#it was mentioned way back when rin asked what meisters there were

[everyryuujisuguro]

[facets-and-rainbows]

Volume 11 question corner (historical restoration)

Welp, one of my posts [here] got flagged DESPITE BEING ENTIRELY TEXT but it’s a reblog from a deactivated OP asking for a translation and CANNOT BE SAVED, so I’m gonna repost it here for posterity. Enjoy this quaint ancient translation of some volume 11 extras.

December 8, 2013

todo-john-august-cat:

BEGGING FOR JAPANESE-SPEAKERS OR JAPANESE-KNOWERS

to translate at least one interesting fact from the info lists. (maybe Lightning’s class and meister type if there is it)

please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please (Q,Q)

desktop-warrior:

Here’s what I got from Google Translate, combined with my very rudimentary knowledge of Japanese grammar. Don’t quote me on this. It’ll likely be quite inaccurate.

Interesting facts for Angel: - “Joke is not through” - I’m assuming this means that others’ jokes at his expense don’t get through to him, or he takes it all in good fun. Or, HIS jokes don’t make sense to others. - “Demon sword Caliburn enslavement” - Also a tricksy one; from the wording of it, I’m assuming it means he’s ‘enslaved’ Caliburn. - Feminist. No joke. - “No mercy to those identified as enem[ies].” Duh! :D

Interesting facts for Lightning: - Cynic - “How it is called Lightning, which was quite strong enslavement familiar.” From what I gather, this means that Lightning got his nickname from a powerful familiar demon he uses. Which means he’s a Tamer, and we might get to see him in action soon, hopefully. :D - Something about either hating not showering for a week (quite long, if you ask me), or not minding that he doesn’t shower that long and he does so quite commonly. I guess that goes with his scruffy appearance. - “Weak and cleaning.” Probably means he’s slovenly, which wouldn’t surprise me.

Now, for Lightning’s Meisters: it looks like he has all five of them, not surprising for an Arc Knight, but it looks like he got one of them (Tamer) twice. Again, don’t quote me because I’m guessing here based on images of the Exorcist ranks list I found online.

And, ah, if I could ask for a teeny favour, if you can: does Godaiin also get a character profile in Volume 11? I really like his character, so would you be able to upload his profile if he has one? If he doesn’t, or if you don’t want to, that’s perfectly fine.

todo-john-august-cat:

omg, what a clever people on internets ! thank You so much

unfortunately in the 11th volume there are only two profiles, BUT Goddain appeared in characters card (idk what it’s proper name) for the first time

[broken image link, used to be a pic of that page]

(I’m not good in tumblr :( is this picture clickable and downloadable?)

desktop-warrior:

Oh, haha, there was nothing ‘clever’ about what I did! I’ve enabled my keyboard to be able to type Japanese characters. So I copied out the facts and then put them through Google Translate. I took a first-year Japanese course in university, so I understand mostly how Japanese grammar works. I looked at the results and interpreted them in the way that made the most sense to me. You can talk to anyone who knows a little more Japanese and they would’ve done a much better job than I did. :D Nonetheless, you’re welcome.

And thank YOU for uploading that character card! What I wanted to know most of all was Godaiin’s first name, which I do now.

facets-and-rainbows:

Your translations seem pretty darn accurate as far as I can tell : ) “Joke not through” means that Angel doesn’t get jokes. I had to look up フェミニスト in like three dictionaries before I was convinced that it still meant “feminist” in Japanese, but he is indeed a feminist against all expectation. “Enslave” is a strong word; maybe “employ”? “Lightning” is apparently a title given to some sort of master Tamer/Aria (I think?). I don’t know what the second “Tamer” meister is. I don’t think it’s been mentioned before. He’s bad at cleaning and bathing, like you said.

I have volume 11 here, so I guess I might as well paraphrase the fan question corner thing they’re doing. It’s got some neat little facts.

-Angel’s middle initial is A, not O. The times when it was O were typos. -Angel is half English and half French. He and Lightning are canonically multilingual (Angel claims to have dabbled in 8 languages!). They are actually literally speaking Japanese in their scenes. Not just for the reader’s convenience. We’re just gonna go with the explanation that all the foreign exorcists are good with languages because it is, in Lightning’s words, “cooler that way.” -Rin sleeps with his eyes open. A lot. It creeps Yukio right out. -The sandwich Shiemi eats in Chapter 46 is made of herbs from her garden. It was “bitter, but good for you. Probably.” -Paku is doing fine in regular school despite seeing demons all the time, thanks for asking. -You can get TO cram school with magic keys, but you have to take the long way back unless you have a key for your next destination. -Rin is the easiest character for Katou-sensei to draw. Angel is hardest because hair is hard. Lightning is also kind of hard because she’s not used to him yet. She can’t pick a favorite character because she’s spent years of her life developing and identifying with each and every one. -Mephisto is impressed that you noticed how his fingernails only look pointy when he’s not wearing gloves. But you shouldn’t worry too much about it. He’s a shapeshifter and he can do whatever he wants. -If you want to know what class everyone is in in regular school, you’re gonna have to figure it out yourself from the school festival scenes. The information is there. -As previously covered, Godaiin’s given name is Sei. He apologizes for it. -Yes, Amaimon’s face was smoking when he came out of the cuckoo clock in volume 10, just like it was when he went into the cuckoo clock in volume 4. Yes, this is because time is meaningless inside the cuckoo clock. -Caliburn, Angel’s sword, is a trans woman in the manga despite being a cis woman in the anime. It doesn’t matter to Angel whether his sword is a man or a woman. But don’t get your hopes up, Caliburn, he probably didn’t mean that in QUITE the way you think he meant it. Angel’s kind of dense. -You have to recite a demon’s Fatal Verse word for word. Unless you’re really good. Like, Lightning good. Then you can freestyle abbreviate it. -Mephisto will neither confirm nor deny that he is the Mephistopheles from Goethe’s Faust. -If you can’t see demons, can you see Rin’s tail etc? The answer is SURPRISINGLY COMPLICATED. Rin says regular people can’t see the flames. They CAN see the ears, fangs, and tail, but no one seems to mention it. They don’t notice much. Then Mephisto talks about perception and the human brain and inattentional blindness for long enough that he has to be cut off. -How’d you like the cross-dressing, guys? Rin: It was funny! Suguro: I feel like I lost a part of myself that day. I don’t want to do it again. Konekomaru: Agrees with Suguro. Shima: I thought I was really cute but not as cute as real girls lol. Yukio: It was part of the mission. -If the twins are complete opposites, how is Yukio’s cooking? Is it edible? Well, he doesn’t really cook much at all. It’s totally not because he cut himself as a child and is afraid of chopping stuff NO IT’S NOT SHUT UP RIN. -Yes, twelve-year-old fan, it is okay if your original story copies Blue Exorcist a lot. But once you become a manga author yourself, you’ll need to branch out. You’ll understand when you’re older.

[animebw]

Binge-Watching: Blue Exorcist, Episodes 4-7

And so we continue! In which the world and characters are fleshed out, Shiemi is the best, and a darker mystery is hinted at.

Welcome to a World of Wonder

With our setting, plot, and characters established in the first three episodes, it’s time to dive into the meat of Blue Exorcist. Appropriately, the show’s blistering pace cools off as we settle into the daily routine of True Cross Academy over the course of a series of episodic adventures, taking time to breathe more life into the world and flesh out the side characters, building up a status quo that it’ll eventually be able to demolish for maximum impact. And it’s a credit to the show’s quality that the plot itself is taking a backseat for now, the quality of the show isn’t suffering as a result. That’s the mark of a true “good-enough” show: a strong enough grasp on the fundamentals of storytelling that it can maintain interest even when it’s not steadily marching forward.

It certainly helps that the world of Blue Exorcist is so far one of its strongest aspects, so the time spent just exploring it and its nuances never gets dull. There’s a real sense of thought put into how the various systems and customs of the exorcists and demons interconnect with and influence each other. There’s the concept of keys that can open doors to places not directly connected to them, which is a really cool Harry Potter-esque bit of magical utility that I greatly appreciated. Ditto how Yukio carries a gun with vitamin bullets to combat demons that have infested humans. And I really enjoyed the D&D-esque approach to the “meister” class system for full-fledged exorcists. The monster designs are also still incredible, especially whenever plants are involved: the demon that possessed garden girl Shiemi’s legs reminded me of Final Form Flower from Undertale in the best way, and the little baby plant familiar she eventually summons is cute as all fuck. Not to mention that utterly gorgeous pastel flower shot at the beginning of episode 4. All these details contribute to True Cross Academy feeling not just like a setting, but like an actual place I could potentially visit. It’s a world of wonder I’m all too happy to get sucked up in.

Everybody’s Got Demons

Of course, a world is nothing without interesting people inhabiting it. And while none of the supporting players of Blue Exorcist are real winners so far (aside from Mephisto, who continues to delight every time he’s on screen), they’re an incredibly likable bunch of dorks. The show wisely keeps the cast to a manageable size, with barely 10 named characters so far, which means I can remember pretty much all of them right off the bat. They’re all such distinctive personalities, too; none of the three girls feels like the others, and Suguro’s mini Yakuza trio all feel like unique individuals. I don’t have all their names down yet, but if you pointed any one of them out and asked me to give a little introduction to them, I could manage just fine. That’s a good sign that the show knows how to handle character balancing, and hopefully that means we’re in for some great group dynamics moving forward.

What most interesting about the cast so far is that all of them share very similar sets of personal demons (heh) they need to work through. Suguro and The Mean Girl(tm) were both made fun of as kids by people who couldn’t see the demons they did, and developed mile-long inferiority complexes and mean streaks because of it, lashing back against the world in force. Shiemi, my personal favorite out of the bunch (seriously, she makes up her own botanical vocabulary and is the only person to consistently make Rin unable to hide his dorky interior. What more could you ask for?), took the opposite route, making a literal deal with the devil to make up for her perceived failures. They were all othered in some way, isolated from normal society by factors beyond their control, much like Rin was. So it’s no surprise that Best Devil Boy ends up being the catalyst for their growth; he sees a lot of himself in them, and by helping them, he starts to have a better understanding of how to help himself. Hell, he even explicitly states as much after saving Shiemi from a lifetime of self-imposed isolation. Much like in Seraph of the End, these broken kids are broken in such similar ways that just being in each other’s general presence can’t help but inspire them to bring out the best in each other. And if it means we get to see Suguro and Rin kick the shit out of Satan together, I’m greatly looking forward to where they go next.

The Blue Night

There’s a moment in these episodes that really stands out to me. It’s in episode 5 (I think), when Suguro’s lackeys fill Rin in on why he’s so surly and aggressive. Part of that explanation involves detailing the backstory of the Blue Night, a time Satan entered the world and killed a whole bunch of important priests. It’s glossed over in the scene itself, just a stepping stone to the more important backstory info about Suguro, but it’s instantly clear that there’s more to this event than we’ve been let on to yet. First of all, this Blue Night is so clearly what we saw in the show’s first scene, with a bunch of priests being consumed by blue flame. And if there’s one thing I know about narrative structure, it’s that the opening scene is NEVER anything less than super important in the grand scheme of things. What’s more, there’s a very specific timeline attached to this night: it happened 16 years ago. A.K.A., pretty much the perfect amount of time for Satan to impregnate an Earth woman, who then gives birth to a half-demon punk-ass kid, who grows up to be 15 years old as of, well, now.

Yeah, if Blue Night isn’t also the night of Rin’s conception, then I’m a platypus. And the fact that no one mentions that fact that the devil had sex that night just raises more questions. Does no one know? Do certain people know and are keeping it hidden from everyone? The fact that both Mephisto and the Eyepatch Teacher seem to have darker, hidden motivations (as evidenced by their matching ominous scenes on dimly lit rooftops overlooking the puny human city below) seems to point to that option. It’s clear there a lot still being hidden from Rin, and I get a funny sense that when it finally comes into the open, it’s not gonna be a pretty sight.

Odds and Ends

-”Don’t soak my manga in your weird fluids.” Phrasing, Yukio.

-Rin’s little tail wag of excitement gives me life.

-”He’s cool!” akjsdhaskjhd Rin you hoplss dork

-”Go on, tell him off some more.” askdjhaskjdhasd Yukio’s such a little shit

-Oh, DICK move, Rin. Why’d you have to brush her off life that?

-I appreciate that Rin was clear-headed enough not to take Suguro up on his dare. It’s the little things that make this show feel so fresh.

-”I’m studying.” “What is this, a bad omen?” kjdahskjdadsh

-Suguro uses a hair clip to pin his long hair back. That settles it, everybody in this show is amazing.

-I could listen to Hiroshi Kamiya talk about food all day.

-”Granda’s calling me...” “We never met our grandma!” fucking rip

-”That’s my big brother, defying logic in more ways than one!” Brotherly love for the win!

-”Hey. They’re simmering.” YOUR CLASSMATES ARE LITERALLY ABOUT TO GET COOKED RIN WHY ARE YOU SO CALM

-That was simultaneously the most heartwarming and ridiculous conclusion to this episode possible. Did we slip into Gintama for a second?

-Oh my god Rin’s still wearing Suguro’s hairpin what adorable continuity

-I think “Tiny Brow” was the perfect derogatory nickname you could’ve given her. Well played, Rin.

-I appreciate we got an entire fight scene with a character in their underwear and there was no leering whatsoever.

-”How did you lose your clothes?” “Just sorta happened.” skjdahskjdhaksd

The plot thickens. See you next time!