#so they massively exaggerated it by making Rain as literal childish* as they could while making Phayu over competent**

[snickerdoodlles]

things i would change in lita if i were in charge:

put Rain in a dorm room instead of living at home

a large part of why Phayu/Rain doesn't work for me is because we don't get to see Rain develop on his own...ever, really. he's in college, but he's living at home, living off his parents' money, still updating his mom on his where abouts like he's in high school. he goes from being closely entwined with/dependent on them to being highly dependent on Phayu. Phayu/Rain didn't come off as "Rain's making stupid and risky decisions but that's part of growing up," which i would've enjoyed, it comes off as ".....no, seriously Rain, can you make this decision?"

moving Rain into a dorm would've given him some much needed independence. even if though he would've still been reliant on his parents financially, there's still the growth that comes from being away from your parents' daily influence, managing your own space, managing your own personal well-being, etc. that would've been Rain's starting point for independent growth. vs canon, where Rain's start in independent growth was an intensely sexual relationship with a highly independent guy (nooot really anything i'm comfortable with myself). Rain can enjoy being coddled/spoiled/etc (which i like! good for him!), but the writers never gave him a chance to figure out who he was on his own, so the relationship as is doesn't land for me :/

more Phayu interacting with the garage family

i really like the glimpses of Phayu's character that we get. he has a lot of contradictions that look like so much fun to explore, but his characterization often gets shuffled to the side in favor of kink. the most interesting Phayu scenes are always the ones where it's not just him and Rain which......really sucks. the Prapai/Sky sex scenes reveal a lot about them as individual characters as well as how they interact with each other. Phayu/Rain sex scenes kinda touch on how they act together, but the main thing they do is tell me more than i want to know about the writers' personal kinks. hell, most of what Rain learns about Phayu as a person is discovered through other people--which is really annoying! i want to be learning more about this guy through his interactions with Rain, not primarily the gossip other people tell Rain. that doesn't happen until like, ep6-7, which is the literal end of their personal arc and mostly spent away from each other. sighs.

more Saifah

quality character, highly underutilized. i love his eyerolls, but the writers never really did much with him to bring him past that point :( i can extrapolate a lot, but canon developed Sig in the second half of the show more than they did Saifah for all of it. Saifah is Phayu's literal twin brother and business partner, and some random architect student got more of a character than him. this is not a complaint on Sig, i fucking adore that guy, but it's a bizarre writing choice.

more kidnapping aftermath

seriously. what the fuck. TWO kidnapping scenarios, the entire reason why i watched this show, and you guys couldn't cut out any of the 1905t59488993e repeated scenes to give me more than 2 minutes of kidnapping aftermath? who the fuck even cares about trucks driving on roads

things i would not change in lita if i were in charge:

Chai showing up to rescue Phayu and Rain wearing a zebra print shirt. sensational. 10/10, no notes

[makeste]

KHR 068: Literal Food Wars

Stay tuned guys, because this chapter features Bianchi’s one and only fight scene, and it’s about six pages long but it’s one of the strangest things that’s ever gone down in this manga.

But before we get to that, this thing opens with one of my all-time favorite KHR jokes! Let’s appreciate it together.

YOU BET YOUR ASS HE HAD A SPARE. And he just WHIPS IT OUT like an RPG character dumping his massive inventory. And Yamamoto is just like, “oh, thank you!” because PAPAMOTO DONE RAISED HIM RIGHT. And his face. Oh my god just look at it it’s perfect.

All in all, a 10 out of 10. Really, we can go ahead and end the arc right here.

Just kidding, obviously we need to continue. At the very least until we find out just what exactly Mukuro is planning on doing with all those teeth!

So anyway, I skipped over it, but it’s important to note that yet again Tsuna is having feelings of guilt over his freezing up and having to be saved by his friends who then end up getting hurt protecting him.

This is beautiful slow-burn character development, so let’s keep track of it as it continues.

It almost seems too easy, doesn’t it? [counts the number of chapters left in this arc] Something fishy going on here.

At this point, poor Ken, who has now been relegated to comic relief status, severely misapprehends the position he’s currently in, and decides to start some shit.

Honestly, he almost even gave the whole game away with that “you’ll die before you see his face” remark. Mukuro really needs to have a talk with him.

An annoyed Gokudera belligerently sprinkles some sand on him (because making his face very slightly dirty, THAT’LL SHOW HIM). An equally annoyed Bianchi tsks at Hayato’s childishness. Clearly, what this situation calls for instead is some light murder in the first degree.

This chapter is off to an excellent fucking start so far.

Reborn then starts hyping Mukuro up again and to be honest he does a pretty good job. But more importantly, he hands the photograph over to Tsuna, so that we, the audience, can get this next page, and presumably scratch our heads in confusion.

“These two Mukuros who look nothing alike… does a trap lie behind its secret?”

Well, let me think. We know that the person that Tsuna and co. think is Mukuro is not actually Mukuro. We also know that Reborn has only one Dying Will bullet left. One trump card; two Mukuros.

Nah, I think it’s going to be fine.

Anyway. Look who’s awake!

Hey, Mukuro actually bandaged him up! And put him in bed. And was just sitting there watching him. Mukuro, could it be you’re actually a nice guy?!?!?!

The answer is no, not quite, since there’s still all that teeth-harvesting and attempted murder and actual murder and kidnapping and wanting to cleanse the world with darkness (we haven’t even gotten to that yet but yeah) and stuff. But watch this space!

Chikusa and Mukuro catch each other up on recent events. Take a gander there at Chikusa’s little exclamation mark speech bubble when he finds out Ken’s been defeated, which is almost identical to Mukuro’s little exclamation mark when Chikusa fell on his face after stumbling back wounded a few chapters ago! The emotionally challenged apple doesn’t fall far from the emotionally challenged tree.

And then Mukuro introduces some ~reinforcements~, and lo and behold:

It’s a two-page spread of antagonists! Which means it’s time for a round of let’s-analyze-the-two-page-spread-using-bullet-points! Man, I love this. It’s been a while.

BIRDS - A.k.a. the literal worst character in the entire series! 100% no hyperbole or exaggeration! That is the correct use of “literal.” There is in fact no one worse than Birds.

CREEPY TWINS - I kind of love them tbh. They’re SO FUCKING DISTURBING and I feel like we never get anything even close to that kind of creepy again afterwards. Except for the Vindice maybe. Fun fact, this chapter came out roughly around 2005, so these guys predate Slenderman. Godfathers of creepypasta right here.

LANCIA IN A HAT - Hey it’s Lancia wearing a funny hat

M.M. - Pretty much the only one of these guys who actually sticks around in the long run. (Not counting Lancia, since as far as I can recall he only makes the one cameo at the end of the Varia Arc and then disappears from our lives forever.) She actually makes it into Tsuna’s nostalgic montage in the very last chapter of the series! But the rest of this chapter is about her, so I’ll hold off on additional comments for now.

BONUS ROUND:

Well, I guess Birds did manage to do one good thing during his fortunately-brief tenure in KHR! Somehow I always manage to forget the origins of this little guy.

Does he really? Somehow I don’t exactly associate the Kokuyou gang with piles of cash (something to do with them squatting in an abandoned mall and constantly seeming to be on the verge of starving to death). Maybe it’s illusionary money. This would have been funny to see if it had actually worked out.

I hope the other Kokuyous get Mukuro a “World’s Best Grandma” trophy for his next birthday.

We then cut over to the small child that Mukuro kidnapped! I’m gonna get whiplash from going back and forth on how evil he actually is in this arc, goddamn it.

Whatever, Mukuro!!!

Okay, so after all of these villain introductions, we finally return to our intrepid group of heroes.

This little hobbit’s feet are tired and he wants to stop and have second breakfast.

So they sit down at some picnic tables and Bianchi once again recalls how much she fucking despises Yamamoto!

“MOVE OR YOU WILL BE MOVED!!”

He makes the greatest fucking faces every time she does this shit, I swear.

There are some comedic bits involving Bianchi just straight up offering Tsuna literal bug soup to eat (like, not even any sort of pretense this time around as to whether it’s actually edible or not). But then, suddenly…!

Yikes.

And of course, Tsuna naturally just assumes Bianchi’s food did that on its own, which. Yeah, that would normally check out. But Bianchi says it wasn’t her!

I don’t have any of the Viz-translated volumes but I wonder what they turned this “oh shi—” into. I’m feeling like they would have gone with a good old-fashioned, nonsensical “Cowabunga!”

Okay but apparently M.M., just like Ken before her, for whatever reason has decided it’s better to just dick around and not actually go for the kill. Because I have to assume that if she could do that to a lunch box, she could do it to a person instead. So I guess everyone should be thankful that their opponent isn’t quite fucked up enough to be the type of person who just explodes all of her enemies from off-screen before they ever have the chance to mount any kind of defense.

Gokudera hears music coming from somewhere and tries to blow it up! This is notable because of how he somehow then manages to forget, less than two pages later, that he actually has bombs. It’s kind of amazing, actually.

Because Gokudera used the power of forced perspective, and Ken literally just hyaahoed around and did absolutely nothing!

Tsuna, Yamamoto, and Gokudera immediately exchange confused looks.

“How many does this make? [counting on fingers] OH SHIT.”

M.M. then proceeds to mercilessly ridicule the Vongola boys who apparently are not up to her mafia standards. Being a bunch of self-conscious eighth graders, they have absolutely no defense against this kind of shade and are blown the fuck away.

“SHABBY LOOKING??”

M.M. then again inexplicably refers to Mukuro as though he’s some sort of Rich Uncle Pennybags type figure, just making it rain everywhere he goes, and in all seriousness this is really starting to confuse the shit out of me.

Either Mukuro has some stash hidden away that the others never knew about, or he was lying through his teeth. Personally, I absolutely believe it’s some sort of leprechaun situation, and M.M. was going to receive a mountain of cash that then mysteriously vanished two days later, by which time Mukuro was conveniently on the other side of the planet probably.

Anyways, having tired of this conversation, M.M. decides it’s time to take them out, so she aggressively plays her clarinet at them.

Because it’s KHR, this is actually a really effective attack.

Okay, and this is the shit I was talking about earlier. If only one of you lunkheads had a ranged attack that you could use in a situation like this, Gokudera! That would sure help the others out a lot, Gokudera “SMOKING BOMB” Hayato, it’s you, I’M TALKING TO YOU, YOU’RE THE LUNKHEAD.

I DON’T KNOW, MAYBE YOU CAN GO BACK TO WHEREVER KEN IS AND SEE IF HE HAS A FUCKING BRAIN CHANNEL YOU CAN BORROW

So finally Bianchi steps up to bat, because no one else has seemed to register the fact that they’re hiding from a fucking clarinet, and the most intimidating thing it’s done so far is heat up some sushi and a few water bottles.

[WONDER WOMAN THEME MUSIC PLAYS!!]

CAN’T BUY ME LOOOOOOVE

Bianchi then proceeds to lay out a detailed analysis of M.M.’s mysterious clarinet weapon after seeing it in action a grand total of once, and holy shit, I’m starting to think she may actually be even more of a nerd than her so-called genius younger brother (especially given the severe dive his intelligence has apparently taken in this chapter).

M.M. then breaks it down in even more gratuitous detail, and I’m starting to fall asleep here christ

BLAH BLAH TL;DR THIS DEADLY WOODWIND INSTRUMENT MAKES THINGS HEAT UP AND EXPLODE

That’s what I was saying before! Then why didn’t you fucking do that??

So the boys absolutely FREAK THE FUCK OUT, which, I would too if someone could nuke my fucking body just by playing “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Bianchi, however, isn’t fazed in the slightest, and whips up a couple trays of weaponized P.F. Chang’s to counterattack.

Look at poor Gokudera’s face. [p-pats]

M.M. isn’t having it and slings some smooth jazz Bianchi’s way!

Very impressive that she can shout the attack name and still play the instrument at the same time.

I never made it more than one episode into Shokugeki no Soma because I couldn’t get past the foodgasms, but basically this is what I always imagined that show should be like.

Somehow Bianchi manages to fully dodge the microwave music attack using the power of PLATES, and takes a dive toward M.M.!

M.M. is all like “AAAAAHHH” but then suddenly she’s like “JUST KIDDING”

She then announces that close-quarters combat is her specialty, and proves it by CONVERTING THE CLARINET INTO A PAIR OF NUNCHUCKS AND WHAPPING BIANCHI ON THE HEAD.

OKAY

On the surface, this looks bad—but Gokudera Hayato knows better.

That is the face of a kid who has seen some shit.

Holy shit this arc had some fucked up moments didn’t it.

Quick refresher, so this is referring to chapter 51, “June Bride”, during which Bianchi almost married Reborn but then didn’t! Because it wasn’t really Reborn at all, but a robot. Haha this manga is weird.

Anyway. So M.M. falls over dead and this horrifically weird battle comes to an end!

Yes. Actually yes. It’s completely impossible. But that’s KHR for you.

And it turns out the reason Bianchi was fighting so passionately was in order to protect Reborn’s nap time!

Hibari Kyoya should look into hiring this one.

But before anyone has a chance to celebrate, they’re interrupted by a horrible old man holding up a laptop because tablets weren’t a thing yet!

I know I should be properly horrified, but all I can think is how absurd this looks now. Here he is, introducing himself and then holding up his unwieldy Macbook with two open QuickTime windows and what I’m just going to assume is Winamp running down there in the corner. Like, this guy is in the fucking stone age still.

So yeah, next chapter is the CREEPY TWINS chapter where Tsuna almost fucking stabs himself to death! Gonna be wild.