#kateh rambles | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kirinda-ondo · 3 years ago

Text

Aight I mentioned I had some actual Orko family headcanons so lemme just haphazardly drop these bad boys

Montork raised Orko since he was itty bitty. I feel like Orko's parents were probably pretty powerful mages in their own right, and before going off on some important mission to help protect Trolla, they left Orko with Montork for a bit having every intention to come back, but they just... didn't. Like they succeeded in their mission, but either died or disappeared in the process (nobody's sure and I personally would wanna keep the option open for potential plot reasons). Bravery does run in the family, after all. In any case, whatever their fate, Orko doesn't remember a thing about them, but at this point in his life he's pretty okay with that.

That said, if they were around, I feel like Orko's parents would have really cool and powerful vibes, but like once they actually start talking, you realize they're just absolutely massive dorks lol. I also don't think they'd be disappointed in him at all, they'd be quite the opposite actually, just downright embarrassingly proud of their little baby boy lmao

There was a line in the Marvel Star comics implying Montork has frequent contact with Orko's mom (who I guess in that canon does in fact exist but is just kinda distant?) so I'm rolling with the idea they were siblings and he's the uncle on her side of the family.

Montork being Orko's favorite uncle implies the existence of a least favorite uncle. Do with this what you will.

Either due to just his generally easygoing nature or because of a sense of guilt about Orko having lost his parents, I feel like Montork probably kinda spoiled him a bit and tended to just let him get away with stuff, which would also at least partially explain a lot of Orko's current tendency to just... do things, consequences be damned.

But also like the whole "not having to clean his room" thing? That's not a Trolla Thing, that's just a Montork's House Thing. So long as Orko kept the mess contained to his own room and didn't get buried in stuff, he probably didn't fight him too hard about it after seeing how utterly impossible it would be to do so. After all, you don't have to worry about stepping on or tripping over stuff if you just float lmao. And if it bugged him enough Montork would probably just straighten up a bit himself anyway.

Bathtime on the other hand was non-negotiable don't listen to Orko about water not touching his body he's a LIAR and Montork can and WILL tell you CHRONOLOGICALLY every time he ever had to drag him into the bath kicking and screaming lmao

Montork being head of the Trollan Academy of Magic probably unintentionally gave Orko a good deal of unnecessary anxiety. That's an awfully big hat to fill and of course he doesn't want to make his favorite uncle look bad! Montork literally wouldn't have cared one way or the other about that just so long as Orko did his best, and there were likely many, many late night conversations assuring him of this. But y'know, that kind of anxiety is hard to turn off, and it probably was a pretty big motivating factor outside of having a generally strong interest in magic for Orko getting as good at magic as he is. It's one of the many reasons he's so desperate to prove himself to him in that one episode.

Montork probably does brag a lot about Orko to other people, but not a word about him being Orko the Great. Not out of any kind of fear or secrecy or anything, he's actually quite proud, but because he sees that boy's emotional complex about magic from a million miles away and is not about to go making it worse by hyping him up like that lmao. That's why he's always emphasizing the importance of the person over the magic to Orko, even if he greatly prides himself on his own magical ability.

But yeah unless you were in the know already, talking to Montork you would probably have no idea his sweet little nephew Orko working all the way in Eternia was fucking Orko the Great and not just someone who happens to share the same name. (given the names of assorted concept Trollans, names ending in -orko are pretty common, i.e. Dorko, Zorko, and Korko, so it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility--)

Then again, it's probably for the best, as Montork has very likely also shared a lot of funny stories about Orko with his students and if Orko knew what all they knew he'd probably die if they ever put two and two together--

Meanwhile the minute Montork comes up in conversation Orko is just out here like "YEAH THIS IS MY UNCLE MONTORK HE'S THE BEST MAGICIAN EVER AND ALSO THE HEAD OF THE ACADEMY OF MAGIC AND ALSO TAUGHT ME EVERYTHING I KNOW" Like he could become an actual god and still hype the hell out of his uncle lmao

As has been previously discussed, they're a VERY affectionate little family. Orko takes it up to 11 on his own obviously, but get the two of them together and they get very sappy, doesn't matter who else is there. Neither of them find this even a little embarrassing. That said I think that kind of environment combined with general emotional immaturity contributes a lot to Orko's lack of emotional object permanence on Eternia, as they're not nearly as blatant in their affections. Like how is he supposed to feel loved if you don't explicitly tell him you love him?

#kateh rambles #orkoposting #and montorkposting i supoose~#i love their relationship too

24 notes · View notes

kirinda-ondo · 3 years ago

Text

You know him, you either love or hate him (or are moderately confused by my sudden dive into this hyperfixation); we're talking about Orko because I have a lot of feelings.

As a disclaimer, I am not gonna claim to be some kind of superfan. I am not aware of every single iteration of the lore and all of its secrets. I don't know anything about the DC comics. I'm only halfway through the 2002 series as of me writing this. I am not someone you want to have discussions on the wider Masters of the Universe.... universe with. However, after watching Revelation, the entire Filmation He-Man (and some of She-Ra, cause he was there too), and going on a deep dive of storybooks, annuals, and minicomics courtesy of He-Man.org and the lovely people who submitted their scans there, I do feel pretty qualified to at least talk about Orko.

So, with all that being said, I'd like to get into a little bit of backstory, if only for my followers who came to this blog for completely different things and are wondering where the hell my love for this funky little wizard dude came from all of a sudden. Truth is, Orko is actually one of my earliest faves! Mind you, I only had limited access to Masters of the Universe as a kid, only seeing a couple of rented VHS tapes and later getting my hands on a small pile of the Golden Books from Goodwill, but apparently it was enough for Orko to imprint himself into my brain. However, also due to my limited exposure, he kind of got shifted to the back of my head as I got deeper into other things. I still knew for a fact I liked Orko a lot though, even if I couldn't quite remember why anymore.

And then Masters of the Universe: Revelation dropped on Netflix. I'm not gonna get into my opinions of that show lest I open a flood of irrelevant discourse (for those uninitiated, it is a bit... divisive, to say the least). However my feelings on the matter did encourage me to go and watch the original and well, holy shit I love Orko more now than I could have ever comprehended as a kid. He is THE quintessential underappreciated comic relief character I tend to gravitate towards, and then some.

But before I get into that, let me back up a bit and explain. Orko is a Trollan, a race of magical little dudes that are basically floating sweaters with hats and covered up faces. Out of these Trollans, Orko is an incredibly fucking OP archmage. Like, they straight up call him Orko the Great, he's so powerful. But then, he gets caught in a freak storm that whisks him away from his home dimension and into Eternia. Immediately, he runs into a young Prince Adam, who is trapped in a swamp/tar pit and needs rescuing. Orko, being the upstanding lad that he is, uses his magic to save him but in the process loses the item that allows him to focus his magic to the swamp (in the 80s version, it's a medallion, but in the 2002 series, it's a wand). Worse yet, the magic (and dare I say the very laws of physics) in Eternia works pretty much the opposite as it does in Trolla, so he's been incredibly nerfed.

So basically, Orko is trapped in a topsy-turvy world away from friends and family, a world with magic he is fundamentally incompatible with. Ouch. He's not completely screwed, however, as he is rewarded by the king and queen for his heroism and appointed... the court jester. Double ouch. He surprisingly doesn't seem to mind though. He genuinely does enjoy entertaining people, even when his tricks only ever work like half the time because he's basically a Mac program trying to run on a Windows computer.

It's not all horrible though, as he does quite literally get adopted by the royal family and thus sort of become the entire palace's weird son/little brother (despite being older than many of them. He's very, very child-coded largely for the purposes of being a stand-in and example lesson to the actual children watching). But also, more importantly, he becomes one of the very select few to know that Adam and He-Man are one and the same.

But outside of secret-keeping, he is actually a pretty valuable ally to have against Skeletor and his dudes because even though his magic is kind of screwed up, when it does work, he's still one of the most powerful mages on Eternia. In various materials, he's created floods, a second winter, and hell, he can literally explode himself and still be perfectly fine. He's also really clever and can weasel his way out of a number of situations. In one episode, for instance, he manages to convince someone that he's He-Man and Adam is his "assistant" in order to free him from captivity so the day has a better chance of actually being saved. He's also got the ability to just be really frustrating and incomprehensible to the point that villains who capture him sometimes either don't want him or don't know what to do with him anymore, which is honestly really funny. In an episode of She-Ra, the villains tried to scan his brain but because the inner machinations of his mind are that much of an enigma, he got diagnosed a weirdo and broke the entire machine. Absolutely delightful.

However, there's a lot more to Orko than just comedy and bungled magic. He's actually surprisingly complex!

See, going into this, I expected Orko's whole situation be played entirely for laughs while the sadder implications of his existence go entirely unaddressed. Coming off the heels of characters like Cobalt and others I enjoy, I'm used to this sort of treatment by writers. But they actually don't do that. The depressing subtext is for once, actually TEXT, which was INCREDIBLY surprising to me. We actually get to see another side of him, a side that hates that he can't be taken seriously no matter what he does, a side that is well aware of all the trouble he causes and feels like a burden to those around him. He actually runs away on multiple occasions, fully believing that he's unloved and everyone would be better off without him, even if that couldn't be further from the truth (a point which the Sorceress hammers home with multiple straight up magical video presentations, and in the 2002 series, a literary adaptation, of why he is loved and important).

Underneath all the hyping himself up that he does, there's a lot of insecurity. He's someone who desperately wants to be loved and respected and feels that without funny magic tricks to entertain people, he has no inherent value (which is incredibly relatable if you are also known by people as The Funny One). At one point he agrees with the notion that he doesn't feel like much more than a pet, which is absolutely heartbreaking. Even when he gets the ability to go back and forth between Eternia and Trolla, his feelings of inadequacy now extend toward his family, worrying that his own uncle, the one who taught him everything he knows and greatly contributed to him being Orko the Great back home in the first place, wouldn't be proud of him. Being on Eternia highkey wrecked his shit, man.

However, even when given the opportunity to go back home for good, he always chooses to stay because he's loyal as hell. Even if he needs some reminders, he does know he's needed not just in the fight against evil, but just because his friends and newfound family genuinely love him. It's heartbreaking, but also incredibly wholesome. I did not even remotely expect a comic relief character like this to get this much depth and respect from the writers, especially not from the incredibly campy and cheaply animated 80s series. I am genuinely so unused to this.

But I think that's also what separates him a bit from his fellow Silly Kid Appeal Characters That Kids Fucking Hate ala Snarf Thundercats or Scrappy Doo. He not only makes a concerted effort to be an actually useful ally, but he's also in fact very self-aware of his status as one of these characters. He knows he screws up a lot but he actually tries to accept responsibility and fix it. It makes me wanna root for the lil dude. Now I understand if someone isn't a fan of the brand of humor he brings to the table, or feel like he's simply a distraction from the Cool Buff Dudes Fighting Each Other, but I hope you can see why he might also be a really appealing character to other people, both kids and adults alike. I mean, he was popular enough to be embedded into the canon despite originating from the cartoon and not the toyline for a reason, after all.

Orko is a fun, entertaining, but also complex, heartwarming, and relatable character. I know there is a faction of people that would disagree with me, but I don't think you need to change him all that much or make him a super serious character to be more appealing. He's already got a lot going on that a writer could easily work with. It all just depends on where you decide to focus. Take a lesson from the show and accept that he's fine just the way he is.

#kateh rambles #a defense of orko (aka 'i can't believe the subtext is actually TEXT this time')#i feel like there's more i could say but i can't get my thoughts organized let alone enough to have it flow with the rest of this #so there could be a part 2 at some point? maybe? i don't know #orkoposting

39 notes · View notes

kirinda-ondo · 3 years ago

Text

Alright, I’m seeing some Trollan anatomy/medical headcanons floating around and after mulling it over for a long hot minute, I wanna put in my incredibly spicy take on how it all potentially works: Trollans are basically just mostly invisible beanie babies filled with magic and don't actually have any bones or organs.

Ok just hear me out. So like, there are multiple occasions where Orko has been scanned or x-rayed, but all you see is a silhouette, nothing else. Now you could argue it's just impossible to properly analyze him with any kind of Eternian machines due to the weird nature of his existence, and yeah, I agree, but I also don't think he's hiding any bone structures or anything.

The way I imagine a Trollan "body" structure is, like, each of them have a sort of magic "core," so to speak. You can't see or feel it, but it basically is their life force, the source of their magic and basically what makes them who they are, while also functioning in place of like, all the organs (brain, heart, stomach, etc.). When they use magic or just go about their day, it uses up energy, and eventually it needs to be replenished with sleep and/or food (which I imagine just gets converted directly into energy in a similar vein to how monsters in Undertale eat). Each Trollan has their own sort of magical signature, almost like DNA, that other Trollans can essentially read in order to tell each other apart (otherwise identity theft would be the easiest damn crime to commit over there, just changing hats and/or putting a different letter on the front of your shirt lmao).

Emitted from this core is a sort of aura that forms an invisible, mostly intangible "body" that creates their basic form. It can come in all shapes and sizes, and they can manipulate this aura to a degree, making it sometimes seem like they have legs under their robes or briefly creating extra (visible) limbs, for example. However, there are limits to how much this "body" can change or expand, which is why it's still possible to eat too much, or why they're generally not gonna be drastically changing body types (i.e., going from tall to short, or skinny to absolutely ripped, etc). Aside from their head and arms, the level of tangibility their bodies have can also shift. Like one minute you might be able to squish them and feel like there's a body underneath those robes, but then the next minute it might feel like there's nothing there at all and you’re just holding cloth. It’s really up to them.

Outside of that aura, they have skin that makes up the area of their heads and hands. From a “biological” standpoint, having actual heads and hands makes interacting with the world a lot easier. And like holding their hands or feeling their heads, you wouldn't be able to tell there's no actual bones or skull or anything, but if for some fucked up reason you were to cut a Trollan, they’d be pretty well hollow and they'd just be leaking magic similarly to how we bleed (and also really upset with you). Still kinda hurts, generally would not recommend.

I feel like all this also explains why Orko can survive so much. Can't break any bones doing even half the shit he does if you don't have any bones to break lmao. Magical problems on the other hand can wind up being much more serious, whether it's being drained of magic, or exposed to some magic with really bad vibes, etc., but even then they're really hard to hurt or kill.

I know there are bits and bobs from various canons that would poke holes in this and I personally don’t quite have all the details fleshed out (pun mildly intended) myself, but I've already put entirely too much thought in trying to logically explain characters that operate entirely on cartoon physics and this is the best way I've been able to comprehend their anatomy without hurting my brain trying to visualize it--

#kateh rambles #orkoposting #can i get a fuckin uhhhhhhhh boneless orko #i tried to draw a diagram how this all worked but it wound up looking like amogus and i couldn't live with myself akslfjdjlk

26 notes · View notes

kirinda-ondo · 3 years ago

Text

Alright so CGI He-man My horribly disjointed thoughts

This shit slaps so hard. If I were 8 years old watching this shit on a saturday morning I would lose my fucking m i n d.

Krass my fucking beloved my fucking daughter i would do anything for her

Ork-0 my fucking beloved my fucking son i would do anything for him, like whoever was in charge of him clearly fucking knows how a good orko is supposed to work. It's a difficult balance and I feel like they nailed it despite the drastic species change. Please let him join the rest of the orkos in therapy--

Also this is the first adaptation where I actually really fucking adored cringer? Like he's never been my favorite, but I loved him here. They made him braver by default, but kept the snark and took away his claws making it generally much harder to rush into battle ala battle cat, which I felt was a nice compromise.

I also just love how like, all the heroes get their moment to shine. Like that's the whole thing, yeah? WE have the power! And that shows in the writing, as characters get so much more depth than you typically get to see from them. I got super emotionally invested in their personal conflicts and I'd love to know more about their pasts and how they got to where they are now. Especially like Teela and Duncan, considering where they started off versus where they are now.

The fucking transformation from Keldor to Skeletor is fucking raw as shit, that acting? on fucking POINT my dudes

Tho skeletor feels like a MUCH different character from keldor, like if I had not watched the transformation and known the lore I would think they were two completely different guys. Like you can argue the havok juice made him a lil crazy but like this skeletor is on levels of cheese that would almost make filmation skeletor blush! Not necessarily a bad thing though! Just a bit jarring lmao

Speaking of characters feeling really different, duncan felt VERY disconnected from his other counterparts, beyond being a dude that fixes things. And yeah I mean fair, comes with such a drastic age-down, but still. He was definitely not one of my favorites and i wish he'd calm down just a little lmao. Dude's anxious energy makes me anxious just watching him sjkdflal

Also just some minor design things but the proportions on he-man, skeletor, and evil-lyn (who is more like evil-leg amirite--) are really fucking weird and honestly kind of distracting. I get why they did it but it feels so weird when everyone else has like fairly normal proportions. Also this is not a nitpick or anything so much as something that I noticed and was kind of amused by but the evil-lyn transformation basically fused all the trix from winx club and i was kinda fucking here for it lmao

Like aesthetically this is VERY different from the He-Mans (he-men?) we're used to, which I think is why I can watch it and not feel betrayed that they changed everything or whatever, but the overall spirit of it is very much what I ideally would want out of a modern he-man. I had a blast and I know kids are gonna love this shit.

#cgi motu spoilers #kateh rambles

35 notes · View notes

kirinda-ondo · 3 years ago

Note

⚡ I know nothing about Dragonball, other than what little I have been exposed to it over the years (which tbh haven't exactly been a very stellar introduction to it), but I always felt a certain fondness for that OC of yours who also had jack all to do with any of the events, not even knowing who Goku is, but fervently wanting to kick his ass all the same. Cayenne, wasn't it?

Hell yeah, I love Cayenne lmao

1. Cayenne was my first Dragon Ball OC and very much started as a joke character lmao. Literally a background character who was getting really tired of Goku and pals wrecking shit. Like yeah they're out here saving the world but they're also ruining her weekend plans and that is unforgivable lmao. So she was gonna go kick his ass. She'll kick everyone's ass. She'll kick her own ass if she has to. Mind you she is a teenager and he is a literal god at this point, but she's too stupid and stubborn to know when to quit lmao. Funny thing is, she'd actually probably get along really well with Goku if she met him (and didn't know he was Goku lmao).

2. While a majority of her personality is about kicking ass and taking names (even if they are incorrect as she is really bad at remembering them) she's got a softer side too. She is actually surprisingly really good with kids (unless they are rude and then she can, will, and has thrown hands with a literal four year old lmao) and she is very soft for her cool android girlfriend (who is an OC owned by my friend). She thinks a lot about getting married someday and has a very specific fantasy where Gonku crashes the wedding and they go and kick his ass and then like smooch over his defeated body, it's very ridiculous laksdjfklsd

3. She is not academically minded in the least, but she knows a surprising amount about movies and movie production! Her favorites are the ones that have the most action, explosions and boobs lmao. Her tastes are very simple. She's tried to take notes for like, attempted fighting techniques, but she always ends up getting way too distracted by what's happening on-screen. She's also very gifted in sports, though she's not on any teams anymore after she got caught forging signatures to get on said teams in the first place.

4. While she's trying every training method she can think of on her own to get stronger and kick Gonku's ass, she does have an actual fighting instructor in the form of another OC owned by my friend, who is Yamcha's wife. She won't actually teach Cayenne much of anything (nor will she let Yamcha) because she knows full well trying to fight Goku is a suicide mission, but she humored her anyway, if only because Cayenne is persistent and wouldn't go away lmao. However, Cayenne eventually became enough of a permanent fixture in the family that once her shitty dad died and she was officially left parent-less, she ended up getting adopted. Now Yamcha is her dad lmao. Rather than calling them mom and dad, they are Sensei and Coach (because Yamcha is a professional baseball player) respectively. She now has a couple of siblings, one of which being the aforementioned 4 year old she has tried to throw hands with--

5. She'll never get strong enough to defeat Gonku properly, but all things considered, she is actually stronger than the average person and I like to think that one day when she's older and hopefully chilled out at least a modicum, she'll luck out and wind up becoming the next world champion, who already gets to pretend to beat Goku in tournaments in order to keep his public reputation as the world's strongest man (it's a whole thing in canon that would take too long to explain). So, at the very least, Cayenne might get the illusion of finally beating Gonku, which is funny to think about lmao.

#kateh rambles #kateh's oc tag #cayenne #this got so long i'm so sorry laksdfjklds

8 notes · View notes

kirinda-ondo · 3 years ago

Text

This is a ramble that has been long, long overdue. It's actually the first TED talk I ever wrote, but I have been sitting on it for years because I always kept feeling like I had more to say. But at last, I’m finally updating and consolidating it into a post more worthy of my current standards and unleashing it upon you all.

And so we're finally gonna talk about Kirinda, the namesake of the character song that is the namesake of my blog.

But first, we actually need to talk about the show that he comes from, because it's kind of obscure and y’all deserve to know what the hell I’m talking about (unless you've been following my antics long enough to remember me screaming about it into the void on my old blog, which then you all deserve a senior discount and also I love you).

Juuni Senshi Bakuretsu Eto Ranger (12 Warriors Explosive Eto Rangers, or just Eto Ranger for short), is an anime set on the peaceful island country of Mugen (no relation to the fighting game), home to many animal spirits, as well as Princess Aura, the one humanoid goddess who governs it. It is also home to the Novel Pole, a long pole in the center of the island that stretches endlessly into the heavens and keeps the island hanging above the ocean below. The Novel Pole is called such because it contains every story, myth, or legend ever created by humankind, each in their own living dimensions called Novel Worlds.

However, under the direction of a vengeful cat spirit known as Jyarei King Nyanma, the Novel Worlds are frequently under attack by creatures known as Jyarei Monsters, who infiltrate the Novel Worlds, often disguised as a random character in the story, and change it beyond recognition with the goal of destroying the Novel World. If a Novel World is successfully destroyed, then the Novel Pole will break, inevitably sending Mugen and its inhabitants sinking into the sea.

This is where the Eto Rangers come in. They are a group of 12 warriors, each coincidentally matching an animal in the Chinese Zodiac. The team consists of Bakumaru the mouse, Hols the bull, Gaou the tiger, Cream the rabbit (no relation), Drago the dragon, Nyorori the snake, Pakaracchi the horse, Souffle the sheep, Monk the monkey, Tart the chicken, Pochiro the dog, and Urii the boar. Together, they ride in the Space-Time Transmitting Machine, Kirinda, a giant robot unicorn, to different Novel Worlds in order to solve the mystery of the Jyarei Monster, defeat them, and save the day.

At least, that's how it starts. Things get a lot, and I mean a LOT more intense further down the line, and the subject of today's ramble is in fact the center of a lot of major spoilers. If this seems like a show you're interested in checking out first, all 39 episodes are on youtube (albeit with uh, questionable fansubs). Otherwise, this sentence is your last warning as we are going directly to Spoiler Town from here on out.

As has become tradition with nearly all my rambles, I'd like to talk briefly about how we got here. Back when I was a wee little cringeboy in middle school, I randomly decided to look up Cream the Rabbit (the Sonic one). To this day I have no idea why, as she's not even a character I like all that much. Anyway, in my search I found a decently popular picture of a different Cream the Rabbit. I was like "who the heck is this?" and when I clicked on the image, the description explained things, but more importantly, linked to a channel with subtitled episodes. I was hooked immediately, but unfortunately the subs stopped at episode 15. I waited, and waited, but more never came. Eventually I forgot about it until 2014, my senior year of high school, when the urge to search for it again randomly hit me. I didn't find more English subbed episodes, but I did find the rest of the episodes subbed in Chinese (which I happened to be studying at the time). And so, I reacquainted myself with the series.

When I first started watching it again, I didn't really pay Kirinda much mind. He was a fun character, sure, and I enjoyed his presence, but I sort of took him for granted, as Hols was shaping up to be my favorite character at the time. He'd be there in the beginning of episodes to tell the Rangers what sort of Novel World they'd be going to, and then again at the end when it was time to purify the Jyarei Monster, with some bad puns and other shenanigans in between (all in the most hokey, outdated Kansai dialect imaginable, even for 1995.) He was a series constant and a key part of the show's episodic format, but beyond that, he was pretty low on my radar. That is, until something happened.

At the end of episode 20, instead of dealing with the average Jyarei Monster attack, Nyanma sends two of her strongest generals at once. They are brought down to the light form that allows them to be purified by Kirinda, but unlike literally every other Jyarei Monster, they dodge the purification beam. This never happens. And then again, unlike other Jyarei Monsters, while in their light forms, they are able to shoot Kirinda out of the sky. He and the rest of the Rangers are saved at the last minute through a combination of taking manual control of Kirinda, and Princess Aura's intervention, but he's down for the count and it's a race against time to find an artifact to save him before he's turned to stone and dies.

When I first saw this, I was absolutely thrown for a loop, not just from the initial shock, but also due to the fact that I had gotten some spoilers for the end of the series regarding the fates of 75% of the main cast. I knew this was a show that would not hesitate to kill off its characters (even if they do get better in the end), so needless to say I was a little concerned. You know that saying, "you don't know what you have until it's gone?" This was a prime example. I may have been kind of indifferent to him, but I sure as hell didn't want him gone. I was wracking my brain wondering how the hell they were going to fix this in time, or how the show would possibly function without him if they couldn't. Thankfully, I didn't have to worry, as after a very stressful 1 2/3 episodes later (again, these were posted in 3 part segments because Old Anime), Kirinda was back and better than ever. He even had a really pretty new power up that he used from that point onward. With the arc wrapped up and things returning to a slightly more normal pace again, I was able to go back to enjoying his presence, albeit with a much greater appreciation. At least, until things drastically changed again.

At episode 33 of 39, I was starting to get anxious. Things were getting intense and I knew the major character deaths were coming any time now, but the spoilers I saw never stated when. These spoilers also never mentioned something else, something very important: the kirin spirit, Lydia. This much smaller, organic unicorn was introduced with no warning and no name, but the minute I heard his voice and saw that the camera he carried was the same as the eyeball apparatus Kirinda used to communicate with the Rangers inside the ship, I knew something horrible was coming. However, I wouldn't realize the extent of this until episode 34.

As it turns out, Kirinda was once an ordinary newspaper reporter named Lydia, who was so passionate about his job that he completely passed on the opportunity to participate in the race to become an Eto Ranger, believing that he wasn't suited for it, even though he could have allegedly won the whole thing due to his speed and been a good member due to his strong sense of justice. Though he didn't participate, he was there waiting by the finish line to get coverage of the winners, and that was when he saw that the young cat spirit, Chocolat, who had seemingly arrived to the finish line first, had been blatantly disqualified. The next day, he spoke with Princess Aura about the matter. Chocolat had been disqualified for starting the race five minutes early, though she claimed to have received a vision directly from Princess Aura telling her to do so. However, the princess claimed to have done no such thing. With both of them agreeing that something seemed wrong, Aura used her spiritual powers to look for Chocolat, but soon found Chocolat was being approached by an incredibly dark and dangerous force.

As Aura was unable to leave the palace without losing her powers, Lydia opted to find Chocolat himself. He was able to catch up to her, but before he could get her attention, she was approached by the Jyarei God Bagi. He watched in horror as Bagi fed into Chocolat's anger towards Princess Aura and convinced her to accept a deal that would give her the power to destroy Aura and all of Mugen itself. And so, Chocolat was painfully transformed into the Jyarei King Nyanma. As Bagi properly introduced herself, Lydia accidentally blew his cover in shock, and though he tried to salvage the situation by attempting to make casual conversation, Nyanma simply saw fit to test her new powers on him. Despite his best efforts, he was unable to escape being shot in the back and was left for dead. Except, he wasn't dead. Not yet.

He dragged his wounded body literally halfway across Mugen from the forest to Aura Castle in order to warn her of what had just happened. While Princess Aura tried in vain to save his life, Lydia lamented his lack of participation in the race, feeling like he would have been able to do something more if he had. And so, his final request was to have his soul used to help the Eto Rangers save Mugen before he finally died. After Aura spoke to her superior, the Great God Goal, Lydia's body was sent to the base of the Novel Pole where he was resurrected as Kirinda.

This backstory, having been completely unprepared for it, utterly wrecked me emotionally. There was a whole other dimension to this character that wasn't even hinted at beforehand (and some of that I will gladly concede as bad writing on their part but shh I'll get to that later) and it honestly made me appreciate him more and cemented him as my favorite character in the series and one of my favorite characters of all time. And now that you know the what and the how, it's time to elaborate on the why, because there's a lot more to like than just his backstory.

As an aside, from here on, I will be referring to him interchangeably as Lydia or Kirinda based on the form he happened to be in during whatever scene I'm discussing.

First of all, this guy is just really fun to watch. Though it's his job as Kirinda to help take care of the Rangers while traveling, he tends to be really careless and irresponsible about it, subjecting them to whatever whims that happen to cross his mind. At best, this tends to manifest in the form of incredibly corny jokes and puns, or falsely blowing things out of proportion and then having to take back what he said later. At worst, he'll screw with the roulette system used to select which Rangers will be sent out, drop them off somewhere really precarious, or simply send them off too soon before someone can finish saying something important.

The most egregious example of many of these is the episode where he sent all twelve Rangers out at once into the world of Mercury and the Woodsman (the one with the golden, silver, and steel axes) and dropping them off into a lake where all but Bakumaru and Nyorori are turned into wood statues, having to be wheeled around in a wheelbarrow the entire time (and later saved from being used as giant bowling pins). In the end, sending the entire team wasn’t a decision made because of some great threat as the Rangers had been led to believe, it was just because Kirinda wanted to try it once and see what would happen.

His shenanigans continue even after the evil is defeated and he's been restored to his original body, as he wastes no time dedicating a whole front page article to his own resurrection while all the hell the Rangers just went through to defeat Bagi and save Mugen from collapsing merely gets a tiny mention. And worse yet, his response to any complaints he gets about any of it is to either ignore the complainer entirely, or fumble a bit for an excuse before giving up and hiding or running away. Getting him to actually own up to his nonsense is quite frankly next to impossible.

However, that's not the only side to him. Though he's not always the most reliable, he is very passionate about whatever he does. In the past, he passed up the highly regarded position of being an Eto Ranger because he much preferred reporting the news (and goes right back to it with all the same passion he had before once he's no longer Kirinda). However, when being confronted with his own backstory by Gaou, he admits that all things considered, he's actually quite happy to become Kirinda and fight alongside them as the thirteenth Ranger. Even on a meta level, he loves what he does, as in one episode, he straight up cries over the prospect of having less screentime on the show because other people keep telling the Novel World's story for him. And to say nothing of his incredibly stupid, but catchy character song where he spends the whole time rambling about how cool and important he is. He may be irresponsible, and despite whatever he may say about not being suited for it, you can't say that he doesn't love his job(s).

Despite all the grandiose and irresponsible nonsense he gets up to, he's got a wiser, kinder side to him as well. As much as he likes to screw with them, he genuinely does care about the Rangers. While he tends to show this by trying to lighten the mood when things look grim, he will occasionally take the time to be more serious and offer some sage advice to someone who needs it. He also apparently has a tendency to bring people out of their shells, as he's revealed to have been particularly close with both Drago and Princess Aura, who are two of the most quiet, distant characters in the whole series.

However, his kindness towards others doesn't stop at his friends, and it's here we start to see that Aura's comments about him having a strong sense of justice are in fact more than just her blatant favoritism. There's the matter of Chocolat, who he clearly doesn't know personally, but goes above and beyond for, not only cheering her on in the race (unaware she'd disqualified herself), but also trying to uncover the truth of how and why it happened and running to try and save her when he learned she was in danger. You can't help but wonder what could have been had a hurt, rejected Chocolat known someone was out there trying so hard to go to bat for her.

Unfortunately, a lot of things about him wind up being put into a much more depressing light when you consider a very crucial element of his backstory: the fact that when he died and became Kirinda, it was a whole six years before the show's main plot began. When he was transformed, it was in a cave at the base of the Novel Pole that would wind up being closed off until the Eto Rangers could activate the doors to open it. Even throughout the series proper, that cave was where he stayed unless there was trouble in a Novel World somewhere (or one particular instance where he's taking the Rangers on a joy ride over Mugen).

Keep in mind, this man was a newspaper reporter, someone with his finger on the pulse of Mugen to the point that he had the scoop on the love lives of literally everyone in Aura City, even if he didn't publish any of it. I highly doubt someone this social would enjoy being so utterly cut off from the world for so long, with his friends and family having no idea where he was. He's able to receive contact from Aura Castle, but Princess Aura would have likely still been spending much of that time grieving the loss and blaming herself for everything as she bore the weight of keeping his whereabouts secret, which would probably be pretty rough to watch. He personally doesn't make a big deal out of it and seems to have a surprising amount of healthy insight regarding the issue when talking to Gaou, but I can't imagine that had to be the most psychologically fun experience to go through, especially early on.

That said, even if he's gotten the insight to not hold anything that happened to him against anyone, it's clearly left him a much more anxious person than what we see in flashbacks. He can be pretty jumpy in the present and he does not handle confrontation well at all, even in less serious situations, which generally leads him to just hit the bricks and bail when faced with the consequences of his own actions. While this tends to be played for laughs, he also tends to still be prone to a "deer in headlights" kind of reaction in more serious situations the minute things start to go off the usual script.

In the episode where he's shot down, after failing to purify Nyanma's two generals, he literally just kind of floats there awkwardly until Urii, the show's resident crybaby of all people, has to tell him to try again, to which he nervously agrees. A similar thing happens later on in his second run-in with Nyanma's (non-sentient) equivalent giant robot unicorn, Black Kirinda. After taking a bit of a beating, he panics about not being fast enough to dodge, so Bakumaru and the others take over the controls, which only freaks him out more and he just straight up screams, but they do a much better job of handling the situation. He's hardly a coward, given the things he's willingly volunteered to do across this series but he definitely has some flavor of anxiety and I will die on his hill.

And then, to make things worse, unlike Chocolat's disappearance, Lydia's isn't even remotely foreshadowed until episode 33. It isn't until the beginning of episode 34 that anyone even mentions him by name, specifically Drago. Now, on a meta level, this reeks of bad writing. However, on an in-universe level, you could argue that Drago is simply such a generally quiet, closed off character that he wouldn't bring up Lydia's disappearance out of the blue, let alone awkwardly tag along with "yeah, and Lydia too," every time Gaou or someone else wondered about Chocolat's whereabouts.

Unfortunately, it's the reactions of everyone else that really add insult to injury. Urii has no idea who he is, which is understandable given that he's a bit too young to give much of a shit about reading the paper, but everyone else simply sort of just chimes in with "Oh yeah, that kirin guy with the newspaper." They then mention with utmost casualness that he'd planned to do an article about the winners of the race (and then a whole serial about each member!) but then the newspaper suspended publication, leaving them believing that he'd just "left to collect materials" and presumably just... never came back? Nobody aside from Drago apparently even remotely questioned it for six whole years. Lydia died and gave himself up for these people and it's implied almost none of them remembered him or cared that he was gone. I highly doubt the writers intended to leave these gut-punchingly sad implications, but boy howdy they sure left them there.

Lydia, Kirinda, whatever you want to call him, is yet another fun, interesting character that got the short end of the stick from writers and is thus left with horrifying implications about their life as a result if you think about it for more than 5 seconds. Y'all writers need to stop doing this so I can appreciate characters in peace.

I could ramble infinitely more about this fucker, from his thought processes, to his relationships (unpacking whatever the hell he had going on with Princess Aura could easily constitute its own TED talk), or even his stupid fucking design, but I shall spare you lest I end up with the same problem I had with my original draft of this where I just felt like I kept finding more things to say lmao.

...You know what actually? We’re are gonna look at his stupid fucking design. That is how we’re wrapping this up. I cannot in good faith talk about this fucking idiot and not roast his design, I’ve been doing it for years and I refuse to stop now.

Look at this goofy motherfucker. Fuckin ill-fitting pastel ass business suit. Every time they draw him it fits badly in a different way. And his tiny ass eyes. It’s not even a stylized Character With Glasses thing, they're just Like That and it's super fucking weird actually. He looks like he’s never had a thought in his entire life. I had no idea what species this man even was supposed to be (he is erroneously translated as a giraffe despite being very decidedly not a giraffe) and now I know more kirin/qilin facts than you could ever even dream of. I hate this man. I love this man. He ruined my life. I want to roll up one of his newspapers and smack him in the head with it. (affectionate) (derogatory)

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

#kateh rambles #eto ranger hell #this is so long and well sourced because this show is obscure as hell and everything requires so much context RIP #god this has the same vibes of that post that's like 'when will ted himself finally show up to the talk'#except it's 'when will kirinda himself finally show up to the ondo'#well now he's here i guess jkldsfjkdl #i had several more paragraphs in my original draft but they didn't fit with the flow of things and i was like 'alright buddy calm down' lma

10 notes · View notes

kirinda-ondo · 3 years ago

Note

⚡️ ANEAS!!!

Aneas From Universe 5, my beloved little plant boy.....

1. Aneas in his original concept was much different than he ended up. He was originally going to be a female OC for self-indulgent shipping purposes, and had a much different personality; somebody who was a bit hyper and loved to cook, but in Paula Dean fashion, put way too much butter in everything lmao. The only thing that stayed in tact really was the overall design and the fact that he's a hopeless romantic (and if anything that part got turned up to 11 lmao). Somehow, over the course of the development process, he ended up becoming Bragi and Tomor's mutual childhood friend instead, and also a little nonbinary dude, even if he's since settled on using he/him pronouns.

2. Aneas was named after Aeneas, a Trojan hero in Greek mythology. The reason his name is spelled differently is actually because I accidentally typoed it the first time and just never ended up fixing it because I liked the way it looked lmao. I did however, pic this name for some vague thematic reasons. The Trojan Aeneas is the son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, which I felt really matched my Aneas' hopelessly romantic nature. He was also named that to reflect the fact that he's far more noble than his sad, anxious disposition (as well as the testimony of a certain very salty green boy at the time) might make you believe.

3. When I created him, he was never really meant to be super important to then-current plot events, but when my friend's OC got shipped to his little planet for parole, Aneas ended up becoming super important and not only married this literal war criminal, he managed to jumpstart like 3 different redemption arcs just by virtue of existing as a nice soft boy. Something something Aneas wins by doing nothing. Dynamic wise, he and his wife are very much the Connecticut Clark and Malfina of Universe 5 lmao. That said, he's usually not even a little confrontational, but if you even look at his wife funny (even if it's an understandable reaction to like, the war crimes) he's going to very strongly consider violence--

4. He loves plants. He has so many fucking plants. He's pretty much been working on filling his whole little planet to the brim with plants. Gardening was something he took up because he had way too much free time on his hands and was slowly kind of going insane from being alone, but through trial and error, he found he was actually pretty good at it, and it's one of the few things he's actually confident in his ability to do. He's got names, personalities, and backstories for all his plants, and if you ask him about even one of them, you're going to learn their entire lineage, their best friends, and everything. They also tend to serve as his silent therapists as he talks to them a lot about his problems (of which he has many). His favorite is a potted plant named Maurice, but his wife grew one of her own using one of Maurice's seeds that he helped name Eugene, and that is their son. Eugene is literally also just a potted plant and not even a little sentient, but that is still his child lmao.

5. He is hilariously shorter than like, almost everyone he knows. Despite being like twice the equivalent age, he's the height of the average 7 year old. When he was younger, he was actually the tallest in his friend group, but after a certain point pretty early on, he just... stopped growing while everyone else kept getting taller. The little house he lives in is very much designed to be Aneas sized rather than like, average person sized, and I don't know how his very tall wife copes lmao. He has a bit of a complex about it because he feels like it makes people take him less seriously or worse, mistake him for a child (like guys please don't pick him up I know he is the perfect size for picking up but please it makes him sad and grumpy) and wants nothing more than to be taller. However, it has been decided that it's illegal for him to be taller, let alone as tall as he'd like to be lmao.

#kateh rambles #kateh's oc tag #aneas

6 notes · View notes

kirinda-ondo · 3 years ago

Text

This is gonna be kind of a weird ramble compared to my others, as I'm not just yelling about a specific character this time, but rather, a ship. It's also a sort of supplement to my last TED talk here, so if you want some more context, I would recommend reading that first.

Now, I would like to clarify that I am not really into shipping. Canon ships rarely do anything for me. I don't go out of my way to pray for non-canon/unconfirmed ships. I tend to try and justify why couples are or should actually just be friends, rather than potential romantic partners. I literally only have 3 major (non-oc) ships out of all the fandoms I've ever been in, including this one. I suppose I am some degree of romance repulsed lmao. All of this is to say that I am not generally the type of person to overanalyze shit with a romantic lens.

But this one. This one feels so blatantly, frustratingly obvious to me despite the lack of canon follow-up, or even fan content that I feel like I'm going insane trying to justify it. But justify it I shall.

That's right, we're unpacking Lydiaura.

I feel this ramble, more than any other, requires me to explain how I got here. As I mentioned in my previous TED talk, I was watching the second half of Eto Ranger with Chinese subs. Now mind you, I wasn't fluent enough to be able to read all the subs as they came on screen, and my show-watching brain and translator brain cannot coexist at the same time, so I kinda half-read what I could and just sort of used context clues for the rest (after watching a bunch of raw undubbed episodes of 60s Astro Boy, I've gotten really good at this sort of thing lmao).

Anyway, cue episode 34. I wasn't sure what to expect with this episode, other than that I'd finally be getting an idea of what the deal with this kirin guy was. Now I'm gonna be real, a lot of this episode is not terribly exciting, especially not without subtitles. There's a lot of standing around and talking, followed by wholesale lifting a several minute sequence from the previous episode except Now Lydia Is There, followed by actual, visible exposition and plot progression. This was seemingly pretty easy on my show-watching brain. Until it wasn't.

After witnessing Chocolat's transformation into Nyanma, Lydia gets shot and left for dead, only to survive long enough to limp back to Aura Castle to warn Princess Aura of what's going on. It's here when things take a turn. Things suddenly became really... intimate, for lack of a better word, between our kirin and princess. There's hand-holding and raw emotions and hugging and I was fucking blindsided.

I sat there wondering, "Was this a thing??? Were they a thing??? Did I miss something here???" Like even as someone who does not look at things through a romantic lens, this shit could not have looked more romantic-coded to me unless they'd just straight up kissed. So I sought the word of the guy who so kindly commented on all the episodes giving some brief plot summaries for people who were not fluent in Chinese or Japanese, and they had mentioned something about Aura being unable to bear being without Lydia. I clearly fucking missed something not reading the subtitles properly, I thought. So I went back. And I painstakingly translated like 80% of the episode so I could have some fucking context.

Now, I will be honest, there was no dying love confession or anything like I'd been expecting based on the body language and overall fucking visual direction. But there were definitely a lot of other things going on in this short span of time to imply some sort of unresolved... something going on between them. And this is where we go back, put on our analysis hats, and start to unpack things.

As I mentioned earlier, a good chunk of this episode involves Aura and Lydia standing around and talking. It's not exciting visually, but in terms of dialogue, it's got some meat to it. The scene opens up the day after the race to decide our 12 Eto Rangers. Aura is just kind of on her balcony watching everyone leave after the event that formally inducted them, when Lydia just casually pops up behind her and startles her. This is already a notable detail, as even the Rangers, despite their closeness with her, have to maintain at least a basic level of formality. Not these two. They don't even waste time with the pretense of saying hello before jumping right into the conversation.

Aura immediately interrogates him about his lack of participation in the race, praising him as one of the fastest spirits on Mugen. She's not the first person to ask him about this either, as Drago also questions him before the race. When responding to Drago, he pretty casually and confidently explains that he's a newspaper reporter and his job is to document the winners. Now, when responding to Aura, his demeanor is considerably different. He's more humble, self-deprecating, even. He's "just an ordinary newspaper reporter." Being in the zodiac "isn't something that suits [him]." He sort of shyly turns away and can't even look at her straight. Aura insists that he would have been a good candidate, moving on to compliment his strong sense of justice. Like, I don't know why she's still going (I mean I do but shhh), it's far too late to do anything about it now. The blatant favoritism is just so funny to me.

Lydia, while flattered, manages to redirect the conversation back toward the series of articles he's planning to do on the Rangers and Aura is more hyped than I've ever seen her about anything. This is a compliment he's far more ready to accept, but it's time to get down to business. In contrast to before, he's able to grill her pretty easily about Chocolat's disqualification. While he doubts Aura's supposition that Chocolat had just been dreaming, he never once accuses Aura of doing anything, instead immediately suspecting some sort of outside force. Despite Aura's reservations about the whole situation, the minute Lydia mentions he's worried for Chocolat, she wastes no time using her powers to look for her.

Skipping ahead a whole lot, the next scene we're unpacking is after Lydia has dragged himself all the way back to Aura Castle (which again, I must stress, is halfway across the entire Mugen). We see he's barely made it inside, and he and Aura are both on the floor as she's sitting there cradling him in her lap while they hold each other's hands. Whether it's for his comfort, hers, or the both of them, it's hard to say, but it's sweet, if not incredibly fucking sad.

Lydia tries to explain what happened, but Aura is desperately trying to shut him up as she promises to heal him. Unfortunately, Lydia is painfully aware that he's not going to survive, though he's trying to smile about it. Aura, very clearly in denial, once again tells him to stop saying things like that. Lydia admits to regretting not having participated in the race, but Aura once again begs him to stop. He doesn't, though, and with his last breaths, he begs her to use his soul to help the Rangers and Mugen. However, he's cut just a bit short, and his hand slips out of hers and falls limp onto the floor. Crying out his name, Aura buries her face in his and uses her now free arm to hug his body.

Look man, the body language alone was enough to throw me down this rabbit hole, and when you add the dialogue??? The pleading and denial???? Fuckin hell.

Anyway, Aura consults with the Great God Goal about his wish and he instructs her to move him to a cave at the foot of the novel pole, where he is transformed into Kirinda. Now, while the image of Aura psychically airlifting this man's corpse halfway across Mugen is kind of funny if you think about it for more than five seconds (like god, I hope nobody was looking up at that moment), there's just this nice little detail of him now being in a proper sort of burial position, arms folded over, and holding his camera. She had to have done that herself.

Aura very clearly loved him so fucking much, there is definitely no debate about that. Lydia's feelings are admittedly a bit less clear, at least if we're going purely based off of this episode alone. However, there is a bit in Episode 32 I feel is worth mentioning, so let's backtrack just a bit.

In this episode, Gaou, Pochiro, Tart, and Pakaracchi are trapped in the world of the Bremen Town Musicians after overstaying the time limit. Normally, the Novel World would be closed off to re-entry after this. However, Aura contacts the remaining Rangers in Kirinda with a plan to transfer her spiritual power into Kirinda's reactor in order to create a new opening in the Novel World. Everyone is excited at the prospect of being able to save their friends... except Kirinda. While he knows this plan would work, he's the only one besides Aura aware of how dangerous it would be for her, and he outright begs and pleads with her not to do it. She does it anyway and ends up bedridden until the end of the last episode, so like, he wasn't even wrong, but that's beside the point--

It's a scene that stood out to me even before I ended up in this hell. Kirinda and Aura don't actually get to directly interact much, but when they do, it's generally pretty professional, presumably either to hide Kirinda's identity or because the writers just threw this whole subplot in last minute and did not think about foreshadowing whatsoever. Whatever the case, we do see that they care about each other, albeit in the sense of protecting the greater good of Mugen and the Novel Pole, but it's here that things start to crack on Kirinda's end.

Suddenly, he's directly challenging her authority, something that up to this point we have never seen him do. He's panicked and his eye is doing that slight shimmering thing anime characters do when they're really emotional or on the verge of tears. Never mind the fact that, while it's not outright said, he's basically willing to throw the trapped Rangers under the bus to prevent her from doing this. And while he's blatantly irresponsible with the Rangers a lot of the time, he's never been one to actually abandon them. Like after he's been shot down, even as he's losing consciousness, he makes sure that the Rangers who are now piloting him pick up the ones that were deployed into the Novel World before getting the hell out of there. But suddenly, if Aura's the one in danger, then it's just out of the question. Going back to this scene knowing how close they were in episode 34, the stakes are clearly much more personal than just protecting Mugen's ruler.

Unfortunately, though, this is all we get (at least without me diving heavily into extrapolation of scenes that could be read either way and coming across like an insane person)! They just drop all this stuff on us, and then never follow up on any of it! It's horrible too, because literally all the other character and relationship arcs get tied up nice and neatly (aside from Bakumaru's tear-jerking Shanghai Cabbage story... I fucking understand, Souffle, this is my tear-jerking Shanghai Cabbage story). Like Lydia's back to normal, but the last we see of him is him getting chased out of Bakumaru's house for being a stinky bastard man. We never get to see them interact; we never get that emotional catharsis of getting to see each other again like normal for the first time in six years. We're just left to imagine it.

And normally, that's not the worst thing in the world! When shit doesn't become canon (even if it feels like it Really Should Have Been), that's what fanfiction is for! Unfortunately, despite spending literal years scouring every archive I could find, in multiple languages, there is literally only one fanfic in existence, and it is in Chinese, and it is Very Sad. And good luck finding fan art that isn't made by me or people I have dragged into this hell with me (a couple pieces do exist, but 2/3 --as in like the total number of pieces, not just a fraction-- are NSFW).

I genuinely feel like I'm going insane here, like I'm some kind of conspiracy theorist. I know I'm not, because everyone I point this shit out to sees it too, but boy howdy sometimes it sure fucking feels like it. Part of the problem is that from what I can tell in the non-English speaking fandoms (Which is where most of the fans actually ARE lmao), Lydia is definitely not the most popular character (though he is well liked), and Aura is even less so (and seems to be actively hated in some circles). And I mean, yeah, I get it, they are a couple of secondary characters in an already huge and likeable main cast. Not to mention the show itself is pretty fucking obscure too. I completely understand.

It's just that, when you lay down this much foundation to the point that it's obvious even to someone who actively avoids shipping, it feels like a huge waste not to fucking follow up on that shit. Even if they don't get to interact outside of a professional level through much of the series, you get to see enough of them simply existing on their own that it's not exactly hard to imagine what could have been. And normally, realistically, I would not support the news media and the head of state getting all cozy like this, but this is not that type of show and they are not those types of characters.

This is the part where I segue into talking the types of characters they are and how their personalities work well together.

Aura is a pretty stoic character. She's obviously very kind and loving, but she is ultimately very distant from others and keeps a lot of things close to her chest. Short of being physically incapacitated and confronted with everything she's been hiding, she very rarely lets her air of professionalism falter. There are a couple times in the series where she takes a slightly more casual approach with the Rangers, like in episode 30 where she's just kind of letting Tart, Souffle, and Cream hang out on her balcony, but it's around Lydia that she's her most emotionally vulnerable.

She's downright happy to see him and seems pretty excited about his plans for the paper. It's brief and not super pronounced, but this is the first time you see her seem genuinely excited over anything, short of Bagi being defeated and the series itself becoming a Novel World. And when Lydia's dying, she just completely falls apart. The closest you get to her showing any similar kind of emotion is when Kirinda is shot down or when recounting what happened to Chocolat, but even then, while she's obviously, visibly fucking distraught, she still keeps a much higher level of composure in front of the Rangers.

Lydia is someone who can break down the barriers Aura has as a result of her position. He blatantly bypasses the social barriers that come between a princess and a commoner with his casual attitude toward her, but he's also able to bypass the literal barrier of her being unable to leave her castle by way of being so closely involved in community affairs due to the nature of his job. He is someone that allows her to let loose and at least vicariously get a taste of normal life she's not normally privy to. With him, she is able to take a bit of a break from being Princess Aura, and simply just be Aura.

However, it seems Lydia is a bit more cognizant of the gap between them. While he's surprisingly casual (and I'd love to know the history between them to allow him to get away with that so easily), he seems to reel himself in quite a bit compared to how we see him throughout the series proper. His demeanor around her is uncharacteristically shy and awkward, and it's apparently much easier for him to go into Reporter Mode and grill her about a potential conspiracy than accept personal compliments.

Mind you, this is the same guy who would put himself on the front page of the paper over the literal saving of Mugen, the same guy whose character song has a verse where he literally asks a girl if she thinks he's cool. So, between the sudden shyness and his willingness to throw the other Rangers under the bus to protect her, it paints a picture of someone that has some feelings he's likely unsure if he's allowed to actually act on, and so, like everything else in his life he doesn't want to deal with, he simply Doesn't.

With that in mind, in contrast to him allowing her to loosen up a bit, Aura is someone who could help pull him out of his comfort zone. Despite her softer, gentler disposition, she’s surprisingly forward when she wants to be, in contrast to his tendency to hesitate in spite of his otherwise more boisterous personality. She clearly sees more in him than he (or pretty much anyone else in this show) does, and he definitely seems like he respects her opinion enough to actually listen, even if he's a bit resistant at first. She's someone that can kind of straighten him out a little bit and encourage him to be a better (and perhaps slightly more responsible?) version of himself.

It’s a relationship that allows for them to bring out the best in each other by making up for their individual weaknesses and providing things that they need but can’t get on their own. Aura needs less structure, and Lydia needs more. That being said, Aura can inspire a bit more (healthy) spontaneity in him, and Lydia can act as a source of emotional stability for her. It’s a really cute dynamic and it would have been so nice to get more of that without me having to like extrapolate like an insane person.

There’s just also a lot of different ways you could write them. You have the more comedic angle what with this mysterious, powerful princess-goddess trying really, really hard to get the mediocre newspaper man of her desires to notice her. Meanwhile said mediocre newspaper man is either too shy, dense or both to pick up on the really obvious signals she’s throwing out, even if he’s down to clown in theory. I also think if they had ever gotten the chance to resolve the unresolved romantic tension and really get comfortable with each other, they’d probably end up being really obnoxious, what with how ridiculous and over the top Lydia is in regular situations and how hilariously into this man Aura is.

Yet you also have the angle of just a couple of people who have been through absolute hell and forced to be apart because of it finally getting a chance to just... breathe. They know better than anyone else the kind of shit the other has been through. They both have been carrying the burden of all these secrets just so that the Rangers don’t have to worry about fighting a former friend (or the fact that they’re literally being piloted around by the first victim of that former friend). During that long period where Nyanma made no moves, these two probably got to see each other at their lowest, between all the guilt and regret and isolation. And even if things are back to normal now, those scars are still there, and you wonder about how that might crop up going forward.

There’s just so much fucking potential here and nobody seems to give a shit! Studio SHAFT robbed me of the emotional resolution they deserved and the fandom at large refuses to provide content, but at least I have my friends and our vast assortment of headcanons to fill in the blanks, I guess.

If y’all actually bothered to read all this then I need you to know I love you and thanks for coming to my particularly self-indulgent TED talk today.

#kateh rambles #eto ranger hell #nothing like a rarepair that by all means shouldn't be

6 notes · View notes

kirinda-ondo · 3 years ago

Note

⚡️ Tomor?

Ah, Tomor, my favorite chucklefuck~

1. Tomor, like his friends, was also originally going to be a girl (do not ask me why this keeps happening I have no idea), but this lasted for all of about like 2.5 drawings before he decided "fuck that actually." That said, his personality and design were virtually unchanged, as someone who was kind of a rough, but well-meaning jerk (as a kid, anyway. He's much more of a jerk nowadays lmao). I ended up introducing him into OC plots way late in the game, but he's actually existed since pretty early on, with only the vaguest references being made to him because I didn't want to fully commit to an entire OC yet.

2. I named him Tomor after the Albanian god, Baba Tomor (or Father Tomor). Unlike his friends, however, he has no real connection to the deity he was named after, and the name was mostly picked for vibes. Vibes, and the fact that like how his namesake is the father of all gods, our Tomor is kind of the origin of everyone else's brain problems (minus Cayenne) without necessarily meaning to be. He was actually the first one to incorrectly assume Bragi's intentions, which then led to the horrible miscommunication that ended up fucking up both Bragi and Aneas up for most of their lives, and was the one that made the half-hearted suggestion for Aneas to stick his name in the lottery to become basically a minor god. ("Haha the chances are so unlikely but wouldn't it be funny if you won?" He did win and it was not nearly as funny as either of them thought--)

3. He has a really immature personality, and even more immature sense of humor, believing peanus weenus is the height of all comedy, but he's actually surprisingly far more intelligent than even he gives himself credit for. He enjoys books and is actually very well-read, on top of being generally clever and and good at seeing through other people's bullshit. He just never bothered to apply himself and instead uses his brain power for shitty jokes and being kind of a bully, whoops. He's very much based on the kind of asshole I was when I was like.... 12-13 lmao.

4. Despite his overall chill, "whatever" kind of demeanor, he's surprisingly conservative and judgemental. He has some old-fashioned and very rigid ideas of how he thinks things should be, and does not approve of his friends' far more unconventional life choices (like marrying a demon, or being so buddy-buddy with mortals). He's also the sort of person who's very much stuck in the past and wants to refit things to the way they used to be without accepting or understanding that people can in fact change and want different things at different points in time.

5. He can take insults and teasing just as well as he dishes them out, so it takes a lot to really get under his skin, but he has one major weakness and that is a horrible alien girl belonging to my other friend. She's the type of person that likes to be the most tragic person in the room because she loves the attention. He knows she's not even half as tragic as she claims and thus roasts the shit out of her, which then feeds into her victim complex, which then feeds into him wanting to roast her more, and it's kind of a horrible dynamic between horrible people but he's kind of into it even if he hasn't quite figured it out himself (and even if it goes against his staunch "don't get attached to mortals" policy) ajksfdklskjlf. Will this change his views any, or will he find a way to justify it? Absolutely yet to be seen lmao.

#kateh rambles #kateh's oc tag #tomor

4 notes · View notes

kirinda-ondo · 3 years ago

Text

Hi I'm thinking about how fucked up it is that kirinda can still feel physical sensations

It's not something you think about because he's a giant anime robot that occasionally fights another giant anime robot and that kind of thing is just expected, you take that shit for granted

And you also don't think about it in the context of silly little gags they drop like him getting a little too into getting a bath or bakumaru trying to strangle him for not being chosen on the roulette for once

But then with that in mind you remember the time he got shot down and nearly fucking died (again), or the other time he got shot at and its implied they had to physically plug him back into his own cockpit (which I am not even remotely sure of the mortality implications there--)

Or all those times he had the absolute shit beaten out of him, got electrocuted by some fucked up energy, or had to crash land (and these are only a few examples)

You're just like

Oh god

He felt that

Fucking ouch

Like imagine of you wrecked your car and the car could feel the impact too. That is the Kirinda experience.

And like compound that with the fact that he is literally just a regular fucking dude with no prior combat experience in there crashing and getting attacked and blown up on a regular basis. Like yeah his body can withstand most of that now but like it's no wonder he's so fucking anxious the minute he has to deviate from the usual script.

Being kirinda is and continues to be suffering

I want to be like "goal what the fuck" but it's like not even his fault, that is just apparently how it goes with slapping a soul in a kirinda apparently, because like with black kirinda, while it does not come pre-packaged with a guy in it, it does get possessed by gen'en and later bagi and they both end up also feeling the pain of it being attacked. Gen'en has it even worse because she's got a physical body as well that is also wounded.

I guess if you squint really hard that could have been foreshadowing about the true nature of our kirinda but that is kind of a stretch lol

So uh moral of the story being a space-time transmitting machine is not a viable career choice unless you like being in a world of hurt

#kateh rambles #eto ranger hell #kirinda: *is just constantly going through it* i love my job :)#desperately need to know how this man even functions so well in spite of all the physical and mental trauma

5 notes · View notes

kirinda-ondo · 4 years ago

Text

Personal Astro Verse Part 2 - Main Characters

Atom/"Astro"

Atom is one of the world's most advanced robots, frequently referred to as "The Child of Science." He's packed to the brim with incredible abilities, both physical and mental, while also being kind, compassionate, and essentially human. He's considered practically perfect, making him the best candidate to bridge the gap between humans and robots.

...Once you get to know him, however, you'll find he's not much different from any other kid his age. He goes to school, plays games, and argues with his siblings just like the rest of us. In fact, he's kind of a huge nerd. He gets very excited about science (Which field? All of them) and can frequently be found at the Ministry of Science either helping Prof. Ochanomizu or the other scientists there. As a hobby, he's also quite fond of Entomology (the study of insects) and Malacology (the study of gastropods like snails, slugs, etc.) and has a fairly sizeable collection of various bugs and snails. Unfortunately, he doesn't have nearly as much time for hobbies as he'd like.

Having so much expected of him has made him into something of an overachiever with a perfectionist complex to boot. He tries to keep it all under wraps so as to avoid worrying anyone, but his tendency to completely stress out whenever failure becomes even a remote possibility, or his tendency to get overly wrapped up in his pet causes often betray that "I have everything under control" exterior he likes to push. While he means well, he tends to come off as being a little bossy because he feels like he's expected to always be the most mature person in the room, and generally acts as the straight man in contrast to his siblings. However, he's not completely above engaging in shenanigans with them or unleashing some Grade A Snark(TM).

Though he may not be as perfect as everyone seems to think, he's still a very kind, responsible, all around good kid with a strong sense of justice. He'll always stop to help someone in need, supports those he cares about, and stands by what he thinks is right, even if no one else agrees; which more than earns him his status as a hero.

Fun Fact: Once, a news headline referred to him as an "Astro Boy" in order to sound catchy and attention grabbing. He was confused at first, but everyone around him agreed that "Astro" sounded really cool, so the nickname stuck to the point where he tends to get called that more than his actual name. Many adults in his life still call him Atom, though.

Uran

Uran is Atom's little sister, built for him as a birthday present. However, she seems to make a point of defying all expectations such a description would create about her. Though she was built for him, she's very much her own person. Though she's a little girl, she's a huge powerhouse in her own right. Though she's cute, she's also a huge tomboy. She doesn't want to be put into a box.

The one thing she is most proud to be though is a little sister. It means she can get away with more mischief since she's young and cute. She also considers it her sworn duty as a little sister to do everything in her power to get on her older brothers' nerves. In fact, it's probably her favorite pasttime, next to Robotting (essentially robot wrestling), and she often combines the two to get surprise attacks in on her siblings when they least expect it. She gets many complaints that she doesn't act "ladylike" as a result, but all those do is make her rowdier out of spite.

She's incredibly honest with herself and others. She'll tell you exactly what she thinks, even if it sounds blunt (and most of the time, it is). If she feels like she's gone too far, she'll apologize, but usually she defends herself as calling it like it is. She may be blunt, but she's very perceptive, often noticing things about others that they've yet to notice about themselves. This gives her sort of a knack for dealing with animals, and also frequently makes her the voice of reason in emotional matters.

Though she may seem abrasive or bratty, she's by no means a bad kid. She does have a softer side and genuinely loves her brothers as much as she loves annoying them. Her emotional intelligence also makes her a good source of honest wisdom and support. Her heart is definitely in the right place at least (...for the most part).

Fun Fact: While she thought her Robotting career was over after her brief stint in the professional ring, the standards have since changed a bit to be less deadly (i.e., no more permanent destruction of robots who lose matches). There's even a junior Robotting league now, and she's basically the champion of her school's team.

Cobalt

Cobalt is the oldest, being a prototype of Atom. He's just as powerful, and the two could even be mistaken for one another at a glance, but that's where the similarities end. He lacks all of the special abilities and was initially deemed defective due to imperfections in his electronic brain and scrapped as a result. While Atom is essentially perfect, Cobalt is very, very flawed.

Despite all this, he's generally a pretty happy, goofy kid with his head frequently in the clouds (which is fitting given that he likes aviation and really wants to fly--). He's very optimistic and refuses to give up, even if it flies in the face of everything else, and is the type to find humor (however corny) in even the worst situations. He also has a lot of faith in people and is very trusting of everyone he meets, even if it's obvious he shouldn't be. This hasn't worked out for him yet, but he continues on anyway. At the very least, he gets along well with his siblings. He tries to be a responsible big brother, but he tends to get undermined a bit (either by others or himself) and winds up being a part of the shenanigans anyway.

While he is genuinely a pretty positive person, he's also got a cripplingly low self-esteem and an inferiority complex to boot. He genuinely believes he's stupid with no real strengths of his own. However, that’s hardly the case; he merely has some coordination, memory and focus issues. In fact, he's actually a very creative thinker, and while some of his thoughts may seem out there, he's very good at finding unconventional solutions to problems (which works well as he doesn't like to fight). But like most with low self-esteems, he doesn't give himself enough credit.

Though he's not always appreciated enough for it, he still continues to do his best to be kind and help people in need, never giving up hope that things will get better. His unyielding optimism is frequently a source of inspiration for his siblings, even if he doesn't realize it.

Fun Fact: Cobalt is my favorite and I’ve already written about him at great length, so if you want more Cobalt Facts then check out these posts

Chi-Tan

Chi-tan is basically Shrodinger's Super Robot Baby in that you have no idea if he still exists unless I decide to make him relevant for joke or plot purposes.

Where does he go when he’s not relevant?

Don’t worry about it.

He’s fine.

Probably.

#kateh rambles #personal astro verse

18 notes · View notes