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After drawing Blaze the Cat, I decided to draw another purple cat with a red gem in the middle of the forehead.

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Completed: May 24, 2025

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Next in our series of Pokémon movie reviews…

Pokémon Movie Review: The Keldeo movie

The 15th Pokémon movie, Kyurem VS the Sacred Swordsman: Keldeo, is short and to the point. Our quick blurb would have to be: Keldeo, the impatient young apprentice of the Sacred Swordsmen, goes to fight Kyurem before he is ready, which ends with him fleeing in disgrace. Ash and friends help Keldeo regain his determination and return to finish the battle, and, through the experience, Keldeo finally grasps what it means to be a true hero.

It's a simple, formulaic story, one that you've probably heard variations on many times before, so it gets no points for originality. It doesn't have any particular twists or subversions on this theme. But kids deserve to have their first version of this kind of story too.

Keep reading…

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Completed: May 20, 2025

Colette, the Chosen One of Sylvarant, looks to the moon of her world, named Tethe'alla.

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Completed: May 16, 2025

Gin is so nasty, I had to keep washing my hands as I was drawing him (to get all the black ink smudges off lol).

Don't smoke, kids, not only is it bad for you, it turns everything yellow!

While drawing, I had @nanoko857's "Devil's Gun" AMV on repeat, for references and for mood, hehe.

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Completed: May 10, 2025

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Completed: May 10, 2025

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Completed: May 10, 2025

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Completed: May 2, 2025

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Completed: April 30, 2025

I think it is the same Igglybuff as in my earlier drawing, hehe.

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Completed: April 21, 2025

For the next yellow page in my sketchbook, I decided to draw April! The moment she became recognizable on the page, my inner child got really excited! She was always one of my favorite characters!

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Completed: April 18, 2025

Another yellow page in my sketchbook, so I drew Pikachu!

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Completed: April 17, 2025

The next page of my sketchbook is yellow, and I had been meaning to draw this character for awhile, so I took the prompting! Luce is the official mascot of the Catholic Jubilee Year 2025, and she's super cute.

The design of Luce and her friends draws from a lot of the same pool of symbolism as some versions of The Fool tarot card: setting out on a long pilgrimage, full of hope despite the challenges. I leaned into that while making this drawing.

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Staircase Spirit - Detective Conan Anime Review: Episodes 124 - 140

It's all about Haibara. She is a very important character, simultaneously within the Detective Conan universe, the Detective Conan fandom, anime in general, and beyond. She's a very well-liked character, following on the archetype of Rei Ayanami, but adding in the twist of the Weird Little Girl.

She's a scientist and a spy and extremely emotionally reserved and private, yet she's also going through so many emotions that she doesn't (often) outwardly show.

Conan did accuse her of bearing responsibility for whatever horrors the Black Organization committed using the science she was forced to research, and it seems that Haibara to some degree does hold that guilt toward herself, even as she at the same time understands that she was also a victim. Haibara is also still grieving the recent (or, in the anime, the extremely recent) death of her older sister, who was her only remaining family, and who died specifically because she was trying to save her. Meanwhile, after shoving her own wants and desires down for most of her life within the Black Organization, Haibara has only recently started to have the stirrings of even realizing that she could want something for herself, that she could make a choice for herself, to seize something for herself.

While she was with the Black Organization, she always needed to look out for her own safety first and foremost, which has warped her means of coping, even now that she's in the outside world. She's holding herself back, even though she's now (relatively) safe. And she also has justified paranoia that she isn't actually safe at all, and that any minute now this temporary safety will come to a sudden and gruesome end as Gin catches up with her. And when that happens, Haibara's deepest fear is that she will have put everyone around herself in danger - and once again, just like her sister, they would all be dying because of her.

Therefore, we see in this set of episodes and for many more yet, Haibara will have a reluctance to make deeper friendships with others, especially the Detective Boys, even as they all try to forge a deeper connection with her. She's holding them all at arm's length so that it will be less painful for her when she (as she believes) inevitably needs to leave them behind, to save herself and to save them from association with her. She desperately wants to protect them, and yet, at the same time, Haibara has been handed the opportunity to relive the childhood she never actually got to have, with all new friends who care so much about her.

While she might still jump whenever she looks in the mirror and sees this little girl who is who she used to be and yet never was, Haibara also has an undeniable optimism about this second chance she has been offered. She was willing to accept death by her own hand, and still struggles with suicidal thoughts, and yet she has an unshakable hope in how, even if she considers her life as Shiho Miyano over, she has the unhindered potential to reforge herself as Ai Haibara.

And whenever her fears grow too great, it is her intense curiosity about Conan and his approach to this all that gives her the strength to continue forward. He's interesting to her as a scientific subject, yes, but also as a peer who has already adapted to the same curse as her, and also as a boy about her own actual age who has caught her attention in a way that she cannot deny herself...

Read the rest on Staircase Spirit!

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@ballwizard gave a prompt to draw an OC with the boobs out!

Thank you for the push!

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Completed: April 10, 2025

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Next in our series of Pokémon movie reviews...

Pokémon Movie Review: The Victini movie

This movie is actually two movies: one is called White - Victini and Zekrom and the other Black - Victini and Reshiram. So, like how there are two versions of each Pokémon game, this time the movie has two versions too. Wow.

At first, we were intrigued. What sort of art piece is this? Do the two movies take place in two different continuities? Do you need to watch both in order to understand the full story? If you watch both movies, does it unlock the true end after the credits?

Keep reading...