#onk rewatch

[aihoshiino]

the character acting for ai in this moment is another reason i will champion the anime's take on this material as being so superior to the manga's it isn't even funny.

the manga doesn't even let us see her face here but the anime gives her this brief inhale of a moment where she briefly looks surprised - almost awed - and then she bursts into tears. To the end, the anime never focuses on the her bodily agony or the spectacle of the violence committed against her - it is necessarily, unavoidably a bit more gruesome than the manga just by the necessity of adding colour to the scene, but it pulls in much more closely on Ai's face, her expressions of joy, relief and release.

because of that, i think the anime really highlights and emphasizes something that is comparatively easier to miss in the manga's version: which is that Ai says these words to Aqua and Ruby expecting them to be a lie. The realization that her love is true doesn't come until she has already said the words and realized they're true.

Ai doesn't say these words for herself - she says them for Aqua and Ruby. Knowing it's the last and only chance she will ever have, even if it confirms her deepest and most horrendous fear, Ai cannot let herself die and cannot allow Aqua and Ruby to grow up without ever hearing that their mother loved them.

But that's just it, huh? Ai's absolutely desperate need to let Aqua and Ruby know they were loved is ironclad proof that she did, in fact, love them in of itself.

[lavendorii]

aqua is kind of a little shit I think (tone pending)

[idontdrinkgatorade]

back to the glory days i guess (binged an entire season of anime today)

[kurocookieemi]

i have mixed feelings about about ONK (i like a lot of the characters and songs, but some parts of the story kinda make me go “ehhhh….”) but i can’t stop rewatching the season 2 OP, the visuals and music are amazing!

[hakucho-art]

What manga are you reading right now? Do you like any manga/anime as much as tokyo ghoul?

Oh hmm, I'm not really reading any manga right now? Keeping up with spoilers for jjk (ughhh) and onk but otherwise...

I don't think anything has given me a stronger brainrot than tokyo ghoul has (or more precisely touken). For me, its the case that something sticks to me if I have a compelling ship to draw and headcanon for. Ofc I also have media that I purely love for its writing and storytelling but it doesnt give me a brainrot that lasts for years JWVDJW

And as of now, no ship has come close to touken ;w; the closest one is nanahachi to me because they KILL me whenever I think of them. I guess I like my ships to be very angsty with a lot of yearning jwvdjv

OH, Nier Automata comes very close but also not animanga. But man. Definitely a game you need to play and not the anime. The anime is cool but I think its much better to have the game be your first experience. It just doesnt compare ajdjwj

Soo uhh right now I'm rewatching Steven Universe (rewatching it as an adult makes me feel so bad for steven all the time omfg) and recently bingewatched fleabag which was amazing. Absolutely recommend it.

[obitv]

rewatching onk i forgot they convinced their adopted mom that they were divine messengers of amaterasu and it was her godgiven duty to look after them 😭

[uros-kana]

Naruto the Movie: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow (onks toi eka naruto leffa emt)

never seen | want to see | terrible | boring | okay | good | great | a favorite

I saw it YEARS ago, but I should rewatch it lmao jesus christ

[aihoshiino]

feeling myself go into some kind of berserker frenzy at the image of ai of b-komachi's fans crowded around the funeral venue, waving around merch and light sticks and making a scene, while ai's actual flesh and blood children have to sit in the car parked away from the venue and aren't allowed to actually attend their own mother's funeral

[aihoshiino]

it's ai's funeral and rather than an image of her as she really was, the photo displayed for everyone to mourn is 'ai of b-komachi'. even in death she very literally cannot ever escape being an idol. she will never, ever be allowed to be a real person.

[aihoshiino]

this is mostly played as a joke but do you ever think about how the twins' instinctive revulsion and rejection of the idea of ai as a human being who has had sex, based not on any parental sexuality squick but entirely on their continued inability to see her as a human and their mother first and an idol last, directly caused the phone call that doomed ai. hahahah. [shrinks and transforms into a corncob]

[aihoshiino]

he poured one for ai so they could drink together now she's 20. hahahhahahhah. [ON THE VERGE OF THROWING UP BECAUSE OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TORMENT]

[aihoshiino]

really like this little bit as a demonstration of what an incredibly good mother ai is. when she first enters the room and sees ruby having fallen over, rather than draw attention to it, she gently helps ruby up and just acts as if everything is fine. it's only when ruby falls over again and goes down with a real bang that she leaps to making sure she's okay and then identifies the issue right away.

[aihoshiino]

i hope whoever had the idea to add this little montage knows how incredibly fucking foul and evil they are

joking aside. this really is such an incredibly addition to the episode. it really feels like a microcosm of all the things i've been saying about the way the anime elevates the manga's source material, both in terms of how it serves the character relationships as a whole and ai's character in particular.

this sequence is clearly evoking the old idea of someone's life flasing before their eyes before their death but even though this is ai's POV, we don't see any moments in her life before the twins' birth or any at all that are without them. and i think that's the point - hoshino ai was born again as a real human being when the twins were born. her life restarted the moment they entered the world and despite everything, she was able to use that new start to create a new family and a new happiness for herself. it's none of the pain or isolation that comes to ai's mind in her final moments - just the pure, all-encompassing joy and love that she and the twins filled each others' days with.

[aihoshiino]

cutting out all the rest of the interview segments only to hit us with this as the singular one retained and retooled for the anime is perhaps one of the most diabolical big brain moves in an adaptation full of diabolical big brain moves

[aihoshiino]

another reiteration of something i've said before but, as much as i understand why the series doesn't touch on this aspect of her character more, i'm so endlessly fascinated and agonized by ai's sense of shame and guilt and the negative relationship she has with her own body and sexual desires, to the point that she is literally apologizing for them to the man who just murdered her for having them.

[aihoshiino]

interesting to see that all the things this girl lays out as being wrong with her idol group are not only things that we eventually find out were rotting at the core of original b-komachi, but that go on to poison the second gen group as well.

as such, it's especially insidious to see miyako, who saw this first hand in original b-komachi and goes on to perpetuate it in gen 2, dismiss it as 'groundless rumors' stemming from jealousy. because, like... that all really did happen! both ai and ruby were unfairly favoured by management because of nepotism and prior emotional investment, to the point that the other members were left feeling unappreciated and unsupported by management. their careers suffered and the resentment created a toxic social environment that harmed everyone... but hey! they were still making money, right?

i think these similarities - and the way miyako dismisses them - are a good reminder that even likable and good people like miyako aren't innocent of perpetuating harm when it comes to conducting business. the entertainment industry is a disease and everyone who touches it comes away infected, no matter how hard they try to avoid contagion