#kazuaki-kun

[vellichorom]

to that one person who asked awhile back for my take on The King beloved... i hope i did him the marshmallowy peepy justice you thought i had in me...

transparents below the cut so you can Behold my newfound watercoloring skills in their lone glory. yes they are very tiny i can't change that

[glazeliights]

Ill catch up with you one day, okay?

[rotten-velvet]

It's no longer 3rd March here but it is somewhere on the other side of the world.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KAZUAKI-KUN 🎉🎉

[ptulapeehtata]

My first Hatoful Boyfriend fanart was on a cake

Reference :

[sybillapandemia]

Hatoful Boyfriend Merch ideas…… I’d like to produce it myself using a manufacturer, but there needs to be interest first, of course. I’d be most interested in pins and mini daki keychains/mini plush keychains personally.

[librarytomb]

Do you want to die together.....?

(art log -> @2sdaynight )

[itscanditime]

I'm back on my Hatoful Boyfriend soapbox you guys. And I'm here to say, there isn't enough stuff for Kazuaki-kun! I want more! Where are my plushies? Where are my shirts? Where is my officially licensed body pillow?? Nowhere! That's where! I demand more content! Justice for Kazuaki-kun!

[gucciguccigarbage]

It Matters.

I've been so normal about these guys since 2015

Posted using PostyBirb

[quailclaws]

a very small doodle from memory :,D

[victors-little-boat]

I couldn't be bothered to put in effort this Kazuaki day.

[donuts4evry1]

I love how the first two posts in the Kazuaki tag is just Kazuaki-kun gettin boozed up on his birthday

[seikyoko]

#yeah these are basically my thoughts as well#kazuaki/the king isn't stupid and he's not a completely helpless innocent -- he certainly feels trapped and i sympathize with that#but he's very very capable of being manipulative - it's the king's m.o.#i would honestly argue that him being whinier/more of a crybaby in mirror is probably indicative of him being *healthier* in that timeline#he's not at the absolute rock bottom where he feels like nothing matters and can barely feel anything at all#and feels the need to turn to unhealthy manipulative behaviour to cope and get his needs met#he's obviously still very anxious and sensitive but like... he's clearly not as miserable as he was when he met hitori in the bbl timeline#and of course there's the angle that he's speaking either to his students or coworkers when we see him in mirror content#and i think a measure of self-censoring in regards to mental health struggles is probably understandable in those cases

after replaying holiday star this morning, there was a little something i noticed that intrigued me a whole lot.

i noticed that, not only is the king (while obviously being The Crybaby King) is a lot more refined and plain than the more accepted depiction of him, but also kazuaki's internal monologue during his flashback is a lot different than how we typically perceive him. it's cold and hopeless and hardened and he doesn't cry-- he is genuinely struggling with a rigid depression. he keeps saying "you lied to me. why did you do this? why did you do this to me?" it doesn't read as whining. it doesn't read as if he's actually crying. it sounds like he's desperate and scared but so broken that he cannot cry. the only time he becomes similar to his typical personality is at the very end of his life when he's begging hitori to save him, but even then he has reason for this, and he still isn't that whiney hikikomori stereotype we usually see. he's more begging. the way he excuses himself by blaming society sounds more manipulative, like a clever ditch attempt at gaining sympathy and getting hitori to call for help. and i am aware he's a bit of an unreliable narrator (i am genuinely convinced that he started putting words into hitori's mouth. but that deserves its own post) but i believe that he was like this in personality, because that's what depression feels like. that's so realistic and similar to how real people struggling with mental illness think

even as the little king, while he is more childish in his true form (and i wouldn't be surprised if that was influenced by his time as the king and wallowing in his own self-pity for several years), he still retains a lot of his desperate and realistic tone. he says something like "there's nothing else you can do, so come on, stop threatening me." he is whiney and selfish but he still has undertones of his past self. he's making excuses and using his knowledge of nageki's past traumas to stop him from burning the lighthouse. he's begging nageki to stop like he begged hitori to save him. when he speaks to the migrant and other citizens before boarding the train, he's picking out reasons to be afraid from their words. he is afraid and desperate and still a little bit manipulative, like he was in life

i actually really like this depiction of kazuaki. he feels real and interesting and slightly problematic and i like that. i want him to be a little manipulative and i want to see that he's in the wrong because it makes him more fun to analyze. and i think in comparison to how he's been written in the mirror universe, it's kind of... i don't know. i feel like it kind of strips away what makes holiday star so damn beautiful and heart-wrenching. it reduces him to a caricature of a whiney crybaby when holiday star is all about the raw emotion and provides one of the most relatable depictions of depression i've seen in media. kazuaki, in his flashback? he's not an idiot. he has been broken by the weight of the world. he is interested in reading and writing but is forced to give up on those things because he is so deeply affected by his disorderly mental health. he sees someone smart and earnest and kind and he admires them while also putting himself down. he confides in them his very real and hard-hitting feelings that many of us have experienced. and that made me cry upon my first playthrough, and i still get heavily affected when i reread it.

i hope moa doesn't entirely scrap this side of his personality in new installments of the franchise. i know it will be hard to do because there are already things including him that don't touch on this, but i'm sure that with how both hatoful boyfriend and holiday star so seamlessly transition between silliness and Emotions, she can make it work. honestly all of the secondary content, like the manga and drama cds and whatnot, do change characters' personalities a lot for the sake of a casual read. and maybe that's also influenced by nazarine's versus other people's translations. so i believe in the franchise's ability to keep kazuaki Interesting in this way

[glazeliights]

I would like my non-hatoful followers to know that

because this is definitely just a silly dating sim and Nothing Else :)

[rotten-velvet]

I drew this to promote my fanfic but it ended up looking like a normal fanart so anyway, here you go.

But also read my ShuuKazu fanfic, Autumn Train 👀

This was the original sketch for this art but I disliked how it turned out so I scraped it

[sybillapandemia]

[seikyoko]

#YEAH

#imo the things he says in that scene are so directly in conflict with the things he says to nageki in flashbacks

#i.e. 'you don't have to be useful. just living your life is enough'

#and i really don't think his whole outlook on that would just spontaneously change that quickly

#ESPECIALLY after seeing what happened to nageki

#it 100% reads as just him trying to convince himself of that because he (believes he) NEEDS to do this

My take on Hitori during That Scene of holiday star is that, yes I can believe that those are the actual words that he said. Kazuaki is an unreliable narrator, but I don't think he necessarily twisted Hitori's dialogue there. Especially since there's the line about how throwing up would only hurt Kazuaki more, which seems in character for me when compared to how Hitori treats Ryouta when he's trying to get his liver in BBL.

HOWEVER, I think Kazuaki attributes a lot more malice to Hitori than was actually there. I think Hitori in this scene is mostly just... checked out. He's distancing himself from his actions, he's trying to adjust the situation in his head so he can live with himself. If Kazuaki told Hitori that he wanted this, if they both agree the world is awful, if Hitori was really only helping him- then it's okay right? He can't stop, right? He has to keep going, because he's come so far, and he's built up this script in his head, and... why is Kazuaki protesting? Shut up, shut up, stop it, this is how it HAD to go, there was never a choice, right?

Hitori has a VERY strong moral compass- but he's actively choosing to go against where it's pointing because his guilt over Nageki is stronger than anything else.