#Also the scene where he was remembering about the moments with Lum and going to the places of their various memories and

[the-hot-zone]

Haru’s Bending Style: An Analysis (And Why Jet Would Lose His Shit)

Here’s the thing–Haru has an incredibly distinct style of earthbending, and it goes beyond, “he uses his hands a lot.” To understand this, we have to go to the root (heh) of firebending. Stay with me.

Firebending is based on Northern Shaolin Kung Fu. On Northern Shaolin Kung Fu:

“The northern styles of kung-fu generally emphasize long range techniques, quick advances and retreats, wide stances, kicking and leaping techniques, whirling circular blocks, quickness, agility, and aggressive attacks.”

The Northern Style is a dynamic style that places emphasis on legwork and force. It is aggressive, strong, and graceful. There are Ten Classical Forms in the Northern Style, but I’m only going to talk about two of them. 

First, look at this video of Haru clips from the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i32HK_RYuDo

[Video Description: several clips of Haru from the show Avatar: The Last Airbender. Most of the clips feature his bending. End ID.]

Two moments in particular stand out to me. The first is this:

[ID: a series of five screenshots that show Haru bending. They follow a sequence of movements as Haru bends a large boulder into the wall of a gorge. In all photos, he is in a deep gorge with walls higher than his head. The rocks and gorge walls are rough and textured, and they are the color of sand: tan, yellow, and shades of brown. In the first photo, Haru begins to lift a large boulder from the ground. In the second photo, he swings the boulder around with two arms. In the third photo, he breaks root, leaping a short distance into the air. In the fourth photo, he finds his root again. One hand is extended towards the boulder; the other is closer to his body, palm outward. In the fifth and final photo, Haru has bended the boulder into the wall of the gorge. A cloud of dust and rock fragments explodes from the wall, displaying Haru’s force. One of his arms is extended towards the wall. End ID.]

and this moment:

[ID: a screenshot of Haru bending. Relative to the viewer, he is leaping away. His arms are extended on either side of him, causing a small avalanche of boulders to tumble into the gorge. End ID.]

These two moments offer us, the viewers, a wealth of information about Haru’s style. It tells us that Haru has adapted firebending techniques to earthbend. Let me explain.

Long-range techniques

This is the most obvious display of Haru’s style; he easily bends earth that’s not immediate to him. We see this above, and we saw that when he rescued that old man from the mine--Haru moved a significant amount of earth from a significant distance away, even going so far as to stop fragments of rock mid-air. Once again, in the above images, Haru is moving a lot of rock that’s not close to him, and he’s doing it with his hands. This brings me to my next point--the two forms Haru’s style reminds me of.

Hand movements

The first is Duanda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y28P5cWHPI

[Video Description: a person performs Dun Da and its application. In the application, an additional person fights the first. End ID.]

Duanda (or Dun Da), focuses on close-encounter movements. The above video also displays the Northern Style’s other characteristics: deep forms, legwork, and power. Here’s a moment that stands out:

[ID: two screenshots from the above video: NORTHERN SHAOLIN 第六路短打少林拳 (FORM + APPLICATION). The first photo shows the person in a deep stance, one leg out in a lunge, the other extended behind them. One hand is extended while the other is close to the body. In the second photo, the positions of the hands have switched. End ID.]

Movement for movement, this is almost exactly what Haru does in the first moment from above: his stance and hand movements are incredibly similar. But I’m not done talking about hand movements. Haru’s bending also reminds me of Chuān Xīn, or Chum Sam (heart-piercing strikes). 

Video: https://baksillum.wordpress.com/bak-sil-lum-4-chum-sam/

[Video Description: a person performs Chum Sam. End ID.]

This is due to Haru’s hand movements while bending. The steps of this kata involve the circular movements of the arms. In the latter moment I mentioned above, from the Haru bending video, he throws out his arms and moves them down to bend the rocks behind him. This isn’t circular, sure, but it’s more related to the movements of firebending than earthbending. Additionally, look at this moment from the Haru bending video:

[Imade ID: a screenshot of Haru from the waist up. He is dressed in a brown prison uniform, and he glares at the viewer with narrowed eyes. In his hand he bends three pieces of coal; they hover mid-air. End ID.]

All hands, baby! There is also a moment later on in the Haru bending video where Haru uses his hands in a swinging motion (with his dad), to bend coal. What’s important here is that his hand/arm movements aren’t always forceful and straightly-applied; occasionally, they’re sweeping and graceful--like the Northern Style. In general, Haru tends to use his hands a lot, which is unusual for an earthbender. I don’t think this is because of inexperience–I think it’s because he wanted to bend, was short on katas, and adapted firebending moves. 

Legwork/Leaping

Finally, let’s talk about leaps, or, as I like to call it in terms of earthbending, breaking root. This is seen in both of the Haru bending movements I mentioned above. In the first moment, Haru breaks root before he smashes the boulder into the gorge wall. And, if you look at the last photo, Haru is in the air when he moves those boulders. Let me repeat that: to bend, Haru is in the air. He breaks root! This is highly unusual for an earthbender--but not for a firebender. 

In summary, Haru’s style is a blend of firebending and earthbending--he’s utilizing aspects of firebending to accomplish earthbending. His style is a combination of occasionally breaking his root to apply a powerful force to his attacks; long-range techniques; arm-movements, and traditional earthbending. He’s applying what’s he’s learned from watching Fire Nation soldiers, and it’s fascinating. 

Now. What does Jet think of this?

Ultimately, I think Jet would be impressed by Haru’s bending. Or, more specifically, Haru’s adaptability. One of Jet’s most distinct skills is his adaptability, and Haru’s bending style is exactly that. Haru’s courage and determination to connect with his native element are so admirable. His own father was imprisoned by the Fire Nation, and he most likely faced scrutiny from his fellow villagers (as seen by that one old guy) for even being an earthbender. He had nowhere to go–literally living in a Fire Nation-occupied town. Yet Haru tried his best to learn how to bend; he refused to be separated from his culture. This is seen in his style, which is a bend of earth and fire.

First, though, there’s going to be a moment of incredulity, and anger. Haru was forced to adapt the enemy’s techniques in order to bend his native element. But I think he’d also admire Haru’s determination, and his stubborness to learn. 

The Jet/Haru sparring scene... there would be so much to talk about. Jet recognizing firebending moves coming from an earthbender--that moment alone would be intense. A sparring scene between those two would be legendary, especially if Haru had learned metalbending by then. Haru’s agility and willingness to break root would catch Jet by surprise, I think, but remember: Jet, too, is adaptable. He would have a field day, and it would end with mutual respect and admiration. 

Ugh. I just. Idk man. Jet’s also done a lot of recon on firebenders/Fire Nation soldiers, and so has Haru. But Haru’s willingness to adopt firebending techniques into his fighting style is a decision only Haru would make. They both embody the concept “never give up without a fight” in different ways while demonstrating similar qualities of determination, stubbornness, and adaptability. They have a lot to learn from each other. 

Conclusion? Jetru rights. 

Tagging the ppl who were standing by: @bluberry-spicehead @spooky--suki @spoopykyoshi and @listless-brainrot​ and @nonbinary-crafter-aang​ cause I know you two also ship Jetru.

[officialinuyasha]

Yashahime Episode 2 "The Three Princesses"

The episode starts with young Towa and Setsuna in the Forest of Ages. I want to note that the music that is playing during this scene is Towa's theme song in a more calm emotion played slow. Fun fact, that Towa's theme song does have Rin's theme song in it, for those who don't know. I have a video I made on that. Towa says that they have lived in the forest for a long time. Setsuna appears to not have her fur, either she gets it by puberty or hers was decorative from another animal. As we know the fur from Sesshoumaru is apart of his body, this was confirmed by Rumiko Takahashi in the InuYasha Profiles book under Sesshoumaru's profile. Again, the comparison to Sesshoumaru's belt is made here like I noted in my trailer breakdown. River (Kawa) or winding stream represents continuity and the future. Based from their color palettes given to us in the first artwork we were given, Towa is blue and Setsuna is purple. While in this scene it appears that Setsuna is wearing blue and Towa is wearing purple. When Setsuna is older, she is wearing blue with a purple belt. While Towa is wearing a yellow belt like Sesshoumaru and Setsuna seems to be wearing the faded red belt that Rin wore from the Final Act.

- Towa's memories have began to fade when she's an adult. The thing she remembers the most is Setsuna - So anything else we see in this flashback may be missing details. - The animals shown in her memories might be the other characters. There were two deer coupled together, and a fawn that could be InuYasha, Kagome and Moroha. With another deer running after. The boar had two twin babies Almost like K'inu and Gyokuto. My friend https://twitter.com/Mokomoko_fluff made even more comparisons and she describes more into the past theory with the animals, as well as the Young Twins clothing comparison to the parents. So please follow her. Towa begins to run too fast, and let's go of Setsuna's hand. When recalling this memory she even questions why she let go of her hand... Setsuna pushes Towa out of the way. I know some people were confused, but as I played it slowly frame by frame. Especially when Setsuna says "Look out!" Setsuna pushes Towa out of danger. Towa can't track Setsuna's sent because of the fire. In this moment, I want you to take account of the Japanese terms used.  In English we have words like scent, odor, aroma, and so one. Sesshoumaru in the Japanese manga uses the term aroma (sweet smelling) for Rin, while for others he used regular smell. In this moment Towa is using the same scent term that Sesshoumaru uses for Rin - A Sweet smelling Aroma. Towa's pearl activates when next to roothead. Probably because she's in danger, or many other reasons as to why it could activate. We hear Ne no Kubi - or it's English name Roothead talking about Towa's pearl. Towa is holding onto a vine until it tears and sucks in Towa. Towa goes through what is officially called the "Tunnel of the Tree of Ages" also known as the "rainbow corridor" as to what Moroha calls it later on in the episode! So this could imply that the pearls have to do with this. Towa wakes up from Buyou, and Souta finds her. Souta notices that she's from the Feudal Era - "It looks like you've come from place far, far away, huh?" Towa wasn't sure why, but she knew she could trust Souta. When they go looking for Setsuna, another version of Towa's theme plays. They never found Setsuna, it had been ten years since Papa Souta adopted Towa. In this moment it's further into Towa's song in this slow version, and we can clearly hear Rin's theme song in it. I got chills. They're living into a condominuim, and she goes by Towa Higurashi now. She says her memories have faded and lately she had been thinking it may have all just been a dream. It shows her weapons, including Kikujuumonji at the top. She has a lot of workout equipment and a punching bag. She's got trophies. Towa says Setsuna definitely was not a dream. She says it's such nice weather, then she goes to brush her teeth to get her day started. Her younger sister Mei is on her way to go to school, tells Towa Good-Morning and mentions that it's Towa's first day at a new school. She tells Towa to not get into any fights. Then she leaves to go to school. Towa tells her to be safe. Towa then says that Mei is "Papa Souta's true daughter". "She's a bit shy and naive, but she's also cute, smart, honest and quite talented." She's Towa's precious little sister. But she feels that maybe she cherishes Mei so much because she's a substitute for Setsuna, whom she was never able to find. The flower on her bag - Plum Blossom (Ume) is the first flower to bloom in the spring and is known as the ‘Flower of Peace’. A protective charm against evil, it also represents longevity, renewal and perseverance. Identified by rounded petals. We also see Towa wearing a robe that has yellow Plum Blossoms on it. Towa says she dresses the way she does because it's easier for her to fight. Souta is worried about Towa being dressed like a boy because it's an all-girls school this time. Because he doesn't want her to get into fights anymore. She walks to school and says that no one seems to get it - That transferring to an all-girls school won't stop the fighting. The ones she takes down always come back for more. The bullies show up thinking Towa is trying to run away from them. The bullies are actually a cameo appearance of Lum's Stormtroopers or also known as Lum's Guards from Urusei Yatsura. She answers "Who said I was running?" In the next scene is shows her beating them up. At one part one of them says "Stop it! Itll break! Help!" in this moment she pauses and stops. She says that the fighting hasn't stopped ever since she stopped a bully in elementary school. And there'd be more each time she changed schools. As she picks up her bag, we see the flower upclose again. She says that they are all weak and "Why can't they just keep their heads down?" The bullies say "That ain't no woman." "Why doesn't she finish us off?" "She's too soft." "But at this rate..." "We'll have to ask Bro for help." That part made me laugh. BRO Towa reaches her school, Saint Gabriel Academy - It's her first day and she's late already. "St. Gabriel Academy" is the name of the school where the main characters went to in the series NEW MOBILE REPORT GUNDAM WING. Which was made in 1995 by Sunrise! She's making sure no one is looking, then she hops over the gate. We see the Feudal Era - Moroha is sitting by a waterfall, picking her ear. She can tell that there's Demon Slayers behind the trees. She says that she wouldn't be slain, not even in a 1000 years. She says that she will turn them all into lunch for her Kurikaramaru. This could be a reference to the swords possible absorption ability like Tessaiga, or even Dragon Scaled Tessaiga. I can't get enough of Moroha, I loved it when she laughed.

Hisui shows up and calls her "Moroha the Demon Killer" this also refers to her being a Bounty Hunter. Hisui's theme song sounds like it uses notes from Miroku's theme, of course that being his father. I'll have to wait until the songs are released for me to make a proper comparison. He says on behalf of the local villagers, that they've come to punish her. "In the name of the Moon I will punish you!" He throws Hiraikotsu and she jumps out of the way. Moroha says that they've got the wrong target. She hasn't left the mountains, she was just waiting for her bounty to show up. Hisui says "A demon /and/ a bounty hunter? All the more reason then!" He was charging at her while Kohaku tells him to stand down. Kohaku calls Moroha, "Lady Moroha" - and asks if another demon is responsible for the attacking the village. She says thats right but that it's too late - they've made her mad. Now she pulls out her rouge that contains the red pearl. You can use rouge as lipstick as well. It looks like a nipple. MOON PRISM POWER! - MAKE UP. Okay, these Sailor Moon references are killing me. She says "With this rouge, I become Beniyasha, Destroyer of Lands. Tremble before the bloodthirsty dawn." Setsuna interrupts Moroha with her Naginata. Moroha says "Hey, you Demon Slayers work with an interesting companion." "You're a half-demon, right? I'm also a..." Setsuna immediately says "Silence! You're dead." Moroha pulls out her sword and the fight starts. It seems that Moroha knows about the weapon Setsuna is using the Kanemitsu no Tomoe. Moroha asks if she wins the match if she could have it. Hisui wants to back her up Setsuna but she says thats theres no need. Moroha says "So your name's Setsuna, huh?" Moroha licks her lips giving her a nickname "All right! Sorry "Setsu," but I'll be taking your weapon!" The battle animation here was beautiful. In this moment Setsuna's pearl starts to glow in her eye. By many reasons this could be happening, Setsuna's life being endangered, or because Moroha's red pearl is nearby, it could be telling her that Moroha is not an enemy. Moroha says "You have a rainbow pearl too?" It seems that Moroha knows about the Rainbow pearls, but that Setsuna doesn't know what they are. As this happens Mistress Three Eyes senses the pearls powers and comes out. The zoom in animation of her eye, that's really detailed. Mistress Three Eyes was the demon that was attacking the village. From the Yashahime Keyword, we also know that Mistress Three Eyes is the Granddaughter of Mistress Centipede from the first InuYasha Episode. She lunges at Setsuna Hisui picks up Setsuna quickly, avoiding Mistress Three Eyes. In this moment Setsuna could be having visions because of her pearl activating. Hisui asks if she's okay and she snaps out of it. Moroha knew that Mistress Three Eyes would show up since she has the red pearl with her. Moroha has been after her from the start. She says "Time to claim my bounty!" as she jumps to attack Mistress Three Eyes, but she's tougher than Moroha though. Instead she pulls out her bow, prepares an arrow for firing and says "Hey Demon Slayers! Get lost, unless you want to get caught in the crossfire!" "Take this! Heavenly Arrow Barrage!" She shoots an arrow, and it cuts Mistress Three Eyes hair, passing her head. Mistress Three Eyes thinks she missed but she was very wrong. The first arrow vanished and then Loads of arrows appear, raining down onto Mistress Three Eyes. Kohaku says "Are those Sacred Arrows? No, those are the Arrows of Sealing. How could Beniyasha have such spiritual power?" Moroha says she did it! In this moment Mistress Three Eyes shouldn't be moving. But here's where things get interesting, Mistress Three Eyes begins to move, however in this moment a purple aura appears. This is the same purple aura we see from Episode 1 when Roothead swallows bandits. Could it be that some arrow shafts  are made from the fallen branches of sacred trees? However this isn't true for all arrows as we know powerful priestess such as Kagome and Kikyou have been able to channel their spiritual powers from regular arrows. Could it have been that these arrows were made from Rootheads fallen branches at some point? She was able to take Moroha's shell that containted the Red Pearl out of thin air. Could it be that Roothead took it from Moroha to give to Mistress Three eyes on purpose to lure the pearls to him? Or Mistress three eyes has a different power than her grandmother. It's possible that even having a pearl nearby she could get stronger, similiar how Mistress Centipede got stronger with the Shikon Jewel nearby. The thing is that Mistress Three eyes was only able to move her head up when this happens, so something tells me Roothead has something to do with it.

MIstress Three Eyes swallows Moroha's pearl and becomes stronger, slightly transforming. So she goes after Setsuna, who has the Gold Pearl while they try to divert her to Lady Kaede.

Towa is at school, with her homeroom teacher Osamu Kirin who seems to be a cameo of Mousse or Dr Tofu from Ranma 1/2. He tells her a British Proverb with an Engrish accent "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." So he overlooked her being late for the day. Which she seemed surprised that he didn't call her parents and let her off the hook so easily. Three of the bullies seemed to be stalking Mei. Then we see Towa jumping onto the roof to look at her sword. She says that this is the moment when she feels at peace. She says "The celebrated sword Kikujuumonji, a national treasure." Towa says that "she was told" that her sword once belonged to the shogun Yoshiteru Ashikaga - Although it might not be true though, you know what Gramps said about So'unga. If he was the one that gave her the sword, I wonder how she got it. I also want to note that Kiku is also a Chrysanthemum flower. Yet another flower symbolism of Towa. It is the symbol of regal beauty, rejuvenation and longevity. Used as the Imperial Seal of Japan, it also represents autumn. The guard on her sword seems to be a flower shape as well. Towa sniffs the air, and she can tell that Mei is crying at Grampa's shrine. The bullies tied up Mei, Grammy and Grampa Higurashi. Bro seems to be Kuno Tatewaki from Ranma 1/2 Towa says "This world is full of the weak. And because they're weak, they band together and pick on people weaker than them. I'm really sick of it."

I like it when Towa says "I can show you a crying face. But it won't be mine. It'll be yours!" Towa fights them with her fists. One of the things I mentioned in my trailer breakdown was the symbol on Towa's sword bag. That appeared to be one of the Kagome symbols. But we'll see what it really is or actually means down the line, I'm sure. One of the guys take out a knife and threatens them. So Towa takes out her sword and drops the bag, we get to see the symbol once again and it appears to be ten pointed. A decagram, based on this frame.

A different version of Towa's theme plays. Towa takes hits because she remembers her promise to Papa Souta, to never use her powers in front of other people. Of course in this moment, she is sorry that she can't keep her promise. She throws the other dude, saves the day. Mei doesn't want her to fight, and says "I know you want to be more girly and cute, don't you?" Towa says "Um, I guess there's a part of me that can't answer immediately." Mei was like "You're supposed to say 'yes' even if you don't mean it!" Okay little girl.

All is well the bad guys leave as they think the police were coming, but Gramps says that they just so happened to be passing by. Mei and Towa have a sweet moment. Towa says she's sorry. Towa says Living in this world is hard. If you don't follow set rules, you're treated as an outcast. Girls must be feminine, and boys must be masculine." And that she has been sick of that. The whole gender roles, and having to follow those rules. I really love that she talks about stuff like that. This is what I've been really wanting to see more of especially coming from the Feudal Fairytale universe. The story of InuYasha was the internal struggles of having to follow what society wants, being an outcast. She said that but she thinks it's time to stop being stubborn. There's nothing that could ever justify making Mei cry that much. Towa is so sweet and loving, she cares so much. Like the voice actors said in Animage, she represents her mom's personality. Another cute part where Towa's smelling something that she's smelled before, something nostalgic as the breeze passes through the Sacred Tree. She questions why it was coming from the Tree. Then we see Lady Kaede coming out of her hut. She's like "What the Hell?" seeing Mistress Three Eyes chasing Setsuna and Hisui on Kirara. So Setsuna says she was going to use to her advantage that Mistress Three Eyes wants the pearl in her eye. Which is funny to me because that was Moroha's idea first. So, here are some things to note from Moroha with her baiting as a Bounty Hunter. Setsuna drops down and uses her Senpujin, or Cyclone Burst. This sounds a lot different from the trailer. I preferred how it sounded in the trailer - But I'm sure that we'll be hearing it a lot more. As not all announcing of special attacks are going to sound the same each time. "My name is Setsuna. Those are my only words for you. That is why you will die tonight." Moroha interrupts with her Crimson Dragon Wave. Atta girl. That's my daughter. You tell her! That was your bounty first. Setsuna said a famous Sesshoumaru line "Ridiculous". Setsuna can't seem to move at all, and Mistress Three Eyes takes her Gold Pearl. Swallows it and does the same transformation we see that her grandmother Mistress Centipede - becomes in the first InuYasha episode. Moroha seemed to be more excited that she was becoming stronger, like it would be more fun of a fight that way. I really like that about her. "Hold on. I've got you, Setsu!" And Setsuna's like "Don't call me that!" Roothead inside of the Sacred Tree/Or known as the Tree of Ages begins to glow blue, and talks. He says "I sense the Rainbow Pearl for the first time in over ten years! And two at that! By the power of the Tree of Ages, I now return to this world!" By hearing this, I know from the first movie the Tree of Ages are linked to all different times. So it could be that Roothead can also travel between ages as well. "Could this smell be..." All three of them get sucked in. Sent to the Modern era. One thing to note is that Moroha is being thrown and landing the same way that Kagome did from the first episode of InuYasha. Towa is amazed to see her sister Setsuna back, her silver pearl begins to glow in her eye. Calling out Setsuna's name. Moroha says "Damn it. I feel so weak. It is because I crossed through the rainbow corridor?" I'm really curious as to what she means by that. So I'm sure we'll figure out more of what the Tunnel of the Tree of Ages does. She could be exhausted from time traveling. Which would be something that's new, but heck she was thrown as well. Mistress Three eyes gettin' all excited about getting a pearl for each of her three eyes.

"Setsuna! I'll save you!" and her sword breaks. So this is what leads to Towa creating a blade from her demonic energy that we will see in the next episode -

The animation in this episode was beautiful especially down to the water effects when Towa and Setsuna were drinking water, even when Towa was walking to school you could see the water effects there as well. Kaoru Wada's music does not dissappoint me, ever.

[alexswak]

Studio Graviton

I have been researching Studio Graviton for a while, a small studio notable for its activities during the ‘80s, and I’ll articulate what I found in this post here. As for why this small studio is relevant, let’s say an individual with the name of Hideaki Anno was one of the founders, and it was there that he had his debut as a director. 

So it all starts with Anno back in 1984, just after finishing his work on “Macross: Do You Remember Love?”. To get an idea about the nature of Studio Graviton we need to understand Anno’s situation back then, as he was still a newling in the industry, not even sure if he was going to continue in this line of work or not. It’s well-known that Anno moved to Tokyo based on an invitation from Miyazaki to work on Nausicaa, after dropping from university, but he moved with only his backpack and barely any money. It was a hard time for him, moving from one place to another, sleeping in the studio when he could, and so on. People might think the harsh working conditions of the anime industry are something recent, yet, while admittingly getting a bit worse recently, it’s always been like that, especially for newcomers.

A comic drawn by Anno detailing how he spent 1984. Translation here.

While working on Do You Remember Love he met with one young animator called Shoichi Masuo. They and two other friends, Kouji Itou and Katsuhiko Nishijima, decided to establish their own studio and called it Graviton. Exact date for establishing the studio is around June of that year, and Anno worked on Megazone 23 there.

I say studio because that is used to refer to Graviton, but let’s clarify the nature of this “studio” first. Studios in general are basically a place for creators to gather and work on the projects at hand, a place where they put their work material and tools and the like. The word “studio” might give off an impression of a place akin to a company or an organization of sorts, with representatives and management staff, yet this isn’t the case for most anime studios. The majority small studios exist mostly for the purpose of providing a place for creators to work in, with maybe one or two persons with management roles such as a producer to organize work and secure new contracts, but not always.

Graviton may be a bit special, but most small studios, which is to say most anime studios, are closer to Graviton than they are to larger studios like Bones or Toei. Graviton was just a rented apartment for the studio members to stay in whenever they pleased, with expenses shared among them. They didn’t have to work together on the same project, and they didn’t have any specific responsibilities or obligations, they could come and go whenever they wanted, really. Anno for example kept switching places between Graviton and Gainax a few times during those years. Another more recent example is Takafumi Hori, who works from Trigger on other studios’ projects, and him having his desk at Trigger is due to his good friendship with other studio members.

The benefits of having a shared working place like Graviton are obvious I believe, like sharing expenses or getting to work on other studio members’ projects if there is a vacancy, I’ll mention some examples on that in a moment. My examples are mainly related to Anno, because getting information on him and his career is much easier, but each one of the original studio members had a notable career of his own and is worth checking out.

So starting with the projects Anno worked on while being at Graviton we have the first part of Megazone-23 where he did some scenes. I guess he worked on the infamous Pop Chaser 4 while being at Graviton too, and then went back to Gainax to work on Wings of Honneamise, and then went back and forth between the two studios juggling different projects till around 1988, when he took over as the director of Gunbuster. He didn’t come back to Graviton after that, probably because his financial situation became much more stable and just settled at Gainax.

Among the things Anno worked on back then were ads, one of them was an ad for a music player from JVC, which he did at Gainax in 1987. The ad evidently has nothing to do with neither music nor electrical devices, which is what the company’s representatives said if I’m not mistaken, but it’s a good piece of animation. Another ad, the really interesting one, was a promotional video for a game on NES called “Mugen Senshi Valis”. This ad is by the way the first directorial (paid) work for Anno. He did it in the same year but this time at Graviton, and I’d have said by this point that the studio at which he worked was a mere difference in location no more, yet this ad was a rare collaboration between all of Studio Graviton members. Also, as a side note, Anno spent the money he got from this job on buying a cooler for the studio in place of the one that broke. 

The promotional video was promoted in magazines and posters with focus on two points: The first is being directed by Hideaki Anno, a genius animator who played a major role in DAICON and Wings of Honneamise. The second is having Katsuhiko Nishijima, the director of Project A-Ko, as a character designer and animation director. I think that the target audience for this promotional video was obvious. The production company behind this was Sunrise, and I think they were the ones who reached out to Anno in one way or another to direct this, who in turn invited his friends from Graviton, so as a result Graviton was credited with the animation.

Director - Storyboard: Hideaki Anno

Character Designer - Animation Director: Katsuhiko Nishijima

Key Animation: Graviton

Backgrounds: Atelier Musa

Finishing: Studio Fantasia

Production: Hideoki Tomoika(Sunrise)

This is a great opportunity to talk about Nishijima, who was a key figure in the ‘80s. He wanted to become a mangaka at first, but wanting to make a living drove him to enter a university, which he left after his first year to join the anime industry. Applying for a place at Sunrise at first, after watching Gundam during his year at the university, he was referred to Studio Live because Sunrise didn’t accept new in-betweeners at the time. He passed the entry test there and had his first gig as an in-betweener on Cyborg 009 episode 27 I believe. His first key animation came shortly thereafter on episode 26 of Maeterlinck no Aoi Tori: Tyltyl Mytyl no Bōken Ryokō.

He started attracting attention due to his scenes in Urusei Yatsura, being a big fan of the manga to begin with he personally asked Toyo Ashida(Studio Live’s president) to work on the TV anime. There he started developing his own style, and although a hint of Kanadism was there, his style was pretty distinct even early on, which led to his scenes standing out from the rest. Even when Studio Live stopped working on Urusei Yatsura, Nishijima moved to Deen where he continued working on it. It can be said that the long time he spent working on Urusei Yatsura culminated in his magnum opus, Project A-Ko, but that’s a whole discussion of its own for another time. Before Nishijima left Studio Live he participated in a dozen of their shows, such as Minky Momo and Dr. Slump Arale-chan, and even after leaving he kept ties with them and worked on things like the Kyoufu no Bio Ningen Saishuu Kyoushi OVA.

There’re a lot of characteristics for his style. First there’s the way he draws bodies, as he was known for drawing girls with sexy bodies while keeping the faces simple and cute with large round eyes. No wonder such style was popular among otaku of the day, especially considering the “idol” status of Lum from Urusei Yatsura back then. His popularity only increased after Project A-Ko OVA, and the Valis PV came shortly after all of that.

Nishijima’s designs are pretty beautiful if you ask me, and this PV is one of the few works where you’ll find his designs. Aside from that his scenes are a joy to watch. I think he was capable of adding a sense of dynamism to his scenes without unnecessary or excessive movement, which not a lot of young animators could do giving his style a hint of “maturity” so to speak, all the while without losing attractiveness. He achieves this through his good use of perspective, for example, or his unique impact frames, which are a favourite of mine.

Some of his impact frames.

If we take a look at his scene in the PV we see how both characters exchange position relative to the camera, as if the camera is rotating around them as they exchange blows. It reminds of his scene in Outlanders OVA, one of his best overall. Just like a lot of other young animators of that generation, however, he sadly didn’t put out any work worthy of note after the ‘80s, especially after switching his focus to directing and participating in less projects overall.

As for people he works\worked regularly with there was Moriyama Yuuji, a friend of his since the ‘80s. I bet the person who introduced them to each other was Hideaki Anno, since Anno met Moriyama around the year 1984 while the latter was at Studio MIN, which is another small studio located not that far from Graviton. Again, the word “studio” isn’t to be taken at face value here, as MIN was akin to Graviton in being more or less an apartment for animators to work in, hinting at the fact that such studios weren’t all that rare.

MIN was founded in 1982 and dissolved in the year 1991, yet it was full of prolific creators throughout its short lifespan. Other than the aforementioned Moriyama we have Hiroyuki Kitakubo, Hideki Tamura and Yoshiharu Fukushima as the studio’s founders, while Nobuteru Yuuki joined them later on. You’re free to look up any of those names, no short post is enough to cover the career of any single one of them, and this short post has already been dragged beyond its original intended length. As a side note though, I now notice that most of the people behind the infamous Cream Lemon Pop Chaser were either form MIN or from Graviton, and it’s an amazing realisation that a few very young creators in their small apartments created one of the most memorable and striking episodes of the whole ‘80s.

Before I end this post I’ll add that the period in which Anno met Moriyama was when Moriyama was working on a manga by Mamoru Oshii (the acquaintance between them goes back to when Moriyama worked on Urusei Yatsura). The manga was named “In The End... “ (とどのつまり) and was published (or was to be published?) in a sub-magazine from Animage called Animage Comics (アニメージュコミックス). That caused Toshio Suzuki, who was still an editor at Animage, to visit MIN regularly and run into Anno, whom he probably knew due to his participation in Nausicaa 2 years prior.

[bedlamsbard]

Concept writing for what I’ve been calling the “surprise AU,” the product of my latest streak of crazed concept writing, this time while moving cross-country (again).  Like a lot of my concepts, this is pretty sketchy at times; I also tend to do a lot of intro stuff for the first scene in a new concept with an outside POV (in this case, as in many, Cham), and this is no exception.

About 4.3K beneath the break.

“I am looking for a girl,” Cham said after the bartender had poured him his drink, which vaguely resembled the lum ale he had ordered.

The Aqualish seated on the stool next to him snorted and said in his watery voice, “Aren’t we all, my friend.”

“I’m not,” volunteered the Theelin male on his other side, who had been eyeing Cham with definite interest since he had walked into the cantina.

The bartender, a lean Pantoran with a missing ear, just said, “I’m not a pimp.”

“She’s my daughter,” Cham said, and when the Pantoran’s brow furrowed, went on, “She’s about eighteen, with green skin and white markings on her lekku –”  He moved his glass so that he could trace the pattern in the circle of condensation it had left on the countertop.

“What makes you think I know?” said the Pantoran.  “A lot of people come in here.”

“This isn’t the first cantina I’ve asked at,” Cham admitted.  “I saw her in the back of a holo, the fight last night –”

All three men nodded, which Cham took to mean that they had attended as well.

“Green Twi’lek–” said the Theelin thoughtfully, scratching at the base of his spikes.  “That could be Kanan’s girl.  I know they were all over each other last night.”

Cham’s stomach flipped, but he did his best to keep his voice neutral as he said, “Kanan?”

“One of the fighters,” said the Theelin. “Young human male, won his category last night.  I think he bunks over at the Poison Rose – tends bar there too, sometimes.  I don’t know about his girl.”

“She probably bunks with him,” the Aqualish pointed out, leering.  Then he seemed to remember that Cham was her father and lifted his fingers in a gesture of apology.

The Pantoran bartender was still frowning. “She run away from you?” he asked, a wary note in his voice.

Cham shook his head. “She was stolen from my wife and I, four years ago.” Almost anywhere else he would have named the Empire as the perpetrator, but here on the Emperor’s homeworld he was uncertain how that would be taken.

The three other men all exchanged looks, presumably evaluating the likelihood of Cham’s statement being truthful.  He must have been convincing, because the Pantoran said, “The Poison Rose is on the next street over,” and jerked a thumb in that direction, heedless of the walls between them.

“Thank you,” Cham said, and put a twenty-credit credchip on the counter. “For your next drinks.”

He left his untouched lum ale behind him as he slipped out of the cantina, into the cool, humid air of the Theed night.  For a moment he just stood there on the sidewalk, trying to fight down the surge of excitement in his chest.  His daughter suddenly felt shockingly in reach in a way that Cham hadn’t felt for years.  Part of him wasn’t quite willing to hope, not after everything that had happened since the colony had burned, after all the false alarms, but maybe – maybe this time –

There was only one way to find out.

The Poison Rose was easy to find, another cantina with several neon signs in the window advertising various alcohols.  Cham pushed the door open and stepped inside, finding that it was bigger but quieter than the previous cantina, already slowing down for the night. The bartender, a female Devaronian, looked up at his approach and said, “What can I get you?”

“I’m looking for a tenant of yours,” Cham said. “A human named Kanan?”

She jerked her head towards the hallway on one side of the bar.  “He’s upstairs, room 6.”

“Thank you,” Cham said.

“He’s got his girl in there with him, so I’d wait if I were you,” she warned as he started in the indicated direction.

Cham’s breath caught.  Hoping that his voice didn’t betray him, he said, “I’ll take that risk,” and went down the hallway.  There were stairs at the end of it, creaking a little under his feet as he climbed.

The walls here were thin, and Cham heard the murmur of voices as he passed various doors.  Someone – a child – was crying, being hurriedly shushed by their mother in a language he didn’t recognize; in another room a woman cried out in passion that he was fairly certain was simulated.  The sound of a smashball game on the HoloNet spilled out from a third. From behind the door to the room marked with a peeling 6 he heard laughter, a man’s and a woman’s.

Cham found himself reaching for his blaster, touching the worn blurrg leather on the grip to reassure himself before undoing the strap that kept it in place. He didn’t know who was in there with Hera – if Hera was in there at all – and he didn’t know if whoever it was was her friend or her captor.  Either way, Cham was not leaving without his daughter.

He knocked on the door.

The laughter stopped.  There was a soft murmur that he couldn’t make out, then footsteps before the door slid open and Cham’s daughter stared up at him.

She was bareheaded, wearing a man’s blue shirt and nothing else, and she looked at him as if she couldn’t believe what she saw.  Behind her, Cham could see a human male sitting up on the room’s single bed, hastily pulling a shirt on.

“Daddy?” Hera whispered, then, before he Cham could answer, flung herself at him.

Cham caught her in an embrace as Hera buried her face in his shoulder, her hands fisting at his back.  She was saying, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” like she couldn’t believe he was real, like if she stopped for even a second he would vanish.

“It’s me,” Cham said. “It’s all right, I’m here now.  You’re safe.”  He shot a glance over her head at the human, who had finished dressing and was watching them with concern.  He hadn’t picked up the blaster that was sitting on the nightstand.

After a moment, he said, “Hera?”

Hera took a breath and stepped back from Cham, wiping at her eyes.  Cham kept a hand on her shoulder, unwilling to release her as she half-turned towards the man. “Kanan, this is my father,” she said. “Daddy, this is my – my friend, Kanan.”

Given Hera’s state of undress, Cham had a good idea about the nature of their friendship, but there was real affection on Hera’s face when she looked at the man.  And she had been laughing, before, which seemed indicative of – something.

“General Syndulla,” Kanan said cautiously, and when Cham frowned at him, he added, “We haven’t met.”

Cham stepped into the room so that the door could slide closed behind him, watching the man’s mild eyes.  Boy might be a better way to describe him; he wasn’t much older than Hera, a well-muscled human with amber skin and dark hair loose around his shoulders.  There was a bruise on his cheekbone, a reminder that he had been in the fights the previous evening.

“Are you hurt?” Cham asked Hera.  He could see at a glance that Hera wasn’t wearing a collar, not even the light slip-chain that some slave-owners used instead of bulkier shock-collars.

She shook her head, looking confused and a little overwhelmed. “I’m fine, Daddy.  I – I don’t – what are you doing here?  How did you find me?”

“I saw you on the HoloNet coverage of the fights last night,” Cham explained. With him, he didn’t say, or what she had been doing when the holocam had panned briefly over them.  Well, she had had more clothes on then than she did now, at least.

“You don’t watch cage fights.”

“Themarsa does.  I was in the room.”

“They don’t broadcast the fights at the Spotted Shaak,” Kanan put in, his eyes narrowing in something that seemed to be worry.

“Someone streamed it,” Cham said.  He looked back at Hera, whose gaze had been flickering worriedly between them. “We need to go now, freykaa.  Get dressed, and pack anything you want to bring.”

She blinked at him. “Go where?”

“Home,” Cham said patiently. “Back to the Free Ryloth fleet.”

He saw the words that’s not home flash across Hera’s face, but she didn’t say as much.  She just hesitated, her expression torn.  “I – I can’t.”

“Why not?” Cham demanded, shooting a glare at Kanan.

The human looked just as surprised as Cham felt. “You don’t owe them anything, Hera,” he said, but she shook her head fiercely.

“I do!”

“No, you don’t!”

“I do!” Hera insisted. “I can’t just – and not for him –”  She shot Cham an apologetic glance, her cheeks flushed as the boy shook his head in return.

“Hera –”

“Hera,” Cham said as gently as he could, “I am not leaving without you.” As she hesitated again, he added, “I won’t do that to your mother.”

Hera jerked her head up, suddenly looking very young.  “Mama?”

“She’s back with the fleet,” Cham told her.

Hera shook her head, but it was a gesture more of confusion than negation. “I can’t – I –”

Cham had hoped to get through this without having to stun his daughter, but that seemed less likely by the moment.  “Hera –” he began, trying to conjure up an argument when he didn’t know what he was arguing against. “What is holding you here?”

He shot a glance at the boy, but Kanan was watching Hera as intently as Cham.

“I –” Hera said.  She looked helplessly at the boy, then at Cham, then down.  “I’m an Imperial cadet,” she confessed, and when Cham stared, lost for words, she added hastily, “It was my choice.  It was the only way I could get out of prison, when they were holding me at the Spire four years ago.  I worked hard for it.  I can’t just leave.”

Cham shut his eyes briefly, then opened them again and reached for Hera. She looked up at him, her expression distressed. “My daughter, you owe the Empire nothing.  They have all but destroyed our family, our world.  They took you and your mother from me, murdered your aunts, stolen your cousins, cost us our home.  Whatever they have to offer you is nothing in the face of what they’ve taken.”

Her face crinkled up in dismay.  “But – I –”  She stumbled over the words, looking at her lover for help, but all he said was, “You know how I feel about the Empire, Hera.”

She shut her eyes, looking painfully young in the too-big shirt she was wearing.  “I’ll come,” she said finally, following that up with a glance at the boy, who nodded in response.  Cham took that to mean that he would be leaving Naboo with two passengers instead of just his daughter, but under the circumstances couldn’t resent it.

Hera turned away to search for her clothes, which turned out to be scattered around the room in a way that Cham didn’t want to think about.  Kanan went to help her, seemed to remember Cham’s presence, and hesitated.

Then he went absolutely still.

“What?” Hera demanded, halfway through pulling her trousers on. “What is it?”

“There’s something wrong,” he said.

“You think?” she hissed at him, jerking her trousers the rest of the way up.

“Not that –”  He caught up his blaster from the nightstand and strode to the window, throwing the shutters open to look out into the street.

Cham followed him, frowning.  Kanan stepped aside so that he could see too, his handsome features creased in worry.

All the pedestrians that had been in the street when Cham had arrived had vanished.  Instead there was a single figure standing there and looking up at them – no, not them, Cham realized.  At Kanan.

“Who is that?” Hera asked, stepping up beside Kanan and trying to peer around him as she did up her jacket. “I thought competitors from the fights didn’t hold grudges.”

“The bettors do,” Kanan said absently, “but I don’t think –”  He flinched back suddenly, and the shutters banged shut, though Cham hadn’t seen him reach for them.  “We need to go.”

Hera caught his sleeve. “Who was that?” she demanded.

“Something evil.”

He looked badly shaken, like he had reached for a piece of stone only for it to burn his hand.  For a moment he stared at the blaster he was holding as though he couldn’t comprehend its purpose, then tried to holster the weapon before apparently realizing he wasn’t wearing his holster yet.  He crossed the room to put it down and pull a bag out from under the bed, digging inside it for a moment before pulling out what looked like the carrying case for a riflescope.  Hera grabbed the bag from him and began to throw things into it, prudently taking the blaster and finding the holster as well.

“Daddy, were you followed from the spaceport?” she asked. “Maybe –”

“No, I’m certain of it,” Cham said.  He looked at both children with bemusement he couldn’t shake – “children” wasn’t fair since they were both be legally adults on Ryloth, but Hera was his daughter and he couldn’t rid himself of the notion that anyone in her company would be any different than her.  And right now they both seemed very young.

The boy put his head to one side, his brows creased as though listening to something. “They’ve cleared out the cantina down below,” he said. “You’re going to have to go out the back, or take the upstairs route.”

“You mean ‘us’,” Hera said, dropping the bag on the bed with a light thump; it didn’t seem to contain more than clothes and a datapad or two.

He blinked. “What?”

“I’m not leaving you behind.”  She lifted her head stubbornly, so like her mother that it made Cham’s heart clench. “And how do you know the cantina’s been cleared out anyway?  By who?”

“Stormtroopers,” Kanan said. “And I just – I just know.”  He looked down at the riflescope case he was holding and grimaced, standing back on one heel.

Cham couldn’t hear anything, but there was something familiar about the boy’s prescience that he didn’t want to think about too closely.  “I will investigate it,” he informed them. “Both of you stay here.”

“No –” Kanan protested.

“Yes,” Cham said, putting all his authority into the word, with the result of seeing the boy hesitate.  Cham left before he could protest again, leaving the door open behind him so that they could hear whatever happened downstairs.

Something had changed.  The earlier sense of life in the cantina had vanished; Cham could still hear small noises coming from the rooms behind the closed doors in the upstairs hallway, but they seemed muted now, as though their residents had realized something was wrong.  Music still played in the cantina downstairs, but Cham couldn’t hear any conversation, and as he paused to listen, he heard under the music the slight but familiar creak of stormtrooper armor.

Kanan had been right.

Cham drew his blaster as he made his way cautiously down the stairs, hugging the wall as he did so.  He remembered the place where the steps had creaked earlier and stepped around it, light-footed as he reached the bottom and the short hallway there.  Beyond it, he could see the dim light reflecting off polished white armor.  The bartender was just visible, standing against the wall with her hands up alongside her patrons.

Had he been followed?  Cham was nearly certain that he hadn’t been, given his meandering path through the city, but evidently he had been mistaken. Unless they hadn’t come for him –

He still had to try and get a count of how many there were.  If there were only a few, then they might be able to fight their way out; if there were more – flight might be their best option.

He edged forward along the wall, his blaster lowered but his finger on the trigger.  From here, he could see four troopers – not too many, but not so few that Cham wanted to tangle with them either, not with his daughter’s life and freedom at stake. He couldn’t see the whole room, either, there might easily be more out of sight.

He started to back up, most of his attention still on the room in front of him. When the back of his heel hit the step behind him he glanced down, unwilling to risk tripping up the stairs and alerting the stormtroopers –

“General, duck!”

Cham dropped, his years on the battlefield sending his body reacting before his mind caught up with Kanan’s shouted warning.  Something red pinwheeled over his head with a half-familiar humming sound, wooden walls splintering its wake and leaving the smell of burning behind.  All at once his lekku went tight as Hera, her voice terrified, yelled, “Daddy!”

Out of the corner of his eye Cham saw a flash of blue light.

When he looked up, there was – something else – standing in the narrow hallway in front of him, blocking the entrance to the cantina.  Cham blinked and the dark shape reformed itself into a Pau’an, dressed in black and gray with red highlights like streaks of blood and holding a round-hilted lightsaber, both scarlet blades extended.  He stared at it, astonishment blanking out every other emotion, even fear.

It was an Inquisitor.

Cham had heard of them before, some creature of the Emperor’s with arcane powers like the Jedi of the old Republic, but he had never seen one except in holograms.

“There you are,” he said, voice a pleased purr that made Cham shudder, but his attention wasn’t on Cham.  “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I thought I dreamed you,” Kanan said, his voice soft and stunned.  The stairs creaked as he stepped down; Cham looked up to see him holding a blue lightsaber, his hands white-knuckled on the hilt.  Hera was behind him, clutching both the bag and the blaster.

His voice soft with amusement, the Inquisitor said, “You thought you dreamed me?  After everything we shared?”

“That’s not what I would call it,” Kanan said, strained.

Cham pushed warily to his feet, but neither of the two men was watching him. The stormtroopers that had appeared in the corridor behind the Pau’an were, though, and Cham saw their blasters move to follow him.

Kanan stepped past him, moving to put his body between Cham and the Inquisitor. From here Cham could see him shaking, sweat beading at his hairline.

“Planning to fight?” the Inquisitor inquired. “You remember how well that went the last time.”

Cham reached for the comlink on his belt and found it, clicked two short and two long, then heard a click in response.

“Let them go,” Kanan said, his voice barely more than a whisper, “and you can have me.  I won’t fight.”

“Kanan, no!” Hera hissed.  “Don’t –”

“I have no interest in your friends,” the Inquisitor told him, almost kindly.  “The Imperial Security Bureau, however, does, and they will be here shortly.”

Hera made a small, pained sound in her throat, and Cham glanced up to see her hands tighten on the blaster she was holding.  He had to fight down his own moment of panic, because he had just gotten his daughter back and he was damned if he was going to let the Empire have her again.

The Inquisitor flicked his lightsaber forward, Kanan’s gaze following the glowing red blade as if mesmerized by it.  “I have no desire to harm you, my boy,” he said, and then smiled, all teeth. “I would prefer to keep you intact, but that is hardly necessary.”

Kanan shuddered all over, but said gamely, “Let them go –”

The cantina door blew in.

Amidst the muffled thumps of exploding concussion grenades that followed, Cham grabbed the boy’s shoulder and thrust him up the stairs before him, heading for the rooftop exit he had seen earlier.  He collected Hera along the way, sending both teenagers scrambling through the corridor heedless of the explosions and blasterfire below.

The clatter of armor sent Cham whirling around, firing at the stormtroopers that had followed them.  In the same instant Kanan shoved his free hand out and the stormtroopers went flying backwards down the stairs, where more shouts suggested that they had taken out a few of their fellows along the way.

They found their way out through a trapdoor to the roof, slipping on the moisture-slick tile.  Cham steadied his daughter, keeping a wary eye behind them for pursuit, but for the moment they seemed to be clear.  They made it over the roof to a ladder that reached mostly to the ground, depositing them in the narrow alley that ran behind the cantina.  There was a stormtrooper there keeping an eye on the backdoor, but before he could shout Hera dropped him with a stun blast.

Cham’s comlink beeped urgently and he took it off his belt.  “Themarsa, are you clear?”

“We’re clear, no casualties,” his cousin reported. “Do you –”

“I’ve got her,” Cham said. “We’ll rendezvous back at the ship.  Cham out.”  He replaced his comlink on his belt and turned back to see Hera staring at him.  “Did you think I came alone?”

“Yes,” she admitted.  She glanced at Kanan, who looked sick to his stomach and was still staring up at the building, his unlit lightsaber hilt clenched tightly in his fist.  “Love – Kanan, we need to go.”

He didn’t seem to hear her; Cham could still see him shaking.  Hera touched his arm and he jerked, looking wildly around before he saw her.

“We need to go,” Hera repeated. “Come on, love.  It’s all right.”

He nodded, shivering, and hooked his lightsaber onto his belt.

They had to dodge out of the way of stormtrooper patrols twice on their way to the spaceport where Cham’s small ship was docked, but they made it there without getting into a firefight at any point.  Themarsa was waiting on the ramp when they arrived, his brows climbing when he saw the human with them, but didn’t comment on Kanan’s presence, just hugged Hera quickly and hustled them inside.

The pilots took off almost before everyone had gotten seated, the force of it pushing Cham back in his seat.  They all sat in silence, waiting for a seemingly inevitable attack, but no TIEs came screaming out of the stars after them, and they jumped to hyperspace a few moments later.

*

It wasn’t a large ship, but Kanan managed to slip away while Hera was being enfolded in the loving arms of various second and third cousins – wary of alerting Alecto, Cham had only brought Themarsa and three others with him, people whose absence Alecto might notice but who wouldn’t tell her if it had turned out to be a false alarm.  Cham tracked the boy down to the airlock, where he found him sitting in the corridor, his back against the hatch and his head in his hands.  He twitched a little at the sound of Cham’s footsteps, but didn’t look up.

“You are a Jedi, are you not?” Cham said quietly.

Kanan lowered his hands.  His expression was bleak; Cham thought from his red-rimmed eyes that he might have been crying, but wasn’t certain.  “I used to be.”

“And the Inquisitor?”

For a long time Kanan didn’t answer, looking away from Cham. Eventually, he said, “A few years ago, not long after – after – you know – I was captured.  By him.  He had me for – a few days, a week, longer, I’m not sure.  He wanted…it doesn’t matter.  I managed to get away, and he – it was easier to pretend that it hadn’t happened.  I didn’t have any permanent marks, and – I thought – I don’t know what I thought. It was like a bad dream, in a way. It didn’t seem to…to leave anything behind.  And I wanted it not to have happened.”

“He hurt you.”

Cham hadn’t heard Hera approach, but he stepped aside so that she could go to the boy.  She settled down beside him and put an arm around his shoulders, pulling him familiarly against her.

“Not like you’re thinking,” he said softly.  “He hurt me, but not like that.  And it was – it was a long time ago.”

If it had been just after the fall of the Republic, then he must have been about the same age Hera had been when the colony had burned, Cham thought.

“You should go be with your family,” Kanan told Hera, with a sideways glance at Cham.  “I’m all right.  I was just – I was just surprised.”

Hera hesitated.  Cham wanted to question the boy further, but he suspected that he would have to do so without Hera there, which Cham would have preferred to do anyway.  That, however, required getting back to the fleet, and it would be a few hours yet before the.  He thought that it could wait for another rotation or so.  Long enough to hand Hera over to her mother, when he could figure out what to do with her lover.

He still wasn’t certain what he thought of that, but there were worse places that he had expected to find Hera, and this had gone as well as it could.

“Come on, Hera,” he said, holding his hand out to her.

She gave Kanan a worried look, but he didn’t look at her, and after a moment she pressed a kiss to his cheek before getting to her feet.  She didn’t take Cham’s hand, but she preceded him out of the airlock.  When Cham looked back, it was to see Kanan curling in on himself, his hands locked over the back of his head like he was holding together an open wound.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Awkwafina: 'I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I'd do anything for a laugh'

New Post has been published on http://funnythingshere.xyz/awkwafina-i-was-always-the-crazy-one-the-funny-one-id-do-anything-for-a-laugh/

Awkwafina: 'I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I'd do anything for a laugh'

The front desk clerk at the Beverly Hills Hotel is polite but puzzled. “Nora Lum? No, we have no one staying here of that name.” How about Awkwafina, I ask, spelling it out for him. He looks at me as though he thinks I might be messing with him. “Sorry, madam,” – is that a note of relief in his voice? – “no one of that name either.” I reach for my phone, but then I have an idea. Sandra Bullock? Suddenly I have the attention of all three front desk clerks. “This way, madam.”

“Who the fuck is Awkwafina? That’s everyone’s reaction,” laughs Nora Lum/Awkwafina (pronounced Aquafina) when I eventually find her. She and Bullock – or “Sandy” as Lum affectionately calls her – are both holding court at the hotel today to discuss their new movie Ocean’s 8, a female reboot of the Ocean’s Eleven crime comedy heist first made famous by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in 1960, then reprised by George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon in Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen. In the movie poster Bullock and Lum are flanked by six other top-tier names: Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, Sarah Paulson and Mindy Kaling. “No one knows why I was cast,” says Lum, who has just turned 30. “Even I don’t know. Gary Ross [the director] really took a chance on me. He saw something in me that I don’t think I even saw in myself. Because of his confidence, I felt confident, too.”

Lum’s route to the top has been unconventional. In 2012, on her 24th birthday, she uploaded a rap video to YouTube entitled My Vag – sample lyric: “My vag speak five different languages / And told yo vag, ‘Bitch, make me a sandwich.’” Two things happened immediately, neither surprising. She was sacked from her job as a publicity assistant at a publishing company. And her father went ballistic. “He was screaming at me on the phone. He thought I was having a quarter-life crisis. And then we didn’t talk for a while…”

[embedded content]

What no one expected, least of all Lum, was that the video would become a viral hit and launch her on a career as a rapper and comedian. “I still can’t believe it worked: that’s crazy to me.” Absurdly brilliant, the song almost defies description. Suffice to say that “vag” or “vagina” is repeated 53 times and the video features Lum – wearing a “horrifying pair of chemistry goggles” – delivering random paraphernalia from a (thankfully unseen) vagina: a violin, a cabbage, a live cat, a toaster.

Adopted by some as a sort of feminist anthem – a belated response to Mickey Avalon’s 2006 My Dick – the video has received more than 2.5m hits. Even Bullock is a fan. “At some point Sandy discovered My Vag and loved it,” says Lum. “She shares it, which is really cool…”

Views will no doubt increase dramatically this year as Lum hits the mainstream, appearing in both Ocean’s 8 and, later this summer, in Crazy Rich Asians. “It’s an amazing time to be in Hollywood,” enthuses Lum. “The landscape is changing. Here I am with an all-female cast and an all-Asian cast. I’m fairly new to this industry and I have not experienced some of the struggles I’ve heard about. Time’s up and it’s about time. No more bullshit characters for women, especially Asian American women. Don’t piss off whole communities of people.”

We meet first towards the end of her photoshoot. Although there are already at least 10 people in the room, Lum’s “wrangler” – as she calls her – is hesitant about letting me in, concerned I might write something revealing about the shoot. Fair enough: she’s just protecting her client. What she may not have grasped is that it is a little late to start protecting Lum. She has rapped about her vagina, joked about her apartment’s “semen-stained walls” and made quips about masturbation. Lum intervenes on my behalf. “Let her stay. What the fuck is she going to do? Write about my Spanx? Like I care…”

Lum is funny and relaxed throughout the rest of the shoot, putting everyone at ease. When the photographer asks her to lean back on a fluorescent bench, she cackles loudly and hams it up. “It looks like I’m giving birth on the subway.” The stylist puts her in a pair of incredibly high rose-gold heels and she totters around delightedly: “I’m terrible in heels. I look like a little baby trying them on.” Her voice is surprisingly deep – at odds with her slight frame. She changes back into streetwear for the interview – cropped black T-shirt, black high-top sneakers and khaki trousers. “I got them in Target [the American equivalent of Tesco] yesterday – I have no fashion sense. I then treated myself to Louis Vuitton sneakers. Target and Louis Vuitton. Who am I? What am I?”

Funny that she should beat me to that question. It turns out that even Awkwafina finds it hard to explain Awkwafina. “There is a duality between Awkwafina and Nora. Awkwafina is someone who never grew up, who never had to bear the brunt of all the insecurities and overthinking that come with adulthood. Awkwafina is the girl I was in high school – who did not give a shit. Nora is neurotic and an overthinker and could never perform in front of an audience of hecklers.”

So if the phone rang early in the morning and she answered half-asleep, who would she be, Awkwafina or Nora? “Nora. I’m Nora most of the time. But when I’m in a good mood I’m Awkwafina. When I’m in a bad, sad, lonely mood, it’s Nora all the way. When I come home at night from being Awkwafina, that’s Nora. I compare it to The Mask…” She means the Jim Carrey movie about a timid bank clerk who discovers a magical character-changing mask. “Thank God for the mask.”

Born Nora Lum in 1988, to a Chinese American father and South Korean immigrant mother, she grew up in Flushing, Queens. Her early years were marked by tragedy. Her mother was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension shortly after Lum’s birth. “It was a very slow illness and she lived for four more years. I remember her, but I remember mostly when she passed… Obviously it was a very tragic situation, but I felt odd and uncomfortable when adults cried to me. One of the first emotions I ever felt was embarrassment. So I started trying to make them laugh.”

Her grandmother stepped in to help her father. “My grandmother was everything to me, she taught me that Asian women are strong, they’re not meek orchard-dwelling figures. She always knew I had something, not even star power but spunk – she got me singing lessons and we didn’t tell my dad, because he’d be like: ‘Why would you waste money on that, that’s just stupid.’”

At school, she was the comedian. “I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I’d do anything for a laugh, like dunking an ice cream in my eye. Everybody would be: ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe she did that!’ These were not intellectual jokes.” She attended a performing arts high school, where she played the trumpet. At 15, she came up with the stage name Awkwafina. “I just thought it was a funny name. And it was fitting that it had ‘awkward’ in it, because I am awkward.” After majoring in journalism and women’s studies, she went to China to study Mandarin, then worked at a video rental store, an air-conditioning company and finally a publishing company.

I don’t think I’ll ever carry myself like a star. Look at me now, bent over slurping up soup

Following My Vag, she released a rap album Yellow Ranger, then joined her idol Margaret Cho on Green Tea, a song which lampoons Asian stereotypes. Later she morphed into acting – appearing in comedy movies like Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising – and pioneered her own gloriously deranged web chat show Tawk, which she hosted from corner stores and laundromats, complete with an octogenarian, boombox-bopping sidekick – as well as a segment from her 84-year-old grandmother Grammafina, who delivers pearls of wisdom from a leather armchair in a darkened room, such as, “You want to throw a good party, you serve some hors d’oeuvres.”

“My grandmother’s such a ham,” Lum says. “She’s always like: ‘I’m so bad at acting.’ And then she murders it…”

In Ocean’s 8, Lum plays Constance, a pickpocket whose adroitness attracts felon Debbie Ocean, played by Bullock, who is planning a heist at New York City’s annual Met Ball. Before meeting the cast, Lum was terrified. “I had waking nightmares I would say something weird. But they welcomed me, they were so warm. There was so much laughter on set. I consider them my heroes – but now they are also my friends.” They keep in regular touch with a group text. “It’s always a joy to wake up to a text from one of them. We have a lot of gifs, a lot of laugh-out-loud jokes.”

Lum – who still raps and has just released a five-song EP In Fina We Trust – does not think she will ever feel like a movie star. “I’m physically insecure. It came with puberty, not feeling pretty. But when I say that to my grandmother, she’s like: ‘Bitch, you’re fine…’ But I don’t think I’ll ever carry myself like a star. Look at me now, bent over slurping up soup.” She says she finds it hard to relax into her success. “Even when I’m lying in bed at night I’m thinking, ‘What more can I do?’ I keep feeling I’ll pay for it all some way.”

Yet she thoroughly enjoyed one moment while filming Ocean’s 8 in New York. “We were shooting this glamorous scene and I looked up and saw the office I got fired from. I thought: ‘Oh my God, everything has come full circle.’ I left that job in pursuit of Awkwafina. And here I was shooting a scene with Rihanna. Getting fired from that job really hurt my feelings. Now I could just look up and say, ‘Fuck y’all.’”

Lum still talks to her grandmother almost every day. “She’s my therapist.” And even her father has come round. “Now he won’t leave me alone,” she says affectionately, “although I still, to this day, get random emails about government jobs from all the job lists he signed me up for. He just wanted good for me.” On a personal level, she says she feels very settled with her long-term boyfriend: “I’m extremely happy. I’m in love.” And yet: “I’m not sure I will ever be the kind of woman who can retire into a family.”

I ask her if Lum and Awkwafina will ever go their separate ways. “At some point they might have to. I don’t think an 85-year-old Awkwafina will be the most normal look… By then people will be laughing at me, not with me – I will be coughing loudly and yelling at birds. But then I look at my grandmother and she’s still pretty fricking cool.”

Our time is up. The hotel wants the room back and someone is ringing the phone and knocking on the door simultaneously. “They’re aggressive as fuck,” she grumbles, as she grabs her things. “Oooh,” she exclaims, spying a side table crammed with bottles of designer water. “I’m just going to steal these.” She grabs an armful, chuckling as we leave the room: “I guess I’ll always be a hustler.”

Ocean’s 8 is in cinemas from tomorrow

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/17/awkwafina-oceans-8-youtube-crazy-funny-nora-lum

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Awkwafina: 'I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I'd do anything for a laugh'

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/awkwafina-i-was-always-the-crazy-one-the-funny-one-id-do-anything-for-a-laugh/

Awkwafina: 'I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I'd do anything for a laugh'

The front desk clerk at the Beverly Hills Hotel is polite but puzzled. “Nora Lum? No, we have no one staying here of that name.” How about Awkwafina, I ask, spelling it out for him. He looks at me as though he thinks I might be messing with him. “Sorry, madam,” – is that a note of relief in his voice? – “no one of that name either.” I reach for my phone, but then I have an idea. Sandra Bullock? Suddenly I have the attention of all three front desk clerks. “This way, madam.”

“Who the fuck is Awkwafina? That’s everyone’s reaction,” laughs Nora Lum/Awkwafina (pronounced Aquafina) when I eventually find her. She and Bullock – or “Sandy” as Lum affectionately calls her – are both holding court at the hotel today to discuss their new movie Ocean’s 8, a female reboot of the Ocean’s Eleven crime comedy heist first made famous by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in 1960, then reprised by George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon in Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen. In the movie poster Bullock and Lum are flanked by six other top-tier names: Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, Sarah Paulson and Mindy Kaling. “No one knows why I was cast,” says Lum, who has just turned 30. “Even I don’t know. Gary Ross [the director] really took a chance on me. He saw something in me that I don’t think I even saw in myself. Because of his confidence, I felt confident, too.”

Lum’s route to the top has been unconventional. In 2012, on her 24th birthday, she uploaded a rap video to YouTube entitled My Vag – sample lyric: “My vag speak five different languages / And told yo vag, ‘Bitch, make me a sandwich.’” Two things happened immediately, neither surprising. She was sacked from her job as a publicity assistant at a publishing company. And her father went ballistic. “He was screaming at me on the phone. He thought I was having a quarter-life crisis. And then we didn’t talk for a while…”

[embedded content]

What no one expected, least of all Lum, was that the video would become a viral hit and launch her on a career as a rapper and comedian. “I still can’t believe it worked: that’s crazy to me.” Absurdly brilliant, the song almost defies description. Suffice to say that “vag” or “vagina” is repeated 53 times and the video features Lum – wearing a “horrifying pair of chemistry goggles” – delivering random paraphernalia from a (thankfully unseen) vagina: a violin, a cabbage, a live cat, a toaster.

Adopted by some as a sort of feminist anthem – a belated response to Mickey Avalon’s 2006 My Dick – the video has received more than 2.5m hits. Even Bullock is a fan. “At some point Sandy discovered My Vag and loved it,” says Lum. “She shares it, which is really cool…”

Views will no doubt increase dramatically this year as Lum hits the mainstream, appearing in both Ocean’s 8 and, later this summer, in Crazy Rich Asians. “It’s an amazing time to be in Hollywood,” enthuses Lum. “The landscape is changing. Here I am with an all-female cast and an all-Asian cast. I’m fairly new to this industry and I have not experienced some of the struggles I’ve heard about. Time’s up and it’s about time. No more bullshit characters for women, especially Asian American women. Don’t piss off whole communities of people.”

We meet first towards the end of her photoshoot. Although there are already at least 10 people in the room, Lum’s “wrangler” – as she calls her – is hesitant about letting me in, concerned I might write something revealing about the shoot. Fair enough: she’s just protecting her client. What she may not have grasped is that it is a little late to start protecting Lum. She has rapped about her vagina, joked about her apartment’s “semen-stained walls” and made quips about masturbation. Lum intervenes on my behalf. “Let her stay. What the fuck is she going to do? Write about my Spanx? Like I care…”

Lum is funny and relaxed throughout the rest of the shoot, putting everyone at ease. When the photographer asks her to lean back on a fluorescent bench, she cackles loudly and hams it up. “It looks like I’m giving birth on the subway.” The stylist puts her in a pair of incredibly high rose-gold heels and she totters around delightedly: “I’m terrible in heels. I look like a little baby trying them on.” Her voice is surprisingly deep – at odds with her slight frame. She changes back into streetwear for the interview – cropped black T-shirt, black high-top sneakers and khaki trousers. “I got them in Target [the American equivalent of Tesco] yesterday – I have no fashion sense. I then treated myself to Louis Vuitton sneakers. Target and Louis Vuitton. Who am I? What am I?”

Funny that she should beat me to that question. It turns out that even Awkwafina finds it hard to explain Awkwafina. “There is a duality between Awkwafina and Nora. Awkwafina is someone who never grew up, who never had to bear the brunt of all the insecurities and overthinking that come with adulthood. Awkwafina is the girl I was in high school – who did not give a shit. Nora is neurotic and an overthinker and could never perform in front of an audience of hecklers.”

So if the phone rang early in the morning and she answered half-asleep, who would she be, Awkwafina or Nora? “Nora. I’m Nora most of the time. But when I’m in a good mood I’m Awkwafina. When I’m in a bad, sad, lonely mood, it’s Nora all the way. When I come home at night from being Awkwafina, that’s Nora. I compare it to The Mask…” She means the Jim Carrey movie about a timid bank clerk who discovers a magical character-changing mask. “Thank God for the mask.”

Born Nora Lum in 1988, to a Chinese American father and South Korean immigrant mother, she grew up in Flushing, Queens. Her early years were marked by tragedy. Her mother was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension shortly after Lum’s birth. “It was a very slow illness and she lived for four more years. I remember her, but I remember mostly when she passed… Obviously it was a very tragic situation, but I felt odd and uncomfortable when adults cried to me. One of the first emotions I ever felt was embarrassment. So I started trying to make them laugh.”

Her grandmother stepped in to help her father. “My grandmother was everything to me, she taught me that Asian women are strong, they’re not meek orchard-dwelling figures. She always knew I had something, not even star power but spunk – she got me singing lessons and we didn’t tell my dad, because he’d be like: ‘Why would you waste money on that, that’s just stupid.’”

At school, she was the comedian. “I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I’d do anything for a laugh, like dunking an ice cream in my eye. Everybody would be: ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe she did that!’ These were not intellectual jokes.” She attended a performing arts high school, where she played the trumpet. At 15, she came up with the stage name Awkwafina. “I just thought it was a funny name. And it was fitting that it had ‘awkward’ in it, because I am awkward.” After majoring in journalism and women’s studies, she went to China to study Mandarin, then worked at a video rental store, an air-conditioning company and finally a publishing company.

I don’t think I’ll ever carry myself like a star. Look at me now, bent over slurping up soup

Following My Vag, she released a rap album Yellow Ranger, then joined her idol Margaret Cho on Green Tea, a song which lampoons Asian stereotypes. Later she morphed into acting – appearing in comedy movies like Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising – and pioneered her own gloriously deranged web chat show Tawk, which she hosted from corner stores and laundromats, complete with an octogenarian, boombox-bopping sidekick – as well as a segment from her 84-year-old grandmother Grammafina, who delivers pearls of wisdom from a leather armchair in a darkened room, such as, “You want to throw a good party, you serve some hors d’oeuvres.”

“My grandmother’s such a ham,” Lum says. “She’s always like: ‘I’m so bad at acting.’ And then she murders it…”

In Ocean’s 8, Lum plays Constance, a pickpocket whose adroitness attracts felon Debbie Ocean, played by Bullock, who is planning a heist at New York City’s annual Met Ball. Before meeting the cast, Lum was terrified. “I had waking nightmares I would say something weird. But they welcomed me, they were so warm. There was so much laughter on set. I consider them my heroes – but now they are also my friends.” They keep in regular touch with a group text. “It’s always a joy to wake up to a text from one of them. We have a lot of gifs, a lot of laugh-out-loud jokes.”

Lum – who still raps and has just released a five-song EP In Fina We Trust – does not think she will ever feel like a movie star. “I’m physically insecure. It came with puberty, not feeling pretty. But when I say that to my grandmother, she’s like: ‘Bitch, you’re fine…’ But I don’t think I’ll ever carry myself like a star. Look at me now, bent over slurping up soup.” She says she finds it hard to relax into her success. “Even when I’m lying in bed at night I’m thinking, ‘What more can I do?’ I keep feeling I’ll pay for it all some way.”

Yet she thoroughly enjoyed one moment while filming Ocean’s 8 in New York. “We were shooting this glamorous scene and I looked up and saw the office I got fired from. I thought: ‘Oh my God, everything has come full circle.’ I left that job in pursuit of Awkwafina. And here I was shooting a scene with Rihanna. Getting fired from that job really hurt my feelings. Now I could just look up and say, ‘Fuck y’all.’”

Lum still talks to her grandmother almost every day. “She’s my therapist.” And even her father has come round. “Now he won’t leave me alone,” she says affectionately, “although I still, to this day, get random emails about government jobs from all the job lists he signed me up for. He just wanted good for me.” On a personal level, she says she feels very settled with her long-term boyfriend: “I’m extremely happy. I’m in love.” And yet: “I’m not sure I will ever be the kind of woman who can retire into a family.”

I ask her if Lum and Awkwafina will ever go their separate ways. “At some point they might have to. I don’t think an 85-year-old Awkwafina will be the most normal look… By then people will be laughing at me, not with me – I will be coughing loudly and yelling at birds. But then I look at my grandmother and she’s still pretty fricking cool.”

Our time is up. The hotel wants the room back and someone is ringing the phone and knocking on the door simultaneously. “They’re aggressive as fuck,” she grumbles, as she grabs her things. “Oooh,” she exclaims, spying a side table crammed with bottles of designer water. “I’m just going to steal these.” She grabs an armful, chuckling as we leave the room: “I guess I’ll always be a hustler.”

Ocean’s 8 is in cinemas from tomorrow

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Awkwafina: 'I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I'd do anything for a laugh'

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/awkwafina-i-was-always-the-crazy-one-the-funny-one-id-do-anything-for-a-laugh/

Awkwafina: 'I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I'd do anything for a laugh'

The front desk clerk at the Beverly Hills Hotel is polite but puzzled. “Nora Lum? No, we have no one staying here of that name.” How about Awkwafina, I ask, spelling it out for him. He looks at me as though he thinks I might be messing with him. “Sorry, madam,” – is that a note of relief in his voice? – “no one of that name either.” I reach for my phone, but then I have an idea. Sandra Bullock? Suddenly I have the attention of all three front desk clerks. “This way, madam.”

“Who the fuck is Awkwafina? That’s everyone’s reaction,” laughs Nora Lum/Awkwafina (pronounced Aquafina) when I eventually find her. She and Bullock – or “Sandy” as Lum affectionately calls her – are both holding court at the hotel today to discuss their new movie Ocean’s 8, a female reboot of the Ocean’s Eleven crime comedy heist first made famous by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in 1960, then reprised by George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon in Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen. In the movie poster Bullock and Lum are flanked by six other top-tier names: Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, Sarah Paulson and Mindy Kaling. “No one knows why I was cast,” says Lum, who has just turned 30. “Even I don’t know. Gary Ross [the director] really took a chance on me. He saw something in me that I don’t think I even saw in myself. Because of his confidence, I felt confident, too.”

Lum’s route to the top has been unconventional. In 2012, on her 24th birthday, she uploaded a rap video to YouTube entitled My Vag – sample lyric: “My vag speak five different languages / And told yo vag, ‘Bitch, make me a sandwich.’” Two things happened immediately, neither surprising. She was sacked from her job as a publicity assistant at a publishing company. And her father went ballistic. “He was screaming at me on the phone. He thought I was having a quarter-life crisis. And then we didn’t talk for a while…”

[embedded content]

What no one expected, least of all Lum, was that the video would become a viral hit and launch her on a career as a rapper and comedian. “I still can’t believe it worked: that’s crazy to me.” Absurdly brilliant, the song almost defies description. Suffice to say that “vag” or “vagina” is repeated 53 times and the video features Lum – wearing a “horrifying pair of chemistry goggles” – delivering random paraphernalia from a (thankfully unseen) vagina: a violin, a cabbage, a live cat, a toaster.

Adopted by some as a sort of feminist anthem – a belated response to Mickey Avalon’s 2006 My Dick – the video has received more than 2.5m hits. Even Bullock is a fan. “At some point Sandy discovered My Vag and loved it,” says Lum. “She shares it, which is really cool…”

Views will no doubt increase dramatically this year as Lum hits the mainstream, appearing in both Ocean’s 8 and, later this summer, in Crazy Rich Asians. “It’s an amazing time to be in Hollywood,” enthuses Lum. “The landscape is changing. Here I am with an all-female cast and an all-Asian cast. I’m fairly new to this industry and I have not experienced some of the struggles I’ve heard about. Time’s up and it’s about time. No more bullshit characters for women, especially Asian American women. Don’t piss off whole communities of people.”

We meet first towards the end of her photoshoot. Although there are already at least 10 people in the room, Lum’s “wrangler” – as she calls her – is hesitant about letting me in, concerned I might write something revealing about the shoot. Fair enough: she’s just protecting her client. What she may not have grasped is that it is a little late to start protecting Lum. She has rapped about her vagina, joked about her apartment’s “semen-stained walls” and made quips about masturbation. Lum intervenes on my behalf. “Let her stay. What the fuck is she going to do? Write about my Spanx? Like I care…”

Lum is funny and relaxed throughout the rest of the shoot, putting everyone at ease. When the photographer asks her to lean back on a fluorescent bench, she cackles loudly and hams it up. “It looks like I’m giving birth on the subway.” The stylist puts her in a pair of incredibly high rose-gold heels and she totters around delightedly: “I’m terrible in heels. I look like a little baby trying them on.” Her voice is surprisingly deep – at odds with her slight frame. She changes back into streetwear for the interview – cropped black T-shirt, black high-top sneakers and khaki trousers. “I got them in Target [the American equivalent of Tesco] yesterday – I have no fashion sense. I then treated myself to Louis Vuitton sneakers. Target and Louis Vuitton. Who am I? What am I?”

Funny that she should beat me to that question. It turns out that even Awkwafina finds it hard to explain Awkwafina. “There is a duality between Awkwafina and Nora. Awkwafina is someone who never grew up, who never had to bear the brunt of all the insecurities and overthinking that come with adulthood. Awkwafina is the girl I was in high school – who did not give a shit. Nora is neurotic and an overthinker and could never perform in front of an audience of hecklers.”

So if the phone rang early in the morning and she answered half-asleep, who would she be, Awkwafina or Nora? “Nora. I’m Nora most of the time. But when I’m in a good mood I’m Awkwafina. When I’m in a bad, sad, lonely mood, it’s Nora all the way. When I come home at night from being Awkwafina, that’s Nora. I compare it to The Mask…” She means the Jim Carrey movie about a timid bank clerk who discovers a magical character-changing mask. “Thank God for the mask.”

Born Nora Lum in 1988, to a Chinese American father and South Korean immigrant mother, she grew up in Flushing, Queens. Her early years were marked by tragedy. Her mother was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension shortly after Lum’s birth. “It was a very slow illness and she lived for four more years. I remember her, but I remember mostly when she passed… Obviously it was a very tragic situation, but I felt odd and uncomfortable when adults cried to me. One of the first emotions I ever felt was embarrassment. So I started trying to make them laugh.”

Her grandmother stepped in to help her father. “My grandmother was everything to me, she taught me that Asian women are strong, they’re not meek orchard-dwelling figures. She always knew I had something, not even star power but spunk – she got me singing lessons and we didn’t tell my dad, because he’d be like: ‘Why would you waste money on that, that’s just stupid.’”

At school, she was the comedian. “I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I’d do anything for a laugh, like dunking an ice cream in my eye. Everybody would be: ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe she did that!’ These were not intellectual jokes.” She attended a performing arts high school, where she played the trumpet. At 15, she came up with the stage name Awkwafina. “I just thought it was a funny name. And it was fitting that it had ‘awkward’ in it, because I am awkward.” After majoring in journalism and women’s studies, she went to China to study Mandarin, then worked at a video rental store, an air-conditioning company and finally a publishing company.

I don’t think I’ll ever carry myself like a star. Look at me now, bent over slurping up soup

Following My Vag, she released a rap album Yellow Ranger, then joined her idol Margaret Cho on Green Tea, a song which lampoons Asian stereotypes. Later she morphed into acting – appearing in comedy movies like Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising – and pioneered her own gloriously deranged web chat show Tawk, which she hosted from corner stores and laundromats, complete with an octogenarian, boombox-bopping sidekick – as well as a segment from her 84-year-old grandmother Grammafina, who delivers pearls of wisdom from a leather armchair in a darkened room, such as, “You want to throw a good party, you serve some hors d’oeuvres.”

“My grandmother’s such a ham,” Lum says. “She’s always like: ‘I’m so bad at acting.’ And then she murders it…”

In Ocean’s 8, Lum plays Constance, a pickpocket whose adroitness attracts felon Debbie Ocean, played by Bullock, who is planning a heist at New York City’s annual Met Ball. Before meeting the cast, Lum was terrified. “I had waking nightmares I would say something weird. But they welcomed me, they were so warm. There was so much laughter on set. I consider them my heroes – but now they are also my friends.” They keep in regular touch with a group text. “It’s always a joy to wake up to a text from one of them. We have a lot of gifs, a lot of laugh-out-loud jokes.”

Lum – who still raps and has just released a five-song EP In Fina We Trust – does not think she will ever feel like a movie star. “I’m physically insecure. It came with puberty, not feeling pretty. But when I say that to my grandmother, she’s like: ‘Bitch, you’re fine…’ But I don’t think I’ll ever carry myself like a star. Look at me now, bent over slurping up soup.” She says she finds it hard to relax into her success. “Even when I’m lying in bed at night I’m thinking, ‘What more can I do?’ I keep feeling I’ll pay for it all some way.”

Yet she thoroughly enjoyed one moment while filming Ocean’s 8 in New York. “We were shooting this glamorous scene and I looked up and saw the office I got fired from. I thought: ‘Oh my God, everything has come full circle.’ I left that job in pursuit of Awkwafina. And here I was shooting a scene with Rihanna. Getting fired from that job really hurt my feelings. Now I could just look up and say, ‘Fuck y’all.’”

Lum still talks to her grandmother almost every day. “She’s my therapist.” And even her father has come round. “Now he won’t leave me alone,” she says affectionately, “although I still, to this day, get random emails about government jobs from all the job lists he signed me up for. He just wanted good for me.” On a personal level, she says she feels very settled with her long-term boyfriend: “I’m extremely happy. I’m in love.” And yet: “I’m not sure I will ever be the kind of woman who can retire into a family.”

I ask her if Lum and Awkwafina will ever go their separate ways. “At some point they might have to. I don’t think an 85-year-old Awkwafina will be the most normal look… By then people will be laughing at me, not with me – I will be coughing loudly and yelling at birds. But then I look at my grandmother and she’s still pretty fricking cool.”

Our time is up. The hotel wants the room back and someone is ringing the phone and knocking on the door simultaneously. “They’re aggressive as fuck,” she grumbles, as she grabs her things. “Oooh,” she exclaims, spying a side table crammed with bottles of designer water. “I’m just going to steal these.” She grabs an armful, chuckling as we leave the room: “I guess I’ll always be a hustler.”

Ocean’s 8 is in cinemas from tomorrow