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needle-thread-thimble-spear · 5 months ago

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I find the cultural phenomena of the maid as opposed to its direct descendant (the generalized domestic laborer) to be really interesting, particularly in the transfeminine sphere. This post is gonna be kinda rambly and not have much a point and involve discussion of kink topics, abusive relationships, transmisogyny, colonial violence and its consequences, etc so heads up for that but anyway.

Starting with the regency/early victorian era Europe, there's this gradual development of a complex household structure among the upper classes, which caps out in the late victorian/edwardian era. This environment forges the "prototypical" idea we have of the maid, whom you'll see in period pieces and historical fiction. She might have worn a (modest!) black and white outfit, she might not have. If her employer is relatively poor she may supply her own clothes. Regardless though, she's a servant for someone wealthy enough to keep her on. Her employer might have inherited their wealth, or found success in a relatively new and burgeoning capitalism, but they were definitely a member of one of the upper classes. She might come from a working class family, or depending on her role, from the petty bourgeois/lesser nobility (it wasn't uncommon for a young lady to have a "companion", often poorer relative with no prospects of her own). It's interesting (though in hindsight not particularly surprising) how the space from where some women might become maids, wasn't very far away from the space where a family might keep on 1-3 people on staff (if you'd like to read more on this, Emily Post's original etiquette, written in 1922 is available for free on Project Gutenberg. Its a really interesting text, here's a summary of the maid section I wrote).

Anyway. Its around the height of this period that the "french maid" is codified. Apparently (my research on this isn't the most extensive I'll freely admit) it wasn't uncommon then for the english upper classes to hire maids from France. Wealthy men became quickly fascinated with them, and before long the french maid is a staple in the erotic material of the age. My understanding is that this is how the black-and-white stereotypical maid dress entered the public consciousness, since that was common at the time (indeed, other time periods and places had different standards for uniforms!) and is what the french maid in life would have worn.

After the world wars, the social landscape of wealthy people changed, the concept of the "middle class" crystalized, and a number of household appliances changed the nature of housework quite drastically. Most of the families that would have been considered middle class a few generations earlier stopped keeping on a "maid of all things". Very wealthy households would hire fewer members of staff, or simply stop hiring a permanent staff altogether. From then on, it would be the role of the housewife to do the domestic labor, or otherwise one keeps on a cleaner or a cleaning service who comes around every once a while. Eventually we enter the modern understanding of domestic labor, where live-in servants are rare and when they do exist they are often supplemented by cleaning services with no allegiance to any one household.

Meanwhile, the french maid continues along as a stock character, not just in explicitly erotic material but comedies and even historical/speculative fiction (and thus quite removed from her possibly more apt "prototypical" counterpart, see most anime/manga maids and "butlers"). At this point she may or may not bother with being french, and she may or may not bother with any domestic labor. The maid outfit (later costume) ends up as a stereotypical, almost trite set of clothing for sexual roleplay. It's in this environment that some early culture of "sissy" or "forcefem" kink latched onto the french maid. Since that avenue of kink focuses on feminization as humiliation, the positioning of the sub as a domestic servant for the (petty) nobility (which to be frank, is a pretty humiliating role all on its own, speaking from experience) dovetails into the whole shtick quite neatly.

Others more clever (and more concise...) than I am have written about how what makes forcefem hot is the transmisogyny. The transfemme is set up to hate herself, to self destruct, to feel shame and self-disgust, to feel terrified of herself, for what she is. I'm not gonna bother spelling out the connection here. A lot of transfemmes (even if they are terrified of it and try to avoid it like I did) find their way into that space pretransition. Or if they don't, they certainly become aware of it after they begin! And then we get all this response within our own culture. We reclaim "forcefem" as a term, maids become a common motif in the form of dolls in empty spaces type literature, but that undercurrent of internalized misogyny and shame still sits there I think. Don't mistake me, this isn't some sort of sex negative tirade against maidkink (that'd be a hypocrisy anyhow!) Rather I'd like to make the argument that we're frequently reclaiming something traumatic through it, even if we don't quite realize it. As transfemmes we often self efface when it comes to (trans)misogyny I think. It's easy for us to say we had an easy ride or that it wasn't so bad. But even so, ask yourself, would you be interested in maids so much if you weren't really badly hurt?

I want to end this going back to domestic labor. It has hardly been my career to this point. In fact, I've only spent a few months of my life as a housecleaner, several years ago before I transitioned. Those also happened to be some of the most grueling and torturous months of my life. A lot went wrong that summer. The work was physically demanding and the hours were long. It was one of my first experiences really working and I felt very loyal to my boss, whom I had a tangential personal relationship toward. I was alright at the work but I did it slowly, putting me behind my quotas. But the worst of it was the cementing of the unhealthy relationship I had with my ex into an abusive one. I won't bore you with the details, and beside they're torturous to relive. I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it, I don't think I've felt so much shame and fear so intensely and for so long a duration since then. A screening of Silence of the Lambs was involved. What we've been through, what we've been subjected to, frequently leaves us pliable doormats, eager to please and easily abused. Many are eager to use us for that, and few things can feel so good as kind words from an abuser. If you're like me, maids are a lot about those feelings. The (trans)misogyny we undergo is a real phenomena. Maids for me is an acknowledgement of that.

Post Script: I think it's important to acknowledge how the history of domestic labor has been shaped by racial violence as well as (trans)misogynistic violence. In the United States, the prototypical maid could be white or black to suite the tastes of the employer. In northern culture, the maid was generally whiter than snow, because she was presumed to be better than her counterparts, thought to be less likely to steal and better mannered. That's what made the northern lady comfortable. In the south, the maid (who was often, maybe almost always black I'll have to do more research) was either enslaved or had ancestors who had been recently. Domestic staff being black was part of the mechanism of settler colonialism in the south. The southern lady was more comfortable seeing black women explicitly beneath her, so they were maids. I say was, but these attitudes persist, in one form or another, across the US today and influence who works where. In the modern domestic labor field, a lot of the workers are immigrants. When I did work cleaning houses, I met a lot of people from the Caribbean or Latin America. Remember when I said before that live in maids are rare, and often supported by outside cleaners? One of the women I met doing that job was a live in maid from the Caribbean (I wish I remember where but I'm afraid I don't. I was going through a lot at the time my memory of it all is difficult to access in good circumstances) who was responsible for cooking and laundry. We came in to do wetwork and dusting/vacuuming. That family had more money than grains of sand, and they weren't even so rich tbqh. At my agency, we'd usually get a temp staff from Eastern Europe to do the work but they were unavailable at the time due to the pandemic, so Americans were hired instead. It should be little surprise that a settler colonial state will oft assign the women of its (oft imported) underclasses to do any sort of difficult manual labor (particularly the kind that happens behind the scenes!). The institutions of sex, which disadvantage women (and trans women still further), are but one avenue of hierarchical social violence and these intersect with one another tightly.

Hope you enjoyed reading this ramble, and that you found it illuminating!

EDIT: removed a poorly constructed sentence that doesn't read well and utilizes figurative language in a place that should be more clear

#maid #spinning

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eroguron0nsense · 3 months ago

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The Mysterious Mysteries of Mr Sir Crocodile (Character Analysis)

(Apologies in advance for discrepancies from my usual tone and for holding off on everyone who voted for this on my last poll. Honest to God I hope y'all enjoy this in some capacity because I've been procrastinating on this meta so long it's derailed ALL my other One Piece writing and I only accomplished it through addy-fuelled mania)

This was such a fucking pain to write. I really wanted to say something about Crocodile and what makes him so fascinating that wasn't like, another fan theory or just a set of headcanons, but that's easier said than done?? We could boil it down to immaculate design, screen presence, attitude, or just the fact that he got brought back as an unlikely ally who shocked everyone by saving the protagonist, but I don't know that those factors in and of themselves make for a villain who's become such an object of fandom obsession.

Whatever it is, it's certainly not backstory or depth, because 24 years and hundreds and hundreds of chapters after his introduction, we still know nothing about Sir Crocowani's past beyond a vague confrontation with the Late Great Edward Newgate (that apparently like, ruined his dreams or something?), and some totally-not-just-a-threat-to-out-him-if-he-betrayed-the-alliance blackmail material the Queen of the Queers is holding over his sandy reptilian ass. I was born and grew into adulthood in the time it took Oda to tell the world fuck all about where he's from or his inner thoughts, or his actual honest motivations and traumas.

All we have about this character are questions. Why did he save Luffy and Ace –very conspicuously after both of their lineages were revealed to the world– against all logic and reason? Does he have ties to the revolutionaries? Is he the long-lost son of Rocks D. Xebec? Did he bounce on Comrade Dragon's Monkey D and squirt out the fucking Warrior of Liberation? I assume Oda's going to tell us more about him, but at this point, he's managed to keep a tighter lid on Sir Crocs, Inc.'s past than the fucking Secret History

You may be wondering, dear reader: what the fuck is my point? What is there, at this final stage of Long Running Pirate Manga, for me–Frankie EroGuroNonsense, OP Tumblr Community Z-lister with like, 7 mildly popular meta posts under my belt–to write about the legendary Sir Krokorok that hasn't already been said or theorized? What eagle-eyed observations did I make while rereading Alabasta and writing toxic Crobin fanfic? Am I going anywhere with this? Sorta. Yeah.

Let's start with listing things we actually know about Crockpot, in roughly chronological (??) order: –attended Gol D.'s execution way back when he was my age, along with anyone else who's anyone from his generation.

–At some point, met and was known well enough by Iva that she could effectively blackmail him

–Made it far enough on the Grand Line, somehow getting to the New World, and managed to pick up an 81,000,000 bounty (low end for a warlord, presumably scouted fairly early in his career)

–Wanted to be Pirate King until he gave up on it, not 100% explicitly confirmed but most likely due to getting his ass beat so badly by Whitebeard that he settled for picking off small fry and racketeering behind a government desk job. This makes him profoundly relatable to the rest of us depressed fucking losers who acquiesce to our own mediocrity.

–At 30, after presumably licking his wounds for a hot minute, sets up shop in Alabasta, comes up with a clever evil plan to quietly build up enough arms to conquer the world with a WMD, and then gets his years-long bioterrorist coup attempt foiled by a 17-year-old.

The rest we know: after a brief moment of glory as the unsung MVP of Impel Down/Marineford, he immediately reverts to Failguy Mode, gives all his money to a literal clown, and consequently gets roped into the neverending uncontrollable PR nightmare that is Cross Guild. It's still super vague and we know little to nothing about his past before the Alabasta Saga (for all we know he had a fling with King Cobra)

...Onto his personality and mannerisms. This shit's a lot more revealing. Superficially, he's everything: immaculate Bond villain levels of charismatic villainy, unbelievably ostentatious, dripped out like a Pimp, constantly smoking cigars, absolutely dripping with smugness and grease and disdain. Owns exotic pets and a giant casino, and spends every waking moment either grinning like a maniac when he's got the upper hand or storming around in a fucking mood when anything goes mildly wrong.

He's also pretty hardened underneath all that, obviously couldn't have lived a day on the grand line or survived Impel Down Torture otherwise. But even in Alabasta, Crockery gives off an air of being distinctly more grounded and willing to get his hands dirty than other flashy, established villains who flaunt their wealth and status. A big part of it is just his really hyper-masculine indomitable tough guy persona, but even early on he's very much micromanaging his operation, fighting people hand to hand in (as opposed to, say, Doffy, who literally puppeteers people while lounging around) and makes a point to keep almost all of his followers at a distance and rely on them as little as possible. He rants a bit about how dreams and whatnot are pointless follies, as One Piece antagonists tend to do, and repeatedly taunts Vivi about how her idealism can't save her, but with the context that he wanted to find Laughtale himself, it feels a lot like projection.

The character trait that's harped on a LOT in canon, and probably the most pertinent one to whatever demons he has, is Croconaw's profound pathological distrust for everyone around him. It's a huge part of what makes him a good early foil to the Nefertari family and the Straw Hats, whose collective strength is derived from organic human connection; Crocalor, by contrast, makes sure that up until the very last moment, he keeps most of his people so distant from him that they genuinely have no idea he's even their boss. His relationship with Robin is interesting, but he turns on her immediately when he realizes she either can't or won't give him the location of Pluton and has his dramatic stabbing/"I forgive you" lines about how he never trusted her or anyone from the start. He says the same shit to Mihawk when he suggests they join forces, even citing their mutual distrust as a kind of paradoxical justification for why they'd actually work well together.

Arguably the only exception is Daz Bones, but even that relationship is still a pretty reserved one; one of the few traits Daz exhibits is a similar avoidance of human connections to his boss and even though they've ironically formed a bond despite it, I can't imagine that they're emotionally close. I find these more explicit declarations of paranoia a lot less indicative of what's actually going on in Croconut's head than subtext, but I feel inclined to mention them just because it more or less tells us that his background/trauma has something to do either with betrayal or alternatively just being jaded and deprived to the point of self-isolation.

Krookodile's character gets a little bit more interesting when we get to see him again in Impel Down being a smug little manipulative rascal right up until he gets blackmailed by his endocrinologist, which is definitely medical malpractice but also funny as hell. I also appreciate that literally the first thing he does after getting out of his cell is change into a big coat and cravat to keep up appearances, but it's not until Marineford proper that things get really complicated. Saving Luffy and Ace is the first selfless thing we see Crobat do–while yelling at Luffy that he needs to protect what matters to him properly, no less– and he just keeps fighting for them after that, teaming up with his most hated rival crew to cover Luffy's retreat and telling the entire WG to go fuck itself multiple times over. He fights everyone on sight with no regard for his own safety, talks mad shit to Doffy, and demonstrates a genuinely compelling amount of honest to god chivalry.

For a short time, we see Crocomotive less as a really entertaining cartoon villain and more as a person with hidden, profound emotions and a confusing moral code that's seemingly incompatible with the vicious little creature we met in Alabasta. We come to understand, in a few very brief lines that give us way more questions than answers, that Cromagnon has deep-seated, emotional convictions he actively suppresses, and that whatever baggage he has is probably tied to wanting to or failing to save something of his own. His resentment of Newgate, who he really really wants to have a go at (despite theoretically no longer caring about the ambitions of his youth) is indicative of a desire to revisit the fight that probably ruined his dream and ego, but it's also tinged with a deep-seated grudging respect for a living legend.

Crock–Afire Explosion's obvious seething hatred of Doffy also gives us a few more insights into what's wrong with him. On a surface level, it makes sense that he dislikes a profoundly obnoxious, even flashier fellow warlord who achieved more or less the same goal he set out to in a shorter time, fucks with his business, and then mocks him/tries to recruit him right after his very public defeat and imprisonment. He postures a lot, especially with his lines insisting he's on a higher level and that Doffy could only ever join him as a subordinate, but he's visibly steamed in their initial encounter and clearly hasn't liked him for quite some time. I bring this up because if we stretch our interpretation a little (for the sake of my argument), Croc Holliday's distaste for someone who's (outwardly) so much like himself and embodies all of his villainous characteristics from back in Alabasta might also suggest that deep down, he doesn't actually like the things they have in common; he sees right through Doffy because he's done the same shit and he hates what he sees.

Having gone over all that, I've come up with some key characteristics of Crocomelon that I'll use going forward:

–Extremely performative: puts an ungodly amount of energy into maintaining a carefully curated persona, and projecting a certain amount of power, masculinity, and prestige. Not necessarily an unnatural or inauthentic one, but a constructed and purposeful one nonetheless

–Deep-seated paranoia, hidden secrets; probably intertwined. Keeps personal details on tight, tight lockdown, probably afraid of being known.

–Constant projection of his own insecurities and failures onto other people, making a point to be uniquely cruel in Alabasta to an idealist who loves her people and a dreamer who wants to be the Pirate King.

Ironically, he demonstrably respects and defends two people–Luffy and Whitebeard–who theoretically embody everything he hates or scorns (ambition, goodness, love, connection, romanticism, greatness in the traditional sense) and he intensely dislikes the villain most like himself, or at least the one who shares a lot of his worst characteristics (ostentatious manipulative scheming rat bastard backed by people stronger than himself) –The Grinch's heart grew three sizes at Marineford because of like, the compelling power of brotherly love and reminders of his youth or something

SPECULATION, CONCLUSIONS??

The difficulty with writing anything definitive about Crocko's Basilisk is that he's such a mystery, which functionally lets the fanbase project literally whatever weird personality traits, potential backstories, or anything else they could possibly come up with onto him. So I want to be clear that I have absolutely no interest in theorizing about the specifics of his past or secret identity or potential baby daddy or anything along those lines; I'm only interested in what we can infer about his personality by extrapolating from canon. And the conclusion I keep coming back to, the one that I'm convinced is true on some level, is that Crocodile is living a lie and he fucking hates himself. Everything he does, from how he acts to what he claims to believe, is a desperate effort to cope with his own insecurity and failure and cover up a past version of himself he's deeply ashamed of.

Now, unfortunately, Oda did not conceive of Crocodile as a trans man but stories belong to the people and we can do what we want let's forget about that and play it straight because he's constantly performing gender as a means of compensating for a deep-seated shame and self-loathing from whatever traumas and secrets he keeps hidden. Even assuming he's a cis man, he deliberately chooses a hypermasculine persona with a Capital V Villain moniker and pimp outfit and speech pattern he's carefully curated to project masculine power–physical, political, and financial–and we know it's performance because we see him break kayfabe and get legitimately fucking angry whenever he's confronted by a person like Luffy, who's crazy and brave enough to try and do what he couldn't and risk everything for love and hope that he cannot bring himself to feel for another person, or reminders of the past he tries so desperately to bury.

The lessons he's wrongfully obtained from his past are as follows: Idealism is a weakness. Dreaming is a weakness. Connections to other people and being known are crippling liabilities (If he is, in fact, trans and closeted, that's all the more reason to be existentially disgusted by what he used to be). All the hope he brought to the Grand Line, all the excitement of trying to carry on where Roger left off, needs to be purged and buried because all he got to show for it was loss and humiliation. But he can't stop wanting more, and ironically, after he gives up on conquering the Grand Line, he ends up chasing the same fucking poneglyphs and weapons because his ambition's still there; it's just compromised and much more jaded.

Everything he does that's seemingly contradictory makes sense when you realize that Crocodile resents his failure and wants to avenge himself. He makes a big show of talking down to Luffy and Vivi's petty ideals and shit-talking Newgate and his family, but he still wants to fight Whitebeard like he did way back when and help Luffy protect what matters to him. He hates Doffy, who's honestly just a more successful schemer than he is because it's a constant reminder of what he settled for when he took that warlord post and fucking gave up. He claims to trust no one, but he keeps Daz by his side and rewards his loyalty because he can't help but trust someone who respects him so deeply and follows him to the ends of the fucking earth long after losing the material incentive to do so. He claims to look down on people who aim for the stars and fight for love and joy and freedom and yet, in his most vulnerable moments–not in the face of violence or imprisonment, but when he's emotionally compelled to defend a child and help save his brother–we see how badly he wants that for himself.

TLDR: Crockman Holic is deeply insecure in his masculinity, desperately needs psychological help, and his character/potential redemption arc in One Piece is just dealing with his midlife crisis.

#one piece #sir crocodile #crocodile one piece #donquixote doflamingo #monkey d. luffy #marineford #marineford arc #cross guild #alabasta #op meta #op spoilers #op crocodile #trans crocodile #edward newgate #whitebeard pirates #whitebeard one piece #impel down

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cry-stars · 15 days ago

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Komaeda and Dementia: Part 1 of 5: Introduction and Overview of FTD

Hi everyone!

I’m an aspiring Komaedologist with an interest in dementia. I often see people doubting Komaeda’s stated diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia, since it presents differently in him than in the common portrayal of dementia in the media. While his portrayal may not be completely accurate, there is a lot of truth to it, and there are many symptoms visible in-game. I wanted to share a few posts about dementia symptoms that we do see canonically in Komaeda’s portrayals in SDR2 and DR:AE, and share some information regarding his specific diagnosis as opposed to Alzheimers, for example.

I work with people living with dementia as a recreation worker. This means that I see them living their daily lives, and know about difficulties they might have with recreational or day to day activities. There are a lot of observations that I might make that can’t be backed up scientifically yet, but do make sense in a practical way. Everyone with dementia is different, and since I work with seniors for the most part, some observations won’t transfer onto Komaeda. However, I’ll do my best to back up whatever I can with sources.

This post is just for fun and to give people ideas. It means a lot to me to see a fascinating and endearing character like Komaeda portrayed with dementia, since it is a sad and terminal disease, and I usually see it end badly in my job, so I hope to give people ideas on how to portray it, or just to notice things in a different way they might not have before!

My main sources for this post and the following ones include “Dementia Diaries,” which is a really cool project where people with dementia talk about their experiences, National Institute on Aging, Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Society, and my own work experience. I plan on doing more posts about specific symptoms that we see in Komaeda later, but I would be happy to hear from other people who have dementia knowledge, or to answer any questions that I can.

For the most part, I'm only going to be talking about SDR2 and a little bit of DR:AE. I haven't finished watching the anime yet and have not read any of the manga. If anyone has ideas from any of those sources, I would love to hear about them!

Overview of FTD: Which Variant does Komaeda Have?

There are two major forms of frontotemporal dementia. The first, which Komaeda likely has, is the behavioural variant (BvFTD), which is also the most likely for young people to develop. This variant of FTD mainly affects behaviour, empathy, judgement, and planning.

Komaeda is less likely to have the other variant of FTD, primary progressive aphasia. This form of FTD mainly affects language skills, including speech and comprehension.

Komaeda doesn’t seem to have very much trouble with understanding the concrete content of what people say to him, but he does occasionally seem to have trouble fully comprehending hidden meanings behind statements (for example, taking statements literally rather than as sarcastic). To me though, this is less connected to him not being able to understand the words or content of statements, and more not picking up on the emotions hidden in the statements (which I’ll address more in the behavior post). He does seem to have some trouble with word-finding in the Japanese version of the game, but again, it doesn't inhibit his ability to express himself given enough time to speak.

Another thing to note about FTD is that, in its early stages, it mainly affects behaviour and language processing, as stated above, rather than memory. In later stages, memory does start to be affected as well, but it’s different from Alzheimers (probably the most well-known form of dementia) in that memory loss isn’t the main symptom.

FTD’s prognosis is about 6-8 years. Komaeda states in his fifth free time event that his life expectancy is between half a year and one year. However, he is also referring to his lymphoma diagnosis, meaning he expected to die from a combination of both illnesses within that time frame. In SDR2, Komaeda is probably in the early to middle stages of FTD, since he was diagnosed right before entering Hope’s Peak, and was a Remnant of Despair for some time without treatment, so while we can see evidence of memory issues (which I will address in another post), it’s something he’s able to cope with and isn’t a debilitating symptom yet.

One more observation: while dementia as a whole is usually seen in elderly people, Komaeda’s specific frontotemporal dementia diagnosis has an earlier age of onset, usually between ages 40-65, and is rarely seen in elderly people. Even though being diagnosed in high school seems unlikely, it is not impossible. According to Alzheimer Society Canada, early-onset or young-onset dementia (between ages 18 and 65) accounts for 2-8% of all dementia cases.

Thank you for reading! I plan on making five posts total. The other post topics will be Outward Behaviour, Judgement/Thought Processes, Other Symptoms, and Writing Ideas.

#nagito komaeda #danganronpa #sdr2 #komaedology #danganronpa analysis #i'm really excited to do these #they might take me forever (even just this one took me a million years dfjkhfdfd)#but i hope they can be interesting or useful to someone #thank you to windcarvedlyre for the encouragement to post these #and for the help looking for sensory overstimulation moments in the game #i feel a bit shy tagging someone in the body of the post but i want to acknowledge you here hehe

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meimi-haneoka · 3 months ago

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Clear Card Trivia 5 ~ Real life models of buildings featured in Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card

Hello and welcome back to my column dedicated to Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card Arc!

After a rather "heavy" 4th one, for this 5th episode of the series I've chosen a topic that doesn't require to dig down into complex matters, but actually just admire the real life models of some of the buildings featured in Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card!

All of the buildings mentioned here have already been featured in a thread or tweet in my Twitter account, but I thought it was time to collect all the info relative to them in a single post, easy to browse through when needed! Maybe for some of you it'll be an interesting discovery!

Two of these models are old acquaintances, since they already existed in the old manga/anime but they came back, particularly one of them became pretty much a big deal in this arc, so they will be dutifully featured here.

Without further ado, let's explore these buildings under the cut! (I will also add useful info in case you want to visit them one day - many CCS fans already do this regularly!)

Tomoeda Middle School - The Gate Hotel by HULIC (ex Rissei Elementary School)

We start this review with one of the most iconic buildings in Clear Card Arc: ever since chapter 2 of the manga (because it didn't appear in chapter 1 yet) and episode 1 of the anime, this new building helped us getting accustomed with Sakura's new life as a middle schooler! Obviously I'm talking about the Tomoeda Middle School! It is a very nice building surrounded by cherry blossom trees, but the best part of it is that it's an existing building in real life!!

Let me introduce you to the ex Rissei Elementary School of Kyoto, which has been renovated in 2020 and turned into the current The Gate Hotel by HULIC. At the time of planning of Clear Card, the building was still known as the ex-Rissei Elementary School, although the building hadn't been used as a school since March 1993 (it had been turned into a multi-purpose space for the local community's gatherings and cultural activities). But don't be fooled: CLAMP didn't choose this building only because it's a pretty school - it is a very, very important historical building for the city of Kyoto (where CLAMP currently live!). This building is considered "the birthplace of cinema in Japan", since in 1897 an early film projector brought from Paris was installed in this school and an experimental showing of Lumière cinema was performed. Furthermore, this school also had the first swimming pool ever installed in an elementary school in Japan.

There's a very nice video explaining in details the history of this important building, subbed in English:

youtube

After a 10-years period where the building was used for cultural activities and festivals (particularly cinema oriented), in 2020 the renovation works ended and the place turned into a commercial building hosting a hotel (the current The Gate Hotel by Hulic), but also a library, events hall, restaurants, etc. enclosed in a complex called "Rissei Garden Hulic Kyoto". CLAMP also took interest in the renovation works, mentioning them in their social media at the time.

The thing that immediately stands out is that, in their renovation works, they kept the original architecture intact and so the building still looks exactly like Sakura-chan's school! You can see them here beside eachother and it's really the same.

If you are in Kyoto and want to do some "fan pilgrimage", as Japanese fans call it, you can reach this building at this address:

Rissei Garden Hulic Kyoto 310-2, Bizenjimacho, Kawaramachi Higashiiru, Takoyakushi-dori, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto 604-8023 JAPAN Official website with detailed info on how to reach there.

Clow/Eriol/Akiho's mansion - The Former Moji Mitsui Club

In Cardcaptor Sakura there's another iconic and mysterious building that had been pretty important in Sakura Card Arc already, but in Clear Card Arc becomes basically a matter of "life and death" for the new tenants who live in it: of course I'm talking about the mansion that first belonged to Clow Reed, then to Eriol Hiiragizawa, then to Akiho Shinomoto (along with Yuna D. Kaito) and ultimately is bought and managed again by Eriol! 😆

Kaito, the stoic and unfazed magician Kaito we all know, had been uncharacteristically nervous about obtaining Eriol's ex-house, since he was afraid that the previous owner had left some trick that would prevent them from obtaining it. This info was not revealed in the manga, but actually in a "behind the curtains" scene of the 1st Drama CD that came with volume 7 of the manga. Why was it so important for Kaito to get Eriol's ex-house? It's easy to deduce, once you remember that Eriol himself told Syaoran that his ex-house is a very good place to store and protect magical artifacts. And who carried a ridiculously powerful magical artifact inside herself, unaware of it? Akiho, of course. Eriol's house was probably the best chance Kaito had to protect Akiho from all the attempts of the Association+the Squids to take her away, back into their control (as we have seen in chapter 33).

This house was so important that the anime staff (along with scriptwriter Ohkawa-sensei) had to come up with a convoluted explanation as to why the house was back on its feet again when Akiho invited Sakura and Tomoyo in episode 8, since it had been completely destroyed to build an amusement park at the beginning of The Sealed Card movie!! (which, mind you, it's still canon!! They just suggested that Kaito brought that house back with his magic and the majority of the characters didn't realize the discrepancy).

Well, did you know that such an important mansion is an actually existing building? Let me introduce you to the former Moji Mitsui Club in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka prefecture!

As you can see by comparing it with the pictures above, the anime version had to change some elements of the front here and there, but the manga counterpart is basically a tracing of the real existing building!! Just like the ex-Rissei Elementary School, this building isn't just aesthetically interesting, with its exposed timbers evocative of German design of its time. It was built in 1921 as an accommodation facility of Mitsui & Co., Ltd., Japan's first general trading company, but it's famous for having hosted none other than Albert Einstein and his wife, during their tour of Japan, in 1922!! In 1990 it was designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan.

It is very interesting to note how the anime staff was pretty careful in keeping the same European vibe of the interiors of the existing building, with its big curtains, mantelpiece in each room, exposed wooden beams on the ceiling, dark brown half-wall wooden panelings.

In the manga we can mainly see, of this house, the living room where Kaito and Akiho always chat and have tea (which is the same of the anime), and only limitedly we can see another room (some kind of studio) and Akiho's bedroom. We even get a tiny glance at Kaito's bedroom in chapter 80, but it's basically just the bed.

This one above is the "Einstein Memorial Room" and it replicates faithfully the suite where Einstein and his wife stayed at while visiting Fukuoka.

The teal colored wallpaper with all those flowers makes me think that the design of Akiho's room in the anime might have been inspired precisely by this room! ✨

If you find yourself in the vicinity of Fukuoka, you can't miss the opportunity to visit this building at this address:

Former Moji Mitsui Club 7-1 Minatomachi, Moji-ku, Kitakyushu City JAPAN *Admission fee required for the 2nd floor - Einstein's Memorial Room More info on this page.

Masaki's Summer House - Rokkaen

And now we get to what I consider one of the most beautiful buildings featured in Clear Card Arc: one of Masaki's houses shown in episode 20 of the anime and chapter 20 of the manga!

This was seemingly Nadeshiko's favorite summer house and precisely for this reason, Masaki has planned to leave it as an inheritance to our Sakura-chan in the future! Truth to be told, he wanted to give it to her immediately, but Fujitaka understandably refused (for the time being) the inheritance of the house on his daughter's behalf. I don't even think Sakura knows of this, it's a matter the two men must have discussed in private. Regardless, dear CCS fans, this is a sneak peek into the future of our Sakura-chan and Syaoran-kun, as this might be the future nest of our two lovebirds. 🥰 And could a building of such importance and beauty be just a fictional house?? Of course not!!

Meet the Rokkaen, a gorgeous light blue European-style building in Kuwana, Mie prefecture!

The official Visit Mie website reports: "Completed in 1913, Rokkaen is an old European building with a four-story tower combined with a Japanese-style structure. It boasts a garden in the front complete with a pond. It was built by Josiah Conder, a British architect who also designed the Rokumeikan". Even this building, just like the former Moji Mitsui Club, was designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan in 1997.

As you can see, this is what the manga shows of this building, and at first glance it might seem like a different mansion because the tower doesn't appear, but worry not: it is still the very same building, only showing the left side of it! The tower on the right side is hidden by the trees (and the Japanese side of the building is missing).

I've checked a bit the interiors from the anime and manga, and while in the anime I didn't recognize particularly any room (the style is still similar though, particularly the half-wall panelings), in the manga there's one scene where it is incontrovertibly featured the sun room on the second floor: it's when Sakura wanders inside and eventually finds Nadeshiko's room!

From the accuracy of the drawing, we can assume Mokona sensei worked closely with different pictures of the real life building! 😉

At this link you can even take a virtual tour of Rokkaen! But if you really want to visit it in person, then take note of the address below:

Rokkaen 663-5 Kuwana City, Kuwana 511-0005 Mie Prefecture JAPAN *Admission fees required to visit the building More info on how to reach the place on this page, using an online translator.

Tomoeda Aquarium - Kaiyukan Aquarium

As for Clear Card, this building only appears in the anime, but it is another one that got a second chance after having appeared in the old anime first: the Tomoeda Aquarium! I still remember how the choice to feature this building again for a very important episode was met with lots of criticism from the SyaoSaku fandom at the time of announcement of episode 9, only to end up making everyone fall in love with the portrayal of Sakura and Syaoran's first date ever. ✨ The magical and intimate atmosphere of an aquarium, with its soft lights and pretty colored fishes, got an unrivaled charm! Well, it seems the design of this magical place (where Kaito and Akiho will have a date of their own later on - only mentioned and manga-only, for now) was inspired by a real existing aquarium, the Kaiyukan Aquarium in Osaka!!

And of course, for CCS, they couldn't choose an average aquarium: Kaiyukan was, when it first opened in 1990, the largest public aquarium in the entire world. Nowadays that record has been surpassed by other aquariums, but it's still one of the largest. Goes without saying, but the design was the same even in the old anime.

Not everything we saw of this aquarium in CCS comes from Kaiyukan, though. It seems like the iconic cylindrical tank (yes, the one that broke twice in the anime) might have been inspired by AquaDom, which was a very popular aquarium situated in the lobby of the Radisson Collection Hotel in Berlin, Germany. This aquarium held the World Record title for the biggest cylindrical aquarium in the world. Why do I talk in past tense? ...Well, this might seem like a joke, you might have heard about it or not, but sometimes fiction turns into reality and on December 16th, 2022 the big tank suddenly ruptured, destroying itself and propelling 1 million litres of water and 1.500 tropical fishes into nearby facilities and streets, with devastating damage. Only two people got hurt from the glass debris since this happened early in the morning (before 6 am), but if this happened even just an hour later, the human damage would've been so much worse, on top of everything else. Unfortunately, all the fishes died. ☹️ When the news came out, I saw a lot of Japanese fans relating the incident to what happened in CCS. 😅

Well, I can't leave information to visit AquaDom anymore, since it seems they don't have any intention to re-build the cylindrical aquarium, but I can certainly do so for the pretty Kaiyukan aquarium in Osaka, so if you visit nearby, definitely check it out! 😉

Kaiyukan Aquarium 1-1-10 Kaigandori, Minato-ku, Osaka City 552-0022 JAPAN *Tickets required Additional access info here.

Old Library of Trinity College & The Eiffel Tower

Alright, alright, I'll admit it: these two come straight from my obsession for YunaAki, hence why I've lumped them together. 😆 When I started getting more and more involved in the story of these two, I (over)analyzed all their panels together, in hope to understand them better and grasp some foreshadowings on the story. And chapter 39 of the manga is particularly dear to me because it showed some fragments of their travels together around the world. I got so interested in that scene in particular, that I started to look if I could recognize the places depicted. And while I had a hard time recognizing some of them, there are two places that are actually existing buildings in real life!

One is the old library of the Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland! When I saw that huge library in the corner of the manga page, I had to look for it. It looked so majestic and beautiful that it had to have a real life inspiration. And it took me to just type "biggest libraries in the world" on Google, to find it! As you can see from the panel circled in purple above, Mokona sensei reproduced (simplifying the design) the one that's called "The Long Room", the biggest and most important room of this impressive library, hosting around 200.000 old books in its 65 mt of length. There are also marble busts lining the room, which have been just vaguely sketched by Mokona sensei, but they do appear along with the seats in the middle of the aisle, indicated by my magenta arrow. The old library is just one building of the Library of the Trinity College, but it is also famous for housing The Book of Kells, which is "an illuminated manuscript and Celtic Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables", as reported by Wikipedia. When Akiho was introduced, they didn't mention she had lived in Ireland, and even though this technically could be just a randomly referenced library and nothing else, it's nice to imagine Akiho and Kaito lived there too. But they DID mention that those two lived in France for a period, hence why the next feature was easier to spot:

Despite the design is sliiiightly different (it's not a perfect tracing of the original, particularly where it seems to be corresponding to the second level deck), I think it's apparent this was meant to suggest the Eiffel Tower and the period they lived in France. The "atmosphere" of the scene also kinda fits it (Kaito always manages to get the best houses - like what do you mean they got an apartment with a view on La Tour Eiffel while they were living in France?? 😆). I don't think the Eiffel Tower needs any introduction, as it's one of the most famous and iconic towers in the world (even the Tokyo Tower is inspired to it!).

So let's just leave some basic info here in case you're traveling the world and want to visit the two locations above:

The old library of Trinity College Old Library, College Green, South-East Inner City, Dublin 2, D02 VR66 IRELAND *Admission fee and pre-booking info here. (Note that currently most of the books have been removed from the Long Room as part of a redevelopment project and will be moved back when works are done)

The Eiffel Tower Av. Gustave Eiffel, 75007 Paris, FRANCE *Admission fee required Additional access info here.

Special Feature / The Pictures in Sakura's Bedroom - Hong Kong

And I've chosen to end this post with an extra: not all of them are buildings but it's something I've already featured in another post loooooooong time ago on this same blog, and I believe it deserves to be featured and collected here again, along with all the other buildings of this arc, for easier reference!!

Have you ever wondered what are the pictures pinned to the wall of Sakura's bedroom in the Clear Card anime? When episode 1 aired on January 7th 2018, some chinese fans were lightning-fast to spot the landscapes depicted in those mysterious photos - they might have looked like some random photos at first glance, but in this anime nothing is left to chance!!

They actually were a very conscious, deliberate choice of the anime staff: they're all referencing landscapes from Hong Kong!!! The chinese fans recognized all the places immediately (and from blurry shots of episode 1, at that!) but later on director Morio Asaka confirmed in the interview of the Starter Book that they were in fact postcards that Syaoran sent to Sakura from Hong Kong during the time they've spent apart between 6th grade and 1st year of middle school.

When I first saw the post from the chinese fans, I remember my heart exploded with tenderness for SyaoSaku, but even more so when director Asaka confirmed it: it was a testament to the efforts made by our two lovebirds to keep their bond alive, waiting for the moment when they would finally be together again. And seeing that Sakura filled her personal space with Syaoran's home gave me a good idea of how much she had been missing him, and used those postcards to "wrap herself in his presence" whenever she needed to. I always appreciated so much this little "present" from the anime staff, always so careful in depicting feelings even through these little details. So let's review what each of those postcards depict (sorry for having to do it like this, but I ran out of pics allowed)

First column The Peak Tower Temple Street Ngong Ping 360 cable car Second column Victoria Harbour ferry Victoria Peak night view

For these ones, as they're just hidden cameos, I prefer leaving a convenient link for each of those places/attractions so you can delve far and wide into the interesting info provided by the official websites (all in English), and maybe even plan your next visit to Hong Kong!

And I believe that's everything, for what I could spot, but if you find other buildings in the Clear Card anime or manga that are clearly referencing real life buildings, let me know and I'll add them here to this post with credits!! ✨✨✨

Remember you can always check the other posts of this series through the hashtag #clear card trivia !

Are you already planning your next trip for a Clear Card pilgrimage?? 😆

#cardcaptor sakura #card captor sakura #clear card arc #ccsakura #sakura card captor #clear card trivia

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thepersonperson · 28 days ago

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Sukuna Can't Tell the Time (The unique way Sukuna is damned to eternal miscommunication and existentialism in the modern era.)

Notes before we start.

1) I will be mainly using the TCB scans for the manga because of their accessibility.

2) I need professional help.

(Click images for captions/citations.)

Preface

I want to get one thing out of the way. This is going to be a weird write-up because I'm hardly going to cite the manga.

I'm basically posting this as a reference for myself. All of this occurred so I could properly lean into the old man aspect of Sukuna for a fic I'm writing. (Aka I read too much on actual Heian Era history and now you all have to suffer.)

People often joke that Sukuna is an old man, but I'm here to tell you he is so out of touch and out of time that he might as well be existing in a never-ending Lovecraftian nightmare where time has stopped being real.

It's going to take a while to explain why this is the case so hear me out, maybe?

Fundamental Measurements

What is a unit of measurement? And where did these units come from? If you've taken an entry level physics class, you've already been through the existential crisis answering these questions caused.

But for the uninitiated, have you ever sat down and asked yourself why you know what a foot/meter is? Everyone has kind of agreed they represent a specific distance, and depending on where you were raised, you'll prefer one over the other.

I'm an American. I'm also an engineer. I have to use SI Units and Freedom Units all the time. Differing distance units are things I can easily conceptualize. I understand what a meter is. It's like 3.3 feet.

Every time I hear meter, my brain does the conversion to 3.3 feet because I was raised with feet as my base unit of measurement. But oddly enough, when I hear 100 meters, I instantly know how far that is. This is because I was a sprinter for all of Jr. High and High School. When someone says 100 meters, I picture the got danged torture stretch of the 300 meter hurdles.

The point of this is to establish that early life experiences become a reference point when thinking about things as an adult. If I didn't run track or do engineering, I would be a "What the fuck is a kilometer?" type American.

Measurements of Miscommunication

If you couldn't tell, I wrote the previous section with Non-Americans in mind. I specified the units of measurement I was using for distance because I understand people outside of the US could be reading my post.

But what happens if I don't do that? What happens when people assume everyone's units of measurement are the same as theirs? Allow me to recall a conversation I'm sure most of you Non-Americans have had with an American on the internet and vice versa.

Friend, Non-American: Ugh it's 40 degrees out today.

Me, American: Dang that sounds pretty cold, don't forget to wear a jacket.

Friend, Non-American: What the hell do you meant that's cold???

Me, American and remembering where they live: OH YOU MEAN CELSIUS. That's 104 in Freedom Units.

Friend, Non-American: 104 IS SUPER DEAD IN CELSIUS.

(40°F is 4.4°C btw.)

As you can see, these kind of assumptions relay drastically different information. 40 degrees without a unit is read as cold or hot depending on where a person is from. It also doesn't help that the conversion between these units is nonsense. The vast majority of people can't do °C = (°F − 32) × 5/9 off the top of their head.

I, for the life of me, cannot comprehend Celsius. Temperature is too abstract a concept for my brain to swap systems. I think there's a reason for this.

Unlike distance, you can't see the temperature with your body. You can feel it, sure, but sometimes you step into a walk-in freezer and come out feeling like everything is warmer than it is. Relativity like that won't affect how you see distance. A foot is a foot, a meter is a meter, and they will always look those distances. You can check them easily.

Temperature? You need a thermometer to check. Or you assume the generalized data on a weather app is accurate. And things like humidity can fudge with your perception it.

This is all to say that my brain assigned the number 40 as cold. It being a hot number is barely comprehensible because my foundation is it being cold.

(If you were wondering, yes this is why I write out dates like Month DD, YYYY. It's so no one has to look at 3/4/YYYY and guess if they're supposed to be reading it as March 4th or April 3rd because they can't tell what country I'm from.)

What does this have to do with Sukuna?

Well my dear reader, my question to you is: What units of measurement were used in the Heian Era?

Forget about distance and temperature. How was time measured in the Heian era?

Heian Era Timekeeping

Ancient Japan ran on something called a Lunisolar Calendar. This is a type of calendar based around moon phases and sun positioning hence, lunisolar.

Taken directly from Wikipedia:

"A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures, incorporating lunar calendars and solar calendars. The date of lunisolar calendars therefore indicates both the Moon phase and the time of the solar year, that is the position of the Sun in the Earth's sky. If the sidereal year (such as in a sidereal solar calendar) is used instead of the solar year, then the calendar will predict the constellation near which the full moon may occur. As with all calendars which divide the year into months there is an additional requirement that the year have a whole number of months. In some cases ordinary years consist of twelve months but every second or third year is an embolismic year, which adds a thirteenth intercalary, embolismic, or leap month.

Their months are based on the regular cycle of the Moon's phases. So lunisolar calendars are lunar calendars with – in contrast to them – additional intercalation rules being used to bring them into a rough agreement with the solar year and thus with the seasons."

Did you notice something funky? A leap month has to be accounted for with this calendar. And it gets worse. The duration between leap months vary because the earth's path around the sun varies.

Under this calendar system, instead of a fixed interval of time always passing for a year, everything is variable. This means conversion to a modern date, which uses fixed time intervals, is not a one to one thing. It's kind of like trying to convert February 29th to non-leap years. Some people born on this day celebrate on February 28th and others will use March 1st. Legally speaking in the US, March 1st is used for tallying. (And if you've seen the Pirates of Penzance, this is an actual plot point when trying to determine a character's contract clause.) So imagine that but for months, years, and hours all the time.

I exclude days from this issue because Heian Japan agreed that a day was as day. They don't shrink or grow. The 12 hours a day always pass! And yes I mean 12 hours a day.

Heian Hours

For the rest of this discussion I'm referencing this lovely source by Katherine M. Lawrence. Everything quoted is from here.

So... let's get into that 12 hour day thing.

"Days consisted of 12 hours based on the 12 zodiac animals, each Heian hour being equal to about two modern hours. In a moment I will get to why I deliberately used the word “about.”

Days were divided into six “hours” of daylight and six “hours” of darkness. Instead of midnight, the day started at daybreak. Only in the Meiji times, in 1867, did the day change at midnight.

What is fascinating is that there were always six “hours” of daylight and six “hours” of night irrespective of the time of year. In modern times, with mechanical and even atomic clocks, we accept that more daylight falls in summer than in winter. We might turn back or move our clocks forward twice a year. In Japan it was done 24 times a year—approximately every 14 to 16 days—so that the first light would always come during the first “hour” of the day, which was known as the Hour of the Rabbit, sometimes called the Hour of the Hare. Dusk would come at the Hour of the Bird, sometimes called the Hour of the Rooster.

If we were to measure the actual length of winter days using a modern timepiece, the Hour of the Rabbit would be shorter than two hours because the relatively shorter total daylight in winter would still be distributed into six parts.

The six nighttime hours in winter would absorb the extra darkness and be proportionately longer than the nominal two hours of our 24-hour clock.

All this kept the astrologers and priests busy, because every 14 to 16 days, the clocks had to be adjusted. “More on that in a minute,” which by the way, is an idiom the Japanese of the era would not have used, because our modern concept of sixty minutes to an hour and sixty seconds to a minute is highly tied to mechanical clocks."

In summary, Heian Hours quite literally grow and shorten depending on the season. That 1 Heian Hour=2 Modern Hours conversion only works when daylight hours are the exact same as nighttime hours.

But it gets even weirder than that. Rather than counting from 1 to 12 for daytime and nighttime like we might on our modern clocks, Heian Japan counted down from 9 to 4 twice. This results in a clock conversion that looks like this.

And remember, this is only accurate when daylight hours are equal to nighttime hours!

It should also be noted that these hours were announced by the ringing of temple bells throughout the day and the night. Everyone relied on these temples to keep the time at all times.

But wait, there's more! (Heian Months and Solar Stems)

This is where timekeeping really starts to fall apart in terms of my understanding of it so Ms. Katherine M. Lawrence is going to explain it.

"In the Heian period (and until 1867), each month began on the dark moon, also know as the new moon. The full moon would come on the 15th day and the month would end approximately on the 28th, sometimes the 29th, and even the 30th day of the month.

Japanese did not have the western concept of the seven-day week, though they certainly could count to seven. What they had instead was the concept of the solar stem, of which there were 24."

"The first solar stem of the Japanese year starts on the first day of the year: Start of Spring, which, unlike the Western calendar, is not in March. The Last Solar Stem (the 24th) ends on the last day of Major Cold. The beginning of the year in Japan, as measured by the Western calendar, would start somewhere between mid-January and mid-February, the variation resulting from aligning the solar stems with the lunar months."

In summary, Heian Months may be about the same length as Modern Months, but they are strictly based on the moon phases and the 24 Solar Stems are anchored around them.

This leaves us with a conversion calendar that looks like this. (Edited to number the Solar Stems.)

And remember, this is approximate. The Solar Stems do not always align with these exact Georgian calendar dates.

The lunar months, of course, do not use our calendar date names. I present a summary table based on several people's documentation (Source 1, Source 2, Source 3) since sadly the other blogger didn't include them:

(Jan-Feb) Mutsuki (睦月) Month of Harmony/Affection��

(Feb-Mar) Kisaragi (如月) Month of Changing of Clothes

(Mar-Apr) Yayoi (弥生) Month of Plant Growth/New Life

(Apr-May) Uzuki (卯月) Month of Deutzia Flowers

(May-Jun) Satsuki (皐月) Month of Planting Rice

(Jun-Jul) Minazuki (水無月) Month of Water/No Gods

(Jul-Aug) Fumizuki (文月) Month of Literature

(Aug-Sep) Hazuki (葉月) Month of Leaves

(Sep-Oct) Nagatsuki (長月) The Long Month

(Oct-Nov) Kannazuki (神無月) Month of Gods

(Nov-Dec) Shimotsuki (霜月) Month of Frost

(Dec-Jan) Shiwasu (師走) Month of Running Priests

This table merges multiple sources because the translations of Kanji differ and it's good to see how/why these differences occur. There's also the issue of the bloggers presenting the months like 1-to-1 conversions.

I want to stress that these Lunar Months start and end anywhere from the middle to the late parts of Georgian Months. This is why Source 1 claims Mutsuki=Feb while Sources 2 & 3 claim Mutsuki=Jan. Source 1 chose Feb because the majority of Mutsuki occurs in Feb while Sources 2 & 3 chose Jan because Mutsuki technically starts in late Jan.

Now that I've laid all this out, I'm sure you have the following burning question:

How the hell do you convert modern time to Heian time???

I turn to Ms. Katherine M. Lawrence again for guidance.

"If this post gets some interest, I will continue and explain how the author calculates..."

There's no guidance.

However! There is an example of a conversion without the explanation.

"Thus, we know as Yamabuki and Tomoe ride up to the Shayō Tōge, the Sunset Pass, at Sunset on May 11, 1172, in the middle of a freak snowstorm, the author can say with some assurance that it happened at the Hour of the Bird on the 13th day of the 7th solar stem, two days past the full moon of the Flower Month."

So I'm going to try to figure out how this occurred using the information I've been given.

Hour of the Bird: This one is easy! The bird hour is the official sunset hour.

7th Solar Stem: According to the chart that's between late April and early May.

13th Day: Since Solar Stems are about 14-16 days this means it's almost the 8th Solar Stem which starts around May 21st.

2 days past the full moon of the Flower Month: "Flower Month" is not on my chart. From what I know about kanji, I think this is a simplification of Uzuki (卯月) or the the Month of Deutzia Flowers. This aligns with the month of May.

This is where I give up. I legitimately do not know where to go from here. ...And that's my point.

What does this have to do with Sukuna?

Before I completely lose you, my dearest most patient reader, please consider the following:

You wake up in a place where time is counted backwards and the hours pass faster than you've ever known them to. The things you use to tell the time don't exist or are in a form you no longer can recognize.

You see a clock face that counts in the wrong direction to numbers you've never seen used for time. The sounds it makes are familiar and foreign all at once. When you try to use the times and dates everyone you ever knew understood instantly, you're met with complete confusion. No one except a few dedicated scholars know how to convert your concept of time to theirs.

This is how Sukuna experiences time in the modern era.

Sukuna Can't Tell the Time (Sukuna almost fumbled his date with Gojo.)

Remember all my rambling about my own experiences with trying to understand SI Units as a Freedom Units user and my complete and utter failure to convert Heian Time to Modern Time? This is to establish that on a fundamental level, it does not matter that Sukuna has access to his vessel's memories. These foreign units mean nothing without a conversion reference.

Yuta in Gojo's body showed us how the memory recollection process works. You see them like movie and must draw your understandings from them.

We also learn from Sukuna that he tends to ignore memories that aren't relevant to his sorcery. So something mundane like telling the time isn't his priority. (I often think about how Sukuna has been watching Yuji and everyone around him use a cell phone but he still calls it a photography device.)

(He's lying about the flowers though.)

So this leads us to Sukuna and Gojo setting the date for their battle...

When Sukuna heard Kenjaku say November 19th and Gojo say December 24th his brain was the equivalent of TV static. It's very likely that Sukuna had to rely on Kenjaku to ensure he showed up at the right day. (Kenjaku, of course, is an exception here because instead of drawing from memories, Kenny got to live through the transitional period of the Lunisolar Calendar to the Georgian Calendar and had 100+ years to adjust to it. And now that I think about it, the Culling Game using days to count time is probably Kenjaku being considerate of this generational difference.)

It's a really good thing that Gojo didn't specify the time because that would've made things worse. See the following examples using the handy dandy conversion chart as a reference...

Gojo: Let's do this at 10.

Sukuna: ???

Gojo: Let's do this at 9.

Sukuna: *Shows up approximately 2 hours late at 11 am.*

Gojo: Let's do this at 8.

Sukuna: *Shows up approximately 5 hours late at 1 pm.*

Gojo: Let's do this at 7.

Sukuna: *Shows up approximately 8 hours late at 3 pm*

Gojo: Let's do this at 6.

Sukuna: *Shows up on time?* (It’s December in the northern hemisphere so the sun comes up after 6. Sukuna might still show up a bit late.)

These examples also assume that Sukuna can still gauge Heian Hours accurately. That too is up in the air because the hourly bells that sounded the Heian Hours no longer exist. The temples and bells may remain, but their use for timekeeping has changed entirely.

Since it's likely he spent a large portion of his early life in a temple, there's a chance Sukuna has a strong internalized sense of Heian Hours. But how many people do you know that can accurately feel an hour pass on vibes alone?

There isn't any point in the manga where Sukuna indicates he knows what Georgian Month is, let alone a Modern Hour. I think that's why he's just waiting on top of the building for Gojo to show up. The day starts for him when the sun comes up, not midnight. He probably figured that as long as he was out there by dawn, eventually his date would show up.

There's something strangely adorable about that. Sukuna didn't go out massacring others for funsies or wreak havoc after Gojo was unsealed. He just waited a whole month and gambled on their connection starting the death date on time.

How Sukuna Might Tell the Time

When Sukuna uses time units, he only uses minutes or seconds.

Well...the narrator implies he's able to use seconds.

This makes sense despite the Heian Era not having minutes or seconds. They're foundational units rather than a unit he needs to convert to something mentally. Because they are so drastically smaller than other Heian units of time, it's easier for the brain to calibrate itself to them.

This means that if one wanted to communicate a duration of time to Sukuna, it would be better to use minutes or seconds.

For example, rather than saying "see you in an hour", "see you in 60 minutes" would be better. Otherwise Sukuna is going to default to 1 Heian Hour and show up approximately 2 hours late.

Another example, telling Sukuna you'll "be gone for a few hours" means to him that you'll be gone for most of the day. At this point it would be better to reference a duration of an activity he's familiar with than use minutes. Sukuna watched some of those movies with Yuji. "I'll be gone for 1-2 movies" will make a little more sense to him.

Funnily enough though, telling Sukuna that you work a 9-5 wouldn't cause a miscommunication for duration. That's 4 Heian Hours or about 8 Modern Hours. He probably thinks it's weird you start working in the middle of the day and into the night though.

How Sukuna tells time for himself is likely similar to someone lost in the wilderness. He'll mostly be relying on environmental cues like moon phase, sun position, constellations, and flora growth. (Which ironically, climate change affecting flora growth patterns would throw him off even more. I can't even imagine how he'd feel about light pollution stealing away the stars on top of that. But at least the moon is still there!)

But as you can see, the normal methods of precise timekeeping are next to impossible for Sukuna to use and this discrepancy is ripe for miscommunication. This has a lot of comedy and horror potential in fanworks. (Hence me writing this as a resource.)

How Sukuna Used to Tell the Time

After doing all this research, I found myself viewing Sukuna's theme Malevolent Shrine a little differently. I always found it to be a quite sad sounding song for his character. Villains as violent and fierce as Sukuna tend to get battle themes that reflect that. In comparison to high energy bangers like One-Winged Angel (Sephiroth Final Fantasy), Avalon (Ultimate Lifeform Kars Jojo), or The Last Mission (Murem vs Netero Hunter x Hunter), Malevolent Shrine is rather somber and unfocused.

This theme opens and closes with bells. The opening in particular feels chaotic with how the different bells seem to overlap and overwhelm each other. But if you listen closely, you'll hear the gong of a temple bell that keeps rhythm by marking the start of a new measure. Using this bell, it becomes easier to count the beats, even when it eventually disappears in the middle section.

His theme to me now feels like an echo of what Sukuna used to know before he was thrust into a world that is no longer in sync with his very concept of time.

"Interestingly, the Japanese “witching hour” is not at midnight, but at nominally 2 AM (1 AM–3 AM) and is known as the Hour of the Ox."

I don't really know where else to put this. Sukuna on his throne of ox skulls, a representation of the witching hour where reality falls apart and spirits come out to play.

How all this might look in action. (Defending my questionable writing choices.)

Though everything I've given is plenty enough for people to run wild with in fanworks, I would like to give examples of it in my own. My type of autism is one where it's easier for me have something to use as a direct reference. (Clear and concise instructions please.) So I want to provide that for anyone else wired similarly.

Context: The fic I'm writing is from Sukuna's POV so I've taken great care to avoid him using modern timekeeping terms. I have a timeline for everything outlined, but I refuse to make that clear to the reader so they can get the Sukuna Experience™.

Other characters will reference the time and give the reader little windows into what date it possibly is, but otherwise they have to infer it themselves.

But because I myself use modern time, I caught mistakes I made in an early chapter... (Aka before I realized Heian Timekeeping is Extremely Different.)

Old Sentence: The year is 2019.

Revised Sentence: The year is 2019 for the Common Era.

(Heian Japan was mimicking China so I'm assuming that the numbered years restarted with each era since I couldn't find how years were kept.)

Old Sentence: It’s reminding him he has not eaten for the past 5 hours and 38 minutes.

Revised Sentence: It’s reminding him he has not eaten since the hour of the dragon—338 minutes and counting.

(This one is self evident I think.)

But even within this chapter, I obscured the date by having Sukuna observe his surroundings. I don't think it's a good example so I'll use a different one from an unpublished draft.

...it occurs under the same wisteria and same midday sun. The branches and buds have begun to green and swell before the Flowering Moon has reached its full, an indication that the bloom will come early.

Wisterias bloom in late April around the time of full moon. April aligns with Yayoi or the Month of Plant Growth/New Life. I worked under the assumption that the moons can be called by their month names kind of like Native American moon names. But Plant Growth/New Life Moon didn't sound good to me so I changed it to Flowering.

So I do have a very specific date for when this scene occurs, but Sukuna doesn't know so the reader doesn't know. The best you can guess is sometime in April but you have to know when Wisterias typically bloom and what a Flowering Moon might be. (I'm hoping this kind of vague timekeeping disorients the reader and causes frustration. I used sun, moon, and star positioning charts for this got dang it.)

Tools to Use for Weird Timekeeping

Chinese Calendar Conversions

Solar Stem Converter

(This one is annoying to use because they don't use the translated names but there is a definitions table.)

Lunar Calendar Converter

(Unfortunately it only allows for 1901-2100. You can probably infer the lunar month via the Solar Stem Converter for older dates.)

Celestial Bodies

For star/constellation positions in the night sky use this:

Sky & Telescope Interactive Sky Chart

(Yes you can even change the location and time to get the exact night sky the characters might be looking at.)

For sun positions and sunrise/sunset times use this:

SunCalc

For moon positions and moonrise/moonset times use this:

MoonCalc

(If you want to see a summary of moon phases by month this tool is helpful.)

Why have you done this?

I don't know. Please enjoy my perverse obsession with the little details.

#cactus yaps #Erikaposting with this one. Need to get my brain examined.#I almost included a rant about changing floral language confusing Sukuna even more but I stopped myself.#This is Sukugo in the vaguest way possible so I won't tag it I think.#The things I do for this fic... This is much worse than my Ace Combat one.#ryomen sukuna #jujutsu kaisen #jjk spoilers #jjk meta #writing ref

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ihatetaxes99 · 6 months ago

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Alrighty, fun theory time: What if Neito Monoma was actually brain-damaged?

I swear, this isn't a joke post, this is a genuine headcanon/theory I like to consider that possibly explains the... Sharp shift in his behaviour. Of course, it obviously isn't actually canon, I don't think anyone would believe that for a second, but it's an idea I like to ruminate upon. That said, time to elaborate:

It's no secret that when the character of Neito Monoma was introduced during the Sports Festival story arc of the Boku No Hero manga, he was rather different from his later portrayals.

Unless I'm forgetting something, this was the first proper panel introducing Monoma in the series:

As you can see, there were some... Changes later on down the line:

Anyone can tell that something happened here. Anyone who has a basic knowledge of the manga is aware that this second image is not an outlier. Monoma has been consistently portrayed as arrogant, over-the-top and borderline mentally unwell. There's clearly something wrong with this boy, this isn't just a kid being energetic.

Monoma in his initial appearance was clearly a bit underhanded, yes. He was a schemer, a trickster, almost like the heroes' version of Mr. Compress (I had to fit a reference to my G in there somehow) in how he relies on subterfuge and deception over raw strength; None of this translates to the psychopathic brat he became as early as the Training Camp arc. The question is, what happened to cause this? I mean, yeah, there are a few pretty good guesses as to why his personality was retconned out-of-universe (I've always taken an interest in the theory that his insanity was turned up to make Kendo's behaviour towards him seem more justified, somehow, and have her come off as less unlikeable, though there is also the popular theory that Bakugo's popularity had a hand in things as well, which I won't get into here), but that's boring. I am an Autist, and what I want is an in-universe explanation to use as my personal headcanon.

And so, we come to this delightful little panel:

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) refers to a form of brain injury brought about by physical trauma or other damage caused sometime after birth, as opposed to genetic brain damage. As listed by the Scottish Acquired Brain Injury Network, symptoms of ABI can include:

Reduced motivation.

Reduced ability to initiate activity.

Reduced motivation.

Reduced empathy.

Emotional Lability

Reduced impulse control (i.e. reduced ability to control expression of emotions and behaviour).

Agitation.

Aggressive behaviour.

Impaired judgement.

Socially inappropriate behaviour.

Sexually disinhibited behaviour.

Reduced insight/awareness of the consequences of brain injury and its impact.

Obviously, not all of these symptoms are relevant to Monoma's case, but some - such as emotional lability, reduced impulse control, agitation, aggressive behaviour, impaired judgement and socially inappropriate behaviour - sound very familiar.

In short, it's proven that physical trauma to the head can very much influence and alter a person's personality, resulting in instability. And as we can see from the image, Bakugo very nearly blew Monoma's head off during the climax of the chariot battle. The way that his head snaps back is clearly indicative of receiving some sort of sharp blow.

And that is where the basis of my theory is formed. Neito Monoma starts out his UA career as a somewhat ambitious and devious, but intelligent and well put-together kid. Then, during the Sports Festival, he receives a severe blow to the head from Bakugo. Given the nature of UA's training regiment, it's even possible that he would sustain more injuries off-panel between the end of the Festival and his next appearance at the Training Camp, possibly even developing the situation into Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. And that's not even considering all of the times Kendo has been seen striking him hard enough to knock him out cold. We're also well aware of how lax UA is in regards to their medical care, with a kiss from Recovery Girl and a few days' rest typically being seen as the best way to deal with incidents. In this environment, Monoma's head trauma would go on to manifest itself in more and more personality defects, transforming him over time as his intellectual capabilities were diminished and his aggressive and socially unaware behaviour grew more and more pronounced. It puts a tragic spin on what is essentially a mishandled joke character, holding the lens to UA's negligent behaviour that the manga barely touched in any real depth.

Of course, as I said, obviously none of this is the case. Monoma was rewritten to be a joke after the Sports Festival and that is the long and short of it. There isn't really anything deeper going on there, not intentionally at least. But I like to dream. And I've really grown rather fond of this little headcanon.

#bnha critical #mha #theory #headcanon #monoma neito #neito monoma #class 1b #UA critical

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itsnothingofinterest · 6 months ago

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So if it isn’t clear, I’m not a fan of chapter 423 and how it ended this final fight with AFO or Deku's supposed save of Tomura. I know I haven't talked that much about it but it's true.

And being the arrogant little internet-er that I am, I thought I might go over how I think this fight should’ve gone down. A little self-indulgent thing about how I would've done it, to make myself feel better, which you guys can read too if for some reason you want to. Granted, the objectively correct way to end this arc would’ve of course been to not do the fight or bring back AFO, end it at 418 as I described before; but this outline is for if one were to really insist on a final battle with a returned AFO.

Starting disclaimer; length: as mentioned in the above linked post, this is going to be quite longer than what we saw in canon. Some may say this is unfair to claim Hori should have done when he’s so clearly burnt out, but that’s just what the fight needs to be properly epic or properly conclude it’s dangling plot threads. Again, this is why ending it at 418 was the correct move. If we really are including this extra climax though, then it needs enough pages for it; which is why we’re going further than the entire manga might, up to chapter 430 plus an epilogue. (Wanted that to be including Epilogue but one chapter outline went long so I split it in two. Just the way things go.)

Pre-423 changes:

Surprisingly little. A part of me wants to change the ‘it was AFO all along’ reveal to be less dog-doodoo but I can’t imagine how. The reveal is bad; ruining many of MHA’s themes, several of its characters, and helping cement Deku as an All Might clone by ending his arc as a hero who beats the big bad AFO…but it’s also necessary for the extra climax to happen. AFO’s ability to take over Tomura is almost literally directly proportional to how bad the reveal is, so we’re kind of stuck with it.

However I would like to change Deku’s dialogue with Aizawa in 420 to not mention his plans of killing Tomura along with AFO up to now. His character just becomes unsalvageablely unlikable with the reveal that he was just looking for a way to murder the crying child in a way he found most tasteful this whole time. So we’re cutting that and Deku’s still aiming for the save like a good hero should. Just have him go into more detail on what happened in Tomura's mind; it'll be useful for Kurogiri to overhear for later.

Besides that, the early chapters of the final AFO fight were mostly fixable with later additions or otherwise inoffensive, so we’re moving on to:

423: On the Offensive

Once again, we start with Deku just landing a huge hit on AFO. Immediate change; the fight is not over with this: AFO manifests a huge mouth with sharp teeth on his chest right where Deku hit to chomp down and pin him before charging up an energy explosion point blank that’ll rip his arm off at minimum.

Deku escapes using a St. Louise Smash to scrape off the bottom row of teeth, letting his arm out and chasing that energy attack to mostly just propel him back into the ground.

Some hero comments how it’s like they’re back to square one while another denies that and points out AFO’s two new major injuries. Shoto takes the opportunity to try going for a major attack too; but AFO, furious that the heroes think he’s on the back foot, uses a quirk to launch the remaining sharp teeth at Shoto as missiles. Endeavor then swoops in and takes the hit for Shoto, surprising him with the sacrifice play but demoralizing the other heroes for their No. 1 to take a hit like that.

Now needing to get back on the offensive, AFO pulls out the giant double rivot mouth move to try and chomp down on Deku while he’s reeling; but they get intercepted by Mt. Lady and Ryukyu. At this time, Aizawa notices Kurogiri has disappeared from beside him.

As Deku is helped up by Aoyama, we see Kurogiri reappear on a bit of elevated dirt behind them; and stepping out to comment on how much he’s missed is a dishevelled looking Spinner.

424: The League of Villains

We instead start with a flashback to Touya, Fuyumi, and Rei being taken away from the battle by those stretcher robots. While they’re a distance away from others, sparks appear from the droids carrying Touya as they halt in place; causing Fuyumi to panic and ask her and her mom’s droids to also stop so she can see what happened. As Rei and Fuyumi struggle to sit up, they see that Toga has thrown knives into both of Touya’s robots and is now cutting him out.

As Fuyumi panics and tells her to get away, a warp gate opens and lets out Spinner, who tells Dabi to get up because the inevitable has happened and AFO has started fighting Tomura; Kurogiri filled him in on the whole thing. Dabi responds, revealing he’s still awake, and attempts to get up with Toga’s help.

Fuyumi begins really panicking, telling them not to take her brother when he’s so injured and she just got him back. But Dabi responds, in an apologetic tone as one could expect of Dabi, that he’s got something important to do.

Rei finally takes the chance to pipe up, asking if these are the friends Touya’s been staying with. Touya introduces Spinner, Toga, and Kurogiri, and says that they are; and then introduces his mom and sister to the League.

Back at Mt. Fuji, Spinne, Toga, and Dabi arrive out of Kurogiri and take in the situation. Kurogiri, now awake for real but with some Shirakumo in his tone, comments that it seems AFO is back in control of Tomura, but that like he saw last time, AFO’s control is probably still precarious. They just need to wake up Tomura again before they think of a more permanent solution.

Aoyama panics seeing the League here, but Deku interrupts asking if they’re here to fight AFO and save Tomura. Toga answers by saying he can just sit back and watch them do his job before telling Kurogiri that he’ll need to play defence; neither the heroes or AFO have noticed them in the crowd yet, but they will not appreciate them being here once they do. As he does, she and Spinner start yelling at Tomura; asking why he left them behind to wallow in his self-pity while they’re still waiting on him to destroy this unfair world? Where’s their horizon?

(maybe call back to this^ somehow?)

This grabs the heroes attention, some wondering if they need to fight them too. But then Dabi joins in, saying that Shigaraki was the one person to truly surpass All Might in power, so to see him a pawn of AM’s favourite punching bag is just sad; what’s with this embarrassing state, leader? Reminded at this sight of his own words to All Might in Kamino, Endeavor tells the other heroes to let the villains speak, while thinking to himself that he can finally see what relationship Tomura has with these villains like his son, and that he's glad he learned this about Touya.

AFO gets annoyed at the League’s insults and moves to attack, but finds his body shaking. In the back of his mind, Tomura stops screaming and appears behind AFO from the shadows, responding to the League’s call.

425: Secret Boss Battle

A fight begins at the centre of the mind between Tomura and AFO, the arena resembling the destroyed cityscape from when he first got the AFO quirk, but shrouded in darkness. Unable to really use their quirks in this space, they basically both resort to hand-to-hand combat and psychically throwing debris at eachother.

As they fight, AFO asks how Shigaraki awakened; his will should have been crushed with his identity as Tenko Shimura torn to shreds. Tomura affirms that he finds no will in the friends or dreams of Tenko Shimura, AFO has managed to treed on those things thoroughly; so instead he'll hold onto what is his own as Shigaraki Tomura. AFO balks at that; he moulded that identity even more thoroughly, implanted every idea in his head and guided his every decision; but Tomura reminds him that's not true, he left Tomura in the care of others many times. We then get both a flashback to Kurogiri comforting Tomura when AFO first died fightign AM, and a montage of flashback panels to his time with the League. Tomura exclaims that this is more than enough will to take on a shitty secret boss like AFO.

At this point, Shinomori appears and punches AFO hard in the face. He is proceeded shortly after by Ragdoll & various other costumed folk who follow up Shinomori with their own attacks. AFO asks if Tomura has caused a quirk rebellion like what happened to the 'other him' and Tomura answers: yes & no. The quirks are active in fighting, but they're not so much rebelling as just helping him subdue a rogue quirk, like what happened against Star & Stripe (he made sure to ask them though; need to know your party for the raid boss after all, and he'd been meaning to take stoke anyway). Or did AFO forget the dynamic of person & quirk between them?

AFO responds by growing into a giant, elongated monster to fight back; furious that these pawns, husks, and nobodies think they have any right not only attacking the demon lord, but looking down on him. AFO knocks a dozen hero & villain vestiges back, but Tomura throws a whole mental building at him for his trouble. AFO emerges out the top trying to attack him, but gets intercepted by the vestiges of Kudo and Bruce; both of them look shattered and like they're missing half their pieces, but the rest are keeping shape to punch AFO as much as they can.

AFO's fury briefly flares seeing them, but he quickly realizes what their being here means, as he hated them too much to ever take their pathetic quirks. Tomura confirms by saying AFO has his own secret boss, pointing out a small light in the distance like a star that AFO immediately identifies as the last spark of Yoichi.

426: Two Fronts

The inner fight continues: AFO begins racing past everyone to try and claim that distant light, but this just allows vestiges both stolen and OFA to slam him into huge debris as he tries. AFO grows even larger to Machia-level size and swats them away, landing a good hit on Tomura, Kudo, & Bruce as he tells them to stop infringing on his story. Just he he goes for another blow though, he takes a hit from seemingly nothing.

Cut back to outside and it's clear that he just got hit by Momo & Denki's canon, now with Jirou helping too. Dazed and in disbelief, AFO is then also hit by Kamui Woods throwing many huge boulders at him. Rikido and Kirishima go for a big attack too, but AFO knocks them away as he regains himself.

Realizing that he's on a war of two fronts and losing, he implants himself with those large roots he seems to have, embedding them in the earth and spreading them out to disrupt and separate the heroes. He then uses more quirks to form a large shell around himself, and uses a more defensive All-Factor Release to launch a myriad of attacks from the shell's surface. Deku goes in to attack AFO from an opening on the shell, but he launches more attacks out of it at Deku & the League. With the roots and shell protecting AFO from most of the heroes, he left an opening on purpose so he can see the League and focus on destroying them, which will then let him subdue Tomura. Deku realizes this plan too, and changes course to deflect the attacks on the League.

More roots emerge, but other members of the class catch on; Shoto freezing some while Shoji grabs others, allowing the League to keep yelling for Tomura to fight. At this time, with assistance from Sero, Iida, Mineta, & Mina; Ruyukyu and Mt. Lady lady finally rip out those mouth stalks, leaving two great black indents in the shell. Enraged, AFO causes the shell to grow large with great teeth around it's opening and enlarge in size greatly, now resembling the imagery of ultimate evil from All Might's old description of AFO as it launches more attacks at Deku and the League.

Deku tells the League to keep it up while he protects them, and we see side-by-side panels of both him and Tomura, bolstered by the League's words calling for his help, continuing their respective assaults on AFO.

427: Trust and Worth

We briefly see the other heroes attempts to get through the now-giant shell in between AFO's still-ongoing onslaught of attacks; Nejire and Amajiki's best attacks doing nothing, and Momo's laser barely putting in a scratch. Mirio says he got in, but his punches still can't phase the guy inside. Weird thing is, he didn't even notice a hero got in; so focused on Deku & the League. The attacks from the shell's surface seem completely random and haphazard too; he's ignoring them. Shoto points out that he basically can thanks to his defences, so does this mean they have to wait for someone who can do something? But Mirio rephrases it to that they need to wait for when they can do something.

Cut back to Deku and he's in a similar mental state. He's almost literally running on OFA's fumes and he's stuck on the defence protecting the League because he can't get into the shell through all the attacks, especially now that it's grown much larger and AFO is hiding deeper inside. It's anxiety inducing, he knows Bakugou would hate it. A part of him wants to try and think of a way to blast past the attacks, but he's not sure he could beat AFO in one hit so it might be too risky (if not for him, then for those behind him). Better to do some entrusting himself and leave this to Tomura until he leaves an opening or needs one himself, which Deku will know because he can see the fight in his mind through their connection.

But back at the mental battle; Shigaraki's confidence only enrages AFO, who grabs him in his giant hand and start squeezing. He taunts Tomura, asks if he really thinks someone who AFO built from the ground up can deny him? 'No, his pathetic friends will have their cries left unanswered forevermore, as punishment for entrusting their hopes to a pawn.'

Just then, another new player swoops in, busting right through the palm of AFO's hand to pull Tomura out. It's Hana Shimura! Who promptly tells AFO to shut up about her brother. The rest of the Shimuras also appear, with Kotaro denying the scope AFO's influence, apologizing to Tenko, and saying his abusive behaviour was his fault alone. Tomura pauses at seeing them, and says while he's in no mood to forgive his father, he promises to get them all out alive so he can grovel for forgiveness properly later.

Nana also appears and asks how the Shimuras are here, which Nao answers saying AFO pilfered their quirks from their remains after their tragedy. Nana is horrified, but AFO can only say that he's beginning to regret letting his whims draw him to any worthless trash he found along his path. Shigaraki remarks back that he's finding plenty of worth in this so called 'trash'.

428: A New Strategy

As more vestiges go back on the offensive; the Shimura family take a moment for strategy, wondering how they can beat this giant monster. Nana wonders why AFO can even grow like this, but Tomura figures he must've done it by letting long-suppressed emotions run wild. He's fraying himself for a chance to reach Yoichi, but stronger emotions like from Tomura or his sister can tear right through him. It also means if they beat him, he'll either be gone for good, or unveil his own core like what happened with Tenko. Concluding this is enough strategy, Tomura leaps into the fray and deals a massive wound to AFO.

AFO is beginning to realize his situation in this two-front battle is not improving, but being so close to Yoichi, he reconsiders his priorities and his strategy to shut up the League. Luckily the reappearance of Nana reminds him of just the way to do it. Outside, Deku, Aoyama, and a few other students continue to protect the League as they call for Tomura and mock AFO, when something changes. The onslaught of random attacks stops, and instead the shell begins to glow, and then a massive force begins emanating from the shell causing gale force winds to blast everyone away. AFO has combined the energy explosion he used to kill Nana with Air Cannon & Shokewave and is using them continuously to create these winds. Using his explosion quirk like this might burn up all his stamina, maybe even kill him and Tomura, but he decides it's worth it to see Yoichi.

The winds drown out the League, internally causing Shigaraki to think they might've just died, which in turn lets AFO pin him under his hand and start crushing him once more.

Deku, being blasted into a wall of dirt, realizes they can't keep up a passive strategy anymore, these winds will tear & burn everyone up. This is when a Warp Gate opens in front of his face, blocking the winds and letting him talk though it with the League, who are protected by a much larger Warp Gate. Spinner says they need a new strategy, but Deku gets distracted observing how Kurogiri's Warp Gates seem to be very effective against these winds by just warping the wind somewhere else. Before Dabi can properly express annoyance, Deku says he's got a plan; but he'll need the League's full cooperation, so are the willing to work with him? Dabi & Toga look to Spinner, who tells Deku...fat chance. He wants their help, he's the one who has to work with them. Deku agrees, so Spinner welcomes him to the League of Villains and asks for his plan.

429: All For One; One For All; All Or Nothing; One Last Smash

Deku and the League begin their operation. Kurogiri opens various Warp Gates around the area that a) give heroes places to take cover from the gusts of wind, and b) let him create his own jets of wind. He points all of them at Deku's back, launching the boy at the shell's opening. The force of each jet matches the force of AFO's wind, meaning multiple will overcome it. Granted, applying that much force to someone from both ends this way would crush most people, but Deku's got a body that can withstand OFA so this is nothing.

As he's launched at the opening, AFO notices his approach and creates giant sharp teeth to impale him; but Deku, being carried by the wind, is free to use another St. Louise Smash to destroy them and make his way in. AFO then tries a variety of other attacks inside the chamber of the shell, but a Warp Gate opens and a blast of ice freezes all of them, and we see Dabi commenting how there's nothing like a life or death situation to see how strong you really are (his mom's quirk packs quite the punch).

AFO then closes the shell to stop the League's interference, air jets or otherwise, and prepares another All-Factor laser pointed right at Deku. But just then, we see Shoto outside preparing a ramp, which Bakugou takes off from (that's right we see their team-up this time), using explosions to overpower the wind, break through the shell where team Momo scratched it, and blast away the charged up laser before it could fire. Now with line of sight inside back, another Gate opens with one of Toga's syringes shot through. Deku grabs it's cord, and uses it to launch himself back at AFO, finally landing the hit to knock off his gag.

Back inside the mental battlefield; AFO is so close to Yoichi and is dragging himself through the vestiges' attacks. Deku suddenly arrives across their mental link, and slams into the giant AFO. Truly desperate, AFO seems to almost puke up something from the hit that gets launched at Yoichi; it's trashbag baby AFO! Who's suddenly feeling a lot more honest, yelling for Yoichi about how much he needs him, how he only cares about him, just let him see his brother's face one last time.

Shigaraki hears this and realizes what kind of person his sensei was all along, and decides what to do with a pity-ing look on his face and a nod from his parents. AFO's path is interrupted one last time by Tenko Shimura, who grabs him in a hug and tells him he understands his pain, but it's over, he needs to let go of this. The star-like light he'd been chasing turns into Yoichi's face, causing AFO to being to cry and relax into the hug, and the two boys fade into another tiny light that rests in Tomura's hand as he shows Deku & the vestiges. It's over.

430: What Makes Heroes and Villains

Deku asks what what Tomura will do with that last shred of AFO, and Tomura says he doesn't know. Part of him still wants to crush it, both out of anger & just to be safe, but that seems distasteful after what just happened. Just then, one vestige steps forth and asks for it, who Tomura identifies as Spearlike Bones; the Shigaraki twins' mother. She doesn't introduce herself as such, but says she knew AFO before he went evil, so give it to her and she'll keep it safe and out of trouble this time. Both Deku and Tomura agree, and then sit down to talk.

The scene shifts to a beach at night, they're alone, and they shift to their four and five-year-old selves. Tenko and Izuku talk for a bit like that, about...a lot of stuff. Mostly about heroes, about Deku, and what Tenko thinks of Deku. If Tenko feels saved (a bit yeah, but also a bit not), how Deku's a good hero, how he's a mediocre hero. How Tenko thinks all heroes suck and are failures, especially All Might, which riles 4-year old Izuku up good...but also how, as the first hero that Tenko doesn't think is a failure who sucks, Deku is the greatest hero ever.

Izuku asks what Tenko will do now, and he says he'll do what he said before; be a hero for the villains, as only a villain can. That said, Tomura doesn't really want to fight Deku anymore if he can avoid it; so he's prepared a peace offering, and a message. The peace offering appear to Izuku as a meteor shower in the night sky, accompanied with a shot outside the mental world to show Shigaraki standing over an unconscious Deku with Tomura's hand pressed agianst him. The message gets blacked out a la Dabi. Izuku, suddenly a teenager is shocked and turns to ask what he means, but finds instead Shinomori asking what what means? Deku has been given the quirks from OFA back, although they are all in pieces aside from Danger Sense, hence them appearing to him as a meteor shower.

We cut to various scenes with villains; Skeptic in a police carrier, Spinner's advisors and a couple other rioters being held in custody, Compress in prison, Redestro in another prison, and even Gigantomachia, once more being tied down even as he holds his hand to the wound AFO gave him. They all see above them a tiny blotch of blackness like Kurogiri's mist.

Back at Mt. Fuji, Tomura finally emerges from the shell of ultimate evil carrying Deku. Lemillion is first on the scene and tells Tomura to hand him over; and is quite shocked when Tomura does just that without issue. Says the two of them made friends and sorted it out in there so don't worry. Toga also tells Mirio to relay a message to Deku that she'll be keeping an eye on both him and Uraraka from here, so keep up their progress together. Other heroes arrive and surround them slowly, not sure what move to make. Iida is the one who finally tells them to come quietly and let this end.

Tomura agrees to let this all end, and Spinner & Toga both ask what they're doing now? Going out in a peaceful way, or a villainous way? Tomura says both; that they'll be performing what may be their final act of villainy, before asking if Kurogiri has a big enough place picked out. Kurogiri confirms he does, and opens a Warp Gate for the League.

At this time, those other villains we saw earlier start getting Gloop Warped away from custody. As the League step through Kurogiri, a number of heroes suddenly move to stop them. Deku barely regains a bit of consciousness and tells them not to attack, causing a few of his classmates to pause. No one is fast enough to stop the League anyway, and Kurogiri disappears behind them. The League are gone.

The chapter ends with police, prison managers, and heroes all reporting in. Besides Dr. Garaki and Overhaul who got left behind, every villain bigger than a small time crook they had in any form of custody throughout the entire country has disappeared.

431: Class 1A Rising

The obligatory Epilogue chapter. As I expect of canon, this would probably be extra long and cover a lot of different plot threads. It'll also be very different based on how Hori wants to take things; but I'll go the simple route.

First things first is catching up with all the hero kids in the hospital. Friendship moments, decompression, comments on character arcs, that sort of stuff. We also learn Tomura's final message to Deku, which he relays to everyone else, student and pro: The heroes have attacked the League three times now. If they attack a fourth time, the villains will return to destroy Japan. But if they don't, the villains will never return.

We then get narration of the immediate aftermath of this announcement; heroes throughout the country search high and low for any signs of Shigaraki & the disappeared villains for months. In a similar case to when they hunted for Stain, this results in heroes finding a lot of injustices they'd normally overlook to catch bigger villains; lost children, domestic abuse, prejudice, that sort of thing. Still, for those entire months, no villains more dangerous than some corner store robbers are found.

Speaking of the heroes, an emergency ranking is conducted; naming Kamui Woods as the new number one, with the rest of the Lurkers as No. 2 & 3. The previous top 3 have all retied (maybe Endeavor dies from that tooth attack he took for Shoto, idk.) Additionally, Mirio, Nejire, & Tamaki have taken the no. 8, 9, and 10 slots, and vow to catch up and rise even higher. Still, there's not a lot of interest by anyone involved; seems everyone has their eyes on the next generation.

There's a few more scenes of loose ends getting tied up like Overhaul waking up Pops or Gentle & Nagant getting status as heroes before we finally return to UA The kids' 2nd year finally begins for real. it's jarring to be sure, but time must go on and so too must education. Besides, a lot of them have started thinking after that war that they need to consider what kinds of heroes they want to be. Deku's falling behind with his shattered OFA not yet showing signs of healing, if that's even possible, but he's confident he'll catch up once again. Perhaps this is where we'd see out final moments with the core cast, checking in with everyone here as they all get ready for their next lesson/mission as heroes. If Hori wanted a more overtly 'to be continued' ending (though I imagine he would not), perhaps we might see where the villains ended up in some sense, building up a future conflict. Or perhaps we might skip forward years into the future, see the kid as pros and end on that kind of uncompromising 'Happily ever after'. Depends on how much open-endedness is preferred.

Either way, there's my conclusion. I won't say it's perfect or anything; I'll even admit I may have gotten the League more involved than would ever be realistic (or maybe it's more like I may not have involved the Deku's class enough). But I like to think I got some cool plot beats in, some cool reveals, I'm more proud of the call back to All Might's ultimate evil imagery than it may deserve; but most importantly, the villains end this war alive and saved. Tomura got to be the hero for villains; and I'd say Deku, between getting his save off and not being the focal point of the win, came out looking a lot less like an All Might clone or the next pillar, and just looking a lot like a better hero than in canon in general. That's what I feel anyway.

Regardless, writing this whole 'what-if' out did in fact make me feel better about 423. So my self-indulgent ramblings were worth that much at least.

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threegunbrainrot · 2 years ago

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i dont have any trigun mutuals so i'm just gonna ramble my thoughts into the infinite void of tumblr. and im sure others have touched on this same topic but

it almost seems like vash is getting softer with every new installment of trigun? like incredibly consistently and incredibly specifically.

let me explain.

i'll start with tristamp and work backwards; the tristamp vash we all know and love there is incredibly adverse to violence.

more often than not he ACTIVELY refuses to fight and just WON'T draw his gun. this post loosely counted the amount of bullets that he shot throughout all of season 1, and almost ALL of them (like to an insane degree) were dished out against knives, who vash knew was strong enough to take the hit.

the few times vash does draw his gun against a human in tristamp, it's as a blunt force weapon (against the badlads gang and livio, for example) or to disarm others/save someone with ricochet (like shooting the punisher before wolfwood can kill livio).

he just doesn't shoot people. at ALL.

then if we look at 98 trigun, things change drastically.

here, vash isn't afraid to hurt people a little if it means more will be saved in the end. of course he never kills, but he actually shoots people here. not only that...

he holds a casual, sarcastic conversation while pointing his weapon at people.

he constantly shoots at limbs to immobilize people, fires warning shots extremely close to peoples' vitals, and performs several very insane trick shots throughout the show to wound those with armor.

tristamp vash wouldn't even draw, but 98 struts around firing warning shots into the sky and singing about bloodshed for intimidation! i'm not sure there's a single episode where he doesn't shoot someone at least once.

...so what about trimax, then?

(PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD)

he is so. shockingly. violent.

of course he never kills. of course he's still trying to save people, but there's this anger in him that i was completely taken off-guard by reading for the first time.

tristamp vash is so soft he's painful to watch. 98 vash makes a heartbreaking effort to be as silly and nonthreatening as possible, constantly making himself out to be the fool. but trimax?

he's... literally grief-stricken and out for revenge. explicit revenge. he's angry and he's hurt and he lays his intentions out so clearly. he's making THREATS.

seriously:

hunting legato. HUNTING him.

it's not even a matter of drawing his weapon anymore. he does it constantly, and fires just as much. never to kill, but he doesn't joke around the way 98 vash does. the most he'll offer is a sunny smile to reassure others and nothing more.

i'm not that far into the manga, either. i'm sure there's countless more (and probably better) panels to convey this side of trimax vash, but i suppose it also says something that i've found so many panels depicting this so early on.

but the progression of vash's personality is fascinating regardless.

from a tortured, angry loner desperately trying to cling to his morals for rem's sake

to an equally devastated man who devotes himself so completely to acting the role of the fool

and finally to the sad, chronically depressed shell of a person in tristamp who refuses to so much as draw his weapon.

#trigun #trigun stampede spoilers #tristamp spoilers #trigun 1998 spoilers #trigun 1998 #trigun 98 spoilers #trimax spoilers #trigun maximum #trigun maximum spoilers #vash #vash the stampede #ok god just trying to cover my bases with all those tags #the last thing i wanna do is spoil anyone #this is such an incredible series and i want everyone to enjoy it in its purest form #but yeah i could ramble about the different vashes aaaaaaaalllll day #i kinda wanna compare all the ww's too cuz even if the differences arent so violently distinct theyre like twice as intricate #but vash's relationship to violence over the years is the most fascinating thing. he's so quick to fire in trimax and 98 for the safety of #others- both with wildly different mental states behind those bullets- but tristamp just. doesnt. Period.#tho admittedly this s1 tristamp has kind of turned out to be the prequel. i wonder if he'll be quicker to the punch in s2 #anyway god gonna stop rambling now. this post was mostly just for me anyway cuz i wanted to put my thoughts in order #ill be surprised if this goes anywhere #trigun spoilers

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hurpdurpburps · 5 months ago

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Kozakura and Toriko

SPOILER WARNING: major spoilers up to Vol 8 of the novels, screenshots of the manga-exclusive Kozakura POV Special Chapter 10 and two passing mentions of minor character development in Vol 9 of the novel (currently only in Japanese).

Vol 10 of the English manga was released yesterday, and re-reading the Kozakura POV Special Chapter at the end reminded me why it was actually my favourite of all the ones published so far, and why I am so enamoured with Kozakura as a character.

I know that a lot of the fandom is amused by the idea of Sorawo having a harem (and it's true - Miyazawa straight up confirms Runa's crush in Vol 9 and has regularly insinuated at Kozakura's feelings throughout the volumes), but I think not nearly enough people talk about Kozakura's dynamic with Toriko, or how the story unfolds from her perspective as literally the "only grown-up in the room" before Migiwa's introduction.

So this post is gonna talk about that.

There are multiple times where the story depicts Kozakura favouring Sorawo over Toriko, such as in when she asked Sorawo to accompany her back home because she was scared, or when she decided to call only Sorawo to go over to her house to collect the free hot springs tickets. A lot of people chalk it up to Kozakura liking Sorawo, but if anything I think this behaviour is more of a manifestation of the lack of guilt towards her, compared to the boatload she has towards Toriko.

In the novels, we as readers feel the disgust and dread from Sorawo's POV as someone retroactively discovering that her friend was a victim of grooming.

But what about Kozakura? If you think about the OP character chart from a bird's eye view, she wasn't a victim - nor exactly an innocent bystander. If anything, she'd be an accessory to a predator, being a late-20s/early-30s adult witnessing her similar-aged coworker rope in who was a literal teenager at the time to traversing and exploring a creepy af alternate reality, and doing absolutely fuck all about it.

Miyazawa made a deliberate decision here, to write in no uncertain terms, that Kozakura was conscious of what Satsuki was doing to Toriko, or the impropriety lurking beneath the dynamics of their "tutor-student" relationship. Kozakura saw it coming - his writing leaves no room for other interpretations - and she let it happen.

And how does she cope with this guilt? Kozakura could've avoided Toriko's attempts at reaching out after Satsuki's disappearance. It would've been easy I think, for Kozakura to simply break off all contact. A simple "our mutual friend is gone so bye" would've sufficed to send Toriko packing for good. Toriko is an abysmally shy girl - and unlike Sorawo, Kozakura knew that side of her from the start. Kozakura is clearly not afraid or incapable of conveying her displeasure, but nonetheless makes the conscious, harder decision to make Toriko feel comfortable enough to stick around.

Kozakura unexpectedly grows more accustomed to taking care of Toriko, plus her new sidekick Sorawo, over time. So much so that by the time Vol 6 rolls around, she pretty much gives up her house and lets our dynamic duo do what they want. By extension, I think her guilt over not doing anything to help Toriko in the past was a driving factor behind her decision to take in Kasumi. In a sense, it's a do-over, and now she's right there from the start to make sure the train doesn't derail. I'm happy to reveal that her efforts have paid off - Kasumi's communication abilities have greatly improved in Vol 9. Now the kid says hi, eats ice cream on the couch obediently when ordered to do so, and quotes entire Wikipedia pages psychically or whatever.

The complicated vortex of envy, jealousy and guilt doesn't stop Kozakura from trying to do right by Toriko, but that doesn't mean it's easy to face her either. Coupled with Sorawo's many similarities to her missing crush (emotional erh, robustness, vague physical resemblance, bravery regarding all things Otherside) and the lack of a complicated interpersonal history, it's no wonder why Kozakura intuitively prefers talking to our protagonist than the poor Bird Girl she allowed to be manipulated. And I don't think she's very conscious of this inclination herself.

Personally, I prefer this interpretation of Kozakura's behaviour, rather than the more popular everyone-likes-Sorawo take (not that it's not valid, unsupported, or fun). Also, this is my all-vibes no-evidence theory, but Kozakura totally seems to me like someone who'd only be into older women, not younger...

But that's probably just me projecting. I relate to Kozakura's position quite a bit, as a late-20s woman who leads a team of mostly early-20s younger women fresh out of university, like a naggy mother hen.

Many stories depict difficult situations from the eyes of a victim, survivor, or even perpetrator, but not enough explore the guilt of someone who acknowledges that she could've stopped a bad thing from happening, in my opinion. And she forces herself to atone by proactively keeping an eye for these girls. While maintaining that superior holier-than-thou attitude towards her kids lol. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh I love Miyzawa's takes so much.

This is a 5am, caffeine-fueled ramble. It's not particularly insightful or profound, but I have a lot of energy right now and decided to pen down these surging thoughts.

And yeah - buy the manga! The Kozakura POV shorts add such a rich dimension to these already-deeply introspective novels, and personally I think it really highlights Miyazawa's hyperawareness of complicated, problematic interpersonal dynamics.

PS. I wonder how many volumes we have to reach before finally knowing Kozakura's first name lol.

#otherside picnic #urasekai picnic #裏世界ピクニック #toriko nishina #kozakura

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khattikeri · 1 year ago

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some timeline shenanigans and musing to figure out when Hirano and Kagiura will confess/get together. long post ahead!

In Sasaki to Miyano vol 1 ch 4 (ambiguously set around July-October of Sasaki's 2nd year and Miyano's 1st) we get this panel of Sasaki offering Miyano mitarashi dango.

As of the end of SasaMiya vol 9 we're two years past this panel, with Sasaki and Hirano in college and Miyano and Kagiura as 3rd years.

One thing to note is that in SasaMiya Vol 9 Ch 43, Sasaki and Hirano chitchat on the train. Sasaki notes that Miyano would've been "thrilled" to see Hirano... and for good reason. There's a ring on his left hand's ring finger!

From this we can extrapolate that Hirano and Kagiura are definitely together and might have been in a relationship for longer - if they started dating around the same time as Sasaki and Miyano, it'd be strangely early (albeit not completely impossible) for them to wear pair rings.

We'll come back to this that train of thought. As for the mitarashi dango from SasaMiya v1c4: in Hirano to Kagiura vol 5(?) ch 21, we get a very similar scene...

...of Sasaki offering the dango to Hirano, before Miyano comes to the classroom. Same time frame, then! Somewhere between July and October of Sasaki and Hirano's 2nd year and Miyano and Kagiura's 1st.

This matters because right after that scene, in HiraKagi vol 5 ch 22, we get the delicious beginnings of Hirano starting to realize his feelings.

For reference: Sasaki's official confession to Miyano is in SasaMiya vol 3 ch 13-14, which takes place in May around the beginning of Sasaki's 3rd year and Miyano's 2nd. That could be anywhere from six months to nearly a year after the mitarashi dango scene.

So what the hell is going to happen between Hirano and Kagiura during those months? SasaMiya sort of timeskipped through it, but the HiraKagi manga is taking us much slower at a much earlier point in the timeline.

We can't pinpoint, but we can narrow it down by looking at chapters set in the future. More specifically, in SasaMiya vol 3 ch 15, we get this exchange between Sasaki and Hirano, where Hirano tells Sasaki more or less to be direct about how he feels and clear up the misunderstanding with Miyano.

Sasaki's confession was in May; this chapter takes place in June.

Excuse me? Hirano Taiga, the guy who is constantly stuck in his head over how he treats Kagiura and unsure of whether to view it as romantic or 'just looking out for a kouhai', telling Sasaki to stop making excuses and just tell him?

Unless Hirano is a massive hypocrite, I suspect that by June of his 3rd year/Kagiura's 2nd year, he and Kagiura have already had a mutual confession.

TL;DR - I think it happens sometime prior to June of Hirano's 3rd year and Kagiura's 2nd year.

Whether they drag it out by not actually dating yet or just start dating with the confession is another thing entirely ofc, but I'm delighted to assume the best ^^

#sasaki to miyano #hirano to kagiura #hirakagi #sasamiya #keri chats #this post honestly could've been shorter/just included the final panel as proof but i wanted to make sure of the timeline in hirakagi lol #i'll assume by the end of vol 6ish in hirakagi (similar pacing to ssm)#it'll take years ofc but i'm looking forward to when the timelines finally meet closer in both manga

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musicalmoritz · 2 months ago

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what are your thoughts on hananene?

I’m so glad you asked this!! Some people assume I hate HanaNene because I ship Nene with Aoi and I don’t post about it as much as Aoi//Aoi, but that could not be further from the truth. When I first watched the anime I absolutely adored HanaNene, they were my favorite ship for a hot second there (though I was saving that spot for Mitsuba and Kou, and it was also Sakura and Natsuhiko for like a day. I never expected it to be the plant lesbians lol)

My love for HanaNene tends to be more mild when I’m not actively reading about them. I have never and will never dislike them, but I don’t think about them as consistently as some of the other ships (though I think of them more than some others). Then I read a scene of them in the manga and I’m abruptly reminded of why they’re one of my favorite TBHK ships. This also applies to when I’m rewatching either of the animes or when I get in the rare mood to read fan fiction for them

The thing that initially stole my heart was how weird they are. Their whole relationship is odd, it’s like if Aladdin got with the Genie. The first chapter doesn’t have anything romantic between them up until the very end and if you didn’t know they were love interests, you’d assume he was meant to be her goofy sidekick. And then we start the gag of him flirting with her while she’s very adamant about him being Not Her Type. But her relationship with him is still so different from everybody else, she’s usually so self-centered but with Hanako she notices things about him and makes efforts to make him feel better (ex: deciding to be his friend in the mokke chapter). Sure, there are still things she misses about him, Teru had to be the one to tell her he was unhappy in the new timeline. But she’s significantly better at looking out for Hanako than she is with everybody else, because he’s so important to her. She gives him time to open up about his past because she knows he’s not ready for it, she wants to be the one to confess to him because he deserves to feel loved. With heterosexual relationships I’m mainly focused on what the woman is feeling/experiencing and HanaNene is such an interesting ship for Nene! It gives her a lot of important development and stands out from her other crushes and ships. She had cheesy romantic fantasies about him but she doesn’t act like a blushing fangirl, it’s real love and we get to see a more mature side of her when they’re together

I have so many favorite moments for them so I’m gonna list them all now because I’ve been waiting for an excuse to do so. The end of the Picture Perfect arc where Nene asked Hanako if he wanted to trap her and he said “of course not, how could you even think that?” The Confession Tree chapter as a whole, it’s my favorite early chapter by far. When Hanako told Nene she’s cute when she’s smiling. When he tucked her into bed at Sumire’s house. I don’t remember when this was but when Nene made some big statement on the roof and then she was like “as a friend ofc.” When she kissed him on the cheek duh that was so cute. That convo they had in the classroom during the Picture Perfect arc. Their first kiss but that’s like a given everybody loves that scene. Wow. HanaNene.

I will say that I prefer their dynamic with Amane’s personality but I’m not one of the people who separates those ships entirely, I think people who do sort of miss the point of Hanako’s character. Amane is still a part of him, there are many scenes in present times when he acts like his old self. Sure, he’s changed over the years, but he can’t fully become a different person the way humans often do because he is forever that same 13 y/o boy. So if you were to ask me “HanaNene or Amanene,” I’d say both. I do prefer to call him Amane tho bcuz it’s such a pretty name. Amane. Amane. Amane. Pretend you can hear it, it’s gorgeous

Similar to how I will never slander Aoi and Akane for Aoi and Nene, I’ll never slander Hanako and Nene in favor of them either. I love all the canon ships so I’ll never be the type of fan to put them down in order to justify my fanon ones. I don’t need to do this because I have good reasons for liking fanon pairings, I can back them up without having to put down another ship. If you have to put down another ship in order to make yours look good, it’s probably not that great on its own

Also for headcanons. They are t4t and bi4bi to me, that’s just how it’s gotta be. Toilet-Bound Woke-Kun. Woke-Bound Hanako-Kun. Toilet-Woke Hanako-Kun. Much to ponder

#hananene #amanene #tbhk #toilet bound hanako kun #jshk #jibaku shounen hanako kun #nene yashiro #hanako kun #amane yugi #ask #ask me anything

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bibururokku · 1 month ago

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I don’t think people realize just how many have failed Kaiser since he was a child... (long rant post incoming, UTC)

I'm pretty illiterate in JP, but I get the gist and understand when speaking, so after running his profile data from his Egoist Bible page to make sure it wasn't vague or outright mistranslated bc shit happens, what stood out to me was what he said about his best and worst school subjects.

得意科目>授業なんてまともに受けてねぇ Tokui kamoku > jugyō nante matomo ni ukete nē Best Subject: I didn't take any classes seriously.

苦手科>学校行ってねえから知らん Nigate-ka > gakkō ittenēkara shiran Worst Subject: I didn't go to school, so I don’t know.

While this is a Japanese manga and, therefore, not likely to be extremely realistic, if we take it from a realistic point of view, Kaiser's past becomes a lot more tragic.

School is mandatory, and homeschooling is not allowed. It is very illegal to not send your child to school in Germany, so parents can be fined a hefty amount for not sending kids to attend. Repeat offenders also run the risk of facing prison time, and the police actually do go out of their way to find children who don't attend, and given their living situation, I don't think Kaiser's father would've run that risk. Especially when he, despite being an absolute garbage of a father, very specifically told Kaiser not to steal from people to avoid getting involved with authorities and, y'know, getting in trouble, and the kicker is that a few panels in the manga support the idea of Kaiser going to school to avoid that.

You see his bag? It's a bit reminiscent of schulranzen, basically a school bag, for German students, which most have because of social peer pressure. It's basically the norm to have one, and as a seemingly old man with no other family, Kaiser’s father doesn't seem to have a need for one, so he probably got it for Michael secondhand from someone else because they're quite pricey so he could go to school and sorta blend in without raising any questions.

Seeing as Kaiser never once spoke to his father, I think Kaiser would've had to take support or remedial classes early on as a child, which would excuse him from the regular classes as any school would be concerned for his development and try to help him meet academic standards there. Things like speech therapy and such would provide the reason as to why Kaiser says he didn't take his classes seriously and didn't go to school. I mean, if you just took supplementary classes, instead of going to the usual classes with your peers, would you really say or consider that going to school, given social norms? Especially with Kaiser's pride? Probably not.

I think this also explains his decent height and the miracle that is the fact that he is still alive. Being from a single-parent household with poor living conditions, I'm pretty sure Kaiser would qualify for free school lunches, which explains where in the world he got the proper nutrition to physically grow as normally as he did. Not to mention, attending school would mean that, at the very least, his father wouldn’t be able to beat him extremely or to death without repercussion. I mean, how the hell is the guy going to explain that?

He can brush off a bit of abuse as Michael being a mischievous kid often getting into trouble or something, sure, but for the kid that's constantly black and blue, to not go to school and suddenly perish? Eyebrows are going to be raised, and people will start talking and asking questions. Not to mention, prisoners are not kind to those who've done shit to children, so I would imagine Kaiser's father trying to avoid it as much as possible.

That being said, I still have a bone to pick with the people who would theoretically be teaching Michael. I mean, he definitely had to be taught a bit because how the hell else would this kid be able to pick up and understand something as complex as psychology by reading and taking notes to study within the short period of time that was him being in prison and taking part in the Bastard München tryouts?

Seriously, the fact that he had an acquaintance who framed and named him as an accomplice for burglary means there are enough legal records of Kaiser’s existence for police to narrow things down enough to find him. Try searching Michael Kaiser without specifying Blue Lock. That is a fairly common name! This guy had to have gone to school.

Anyways, why the hell did they not report his dad?

Like, Kaiser, may have been a quiet child, sure, but he also shows signs of being very avoidant and is usually battered up, all of which are signs of abuse so what is the excuse here?

"Maybe they weren't taught to recognize these signs or scared to make a report!"

But even then, you have to ask how many people over the course of his life saw him like that and didn’t say a thing? How many people saw this battered child in the streets on his own without a guardian in sight and just turned a blind eye? I know kids can go off on their own because it's a relatively safe country, but hello????

He's probably out there for hours trying to avoid his father or because his dad is out gambling and is out somewhere inebriated anyway! Why not ask the kid who's always out on his own some questions?

There had to have been a person who noticed! Like the people at the sandwhich shop who were nice enough to give him the leftover bread crust to make rusk! Because surely someone there would've gained his trust by giving him those?

But nope!

You know who else failed him?

That's right! Every single person he's interacted with from PIFA and Bastard München!

Ray Dark appears to be extremely suspicious, but here's the thing about him picking Kaiser up. He basically made a gamble, and Kaiser did as well. I say this because he is specified to be a PIFA agent, so I'm assuming this also makes him Kaiser's sports agent. Kaiser took the gamble because he didn't want to rot away with the life he had. That's obvious. Mr. Dark? He made a gamble in choosing to represent some random kid that he heard took down seven police officers.

But the thing is, he's a PIFA agent. He can do that with multiple players. It's less of a gamble for him because even if Kaiser doesn't make it big, well, he can still look for other talents to represent while leeching off their paycheck as well.

Honestly, the only good thing Kaiser has in his shitty life is the fact that he was born in Germany and is German.

The country has several laws to protect children, so they have several individual rights, which makes it more difficult for him to be taken advantage of since the bureaucracy and courts will have his best interest in mind. Especially given his situation as an underaged teenager at the time. He gets a good amount of say, and the laws have his best interest in mind, so he's pretty well-protected and would be challenging to take advantage of, legally speaking. At 14, he has the legal right to veto important decisions regarding himself, and he started playing at 15, so Kaiser is very safe now that he's away from his father.

Yet, no one has bothered to teach him this in his four years at Bastard München.

I really have to question what the hell is going on inside the higher-ups' heads here because this guy got into a fight his first day, and not a single one considered getting him therapy? This kid was scouted out for them and definitely has a record they can pull up to see.

Not to mention, since he got into the team, they probably sent him to a sportschulen or sports school to help develop his talent. Hell, with the studying he was doing in there, it appears that the team has their own for their underaged members because they're a German team. Formal education is compulsory for children from 6 to 18.

Sorry, Kaiser, I don't buy your "I didn't go to school" BS; you just had a non-traditional type and style of education, goofy.

Seriously, what the hell are the adults around him doing? He's been playing for the team for 4 years and is still in survival mode! Just look at the way Noel Noa looks after him. There is no hope for this guy. Everyone around him has failed to help him meet his basic emotional and psychological needs! Even Ness, who I will give a small pass to because he is equally as messed up to a different degree, was of no help in that sense because he just affirmed Kaiser's bad traits!

He's also in the do-or-die hellscape of Blue Lock now, and he does not need to be there. What he needs is to be locked in with a therapist for his own sake because, I swear, this guy is going to self-destruct in a bad way one day if he doesn't.

We see him do that mildly here when he says he thought he got over his father, but this guy hasn't gotten over anything and only feels that way because of the front he's put up. It currently works because no one has gotten in his head and made him highly vulnerable. Which, in turn, just makes him susceptible to having the biggest breakdown ever.

At this point, I'm begging. Someone help him. Please. He's just been screwed over his entire life. Do something.

If you made it here to the end, congrats! You managed to see half of my thoughts. The other half will be in a separate post for Ness.

I was not kidding when I said the new Egoist Bible pages had me thinking and cooking something in my head.

#blue lock kaiser #bllk kaiser

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brucebocchi · 11 months ago

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Ranking every new anime I watched in 2023, Pt. 3: #10-6

hey, i just started a ko-fi for my writing and possible other creative outlets. this post will also be available there, so please check it out and consider tipping/donating as i'm currently between jobs. the tumblr version of part 1 can be found here and part 2 here.

I didn't mean to drag this out quite so much, but I ended up writing a TON for the top 10, so for the sake of everyone's attention spans (and so I can buy some time to finish my top two) I broke it up into two more posts.

ALSO! I've embedded a link to each show's OP in the title of each entry. I wanted to give more of a visual element to each show outside of the header images, plus there have been some incredible OPs this year. I've gone back and edited them into the prior posts as well.

10. Trigun Stampede

It’s funny, I had fond memories of watching Trigun on Adult Swim in my adolescence, to the point where I used to count it among my all-time favorite anime for a while, but I didn't realize until this year that I hadn't actually sat down and watched it from beginning to end. It’s honestly a very uneven watch, and it’s clearly split into two parts: The first, a dieselpunk western revolving around a mysterious goofball with a big-ass gun and a bounty on his head, and the second a slightly more somber revenge quest as he is forced to survive his way past a rogues gallery while vowing not to take any lives. Still, it was a hit among western anime fans for a reason, and it was formative to me even back when I thought anime was kinda cringe.

Trigun Stampede is far from a faithful reinterpretation of Yasuhiro Nightow’s manga nor of the original Madhouse production. Meryl Stryfe is no longer a jaded veteran insurance adjuster but a much younger muckraking journalist. She’s no longer tailed by the gentle giantess Milly Thompson, but rather following her senpai, the gruff, bleary-eyed Roberto De Niro (the names in Trigun have always rocked). Nicholas D. Wolfwood isn’t an affable priest with a dark past; he’s all dark past now. And Vash the Stampede, now rocking a fuckboy undercut, is less of a mercurial wisecracker with a soft side and more of a reluctant gunman freaking it in a sensitive style.

Stampede wastes no time differentiating itself from any previous version of Trigun. Vash’s history is no longer a mystery waiting to be uncovered; it’s a driving factor of the plot as his brother Knives seeks revenge on humankind for their use and exploitation of “plants,” an alien race to which the two seem to be connected, as an energy source. This was always an element of the original anime that I felt went unexplored, so it was fascinating to see Stampede dive right in. It’s a great introduction to the story for people who haven’t seen the original, and full of unexpected turns for existing fans. It’s still built on the bones of Trigun as we know it, but it is very much its own thing.

People made a lot of hay about Vash’s new appearance, but I think it works. The huge pleather trench coat, spiky flat-top, and tiny glasses remain an iconic 90s design, but I believe the 90s is where it belongs. This take on Vash is just as capable but much more self-effacing, tortured, and averse to violence. This is a younger Vash, and it’s clear that his history with Knives is a much fresher wound, rather than the dull, nagging ache in the original. This is a gentler (but no less talented) Vash, so I think the softboy look suits him this time around.

I also spent most of the season quietly insisting to myself that the original version of Meryl is much better (and cuter) than the Stampede variant, and I still stand by that, but the updated version definitely grew on me. I mean, just look at that hat. But it’s clear from the jump that Stampede’s first season is very early in this version of the Trigun story (you may notice that the bounty on Vash’s head is much, much less than the famous 60 billion double-dollars), and Meryl has some growing to do (and presumably a whole lot of professional frustration) before she becomes something like the one we knew and loved around the turn of the 21st Century.

I’m still yet to watch Beastars, but it’s immediately apparent why Studio Orange was entrusted with the Trigun IP. This show looks incredible. This is some of the best CG animation I’ve ever seen outside of a Pixar or Spider-Verse movie. Characters are amazingly expressive and oscillate between naturalistic, weighty movement and cartoony flailing. Action scenes are inventive and dynamic and stand up to even the wildest sakuga. And yet, it still looks like an anime. It still retains the classic 24fps look and even occasionally trades in the CGI for hand-drawn animation for effect. We are long past the botched Berserk revival: This is what CGI anime should look like.

It’s plainly obvious that Trigun has always carried influences from landmark western media like Mad Max and Dune (not to mention Fist of the North Star, but that one always wore its Mad Max influence on its sleeve), so it’s been an unexpected delight to see those influences take a new shape now that both franchises have seen major updates since the last iteration of Trigun went off the air. For all of the alien technology and technicolor glowing lights, Trigun takes place entirely in a desert setting, and it’s impossible to see these chase scenes and not immediately think of Fury Road, or halfway expect to see Villanueve’s take on the Fremen popping out of the dust clouds.

Stampede is a very welcome entry to a franchise long believed to be well and truly over, and the more eyeballs on Trigun, the better. It’s evident by the end of this season that this take on the story is only just beginning, and it has already taken unexpected departures from the story as we already knew it. I can’t wait to see where it goes from here, but that’s mostly because we have confirmation that Milly will be in the next season. It can’t get here quickly enough.

9. Insomniacs After School

I watched and read a frankly absurd amount of romance-centric anime and manga this year, especially of the slice-of-life variety, to the point where even by the early summer I thought I'd had my fill. I'm overjoyed to say that Insomniacs After School proved me dead wrong.

What a treat this was. It's a simple enough premise: A boy with insomnia is sent on an errand to his high school’s abandoned observatory, where he finds a classmate sleeping because she suffers from insomnia as well. They quickly find out that the observatory is a perfectly quiet environment for the both of them, and that they actually get restful sleep around one another. In order to get away with making use of the area, they resurrect the school’s astronomy club and find a genuine love for astrophotography and, you guessed it, one another.

You couldn’t have picked a more apt studio to adapt this work than Liden Films. Call of the Night made a splash last year for its saturated, vibey nightscapes, and Insomniacs’ gorgeous astral visuals carry that mantle. The nighttime backdrops of the quiet suburbs, wide-open beaches, and lush countryside are nothing short of stunning, and Isaki’s adolescent wonder at the world’s hidden beauties reminded me, and I do not say this lightly, of something Miyazaki would’ve animated.

On a couple of occasions this year, I’ve been able to step back from an anime, take a breath, and simply say “That was beautiful.” Insomniacs gave me one such occasion. Even putting the visuals aside, the story itself is lovely and would have made this the feel-good anime of the year, if not for the next entry on this ranking. I would have more to say, but Insomniacs After School speaks for itself. Give it a shot.

8. Skip and Loafer

There are so many standalone adjectives I could use to describe this one, and most of them are ones that would normally make me want to impulsively run the other way like “comfy,” “feel-good,” “wholesome,” what have you, but I think the most comprehensively I can boil it down to a single word is “lovely.” Everything about it just gives you the warm fuzzies, and almost makes me think that the “I want more stories with no conflict” dorks might actually be onto something.

It’s a simple one: Mitsumi, a dorky teenage go-getter with her entire life planned out, moves to Tokyo from her no-horse beach town to attend one of the country’s best prep schools, but much like everyone who played the first two hours of Persona 5, she quickly gets lost in Shibuya’s subway station on the first day of school. She runs into Sousuke Shima, a laid-back boy from the same school who’s also running late, because that’s, like, what he does, and manages to wrangle him into running to school with her.

Mitsumi quickly draws attention from her classmates, not only from delivering a speech as the incoming class representative (and subsequently barfing all over her teacher), but because she inadvertently made fast friends with the hottest, most popular first-year in the school. This attracts the attention of social climbers and jealous hangers-on, but Mitsumi hardly notices. She’s used to knowing everyone in her school back home, so she wastes no time reaching out and seeing what’s up with anyone who’ll give her the time of day.

A lot of Skip and Loafer revolves around the roles for which we think we’re destined in a controlled social environment like high school, and how easily the preconceptions you have of other people can be shattered if you just get to, like, talk to them for 20 seconds. Mitsumi’s friend group quickly fills itself out with people who wouldn’t give each other so much as a passing glance at first, but come together so naturally that you almost can’t believe they weren’t friends already.

Shima, for his part, also struggles with those preconceptions; for as laid-back as he seems on the surface, he’s a habitual people pleaser and is constantly playing a role. He’s so caught up in the performance that he doesn’t quite know what’s going on half the time or how he really feels about most things. Mitsumi is so naturally magnetic, though, that he does seem to genuinely enjoy his time with her, and vice versa. You can see where this is headed, if the gorgeously-animated dances they do together in the OP weren’t enough of a tell.

Everything about Skip and Loafer is just downright pleasant. Character models are simple and sketchy, the color palette is awash in pastels and neutral tones, and the soundtrack is peppy and whimsical. It’s a warm hug of a series, and at no point does it feel cloying or manipulative. High school slice-of-life is pretty bloated as a genre, and I watched a ton of those this year, but there’s just something so charming and magnetic about Skip and Loafer that instills in me a sort of false nostalgia for the ideal high school experience I never had.

Also: Nao-chan. Exceptional trans representation. We do not get enough of that in anime and she is a breath of fresh fucking air. I would die for her.

7. The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You

And now for something much less wholesome.

I really don’t seek out harem anime. Tenchi Muyo was formative to me as a tween, and a rewatch last year ended up being a major catalyst in getting me back into anime, but despite it being widely considered the second-ever harem anime, it hasn’t left much of a legacy in the ones that followed. Harem anime from the 00s onward has largely been formulaic wish-fulfillment slop that runs itself in circles as a perpetual money-making machine rather than developing any sort of plot (see: Hina, Love and Girlfriend, Rent-a-). I know I covered Girlfriend Girlfriend earlier, and while that’s nothing like Tenchi either, it does scratch an ever-present itch for stupid, madcap, relentless anime bullshit.

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, [...] Really Love You, meanwhile, sees that itch and takes a fucking chainsaw to it. To say everything about it is over-the-top would be an understatement: The top is Hyakkano’s floor. This show gives you everything you could ever want in a harem comedy, but to the extreme: It is your dad making you smoke the whole carton. It is Hell’s donut machine, and you are Homer Simpson. Satire is often at its best when it pushes the boundaries of absurdity, and 100 Girlfriends revels in that push like a horny bulldozer. This is not genre subversion, it’s genre explosion.

The headcount isn’t the only wildly outsized element of this series; every single member of the titular harem, each a tick on the checklist of every -dere archetype you can imagine, pushes the slider of each of their character tropes so far to the right it’s breaking the track. The deredere is a ball of deranged horniness, the tsundere betrays her intentions so compulsively that she’s functionally incapable of lying, and the kuudere is so robotically devoted to pure efficiency that it’s salient to mention that her name is literally pronounced “Nano A.I.” If you can think of an anime girl archetype, she is in this (or will be in future seasons), and she is the apotheosis.

And yet, this show still bothers to make each one of them an actual character. Harem anime has such a low bar to clear on that front, yet most entries in the genre still bang their dicks against it. Hyakkano's titular girlfriends, at least the ones introduced in the first season, are actual characters with actual backgrounds, actual motivations, actual growth, and actual reasons to like the protagonist beside the premise. They’re all founded on stock anime tropes, to be sure, but the original manga’s author actually put in the work to give them, you know, personalities. And above almost all else, they actually like each other too! This isn’t exactly a full-on polycule (though two of the girls are prone to making out with each other on occasion), but for as deeply weird as this family unit is on paper, they actually come across as a group of people who love and care for each other rather than everyone cattily jockeying for the same position.

And not for nothing, but Rentaro is easily one of the best harem protagonists I’ve ever seen, and again, this is coming from a Tenchi Muyo fan. I do enjoy Naoya’s over-the-top earnestness in Girlfriend Girlfriend, but Rentaro is the gigachad version. He is exceedingly patient, kind, and understanding of each of these girls’ unique quirks and qualities and quickly grows to learn to manage them in conflict and help them work through their insecurities, and he loves them back in kind and puts in the work to make equal time for each of them. He doesn’t want to “fix” these girls; he sees them for who they are and proactively does everything in his power to accommodate them. He's like if Tadano from Komi Can’t Communicate actually got the harem he deserved. Putting aside the fact that he’s, y’know, 100-timing his girlfriends, he comes across as just a really good partner.

I also want to be clear: For its rampant, fanservice-laden anime bullshit, this show is genuinely hilarious. It’s not some kind of “how did this shit even get made” trainwreck; it is a comedy first and foremost, and the comedy hits exactly as intended. The comic pacing is buckwild, the visual gags are so rampant that they’re almost difficult to keep up with, and the translators, at least in the version I watched, did an outstanding job of localizing the constant wordplay. It’s also so unapologetic in its horniness that you can’t help but admire it a bit; 100 Girlfriends knows exactly what it’s about, and it dares you to say something.

There’s a very good chance this won’t be for you. 100 Girlfriends is constantly pushing the boundaries of good taste, but never in an offensive way and never truly at its characters’ expense. Geoff Thew calls it the “most 'harem' harem anime,” but I'd argue that it’s the most "anime" anime: It is every trope you’ve ever seen in romcom anime cranked up to a thousand and smushed up against your nose. This shit hits like Panera lemonade. It is peak trash. If you have a tolerance for anime bullshit, this show may very well test that, but I still cannot recommend it enough.

6. Heavenly Delusion

Didn’t think I’d be getting into more than one post-apocalyptic anime this year, but I’d seen this one recommended so many times that I felt this list would be incomplete if I didn’t watch it. Don’t ask me about Pluto.

Heavenly Delusion (Hulu lists it under its Japanese title, Tengoku Daimakyo, for some reason) splits its runtime between two different stories: The first, a pair of young travelers making their way across a ruined Japan in search of nebulous goals neither is sure even exist; the second surrounding a group of adolescents in an unnervingly idyllic walled garden in some sort of school setting. The narrative flips between these two sporadically, rarely ever showing its hand in how they are even remotely connected.

On the post-apocalypse side, we follow Maru and his bodyguard-for-hire, Kiruko, as they trek across the country to deliver Maru to someplace called “Heaven,” while at the same time, Kiruko is in search of a pair of men from their youth. They are often beset by bandits, cults, and most crucially, horrifying monsters called “Man-Eaters,” which Maru has the unique ability to kill. On the school side, we see a group of gender-ambiguous kids in an enclosed space, constantly monitored and kept in a very controlled environment. Everything feels… wrong. Nobody seems entirely human. There is a lingering and seemingly taboo curiosity about what lies outside the walls. I hesitate to say any more.

There is phenomenal human drama in here, and sparks so many conversations about transhumanism and human nature, gender, trauma, community, all things I’m not smart enough to really dive into. But to even address these topics here is to give the game away, and Heavenly Delusion is a story better left unspoiled, even if, a full season in, I’m still not 100% sure what’s going on.

This show is gorgeous in ways I’m still struggling to articulate. The character designs, animation, lighting, and cinematography are so immaculate that I repeatedly had to remind myself that I wasn't watching a movie. Heavenly Delusion looks like a grungy Shinkai film: Character models are immaculately realized and fluidly animated, the light and shadow effects are some of the best I’ve ever seen in TV animation, and action sequences are visceral and unpredictable. Maybe all I needed to say is that it was made by much of the same Production IG staff in charge of Psycho-Pass.

I want to say as little about what happens as possible, because the mystery is the main draw of Heavenly Delusion, but I feel the need to warn that there is a very dark and sour turn near the end of the season in the form of some strongly implied sexual violence. It was thematically unnecessary, and once that side of things is resolved, everyone just kinda… moves past it. It doesn’t ruin the show, I still recommend it heartily, but be forewarned. I found it upsetting, but more in the “did this REALLY need to be in there?” sense. The mounting tension and slowly-unfolding existential horror in this series are otherwise expertly woven into the narrative, and this part landed with a wet thud.

This is a much longer story than most of the season would have you believe, and it ends with far more questions than answers. One side of the story leaves off with an open end, and the other with a massive cliffhanger, which left me a little cold but with interest piqued for the next season. For what it is right now, though, Heavenly Delusion is a nearly perfect, endlessly thought-provoking mystery and one of the most gorgeously ugly things I’ve seen this year.

#anime reviews

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tamamatango · 6 months ago

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“Holy shit they actually froggin did it”: A Keroro Gunso anime revival preliminary info and speculation post (late as hell edition)

Okay first of all,

AWAKEN

That’s right, vanished-into-the-void bastard Kirb here, I am an alive person still, though I’m certain a lot of stuff on this blog is horrifically outdated. Don’t get too used to my presence, I’m a whole ass adult with a 9-to-5 now and don’t really have the energy to put into consistently maintaining this account, at least not to the degree that I used to (took me well over a whole ass MONTH just to write this post). However, I’ve returned for a special occasion, as basically anyone still in this fandom is already aware considering it’s been forever now:

We are so fucking back

youtube

It took thirteen years and counting, but here we are, a brand new Keroro anime project is in the works—no “the short anime of all time” Flash series here, this is the real deal, straight out of 2004–2011, and goddamn is it beautiful. I might’ve been off the mark when I called it for the 15th anniversary, but it’s now the 20th, five years later, and the madmen did what was once thought impossible by many.

So let’s break down what the hell is actually going on here, because when this got revealed last month, Keroro fans on all sides of the globe basically started collectively running around like headless chickens. I’m gonna divide this aggregation post into the following sections:

Where did this even come from

Clearing up misconceptions

Okay so like what is “““Project”””

Collection of statements from official accounts, staff and cast, etc.

The Localization Question (TM)

Miscellaneous thoughts that don’t really fit anywhere else

I was originally going to make this a living document of sorts but some small stuff has already happened since I started drafting this the day after the reveal happened, so this should be it for the time being. It’s a hefty enough post as is. I am just a master procrastinator :V

That takes care of all the goofy intro nonsense, now for the parts you actually want to read, starting underneath the cut!

Section 1: The Signs Were There

As previously stated, 2024 is the 20th anniversary of the Keroro anime, along with the 25th anniversary of the manga’s serialization but apprently even they don’t care about that since they’ve made no fanfare around it whatsoever, unlike the joint 15th & 20th anniversary back in 2019. Maybe they will as we get closer to the manga anniversary in November, but for now-obvious reasons the anime has been overshadowing the manga side by a lot.

If you’ve been monitoring the Keroro PR account on Twitter (you bet your ass I’m still calling it that) you’ll have noticed an increasing output of Stuff over the last year or two, even compared to the prior anniversary. These include but are not limited to:

In 2021, the series opened an official YouTube Channel, where they’ve been doing reruns of the anime (region locked to Japan), PR podcasts, etc. It’s also where the revival announcement premiered on April 1 at midnight JST.

In 2023, the series opened an official Fan Club with a paid membership. Originally it was a temporary project meant to last for only the two anniversary years (2023 for the pilot oneshot’s anniversary, and 2024 for the anime/manga), but was ultimately extended indefinitely due to “good reception” (my guess is it was always planned to be more than two years but they didn’t want to make it too easy to guess as early as last year that the anime was returning lol). They have a merch store, giveaways, and some kind of social component. I don’t know much about it otherwise because it’s a paid membership that I don’t have access to.

The series has had an overall increase in merchandise and collabs since 2022 or so. This has pretty much always been the case, but there was a bit of a lull between the Flash series ending and the ramp-up period to this (I’d start at 2021 when the YouTube channel opened). Save for the 15th/20th stuff in 2019, for which the major project was Keroro UC, a spinoff manga/plamo line that just…never released all the models and has never been brought up again. Guess it didn’t do very well :V

A number of international releases/rereleases happened as well, but I’ll get into that a little bit more in its dedicated section. For now let’s just say that the anime being finally licensed and put up on streaming in North America may indicate the new series will be English translated in some capacity. It’s also made a resurgence in Korea, its biggest market outside Japan, where it’s had new exhibitions and collab cafes, a redub (that only got through 2 seasons I think), and even a new mobile game.

And finally, a week or so before the announcement, a new Twitter account was created specifically for the anime side of the brand. I think this was really the big tip-off, as Keroro PR has been the hub for all things related to the franchise for the last nearly 15 years, even when the original anime itself was still running during Twitter’s infancy. Keroro PR has posted everything for every other anime anniversary. The fact that now all of a sudden they had to sector off the anime stuff into its own account made it clear something bigger was going on. (Accordingly, the Keroro Anime account has labeled Keroro PR the “original work” account, AKA the manga side of things.)

Essentially I think they’ve been planning this to some degree since as long ago as 2021, the first time the president of Bandai Namco Pictures (animation studio comprised of Sunrise staff that took over the Keroro IP in 2015 and are now producing the new anime) openly acknowledged the possibility. I’ll just link my own tweet with the translation of his statement here. This was right around the opening of the YouTube channel, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

tl;dr Momentum for the anime component of the franchise has been building for the past couple of years pointing toward a new anime around the 20th anniversary, so I wouldn’t say this comes off as a huge surprise, though I was expecting something smaller scale than what we might be getting (more on that in the “what is this” section).

Section 2: No It’s Not April Fools, Guys, Plus Other Clarifications

With the announcement spreading across the internet, I’ve seen a few points of confusion going around that I’d like to clear up before I go any further.

As I’ve made clear in the section title, yes the new anime was revealed on April 1, no this is not a prank. A lot of Japanese companies do post April Fools pranks, but keep in mind April also marks the start of the new fiscal year in Japan, so many legitimate announcements are made as well. Plus, the original anime’s exact anniversary was on April 3, just a couple of days after the announcement.

I’ve seen a lot of people call this a new series, season, etc., but officially, the only term used to describe this so far is “new anime project”. That could mean literally anything, from TV series to movie to ONA and so on. I am leaning closer to a certain interpretation, which is what the entire next section is for, but for the time being, calling it anything other than “new anime” is technically not concrete info.

There seems to be a little bit of confusion on what studio is working on this, but in short: it's Bandai Namco Pictures (BN Pictures or BNP for short). As previously mentioned, this is the studio that inherited the Keroro IP when it spun off from Sunrise in 2015. Sunrise, the anime's original studio, is now a brand name for the larger anime management company Bandai Namco Filmworks. Although they've held the IP for almost a decade, this is the first time they've really gotten to do anything with it besides merchandise licensing and some anti-piracy commercial from a few years ago that they’ve ironically scrubbed from the internet now. If you've seen the name Studio BIND (Mushoku Tensei, Onimai) floating around, they're assisting with the production but are not the primary animation studio. Of course this is all assuming this setup continues on to the final project and not just for the PV, but I see no reason to assume otherwise at the moment. It would be rather unusual for BNP to outsource anything if it was solely for a 30 second trailer.

I think that does it for the main points of contention I wanted to address for now, so moving on to the thing we all really want to know…

Section 3: Okay But What Is It Actually???

Well, as I said in the previous section—we don't know, lol. At least not officially. But if we put our thinking caps on, we can make a few deductions:

The anime project will be broadcast on TV. In other words, it won't be an ONA (original net animation). This is determined based on the fact that TV Tokyo, the network the original anime aired on, is on the production committee. For those who don't know, a production committee for an anime is the collection of parties/companies who contribute to the production and funding of the anime. For comparison, the Keroro Flash Series, which aired only on the TV channel Animax to accompany a dedicated timeslot for the original anime reruns, did not have TV Tokyo in its committee. So, it will likely air on TV Tokyo once again.

It's (probably) not a movie. This is going to be more evidenced by point 3 than anything, but BNP has been pretty clear about when something is a movie specifically in the past, such as when Kaiketsu Zorori had various feature films in the 2010s before getting an actual TV anime revival in 2020. Still, we can't be 100% sure until someone directly says otherwise.

It's going to be more than a one-off. I will post the statement in full in the next section, but the Keroro PR account uses specific wording (“resumption,” “new start,” etc.) that sounds very much like they’re making a longer term commitment, so this is straight from the horse’s mouth, essentially.

The series will be a continuation of the 2004-2011 series rather than a reboot. This one’s probably my flimsiest prediction as the PR statements sort of obfuscate whether it’s one or the other, but the character bios section on the new anime portal site gives away a big hint: the Garuru Platoon, Pururu included, is there. This means that we can reason that, at minimum, all or part of Season 3 has already occurred. The character bios themselves also summarize things that weren’t revealed until a little while into the show, such as how Momoka and Tamama met. That all said, the Garuru Platoon members do not have bios, so I suppose they want to keep what’s being done with them a bit of a secret; perhaps they intend to reintroduce them with some kind of dramatic arc again. Either way, if the series does retread/retell some old material, it probably won’t be the bulk of the story. This makes sense to me, as it’s not like the show has been so hard to find in the last decade that a reboot is necessary to get a modern audience on board—it reruns constantly on kids’ TV channels like the Japanese version of Cartoon Network, is available in full on multiple streaming platforms (movies included), and is now on its second rebroadcast of the whole series episode by episode on the YouTube Channel. Unless you’re a literal toddler, if you’re interested in the series, you’ve probably watched at least some of it already.

In conclusion, based on the above (admittedly sparse) evidence, I am inclined to believe the new anime project is a TV series that will air on TV Tokyo as the 2004 anime did and will be a continuation rather than a reboot; however, there is no way to determine episode length, episode count, etc. at this time. It could be a cour (for those who don't know anime, "cour" is your average 12-episode season), it could be consecutive cours, it could be split cour (in other words, goes on break for a season before returning), it could even be a year-round anime if they really wanna go all the way with it. Granted, I hesitate to believe that they would do the latter simply due to the nature of anime production these days, and as far as I know, BNP has not done a single year-round airing since its founding. Even the aforementioned Kaiketsu Zorori revival was a two cour (24-25 eps) series each year from 2020-2022. My guess is we're looking at something similar here, but Keroro is a pretty big deal, so could they make an exception? Maybe, but this setup would already lead to more episodes than the vast majority of anime these days, so it would still be plenty enough to be happy with.

Considering all this and the list of numerous hints that we were potentially getting a new anime as far back as three years ago as bulleted in Section 1, you might question what made me doubt that it could be a series in the first place. Well, besides just the series being so old and it being so long since the anime ended that it felt a little like wishful thinking, at least three members of the cast said that a new series was not something they were specifically looking to do...I think, anyway. Let me explain.

Last year, on December 9, a Keroro birthday event with Kumiko Watanabe (Keroro), Etsuko Kozakura (Tamama), and Takeshi Kusao (Dororo) was hosted in person and livestreamed on TwitCast for fans that paid for a ticket. There were two timeslots for the in person event, and only the evening show was streamed, with the afternoon one being in person only. Now that I have adult money, and being the impulse driven gremlin that I am, I paid for the virtual ticket. Most of it was just cute little segments like the three cast members doing live commentary on some of the birthday episodes, discussing the results of a “favorite lines from their characters” poll hosted on Twitter a few weeks before the event, and a brief visit from Jashin-chan of Jashin-chan Dropkick/Dropkick on My Devil, a series that Keroro recently collabed with for a series of merchandise. Unfortunately the event wasn't archived publicly and they specifically asked to not upload materials to social media, and I'd like to respect that request mostly out of consideration for the cast, so you will just have to take my word for it :P (besides those who were watching me talk about it in real time on discord).

The reason I'm going on this tangent is because, at the end of the stream, a special prerecorded video featuring the three cast members was shown exclusively for virtual attendees. In it they essentially explained that they still greatly enjoy the characters/series and would love to partake in more events and projects, but "not necessarily a new series." I promise you I listened to this clip over and over the entire time it was available and that's what I heard. Now look, the room they recorded this in was echo-y, and my Japanese is pretty decent (enough for my N2 anyways, yeah I did that while I was away from here clap clap) but listening comprehension is my weaker area, so maybe I just take a massive L here. When I started writing this post there was a sentence here guessing about whether they were just being cheeky or didn’t know yet, but an interview came out last month that gave what’s all but a conclusive answer to that. More on it in the next section but tl;dr, they likely did not know it was happening at all. Well, at least they got to be as surprised as we were :V

Anyways now that the thing has been revealed none of the last two paragraphs even matter, so I just prattled on for no reason besides to admit my own shame. Next bit.

Section 4: SAUCE PLOX??? (Current testimonies from relevant people/entities)

Naturally, when the trailer dropped, we got a pretty decent handful of comments from whatever staff and cast are on social media. Most of these are just people going “yay we’re back hooray!” (paraphrased) but the Keroro PR account statements are actually kinda sorta hints? So I’ll start out with those. There’s two tweets that I want to highlight here:

First is from April 1 (JST), the day of the reveal. In this tweet the account wishes everyone well for the new school/fiscal year, but the important part is the last sentence, This can be translated any number of ways (thanks to yoroshiku onegaishimasu and its 50 potential meanings, every Japanese translator’s worst nightmare), but essentially it’s something along the lines of “we hope you’ll support the restart/resumption of the Keroro anime for a long time to come.”

The keywords here are obvious: 再始動 (saishidou) meaning either restart or resumption. I know you’re probably thinking those are two very different things, but the nuance here is that it’s more of a restart in production than restart of the continuity. For the latter, I think it’s more common to see リメイク, which is just the English word “remake” in katakana. Worth noting that the Flash anime used none of these words in its marketing, but it did use language such as “brand new invasion plan,” “rebirth of Keroro,” and so on…in addition to, you know, having a completely different artstyle and a title change to just “Keroro”, which this clearly does not (the artstyle is relatively faithful to the old one and the project is under the original Keroro Gunso name).

The other big word is 末永く(suenagaku), which…also doesn’t have one exact translation, but implies somewhere between years or even an indefinite period of time. I didn’t want to say a specific unit of time in my translation of the statement because well, we can’t really be sure of anything here, but either way, they’re signaling that they’re most likely in it for the long haul.

Then there’s the tweet from the PR account commemorating the actual anniversary of the original anime (April 3). This one uses 新しいスタート, “new start”—no real multiple definition shenanigans here, this is about as literal and straightforward as you can get. In terms of the reboot or not question, this could lean either way, but it definitely adds to theory that it is a series of some sort.

Okay, that’s all for the individual tweets I’m gonna totally overanalyze, otherwise I’d be stuck here for even longer than I already have been. Here’s a quick list of involved staff who tweeted about the reveal:

Unsurprisingly, Kumiko Watanabe (Keroro) posted that day, reiterating that it is real and saying “believe usssss!” (As a reminder, half the internet was convinced it was April Fools for like a whole week)

Adding to the cast comments, Etsuko Kozakura (Tamama) says, “Whoo-hoo! Can’t wait for more news! Keroro Gunso is still the greatest!!”

Jouji Nakata (Giroro) didn’t make a specific comment about the trailer, but has been retweeting the other official accounts and such and replying about it, so he has acknowledged it otherwise. As a substitute, here’s a picture of him visiting the Keroro Exhbition in Ikebukuro a day early.

Here’s an interesting one—Haruna Ikezawa (Momoka) said about the trailer, “Really?! Is this real?!?!?!” While no cast members outside of the Keroro Platoon were officially revealed to be reprising their roles, I’m assuming they’re going to try their best to reassemble as much of the cast as of season 7 as possible—besides Keiji Fujiwara (Paul/Narrator), who sadly passed away in 2020—so I kind of figured Ikezawa would know about this, but maybe not…? Well, considering that the main five were completely blindsided by this to the point where they weren’t even sure this was a real thing until they were in the middle of recording it (as I said previously, more on that later), I suppose the other cast members were just. Not told. I don’t really doubt Ikezawa would return (she even stated it could happen someday all the way back when the then-final season ended in 2011 and did come back for Flash)…but unless they were like really worried about leaks why even keep them in the dark to learn with the rest of the public, idk man :V (so much for not overanalyzing tweets huh)

On to production staff now, here’s the tweet from Satoshi Koike, animation director of the latter third of the original and also the reveal trailer, indicating that he’s most likely back for the new project. It’s just a simple “Welcome back! (de arimasu)” but the images he used were drawn back in 2019 to commemorate the start of the Reiwa era, spoofing the original lyrics of the first opening. The reveal trailer tweet itself from the Keroro Anime account does this too (“Starting today, the Reiwa era shall be known as the Keroro era!”).

New to the staff is Jouji Furuta (yes we have two Joujis now har har), who did the storyboards and direction for the trailer. He’s relatively new to the scene as a whole, with his most well known project being Shaman King Flowers. Although he never worked on the series before, he did a pretty good job emulating the original, and based on the last line of the tweet, it seems like he will be staying on for the full project as well.

And now for a kind of weird section where I talk about the few related accounts that the Keroro anime twitter is following but haven’t made any kind of verbal acknowledgement yet.

First and foremost is Mine Yoshizaki—you know, the guy who created the fucking series, whose name is on the copyright string and whose explicit permission they had to get to do another anime in the first place? Yeah so it’s been over a month since the reveal now and there has been zero acknowledgement from him. I do know his personal social media account has been inactive for quite a few years now (I feel like the anime account is only even following it for symbolic reasons), but he had multiple other opportunities to say something at this point. He did contribute some signed artwork to the anime-focused exhibition that just ended but nowhere in it does he directly mention the new adaptation, and so far he hasn’t commented on it in Shonen Ace (maybe in the next volume, assuming that’s soonish). I have my theories about his relationship to the anime, especially now that the Kemono Friends fiasco has occurred, but that’s all a story for another day or never. I’m sure he’ll contribute something later, but even so it’s just really bizarre to have nothing to say about your biggest creation’s first new adaptation in over a decade. Oh well.

Character designer Fumitoshi Oizaki, who has been around since the beginning if I remember correctly, has been retweeting things, but no official comment just yet. (He discretely left a message at the expo apparently, but didn’t post it online, so no idea if it mentions the new anime.) He isn’t credited on the trailer, but considering he’s still been pretty involved with the franchise’s promotion over the last few years, I would be very surprised if he wasn’t returning.

Last but certainly not least is Junichi Sato, the chief director for the original anime for the first two seasons, arguably its most well-known and critically praised era. He’s also a very notable director in his own right, having headed other famous series like early Sailor Moon and Ojamajo Doremi. Sato didn’t direct the original anime for the majority of its runtime (though he did direct the first four movies), but he still directs and storyboards on projects to this day, including for other franchises’ major anniversaries (namely Doremi and Precure). Though not certain, I think it’s very possible that he returns for this in some capacity, if not as director than perhaps for storyboarding or general advising.

To close out the testimony section, I’m going to share here the translation I did of the aforementioned interview with Kumiko Watanabe in last month’s issue of Newtype (anime-centric magazine published by Kadokawa). I won’t re-summarize it here since it’s not particularly long, but the main takeaways from this in terms of hints as to what we can expect are that a) the cast was surprised by this and potentially didn’t even know back in December when they last discussed the possibility of working on Keroro again, and b) as I previously speculated, this is going to be a long term enough project that at least Watanabe feels the need to physically prepare for it lol. And thankfully, it seems they’re all excited to go back to the series. I spent a long time thinking they might not be up to it again since it’s been so long and they’re much later in their lives/careers (Nakata just turned 70 oh man) but I’m glad I was wrong! Though I don’t expect this to be another 300 episode commitment anyway; in spite of the PR comments I don’t think we’re going for that long with the nature of anime production these days lmao.

And now for a topic which I think many of you are concerned about…

Section 5: “But what if my 日本語 is not 上手???” (The Localization Question)

If you did not get the joke in the above headline without looking it up, it’s probably safe to assume that if you want to watch this Thing, you will need it in a language other than Japanese (and even if you did get the joke you will know if you are truly 日本語上手 when people stop saying 日本語上手 to you). I’m going to focus on English for this post since that’s the primary language of the audience here, though I would be very shocked if there isn’t at minimum a Korean translation—dub more likely than sub imo, since the most famous version of the show there had different names for the characters and was changed to be set in Korea, and the series is HUGE there to the point where it almost rivals the Japanese market.

So, English. Well, if it were a few years ago (say, if this came during the 15th anniversary like I was originally coping over), I would be markedly less optimistic about getting any official translation at all. At that time, the dub was explicitly dead and the only English sub had been delisted for a few years, and even that was only available in a select few countries in Continental Europe on a pretty obscure streaming service called Viewster for like a year or two before getting pulled. It’s no surprise that this particular sub eventually became more well known as the subs on the torrents compiled by ColdFusion (whoever that was, I’m still not sure myself). That was until…

…the magical year of 2021, when our heroes at Discotek licensed the ENTIRE SERIES (minus the movies) for an official English release using Viewster’s existing translations! That’s right, we got all of it. And not only that, the whole series was also added to Crunchyroll, though only the sub; Discotek had the Funimation dub but it seems it did not get ported to Crunchyroll when the merger happened this year. It does seem that Crunchy has still not made the series available outside of the US and Canada, which is a shame, but man is it still surreal to have the entire series legally available both digitally and physically after nearly two decades of scattered fansubs and hardly accessible official releases. Surely this was a huge win for Discotek, right?

Weeeeeell…no. Of course they weren’t able to say it out loud, but it’s been extremely heavily implied that unfortunately the BluRay/DVD releases flopped for them, and they did say they definitely won’t be getting the movies or the Flash series. They also stopped releasing the discs on a one season a year basis and started bundling them together, with seasons 5–7 coming out all at once later this year, so they’re clearly trying to just get it off their plates. To be honest, this was pretty predictable because…it’s been on Crunchyroll since before the discs even came out. Look, physical media is super cool and all, but who in this economy is going to pay $40-60 per box for a handful of seasons at most when they can get the whole damn thing on their phone for like $8 a month. Crunchyroll isn’t necessarily a disc killer; their release of Digimon Adventure, for example, still seemingly did well despite that series being available on Crunchyroll two years prior, but in addition to Digimon being more popular in the west, it’s one $60 purchase for the whole series versus having to spend like over $200 for 358 episodes. I applaud them for rolling the dice and trying to get this behemoth of a release out there, but I’m not surprised about the lack of financial returns.

However, since Crunchyroll now has set a precedent of having the original series available on their platform, we just might get the new series available on there as well—if not as a simulsub, then at least dropped in batches later on. I’m not 100% confident in this, particularly because technically Discotek still holds the license, but my guess based on the way they’ve talked about the series is that they’re pretty open to someone else taking it off their hands when they’re done releasing the original series (and the translations weren’t originally theirs to begin with anyways, they purchased them and did some touch-ups to the existing translation with added typesetting). As far as simulsubs go, the kids’ shows that get simulsubbed tend to be from Toei, with whom Crunchyroll has a known partnership. But if it is split into cours rather than being a year-round anime, I think the chances of a simulsub go up. Whatever the case may be, it’s for sure in a better position to get an official subtitled release than it ever was before. I’m certainly praying this happens because I believe most of the people capable of fansubbing (with good translation anyway) have gradually moved away from the fandom over the last decade for various reasons—myself included, though mostly I just quit fansubbing/scanlation in general for Personal Reasons(TM). Fingers crossed, everyone.

So subs remain as a not-guaranteed-but- definitely-not-low possibility. But what about a dub? If you recall, Keroro has had a very rocky history in 3D with English dubs, with the American dub being in licensing hell for years before finally falling into Funimation’s lap and subsequently failing to take off despite remaining a beloved cult classic to Some Fans (I am not as high on it, but longtime Kirb followers probably know that by now), and the only other English dub is relegated to the network Animax in Hong Kong + Southeast Asia with no official home release, leaving all of it besides parts of seasons 3 and 4 as lost media (and the voice acting sucked ass but at least the script was accurate). But we’re not in the mid 2000s to early 2010s anymore; this is the screamin’ ’20s, baby! So much anime is getting dubbed now, sometimes at almost the same time as the Japanese release! There must be a chance, right?!

Eeeehhhhhh I wouldn’t bet on it. Even the Toei kids’ shows Crunchyroll started simulsubbing usually don’t get dubs (Digimon is an exception, and the reboot’s dub took YEARS to come out). Anime dubs, as far as I’m aware, are not cheap to produce (though it’d be great if more of what the companies are pocketing went to the actors’ wages >_>), and if the show does have the potential to become somewhat of a long runner, I think they’ll need to see more interest around the IP to fund one, and both Funimation and now Discotek’s releases have proved that the audience for it isn’t always there. I also speculate they’d be doing a lot of recasting; the casting process is not as smooth and (I believe) more expensive than it is in Japan, and a lot of the original cast are not working as often in the field anymore and/or have been involved with some pretty serious controversies—I’m sure those in the know are thinking of a specific drawn-out conflict but I’m pretty sure it’s more than just About Him at this point. So let’s just say that while some of the cast still remembers the show fondly, I think trying to get them all in the same project again would potentially open some cans of worms better off left closed. It’s not 100% impossible it gets dubbed, you never know what the industry can manage to make work these days, but I’d wager it’s like 90% not happening. Just a hunch. If anyone more knowledgable than me on anime localization (this goes for both the dub and sub stuff) would like to argue me with better explanations than I have I’d very much be glad to hear it.

Section 6: The Stuff That Doesn’t Fit Elsewhere + Final Thoughts

There’s not going to be any real organization to this section. Here’s just some bullets of miscellaneous stream of consciousness thoughts related to whatever:

The character bios page on the site linked in section 3 has some WEIRD romanization choices. I don’t expect these to reflect on any official localization because chances are they’ll go with what Viewster used, which is largely what the fandom is used to besides the Kululu/Kururu split. It is indeed Kululu here and Kululu has been the de facto official spelling for a very very long time now but I still have a personal preference for Kururu because “Kululu” loses the onomatopoeia joke and I’m a rebel. But like. “Tololo”? Since when has Tororo ever been called that in any media? And worst of all, “Pole”? POLE?? That’s literally never been a thing what glossary did they pull these from.

Also worth noting, Alisa and the Narrator had merchandise sold at the Keroro expo (will talk about that next btw) despite not being on the characters page. This isn’t a confirmation of anything but I would be very surprised if Alisa doesn’t return at some point since she was pretty prominent later in the show and Yoshizaki seems to have a particular fondness for her, and the Narrator will obviously be there with a recast, though jury’s out on if his little ’sona guy will show up too. It won’t be the same without Fujiwara :(

I do want to touch upon the “Keroro expo”, officially known as the “Keroro Gunso Super Gerogero Museum” (expo is a fine shorthand because the Japanese word can mean exhibition also), since I’ve mentioned it a couple times throughout this write-up. This was an event that was held in Ikebukuro just recently from April 27–May 12 that was basically a walkthrough experience recreating settings from the anime, having artwork and stuff sprinkled in between (all reused, no new concept art or anything sadly). The main gimmick was that the venue had an exclusive app that let you take AR pictures with models of the Keroro Platoon. It also had an AI chatbot feature where you could talk to each member of the platoon, and not too many posted pictures of this feature but apparently the chatbots were uhhhhhh weird. I have no idea how much of it is generative from other LLMs, and I’m assuming they programmed it at least partially with their own original input/databases (which is the only way to make generative AI even close to ethical), but from the few screenshots I’ve seen their speech was just a little bit awkward and some of the stuff they said was really bizarre. At one point users started to turn it into an otome game and successfully romanced the frogs, which I’m assuming is a little bit out of the bounds of what they were expecting from this experiment. If they do release that app publicly at some point—they labeled the version at the expo to be a “test version,” so maybe—I sincerely hope they at least fine tune it because Good Lord. Finally and maybe most importantly, there were new voice lines recorded for the exhibit to give it an audio-drama type simple story, but unfortunately it was probably not archived because video recording was not allowed inside the venue. The platoon all had new voice lines along with Fuyuki and Natsumi, reportedly still played by Houko Kuwashima and Chiwa Saito respectively, so most likely they will return to reprise the roles for the new anime, though I don’t think those two were much in question. That’s really like the only important part of this for the purposes of this post I’m not sure why I mentioned anything else here actually. AI chatbot Dororo wants you to know he enjoys tickles from Giroro and Tamama. Yeah this thing’s a little fucked

I didn’t want to get too deep into this in section 3 because it’s not really a production related question, but…are Shin Keroro and related new characters gonna be in this or not? For what it’s worth the site seems to count the Flash series as part of the anniversary celebration, and screenshots with Shin in them are there even if he is completely absent from the character page. Flash was a total reboot so I don’t think it will be that exact iteration of the character if he is in the new anime, but there must be some way to work his stuff into the existing anime canon even with its many differences from the manga. Honestly I think the main obstacle to him appearing is just that the guy is not very popular lol. He’s hardly in the manga anymore and Tomosu and Myou are in it even less. I’m not sure if it was just franchise fatigue following the end of the anime but the reception to Shin was very meh across the board (at least among longtime fans, kids might’ve liked him I think. Which makes sense). So I could totally see them skipping him entirely. There’s still a lot of post-anime manga-only stories without his involvement at all, some that included him but he could easily be changed to some other character, and for the stories that revolved around him, well, the Flash anime got to a decent amount of them. This could really go either way but for now I’m going to lean toward him not being included. If he’s put in I think it will not be until the “second season” (whatever the definition of that ends up being) so we can be eased back in to the existing cast first before shaking things up significantly.

I like the new artstyle, assuming it carries over from the trailer to the final project. It looks like they hit a happy medium between the early and late artstyles of the original anime. This is the most obvious with the human cast who haven’t received new official artwork by Koike and/or Oizaki in a looooong time, and they look much better than the last time we saw them in season 7 where everyone got weirdly lanky for some reason.

Okay FINALLY I’m done here for now I think. At the time of writing we’re pretty much just in a “wait and see” phase with no other real concrete info around that I haven’t touched upon in this post. Trust me, I’ve tried digging for more, but I couldn’t find anything really interesting staff-wise and very few of the staff credited in the trailer are even on social media (sometimes staff can be a bit loose-lipped so it’s possible to get hints there). I’ve also checked every nook and cranny of the official sites of both animation studios and the companies on the production committee and turned up with nothing of note. I’m hoping we get some more info at least sometime between now and autumn.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end (or speedscrolling here, don’t worry I won’t be disappointed lol). I hope you found it informative even though I probably spent way too much time yapping about dumb shit. It took me entirely too long to write this post, but I don’t have as much time as I did as a teenager and it’s been a good few years since I’ve done a really deep dive into Keroro stuff. Needless to say, I’m beyond excited for this project and can’t wait to see how the last seven years of me huffing unhealthy amounts of copium pays off. I’ve had like a month and a half to sit on it now and it honestly still doesn’t feel real!

I will most likely return to report when we get some amount of substantial info—hopefully with way fewer words lmao. Until next time! Ge-gero~

#keroro gunso #sgt frog #sergeant keroro #anikero reiwa #I’m gonna call it that in tags because we don’t know if it’s airing in 2024 lol #infodump #translation #did y’all miss me #I hope not

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