#magi talk

[magicalgirlypop]

i'm so well fed with amazing female characters in magical girl anime that i forget there's people who only watch shonen and think that's a whole representation of female characters in anime. how sad. you need some sailor moon, precure, and cardcaptor sakura, in your life.

[aspennntree]

i’m so glad homophobic hitomi has been preserved

[kelparty]

"Facing it"

Alt background :)) This took me so long ong I've never put so much work into a background. This is me wishing we'll get a scene like this in the movie.

Timelapse (made with Clip Studio Paint)

Yes the scene referenced is from Pandora Hearts

[jukedoxxed-st]

Yeah I kinda doubt that

[labyrinthoftragic]

I feel like Hakuryuu (and to be honest, most of the entire kou gang) suffer a lot from just not being part of the main gang. Ohtaka skips a lot of screentime for important character developments, especially when it's a character outside the main 3.

This is also a phenomenon that just becomes more and more prevalent the further the story goes, partially because the cast of known characters just expands by that much, and partially because the story just ramps up in speed in general.

Now, I do feel like Hakuryuu suffers from this probably most out of all characters, specifically because you can easily consider him part of the main cast. He at some points gets more screentime than other people from the main gang (That's also because Morg gets shafted near the end but that's a talk for another time) but in the terms of what gets actually gets shown vs what gets skipped, he gets side character treatment. We get to see his states of being, like his antagonistic role and his brainwashing era, and then that gets moved past quite fast in order to get him in his next state.

I feel like this choppiness in between his states can make his character quite make or break. Like said before, there's a lot of people that only started liking Hakuryuu after certain points, or people that started hating him after certain points. We get shown these states with not much in between, and are left to fill in his feelings and the potential (mental) repercussions.

From what I've seen, this is where the make or break point comes. We're left with nothing much but crumbs for the very important bridges in between these states, and how (or if) the reader fills this in can really determine what way you end up swinging when it comes to liking or hating Hakuryuu. I feel like his hate (and even his love tbh) would have been a lot less bad had we seen more of his slow growth towards the extremes he ends up embodying.

hakuryuu is such a divisive character. i feel like people either love him or hate him. and there are people who liked him before kou arc and hated him after it, and people who didn’t care much for him before it and grew to love him during it (i’m the latter).

it’s pretty easy to see why, since i guess some people just are not into dark characters. one argument that shows up often is that hakuryuu didn’t get “punished” enough in the final arc, which is always super weird to me. many people in the series did fucked up shit and most of them are never punished for it, so i don’t understand why hakuryuu is such a big issue. especially when i feel like he was punished. basically he had to accept the fact that he failed at what he was trying to do, and that his previous way of thinking was wrong. he had to become humble. note how hakuryuu gets nothing he was initially going for, including morgiana.

we often think that “real punishments” are only those where someone is imprisoned or killed. in some situations, however, it’s the mental journey that a person has to go through that is way more punishing, and at the same time, way more healing.

hakuryuu loses. loses at love, loses at managing his country, loses at his philosophy of doing everything alone without anyone’s help. and on top of it all, he loses in all of those to the people he thought he was being tougher compared to, who he thought were naïve, mainly alibaba.

(and i’m not even going to address the history stuff because. yes, believe it or not, power struggles within imperial families like that, that got pretty darn violent, are period typical and not out of the ordinary.)

but hakuryuu has grown during the series. he takes these losses and lessons with humility. tries to become better. not enough? would he have had to go into a fit of rage and misery over his failures? would he have had to be publically disgraced before anyone was allowed to forgive him? would he have had to suffer more in order for his punishment to be adequate?

[wiltkingart]

what year is it

[tothepointofinsanity]

MAGICAL DOCTOR.

[lunxev]

Never realized how much I missed this show until I rewatched the anime and read the manga last year since 2019 and now im obsessed again. Anyways pls enjoy these doodles I drew :DD

[wyfy-meltdown]

Nagisa has such a complex and emotional backstory (the one presented within Magia Record) and while I love the memes, I'd also love to see her analyzed the same way as the Holy Quintet girls more.

When it comes to Nagisa's relationship with her mother, it is clearly emotionally and verbally abusive in a very realistic way. Nagisa loves her mom. Her mom is still her mom despite everything, and Nagisa wants to love and forgive her. Nagisa also hates her mom; The mom who yells at her, is implied to hit her, and tells her she's wasting money and time. Nagisa tries her best to support and care for her mom despite everything; she acts like a hit dog still coming back to the hitter because it's all she has.

Speaking of dogs, I want to draw parallels between Nagisa and Inui. Kyuubey specifically mentions that another girl in similar circumstances* (*to Nagisa) wished to have the attention of the boy she liked; cut to Inui, who talks to Kyuubey about her worries with the Sleepwalking Ghost and her boyfriend. From this we can guess that Inui is impoverished, has a difficult relationship with her mom, and has the same goal as Nagisa; to be loved in a conditionless way by someone who endlessly hurts them.

Inui is a perfect parallel for Nagisa; Nagisa has become disillusioned with the concept of "love" to the point of viewing all fairytales and stories in a gloomy light; Nagisa has not been loved in the way a child needs to be loved, and so cannot fathom the type of carefree love shown in fairytales. Inui on the other hand is so desperate for the attention and love she hasn't gotten she's gotten into a relationship with (presumably) the first douchebag who showed any kind of interest in her; she craves a fairytale romance and to be swept off her feet by a prince and so in her mind Sho can't be anything but that prince. Both of them cling to their delusions and coping mechanisms while further being hurt by people supposed to love and protect them.

Nagisa resents her mother despite craving her affection; she considers using her wish to make her mom regret being unkind to her (a vengeful fantasy of an abused child [she hopes for an apology and for things to become perfect]) before finally settling on making her mom unknowningly seal her own doom (ie, the cheesecake).

Nagisa's cheesecake is an incredibly important object for both literal and symbolic purposes. She wished for it instead of saving her mother's life; It represents her final revenge against a woman who never treated her kindly. It also represents the unobtainable love Nagisa searches for even as Charlotte; "unable to make the cheese she loves" aka "unable to obtain love". There is a more uplifting (albeit dark) symbolism here too; that being Charlotte's unfortunate decapitation of Mami. Mami, who in Rebellion is Bebe's caretaker and mother figure, is eaten by Charlotte: Mami is the "cheese" Charlotte loves and has finally found.

Nagisa is abandoned by everyone: the only one who hasn't abandoned her is her mother, who is convinced Nagisa will abandon her. They have a vicious cycle of mistrust and dependence. Right before she becomes a witch, Yuu promises "I'll never leave your side"; after taking the only person who never abandoned Nagisa, Yuu promises "I'll never leave your side". Those were some of the last words Nagisa heard: the crippling loneliness, guilt, and betrayal that sunk in is what caused the birth of Charlotte. What makes it worse is those are words Nagisa was likely told by her parents at some point: afterall, parents will say anything to comfort their child, especially before something like hospitalization or leaving the family entirely.

Nagisa is 12 at her oldest possible age and 8 at her youngest possible age. She is a tragic figure on the same level as Sayaka, Kyoko, and Mami. The only true closure we have for her at the moment is her relationship with Mami (and the other Holy Quintet members) in Rebellion.

[magicalgirlypop]

a compilation of all battle pentagram art of every holy quintet ship. they're everything to me

[bitchliteraria1906]

Trying to write about how Kyoko and Homura being religious affects their characters but I'm not smart enough to make it coherent.

[austajunk]

I'm almost finished with PMMM and these two are my world, okay????

[clementiaart]

just once

[beastwhimsy]

I knew I had to draw them as that one archie comic panel. it was destiny. simon I'm so sorry about your knees 1 second after this man

[concrete-3ater]

thinking about how Akumura's bow isn't the red ribbon Madoka gave her

it looks similar, but its not the same one.

[shibusawaz]

”what’s your favorite genre of animanga?”

normal-ish series with some deeper themes that eventually morph into absurd hellscapes that make you question what perception and reality could be