#ocelotrambles

[ocelotlesbian]

rip mitsuba sousuke you would've loved tumblr

[ocelotlesbian]

technically it's not just nene!! he's portrayed as a dog in a chapter of ashk too when he's begging sakura to help him make friends. so it seems the most "correct" answer is that he's a small dog, but yeah rabbits and cats fit him too!! he's just a cute little critter, simple as that

(also if i can inject my own opinion, he reminds me most of a chihuahua. they have loud and high-pitched yaps which fits with his original jp voice in the anime, chihuahuas are a toy breed which fits with his desire to be cared for, and they're really really tiny which fits with his general inability to keep himself from danger. also i'm just rlly rlly biased towards chihuahuas i fucking love chihuahuas)

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It seems that the fandom has firmly decided that Mitsuba is a pooch.

However. There are a few interesting points to be made about this.

Almost every time Mitsuba is drawn as a dog it is from Nene's perspective

So basically Nene views Mitsuba as a puppy

But more importantly, Mitsuba views himself as a bunny:

"Pyon" is the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound rabbits make.

Also Mitsuba just loves bunnys

On the complete opposite side; Mitsuba also exhibits cat-like behaviour every now and then

Natsuhiko seems very aware of this

He mimir

Nene views Mitsuba as a dog, Natsuhiko sees him as a cat, Tsukasa probably sees him as a bird of sorts, and Mitsuba himself thinks he's a bunny.

The moral of the story is no Mitsuba fan is "incorrect" for saying he's any animal, because at the end of the day he's just a cute little abomination of dying supernatural parts.

✧⁠◝⁠(⁠⁰⁠▿⁠⁰⁠)⁠◜⁠✧

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[ocelotlesbian]

this year's mitsuba cake!!!! (*´ω｀*) as always, i am terrible at cake decorating. but that's okay because mitsuba's beautiful face makes up for it <3

[ocelotlesbian]

every day i stand in awe of how aidairo were able to create such a fundamentally perfect character with such potent bittersweet tragedy & rich symbolism that speaks to me on so many levels that it makes me wanna cry. if god is real, i wholeheartedly believe he is mitsuba. anything else simply wouldn't make sense to me <3

[ocelotlesbian]

he's always staring at mitsuba like his life depends on it what's his fucking deal. never beating those allegations i swear to god

can you quit ogling him for one fucking minute oh my god i'm so sick of you faggots. go to hell

[ocelotlesbian]

i just woke up to this news and i feel countless indescribable emotions.... i must watch it as soon as i get the time...... oh autogenerated / autotranslated youtube captions please don't fail me now.....

mitsuba’s va was a guest on the radio show this week HOW DOES IT FEEL TO WIN IN LIFE

[ocelotlesbian]

the horrors may be beyond comprehension to *you*, but they are PERFECTLY comprehensible to *me*. i get the horrors. the horrors are my bff. skill issue

[ocelotlesbian]

i haven't seen anyone post about this still yet so i just wanna say i laughed my ass off at this

HE'S SUCH A FUCKING HATER

[ocelotlesbian]

translated magazine interview with kou and mitsuba's voice actors!!!

DISCLAIMER: i used machine translation so it's probably not 100% accurate, but i still did my best

this took me foreeeeverrrr to do and it cost me six of my own dollars so i hope you enjoy lol :3c

[ocelotlesbian]

oh, and not just that. it's not just that mitsuba was there. it's so much worse. mitsuba specifically pulls *this shit*

"you're all that i have" - kou wants mitsuba to rely on him and to want his presence and to *need* him; he wants to be important to mitsuba above all else

"forget about everything else. think only about me" - this one is especially interesting... kou wants mitsuba to want kou to only think about him. in other words, kou wants him & mitsuba to be completely inseparable from each other, and to be the most important things in both of their worlds. and then there's the big one...

"please die." - um. yeah. we already know kou is fine with the idea of becoming a supernatural for mitsuba to be with him forever, but here we see that he specifically wants mitsuba to *also* want this. he wants mitsuba to affirm this self-destructive idea, so he really has a reason to go through with it. it's basically a fucked up jshk-style kind of way of saying "i want him to reciprocate my feelings"

so tl;dr, one of kou's deepest desires is for him & mitsuba to be together forever, completely inseparable and unable to go on without each other, and for mitsuba to want this just as much as he does.

i'm sure this means nothing

is NOBODY going to talk about how mitsuba was one of kou’s desires in the red house. mitsuba. and kou acknowledged this house gives him what he wants before he found mitsuba. you cant make this shit up. this is canon. this should be grounds enough for at MINIMUM “implied feelings on kou’s side” on the shipping wiki

[ocelotlesbian]

i've been thinking about this for a while, and i wanted to write about it, soooo:

a quick little essay on the two mitsuba variations, 三葉 and ミツバ, and why they aren't as seperate as some may think!

let's gooooo!!! (・∀・)

i've noticed that in the fandom, some people tend to fall into two camps regarding the two different versions of mitsuba: either they don't recognize the differences at all and mix up the two's traits, or they go the extreme route of believing that the two mitsubas are completely different characters who can't be regarded as one character no matter what. personally, i think both of these are wrong, but in different ways, and i want to share my opinion!!

personally, i view sousuke mitsuba & no.3tsuba (the term i use for the supernatural version) as two different entities, but not two different characters, with both of them being two sides of the same character arc coin, if you will. they are fundamentally different in terms of physical circumstance, with sousuke living and dying as a human and no.3tsuba being entirely supernatural, but the core character motivations and personality within the two are the same. after all, no.3tsuba was made with sousuke's soul!!

the main motivation for mitsuba as a character is the fact that he's lonely and wants friends and a place to belong. this carries over between both incarnations of him, with sousuke being the set-up for no.3tsuba's arc and no.3tsuba being an extension of sousuke's arc. you can't have sousuke without no.3tsuba, and you can't have no.3tsuba without sousuke. fundamentally, they share the same struggles, motivations, and flaws, making them function as one character with one shared character arc who simply has two different incarnations/variations of himself!

(example below)

i think it's now also worth going over mitsuba in the new timeline, and the dreams that he has of the old timeline. instead of just one version of mitsuba being present in his memories, both of them are, sousuke *and* no.3tsuba!! and he regards them both as himself, "the me who's dead" and "the me who became a supernatural." they're both treated as equally mitsuba, both just being different parts/versions of him. and if the mitsuba in this timeline is sousuke, and they're supposed to be two completely different people, then why would he have no.3tsuba's memories? to me, this is because they share the same soul, with no.3tsuba inherently being an extension of sousuke mitsuba and his mind. if aidairo regarded them as completely different like so many fans try to insist, i don't think they would have made such a strong connection between the two.

another thing i want to mention is the alternate universes!! within the alternate universes for jshk, mitsuba is always one character, not two, which becomes interesting when you consider that in the alternate universes, mei shijima & no. 4 are always portrayed as seperate people. so, if sousuke and no.3tsuba really were different people like so many fans insist, wouldn't aidairo do the same for mitsuba? so, considering this context, it seems aidairo themselves regard mitsuba & his different versions as one character, instead of two different people like they do for mei shijima & no. 4

(side note: this point was specifically brought to my attention by my beloved mutual @musicalmoritz!! thank you, roxy)

so, in conclusion: despite the different physical circumstances surrounding these two versions of mitsuba, they still share the same soul at their core and are simply two sides of the same coin, that coin being mitsuba as a whole. thank you for listening to my special interest fueled ramblings!!

[ocelotlesbian]

i've been thinking over this aspect of his character for a while now and i think i have enough material to make a post about it, so...

> genderqueer mitsuba!!

an analysis on mitsuba's peculiar gender expression and queercoding! ( ´∀ ` )

full post under the cut!!

before i begin, a disclaimer: mitsuba is canonically a boy, and i'm not trying to say he isn't!! he can be a boy and also genderqueer. genderqueer folks can still identify with the "binary" labels of girl or boy, since being genderqueer doesn't require anything aside from having a queer experience with gender. and as i'll explain in this post, his gender is pretty damn queer!!!

also for the record i myself am genderqueer. lesbian flavor

now, to start off: the immediately obvious.

it's pretty obvious that mitsuba is the most gender non-conforming character in the entire manga. from his medium length pink hair neatly tied up in a little ponytail, to more subtle details like his hands being drawn similarly to that of the female characters & his occasionally drawn bottom lashes, which no other male characters seem to have.

along with his general "you should not ask me to lift heavy objects" demeanor, all these more feminine details serve to make him distinct from all the other male characters in the manga, putting him in a kind of seperate category consisting solely of him.

and this idea of him being in his own seperate category ties in with other important aspects of his character as well!

for sousuke, it ties into how he was ostracized from his peers for standing out too much, and for no.3tsuba, it ties into how he feels alienated from humans & other supernaturals and feels as though he doesn't belong anywhere. if you think about it, it's all pretty analogous with the queer experience!

and going further with sousuke specifically, the turning point of his character arc was his conversation with kou on the stairs, where kou essentially tells him that he didn't have to try and fit into a polite box to make himself more likeable, and he can just express himself the way he wants to. ...i don't think i need to explain how this sentiment could easily be tied in with his queerness and gender expression lol

now i could go even deeper into how queercoded mitsuba's character arc is, but i think i'll leave it here for now.

another thing i wanna go over is the genderswap episode of the after school hanako-kun anime. now, the events of this episode including him didn't actually happen in the manga, so the canonicity is rather dubious. but i still think it's worth going over!!

this episode deviates from the manga by having mitsuba join hanako & sakura in the genderswap shenanigans. in the episode, mitsuba gets hit with the gender reassignment surgery beam and... well, basically nothing happens.

the joke here is obviously the fact he already looks like a girl, so you wouldn't really have to change anything in a genderswap, but the part i find the most interesting is how he himself didn't notice a change whatsoever.

i'm not sure how the specifics of the genderswap robot work, but i'd imagine he'd notice something was up, right? so to me, this scene just hammers in the fact that he's just kind of unnaffected by / outside of most things relating to gender. he's in his own gay little corner, he's immune to this shit!!

so in conclusion, mitsuba's gender is in fact very queered!! his queerness & gender expression is extremely interlinked with his character arc and motivations of feeling othered from the rest of the world, and i just felt like this needed to be discussed. and also i love him lots. <3

end of post!!! thank you for reading my autistic ramblings ^_^

[ocelotlesbian]

i'm always so astonished by how utterly gorgeous aida's artwork is

the way you can sense so much motion from a scene like this that isn't outright portraying movement in the characters is so impressive to me. it's in the subtle details, like the swaying of mitsuba's scarf & the hanging pieces on kou's staff, and the way the illustration is slightly tilted to make the scene just that much more dramatic...

and the background as well!! i love the way adia's backgrounds fit so seamlessly with the characters. both the characters & the environment they exist in follow the same stylistic rules and it's so wonderful and immersive. everything has such a defined texture and it feels like you could just reach out and touch anything in the page

speaking of texture, aida's textures are fucking insane... the hatching, the little scratches on certain objects, the intricacy of how the hair is constructed & drawn... just look at mitsuba's scarf!!! it's so fucking impressive how well aida can convey the knitting just from black & white linework alone

honestly i could go on, but this post is already kinda long... there's just so much love and care and detail in the artwork of this series and it's so amazing and it inspires me so fucking much <3

okay fangirl ramblings over i <3 adiairo

[ocelotlesbian]

jesus isn't that special tbh like tons of dudes were getting nailed to crosses, we only talk about his case because he's a nepo baby

[ocelotlesbian]

ooooug my darling boy <3 my most darling boy in the whole world <3 i luv u <3 ooooug <3

[ocelotlesbian]

OCELOTLESBIAN RAMBLE TIME!!!!!!

first!! they are two seperate entities. no.3tsuba is an amalgamation made of several different supernaturals imbued with the original sousuke mitsuba's mind/soul, so he's somewhat of an "artificial mitsuba," a shoddy replica of his original incarnation

second!!! the "which mitsuba is 'real'" debate is mostly just to represent kou's internal conflict. he can't move on from sousuke and can't accept that he isn't here anymore because he feels like he failed him, but he also cares about the new mitsuba and wants to make his wish come true. he struggles to differentiate the two and decide whether or not he's supposed to move on.

although, it also serves mitsuba's conflict of wanting to be human too!! his entire existence is a reminder of what he could've been and wants to be. he's just a "fake" of a human who already existed, and he knows he can't live up to that expectation

hope this helps!!!! i love analyzing mitsuba so it was fun to write out the thoughts that have been rotating in my microwave brain

What’s the “who’s the real Mitsuba?” debate in the manga about? I thought they were just two different people?/gen