#it could have been worse like other shounen but. it was still there

[rivalcobalt]

Okay actually yknow what, I'm just gonna do this on here cause I've been agonizing over this for too long

Firstly to prove I'm not insane, and I guess to his credit, the author has mentioned ONS as an inspiration-slash-thing-with-similar-vibes on twitter (archived):

That said, I feel like this really undersells it. Like, you can argue about how much inspiration you can take from a work, and ONS itself takes insane amounts of shit from Devilman, but even still it feels very much like a different story, and not like... the entire first half of the book being largely what you'd get if you just ported the plot of S1 of ONS over into a YA novel with and then altered who the love interest was.

This is long enough already (talking like nearly 4 pages point form on google docs) so I'm just copying it over as is. I only read the book once, so honestly this may have even missed some things. I'd put more effort into this but honestly idk how many people are gonna see this anyways.

Tl;dr no fucking way did you just "watch this while editing"

The Flood || unnamed apocalypse virus

Man-made virus

Kills most of the human population (ons' explicitly kills off 90%, the Flood has killed near 9 billion (earth's population when it was released)/appears to be a comparable rate)

Intentionally caused by Angels cult/Hyakuya Sect + JIDA (revealed in manga/LNs only)

Angels cult || vampires:

Signaturely wear white robes/uniforms + capes

Ons vampires are associated with (fallen) angels

New Nazareth/Sanguinem (city for cult/vampires that protagonist escapes from)

Don't want any more of their kind made (Angels forcing Angel parents to drown their newborns, vampires noted to be generally opposed to making more vampires for unexplained reasons; iirc only progenitors are able to sire and they're supposed to get permission from the vampire council first)

Angels cult || Hyakuya Sect

Religious cult

Doing human (S)eraph experiments

Benji & Theo/Yuu & Mika are children of cult members who use them as test subjects

Causes virus on purpose (manga/LNs only)

Responsible for creating Graces/Horsemen of John (manga/LNs only)

Benji || Yuu:

Only successful version of the (S)eraph experiments

Not fully in control of powers yet/powers emerge over the course of the story

Child of Angels/Hyakuya Sect cult members

Brought to New Nazareth/Sanguinem under the age of 12 and lives there for 4-5 years before escaping

Grow up in New Nazareth/Sanguinem with Theo/Mika during those years

Important family member dies as they try to escape together

Son of cult members

Posesses (S)eraph abilities from being experimented on by cult

Joins ALC/JIDA in their front-line forces after escaping and being found by Nick/Guren

Seraph || seraphs (humans possessing seraph gene and have ability to turn into them)

Aim to wipe out humanity (but this can be controlled by protagonist with effort)

Very powerful

Created via human experimentation on children by the religious cult that caused the virus

Picture of Yuu in complete seraph form in ons tweet from author

Theo || Mika:

Curly/wavy blond hair and blue eyes

Protagonist's childhood best friend

In love with protagonist, debatably reciprocated

Child of Angels/Hyakuya Sect cult members

Grows up in New Nazareth/Sanguinem with protagonist, but didn't escape with them

Wants to get protagonist away from ALC/JIDA and live with them

Seen in whites of the vampires/Angels for the majority of the story

Remains affiliated with the vampires/Angels (Theo sides with Angels & Mika is turned)

Soldier for the Angels/vampires

Protagonist often recalls memories of being in the cult/vampire city together as children

Protagonist thinks of them as someone they'll never see again after escaping (Theo stayed with cult, Yuu thinks Mika is dead)

Mika is revealed to be the son of the first vampire, a fallen angel, meaning he's also an angel (manga only)

Other (S)eraph besides Benji/Yuu, but not a fully functional one (Theo injects himself with a failed version of Seraph, Mika's seraph gene is dormant)

Theo's angry outbursts may be based on Mika's anger (though who they lash out at is very different)

Theo's character differences from Mika are almost all traits commonly found in other characters also influenced by Ryou Asuka (betrays protagonist, parallel to protagonist due to similarities but on opposing sides of conflict) (not sure if author knew about Mika being heavily from Ryou or just subconsciously knew the archetype via consuming other anime/manga/JRPGs/etc or just a really funny coincidence)

Upon escaping New Nazareth/Sanginem, Benji's dad/Mika is killed

Nothing can be done to save them

Bleeding out as Benji/Yuu tries to save them as a specific similar imagery (plus I guess gaping hole wounds specifically mentioned (from being shot in the head/arm thrust through stomach respectively))

Specific memories of looking at a map together to plan their escape

Yuu/Benji is forced to keep running alone to the only way out (only bridge out of Acheson/only tunnel out of Sanguinem)

Cult is using human experiments to create humans with the seraph gene/martyrs to turn into Seraph

(S)eraphs aim to wipe out the rest of humanity

The name. Are you kidding me

Protagonist is the only fully successful experiment

Main character and childhood best friend are children of parents in cult

(In the end) main character and childhood best friend are both (S)eraph experiments

The way the Flood is killing Benji has similarities to Yuu in his incomplete seraph form

Dripping blood and black fluid (Yuu: from wings and left eye, right sclera filled with blood and left eye may have burst upon transforming, Benji: from wounds from Seraph decomposing him)

Spitting up black fluid

at a later incident, Yuu's seraph form is triggered by multiple organs rupturing. Benji's organs are liquefying inside him and coming up in chunks as part of the Seraph transformation

Theo's death after injecting himself with Dominion-12 focusing on his shot-through left eye looking like a black hole is similar to Yuu's left eye blacked out by anime gore censor circle in incomplete seraph form

Same type of post-apocalyptic setting: 

Plants beginning to cover over a wrecked city (only a few years after the virus broke out, so not super heavily overgrown yet)

Skyscrapers and concrete brutalist architecture specifically shown. Downtown core type of stuff

Graces || Horsemen of John

Created by Angels/Hyakuya Sect (result of Flood virus/called by 6th trumpet (seraph) of seraph experiments)

Beasts that kill humans, just to finish killing off the population

Can be called upon/created/controlled by (S)eraphs

Described as both horselike and spiderlike

Ribs protruding out of chest, fangs, mouths in unusual places, and I think wings (not sure about Graces on that one) are common traits

Picture of a Horseman included in author's tweet about ons

ALC || JIDA

Wear all black

Surviving humans outside of New Nazareth/Sanginem

Fight against Angels/vampires

Rescue Benji/Yuu after they escape New Nazareth/Sanguinem

Secretly aim to use Benji/Yuu's (S)eraph abilities for their own gain

The Watch || Shinoa Squad

ALC/JIDA Moon Demon Company front lines squad

Comprised of teenagers

Protagonist joins them after escaping New Nazareth/Sanguinem to fight back against the Angels/vampires

Cormack is debatably based on Kimizuki (red/pink hair, asshole personality, rare bits of kindness show through exterior (when Cormack prioritizes giving Benji his jacket to block smoke while ALC is on fire, but not nearly as nice of a guy under it all as Kimizuki)

Aisha is like… maybe bastardized Mitsuba if you just take her emotional outburst parts, but I might be reaching on that

Nick || Guren 

Leader of ALC & the Watch/Moon Demon Company (strongest section of front-line soldiers in JIDA)

Black hair & eyes (Guren's eyes are dark purple, but could be interpreted as stylized black)

Finds Benji/Yuu after their escape and brings them into their group

Nick is literally just Guren in personality if you age him down a few years and add autism and make him nicer under the exterior. Like even the way he talks and him being mentioned dramatically stomping his leg up on furniture during speeches 

Heading ALC/JIDA's intentions to use Benji/Yuu for their own gain

Dehumanizes protagonist yet also having a bit of affection towards them (more debatable for Guren, but he has some rare moments of being caring towards Yuu in a more older sibling/fatherly way)

Erin || Shinoa

Another leader within the ALC/JIDA (though Erin isn't a soldier/in the Watch)

Sympathetic towards Benji/Yuu, protests against Nick/Guren directly for how they treats them

Pastel pink/purple feminine aesthetic

Wears hair at least partly in braids

Benji & Theo's reunion in Reformation Faith Evangelical Church || Yuu & Mika's reunion on the battlefield in Shinjuku

Reunite at first major battle protagonist participates in, but not their first (iirc both only have one minor fight between joining ALC/JIDA squad and this one)

One approaches other from behind, other only realizes who they are a moment after turning around

On opposite sides as ALC/JIDA vs Angels/vampires

"[Name]? Is that you?"

Benji holds a knife to Theo's throat || Yuu stabs Mika through the chest

Theo/Mika went along to fight specifically to find Benji/Yuu

"Abandon everything and run away with me" || "I came here to follow you. I couldn't let the city take you alone. If it wants you, it has to take me too."

Theo/Mika wants to separate Benji/Yuu from the ALC/JIDA (but Mika has good reason, while Theo wants Benji to come back to the cult)

Forced to separate again at end of fight

Picture of Yuu stabbing Mika from this scene is also on ons tweet from author

In general, first half follows the escape from Sanguinem/New Nazareth leaving behind a dying family member who tried to escape with the protagonist but died to let them get away -> get found by JIDA/The Watch upon escape and rescued by Guren/Nick with the intention of using Yuu/Benji as a weapon against those he escaped from due to his nature as a human experiment -> join JIDA/The Watch, meet other members and the leader Guren/Nick -> do some missions with them -> reunite with previous friend-slash-love interest they had left behind (Mika/Theo) at first major battle as soldiers for opposing sides and are forced to part again progression, which isn't super unique but still very specific, and given everything else... yeah

This is by far not the first time an English work has copied a Japanese work and was praised for originality, but "gay trans YA novel rips off mediocre gay vampire shounen" has to be conceptually the funniest and yet there still seem to be 0 google results about it

[skania]

OnK Chapter 151

Me two weeks ago:

Me reading this chapter:

The fact that Aka did parallel Chapter 30 makes me feel like we're definitely going to see some Tokyo Blade & Private parallels as the anime covers those arcs. For the better or for the worse.

But we'll get there in due time. For now, time to laugh at the writing again 😂

I have to hand it to Aka. I mentioned that last chapter highlighted like half the reasons why I find romantic Aqua/Kana so poorly written, and this chapter right here did a fine job at highlighting the rest 😂

I want to be an actress! Well... Aqua wants me to be an idol and it may not be so bad actually, I want to be Aqua's Oshi no Ko! Aqua is ignoring me! Being an idol sucks, I quit! I'm going to be a great actress! I may have a chance with Aqua actually. I just want to be his Oshi no Ko!

It's wild to me that Aka had Kana say that her current dream is just to be Aqua's Oshi no Ko. Absolutely wild. This girl was so desperate to become a well-known actress that she was willing to be casting-couched for it, yet suddenly now it's actually it's fine that I peaked when I was five tee hee!

She's obviously lying to herself and settling for the level she is in now because she thinks that reaching that level of notoriety is out of her reach, but...

Not gonna lie, as someone who has seen Akane be called everything from obsessed to emotionally dependant to simp, it is hilarious to witness Kana's writing right now.

But I guess it couldn't have been any other way, because what Kana asks out of Aqua this chapter is a reflection of what she has wanted all along:

I mentioned it before that Kana started fixating on Aqua as being that person for her, and this chapter shows that's still the case. There's nothing inherently wrong with that IMO, in fact it could be empowering to know that as long as this one person is in your corner, you can take on the world.

The problem is that so far, Aka hasn't quite written it that way. The secret behind Kana's acting is that she wants people to look at her, she wants people to acknowledge her, to love her. But when that desire is centered on Aqua and Aqua alone, she gets so hung-up on him that it's debilitating. She literally became a shell of herself during that year Aqua was no longer a part of her life.

Last time I felt Kana was acting pathetic, Aka confirmed that she was indeed meant to be perceived that way, and Kana gave herself a reality-check:

I thought Kana's moment of self-awareness was going to lead her to be emotionally independent from Aqua, but it seems that the fact that Aqua wound up saving her either way undid that progress. Now that she has hope that he may date her if she makes a move, she's taking it so far that she's ranking her romance with him over her lifelong dreams.

All this to say that since Aka once deliberately wrote Kana being overly dependant on Aqua to show that it's not how she is meant to be, I can't help but hope we may see something similar later.

Granted, Kana being written like a shounen love-interest whose entire purpose is just to get with the MC has always been a risk, so I guess this is par for that course lol

As for Aqua, I mentioned before that I believe Kana is everything he liked about both, Ai and Sarina and thus, the perfect Oshi... and this chapter has Kana declaring out-loud that she wants to be his one true Oshi No Ko.

Moreover, this is happening right after Ruby told Aqua this:

And while Sarina is undoubtedly Goro's Oshi, Kana wants to be Aqua's. The issue with that however... is that Kana wants to be the only person Aqua looks at, his Number One.

Meanwhile, Aqua kind of has his hand full in that regard already, so it's no wonder that through his shock, he isn't able to "catch" the ball symbolizing that particular part of Kana's dream 😂

There's his eyes, too. Last chapter I said that Aka seems to want us to compare the Aqua-Ruby chapters we got in this volume with Kana's, and the way Kana's confession was structured seems to confirm this is the case. So following that comparison, it stands out to me that Ruby's words brought out Aqua's white star and Kana's didn't. Especially because just a few chapters ago we saw Kana bring out Aqua's white star just by being Kana:

In this chapter Kana praises him, validates him, confirms that she is into him (which he has likely known since, coincidentally, at least Chapter 30), yet Aqua’s star remains black all throughout.

Why is that? Is it just his self-hatred and his guilt-complex keeping him from accepting that he’s the object of Kana’s straight gaze?

Or could Aka be hinting at something else?

Aqua has a lot of issues. Some have been with him since he was Goro, and others he has developed during his current life. We saw that Ruby's words pacified the "Goro" within him, but Aqua dismissed Ruby's affection as being aimed at him because he once was Goro. It's not something he feels he has earned in his current life. Kana is the other side of that complex equation. Everything she knows about him are things he has been willing to show her, but what about everything else? What about his trauma and his dark impulses? What about his past? Aqua likely thinks her view of him is skewed, and he is not wrong in that regard. But I'll stop there before I bring Akane into the mess lmao

All in all, for the time being, I feel like what we saw this chapter tracks with my thoughts here:

Aqua, Kana, Ai and Aka's concept of Oshi

Kana is the Ultimate Oshi (parallels to Sarina and Ai) + 1

Even more parallels and a theory about their purpose

Considering how lousy Aka's writing has been lately, I feel like this is still the most interesting route he could take. After all, if we abide by the values he preached in Kaguya, then Oshi is meant to be a platonic concept. So following Aka's logic, for Aqua and Kana to end up together, Aqua would need to tell her that he doesn't want her to be his Oshi, but his lover.

Of course, it's entirely possible that Aka is going to walk back on all of that. Oshi no Ko is supposed to be its own manga, after all. Maybe it's his attempt at writing tropes in the most straight-forward way possible and Aka's new idea of a big love declaration is Aqua finally waving the white lightstick at Kana's graduation concert.

If the curtains truly are just blue, I hope the writing will remain as hilarious as it has been these past few chapters 😂

In the meantime, the other thing that stood out to me this chapter was Aqua himself. We all know that being a surgeon was Goro's dream, so it makes sense for Goro to chase that dream in this new life as Aqua. I was even happy for him when he first brought it up because this life is his chance to do everything he wanted but couldn't in his first life!

But last chapter we had a big showing of "Goro" telling "Aqua" that he is free to live his own life now. In other words, instead of trying to do what Goro would have done if he had a second chance, he can focus on doing the things that he wants to do as the individual he has become during his life as Aqua Hoshino.

So, I feel like this begs the question: is being a surgeon truly Aqua Hoshino's dream? Like not even something he wants to do alongside other things, but his outright dream?

I can't help but wonder. Particularly because, in my opinion, the TB arc did a good job at foreshadowing that Aqua Hoshino is made to be an actor.

In this chapter Kana seems to be fooling herself into giving up on her childhood dream because she thinks it's out of her reach. It would fit, then, for the Aqua in this chapter to be fooling himself as well.

If we entertain the thought of wanting to be a surgeon being a vestige of his old life rather than something Aqua truly dreams of in his current life, then his reaction in these pages becomes more interesting:

Kana assumes Aqua is just embarrassed, but these panels to me read like something more than that - for more reasons than one.

Just like Goro guided him to Kana last chapter possibly based on his own wants, in this chapter Kana unknowingly guides him to Goro's.

She is completely right. Every word she says rings true.

But I'd argue that everything she said was already accomplished by Goro in his previous life. He did save lives (although not as many as he would've wanted, and not the ones that counted the most for him), he was a light to Sarina, etc. etc. He was a good doctor.

Everything Kana says about Aqua was already true of Goro. On the other hand, Kana's description of Aqua paints nothing but virtues, and we know for a fact Aqua isn't only just light. More than that, we know for a fact that Aqua doesn't see himself that way.

Much like how in Chapter 149 we got Kana giving a very positive but very one-sided description of Akane that leaves out her negative traits, Kana more or less does the same thing with Aqua here.

In Chapter 149, Akane first got flustered (her idol Kana-chan was praising her, after all) and then sobered up; possibly because for her it's the opposite (she isn't a goody-two-shoes nor normal nor decent, and men would prefer women who are - like Kana).

I feel like in this Chapter, we may or may not have seen a repeat of this with Aqua. It's his Oshi no Kana praising him, but does he really believe the things she's saying of him? Or are they just a reminder of what he is not (according to himself)?

I can't help but wonder, because last time we saw Aqua blushing to the point that he had to hide his face, Mengo and Aka made sure we could see his blush.

The way he is drawn here is very obviously meant to be paralleled to this chapter, he shields his face in the same way and all. So why not simply show his blush, just like they did in Chapter 29?

Granted, this is just me naturally going for the most interesting possibility lol It is entirely possible and even likely that this is all as simple as it seems. But to be fair, in Chapter 30 he throws the ball at Kana in the same way and it wasn't because Kana was right. At the contrary: it was because he was having a moment and Kana drew the most basic conclusion out of it, one that embarrassed him lmao

Geez it's kind of sad how this manga lends itself to two completely different readings and the most basic one is the one with the highest chances of being true 😂

[just-antithings]

proshippers r funny to me because of the degree to which yall just lie. "we always tag our content correctly" no the fuck you dont ive been in the world you cannot trick me, trying to filter out all the ""shotacon"" when i still used ao3 was a nightmare because even when it wasnt split between 2293809 different euphemisms which changed frequently as everyone else started realizing "old man/younger man" was being used for like a 6 year old kid instead of age gaps between adults which outside of your roleplay most people do have a different stance on than pedophilia, and people constantly just posting 5 yr old/20 yr old porn ageddown porn of canon adults with zero relevant tags. this has been my experience in all of fandom, telling a proshipper that they need to avoid posting untagged graphic rape porn in tags for shounen is apparently as painful as having your leg sawed off from how people react to it. you have posts insisting that it is at all reasonable for an ao3 user who doesnt want to see pedophilia should simply filter out every possible shotacon ship which is what i did so i can tell you thats incredibly unreasonable because that number is generally in the thousands, doesn't count as "tagging correctly", and also DOESN'T WORK because again people will just not tag shit or do agedown porn without tagging it so you can be in the tag of a ship for characters who are 50 and 60 in canon when lo and behold AU porn where the older one is babysitting the younger one and theyre 20 and 10, no tags except "Au - babysitter". like tbc i do think that even if you have the minimum balls to tag your adult raping a kid porn "pedophilia" you should still be criticized for that which i know the main conceit of the anti anti movement is pretending is worse than murder, but its wild how often people let yall just lie that tagging correctly is the universal or even a common standard. thats not even getting into the fact that ao3 doesn't let you select tags to automatically filter so you have to type in every individual tag you want out every single time you do a search. but no everyone should have to spend 4 hours theorizing every possible way you could weasel words your way around describing an adult having sexual intercourse with a child and then individually type em all in just so they can see read old men fucking without one of them being turned into a middle schooler. like with every other anit anti talking point it runs into the ultimate problem that yall are lazy assholes who are in this community in the first place because youre so allergic to compassion you can only tolerate people esp children if youre jacking off to them and so any measure yall claim you take for the good of others is ultimately a lie. also i still havent forgotten all those times you defended irl pedophilia or that one time you said you had a kneejerk reaction to discredit someone talking about a case study of irl csa by defending the pedophile and blamed "antis" instead of the fact that you spend all day every day defending being attracting to children. which is much worse, obviously

[cartoonrival]

👀Kirishima popular with men and not boruto uglified unhappy married with a woman? Fuck everything else i won(ill take this crumb i was so scared 💀)and my girlss momo, mina, jiro, tsuyu and specially ochaco my fav <3 love seeing them doing ok this is my win, bkdks can have whatever they want idgaf if the girls, some others charas. and my token gay kr (beloved)implied are ok. The rest is to much to unpack i pretend i do not see it atleast it could have been worse, what did you think rival?

honestly i’m really happy with it! i’m really happy that you can tell horikoshi was losing interest in including the obligatory romance and he actually followed through with having uraraka and deku both move on from it, but at the same time in the penultimate chapter they still hugged without it reading as confirmation that they’re in love or whatever. made me happy!! even ships that seemed plausible and like hori was leaning towards them (kamijirou for example, which i actually think is rly cute) weren’t explicitly “confirmed” and i think that’s really refreshing. for such a quintessential shounen manga to move away from the obligatory romance is really dope to me as someone who loves shounen but hates obligatory romance, lol.

especially having just watched naruto, where kishimoto clearly thinks that a person cannot be considered “fulfilled and successful” if they’re not married, despite that not being relevant to the plot up to that point at all, it makes me happy to see hori not falling in the same pitfall. id say the bar is on the floor but it happens literally so often that it’s a genre staple so i think it actually is deserving of a little credit that he moved away from it so completely.

kirishima is gay ☝️ this i know. everyone has known this forever. he’s always been coded gay. it’s one of those situations where whether hori meant it or not (i lowkey find it hard to believe he didn’t recognize what he was doing) it is true, and a hero popular with men is the nail in the proverbial rainbow coffin. i was also glad that he got an aside becuz he’s been sort of left behind by the focus of the story for quite a while it seemed like hori had forgotten that he was such a key player for a while in the middle, so even though i’m still sad his relationship with bakugou was all but forgotten he did still get a nod at the end that most other characters didn’t get.

REALLY LOVE THAT MIRIO IS THE NEW NUMBER ONE AND NOT BAKUGOU. because mirio is literally more talented than him.

pissed about deku getting that tech that lets him be a hero again. i think honestly with the theme of not all people are created equal but we must love and support each other and find our niches nonetheless, it kind of loses its punch of deku to just. have a quirk still essentially. i thought him losing it was dope, and for him to remain the greatest hero of all time but have to pass on the torch because his time in the spotlight was over, whether it was luck or hard work he couldn’t stay a hero forever. because when it comes down to it he was born quirkless, and actually that’s okay, because he still has knowledge and talent and love to offer the world and he still has friends who love him. but whatever. tch

even though they didn’t go through with it, i really loved that all might was the one to suggest eliminating the popularity aspect of the hero chart completely. i think it really demonstrated how much HE has also grown over the course of the series, what he has learned and how his values have changed. i honestly think that would’ve been a better conclusion than whatever mixed bag thing hawks was setting up but it’s whatever. i think more structural changes are necessary and there should’ve been more explicit exploration into what those would look like imo, rather than just “people are nicer now cuz deku inspired them to be nice”. it’s not that it’s BAD because ultimately the structural issues of bnha’s world stemmed from social attitudes, and if those attitudes changed then that’s the first step to uplifting people born with scary or unusual quirks or born as heteromorphs, but at the same time it doesn’t give you the feeling that this peace is going to last.

LOVED DEKU’S FINAL CONVERSATION WITH SPINNER. I LOVE SPINNER AND I LOVE HIS WHOLEHEARTED LOVE AND DEDICATION TO SHIGARAKI AND I LOVED THE FOCUS HE GOT AT THE STORY’S TAIL END AND SEEING HIS REACTIONS TO HOW SHIKAGRAKI WAS CHANGING UNDER ALL FOR ONES INFLUENCE

anyways not perfect by any means, but i’m happy with it ^_^ horikoshi bit off a lot and i think i’m okay with how he decided to tie it off. i think platonic bakudeku is fun and interesting but i think it was better when it was bakugou crying suddenly cuz he thought he’d never be able to compete with deku again since he lost his quirk. if deku gets his quirk back it’s like okay. whatever. would’ve liked to see him continue to respect deku when he was quirkless again. but it’s fine. i still maintain that ppl who think they’re romantically involved don’t get it at all

[exo-raskreia]

Do you think Cour 3 and 4 will give Rukia anything ?

My ideas would be for her to get something emotional with Ukitake , because they've not interacted for the entire arc , and when they finally do , he's about to sacrifice himself

And his death , it falls flat like a pancake , as Kubo treats it like it's just another plot point , we don't even know that Ukitake's dead until the very end of the series

I'd also want for Rukia to have a little team up with Byakuya and Toshiro against that Bottom Bargain Thor

Because again , Kubo's such a hack and fraud , why aren't your Kuchiki siblings and ice users not teaming up ?

Kubo wipes off Rukia and mostly everyone else of the board because he just didn't know what to do with them , really , for that week when he was writing and drawing the chapter , it was blatantly clear he just didn't have any real ideas and so went with the easy way out

And I mean , if Bottom Bargain Thor is such a strong opponent , shouldn't you want him to face more people ? 1 against many ? Especially with how huge he gets

There was no reason for Kubo to clear so many characters off the board other than his pure laziness and lack of ideas , when really all he had to do was simply let your characters use their abilities , Rukia doesn't even get to use hers since her fight with As Nodt

Lastly , I'd want to of course see Rukia with Ichigo in the final fight against Yhwach , as it was promised infamously by Urahara , which to this day , are still his final words in the series

So curious on if the new anime will keep that in or cut it right out , or worse , change him saying Ichigo & Rukia , to Ichigo and Orihime

I have so many ideas on how the final fight could go , but it would take me quite a while to write them all out

The main points would be , what can anybody even do against Rukia's absolute zero ? Maybe Yamamoto’s bankai , but Rukia’s power is to actually control / lower the temperature , so couldn’t she just lower the temperature / heat of his flames ?

Yhwach also mainly uses his almighty to break people's swords , how can you break Rukia's when she can obviously reform it with ice , as she does in her fight against Aaroniero

The real question should be , what can Ichigo even do against Yhwach when he enters that final fight with only a third of his powers ?

He had both his Hollow and Quincy before , now he only has his Shinigami side , surely he can beat Yhwach now

Tbh, I don't know. I don't watch the TYBW anime adaptation & don't have any particular hopes for it to fix anything. There's just a bunch of plot holes in this arc (Bl3ach in general 🙄) & underdeveloped characters that the cop-out ending left in its wake 😮‍💨.

It's a crime that Rukia was sidelined in the final arc. She never did anything significant after her bankai. She should've been beside Ichigo against Ywach, NOT Ori, who was treated like a ragdoll by Ywach, was more hindrance than help to Ichigo, & couldn't even encourage him! As if Rukia would've ever told Ichigo, "You can't fight anymore" !!!

She definitely should've had a moment with Ukitake, who should've lived imo. We never even saw him fight 💀.

Who knows if they'll remove Urahara's cryptic words about IchiRuki. It's a huge plot hole, so either they'll keep the scene as is with no elaboration (and we'll witness Bl3ach burn again), remove it, or keep it but actually give us the IchiRuki tag team we deserved. Ichigo vs Ywach, the final boss fight of Bl3ach, was an entire circus. Worst final boss fight I've seen in a battle shounen 💀. The IR tag team could save it, but that would mean the atrocious conclusion to the series would have to be fixed. They'd have to fill in the other plot holes too, no? I don't wanna have any expectations on that, tho.

Wish Ichigo had seen Rukia's bankai 😫. Remember how impressed he was when he first saw her shikai? He couldn't stop staring 😭. Imagine when he sees her bankai 😩.

That Thor fight never had a conclusion, did it? Just another plot hole that I don't know if the anime will fix. I personally enjoyed the Kenpachi, Byakuya, & Hitsugaya team up 🙃. It would be cool to see our fav ice users team up for something, tho.

Anyway, I'm only looking forward to seeing clips of older Hitsugaya & the GrimmNel scenes 😅.

Sorry for the late reply!

[the-bloody-sadist]

#we don't support peer preasure in this house

Love your hashtag above.

Can I ask how do you deal with hurtful comments on your fanfics from someone you consider a friend? Like I know if some stranger send hurtful comments it felt bad but damn when someone you know said the same thing it felt worse. Early this year I was kicked out and blocked from an animanga lover group when they find out that I wrote mlm fanfics from major shounen series (naruto,bnha, aot, jjk). This what they said :

“I'm convinced you must have never had friends before because all of these relationships are perfect depictions of what PLATONIC friendship is. If you want a gay story support ACTUAL gay couples like in BL & GL manga. Do you know how frustrating it is to see people move mountains for a non canon ship that’ll never happen then ignore actual gay manga’s and anime’s in BL & GL anime/manga...."

What do you think? Even until now, I'm still feeling a bit guilty for liking non canon mlm and wlw ships from shounen series. But when I found your blog and read your posts, I felt way better. Especially that answer of yours to anon who asked is it weird to love mlm& wlw more than wlm. Thanks for sharing your hard work (analysis, fanfics, arts, reviews).

Sorry for my rants and for my weird feelings.....

Ohhhh this is so precious please don't apologize for sending me this ask, I love feelings and hearing about other peoples' experiences with them and how my art/accounts have somehow been relatable because of that.

The peer pressure in fandoms is absolutely insane and convinces me that the social aspect works the same as any high school full of bullies. There WILL be mean girls, there WILL be cliques, and if you're a creator like me, you're going to be a MAGNET for like ten different types of them.

As for how I deal with hurtful comments, I was raised in an environment that constantly shamed me. I was controlled from all sides on what I could draw, write, and consume, so I'm used to being shunned by those who "love" me because of what I'm interested in! Because of this, the hate comments were what I EXPECTED going in and the positive comments were actually the things that threw me for loops. Hurtful comments only had the power to nag at me when I didn't have an audience (or friends) to bounce them off of so they wouldn't keep popping up as a "do I actually do this, though?" "am I actually bad for this?". But now they don't bother me; they give me the chance to either make a troll reply or spice up my friends' group chat for the day.

As far as a FRIEND leaving a hurtful comment??? I have so much sympathy for you. I am SO sorry they treated you that way.

When I make friends, I tell them openly what I do and to what extent. This way, I gather the type of people I want and push away those who don't. If they think it's not okay, they're silly.

Those friends who kicked you out of their little club? SILLY. They think they're so pure and moral for gatekeeping what can and can't be done with creativity and passion. They won't ever know what it feels like to live as freely as you do. In the end, their opinion is an opinion that is largely not shared by the logical, rational public. Any professional in the art/film/writing industry can tell you that much. How else are we supposed to make stories? Have a little IMAGINATION!! DAMN!

I'm saying a lot of this because it's the best thing to tell yourself when you read things that are clearly meant to make you feel shame when you haven't done a single thing wrong. Since this is Tumblr and I can ramble to my heart's content, maybe it'll help you if I also point out the specific tools that have been used in that message they sent you. Sometimes a good breakdown of tactics is all it takes to remind yourself you're not in the wrong.

"I'm convinced you must have never had friends before" AKA "you're so ignorant" - invalidating your experiences to crumble any foundation you might've had to stand on if you wanted to argue back. Starting off with this helps them cut you down so your self-esteem is lowered.

"these relationships are perfect depictions of what PLATONIC friendship is" - their opinion is being stated here as a fact, as if the entire world agrees with them and there's no other way to see it. First of all, this means NOTHING to the shipping world, since it exists largely to turn friendships into romances. Idk what they wanted to do with that one.

"If you want a gay story support ACTUAL gay couples like in BL & GL manga" - I'm not sure what kind of burn that is. SUPPORT ACTUAL GAY COUPLES LIKE THE REST OF US!! Okay snuffledumpkins. Guess nobody taught them how to MULTITASK!!! GUESS WHAT? I CAN SUPPORT ACTUAL GAY COUPLES *AND* NON-CANON GAY COUPLES, FREAK! WHAT NOW, HUH??? Being serious though, this is an attempt to define for YOU what ''''''true gay couples'''''' are (ACCORDING TO THEM), when this is an entirely fluid meaning and can be applied to whomever you'd like in fiction. This is THE PURPOSE OF FANFICTION.

"Do you know how frustrating it is to see people move mountains for a non canon ship that’ll never happen then ignore actual gay manga’s and anime’s in BL & GL anime/manga...." AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA! (inhales) AAAAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAH imagine being so stupid that you don't know how much better LGBT representation can be in fanfiction and non-canon works than in actual BL/GL works. Imagine thinking that the only way you are allowed to enjoy BL/GL relationships is through canon couples, otherwise you're not helping the cause. Here's the biggest thing to remember: they don't give a fuck about the cause. They are using that language as a way to shame you. Oh you think these friends are in love??? You must not support LGBT people in real life. You must not support ACTUAL stories about ACTUAL gay people.

The logic jump is LAUGHABLE.

Ughhhh, what a long rant from me. But your last paragraph absolutely WARMED my heart, minus the part about feeling guilty. Let me just...[shines spotlight down on you][metal screech][picks up megaphone] YOU ARE NOT IN THE WRONG FOR WANTING FICTIONAL FRIENDS TO FICTIONALLY FUCK EACH OTHERS' BRAINS OUT!!! YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT THIS MATTER, HOWEVER, ARE VERY UNDERSTANDABLE AND SHOULD NOT BE INVALIDATED, BECAUSE BULLYING IS A DIFFICULT THING TO DEAL WITH AND CAUSES VERY COMPLICATED FEELINGS REGARDLESS OF WHAT IS RIGHT OR WRONG. YOU ARE A WONDERFUL PERSON AND YOUR FICTIONAL PREFERENCES DO NOT DEFINE YOU. BE FREE, LITTLE BIRDIE! SHIP THE MASSES OF BOYS AND GIRLS IN RELATIONSHIPS THAT ANIME LOVES TO TEASE ON PURPOSE WITHOUT ACTUALLY FOLLOWING THROUGH WITH A ROMANCE SUBPLOT BECAUSE THEY'RE COWARDS!!!! THEY CAN BE ACTUAL GAY COUPLES TOO! BECAUSE YOU SAID SO! AND THAT'S OKAY!!!!

[puts the megaphone down][coughs]

I hope that helps. :D Thank you for the ask, and much love to you! It means a lot that you appreciate my work and my analyses and my opinions enough to ask me about such a painful subject.🖤

You are, in fact, quite normal for your opinion, and my entire audience would agree.

[hxhhasmysoul]

Sorry if I'm late for the ship ask game. Can I ask for these ships :

- Killua/Gon (my fav non canon ship from any shounen until now)

- Zuko/Sokka (my fav ship from ATLA, and they're also my top 5 fav characters from that series)

- Gojo/ Getou (sorry, I know you dislike those two, but I want to know your opinion on this ship. Also, they're my main reason to enter JJK fandom)

Thx if you want to answer

KilluGon

Absolutely ship it!

What made you ship it?

Canon, they're prone to these very romantic moments.

What are your favourite things about the ship?

How devoted they are to one another. They meet by accident and get entangled with each other so quickly. Killua follows Gon around during the exam, then Gon goes to save him and since then it becomes a duh for them that they do everything together. And then the trauma they both endure puts a strain on their bond and we see in real time how their relationship partially sours because they are too young and they don't know how to deal with the trauma and the stress. They make each other better and worse, and it just feels so real. It's just amazing.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Idk how unpopular it really is but Gon isn't abnormally selfish, and he's not some villain in their relationship. They both contribute to it hurting them both. People getting hurt in relationships and still fighting for them and working on them is just so normal. I think also that people who dislike Gon or have no interest in him should no be shipping this. And Killua isn't a soft uwu boi. He's got a mean streak, is petty and prone to addiction, the soft boi outfits are a lie.

Zuko/Sokka

I don't ship it.

Why don’t you ship it?

In a previous ask reply I talked about how much I like MaiKo. And that's just my default ship for Zuko. The thing with Sokka is that his heterosexuality forces him to reconsider his misogyny, it's not ideal that this is what makes him start respecting women but honestly, who cares as long as he doesn't act like sad loser towards women in the end. And I'm saying this because having a sister who was his life line and his keeper for years after they lost their mother and were left behind by their father, did nothing to make him not a dick to women. And I think that if Sokka'd been gay, he'd've never changed. He'd've been one of those gays who look down at women. What if he lead Zuko there too? Like Azula makes Zuko's life quite awful, so some bigoted takes about women could've made him a misogynist and feel justified for it too.

What would have made you like it?

If they had more chemistry in canon. I just can't imagine an exciting dynamic between them to engage in shipping it? Nothing about this ship makes me think they could make each other better and that's a must for me to ship anything, really.

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

I'm sorry but not really. I have barely seen this ship around because I don't go to the ATLA fandom, I don't think even fanart for it has ever crossed my dash. I mean it's marginally better than Zuko/Katara, because that one is just toxic heterosexuality the ship.

Gojo/ Getou

omg, not really.

Why don’t you ship it?

Like with HisoIllu, I accept that this is a logical ship and it's likely canon. But unlike HisoIllu, I actually actively can't stand it.

Generally, considering how toxic Gojou's personality is, I consider all his het ships misogyny and all his queer ship, queerphobia, even such absolutely toxic shit like SukuGo, even GoKen, even Gojou/Touji. I don't even like Touji but not even he deserves that. Apart from SatoSugu. Getou was a truly disgusting fascist adult and a condescending fuck as a teen, I think they can have each other.

Why I actively despise it, is because of the fandom. The fans of these two characters separately and those of this ship are some of the loudest and most obnoxious in this fandom. They will literally take panels, scenes or chapters that are about other characters and unleash some truly unhinged word vomit to make it seem like there's some connection to Gojou, Getou or their ship. Usually it's either complete misrepresentation of what is in the manga or pure untagged fanfiction. But the tags of other characters get regularly flooded by this kind of shit. They act as if they couldn't stand there being parts of the JJK fandom where their favs are not worshiped, where their ship is not the most important thing.

What would have made you like it?

Nothing. If it weren't for the fans, I would've been neutral about it. I wouldn't have cared about it because a thought about any dynamic between these two assholes leaves me completely cold. But I wouldn't've cringed when I saw it in the tags to the fics in my tags. I wouldn't've cringed writing the single Gojou involving scene I've ever written.

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

No, I'm still sad that the most awful fans of these two and their ship haven't rage quit the fandom when Sukuna finally reduced Gojou to tolerable portions. Honestly it seems to be getting worse. Despite how liberally I block, it still often feels, even on some leaks days, that there's more about this ship in the JJK tags than of the actually relevant stuff.

[tae-shimura-is-my-wife]

They aren't shoujo but...

Originally I wouldn't post it because I didn't wanna to cause controversies and thought it was silly, but this has been annoying me for a while so here we go...

The idea that shoujo is any mang/anime containing romance is annoying and tiring when it's a diverse demographic, and is even worse because a lot of people use the "romance" aspect as a way to dumb down the demo, so I really understand shoujo fans frustrations with it but there's certain mangas that folks get PISSED OF when most think they're shoujos even insinuating it's a completely crazy statement which in my opinion isn't fair.

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Apothecary Diaries

Let's start with this one, that actually is the one which makes me more annoyed (and novel fans too)

Apothecary Diaries is a light novel that was published digitally, since LNs don't have demographics like mangas, they're categorized as joseimuke (for women/girls) or danseimuke (for men/boys), and guess what? It was written by a female author aimed at a female audience oh wow! "But the manga adaptation is a seinen!" yes, but this isn't a strong argument when code geass manga is a shoujo and we know very DAMN WELL women aren't the target audience for it 💀. Also an interesting thing to note is the (printed)novel beloging to square enix and they don't have a josei demographic, so it didn't have much chances of getting labeled as their og target audience.

Also it's kinda funny that people got kinda pissed at the notion of elements that could intend it being for women like Maomao herself or Jinshi (there's plenty of Jinshis in joseimuke medias so why they got mad) and it's especially funny because jp otaku men hated it when the anime aired, calling Maomao ugly and annoying, saying that Jinshi is too unrealistic and it's a female power fantasy why this is a bad thing help .

·· ──────── · ──────── ··

Horimiya

Recently I discovered a lot of people hate that anime/manga and hate the fl, welcome back Toradora! Now to our shounen or... not exaclty? It was published in Monthly G Fantasy a manga magazine known for their bishounen characters and fanservice for fujoshis; some of their titles are Black Butler, Jibaku Shounen and they also do the manga adaptation of Twisted Wonderland a joseimuke game,

Despite being a shounen jp sites sell them in the joseimuke category and some of their titles can be found in the female aisle alongside with shoujo and josei and most of the information of the magazine is focused on it young female readers, which is ironic since other magazines don't keep ofuscating their male readers y'know, but looking at what is published there is kinda obvious the actual male demographic is almost inexistent.

Now to the actual manga, let's be for real Miyamura ALONE is a reason to why most wouldn't think this is for men yeah bishounens exist in male demographics but not in romances, it's literally a recurring joke on how shounen romance girls look stunning meanwhile the men are average as hell, but in Horimiya is the opposite, look Hori is super pretty but compared to Miya she gets overshadowed to the point HE is the main selling point of the series.

Since i talked about Miyamura being the main point, this is also a reason why much wouldn't think this is for men, generally the idea of shounen romances is getting a perfect waifu, she's the main point, a girl that a guy would dream have, but when Horimiya launched actually the girls were fantasazing about Miya and they still do! Miyamura has more merch than Hori and look it's basically IMPOSSIBLE to have anything of a male character in a male targeted romance, since the idea is to you collect and appreciate your 2d gf, just search for popular shounen and seinen merch of that genre and see what I'm talking about.

To finish Horimiya most jp sites tag it as "for girls" manga and it's not even because of being a romance as many would think, since Blue Box and Kaoru Hana are sold as shounen in the same stores, so yeah maybe people weren't that crazy about calling it shoujo 😆.

·· ──────── · ──────── ··

Skip and Loafer

And last but not least Skip to Loafer you probably would be thinking "this chick gonna say this shit is secretely a seinen shoujo?" but no! It magazine is pure seinen, so if this isn't from a proto-shoujo magazine, neither having the a adaptation being joseimuke why is it here? Simple the content, Skip to Loafer is a coming of age story about a high school girl that focus on growing up, female friendships, characters emotions and has realistic deciptions of girlhood, hmm where did these things are more common? Which demographic would have something like that? It's obvious guys c'mon! The only thing that makes it not be a shoujo is the label, to the point where a lot of shoujo fans thought it was one and it's constatly compared to kimitodo, also the author already wrote bl and josei before so it's not like people are completly crazy thinking this could be for girls, and let's be honest, do you really think this is a series which the target audience are adult men? SERIOUSLY?

And yeah there's some men that said this is better than shoujo and stuff, but if it was shoujo they would say the same shit, saying "it's not like the other shoujos" how they did with Yona, Fruits Basket, Rayearth and even Sailor Moon recently and please stop letting dumb dudebros that don't even know what shounen or seinen is affect you that much, most of the fans are women both in jp and west, and most of them already watched shoujo before.

Just to conclude that part and also adding some things seinen and shoujo line sometimes can be very blurred, a lot of shoujo authors are or were seinen writers, also Kageki Shoujo were a seinen before moving to Melody and Orange moved to a seinen mag.

︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵

And to finish I understand the frustration of people recommending this series instead of actual shoujo ones (except Apothecary Diaries bc it is for women), especially because the manga community tend to snob shoujo series and see them as lesser just for being targeted at girls, demographics do matter! But I don't think is fair to get pissed off at people interpreting these works as targeting girls, considering they do have a female appeal and were purposely created that way by its women mangaka. I still think the real enemies are the ones calling Nisekoi, My Dress Up Darling, Rent a Girlfriend a shoujo💀.

[braemjeorn]

i was calculating daewoong's age for a fic and there'll be some spoilers here so mind yourselves.

anyway let's get it. the hypothesis is that if he was 17 in that scene where he got beaten up (I don't think he would tolerate any more beating after 18, he'd fight back) and seojin was at least 5 blowing on his wounds cutely, they'd have a 12 years gap. or 13 if she was 4. which means, that considering seojin graduated college on track at 22 in the year 2022 and shin cha-il came at her second year of career, she's 24 and and daewoong is 36 during the series.

now daewoong's actor jin goo was 44 (b. 1980) during filming - which is also possible to be daewoong's age but considering seojin was at least 5 or 4 during that scene, it's too big of a gap. again, i don't think daewoong would tolerate anymore beating after 18. (he could be even younger in that scene, so the gap would be closer, but the keyword of the flashback was my highschool days and all.)

so this statement baffles me.

either someone is not considering things right in the script or mr yang was exaggerating his loyalty OR he did saw the 6/7 year old son of his CEO being bullied by his older brothers so often and just decided to defend him from then on, hence the claim. hilarious headcannon but very possible - and most touching. in this perspective, daewoong is easily in the hero/victim position and the brothers the villain, which is an interesting view (shounen arc much?) still hilarious, so i'll give you daewoong's pretty smile to entertain ourselves.

(honestly this all depends heavily on seojin's age because with the flashback scene and how she's a junior employee, i really don't think daewoong could be any older that 37. hardly. possible. that's my cake, eat it.)

talking about age again, i like to think that the gap between the older two and daewoong is more than a mere two-three years. even though they look like very mean college kids here.

but - gunwoong had two kids, right? the oldest at least 16 or 15 years old.

the son was wearing a jacket in the hospital scene (ep 2 i believe?) while his sister was in a uniform, it's possible to presume that he just started college, so 18 at most.

say that gunwoong got married in his late 20s - around 27, and had kids soon after. with that number, he'd passed away at… 42-ish. at least. but i think him and sewoong could be way older than that, because it's vewy reasonable to me that when the two were in early elementary years, 6 or 7 year olds, their emotionally distant dad just brings in a new woman after their mother passed with a baby in tow. without the right orientation that would have been a despicable prospect that the hate lasted years after. equally worse even if only daewoong comes to be raised in the house when their mother's alive because father wants to take responsibility for the bastard. same deal if there are no mothers around and just three brothers not knowing what to do with each other. no healthy emotional attendance or proper parent figure, plus the influence of how others might degrade daewoong's low birth, so they just—sewoong hated his guts and gunwoong only started to acknowledge daewoong a year before he died like—

he ended up rising above them all. damn king.

[rockanroller]

Spoilers to Kaze to ki no uta is an old shounen ai (boys love) anime about two students sharing a dorm together one the main characters Gilbert is pretty much the foundation of Angel dust, someone whose been abused, manipulated and can’t trust anyone, and both sexual harass men. Gilbert is a victim of child SA he is very hyper sexual and puts himself in dangerous sexual situations with men so he can hurt himself or to get those men to hurt another main character and his love interest. They do show explicit scenes of Gilbert being SA but it’s not for gratification like his not tied or gagged showing clips of BDSM porn with a shitty pop song talking about how “loves to be exploited but secretly hates it” it’s really heartbreaking plus Gilbert is totally in love with his abuser, who isn’t such a joke like his abuser is fucking terrifying he wants and enjoys Gilbert to destroying himself

Gilbert sexually harasses his roommate and love interest Serge but Serge stands up to Gilbert and says “no” like the sexual harassment is never written as comedic it’s taken seriously. Serge wants to save Gilbert or at least stop him from hurting himself by putting himself in this dangerous relationship with older men and even starts to fall for him but at the end of the day Gilbert can’t be saved and dies.

the thing with Angel dust is they don’t clarify whether he’s hyper sexual or just written as jokes? “lol Angel is making husk uncomfortable but husk secretly likes it 😈” “lmao Angel loves sucking dick and is such a slut and hypersexual people love talking about sex and dick sucking lol” and with how Valentino is written as joke with terrible voice performance I can’t take Valentino seriously as an abuser maybe if it was vox I could but introducing Valentino this early into the show was a mistake, I fucking hate how viv and crew underplay Valentino as just a “not so nice character or nasty evil man” like now he’s a rapist call it what it is.

tysm for giving us some further insight into other content portraying traumatized male characters in mlm scenarios. i haven't read it so i'll take your word on it for now and will have to read the manga sometime to form my own thoughts. but i can def agree with the last paragraph. viv's work has a track record of her writing switching back and forth between what she wants you to find funny and what she wants you to take seriously. most recently pointed out was how blitz/loona call moxxie fat and it's treated as funny--but then mammon calls fizz fat and it's treated as bad. or the fact that viv & friends & fans, as you say, tend to underplay Valentino a lot as just like...some guy Angel shouldn't be around bc "teehee he's a creep!" while still wanting us to feel bad for Angel, idk, it's a bizarre dynamic for sure. of course this isn't to say they haven't played Valentino worse in the past, many felt he was played properly threatening in Addict--but then as we've seen in his first appearance in Hazbin he's more like a pissy man-baby.

[pwnyta]

man idk I’ve been contemplating re-reading or re-watching some of MHA up until like. Where the shittening begins but I’m honestly having to ask myself if this has just retroactively ruined it for me. This is my game of thrones moment. When something had all this potential on the table and it was going strong and I was hopeful for this fun manga about superhero kids and their friendships and the way they drove each other to improve but all that has slowly been pushed aside to sprint to the end. Idk I’m not even exactly mad at horikoshi bc lord knows Shounen jump works their artists like dogs and the results can sometimes be worse than just ‘manga ends poorly’, so I’m like. Fine that this will probably be better for his health. But I’m still sad. ):

I feel ya man. It blows... for me it was either the villain arc or Endeavors arc I cant remember what came first but it was one of those two that made me go 'Damn this blows.' and then the hospital getting blown up and Gigantomachia ripping through the city was the 'Oh this series is DEAD dead. Theres no coming back from that.' and that was true... there was no coming back from that.

Yeah i guess youre right... its probably not all Horis fault but its hard not to blame him at least a little since Ive had some of the same problems with his writing the entire time (like Bakugo being a dog shit flat ass character or just random stops and starts to big world building potential moments like Stains 'corrupt hero society' or even Quirk bigotry that could have/SHOULD have been brought up so much sooner or was shown after specific points (like Toko losing control during the camp arc.)

Its very frustrating. its a very similar frustration I had for Bleach when that went down hill...

How the fuck does Oda keep OP so reasonable after all this time. That motherfucker is BUILT DIFFERENT.

[utaite-mun]

melting steel, a meta about shouto todoroki v tetsutetsu tetsutetsu

[ Spoilers for My Hero Academia through s5 and the Joint Training Arc. I will be discussing both the manga and the anime in this post as evidence of my claims and as points of comparison. ]

tl;dr I think that Shouto as of the Joint Training arc is still feeling many of the ramifications of his hate of his father still, which leaked into his fight against Tetsutetsu, which lead to him attempting to go through with behaviors that should have had more punishment for him, either by the fans or within the narrative. I do not believe that he is a bad or worse character or person for it.

I do believe that the anime’s adaptation of this scene shifts the emotional focus to something else rather than the already presented one, intentionally makes a character more antagonistic, and removes an interesting anger from the other.

---

The Joint Training arc in BnHA is clearly a top pick for many fans of side characters simply due to the format permitting for more screen time for much of the underutilized cast. Issues of writing and very little of substance to add to the characters has been a scene that rubbed me quite the wrong way for a time after first reading it, aiding no more by community reception. 

We’re going to be talking about the third battle, specifically the fight between Shouto Todoroki and Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu and talk about the circumstances in the battle and my opinions of them, as well as fandom perception and reception as well as applying a filter of real world logic to see what would’ve really happened.

In this meta, we’re going to be using a lot of direct screenshots from the officially English translated manga and a few screenshots with the Crunchyroll translations as evidence to back up these claims. As a result this post will be quite long under the cut!

Let’s start simple! Character motivations!

The easy one is, well, it's a class training. Mandatory participation for grade all that of course, but every character carries with them a little more than that.

We’ll start with Tetsutetsu because his motivations are a lot simpler, both due to being a far simpler person, and also without very much characterization. But what we see is telling.

He believes everyone thinks he’s stupid so he’s gonna counter Class A’s team!

This is entirely for the immediate comedy of showing that he is indeed quite stupid because he is causing quite the amount of collateral damage by flattening the arena. Outside of that, Tetsutetsu really doesn’t have any other motivations to want to win the or even to fight outside of typical school tournament battle shounen competetiveness!

Shouto on the other hand is a little more of an interesting case. While not a direct motivation, before the battle Tokoyami brings up the legacy and upholding the reputation of the heroes they intern under, being Endeavor and Hawks. Shouto is then prompted to think back on his past and the abuse that he’s faced from his father, with a particular focus on moves that Enji claimed only he could learn due to, well, not being like Touya (who couldn’t due to burning far too easily).

“You will learn these moves.” “Only you can do this technique!”

There’s a heavy focus on these move, this technique, that only Shouto can do, so claims Enji. This technique and these powers are the why behind all of Shouto’s abuse which is why the abuse is also so heavily focused on here.

But Shouto never takes a particular stance on these feelings when the fight starts, he’s just thinking about it because its part of the reputation he’s upholding, part of the legacy heaved onto him.

Now before we get into the nitty gritty of breaking down the fight with even more panels of evidence, we also need to talk about the two’s fighting styles. It might feel a little pointless but it’s very important to a point we’re going to bring up later and also to gather how the fight goes.

Tetsutetsu is a physical brawler above all else, he doesn’t have any range to speak of unless he starts throwing things, but outside of that he punches. It’s all punching and bludgeoning things, because that’s what his quirk is best for, getting up close and beating things up.

Shouto then is more of mid to long range attacker. His fire and ice are best used in wide areas where he can entrap opponents in obstacles of his own making. But we know him to not be the best at fighting hand to hand with people mostly because he’s never had to do that. His quirk always let him finish engagements before he ever needed to use his fists, or to think of how to counter them.

With that bit squared away, let’s look at the fight and the characters mental states during the fight. Admittedly, this is significantly more for Shouto, because Tetsutetsu does not have any real baggage during this fight outside of “I want to beat this team in a fight because we’re battling to see how many teams from each class wins” and more training. Very simple shounen battle competition mindset. But let’s look at a few examples before the particulars that I want to get into.

Tetsutetsu is brash and crude, but this is really just par for the course in all shounen series, and in fact, these behaviors are akin to Bakugou, if not slightly nicer, though not that much nicer.

And before we start going into Shouto’s emotions, were gonna talk about this, and talk a little about how this has been taken by the anime and a lot of other people. Yes, Tetsutetsu is indeed saying he’s going to clock Shouto so hard he passes out. Could Tetsu drag him back to the jail cell? Yes and no, yes because its more nice than beating him up, but no because that goes right in front of the other people.

Is this violent? Yes! Is this more violent than series typical violence that has been previously enacted on other characters? No! Bakugou has done exactly this to Shouto (to the point of actually making him pass out) in the Sports Festival on a public stage. This is series and world typical violence, whether we endorse it or not.

So let’s get into the meat!

Shouto Todoroki and Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu are fighting basically in the middle of a pipe jungle, Tetsutetsu has the upperhand due to early on getting Todoroki into a hold and then proceeding to punch his way to a victory by knocking out Shouto to then be taken to the faux jail cell.

Shouto’s ice proves to not be of very much effect when Tetsutetsu punches and shatters it, while his fire also proves to be of very little effect due to Tetsutetsu’s steel which resists fire and heat up to quite a high temperature (Shouto’s fire is likely only about 1200°C at it’s hottest, while steel doesn’t start to melt till around 1400°C).

In an attempt to fight Tetsutetsu, Shouto raises the temperatures of his flame, and says this.

And this is the very much part of the meta where I bring up my grievance.

Unlike the intentional comedic relief of Bakugou and his violence, Shouto in this instance is threatening violence unto another student that is unlike series typical violence established in the school setting (its important to note in the school setting because series typical violence outside also includes Kirishima losing the outer hardened layer of his quirk to Rappa, however that was a villain encounter who was TRYING to kill him).

Neither the audience, nor the character of Shouto, knows what melting Tetsutetsu will do to him. From a logical idea of how his quirk works, it would either melt his body entirely leaving just a puddle of melted metal, or the metal is just a layer atop the body, which looking at what has happened to Kirishima as reference... well, that layer would probably be the equivalent of Tetsutetsu’s skin.

It’s also very important to note that the heat Shouto creates in this moment is so hot it forces the cameras in the area that the teachers are using to monitor the situation for feedback to be destroyed.

Tetsutetsu responds, not by backing off, but by recognizing what the situation is with empathy for the other (yes empathy, he is burning, shouto is also probably burning, they’re feeling the same heat). And his recognition is a doubling down on his previous tactics. Knock out Shouto Todoroki in an endurance battle and quell the heat because Shouto will no longer be able to create it.

Shouto, too, doubles down. He doubles down that he’s going to wound Tetsutetsu is a severe manner. To which the reply is that Tetsu is ready to die in this training because if he can, then it means he’ll be able to do it when it really matters too.

The response is annoyance. And we receive a panel showing us just how massive the wall of flames he created really is. It’s massive.

The last of the panels of the immediate fight we need to look at is this one. Yes, Tetsutetsu eggs on Shouto, but that too is simply part of a fight. Shouto is choosing to escalate just for this short moment, with a concentration of fire to a punch, the only fist he’s hes thrown this entire fight by the way to double down on him not normally doing hand to hand combat, to hit Tetsutetsu, who is already warping under the heat.

So I’ve dug into the fight, broke it down, mentioned my major gripe, but lets dig deeper into this.

Shouto could not beat Tetsutetsu with his normal tactics, and was on a trajectory to being knocked out and losing. You may have noticed I left out some key panels here, and especially if you’ve only seen the anime, some key scenes.

All while losing, Shouto focuses on the reason for his abuse, this power only he holds. Which comes right back around to the flashback he was thinking on before the fight started, and what leads him to using such massive and hot fire against Tetsutetsu and threatening him. It is a technique only he can use that surpasses anything he had done prior to.

And when Tetsutetsu fights back still, he’s pissed! He’s annoyed that this guy can think that he can still possibly win this battle, he just wants Tetsutetsu to shut up and get away or else he’s going to hurt him with far worse than just some burns. He’s cruel and angry, and he’s willing to do a lot of things he probably shouldn’t. And I’m honestly a little pressed to believe that he was doing this out of anger in the moment.

When he wakes up in Recovery Girl’s hes just kind of dazed and confused. But he’s not fuming, and that probably in part of the heat exhaustion and likely lack of oxygen.

We’re going to go on a tangent about the anime now! Yaaayyyy....

For those who have only seen the manga, or have made it this far, the anime fundamentally changes a lot of the emotional context for reading Shouto (and Tetsu!) in this scene. And I really don’t like these changes.

First we need to focus here. There are no clips I can find of this scene but this is 8:30 into episode 96, Battle 3 Conclusion. The anime completely removes the second half of this statement from Shouto.

First, at the timestamp, there’s a heavier emphasis on Shouto getting physically punched. A focus on the impact and the reaction of him heaving over, and whether intentional or not drawing a heavier emphasis and direct imagery to the next scene which is of a child Shouto on the ground after being similarly hit. Even if the words spoken carry the same meaning as the manga’s the scenes tone and imagery does not.

There’s also this!

This does not exist in the manga, nor is there any real reason for Tetsutetsu to act in this manner.

If the above scene with Tetsutetsu was supposed to be in the manga, it would be where this red circle is. And sure, you can assume that it pulls on the previous panel with him saying he’s going to punch Shouto until he’s knocked out, but that’s a very different energy from the above.

Finally we need to focus here. There are no clips I can find of this scene but this is 8:30 into episode 96, Battle 3 Conclusion. The anime completely removes the second half of this statement from Shouto, being “Unless you wanna melt!”.

What the anime did with this scene with just a few changes ultimately changed a lot of the emotional context of this entire scene in a way that painted Tetsutetsu in far more of an antagonistic light than he really was. Between imagery that all but asks you to picture Shouto having a PTSD response (in the vein of a paralyzing panic attack), and adding a line which makes Tetsutetsu sounds far more sadistic or cruel than he is muddies some of the focus this scene had.

The manga didn’t have a focus on the abuse specifically nor did it make parallels to it the same way the anime did. It used the abuse but more specifically it was calling into recollection the reasons for the abuse, not necessarily the abuse directly (though it is all connected yes). And due to not having a line about Tetsutetsu telling Shouto to just get punched and take it (which is already terrible to say to anyone), Tetsutetsu was also completely more empathetic without it, because he still recognizes this as a classmate who he’s just gonna knock out and he’s gonna do it faster because they’re both BURNING.

So the scene happens, Tetsutetsu makes it out alive, we all know how this ends, you probably do since you’re still reading. Let’s talk aftermath.

I’m gonna sum up a lot of science and say, Tetsutetsu should not be alive. Working under the assumption his quirk is one that functions as a layer of steel over his body, his insides should have been so heated they literally explode. Like when you microwave food and it pops so loudly in your microwave it sounds like a gunshot. Imagine that, but your body. (Also there should be no oxygen due to that fire).

But I like Tetsutetsu, and I think everyone would like if Shouto didn’t commit a murder in the end, so we ignore that.

Next, we address Honenuki and Tetsutetsu dropping the tower on Iida and Shouto. No, Honenuki dropping part of the pipe on Shouto’s neck therefore knocking him out is not any more extreme than previous violence done by other characters (see Bakugou knocking out Shouto in the Sports Festival). 

And no, dropping the tower is also not any more atypical than anything that Shouto himself has done in the past. It is not any more heinous than something we haven’t even batted an eye at. It is akin to Shouto dropping the zero pointer robots on the obstacle course in the Sports Festival, which he did not care if he had smashed anybody under (very clearly because Kirishima and Tetsu were under there).

We’re also going to talk about here, that Shouto faced no ramifications for threatening to either kill or seriously maim Tetsutetsu in this fight, which is not behavior he typically engages in without reprocussions. There is no reprimanding by Recovery Girl or any of the teachers regarding his actions that could be potentially dangerous.

Here, in Chapter 241, we see that none of the students have any particularly bad things to say. They all think it was cool, and that it’s worth showing off as one of his super moves. Shouto doesn’t face consequences.

In this vein there have been a lot of fights where consequences happened. Shouto and Izuku at the Sports Festival had to be stepped in on by Cementoss and Midnight because of the threat that one of them would be too badly injured, or Izuku and Bakugou fighting against All Might and All Might being reprimanded for how he fought Izuku and possibly snapping the kid’s spine (even if it was played up as a joke). But that just never happened here.

And with that, we’re going to talk about real people reactions now. People like you and me, and I don’t have evidence of these but I want to talk about it. I at least want to touch on it here.

The fandom reaction to Class 1-A’s misconduct and dangerous behavior is vastly different from the reactions to the dangerous behavior of the same caliber from 1-B. There’s also heavy favoritism towards 1-A with no exception.

Back in 2018, when these chapters were first released, I never once saw any person talking about, “Hey,,, that’s actually a little messed up that Shouto’s threatening to melt someone”, but I definitely saw people getting mad that Honenuki let a pipe drop onto him or even the tower. But not a thing about how it’s similar to Shouto dropping those robots.

There was also a string of people just joking and being outraged about Kinoko, nevermind that especially what Shouto was doing was on just as bad of a scale (I’m looking at all those broken Geneva Convention jokes, yeah you know it, Shouto breaks it too, hes a walking flamethrower).

In the end it’s just a funny story about weird superpower teens, but for how much this series community used to revel in adding some complexity, it always just felt a little weird and bland when it was just this hype for unlocking a super move, that’d possibly even come at the expense of another character’s life.

---

I’ve been building this case since then and wanted to wait until the anime adaptation to really say something about it, little did I know how I’d have to discredit the anime to fast by doing the characters a disservice in my view.

Ultimately, I do like this scene. There’s a lot of interesting ideas here, especially about Shouto and his annoyance being driving factors (and something I want to write about in another post, talking about Shouto through some of his major plot points). I also think there’s a lot of things you can make here that I think are interesting, like in my “Lets Have a Talk, I’m Sorry” comic where it’s possible to say that Shouto was so blinded by this legacy that he threw away the safety of others.

I just think it’s a shame that the anime warped it in such a way that it only let’s you read a trauma ridden (oh no shouto is having a panic attack poor boy) version of it, and that no one really took the time to think about it like this back when it first released. In the end, I kind of just hope that I can offer a different look at a scene people love for so many reasons (and that I dreaded for a year), and some of my opinions on fandom perception of characters (which i do want to go more in-depth about later as well).

More of my BnHA meta’s can be found in this master list!

[liquidstar]

your ocs

BUT

in Re:Zero

how would they end up causing Subaru's deaths?

Omg that's such a fun question 😭😭😭 poor Subaru I'm about to kill him with ocs sorry

But here's what I think would happen:

In the case of Polaris I can see it being a fight caused by somekinda misunderstanding on her end and also on Subaru for being terrible at explaining shit. I don’t think she’d kill him on purpose through this but she does NAUGHT have good control over her powers so he might get an icicle through the heart or something. Typical day in the life and death of Natsuki Subaru though, who has been frozen like? 3 times? At least?

Saiph also can’t control his powers well once his sword is unsheathed- but it’s less so a case of physical control like with Polaris, and more so the kinda thing where the power overwhelms him and the more flames there are the less he realizes what he’s doing. So I’m picturing a scenario in which his sword is unsheathed for too long and Subaru is just caught up in either the fire or the sword. Preferably the latter, to be honest. 

Bella has a very strict NO KILLING rule so in her case I think it would have to be a pure accident. Not like the other two did it fully intentionally either but I was still thinking of fights against each other. Idk exactly what it could be in this case, maybe something like Bella swinging her weapon at a monster but it ends up dodging, and Subaru somehow ends up in the way before she can redirect the swing. In this case for Maximal Drama it would totally have to be the case that she managed to redirect it just enough to make it a much slower death than it would’ve been if she had done nothing. This is important bc it would fuck her up more to kill than him to die, at this point, and hes gotta see that. For the drama.

Al is probably the most prone to not listening to Bella’s orders, is the thing. Meaning that even if she has a “no killing” rule as the leader, he’d break it if he felt he had to. Subaru can come across suspicious at times, due to a variety of factors, and if Al believed him to be somekinda genuine threat and saw no other alternative. I mean he’s probably the only one who’d actually be willing to kill a guy on purpose really. He’s always been just a little bit unwell and whenever he decides to enter his shounen rival “villain” era maybe he’ll kill him again who knows. I will say though for the record that either way it wouldn’t be something he’d find any sort of joy or pride in at all, and ideally he’d prefer to avoid bloodshed at all costs. But, you know, he wants to protect people At All Costs too. And when weighing the lives of your friends vs some random sketchy dude… Sorry dude.

Also like the thing about Subaru is that he really wants to help people and sort of play therapist even when he’s clearly encroaching on sensitive territory. Mira is repressing quite a lot- If not outright deluding herself in a few ways. I think that if Subaru tried to scratch the surface of this mind palace of hers, she probably wouldn’t react well. If she has a mental breakdown it could fuck with the wind real bad, and would probably get worse if he continues to try to talk to her. Basically imagine something like the “choose me” scene (iconic) but wind instead of fire. And this time the person he’s talking to is not listening at all but closing herself off further, air ball style. So there’s not really any escaping the winds, he’d either get swept away by them or hit by something and that’d be that. If you wanna get a bit darker with it she could end up using all the air present to create her “bubble” and there’d be no oxygen around so he’d just suffocate.

Felis kills him for knowing someone with the same name as her. She has to be special. The end. (Joke answer. They'd actually probably love each other lol)

[piduai]

The ugly baboon is just a p!mp .

So rat chi just tried to make us sympathies with one. The only reason why yoshiwara wasn't abolished after his underserved nice passing is because there still some idealization of these kind of place which is awful.

I can't believe gin ball ma used to be an example of strong female empowerment media for me and anitwt(☝️🤡) 2018.

There is nice stuff but it's NOT one . It's not because something is less bad than it's peers that it's meeting the minimum standards.

I wanted to rewatch and follow your commentaries but nevermind also I never liked the alien space stuff .

You know I think the yato clan could be a superhuman clan from earth and we didn't need all these space stuff and that ugly electrical obelisk. (the tower that they like to put in any cover )

Not surprised also when you take into account his real friendship with the ruronini kenshin author .

I'm sorry to lash out my hateful keyboard because I'm a hater and find negativity in everything , I feel comfy to lash it out here 🚬🚬🚬 ( fuuuu) .

on one hand gintama is a gag manga whose brand is hiding good morals under a raunchy and jaded exterior but on the other hand 🙄 the worst thing is that it's actually miles betters than its peers LMAO. i wouldn't call it female empowerment now and neither did i consider it such back when i was first into it but i quite like the female cast, and unlike other series at least it has a female cast that is only getting saved like half of the time. what is pissing me off though is that at times it tries to raise the issue of female subjugation, reductive gender roles and what have you and then immediately shoots itself in the foot while trying to parade its lukewarm message, resulting in something even worse than if the status quo was left untouched. sad! males idolize yoshiwara and other red light districts and keep reusing its setting in their shit stories because they are demons. and it's concerning when this stuff is presented in shounen jump of all places, a magazine aimed at children. but whatever

i don't really vibe with the alien stuff either, to be honest when i just started rewatching i was a bit baffled by how... idk, right-adjacent this whole "outsiders are enemies, we need to protect our country" stuff is. maybe i'm imagining it though, i can't coherently put it into words but it left me 🤨 huh never noticed this before. besides it's boring and ugly. i stopped following the manga closely after the arc that came after shogun assassination but i remember watching the final movie in the cinema and it was literally just 2 hours of non stop boring alien fighting and i feel like that thing dragged for 2 years in the manga, the last few arcs they go to space and they just keep fighting space animals over and over and it has no meaning or definition and then it ends. i don't really care about yato as a whole to be honest but they were soooo underutilized, they're like this superhuman quing dynasty lite but the only prominent characters are kagura's family and mutsu (who wasn't even known as yato for most of the story and then it's never brought up again) like they were so fumbled. i think in the end literally everyone was fumbled because every single character needed to be scraped off the board to make space for the annoying ass ugly insufferable mc because god forbid his dick is not being sucked for 0.2 seconds

this is a safe space for haters ✌️😤 all in all the forte of this series has always been the comedy and that's why i picked it up and liked it in the first place... and it's still funny. given lots of grace we can say that some of its serious stuff is also mildly entertaining but it should have never deviated from being funny imo, but i find my rewatch quite fun to be honest. all things considered up to a certain point it's not a bad series at all

[number-1-kuaidul-fanboy]

I cannot shake off the fear that the Velgearians' deaths are permanent

Studio Bridge doesn't have a precedent for deaths the way Gallop did. The closest thing we had to temporary deaths in Bridge was the characters being turned to ice in the Great King of Terror arc and that arc had a heavy emphasis on trying to save the ones who'd been trapped in ice. This Velgearians' death arc though? I don't think the idea of bringing back the Velgearians who've died has graced even a single character's lips yet. It still could in the last few episodes to be fair but so far, it's all about preventing more deaths which at this point, let's be real, is all of one death: Yudias. But if anything, the opposite of saving the Velgearians has come up in the most recent episode:

These lines in particular really fuck me up. Because on the one hand, I see the reasoning: life shouldn't be eternal and we all have to accept death eventually. But on the other hand, the Velgearians have entire goddamn galaxies in them! Look at this dialogue from episode 89 when Kuaidul explains why he's dying:

Is he saying that the Andromeda Galaxy ITSELF is dying here?! Because that's how it reads to me! We know Yudias has to survive since he's on the season 3 poster and, if my logic with Kuaidul is correct, Yudias's galaxy is the Milky Way and you can't exactly kill that galaxy off and still have a world.

My point here though is that if this logic is correct, then it's not just Velgearians who are dying: it's all life in the galaxies inside of them across the vast universe which humans haven't explored more than a tiny piece of that are dying. More lives than we could ever feasibly comprehend or know are having their lives snuffed out swiftly and prematurely. This goes far beyond just the quote on quote "artificial lives" of the Velgearians. I know the end of all life in the universe is an eventual inevitability and can be considered "just nature" but the way it's been presented in Go Rush with all these fantasy elements, like the reason the Velgearians existing in the first place being the actions of one individual, prevents me from seeing it as "just nature" as Zwijo is apparently claiming.

The Creator, from what we know so far at least, has honestly done something sinister and horrific by molding parts of the universe itself and stuffing them into what we know now are mortal, albeit long-living, beings whose lives are flickering out and by extension, seemingly ending the lives inside their galaxies suddenly, pre-maturely and, in my eyes despite Go Rush claiming otherwise, unnaturally.

How much of this the writers intended I have no clue but the more I think about the implications, the more horrified I feel. And I'm not sure what's worse: if the writers did fully think all this through and are permanently killing the Velgearians knowing all this or they didn't think it through and they've just dug a massive hole for themselves.

But why do I think these deaths are permanent in the first place? After all, Yugioh and shounen in general is no stranger to temporary deaths and bringing back characters through whatever means necessary because they want to write dramatic deaths and sacrifices but need to keep the characters around in some form to advertise their cards.

Well, I've seen every Yugioh series twice each and here's every non-evil (or at least not fully evil) duelist character who permanently died. Apologies if I miss a few:

Atem (Freed his spirit by going to the afterlife in the very last episode.)

Daitokuji (Died a villain and a traitor but lingered as a ghost who acted as a guide to Judai at times.)

Roman and Goodwin (Villains who at one point, wanted to do the right thing and were "lead astray." Chose to stay in the afterlife.)

Paradox, Bruno, Aporia, Z-One (Villains whose ultimate motive was trying to prevent a doomed future and in the cases of Bruno, and Z-One (and debatably Aporia), ultimately sacrificed themselves for Yusei to save the future.)

Yuto, Yugo, Yuri, Serena, Rin, and Ruri (Died and became part of Yuya and Yuzu as spirits.)

Haru and Bohman (Honestly just pawns of the pure evil Lightning but believed in their cause to the very end. Were reunited in the afterlife I believe?)

Earth, Windy, Flame, Aqua (Gave up the last of their energy to Ai, permanently killing them. Should be noted that that Flame and Aqua never used their own decks, instead giving them to characters who did live so their cards were still advertised.)

Roboppi (The consciousness that made him who he was permanently dead and gone forever due to being unnaturally given free will.)

So uh... there's some overlap with these deaths and the Velgearian deaths that have occurred in Go Rush so far, particularly the ones who died and didn't come back as ghosts. The VRAINS deaths especially are the most egregious to me since all the temporary deaths (excluding Ai) were human and every single one of the permanent deaths were AIs. They were all an "artificial intelligence". I know these shows were produced by different studios but VRAINS killing all "artificial life" then one of the subsequent shows describing lives that are currently dying in troves as "artificial" is unsettling, especially since VRAINS isn't even an outlier. Fully evil or not, most of the permanent deaths in Gallop Yugioh (that didn't come back as ghosts like the Yu boys/bracelet girls and Daitokuji), were either non human (ie: the AIs in VRAINS) or "gave up their humanity" as part of their evil, like the Stars of Iliaster putting their consciousness inside "artificial" android bodies to extend their lives and carry out their evil.

The way I see it, Go Rush's latest episode claimed that since the Velgearians' lives are eternal and artificial, keeping them alive would be "unnatural" and thus they should accept their deaths. And honestly, in the context of Velgearians, most of whom don't even know that their lives are "artificial," is just horrifying and messed up.

So I hope my aimless overthinking speculation here is wrong. I hope they aren't all permanently dead because it would be a miserable end to their stories. The only thing in my mind that makes me question my own reasoning is not knowing when the Go Rush writers knew for sure they were getting a third season, as I doubt they would've killed all the Velgearians knowing that could've been the final note of their show since the target demographic of the show is still children. Still, I don't know when in production they knew they were getting that third season so again I just can't be sure...

[trashexplorer]

BLCD Review: Unmei no Tsugai ga Omae da Nante

Title: Unmei no Tsugai ga Omae da Nante (運命の番がお前だなんて)

Author/Artist: Haruta

Release Date: 2021/06/25

Cast: 

Okitsu Kazuyuki x Masuda Toshiki

Taito Ban

Tsuchida Reiou

Kobayashi Kousuke

Matsuura Yoshiyuki

Tanaka Tomomi

Watanabe Yoshimi

Synopsis: Free-spirited omega Shishikura and straight-laced alpha Kotani have disliked each other since middle school, so neither are pleased to learn they will both be working at the same company. Shishikura is even less thrilled when he discovers that he and Kotani are a fated pair! The two men take verbal swipes at each other every chance they get, yet still wind up in bed together again and again. Both chalk it up to biology and refuse to admit that deeper feelings might be involved, and Shishikura begins looking into other potential marriage partners. Will this tsundere couple ever get their act together, or will destiny be derailed by their own stubbornness?

Review Proper

Finally, the thing I mistook for Yukyuu Omega is here. *exhale*

If y’all know me, you’ll know that I absolutely abhor omegaverse (you can thank Kurui Naku Ban Beta, Sayonara Alpha, and Erito for that). Literally everything you could do in an abo has already been done. I don’t see a point in making more of these. Mangakas: Okay, let’s do domsub instead But hey, am I not a Okitsu whore? No. Anyway, even though I was excited about listening to this, I knew I was going to hate Kotani because he was an asshole. 

There’s only one thing worse than an abo.

AN ABO WITH AN ASSHOLE CHARACTER.

But, in spite of myself, I actually enjoyed this. 

I’m having a moral crisis, help.

JK. Unmei no Tsugai doesn’t sell itself as a serious plot, so it shouldn’t be taken seriously either. Unlike our deep try-hards. I mean, it’s your pretty run-of-the-mill dumbass gets an excuse to fuck the asshole, falls in love with him, the asshole becomes more of an asshole, the dumbass drags a third party to make him jealous, the asshole becomes more of an asshole, poor third party gets led on and dumped, and the dumbass and asshole finally gets together without the asshole even apologizing, medetashi, medetashi. But the way that Haruta wrote and movic set it all up was fantastic. 

Now this is how you do comedy. I initially had some doubts ‘cause the narration in the first track was kind of strange lmao. It went from medieval style to traditional Japanese and it was narrated by someone who sounded like a news broadcaster wth. Is this a densetsu??? The CD later turned out to be a whole vocal flex for Massuu and Okitsu ‘cause goddamn. 

Massuu, for starters, used a tone slightly above his Hirokuni but slightly smoother. I haven’t read the manga before, so I wasn’t sure how things were going to go, so I was very surprised that he pulled his shounen (aka his Kirishima) voice later! I loved it. His changes were dynamic, chaotic, and very fitting for Shishikura. AND! AND! JESUS CHRIST HIS SEXAY MONOLOGUES!!! HELLO??? WAS HE PAID EXTRA??? Y’ALL GOTTA HEAR ALL THE BEDROOM SUBJUGATIONS!!! I didn’t know he had that in him tbh. I was just blown away. He has never bottomed this chaotically before, if I recall correctly. It’s evident that he had a lot of fun recording this (as did Okitsu as per the cast talk) and I love that! It makes me wish this had a second volume so we could hear more of this kind of Massuu.

Onto Okitsu,

Y’all already know what I’m gonna say. 

Is my bias over Okitsu making me like this? Who knows? But it’s undeniable that my man has, once again, slayed this role. I won’t talk about his perfect performance much ‘cause I’ve already run out of praises years ago, so just know that if you’re not an Okitsu bitch by now, you’re really missing out lmao.

ALSO

I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT WE’VE WITNESSED OKITSU PLAY TWO BETAS, A PRETEND OMEGA, AND NOW FINALLY AN ALPHA!!! We don’t count the disrespect that was Shounen no Kyoukai

-Chesk, 25, hates abos but will listen if Okitsu’s in it

Anywho, these two also had great chemistry with each other. They’re more or less in sync during their mattress mambos, so I really wasn’t spazzing out during Smoky Nectar. I was thinking maybe I was asking for too much. 😂 Idk what to feel, knowing that this is Fatgum x Kirishima

In conclusion, get this. Get this if you’re a fan of the series and abo in general. And if you dislike abo like me, this still is worth getting if you’re an Okitsu/Massuu stan. If you want to see just what makes voice actors good, you’ll be in the right place. As for those who want to read the manga along with the BLCD, it is doable, but bear in mind that there is added and cut dialogue. I only have the magazine releases, and I’ve noticed that the narrations are rearranged, so do try buying the tank if you can (reading the Chrima release with it is doable too tho). Gosh, I really wish this wasn’t an abo lmao. Anyway, I’m afraid there aren’t a lot of gag abos like this out there, so I wouldn’t be able to recommend anything similar. Go Kashikomarimashita: Destiny and Re:birth for more Okitsu tho