#steph rambles about psyren

[himetsuri]

i love how uranus is all "ugh grana my EX-TARGET and definitely nothing more" but then goes matching outfits with him for the end of the world

poser

[himetsuri]

another instance of vizren making junas a complete idiot

what the fuck do you mean he never "imagined" a high level of psi "without an illumina"?? neither miroku nor grana have an illumina, does he somehow not know what either of them can do? every member of wise (minus riko) has an illumina yet they are all still ranked below miroku and grana it doesn't make logical sense that he'd be unable to imagine high-level psi without an illumina

what he's actually saying is that he's surprised that there's a (different) method to abruptly cause a spike in one's psi without an illumina

this is directly referenced earlier in the chapter

one of the first things junas notices when asuka uses nova is that asuka gets a sudden surge of psi

which viz (as usual) just omits……for whatever reason

that is why, when asuka starts explaining that there's a secret fourth part of psi called nova, junas' reaction is "a hidden power? that's really your explanation?"

[himetsuri]

psyren getting an anime will do nothing but inconvenience me: expands the fandom to potentially introduce weirdos, will follow the vizren translation so dumb shit like 'air blocks' and 'granar,' will make me suffer another flood of 0106 and junariko Hell

but i want it so badly

[himetsuri]

the contrast between how grana and junas react to miroku vs uranus fills me with unspeakable joy

[himetsuri]

one of miroku's biggest strengths as a character is that he is not plot-bound to ageha

he meets with ageha, but that's solely for ageha and the protags' sake; afterwards, he never tries to track ageha down, he never goes out of his way to try to impede the protags, he doesn't even think about ageha until ageha confronts him

which makes sense, because he barely gives any shits about his own allies so why would he give any shits about ageha?

miroku is very much operating as the protag of his own story, and what drives him is his own backstory, his relation with #07, and his inner conflict of "save the world / destroy the world"

and i've said it before but this is also partly why i think a psyren anime is more complicated to make than usual, because unless they want to commit to animating the entire series it'd be very difficult to include miroku in a way that feels natural and without miroku there is no main antagonist

in fact miroku doesn't even have all of wise assembled in the present until the very last few chapters––and that was after an offscreen 1 year time skip

[himetsuri]

uranus is the worst character to see out in the wild and start reading psyren for

he debuts in ch 108 and then fucks off for like 20 chapters only to reappear and then die 4 chapters later

like just imagine reading 100+ chapters to see this dude only for him to appear and then die all in less than 10 chapters total

[himetsuri]

no matter how many years go by this is still so goddamn painful

uranus going from saying "grana's just an ex-target" to "grana gave me a reason to live"

he's so empty and so desperate to be needed, struggling to find reasons he exists to the point he wants to be used as a tool, yet at the very end he opens up and admits that grana gave meaning to his life

just the weight of him admitting that

and he still chooses to kill himself

it fucking hurts man

[himetsuri]

junas seeing miroku as caring will always be something i wish made it into the main series

narratively it adds so much to miroku's character, especially since most of the time he's portrayed as the exact opposite and almost every other character describes him as the exact opposite

the juxtaposition of junas seeing miroku as a caring person deep down and what shao sees as miroku's "inner self" is so good

this page by itself is just good though, so many ways to interpret it

[himetsuri]

man i love ageha

watching him go from someone who doesn't care about the world because he thinks it's all doomsday anyways to someone who's willing to kill not only others but himself in order to save it

he's the best

[himetsuri]

i love small details like this

shiner may have fucked over wise and led to their demise but he at least told them about shao's ability to read minds

[himetsuri]

amamiya's memory loss was one of the plot points that we were robbed of by the cancelation, but honestly having this be the resolution to it wasn't bad

amamiya is so trapped in the past that even when good things happen all she can think about is the memory of those times after the fact, and so the threat of those memories disappearing terrifies her because she clings to them to find happiness

that's why ageha and his forward thinking is such a good influence on her, because when he hears her distress at losing her good memories, his response is simply, "then let's make new ones"

ageha encourages her to look to the future and the happiness it can bring rather than be hung up on what's already gone

[himetsuri]

candyman's regard for miroku is so interesting, because he comes to the same conclusions as #07 in that miroku is batshit insane –– except, of course, unlike #07 he sees this as a good thing

the interesting part is that he doesn't say that he recognized miroku as similar, he says that miroku recognized HIM as similar

we know that candyman is just a crazy mofo, both from his arc in the manga and from iwashiro straight up saying that's what he was going for, so it'd be easy to write this off as him projecting his own insanity onto miroku

except for the fact that #07 also came to similar conclusions

what obfuscates this is how junas sees candyman as a crazy mofo and disparages him as a result but DOESN'T see miroku in the same light

junas sees miroku as a savior first and foremost and refers to any coldness as a "mask" concealing how much he truly cares about others, which ironically enough can be compared to how candyman perceives miroku in the opposite direction

it's little webs of relationships like this that i think iwashiro specializes in best

[himetsuri]

i’ll never forget my first color scheme for uranus

i still love that man

[himetsuri]

one of my fav small details

at the start of his fight whenever uranus talks his breath is never shown

but at the end you can see it

[himetsuri]

luv this sequence of uranus falling and where he’s reaching for is where grana is saving him by blocking out the sun

[himetsuri]

viz keeps doing this and it drives me crazy

ageha’s moment here with amamiya is one of my favorite scenes in the series and these specific parts are connected –– viz just completely omitted the connection and turned it into some generic “hey! i love you! i’ll be there for you!” shtick

“…Thank you.” “For what?” “You’re always coming to my rescue.” “…I’ve remembered the time we were in elementary school. Mom died, I was depressed and a total wreck, and you were always there, cheering me up…”

ageha doesn’t ask amamiya if she remembers the past, he tells her that HE’S finally recalled it

this ties in to what he says after this in that he had forgotten his feelings for her, somehow; he did nothing but fight throughout all of middle school and even when they did meet again in high school it was like she had become someone completely different

it was only after she asked him to ‘save her’ and he followed her into psyren that he finally remembered

“That’s why this time, I’ll be the one doing the protecting, Amamiya. This time, it’s my turn to save you when you’re a total wreck.”

the point of what ageha is saying isn’t just “you’ve suffered but i’ll be here for you,” he’s saying that what she did for him meant so much to him that he wants to be that person for her in return

after getting through his own rough patch, he can now recognize that she’s going through something of her own and everything he’s doing right now he’s doing to return the favor to her