basically my recommendation algorithm but better bc I know I'll be seeing it in my dash lol

when u were talking about golden kamuy I was like yeah I'll watch that and now it's bsd and I'm like... Should I give it another shot?? For the old man???

IM CRYING LSKJFSKJFD if there's one thing about me babe it's that i will be yammering about something at any given time. did you like golden kamuy? i still think everyone should watch it. it's sooooo gooooooood and it's a hot dude buffet, a win win.

so i have told a couple people that i didn't like bsd or wasn't like fully invested until season 2. season 1 was fine but i was stilll sort of on the fence even past episode 5 or so but season 2 is where it really picks up and it only gets better from there. i say give it a shot!

[ruinikaido]

My best friend let me talk about my favorite golden kamuy scenes during lunch and she was really sweet about it im crying just thinking about it like she didnt interrupt me and she seemed genuinely interested and i got to show her a bunch of clips and panels and everything and she was like woah this writings so cool and wahhhhghhhhh i love her

[alternating-b-w]

a lot of people nowadays, when consuming media, do not have the ability to adjust their mindset and expectations on what should happen to the actual events of the story. people expect found family partially because they lack emotional immaturity or life experience.

i don't want to sound like a snob, but the popular fiction landscape is currently dominated by fanfiction or wannabe fanfiction- genre fiction that labels itself with ao3 tropes. you know the sort: cozy fiction, brandon sanderson type stuff, or honestly? if i see an anime genre in a native english language novel, like magical girls or mecha, i run. they are best suited to visual media for a reason. this is my personal opinion, so don't jump me for this, but these works don't tend to deal with emotional matters in a complex, subtle matter. when there is a romance story, you get a character who says "i hate this guy, he's kind of cute- i mean a BITCH." when someone suffers, their response is measured or defined in what angst trope do they respond with. they are cut and paste characters designed for emotional gratification, behaving relatively similar across the board regardless of how someone about the same age, gender and in the circumstances as those characters would behave. i could further go on about how how this in part stems from not really examining the culture and mannerisms of the opposite sex (and yes, i used the word sex, because it's important to analyse gendered socialisation when understanding how someone relates to their gender in present, cis or trans) to oneself when writing, but i digress. my main point is that the anime community tends to be bedfellows with those sorts of literature fans.

meanwhile, golden kamuy doesn't really have stock characters, aside from maybe shiraishi.

for example, sugimoto's a wanderer with ptsd, but there's no mystique or affected melancholy to his trauma, i.e. no real whump-bait. a less thoughtful writer would stop the brakes on the story midway to kick in the ye olde 1900s japanese therapy-speak and have him solve his issues that way, or have him cry and open up about his trauma regardless of him not being the sort of person to do that.

likewise, tsurumi's a manipulator, but he isn't a mustache twirler or a ragyo kiryuin clone- he's eccentric, charming and makes his men feel they owe him without him ever holding it over them. the actions he takes in the story create a logical conclusion of his men being loyal to him. a lesser author would have created a character who is a manipulator because they said so, even if in real life the character's men would all actually scared of him or would probably be offput by him trying to overstep their boundaries.

then, there are the characters who are 'useless', but are still present such as kadokura, kirawus, or vasily. we understand their emotional states, but equally that the main cast dont want or need to be their best friends; this making everyone feel real because it shows where the main casts priorities lie! kado and kira were certainly aware theyre werent pulling their weight compared to anji or ushiyama, but they didnt really give a fuck because kadokura had already did hijikata a massive solid with the prison break-in. meanwhile, vasily can't even speak japanese and followed sugimoto's group for the sole purpose of jumping ogata. he wasn't there to make friends and the story's not, at its core, about making friends, so why on earth would vasily end up being friends with sugimoto? gk respects every single character's agency and motivations more than making the reader feel warm and fuzzy.

however, when one doesnt think critically about characters and how their circumstances should impact them, it's easy for one to default to the mental comfort zone: tropes. likewise, when one doesn't spend much time in a highly competitive environment like the events of gk, they cant quite comprehend the fragile nature of the relationships made in those circumstances. so, to maximize emotional gratification, a somewhat friendly group now becomes a found family.

now the ogata issue starts when when the reality peeks through- ie, that every character bar asirpa has tried to kill each other at some point, the classic fanon 'fuck canon i do what i want' mindset kicks in. here's the thing- ogata is one of the only characters to which you really can't 'fuck canon' your way out of. even usami's quirky enough that you can easily box him in as the yandere sort, but ogata killed his mom, dad and brother over deep-seated daddy issues. it is very hard to defang the character into making him have the found-family appeal, especially as the story progressed and he went from weird quiet guy with sad backstory (which is still workable) to telling asirpa "do it pussy you won't." there is no way to turn ogata as we know him into an archetype fit for emotional gratification without removing a lot of what makes ogata ogata, as he would rather kill himself than show emotional vulnerability or change his mindset, so he becomes the odd one out when talking about the different groups in gk. thats what i think.

I mean... I am a person without a lot of attachments. I don't have a lot of trust in people, and I generally view people as simply everybody on their own path.

So then when I read other people's interpretations of gk, I'm often confused because I don't really understand where they're coming from.

For example, the idea of loyalty seem to be really important to a lot of other fans. Ogata is interpreted by almost everyone as a untrustworthy, with no loyalties.

But I don't understand why anyone in this story needs to have loyalties or why loyalty is even a good thing.

Everybody has completely different motivations and wants.

Tsurumi wants to split off a piece of the military, and use it to regain territory in Russia Where his wife and child are buried.

Hijikata says that he is looking to revive the Republic of Ezo, but actually he doesn't have the resources, or the time to do that so really he's looking for one last great battle and to die under that banner rather than to set up and new independent political entity.

Shiraishi has no real goals and just likes his friends and would love to get some money out of it. He later takes on Boutarou's goal.

Ogata has no real concrete achievable goal and is looking for an abstract sense of worth.

Sugimoto also has no real concrete goal and is using the gold hunt to avoid confronting the fact that he really has no place to return to. He says he has to get the money before he returns to ume, but this is just a prerequisite he set for himself, to delay returning. Ume isn't waiting for him, has no idea that he's out trying to get the money for her, and doesn't even know if he's alive. Despite all of the importance that he places on returning to her, he is a non-entity in her life, in the same way that Ogata is a non-entity in his father's life. The similarities and differences between Ogata and sugimoto is best left for another post.

Asirpa...... is a 12-year-old girl and is still trying to make sense of the world.

Many of the soldiers don't have any goals of their their own other than following orders or impressing their commander. People like Inenaga, ushiyama don't really have any aspirations for the gold. They just seem to be along for the ride since they have map tattoos.

My point is....

These are all clearly people with individual and completely different goals, to which the gold is just a means to an end. So I don't understand why loyalty is considered important, in fact I don't understand why it's a thing at all.

So given that ..... I don't understand why Ogata is considered a disloyal betrayer....

When I read comments by other readers, it really feels like there's an expectation that these groups be a found family of sorts. A place of trust and loyalty where people support and mentor each other and it makes no sense to me.

Like that's something you expect from the military. Members of the military are supposed to be brothers in against a common enemy led by a father figure and it is explicitly pointed out that this is not the case.

People bully each other, sometimes severely. The father figure is self-interested and the only sees his men as pawns. There are shifting loyalties and factions with their own goals in the same unit. The military is not a family substitute. Gold hunt groups are not a family substitute. Even family do not present the kind of loyal loving support that people seem to expect.

So I just..... I straight up have no understanding of why Ogata is considered to be a betrayer, because I don't understand how loyalty is a thing here. I mean to me, the very concept of loyalty in this story seems to be a lie used to manipulate people seeking identity and belonging, and have them be willing to die for the group.

When I look around on forums and discussions it seems like most people do not share this interpretation. People interpret media and events is through the lens of their own experiences. And I actually keep wondering if I'm missing something huge. Like if other people interpret loyalty in a totally different more meaningful way, what are their experiences that support this belief?

Just Curious

TLDR: this is not a story about found family as much as you want it to be. Instead it's about each person finding a place for themselves....not everyone is looking for a family.

Edit: I guess this is sort of meta. The reason I have this interpretation because I have a long history of working for corporations, and despite the found family culture that they try to create and all the team building exercises, people are constantly gunning for each other, trying to get people fired, taking credit for other people's work, making people look bad in front of management to elevate their own status, trying to jump ship and go to other companies in the same industry with proprietary knowledge... so my take on this whole story is that..."this is simply how people operate."

Like I've been on team building exercises with the company where everybody an outdooring trip and bonds over canoeing, and then immediately the next day people get back to trying to get each other fired.

That's just how people are. People form connections over all sorts of things, but that doesn't mean that they aren't out for themselves or that the connection will always exist, or that the connection is deep or that the person is loyal to you.

[ruporas]

you want me to give you that reason?

[chibivesicle]

‘Times, they be a changin’

After a drop off due to Golden Kamuy ending and my overall disappointment with the last arc. And of course, Ogata’s death, I’ve been wondering where I want to go with these things.  I put a lot of GK content out and I don’t want to just shelve it but I don’t want to split myself between fifteen thousand side blogs.  I’ve decided that I’ll keep my live action meta over on my ‘I don’t want to be exterminated, upgraded, turned into pudding’ side blog and I’ll keep all my anime and manga opinions here.  Since I have been reading manga for a long time and watching anime for even slightly longer. 

To reflect this, I’ve removed my last previous Ogata icon and I’ve jumped straight to God; Kuroneko-sama that is.  It isn’t that I’ve stopped reading manga or watching anime either and I have just one of the many opinions on the internet. 

Let’s go with an easy current on topic target for some mild-meta.  Trigun.  

Many moons ago, my best friend from undergrad introduced me to Trigun.  She had a Vash poster in her dorm room in university that she picked up at Katsucon, which was the first con I ever went to with her.  She’s quite the influence!

I watched all of the original Trigun anime on fan subbed VHS tapes that were passed around the anime black market of the 90s and early 2000s before they’d be bumped out of the way by file sharing services and online fansubs.  Honestly, I can’t even remember when I first watched it, but I do remember crying at a character’s death and just rolling with some of the more hand wavy sci-fi elements.

Not surprisingly, as someone who loved Ogata as a character, my favorite character from Trigun was none other than Nicholas D. Wolfwood - wandering man of the cloth toting around his cross which is heavy b/c it is full of ‘mercy’.

How much of a Wolfwood fan was I?  Enough of one that I paid likely waaayyy too much money in a dealer’s room at either Otakon or Katsucon for this capsule version of Wolfwood with Kuroneko-sama.

I used to have him up on my desk when I was in uni, but he always fell over and at some point, I popped him back into the bubble and shoved him under a bed at my parents’ house forgotten for over a decade or so.  He moved to the desert (still in that capsule) and I just dug him out after moving to my current location along with two Ruroni Kenshin figures that are back in a box.

What is with this path down memory lane all about?  I was at Anime Expo in 2022 (with exact same friend mentioned above) and we didn’t make it to the Trigun Stampede panel but, I did get an awesome photo of an amazing Vash cosplayer.

With the Trigun 2.0 on the horizon and the Sony merger stuff, all of the older anime titles that were on Funamation have moved back onto Crunchyroll - meaning a lot of titles I loved when I was younger could be rewatched.

And that’s what I did last month!  I dusted off my little Kuroneko-sama and Wolfwood and sat down to watch Trigun for the first time in over 20 years, I think.

I was both surprised by what I remembered and what I did not remember.  Plus, rewatching something you haven’t seen in years allows you to have a sort of fresh pair of eyes.

First off, for a manga that started in 1995 and had the anime in 1998, it has great female characters.  Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson wear normal clothing, have professional careers and are packing heat in a wild west environment. These are the least sexy main character ladies!  Milly wears a dress shirt, tie and pants with suspenders along with her long coat.  Meryl wears boots, tights, skirt suit and then a cloak (with all her guns) as well. 

Meryl is the older skeptic/pragmatist and Milly is naive yet if the most obvious thing is the best answer, then accept it as the truth.  They are great characters and I love how they are a great perspective and point of view into the events.  Sure, they are completely overpowered by Vash or Wolfwood, but they are neither a non-human-pseduo-angelic being or a man who had his entire body altered [manga] to be a better killer or just a much more on the job experience [anime] soooooo yeah.  I’m okay with Meryl and Milly not having to hold their fighting prowess with the boys. 

I finally decided to break down and read the manga.  Little did I know that Darkhorse owns the current rights and the series is out of print.  Gah, I was hoping to score the series cheap used but that will not be the case.  I’ve read the original Trigun from the shounen mag that went belly up (3 tankobons, 1 volume via Darkhorse) and the moved into a seinen publisher for its continuation as Trigun Maximum.  I went ahead and purchased all the way up to Trigun Maximum volume 5 and have read it all as well.

As someone who enjoyed the anime, I can appreciate the way the anime ended at the time.  They were years away from the end of the manga’s run and the anime team needed to come up with a nice way to tie things up.  Honestly, I’m fine with how things went in the anime.  Well, other than Wolfwood’s death, which made me cry and still pulled at my heartstrings on the recent watch.  So far the manga has more details, and is taking the time to fill in motivations of characters like the Gung Ho Guns (why would you willingly sell your humanity to destroy it?).  It however, still keeps an air of mystery about Vash’s past and the exact reason why humans got stuck on the planet.

The two major differences I see between the anime and manga are as follows:

Anime Vash has that sort of 90s MC perv side being a ham towards women early on when it later has him questioning who’d love him anyways.  Manga Vash doesn’t even go there which is something I like - dude’s got a lot more problems.  No space for chasing skirts and hitting on ladies.

Life on the planet Gunsmoke is fucking terrible in the manga.  You think it is pretty shitty in the anime?  Pffftt, that’s nothing compared to the manga.  People are worse, humanity is more like how Hobbes would view it and less like Locke.  I honestly, don’t know all of the differences yet, since I’ve barely cracked the manga story line but it is clear it is only going to get darker.  Yet at the same time there is more hope since the humans who’d kept themselves ‘above the fray’ were able to contact other people and they are supposed to possibly be rescued.  If Knives doesn’t throw a giant bloody wrench in there. 

In a way, these differences do reflect the shift that the anime gives us.  We go from a goofy guy who is overly competent trying to bumble/drift through life and has biblical levels of trials/tests of his faith in his own belief system to come out with a resolution and faith in the future.  You feel it when you get to around episode 13 and you realize that shit is gonna get serious and you can’t just go back to zany antics.

What I like about the anime is that we have a range of how characters act and view humanity.  Vash will punish himself to not harm others as he sees it as the unalienable right that every living thing has the right to life and it isn’t right for you to take that away from anyone.  Not sure how he resolves eating those salmon sandwiches with great vigor unless it is artificial salmon (desert planet out?).  Milly is the extremely naive and optimistic, Meryl is sarcastically pragmatic.  Of course Knives is the exact opposite of Vash, thinking humans are a scourge and no one is worth their own lives. 

And in the middling grey area we have - Nicholas D. Wolfwood.  Yep, is it shocking my favorite character straddles the moral grey line?  Seeing that it is a rhetorical question, we all know that yes, I love my characters that move between different philosophical spaces.  Is Wolfwood a good or bad character?  It depends; the narrative and other relationships tell us in the anime that we should see him as more good than bad character.  He is a friend to all children and uses it as a rationale why he has to do his job.  Without him making money from being a traveling clergyman/gun for hire the children would not have financial support.  However, we can see that the closer he gets to Vash the more conflicted he is and keeps verbalizing why he has no option but to kill; or else someone else would be killed. 

What I like about him is that his observation skills are top notch.  When he first meets Vash, he get straight to the point that Vash is wearing a mask in front of others.  He’s trying to get by, not die, but has a lot of anger at the shitty hand he was dealt in life.  It is the classic example of I had a crap childhood and ended up stuck in this less than ideal path but I want to protect others from it.

He’s one of those characters who really compliments Vash both visually and personality wise.  Vash could never haggle down the price of anything but Wolfwood squeaks by talking his way out of pay full fare for the bus or trying to run a tab (as a drifter).  Yet at the same time those two idiots are as thick as thieves getting in petty arguments over stupid shit and feeling resolved to deal with each other.  I also like how he’s one of the few characters who pushes back at Vash’s need to take on extreme burdens and that sometimes you have to accept all your options are going to suck.

We are going to get in a stupid fight about how Wolfwood’s motorcycle broke down again.  Which he named Angelica II.  RIP Angelica I.

We just tossed our water bottle over!

And just this.  Like sticking out your tongues at the same time will allow you to capture that last bit of water . . .

Does it end here?  God no, it continues to the extent that man who saved them is ready to toss them off his truck.

The manga has a very similar visual dynamic between them.  They are two guys with rough pasts and are navigating the present in very different ways.

Anyways, I’m still not sure where I exactly want to go with things, but a deep dive into Wolfwood (anime & manga) may be a worthwhile endeavor.  I’ve got a ways to go in the manga and I’m not rushing through it or anything like that.

What I am worried about is the remake/reboot/re imagining of Trigun as Trigun Stampede.

I first watched the preview videos about it.  I’m not here to argue if CGI is good or bad.  What I do have an issue with is the general character designs - I get it, Trigun is a 90s manga/anime and it looks like a 90s series.  I really like the Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, for me it has less to do with the character designs and for how the storytelling perspective is more people driven and less sterile/historical documentary style.  I’ve read most of the novels and LOGH:DNT leans much more on the novels/format than the original epic long OVA.  The creative team behind LOGH:DNT are really giving it their all.

But for Trigun Stampede the new character designs are seriously rubbing me the wrong way. 

Vash: I get that Vash would be considered ‘best sad boi’ if the series were new, but the lack of spiked up hair is baffling to me.  His prosthetic arm is obviously not of this world in origin/tech and it really kills the slow reveal of what it can do.  Wearing a jacket with the Project Seeds logo on it - sure - most people on the planet aren’t the most educated about all that info.  We also have the changing of his type of firearm, which any detail nerd is going to be up in arms about the switch from a long colt .45 to a .22 caliber revolver style handgun.  I blame Ogata and his love of the Type 38 over the Type 30 rifle for sniping.

Meryl Stryfe: not only gets a tomboy look but a career change and a shit mentor/supervisor.  Let’s give her a newsboy hat, shorts with her old suit coat and a large parka and random gloves with chunky sneakers.  Oh and she’s the underling of a chain smoking whiskey drinking misogynistic asshole whose job is to treat her like shit and insult her.  She neither looks nor acts like a young twenty something professional.  In the anime and manga she’s just a petite woman.  But episode one of stampede has me concerned.

Milly Thompson: does not exist?  Information about this is vague at best and I’m not going to troll the internet for what the creative team may have told the Japanese press.  Milly’s character design was top tier.  Her character added great value to the anime and manga so far.  She’s not on the promo artwork and Roberto De Niro is - which is a bad sign.

Nicholas D. Wolfwood:  Looks like a hipster from Tokyo.  And any other ikemen type of character.  Or from a Jdrama.  Really, he looks like if you took a fashionable guy off the street and threw him into the mix.

We see here, an unbuttoned jacket.  His dress shirt is unbuttoned at the top, but also not tucked in.  He’s got skinny/tapered pants and exposed ankles.  And those black shoes that might be sneakers or loafers? 

Now, you live on a desert planet my man.  You know what absolutely sucks when you live in the desert? Getting sand and shit in your shoes!  How do you do that?  Don’t wear shoes that aren’t covered by your pants.  I can forgive the lack of hats on the entire main cast b/c they are the main characters and we want to see their faces.  But if they actually lived on a twin star planet, Vash, Wolfwood, Meryl and Milly would all be wearing hats; you want to keep that sun off your face and block a lot of the crap floating by.  Honestly, that’s one design element which is spot for the characters except for the lack of hats - the long sleeves and layers.  You wear layers and long sleeves and pants when you live in the desert to protect yourself from the elements.

Sadly, not only does his wardrobe suffer from the ‘upgrade’ but his hair as well as a lollipop instead of his hallmark crumpled cigarette.  Smoking kills but Wolfwood is going to die young anyways so do you think he cares that much?

His hair is tamed down the long locks in front of his ears are gone and I’m guessing his nose will be shrunk as well.  My most recent watch had me appreciate a few elements of his character design.  First off, he’s got a rather ‘normal’ looking nose that doesn’t make that weird point.  I like this it gave him a more unique appearance without doing too much.  We can also see the long shaggy bit of hair as well as the much messier overall look.

Looking at him more closely, it really seems as though he had a sort of almost retro (for the 90s) 70s look with a scruffy chin.  That sort of makes sense since he was designed in the 90s, his style might refer back to the previous 20 or so years for his overall look.

I am a huge fan of the added rough around the edges look with the lines on his cheeks which are more pronounced in the manga.

I also visually read this to be an indication of age.  Which in the anime, I read him to be the oldest human of the bunch, over thirty.  His observational skills, the way he talks to others, how he rationalizes things at least in the anime. Wolfwood has seen more of life and some of his solid statements really make me think this.  I haven’t gotten to his whole backstory in the manga yet which from what I’ve seen - is vastly different than that with him being much younger but appearing older.  Which is why he gets the scruffy/blushy lines all the time?  Maybe?  I’ll get back to this.  However, this point doesn’t sit well with me since some types of wisdom require one to reach a certain age to get them so I’m not keen on the concept for appears old but is much younger Wolfwood.  But I’ll see how it plays out in the manga before judging it. 

I’m not the type of person to get my knickers in a twist over logical updates to characters and their design but the creative team for Stampede went hard.

Honestly, I already found a much more professional review that really highlights a lot of the issues I had with episode 1.  The reviewer never saw the original and still highlights a lot of the things someone who’d watched it before would or could be bothered by.

https://www.themarysue.com/even-as-a-trigun-newbie-trigun-stampedes-first-episode-didnt-feel-right/

This article completely captures why I hate Roberto De Niro and why if he dies as a character I will be happy.  But not happy enough without Milly!

Anyhoo, I’ll give Trigun Stampede the college try, but they are going to have to work very hard to convince me it is a worthy remake.  If only to see Roberto De Niro to die and try not to ask Tanigaki why he’s toting around Punisher - which is a heavy cross b/c it is full of mercy. 

[zulixe]

Some AO3 Stats

I'm obsessed with statistics and some friends and I recently thought about which fandom on AO3 would be the horniest. So yeah the next thing I know is I go through every fandom and find out which percentage of all fics are explict. This would probably be a lot faster if I knew how to code a programm but so I sat there for 4 hours and went through the Anime/Manga Fandoms To have a large enough sample size I only included fandoms with 1,000 or more fics and I also did one for 10,000 or more fics. Here are the results:

Anime/Manga Fandoms with more than 1.000 fics

I was baffeld that there is a fandom with 0 explict fics, like wtf, I think this breaks the rules of the internet.

10. Saiyuki 25.63% 9. Dragon Ball 26.24% 8. Devilman 26.85% 7. Finder no Hyouteki 28.81% 6. Jujutsu Kaisen 28.93% 5. Golden Kamuy 29.49% 4. Devil May Cry 29.49% 3. DRAMAtical Murder 30.05% 2. Promare 30.73% And now the nukber 1 horniest Anime/Manga Fandom is.....

1. Ghost with 49,51%

Which isn't even an Anime Fandom? Like my friends and I had no Idea what that is so we asked google and it is a swedish metal band? Why is this listed in the Anime/Manga category, but yeah their fans seem pretty horny xD

Anime/Manga fandoms with more than 10,000 fics

I honestly expected the BNHA Fandom to be much higher in this list and Hetalia also seems quite low, I never watched it, but what you hear about its fandom, yeah, maybe its just to old for AO3

[quickdeaths]

It wasn't too hard for Rio to pay attention to Kazuichi and make sure to smoke him in the races at the same time. Mario Kart felt kind of mindless to her, like going through a flow chart of decisions in order to maximize speed and guarantee the best items possible. "Mm... I don't know. I don't think I'm a workaholic." Certainly, Rio spent a lot of time with her birds, and compiling her research reports, but 'workaholic' was a bit much, wasn't it? "I just have a sleep disorder, so I get tired sometimes and need to recharge." That was oversimplifying it, but it was about as comprehensive an explanation as she was willing to get into while tearing up the Rainbow Road.

"Yeah, maybe," she said with a small shrug. "They just recently did a remake of my favorite Story of Seasons game, so I might check that out." Maybe she could play it with Chiaki. The brief times they'd interacted, it seemed to Rio like they would hang out together well, each doing their own thing. "Oh, but if you're into manga, senpai, you should check out Jump+." If someone was worried about falling behind, those kinds of online or app-based things were great.

"It's Shonen Jump's online publication, and they have their own original stuff, and they put the main issue on there too. They have free and paid content, so there's all kinds of stuff." If it came to action manga, or manga with more of a shonen focus, Rio wasn't quite as knowledgeable, being in that her main area of expertise was girl romances, but still. She had some ideas. Even if they might have been a bit basic, or the kind of thing Kazuichi was already familiar with. "You should check out Kaiju No. 8, or Chainsaw Man."

Rio herself was a little more into something like Golden Kamuy but baby steps. "Oh, and you're talking about A Silent Voice." Yeah, that was definitely a good one, and Naoko Yamada was one of the few women who had been able to overcome industry sexism to become a beloved director. "You should check out Liz and the Blue Bird, too, senpai, it's by the same director." Plus it had lesbians. "I like Mamoru Hosoda and Makoto Shinkai's stuff too, but I think the thing that made me most emotional was I Want To Eat Your Pancreas, maybe?"

Talking with Kazuichi like this, Rio was having a tougher time figuring him out than she'd expected. His whole reaction to the 'being gay' thing, and his posturing, made it seem like he had some serious toxic masculinity going on, but then to so easily admit to liking characters like Peach, or liking movies that made him cry? That was sort of complicating of that image. "You're a little strange, Kaz-senpai," Rio murmured, without any judgment behind the words. "Are you like this with people in your own class, too? Actually, I don't know a lot about your class, other than you and Nanami-senpai. What are they like?"

“That’s… true,” the mechanic mused, face visibly lighting up when he was passed an energy drink. He’d probably be one of the people guilty of having little to no hobbies outside of his job, but he could argue that his job is his hobby, so it would be a little different in his case. Tinkering with machines calms him down. “Some people are workaholics, I guess. I kinda got that impression from you too, since you seemed pretty tired the other day.”

Opening up his energy drink, he tried to take sips from it before the game started, but he didn’t have time, quickly putting it down to catch up with the others after the countdown was over. Groaning in irritation at the big 12th slapped on his screen, he hoped to get a good item to boost him up, but all the mushrooms did was result in him falling off the map. That sucked. “I-I uh…” Shit, it was hard to talk when he was concentrating so hard. At least he was slowly but surely making it up to 9th place. “I haven’t really played anything as a kid, but I watched other people play Mario and Sonic games. It’s nothing like watching Namani play the Animal-Crossing-Over-or-something game, though. It’s like, satisfyingly relaxing. You should try it sometime, ‘cause you guys look like you would get along.”

Speaking of relaxing, ending up in 10th place sure is not. With a whine of dejection, he put the Joycon on the ground and held his head in his hands, taking a moment to mourn his loss. “…Well, I know some people that would marry a statue, so I was worried,” he muttered, reaching out to his energy drink for comfort. At the other’s question, he looked a little sheepish, learning from his mistake and putting the drink down before the round began. “L-like I said, I never really… had games, but I did read whatever comic books I could get my hands on, especially action ones! Like, there was this time I stood in a store for an hour flipping through a manga series. I was just getting to the good part when… uh, y’know, family matters called. I never got to finishing that stuff.”

Trying to get the speed boost at the beginning earned him 6th place, which wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. “I watched some popular animes, though. Not all the way, but there were a lot of popular series in middle school that if you didn’t know about they’d think you’re lame, so like, it was almost… what do you call it, socially required?? To watch them?? I-- OH FUCK YOU DONKEY KONG!! What the fuck was that for??” Cursing the gorilla under his breath for hitting him off the stage, he nearly stopped playing in defeat, but his pride wouldn’t let him. “…One of the girls that hanged with my group after school was super into that stuff too, so she basically forced us to sit through some episodes. I’d say one of my favorites would be… uh, I can’t remember its name, but it was about a girl that couldn’t hear.” He furrowed his eyebrows. “Or, wait, that might have been a movie. I mean, I like action stuff better, but that movie made me cry, man. You ever got those stories where it just makes you so emotional that you can’t not get attached to it?”

[absolutelynotsanebaby]

best fics you've ever read? any fandom

Hmmmm that’s a good one tbh. Imma take this time to just ramble about some fics I really like. There’s 4 dsmp/mcyt fics I find really good. Passerine is a obvious one I think, that fic is literally so beautiful. Made me cry like 5 separate times while I read It. Just Strangers who know each other is a really good chommy protege au. I haven’t read it in a good while but c!clingyduo <3.

I haven’t read this one is a good while either but I remember really liking, it’s called “There are many l names in history (but none of them are ours” it’s a fic about L’manburg and how it fell and from what i remember it was 🤌. An odd but kinda devastating fic is “How to Sex Vol. 4-58” and lemme assure it’s not explicit whatsoever. It’s based around those books tommy wrote. It’s basically c!tommy writing his thoughts as he’s locked in prison by the green man himself. It’s basically angst disguised as high key crack.

“A deer’s death “ is also probably one of my favorite fics, it’s really fucking pretty. It’s by taper pop and a golden kamuy fic. Emotionally an owie tho

The other is “No Time To Crank The Sun” by VIKAN and it’s an amazing POV of a highly unreliable narrator through the lens of one Roronoa Zoro.

Actually my favorite fic is probably “The Next Right Thing” by Melodramaticcoffeeaddict but I don’t feel like I’ve watched enough of op to speak on it lol. I really love reading it <33

[bowietiee]

it's still us.

part 1 || part 2

god i love golden kamuy as much as i love creating things that make you think and feel and cry and think even more about the story

it took me a while (a day) to find all these panels and GOSH im obsessed

[schocooca]

Golden Kamuy Yuusaku x Ogata One Shot

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33297505

Usami gave Ogata the wrong drink.

Or, when fellow coworkers go to a bar after work and Ogata is so done that he doesn't care about the wrong color of alcohol in the glass and just drinks the all thing in one shot. 

He ends up in Yuusaku's arms.

He did not want to be here. He really, really and again really, didn’t want to be here. He went along with the idea of going to the bar for some drinks with his coworkers only because he would hate hearing their whines about how he never goes out with them after work. 

They always whine and cry anyway, so thinkin now, what was the difference? 

He just moved the glass in his hands, small, compared to the other men. Small, but still firm, and yet soft. Sigh escaped his mouth, when the next part of alcohol came to their table. 

Today, the one in charge of drinks was Usami and it showed. These colors were so weird that Ogata doubted if they were still edible, but then remembered the time when Usami drank the mix of… some things and it was pitch black. Oh lord, it was so hideous and stank so much that he threw up, but no, Usami drank it in one shot.

He ended up in hospital for a few days. 

Now, looking at a one year older man, he seemed… no, he didn’t. He was still stupid and with some bad ideas in his head. But then, the drinks this time don’t look like they came up from the deepest hole in hell. Nah, they looked like they only came from hell. 

Ogata made a disgusted face. 

— What's that face for, huh? 

His eyes picked up a movement to his right and ears picked up sound. He stared at the man who just talked to him. Younger than him, but started at the same time at the office. Sugimoto was his name and sure, he was capable, but always somehow after a few hours of work ends up somewhere too far to that place that he should be at. One time he disappeared and was found on the playground with some young girl. 

— Should I really answer that? — he grumbled, low voice vibrating and he picked up glass with low percentage alcohol, drinking all the liquid that was left. 

Glass left his hands and then table, and next one with some really intensive color appeared. 

Sugimoto eyed that drink and laughed, but when he saw his own - stayed silent.

That was so wrong.

— I hope that at least no one drugged them… — Ogata heard a whisper from the end of a table. It came from Kadokura, who was one of the oldest ones here. Let's say that… Usami might be kinda fixated about him and the poor guy was always the victim. Lucky for him that he never stayed at the hospital because of it.

Guys before him weren't always that lucky.

— EVERYONE! CHEERS!

Ogata grabbed glass and moved it slightly towards others and after that - drank all of it in one shot.

He felt the alcohol killing inside of his mouth and throat and that feeling was pleasurable, obviously.

But the taste was kinda off.

Welp, he didn't care at this point.

— Ah! I gave Ogata my own drink!

It's too late.

Taste was off, but made him crawl more and it was totally not like him to be the first one with the red face and hazy eyes. His head was on the table, looking at the person opposite him, smiling like a kitten that he was. 

— Did Ogata just get drunk?

— I think so

— Welp of course he did, after he drank MY drink and stole some others. 

Ogata closed eyes, head dropping to the side and his hand moving onto his face.

— What a stupid cat.

— Koito, you aren't better. 

Suddenly, Hyakunosuke's head went up and looked around, like he was searching for someone, but didn't find it, so he started pouting and then - clinged to Sugimoto, who was next to him. 

— What the—

That wasn't all. Ogata purred, while rubbing against him. Sugimoto choked.

— Woah woah, kitten, don't get too fired up

Kiroranke laughed and patted Sugimoto on the arm, trying not to laugh more after seeing his face. 

— Y...ku.. 

Ogata was mumbling, while sniffing Sugimoto. Yes, that's his smell… But he would not sit so stiff.

— Where is Yuusaku — he groaned and tried to move away from the warm body that he wanted to feel so much. But it couldn't be anyone. It had to be him. 

Ogata hit the table and spilled drink on his shirt. He wanted to stand up, but legs weren't listening to him and he stumbled on them, right onto Sugimoto's lap. 

— Ow!

— That's funny to watch, but also it starts getting annoying.

It was Usami who said that.

— Sugimoto, take care of him~

— WHAT

Said man screamed and Ogata trembled at that. Hot. And so, he said his name again.

— Ugh, fine! Shiraishi, Tsukishima, could you help me with it?

And so they went, trying to take the man who started to get really needy and horny and it showed.

At the end, when they rang the bell to a place that Usami told them to go, they hesitated.

— Does he really live here? 

— I don't know man, he never really told us where he lives, so—

— Please be faster because I swear to god I'm gonna leave you two alone with him

— Jeez, chill…

And then they waited. Few moments later they heard doors opening.

— Good evening, what can I- Oh, Brother? 

Ogata's head perked up and in one moment he tried running to him but missed a step and face hit his chest. Yuusaku caught him and held firmly, yet soft. 

— That's all! Take care!

Three of them disappeared really fast, whispering to each other.

Ogata looked up and bit his lip, his mind going crazy. How he wanted the younger brother to hold him, whisper to his ear, move fingers on his body, touch him… He whined and pushed him inside their house.

— Ah, Hyaku, are you okay?

Yuusaku tried to move him away, and sure, he did that, but man, how his heart fluttered at the sight. 

— Brother, let's get you changed, okay? 

— Mmm… 

Ogata couldn't walk on his own, his head was full with naughty thoughts about them and damn, he sure was hard. 

So when they got into the bathroom and Yuusaku made him sit on the bathtub, he was wiggling for touch. He was in so much need for it.

That he just took his hand and placed it on his crotch, whining sweetly and making the young man blush. 

— Yuusaku, fuck me

His heart was beating so hard now. Imagination of him and Ogata having sex was before his eyes and made him twitch. 

— Brother, I couldn't-

Ogata second hand grabbed the young man's hair and after that, he went for a kiss.

It was messy at first and Yuusaku was still in shock. It was also short, since Ogata gasped for air and whined, wiggling under his touch on his pants. 

— You are cute, brother — Yuusaku whispered, their lips brushing slightly and went for a kiss. It was sweet and soft, innocent and full of affection. His hand was on Ogata's cheeks, thumb caressing his skin and so loving. 

Then, his second hand took care of buttons of his shirt, belt and zipper of pants. 

After a while, they stopped kissing and while Ogata's drunk brain was still processing the love, Yuusaku pulled off his shirt and pants.

Ogata shivered from the cold and opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off with a peck on his forehead. And then cheeks. Eyes. Nose. Mouth.

— You are loved, brother 

He took his small hand and placed a soft kiss on the palm, and then put that small hand on his cheeks. He saw how his eyes looked between his lips, hand and eyes, but he didn’t say anything. 

Yuusaku then waited, giving more soft touches.

They stayed like that for a while, until Ogata sniffed. Yuusaku froze.

— What-

There were tears in his eyes and they were going down, making wet stains along the way. 

Ogata was crying.

Seeing his older brother in that state was heartbreaking.

—Hyakunosuke…? 

He spoke in a soft voice, full of worry. In a moment, he was cupping Ogata's face in hands and wiping away his tears with thumbs. 

— Why you make me feel all these things… — he sobbed — I am bad, I do bad things and I despise you

There was a faint smile hiding in Yuusaku's lips. 

— I don’t care about all of this. Well, maybe I love you because of all of this?

He spoke these words, while looking at him with loving eyes. 

Caressed his cheeks and placed a soft kiss on his nose. After that, he just embraced him and let his beloved brother wet his shirt with tears. He stroked his bare back, feeling how muscles tensed under his touch, and - after a while - they relaxed. 

Yuusaku closed eyes, humming under his breath and when Ogata was no longer crying, he just picked him up and went to his bedroom. Put in bed and lied next to him. 

Ogata snuggled into him right away, making the younger man chuckle. But he didn’t say anything. 

Yuusaku just put his arms around him and petted Ogata hair, both of them listening to each other's breath and heartbeats, which – lulled both of them to sleep.

The next day, Ogata had a hangover. And people give him stares in the office. 

— Hey, Ogata, what is your relationship with your brother?

It was Shiraishi and oh look, that's the coffee Ogata was just drinking on his face.