meowkotoyuki - Tumblr blog

[meowkotoyuki]

og image under cut

[meowkotoyuki]

zzzz ….z

[meowkotoyuki]

deliriously thought i need date as photocard so i made one [ twitter ver ]

[meowkotoyuki]

cooking aikoto at night is fun except for the part where u wake up like u wake up from a hangover (its 2pm bois),

[meowkotoyuki]

$20

or

dinner with ao oni

real ones know

[meowkotoyuki]

big showcase of my style inconsistency with these au doodles but idgaf,,,

[meowkotoyuki]

royal trio in some au of sorts. these were hell to draw but i was very much committed

[meowkotoyuki]

that is all for the moment

[meowkotoyuki]

heh😼....nmot many will get ths referenmce ☝️☝️☝️☝️

[meowkotoyuki]

i shine only with the light you gave me

[meowkotoyuki]

farming wth armageddon almost feels like cheating

[meowkotoyuki]

I love Ramlethal Guilty Gear!

[meowkotoyuki]

been playing p3

[meowkotoyuki]

Senri - Day 111

Race: Holy

Arcana: Empress

Alignment: Light-Neutral

September 23rd, 2024

Among the differing forms of cat-based Yokai in the SMT series, as well as in general Japanese mythology, the Nekomata only stands toe-to-toe with the Bakeneko in terms of infamy- but, lo, what about our more forgotten feline friends? One of these more curious beings actually seems to have been the origin for the Nekomata, after all, being a Chinese tale that shares many a similarity- that being, of course, is Senri, today's Demon of the Day. What may be less obvious, however, is how and why Senri is depicted as a different figure in SMT, and I intend to explore that today.

Senri, also called Xian Li, are a rather obscure proponent of Chinese mythology that seem to have been carried over to Japanese mythology in a similar way that Shiisaa may have been, as gone over in the Shiisaa analysis. By obscure, I mean obscure, by the way- I've gone searching for articles who mention Xian Li or Senri by name and can barely find any, so this little introduction is based on encyclopedias, the most unreliable form of source. Naturally, it has far more sources in the native Chinese, where its name is spelled as '仙狸,' meaning, from what I can tell, "Fairy Raccoon" (the raccoon term in question may stem from a wonky translation, as it seems to mean more 'wild cat?') but language barriers damn me again and I can barely make sense of what is Google Translate's doing and what is the actual information. Even funnier, one of the only sources I can work off of for this is a compendium OF SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI DEMONS. I AM NOT JOKING.

Needless to say, English sources are scarce, and Chinese sources are only somewhat better, mostly seeming to be encyclopedias of world monsters. From what I can glean, however, Senri are more than their Japanese counterparts in several ways- Senri are originally wild cats who end up absorbing spiritual powers, likely through communing with magic in some way or another (perhaps by speaking with humans,) and they adopt the ability to take the physique of a human to transform into said humans in order to absorb their essence. Senri can take the form of handsome men or beautiful women, and use said forms to seduce humans so they can then drain their life away to feed off of.

Claims of Senri are somewhat similar in some ways to claims of the Nekomata, which leads to people commonly connecting the two- granted, I can barely wrap my head around why, given that Google Translate seems to have an aneurysm whenever a word can mean two things at once in another language, but it seems to be connected to how the 'raccoon' term it refers to is similar to the term for a fox, which may also connect to a term for a cat? Again, I'm not sure. I'm just a westerner who can't read a lick of Japanese or Chinese, so take this with a truckload of salt. Still, it seems like Senri are, in effect, the Chinese version of the Nekomata, and perhaps are the origins of the stories of said kitty cats.

In SMT, the design of Senri is a rather simple one, though it ties the leopard theming of the Senri (of which I think the wild cat term refers to in regards to the shitty translations) to a humanoid design, combining the aspects of the double life a Senri leads, one being a human and the other a wild cat. A pretty simple, yet effective design. I'm not sure where the hat comes in, but maybe it's just to add a bit of stereotyping flair.

[meowkotoyuki]