#manhua = Chinese comic

[taomubiji]

The Iron Triangle in the Restart Comic

[the-astral-express-archive]

[RAW] Honkai: Star Rail CN | Promotional comic strip for the "Argenti" breed of rose from the Beijing Academy of Garden Sciences collab

Artist: Inkmo

[diamondnokouzai]

posters on r/otomeisekai are inventing racisms faster than the human mind can comprehend

[meiryen]

La concubina del Faraón

Bonus:

Bai Mo Tao

[nolee24]

Steel rose (2000-2004)

[random-anime-obsession]

ABSOLUTE DEVASTATION

[dogandcatcomics]

#repost @woshibai @woshibaii 我是白 Woshibai (Shanghai, China). Snippet from 20 km/hr, an edition which is expected in Spring 2023 from @drawnandquarterly. Felines are not the major theme of this underground comic, but I appreciate this representation of a tiger.

[jadenerd]

Historians would call them really close friends

[moony-rabbit]

Someone please ask me about my profile and header pic I'm getting desperate to ramble about SDIP

[kukuandkookie]

The end of 2024 has proven that 2025 seems to be a huge year for donghua and I’m gripping everyone to give all these donghua besides just the most popular ones a chance!!!:

Link Click, Yingdu arc: releasing December 27, 2024

Nezha 2, sequel to Nezha 2019 aka Nezha zhi motong jiangshi, confirmed for January 2025

To Be Hero X, likely April 2025 release (I hope people will also support the version with Chinese VAs! 🙏)

Lord of the Mysteries, 2025 summer release—accompanied by more good news: the novel has officially entered the British Library and it will also be translated into English by Yen Press

False Memory, series version, confirmed 2025 release

I am making this post because False Memory just released its new trailer and I am very much so looking forward to it! The series started as an indie short before growing into a bigger thing, much like Fog Hill of Five Elements and The Legend of Luo Xiaohei and Alita’s Trial. We’ve thus been waiting a couple years for news so this is really exciting, especially after it recently got a Twitter account!!

Bonuses:

Ya She, released a couple months ago but late enough into 2024 I’d still love for more people to check it out!

Scissor Seven, another one that’s had its newest season out for a while now, but I assume that for those who have Netflix, it hasn’t been officially English subbed or dubbed yet. We’re also still getting trailers for its game!:

I Am What I Am 2, released Dec 14, 2024 in China!

Reminder that Mo Dao Zu Shi is now on Crunchyroll! They may have removed it from Tencent’s donghua YouTube channel for this, so definitely go support it if you do have Crunchyroll!

Some children’s donghua have also recently released, including news of the new Balala the Fairies season and the other magical girls show, Rainbow Crew! The latter is confirmed for an official release in English.

The Yi Ren Zhi Xia game is also coming soon to global, and Fox Spirit Matchmaker even updated their OP recently after quite a long time of silence.

And speaking of silence, even the long-awaited SVSSS donghua saw some movement recently!?

Now if I could get a confirmed 2025 release for White Cat Legend season 3 (and maybe God Troubles Me and Lie Huo Jiao Chou and Fei Ren Zai and All Saints Street and The Legend of Luo Xiaohei and Wo Jia Dashixiong Naozi You Keng etc…)), I could die a happy man (gender-neutral)—after watching all of these newly released donghua shows and films and seasons, of course ahaha. 🙏

For more news and info on donghua, you can check here:

There’s a bunch of new donghua information in the above document that came from 2024, even though they don’t have official release dates yet! Including but not limited to:

The announcement and PV of Call-Up Girls, based on a baihe manhua

The announcement of a Nirvana in Fire donghua, based on the danmei novel with a famous cdrama adaptation (with the manhua having recently gotten an official English license via Aloha Comics)

Trailer and announcement for 《向火而生》, based on Shui Qian Cheng’s danmei novel Blazing Armour

More announcements for Jing Wei Qing Shang, based on the popular baihe novel

Trailer for The Story of Rong Song, a spin-off of the famous Big Fish and Begonia movie

and many, many more…!

Hope everyone can join me in watching more donghua for 2025!! :D

[fishing-lesbian-catgirl]

is there a way to experience arknights that doesn't involve playing a gacha game? i kinda wanna see what it's deal is the girls in it are really hot

Yes there is!

There’s an online tool that lets you read the visual novel story sections: https://akgcc.github.io/cc/story.html. It lets you read the main story, event side stories, operator records (mini stories focused on specific operators), it even has modules (upgrades to operators that cost a lot of resources but also give you a short story blurb when you unlock them). It usually takes a bit for new stuff to get added, so it can’t really let you read along with the current ongoing events (unless you can read Chinese, the CN server is 6 months ahead of the global server and I think the story reader gets updates for their stories but I haven’t checked, it might just be the ones on global).

There are 2 8-episode seasons of an Arknights anime covering the first 2 parts of the main story. They’re called “Arknights: Prelude to Dawn” and “Arknights: Perish in Frost”

There are a handful of official manhua covering various groups of characters, including one for the main characters at Rhine Lab (American science company with a lot of well meaning characters working for a flawed corporation with ethics issues) and one for Blacksteel (the mercenary group with Franka, Liskarm, Jessica, and Vanilla, who I’ve been posting a lot about. The new event side story is about Jessica so that’s why. The mangadex fan translations of this one were tagged as “girls love” and then the official translation made it even gayer, highly recommend for foxgirl dragon girl yuri). As well as a few others. There’s even the mostly lighthearted Rhodes Island test kitchen series about different operators making different foods from their cultures and backgrounds and stuff, it’s very cute. Official translations are here https://www.arknights.global/comic but for the ones that haven’t been fully translated you can usually find them fan translated on mangadex.

Speaking of mangadex, there are also 2 other comic/manga/manhua things you can read. There is the light hearted 4 panel series “Arknights Operators!” that has short, usually comedic, comics about various operators and their lives on the Rhodes Island land ship. I don’t think it’s explicitly canon (it has a gag about Hoshiguma bumping into door frames bc she’s so tall, but her “canon height” is 5’11” [no one likes the canon heights]) but it’s pretty fun and cute.

And what I think is the last thing I have the mention is the Arknights anthology manga series. It’s explicitly non-canon as the comics are all made by guest artists, but it is officially published by Arknights. It was only published in Japanese but scanlators have translated a large portion of it and it’s very good.

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 大理寺少卿游/White Cat Legend.

White Cat Legend is the 2024 live-action adaptation of a funny historical manhua about a country bumpkin who winds up working with a bunch of mystery-solving officials led by a beautiful boss whose tragic past means no one can know he's also a kitty.

This is one of those cases where television comes in to adapt something that has both unfilmable elements and a very non-cinematic storyline that hasn't even been finished yet, and as such mostly just takes the characters and the basic conceit, then creates an entire vaguely nonsensical 36-episode AU fanfic of it. To call this show tonally inconsistent would be an insult to shows that are only merely tonally inconsistent. It is full-on tonal whiplash, the kind you should go see a doctor about. This shit is all over the place. It has arcs and situations that are genuinely emotionally moving, and then smash cut! to wacky nonsense happening with the B-plot. It does not know if it wants to tell a Serious Story or just have bonkers antics, and it will deal with this indecision by doing both at once.

So if you're in the mood for something fun with charming characters that won't tax your brain parts, let me give you five reasons this could be exactly the junk food you're looking for.

1. Just a family of all boys

If you're looking for a show rife with female characters, go watch Legend of Fei or Story of Yanxi Palace. Over here, it's Boys' Night Out.

The show is set in the Court of Judicial Review, which solves crimes. The boy in charge of all of them is Li Bing, who is secretly also a cat for reasons he doesn't understand. He picks up naive yokel and total sweeheart Chen Shi and brings him back to work with the Court's current occupants: a sad-eyed scribe with catastrophically bad luck, a former soldier who wishes he'd been born recently enough to be into Crossfit, a generic "foreigner" whose superpowers are spending his parents' money and pronouncing things badly, and the 8th-century Chinese equivalent of a mediocre white man.

And I'm going to tell you right now, up front, above the cut, that these boys' character interactions are the #1 reason to watch this show. You watch it because you like to see them bounce off one another like the unsupervised toddlers they are. They all love and care for one another in the best ways they know how, which sometimes aren't very effective, but darn it, they're trying!

What's especially cute is how they're so touchy with one another -- and not in any kind of sexual or creepy way, but in a sincerely affectionate bro way. There's lots of hugging and supportive arms around waists. Sometimes when they get scared, they hold hands. They grip one another when walking across unsteady ground or climbing over walls to break into yet another house. There's never any gay panic or no-homo reassurances. It hits that sweet spot right between brothers and boyfriends, where you can read their interactions as fraternal and/or romantic as you like (see below).

I mean, who needs a plot when you have half a dozen charming boys canonically working, eating, and sleeping side by side? That, my friends, is quality television.

2. Jam-packed with goofball nonsense

White Cat Legend is a show that will make you laugh out loud, and mostly even on purpose.

About 2/3 of this show is silly, and the other 1/3 is trying so hard to be emotionally resonant. But you know what? Screw emotional resonance for the moment -- let's embrace the antics!

There's a lot of silliness happening even at the production level. The show also starts out doing some very cute visual things, like breaking shots into multiple "panels" that give everything a real comic feel. It's especially effective during fight scenes and other visually confusing setups. ...And then about 1/4 of the way in, it forgets about this gimmick and stops almost completely. This is a shame, because I liked it! I liked that VFX tomfoolery that paid homage to the story's webcomic roots! (Also, someone behind the camera clearly got told that the way to make a scene more visually interesting is to slowly pan in during every shot. Once you notice it, you can't unsee it.)

The main villain is ... well, he's a lot. He's just a whole lot. I'd call him Evil Garfield, except Garfield is already kind of Evil Garfield, so this guy's Eviler Garfield. He's not chewing the scenery, but is instead treating it like a cat with a vendetta against some drapes. He's just hilariously over the top at all times. It starts out vaguely entertaining, then gets annoying, then wraps right back around to entertaining again.

Also, his wig is terrible -- and it's not even the worst wig in the show! White Cat Legend has decided that the way you style foreigner NPCs is just to jam unbrushed women's wigs on extras' heads and call it a day. There are indeed a lot of foreigners in the show, and the show has chosen to handle them by assuming everything beyond the borders of 6th-century Chinese territory is a great undifferentiated vaguely Persian-flavored mass. Who's that shady-looking guy? Oh, he's Foreign. What country is he from? A Foreign one. What language does he speak? You know, Foreign.

You are not ready for the score. This is a show that spent its entire musical budget on a handful of middling pop songs, realized it still needed ~40 minutes of music to put in each episode, and decided that it could just pull things at semi-random from whatever the Chinese television equivalent of the YouTube royalty-free sound library is. The result is some laugh-out-loud hilarious soundtracking. Do you know why they usually pay people to do things like score television shows? It's because when you don't, it sounds like this.

True story: During one antics-filled scene, I frowned, listened a second, and asked my wife, "Is that ... 'Deck the Halls'?" It was!

The mysteries are -- and I'm quoting myself here -- the celery that gets the cute boy peanut butter to your mouth. Not only can you, the viewer, not solve them, I don't actually remember what most of the resolutions were. Hell, I barely remember what most of the actual setups were. The individual storylines are mostly unimportant pieces of fluff that kinda sorta tie into the big mystery of the show: Why is that boy a kitty? ...And if you think you're going to be satisfied by the resolution to that one, honestly, you haven't been paying attention to what I've been saying in this post.

Basing this on absolutely nothing but vibes, here is my guess: The original vision for this series was as an ongoing thing, something that might hew a little closer to the comic storyline in later seasons. At some point in the production, the decision got made that there would be no further seasons made. The resulting drama is something that's technically self-contained, sure, but has a lot of little lingering weirdnesses that look like foreshadowing.

As just one example, the way they frame and shoot the empress is bizarre, and she might as well have a big SHE'S GOING TO TURN OUT TO BE EVIL neon sign above her head. ...Except that, no, she's fine! Perfectly fine, mostly normal empress, mostly normal levels of evil, nothing to see here. She is, however, evil as heck in the source material (and that's not a spoiler, she's a little pink thing who's clearly sinister all the way from the get-go), and I have to wonder if the showrunners weren't planning some future heel-turn villain arc for her. Well, we'll never know now, so whatever you choose to believe, the show won't contradict you on it!

Your reaction to all of this will 100% depend on how charitable you are feeling toward staring down a firehose of (mostly) intentionally slapdash shenanigans. If you go into this demanding coherence and substance, you will wind up disappointed. If you go into it expecting nothing more than a fluffy good time, you'll probably enjoy yourself tremendously -- and you'll maybe even be moved by the rare times it does work out to being something of substance! Such as...

3. We are never ever getting back together

The first thing you can tell about Qiu Qingzhi and Li Bing is that they are as divorced as two dudes in a c-drama can be. They aren't just a little divorced. They are nuclear divorced.

Except -- and this is the juicy part -- they obviously still work really well together. If it's just the two of them head-to-head, they will be assholes to one another with no mercy. If circumstances change and they have a shared target, God help that shared target.

The unspoilery version of their backstory goes like this: They were adorable little tween besties who grew up into adorable little teen besties, until Qiu Qingzhi went off to join the army and came back a real cold bitch, and Li Bing has no idea why. Now the two of them control state agencies that should work together but actually wind up competing more often than not (think the FBI and the CIA), a competition not helped by how the Jinwu Guards (Qiu Qingzhi's group) are actual professional soldiers in very nice armor, while the Court of Judicial Review is, well, [gestures to points 1 and 2].

And yeah, baby, this right here is The Ship.

I spent a nonzero amount of time while watching this series laughing out loud because Wei Zheming's face is just too beautiful to be believed. With his sculpted jaw and his perfectly practiced looks of disdain, his Qiu Qingzhi looks like a damn Disney prince. His face could not be more perfect if you'd assigned a team of animators to draw it. This actor is the reason I found this show in the first place -- he was so beautiful in Word of Honor that I found myself wondering what else he might be getting up to. Turns out, he is again being a smug bitch and capturing the heart of a doe-eyed younger man.

Don't let me oversell how much these two are together in the show, because they're not. Qiu Qingzhi is not part of the main crew, so he's not in most of the episodes. Most of his screentime comes in flashbacks during the last story arc, to a time in his past when Li Bing wasn't even around. But when they're together, oh, the sparks do fly.

I think it helps that the actors seem to have understood the ship, even if in that video, Ding Yuxi (Li Bing's actor) is trying so hard to do the Please Do Not Cancel Us dance of plausible deniability. I honestly don't even think this is the show's doing; after all, the source material (see the section near the end) is not BL in the slightest. I'd believe the show meant to create a normal platonic bro-relationship between these two. I'd even believe that it thinks it succeeded.

Still, if you're not the biggest fan of Lovers To Enemies? That's fine! Here's the relationship that's the real core of the show:

4. Here comes a special boy

All the boys of the family of all boys are special and wonderful, but truly, Chen Shi is the specialest and wonderfulest of them all.

He is your everyman character, the little country bumpkin overwhelmed by all the big-city dealings he's stumbled into. With his cute little twang and his natural inclination to trust everyone he meets, he's the perfect cinnamon roll, too good, too pure. I want to pinch his angelic little cheeks.

Fun fact: I have been informed by someone who speaks with the same dialect he does that said dialect is very sweary, which brings to mind the wonderful image of Chen Shi just casually and sweetly dropping f-bombs while everyone else stares in shock.

In a show where the characters are way more important than the plot, having a good POV character is key. Your audience lives or dies entirely on how much they want to see that POV character put into situations. To me, Chen Shi is a rousing success at this. He's not stupid! He's just extremely sheltered and on his own for the first time in his ife. He's the bravest little toaster, the goodest boy who's not going to let the little things stop him -- like, say, illiteracy, or a lack of familiarity with city living, or an inability to give any substantial details about the brother he's looking for beyond 'he looks just like me.' That's why he's got his friends help him out!

You better believe that when it comes time to save the day, Chen Shi will do it through the power of how everyone loves him.

And he and the kitty are ... romance? Kind of romance? Romance-adjacent? I could burn even more wordcount explaining the dynamic, but @uovoc has already said it best:

cdrama Li Bing is like: I've taken an inexplicable liking to this simple country boy so I'm going to entrust him with my life's greatest secret because I'm whimsical like that. And cdrama Chen Shi is like: this man is the most beautiful cat I've ever seen.

No matter how romantically you slice it, it's a dynamic I absolutely love: where a guy weighed down by his own past meets another guy who could not care less about that. Chen Shi is Li Bing's chance to figure out who Li Bing is, without the burdens of his family history, connections to the court, job, status, or any of the other things everyone else sees when they look at him. Chen Shi looks at Li Bing and sees Li Bing, whiskers and all.

I mean, Chen Shi makes Li Bing an entire office full of human-sized cat toys. If that's not love, I don't know what is.

And if you're not into besties-to-worsties or the pure and purrfect love between a man and his cat who is also a man? That's okay! I've helpfully made a chart to demonstrate the many flavors of exciting relationship dynamics White Cat Legend makes available to you:

Imagine the possibilities! Make your own fun! And then get over to AO3 and share it with the rest of the class! The White Cat Legend tag is sparsely populated and mostly not in English, and that's a shame, because there's so much smooching potential.

5. Not as dumb as it looks

Wow, that's kind of a backhanded compliment, isn't it? Well, no, not actually. You saw my earlier points about what a bag of goofs this show is. What's easy to miss, though, is how unexpectedly clever a whole lot of its dumbassery is.

A lot of this, I'm going to chalk up to the actors, who on the whole turn in some comedic performances way better than they have any right to be. That's the thing about comedy: to do stupid well, you have to be smart. They're all very funny, and they've got some great chemistry in combinations and permutations. It's a testament to their abilities that you can take any two of them, give them a scene together, and get something worth watching out of it.

Of course most of this is the main boys, but the major supporting characters largely have the same clever sense of comedic timing. Their actors know they're not performing some great work of literature, so they've decided to have some fun with it. I'm not going to praise anyone's performance here as particularly great, but by and large, the recurring cast members are doing solid work.

The aforementioned goofball nonsense also does a fair job of distracting from how creative the show can be. For example, the fact that many of the fights and chases are comedic makes it easy to miss how the fight choreography is often really tight. I don't think the show is trying to hide its moments of cleverness, so much as it's just grabbing them where it can without drawing attention to them.

I know a lot of people gave up on this show only a few episodes in, and I suspect I know why. It's not even that it just takes a while to find its footing -- it never quite finds its footing, on account of being such a patchwork creation. It's an adaptation of an incomplete story, forced to make changes because of budgetary limitations, promising things it's not allowed to deliver on, and further cut down between filming and release. That's what you call having the deck stacked against you. The fact that the final product is not only watchable but downright enjoyable is a testament to how the production got some critical fundamentals right.

In short, it's not just dumb fun -- though it is a lot of dumb fun. But it's dumb fun with just enough to sink your teeth into that it eventually becomes a compelling ratio. I don't blame the people who bailed, but I'm glad I stuck with it.

bonus: It comes in other flavors!

If you like the series and you want more, you're in luck! There's a whole ongoing comic and animated series!

The comic is the original version of the story: a tall vertical webcomic with a cute, distinctive style. It's still being published, and it's very different from the drama. There's a great ongoing translation project at @whitecatlegend, so if your Mandarin skills are as bad as mine (or worse!), you can follow along in English as well!

The donghua is a pretty close adaptation of several parts of the comic. You can find the whole first season at this YouTube playlist, though please note that the playlist is out of order, so you don't accidentally start with episode 8. The translation is ... eh, it's a little rough in places, to put it charitably, but it also makes some charming localization decisions, so I'm all for it. Oh, and here's the second season! It's even prettier and better-translated than the first!

Also, hey, furries? Li Bing's a perma-kitty in both of those versions of the story, so have fun with that.

The drama's casting is spot-on. Whoever picked these boys went out of their way to keep the original artistic vibe as much as possible, to the point where if you'd told me the drama had come first and then someone had drawn a comic starting from the actors' likenesses, I would've believed you.

(And yes, if you've read it, Qiu Qingzhi and Lai Zhongshu aren't technically Qiu Shenji and Lai Junchen, but I'm declaring them close enough for the purposes of this demonstration.)

I have heard that some fans of the comic are unhappy about the live-action adaptation, and I get that, I do -- they are not the same thing. There are plenty of things the drama leaves out where, okay, I understand why that person/event/factor got cut, but at the same time, dammit. In the end, I like them both as very different stories featuring the same(-ish) characters. Still, the drama is definitely not one of those situations where you get to tune in to watch the same things you loved on the page, just in a different medium. The delightfully accurate casting is about where the similarities end. Everything beyond that is its own legend.

Kitty.

Here, kitty, kitty?

The drama's an iQiyi exclusive, so that's where you'll get it.

It's a fun show, not a perfect show. It has some captivating elements and lots of promising nonsense worth thinking about. And like I said, it's a tiny-ass fandom -- a paltry 277 works on AO3, a mere 44 of which are in English. Somebody get in there and make some combination of those boys kiss!

Also, it is criminal that Kitty Li Bing has fabulous red eyeliner that Person Li Bing does not get to wear. Call makeup and fix that.

[asher-agere]

Lately I’ve been trying to get into different kinds of books then just manga and the very occasional novel so I’ve been reading a manhua (Chinese comic) called My Darling is The Cutest and!!! I can confirm the character being referenced in the title is the cutest. It’s a very silly manhua but unfortunately its a webcomic on tapas which means I can only read another chapter every three hours unless I want to grind out the free ink missions to pay for one and thats a pain to do so I just have to deal with it. Qi Ling is an age regressor and Chang Shu is her caregiver please trust (I made this up there’s like nothing in canon pointing to this. Then again I’m only on like chapter 11 and there’s over a hundred chapters so�� there could be something pointing to it!)

Anyways as you probably expect its request time now!! Can you do caregiver Ranpo and little Dazai BUT IN SPECIFIC he regresses to a teenager! Like 14~16. I think teenage regressors (actually, just anyone who doesn’t regress to a baby or toddler) are overlooked in the agere community and I’ve been thinking about ranzai a lot lately (I’m even writing fanfiction about them! It’s platonic though because I wrote it less for ranzai and more because I had an interesting canon divergence idea and I know that nobody will write it in the way I wanted) so hey why not combine the two? I also like teenage regressor Dazai a lot in general. He joined the mafia at like 14 so it makes a lot of sense for him to regress to a teenager!

That sounds so exciting! I’m answering this ask so late (╥﹏╥) Meaning you’ve probably had time to read a bunch more! So how’s it looking so far? I looked into it a bit and it seems cool :0 Though what I looked into used some different names- Qi Ling is the one with white hair I’m guessing? She’s so cute hehe

And YES I can do that! I looooove Souheki (Ranzai). I don’t write much for teenage regression since I’m very unfamiliar with it (Certified baby regressor here) but that doesn’t mean I can’t do research >:3

Caregiver Ranpo + Teenage Little Dazai

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺ ˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖ ༻ੈ✩‧₊˚

✦ Like specified in the request, this will be teenage regressor Dazai with an age range of 14-16! Though there will be a heavier focus on 14-15 because that’s the real beginning beginning of his time in the mafia, before he had people like Odasaku and Chuuya making his life even just a tiny bit better. I think Dazai regresses because, the mafia was easily the point in his life that made him accept he didn’t have a childhood. Before that he could convince himself, so when he regresses his teenage years are the only part he feels the need to relive (We don’t know his past but we all know it’s tragic)

₊ ⊹ With Ranpo as a caregiver it’s literally impossible to hide anything, which is perfect! Because when Dazai regresses he’s an absolute menace. Constantly lying, trying to manipulate Ranpo, or just causing general chaos! For example if Dazai steals extra snacks and claims he didn’t, Ranpo knows the truth. Or if Dazai is bargaining to get something he wants, Ranpo can figure out a compromise the little one will agree to! Or if Dazai is pretending to be sad to get out of punishment of any kind, Ranpo can point out how he knows it’s fake! Dazai gets very frustrated

✦ Ranpo is a really relaxed caregiver honestly! He has like, no rules. Not officially at least? The idea of rules intimidates Dazai I think, it caused him to put up those mental barriers and shut Ranpo out, so Ranpo just skips all that hassle! Anything that’s important he simply reinforces. He makes sure to do two meals a day, showers every other day, brushing teeth twice a day, drinking water throughout the day… Standard self care stuff that Dazai would usually struggle with!

₊ ⊹ Whenever they’re going to do something, Dazai is never forced into it! Ranpo always gives him the chance to explain why he doesn’t want to and they proceed accordingly! For example if Dazai doesn’t want to eat because he says he feels nauseous Ranpo won’t force him to! The food can be put away. But if Dazai tries to avoid a shower for example by saying he’d to tired to stand up, Ranpo just sets up a bath for him instead! Problems are addressed, if they can be solved they will be, if not they’ll be avoided for the time being to avoid further conflicts

✦ Dazai absolutely feels like such a bad boy, a cool kid, however he also says things like “Frick” “Fudge” “Darn” Not because Ranpo has said he isn’t allowed to swear? But because any time he’s about to Ranpo just looks at him with a raised eyebrow, and suddenly Dazai decides to use a different word. Ranpo is torn because honestly he doesn’t care one bit if Dazai swears, but he knows not to encourage it, plus he finds it hilarious hearing Dazai’s not so swearing swear words

₊ ⊹ Dazai can push boundaries, but he also had a messed up childhood, so when Ranpo mentioned punishment Dazai got a bit freaked out… However when he was told that his punishment was an early bedtime he relaxed. He went from his quiet shutting down to being whiny and complaining. It’s not a real punishment, nothing that bad. But… He hates it! He doesn’t want to sleep! Especially not early! Of course Ranpo can’t really make him sleep, but Ranpo can make him lay in bed instead of playing and running around. And it’s so mean! Plus Ranpo rubs his scalp super nice and he gets so tired… It’s so annoying!

✦ Dazai refuses to listen to any advice, even though Ranpo is usually (Always) right. For example Ranpo can say it’s hot outside so he should dress light! Dazai puts on ten million layers. Ranpo says that eating a bunch of candy will hurt his stomach? Dazai eats even more! Ranpo says they’ll be going somewhere that might be overwhelming so Dazai should bring noise canceling headphones or fidget toys? Dazai doesn’t need that! (Ranpo brings him things in a bag anyway)

₊ ⊹ Dazai loves going to the arcade! It’s one of the few things he was able to do as a teenager in the mafia that he genuinely enjoyed, plus! Ranpo is the best! Together they’re the ultimate cheating duo. Dazai will mess up other players while Ranpo finds shortcuts and similar hacks for Dazai to use! Overall they’re basically unstoppable. The prize counter is where conflict happens! Ranpo wants all the snacks, Dazai wants the cool toys and trinkets! Eventually they end up splitting the profits, all snacks that Ranpo buys he shares though of course!

✦ Pet names! (I totally didn’t almost forget…) I think mainly just just do nicknames? Ranpo constantly calls Dazai “Daz” or “Zai”, but he’ll also use pet names like “Bud” or “Champ”! Dazai thinks he’s being real mean with his nicknames for Ranpo “Four Eyes” “Snack Addict” “Knockoff Sherlock” Ranpo will lightly argue back to amuse Dazai of course! But he doesn’t get really upset

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺ ˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖ ༻ੈ✩‧₊˚

Hooray for Souheki! They’re so silly I love them

[phoenixtakaramono]

I believe Cheating Men must die is a great story

It adds wonderful twists in existing tropes and genres. The protag isn't perfect but she's great, she likes eliminating assholes, which is valid

It's also interesting how Su Luxia doesn't have an identity issue since she lives under so many identities but I guess she's hardened for the job

For everyone who hasn't read Cheating Men Must Die (comic "Wan Zha Chao Huang" (万渣朝凰) by Shi Dai Man Wang (时代漫王)), this is an open invitation for y'all to read it. Genre: quick transmigration, revenge story. Basically your ex-cannon fodder MC, Su Luxia, is a System agent who transmigrates (isekais/ world hops) into the bodies of women of each world who are wronged by the Male Lead, Female Lead, another canon fodder, author, etc and changes their fate. I forgot how many chapters of the manhua there are presently fan-translated but I believe the current season finale in Mandarin Chinese ends at over 800+ chapters of art. (The link has the MTL English translation, but if you don’t like MTL y'all can also peep at other sites for ENG fan-translations.)

There are a couple of different summaries but I love this summary the best:

Don't you think that all cheating sc*m need to die? Su Luxia, an intern pro working in a transmigration agency, doesn't believe in that. For her, all cheating bastards need to rot in hell before they die. Or else they won't suffer the taste of their own medicine! Using elaborate means, she beats up countless cheating bastards and b*tches. Su Luxia sneers... "People take everything they get for granted. The more they get, the more they don't strive for it. An unrequited love is an example. There is always a sc*m who takes advantage. Since they brought this upon themselves..." She studies her face in the mirror and smirks, "... let them have a taste of their own medicine." System: "You're making that scary face again!" Follow our female main lead, Su Lüxia, who is bound to the Female Lead Counterattack System and transmigrates to several small worlds beating up countless sc*m.

Art bait for y'all who are still hesitating (and some of my favorite arcs, and those that'd surprised me like the arc where she transmigrated into the Second Male Lead):

RE: I have to agree! Ty for the Ask, @bernkastel11! I had a response ready for ya the day I saw this in my inbox and literally typed a long essay with links, but lo and behold tumblr ate it. 😭 But finally I have the motivation for a take 2. Honestly the manhua is a guilty pleasure of mine. The art's great (we definitely see the artist improve over time with each arc...even with the obviously borrowed assets and sometimes janky perspective, hahaha) and I love how Su Luxia is a badass femme fatale (white lotus & green tea b*tch), as well as her friendship with her cute talking hamster System. I also love how the artist is giving variety; it's not all just kicking butt, chewing bubble gum, finding romance. She's become an empress, made a friendship with the exorcist Female Lead, become a mother, led revolutions, survived a death game, became a guy, made a Male Lead yandere and obsess over her to the point of trying to hunt her down in whichever world it is, has some...questionable sapphic overtones, transmigrated into a BL novel, revisited some worlds with reoccurring characters, etc. They satirize a lot of preexisting tropes, and I love it when artists and writers have fun with the meta. I also like how they're slowly expanding on the lore of her interest with previous System agent Zero (the whole reason why Su Luxia became a System agent).

"It's also interesting how Su Luxia doesn't have an identity issue since she lives under so many identities but I guess she's hardened for the job"

The thing about QTs in general is the artist or author usually don't put much emphasis on the consequences of transmigrating so many times into other people's bodies. It's just a staple of the genre (because they're usually portrayed as badass, cunning, and OP, what have you with a strong willpower to assume all these identities, overcome challenges, and not experience dysphoria). So far I think the only writer I can think of off the top of my head that addresses it is: The Exhausting Reality of Novel Transmigration (novel / manhwa). I highly rec it. So far it is one of the few works where they explore that concept of how mentally exhausting it is adopting another person's identity as well as the consequences of "the characters" finding out (it's not your usual "oh, you hopped into my dead daughter's body and assumed her identity? Well la de dah, guess you're my daughter now." No, we're talking about the mother suspecting, finding out, being horrified, and having a mental breakdown trying to exorcise "the evil spirit" who's taken possession of her daughter's body). It also touches on the danger of an ordinary woman transmigrating into the body of a Female Lead in an R18+ novel where the Male Lead is a yandere.

Since you'd mentioned CMMD, I can give you several other links:

Cheating Men Must Die animated audio version of the first few arcs (King of the Phoenix), comes with ENG subs

Mission in Parallel 2022 Chinese short drama (it's the late 1910s socialite arc where she transmigrates as the overweight nightclub owner & wife of the abusive husband who gets seduced by a singer who's also a transmigrator), comes with ENG subs

Cheating Men Must Die (2022)(it's the arc where she transmigrates into the world where she's the villainess and the CEO Male Lead is self-aware, and the author has signed with the evil System trying to kill off Su Luxia so that she herself can transmigrate into the body of her own FL), comes with ENG subs

[ooloongt3a]

I did a really simple fan translation of one of the chapters from the FGO comic anthology manga so that fellow Arjuna enjoyers, like @hasarjunadoneanythingwrong can enjoy this cute lil bean enjoying life hehe.

NOTE: this is translated by Bilibili manhua from Japanese to Chinese, and I merely translated the Chinese version to English for non-profit purposes. All credits belong to Bilibili manhua and the original author of this chapter. Please go support the official ones if you can! If you want to read more chapters, feel free to DM me for the link to access these chapters in Chinese :3

[lazycranberrydoodles]

I hate to ask but who is hua Chang

Hua Cheng is the deuterantagonist of the Chinese web novel Heaven Official's Blessing! It's a historical fantasy novel about gods and ghosts and cultivators (xianxia) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. It's also a gay romance (danmei). The main themes are destiny, love, and what it means to be a good person. It has a comic version (manhua) and one-soon-to-be-two seasons of animation (donghua).

He's an 800+ year old ghost who has a sentient sword made from his own dismembered eye, runs a city, turns his enemies into blood rain, creates silver wraith butterflies and has been devotedly worshiping/pining after his god, Xie Lian, his entire life. This book is the longest hyperfixation I have ever had. So I think it's pretty good (understatement of the century).

I can and have written essay length rants about him but here is a paragraph i wrote a while back about my favorite things about him, to sum up:

His gender probably. The way he looked fate in the eyes and said “fuck you, old man” and built a highly successful life of his own. How he is so fucked up but still hyper-competent. How all his strength comes from love. How his devotion changed as he grew up but never wavered. The way he is kind but not nice. His infodump swag.