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[somewhatstupid]

Thank you so much for the post!

Hello! I see you in the houseki no kuni fandom quite often. I'm dying to know, what is your review of the series? Your praises and criticisms to it, your favorite parts, and characters?

yooooo i appreciate you asking ^^ i'll keep this brief

the pros:

for those who don't know, i watched the anime first, and like many i was skeptical going in. but it didn't take long for me to change my mind about the 3D medium, or for the story to rock me. since then i've watched nearly everything orange has worked on and they've made wild improvements.

as for the manga, the art style shapes it up to be one of the more unique-looking manga in recent times, and the history/worldbuilding kept me hooked on the story for about 3 years straight. i don't actively keep up with many manga, but hnk provided a sense of excitement in my life and i always looked forward to the monthly community experience.

the cons:

i used to have an unyielding ride-or-die attitude towards the story, until christmas 2020 when i started to doubt everything. ultimately i HATE how the solution was assimilation. all this time, the gems were fighting against the cleansing of their kind, with the admirabilis putting up their own fight in the background, but for some reason this time it was okay?? nah. it would've been more interesting to see some pushback/rebellion from both tribes, all while tying up loose ends that were established soon before. but instead it skipped to the end of any foreseeable conflict.

i've seen more recent reviews stating they liked the last arc because it follows the theme of change / "nothing matters in the end." but to me, a lot of this did matter. (not that it didn't have its good moments; i thought myouken was funny.)

one minor nitpick i have regarding the character designs is that i wish they were more consistent (aside from expected art style evolution). there's times where phos or wer's designs would change and they look a bit too different from how they used to. i get that it's a reflection of their internal development, but you don't always have to overhaul their models to do so.

the faves:

y'all already know. aculeatus has been my fave since the day he strut onto my phone screen in the high school cafeteria. no one understands him like i do 💙

also i didn't really give a damn about ayumu until her face reveal but oh my god she turned out to be one of the women of all time. quickly jumped towards the top of my list.

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Decided to just lurk. Sorry fellas, not many posts from me.

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Natural born entertainer doing her best

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telling a vampire "youre not allowed in my house anymore" and they get blasted out through the nearest wall

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He dropped his breakfast 😔

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cuddling

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nerd (redraw)

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Working with kids is hilarious. They accepted I was trans immediately after I bullshitted a half baked explanation about tadpoles turning into frogs. Now they're like wait so I CAN CHOOSE and I'm just like. Yeah. You can.

It's even funnier bc there is a little girl (9? 10?) who is trans at the camp I work at and they keep going OH SO THATS WHY REDACTED IS A GIRL SHE CHOSE TO BE ONE it's so funny honestly

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😭😭

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How do you feel about Houseki no Kuni now that it ended? Did you like it? Do you have criticisms/would you change something in the end?

Hey anon, thanks for the message!

First of all, I'm proud of Miss Ichikawa of pulling the tremendous feat off that is finishing the manga, especially that the project took over a decade to make. I'm grateful she decided to share her bizarre world of living rocks with us and show off her beautiful art! Of all things, I'll remember the comic for its nostalgic if not dreamlike quality, depicting a human world at the end of its life-cycle.

As for the ending, I was a bit confused by the "sea of flowers holding crystals inside their buds" part but that's bc I'm not that familiar with Buddhism. To be honest, I expected something akin to the ending of "On Pandora" - melancholic, longing being a strong undertone but ultimately, a reader is left with a sense of hope. And one could argue this is what happens at the end of HnK - the pebbles and a small piece of Phos end up in a place of eternal peace and joy. But the last panel of the manga suggests there's a number of parallel universes out there, a number of timelines in which Phos is, yet again, traumatized into oblivion to become a diety, and that's not particularly hopeful, in my opinion. Oh well, the wheel of samsara must turn, they say…

The only thing I have a problem with is the way the gems have been assimilated into the moonie's society (I thought of buying "The Party at the End" booklet but the drawing of a moonie taking a pic of Blue Zoisite in a bathroom was too much, lol). Remembering that, canonically, the gems are in relationships with the members of a people who committed genocide on their kin makes my skin crawl and I wish Ichikawa handled the assimilation differently.

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mutuals let's sit at the end of the dock and splash our feet in the water while we watch the sunset

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Favourite Designs: Linda Friesen 'Raven in the Mist' Haute Couture Gown [x]

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LGBT (labrador, greyhound, beagle, terrier)

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wheres the smiling blackfoot family i want to see the smiling blackfoot family