#now where did i leave those scanlations

[calandrinon]

If you are entering the fandom here's are some words of advice and warning- 99% of the fans stick to their own fanon interpretations and its better that way usually, most of the good canon stuff are the more recent things (don't read the super old stuff its not good), and the fandom is still bad and far from perfect but it's better than it used to be and is trying to be better (tho thats not saying much) Other than that enjoy your time here

*steeples fingers, glasses do the Gendo Ikari thing*

So what you're telling me is that I can pick out an aesthetically pleasing combo of blorbos and mash them together with abandon. No don't correct me I must think. Perhaps I have been... too hasty.

(also I'm sure better people than me have made all the good heta-fandom jokes by now)

(thank you anon for another lovely ask)

[somacruising]

One of the things I like the most about Tales of the Abyss is the careful attention to detail the devs did when creating the locations in the game. One of the highlights, for me, has always been Guy and Pere’s room in Fabre Manor.

One of the first things you might notice is Guy’s folded the banner above his head over. Knowing what we know about Guy now, it’s obvious that he did this because he couldn’t stand looking at the emblem of House Fabre. This was the most he could do to get them out of his sight without actually cutting the banner—which would be entirely too suspicious. 

Of note are those swords hanging on his wall, and the little metal trinkets on his desk. While Guy isn’t exactly an engineer himself, this seems to suggest that Guy’s gotten into the habit of tinkering with fon tech during the (likely very scarce) moments of free time he actually gets to himself. It’s a bit more cluttered than the desk on Pere’s side.

Another fun little detail is that Guy is very good about pushing his chairs in when he’s done and Pere leaves his out (lol).

However, the thing that I want to point out the most, that I haven’t seen a lot of people talk about, is that little metal box by Guy’s bed. Considering he keeps it close to him, it’s something very important. What it is is revealed in the Guy Cecil Anthology comic (which you find on the Wings of an Angel scanlation group website if you haven’t).

It’s a little music box. In the brief window we see in this panel, Guy and Luke seem much younger when Luke is giving it to him. We know from the game that Luke has purchased things before, though it was likely through some sort of catalogue where the household staff took care of the transaction for him.

Tear: You can't just take a store's products without paying! Luke: But the manor pays for everything all at once.

Which leads me to wonder if this gift was what got Guy interested in fontech to begin with. It makes me wonder how often Guy would listen to that at night, given it’s right next to his bed.

[danwhobrowses]

One Piece Chapter 1093 - Initial Thoughts

And we are back A week removed from last chapter for a change, it's been a long while

July in fact, 1088 and 89, well 1085 to 89, since then it was consecutive breaks until now.

An Admiral is in the clutches of a Yonko, a giant is awakening and the forcefield is about to go down, so what's next? I'll tell you what's next, the chapter

Spoilers for the Chapter, Support the Official Release too

Koby and Helmeppo on the cover, tarsiers (those really big eyed tiny monkey things) wearing their glasses

Picking up where we left off with Luffy holding Kizaru

Oh man's is winding up for some tit for tat

Man went from throwing lightning to throwing light

The group plan to leave Kizaru to Luffy, but Atlas plans to go down to the fabriophase

It sounds like death flags even if she's there to outrank the authority chip regarding the Mark IIIs

Really reminding you that there is indeed one person in the vicinity of Egghead who can in fact outrank the Vegapunks

Stella wants to come too

Usopp does make a point in that it is counterproductive for Stella to go down to the people who want him dead when they're trying to keep him alive

He calls Franky to confirm that Bonney got knocked off too - also reprimanding him for not protecting Bonney from an admiral who moves at the speed of light

Franky wants to go down to help Bonney, as does Sanji who is with Jinbe stocking up an area, so it's gonna be a big group split

Bonney's presence is noticed by the marines though, as she does leave a path of old and young in her wake

No legging below the lower cheeks but she still gets a hoodie

The Marines have found Sentomaru too

Oh, Sentomaru caught Bonney from falling, that's a chad move

Luffy spots Zoro fighting Lucci too

Zoro denies help though, telling him to focus on Kizaru

Seems that Zoro gauges Awakened Lucci as something he can handle, as he should I mean he is over 1 billion berries

Lucci meanwhile is hoping to get the Yonko No. 2 as a consolation prize so I need this guy to get the Bob Barker treatment (not him dying, the 'neuter your pets' thing)

Also it seems Zoro's pretty chill about seeing Gear Fifth Luffy...

Back with Kizaru and he's about to hit the ocean - Luffy did yeet him pretty far away

The dude can just float above the sea it seems, I mean he is light so he is - pun intended - a wave

He preps his retort with his scatter beam attack

Ah but rather than blasts he has made them all into Kizarus, he's gone full kage bunshin, or would it be hikari bunshin?

He also uses the light sword, scratching Luffy

Dawn Whip passes through the Kizarus, confirming them to be holograms (though surely they're still extensions of his body right? Idk maybe because it's light and not Smoker's smoke or Robin's doubles/giant naked kaiju it applies differently)

Not Luffy running away from the speed of light

He lines up the Kizaru's for a Dawn Stamp, but his foot passes through them all

It might be scanlations but there is 'Booming' in these names so I wonder if there's something to that compared to his moves against Lucci

An explosion makes Luffy realise that Kizaru wasn't even near him through all this, as he has Usopp in his clutches with Nami and Brook on their guard

Bit odd that, Kizaru did a whole thing with Saturn about fighting Sentomaru directly because they resolved to do it, but Luffy resolves to fight Kizaru and he quietly tries to shuffle to the side to try and kill Vegapunk

Of course, Stella isn't there to his surprise

Punk is already off on his wheels, and no respect for the tube tunnel this time

Sanji has also hitched a ride on the side of the Vega Tank 8

Stella's got a face of fury aimed at the marines, he's very focused on saving Bonney

Unfortunately that means he's blind to Kizaru aiming at him

Luffy jumps in and takes the blow, well eating the...nope not gonna finish that sentence...turning into a human jack o lantern

As a glowing god of Luffy shines out, Franky also hitches a ride on the Vega Tank 8, leaving General Franky to Lilith to move the Sunny

News is breaking that the Punks are coming down, but Atlas uses it to command the Mark IIIs to 'eradicate' every last marine

Bit of a strong word Atlas, though she is Vegapunk's personification of violence

Ominous Saturn is Ominous and will likely overrule Atlas

Oda I was literally just praising the fact that it's the first time since June-July we've not had frequent breaks and what do you do? Breaks. More Breaks. What's your address I just want to talk and shadow and marvel and ask as many questions as there are chapters...

But I also want to ask WHERE IS ROBIN? Her absences is becoming more alarming and concerning

It was another fun chapter, it's always fun to see Gear Fifth Luffy fight, it's always so silly but Kizaru may be a perfect opponent for him because he's aloof to the point of silly.

Kizaru does still confuse me though, his clones were unaffected by Haki but light is an extension of his body, when Smoker surrounded Vergo in smoke it still damaged him, when Robin makes clones of herself it's unclear if the damage stacks because sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. It's a small thing but still confusing, and the fact that he tried to dodge Luffy after his resolve about Sentomaru is still weird, can never quite pinpoint his character.

I still feel however that Lucci needs to be humbled, he probably won't since Zoro does seem to have the King of Hell swirls on his swords but still in no department should Lucci be Yonko commander level. What if Hattori just turns into another hulking zoan, like a Tiger, or a Bear or a Gorilla...actually not a Gorilla, not with the minority hunter joke.

But the sidequest to retrieve Bonney makes sense, kinda. Stella going down makes it a wrinkle but Sanji will at least get his righteous chivalry moment probably saving Bonney. I do hope we get something for Franky, they took his mech so the only tools he'll have is whatever Vegapunk has lying around, so there is opening for Franky to finally get some Egghead shine. Kinda hope we pull Sentomaru out too he deserves a little add to the stocks for saving Bonney. We do have to prepare ourselves for Saturn overruling the Punks' orders, perhaps even bringing the Seraphim back into play, but also bringing the sleeping giant into play too because we got nothing out of that cliffhanger, same with Kuma.

I also reiterate that we need 100% more of safe and healthy Nico Robin in these chapters, you're putting us on edge Oda let the woman have screentime and doing something, even if it's downloading all the info from Ohara that Shaka had. Because he was chatting with the Revolutionaries about anticipating his death, you think he would've made precautions? Jinbe, Chopper, Nami, Usopp and Brook could do with something too, for Chopper he will likely have to tend to Stussy but still, gotta make the whole crew show up to the marine blockade. It's also worth reminding that Caribou is on the fabriophase, the dude does like to swipe a hostage like Vegapunk, plus there is still that Blackbeard ship.

But we have another break to simmer on Luffy being a human lamp, I imagine that may become merchandising at some point.

[blazehedgehog]

Thoughts on One Piece?

I've told this story, but since Tumblr search is so awful, I'll tell it again.

The short of it is: I really wanted to get into One Piece. When One Piece started, pirates weren't really a subject you saw a whole lot of in anime. I thought Oda's art style was fresh and cool, too.

I did not like dealing with fansubs. They were kind of difficult to acquire (relatively), and at the time, I had a router that would absolutely crap its pants if I left a torrent running (it would have a firmware crash and all internet traffic would die until you power cycled the device). So the Kaizoku stuff was right out for me from the start.

I forget which came first, the 4Kids dub or Viz launching American Shonen Jump with their version One Piece. I think the 4Kids dub was first, because I remember being angry at Viz for adopting "Zolo" instead of "Zoro." Either way, I was angry about the 4Kids dub, but I was lucky enough to pick up the entire first 12 months of Shonen Jump, and figured that's where I'd start with One Piece.

Didn't have the money to keep buying new Jumps past that first year, so I figured I'd have to slum it with scanlations at least. I believe I left off in the back half of Baratie, and the only scanlations I could find from that part of the manga were like, truly awful quality. I have described them as "third generation Yahoo Groups quality scans." They were dark, blurry, heavily compressed, and the dialog was barely a step above an automated machine translation. I almost wish I could find them again, because it was nasty.

Around this time I think Funimation announced they wrestled the rights to One Piece away from the decaying hands of 4Kids, so I was happy to wait for that. We subscribed to Netflix in those days, the original DVD-by-mail service, so I'd rent each new set as they came out. Got all the way up through Baratie, up through Arlong Park, up to where they visit and prepare to leave Loguetown.

I think by the time the DVDs hit the fifth set, I ran into a problem: physical rental locations like Blockbuster had hard rental deadlines. You had to bring the disc (or tape) back in a day or two. Netflix, famously, had no rental deadlines. Keep things as long as you like.

While I had no trouble getting 1-4, some clown got set 5 before I could, and sat on it. For over a year. I complained to Netflix, and Netflix just shrugged at me.

Within a year or two of that, Funimation officially launched a One Piece website, like my memory is saying it was onepiece.com or something (which it isn't, that's a clothing store), but the point was they were announcing they were going to simulcast subs of the anime, for free, on this site. They were also adding dub episodes to this site, again, to stream for free. Back then, this was pretty unprecedented. Hulu was only a few years old at this point.

I figured: wow! Now's my chance! Go to check the website and...

The free episodes ended at the exact same point I left off at with the Netflix DVDs. Episode 53. It went from Dub Episode 53 straight to Sub Episode 230, which is where the simulcast began. Looking at Funimation's current site, this is what they consider "Season 1."

So I earmarked it. "Maybe I can finish it some day."

Some day never came. One Piece is over 1000 chapters (100 volumes) and 1000 episodes. There is over 430 hours of One Piece available to watch. The manga is so big people have talked about it taking up an entire shelving unit. I even saw photos once of somebody who had their shelf break because their One Piece collection was so heavy.

It took me over a year to read 16 volumes of the original Dragon Ball. There are almost ten times as many volumes of One Piece.

I have given up. I will never read it. Never watch it. Never see it. It's great that it's this amazing thing, truly this long journey, but even at 500 chapters it would have been too much.

Even if I wanted to, it's grown to be such a thing that when something happens in the anime or the manga, there are instantly spoilers for it all over the entire internet. 107 volumes of that is pretty disheartening.

I know about One Pace. One Pace is still too long. Some of those videos are over 20 hours. For a single video. And One Pace still has gaps in their coverage anyway.

It's just not happening.

[silvertsundere]

Silver Talks AniManga (18/06/23)

wao 2 new series this time, tho one of them came out ages ago but just didn't get scanlations past chap 1 til now but anyway also just noticed as I was about to press post but I forgot to put a * on sakamoto and don't feel like remaking the pic again so yeah

green - new series/new to me

Anime

Megumin Ep11

the finale episode's title is gonna be the show's title so that's neat, always cool when they do that anyway, same thing I said about last episode basically, ever since they got to axel there's just been a billion konosuba easter eggs in the background to the point where it doesn't feel like easter eggs in a spinoff and more of a like "hey you like konosuba right right look at this! kazuma and aqua in the background saying the same lines from the show! wow! so cool right?" and I don't like that. like if they just did that once, or even once per ep it'd be fine but it happens every 5 minutes, not just with those 2 but other people like darkness and wiz

Imas CG: U149 Ep10

I was completely right with my prediction last week, expect the ep wasn't about making the song, since it was already done at the start, but instead them fighting upper management to be able to do a live, which they were iffy about cause budget and stuff, so they had to come up with a solution for that. it had a TON of cameos from CG idols whic was very nice. and you might think "oh that's good but you were bitching about the konosuba ones?" but it's completely different. in this the cameos showed during the insert song as panning still shots with the girls talking to them, not just showing a scene that already happened from another pov but whatever anyway good ep ofc, there was even an extra scene after the ED giving a taster of the drama for arisu's episode next week so that will be very good too

Mashle Ep10

after the episode last week I was trying to figure out with mega where the anime was gonna end and went around and looked at the manga and came to this conclusion and I was completely right, and from the episode title it seems like I'll be right about that too. mega thought the end of the anime was gonna be one of the manga spreads with all the divine visionaries but that doesn't happen til waaaay after this so no way, however right after the I0 goon leaves, everyone finds out mash has no magic which would be an appropriate cliffhanger, with s2 getting announced along with the finale of both the anime and manga but we'll know for sure in 2 weeks

anyway, very unimpressive episode, but that's come to be expected

Pokemon Horizons Ep11

what the hell!! nemona got like 4 sentences at the start of the ep and this disappeared.. what's the point!! but anyway nice ep, they teased molly's backstory only to just have it on the same episode anyway which was kinda weird but go off. I expected them to get done with this forest stuff in the ep but it being multiple ones isn't bad either, also from the pv maybe we'll see riko's mom next ep? so that's exciting

Jigokuraku Ep11

nice episode, nothing fancy in terms of animation or anything but still good. was mostly just the choubei and gabimaru fights where they learn tao. now that we're 2 eps from the end I don't think it'll actually end where I predicted previously. from the cliffhanger at the end the next episode should be all of the sagiri and co fight vs the tensen. looked at the manga again to get an idea of where it might end at this rate and after that it's the gabimaru vs choubei fight followed by the second expedition making landfall but that's quite a lot of chaps so I'm not sure.. it would be a good stopping point with shugen arriving being a big turning point but ANYWAY I'll have a better idea after next episode for sure when I see what they cover

Manga

Martial Master Asumi Ch1

the newest series on jump, debuting this week by Kawada the mangaka behind Hinomaru Sumo which was quite successful some years ago. this time around it's a series about MMA, which the english title can be abbreviated into which is a very cool touch from the localization team. anyway, really good first chap, no complaints from me, you can tell that it was made by a jump veteran. the first chap was the introduction of our main character asumi and what is MMA and all that for people who don't know anything about it with a little bit of a taste of action at the end. the grandpa in this has dementia and in just this one chap they did a waaaaay better job of showing what dementia really looks like compared to whatever the hell ichinose was doing. I'll be looking forward to this, I really liked the chap, the art's really good and don't even get me started on how good the main girl is glasses? spats? can kick ass? sheesh, let's just hope this and do retry don't cannibalize each other and instead nue, ichinose or fabricant end instead

VERSUS Ch1 - 6

this is ONE's take on the good ol 1v1 battle manga..or is it? after a plot twist it's revealed that it's actually an isekai! or is it? it's actually more like a reverse isekai^13. it's ONE so you know you can expect some very cool genre deconstruction and this does not dissappoint (yet). I read chap 1 back in january or december when it came out, but there haven't been any english TLs til now, it's monthly too so that's painful. anyway, yeah it's good so far, our protagonists are on the brink of extinction so they try to summon people from another world to help them, while the same people (from 12 different worlds) were doing the same thing at the same time, leading all 13 worlds to get fused into a single one bringing along the enemies of all 13 humanities into the same planet and causing massive chaos. humanity is too weak to fight their respective (or any) enemies so their current plan is to make them fight and kill each other off, we'll see how that goes tho. I really like OPM and mob so I trust ONE fully, looking forward to this continuing. hopefully doesn't get picked up by kmanga (terrible service) or tls will become a lot harder to find oh also the art's really good too forgot to mention

Dandadan Ch110

what the hell that's just [The Hand] anyway mostly action chap, finally seeing momo's side of the fight, tho things didn't go as well as you'd think when we left off. I'm assuming okarun is gonna show up next chap, it'd be perfect timing

Kindergarten WARS Ch16 - 18

you know, up until now I was like "you know it's p funny sometimes and the art's really good I can see why it's so popular" but this mini arc, especially chap 17 and 18 were extremely good. like just wow, I really didn't expect something like this. not gonna hold my breath for a lot more content like this in the like 15 chaps left to catch up but I can hope

Nue's Exorcist Ch6

author introducing yet another girl, this one's here to kill/steal nue's power, that's still not gonna help the series tho chief. I don't like being so negative but I really think this one's going in the U19 club

Kill Blue Ch9

turns out the fight was p goofy, with the baddie trying to put a pacifier on ogami's mouth as the duel but it was a nice chap. at the end of it he came to this realization, which I was hoping would happen so that's good

Do Retry Ch7

good chap, the art felt better than usual too, there were some really nice panels, sadly the series is doing p bad in terms of the rankings being 4th from the bottom this week, and this week MMA started, which is another combat sports manga by a veteran mangaka (hinomaru sumo), which is probably not gonna help it one bit

Witch Watch Ch113

well I was right to think that the confession wouldn't go as planned cause it'd be too easy but I didn't expect that what the hell, even the title had double meaning wild

Blue Box Ch105

another good chap, with some more natsu shamelessness at the end they were debating about wether or not to tell their parents about it and decided not to which I think is good since they're living together and all that. doesn't seem like it'll end any time soon so looking forward to more cute stuff from these two

Tenmaku Cinema Ch10

good chap, curious to see what the director guy is gonna say about the script since he found out about it at the end. sadly tenmaku has not been doing well at all, it was rate last this week and 3rd and 4th from the bottom in the 2 previous issues, which is bad enough that tosh had to do some fanservice on the cover today to try and grab people's attention. I guess the jp crowd just isn't interested in film making, I mean I can kinda see it cause it IS a manga and all but should still give it a chance smh, meanwhile other stuff that's much worse gets to go on for ages

Cipher Academy Ch28

another good chap, got the backstory for toshusai's goon they teased last time and set up the next match. I'm more curious what went on in that pre-match match but we'll get there eventually

Undead Unluck Ch163

seems like we're getting our tournament after all but with the twist that it'll be shen fighting everyone one by one as a way for him to get stronger and stronger, even more excited about this now. I thought we'd see some different matchups but this makes a lot more sense since the union people wouldn't have any reason to fight seriously against each other when the plan is just to recruit shen and beat feng

Mashle Ch160

that's it finn that's the whole series. anyway the final battle is finally over, the anime only has 2 more eps left so I'm expecting 2 more chaps too, it's been a good ride

The Elusive Samurai Ch114

the intermission is over and we finally saw our protagonists again with different appearances too, it's been quite a while. the cliffhanger showed tokiyuki leaving to go join one of the courts, in historical fact he sided with the south to go against takauji so if this does the same we'll have a better idea of what might happen after too (not good things for tokiyuki monka)

Akane-banashi Ch66

very good chap, like always. when the chap started with the master telling her to stop voice acting the different characters and focus on the rakugou stuff I figured this is where it was going but it's still very cool to see. I'm guessing the next chap is gonna be the end of her performance but I could see it taking 2 more. my predictions for the scores from last week still stands tho, but seeing how much she's improved just makes me more excited to see akane perform again

Ayakashi Triangle Ch133

some good lewd panels in this chap but they all pale in comparison to how funny the end was, god shirogane is right suzu is indeed shameless

JOJOLands Ch5

what the hell? jojo on a sunday? I honestly thought it'd be coming out at some point during next week but hey I ain't complaining tho it feels weird for it to be at the bottom here like this instead of in the middle like usual but anyway. good chap, it was cool seeing rohan dominating 3 stand users but it only made sense for the plot if he lost, tho it was nice to see more of how [November Rain] works. quite a bit of lore stuff in this chap too, very curious to learn more about all this stuff, really feels like early p7 and p8 where there's a ton of terms flying around and you don't know what the hell they're talking about lol

[natsspammityspamspamham]

I read a bunch of isekai manga of the villainess subgenre so you don't have to!

Bro, procrastinating during finals season looks different for everyone. Ugh... Okay, so I'm going to go through some of the ones that have already been adapted into anime and what I think of them.

Hamefura

Hamefura is the pioneer of this subgenre of a subgenre when it comes to getting an anime adaptation. This show is what taught me that the whole "isekai" and "villainess" genres were not inherently bad if adapted correctly; in fact, they can be quite good! With an enjoyable cast and an amusing setting, this anime is a lot of fun to watch, and it's no wonder that it keeps getting continuations.

Akuyaku Reijou nano de Last Boss wo Kattemimashita

It's not good after episode 5. I went off about it here. Just read the manga or watch the first five episodes and dip. You're not missing anything.

Manga Territory

Akuyaku Reijou no Tsuihougo!

Ah yes, this is the one that started off this rabbit hole of absolute terror. If you want more information about it, I did talk about it here when asking what the reception of it was (in case people really wanted it scanlated). Anyways, it's cheesy and corny, but the voice-over comic sold me on it. I like how they really incorporate her previous life into the decisions she makes, but they should probably explain why she's so dense to romance (or whether she's rebuffing him), in my opinion.

The decision on whether I'd want it scanslated will probably be determined by both reception and how the story moves (because if they ain't together within the next few chapters, I'm leaving. Sayonara losers)

Tensei Majo wa Horobi wo Tsugeru

This one was fun and all, but it felt really standard out of the batch. It also borrows a ton of ideas from Akatsuki no Yona. While it's about as plain as the previous entry, I actually read this one last, so along with the parody, I got this one. Speaking of Akatsuki no Yona, here are some similarities: Special girl has her life turned upside down by a tragic event and has difficulties with trauma. Boy (non-dragon) comes in and takes her to some place different. Dragon boys start showing up and being added to the... what is now a harem I guess. It's like "Hold on. I've got an idea. Akatsuki no Yona mixed with isekai. The girl is a previous hikikomori too." I mean, I will give credit where it's due, the art is good, but I just feel like reading it was just a deja vu experience.

I find it funny how two male leads in media I've consumed recently have identified as "mothers" of the MCs. Does this mean that girls want someone that will essentially be a mom to them?

Watashi no Oshi wa Akuyaku Reijou.

Now this is a good parody, but I'll have to get back to everyone if it ends up keeping my interesting. Unlike all of the other entries, this one doesn't have a huge "plot". It's basically just a girl pining for the villainess of an otome game, and the result is a mushy, corny, cheesy pile of "What the heck? That's cute!" It does exactly what it needs to do, and the art is amusing! I also appreciate the approach of "Imagine having an otome game where you're not interested in the guys but a side character"

Seijo no Hazu ga, Douyara Nottoraremashita

This one was saved for last because it was a darn blast. This one has the weakest, most disproportionate art I've seen in a while in a manga (where frames don't really move). Unlike manga such as Mob Psycho which has an art style that complements the disproportion, this one does not. The characters look like their eyes need to be reoriented sometimes. Or maybe just start again? But man, what it lacks in art it makes up for in story and humour. This may be listed down as a romance, but it takes a good 16-18 chapters to really get going, but it isn't one of those "slow burn" sort of things. It progresses when it wants to progress, and when it doesn't (or even when it does), it will just full-on mock the situation its in with a heroine who reacts in a way that we probably just might. Also, the fake marriage in this one makes a lot of sense from a plot standpoint. Overall, it was enjoyable and stuck out from the rest, but the cover art is extremely misleading (it makes you believe it will be what it is essentially trying to parody sometimes).

I'm looking forward to that villainess anime with the tsundere and whatnot, so I'm going to read that (hence, I'm reading everything else). I was half-asleep when writing this and reading some of these, so this may have skewed my perception.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Quick outline of the changes in Golden Kamuy Vol 28

So I realize that I’ve fallen behind with this series, but as my liking of the story started to lower and my work instead, didn’t, I ended up neglecting it. Anyway, for who’s interested, here is a general outline of the more relevant changes that take place in Vol 28 compared to the magazine. Note that as usual I won’t dig into minor changes or redraws unless they seem to be relevant for the plot or characterization (or I really like them).

So now let’s start.

WARNING: I hadn’t had the chance to check all the dialogues yet. If I’ll find out there are changes in them that are relevant I’ll update this post as soon as I can. @piduai​ though, translated some of the new pages in which relevant changes took place, so I recommend checking this post. Said so, let’s start.

We spend a moment on the cover, which shows a character who has never appeared on covers in the past, Nikaidou Kouhei.

The pose is dynamic and put in evidence both his prosthetic leg (which is firing a shoot) and his prosthetic hand (which is letting chopsticks fall). Behind him there’s Arisaka with a machine gun and the unnamed guy we saw at the hospital, the implication being that Nikaidou isn’t fighting anyone but he’s still in the hospital.

We then move to the colour page.

which was used for chap 285.

A colour cover that was in the chapters included in this volume and that instead isn’t shown is the one of chap 272.

This volume includes an index page (which uses as image the one of the cover) and a 4 page summary.

This volume counts 9 chapters (normally a volume counts 10 chapters but the previous counted 11) with some changes, additions of extra pages and panels to expand scenes that already were in the magazine version so we can better understand what’s going on and of scenes that are redrawn, either to improve their quality, correct mistakes or add to the plot.

Note I’m not going to add them all but only those which are plot relevant (or that I particularly like). Also no scanlations this time.

Let’s start with chap 272.

Since originally this chapter had a color cover, Noda made for it a black and white cover with the image of the moon Kikuta and Ariko saw when they were trapped in a trench.

Noda then added Kikuta’s face, along with info on where and when the scene is taking place.

He then proceeded to expand Ariko’s tale

The image of the Makiri is also redrawn.

Noda expanded also the following scene which ends up including a flashback to when Ariko discovered the Makiri was in Tsurumi’s hands.

The result of this addition is that it seems that, in the following page, when we see Kikuta pondering, this seems to be because he remembered when Ariko found the Makiri... while in the magazine version we could hope it was because he was worried for Asirpa. As a result I’m not overly fond of the addition of this flashback as it means to add a page and a panel of scenes we’ve already seen.

A scene of Tsukishima and Koito tring to open the door alfter Sofia tossed the bench against it is added.

We also have a new panel of Asirpa, Sofia and Ariko running toward the bottlemobile which, here and there is better drawin. Ariko’s fall is a lot more dinamic and the scene in which he tells Asirpa to run is expanded and better drawn.

We continue with chap 273.

As he did in the previous volume, in this volume too Noda added the right shading to the firemen’s uniforms.

Noda enlarged the panels in the scene in which the soldiers point out how Nikaidou smelled of beer and Koito realizes due to this Tsurumi should have smelled him and Tsukishima while they were hiding under the desk.

The final page is changed so that Koito now doesn’t close the door.

Considering the idea is that, despite everything, Koito will never genuinely plan to cut ties with Tsurumi, the fact that Koito leaves the door open might remark what we will ultimately see in Vol 30, that despite everything Koito was willing to follow him and only wanted him to be sincere with him.

So no, I’ll say the idea Koito would part ways with Tsurumi as most of the fandom hoped was never on the table. Too bad.

To make up for it Noda includes a panel showing Koito under the rain outside the church, watching the door and, through it, Tsurumi.

This implies Koito is, in a way, closed out, not close to Tsurumi as he would like to believe. He doesn’t belong to Tsurumi’s little world, not him nor Tsukishima. For all his devotion, he’s just a henchman to be manipulated and, while it’ll turn out he doesn’t like this, ultimately he’ll still be at Tsurumi’s side because he’ll remain forever a Tsurumi fanboy despite everything.

It’s a pity Koito never grew out of this... but, well, since the story planned to make a leader out of it regardless, I guess it didn’t matter.

Then there’s chap 274.

Noda modified the panel in which Sofia talks with Hijikata so that now we can see her men are with her.

He also redrawn Boutarou and added an image of Hokkaido superimposed with the scenery.

Noda then moved here the scene from chap 279 in which Asirpa checks the skins in attempt to decode Wilk’s message, expanding it a little.

We move to chap 275.

Noda added 4 more pages that shows Sugimoto sleeping and then digs more into his dream/flashback of the past.

As I remember well enough this part, this flashback isn’t something I feel I needed (except for the part that shows Sugimoto wandering), but I understand others might have forgot and so Noda decided to include it.

Noda also expanded the scene in which Kikuta talks about Kaeko. I still find funny how Noda fundamentally refuses to draw Hanazawa in a position different from his death portrait.

Also he cut the part in which Kikuta said that it’s not rare for girls to search for marriage without involving their parents and placed the remaining dialogue in such a way it covered hald of Kaeko’s face.

He expanded the scene in which Sugimoto dresses up as Yuusaku.

The image of the imperial hotel is redrawn.

So we are at chap 276.

Noda adds a flashback image of Sugimoto, Umeko and Toraji...

...and expanded Kikuta’s scolding.

Then he added a scene showing where Sugimoto was standing and in which Kikuta explains the origins of his habit of loothing things.

He then drastically changes Sugimoto’s interaction with Yuusaku.

The remaining interaction goes as in the manga but now Yuusaku is sweating a lot more.

Noda changed things so that, fter receiving his hat from Tsurumi, Sugimoto doesn’t thank him with an admiring look but in a rushed manner and then escapes.

Then chap 277...

...shich is basically unchanged.

And here comes chap 278…

in which the only change seems to be that now Ogata doesn’t wear his hat when he crosses path with Yuusaku (also Yuusaku is now drawn on the right side).

We have chap 279.

In which Yuusaku’s face is heavily shaded when he opens ‘his’ eyes, the next panel basically showing Asirpa in his position, better implying Sugimoto is seeing Asirpa in Yuusaku.

Noda also added a spread showing the scenery.

As the bit of Asirpa was placed sooner, now it’s absent from this chapter and we just have Hijikata saying to wait as he seems to realize something.

And so we’ve reached chap 280.

Noda changed a little the features of the spy who should have received Kikuta’s message and added more details to the poor guy who collected it instead.

Overall scenery and characters are detailed better in the volume.

There’s even a tiny drawn of Ueji when the text in a box mentions him.

We finish with a tiny image of Kikuta and a young Sugimoto thanking the editor.

And that’s all for this volume.

I remember everyone this was a quick overview and I might have missed something, especially in the dialogues which I didn’t really check.

As usual Noda improved it in a relevant manner so, if you like “Golden Kamuy”, you might prefer buying it to the magazine version.

[makeste]

BnHA 326: What’s up Kids, It’s Me, Your Old Pal Stain

Previously on BnHA: Ochako shamed the U.A. Clown Mob into letting Deku go back inside his own fucking school by giving them an hour-long speech about how not to be humongous dickheads. Kouta and Gigantic Fox Lady saved the manga by being the only ones brave enough to give Deku a hug. Shouto was all “man, all this togetherness sure does remind me of that promise you made that we would handle Touya together which you immediately bailed on, doesn’t it, Dad.” Aizawa was all, “for the one and a half people out there who thought that my losing an eye and a leg might actually make me less sexy, I’m very happy to prove you wrong.” All Might was all, “[standing outside the U.A. fortress alone in the rain talking to someone or something??].” Like seriously, what was up with that though.

Today on BnHA: All Might is all “here I am in Kamino having a belated mid-life crisis because Deku abandoned me and I’m a terrible mentor and everything sucks and I hate myself.” Stain is all, “don’t make me come over there and give you a ten page speech about why you’re still the goat while menacingly holding you at swordpoint the entire time” because idk if you knew this guys, but Stain is pretty crazy actually. Anyway so he does that, and then All Might gets all emotional, and then the lady from chapter 92 shows up and gives All Might’s statue an encouraging pep talk, and then Horikoshi is all “and it even stopped raining lol can you believe this shit I’m not even a little bit subtle,” and he really isn’t. But I still got emotional anyway, because seeing people reassure All Might that everything he’s struggled for his entire life hasn’t been in vain just got to me okay. Horikoshi knows I am weak to the All Might feels and he just goes for the jugular every time, that bastard.

lmao. “in the neverending downpour, All Might is...” yeah, thank you, glad we’re getting right to that then

“All Might is driving 95 mph in his busted ass car in the pouring rain, is what he’s doing.” huh

so basically a day or two after his adopted child refused to accept the handmade bento that he packed with love, my man is out here acting like he’s got nothing to live for anymore. this sure bodes well for certain prophecies on which the clock is still ominously ticking down

his fucking face though omg. is it weird that I’m kind of hoping more people ambush him just because I think it’d be funny to see them get their asses kicked like the last bunch

(ETA: or maybe he will just stand there openly not giving a fuck and basically daring them to stab him!! get it together please All Might.)

side note, “anti-hero supporters” is such a strange way of saying “people who hate heroes”, which I’m assuming is what they actually wanted to say?? this makes it sound like it’s a group that really loves antiheroes. “these Hannibal stans have been a real menace lately. time to go deal with them”

ha ha ha, fucking ouch

are you really gonna do it Horikoshi you bastard. are you really going to let that be the final encounter between the two characters whose relationship you once described as the vertical axis of the entire fucking story. are you really gonna?? huh??

huh

you’re telling me you were driving 112 mph and you still didn’t get there in time. you’re losing your touch old man. lol Todo’s ice is almost fully melted already, how late were you

(ETA: so apparently this is taking place after the end of chapter 325, meaning he went to U.A., hung out for a bit, saw the kids come back with his bedraggled half-dead protégé in tow, watched as they shamed the civilians into some long-overdue character development, and then was all “welp, time to go argue with the hero-hating faction or something because I’m feeling useless.” and Edge just let him go, just like that. though to be fair I have to imagine it’s pretty hard to say no to All Fucking Might.)

also belated lol at the fact that the kids were all “yeahhhhhhh we are definitely not gonna touch that thing, let’s just leave it here, he doesn’t need it anyway.” probably the right call to make since they couldn’t get a hazmat team on such short notice

fuck. ha ha ha fucking ouch part two

All Might please put that thing down before you get gangrene. also yeah, you dropped the ball, good for you to acknowledge it. nobody’s perfect and you did your best. but yeah you could have handled a lot of things completely differently. but I still love you

is Horikoshi really putting this flashback here. are you serious. what kind of fucking sadist

look, I swear I’m not one of those people that runs up and down the street shouting “DEATH FLAG!!” at every third panel lol. but this shit screamed Death Flag when we originally got it, and it’s screaming DEATH FLAG!!! even more now. like with the capital letters and exclamation marks and all. and that’s just a fact. I don’t like it but that’s how it is

ffkdjslk

“DID YOU READ THE SIGN??!” Horikoshi asks while zooming in maniacally because he thinks we’re blind or something. lol what

-- though actually, it only just occurred to me that this sign is actually written in English. I never really paid attention up until now and had been assuming it was written in Japanese and translated by the scanlators, but the writing here is clearly part of the original image. anyway so maybe that’s why he’s zooming in?? just to make sure everybody pays attention lol

okay fuck this

see, this is the whole problem right here. once again All Might is all on his own. Deku’s self-destructive angst spiral was fortunately brought to a grinding halt because he actually has support from his friends and family and teachers and classmates. but All Might never had that same kind of support, and it’s made all the difference between the two of them, and not in a good way. Katsuki wasn’t wrong when he said All Might and Deku were both cut from the same cloth. but now when it’s All Might’s turn to go all “I WALK A LONELY ROAD~~” once again, there’s nobody in sight

just, after forty plus years of him carrying this torch, I just wish someone would finally come along to let him know he doesn’t have to. all those things that he wanted to say to Deku are also things that he needs and deserves to hear himself. Aizawa was making a little progress there, but now he’s got his sad zombie cloud boyfriend situation to deal with, and we can’t expect him and his perfect hair to solve all our problems. someone else has gotta step up

oh my god

“you rang?” never mind I take it all back sob

omg why am I laughing. shit

this man truly has the best PR game in the series. we were truly convinced he was gonna suddenly become a good guy and defend All Might against the other villains or some nonsense. as if this wasn’t the same man who decided on a whim that Iida Tensei deserved to be paralyzed, and that his fifteen-year-old brother deserved to die for daring to be upset about it

lol even All Might is all “I genuinely never saw this coming” lmao

just want to say, for the record, I have always harbored a very sensible hatred toward Stain. feeling very vindicated right now. good job Past Me

adsfklwkfsdwgkj

ffffwefjslkg. ghsdlkg. dsfkkkslkjldwkjrg

STAIN: heard you talking shit old man

ME: smh that’s what I thought you’d say you dumb fucking Stain

STAIN: how dare you talk about All Might that way

ME: gljfljgk

(ETA: in hindsight I have no idea how I didn’t clue in sooner that he didn’t recognize him -- or, well, ~didn’t recognize~ him, to be more accurate lol. I think it was the whole “is that a slight against the heroes?” thing that threw me. Viz’s translation makes it much clearer that he’s offended on behalf of All Might specifically, not heroes in general. anyways.)

sob. so All Might is all “yeah I don’t blame you for not recognizing me in this sweet leather jacket”

good thing he still knows how to do this party trick

A+ reflexes on Stain’s part presumably pulling the sword back a few inches to keep this dumbass from impaling himself with his whole pufferfish routine. can you imagine if that was the gruesome death Nighteye foresaw. and he was just too embarrassed to say anything

lol anyways guess I was wrong about Stain everyone

way to fucking go, Past Me. you really biffed this one

oh wait

Stain sure is one wacky rollercoaster ride

oh fuck me lol I forgot how much I did not miss this

(ETA: “this here is the sacred ground where All Might gave up the last of his power and turned into a shriveled old man!! please ignore the part where I admit to knowing all about that, and yet pretend not to recognize said man when he’s standing two feet in front of me.”)

Past Me, I know we’ve had our ups and downs these past ninety seconds, but I’m really starting to think you were on to something. this dude has always been kind of insufferable. always acting like his high horse is a fucking giraffe when it’s actually a Shetland pony

dammit now he’s got All Might going off on a depressed monologue

oh my god my heart

shit

why the fuck does that hit so hard. he became a hero because he couldn’t bear to just sit back and let bad things happen to people who didn’t deserve it. I mean that’s basically the same as every hero ever, right? so why does it still hit so fucking hard every single time though. what is it about seeing someone so determined to stand up for other people and fight on their behalf. it just never loses its impact no matter how many times I see that determination mirrored in so many of my favorite characters

“I wanted to make the world a better place.” omg. but you did, though. like seriously, I feel like people are always dogging on him for not being 100% perfect, and fandom really doesn’t give him enough credit for everything he still managed to accomplish. this man came of age at a time when Japan was by all accounts a total shitshow, and singlehandedly managed to bring about an era of peace that lasted for four fucking decades. can you imagine having peace for that long?? that’s longer than I’ve been alive. shit

and he gave people hope. he inspired them and protected them and made them feel safe. and no, he couldn’t save everyone, because he’s only one fucking dude (and also because the whole time AFO was also out there desperately working to undermine him so that he could keep preaching his narrative of “heroes are bad actually”). but you know what he did do, is inspire multiple new generations of heroes who, if they can all manage to work together, will finally be able to accomplish everything he never could

so yeah. forty years of peace, and inspired the “that’s how we all became the greatest heroes” generation -- that’s a fucking win in my book. talk about having a net positive impact on the world. lol anyways now I’m all fired up and ready to fight anyone who tries to talk any shit about you, All Might

“but what if I talk shit about myself” okay listen up All Might I’m gonna need you to try just a little bit harder to work with me here okay. please calm down and stop blaming yourself for every single bad thing that’s ever happened in the world. do you remember that time Bakugou was blaming himself for Kamino, and you gave him a hug and told him it wasn’t his fault, and that he was only a boy, and that even though he was strong, even strong people can struggle with the burdens they place on themselves, and that you were sorry for not seeing that earlier? do you remember all of that? that’s what I want someone to tell you too, dammit. anyway please stop breaking my heart please and thanks

wtf

are you dead All Might

um

I don’t even have the slightest idea what’s happening lol

oh snap did he grab him so they could hide??

hold the fucking phone. don’t tell me this person in the background with the umbrella is here to actually do something decent??

oh my godddd

and here come the feels. oh boy. okay don’t mind me, I’m just gonna sit here sobbing over this fictional lady and her simple act of kindness in this weekly shounen manga that I care about way too much

FUCKING DAMMIT AND HERE’S A SECOND HELPING

DON’T MIND ME, I’M JUST GETTING DISPROPORTIONATELY EMOTIONAL OVER THIS WOMAN’S DETERMINATION TO HONOR A MAN WHO SACRIFICED EVERYTHING TO SAVE HER AND COUNTLESS OTHERS. I’M JUST HAVING SOME FEELS OVER HERE ABOUT HER HEARTFELT, DOESN’T-EVEN-KNOW-ANYONE-ELSE-IS-WATCHING FEELINGS OF GRATITUDE THAT COMPELLED HER TO COME OUT HERE AND MAKE THIS SMALL BUT POWERFUL GESTURE. I’M JUST OUT HERE GETTING ALL PROFOUNDLY WORKED UP ABOUT STATUE MAINTENANCE AND THE HUMAN RACE. NEVER MIND. JUST IGNORE ME AND CARRY ON

holy shit. I was not even remotely prepared. you can’t just do that to me. you can’t just leave all these death flags on my lawn and then suddenly shift gears to show me the best of humanity in a chapter where I was expecting the worst. that fucks a person up lol

OH ARE WE STILL GOING

my heart. you see that, All Might. your legacy is so much more powerful and meaningful than you think

...has. has Stain actually been giving All Might a pep talk this entire time

I give up lol. this dude is a fucking enigma

YAYYY

it may just be a metaphor panel, but I’ll take it lol. I missed them. nice to see the traffic light trio front and off-center. I know the whole “this is the story of how we all became the greatest heroes” thing had left some questioning whether certain characters would continue to play a central role in the narrative, and hopefully this will help to ease those concerns just a bit

anyway, so idk if it’s getting a bit chilly down there in hell, but damned if Stain didn’t just give an actual decent fucking speech

I have to say, earlier when I was whining about All Might not having a support squad, I really was not expecting Stain to be the one to come over and pat his head and reassure him that he made the world a better place

-- okay LISTEN

YOU CAN’T JUST COME INTO MY HOUSE AND HIT ME WITH THOSE ALL MIGHT TEARS AGAIN GODDAMMIT THIS ISN’T FAIR. my god. first 317 and now this

holy fucking shit

“I’m just gonna pretend like I haven’t been stalking him for two days and didn’t see the entire Deku bentogate thing go down, and then I’ll give him the whole big speech that I rehearsed, and then I’ll turn around and be all ‘BUT IF YOU’RE A TRUE HERO’, and then I’ll toss him the super-secret AFO wifi password that I stole from Tartarus. god I’m such a badass. fucking give myself chills”

so basically what you’re telling me is that this whole time my “what’s up kids” characterization of Stain from this shitpost has actually been 100% accurate. just want to make sure I’m understanding this right. okay then

“and then I’ll dramatically spin around and be all NOW COME KILL ME BITCH”

it must be so much fun to write Stain. drawing this coked-out maniac who talks like a chatbot that was trained to speak by reading Alan Moore monologues. that must be a trip

anyway so All Might is still crying, the awesome lady from chapter 92 is admiring her handiwork totally oblivious to the batshit insanity going on fifty meters to her right, and it’s finally stopped raining lol

“THE RAIN WAS A METAPHOR YOU SEE” yes, yes, we got it lol. thanks for that Horikoshi. don’t think we needed any help putting the pieces together on that one but I appreciate the effort

so that’s the end! and as I mentioned in another post, I had the count off by one chapter, but next week should be cliffhanger week! so break out your U.A. Traitor bingo cards, friends and fiends. either that or something else happens that I’m completely not expecting at all. which, based on my success rate with Stain predictions, I’d say is more than likely lol

mmm but anyway, so now that the Hug Deku 2021 campaign has finally come to an end, what’s it gonna take to get a hug for my struggling bento-preparing jacket-rocking world-weary death-flag-waving husband who is the worthiest man to ever live and deserves the fucking world, goddammit

[no--envies]

Nightless City – An analysis of Wei Wuxian’s accountability

I’ve come across several takes about the bloodbath of Nightless City that don’t really sit well with me. Some people say Wei Wuxian is totally to blame, others that he’s totally blameless, and I personally disagree with both. I think that, like in many other events in the novel, what really happened is more complex.

(All the translations are by Exiled Rebels Scanlations)

First of all, the text shows us that Wei Wuxian wasn’t completely clear-headed even before going to Nightless City, which is normal considering what he was going through. His whole world had crumbled in just a few hours. Everything he’d done until that moment – the sacrifices he had made for what he believed was right – appeared to be for nothing. He ended up hurting the people most dear to him, and he couldn’t even protect those he had wanted to protect. When he could move again after the three days he spent in the cave immobilized by Wen Qing’s needle, for a while he didn’t even know what to do or where to go.

After he got down the mountain, he stood amid the bushes, catching his breath. Bent down, he propped his hands against his knees for a long while before he stood up straight again. Yet, looking at the wild grasses that covered many of the mountain paths, he didn’t know where to go.

Burial Mound—he’d just gone down from there.

Lotus Pier—he hadn’t been back in over a year.

Koi Tower? Three days had passed already. If he went now, it was likely that Wen Qing’s corpse and Wen Ning’s ashes were the only things left.

He stood blankly. Suddenly, he felt that the world had no place for him, despite how large it was. He didn’t know what to do either.

(Chapter 77)

It’s rare to see Wei Wuxian so utterly lost and miserable. What happened was too much for even someone like him – who always tends to look at the bright side of any situation – to be able to deal with it. Since he doesn’t know where else to go, he decides to go to Koi Tower to retrieve the Wen siblings’ ashes, but he doesn’t manage to do anything before he’s discovered and forced to flee. He wanders without purpose for a long time until he arrives at a city gate where he hears a group of cultivators talking about him with contempt, which triggers his anger.

The longer Wei WuXian listened, the colder his expression grew.

He should’ve understood long ago. No matter what he did, not a single good word would come out of these people’s mouths. When he won, others feared; when he lost, others rejoiced.

He was cultivating the crooked path either way, so what exactly did the years of persistence mean? What exactly were they for?

However, the colder his eyes were, the brighter the raging fire within his heart burned.

(Chapter 77)

We see him come to a very bitter realization: no matter his noble intentions and moral integrity, everyone has already made up their mind about him, he would be made into a villain no matter what he does. Before what happened at Qiongqi Path he had managed to keep a positive mindset, since he was doing fine in the Burial Mounds with the Wen remnants. It wasn’t an easy life, but they were safe, they didn’t starve and Wei Wuxian was free to focus on his research and inventions in peace, creating the Compass of Evil and the Spirit-Attraction Flag. He missed his family, but he also found another one. He had people who loved him and valued him, and whom he loved and valued in turn. All in all, he was content. He thought that as long as he didn’t actively seek trouble, the world would leave him alone. But he was wrong. Jin Zixun ambushed him accusing him of something he didn’t do, and everything spiraled down so quickly he couldn’t do anything to prevent it, until he lost control of his demonic cultivation and killed Jin Zixuan.

In this moment, Wei Wuxian feels completely alone. The Wen siblings are gone, his beloved shijie might hate him for killing her husband and the cultivation world as a whole can’t wait to besiege him. If it had been another time, he wouldn’t have beaten up those random cultivators. It’s not like it was the first time he heard awful rumors about himself. The fact that he reacts so violently here says a lot about the state of mind he’s in. Wei Wuxian is clearly looking for a way to vent his anger, so he takes it out on the cultivators who are speaking ill of him. His rage is justified: not only were they saying malicious things about him without even knowing the full story, but they were doing it cowardly behind his back. However, his reaction is somewhat disproportionate to their offense: one of them gets kicked in the face until he passes out from the pain, while another gets his legs broken for daring to speak up. Although he doesn’t kill them, he does terrorize them and in the end he leaves them there immobilized by the spirits he had summoned (if Lan Wangji hadn’t been looking for Wei Wuxian, who knows how long they would have had to wait to be freed).

After this, Wei Wuxian sees the announcement of the pledge conference and goes to Nightless City. I’ve seen people argue that he was only trying to protect the Wen remnants and that the people who were there had already pledged to kill him, so it was self-defense. But is it really the case? Personally, I don’t think what he did was self-defense. Sure, he tried to discuss first and didn’t attack until he was attacked, but defending himself and the Wen remnants wasn’t the main reason he was there in the first place.

The crowd flung curses at him, but Wei WuXian accepted all of them.

Anger was the only thing that could suppress the other feelings within his heart.

(Chapter 78)

All of his pain, desperation and guilt were too much to handle at once, so he tried to suppress them all with anger, and directed that anger at the people who hated him. Wei Wuxian didn’t go to the pledge conference to try to prevent the siege from happening (since he thought it wouldn’t change anything anyway) or to weaken the Sects’ forces. He went there to vent his anger and frustration. Wei Wuxian is not clear-headed here, as highlighted by this passage:

Wei WuXian spun around to dodge the attack and laughed, “Fine, fine. I knew since the start that we’d have to fight a real fight like this one sooner or later. You’ve always found me disagreeable no matter what. Come on!”

Hearing this, Lan WangJi’s movements paused, “Wei Ying!”

Although he shouted the words, any sane person would be able to tell that Lan WangJi’s voice was clearly shaking. However, right now, Wei WuXian had already lost his judgement. He was already half-mad, half-unconscious. All evil was being augmented by him. He felt that everyone loathed him and he loathed everyone as well. He wouldn’t be scared no matter who came at him. It wouldn’t matter no matter who came at him. It was all the same anyway.

(Chapter 78)

In this moment Wei Wuxian believes everyone hates him and there’s no use trying to convince them otherwise – there’s no use trying to reason with them in a diplomatic way because no matter what he says or does, his words will be twisted to fit the opinions of the crowd. He almost welcomes the attack because this way he can attack them back and vent all his pent-up anger. Wei Wuxian is not behaving like his usual self here. He can’t see Lan Wangji isn’t trying to hurt him because his mind is not lucid. This is why he loses control of his demonic cultivation for the second time, injuring Jiang Yanli.

His shijie is the only one who manages to calm him down a little despite his chaotic state of mind. He manages to stop the corpses from attacking everyone and waits for her to tell him what she thinks of him, if she forgives him or not. However, she dies to save his life before being able to say anything, and the whole situation becomes simply too much for him to bear. All of his emotions crush him at once, so in his already half-unconscious state he activates the Tiger Seal, effectively erasing any chance he might have had to redeem himself in the eyes of society.

The point of this analysis isn’t to blame or absolve Wei Wuxian. It’s very easy to empathize with his anguish in these scenes. What he was going through was incredibly stressful and the root cause (the ambush at Qiongqi Path) wasn’t his fault. Even Lan Wangji says he can neither condemn nor justify his actions, but he’s willing to face all the consequences with him anyway.

I told [Wangji] when I went to see him, Young Master Wei had already made a grave mistake, there was no use augmenting it. But he said… that he could not say with certainty whether what you did was right or wrong, but no matter what, he was willing to be responsible for all of the consequences alongside you.

(Chapter 99)

Wei Wuxian isn’t blameless for what happened at Nightless City. I don’t think he’s proud of what he did and all the people he killed, either. The fact that he destroyed the Tiger Seal after returning to the Burial Mounds is quite telling. He definitely didn’t act in the most rational and clear-headed way, which resulted in a lot of people – including his shijie – to lose their lives, but the point of all this is that Wei Wuxian is human. He makes mistakes because no one is infallible, no matter how heroic, selfless and virtuous. Not even he can be totally immune to all the criticism and accusasions, even though he often acts like he is. Wei Wuxian is a fundamentally positive person, so most of the time he can ignore the bad things that happen to him and focus on the good, but this time his situation was simply too extreme for anyone to be able to stand it.

[kotonoha-ura-translations]

I doubt anyone really cares, but before any of you get confused I’m not a “translation group” I’m just one person. Don’t refer to me as a group or compare me to groups because I’m not a group, everything from step one in the “scanlation process” is done by me alone

And I never finished Fukujuu to Amagami because I wanted to “outshine” Trufflenyan or to “stir the waters” or whatever. 

I literally said right here that it’s because Cecil was severely injured, I cried for days thinking he was going to DIE. He was literally missing a chunk of his neck.

At the time all I thought was “How else can I make money? Maybe people will help out if I finish Fukujuu to Amagami? I’m almost done anyways, and it will bring attention to Cecil and when they see his condition maybe they’ll sympathize... It seems popular, if thousands of people read it won’t at least a few look at Cecil too?”

Cecil is better now, so I took FtA down. Why didn’t I post about this all earlier? Because this is a frickin’ R18 blog I posted all that nonsense to my personal blog, not here. (Not referring to my main translation blog.)

And to further clarify, this is why I think Trufflenyan butchered Fukujuu to Amagami. This is just the first few pages of the first chapter, I’ve starred the incorrect places. I’ll explain why they’re wrong and of course provide the original Japanese pages alongside.

-----

1) どうして日本い狼が？ -> Why are there wolves in Japan?

This just shouldn’t be plural... you don’t look at a singular wolf and refer to it in the plural. “Why is there a wolf in Japan?” is more accurate.

2) ここらで狼犬を飼ってる -> “...raising a wolf in this area...”

狼犬 means wolf dog, literal translation is... wolf dog... They are a real thing.

3) お家戻ろうね -> Go home~

This isn’t a command,  戻ろう implies returning together or is a softer way of speaking. To clarify on speaking ‘softer,’ imagine you’re talking to a child, you don’t say “go home” because it’s forceful and direct but rather “let’s go home okay?” or “you should go home now.” The ~ kind of softens it a bit I guess? It makes the command of ‘go home’ look oddly passive aggressive imo but everyone reads it differently I s’pose.

-----

4) 日付が変わった頃 -> “...returned the next day...”

If you look up 日付が変わった 英語 you’ll most likely find something like “when today becomes tomorrow,” which means midnight when the day ends. 

Rather than saying he came back the next day at who knows what time, he’s actually clearly saying he came back “around midnight.” 

-----

5) 包帯のせいでうまくできないのか… -> Is it because of the bandages that he’s not about to move about...

包帯のせいでうまくできないのか here means something closer to “He can’t do it well because of the bandages?” The “it” implied here means... Masturbation! That’s right, what he means to say is “He can’t [masturbate] well due to the bandages?” Turning that into “move about” leaves out the dirty implication. The translation was kind of confusing for me so I’m not actually sure if the translator is thinking that “moving about” means he can’t move his hands up and down well or what but that’s not my problem.

6) うちの子に何かされたら困るから… -> If anything were to happen to my kid (Angela), then things will get complicated...

This is an okay translation, they even made sure to put Angela in parentheses so the reader wouldn’t get confused, but I don’t know where the “things will get complicated” came from.  困る means “troubled” or “bothered” and I guess things can get complicated because you’ve been troubled, but... In what way will things get complicated? He’s just saying he doesn’t want Iruma to do anything to Angela, because he’ll be troubled by it, no need to... Complicate things! (Hah, I’m not funny I know.)

-----

7) その時俺はあろうことかこの得体の知れない生き物を -> At the moment, I was at a loss as to what I should think of or do for this mysterious creature...

This... is hard to translate so I understand why they failed here.   あろうことか doesn’t mean he’s worried about how to care for Iruma.   あろうことか means something along the lines of “would you believe it?” or “unexpectedly.”  I’ll borrow an explanation from someone on hinative. They explain this phrase to mean そうあってほしくないのに、実際にはそうなってしまった or “I didn't want it to happen, but it did.” So, a more accurate translation would be: “At the time I unexpectedly [thought of] this unknown creature as...” [Next panel] “Cute” “...at a loss as to what I should think of” is inaccurate, he is quite clear on his thoughts as he says right there “かわいい.” He thinks Iruma is cute.

-----

8) 近づいたら噛み殺すぞ! -> Another step and I’ll bit you to death!

This is perfect! It’s a pretty direct translation that even google-sensei can do! Hibari Kyoya even made this phrase popular. And Iruma is a dog, it makes sense that he’d bite something. 

This is just praise for them deciding to keep it literal, I changed mine to “If you come any closer I’ll rip you to pieces!” Because “ripping someone to pieces” seems to be a more familiar English phrase.

-----

9) 新しい犬種と出会えたようなものじゃない? -> Isn’t this something like one of those new hybrid dogs?

I don’t know where the translator got “hybrid dog” from? 犬種 just means dog breed. It’s a proper English phrase, you can even look up “what breed is my dog?” to find out what breed it is. 

A direct translation would be “Isn’t it like meeting a new breed of dog?”

-----

10) 俺を! 犬扱いしやがる奴と一緒にいられるかよ!! -> You!! I don’t want to be around people who would confuse my kind with that of dogs!!

Oh boy... this is a doozy, where do I even start! Let’s provide a direct translation first from DeepL and then from me. DeepL: I can't be with a guy who treats me like a dog! My translation: As if I could stay with a guy that treats me like a dog!

Now that you’ve seen the correct translation, Trufflenyan... where did it go wrong? “I don’t want to be around people who would confuse my kind with that of dogs!!” This went from mistranslation to straight up making a new sentence!

I know I’ve changed a couple things such as 夜這い to “in heat” because there literally is no direct translation that fits, and changing it to something that suits the context more is a good choice, but here... There is a good direct translation that makes sense and properly conveys what the speaker is saying. 

-----

And those are just the first few pages... I’m not gonna waste any more time pointing out the fairly large amount of mistakes Trufflenyan’s group made throughout the remaining chapters because I finally got a day off work and I’m super tired. Anyways. If you’ve read this far then congrats! 

I’ll be working on Arashi no Yoru ni like usual and will probably abandon this side blog for a long time again. 

[actualaster]

Hey just wanted to say thanks for backing up that one person that pointed out demanding x length comments on fics the way that one poster did was done in an ableist way. The notes had several people tearing the guy apart and the OP of that post even misgendered him in the tags so it was really disheartening.

I've got chronic illnesses bed enough where sometimes when they're flaring I'm hospitalized. Sometimes I literally physcially can't comment on fics, and mentally can't even more often, but having them read out helps pass the time and keeps me going.

Posts like that one becoming common really do make me feel like I'm not allowed to engage with fandom or other free writing. Especially when people who try to point out the ableism get torn apart.

So thanks for saying your content is safe and welcoming for everyone and for backing up that that post was ableism.

I also found some nice stories you've written thanks to you commenting on that which is a huge bonus. I really like your writing and now have a new game to try and maybe look in to. The guys you wrote about in the werewolf stuff seem cool and the art I found of them was really pretty.

Anyway, thanks again. <3

You're welcome, anon!

As somebody with multiple issues (mental and physical) I, too, often find that I just am not up to commenting anything coherent--or sometimes even anything incoherent. So I know firsthand how it can just... Suck. Especially if you really want to comment but aren't able to.

And, as the OP shows... there's no agreed upon actual minimum. All those posts that say "just comment extra kudos or a keysmash"? Readers following that advice would probably get a vague post by somebody with the same mindset as the OP about "wow, all these people who can't even be bothered to leave a proper comment, bare minimum X amount, and all they do is keysmash, clearly they don't value authors". :/

I know comments are deeply important to a lot of authors--but there's plenty of ways to encourage comments that don't involve guilt trips and ableism and being passive-aggressive about it, and that are mindful of people who can't comment right away (or at all, as the case may be).

Also, thanks, anon! :D I'm glad you like my writing! That honestly just makes my night to hear!

That said, I just want to give fair and proper warning though--neither of the characters in the werewolf AU setting get a ton of screentime in the game. Explaining beyond that would be massive spoilers, though. If you're interested in the game itself, it's on Wii and PS3 (the PS3 version is part of a 2-game collection), and there's various side materials that are in Japanese. (One of the major ones is a manga, there's a masterpost with links to the scanlations available, but I don't think any of the other stuff has ever been fully translated by anybody?)

[duhragonball]

Battle Tendency Liveblog JJBA Ch.48-52

This is the “Joseph vs. Straizo” arc, so I’ll just lead off with one of my favorite moments from the entire JoJo franchise, when Joseph furiously declares war on Straizo with tears in his eyes.   In the anime, voice actor Tomokazu Sugita delivered this with such intensity that it actually overshadowed the machine gun.

None of the dubs or translations can do it justice, including this panel from the JoJo’s Colored Adventure scanlation project.   This is a faithful translation of Joseph’s line, as far as I can tell, except they always leave off the last part: “宣戦布告だぜ!!”  In romanji, that’s: “Sensen fukokuda ze!!”    And it means  “This is war!!”  

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Last time, we saw the Joestars treating their new friend Smokey Brown, to dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant.   Some mafia jerk caused trouble, Joseph whooped his ass, and then a second mafia guy apologized and shared a rumor he recently heard: Robert Speedwagon was found dead in a Mexican riverbed, apparently killed by a Tibetan monk.  

From there, we see that Joseph immediately realizes that this must have been Straizo, and Erina suspects that it must have something to do with the Stone Masks and the battle with Dio fifty years ago.   Smokey warns Joseph to consider the source, but Joseph is pretty sure it’s credible information, since mafia guys are all about money.   I’m not sure what that has to do with whether he’s telling the truth, though.   Either way, Joseph slugs the guy for just blurting out such terrible news in front of Granny Erina.  

Now, at this point, Joseph and Erina are making all these Phantom Blood references, and Smokey has no idea what they’re talking about.   And I think seeing this panel helped me understand Smokey’s role as a viewpoint character.  When the Part began, it seemed like Smokey was sort of the narrator for the thing, which works because he’s a good viewpoint character, and he seemed to be settling in as a sidekick like Speedwagon and Poco in Part 1.   But shortly after this he just vanishes from Battle Tendency altogether, and then he shows up at the end like it’s no big deal.   I never quite understood that, and I think this is the sort of thing that fuels the “Araki forgot” memes, but it actually makes a lot of sense.  

See, Smokey’s primary function is to be the viewpoint character, specifically for the readers who missed out on Phantom Blood.    BT is a direct continuation of the previous part, in a way that none of the other JoJo parts are.   Most of the main BT cast was deeply affected by what happened in Part 1.   A few of them lived through it, and the ones that didn’t have personal connections to it.    So they constantly talk about Stone Masks and Dio without really stopping to explain any of it.   Well, if you don’t know what they’re talking about, you can take heart in the fact that Smokey doesn’t know either.   So as long as he can keep up with the story, so can the uninitiated readers.  For now, all that matters is that he’s impressed by the Joestars’ great kindness, and he’s intrigued and disturbed by these hints of a tragic past in their family.  

And eventually, Smokey learns just what happened to the Joestar Family, or at least everything that the reader needs to know to follow Part 2.   But that doesn’t happen until near the end, which is why he shows up to hear the secrets revealed.   But for most of the story, he steps aside, because that’s mostly about Joseph dealing with events in the here and now, so Joseph can act as his own viewpoint character.  

But is Speedwagon truly dead?   The story flashes back to the previous night, after Straizo killed his own disciples and clobbered Speedwagon.   They’re in this temple where Speedwagon discovered more Stone Masks, like the one Dio used, but Speedwagon also discovered an immortal man petrified in a stone column.    Straizo was enlisted to destroy this “Pillar Man” with his Hamon power, but instead he wants to use one of the Stone Masks to turn himself into a vampire.  

Before he does this, he reads Speedy’s translations of the writing on the walls of the temple.    The ancient Aztec cultists who built it said that the Pillar Man was immortal and had many powers, but he was vulnerable to the sun, just like the vampires from Part 1.   But the writings warn that the Pillar Man created the Stone Masks because of this weakness, and one day, “when he befriends the sun, the world will be his.”  That doesn’t seem to follow, since the only thing the Stone Masks seem to be able to do is make new vampires, who are just as vulnerable to sunlight as the Pillar Man.   

Anyway, Straizo doesn’t seem to care.   He just doesn’t want to die of old age, and he’s become disillusioned with the Hamon power he has, so he’s turning heel and going full goth on us.   To avoid Dio’s mistakes, he plans to eliminate any witnesses, including Joseph and Erina.  Then he’ll go into hiding and figure out a long term plan, with the rest of the world unaware of his existence. 

You know, now that I write that out, I’m amazed by how similar that plan is to what Dio ends up doing in Part 3.   In Part 1, he set about turning a whole town into zombies, and planning to unleash them on the world without any real agenda.    But in Part 3 he eventually holed up in a swank mansion in Cairo and took great pains to stay hidden while he acquired more power.   Parts 5 and 8 carry that same idea even further, with villains who go to great lengths to cover up their very existence.   

At any rate, we only see Speedwagon pass out in this scene, so it’s unclear whether he actually dies or not.   Really, using Speedwagon in this way is a pretty smart play.   He’s an old man, and he was never going to survive another 50-year time-skip into the next part, so it’s safe to assume that Part 2 is his swan song.   But how will he die, and when?   It could be at the very start, or maybe somewhere in the middle.  

Anyway, Straizo just walks up to a cafe in New York to confront Joseph, and Joseph whips out a machine gun and shoots his ass.   This whole time, Straizo had assumed that the untrained grandson of Jonathan Joestar would be easy pickings, but Joseph’s a lot more skilled with Hamon than he expected, and he’s tricky too. 

As Joseph fires on Straizo, he recalls how worried Erina was about all this.   The story kind of glosses over it, but Joseph seems to have worked out Straizo’s entire plan.   I guess that’s not much of a stretch.   He and Speedwagon were together with a temple full of Stone Masks, and then Straizo turned on Speedwagon.    Why else would he do that, unless he used the Stone Mask to turn into a vampire like Dio did?   And once you arrive at that conclusion, it isn’t hard to figure out what Straizo’s next move would be.    And that’s how Joseph was so prepared for this.    After the shooting stops, Smokey freaks out about Joseph murdering a dude, but Joseph was expecting a vampire the whole time. 

I also like Joseph’s line in the flashback.   Erina isn’t worried for herself, but for Joseph, because it looks like he’s being pulled into this same tragic fate as the rest of the family.   But Joseph resolves to face this head on.    “If this is my fate, then I accept it.”  Pretty sure Will Zeppeli said the same thing when he discovered that he would die saving Jonathan.  

There’s similar “call-to-adventure” moments in the other parts.   Jonathan has his when he accepts Zeppeli’s offer to train him to battle Dio again.  Jotaro has his when he defeats and saves Kakyoin, then learns what’ll happen to his mother if he doesn’t go.   Josuke has his when Angelo shows up and he has to avenge his grandfather.   Giorno kind of always had a hankering to take on Passione, but I think things got serious once he had a choice between killing or sparing Bruno.  There could be no turning back from that point.  For Jolyne, it was the moment she had a clear path to escape the prison but decided to go back in because that was where her enemy was.    For Johnny, it was that one battle where he chose to crawl towards the danger to save Gyro instead of withdrawing to safety.   For Gappy... I’d have to study that a bit.   

But for Joseph Joestar, it’s this moment.  Erina never sent Joseph to learn the Ripple from the Hamon monastary, and she seems to have taken great pains to keep him out of trouble, but now trouble has come to them, and Joseph isn’t about to back down.   

So yeah, bullets don’t actually kill vampires, but Joseph was hoping to destroy his head with some of those shots, or at least slow Straizo down long enough to finish him off.   Instead Straizo reveals that he has the power to shoot high pressure fluid from his eyes, the same move Dio used to kill Jonathan at the end of Part 1.   He calls this “Space Ripper Stingy Eyes” which is either stupid or brilliant depending on your mood, I guess.   He used it to protect his head from the machine gun fire, and then he uses it again to shoot Joseph... except he hits Joseph’s reflection in a nearby mirror, and I guess he didn’t notice the real thing standing behind him.

What makes this fight so awesome is that these two are determined to kill each other, and they each have extremely simple moves to defeat one another, but they have all these tricks and schemes to protect themselves.   Joseph manages to hit Straizo with Hamon, but it does nothing... because Straizo was a Hamon master before turning into a vampire.   He can’t use the Ripple without destroying himself now, but he still knows how to defend against it.   For instance, he’s got this scarf woven from dead bugs, because it conducts Hamon energy far more effectively than his own body.    So it just absorbs Joseph’s attacks and disperses the energy harmlessly away.   

Does it really have to be made of dead bugs?   I feel like Tonpetti just told him that as a prank.   “No, really (snort!) the only thing that works is dead bugs.  (tee-hee!)   It smells awful but you have to wear it (ha!).”

But Joseph has his own tricks, like... putting a dozen grenades on his opponent’s back when he isn’t looking!  Seriously, there was zero opportunity for him to do this.    One moment he steps over Straizo’s body to see if he’s still alive, and the next moment he supposedly planted all these things on his scarf.   I get that he could pull a string connected to the pin without being noticed, but that’s the only part that makes sense about this.   It’s still awesome, though.   If Jonathan had access to explosives, Part 1 would have been a lot shorter.  

I really think this was the battle that set the tone for Stand Battles in later Parts.   Araki loves these off-panel tricks in combat, and they’re a lot easier to explain when all of your characters have magic super powers.   If Joseph had Hermit Purple in this fight, there’d be no problem at all.   He could just use Hermit Purple to snake through the ventilation shafts and hook up all the grenades.   In fact, it’s tempting to suggest that Joseph was unconsciously using Hermit Purple throughout Part 2, but I don’t want to get into that right now.

Anyway, explosions don’t stop vampires any more than machine gun fire.   Straizo’s body is in pieces, but the pieces just slither back together and regenerate.   Wait, wouldn’t his head have been vaporized in that blast?   Also, Straizo spends the rest of this battle in the nude, so we know that stupid scarf is out of the equation.   Why didn’t Joseph just go back in the cafe and finish Straizo off while he was still in pieces?

Again, it’s easy to say “lol Araki forgot”, but I think it’s a lot more sensible to suggest that Joseph forgot.   As clever as he is, he went in with the Ripple, a machine gun, and a dozen grenades, and Straizo had an answer to all three.   He doesn’t want to press the attack because he’s out of tricks.   All he’s got left is another Hamon attack, which means Straizo will see it coming.   Or he’s still worried about the scarf, and hasn’t realized that it’s gone now.    In any event, he’s running away, creating some distance before Straizo can make his next move.

Also, there’s a lot of bystanders gathering around, so it makes sense to take the fight elsewhere.   Some guy named “Bruty” tries to stop Joseph to impress his girlfriend, but that backfires spectacularly.  Was Bruty in the anime?  I feel like he wasn’t, but I don’t want to check. 

The one I do remember is this girl photographer.   Spider-Man hadn’t been invented yet, so in those days photographers just sort of wandered around with their camera, waiting for Spidey to debut.   This exploding vampire diner is the best she could do in 1938.  

I just really like this lady.   There’s a spark in her eye and I just assumed she would end up being Joseph’s love interest by the end of the story.    Well, we’ll get to that.  

Instead, she’s a hostage.  Joseph and Smokey run to the Brooklyn Bridge?   I guess?   It’s a bridge, I’m sure of that much.   Anyway, Straizo catches this lady and takes her with him to intercept them.   He threatens to kill her unless Joseph faces him again.   But Straizo offers to spare Joseph and never trouble him again if Joseph runs away.   This is because Straizo figures that if Joseph chickens out now, then he’ll never be a threat to Straizo in the future, no matter how powerful his Hamon abilities become. 

Joseph tries to call his bluff, but then Straizo rips out one of the girl’s teeth to prove he means business, and Joseph gets furious all over again.  I don’t think he was ever planning to abandon this fight, but he was probably hoping to get Straizo to give up his hostage at least.   Now he’s just pissed, and Straizo is impressed.  Joseph tries to act cool, but he just can’t hide his passionate feelings.    This is in stark contrast to Jotaro, who wagered his own soul in a poker game and bluffed his way to victory. 

So Straizo tries again with the Space Ripper Stingy Eyes, but this time Joseph blocks it with two shot glasses charged with Hamon power, and then he lands the decisive blow.   But before Straizo dies, Joseph demands to know why Straizo dumped Speedwagon and the others in the river.   Not only does Joseph want to give him a proper burial, but he doesn’t understand why Straizo would have dumped them in the river, since that was how Joseph knew to expect him.  

Wait, I thought Straizo wanted Joseph to know he was coming.   Oh well.

Anyway, Straizo explains that he had to do it, because the Pillar Man was absorbing the blood from his victims.   Straizo was worried that the Pillar Man might awaken, so he put them in the river instead to be safe.    Nevertheless, he suspects that the Pillar Man will reawaken eventually anyway, and Straizo now realizes that it will be Joseph’s destiny to face him some day.    Then Straizo just uses the Ripple one last time, and self-destructs. 

It always seemed strange to me that Straizo saw the danger of the Pillar Man and just left things the way they were.   Maybe he planned to deal with him later, or maybe he just didn’t know or care about it until Joseph defeated him, and he felt a moral obligation to warn someone. 

I guess he could have destroyed the Pillar Man like Speedwagon wanted him to do in the first place, but it seems like Straizo didn’t realize that blood would wake him up until after he was already a vampire, and unable to use the Ripple.  For that matter, it remains to be seen if Hamon will work on Pillar Men.   

Anyway, what else is going on?   Oh, yeah, Europe is getting closer and closer to World War II.   The official start of the war is usually considered to be September 1, 1939, but Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, and Japan invaded China in 1937, and Germany annexed Austria and conquered Czechoslovakia in 1938, the year Battle Tendency is set.  So we’re in this weird time period where there’s Nazis in the story, and the British-American protagonist doesn’t care for them, but isn’t trying to kill them on sight.   I’ll be coming back to this topic later on. 

I think the main reason for including Nazi Germany in this story was to draw parallels between their goals and those of the fictional villains.    The Nazis believed themselves to be the “Master Race”, the most “evolved” people, and this made them worthy to rule the world.   Araki notes that they turned to all sorts of sci-fi/occult/fantasy stuff in their war.   Similarly, you have villains like Dio and Straizo turning to mysterious Stone Masks for spooky powers, and then you have the Pillar Man himself, who apparently sought the means to “befriend the sun” and rule over the world.    So the Nazis fit into this theme of trying to claim some sort of supremacy over other beings.  

But what’s their role in this story?   Well, the Germans have an “information base” in Mexico, run by a guy named Stroheim.   He makes pretty ladies shave him with a straight razor, and if he gets a nick he makes them lick the blood off, and then he threatens to cut off their tongues.   Also, he trained his dog to not eat treats until given permission. He’s a sick fuck, is my point. 

Wait, no, my point was that his staff discovered the bodies that Straizo dumped in the river, including Speedwagon, who’s still alive, somehow.      I guess Straizo was going to finish him off but he got in a hurry when he saw the Pillar Man absorbing the blood from the others.  Not sure how Speedwagon survived that ordeal, but Stroheim’s men have been taking care of him this whole time, and he was unconscious until recently, so it might have been touch-and-go for a while. 

            Back in New York, Joseph doesn’t know what this is all about, but he decides to go to Mexico himself to get to the bottom of it...

[untamedunrestrained]

The Untamed and Mo Dao Zu Shi

These past eight days have been surreal.

I have drowned so fully in this story that it feels like I am just surfacing.

On Valentine’s Day, fandom on tumblr reblogged this fanart of WangXian by qulfeeh and I was intrigued. The reblog was tagged with two important key words ‘Wangxian’ and ‘The Untamed’. In the brush of a few keystrokes I came across the Wikipedia page for a show known as the Untamed that was available on Netflix. The thing that stood out was that it was based on a BL novel and that both the very male protagonists were described as each other’s soulmates and somehow that was enough. So, I opened Netflix and after like a second of hesitation I started watching the show and I didn’t stop. I started at eight in the evening and I watched nine episodes in a row which basically meant I was up till five in the morning. What followed seems like a record for me. I finished all fifty episodes of the Untamed in under seventy-two hours.

I put hardly five minutes of thought into my decision to watch this story and ended up dedicating the past eight days straight. The first three days to the live action drama and the past five to reading the novel.

If it isn’t obvious this story is that good.

The Untamed

The Untamed is a first for me on so many levels. I have never watched a Chinese show before ever and that seemed extremely significant to me because China is actually a neighbouring country yet as far as my mind is concerned it might as well be on another planet. Which seems particularly odd considering shows from English speaking countries like the UK and the US are a staple for me which makes these countries feel so much closer though they are geographically on the other side of the planet. Of course, a major factor is the language barrier but another is the political scenario between our two countries and amazingly this show made me realise how much of an impact perceiving different cultures can have on your perception of their people. It has literally opened up a whole new world for me that I have just realised I have never taken the moment to discover. Well, considering this is me we are talking about, how appropriate, that it would be a drama based on a BL novel that unlocked this whole new world for me.

I have tried reading a Danmei novel before which was awful and it completely turned me off the genre but it did have a side effect of educating we about elements of a wuxia novel which made this xianxia world seem a little familiar but even if it hadn’t, I would have still been hooked.

It didn’t take long for The Untamed to find a new fan and I have been obsessing over it ever since.

The Untamed is an amazing drama which revolves around the love Lan WangJi and Wei WuXian have for each other and the plot is so intriguing that you wouldn’t be able to stop even if you tried (I didn’t because that thought didn’t even manage to enter my mind).

It’s a love story and that is undisputable for me, they don’t say it, it isn’t mentioned but there is this palpable force influencing events and you know they love each other. I have somehow really disregarded how much a show can show you stuff without ever explicitly stating it but The Untamed set me straight in that regard. I doubt anyone who watches the show would mistake it for anything but the love story it is.

Wei WuXian was an instant hit for me. He is a lovable, gregarious character always up to mischief but is someone who always wants to be on the side of justice and I have a weak spot for characters with a hard on for justice. He is just such a lively character who keeps smiling all the time that it’s just hard not to fall for him in minutes. His antics and his demeanour are so charming that you’re hooked. He would have easily been my most favourite character in any other drama that doesn’t have a Lan WangJi.

Lan WangJi is an amazing character. In a world, which has become increasing about everyone voicing their opinions (like I’m doing at present) it is hard to believe that people like Lan WangJi exist. People who are quiet, who don’t speak unless absolutely necessary. He is literally the embodiment of tranquillity and more important he is Wei WuXian’s hero. Like literally he protects him like he’s protecting his life which on second thought he definitely is.

I literally had second-hand embarrassment from how obviously romantic these two are.

Hands down the best thing I have watched in 2020 by far! The characters are amazing, the plot is intricate and it is so, so interesting. I watched almost fourty hours of this series non-stop and I don’t remember a single point where I felt like the story became boring for a second which now that I think about it is, is… astonishing. How can such a large drama be so engrossing? This isn’t binge-worthy there is literally no other way to watch the show!!!

Mo Dao Zu Shi

But after coming down from the high of the first seventy-two hours of being submerged in this world, I was reluctant to leave this world so much so that I didn’t even contemplate it. I had a wide variety of media to choose from. The story is based on a web series by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu that was made into a manhua, followed by an donghua, followed by an audio drama followed by The Untamed. It must speak to the universality of the story that the people are willing to read the same story in so many different formats, I know I’m not done.

But, high up on my list was the source material, one of the articles described the show as being extremely faithful to the novel, which made me want to jump on that wagon posthaste, and I agree whole-heartedly. I read the translation by Exiled Rebels Scanlations and what struck me was how the show and the novel were tonally the same. I had switched mediums but it didn’t feel like a different story or like I was reading different characters which is shocking because that’s literally how good the show was at translating words into video.

Differences

One of the startling things about the book is that it really ties up the plot neatly. There are tons of plot points that aren’t as completely resolved on the show as they are on the novel which I only ever realised after reading the novel. A lot of this had to do with how certain details of the plot are different. A classic example that the reason behind the scars on Lan Zhan’s back is different in the two. In the novel, LWJ whisks WWX away from the Nightless City after he massacres and pretty much beats-to-a-pulp the entire alliance of sects. LWJ then has to tend to WWX so they remain in hiding for three days. When cultivators from the GusuLan Sect finally discover the two, LWJ has to defeat all of them to keep WWX safe and that’s why he is given one whipping for every cultivator he defeated. Of course, since WWX dies on the battlefield in the show this couldn’t be the reason behind the scars so they have LWJ defend Burial Mounds which wasn’t all that fruitful considereing the LanlingJin Clan does end up with a lot of WWX’s artifacts, there was no point in defending Burial Mounds as he couldn’t have kept it up in the long run but him going to Burial Mounds after the massacre at Nightless City is important to ensure they story can credibly reveal Lan ShiZui to be A-Yuan. So, yeah differences, the show focuses on the Wen Clan and the Yin Iron while the novel doesn’t have the Yin Iron at all and focuses on Jin GuangYao. But, despite the differences the story still feels coherent between the two mediums mainly because the relationship between LWJ and WWX that is at the core of both remains central to the plot at all times.

The plot of the novel though is extremely intricate and the author does an amazing job of deconstructing it which makes it easier to understand what’s happening while the show in hindsight does get away with sweeping up certain loose ends.

Of course, the kisses and the sex are gone but I will gladly take that cliff scene in exchange. I was actually shocked that the novel actually doesn’t dwell on WWX’s first death at all. Like, we don’t even know how exactly he died in the novel and this was hsocking given how pivotal that cliff scene is in the show.

Characters

Surprisingly though a lot of the roles of side characters were expanded for the show, the novel seems to have delivered a better understanding of these characters. The biggest example for me being Jiang Yanli.

She has an elaborately expanded role in the show which does highlight how deep her bind with her brothers particularly WWX is but somehow she seems like a timid character among a bunch of very strong characters. What the novel does is that it gives you a very realistic picture of her, she might not seem like a significant influence on the story but her impact is far-reaching. The novel doesn’t showcase much of her character but the scenes that feature her in the book are some of the most poignant ones and incidentally those are the same ones that stand out in the show. I feel like novel did a better job of showing off her strength. While, in the show I couldn’t look beneath her timid demeanour the novel manages to showcase the strength of her love. She cares deeply and loves deeply and the novel manages to show you the courage it takes to love someone so deeply. I definitely admire her character more and in fact I’m kind of in awe that someone who appears so traditional was so awesome. It felt easy to dismiss her character but reading the author’s words made me realise that I would be very, very wrong in doing so.

Wei WuXian might be the luckiest guy in the world to have a shijie like her followed by a husband like LWJ who both seem very determined to spoil the hell out of him. I might be experiencing some jealousy right now.

The author somehow manages to imbue her characters with qualities that makes them real and unique. Like WWX forgetting everybody’s face which is a real world problem that I have never seen anybody suffer from in a novel but just the fact that WWX doesn’t immediately bring his old hang-ups in his subsequent meetings with side characters didn’t only have hilarious consequences but made everything that much more intriguing and credible.

This author also does an amazing job of flipping characters. There are very few villains who are black and white in this story. WWX himself is a character caught in the gray of it all, universally reviled for standing up for the right reasons. This is a theme throughout the show and the novel where bad characters might be good and good might be bad but the author endeavours to show us all sides to a character. While this most definitely applies to Jin GuangYao, I’m surprised with how it resonates with Xue Yang who’s relationship with Xiao Xinchen can only be characterized with the words “It’s Complicated”. I don’t actually know what to think of these two Xiao Xingchen was definitely betrayed but can we ignore the fact that he found himself a companion in Xue Yang his sworn enemy and Xue Yang’s feelings for Xiao Xingchen are enough to drive me crazy. This guy has no idea how frustrating he is, that piece of candy clenched in his fist will drive me crazy for the rest of my life. The entire Yi City Arc is a big mess of grey there are no whites and blacks and the show underscores that with this quote –

Once upon a time, there was a little child who liked sweets very much. But because he had no parents nor money, he could never have such things. So he’d been dreaming if only someone could give him a candy every day.

Don’t even get me started on the music that plays in the background when this quote is being narrated.

There are just so many amazing things about the show and the novel. I mean the show might have actually worked harder to make things more romantic and one scene that I’m surprised isn’t from the book is the lantern scene with both of them making pledges like that particular scene neatly underlined who WWX is and would become. The hand-fastening scene is also not from the book but then there are other scenes and other delights to be found in the novels.

This story is definitely worth reading and watching for years to come. If anyone has any apprehensions about the novel I will be glad to clarify but the everything about “The Untamed” and “Mo Dao Zu Shi” stand in the same breath.

[noragami-ru-manga]

Soul summoning and Father’s return from Yomi

For someone who supposedly hates Father, I sure talk a lot about him, huh

While I was flipping through the pages of the manga, I once again came to a stop at the soul summoning scene in chapter 37. Specifically at Nora’s tale about Father escaping from Yomi, which I, apparently, did not pay due attention to.

I’ve never had a single opinion on how Father got in and out of Yomi, so I toyed with a few.

1. When Father was still human, he was already interested in researching ayakashi (like Ebisu, for example), somehow learned about the kotonoha (the Word of Yomi) and decided to get one for himself. He voluntarily ventured into Yomi but asked the pock-marked girl to soul call him beforehand, and she did just that.  

2. The pock-marked girl died, and Father got mad at the gods for being directly or indirectly involved. He went to Yomi to get her back, stumbled upon Izanami, saw the brushes in action, and either stole or wheedled out one of them.

3. Father was the one who died while the pock-marked girl lived. While in Yomi, Father encountered Izanami, learned about the brushes, and got his hands on one of them.

In this post I want to examine the last option – the one in which Father died and was resurrected by that girl of his through soul summoning.

First of all, let me remind you that soul summoning isn’t something Adachitoka came up with specifically for Noragami, but an actual Japanese tradition.

I think it’s reasonable to assume that whatever exists in our world is also a thing in Noragami universe. All the locations that we see in the series, specifically shrines, are real places (with the exception of the characters’ houses, Takamagahara and Yomi, obviously).  This means that the tradition of soul summoning can easily exist in-universe.

Maybe it’s just me (or the translation), but the way Kofuku talks about soul summoning seems to imply that she knows what it is and expects others to know about it, too. Apparently, they just never thought of using it on a god because it’s a human tradition.

And it goes against everything both Father and Amaterasu say.

Amaterasu says humans can’t (mustn’t) come back to life at all, Father implies he is the only one who’s managed to return from Yomi/come back to life. How do we reconcile these statements with people climbing on roofs and staring down wells trying to revive their loved ones? The answer is – people did all that, they just weren’t successful. Except for the pock-marked girl.

I’m absolutely sure she was the one who called Father back from Yomi, thanks to a discussion I stumbled upon here on Tumblr.

@sayaka19fan​ gave an alternate translation of this scene that differs from both the official transalation and the fan scanlation: “Even if he said I was a girl with pock marks I wonder if she was his loved one”. Aka “he was cold to me, even if I had her appearance”. So Father being distant made Izanami question her choice of appearance and wonder if she impersonated the wrong person.

If the girl was alive, then Father not being swayed by Izanami is easily explained, he simply knew that whoever was in front of him couldn’t have been that girl. This rules out her dying first and Father coming to Yomi to retrieve her the way Izanagi came after Izanami (not to mention that this particular scenario would require some other person to call Father’s name). So between the two of them, Father was the only one who got into Yomi.

The thing about Yomi is that it’s unclear whether it’s really a place where people go after their deaths. On the one hand, you have this word “yomigaeru”  - to come back to life = to return from Yomi. On the other hand, there are opinions like this one:

In no ancient Shinto textual source is it explained who exactly goes to Yomi and why. Some historians suggest that the concept of a life after death was not a familiar one to the ancient Japanese and it only took form with the introduction of Buddhism from China in the 6th century CE. Yomi certainly has a very limited place in Shinto thought where a life after death is only vaguely alluded to and where there is an absence of a general concept of punishment and reward for souls in the next life as found in many other religions. The only suffering of souls in Yomi, if indeed there is any at all, is their separation from their living loved ones. The noted Shinto scholar and theologian Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843 CE) explains Yomi and its limited significance thus,

“The old legends that dead souls go to Yomi cannot be proven. Then it may be asked, where do the souls of the Japanese go when they die? It may be clearly seen from the purport of ancient legends and from modern examples that they remain eternally in Japan and serve in the realm of the dead governed by Okuninushi-no-kami. This realm of the dead is not in any one particular place in the visible world, but being a realm of the darkness and separated from the present world, it cannot be seen…

The darkness, however, is only comparative. It should not mistakenly be imagined that this realm is devoid of light. It has food, clothing, and houses of various kinds, similar to those of the visible world. Proof of this may be found in accounts…in which a person has occasionally returned to tell of the realm of the dead.

After death the soul leaves the body and resides in the area of the grave, a fact attested by countless accounts…of both ancient and modern times of miraculous occurrences by spirits in the vicinity of graves…Some say that the soul goes to the filthy realm of Yomi, but there is not a shred of evidence that this is the case”. (Scott Littleton, 94)

Even in the manga itself Yato and Ebisu didn’t encounter a single soul when they were in Yomi, only ayakashi and Izanami’s maidens. Then again, we learned in chapter 86 that where souls go in their afterlife depends on what they believed in when they were alive. So technically, if Father believed that dead souls end up in Yomi, that’s where he could have gone after he died.

Why do I now think that he died and didn’t venture into Yomi as a living person specifically to get the kotonoha? Again, it all comes down to the pock-marked girl. I think that her death could have been, in FMA terms, an “equivalent exchange” for Father’s return from Yomi.

See, gods in Noragami are pretty powerful, I give them that. They can, for example, turn into giant spiders (Ookuninushi) and lightning (Takemikazuchi). And while the series never really explains how exactly Tenjin goes about helping students get better marks, or how Ebisu helps businesses, I’m pretty sure that gods can alter reality to some extent. However, they aren’t all-powerful, and there’s one thing they can do nothing about – death.

Of course, we should take into account that Yato isn’t exactly a god of healing to at least theoretically be able to postpone someone’s death (he can totally do the opposite though). I do think, however, that any other god would have said the same, because this is the one thing the gods cannot change. They can’t postpone death because the circle of life is the nature of things and shouldn’t be meddled with. Not because “Amaterasu said so”, but because that’s how the world is. Who made the world like this is a tricky question to answer, since to extent to which the Japanese cosmogoniс myth is applicable to Noragami, aka what came first, the egg or the hen, is a topic for a discussion of its own.

Bottom line is, if Father came back from the dead, something had to balance that out, and that something was the pock-marked girl’s death. It wasn’t a punishment from the Heavens for his breaking out of Yomi, which the Heavens, apparently, don’t even know about. It wasn’t an injustice that some god committed, ‘cause gods had nothing to do with it all. Father became bitter at the world for taking the pock-marked girl away from him, at the gods who didn’t help him when he needed them, and at humans who created and support those useless gods. The clothes Father was wearing when he was escaping from Izanami are the same ones he was in when he was hugging the girl in chapter 60. If this is how things went, then the effect of his return was immediate – as soon as he came back, the girl died.

There’s one more thing that bothers me about Father – how he’s survived after his return from Yomi, specifically how he changes bodies. It’s hard to tell if he had a body in the scenes from Yato and Nora’s childhood, since Far shore beings can interact with the real-life objects (food, clothes) just fine. All we know is that he’s had the same appearance in Yomi, in Yato and Nora’s childhood, and even now; and also that he doesn’t just possess bodies, but their souls as well. His current “host” Fujisaki is a third year high-school senior, meaning he’s roughly two years older than Hiyori. If Father is reborn in a new body each time, then Yato hasn’t seen him for 17-18 years now. And that Yato has never seen Fujisaki before his father made himself known when he and Yukine were walking down the street is apparent not just from their exchange in Fujisaki’s house

but also from the very first scene Father was in. Yato saw how Fujisaki caught Hiyori, and if he knew that the guy was his father, he definitely would have warned her to stay away. Granted, Yato probably didn’t see the guy’s face, but it doesn’t change the fact that Yato first saw what Father now looks like in the year the events of the manga currently take place – after 2010.

Except we see in the Volume 8 omake that Father collected articles about the “Yatogami miracle” from 2000′s, too – when Fujisaki was barely in primary school. (I don’t know if I need to explain this, but just in case it confuses you. I’m not talking about who and when was collecting the papers. What I mean is that Yato worked as a magatsukami in 2000′’s when Fujisaki was only a child).

Could Nora have been the one to make Yato go back to his work as a magatsukami all on her own on those occasions when Father couldn’t command him, being a grown man in the body of an infant or a child with all the restrictions that come with it (also, gross)?  She was able to deliver him to Father using the masks, but for the most part she was just following his orders. So I’m really curious what Father meant when he said that he “didn’t get to chose”. Does it mean he has to be reborn as a baby each time he dies?  Or maybe two souls are just too much for one body to handle, thus he has to switch them quite often and at the most inconvenient times, so he just uses whoever is available? He had to change schools to spy after Yato and Hiyori because Kouto didn’t live in Tokyo, and he seems to somewhat care about his “sister” and “nieces”. But his being out of Yato’s life for a solid decade after each rebirth (before he at least has some freedom of movement, being a child and all) is too good to be true.

And even though I’ve said we don’t know for sure if he had a body after his return from Yomi, I’ll just go out and say that he had – his own body, no less, the one we saw in Yato and Nora’s memories. He had to be human to have wished Yato into existence in the first place, and since his appearance back then matches his current looks, he could have initially returned into his own body.

After all, time flows differently on the Near shore and on the Far shore. Although so far we’ve only seen that the passage of time is slower both in Yomi and Takamagahara.

Is the opposite possible? Could it be that while Father was in Yomi, very little time has passed in Nakatsukuni, so instead of burying Father the girl tried calling him back and succeeded? It’s a wild guess, but if day and night don’t have a set length on the Far shore, then it means that one day in Yomi can also be shorter than one day on Earth.

In any case, if Father did come back to his own body, it lasted for a while – at least until Yato was a teen.

Another thing that bothers me is how come Yato didn’t know what Father looked like after an entire month of staying in that cottage. Did Yato never look at him during that whole time? Or would Father come to the cottage as himself? We know that his soul can separate itself from Fujisaki’s, but is it accidental or intentional?

Look at his latest encounter with Hiyori.

Father showed himself for a split second, distracting Hiyori and letting the ayakashi bite her. Did he accidentally “slip out” because of his strong emotions, or did he do it deliberately to make Hiyori lose focus and be an easy target for his doggies? The second one is a very Father thing to do, and if he can separate himself from Fujisaki from time to time, it explains why Yato didn’t know he looks like a student now. However, he was Fujisaki when he came to collect Nora after the whole ordeal with Ebisu.

Maybe Yato only saw Father that one time during his entire stay at the cottage – when Father ordered him to go to Yomi. This way it’s possible that Yato indeed never looked at his face. Except chapter 29 seemingly disproves that.

The background to Yato’s thoughts is Father putting down the bucket with purifying water in it. If this is just to remind us that this person is Father, I’m fine with it. But if this is Yato’s memory, something he saw with his own eyes, then it can only mean that Father did not look like Fujisaki then.

TLDR: I think that Father came back from Yomi because the pock-marked girl resurrected him via soul summoning and died in exchange, accidentally or voluntarily. I’m not overly attached to this theory and I won’t be surprised or disappointed if it’s never confirmed. It was just fun to dig into Father’s possible past once more.

P.S. while I was reading the soul summoning scene, the inconsistencies in Amaterasu’s actions and words (“call him like in a soul summoning” – “people can’t come back from Yomi”, “call him by his real name” – “are you the one called Yatogami?”) made me entertain the idea that the girl who helped the gang wasn’t Amaterasu, rather her lookalike. Like her twin sister Tsukuyomi? They weren’t twins according to the Japanese mythology as far as I know, but in other mythologies the sun and the moon are twins *cough  Greek cough*, and we’ve already seen that Adachitoka don’t exactly retell mythology but adapt it however they like. I did cast away the thought since there was too much focus on the sun during the scene, but it’s still a fun little idea.

[seirity]

Chihaya 3 episode 23 reactions and thoughts on Taichihaya: Part 2 - The Confession

This is the second part of my post regarding episode 23 of Chihayafuru 3. If you would like to read the first part of the post please go here.

So after all that build up, it finally happens. Taichi finally gets his opportunity to confess to Chihaya right before the start of the new school year.

Honestly, I think it’s beautiful how meticulous Suetsugu-sensei was with Taichi’s confession. While Arata’s was short and sweet, but completely fitting for his personality, Taichi’s was incredibly detailed.

First and foremost, Taichi’s confession coincides with spring and is done with the cherry blossoms in full bloom. Spring is a special season in Japan, since it is a time of new beginnings, of change, of life, and for people to come together to celebrate the start of a new year. Unlike the west, Japan’s school year starts in the spring. It’s also a period of time that is associated with love and I’ve also seen many references of love blooming between couples during this time period. Coincidence? I think not.

For those of you that would like to learn more about this, here is a very nice blog entry regarding love and spring in Japan.

On the flip side, those of you that are being devil advocates are probably asking me:  But what about the fact that spring is also associated with the transience of life? Honestly, I think this meaning of spring is more associated with what comes after the confession and how it signifies that Chihaya took Taichi for granted. She took for granted how he was always a part of her life. He was always there for her. He was always with her.

Anyways, I digress.

To be honest, in my opinion, Taichi’s confession felt more genuine and more heartfelt than Arata’s because of the way he went about it. He actually confessed that he was the one who took and hid Arata’s glasses back then before telling Chihaya that he’s loved her all these years. Taichi didn’t have to, but he did it because he wanted to prove that he too has changed or grown as a person since his elementary school days. For him, this means he has to come to terms with the fact that he took Arata’s glasses back then, no matter how much Chihaya may possibly hate him for it or how it may change her opinion of him. It’s no coincidence that Suetsugu-sensei follows his revelation with this statement:

“I’ve always.. always... wanted to be someone who wasn’t a coward.”

Then he confesses to Chihaya that he loves her.

Taichi tells Chihaya that ever since they were children, he’s loved her fingernails that she never grows out, her fingers, her hair, her mouth that is always wide open like an idiot, and her smile. Yet before he even tells her this, he’s repeating, “Just kidding, Chihaya. That was a joke. Just a joke.” like a mantra in his mind. Almost as if he was going to give himself a way out before he takes the plunge and goes all in. It’s beautiful because the audience can feel the moment when he realizes he is at that tipping point: the point of no return. It’s heartbreaking and it pulls at your heartstrings.

It’s at this exact moment that Suetsugu-sensei chooses to bring up how Taichi doesn’t like the person Chihaya becomes when she’s thinking of Arata. Suetsugu-sensei chooses this exact moment to give the audience a look into Chihaya’s mind and reveals Chihaya is recalling Arata’s confession. It’s such a beautiful juxtaposition of how each of them have chosen to tell Chihaya how they feel about her.

I’ve always been confused about this ever since I read the manga, but it’s never made sense to me why there are two different version of Arata’s confession.

After the Meijin/Queen qualifying matches:

While Taichi is confessing to her:

The last part of the confession is completely different and it makes me wonder if what Arata says at the Meijin/Queen qualifying matches is what actually occurred, while what Chihaya recalls during Taichi’s confession was her own interpretation of what Arata said when he told her that they should play karuta together in college if she wants to.

Kana-chan did allude to this earlier in the series:

Anyways, it is this beautiful juxtaposition that makes it clear that there is a difference in the depth of their feelings for Chihaya. For me, Taichi’s confession is much more sincere, but honestly, this could also be because he had time to prepare for it. Arata simply blurted out his feelings for Chihaya in a spur of the moment kind of thing simply because of what she said at the moment. He didn’t have the time or foresight to really think about what he wanted to say in his own confession.

For me, Taichi’s confession was a lot easier to understand in the anime than in the manga, since I had the Japanese audio. I’m forever grateful for those who do the scanlations and I know they try their best, but sometimes things don’t really make sense since a translation is done based on the translator’s interpretation of the scene. Chihayafuru is a difficult manga to translate since the subject of the lines are usually not included and it’s not clear to whom some of the thoughts are directed at or from. Animating a series clears up the vast majority of the issues that arise from translating Chihayafuru, not to mention the amazing music and voice acting that comes with it. Speaking of which, both Miyano Mamoru and Seto Asami truly outdid themselves in this scene. The voice acting and the music were both superb and matched the scene perfectly.

Finally, we are now at the most controversial part of Taichi’s confession: Chihaya’s response.

Honestly, 「“感じ”悪いから、聞こえ���－よ」or “’Kanji’ ga warui kara, kikoeneeyo” is a really hard line to translate. Kanji or 感じ here is in quotation marks because it’s not the normal definition of 感じ, which is feeling or sense. 感じ here refers more to the ability of being able to understand the flow of a match because you have extremely good senses, which in karuta’s case is hearing. So in this case, Taichi is essentially saying he was unable to hear what Chihaya said because his hearing isn’t as good as Chihaya’s or good enough to hear what she whispered.

For me, this just makes my heart break because it’s just another layer of misunderstanding between these two as their actions/lack of actions tear each other apart.

While this card did not appear in the manga, I will say I do like how it made an appearance here in the anime. It is the second part of poem #46:

‘Where, over the deep of love, The end lies, I do not know “

行く方もしらぬ 恋の道かな

The entire poem is actually this:

Like a mariner Sailing over Yura's strait With his rudder gone: Where, over the deep of love, The end lies, I do not know.

由良のとを わたる舟人 かぢをたえ 行く方もしらぬ 恋の道かな

It’s a beautiful poem and I actually really like how the translator for the anime chose to translate the last part as “I do not know where this love will take me.”

The English translation done by the University of Virginia is beautiful and echoes the same sentiments as a Japanese explanation for this poem that I found here:

由良の門を渡る船頭が、櫂がなくなって行方も知れず漂うように、将来どうなるとも知れない恋の行方であるな���。 Yura no to wo wataru sendou ga, kai ga nakutemo yukue mo shirazu tadayou youni, shourai dou naru mo shiranai koi no yukue de aru kana.

Just as a mariner does not know where he is going as he drifts down the Yura strait without his oar, what will become of this love in the future and where it will go is unknown. (disclaimer: 将来 or shourai means future in the sense of what will happen soon and not in the far out future/long term.)

The poem is perfect for this scene because Taichi does not know how Chihaya will actually react to his confession or where his love for Chihaya will take him, just as the mariner does not know where he is going as he drifts down the Yura strait without his oar.

For me, the 「ごめん」or “I’m sorry” that Chihaya whispers isn’t a response to Taichi’s confession, but more her apologizing for never realizing his feelings for her were the reason why he couldn’t tell her everything and why he did things alone. This is due to the fact that the first thing she thinks of after hearing Taichi’s confession is this particular scene:

After her flashbacks, Taichi’s confession plays again in her mind and then it finally hits her: Taichi loves her.

I alluded to this in part one of my post, but I would like to reiterate the same sentiments here. I REALLY liked how they animated this particular scene and the timing of the close up has such a beautiful impact. The audience can really feel the moment where it hits Chihaya.

As Taichi leaves the room, the camera pans to Chihaya and we are left with this scene:

The way this scene was beautifully animated further drives this point home because she is shocked to learn that Taichi has been silently suffering all this time because of her. She feels she is the reason why he hasn’t been happy. or hasn’t been smiling. She’s also shocked to learn that the person who has always been a constant in her life loves her. Now for part 3: The aftermath.

[elizabeatrice]

The Simp, The Himbo, and The Bone Man (Chapter 65)

Let’s Talk About JSHK Manga #1

Warning: !!!Manga spoilers up to chapter 65!!! Duh.

Note: I don’t speak Japanese, and I’m using Nikko Scanlations’ translation of chapter 65. Props to them for translating so fast! There’s one mangacap from chapter 60 by Caim, and one from chapter 64 by Ropes of Fate. Ya know what, props to all JSHK fantranslators. Love y’all!

I’m proud of the title. Heheh.

Ok so I read chapter 65 and then proceeded to get thrown on board SS Confusion.

Before we begin I gotta say I’m loving the faces we got in chapter 65. Thanks, sensei.

I wasn’t really surprised that we didn’t get to see hananene or akaoi this chapter. I mean, sensei just impaled my boy and last chapter was angst fest all around so naturally they’re gonna jump to comedy/something lighter in this one because … well, it’s JSHK.

Let’s get chronological.

The. Colored. Art. Is. So. Fricking. Gorgeous.

I love the whole thing with Kou worrying about his friends. Baby boy why you so wholesome can I hug him pLeAsE!

Yokoo and Satou are super cool as well! My baby Yokoo you outshine the morning sun, my son. It’s nice seeing more of them, caring about Kou no less. Gaaahhh the friendship fluff

Apparently this arc is going to delve into the whole ‘friends not telling each other things’. Exhibit A: Akane, Nene, and Aoi. Exhibit B: Satou and Yokoo and Kou.

Heck the tagline of this month’s colored art is ‘no one knows the real me’. Interesting development. I love me some friendship drama.

Yep. I’m loving where this chapter is going. Kou is feeling useless yet again. His brother is away who knows where, Akane is still lovesick insane, and Tsuchigomori won’t tell him the future. Not to mention that Hanako and Nene are missing. Kid’s literally on his own.

Until-

Ey yo Mitsuba how’re ya doin’? It’s very nice to see him caring about Kou, especially after what happened last arc.

And then the simp showed up. I love him.

(By the way isn’t his Raitejou still sealed? How is he conjuring those lightnings? Maybe he was just hitting that apparition with it?)

Finally! Kou meets his broadcasting club trio equivalent, and Natsuhiko meets his toilet trio equivalent. This is something I didn’t know I needed. Thank you sensei.

Now Natsuhiko’s definitely got something up his sleeve, from the way he seemed to prevent Mitsuba from telling Kou who he is (and most importantly, who he’s affiliated with).

Hm … Tsukasa wants No. 6, eh? Ohhh boy.

Mitsuba falling asleep right away lmaoooo. Look at these dumbasses.

And I can’t believe Kou fell for those ‘heroic stories’. Poor Hanako, his two best friends are (lovable) easily-tricked idiots hahaha. I mean, Kou is such a pure soul, bless him and his dog ears and tail. Thank you, sensei. You’ve fed us well.

Then … Bone Man. I actually call him Goat Man, but let’s just stick with Aoi’s lovely nickname (his name is Shinigami-san thoooo).

Interesting development. He be OP af man. The guy literally controls both life and death. Do NOT let that >60 year-old psycho child gets him.

I know it kinda seems like, oh, there’s the glaringly obvious answer to Nene’s lifespan problem. But as we know, there are prices to magic, and Bone Man doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to break the rules. I mean the dude wants to close off boundaries to keep the two shores completely separate, and is willing to sacrifice a girl to do it.

Yeeaaahhh … he’s a bit lawful evil imo, but we still don’t really know him yet, so. Eh.

Then Bone Man dropped this month’s bomb.

Did Nene, Akane, and Aoi just die? What freaking else can you call ‘body decaying, leaving the soul behind’ other than dying?

Not to mention not one (1) kannagi fell into the whole. TWO (2) kannagi fell into the whole, along with a dead boy and a soon-to-be-dead boy. Will that change the equation?

Speaking of dying, remember what Aoi said about No. 6? People who are about to die soon can hear No. 6′s flute? And Nene heard it?

Is this what ‘going to die in less than a year’ means for Nene? Thrown into a hole deep enough to the point of no return, a hole full of giant creepy bugs, her body decaying and leaving her soul behind, and thrown there by her own best friend no less?

This, this is wild.

But Hanako said in Misaki Stairs arc that nothing lives and nothing dies in the boundary. Is this an exception? Does the hole lead to a place outside the boundary? Is it a gate to the far shore (y’know, since there’s no returning from death unless No. 6 intervenes)?

And apparently Aoi falling there was ‘according to plan’? Hm … Aoi didn’t seem to know that the last time we saw her. She didn’t want Akane to drag her with him, remember? She could be lying, I guess. But Akane, Nene, and Hanako didn’t need to be sacrificed too. Maybe she was brainwashed not to care?

See, SS Confusion.

I know we all miss our monthly hananene, but be patient my friends! Sensei are working hard, and, well, this sort of thing comes with the whole monthly update format.

(Guys. Guys. Daydream arc is about 20 chapters long. Thats one year and eight months. It almost took two years to finish that arc. And seeing that this arc is a lot more plot driven than Daydream - which is more character driven imo - I’m kinda scared. Heh.)

Anyway! I enjoyed this chapter and all the dumbasseries featuring Natsuhiko, Kou, and Mitsuba. Really lifts the mood in this condition, ya know?

Feel free to discuss with me if you want to!