#let her date some other titiboo waitress

[smallearthboundfindings]

Is Duster x Kumatora actually canon? What's your opnion about it?

I've already spoken on Kumadust on my main, but tl;dr, I don't like it; I'll answer your questions in the order received.

As far as I am aware, Kumadust has little to no basis in canon. Now, mind you, I have only played Mother 3 up to Chapter 2, almost Chapter 3 (old PC, suck at combos, I'll get there eventually but TOTK has been very distracting), but as you can tell, I am very involved in the fandom for it and would have likely found out if the ship was intentional. This was the best thread I could remember on the matter in case you're curious.

Now, on my part, the best "support" I can think of are post-release art like this:

[Id: Two images of Kumatora and Duster next to each other. In the first, Kumatora is smirking while holding an ice cream while Duster is wearing a black cap and looking at her with his arm behind his head. In the second, both of them are on a two-person bicycle with Kumatora driving and Duster sitting sideways with his arm up.]

However, these never appeared in-game and seem to a particular quirk of one of Mother 3's staff members, Nobuhiro Imagawa, long after the release of the game. You know about "official fan art"? That's basically what this is at this point. It's just one person and not Itoi who actually has a say in stuff. Plus, they're just standing there? Like?

Anyway, I'll get to the point: the real bread and butter.

I don't like it because of the the pretty clear age gap implied here.

Duster and Kumatora have a familiar relationship to me as does the entire main cast where Duster is like the uncle to borderline siblings at this point Lucas and Kumatora. And it's not just an age gap. I have very substantial reason to believe Kumatora is a minor. Exhibit A, your honor:

[Id: A comparison of Kumatora labeled "before time skip" on the left and "after time skip" on the right. A green line shows that the Kumatora on the right is one pixel taller.]

She grows taller over the time skip! You know what this means? She's still going through or only recently underwent puberty! More before and after, top to bottom:

[Id: Ten sprites of Kumatora. The top five are before the time skip and the bottom five are after it.]

Note the three-quarters pose where she seems to be curvier after the time skip judging by the hoodie's collar. That's a youngun if you're still growing like this over a three year span!

Now you could say, "Oh, but she works at Club Titiboo, that's clearly a bar! She has to be older than twenty then! Delayed puberty!" Okay, right off the bat, legal drinking age is highly dependent on where you're at. In some places, it's even sixteen! Secondly, take one look at the Pigmasks and the fact that their leader is Porky to ask if they give one hoot about child labor laws? In fact, I think Porky would love to make a law to allow minors everywhere; you cannot trust this one bit.

Meanwhile, I don't really have to say much to say for Duster that isn't obvious. He's clearly an adult. He's got a pretty common balding pattern, facial hair, doesn't grow one inch or pixel over the time skip: Duster's a grown man.

Shipping a minor and a clear adult is an automatic no from me. I guess you could still argue somehow that Kumatora is an adult, but I think you're just grasping at straws at that point.

That is all I will say on the matter for now. This isn't a shipping blog. Go ask a shipping blog. Goodbye.