#ijuin

[sekasu2007]

伊集院光、こんまりこと近藤麻理恵が『深夜の馬鹿力』を聞いていたとの情報に反応「ネタが採用されたこともある、みたいな」

[the-gears-of-fate]

BN AU - Gears of Fate

#002 - Protoman.EXE - Character Ref

Blues Ijuin

[hikari-saito]

[cylikaart]

I love the time around Christmas Eve. That Blues calls himself out by it hjdchjhj

Someone needs to draw Santa Blues jhdcjhfc

[shinigami-striker]

Griffin Burns | Saturday, 10.26.24

Same voice actor - featuring Griffin Burns. Happy birthday! 🎂

2015

Chilbo (Frosticons), Slusho (Glorp Corp), and Snax (Munchos) - Mixels (TV series; episode: "A Quest for the Lost Mixamajig")

2021

Hiro Ryugasaki - Shadowverse: Champion's Battle (video game)

[rockingego]

Cringetober Day 2: Tsundere

[imasallstars]

[09/24] HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEGUMI IJUIN!

Voice Provider: currently unavailable

[shizukateal]

Grimm Variations - Episode Three Review: Hansel and Gretel

(Buckle up, everyone, this is the call-back episode.)

Hansel and Gretel live a pretty routine, gray life at their orphanage/boarding school, with their fellow classmates and their mama and papa- wait a fucking second, that's Sakura's great-grandfather from Card Captor Sakura!

Jesus Christ, CLAMP, I know designing old men isn't your wheelhouse, but that's no excuse to be lazy! Anyways, their life is pretty boring and restricted, so Gretel usually acts out and Hansel gets swept up until they're both grounded. Finally, one time after too many antics, their "parents" decide to spice up the punishment by leaving them to sleep outside in the forest. They're warned that they can sleep near the fence if they want to, but of course that's too boring for Gretel, so they go on a walk until they find a small wooden cottage, although it does have two ca- Yuuko.

...

I never really finished XxxHolic. I only watched the two seasons of the anime, so I didn't really experience Yuuko's death, I just spoiled myself. Still, it gets me unexpectedly emotional. To see a version of her blessed with the ability to age.

So the Dimensional Witch and the kids get to talking around some cocoa, and Yuuko incites the kids to find out about The End of the World. Her words, not mine. That's silly! reply Hansel and Gretel, the world doesn't have an end, it's spherical! They would know, they've been taught a lot of suspiciously advanced scientific stuff in school. So Yuuko proposes them to do a little empirical research to settle the debate. Next time someone loses a ball during a game they should go pick it up themselves, instead of letting their "parents" get to it first. Hansel does that at the first opportunity he gets and indeed, he finds a forcefield, proving Yuuko correct.

This discovery sparks a fire in Hansel, so he gets himself deliberately sent out to the forest again and Gretel does the same to accompany him. He reaches a bargain with Yuuko: she'll help him discover what's real and in return he will help her grant her own unspoken wish. She tells him to look for unusual things in his school and gifts him a tube filled with what could be candies or gems, saying that they'll help guide the way, but to not eat them or they'll run out of it.

Hansel and Gretel start paying attention to their surroundings and finally the weirdness of their situation starts to stand out to them, like how their classmates keep disappearing out of nowhere and nobody bats an eye, especially when there's photographic evidence about their numbers dwindling in the school group pictu- Syaoran.

And 2/3 of the Clamp School Detectives!

I find it hilarious that Nokoru and Akira are here, but Suoh had to be deleted from existence because his blue hair would've stood out too much. RIP, lmao.

Anyways, Hansel decides to try to see if he can find a way out through the forest and obviously his sister goes along with him. Before they can properly set out, however, one of the candies acts up and opens up a portal. The siblings go through it and they find themselves in a mysterious space station of all things, with data of all of their classmates. Soon enough their "mother" finds them sneaking around and they run away from her, using up the candies to open doors. But when Hansel almost gets squished by a closing door, Mother sacrifices herself to save him, confirming to everyone that she is, in fact, a robot.

Naturally, this leaves Hansel with more questions than answers, so after coming back to the school he and his sister straight to Yuuko, who gives him the Matrix choice of taking a pill to forget everything or learning the truth. Hansel chooses the latter and Yuuko takes them back to the space station, explaining that the earth has long since become inhabitable and that the school is teaching the children how to restore it until they deem them fit to go there. Her previously mentioned "wish" is to send them all safely there. Hansel is apparently fit to travel already, but he starts dithering about the choice, especially because the space shuttle only has one seat, so where is Gretel to fit?

That's when the curtain is lifted: Gretel doesn't exist. She's a mental projection for cowardly, dithering Hansel to act out decisively on his own impulses while mentally excusing himself for following along, but now that he has come this far on his own accord he doesn't need her anymore. Hansel, with Gretel's encouragement, chooses to leave, but he still cries tears of bitter regret at loosing his "sister" to the truth instead of taking Yuuko's offer to forget.

Alas, however, he arrives at earth, where his lost classmates have grown up and welcome him with open arms. Yuuko eulogizes the mom-bot, congratulating her for raising the kids and then welcomes Syaoran to her hut...

Oh boy, ok, this one's a doozy, let's see where to start.

Ok, I'm gonna start with the blatant Revolutionary Girl Utena references and work up from there, because if I don't it's gonna drive me insane. Here's the thing people, it's not a sin to reference RGU; in fact I'd encourage it, but if you're gonna pull iconography from there of all places, then you'd better be really fucking conscientious about The Themes™️ and what you say with them.

So this episode presents us with a school in which time is apparently bubbled, constricted by The End of The World it represents, supervised by two figures emulating the heteronormative family structure, contrasted by a witch who at first seems like an outcast but is actually essentially powering the whole thing (maybe), and where students disappear without anyone properly remembering them because if they dare to figure out what lies behind the curtain of the system, just like Ohtori Academy. So far so good... kind of.

The implication is that the school is deliberately set up as this secret test of character thing so, like Hansel, the students learn to be independent. There's even some clever hints that disobedience and figuring out the mystery gives them the passing mark before we watch our protagonist. But then like... why do the students forget whenever one of them leaves? In Utena that's implied to be the magic of whatever time bubble Ohtori is in keeping everyone ignorant to perpetuate itself without objections, but more important that the explanation itself is the metaphor it's in service of. Ohtori students forget because the system wants to present a narrative about itself without any blemishes, so tragedies get trivialized into gossip, victims swept under the rug. Even if you assume that this schools timeloop or whatever is also passively mindfucking with the children, why is there so much focus on the dadbot and especially the mombot keeping things like the forcefield hidden? What is the purpose of that? What commentary is it making? What does breaking the cycle of apathy and blind obedience mean in this setting?

It might sound like I'm doing a pointless nitpick here, but trust me when I say that the viewing experience is already too confusing because of the tone and its use of the imagery. The school really is portrayed like if Othori met the orphanage from The Promised Neverland met an oscarbait period flick about world war II. Like, you genuinely expect that the twist is that the school is farming the children for their brains or something. It took me until I was writing this review to actually put the pieces together as to what the robo-parents motivations are, because their secrecy and strictness is completely antithetical to them wanting the children to grow independent!!!

The truth of the matter is just too soft for the themes its exploring and the imagery is presenting. Hansel created Gretel because he's afraid of taking responsibility for his actions, the same way a character in Utena projected a Rose Bride to not acknowledge the fact that he killed like a 100 people in a fire on purpose. So one would assume, based on how fucking creepy the school and the parents are, that he has some real good fucking reason to reach that extreme of cognitive dissonance, but no!!!!! Even the parents sending them out to sleep in the forest lands like mere chiding!!!!

But going back to Gretel, the usual initial portion of the episode is about how Charlotte doesn't seem to like her character in the original fairytale. How she thinks Gretel should be punished for getting Hansel into trouble which... istg I have NO idea how this show is trying to engage with its source material at all, because that is NOT a conclusion anyone would reach after reading the fucking fairytale, but whatever. It's fine. Or rather it WOULD be fine if there was a smidge of actual feminist commentary in this script which goes OUT OF ITS WAY TO REFERENCE ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL FEMINIST PIECES IN ANIME, but noooooooooooo it's all so bittersweet. On the one hand I'm glad he chose to grow up, and since I don't believe in punitive justice I don't think he needs to be punished to get there, but I'm still upset the character of Gretel gets reduced to this when she was an active heroine in her own story. Guess Charlotte succeeded in her purpose then, although it is curious that she casts herself as the twins.

Like, am I evil for expecting Hansel to straight up die in that oven-shuttle? In her original universe, Yuuko was an agent of karma. If she was scary it wasn't because she was evil, but because she would give you exactly what you want and not shield you from the consequences. It would feel weird to me if she were to endanger children the way she does some of her customers, but it would not have been completely out of place in this "grimm variation" that is about our protagonist literally deluding himself to avoid taking responsibility for his choices to end up with those consequences catching up to him in a terrible fashion.

Guess I shouldn't have expected all that much better. Although I am surprised that they didn't just straight up turn Subaru and Hokuto from Tokyo Babylon into Hansel and Gretel. Alas, to be a CLAMP fan is to suffer, and it seems that these past 20 years have not taught them much about theming. This is why I'm still terrified of reading Clear Card Arc, even though I should.

[sekasu2007]

伊集院光、『魔改造の夜』で電マを登場させたNHKの番組スタッフたちに「あれは狙いなんですか？」と質問したところ予想外の答えが返ってきたと明かす

[the-gears-of-fate]

BN AU - Gears of Fate

Enzan Ijuin - Character Ref

[prfm-multiverse]

Ijuin Hikaru: "Oh, what a good kid!" He is surprised at the humility of this world-famous artist, saying, "He has the purity of a newcomer."

Recently, he saw a certain artist being invited on a popular TV show. "You know the 50,000 Yen Trip with Ito Asako and Katase Rino? Perfume's Kashiyuka was on that one." Kashiyuka appeared on "Asako, Rino, and Kashiyuka's 50,000 Yen Trip: Crossing Ibaraki! Toasting with Good Sake Special," which aired on May 25th. "It was in the title so casually that it said Asako, Rino, and Kashiyuka's. I was like, 'What?' and surprised." As an artist who is now widely popular and has toured the world, he was surprised at the gap between the show he was on and the show he was on.

Ijuin recently performed with the three members of Perfume on another show. "I've been in the entertainment industry for a long time, but I recently worked with Perfume for the first time. They're so good! I was like, how good are they? They're top artists, and in a way, they can be as selfish as they want, but they also have the purity of a newcomer." After years of misfortune as idols, the three rose to stardom with the big hit of their signature song "Polyrhythm." Since they became popular after learning about the hardships of the past, Ijuin was touched by their modesty.

Perhaps because of this connection, Ijuin said, "I ended up watching this too." He laughed, "It's Kashiyuka, right? Perfume's Kashiyuka. She was eating stewed tripe and drinking beer. Just like normal." He then said, "Right before the finish line, they made her walk up a mountain path that couldn't even be called a road. It's impossible, right?" He was amazed at the fact that they were not given any special treatment.

[chuunibyou-showdown]

It is important to know the difference between Chuuni essence and Chuunibyou itself.

Chuuni essence is what I call the things that tend to excite those with chuunibyou. For example, magic circles, curses, and power for Evil Eye types, motorcycles and gang terminology for the DQN type, foreign terminology and alternative fashion for the subculture type, elaborate terminology or naming schemes for chuuni in general.

In effect, chuuni essence is what gives you a feeling of "Ah, the person who made this or like this are probably a bit chuunibyou". Things like Devil May Cry, edgy OCs, overly complicated weapon designs.

The importance of this distinction is that just because a character or person is involved with chuuni essence concepts, they're not necessarily chuunibyou themselves. Take complex terminology: in Japanese, there's words or phrases known as Yojijukugo: They're made of four kanji, many are akin to idioms and originate from Chinese scripture or Buddhist text. Given that, chuunibyou tend to love these, they're intricate, they give an air of knowledge, they look cool written out.

But the origins aren't really chuunibyou. Chuunibyou itself is linked with self-perception and a sense of cheesiness or cringiness. Buddha isn't chuuni. Similarly, a character who has dark powers and an edgy design isn't necessarily chuuni. Determining whether they are is often a topic of debate, which is where I think the distinction between chuuni essence and chuunibyou is important so you can distinguish whether a character just has elements a chuuni would like/design versus the character themselves being a chuuni.

TL;DR Just because a character has design elements that are edgy and a dramatic presentation doesn't mean that they themselves are chuuni.

[cylikaart]

Long overdue WIP!

I need more Blues/Serenade in my life! Gonna do it myself!

[sierralavandulaart]

NetZan development

So, I've returned to Rockman.EXE hell after a while because I was feeling nostalgic and I end up watching a Blue Moon playthrough because I was curious about the Blues scenario (I haven't played any of the Battle Network 4 games) and OMG, the NetZan fuel! I realize that Blue Moon/Red Sun games tend to be hated and I understand why, but the Blues scenario really shows how Netto and Enzan's relationship has progressed from the earlier games!

To briefly summarize Blues' scenario, you have to help Enzan get Blues back after he gets infected with a Darkchip. After navigating the Undernet and finally reaching Blues, Enzan states that he wants to be the one to liberate Blues by operating Rockman. And Netto lets him. And hands him Rock's PET to do so!

Sorry, but this kinda blew my mind when I first saw it. Netto might be a social butterfly who gets along with almost everyone, but letting someone else operate Rockman? He even mentions that he usually hates someone else operating him, but Enzan's an exception!

Then Netto finishes off by saying that if the roles were reversed, he'd do the same...which brings the following game in mind, where after Rockman gets abducted, the respective leader of the games will loan you their Navi to use until you get Rockman back. In Team Blues' case, that means taking control of Blues for a while. I lowkey wonder if for Enzan, his Blue Moon scenario is another factor into his decision to lend Blues to Netto.

For many in this series, letting someone else operate your Navi is probably considered a huge sign of trust, and this is probably especially true for these two and both of them let the other do so in canon! Am I weird for going crazy over this?

I know Battle Network 2 is where their relationship starts to take a positive turn and has that famous cute tsundere moment, but 4 and 5 really show how far they've become! Plus, 4 has Netto act like the tsundere for once lol

Also in Blue Moon, they enter the stage together! It's just so cute!

[junryou]

o p / n a v i

reblog, do not repost

[vestal-spirit]

07 shadow