chilka

[chilka]

Honestly my feelings about Eps 11 and 12 have cooled in the time since, but it's only really slid further in the opinions of "this probably wasn't what Andgy wanted to make in the end" and "fuck you Pony Canyon" and "I'll just fix it with fanon"

[chilka]

I've written a lot about this show's worldbuilding both during and after it was airing, and the most painful part about all the crumbs they sprinkled on the backstory between Chiruka and Ranmaru is that none of the clues make sense with the final story. It would make a lot more sense with a very different story that involves messier feelings between Betelgeuse and Sirius. Since their original human forms were in the opening from the start, I don't think it's necessarily "not idols" but just something emotionally different from what we got.

it's why there was heavy speculation (that was all but confirmed when YMM and a JP fan met and spoke in person) about executive meddling causing heavy changes to eps11 and 12 that don't match Andgy's original vision...I will point out that after ep12 aired, Andgy posted a bevy of Sirius/Betelgeuse art (as well as Chiruka/Ranmaru) that do not quite work with the show's version of them.

Those tweets about that meeting were intentionally deleted within a day by said fan tho so I understand this is just he said she said now.

Also yes, Chiruka was always meant to be a Tenebrae fairy (cleared up by YMM when I asked if he was originally a Lux fairy who fell to darkness lol), but the show implies the other fairies weren't aware of this. Since neither the rest of Lux and Tenebrae clans appear and the Winter Triangle trio came from the stars/heavens, I always figured this meant they just told everyone they were Lux for simplicity. Granted, there is a lot in F-Ran that can be handwaved away with "they just didn't tell anyone about it" or with characters otherwise being emotionally charged and speaking/acting irrationally.

Fairy Ranmaru Rewatch Part 2

Episode Five

Poor Bakkun, being witness to that...

So, the queen ordered Takara to be the cook. To some extent, I thought they were given roles to divvy up among themselves.

Is this episode the first instance of them calling the villains "wicked souls"?

"Find Sirius and cause him to ascend." I guess the original plan that only Takara knew was to retrieve him?

The sloth is holding the rotary phone while Hojo calls Takara lol

Do you think Takara was able to just summon that money with his powers? Cause at this point they don't really have customers...

Not only does Takara have that scar on his back in fairy form, but he also has the paint-like markings on his lower stomach.

So, I completely forgot about this battle. The world is obviously based off of Picasso's style.

The bull monster goes for Takara's gem, causing him pain, which adds to the whole "the gem/jewelry is the fairy's true self" idea that I had.

They say Takara's collected attachment is of the finest quality. Is this dependent on the wicked soul it's collected from, or the method of retrieval? So far we've got a bunch that were stabbed and speared, but Takara and Uruu's are the only ones that were grasped or squeezed.

The queen said she'd look the other way for Hojo's sake. We find out later that Hojo is a Loam fairy, but since earth and metal/gems are related, could he be Takara's cousin?

Episode Six

"Why do we have to send attachment to the fairy world?" "Because it's our mission." Thanks Uruu, very cool. At least Takara explained that it's like money, and without it fairies would cease to be.

Here it's implied Sirius is a Lux Clan fairy, but wasn't there a tweet that said he was from a different clan? Like the fairies of darkness?

The sloth has a Switch parody once again.

Interesting to note that Ranmaru's directly saved both of his clients from committing suicide.

This is the first time we've seen Bakkun's alert for the others.

Did they add that sound Ranmaru made during his transformation? I don't remember it from the first one. (I checked, and yes, it was added lol)

Chiruka is so surprised that Ranmaru threw down his sword? You'd think he would smirk evilly. Also. "I see now." Chiruka, what do you see?

Just realized they're not really saying "Go to heaven" to the wicked soul, but instead to the attachment that's being sent to the fairy world.

And I could've sworn the client's grandmother survived!

The sloth once again has the rotary phone.

Episode Seven

Uruu keeps saying Homura got sloppy, but is there any evidence of that we were shown as the viewers? Like, I find it hard to pick out which side the battle is in favor of unless someone's screaming and grunting in pain.

Sure, Homura was set on fire, but Uruu also got attacked by tentacles so it's not like he's one to talk? I know the sloppiness is probably referencing Shiina having vague memories of what went down and using them in her manga, but what point in the battle translated to being sloppy and having the memories remain, you know?

Shiina looks like Homura's mom, and his mom doesn't really look like a fairy. So is Homura half-human? Is Shiina her reincarnation? Could she be his full-human cousin or other relative?

The sloth is using nail polish.

All the sketches on the wall in Shiina's office are of the Fairy Ranmaru cast! I wish I could find the production art in an auction...

I remember watching this episode for the first time, and being so confused at Ogi's makeover. It was so sudden that I didn't recognize her as the same character, and just went "who's this?"

I like how the rooster was moving lol

Chiruka saying he's teaching Homura not to fall in love with a human hits harder when you know his backstory.

Also, is Homura actually falling in love with Shiina, or is everyone just assuming and projecting? Takara's got human lovers, Uruu has feelings for Homura, Chiruka had feelings for that woman, and so on...when I think Homura's not falling in love, but seeing his mother in her.

And the kiss~

Episode Eight

The sloth has a kendama.

Interesting Ranmaru referred to Homura as his team, and the queen called him family.

Fairies and humans need the Arbor Clan. Is this the first time we're told what fairies do for humans (aside from "saving their hearts" for attachment)? Because collecting attachment feels like "oh, if the humans happen to benefit, that's good" whereas this line about the Arbor Clan is like "we maintain the human world's nature in addition to our own, because that's what we do" (aside from if there were no more humans, there'd be no more attachment).

Funny that this episode has a host club, and Remote Host started the same year.

Jyuka's clients both have names that are letters (Eru is L, Aru is R) and their opposition is at a (host) club during the battle. Also, both times Jyuka has to embrace his own cuteness.

I've come to the realization that Chiruka's speeches sound like Jigsaw tapes. ("Hello, child of verdure. I want to play a game.")

Damn, Jyuka's ear cover actually shattered. But I guess he came back quickly because of his healing abilities?

The principal saying "I'll pay overtime" is kind of a double entendre, right? Paying Aru, but also paying extra for the hosts lol

Chiruka says "I love you dearly, Betelgeuse." At this point, does he know Ranmaru's feelings?

Love the zoom on Uruu's reaction, so dramatic lol

The queen said Jyuka was "right on schedule" about standing on his own.

Looking at the credits for the hosts, and there's the voice of Noin from Gekkan Mousou (Inoue Yuuki). The other two hosts are voiced by Yanagi Kouhei and Ootani Yuuki. (There were more than three hosts in the scene though, right?)

[chilka]

One day I will make these into stickers to give away. Fairy Ranmaru is the best and I always want to spread the love!

😌🙏💕💕💕

[chilka]

Doubtful I'll be writing Fairy Ranmaru fic again, so here's a dump of headcanons I never got around to sharing, mostly part of my worldbuilding of the fairy clans and the timeline I used for The Fairy Queen's Timekeeper. I spoil my own fic freely in this post (especially in the time theory section) so if you haven't read it yet and you're interested in a pre-canon Hojo-centric fic with a focus on worldbuilding and organizing the backstory timeline and don't want to be spoiled, feel free to give it a read first.

Note I have been out of the loop on F-Ran, if anything new even exists, since posting that fic in 2022 so I have no idea if anything here contradicts anything new.

Lux and Tenebrae Clans

These two clans are literally celestial fairies living in the stars. The elemental fairy clans are native to Earth.

They are a more technological civilization than the Earth fairies, and also fairly militant. Much of their time is spent in spacefaring expeditions to the rest of the universe.

They're also extremely unconcerned with Earth. They don't care at all about Earth fairies, and due to this Earth fairies generally don't even know they exist. There would definitely be an air of superiority to the way they think about Earth fairies.

Consequently, "attachment" as an energy source would be something they have in abundance. Attachment would form naturally and rise to the heavens and with access to attachment from all over Earth (and beyond? if aliens exist lol) across the millennia, it's not something they need to save as heavily as we see the fairies do in the show.

Constellations served as organizations/groupings. These are inter-clan. From my WIP I had a few of these down as follows:

Canis Fleet, which Sirius was part of, and would be split into Major and Minor divisions Orion Fleet, which Betelgeuse was part of. I also had an OC named Rigel here Scorpio Fleet, for my OC Lesath Pleiades Guild, for an OC called Merope. A more research and study oriented organization. Merope, for example, was a wicked soul analyst as well as the only "expert on Earth fairy clans"

If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned Procyon at all, it's because I headcanon'd her as being a separate thing altogether from the Lux and Tenebrae Clans. Ruling over both clans would be "House Sol".

Procyon was a lesser princess of House Sol, and had the ambition but not the power base to become a queen. Together with Betelgeuse and Sirius, she came up with the plan of traveling to Earth and forming a kingdom of her own there instead, where she would be unopposed.

Procyon brought with her a fairly flippant attitude toward the use of attachment in the early years of her kingdom, which of course was only helped by Betelgeuse and Sirius's gathering truly massive amounts of it (and presumably other teams were gathering attachment at a smaller scale, too small to sustain the golden years of the kingdom).

The stars we saw falling to Earth that carried Betelgeuse, Sirius, and Procyon are essentially single person ships. They salvaged these into raw materials (both physical and magical or metaphysical) to build certain parts of the kingdom, such as Procyon's throne. This ensured they could not return to the stars—which none of the three wanted.

The fic that caused all this worldbuilding would have involved Rigel, Lesath, and Merope traveling to Earth to investigate "the largest anomalous Heaven Space ever recorded" in a sort of sci-fi horror/thriller type story (the twist would have been that it was caused by a bad end from Ranmaru choosing to join Sirius).

Basically, the fics I had planned about the Lux and Tenebrae clans would have drawn heavily from the sci-fi genre, leaning mainly toward space operas or sci-fi thriller/horror depending on the fic.

Unifying the Five Clans

This is of course the clans we saw in the show: Aqua, Ignis, Arbor, Metallum, and Terra. Before Procyon's arrival, they had always lived with a sort of precarious balance between each other. Conflicts often did arise between them, oftentimes leading to bloodshed.

While I do not have specific details, I do think each clan would have long, long histories stretching very far back in Earth's history. As far as inter-clan relationships go, this means there would have been all sorts of alliances, treaties, betrayals, assassinations, and even wars over the many centuries.

The actual, (meta)physical islands that served as homes to each clan originally moved around a lot, but could be easily traversed with the use of heaven doors.

By the time Procyon, Betelgeuse, and Sirius arrived, things the five clans had recently entered a fairly cool peace. It was mostly to do with the natural death of Hojo's father, former chief of the Terra clan. With Hojo going through the rituals to take over as leader of the clan, the four other clans were being cautious about Terra and each other to see what sort of new dynamic would emerge from having a new leader.

I hinted at this in Timekeeper, but Procyon unified the clans by promising attachment becoming plenty and that the elements would no longer need to worry about each other if they followed her. She then gave each clan a defined role in the kingdom to ensure no one clan was that much stronger than the other (in theory).

She also unified the clans magically, ensuring the clans could not truly break off from each other and her without severing a large amount of their own magic.

This did lead to a golden age before all the clan leaders' personal problems started!

As I wrote in Timekeeper, I headcanon that Terra Clan served as spies (and well, secret police in practice). This is meant to contrast Metallum the way that Aqua and Ignis contrast each other. Where Metallum audited the other clans and themselves, rooting out corruption and civil misconduct that would affect the day-to-day operations within clan, Terra Clan served as Procyon's personal eyes and ears to root out dissent and threats to overall peace and the unification of the clans.

They were already doing this for their own purposes actually but Hojo offers the use of his spies to Procyon. He was both Timekeeper and Spymaster to Procyon.

Takara's father was killed by his (the dad's) younger brother. Takara's life is the fairy version of the Lion King.

Timekeeping

You know that trope where characters go to a different world and spend a long time there, maybe even years, and then come back to Earth and it's only been like an hour since they left?

That's my explanation for all the wonky timeline stuff happening in Fairy Ranmaru.

In general, time moves a little faster in the fairy world than in the human world.

The major incidents that happened to the leaders of the clans happened in short succession, leading to a sharp decline in the prosperity of the kingdom and the end of the golden age. Homura's father was executed, and then not long after (a few fairy years at most), Takara's father was assassinated by his younger brother. This means Homura and Uruu were small children while Takara was a baby.

(Presumably, Jyuka would've suffered some tragedy back in Arbor around this time as well.)

But we saw flashbacks of Takara as a small child with his mother. So by the time of those flashbacks, Homura and Uruu would be roughly the age we see them in the current show, as young adults. By this point, a number of fairies have fled to the human world to live as humans.

And it's at this point that Betelgeuse and Sirius have their fight and Procyon flees deeper into heaven space, causing Hojo to stop time for all fairies and the kingdom using almost all the attachment left over to prevent any further deterioration of their society. Except for himself.

Using the watch, Hojo could unfreeze specific people or locations. This is how Takara gets to become older than the others despite starting out as the youngest in this theory: he's unfrozen by Hojo and sent to Earth, where he lives as a human and grows to the age we see in the show while the others are still frozen in time.

Because Hojo would then spend all of his time in the fairy world searching for Procyon, he also aged much faster than Takara, becoming the ojisan we know and love during the intervening years.

He is also, of course, the one who unfroze Homura, Uruu, and Jyuka, allowing the show to happen.

Anyway that's my personal explanation for the timeline of the backstory of the series and why Hojo got a scene emphasizing his receiving the watch. Most of this theory is centered on Hojo because I came up with it while writing Timekeeper, but I feel like it also serves as an adequate explanation for the other oddities in the timeline.

If you got this far, thanks for reading! After writing all this down...man, I miss Fairy Ranmaru even more lmao

[chilka]

Hey, I have andgyraum's pic #57! I could send it over (off anon) if you'd like, just let me know. Cheers!

ooh yes please do send it! you should be able to message me on here or submit it and I'll update the zip file accordingly

[chilka]

andgyraum - fairy ranmaru.zip

Missing #57 and anything that wasn't Fairy Ranmaru art.

EDIT: Now complete as far as I know, thanks to the anon asker.

[chilka]

chilka's evil yassification from fairy ranmaru episode 11! this is one of my favorite transformations but i was never able to find it anywhere online so i screen recorded the whole thing and here we are :3c

[chilka]

If I didn't care at all about respecting Andgy's deletion, I wouldn't have asked for other people's opinions and just reposted everything right away???

This is a situation with more nuance than making me out to be some kind of art thief reposter who doesn't care about "consent and permissions" just because I am willing to preserve Andgy's works and show it to other people and not let it be lost 🤷 it's personal work, but it's also literally some of the only extra material we have about the show?

Besides, ymm said Andgy had a lot more work they wanted to post but that doesn't match up with how slow the pace of posting had become before deletion. And other people related to the show deleted too so. Who wants to bet it wasn't a willing deletion in the first place?

[chilka]

I read your tags: I'm not here to argue either. But I will make my stance on this clear in response to this.

I'm very very familiar with the way Japanese copyright laws work. And you're right, Andgy's art is personal work and not official show material. I have no intention of directly reposting anything because of that.

But my main anime fandom of 15+ years lost a huge chunk of post-canon/extra-canon art and lore when the mangaka's website hosting lapsed and internet archive missed a few years worth of their blog pages. I happened to maybe have a handful of those art saved from my preteen years, but none of the text that came with it. I've never reposted them, but I did share them privately to other fans. It's been 15 years, and some of these are new to the western half of this fandom—hell, I didn't even remember the URL of the mangaka's site until 3 years ago. I put it into internet archive and there it was, full of essentially new stuff to a decades old fandom, just missing a few years worth of it.

So: I'm not a big fan of letting anything be lost completely in this manner. I'm a big fan of media preservation, essentially. And 1 year down the line. 2 years. 5. 10. People will eventually come to Fairy Ranmaru and if they decide to look at the fandom, especially at what existed during the show's run, they are going to find that Andgy's art is inextricably linked with a good chunk of that. That's one more reason I won't let it go.

It does feel disrespectful because Andgy took it down themself. That's exactly why I said that originally. But that's why I asked for suggestions on how to handle it—I'm also taking suggestions on where—rather than releasing it out there right away. I just don't intend to take "never" as the answer, but I'm willing to wait however long.

Regarding Andgy’s Twitter Deletion

I’ve been meaning to make this post for a long long while now. I’ve been away from the Fairy Ranmaru fandom since completing my last fic and I don’t keep up with either Yamamoto or Andgy (and their new work together last I know, since last I heard was they had left the company).

I’m sure it’s known that late last year Andgy deleted their twitter account, along with all the art that had been on it. This isn’t anything definitive or satisfying, but a Japanese fan ran into Yamamoto last year and had the chance to chat about Fairy Ranmaru (and other things, I assume) with her. This fan locked their account while sharing information and then deleted the tweets, so I can’t really give any sources on it other than what my partner translated of it. Understandably this is very he-said/she-said but I think it’s still the most info we have from the Japanese side of this about Andgy deleting their Twitter.

This is what the Japanese fan had to say (translated obviously):

Looking back, I’m not sure if it was a good idea to ask this, but when I mentioned that I was surprised when Andgy’s account suddenly disappeared, (Yamamoto) replied, “Well… a lot of things happened…”. So, I thought maybe the management got angry with them. Maybe the director’s audio commentary too.

She also had a chance to interact with Andgy’s work at an exhibit, and after speaking with Yamamoto, it would seem that both Yamamoto and Andgy would prefer not to acknowledge Fairy Ranmaru’s existence anymore.

Keep in mind that after Fairy Ranmaru ended, Andgy was still posting art, but specifically there were a few explicitly Ranmaru/Chilka pieces that imply more than what the show ended on.

The primary speculation here is that there was some bad blood in the end between the creatives of Fairy Ranmaru and the executives of Pony Canyon.

Again, nothing very satisfying, but it’s personally what I also think happened.

Now, one more thing: I do also have a zip file archive of nearly every art that had been on Andgy’s account (it is missing a few pieces), but none of the photography. I don’t know how much of it has been saved out there but given the way things ended in this situation, I feel it’s disrespectful to Andgy to release the zip file publicly? But I also want fans to still have access to the archive. I am thinking of giving it till the end of the year before posting it publicly but I am open to suggestions.

[chilka]

Regarding Andgy’s Twitter Deletion

I’ve been meaning to make this post for a long long while now. I’ve been away from the Fairy Ranmaru fandom since completing my last fic and I don’t keep up with either Yamamoto or Andgy (and their new work together last I know, since last I heard was they had left the company).

I’m sure it’s known that late last year Andgy deleted their twitter account, along with all the art that had been on it. This isn’t anything definitive or satisfying, but a Japanese fan ran into Yamamoto last year and had the chance to chat about Fairy Ranmaru (and other things, I assume) with her. This fan locked their account while sharing information and then deleted the tweets, so I can’t really give any sources on it other than what my partner translated of it. Understandably this is very he-said/she-said but I think it’s still the most info we have from the Japanese side of this about Andgy deleting their Twitter.

This is what the Japanese fan had to say (translated obviously):

Looking back, I'm not sure if it was a good idea to ask this, but when I mentioned that I was surprised when Andgy's account suddenly disappeared, (Yamamoto) replied, "Well... a lot of things happened...". So, I thought maybe the management got angry with them. Maybe the director's audio commentary too.

She also had a chance to interact with Andgy’s work at an exhibit, and after speaking with Yamamoto, it would seem that both Yamamoto and Andgy would prefer not to acknowledge Fairy Ranmaru’s existence anymore.

Keep in mind that after Fairy Ranmaru ended, Andgy was still posting art, but specifically there were a few explicitly Ranmaru/Chilka pieces that imply more than what the show ended on.

The primary speculation here is that there was some bad blood in the end between the creatives of Fairy Ranmaru and the executives of Pony Canyon.

Again, nothing very satisfying, but it’s personally what I also think happened.

Now, one more thing: I do also have a zip file archive of nearly every art that had been on Andgy’s account (it is missing a few pieces), but none of the photography. I don’t know how much of it has been saved out there but given the way things ended in this situation, I feel it’s disrespectful to Andgy to release the zip file publicly? But I also want fans to still have access to the archive. I am thinking of giving it till the end of the year before posting it publicly but I am open to suggestions.

[chilka]

So I watched Fairy ranmaru recently…

[chilka]

Round 1!

[chilka]

Fairy Ranmaru Baby AU

This is a little AU of mine set many years after the end of the show, where our main 6 have (mostly) settled down and, surprisingly, started families.

Keep reading

[chilka]

The two who wanted to be loved more than anyone else in the world.

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A stitch edit I did of a shot from episode 9; ‘Apathy’.

[chilka]

I love Fairy Ranmaru!! I love the various facets of the relationship between Chilka/Ranmaru (Sirius/Betelgeuse)💜🤍💜🤍

[chilka]

(Theory) Ranmaru was faking his amnesia.

(This is a repost from my Twitter.)

I already wrote about the concept in my fic ‘Let Me Forget’, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like Ranmaru remembers everything from the very beginning. I think his actions throughout the entire show seem very suspect, heightened by the fact we never see anything from his perspective.

Keep reading