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duhragonball · 2 years ago

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Dragon Ball GT 57

✨GT Stands For Gross Touching✨

✨"Good" "Ideas", Poorly Executed✨

Last time, Goku claimed he could defeat Eis Shenron in five seconds, but he failed to consider Eis’ willingness to use Pan as a shield.

He freezes Goku again, but this time Goku breaks loose, which he explains by saying that he memorizes every technique that he encounters, so because Eis got him with it in Episode 56, he’s prepared for it this time. That’s really stupid, because Eis zapped him with the freeze ray several times in Episode 56, and Goku just stood there like a goof and got zapped. Yet he has the gall to say he won’t fall for the same trick twice.

So then Eis starts pleading for mercy, which leads to this shot, which is kind of interesting. Not because of this episode or its story, though. This is just another example of Goku falling for the same trick twice, because Mercenary Tao and Frieza begged for mercy years ago, and Goku still hasn’t figured out that bad guys will feign surrender to catch him off guard.

No, it’s interesting because there was a semi-famous image going around in 2014, with Goku in some sort of Golden Super Saiyan 4 form, and Beerus was the one pleading for mercy. This looked authentic enough to seem official, and while I’m not sure how many people believed it was real, it sort of represents this last gasp of the “Dragon Ball AF Culture” in the fandom. Nowadays, it’s a lot easier to find out what’s really going on in Japan, but back in the early 2000′s there were all sorts of rumors flying around, and it was hard to know what was real and what wasn’t. So if a fan artist was talented enough to redraw an obscure scene from GT, they could conceivably convince other fans that their Goku redesign was going to appear in an upcoming work.

But back to Eis, he offers to surrender his Dragon Ball, and begs Nuova to speak on his behalf, and Nuova actually does. The thing is, I’m pretty sure Eis can’t exist without his Dragon Ball, so this offer is kind of pointless. But just as Goku agrees to let him go...

Eis slashes at Goku’s face with some sort of icicle claw attack? The effects are pretty clear. Goku is blinded for the next couple of episodes, and also that building in the background gets cut in half.

What’s less clear is what exactly Eis did to Goku’s eyes. Considering how that building turned out, you’d think Eis cut Goku up really bad, kind of like what Zorin Blitz did to Seras Victoria in Hellsing, but that’s a bit too gruesome for GT. Or maybe the ice claws just froze Goku’s corneas or something?�� That’s more consistent with the ice gimmick.

It doesn’t really matter, because when Eis tries to finish Goku off, Goku just punches a hole in his chest and insta-wins. I mean, duh. This episode is Goku’s 501st appearance on television. One thing we’ve learned about the guy over and over again is how sharp his senses are. He can track scents like a bloodhound, and detect objects and people by sound and the feel of subtle movements in the air. And his ki senses let him detect just about any powerful warrior in the area. Blinding Goku is practically useless, and it seems like the Shadow Dragons are the only ones who don’t understand this. The audience sure as hell knew, so I don’t know why this was presented like some suspenseful moment.

So Goku follows up with a Super Dragon Fist which killerizes Eis and removes all the ice on the city they’re in. Convenient.

Goku tries washing his eyes to clear his vision, but it doesn’t work. So did Eis like... throw dust in his eyes or something like that? Then a bottle drops into his hand, and it turns out Nuova is the one who’s giving it to him. He says it’s “medicine” that will heal Goku’s eyes. Wait, why the fuck would Nuova Shenron just have that with him? Was he expecting something like this to happen?

I think the writers just wanted to make it clear what a sporting guy Nuova was, but it’s kind of weird that he would have eye medicine handy. Also, there’s no obvious trauma to Goku’s eyes, so I really have no idea what the medicine is supposed to do. This feels more like some sort of Solar Flare deal, where Goku just saw a really bright light and he needs time to recover. And maybe that’s what Eis did to him, except why did it cut a building in half?

The bigger problem here is that this blindness angle carries on for a while longer, except it doesn’t really slow Goku down that much, and then it clears up on its own a short time later. So this whole bit just seems like a total mess. They wanted to do something to raise the stakes, but they failed to think it through or make it mean anything.

Anyway, Nuova offers to withdraw until Goku has recovered, and they can fight again later, but before he leaves, another Shadow Dragon shows up and attacks. He destroys the medicine and takes down Nuova. Then he shoots again, and Nuova knocks Goku out of the way and sacrifices himself to save him.

So this is Syn Shenron, the One-Star Dragon, and now the last one of the set. He’s also the strongest one, and apparently he had enough of Nuova’s half-assed babyface routine, and of Eis’ half-assed Memphis heel shtick. He reminds Goku that he was the one who made the Shadow Dragons possible, and this is all his fault, but that’s dumb. Most of the wishes Goku and his friends made on the Dragon Balls were for the sake of restoring the Earth from great cataclysms. I’ve never understood the Shadow Dragons’ sanctimony. They berate Goku for overusing the Dragon Balls, then threaten to destroy the world. Instead of complaining to him, they should be thanking him for giving them life and purpose. Or if they actually care about the world, they could just stay their hand and give Goku a pass. But pick one and go with it.

✨Positivity Page✨

So they fight for a bit, but Syn turns out to be in a whole other class of power. Goku suddenly finds himself running for cover, and struggling to keep up, a lot like he was doing against Oceanus and Nuova, except this time he’s doing it as a Super Saiyan 4, which makes his desperation much easier to believe.

Goku manages to lie low and ambush Syn with a 10x Kamehameha, and it doesn’t do anything. Worse, Syn replies with his own 10x Kamehameha, and completely wrecks Goku’s shit.

Pan sort of wanders around in a stupor, and when she sees Goku hanging upside down like this, she screams in abject terror. See, this is how they should have been doing it all along. They blew through six other Shadow Dragons and finally figured it out on the seventh.

See, the way these Dragon Ball arcs work, you’d have a group like the Shadow Dragons, and Goku might take on the first one, and everyone assumes he’ll be okay, but then he barely survives the fight, and it turns out that it took everything he had to beat the weakest one. That’s how it went with the Saiyans Saga, the Androids Saga, and so on. Haze should have beaten Super Saiyan 4 Goku to a pulp, and only a last-ditch maneuver would have won the day. Then Goku would return to the others and tell them how bad things really are. Yeah, he’s a a Super Saiyan 4, but just one SSJ4 isn’t enough.

And that would lead to a hurried effort to get some reinforcements onto the field. Not just SSJ4 Vegeta, but Gohan as well. Suddenly SSJ3 Gotenks sounds pretty handy, huh?

But no, GT refuses to take the focus off of Goku, so they did this stupid arc where most of the Shadow Dragons were pathetic twerps and Goku takes them all on by himself. Everyone else just sits at home and hopes he’s doing okay. But it ends up turning out the same way as what I just proposed.

Because now Pan is pleading for the rest of Dragon Team to show up and save Goku. Hey, that’s fine, but we should have skipped straight to that on the FIRST Shadow Dragon, not the LAST one. Then we could have had seven OP bad guys taking on seven good guys: Goku, Vegeta, Trunks, Gohan, Goten, Uub and Pan. And all seven of them would have to push themselves beyond their limits just to stand a chance. It’d be awesome. And we could have been doing that for the past nine episodes instead of watching Rage Shenron defeat himself, or Pan getting possessed by a giant mole.

Wait, I forgot about Bulla. Oh man, can you imagine if the good guys were getting clobbered and then Bulla just shows up and blindsides a Shadow Dragon in the head? I don’t think Bulla and Pan would dominate a conflict like this, but the point is that you could still have them jump ahead a few levels and actually put up a fight. Nuova knocked Pan in Episode 54 just to keep her out of his way. I’d much rather see him knock Pan out because he’s got SSJ4 Gohan to worry about, and he’s afraid of SSJ3 Pan shooting a ki blast at him while he’s not looking.

Well, no point crying for what should have been...

✨Is This Episode Worse than "The Roaming Lake"?✨

I give this one a lot of credit for actually having plenty of things happen. Unlike the last several episodes, this one has a lot on its to-do list. We have no fewer than three Shadow Dragons in this one, so we need to kill off two of them and introduce the third. And, mercifully, Syn Shenron is aggressive enough to just attack instead of making long-winded speeches. It fits, because he came here to find Goku, so this isn’t like when Goku finds one of the others and asks them what they’re up to.

So this is a lot like Episode 19, where it still kind of blah, but at least it’s not slow and dull. So it approaches “Roaming Lake” levels of quality, but I still think it falls short. Here’s why.

First, the Eis Shenron fight was disappointing. I get that he’s a dirty cheater, but he’s also supposed to be at least as powerful as Nuova Shenron, who’s presented as a match for SSJ4 Goku. So you would think that Eis would put up more of a fight than he did. Instead, Goku powers through Eis like he’s no big deal, and Eis really has nothing left to do but cheat. He does the fake surrender thing just like Rage and Naturon, and he uses Pan and Nuova as shields, just like Naturon. We already saw Goku defeat Rage and Naturon, and those fights sucked. Why are we doing this crap again?

Second, the death of Nuova is pretty hollow to me. We’ve only had the guy around for four episodes, and one of them was the Vegeta clip show, so he was barely in it. We’re supposed to miss this guy, but why, exactly? Because he was halfway decent towards Pan? Because he freed Goku from the ice, then gave him the medicine for his eyes?

Look, if Nuova were truly a good dude, then he could have stepped in and rescued Pan from Eis’s various efforts to use her as a hostage. He could have also stepped in and attacked Eis rather than just standing around and waiting for Goku to overcome his dirty tricks. Nuova tried to dance on either side of the battle line, and that doesn’t make him a hero or some kind of tragic figure. It just makes him a shitty villain. Goku might miss his ass, but I sure don’t.

Third, Syn’s appearance does raise the stakes, but it does it in a very formulaic way. We see him stalking Goku through this amusement park, but it’s very similar to the way the other Shadow Dragons would push Goku around in past episodes. The only difference is that in those earlier episodes, Goku was in base mode, so you knew he could always turn SSJ4 if he was really in a pinch. This time he’s already in Super Saiyan 4, and he’s still on the backfoot.

On paper, that’s fine, but in practice, it just makes this whole fight look very, very familiar. They just took the same tactics from the other episodes and translated it to a higher power level. There’s nothing new about Syn’s tactics or attitude here. Things will improve a little in the episodes to come, but for this episode, Syn vs. Goku doesn’t feel very special.

And that’s a big problem for the Shadow Dragons Saga as a whole. These episodes all tend to run together, because it’s a lot of the same visuals and character motivations, and a hero who keeps screwing around instead of tackling the villain. So even when the hero is finally forced to try harder, it still falls flat because it looks exactly like it did when he was screwing around.

Also, the music and aesthetics of these episodes is just the pits. I hate the GT score, and I hate this hazy sky always being in the background of every shot, and Syn isn’t exactly winning me over with his design.

So the Roaming Lake wins again, 58-0. This episode put up a decent fight, but it’s not ending the streak. At this point, I’m beginning to think nothing can.

✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku*✨

Syn Shenron. Ready

For six more episodes of

This jerk? ‘Cause I’m not.

#dragon ball #dragon ball gt #really sucks #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #*haiku does not come with crown as illustrated #goku #pan #nuova shenron #eis shenron #syn shenron #oh it's almost over #almost...

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sorrycory · 1 year ago

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In all honesty, I’m mainly posting here because I just need someone to listen to me. Would make me feel better about some things, you know?

From what I can tell from Discord texts I sent one of my old friends, it kind of looks like everything started back on July 13th of last year. Which- is kind of weird timing, looking back at it. The thing is- I didn’t really use to dream often. If so, it was mainly just nightmares- one in particular, I remember being caught up in a pile of snakes, and my sibling just watched me while standing near my bedroom door. But this one was really weird- it felt really real, anyways.

It started off in a concrete basement. One of those ones deep in the ground- the doorway out was really high up nearing the center of this wall, with this metal stairway leading up to it. It didn’t really look that stable looking back at it, but I didn’t really think much of it. I guess there was supposed to be a party going on? There was these banged up folding tables to the left of the room, and there was all of these people in really fancy clothing. It might’ve been a murder mystery masquerade, I’d never be able to tell. I remember the dream kind of had a long beginning? I don’t remember any conversations, but I feel like I was talking to people- my attention was stolen by this guy running down the stairs frantically.

He was screaming really loud about being chased by someone- he seemed half drunk, but it didn’t really matter until this guy came up and stood near the top of the stairs. He was laughing maniacally- looking back at it, I’m not really able to take him seriously, but he was going on this long villain like dialogue. Being the destroyer of humanity, cursing the plains since the beginning of Earth- which was then contradicted by him claiming he was raised by wolves. I don’t think he was very smart, but he did come off as powerful.

He started talking about giving us a chance to run, saying it would make things more fun for him in the long while. He just sort of stood to the side as everyone began running in a big cluster up the stairs, doing that same stupid laugh as before. Looking outside the door was weird- everything was so flat. No shrubs, no uneven grass, it was like looking at a window’s background in that sense. There were these really tall trees with no leaves, though they didn’t cluster together like a forest- each stood evenly spaced apart, almost perfectly placed in contrast to the one nearby it. And in front of all of this, was a large river a couple yards away from the door. From what I can remember vaguely, I think I saw a city on the other side of the water.

It was so weird, because I distinctly remember that when we ran into the water, everyone was acting like we were “safe”, somehow. This guy that was swimming next to me had a big smile on his face, and while it did make me feel some form of relief, I couldn’t help but wonder how this was supposed to be a good thing.

When I woke up, I just remember seeing this thing (the first image) in my mind. I think it has some relevance to the villain monologue dude, but I literally have no clue whatsoever. Keep in mind these were drawings from like- a year ago, so I’ll probably redraw them later depending on how I feel about it.

The second image is what I remember the villain monologue dude looking like, though again- I’ll have to redraw him at some point. I had more dreams that followed this one, but I’ll post about those later. I just wanted to write this down somewhere, you know? I don’t want to feel crazy, I just want to get this off my mind. Maybe someone can help me get some clarity somewhere down the line.

#dreams #weird dreams #recording memories #i’m fucking crazy #insane in the membrane #I’m a fucking loser #I have to live with this for the rest of my life.

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metalbenders-and-telepaths · 2 years ago

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💕 self-love time! talk about which ones of YOUR creations (edits, artworks, fanfics) you like the most then send to other creators to do the same 💕

Thank you for this ask <3 <3 I think I'll go through my art folder and sort it out by the years (and also a fun look of my past fixations haha)

2020

My obsession with AU's still hasn't changed at all. I really miss my traditional sketches because nowadays I draw digitally and I abuse the heck out of ctrl+z and my sketches take like x4 longer lmao.

Also I am pretty proud of my edit of The Merciless. I still rewatch it from time to time (and cry about it haha).

2021

Man I kind of miss my Loki show era. I was literally pumping out art every second day for like two weeks. I liked this one in particular because I actually allowed myself to calm down and complete it across a few days, whereas these days I only allow one day for each art (because adhd - out of sight out of mind lol). (x)

2022

Last piece of art using Procreate before I switched to CSP. My goal with this piece is to replicate the 山水畫 (shan shui) style and I actually achieved what I wanted :D (x)

Dot pen my beloved! My second art using CSP. I remember drawing this while giggling like a maniac. Drawn during my honeymoon phase with Formula 1. Good times. (x)

I had so much fun abusing the grid snapping and straight line tools. I was exclaiming things like "wow technology is great" haha. Also first time I thought to myself that I wouldn't mind having a keychain of my own work hehe (x)

This one is like, my magnum opus. I don't think I'll ever be able to top this (or have the patience again lmao) (x)

I think this is the first time I actually vibed with my own art? Like wow I can actually feel warm and fuzzy looking at my own creation? (and now knowing Seb is retiring makes me even more emotional) (x)

Another art where I achieved my initial goal and drew something that I'm happy with (look I even added watermark and signed it lol) I also manually drew the background (because I couldn't find a png file that didn't have to pay for lmao) and I liked how it turned out! (x)

I always wanted to do a redraw of that bisexual anne hathaway photoshoot and I finally did it with my current blorbos! This one was initially going to be full b&w but I'm glad I decided to add the red last minute (x)

OOOOF this got really long lmao anyways thanks for the ask once again :))

#my art #june rants

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soyforramen · 3 years ago

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28. i’ve been crushing on you for so long and when i get your name in secret santa i decide to write you a love note except there’s a last minute shuffle with people trading and my gift is given to someone else (bonus: ot3! ot3!)

I know this was a prompt sent in by @arsenicpanda, but lord help me if I can find the ask.

“So, who’d you pull for Secret Santa?” Fangs asked.

Betty picked at her sandwich. The reminder of Cheryl’s forced Christmas cheer drove away what little appetite she had. Nervously, she glanced over at Jughead who seemed oblivious to her internal struggle. When he glanced at her, she smiled and shoved her sandwich towards him.

“Veronica,” he mumbled through bites. He shot Betty a glance, a concerned warning that he’d be making sure she ate later.

“Cheryl,” Betty said miserably. “I don’t even know what she’d want.”

While she and her cousin had been on better terms now that the babies were older, it was still rocky. Alice Cooper and Penelope still hadn’t learned how to co-grandparent, forcing Cheryl and Betty to work together to avoid a Hatfield and McCoy situation for every holiday."

“Something red,” Fangs said with a laugh.

“Or stupidly expensive,” Jughead added.

Betty sighed and stared out at nothing in particular. Between finals, editing the school paper, and Christmas shopping for her own family, not to mention the long list of things she hadn’t managed to get to this month, it looked more and more like she wouldn’t be getting much sleep until the New Year.

“If you wanted to stare at me, all you had to do was ask. I'll send you as many pictures as you want.”

Betty’s eyes refocused to find Toni sitting across from her. Her knowing smirk made Betty flush. Suddenly, Toni was all she could see, bright eyes twinkling with mirth and her lips temptingly full and pink. Before Betty could stammer out a response, Jughead laughed and slung his arm across her shoulders.

“Toni, are you flirting with my girlfriend?”

At the reminder of his presence, Betty squirmed and stared onto the old picnic table. Guilt crawled across her skin; after all, Toni hadn’t been the only one flirting lately.

“Have been for a while Jones,” Toni shot back with a wicked grin. “You gonna do something about it?”

Betty held her breath, waiting for an irritated response or jealous sulking, but instead Jughead threw his head back and laughed. The sound shook out the tension that had suddenly risen within in her, and she couldn’t help but join in with him. When she glanced across the table, Toni shot her a wink. This time Betty’s skin crawled with something far different than guilt.

It was the last day of finals, and Cheryl had finally rounded everyone up. A vast array of presents, the wrapping of each a reflection of the giver, was piled in the center of the common room. Betty’s was meticulously wrapped, a hand made bow sitting on top. Archie’s was wrapped with more tape than paper, and Jughead’s had been thrown into a plastic shopping bag. Veronica’s was wrapped in expensive, holographic paper, no doubt wrapped at a chic New York boutique, while Kevin’s sat in a reusable tote that proudly thanked him for his donation.

“Can we get this over with Cheryl,” Veronica said over a latte, “I have an economics test in fifteen minutes.”

“So much for holiday cheer,” Kevin said in a soto voice.

“She’s even wearing Grinch green,” Fangs added.

“Do any of you humbugs have any holiday cheer?” Cheryl asked. She set her hands on her hips as she surveyed them. “No? Then how about we make things extra interesting. We’re all redrawing names.”

A collective groan rang out. Not to be discouraged, Cheryl picked up the first gift, a small package topped off with tinsel.

“Archie, pour vous.”

Before he could take the package, Toni leapt forward and grabbed the package.

“Sorry Red, you'll have to take a rain check,” she apologized, ignoring Cheryl’s harsh look. When Cheryl started to object, Toni said, “You’re the one who changed the rules on us.”

Cheryl huffed. “Fine, I’ll allow it just this once. But anyone else who tries it -“

She let the threat hang in the air before reaching for the next present.

“And this one will be for …”

Betty watched Jughead pack from the comfort of her bed. Outside the snow fell, it’s soft plinking noise lulling her back to sleep.

“Are you sure you have to be in Ohio the whole time?”

He turned, smiling, and kissed her on the forehead. “Jellybean’s been threatening me since August that if I didn’t come up there she’d drag me there herself.”

Betty reached out and grabbed his flannel shirt, pulling him back for another kiss. “I’m sure I can fend her off.”

“I’ll miss you too," he said.

His eyes were so soft when he looked at her like that. It was almost enough for her to volunteer to drive him to his mother��s. Almost. Knowing that they had holidays to spend together years from now made it easy enough to let him leave today. That, and the fact that if she did go she’d miss the twins’ first visit Santa. (And, worse than that, she'd have to hear about it all second hand from Cheryl).

“Why don’t you ask Toni to hangout? She wants to go see that weird alien movie you've been gushing about,” Jughead said, turning back to his luggage.

All of the warm, gooeyness that she’d felt evaporated immediately. Desperate to relieve her discomfort, Betty pulled the blankets tighter around her. There wasn’t really a reason she could give as to why she could say no; after all, they were part of the same friend group and they did get along splendidly. Not to mention the inappropriateness of admitting to one’s long term boyfriend that you had a maddeningly, infuriatingly, deep crush on someone else.

“Maybe," Betty said while she picked at a loose thread.

Then again, maybe spending more time with Toni would cure her of this crush; after all, it had happened with Veronica and they’d settled into a close friendship, one Betty wouldn’t give up for anything.

“Don’t have too much fun while I’m gone,” Jughead said, picking up his bag and helmet.

He kissed her cheek and Betty mumbled out an ‘I love you’ that felt just as real, just as strong as it ever had. A few minutes later Betty’s phone chimed and she saw a text from Toni. Betty groaned and burrowed deeper into her bed.

“It’s fine, really. I can walk. It’s only a few blocks,” Toni repeated as she pulled on her jacket.

Betty glanced out the diner window. Outside, drifts of snow were quickly growing.

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” Betty replied.

Despite the tension that had been building up within her, despite the fear (exhilaration? increasing desire?) of being alone in such a close space with Toni, Betty couldn’t let her walk home in this kind of weather. Even if their friendship hadn’t grown deeper over the past week and a half she still would have made the offer.

“Are you worried about me, Cooper?” Toni teased.

“Yes.”

The smile fell from Toni’s face. She searched Betty’s face, and finding what she was looking for, smiled softly at her. It was so similar to the one Jughead had given her before she left that Betty had to look away.

“Alright. Lead the way,” Toni said.

Pop’s bid them a good night on their way out, and they braced themselves for the cold. Impulsively, Betty slipped an arm through Toni’s. After all, they were friends now, closer than they had been. She did this sort of thing with Veronica all the time, though unlike with Veronica, Betty only found her crush on Toni growing deeper.

“So, what are you doing tomorrow?”

Toni shrugged and stepped closer to Betty. “Same thing we always do. Watch reruns of It’s a Wonderful Life with Grandpa and eat too much. You?”

“The Blossoms invited us over for Christmas dinner.”

“Yikes,” Toni said with a slow whistle.

Betty pulled out her keys and opened up the passenger side door. Toni nodded her thanks and sat down. A minute later they were pulling out of Pop’s parking lot.

“I take it you and Cheryl are running interference?” Betty nodded and turned on her blinker. Despite there being no one on the street, it was a ingrained habit that made Toni smile at her.

“Something like that. Mom’s convinced they’re going to cancel last minute to make us host it, so she’s been on a cleaning and decorating rampage this past week. But the kids love that Cheryl’s been staying with us.”

“That’s good. I'm down there. ” Toni pointed to the right side of the Sunnyside Trailer Park. “The most drama we get is when some idiot decides to shoot off firecrackers at 4 am.”

Betty laughed and pulled in next to the trailer surrounded by half rebuild cars. She sat on her hands to keep from rushing out of her car and checking the models of each.

“Well, this is me,” Toni said.

Betty nodded, unsure of what else to say. In her peripheral vision she saw Toni pull something out of her bag.

“You were supposed to get this at Cheryl’s Christmas exchange,” Toni said.

She held out a package with crushed tinsel wrapped around it. When Betty looked closer she realized there were different kinds of vintage cars driving along a highway, each with a pine tree strapped to the top. Glancing at Toni, she gently pulled the paper apart. She almost fainted when she realized what it was.

“Toni, this is too much, I can’t -“

Toni held up a hand. “It’s really nothing. I just got lucky at the thrift store and thought of you.”

Betty stared at the first edition copy of The Secret of the Old Clock, scared to open it least it fall to pieces in her hands. A paper peeked out of the pages, and she gently tugged it out.

‘Merry Christmas Betty!

Thought you might like this (and don’t forget to check the inside cover before you put it under glass).

From,

Your Secret Admirer.’

Upon reading those words, Betty couldn’t help but keep the smile from her face. Something like this was so heartfelt, so personal, she couldn’t help but want to take Toni into her arms and thank her profusely. Opening the book ever so gently, Betty gasped at the author's faded signature.

“Toni -“

Her voice had taken on a tone of anguish. Torn between her loyalty and the sudden tenderness she felt, Betty was at a crossroads without a map.

“Is this about Jughead?” Toni asked. Betty whipped around to look at her. With a gentle smile, Toni wrapped her hands around Betty’s.

“Call your boyfriend.”

Betty squinted at Toni, unsure. Was Toni asking her to choose between them? As if reading her mind, Toni laughed. She slipped the book out of Betty’s hands and set it on the dash.

“Call your boyfriend, Coop.”

Frowning, Betty pulled out her phone and dialed Jughead. With every ring, her heart beat more painfully against her chest.

“Hey, happy Christmas Eve eve,” came Jughead’s sleepy voice.

“Hey, I didn’t wake you did I?”

She could her him shifting in the background. “No, we were just watching the worst movie of all time.”

Jellybean yelled out in the background and there was a scuffling as the phone exchanged hands.

“Break up with him, Betty, he has no taste.”

“Santa’s Slay should never had been made,” came his tinny voice. A second later and his voice was as clear as if he were sitting next to her. “What’s up?”

“Toni’s with me, and -“

“Oh, she finally gave you her Secret Santa gift?”

Betty’s eyes drew together and she glanced over at Toni. “You knew she drew my name?”

“Actually, I drew it, but -“

“You?”

Jughead’s chuckle was throaty and deep. The sound of it sent shivers down her spin in much the same way that Toni’s look did right now. “She wanted to trade, and neither of you have been subtle.”

“But -“ There was a silence that hung in the air as Betty processed what was happening. “Do you mean -“

“I’m secure in our relationship Bets. If you want to, then you have my blessing.”

“Oh.”

He laughed again. “Merry Christmas Betts. I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said, her voice sounding far off.

The line went dead and she sat there, watching the falling snow. It felt as if her chest were going to explode. The world had expanded three times since she’d first picked up the phone and suddenly it felt as if there was a wealth of new possibilities open to her.

“Well?” Toni asked, breaking Betty out of her reverie.

Betty turned to her slowly, taking her all in. Setting her hand on the console between them, Betty slowly leaned in, hesitantly touching her lips to Toni’s.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I really like my Christmas gift.”

Toni wrapped her hand around Betty’s and tugged her closer. “Than you’re going to have to do a better job of showing it than that.”

#toni/betty/jughead dynamic #ot3 #listen this took far too long to get done #but here's christmas in june

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slugtranslation-hypmic · 4 years ago

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Ik this maybe sounds kinda random but I have a feeling you're latinoamerican Idk why.

Also what are your thoughts on the anime? I really liked the CGI I think it looked very cool and clean!! A-1 pictures did a good job 👏👏 I know it just started but I really hope its successful in japan, so maybe one day we could see Osaka and Nagoya animated :')

That’s probably because I am and am fairly vocal about it.

I live in the US and am racially pretty damn white, but my mother’s family is from Mexico. (Sorta. They’ve been in the US for a while now, and we’re not exactly sure who came across the border when because most old Mexican men can give Gentarou a run for his money when it comes to telling mentiras.) I was raised speaking both English and baby Spanish, but I lost the opportunity to practice it all that often when I was pretty little and as such forgot almost all of it, hahaha. Still, I can understand most written Spanish and a fair bit of common spoken Spanish, and I speak Spanglish with my mom. Growing up mostly white is pretty weird, since I don’t feel Latino enough to fit in with my own family (but they ARE my family) but also not white enough to fit in completely with my white peers. They don’t get how enchiladas are comfort food or how the words “mijo” and “mija” are love incarnate. They don’t get it why my parents have three bags of tortillas in their fridge at all times (it’s because I keep stealing them whenever I run out at my house) or the importance of owning a big-ass olla. It’s like... I don’t want to intrude in spaces where I don’t necessarily feel I have the right to belong, but I also want to acknowledge the struggle of my grandparents who worked as migrant farmers instead of going to school and gave up everything they had to give their kids a better life. I wonder how well I can do that, having forgotten their language and living as so much as a product of “American melting pot” culture. It’s... tricky. Identity is tricky.

Point is, I want to see Dice casually calling Otome “vieja”.

ANYWAY. Anime thoughts. I’ll put them under a cut for anyone concerned about spoilers.

The little kick the Buster Bros did in the opening on “buttobasu” (send ‘em flying) made me involuntarily laugh out loud. So dorky. Love them for that.

I was not sold on the opening back when I saw it in the previews, but I actually liked the full version quite a lot. The rap bits are a lot more impressive than the sort of generic chorus.

Love how it opened on TDD. I hope other episodes will follow suit and give more TDD backstory, because I think it delivers the best emotional impact when you know the reasons the anime boys are duking it out with one another.

TDD Samatoki has giant eyelashes even in the anime. Jesus christ.

TDD Ramuda appeared for about three seconds, and I was appeased.

The Buster Bros bit didn’t interest me too much, personally, but I thought it set the tone for the series really nicely. I also thought that a bunch of random dudes ganging up on these children and being like, “Heh heh, bitch, whatcha gonna do? We have microphones!” is hilarious.

BB rap was fantastic. I appreciated how much of a mix this was between the ARB and manga styles in terms of the way the raps appeared. Having the lyrics on screen was a GREAT thing for me as well. I also really enjoyed the moment where Saburou pushed Jirou out of the way and Ichirou stopped Jirou before he could retaliate. It wasn’t a distraction from the song at all but also characterized the familial interactions so clearly in just a few seconds. Kudos.

My VPN connection died during Ichijiku’s first talk with Otome, so idk what went on there.

I know Samatoki is supposed to be taken seriously, but for the life of me, I really can’t. I kept on snickering the whole time he was talking to the yakuza NPCs and acting tough. All his posturing is ridiculous to me.

Loved that MTC rap, although I kept laughing at that too. MTC is overkill.

I have a love/hate relationship with Samatoki’s speaker ever since I had to redraw part of that motherfucker sometime last year, but it is really damn cool looking. The animation for it blew me away. LOVED THAT.

Riou was there :)

I finally understood the significance of the cigarette kiss between Samatoki and Juuto. It’s to symbolize the whole “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” professional relationship they have, but I did think Juuto was leaning in for a kiss for a really bizarre moment.

Riou showing up to offer food :)

Eat Riou’s fucking food, Samatoki :)

I think Ramuda is a bit smaller than he should be as compared to the other cast members, but I will let it slide

Ramuda’s office is absolutely awful in color, but I will also let that slide

The Fling Posse interactions were a huge hit with me. I love seeing them hang out with one another and horse around the way that they do. Like the BBs’ scene, this was a great establishing shot for them.

I love how Dice rolls with Ramuda’s gratuitous English without missing a beat.

FP song wasn’t as hardcore as some of the other ones, but it was executed very well. Love the wordplay with the end of Ramuda’s and the beginning of Gentarou’s verse.

THE HIGH FIVE AT THE END OF THE SONG... HOO HOO!! NOW THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, BABY! NOW THAT’S FRIENDSHIP RIGHT THERE!

Hypmic NPCs lowkey piss me off, especially all the “Kyaaa~!!!!” female NPC types. I get that they’re not supposed to be thought about all that much, but seriously...? Why is running from fangirls a plot point that keeps on being revisited?

They left Dice’s money behind... Bruh.......

Love how Doppo and Hifumi barge into Jakurai’s office nonchalantly.

The bit with the nurse establishes Hifumi’s character very well, although I still think Doppo’s being kind of an ass when he pulls Hifumi’s jacket off.

The whole fucking “terrorists on the roof” bit made me laugh again. Some of the Hypmic plot points are so contrived that I find them funny. It’s all silly good fun.

Love that rappers show up to push past the bumbling security guards/police. Excuse me, please, let me through... I’m a rapper.

Jakurai’s speaker was very well animated, but the way it appeared made me think of the Lionsgate logo. The mic animation was pretty cool too.

JAKURAI’S RAP ACTUALLY BLEW ME AWAY. I’m normally not a fan of Jakurai raps, but god DAMN was that cool.

Hifumi and Doppo didn’t drop the ball either. Fuck it UP, Matenrou.

I can’t believe they dropped lightning bolts on two people... especially when one was holding someone else hostage. Is that woman okay? Did she get fucking vaporized? I’ll never know.

Otome’s character model moves pretty stiffly, which I think actually helps her character because of how stoic she tries to act overall.

Ending song was dope. I wonder if they’ll feature other divisions in the endings of other episodes.

Ramuda leaping a good 3 meters in the air in the final shot is funny as fuck.

#not a translation #asks

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toastedbuckwheat · 5 years ago

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Hello! May I ask how you draw? I'm currently learning how to myself and would be highly interested into a step to step process by you! Like from sketch to the done thing (no color necessary)

Hello there!

I dunno how I feel about showing how I work/giving advice to someone who’s learning (and I say it as a pro artist who went through years of traditional art education) because when I do the illustrations you see here on my tumblr I BREAK THE RULES you’d learn though life drawing routine, and give in to bad habits, and my methods are rather unplanned and chaotic which makes it difficult to pinpoint significant stages. But I used my portable potato to take some photos during working on my last piece, so I’ll throw it here with a bit of an explanation of what’s going on.

Before I begin - and because you’re about to look at a mess of a WIP - I’d like to give you some general advice that generally makes life easier when you draw (again, things that I learned in traditional arts education - another artist might advise you the complete opposite, dunno!)

Work holistically. Forget them satisfying-to-look-at clips on instagram showing someone produce a hyperrealistic portrait starting from an eye, with each and every element emerging being finished before they proceed to another part. It takes a lot of talent, yes, but these are ppl redrawing a photo in a kind of a mechanical manner. Most artists don’t work this way. Especially if you’re working without a reference, or if you’re doing a life drawing - your process will be layering and changing and finding what works best to give an impression of what you’re drawing rather than reproduce the exact image, and your artwork is likely to look messy most of the time.That said: don’t start with the details. Don’t spend too much time on a particular part while neglecting others. Your goal is to keep the whole piece at the same level of ‘finished’ (even though it’s unfinished - do I make sense?) before you’re confident that everything is where it should be and proceed to the details. So sketch out the composition first. See how things fit, what’s the dynamics. You’ll save yourself from limbs sticking out from the frame, odd proportions etc etc.

Because it’s a game of relationships between different parts of the picture/scene. I ask you not to worry about finishing a single element before laying out the rest because you’ll find that said element will look different once the other part appears! For instance - you might think that the colour you picked for a character’s hair is already very dark. But once you’re done with the night sky background, you’ll find that it’s in fact too light, and doesn’t work well with the cold palette. You’ll have to revisit different parts of the image as you go to balance these relationships and make the picture work as a whole.

Give an impression of something being there without actually drawing it ‘properly’- because details are hard, mate. You’ll see that my lineart usually has hardly any, and my colouring is large unrefined stains, but the finished thing looks convincing. Like, fuck, I can never focus on how Crowley’s eyes are really shaped. So I just turn them into large glowing yellow ellipses crossed by a line, and heard no protests so far.

Don’t panic if you messed up (you probably didn’t anyway). It might turn out to be a completely unnoticeable mistake - because, remember, things work together to balance each other, so another finished off prominent element will probably drown that badly placed line that looked so visible and out of place a second ago.

It might not look good before it’s finished. I’m mostly immune to it after years of drawing, and my recent illustrations all follow a specific method (ykno, my sunset glow effects and all that) so I can kinda predict the next stage. But I do my linearts on a specially picked crap paper, I don’t bother erasing the smudged graphite, and it looks messy af until I make the background white in Photoshop. Conclusion: you might have a moment of doubt as you work through a piece, but try to break through it - I often suddenly start to like what I cursed a minute before! - and try to finish it even if it’s meant to be bad. This way, looking through your past pieces, you’ll see the progress. And trust me, I can’t even look at my art from literally three months ago. It’s normal.

Now, pics! The sketches are paler in real life, but I increased the contrast a little so you can see something.

1. Laying out the composition!

I wanted to just show them kissing, but I got carried away due to some Art Nouveau inspiration. As you might have noticed, most of my illustrations are quite self-contained (ykno - they look like a sticker on a plain background). So I wanted a tight swirl bordered by Aziraphale’s wings creating a sort of rounded, yin-yang like bubble around them. Consequently I made the whole composition revolve around their heads.

2. Adding more details to the sketch. It’s messy af. It will be messy until I’m done. It’s fine.

3. These are the fineliners I use for the linearts! They are made by Uni-ball and come in light and dark grey. I also sometimes use the guy on the left - ‘Touch’ sign pen by Pentel, when I want more brush-like, wider strokes. I work in grey because when I scan it and do my usual boring trick with sunlight highlights - which is an Overlay mode layer in Photoshop - the highlights ‘burn out’ the lines too and make them vanish a little, and the lighting effect gets more striking. I also like to use the light grey ones to make something look pencil-y without actually using pencil, because pencil fucking smudges.

4. It smudges! So because I am right handed, I start inking from the right hand side, no matter how tempted I am to do their faces first.

5. You can see the composition directions here. I made it intuitively, but ofc some ppl actually use grids etc to lay out their drawings.

6. See how pale ans thin the lineart was at first? I kept adjusting it as new inked parts were appearing. It starts to look nice and consistent now!

7. Finished lineart? There are some mistakes which I later corrected in PS. Notice that Aziraphale’s face has hardly any details on it - I tried to make the drawing suggest his expression rather than risk overdoing it.

8. Photoshop time!! You can totally do what I did here even if you don’t have a graphic tablet. I used Curves tool to enhance the lineart, then Quick Selection Tool to select the background around around my sticker-like piece and filled it white (on a new layer ofc). I keep this white layer on top of the layer order so it works as a mask as I colour. I decided I did not like the hatching shading underneath Aziraphale’s halo, so I erased it with a Stamp tool (because I wanna keep the textured grey fill my crap paper naturally gives me!). It’s done roughly but won’t be visible once the thing is coloured.

9. And the reason why I keep the grey shade instead of easily getting rid of it by using Curves/Levels is because when I set this layer to Multiply mode and colour underneath, it gives me this nice desaturated look like from an old cheap paper comic page. It works as a natural filter! But of course I can’t do bright colours this way, so all my glowing highlights happen ABOVE the lineart layer - on a separate layer in Overlay mode!

Finished thing here!

_____

Commission infoBuy Me a Coffee - help me with my transitioning expenses!Prints and stickers and things on my Redbubble!

#ask the buckwheat #long post #tutorial #drawing advice #drawing tutorial #good omens #ineffable husbands #good omens fanart #good omens art #my illustrations #doodles #toastedbuckwheat

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goldenkamuyhunting · 5 years ago

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Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 227 “Partners In Crime”

And so we reach this important chapter which talk about what one truly needs in order to turn someone into a murderer…

Too bad Tsurumi never had the chance to hear this Beatles song, he might have found it inspiring… (and by the way ‘diabolical mastermind’ is the name of a trope fitting him) but let’s go with order as this chapter is rather psychologically complicate and hard to judge objectively.

Why is that?

We’re dealing with a flashback whose settings were set in the previous chapter but… with a twist. Although this is fundamentally a flashback about Usami and Tsurumi’s past, in the previous chapter we didn’t really get a glimpse of the mind of either of them. The mind we were shown is the one of Takagi Tomoharu with the result we were influenced by his perception of the situation so we were unprepared for what Usami did (which was likely the point of hiding his point of view by the way).

The second is that since we know Usami and Tsurumi by a long time we tend to view them according to their present identities and it gets hard to think that in this flashback Usami was in between childhood and teenager years (12/13) and Tsurumi has already lost his wife and daughter but hadn’t taken part to any war yet, and he’s not even in the 7th.

And now let’s start.

The cover seems to be a redraw of the last panel of the previous chapter, although with some differences.

In addition to the increase in size we can see Usami’s foot is still above Tomoharu as if he has just hit him or he’s about to strike him again (in the last panel of the last chapter he seemed to be about to lower it), Usami’s face now well visible and clearly enraged. We can also see Tsurumi is now running to stop him.

As a cover isn’t necessarily a continuation of the story but can also merely be a summary of what happened previously, we can’t tell if the cover is meant to hint Usami is planning to hit Tomoharu again or it’s just here to summarize, to who had missed the previous chapter, what had happened before this chapter will show us how Tsurumi pushes away Usami and kneels on Tomoharu.

Usami’s expression seems back to normal as he’s pushed away, and maybe hurt. Is it because Tsurumi is getting in between or because he realized what he did to Tomoharu?

Anyway, when Tsurumi tells him to call a doctor, instead than just doing so, Usami starts to blurt out his reasons.

He didn’t want to do it, it was Tsurumi who said “to do it in this wide area” (こっちの広いところでやりなさい ‘Kotchi no hiroi tokoro de yari nasai’).

His choice of words is... kind of scary. In the scanlations they left ‘the two of you’ but Usami actually cut the initial ‘kimi-tachi’ (キミたち “You (plural)”) which was in Tsurumi’s speech in the previous chapter so that it seems as if what he’s saying is that ‘he didn’t want to do it but Tsurumi told him to do it (murder Tomoharu) there’... honestly, I worry for Usami’s mental state as in this chapter he sort of remind me of Heita.

Anyway as Usami speaks his eyes are either close or almost close as you basically see only a thick black line. There are lines on his forehead, which are usually used as signs of distress in manga.

The fact that instead than doing what Tsurumi told him, Usami is trying to defend himself shows he’s aware he did something wrong and, in the perspective of someone who’s barely a teenager, the things he lists (which are factually true), probably felt as if enough of an excuse, something at which Usami can cling.

The reaction ‘it’s not my fault’ is often typical of someone who’s trying to cope with shock or something traumatic by distancing himself from the deed he did.

In short, although we see Usami standing there apparently calm, he’s likely not that calm and comfortable with what had happened, his gaze turned away from Tsurumi and Tomoharu as if not seeing would equate to make the whole situation disappear.

Killing is always traumatic and men do a lot of mental gimmicks to excuse themselves when they commit murder but the younger you are, the better you are to wrap your own narrative around a traumatic fact so as to protect your mind from breaking.

The problem is that if you don’t face what you’ve done you only end up damaging yourself further.

Who instead is surprisingly calm given the situation is Tsurumi. Although I’m pretty sure he was surprised when Usami crushed Tomoharu’s throat, if I study the visual of the scene, it clearly wasn’t that shocking for him as his eyes remained black and Noda tends to represent shock by whitening the eyes.

While for us Tomoharu is a side character just introduced, Tsurumi clearly knew him by a while. He helped training him, he saw him grow, he seemed happy when both he and Usami wanted him to do randori with them. He should also have had a similar relation with Usami, seeing him grow, training him.

I’m not saying he had to feel a father/son bond with them but still he supposedly should care for them in some way, after all he had acted like he cared when he had supposedly supported and encouraged Tomoharu in his wish to have a last standing with Usami.

Now he wasn’t witnessing something merely ‘surprising’, he was seeing one of his students attempting to murder another of his students. Poor, agonizing Tomoharu wasn’t an enemy or just ‘a random boy he never met’, he had just volunteered to overlook on his and Usami’s match which implies also taking care of their safety. Tsurumi isn’t yet a war hardened veteran.

In short, he shouldn’t be so comfortable dealing with the idea one of his students might die. He should want him to live, even if only because there could be consequences for him as well if Tomoharu were to die.

Remember when Tsurumi asked Tomoharu ‘how his father was doing?’ a chapter ago? It wasn’t just a question out of politeness. Tsurumi asked about Tomoharu’s father so as to show proper respect to a superior officer because Tomoharu’s father is a higher up in the 2nd division in which, at the time, Tsurumi belonged. That’s also why Tomoharu is going to Tokyo, to get into an army school (like Koito did).

In short Tomoharu’s economical and social situation is drastically different from Usami, who’s apparently the son of a farmer and is supposed to stop studying to help him in the fields… but it’s also clear that Tomoharu’s father is someone who could be powerful enough to cause Tsurumi lot of troubles if his son were to die while under his supervision.

Yet from this point on Tsurumi will stop caring of Tomoharu’s survival, he’ll stop attempting to give him some sort of medical aid. Chatting with Usami is more interesting.

So, he turns to look at Usami, a dark background behind him and instead than urging again Usami to call for a doctor, he calmly claims he did all he did because he had no idea Usami would have done that ‘to his friend’. To be exact Tsurumi uses ‘Shin'yū’ (親友) which means something like “close/intimate friend” and, by extension, can be translated as “best friend”.

It’s worth to mention Tomoharu is still alive right then, fighting to draw another breath, even if Tsurumi doesn’t care about it anymore.

Now we readers too probably assumed Usami and Tomoharu were close friends. TOMOHARU was always calling Usami, wanting to spend time with him, wanting to beat him, desperate to leave him… Tomoharu.

We never saw Usami being interested in him and now that Tsurumi has called Tomoharu ‘his best friend’, Usami clearly begs to differ as he repeats ‘my best friend’ his expression turning enraged again.

In what looks like a fit of hysteria, nodding his head back and forth, the visual making him look almost as if he had two heads, as if to depict his contrasting feelings or a split in his personality, his face still a mask of rage, Usami starts listing all the times in which Tomoharu didn’t act like a ‘best friend’ would. In a way it reminds me of when he beat Ariko. Here it’s a clear sign of distress even if it’s also a clearly disturbing sight that makes him look as if he’d gone mad.

So, while the previous chapter focused on Tomoharu’s side of his relationship with Usami, now we get Usami’s side.

Usami in a clearly disturbed tone, if the font Noda is using can be taken as a hint, points out to how Tomoharu always interrupted his time together with Tsurumi forcing Tsurumi to give him attention because Tomoharu’s father is a big shoot in the 2nd division.

[It’s worth to note that Usami didn’t say ‘bastard’ when referring to Tomoharu, that’s just something translators chose to use as Usami didn’t use any way to refer to him. Usami’s exact words are “Itsudatte Tokushirō-san to no jikan o jamajiya gate” [いつだって「篤四郎さんとの時間」を邪魔じやがって] which means just “Always getting in the way of ‘(my) time with Tokushiro-san’” and they are clearly missing the subject (Tomoharu) which translators had to include and chose to do so by having Usami calling him ‘bastard’ to better drive home how enraged Usami is.]

Usami points out how Tomoharu was planning to go to the Army Youth School in Tokyo so as to get close to Tsurumi by becoming an official like him.

He points out to how he looked down at him till that day, by refusing to tell him the truth.

Then, for each thing he lists, he says he can forgive him, in a big, normal, bold font (in the Japanese version. In the scanlations scanlators chose to use the same font).

In a way the 2 heads he seems to be having also can represent this, one head is for listing ‘Tomoharu’s wrongdoings’ in a disturbed tone, the other is to say ‘he’ll forgive him’ in a loud tone. Usami is split between his rage and the fact he wanted to forgive Tomoharu.

Now… the flashback showed Usami being trained by Tsurumi in 1893. In 1891 Tsurumi was shown being in Vladivostok. Fina and Olga’s death might have taken place in autumn (when Kiro and Wilk were hunting martens they were more lightly dressed than when they dropped by Tsurumi and Fina and Olga died) and then Kiro, Wilk and Sofia used the drift ice that forms in winter to reach Karafuto.

All this to say that till around the end of 1891 Tsurumi was likely still in Russia, so he moved in Japan in either 1892 or 1893.

Why this is relevant?

Because it tells us Tsurumi hadn’t been always present in Usami’s life, by the time the flashback started he was back in Japan by a little more than 1 year at best, or more likely, by much less. It would explains why Usami’s father have no idea who this Tokushiro-san his son is talking about is, because Tsurumi had been for a long time in Russia so the people in the town don’t remember/know him.

On the other side Tomoharu could have been around Usami from when the two were small. They could have been friends… maybe best friends the way kids can be best friends… before Usami developed a mad crush/obsession for Tsurumi and started interpreting everything Tomoharu did as Tomoharu’s attempts at getting between him and his love interest.

Of course WE know Tomoharu never planned to do such thing, he likely was totally unaware of Usami’s crush but jealousy is an ugly beast that warps everything and so Usami was completely fooled. He’s in between 12 and 13 and very young and immature and completely taken by Tsurumi it’s no surprise he misinterpret.

On the other side it’s true Tomoharu wasn’t a perfect friend as he didn’t understand Usami at all, tried to use him to gain confidence (the idea if he were to beat him he would find the courage to live in Tokyo), wasn’t fully honest with him (how he couldn’t tell him the truth about going to Tokyo) and didn’t care of how Usami would feel if he were to finally beat him. Of course as Tomoharu is rather young it’s pretty normal his friendship with Usami is still self-centered and that this could end up hurting Usami even though Tomoharu didn’t mean to.

However… it’s interesting to wonder… before starting to obsess for Tsurumi… how did Usami feel in regard to Tomoharu? Did he consider him as a friend? Is he so enraged because he saw him as a friend in the past and felt that friend had left him down? Or he never liked Tomoharu to begin with and had to get along with him merely because Tomoharu was up in the social scale?

Honestly I think it’s relevant how, when he says he’ll forgive him, the font used is a normal, big and bold one.

It makes me think Usami is being sincere in saying he forgave Tomoharu and that there’s the possibility that Usami originally viewed him as a friend and wanted to forgive him like a good friend would do.

Still, it’s hard to say and anyway it doesn’t matter anymore.

Usami goes on listing Tomoharu’s actions which he perceived against him, claiming the last one was something he could never forgive. It’s at this point we learn Usami has overheard Tomoharu and Tsurumi’s discussion in the dojo (it’s from that discussion Usami learnt Tomoharu was going to Tokyo) and that said discussion continued after the bit we were shown in the previous chapter.

The discussion continued with Tsurumi fundamentally saying to Tomoharu he could beat Usami, that he can become stronger than him.

And this is what breaks Usami as we see that when Usami overheard it, his face contorted in rage.

Usami, very naively, believed that him being the best in the dojo is something that connected him to Tsurumi, is something that made him ‘special’ in Tsurumi’s eyes as if it were some sort of love declaration and not merely an acknowledgement of his ability.

If Tomoharu were to beat him, Usami wouldn’t be number 1 anymore in Tsurumi’s eyes and would lose his connection with Tsurumi, the only thing Usami claimed he had, the only thing that mattered to him, opposed to Tomoharu who, due to his father being in the 2nd and him going to become an officer, would have many more things that would connect him to Tsurumi.

Usami wants to be Tsurumi’s number 1 but Tsurumi told Tomoharu he can easily replace Usami. Is it true? Why is Tomoharu doing this to him, trying to snatch away Usami’s spot in Tsurumi’s eyes? That’s what Usami was likely thinking.

In his mad jealousy Usami doesn’t see Tomoharu has no interest in connecting with Tsurumi, just with Usami.

When Tomoharu found Usami outside the dojo, although he looked calm, Usami clearly had a storm inside and Tomoharu… didn’t realize at all, didn’t worry at all of how Usami would feel if he were to lose to him. I don’t mean he had to understand Usami was unhealthily obsessed with Tsurumi, it would have been enough to understand Usami took pride in being number 1 and could be saddened by losing the way Tomoharu was saddened by losing, instead it doesn’t even brush Tomoharu’s mind. He’s young, it’s normal he would focus on himself and not on the consequences this could have on Usami.

Tomoharu is just young and immature but his insistence in fighting as well as the fact Usami overheard Tsurumi thinks Tomoharu can beat and replace him, ends up causing Usami’s control to shatter.

Usami can’t allow Tomoharu to beat him and snatch his place in Tsurumi’s heart, he has to show Tsurumi he’s number 1. The result is something we all know. When Tomoharu ends on the ground and refuses to accept his loss, Usami loses it and ends up attacking a vital spot, effectively silencing him and giving him a slow death.

If you think at it calmly and rationally it’s fully insane but if you’re barely a teen, possibly in a hormonal storm with a crush that’s bigger than yourself, a sense of jealousy that’s planet-sized and the possibility to actually murder your love-rival you can delude yourself this makes sense.

There are two things that come to my mind here, one is a scene from “Magia Record” (“Puella Magi Madoka Magica” sidestory).

If you’re unfamiliar with it the plot idea is that ‘magical girls’ are forced to risk their life fighting witches (and yes, this is no “Bishojou Senshi Sailor Moon”, magical girls can die) but if they accept to become magical girl they can get one free wish at… everything really, they can even ask for a miracle.

Anyway a girl accepted to become a magical girl in order to get a date with the boy she liked. She admits they had broken up in the end, so it wasn’t like he was the perfect person for her, and this has stuck her in that dangerous situation from which she’d like to escape and that she regret becoming a magical girl but she still states that, at the time, dating that boy meant EVERYTHING to her.

In short when you are young and in love your emotions might cause you to blow things out of proportions. A date with a boy that wasn’t even perfect for her wasn’t worth that life but still at the time she couldn’t see it.

Usami is the same. For him Tsurumi’s words that he’s the best are EVERYTHING.

The second thing that comes to my mind is from “Video Girl Ai” and it’s about how people are prone to give most of the blame or the full blame not to their loved one but to the one with whom they loved one betrayed them.

In short Usami, instead than feeling as if Tsurumi had made fun of him or had lied to him by telling him he was the strongest only to tell Tomoharu he could beat Usami, took it out on Tomoharu.

At this point Tsurumi embraces the still enraged and out of it Usami, APOLOGIZING TO HIM and telling him he said such words because he assumed Tomoharu would give up and go home if he were to tell him that as USAMI IS STILL HIS NUMBER 1.

Tsurumi’s expression as he apologizes and says he lied to Tomoharu is pretty detached and, at first, he’s not even watching Usami who was still shaking with rage. However this is enough to cause Usami to make a 180° turn. His face go back to normal, his rage dissipates and he smiles claiming he feels relief.

Now… remember what I said before, at the start of this meta?

‘If you don’t face what you’ve done you only end up damaging yourself further.’

Usami succumbed to rage and jealousy and committed murder supposedly over a misunderstanding (honestly I’ve no idea if Tsurumi triggered his rage on purpose or decided to capitalize on what had happened only later, when he realized what he had done).

He was young and although some countries think 10 is an age in which a child can be prosecuted as if he were an adult for murder, the majority thinks you’ve to be much older to realize the implications of your actions and have the necessary self control to restrain yourself in a stressing situation.

Tsurumi could have used his influence on Usami to help him to understand what Usami did WAS WRONG. I could give him a pass for covering up Usami’s murder as Usami was young and acted in a moment of emotional storm but not for VALIDATING Usami’s actions as if they were RIGHT and RIGHTFUL.

In this way he encouraged an already emotionally unstable youth to consider murder as the best option in any situation. Usami, from this experience, doesn’t learn to control himself, he learns to vent his worst emotions and that’s why he grows up as an adult who thinks the best option is to murder people.

And so the attention moves back on Tomoharu again.

This time Usami refers to him directly, not calling him ‘bastard’ but calling him ‘sore’ (それ “It/that thing”). He’s not insulting him, he’s objectifying him, denying the fact he was human. He’s distancing himself from him as he asks if Tomoharu is dead. The visual is interesting as well, because it shows Usami pecking at Tomoharu while holding Tsurumi’s arm and almost hidden behind him as he claims they’re ‘Kyōhan’ (共犯 “partners in crime/accomplices”).

In short he’s persuaded Tsurumi agrees with his actions but at the same times he’s searching still his support and protection. He’s turning Tomoharu’s death into something that validates their relation, that unites them, reframing it into something good and precious. Tsurumi let him, actually he supports him in this by making a cover story for Tomoharu’s death and sharing it with Usami.

The story is that Tomoharu had been kicked by the horse Tsurumi was riding and that’s why he died. The result is that Tomoharu’s father went berserk with rage and killed Tsurumi’s horse under Usami’s eyes. Usami is clearly shocked by this, his eyes going fully white.

Tomoharu’s father’s actions told him what he did was wrong, that HE should have been the one ending like the horse. Usami tried to bury it inside himself but we saw how, in chap 225, Usami supposedly murdered a horse, and then looked at it in the same way he looked at Tsurumi’s horse.

I think the idea Noda is trying to deliver is that although Usami worked hard to reframe Tomoharu’s death into something good, a side of him deeply buried inside him, still felt guilty for what he did and he took it out on the horse. This is something Usami can’t face, he can’t face or he’ll break, his mind split between how Tomoharu wasn’t a good friend because he tried to steal Tsurumi from him and how he would still forgive him because Tomoharu probably had been a friend for him before his obsession for Tsurumi started.

Meanwhile we go back to 1895, Tsurumi and Usami standing on the yard where Tomoharu died that Usami called ‘his sacred place’. Now Usami confirms that’s so because that’s the place where he first killed a person, the info box adding ‘where he lost his virginity’ or, more specifically it says just ‘Boku no dōtei sōshitsu’ (僕の童貞喪失 “The loss of my male virginity”) where ‘dōtei’ specifically refers to male chastity/virginity.

So yes, Usami is comparing what he did to having sex with Tsurumi, not just to a vague loss of innocence. He then claims he had come to those sacred ground countless times to remind himself about that day, to better wrap himself in that lie, claiming it’s a secret between just him and Tsurumi. In short he managed to fully persuade himself what had happened was something good, something romantic, something that ties him to Tsurumi.

Usami than says he heard from Takeda that due to how Tsurumi’s horse caused Tomoharu’s death, Tomoharu’s parents hated Tsurumi and made difficult for him to remain in the second division.

It’s interesting how now Usami is using ‘ano ko’ (あの子 “that child”) to refer to Tomoharu. Of course he might be quoting Takeda but normally we don’t quote people word for word, we report what they say in our words unless their words were peculiar or needed to be reported exactly. So it’s possible that, although Usami is still refusing to call Tomoharu by name, he’s starting to acknowledge him back as a person, or more specifically as a child. Or maybe not. Hard to say as manga often have people quoting other people word by word even if this isn’t exactly normal.

Usami anyway seems touched Tsurumi would cover up for him even if he knew this would have happened, likely framing it as another proof Tsurumi loves him.

Tsurumi claims that’s why he was demoted to a position in Hokkaido but claims this is all right as being farther away from central command allows him to act with more freedom than he might have had otherwise.

Now… since in the Sino-Japanese war Tsurumi was still in the 2nd division with Tsukishima and the Sino-Japanese war has just ended, his being moved in Hokkaido should be a recent thing... but the fact he was demoted well explains why, despite being so good, he’s still stuck at the rank of first lieutenant. It’s not just lack of family support, it’s also due to an officer hating him.

Then Tsurumi cleverly wraps the whole thing as if it was all something he did for Usami by saying he thought it would be an awful waste if someone as interesting as Tokishige-kun ended up being destroyed.

Yeah, Tsurumi defines Usami as ‘Kyōmibukai sonzai’ (興味深い存在 “Interesting being/existence”) and maybe it’s just me but this sounds more like he finds Usami some sort of interesting specimen than a love declaration but Usami misses this and, again, warps this in his mind as some sort of love declaration.

Now, it’s worth to mention this time, when Tsurumi speaks Tokishige’s name isn’t written in katakana anymore (usually when Tsurumi would talk to him his name would be written in katakana [トキシゲくん ‘Tokishige-kun’]) but in kanji [智春くん ‘Tokishige-kun’]. Japanese readers interpreted this as Usami rising in importance for Tsurumi… or better for Tsurumi’s plan.

Anyway Tsurumi stretches his hand toward Usami, saying he’ll be waiting for him to join him in the 7th division.

It’s worth to note that the Hokkaido division was a territorial division which was converted to field infantry division in 12 May 1896, in the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War. We’re in 1895 but Tsurumi might be aware of the conversion and think that place would be a good place in which to cultivate his ambitions for dictatorship.

The part of the flashback that regards Usami’s meeting with Tsurumi ends here.

We’re still in flashback zone though as now we’re shown how Tsurumi’s discussion with Takeda, which started in chap 225, continued. Remember when they were talking about how men found difficult to kill people?

Tsurumi continued talking with Takeda about it, about how to make soldiers who would kill enemies troops without hesitation, explaining how he witnessed ‘an incident in which someone overcame is resistance in killing’ (basically he’s talking of how Usami killed Tomoharu) and how that fact stuck within him and he continued to think at it and finally, during the war, he discovered the answer on what caused that boy to act that way.

He claims what motives soldiers to kill isn’t hatred for the enemy troops, nor fear or difference in political ideals (yeah, as if common people of that time were interested in politics… Tsurumi, really!).

Tsurumi, with an helated face, claims it’s love what pushed people to kill, behind him appearing the images of Ogata, Koito, Usami and Tsukishima, as if to hint that they all committed murders out of love.

Now, while some info box informs us of how, during the World wars and during the Vietnam war soldiers claimed they found easier to kill due to the powerful and loving relationships they formed with their comrades and out of fear of betraying the expectations of superior officers they admired and adored and fellow soldiers they loved we see how Tsurumi manipulated Tsukishima, Ogata and Koito.

For Tsukishima there’s the whole ‘I lied to save you my precious friend’ which pushed Tsukishima to risk his life to save tsurumi, for Ogata there’s the scene in which he promises him acknowledgement in the 7th division and for Koito there’s the scene in which he helped him to stand after beating him and how Tsurumi went to rescue him.

We don’t get anything for Usami but, I think, it’s unnecessary as it would mean to show us what we just saw in the flashback.

This basically tells us they all were manipulated into ‘loving Tsurumi’ and doing everything for him… or so Tsurumi assumed, even if this is clearly a flash forward as Tsurumi will manipulate those three only AFTER speaking with Tanaka.

Anyway Tsurumi’s idea he has been successful is quite mistaken.

Tsukishima saved him out of inner kindness, quickly discovers the truth but remains loyal to him due to believing there’s nothing else he can do. It’s not love it’s hopelessness.

Ogata did things for love… but not Tsurumi’s love, he wanted to get his father’s love.

Koito crushed on Tsurumi as well also thanks to his naivety but the one he loves the most are clearly his father and Tsukishima, Tsurumi being merely an infatuation.

Tsurumi has barely grasped the mechanisms that push a man to kill another.

It’s not just ‘I love my boss and my companions’ but also ‘I’m trapped in this situation with no way out, dealing with overwhelming emotions that cloud my judgment and naively think this will solve everything’.

There’s a huge component of desperation that pushes men to act, as well as rage, self preservation, fear, confusion, sense of entrapment, pressure.

Tsurumi is over-simplifying everything, thinking he discovered the exact formula to rule men and their hearts when he’s just grazing at the surface of things.

No wonder he fails with Ogata and gets easily discovered by Tsukishima while Koito planned to drop him as soon as he had discovered the truth. He doesn’t understand his men, he creates illusions, offers them sweet lies to influence them in the moment in which they’re psychologically at their weakest and thinks that’s the key to hold them in his power forever, that they will never question him or rebel to him.

And in the end, even if love were to be the key, Tsurumi doesn’t offer them love, just an illusion of it. His men delude into thinking he cares when he’s just using them.

I think that’s why he should lose to Asirpa, because Asirpa offers genuine love to the people she cares for but we’ll see.

Tsurumi tosses in it’s also a battle between the soldiers and guilt but he doesn’t really care to dig into it much, he worries more into how to create soldiers who could do any sort of dirty deeds for him. He then goes and claim that many soldiers are just sheep but occasionally among them there’s one who’s a dog, who’s born soldier, who’s aggressive and loyal and feels no guilt or remorse about killing people and Tsurumi feels it’s vital to have soldiers like that in his troop.

Well, normally we would say a ‘wolf’ but the choice of the word ‘dog’ ties this well witht he story Asirpa told in chap 225 and with a characteristic Tsurumi wants his men to have and that stereotypically belongs to dogs but not to wolves. Dogs are loyal to their masters (opposed to wolves who have no master).

In short Tsurumi aims to have an army of loyal psychopaths without knowing psychopaths aren’t as easy to control as he seems to think… and that many people he exchanges for ‘ideal soldiers’ are actually just traumatized guys, not naturally born psychopaths but people who either went through trauma or reacted in the wrong way to pressure and ended up twisting themselves so that they suppressed their guilt and become extremely murder prone.

Anyway, as Tsurumi says so we go back to present time and to Usami, of whom Tsurumi has understood nothing. Usami’s hysterical crisis was a sign that Usami wasn’t a natural cold blood killer, otherwise he would have just shrugged off calmly how he murdered Tomoharu (not mentioning we would have had a lot more signs of Usami being a sociopath during his youth) and wouldn’t have cared to murder again a horse that much later.

Usami is currently unstable and very dangerous as his actions of that day had been excused and legitimated and he never properly faced them but was encouraged to continue through that way. No wonder his eyes have the ‘crazed whiteness of the irises’ in a permanent manner now and no light.

Usami says to Kikuta the murderer kills for the sake of killing, that he will return to the crime scene, fantasize about it and masturbate to his fantasies, and this is something he can understand...

...implying he did the same... which would already clash with Tsurumi’s idea that murders are moved by love... and, more than anything, would clash with the reason why he killed Tomoharu which was merely the fear to lose his connection with Tsurumi, not the enjoyment to kill people. Though well, over the years things might have changed for Usami, and in his attempt to cope with what he did and the way he chose to cope with it (seeing it as an act of love toward Tsurumi) he might have grown to transfer this to all his following murders and therefore ‘enjoying them as proofs of his love for Tsurumi’. Or just having turned so deranged, even the initial gimmick of connecting them to his love for Tsurumi got lost and, like Pavlov's dog, he subconsciously conditioned himself to enjoy murdering.

Now, you’ve probably heard how ‘The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime’. In truth is not true for all the crimes, it tends to be true only for crimes of ‘passion’ as the culprit, as Usami said, gets off relieving the crime. Psychopaths who’re good at planning their crimes for example tend not to do it as it would be stupid. Arsonists instead are a lot more prone to do it.

The FBI "Crime Classification Manual" roughly divide serial killers in 3 categories: organized, disorganized and mixed.

Organized serial killers are normally the smart type who plans their crimes beforehand which includes carrying a weapon with them and, once they’re done, feel no regrets and wouldn’t be that stupid to go back to their crime scene.

Disorganized serial killers obey an uncontrollable urge, use weapons found on the scene and might have regrets in the aftermath either out of guilt or fear to be discovered which can push them to go back to the crime scene.

It’s clear Usami’s murder was out of sudden rage and he coped with it by romanticizing it and transforming it into some twisted form of manifestation of his love for Tsurumi when instead it was just him losing his cool out of jealousy and getting so angry he couldn’t contain himself and stomped on his ‘love rival’s’ throat.

Even his recurring habit to go to the crime scene is nothing else but a way to cope, to reassure himself of his own action… which clearly made him a very disturbed individual but not an organized serial killer.

Now our ‘Jack’ carried with himself his own knife and clearly planned his murder. He chose the timing, night, and his target, a drunken prostitute in a poor area which he drew in an empty place before abruptly murdering her. Then he performed his sick ritual of eviscerating her, confident no one would come bother him.

I’ll say Jack is a much more organized murderer than Usami who, in Tomoharu’s murder, clearly lacked in the planning department a lot and nowadays never get a honorable mention for planning something, ending up on getting discovered when he tried to do spy work for Tsurumi.

It’s hard to say if his murders are out of ‘passion’ because, even if people tends to think that the murder of sex workers is tied to it, this isn’t always the case.

Gary Ridgway killed killing 48 sex workers just because they were easy preys, as he could easily pick them up and won’t be reported when going missing.

Peter Sutcliffe instead murdered sex workers because ‘the voice of God told him so’.

Samuel Smithers apparently did so because so traumatised by his abusive childhood that he hadn’t really known what he was doing.

Rurik Jutting was just a sadistic sexual predator.

So it changes according to the case.

As for Noda he showed us both organized and cold murderer, like Sekiya, and disorganized and passionate ones, like Henmi but, interesting enough, it was Sekiya who went back to his crime scene, and not to get his jollies out of it but merely to draw more victims. Henmi didn’t bother doing so, nor did Sakamoro and O-gin even if they were clearly having a blast when killing.

So… it’s hard to say what Noda will chose to do with ‘Jack’.

Personally I would like for Usami to be wrong if only to slam in his face not everyone works like him, that what he did is not the norm. I fear it’s too late by now to help him realize what he did but who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Though the things I would find more interesting is, if like he had done with Koito, Ogata were to manage to instill the doubt toward Tsurumi in Usami’s heart. But this might be just me.

Elsewhere in the hospital Koito and Inkarmat are, Nikaido is searching for his prosthetic hand that, apparently, disappeared while he was sleeping.

Koito, snickering and hiding something under the covers suggests ‘someone’ hid it because the thing Nikaido does with the chopsticks is annoying. It’s not really hard to guess who that ‘someone’ is.

Personally I find this an assholish move like few others.

You DON’T steal someone’s prosthetic, it’s not fun, they’re like a part of that person’s body. They need them.

Inkarmat then volunteers to use clairvoyance to find it, which makes Nikaido extremely grateful (he even calls her respectfully ‘Inkarmat-san’).

Inkarmat senses a strong sense of it coming from Koito. Me too and I’m not into clairvoyance.

Interesting enough though now Inkarmat uses ‘Koito Nispa’ instead than ‘Koito-san’ as she did in chap 222. Was that a mistake? Or she has started calling him ‘nispa’ out of late?

We’ll see.

Anyway Koito, naïve child he is, is shocked he got found out and hands Nikaido’s hand back. Tsukishima claims he too could have guessed it and really, I’m disappointed in him. He shouldn’t have allowed Koito to do it.

Meanwhile Koito starts praising Inkarmat’s ability munching on an Ikema root that guards people against evil. Inkarmat evidently gave him a discount because she sold it to him for 20 sen while Shiraishi paid 70 sen. That or she starts with a low price and then increases them on the way.

Tsukishima says she should stop swindling money form Koito. He could have told Koito to stop hiding Nikaido’s hand for a change. That was more harmful than getting 20 sen from Koito.

Koito defends Inkarmat, claiming if Tsukishima doesn’t believe her he should just ask her to search something for him. Tsukishima gives him a sideway glance then turns his gaze away claiming he refuses. Not meeting Koito’s gaze, Tsukishima? Do you maybe feel guilty?

Inkarmat volunteers to search for him something he can’t find or that he’s searching for. We get a flashback showing us Igogusa’s hair, making clear that’s what Tsukishima is thinking about.

Tsukishima still tells Inkarmat she shouldn’t try to think she can win him over to her side.

Basically Tsukishima thinks Inkarmat’s actions are so that Koito and Nikaido will become her allies and that she’s trying to win him as well but this won’t work on him, no, much better to trust in Tsurumi’s ‘sweet lies’ that promise him a place in his royal guards than in Inkarmat’s that promise him to see the person he loves again. Really, Tsukishima, you should reconsider who you put your trusth in.

Inkarmat, with a sad gaze points out to how Tanigaki should have returned from Hokkaido but hadn’t dropped to see her so she asks if she’s a hostage.

Tsukishima doesn’t reply, his face is hidden but shadowed.

Meanwhile Nikaido complains his chopstick don’t come out of his hand and, there’s something stuffed in. When he manages to pulls it out it turns out it’s Youkan, an emergency ration Nikaido can eat without chopsticks so evidently Koito hadn’t just stolen the hand, he also has tampered with it, obviously exchanging Nikaido’s hand, if not Nikaido himself, for some sort of toy he can play with.

Someone give him a spanking please.

I’m really sorry for all the troubles he had to face and for the situation he’s in but he’s being a brat in need of a spanking and if he gets one maybe he can stop following Tsurumi like a lost child and start following someone who’s more morally sound since, in order to get him to behave, all Tsurumi needed to do was to give him a slap.

Anyway, with this, the chapter ends.

Well, to start from the end it’s clear Inkarmat is aware of her condition and I like how she’s trying to win allies over. Clearly, if she weren’t in such an advanced state of pregnancy, Tsurumi won’t manage to keep her there for long.

Something else worth to ponder is that Tsukishima can claim all he wants he’s fine the way he is but he’s still thinking at Igogusa and can’t let her go even if he can’t find the guts to dump Tsurumi and go search for her.

I’m not sure of what’s going in Koito’s mind as he just seems to be enjoying his time in the hospital, free of responsibilities and worries. Maybe he’s just metaphorically attempting to hide his head under a cover and forget about the situation he’s in.

I pity Nikaido. He’s not a good person but they had basically broken him and turned him into a guinea pig for drugs and this is inhuman.

I still don’t know why Tsurumi wanted Usami and Kikuta to tag along unless he aims to get rid of Kikuta because Kikuta still isn’t willing to do every dirty deed Tsurumi would want him to do… which might have been originally why Nikaido and Usami were sent in Noboribetsu ahead of Tsurumi.

Then Toni Anji got involved in the mix and things became troublesome and the plan to get rid of Kikuta, who had moral values and a rank that’s rather high, got scrapped.

We’ll see.

I honestly hope Tsurumi’s plan to use love to control people will blow in his face. As hard as possible. Thinking that he should warp something as good as love making his men worship him and turn into remorseless murders is… I’ve no words for it.

As for Usami… a part of me pities him.

When he kills Tomoharu he’s barely a teen, and it’s clearly not a planned thing, it’s out of an excess of negative emotions, piling up stress and delusions. Killing a person in a fit of anger is something that sadly happens more often than not to grown up adults who should know better but just ‘lost it’.

As for kids… it is rare for a child under the age of 14 to kill someone; approximately 74 children a year do so in the United States which is less than 1% of all homicide perpetrators with the vast majority (90%) being boys between the ages of 11 and 14 who, about 75% of the time, kill someone older.

That’s because children usually fall in one of the following groups.

1- Older sibling beating to death the younger sibling of 0-2 when taking care of him or her.

2 - Child kills a relative, usually a parent or grandparent who abused of him.

3 - Child grabbing a gun and killing a peer during a moment of anger.

4 - Young teen shooting an adult stranger during a robbery or break-in.

5 - Teens (often gang members) attacks a lone victim or group of victims as part of an ongoing conflict.

Although Usami didn’t use a gun he clearly fell in the 3rd group. His martial arts proficiency and the situation worked like a charm to turn him into a lethal weapon even without the gun.

Children control poorly their anger and aren’t fully aware of the consequences of their actions. Their brain just isn’t developed enough yet. Usami was enraged, delusional, stressed and dangerous. What’s worse, when the deed was done no one helped him to cope with it.

Nihei too killed people in a long lasting bound of anger for they had targeted him, not stopping not even when the last one was caught by the police but then he realized his mistake. It took him time but he at least managed to realize by doing so he had downgraded himself to the level of a beast.

There’s no one to tell young Tokishige what he did WAS WRONG, that there was no good reason to excuse it, helping him to cope with it in a correct way. No, he’s only helped to think what he did was right and encouraged into doing again for Tsurumi. From the way Noda depicts him… I fear Usami had gotten too twisted to realize what he did, what he’s still doing, was wrong. In a way maybe the fact Usami still uses ‘boku’ to say ‘I’ instead of going with the much more adult ‘ore’ as the rest of the soldiers might be Noda’s way to tell us Usami never truly grow up from when he was barely a teen and killed Tomoharu. For him time stopped to that day.

In a way it did. That day probably split him in two, an Usami pre-murder who was like any other normal kid and an Usami post-murder, obsessed with Tsurumi, what he had done for him and what he will do for him in the future. Yet the murder of the horse let me wonder if, in a small corner inside him there’s still a small Tokishige who knows the truth and regrets Tomoharu’s death.

In a way Usami might be similar to Heita… or Sugimoto as he too has inside himself the kind and gentle Sugimoto of before the war and ‘soldier Sugimoto’ who can easily murder whoever he sees as a threat. We’ll see.

On another note… if the whole thing between Tomoharu and Usami on a side resembles Sugimoto and Toraji’s relation, it also presents elements of similitude with Ogata and Yuusaku. Tsurumi, who initially seemed to hold Ogata in great esteem, then starts to switch his interest on Yuusaku, praising him and his noble blood. Ogata, the poor child like Usami versus Yuusaku, the son of an officer like Tomoharu. And Ogata, like Usami did with Tomoharu, kills Yuusaku but this time it’s not for Tsurumi. It’s for Hanazawa as the love Ogata is desperately searching is the one of Hanazawa. That’s why Tsurumi’s words that promised Ogata great prestige might have fallen flat on Ogata. Ogata didn’t want such promises from Tsurumi but from his real father, he wanted genuine fatherly love, not Tsurumi’s attempt at seduction.

Maybe that’s why Tsurumi can’t understand Ogata.

In a way Tsurumi is egocentric, he thinks he can get his men to worship him and die for him but Ogata is unwilling to do so and Tsurumi can’t understand why his ‘Tsurumisexuality’, as we jokingly call it in Discord, failed on him.

We’ll see.

Well, this is all for this chapter.

I’m kind of surprised Noda placed the flashback in what basically will be the middle of the volume instead that at the end as he did for Tsukishima and Koito but well, Ogata’s flashbacks also were placed in the middle of the volume so it’ not such a surprising occurring.

Well, we’ll see what GK has in store for us.

Last but not least many apologies if this meta isn’t as good as the others. There were tons of things I wanted to say and I had to rewrite it many times but it still feels lacking so I apologize. All I can say is I attempted to do by best. I hope it didn’t turn out too bad.

#Golden Kamuy #Usami Tokishige #Tsurumi Tokushirou #Takagi Tomoharu #Takeda #Inkarmat #Nikaidou Kouhei #Koito Otonoshin #Tsukishima Hajime #Ogata Hyakunosuke #Tanigaki Genjirou #Golden Kamuy Ramblings and Theories #Michael Ostrog #Kikuta Mokutarou #Harumi Chiyo

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kaleidiope · 4 years ago

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September Project updation post in October because, well, i’m silly

This post I’ll mainly talk about my plan for my stories, and the things that’ve changed along with my plans for them and such. This was suppose to be in September but, I procrastinated, so yeah! And, a ‘keep reading’ line to keep things tidy looking! Also, I actually had this as a draft, but forgot about it! Also, also, please don’t mind all the spelling errors that i’m sure is in here, this is quite long, and i’m so sorry for all of that!

You all know the drill, this is an update for the story I've been working on. It was made in roughly February of 2019. Or at least, that’s when I got the idea for it. I’ve been working on it seriously since September of 2019. So, for about a year. On this blog you can find a good bit of random things about it, including drawings. A lot of the drawings I've done I never posted, maybe one day, probably never, but still! A lot of this Blog has actually been WIPS of my story. And, since those past updates, story pitches and such, a few things have changed, and that's what this is about!

First, for those who don’t know, I feel in love with One shot, Deiland, Moonlighter, Borderlands, and a few other games. Mainly One shot for it’s vibe, it’s feel. I loved it, maybe too much? And, really wanted to make something like it. I don’t see that atmosphere much, personally. On Music box maniacs, a lovely site, I was given the idea to make a melody for a character. And that’s how Umber came along. Over time, I kind of made Umber, and left her. Started trying to get into digital art, but without a tablet I tried to create a character that would be easy to free hand with a mouse. Which became Pax. Over time, I feel in love with Pax’s design. I drew him a lot, he was my first, and only OC. I’ve drawn random people and thing’s before, but he had a name. An age. And soon, a back story. He was set in a different world than Umber’s. Which, at this time, is almost abandoned. He was a potion seller’s child who only wanted to go on the adventure’s the customers where experiencing. And one day, he’d face a dragon, and possibly his fate. But that was scraped because each time I drew him, more and more, the backgrounds reminded me of Umber’s story. So, he became a child in her story and his was abandoned. Umber was suppose to be a child traveling with no family trying to get awareness of her light to others. And once meeting Pax in another shop, he agreed to help her. So, you could say, Pax was Moonlighter based, and Umber was One shot based. The idea that her light was a bad thing and there were ‘”bad people” didn’t come until later. Though, Crimson was suppose to be a bully type of person who mocked, and even at times, almost hurt Umber. Because also, at this time, everyone was children. Once it was thought over for awhile then did we get the story line we have now. Umber was an inventor in a world suffering a seeming eternal eclipse. which was ruled by a corporation that was money hungry and didn’t care for the greater good. The world had glowing bugs that somehow emit a good amount of light, and through time and a lot messing and discovery, oddly power? Which is what the corporation sells, Starworm lights, and “batteries” of a sort. The bugs also allow some things to grow, but with them being harvested as much as they are, the corporation is killing the world. But, that won’t be their problem, they’ll be dead by the time it’s an issue. Now, we have a lot of characters and general world building stuff, along with the flora and fauna and how things work. So, let’s begin! (Yes, this is going to be a long post. I’m so sorry!) But, I have since changed a few things, which I will now state. I was pretty heck bent on giving them ages, but, I don’t wish for them to have any, anymore. This is not earth. It’s a planet without a sun. Keeping track of time is easier than days, let alone years. So for many, it’s just a toss up on how long they’ve lived for. Just a mere, rough, idea. I wanted ages for personality comparisons and height ideas for when I draw them. Which, was never my idea at first. This was just for OC’s to draw, yes, but then it became a story for them, along with for my own enjoyment and somehow it became more than that. Which, I oddly love. But, ages were more for an even sillier reason I've since abandoned as well, and I think the story’s better off now since then. Also, they were all children at a time. Adults wouldn’t even have names or faces, All adults were originally suppose to get full face masks. Instead of half masks. But Indigo ruined that, and after that, some of the characters were being made older. To fit with the personalities, for say, Talos. He was also a child, who I didn’t feel being a child would fit the character and mainly, their job in the story as a whole. So yes. The story itself wasn’t the main idea. Having OC’s to draw were. But I was given a lot of support on MBM with my story pitches, also, I enjoyed making them. So I continued. And I really enjoy this. World building has been the hardest, trying to make things make sense, like the eclipse lasting years. And the fact a moon bigger and that much closer to the planet would most likely make the planet itself, the planet’s moon, and the moon, the planet. And how is life still possible, along with, isn’t it cold? And to that, yes, yes, yes, and maybe XD Mainly, this is fantasy, yes, I do want it to make sense, yes, this isn’t earth. The people’s races aren’t our races, calling them human might just be an insult to them. I mean, they don’t even have pupils. (Thanks, odd drawing style.) So, my answer to a lot of this is, it’s not earth. This is fantasy. I’m doing this for fun. And I’ve done a lot research for something that was never suppose to be as much of a thing as it is, but i’m having too much fun to stop now. And with that as well, yes, a lot of my characters are suppose to have a deeper skin color. Talos, Mauve, Indigo, and so on, are suppose to have a more deep olive color. But, at the time of drawing a lot of them, I didn’t have the faith to execute other skin tones correctly. So I just didn’t. Just like drawing illustrations for my story. I didn’t think I would because I didn’t think I could, but i’m now willing to try. So, here is where we stand so far! I want my characters to have a rough age, but it could be depicted to give of take about three years. I’ve said I wanted Pax to be about 11, but I also see him to act older for his age and such. The idea of him being any younger seems odd, but if you wanted to give him a 9-15 age for an example, that’s more than cool. That goes for all my characters. I want a lot of my characters to look like their own character, i’m working very hard with redraws to make sure there’s noticeable differences with their noses and eye shapes and such. I want different skin colors and face shapes and so on, but the idea of different races on such a small planet and even the idea of tanned skin in a world without the sun to give one a tan seems odd to me? But there will be differences, because I always wanted there to be. This story will indeed cover some heavy topics. Including but not limited to, alcohol, death, suicide, murder, mental and physical disorders and illnesses, such as DID, alzheimer’s, dementia, memory issues, abandonment, and a form of racism. All things are not straight out talked about or referenced, but lightly implied. I took inspiration from a lot of things. (including places, animals, other stories and people) And I will not refer to any of it within my story, such as DID. There is already too much falseness and other wrong info on that and other things. I do not trust myself to paint it in a good light, nor a correct light. And will re-frame from actually stating a character has an identity disorder. The idea this world knows of DID and would use the same word is also something I question. But the characters disorder is based on DID. (Also, it’s Tobias.) The idea of genders is something that’s a toss up. I’ve never said anything of the sort and would rather not say anything. The idea that they have genders or sexuality is just something I don’t really want to think about and is rarely mentioned. The idea of love and such is mentioned, purely more for a joke/bit. But still I don’t wish to think of my characters with genders or those parts no matter what I refer to them as. Not mention these characters still aren’t human. I do use She/he/they pronouns for my characters and as of now have used phases like, “That guy” But, it’s become a personal running joke I want to make clear at the start of my story that it was translated and adapted to fit this worlds standers of word form. There are roughly 25 characters as of now, only five main characters, or should I say, five characters that get there point of view expressed. And about six support characters, and the rest are minor support characters. Some of these characters are only mentioned, or referenced, as an attempt to build the world. Questions are always open, and this story is undergoing many changes and constant consideration. As I learn, grow and improve my skills. I have no hope or want for this to get big or anything of the sort. this is for fun. 100%. If it looks like I talk about this a lot, but never have anything to show for it, it’s because I want it to be perfect or close to it before I show anything. Which will be never, because I can never make perfect. I’m just trying to do the best I can and am pushing the limits of my skills to get there. I should note, I am fine, I’m not “Pushing” myself. Which is why it’s taking the time it is. I am really working on character personalities and keeping them coherent and sane along with the same. And talking about all this helps with that. As for now, I know what I want to do, and where I want my story to go, i’m just figuring out how to execute it best. I’m more skilled in writing where I describe things, mainly emotions and the scene it’self. Along with script writing. I’m not skilled with writing conversations which is a large part of my story. Same with drawing backgrounds or anything that isn’t people. So my story so far reads a lot like a script due to how the conversations are laid out and due to how I describe how each thing is done. This is something I want to get a bit away from because it was purely so I wouldn’t get lost and confused with who was talking and the emotion/feel of each scene. That’s because I have the attention span and instruction following skills of a carrot. I use my characters names far too many times along with a lot of other things I use for self help clarity which I hope to fix by the end. I do think it’d be cool to start dropping parts of the story and other things of what I have done, with the note that it could change. I feel it’d be fun, but i’m very hesitant to do so. I do wish to make character bios and such for them all at some point and just have a post that lays down what has been decided so if anyone wants they can follow along with the process. But, that’s all a toss up as of now. Thank-you for reading, and for your time, I hope you have an amazing day! And I dearly apologize for this length!

#Update #OUL update #OUL story draft #Thank-you for your time

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i-write-shakespeare-not-disney · 5 years ago

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Director’s Commentary- Fragile Hearts, Pidge asks for the truth and first kisses

Ahhhh I miss this story so much and I love getting to talk about it!!!

When she swallowed again, her tongue was dry. “Hunk?”

He hummed and looked at her. “You alright?” Oh Hunk you oblivious gorgeous man you.

She nodded and thumbed through her book. “Um. It’s just- I read something in here and I wanted to ask you about it,” she managed to spit out.

He chuckled and tilted his head. “We lived through all that. What could you possibly have to ask about?”

“Well, it’s not something I would’ve been aware of,” she said. She opened the book and stared at the words, afraid to look up and lose her nerve. “It says you- or I guess, your character- um….” reading this right now make me want to reread the whole thing ahhhh

“What?” Hunk prodded, confused.

Pidge took a deep breath and laughed nervously.

Just spit it out. Spit it out. Spit. It. Ou- I like doing this thing where the narration may be in third person limited, but it can still have the character’s voice bleed through. In this case the spit it out is very much pidge thinking then cutting herself off because I wanted it to feel abrupt to the reader too.

“It says you had feelings for me at that time.”

She grimaced at her hands, feeling like she was drowning in the silence that ensued. To me, the panic of asking and the grimace stems a lot from the feeling of disbelief that he would like her. She tried to remember to breathe and managed to look up and see Hunk, frozen and shocked where he sat.

“Um…. I’m not sure if it’s just something Lance threw in for romantic purposes, or if it’s real, but…. I guess I kind of wanted to know from you. She was giving him an out to deny it, mostly because she also didn’t want to sound hopeful. If you… uh, liked me like that and when… yeah,” she finished lamely. She chewed on her lower lip and waited.

“Fucking Lance,” he muttered under his breath. HE VIOLATED THE BRO CODE. Hunk had no idea his crush would get into the books, and he’s really not surprised that Lance would have spent time on it because it’s LANCE and he’s just exasperated. “Can I… see?” She handed the book over and sat back, sitting on her hands. Hunk narrowed his eyes and then closed the book, chuckling into his hand. “Um… yeah. Yeah, that… that’s real. It wasn’t just added in.” Cat’s outta the bag and also he doesn’t lie to Pidge.

Pidge felt her face heat up, as she squeaked out a high pitched, “Oh.”

She waited, expecting something more. Something like, but that was back then, or yeah I liked you then but we were kids. Just something more. But the topic was left there, hanging in the air, feeling unfinished. Because it is unfinished!! It’s still there!!!! It’s still going!! But this also just shows how Pidge is always kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Finally she asked, “Why?” He frowned and looked back at her questioningly. They were both perched on the edge of their beds anxious and drawn to each other and the space between them seemed to swallow what they said and didn’t say despite the silence in the room. She swallowed and let out a shaky breath. “I mean, why did you like me? I was… I was- I don’t know.” I never wanted to demean Pidge or have her demean herself. Pidge knew her strengths, she was smart, she was quick, she was stubborn, she was a good fighter. But as any teen might, she has her insecurities. Her mind wasn’t on dating back then, it wasn’t a priority. But looking back, she does wonder what the hell because those insecurities about her body and dating very much exist now that the danger is gone.

“Smart? Determined? Strong?” Hunk finished for her. She looked at him, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. He looked frustrated, and he kept running a hand through his hair. “Pidge, you’ve got to stop putting yourself down. I don’t know why you do it, but it’s….” He sighed and stood up to kneel in front of her. Body language to show he’s at her beck and call (in a good way), and willing to be open and honest with her. Neither of them are closing themselves off. Her eyes were wide, focused on him, and she knew her cheeks were a bright red. “You’re a hero, Pidge. If people knew the things we did, you’d be every little girl’s role model. Smart, quick-witted, and resilient.”

She tried to steady her breathing, but he was too close and making her nervous. She could feel the anxiety running over her like a heat wave, making her feel like a fly under a magnifying glass in the sun. “You never said anything,” she whispered.

“The last thing I needed was to push away my best friend.”

She crossed her arms and scowled. “I’m not that terrible of a person, Hunk!” she snapped. “You’re my best friend too, I wouldn’t have just… cut you off or something. You could have told me, why would you just assume that I’d want you to go away?” Hunk also very much had his own insecurities. And I think that when it comes to best friends, there’s always that fear of what if it messes everything up?

He sat back on his heels and sighed. “I was a kid, Pidge! I was…. My crushes before had never gone over well. I didn’t want to risk that happening with you. You had more important things to focus on, we all did.”

She frowned and looked away, towards the floor. “So I find out five years later in a book,” she grumbled.

“Yeah, I’m gonna kill Lance for that.” A tiny bit of more natural banter to sort of ease the new territory they’re in.

She kept glaring at the floor and took a very deep breath before her next question. “So when did you stop? Liking me, I mean. Because of Shay? Or when we came back home?”

No answer. She looked back at him to find his eyes on her. He looked like he was in pain. “Please don’t make me answer that,” he said, the words barely even a whisper. I HAD PLANNED THIS. FOR A WHILE. I was so so so excited for this very line of a pained “don’t ask me to answer that” because just. Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies. Hunk has felt this for so long but he RESPECTS Pidge enough not to let it intercede with their friendship, not to expect anything out of her, and he RESPECTS her enough to never want to lie to her. Even when it can hurt him.

She looked at him, confused and worried. “Why?” as smart as Pidge is, emotions are not her thing even now. It’s also part of why she banked on schoolwork to distract her instead of dealing with herself.

His lips twitched into a soft, sad smile, his eyes darting away from her. “Because I don’t want to lie to you. But I also don’t want to lose you because I just got you back.”

Her heartbeat sped up and she could feel her hands shaking, longing to reach for him. “I just told you that you wouldn’t have before. Why would you lose me now?” Hunk furrowed his eyebrows, his shoulders tense, looking everywhere but at her. She reached out, turning his head to her. His eyes locked on hers immediately, but they were wide and afraid. “Hunk? Talk to me.” gentle intimacy.... T.T I love them so much and I just wanna give them every soft moment ever.

He opened his mouth but promptly clamped it shut and shook his head.

Pidge could feel her heart pounding in her entire body. She knew the desperation was plain on her face in the way her eyebrows scrunched together, the way she kept biting her lip, the way her eyes searched frantically for something telling in Hunk’s face.

“Please?” she breathed. All she had to say was please for him to break and idk that’s. I love that.

His eyes opened and he looked her in the eyes. His shoulders slumped and he leaned into her hand. “Because now these feelings are a lot stronger than they were when I was seventeen.” Pidge gasped and jerked back slightly, staring at him in disbelief. She’d gathered he still liked her but she didn’t expect him to say the feelings were STRONGER, Hunk are you trying to kill her?? “I didn’t stop. I thought I could live without you when we came back to Earth, but…. Everything came crashing back the second I saw you looking at me in the bakery. I. Loved. Writing. This. Confession. I believe hidge-resource did art for it, I can’t recall. Freckled face, tousled hair, and… big, amber eyes,” he said with a smile, pulling back himself as if to give her space. “I’m so sorry, Pidge.” anyone else as upset as me that Hunk feels he has to APOLOGIZE for his feelings? Because. God. He just bared himself and he still expects her to be upset. Because he kept it secret, for putting her in an uncomfortable position and THIS is why I love unknown requited pining.

She remained silent, shell-shocked. He still liked her. His feelings had grown. And he was… sorry for it?

He looked up, defeat coating his features. Like he was certain he’d made a big mistake.

Her entire body felt like it was shaking as she reached up to cup his face with her hands. His beard was rough beneath her palm but she didn’t mind. She’d been holding back from him for so long. She never had to. He still liked her. He still liked her. He still liked her. I drew this, but I’d love to redraw it. Also the repetition is her trying to get it in her head.

Pidge leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, eyes shut. She felt like she’d opened a dam, and there was nothing she could do to stop the flood of emotion and memories that flowed from her. Endless smiles and jokes, fighting side by side, sleeping next to him, dancing in a dark living room, hungover mornings, laughter and comfort and…. Hunk. someone mentioned in a comment that they really liked how this kiss was described. It’s not the physical aspect of the kiss, but the emotional and personal aspects. The things that culminated to this one moment.

She pulled away and gasped as his hand caressed her face. “What was- why are you crying?” he stammered.

She rolled her eyes and leaned forward to kiss him again, smiling against his lips. “You should have told me. Instead of having me pine after you like one of those cheesy movies we watched today.”

“Pine?” he repeated, dumbly.

She looked him in the eyes and laughed softly. “Do you think you could stop thinking for a sec and just kiss me back?” Pidge kissed him TWICE. And he couldn’t react because he was so dumbfounded. They’re both so smart but SO FUCKING STUPID.

He let out a breathy, nervous laugh, but he pulled her in and kissed her. It was a little clumsy and uncertain, neither of them really used to the other this way. But between laughter and relieved, adoring gazes, they managed to figure each other out, their kisses slipping into something familiar and comfortable. I always loved the idea of being comfortable enough with someone that the clumsy awkward parts are easy to get through before reaching something soft and comfortable and familiar to the two people involved. Like... they’re best friends and know everything else, and this is something new, but also something that, like everything else, they’re gonna get familiar with.

#director's commentary

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picturebookmakers · 4 years ago

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Axel Scheffler

In this post, Axel takes us on a journey through his art studio and career. As well as sharing wonderful development work from some of his much-loved picturebooks, he shows us unseen sketchbook pages, early illustration commissions, etchings he made as a student, and his recent work to educate children about the coronavirus.

Visit Axel Scheffler’s website

Axel: I’m not really sure how many books I’ve illustrated in the 30+ years that I’ve been working. Over 150. I mostly work for the UK market, but occasionally I do books with German publishers. Not picturebooks though, so nothing that collides with the co-edition market.

Each of the boxes you see here contains one of my books: the sketches, illustrations, dummies, alternate versions of covers, everything.

I organised these boxes with Liz, my assistant, to have all the main books there so we can find things for exhibitions. There’s still lots of drawings in these boxes which aren’t sorted yet. Liz is such a great help, but it’s very difficult for me to keep on top of everything. I think I would probably need two Lizes, or perhaps three.

So yes, I don’t really know where to begin... I’ve got endless sketchbooks and little drawings on paper. I’ve got some really old sketchbooks I could show you.

Shall we start with The Gruffalo?

My early sketches of the Gruffalo were thought by my editor to be too scary for small children. So I had to make him a bit rounder and more ‘cuddly’. Initially, I‘d also thought that all the animals would be wearing clothes, as they often do in picturebooks. But Julia had different ideas, and to be honest I was relieved. How would I have dressed the snake?

Here’s some spreads from the dummy...

I tried a lot of alternate covers for this book; I think there were twelve in total. There’s some where the Gruffalo doesn’t even feature on the cover.

My latest book with Julia is called ‘The Smeds and The Smoos’. It was quite nice to work on because it’s so different from the other books we’ve done together. The text is a bit like a mixture between Dr Seuss and Lewis Carol; it has this nonsense element. But it’s basically Romeo and Juliet in outer space.

It’s an alien story, so I didn’t have to draw any rabbits or squirrels for a change, and I could invent more. I had more freedom. But like always, I got bored with drawing the same characters over and over again. But that’s picturebooks.

There was quite a lot of development work in the case of this book. But when it’s a story about a fox or a squirrel, I don’t do this kind of stuff. Over the years, it’s become much quicker and easier working on my books. I do far less research than I used to. Now I generally just do a quick pencil sketch then go straight to artwork.

Sometimes I have to start again because things go wrong though. This was a finished piece that was abandoned. I think I suddenly thought that the rocket was far too big or something. I do that; I work on something for ages, and then I suddenly look at it from a distance and realise that something needs redoing.

Did you spot the little Gruffalo in this picture? Since ‘The Snail and the Whale’, I’ve hidden a Gruffalo in each of my books with Julia (not ‘The Ugly Five’ though).

For almost all of the books Julia and I have done together, our editor has been Alison Green. We’re an old established team. And I’ve always worked with the publisher Kate Wilson; I followed her from Macmillan to Scholastic, and then to Nosy Crow. Julia moved from Macmillan to Scholastic, and decided to stay there. So Julia and I have some of our joint titles with Macmillan and some with Scholastic. Julia does books with other illustrators for Macmillan, and I illustrate other books for Nosy Crow.

People often ask me which of the books I’ve done with Julia is my favourite. It’s quite hard to choose, but I enjoyed working on ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’. I liked the way I could do a crazy world with animals, giants, fairytale characters, everything mixed together without anyone caring or questioning it. I’ll show you a few things from the box...

For this book, the cover was changed at the last minute. The original design had the title written on a poster stuck on a brick wall, but the sales people said they wanted a landscape, so I did another one. Years later, they used the original design for a new paperback edition, so it wasn’t completely wasted in the end.

I mentioned my endless sketchbooks earlier. I’ll show you a few of them. This was mainly me playing around without thinking about what I was doing; it wasn’t a conscious thing.

I haven’t looked at these sketchbooks for ages. It was such a long time ago. I don’t work in sketchbooks like this anymore, and I no longer doodle. But for fun, I make illustrated envelopes for friends.

I often think about doing a book with just pictures, but I’m always too busy doing other things. Posthumously, perhaps there will be time to do this. I’d also love to experiment and be more spontaneous; it’s been my dream for decades to do something completely different. But when I receive a book project, I always feel under pressure to finish it, and I’m always late with everything, so I end up doing it the way I’ve always done it.

This is my drawing table, which is and always has been too small and too messy. I think I have to accept it will always be this way.

I use Saunders Waterford paper for my illustrations. It’s funny how we all have our special paper. My rough sketches are often quite small, so I have them blown up to the correct size. Then I trace the sketches on a lightbox onto my watercolour paper. After that, I draw the outlines in black ink with a dip pen. I colour everything with Ecoline inks using brushes, and then coloured pencils on top of it (I use Faber Polychromos and Prismacolour crayons). I might then need to redraw some of the black lines, or use some white gouache for highlights.

I studied History of Art in Hamburg, but left before graduating. I realised this wasn’t what I was good at; I’m not an academic.

Then I had to do my alternative service as conscientious objector. Sixteen months. There was still conscription then; that’s how old I am. I worked with mentally ill people in their homes. It was during this time that I had a friend studying ceramics at Bath Academy of Art in England. I went to visit her. I really didn’t know what else to do, so I thought maybe I could move to Bath and go to the art school. So this is what I did. The course was Visual Communications, so it was design, printmaking, photography, all that stuff. But I realised I only wanted to do illustration.

I’d gone to art college hoping to learn something. I don’t think that necessarily happened, but drawing intensively for three years was, I think, what I had needed to do. I don’t remember actually finishing any projects though.

Here’s some drawings from my student sketchbooks. I did lots of observational drawing back then, which I don’t anymore. I did it then because they told us to. I’m an obedient person!

While I was a student, I did an exchange in New York: Cooper Union Art College for three months. These drawings are of Jewish immigrants, meeting for coffee. It was 1984, so many of them were still alive; refugees from Germany or Austria. I heard them speaking German, so that’s how I knew.

Sketchbooks are such a good way of memorising things. Nobody really knows about these sketchbooks; I used to take them to interviews, but they’ve been hidden away for years.

After I graduated, I moved to London and took my portfolio around. My art teacher had suggested I should do this to get work, so that’s what I did. In those days, you had to ring them and ask to come around. I got two commissions straight away, and it’s been busy ever since, really. I’ve always had something to do.

Here’s some of my early commissions. Starting from 1985, I guess. Very pointy noses...

I did so much of this kind of work. It was a good way of earning money quickly. Occasionally, I still do editorial. I did some Brexit drawings for the remain campaign. Sadly, it didn’t help. Maybe I wrecked everything!

I’ll say a few words about the KIND book... 38 wonderful artists donated a picture to illustrate some of the many ways children can be kind. Such as sharing their toys or helping people from other countries to feel welcome.

One pound from each book sold goes to the Three Peas charity, which supports refugees from war-torn countries. It’s been a big success so far, and Three Peas has received a lot of money from sales in the UK and co-editions.

I’d quite like to do the UNKIND book next! I think illustrators would probably enjoy that, but I don’t imagine it would sell very well.

And now for something completely different! Some etchings I made when I was a student.

People often ask me which illustrators I’m inspired by. I don’t seek any direct influence on my work, but I’ve always said that Tomi Ungerer had the greatest influence on my approach to illustration. Although his style is quite different to mine, this humour and wackiness is something that has always appealed to me. And the details.

William Steig is someone I got into later, when I was already illustrating. And Edward Gorey of course. And Saul Steinberg. I think the Czech artist Jiří Šalamoun is wonderful. And I like Eva Lindström from Sweden a lot. She’s so great.

Okay, to finish with I’ll talk about the coronavirus work I’ve been doing...

I asked myself what I could do as a children’s illustrator to inform, as well as entertain, my readers here and abroad about the coronavirus. So I was glad when Nosy Crow asked me to illustrate a book on the subject. I think it’s extremely important for children and families to have access to reliable information in this unprecedented crisis.

You can download the free digital book in English here, and in over 60 other languages here.

I also wanted to do something light-hearted to cheer people up, and I thought, “What if I imagine some of our characters in corona situations?” Julia liked the idea and wrote rhymes for the new scenes. This was really more about entertainment than serious information.

Artwork and verse © Axel Scheffler and Julia Donaldson 2020. Based on characters from ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’ (2004), ‘Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book’ (2005), ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ (2002), and ‘The Gruffalo’ (1999) — © Macmillan Children’s Books.

And here’s one more thing: my ‘letter from lockdown’. On The Children’s Bookshow website, you’ll find lockdown letters from lots of other wonderful authors and illustrators.

Buy this picturebook

The Gruffalo

Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler

Macmillan Children’s Books, UK, 1999

‘A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood. A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good.’

Walk further into the deep dark wood, and discover what happens when a quick-witted mouse comes face to face with an owl, a snake... and a hungry Gruffalo!

‘The Gruffalo’ has become a bestselling phenomenon across the world. This award-winning rhyming story of a mouse and a monster is now a modern classic, and will enchant children for years to come.

PUBLISHED IN THE FOLLOWING LANGUAGES & DIALECTS

Afrikaans

Albanian

Arabic

Australian

Azerbaijani

Basque

Belarusian

Bengali

Breton

Bulgaria

Catalan

Chinese (Simplified)

Chinese (Traditional)

Corsu

Croatian

Czech

Danish

Doric

Dundonian

Dutch

English

Esperanto

Estonian

Faroese

Farsi

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Buy this picturebook

The Smeds and The Smoos

Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler

Alison Green Books, UK, 2019

The Smeds (who are red) never mix with the Smoos (who are blue). So when a young Smed and Smoo fall in love, their families disapprove.

But peace is restored and love conquers all in this happiest of love stories. There’s even a gorgeous purple baby to celebrate!

PUBLISHED IN THE FOLLOWING LANGUAGES

Afrikaans

Catalan

Croatian

Dutch

English

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Kind

Alison Green, Axel Scheffler & 38 illustrators

Alison Green Books, UK, 2019

Imagine a world where everyone is kind; how can we make that come true? With gorgeous pictures by a host of top illustrators, KIND is a timely, inspiring picturebook about the many ways children can be kind, from sharing their toys and games, to helping those from other countries feel welcome.

One pound from the sale of each printed copy will go to the Three Peas charity, which gives vital help to refugees from war-torn countries.

PUBLISHED IN THE FOLLOWING LANGUAGES

Bulgarian

Catalan

Chinese (Simplified)

Chinese (Traditional)

English

French

German

Greek

Hebrew

Italian

Korean

Netherlands

Portuguese (Brazil)

Romanian

Spanish

Swedish

Turkish

Vietnamese

#Germany / UK

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slowlymadeart · 5 years ago

Photo

After a month of making adjustments to the script and editing things out I’ve kind of lost perspective on how this can been seen from a stranger’s point of view.

(And may have over explained in areas just to make sure communication was clear).

All images are cropped to instagram size. (except the first one with the “critique” message).

Tried my best to jam everything into 10 panels.

Oh, and what’s happening in that last panel is me being arrested for spoon debt.

Annnd to answer your question, yes. I do imagine a world in which “spoon court” and a “spoon bank” is being run by utensils.

I know it’s weird. It’s the whole “Goofy is a dog with a dog (Pluto) as a pet!

but.. I think it’s kinda funny….or could be if I ever draw more. Just doing research on obscure and various utensil to make into characters? I don’t think I could pass on that.

Anyhow, here’s some thoughts and explanations you are free to ignore. Seriously. They might cloud whatever you thought of the comic before reading a backlog of thoughts…But if you wanna follow the thought train, hop aboard.

1. Is “Well, You could just google it” too condescending or will the internet be okay with this? When it’s written in a post it’s fine, but in a comic? I just don’t want to push people away. Especially first thing. (After a month of rewrites and redraws is when I changed up that speech bubble and put that line in there, lol).

2. “Spoonie” comes with many associations with chronically ill/disabled communities. I tried to acknowledge as many points of view as simply as I could. Hinting at a bunch of perspectives from both the people who love it and reasons why people hate it.

3. Also nodding towards the idea that “Spoonie” is easier to say than “Disabled”, and for some, the internalized “Disabled is a dirty word” has them opting to say “spoonie” instead. Often unintentionally. So I then tried to blur the distinction between the two a bit. Out of a desire to mae “Disabled” a more approachable word.

4. Alright, so the idea ”Spoonies are just one part of the disabled community.” I feel like I may have been able to communicate this, but when I drew the group image of various spoonies connecting from their beds, it might feel too “Any person with a disability can be a spoonie to some degree.” …..which makes me worried healthy people may eventually start projecting it onto people they meet with disabilities. Sort of a “I can help you somehow, here’s this info a about spoons! Did you know it exist yet? it could change your life!!” all while still disregarding the person their talking to.

5. The facial expression on my character for “My body is disabled and day to day living sometimes breaks my brain” -I could not figure it. For me, there’s a mixture of “slight embarrassment but I gotta say it” and “LET’S PRETEND YOUR ELSA IN “LET IT GO” AND YOU HAVE NO MORE FUCKS TO GIVE!”

or “calm. with no more fucks to give. A ‘deal with it’ sunglasses or vacant eyes and a slight smile situation”

then I’d go back to “Embarrassment, both crying and laughing from brain breaking, wants to have no more fucks to give but that’s just not true”

and I was worried that gave the wrong impression about being disabled. Yes, there’s absolutely truth to it. but after reading articles by some extremely well educated disabled advocate types, and a critique on the show “Special.” I wanted to try and set a good example- pretending I’m further along with coming to terms with what my life is than how I can be at times.

We’re allowed to feel like this is a mindfuck. It absolutely can be. But I don’t want to be seen as too whiny…

…. and I need to clean up my language so my 11 and 12 year old sisters can read. (Will be changing a couple words for the finished version that goes on instagram and webtoons).

6. Christina Miserandino seems to use to be very into tanning. When collecting photos, her shade of skin changed all the time. But it’s not “arianna grande” type stuff, just more so her genetic predisposition and past beauty habits conflicting with going through a lot in recent years and hasn’t been getting out as much, or caring about looks. I tried to capture a sense of her advocacy prime, with the purple, when she put a lot of work into her hair, her love of girlishness but with a slight edge to show maturity. Just going with a skin tone she’s had consistently in the past couple years- just because going darker would have been a lot more strange to those who looked into her now. (This one’s less of a concern and more of a…disclosure? Just felt weird to deal with).

7. I don’t know if any of you have ever looked through spoonie selfies, or disabled selfies. but we seem to LOVE DYING OUR HAIR. (It’s one thing we can change). Hair dye is having a moment in the world. So I hope the change of hair colors here and in the future is not taken the wrong way. It’s just really fun to use unique hair colors on characters. I will say, the reason the woman on the left side of the “Today a spoonie is” has blue hair, is because she’s Trans, it’s a wig. her hair isn’t where she wants it to be yet, she uses the hat because she couldn’t afford a lace-front wig. Yes, it’s hot on her head. but it’s easier than using energy to secure everything and make the top look nice. and it feels too fake looking when the top is not covered up……. And…yes, I realize this is all in my head and not conveyed or relevant at all- but that’s the backstory, lol. I gave her shirt the trans flag colors, but she didn’t seem like a pastel person and so I kept them darker, feeling like that’s what this character would like.

8. I included cutting scars on two characters because a few years back I had a friend who pointed out to me I always omitted drawing her scars. I wasn’t doing it on purpose, I just kept forgetting. But I felt bad. It seemed like including the scars was more empowering to her at that point in her life. That’s why they were included here.

9. I know some think “Spoonie” is just for those with Chronic illness. It can feel that way- it’s a large majority of Spoonies. But Christine herself said in an interview Spoon Theory can be used those with disabilities and Mental health conditions. Basically, whoever has a condition that causes fatigue.

When put that way- well, the panel that reads “Perhaps detached enough for misguided normies to think” -could happen.

(All the more reason to blur distinction between “disability” and “spoonie”?…maybe. but, that could alienate neurodivergents. And the blurred distinction between “Neurodivergence” and “disability” is…exploding as a topic currently. And I don’t want to contribute to more people thinking neurodivergence means “disabled” and therefore “broken”- that’s the opposite of what I want to do).

((Thus why there’s info supporting the idea throughout the rest of the comic “Don’t fix it. work with it. My situation’s just different.”))

Maybe the panel isn’t needed, but that’s how/why it came to be.

10. If there’s unhealthy mentalities portrayed in the comic that don’t serve a greater purpose, let me know. Unhealthy mentalities are great for humor, and getting to let someone else who’s going through the same type of thinking at times have comfort- but what I’m worried about is anything that is problematic.

11. If any of the terms I used are incorrect- such as places I use “conditions” to sum up- everyone who can be a spoonie. Let me know! It get’s really tricky at times when you have to make the statement as simple as possible to refer to a very diverse group with very diverse bodies.

12. I’m starting to put “mean stranger” type characters in colors without skin tones so that they can be applicable to more people, as being sick/disabled/neurodivergent is somehow in open invitation for the opinions of jerks. Drawing them all as Donkeys or “Asses” would be cool and clever, but too much work.

13. Because of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia sitting with my legs down in a wheelchair is extremely draining, so I want to stop drawing that.

#critique #please #halp #so tired #brain gone ploop #what are words

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alexswak · 5 years ago

Text

Animator Hiroshi Watanabe’s Interview

This is an interview with one of Studio Live’s main animators, Hiroshi Watanabe. For more on Studio Live and Hiroshi Watanabe, I recommend reading my previous post on Minky Momo.

This interview goes into his start in the industry, the hardships of being an animator in Japan, and some technical tidbits. Although conducted in mid 1980s, most of what is mentioned here still holds waters today, and it’s interesting to see what changed and what didn’t from that time.

First published in スタジオライブの本・らでいっく (1)　(Studio Live’s Book Vol.1). Translation by me. I’m not the most experienced translator nor am I excellent in Japanese, and although I think I managed to properly translate this since it’s not that hard or complicated of an interview, I’ll provide the original interview in case someone wants to check my translation for errors, for which I’d be pretty thankful actually.

Sorry for the long intro, here’s the original interview in Japanese.

-Moderator: Today we will be hearing animator Hiroshi Watanabe’s story since joining Studio Live up to the present day.

-Ashida (Toyo, Live’s Predsident): My, aren’t you serious.

-Moderator: It’s just kinda an official thing isn’t it *laughs*. Anyway, let’s start. First, can you tell us something from the time you left Kumamoto to Tokyo to join Studio Live?

-Watanabe: I was making anime by myself beforehand, but I had no idea how to draw in-betweens. Joining the company and using the tap for the first time made me see how real work really is different. At that time, 1000 drawings was the normal output of an in-betweener, but after all my effort it took me around 3 months to draw that much.

-Moderator: 1000 drawings in 3 months, how good is that?

-Ashida: Fairly fast I would say.

-Watanabe: Yet Matsushita (Hiromi) drew that much in one month and a half… so at that time my abilities weren’t really good enough, and there was the tough in-betweens check; no matter how many times I redraw it doesn’t get approved. Lines are a bit dirty, erasing remains are visible… really small stuff. I had my own thoughts of course, and with that happening I felt like the people on the other side just couldn’t understand. It’s really frustrating, but you still need the money to eat so you keep on drawing… such situations are pretty tough.

-Moderator: “I drew those in-betweens that way because it’s the way I do it” or something like that?

-Watanabe: Right. I didn’t want to admit that I lacked the skills at all. That was definitely the case, but the fact that I had the mentality of “it’s my way of doing things” was… frustrating.

-Moderator: Back then, and even now...

-Watanabe: No, thinking about it now, I’d say that period was normal. Yet back then, all I had in mind was “I’ll make them accept what I’m making”. And then I looked at what the key animators made and thought how different it was, which made me wish even more to become a key animator myself.

-Moderator: The thought of wanting to make an anime with your own sense...

-Watanabe: Back then, all of Live’s projects were adult shows. That’s why they seemed to lack the power. Although such projects are actually harder, I wanted to swing the camera more and move things around. Thus I wanted to become a key animator as fast as possible, and worked hard to achieve the goal of 1000 drawings.

-Moderator: Is it the same for everyone?

-Ashida: Not really, but I’d love if all of Live’s staff were like that. It’s a matter of future prospectives. Do you want to do in-betweens forever? Or become an ordinary key animator? An excellent key animator? An animation director maybe? Everyone is different.

-Moderator: And Watanabe wanted to become a key animator quickly.

-Watanabe: Correct. That’s why I, although not directly related, was so motivated to draw the 1000 sheets and become a key animator quickly and make the company acknowledge me, which enabled me to do just that.

-Moderator: So how long did you do in-betweening for?

-Watanabe: I joined the company in April and did in-betweening till October. “Cyborg 009”’s first episode was my first time drawing key frames.

-Moderator: Not too long, huh?

-Ashida: It was actually a little too fast? But then, he was our prodigy. It’s not about drawing nicely, it’s more about instinctively knowing what anime is.

-Watanabe: Why did I want to become a key animator back then? Ashida-san wanted to show youngling’s power, pent-up emotions and new strength and abilities in “Cyborg 009”. I was there anyway so it was more like “we will give you a chance then” type of thing.

-Ashida: As I said, the longer you do it the harder it becomes. At first, doing what you want is fine, but in 3 years time a wall will come, overcoming that will give you another 3 years before the next wall, until you reach a point where the wall comes every year.

-Watanabe: At that time, maybe because of being young, but I had the power to do anything. Everything I did was fun. In “Cyborg 009” or “Blue Bird” I overdid even the simplest scenes. It was all pretty interesting back then, be it anime itself or key animating itself… Then came “Arale-chan”, and after that came a time when I started paying attention to character consistency (looking the same), but getting full of myself I always thought what I did was fine and didn’t put in the effort to make them look consistent.

-Moderator: “I don’t mind if they don’t look alike. It looks fine the way it’s” type of mentality?

-Watanabe: I mean, Ashida-san was going to correct them. But I wonder if “Blue Bird” was the last project I did with my youth power. A bit after that I started feeling as if my power was fading away.

-Ashida: Well, it wasn’t about losing power, rather more about having to do the same thing for a long period of time. If you can’t overcome that, then… You just can’t stay a promising young animator forever.

-Moderator: What are your thoughts when you watch “Blue Bird” now?

-Watanabe: Watching it now… Watching it now… *laughs*. I find the projects back from the period I had power pretty good. Some small details look rough, but really the things I did back then were impressive.

-Ashida: It’s not knowing fear. Now that you know what to be afraid of, going about it the same way isn’t possible.

-Watanabe: Right. I can refine the small details now, but achieving the same furiousness wouldn’t be possible. To this day seeing the dragon fight from “Blue Bird” (This scene) gives me goosebumps *laughs*. Why was I able to do something like that, I ask myself.

-Moderator: Oh no, this is turning into an old geezers’ conversation *laughs*.

-Watanabe: So, being completely helpless with character acting scenes, action sequences were my chance to go wild and forget about the storyboards. That’s why I did what I did. And that’s why I had that much fun. Then it became bitter, bit by bit, drawing key frames I mean, until one point in 198X where I just couldn't draw anymore.

-Moderator: Not being able to draw… what kind of situation was that exactly?

-Watanabe: Not going to Toei anymore, spending all day on Pachinko machines, that kind of stuff.

-Ashida: Truancy, basically.

-Watanabe: Along the way I started gradually wanting to draw again, drawing became interesting again. Then I said to myself, why not do some animation director assisting jobs, and since I have been causing all sorts of problems and troubles for the animation directors, I was so happy to be in a position where I can repay them. Everyday started being fun again.

-Moderator: What is an animation director assistant actually?

-Watanabe: Key frames, prior to the animation director’s corrections, are terrible. Although my frames don’t get approved, looking at the frames that do get approved I see only the middle of the frame being drawn while everything else is left to the animation director’s assistance to fill in. Also stuff like character faces being completely off, all these things have to be at least “prepared for correcting” in this process. It’s more of a 2nd key animation role than an animation director assistant. It was nonetheless fun, and correcting characters like that made me feel like I made some progress.

-Moderator: What about “Momo” (Minky Momo)?

-Watanabe: “Momo” was fun. Although in 198X I was kinda mentally depressed, none of the key animation I drew for “Momo” was turned down or returned for retakes. So I just kept pushing on.

-Ashida: This is the effect of the ultimate “Opening Strategy”. Let someone do the opening and have the fame at first, it was the same with the animation direction role.

-Watanabe: That was again a fluke of luck. My first job as an animation director was an episode with Kaijus fighting. With such things you just have to make them move, make them flashy and catchy.

-Moderator: Your speciality, huh.

-Watanabe: It wasn’t something I excelled at as much as it was something I had fun doing. Also, when speaking with Yuyama (Kunihiko)-san, I see he has something he wants to create with which I can totally empathize. Doing the normal life scenes without any interest, for example. So it got to the level of being a hobby where I give all my effort, rather than a job I have to do.

-Moderator: That’s how much you as an animator can get into in the project, right?

-Watanabe: Of course, being at Ashi Pro means that things like drawings numbers don’t matter. Such situations exist, but at stricter places cuts are made at the storyboards or screenplay stages. Deciding to tune down here a bit or focus here a bit from the start means that all this is planned through, something we can understand and makes us feel like the whole thing is indeed worth doing.

-Moderator: “Momo” was your first project as an animation director, how was it?

-Watanabe: Doing animation direction is annoying. Fixing the key animation of other people requires all my effort, animation direction isn’t a job you can slack off at even slightly. That’s why it made me want to draw key animation even more. That being said, doing animation direction limits me, but whether I’d be able to draw key animation if I didn’t do animation direction… Also, character acting stuff was handled by Yuyama-san, and I handled things like character faces. Those being Live’s key animation, I’d say MatsuX (he means Matsushita Hiromi) drawings were completely off, while (Kazuko) Tadano-san’s drawings were even more on model than mine *laughs*. Man, no more talking about “Momo” please.

-Moderator: *laughs* Well, that was the end of today’s interview. Thank you very much.

#hiroshi watanabe #studio live #interview #translation #toyo ashida

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