#I NEVER THOUGHT IT WOULD HAPPEN SINCE THE ANIME DEVIATED FROM THE MANGA | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

crehador · 2 years

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how are we halfway through the season again it’s true what they say time flies like the wind and fruit flies like bananas

anyway winter 2023 mid-season thoughts:

nier and uniteup aren’t quite at the halfway mark yet due to their hiatuses (which were thankfully short, looks like no one is getting fucked like isekai ojisan this season knock on wood)

no new thoughts on nier since 3-ep ruling since lol it’s still at its third episode, but finally coming back this week! hype

uniteup is still adorable, though i’m starting to notice more immersion-breaking moments of the voice actors just... really sounding like they’re reading off a script

which is honestly kind of cute to me? they’re all very new of course and it’ll be nice to see them grow and improve as they get more work (well... if they get more work)

technoroid is shocking still the better idol anime of the season, though as i suspected it does struggle a bit to hold the perfect balance between its idol plot and its human/android tensions plot. they did a really phenomenal job of striking this balance at first, but the idol stuff has fallen by the wayside a little imo

it’s like if you’re going to do both you’ll need to do both well enough to justify having both, which technoroid is... still more or less accomplishing! i do wish we had a bit more idol stuff, but i can’t imagine how they would be able to do that without making the other themes suffer, so i think overall they’re doing as well as they can

that’s only for new idol seasons though because idolish7 is back from hiatus hell and continues to be the best idol series, like, of all time basically

trigun stampede is... well... i can’t say i’ve completed come around to it. i don’t so much mind that there are changes, it was always billed as a re-imagining after all, but so many of the changes (most of them, in fact) just make no damn sense to me

i’m not even a manga purist or anything, like yeah that’s my favorite version of canon but i do also love the og anime a lot even in how it deviates from the manga (i even like the og anime ending! so i’m really not like grrr grrr nothing can change from the manga grrr it just... doesn’t feel like these stampede changes are reasonable)

stampede is of course a gorgeous show and i’m loving the visual feast, also gotta give props for the crybaby livio flashback scene because that was quite literally everything i could have wanted

SINS I STILL HAVE NOT AND WILL NEVER FORGIVE: MILLY ERASURE. AND THEY TURNED?? MY WIFE??? ELENDIRA??? INTO A CHILD FOR SOME REASON?????? WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT WTF

anyway i will continue to enjoy the visual feast and otherwise keep my expectations so low that they are buried in the ground, my only hope is please please please let legato be as unhinged about knives as he is in manga canon do NOT take this away from us gays we need it

fumetsu s2 is still good but ngl kinda losing me, i’m just sad enough already that i don’t really need this lol

blue lock is coming up on its first season ending, and no it hasn’t held the high quality of its earliest episodes, but i still personally find it to be an incredibly good adaptation. hoping s2 will be announced quickly so i can continue watching with my dearest

high card is still in the strongly okayish category in terms of quality, wihch puts it above ooyukiumi no kaina... and it pains me to say that because kaina had such a strong start, but i don’t feel like it’s actually done anything all that interesting with its very cool worldbuilding

or, rather, i guess i’m just not into what they are doing. it’s fine and all, but i’m not feeling invested in the characters. worldbuilding is still dope as hell though

tsurune remains gorgeous and... kind of baffling in terms of vibe lmao like what the hell happened in the novels because i’m so sure it’s not as sanitized as the anime, i can just feel it

even in s4 my memories and i are still in such a weird relationship with bungou stray dogs which is that i know i’ve read the manga up to this part at least, probably even farther, but the absolute most batshit things have to happen before i’m like “ohhh yeah i guess that did happen huh”

don’t remember anything else. how did kunikida even get in jail?! he’s my favorite so the fact that i forgot that makes me wonder what else i forgot lmao

tomo-chan and i guess we’re calling it ice guy are still both pretty cute, and i usually enjoy office romcoms much more than high school romcoms because hell yeah adults

but tomo-chan has a strong edge over ice guy. both these series are just in the pretty okayish category for me, but tomo-chan’s comedic beats tend to land while ice guy’s do not. ice guy has its very cute moments, and it’s so so so soothing that i’m definitely enjoying it, but its comedy (especially its comedic timing) is just not really working. very often there are sketches that go on for just waaay too long, to the point that i think ice guy may have benefited from being a half-length show like cool doji danshi

still very cute, though!

and speaking of cool doji danshi, it’s still asdkflajsdlfkj i want to PUNCH a CLOUD these idiots are so cute. eikyuu shounen, the other half-length series of the season, is still pretty enjoyable too! surprisingly, if we rule out idolish7, i think i’d actually say eikyuu shounen has the best music out of the currently airing idol anime. uniteup and technoroid are obviously better in many other ways, but the eikyuu shounen music is right up my alley

last but certainly not least, the vampire dies in no time s2 is still so fucking funny that i’d put it as a strong contender for anime of the season for me. i feel like we’re seeing a lot more of fukuma this season which is fantastic because the bits about ronaldo’s writing career are so incredibly relatable lmao

like where can i get a fukuma-san fr

#crab watches #various things #mid-season review #i'll be curious to see if my thoughts/rankings change at the end of the season #but unless something really cool happens in high card or technoroid #i think kyuushin stays on top #(well cdd also but i'm not really counting the half-length ones)

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ketilsfarm · 1 year

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So I disliked pretty much every single change they made to the Ketil family in the anime, minus a couple of moments with Olmar and Oddny. Let's get to it.

-The Ketil backstory: awful. It seems like someone on the staff thought Ketil needed to be explained, as if his behavior is aberrant and illogical. Except his character is already complete in the manga, because he represents the only possible outcome of a self-pitying man who hates violence, but refuses to rebel against a system that rewards violence. He's not a critique of individual behavior that deviates from societal standards; he's a critique of the standards themselves. Raping slaves was legal. Beating them to death was legal. Everything he does is countenanced and even encouraged by the society he lives in. He didn't need a tragic backstory to explain why he stopped being a good person, because he never was one to begin with. He was just sensitive and hated physical violence.

-Throughout the story Arnheid is systematically stripped of all her rights and agency as a human being. Reframing the one decision she makes on her own into "a man reassures her that she's making the right decision" is even worse than the backstory for Ketil itself. Moreover, why is Sverkel of all people taking this moment to tell her about a time when her owner was really sad?! Even if we presume that he doesn't know she's Ketil's concubine, he's opposed to slavery in the first place. He wouldn't do this! In the manga he apologizes for not being able to help her, and later does help her to the best of his ability, and it works fine. He doesn't go "oooh my shit son was really sad once because a nameless woman was forced into a relationship she didn't want... almost like you in fact.... anyway she died."

-The entire point of Ketil's story is that he genuinely doesn't like physical violence until his final breakdown! We see him showing genuine discomfort with violence, and the climax of his arc when he breaks down and fully embraces it because it gives him power is supposed to be very important. Now this flashback tells us that he already reached the exact same point more than 20 years ago? He was already willing to go into battle to protect someone he loved, even though the other point of his character is that he's more likely to use violence against someone he should care for and protect? He beats those children because he's "forced" to do it; he rapes Arnheid because he's legally allowed to do it and finally he beats her to death because he can do that too.

(Oh, and he hits Olmar too, but that's also socially sanctioned to this very day and I doubt it's meant to be taken seriously.)

-Sverkel says this happened "more than 20 years ago", but according to the guidebook Thorgil, Ketil's oldest child with his legal wife, is currently 27, so… that would have to be quite a bit more than 20 years ago. I guess if I were Thorgil's grandfather I wouldn't bother remembering his age either. Unless we're assuming that Ketil was already married to his current wife then, had a young Thorgil running around, and he was trying to take a second wife? This would have been legal as long as he had enough money to pay another bride price and support more than one family, but he wouldn't have been in charge of the farm yet then, since Sverkel is clearly calling the shots in the flashback. So the farm would've been much smaller and poorer, because Ketil is the one who expanded it beyond a level he could support.

According to the guidebook ages, if you're wondering, Thorgil would've been born when Ketil was 20. So if Ketil isn't married yet in these flashbacks then he's 19 at most and will be married to his legal wife almost immediately. By that count, this flashback would be 28+ years ago.

This shot is framed like it's Sverkel looking at Ketil with regret, but we just saw Sverkel five seconds ago and he didn't look like that?

So why was that character who has the same hair and face as Ketil (and I'm realizing as I type this the same outfit as Sverkel in the earlier shot) framed so prominently in that shot???

Those are the same clothes. They forgot how they drew Sverkel within the same flashback. You can't do this.

Also, the whole flashback is set up like Sverkel is a village chieftain. He's not. Ketil isn't either. They run a farm. Under Ketil's leadership the farm is expanded greatly and has a huge amount of influence and social/financial control over his workers and the surrounding farmers, but these are his tenants and debtors. He's able to call them in and leverage those debts to get them to fight. He's not ruling over them as their leader, or settling disputes that happen off of his land. And we know that Sverkel wasn't running a huge operation like this back in his time as leader of the farm, so there's no reason anyone would go running to him to make decisions on how to defend the village or negotiate who's going to marry whom. He was just a farmer who probably had a slightly larger farm than anyone else.

Everything in the other village burned to ashes minus a few corpses, including the groom, who was standing right next to Ketil's girlfriend, but her clothes are unsinged and undamaged except for a few sword/arrow slices that didn't even break through the second layer of clothing? The raiders didn't even try to loot her fancy rich bride shoes? I'm sorry but this whole flashback is too stupid for words.

I don't know why they added this and tried to make Sverkel into the asshole who kowtows to social pressure in order to protect himself, while Ketil is the one who wants to defy stronger forces in order to protect someone vulnerable. Sverkel is the one who works his own fields into his sixties instead of buying slaves, puts himself in danger hiding Gardar, and literally crawls from his bed without working legs to beg Snake to spare Gardar and Arnheid, two people he barely knows. Ketil is the one who gives into pressure to make things easier for himself. Reversing their positions in the past doesn't add depth and explain why Sverkel feels this way now, it's just a dumb attempt to make Ketil look better and sadder for no reason.

-Scenes that hint at Thorgil being aware that Iron Fist Ketil is a lie: I hate this too. It removes so much charm from his character. The manga doesn't suggest at all that he knows the truth; he just thinks that Ketil is old and washed up now. Thorgil has some patience with Olmar because he's aspiring to an ideal Thorgil approves of, but he doesn't mince his words. It's completely out of character for him to even mockingly pretend that he respects someone who lied about being a warrior so he'd never have to fight anyone. Thorgil doesn't outright defy the institution of family, because loyalty to your clan was part of being A Norse Warrior, but we see him lose respect for his family in canon, and he responds by walking out forever. Not by fucking around and coming back to play games.

He wouldn't say this if he didn't mean it. He doesn't need anything at all from Ketil as an adult. He's an established warrior living on his own with plenty of status. If he knows the truth, it makes no sense for him to willingly come home after meeting Ketil at the Thing, and even play along with the Iron Fist lie to encourage Olmar. It's charming that he believes it! And it's not inconsistent with him throwing Ketil around in the barrel, either! He just thought Ketil was acting pathetic at the moment!

He's perfectly happy with him once that changes.

And he expected him to be helpful in preparing for the fight!

Does he leave Ketil on his own with a bunch of terrible fighters he knows will be slaughtered immediately? Yes, but that's not inconsistent with thinking he was Iron Fist either.

He's just nuts. That's it. He tells Olmar he can die if he fails to defend his honor, then he saves his life. Then he's completely serious about training Olmar, but then when they're swimming to Canut3 and Olmar vanishes, Thorgil shows absolutely no reaction. For all he knows, Olmar could've drowned. Then later when he's walking out, he chooses not to escalate with violence or threaten Olmar into doing what he wants. None of this is inconsistent. He's not gonna do it himself, but if Olmar dies, then he dies. If Ketil's being useless at the moment, then Thorgil's done with him as well. Inconsistent would be him faking respect that he doesn't feel.

In conclusion, Thorgil's charm is being an earnest and playful evil bully. The way he switches on a dime is also earnest.

If he knows the truth and is looking down on Ketil the entire time, that isn't cute. It doesn't spark joy.

He's not even mad here in the manga! 🗿 is just his default face!!!

-Ketil's wife being in the ending, trying to be at his side or whatever... I'm not opposed to more development for her given that she doesn't even have a name, but she's clearly all in on the toxic masculinity stuff, so I don't know what this adds.

Maybe this would've meant something if they added more of her earlier in the anime, but as things are, it doesn't even seem in character, because why would she be here consoling him while he mourns a woman she clearly hated and is probably glad he beat to death? We can say that she loves Ketil, technically, but what she loves is the public persona he's crafted.

Every one of her appearances is being violent herself or encouraging someone else into being evil and violent, so why would she have any time for Ketil now that he's sitting around crying and doing nothing? Maybe she's just trying to avoid having to look at Olmar?? Like there's nothing there. She's not pleasant or supportive. The only thing that worked for me was the seiyuu taking care to emphasize her addressing Ketil as "dear" several times when she's talking to him about Arnheid--she's definitely jealous even in the manga, but the passive-aggressive reminder that they're married works with her established character.

So in summary: the men of the Ketil family are all full and complete characters in the manga. Ketil's wife isn't, but the attempt to expand on her is too half-hearted to work. The only added anime scenes that work are a couple of short moments with Olmar and Oddny, because those moments aren't trying to reverse Olmar's established character traits. Everything else that got shoved in makes things worse, because the changes in the anime aren't complete enough to make anyone into a new and different complete character. They're just damaged versions of the original well-written ones.

The Ketil flashback in particular is something that destroys multiple characters, along with the entire point of the Slave Arc. Ketil in the manga isn't a critique of an individual man; he's a critique of society. He's not an anomaly who falls from the path people are supposed to follow. His downfall and his embrace of violence are the system functioning exactly as intended. He hides within the established power system because he doesn't have the courage to challenge it, and he reaps the benefits of that power system. Even when he finally defies the social order by turning on the king, he does so in a societally approved way: by manipulating the people who depend on him financially, and inflicting deadly violence on a slave he has the legal right to both rape and kill. The anime turns this into "trauma makes individual people scared and mean", which is pointless to add into a series that's first and foremost about patterns in broader culture. And is also telling that trauma story with several other characters to much better effect.

Sverkel, on the other hand, gets turned into a total asshole for all of one scene that serves no purpose other than stripping Arnheid of a decision she'd already made on her own in the manga. Apparently he thinks that while her husband is being held captive and she's walking out the door to tend to his wounds, what she needs is to hear is a long, rambling story about the time he had to pay for a bunch of Ketil's therapy sessions? The guy who owns her and who hired the guards who captured her husband? And she and Gardar totally die as a result of Sverkel telling her this story, so he's two for two on getting women killed now. No time for the anime to deal with that, though, because we're just gonna wrap things up for him exactly the same way as the manga.

-Th0rfinn saying they need to be grateful to Ketil instead of to the people who were kind to them without owning them as slaves or beating anyone to death: umm (laughing) no. Another delicately balanced detail from the original story that gets obliterated by someone on the anime staff who was real hornt up to remind us that Ketil is a loving man damaged by the world. I actually agree that Th0rfinn personally is in no position to pass judgment on Ketil, because he has a way higher body count and spent 11 years actively engaged in the slave trade. But this is not the time. Saying this about Ketil five minutes after they buried a friend of theirs whom he beat to death is so impossibly saintly it comes off as inhumanly cruel. Really weird choice to have Arnheid's friends spit on her years of suffering because there was a Ketil stan at large in the studio!

-Also while I'm here: the "Sverkel was the real Iron Fist Ketil" theory: don't even talk to me. Don't start. It sucks.

The crux of the theory seems to be that 1) Snake got along with both of them, so they must be the same person and 2) this one random chest has to hold his sword from his days as Iron Fist. But this makes no sense because

1) Iron Fist Ketil's whole thing is shattering all his weapons and fighting barehanded. Why would he have a special sword that he kept as a souvenir when he shattered every sword he actually tried to use?

2) Snake is 34 and Sverkel is 68 when we meet them. Even if Snake was one of those Viking saga wunderkinds who leave home to become warriors at 14, that would mean Sverkel was 48 at the youngest when he was mentoring him as Iron Fist Ketil. That would be two years from retirement even for Jomsvikings who train their entire lives in combat. And Sverkel's oldest grandchild, Thorgil, is 24 when Snake is 34, so Thorgil would've been 4 already during the Iron Fist days if we take that absurd timeframe as the truth.

Which means Sverkel somehow started working as a traveling warrior in his 40s, after working full time for most of his life running a farm? And had such incredible warrior skills as a newbie in his 40s that he's treated as a living legend? And only after returning home to his multiple grandchildren did he apparently change his name from "Ketil" so his son, an established landowner who was already named "Ketil", could randomly start pretending to be Iron Fist in his mid-20s? And then after meeting Snake again, neither of them ever sees the need to mention their history together, even when they're alone and Sverkel is seemingly at death's door?

(Since I brought it up: it is kinda weird that Ketil's spent his whole life as a very important figure living on the same farm, but is somehow able to spread rumors that he spent a lengthy period of time as a legendary warrior. I think it's safe to say this is more something he had spread around outside the farm area itself, given that Olmar didn't know about it and Ketil himself was startled when Thorgil brought it up. Otherwise a bunch of the locals should've noticed at some point that no one remembers a time when Ketil wasn't around. The guests heard the rumors because they originally came from far away.)

3) Snake says outright that Ketil the farmer is roughly the same age as Iron Fist Ketil. So... that can't be Sverkel.

#posting this now since a certain subject in the upcoming chapters has the potential to piss me off irreversibly l m a o

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catnipkdodowrites · 2 years

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From a discussion about the type of people who become heroes to Endeavor the soap creature

I have a ridiculous train of thought that I must scream in some direction or I will explode. Mind you, this idea would happen way down the line, if it happens at all.

So I have a long-standing Marvel/Original Work fic, been working on it since sixth grade, essentially, and I’m currently in the middle of seriously updating the new version of the fic so it’s formatted to be more reader friendly. The first two books, for lack of a better term, is strictly Marvel, but, eventually, the plan is to have a sort of MHA crossover where four original characters, Tony, and Clint get sent to a MHA world through a series of misadventures involving various magical bullshit. At this point, they have already been through a few other alternate worlds including, but not limited to: Avengers: EMH, Young Justice, Justice League/Justice League Unlimited, Danny Phantom, and One Punch Man. The timeline of the world they came from mostly follows the timeline of Avengers Assemble.

Through some more bullshit, they all end up working closely with UA. (They use aliases but for the sake of not hurting my brain I will refer to them as my typical shorthand) Most of the Heroics teachers are aware of the situation due to them crash landing on UA’s campus during a teacher’s meeting. In the world the six of them came from, the MHA manga and anime exist, and they are determined to keep the War arc from happening by nearly any means, while keeping as close to the canon timeline as possible to prevent deviations they can’t predict. There’s more to it, but for now, just roll with it, it’ll make more sense when I finally write it. Now let me set the scene.

The fab six are hanging out at the dorms. No other characters are around, and none of the students have moved in. They’re relaxing in the commons. One character (George McCartney/Locate) makes a joke about all heroes being theatre kids in one way or another. The usual POV character (Laurel Mishevski/General) overthinks for a few seconds, as she is prone to do. She takes the joke statement and pretends like it’s a theory she’s testing. Her conclusion?

Gen: “Holy shit, you’re actually right.”

Loc: “What?”

Gen: “There’s just so many…”

Rose O’Hara Payne/Katan: “Oh my god you’re right.”

Tony: “Shut up, there’s no way it’s every- I mean look at Clint!”

Clint: "Tony, I grew up in a circus.”

Tony: "Okay... but that doesn't mean it's true. Not every hero is a theatre kid."

Tina Fox/Techno Mist: “Hang on, before we go any further, I think we should establish what we mean by theatre kid?”

Loc: "It was just a joke!"

Gen: "Yeah, but I ain't fuckin’ laughing. As for what we mean by theatre kid, are we going with the more literal definition of having been involved in theatre as a kid, or are we broadening the definition to include anyone with the skillset and mindset that would have allowed them to thrive in such an environment?"

Tina: "I mean, if we're trying to disprove the theory to the fullest extent we should probably include people who just love theatre without wanting to get involved."

Gen: *nods thoughtfully* "In that case, I propose we used the three categories we came up with that one time, the Literal, the Aficionado, and the Repressed, while following the main rule that the only thing all theatre kids truly have in common is a flair for the dramatic and the need to act on it."

Tony: "The what!?"

Clint: "Not this again. Guys, if you do that you'll never be able to completely rule anyone out. There's no way to know if someone likes theatre or not without talking to them about it. I mean, all of us fall into Literal and Aficionado for Christ's sake."

Rose: "When did we come up with those?"

Gen: "It was during a five am discussion after George and I dragged Tina and Clint along to see a performance of Heathers. Does anyone need the categories explained?"

And that's as far as I'm going to get on that part of the dialogue for now. Eventually, they agree on an exception to the theatre kid rule, Green Lantern John Stewart. And by that, I mean they devolved into frantically naming various heroes they know about/have met before someone immediately names which of the three categories they give off the vibes of belonging to. John Stewart being named was met with silence before Gen and Tina let out shrieks of euphoria while the others sighed with relief. After that they’re able to name a few others, but not many. However, the conversation has some interesting detours before we get there.

Loc: “Well, we can rule out the entire UA staff at least.”

Gen: "Hang on now, Aizawa's not a theatre kid... actually now that I say that out loud..."

Tina: "What are you talking about? He's totally an exception!"

Rose: "I'm sorry, do the words 'iT wAs a LoGiCaL RUse' mean nothing to you!?"

and of course, what you're probably here for.

Tony: "What about Endeavor?"

Clint: "Does Endeavor really count as a hero?"

Gen: “Ok, stop. If we start considering villains or debating whether or not to count someone hero, this conversation will never end. For simplicities sake, let’s exclude people who we know are morally questionable.”

Tina: *snickers* “Could you imagine if Endeavor liked musicals though?”

Rose: *giggling* “What would his favorite musical even be?”

Gen: “Obviously, it would be Legally Blonde!”

Group laughter of course.

Gen: “Can you imagine, though? Him in the shower-”

Loc: “No one wants to imagine that!”

Gen: “Well just pretend it’s like cartoon logic, the soap covers the stuff you don’t want to see-”

Clint: “He’s just a soap monster then!”

More cackles and laughter.

Gen: “Okay, but seriously, imagine him singing along to ‘Omigod You Guys’ in the shower. Imagine it. Endeavor.”

Tina: “Wait, is it funnier if he sings in his range or in falsetto?”

More giggling, and then they get back to the original topic. And that’s all i have to scream about for now.

#afpttf #catnip rambles #future scene outline #marvel ocs #avengers asemmble #mha

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kuboism · 4 years

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Bleach Canon Vs. Studio Clown Episode 1

Intro to the series

WARNING: Long read but theres plenty of pictures

The first deviation we’re greeted with is what the anime presents as the arrival of hollows into the human world. With a likely artistic rendition of them forming from the shadows of Hueco Mundo and dripping/bleeding over into the human world like splotches of ink, after which they disappear - unable to be perceived by humans.

A/N: Which, kubos to the anime, is rather neat.

The anime also decided to incorporate the first volume poem which is the thematic beginning and a great establisher of the mood/themes of Bleach, which roughly translates to:

我らは姿無きが故にそれを畏れ

“We fear that which cannot be seen”

And then they curiously add a line to this poem?

姿無き故に敬う

”We revere that which cannot be seen"

A/N: Which, initially seems on brand with the spiritualism of that “which is not seen” - the shinigami, DEATH itself if you will. However, unlike the themes of “fear” and “fear of death/the unseen”, “reverence” is not really a theme prevalent or definitive for bleach. Reverence is not particularly reserved for death or death gods, but antagonists with themes of divinity/the Soul King himself, but I digress.

Next off the bully scene has a couple of missing/reworded lines, as well as some of the delivery changed, but overall it’s not significant enough to mention.

I also wish they’d kept Ichigo’s shit yourself scary face from this moment right here, since it really underlines how serious and personally invested Ichigo is in bringing small justice to the souls of the departed, but I can only pray a future remake does include it.

^ I am disappointed in y’all :/

vs.

v Karma delivery, bitch

Then for some reason the next scene is changed significantly:

In the manga, it builds up slowly to Ichigo’s reveal of supernatural abilities with the iconic TM character profile intros (which I can see why weren’t recreated in the anime, but I sure wish they put them in....)

with him spooking the bullies off with the ghost girl right behind him

Versus his scary face doing the job instead.....

It’s a small change, and I can see why it would be opted for - we don’t really know if they even saw the ghost in the first place (then again you could argue that would spook them anyway). There is a tonal difference in the long run though. The manga emphasizes once again *why* ichigo is scolding them in the first place - he sees the people disrespected by them knocking down the vase, he wants them to acknowledge their actions *because* in his mind, there are real victims he knows from it. While in the anime, since the ghost is not yet introduced, it feels more like “you are disrespectful to the dead” in a more generalized way vs. him actually being acquainted with the dead and treating them like the living.

(Again, not sure why change it so much at all........the suspense and reveal are in the manga just the same.... but ok)

As well as cutting off this small moment where you can see Ichigo’s very human (and cute!) interactions with the ghosts. To him they’re just as real as the living, and he lends them a hand whenever they ask for help.

Also lmfao this 4kids level of censorship.....

It goes on rather faithfully for a while, no significant omissions, then Pierrot decides to randomly replace Yuzu’s lines with Karin??

Manga:

Anime:

Which is an odd choice, given that not only does Yuzu sense ghosts just fine (albeit at a much lesser level than her family) and that later comes into play with Fishbone & Grandfisher, but Karin literally later admits that she doesn’t even want to acknowledge their presence, so why the change....?

They also cut short Karin’s little talk about Ichigo’s stats, which is a fair change for screentime’s sake, but mentioned for the record.

There’s a bit of a divergence with Yuzu lore, when the manga explicitly states she sees them, but not “clearly”, the anime focuses on her barely sensing them. I guess it doesn’t matter that much in the long run, since she is not that prevalent in the story, but it’s here for the record nonetheless.

Anime:

vs.

Manga:A

Also this next bit was removed, probably for the sake of pacing (which, totally fair!!), but it’s funny and I love the Kurosaki family so here it is:

It does make the flow a bit better in the manga, since this talk of selling his talents distracts Ichigo and creates an opening for his father to strike, in the anime, the same is done with Ichigo just randomly saying

and thats where his father attacks him, which isnt really an issue, just kind of funny of how the manga is like:

Ichigo’s distracted by his sisters plotting to sell him out and hence Isshin has his chance to strike back

vs the anime being like:

Ichigo randomly thinks about dinner mid convo about ghosts and thats what distracts him from play-fighting with his dad

gfdkhlgfdg okayyyy....moving on

In the manga this scene is interspliced with Ichigo’s inner monologue about the nature of his powers (with hip jargon like “for real” courtesy of Viz )

(but my beef with Viz translations are for another day)

Also the line about “He told me more ghosts than ever have been haunting me” has been given to Karin for some reason, probably to make her feel more included in the scene/Ichigos life.

Notably, Isshin’s response is changed from “What?! He talks about stuff like that with you (Yuzu, singular)” to “What?! He talks about stuff like that with you guys?” as well, again probably to include Karin more into the dialogue. (Mmmm ok....)

Minor detail, but Karin’s lines has been changed to more “boyish” speech structure in the Japanese dub, which may seem insignificant, but ...... that is for later.

.....

This little exchange

is replaced with:

Which, seems innocuous adaptation differences, but Yuzu’s lines keep decreasing and it’s a short enough moment to like....include and establish how motherly Yuzu is acting towards Ichigo.....but ok...huh.

And now we get into the big boy changes.

So, probably for the sake of grounding the supernatural element of the series, the anime decided to skip time to the next morning and introduce the hollow attacks with a news report.

Which.....is an interesting choice. I am assuming this is addressing how the real world perceives the hollow attacks, which Bleach doesn’t put too much effort into addressing, but very soon after this we learn about stuff like memory replacement and other various technology to keep things under wraps so this is either redundant or implying that shinigamis have not been doing their job, which hm......

Next off is the bizarre choice to paint Isshin out of the picture for the night

Not sure why, but ok

Again, where’s the shinigami with their Kikanshinki (memory replacement devices)??? Pierrot where’s the lore coherence......

Anyway, Ichigo goes to replace the girl’s vase, but suprise-surprise she’s gone-zo. Wonder what happened to her.....

(And....again, people vehemently don’t want a reboot when the anime looks like this? )

So Ichigo hears a scream and a hollow scream and follows the sound (Ok?).

Totally random hollows attack. Which Ichigo somehow has never seen so far? Mind you, this isn’t like in the manga, where Fishbone was sent by Aizen specifically after Ichigo to make him aware of it. These are random-ass hollows attacking people, so how come Ichigo suddenly sees them. Ya coulda played it safe Pierrot, and stuck to the book, but we got plot inconsistencies episode one so let’s party.

The girl is, of course, not eaten and they run away.

She trips at the most inconvenient moment. (can ghosts trip? Ghost don’t even have legs in japanese lore and Kubo draws them floating around so okkkkkkkk)

(ok ok, im just being petty, bUT YKNOW)

(convenient tripping on deadass levelled ground is convenient)

(also God I really want that bag Ichigo’s got on his shoulder, it looks so nice)

Random-ass hollow closes in and

BOOM

Rukia

(Now, if the rest of Bleach and the manga didn’t exist I would like this moment. We get a glimpse into Rukia’s abilities, into shinigami as a concept and we don’t really get to see her slice and dice hollows that much overall so the moment itself is rad in isolation.

Now, unfortunately for Pierrot’s screenwriters, Bleach manga exists and so does it’s lore, which again, would not be inconsistent with each other if the adapation was faithful. Now, Ichigo sees a shinigami, for some reason, for the first time in his 15 years of life. All of a sudden.

You could argue, that much like in the manga, this is all part of Aizen’s plan TM, but like, she literally leaves right after leaving Ichigo gaping in awe ghfkjgdf. Why’d Aizen give him an appetizer, I really don’t understand how this change is benefitting the narrative in any way. It’s ....dare I say....generic.)

Rukia yeets the hollow

(why is this kid suddenly not wearing shoes?)

and goes off on her merry way, leaving Ichigo shooketh

ALSO RUKIA MA’AM THERES A FUCKING STRAY GHOST RIGHT AT YOUR RIGHT????? ISNT IT YOUR LIKE....JOB.......... TO HELP GHOSTS MOVE ON??? i know killing hollows is the fun part, but like ghjkfdlgfd ??? are you gonna ignore her???

( his fucking face ghfjdkgdlfgfd)

So after this wholeass pointless detour (you’ll see why it’s pointless in a moment) we timeskip again (the filler is strong in this one. These 6 minutes were worth not coming up with something cohesive and removing scenes that actually make sense ah yes)

Ichigo is in deep thought TM about who tf is the stranger he’d just seen. Likely mulling over the monsters and how this person was able to slay said monsters. Probably thinking how unusual they are.

and as if on cue

the stranger makes their presence once more

(my God these faces gfhgkldfg)

....

Now let’s briefly address what happens in the manga instead.

Instead of the whole timeskip scene with the fight, Ichigo simply returns to his room on the same day, and oddly enough recognizes the species of the butterfly he sees? (nerdy boi! nerdy!! boi!)

rukia arrives much the same

(With the little text emphasizing how he’d never been aware of soul reapers, which is unsurprising given their secrecy, and makes sense in the long run since their first meeting is specifically orchestrated by Aizen. Two species that werent meant to interact brought together by his schemes.)

Back to the anime:

Ichigo pauses to ponder who tf they are and why the fuck they’re there.

and then the anime has the gall to suddenly revert to sticking to the manga, which like.... Ichigo kicks her for no reason? I guess because she isn’t answering? Even though Ichigo knows she has a sword and can wield it? Reckless boy.

Manga Ichigo thinks she’s a burglar, therefore, unsurprisingly, is comfortable kicking her outta his house. It’s a silly moment, but it also shows how accustomed or stupidly brave he is with the supernatural.

In the anime Ichigo asks her who she is instead of all that, and she responds pretty similarly to the manga

AND THE NEXT SCENE IS WHERE IT CLICKS WHY THEY WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY TO REMOVE ISSHIN FROM THE HOUSE.

(Ichigo and Rukia addressing the pointless filler, this leads nowhere)

Rukia check him out like she’s checking if the oranges on sale dont have mold on them

slapstick ensues

and Rukia decides to answer his question.

Vs. the manga in which Isshin doesn’t leave his children home alone for some random conference and is actually used very efficient for two reasons:

1) building up on the burglar gag with actually funny slapstick that is based on a previously established joke

2) Instead of Rukia just saying “oh usually people can’t see me”, we get an actual demonstration of it, the reader gets to see “oh Isshin can’t see her - she must be a spiritual entity,” which further clicks with her surprised reaction at him being able to kick her in the first place.

The next scene is the classique Pierrot censorship.

Ghost girl runs away from what I’m assuming is Fishbone.

Aside from not showing her get eaten, the scene is pretty much delivering the same message,

bUT

BECAUSE OF THE STUPID ASS FILLER WITH THEM MEETING RUKIA BEFORE THIS, I CAN ACCUSE RUKIA OF NEGLIGENCE.

UNLIKE THE MANGA, where Rukia arrives the night before and is specifically seeking Fishbone, therefore having no time to help this girl pass away,

This vvvvvvv

could have been prevented if SOMEONE DID THEIR FUCKING JOB THE DAY BEFORE VVVVVVV

(I rest my case. Thank you Pierrot for making Rukia either negligent or an idiot. Awesome, And mind you, these changes were unnecessary. The manga’s pacing is fine. They could’ve extended scenes. But nope, had to go for making them meet beforehand.)

Anyway, we get to see some actual stakes in the manga

The next scene which is this in the manga

has two changes to it. Firstly, obviously Isshin being consoled by Yuzu isn’t included since he isn’t home in the anime, and even if he were, I can see why that would be removed, cute as it may be.

And secondly, due to them having met prior Ichigo asks two additional questions:

And Rukia nods at both, which means she acknowledges that she had seen the girl the hollow was after and yet did nothing to help her pass on.

(Reminder the Bleach anime was in production WAAAAY past the first 4 volumes, which gave a good general idea of the series, which y’know, was fine to adapt as is.

You’ll see these changes add up into becoming inconsistent with further Bleach lore. There’s a reason people call Bleach a hot mess, and I’m afraid Kubo ain’t really it.)

(Volume 14 Note from Kubo where he talks about the anime being announced)

Back to the series

Pet peeve time: Wish the anime was half as expressive as the manga

These scenes are supposed to represent

This panel:

(Nitpicking? Perhaps, but idc)

So uh, this scene is odd

Again, because of the addition of that filler with the hollow

Ichigo has seen her in action

And they even added Rukia trying to convince him

even though, yknow???

LITerally the previous day???

Anyway in the manga, where Ichigo has reason to be distrustful of her and her claims since y’know hes never seen her or a shinigami in action, but has enough proof that she’s a ghost bc his dad didn’t see her, he simply dismisses her before she can reply, and instead of just getting angry for being called a pipsqueak

she shows both Ichigo and the audience proof of her spiritual powers by binding Ichigo and forcing him to quietly listen to her explanations.

(To reiterate - Anime Rukia has to verbally try to convince Ichigo WHO SAW HER FIGHT A HOLLOW THE OTHER DAY that shes no ordinary ghost. And because of that, she has no other reason to use Sai on him other than that shes mad she was called a pipsqueak bc she just tried to verbally convince him shei is a shinigami. When they could just adapt the manga and have her both demonstrate her powers and put him in his place at the same time. Wild.)

Also CRIMINALLY BORING SHOT, WITH CRIMINALLY BORING RUKIA

#NotMyRukia

LOOK AT THE MANGA

LOOK AT HER SMUGLY OWNING ICHIGO’S IGNORANT ASS #FuckYeahRukia

Also the subs may not show it if you’re watching it on Netflix, but anime Rukia says “I am not allowed to lay my hands on humans outside orders,” which like, you ARE LITERALLY DOING THAT. Manga Rukia is fine with bullying Ichigo, but she draws a line at killing him, but man Anime Rukia, you give no fucks about the laws huh.

why so cheerful?

(also Rukia be right tho)

(specifcally compared to hell you could say Soul society is a resftul place lmfao)

Also anime salary man gets to rest in peace, even like, pray and shit

Meanwhile the manga

YEET TO SOUL SOCIETY

(also notice how we’ve been robbed of ichigo’s silly socks

I swear the anime knows how to suck the soul out of the manga

Get it? Soul! haha ....moving on.)

Really Rukia? One of your jobs?

GUESS YOU WERE OFF DUTY HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I’M SORRY BUT LIKE, SEE HOW POINTLESS THIS FILLER IS UGH!!!)

(Again pet peeve but look at how ugly this screen is COMPARED TO THE MANGA)

(What have they done to you, queen)

(also they never mention the name Konso ( or as Viz calls it here -”soul funeral”, thanks Viz)

Next on, not a pet peeve, but an observation:

Anime Rukia keeps her sketchbook in her kimono

Manga Rukia keeps it at the titty

Yep, which you neglected to do the day before,

she literally says “With the konso I did just a moment ago” like she used the word before. Like you can contextually get it, but why cut that line out of the dialogue if you don’t change the next line it’s referenced in?

There’s also a dialogue change from the manga’s well, Viz uses “vaporize” which is not a bad choice given the specific wording Kubo uses, but the original says

昇華 • 滅却

sublimate/convert • extinguish

which is a clever little nod/foreshadowing to the nature of souls in bleach and that they can be “converted” in and out of a hollowfied state.

While the anime just says “to slay hollows”, and albeit it lacks the little nod the manga has to offer, I can’t see how they’d include it in the anime at that stage so I’m fine with them simplifying it to like, an exorcism.

A better question then Rukia - WHY DIDN’T YOU SEND OFF HER SOUL????

also WAIT THE GIRL IS STILL ALIVE?? she’s dead-dead by this point in the manga.

BULLSHIT !!! YOU LITERALLY EXPLAIN LATER WHY!! ACTUALLY YOU EXPLAINED EARLIER WHY!!! YOU LITERALLY SAID THIS, 1 MINUTE AGO :

Anyway, Fishbone almost grants her the priviledge of escaping this God-awful anime, but is suddenly stopped?

AND CAN TALK??

wait WHY DOES FISHBONE TALK?? GHFJD isnt this supposed to be a juicy reveal for later when Ichigo realizes “hey theyre not actual complete monsters - but used to be humans!” Hm, ok.

Also leaves her alone? Damn ok...

Reminder:

Moooving on...

Speaking of the manga, this little moment is missing:

Since there is no pointless filler that would make him ask about the ghost girl therefore exposing Rukia’s slacking off of her duty, Ichigo realizes that there must be a hollow nearby bc in the manga he actually has braincells to spare.

Also wiping off the Baron’s moustache moment is gone 😢

Missing and dearly missed is also this moment, which consolidates how protective Ichigo is of his family. He only needs to hear Yuzu scream to click that the hollow is nearby and his family is in danger. I feel like anime Ichigo should be even more worried since his sisters are alone but ok??

Also foreshadows their dynamic of Rukia trying to stop his reckless attempts at pushing himself to protect his family, bc yknow....she has her own Kaien trauma to process.

Next off....

This is .... a choice....

They were very eager to give Yuzu’s lines to Karin just a couple of moments ago but now this whole exchange:

Where we see a very pragmatic yet soft side of Karin

She doesn’t know what is happening, and doesn’t expect her brother to fight it - he just wants him to be safe, because she loves her family. At least warn him before it gets to him and hurts him.

is replaced with this:

Yuzu, sweetie, what do you think he can do to achieve that.

I guess at least Anime Ichigo tries to get Rukia to do her job as she looks down on Yuzu in silence.

But compare it to the manga:

#MyRukia stops by Karin to check for a pulse and reassures Ichigo that his sister is alive.

Manga Ichigo is NUMBER ONE oniichan in town and doesnt have time to call out to a stranger to save his family - HES BEYOND READY TO GO FIGHT, RECKLESS AS IT IS, EVEN THOUGH HIS OWN FAMILY BEGS HIM TO JUST RUN. because he cant let himself be unable to protect them. He cant live with himself if he doesnt try his darnest to protect them.

*elevator music playing as ichigo tries to get rukia’s attention but she fucks off downstairs, but instead of doing shit he just does the worm on the floor*

which I guess is more realistic for a teenage boy, but Ichigo is literally traumatized by being unable to protect a family member. Y’all think a ghost he’s never seen before is gonna stop him?

Yooo, pathetic. #NotMyIchigo

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kiranatrix · 4 years

Note

I feel like the nature of Light’s ideology and his methods get caricatured a great deal in the fandom (especially by those who only viewed the anime). I keep seeing popular memes about Light killing petty shoplifters who are only attempting to feed their family and I always get the sense that they’re largely inaccurate (for the most part). Light notices in the Yotsuba arc that Kira’s sentencing spares those: who’ve served their sentences and improved their ways, who committed justifiable crimes, and who have shown remorse. So it feels off to seeing portrayed that way, especially when Light’s elimination of innocents (such as the FBI agents, Naomi, etc...) are usually for strategic purposes, intended to help him progress ahead. Not to mention this pervasive belief that Light apparently didn’t know that he would be bound to sentence some innocents to death (with his large kill count per day). Wouldn’t it be more likely that Light knew that it was inevitable and was willing to sacrifice those lives for “the greater good,” in his view?

This is a doozy of an ask, anon. But it is GLORY bc these are all excellent things for me to ramble about Light (thank you!). I’ll take them point by point, strap in cause this is a bit long. *cracks knuckles*

You’re absolutely right that fandom often boils Light’s character and ideology down to a few basic elements that are distorted, mostly to drag him. Let’s be honest-- it’s fun to drag characters, even our favs-- and pretty much everyone in Death Note deserves it. But it does become annoying when its inaccurate, like with your example about who Kira focused on killing and some others I see. To be clear, this isn’t any kind of apology for the bastardly things Light DID do, but clarifying what he was and wasn’t about.

Did Light kill petty criminals?

The only time it is mentioned that Light kills criminals for non-serious crimes is when he was under surveillance by L (the infamous potato chip scene) and had to kill someone on the news right then, as well as the immediate coverup. In that circumstance, he couldn’t afford to be picky-- he needed L to see a signature Kira death (heart attack) when Light supposedly couldn’t be doing it. The crimes that appeared on the news that night (in his chip bag TV lol) ended up being non-serious criminals, and Light wasn’t so thrilled about this.

Mainly because it meant he had to cover his tracks and kill a few more minor criminals so it really did look like Kira’s work.

But his focus was putting himself in the clear with L; those minor criminals were incidental, and when he had choice/freedom again, he did not focus on them. The ruse didn’t completely work because L thought minor criminals dying was suspicious since it deviated from Kira’s usual MO. So, L knew the real focus.

This was a strategic move in service of, versus reflecting, Light’s ideology. This is something we see pop up again and again for Light. He is willing to do ‘wrong’ for the greater ‘good.’ We also see his distaste for killing petty criminals later when Light rebukes Mikami’s off-script killings in his thoughts. If Kira had been acting this way all along, then the Task Force wouldn’t have been surprised and Light wouldn’t have been pissed off that Mikami was doing it.

Kira was looking for violent criminals who had escaped justice, that’s his main goal. He’s also disagreeing with Mikami’s methods of punishing wrong-doers who paid their debt to society (as opposed to the Death Row criminals I discuss below who haven’t ‘paid their debt’ yet). He doesn’t want people to fear Kira and thinks shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak, would do that. His ideology is not punitive; to him, its about prevention. Petty crime wasn’t on his radar until he had to make that a temporary focus for his safety.

Did Light focus on criminals already in prison?

I’ve seen plenty of posts in the Death Note tag grousing about how Light was ‘dumb’ because he only focused on criminals in prison, but that’s not wholly accurate. The first two names he wrote were criminals he witnessed in the process of a crime with actual victims that needed help (a hostage scenario where the perp had already murdered people, and a man about to rape). Then he went for the Big Bads in the news- the most vicious criminals world-wide.

Other than criminals at large, he DID kill some criminals in prison. The times he did so were:

1) Killing criminals on Death Row who, in the eyes of law enforcement, “deserved the death penalty several times over.” These are criminals who had already been sentenced to die and Kira enacted the ‘justice.’

2) During Light’s ‘testing phase’ of the Death Note when he was trying to understand the rules in a population he could control

3) When he was trying to be conspicuous about deaths for L’s benefit, like throwing off the assumption that Kira was a student. Light knew that those deaths would be found immediately and attributed to Kira.

For 2 and 3, these criminals were likely to be on Death Row given what was said by INTERPOL about who Kira was killing behind bars. Ironically, even L thought Death Row criminals needed to die-- he chose Lind L Tailor from Death Row for his stunt, and said on TV he’d seek the death penalty for Kira. Hmm.

Why did Light kill innocent people?

The innocent people that Light killed include Raye Penber, the rest of the FBI agents in Japan investigating Kira, and Naomi Misora. L and Watari might be considered innocent per Kira’s ideology (Watari had probably murdered people but L had probably not, directly). Rem technically killed L and Watari, but Light certainly wanted them to die and orchestrated it that way. The innocent people that Light WOULD have killed include the Task Force (Mogi, Aizawa, Matsuda, Ide) and the SPK (Halle, Gevanni, Rester, Near,) if he’d won in the warehouse.

The main thread tying all these people together? They were all imminent threats to Light and were actively trying to stop and/or kill him. Killing them would never have crossed his mind if that hadn’t been the case. THAT DOESN’T MEAN HE DIDN’T ENJOY IT. Taking out his enemies was something Light did savor, he really loved that win. But it wasn’t like he wiped out the entire FBI or Japanese police force. Those were not his targets; these were individuals who threatened his goal and life, and he saw their killing as self-defense.

Did Light kill any criminals who were innocent or wrongly convicted?

It’s certainly possible that he did but the manga never touches on it. Given that his MO for killing incarcerated criminals was limited to Death Row, he probably felt like those were safe bets (we know that’s not always the case in the real world, of course). But let’s say that Light, in canon, found out he’d killed someone wrongfully convicted. In the beginning of his journey as Kira (at 17-18), I honestly don’t think he’d given this a lot of thought. What’s funny is that Light was naively, and paradoxically, putting a lot of faith in the human justice system while simultaneously enacting his own justice that relied on having zero faith in the traditional channels. Makes my head spin, but Light is a fascinating character because of that kind of thinking. He championed sweeping ideals of right and wrong, but couldn’t be bothered with getting in the murky details.

But by the time he’d grown up and matured some, especially after becoming part of the police force himself, he would have know it was a possibility. At that point, I agree that he’d view it as an inevitable sacrifice in service of, but not directly reflecting, his ‘greater good,’ like the previous choices he’d made.

So why is Kira’s ideology so often distorted? For one thing, his thinking is kind of convoluted. The anime has less nuance about what Light’s about, and many people just watch that. Another common reason I see for this is that someone really, really hates Light for defeating L, and once we dislike someone it becomes easier to roll in more and more unlikeable qualities into a nasty villain pie. Any trait that is ‘bad’ can be overlaid onto Light because he is ‘bad,’ so it fits right?? Ha....no. He has plenty of bad traits and actions of his own to drag him for without inventing new ones. At the same time, I see L’s flaws and negative traits/actions being hand-waved away or justified because he is their fav. It happened with Minoru, too.

#death note #light yagami #meta #character analysis #asks #anon #anyone who actually reads all this ilu

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ineedglasses · 4 years

Text

VK Character Analysis: Rido Kuran

Rido is a complete, messed up, SOB, but I still like him as a character because he is simply such a fun villain. If I were to place him in that alignment chart thing, he would be “chaotic evil” without a doubt.

While he is generally seen as a creepy, sister-obsessed, maniac, I really believe he was different earlier in his life.

This analysis is based off the Rido we see in the manga and the light novel, NOT the Rido in the anime, since the anime was trash and deviated from the manga when it came to his arc. Anyway, at the start of the post, I will go over the info from the light novel and manga, next will be my headcanons of him as a young man and at the end is my interpretation of him when he was crazy, as we see him in the original series.

XXX

The Deranged Love story in the Fleeting Dreams light novel talks about Rido’s obsession with Juri and gives some info on their past. However, when compared to the original VK series there are several points that don’t add up, and some parts of the light novel simply make no sense.

First, Both VKM and the light novel mention that Rido killed his parents and presumably devoured them to take their powers. That makes sense, it seems like something he would do. What doesn’t make sense to me is the timeline. When exactly did he kill his parents?

All the light novel tells us is that he killed them immediately after they engaged him to Shizuka. Is this around the time Haruka and Juri got married? I always assumed Haruka and Juri have been married for a while, like at least 1000 years. If this is the case, within that time period, how can they not notice that their parents are dead and that their brother killed them?

Or does their murder occur closer to the time Juri got pregnant? But this doesn’t make sense either because Rido referred to Shizuka as a “small child” when he killed his parents, and by the time Juri was pregnant with Yuki’s real brother, Shizuka was probably already at least one or two thousand years old. Unless Shizuka is much younger than we thought? So when exactly Rido kills his parents is quite the mystery.

Secondly, How did he kill his parents?

I assume the older a pureblood, the more powerful they are. So how can he, by himself, kill his parents, both of whom are older and more powerful than him? I doubt his dad was a weakling because as former king of vampires, he should be quite powerful. In the light novel, it seems his parents were already wary of him and wanted to keep him away from Juri. Thus they wouldn’t completely let their guard down around him. And its not like Rido could carry around a hunter sword with him without it being noticed. Even if he was carrying something small like a dagger, his parents should have been able to overwhelm him in a fight since its 2 vs 1.

Kaname has commented that “purebloods have equal powers, so they would only exhaust each other in battle”; basically it is hard to kill another pureblood unless you have some advantage (e.g. Shizuka being already wounded by Zero’s hunter gun). So the only logical way Rido can kill his parents is if he catches them off guard, such as when they are taking a centuries long slumber in the family mausoleum, basically doing what Sara did to Hanadagi.

Thirdly, another point that makes no sense is that Rido in the light novel says:

“My parents had taken my precious Juri far away from me and made it so that we could never meet.”

How exactly did his parents take Juri away and stop them from ever meeting again? Send her abroad with no intention of ever letting her return? And yet the manga clearly contradicts that, because Rido is still in contact with Haruka and Juri, he was there to see their firstborn baby!

Fourthly, this is a small detail that has always irked me: In the manga, when Yuki’s brother peed on him, Rido mentions that he used to change his siblings’ diapers when they were babies.

However the light novel kind of contradicts that, because young Rido upon being called in to meet his baby sister says: “I will confess that newborns seemed very uninteresting to me at that time”; does this sound like an older brother that would change his younger siblings’ diapers? It sounds like a guy who would leave baby care to the nannies and stay far away from soiled diapers.

Finally, we get to the biggest illogical point in the light novel: Rido was a psychopath that just randomly developed an obsession upon seeing the newborn Juri.

“ It was in that moment – somewhere in the depths of my being – something abruptly flared to life. […] I was overwhelmed by the urge to devour her.”

No normal person just out of the blue feels the urge to consume a baby, only crazy people do. The rest of the light novel story continues depicting Rido as a psychopath. Their parents notice there is something wrong with their son because the mom slaps Rido and starts to keep him away from Juri. Adding on to this portrayal of him as batshit crazy, after he (somehow) kills his parents, he says the following:

“That’s what you get for getting in my way, you naughty things…”

LOL, who in their right mind would call their parents “naughty things”?

My issue is this: I highly doubt Rido was crazy from the start, because it would make no sense. If Rido was crazy, how the hell could Juri and Haruka not have noticed for over 3000 years?! Even the dumbest person would get a clue that their brother was crazy after just 30 years, much less 3000 years. They trusted him enough to let him hold their baby, so they clearly believed Rido was not crazy. There is no way that Juri and Haruka were that stupid and blind. Thus, I doubt that Rido was crazy at the start of his life. So, this aspect of the light novel is just total BS to me.

IF Rido really was crazy from the start, then his mom and dad were bad parents. Yes, it makes sense to keep Juri away from Rido if he really were a psychopath, but their other actions were just extremely irresponsible and selfish. If you know your son is dangerous, maybe you should address this issue properly. After all, he is a pureblood and if you don’t deal with the problem, there will be huge repercussions for everyone given the destructive powers of purebloods.

But instead of taking their son to see a mental health professional like any decent parent would do, Papa and Mama Kuran decided to solve the problem by engaging him off to a “tiny child”. I’m no parenting expert, but I’m sure if your son has mental issues, you definitely should NOT marry him off to any girl. Even if they didn’t get him some help, they should have at least locked him up like Shizuka to ensure he didn’t harm anyone... but they just let him roam free.

If this is the extent of their problem-solving ability, then it’s for the best that they ended the monarchy because they must have been cruddy rulers. But who knows, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they believed the “tiny child” they chose for him has a PhD in psychology and can provide their son with the help he clearly needs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, I consider the light novel to be only pseudo-canon since it was inspired by Hino but written by someone else (Ayuna Fujisaka), so I will just ignore the parts that don’t make sense and keep the parts that do.

XXX

This following section is what I believe Rido to have been like when he was a (sane) young man, based on the info in the manga and the few bits that do make sense in the light novel.

Since Rido was the oldest son and born in a time when the Kurans were still the ruling family, he probably grew up with a lot of pressure and expectations as he was the crown prince. Given these conditions, he was most likely serious and hardworking, doing his best to live up to those expectations and preparing to be the next king (kinda like Eins in The Royal Tutor LOL).

He was also probably a bit older than Haruka and Juri (because according to the manga he has experience changing their diapers and taking care of them). And since he was probably busy with his princely duties, he did not spend a bunch of time with his siblings and thus Haruka and Juri were naturally closer to one another than Juri was to him. She probably saw him a respected older brother but not as reachable and easy to connect to as Haruka.

Rido was probably arrogant, possessive, and entitled even at the start (though at much milder levels than towards the end), which makes sense given his background. Not only was he a pureblood, but the crown prince too. And since he was prince, he probably had to deal with the dog-eat-dog world of politics from a young age, so that probably made him more cynical and darker than his siblings who had much less pressure and responsibility. It would almost be shocking if he was a humble and kind person instead.

Anyway, according to the custom of primogeniture, both the throne and Juri should have been his. Since it was tradition of the Kurans to marry their siblings, it only makes sense that as the oldest son and legitimate heir, he was the one that Juri should have married. Yet for whatever reason, their dad decided to end the monarchy, which must have been a huge blow to Rido who spent his whole life preparing to be the next king. He probably drove himself to despair questioning why and if there was something wrong with him that his father would pull such a move.

Then Rido probably got another big slap to the face: Juri choosing to marry Haruka instead of him, with his parents probably giving them their blessings. So not only has he lost the throne, he also lost the fiancée that should have been his according to precedent. And Juri choosing Haruka probably made Rido lose face among their society, since people would naturally wonder why Juri spurned tradition and married the second son instead.

(Actually, it wouldn’t matter if the monarchy getting dissolved took place first or if Juri choosing Haruka took place first, the point is both happened and it screwed him up.)

Rido most likely didn’t love Juri, but simply believed he did. He probably conflated Juri with what he lost/ what should have been his by birthright and became unhealthily obsessed with the idea of her. It didn’t help that the one Juri chose was Haruka, who we know has a mild and kind personality. To someone like Rido, those are traits probably considered “weak”, and thus he probably never thought of Haruka as his rival. Therefore, the fact that he lost to Haruka of all people shocked him, and there might have been some anger and sorrow at being betrayed by a sibling. So anyway, Rido’s emotions as well as his ego got clobbered.

But fate is not done with him yet! His parents most likely decided to engage him to Shizuka “without his consent” around the time that Haruka and Juri got engaged/married. They might have rushed to engage him off to whoever was available at that time (unluckily for Shizuka it happened to be her), hoping to get him out of the way of his siblings’ happiness. Rido probably was pissed, since not only does he not get to choose his new fiancée, the one chosen for him hails from a clan with a history of supposedly going insane, instead of someone with a less problematic pedigree. His parents really doing him dirty lol.

I think he really had some deep-rooted problems with his parents. Sometimes parents just don’t like their child, because of personality and ideological differences…Anyway, they were definitely in a strained relationship which would explain why Rido could go so far to kill his own parents and feel no guilt over it.

XXX

Finally, towards the end of his life he really just lost it.

Rido probably tried to keep up appearances and act like everything is okay and that his world is not falling apart, thus allowing Juri and Haruka to still trust him. But over the years he just stewed in his anger against his parents, his siblings and the world in general and turned into a very bitter and hateful person on the inside. And although he probably tried to suppress his growing darkness, his bad traits got amped up while his better traits died. It was probably extremely infuriating for him to see his siblings so happy in their pink glittery world while he himself was drowning in darkness.

(Even Kaien was annoyed by Haruka and Juri’s “pink world”, imagine an already salty and bitter Rido seeing this type of scene for centuries and just frothing with rage on the inside LOL)

So Rido became a sadistic ass towards the end, taking his anger out on people that have nothing to do with it. He tried to make Shizuka miserable and force her to be docile and had no luck with that but succeeded in breaking Senri’s mom and driving the poor woman crazy. Though if you think about it, in a way he did succeed in breaking Shizuka too… he caused her lover’s death and when she lost her lover, she basically lost her will to live.

Hino showed how talented Rido is at antagonizing others. While he possessed Senri, he intentionally hurt Senri’s body to toy with Takuma.

Even after his death, his dregs were tormenting Kaname by pointing out all his inner concerns, taunting Kaname about how he has no hope left.

In VKM, Yuki mentions Rido as someone “with overwhelming desires that only plunge the world around [him] into misery.” Overall, Rido probably got his giggles by making others miserable.

Besides getting high off ruining the lives of other people, he was just a bastard in general. He used everyone around him as tools, even his own sons. Unlike Shizuka or Kaname, he did not care about his subordinates at all, to him they were just “appetizers” and expendables. He also had zero reservations about forcing lower vampires to submit to his will.

Anyway, Rido probably was already a bitter jackass but he really snapped when he found out Juri was pregnant and would start a happy little family with Haruka. Maybe he was idiotically holding onto hope that as long as Juri didn’t have a kid, he still had a chance? Regardless, it was at that point that he gave up any vestiges of humanity he had left and decided to just pursue power instead.

With no hope left he just decided to give in to his primitive instincts and lust after power, at the expense of family ties. In a way, he might have felt betrayed by his family, and reasoned with himself that unlike the throne and Juri, at least power won’t be stolen away.

BTW, I think his decision to sacrifice Yuki’s real brother to ancestor Kaname was spontaneous and not premeditated. After all, crazy people are unlikely to plan things in advance and just do as their whims dictate...

Maybe it came to him right when he stared at Juri holding her newborn.

“It’s such irony that this baby was named ‘Kaname’ like you. That’s what got me started thinking of this.”

Because his plan (if he had one) sucked. He should have known that the famished, revived ancestor would attack him, since the blood of a tiny baby was clearly not enough. And yet he made no preparations to fend off such an attack and ended up getting drained by Kaname.

As a side note, Haruka could have killed Rido right then, when Rido was badly wounded by ancestor Kaname.

But he didn’t, and chose to have Rido imprisoned by the Senate instead. Haruka should have known that Rido would never give up on destroying his family as long as he lived, so the logical thing would have been to kill him. Even Rido mentions this later when he returned for Yuki.

While Haruka’s pacifist nature played a part in this, I think he also restrained himself from giving in to vengeful rage partly out of the fact that they are family, and more likely out of guilt. Perhaps Haruka had always felt guilty for marrying Juri and realized that he was partly responsible for driving Rido insane.

Anyway, Rido crossed the line by killing a helpless baby and basically burned all his bridges. At this point he didn’t really give any fucks anymore.

Asato mentions how Rido was like a child, even though he has lived so long. I think the analogy fits, because Rido acted like a child throwing a tantrum, trying to destroy everything and doing whatever he pleased with no regard for consequences or others.

In a sense, like Shizuka, Rido had already lost his will to go on living. The only thing keeping him hanging on was the need to lash out. Even though he acted like he was pursuing greater power, aiming to consume Kaname and Yuki to become more powerful, he wasn’t actually trying.

If he was serious, he would not have gotten easily distracted, suddenly deciding to have Yuki replace Juri instead of continuing with the plan to devour her. Rido also didn’t bother trying to fight seriously at the end and Zero comments on this.

Otherwise Zero and Yuki together could not have beaten him, given how Rido is much older/powerful and consumed at least 2 other purebloods. Even Sara said that Rido was acting foolishly reckless, saying he was just having fun.

XXX

Overall, given this interpretation of Rido, I actually feel bad for him. I believe that he drove himself crazy wondering why his parents ended the monarchy instead of letting him be the next king, and wondering why Juri chose Haruka over him. Those questions probably haunted him for centuries.

That feeling that you tried your best, did everything you were supposed to, but still ended up with nothing is something I can relate to. Sometimes one just wants to watch the world burn given how unjust life usually is (even though logically we know it is wrong to feel this way). So yeah, these are my headcanons and analysis of Rido, who I prefer to see as a deeper/more interesting character than just a sis-con psychopath LOL.

#Vampire Knight #rido kuran #Haruka Kuran #Juri Kuran #Shizuka Hio #Kaname Kuran

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glitterytidalwavedragon · 4 years

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Let’s Talk About Kaiba’s Heritage... He’s French… (A head cannon I propose could be cannon)

Once more my brain goes off and wonders away with itself and this is one of those things... I did the same level of research on this that I did for Sebastian’s heels... I think I need help sometimes.

So, one of the greatest mysteries with the Kaiba brothers is who they were before the monster called Gozaburo. While we may never get the names of who their parents are or what their original last name was, let us look at some interesting facts that point to the Kaiba brothers being of French heritage.

Let’s start with something obvious. The Kaiba brother’s food choices. Seto prefers eating, in fact his favorite meal, is Fillet Mignon with Foie Gras. A French dish. Mokuba’s favorite dish is, of course, Chocolate Parfait, this kid and sweets.

But let’s look at what Seto doesn’t like, as Mokuba only dislike is celery and well, child not liking celery is normal. Kaiba does not like Oden. A seafood centered dish with origins in Japan and Korea. While it isn’t a solid argument for them being French, one thing might be.

The World Chess Championship Gozaburo entered. Now if we go with the timeline in the manga, the whole Yugioh DM series takes place in 1996. Gozaburo adopted the brothers in 1990 as Seto would have been 10.

When Gozaburo won the world champion ship, he was visiting an orphanage in the nearby area to donate the prize money. Takashi-sensei did like using real world references, so if he thought ahead and used the realm world championship of 1990, know where that took place? Lyon. Where is Lyon?

France.

If the local orphanage was in the place of the championship of the real world 1990 location, then Gozaburo was in France.

Now let’s look at Gozaburo. Could he have been Japanese, absolutely no questions asked. However there are some issues with his business and resources. First let’s look at what happened to Japan after World War 2. Japan was not allowed to have a military for 70 years since the world war. In 1990, the 70 year band on the military was still in effect. This means that Gozaburo’s private military or employment of a Japanese army would be consider illegal by, not just Japan, but by the US and UN.

However, Gozaburo did have dealings with many countries outside of Japan. In fact it could be very safe to say that the man had the company stationed in Japan, but everything else outside. Afterall, their main factory would later become the Duel Tower that Kaiba blows up twice.

Also, after World War 2, Japan was restricted from making a number of weapons. While we don’t know the full list of weapons Kaiba Corp made at the time, we can assume, since he was supplying countries like the US, he did make WMD’s (Weapons of mass destruction). As Japan is restricted from developing WMD but Kaiba Corp. did have access to many WMDs.

What I am trying to boil down to is that it is completely possible that Gozaburo found Seto and Mokuba outside of Japan.

Let’s return to France for a moment. The average height of a French adult male is 5’ft 10.75 inchs in the 1990’s. Now, for those who took statistics mathematics there is usually a deviation, meaning it would not be unusual for someone to be slightly below or above the average. Usually the number used is 5 points. So the shortest average would be 5’ft 5.75incs and the tallest average is 6’ft 3.75ins.

Seto, at sixteen is at 6’ft 1in. Reading a French report by E. De La Rochebrochard in 2000, marks French males as entering Puberty at 15-20, but there is also the chance of still growing taller until age 25. Seto could very well still sit in the average with a likely of going above average.

But better, lets look at Mokuba and compare him to Yugi. The average male height for a Japanese male in 1990 is 5’ft 7inchs. Yugi, at age 15/16, starts at 5’ft. I couldn’t find much on the puberty of Japanese males, so I will use the global average of 13-17 years of age and with the same possibility of him growing up to age 25.

Using the same 5 point, and considering Yugi has another few years, Yugi could in fact hit the average. But then let’s look at Mokuba, who is 11 and is 4’ft 8ins…. Yugi who is five years older than the younger Kaiba brother is already barely taller than Mokuba, a boy who hasn’t hit puberty yet. If anything, when looking at the anime and Seto was 12, he looked to be around the same height Mokuba is currently.

Which would mean that Mokuba is on track to reaching his brother’s height.

Now there are more advious things such as the fact that Seto and Mokuba are very much inspired and live in western style household and fashions. I won’t go into their appearance as someone who looks completely different from their real heritage, I have no room to use that as an example.

But the brothers are amazingly comfortable in western traditions. It would make sense for the brothers to have western roots.

So there, is my argument. Enjoy!

What do you guys think? Opinions!

P.S. Please read the notes...

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dragonsballsz · 4 years

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cannot stop thinking about whis having undetermined (not malicious) motives for wanting goku and vegeta to work together. if dbs 2 happens i would love them to have whis revisit this in the story. "thought it was about time to have you two train together" like. What Is He Planning

the only thing i can think of is that he wanted to get rid of beerus. having the last two saiyans kill the guy who ordered their extinction is pretty karmically satisfying, and it doesn’t hurt that they’re both op as hell (so it beerus tho).

it kind of looked like that was a potential twist later on, but i think the creators got too attached to beerus (which is just. why? why tho?). or it’s just bad writing.

not that dragon ball has ever been known for its in-depth examinations of the psyche (which isn’t a problem; the point is friendship and punching things), but super is a lot more cavalier about certain things (read: genocide) than any of its predecessors.

it’s possible that there was an idea to have goku become the new god of destruction, but (hopefully) that idea would’ve been shattered pretty quickly, since it’s not the first time goku has been offered godhood, and the last offer was a lot better. it’s also possible that they planned to have vegeta do that but then realized that that would kinda fuck over his whole character arc of becoming marginally less homicidal.

the issue i have with whis is that while he’s got a fun and genuinely likeable personality, his function in the story is a lot closer to a plot device than an actual character. this isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it doesn’t work quite as well in this case bc the beginning of super really did appear to be setting him up as a full-fledged active character - a dragon with an agenda, if you will, to beerus’s big bad of the first arc. that also wouldn’t be a problem, except that beeurs no longer appears to be acting as an antagonist.

i’ve gone into why i don’t like beerus (as an antagonist or as a character in general) on my personal blog a few times, but the issues with beerus also directly impact whis, and whis’ lack of any real importance outside of his job (i.e., his connection with beerus and the rest of the dragon ball pantheon) means that he’s pretty badly hurt by said issues.

dbs also has the issue of setting up some genuinely new and interesting ideas, but being afraid to deviate from the show’s status quo to properly execute them. this is becoming more and more common in anime, from what i’ve seen, and it ends up sacrificing character development, usually for comedic value. and not good comedic value either, just running gags that enough of the fans find amusing for the writers to just stick with that instead of having the characters grow and potentially lose the ability to keep the gag around.

think about fullmetal alchemist (the manga). one of the most famous running gags is ed’s height, but as the story progresses and gets more serious, those jokes begin to peter off and eventually stop more or less completely. this is in part bc ed himself has physically grown, but it’s also illustrative of how the story has progressed and the characters have progressed with it. it was a fun gag while it lasted, but it wasn’t permanent. it’s also important to note that ed’s lack of height was in part due to the weight of his prosthetic limbs, so the gag would have to be left behind eventually bc it wasn’t worth sacrificing so much of the story for. dbs and other newer shōnen don’t seem able to put the story before the jokes. and in light-hearted moments that can sometimes be okay, but when it’s consistent throughout the story (or worse, part of the story), it kind of ruins the feeling.

bouncing back to dbs, there are two examples of jokes illustrate this: mr. popo and goku. plenty of people know that the scene where popo warns vegeta not to break the hypertonic lion tamer (sorry) is a reference to tfs’s running gag of popo being absolutely terrifying. this works without knowledge of the abridged series bc it looks like an otherwise nice guy getting fed up with these assholes who keep breaking his shit, and it works with the reference bc pecking order. does it properly mesh with his kind, gentle, and extremely patient nature? no, not really. but it’s a little side joke that doesn’t really hurt anything.

compare that with goku. goku was never characterized as an intellectual genius, but the original incarnation of him in db and later in dbz wasn’t so much stupid as thoughtless, naive, and occasionally just uninformed (which makes perfect sense - he’s an amnesiac alien kid who spent the last few years alone with no one to teach him things). but he had a good heart and generally tried to do the right thing. if the world was in danger, making sure it was safe was his top priority. he was a smart and clever fighter who learned from his errors, and he frequently showed his own form of intelligence outside of battle by thinking ahead in ways that no one else had - such as realizing that the earth would still need protecting after he died for good, and choosing to stay dead after bulma pointed out that many of the recent threats to earth’s safety were there because of him. he doesn’t think the way most people do, but he certainly wasn’t a brainless idiot who didn’t care about anyone but himself. not perfect, but still.

in dbza, he becomes said brainless idiot bc it’s a parody series and that’s what’s funny (sort of like tenshinhan and chiaotzu randomly being jewish, or turles trying to steal christmas). but that characterization got popular, and super’s goku frequently leaned a lot more towards the abridged incarnation rather than the original goku. again, that would be fine if it was a one-off joke, but it often feels like the audience is getting bounced back and forth between canon!goku and abridged!goku all the time, which is.... frustrating. to say the least.

beerus and whis suffer from something similar, only instead of being related to comedy, it’s related to their roles in the story and how they affect the plot.

tldr: writing is hard, status quo is NOT the end all be all, and i apparently have a lot of unresolved feelings about this that i should probably bring up with my therapist bc wow

#long post #dragon ball #dragon ball z #dragon ball super #crystalklk #son goku #kakarot #beerus #whis #bills #fma #me @ me: calm down u dramatic gay bastard

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miximax-hell · 4 years

Photo

Happy Goku Day, everyone!!

I checked and, miraculously, I still have followers on this blog. In fact, I’ve gained some since the last time I posted, for some reason! I’m not going to question it, though. Just... bless. But, hey, long time no see! As usual!

This time, I’m going back to my roots. The first drawings I posted on this blog were meant to show my love towards original Raimon, and it’s never a bad time to remind you all that I still adore these kids. Especially now that my friend @dust-monsters-under-my-bed has reminded me of them. Go check her art, btw! She’s not very active on Tumblr, but you can find her art on Twitter right here: https://twitter.com/rachelmonart

Anyway, she’s watching Inazuma Eleven for the first time and she’s made me think again about how much love these kids deserve, BECAUSE THEY SURE GOT NONE FROM HINO. DAMN YOU, HINO. So, today, let’s talk about the one and only IE character whose feet are classified as mass destruction weapons, who decided to borrow power from someone who will make you all question me, my logic and my tastes: Yamhan (or, as he is known in the west, Tiencha), THE FUSION OF YAMCHA AND TENSHINHAN FROM DRAGON BALL.

Introducing ShoYamHan! More on him under the cut.

So, first of all, how have you all been? I suppose many of you, like myself, are being told to stay at home to fight this situation. I salute all of you who do your best to stay safe and not help spread anything. It’s a very necessary fight, even if it can be boring at times. Many of us have friends or relatives fighting on the frontline, though (unless you yourself are the doctor or nurse friend!), and we hopefully know that staying at home is a small price to pay.

As for me, I got a job in December and lost it last month, so... yeah. It’s not been great. Still, something I’ve been working hard on for a while should be released soon and that’s so exciting! MY NAME WILL FINALLY BE ON SOMETHING’S CREDITS AND I CAN’T WAIT FOR IT TO BE UP.

But, anyway, back to business!

Rachel suggested I talk about the reasons behind this particular miximax, and considering it makes for a perfect parallel with my first posts, where I talked about the reasons behind Max’s and Kageno’s miximaxes, I’m all up for it! But, this time, I will have to do something new: explain WHO THE HECK YAMHAN IS. So let’s start with a picture of this handsome devil.

As most of you hopefully know, this project is about miximaxing Inazuma characters with video game characters. No anime, movies or anything else. Only and exclusively video games. Dragon Ball has probably spawned all those things, but it started as a manga, so you’d be right to think it most definitely does not qualify for this project. And, indeed, Dragon Ball doesn't. What DOES qualify, however, are Dragon Ball characters exclusive, or first introduced, in a video game. And that’s exactly the case we’re dealing with here!

Growing up, I loved Dragon Ball games. Even before I watched the show properly, in fact! I would go to my friend’s house, who was a fan of the show, and we'd play the Dragon Ball Budokai games nonstop with absolutely zero regrets. Those were some great times. And once I came to know the source material, the game that blew my mind the most was Dragon Ball Budokai 2. Was it the best one? Not necessarily. Is it my favourite? Not by a long shot. Still, it was the most creative! Most games follow the story of DBZ, which, obviously, is always the same. But Budokai 2 wasn’t afraid to do new things. Its story mode resembled a tabletop game and it was more than happy to deviate from the source material in some really fun ways; most notably, with exclusive fusions.

Budokai 2 introduced us all to Yamhan, the fusion of Yamcha and Tenshinhan, two long forgotten characters in the series, as they (and especially poor Yamcha) didn’t do anything especially relevant past... well, past the original Dragon Ball. As a champion of the unloved, that blew my mind. There were other fun things in Budokai 2, but what fascinated me and stayed in my thoughts for years to come was Yamhan. It was just such a cool concept. Two underdogs who had fallen into obscurity fusing to create a much greater warrior!

Of course, Yamhan isn’t the only videogame exclusive characters in Dragon Ball. He isn’t the first, nor the last. Yamhan isn’t the strongest, nor the weakest. But I haven’t played FighterZ nor Fusions (yet), nor pretty much any game that wasn’t on PS2 or GBA. And even if I had, I doubt Android 21 or any of the HUNDREDS of combinations available in Fusions would captivate me and my imagination as much as Yamhan did back in the day. Yamhan was a fusion, which is something that has always fascinated me to begin with. I MEAN, THIS ENTIRE BLOG IS ABOUT FUSING CHARACTERS, SO I THINK IT’S PRETTY OBVIOUS LMAO But he wasn’t just one among hundreds. He was this very specific, never-seen-before, cool as heck and usable fusion. Like, wow. That was wild for me. Sign me up, man.

But, you know, I try not to let that sway me too much. Of course, I wouldn’t likely pick a character I hate for a miximax, but, still, my preferences aren’t everything. And choosing Yamhan begs a question that I have already alluded to: if Yamhan isn’t the strongest game-exclusive DB character out there, then, why him? Well, the answer to that is related to the biggest problem posed by the sheer concept of miximaxing with a Dragon Ball character:

Power escalation.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Goku is, pretty much, the strongest character that has ever played the lead in any manga, and one of the strongest fictional characters ever, period. By the end of the Dragon Ball Super anime, he has EXCEEDED THE POWER OF MANY LITERAL GODS AND IS (or has been) A CANDIDATE TO BECOME ONE. You may prefer One Piece, or Naruto, or anything else, but few things reach the astronomical, reality-bending scope of Dragon Ball. Not to say DB is the best series--I’m just saying that it’s so out of control at this point (and I love it). But, of course, the stronger Goku is, the stronger the villains need to be, and Goku ends up becoming EVEN stronger than said villains. Rinse and repeat dozens of times until you can make an entire universe disappear by raising your hand.

Now, imagine applying that out-of-this-world power escalation to a context where the power balance isn’t so outrageous. For example, Inazuma Eleven.

Goku wriggling in his sleep is more powerful than Zeus, and an accidental sneeze would smash all of Ixal Fleet to smithereens. Do you see what this would do to the balance? It would ruin it completely, as anyone who miximaxed with Goku would be immediately a one-person army able to defeat ANY opponent--and if the opponent were to be EVEN GREATER than Goku, well, the rest simply wouldn’t stand a chance. Ever. Remember: the point of this project isn’t to create perfect and unbeatable players, and I’m not trying to prioritize anyone or make them noticeably stronger than anyone else just because I happen to like X more than Y. That completely ruins the tension and the fun (and my attempts to create justice in this unfair universe). The point is to come up with a balanced team full of players with strong points, but with flaws, too, that complement each other when they play together against stronger enemies.

So, if we go with Dragon Ball, and I love Dragon Ball WAY too much to not include it in this project in some way, we have to be careful and avoid overdoing it. Balance is key. And now that you know why I didn’t just choose the fusion between Beerus and Whis or something crazy like that, I’ll move on to explain what makes Yamhan a very interesting option. I SWEAR THERE ARE SOME ACTUAL REASONS.

First of all, the very concept. You know, Yamcha and Tenshinhan fused to created Yamhan, and now, Shourin is fusing with a fusion. That’s just... hecking cool. I won’t lie--my preferences towards Yamhan didn’t tip the scales towards making this happen, but my preferences towards FUSIONCEPTION totally did. XD But there’s more, thankfully.

From the very beginning, I knew I wanted a fighting game character to miximax with Shourin because it fits his theme best. I’m not big on fighting games, though, so it was quite tough. Especially because just any fighting game wouldn’t do it. Shourin is a martial artist. As I mentioned at the very beginning of this post, his feet are his weapons. His entire body is a weapon, really. If I were to suddenly miximax him with some character who wields a sword or an axe, for example, it would be a complete disservice to Shourin. Original Raimon members don’t have much going on for themselves, and I’m going to cut or ignore the ONE thing that makes one of them special? Not in a zillion years. Shourin needs to fight with his body. That, of course, cuts many characters already: pretty much the entire roster of Soul Calibur, many members of Mortal Kombat, many from games like Skullgirls (which I still want to try to represent here in the future, because @lumaga worked on it and it makes me happy just because of that), etc. For a very long time, I considered someone like Ryu, from Street Fighter, but then it hit me: I have never played Street Fighter and I don’t want to include him just because I know what a Hadouken is. It’d be... cheap. And fake. Thankfully, as I also mentioned earlier, I played LOTS of Budokai back in the day and I am an actual fan, so I don’t have to pretend to know what the heck I’m talking about. XD And, thankfully, most of the characters in DB games fight with their bare fists and legs, so they perfectly fit my needs. Yamhan is, of course, no exception.

Now comes my favourite reason to choose Yamhan and not, well, literally any other DB game-exclusive character. And that reason is style.

Remember that power escalation thing I mentioned earlier? Well, it’s epic, but it comes with a big disadvantage: power ends up becoming much more important than skill. Early Dragon Ball was very focused on fighting styles. There was an ongoing feud between the Turtle School and the Crane School, who taught different martial arts to fight in different ways, and there was a big plot involving which one was superior. It wasn’t just about who was strongest, but about who fought better. With time, that disappeared, though. Even though battles became flashier, aerial and more spectacular, they were much more indistinct. Sure, there were gimmicks like “heh, I have a tail and I will sometimes hit you with it,” or “I will try to hit your face with the palm of my hand instead of my fist for some unspecified reason,” but that isn’t... much. You just see very fast people avoiding equally as fast punches to the face. And Goku, the main character, only shows some style when he adopts a fighting pose BEFORE fighting. Once the punches start flying, it’s all a race to see who can hit the other the hardest in the gut to make them spit blood. Cool nonetheless, but still.

Ironically, though, it’s two of the least relevant characters who never really lost those styles that made them unique when they were first introduced to the series. And those are, of course, Yamcha and Tenshinhan.

Yamcha joins the Turtle School and learns techniques as classic as the Kamehameha, but he had his own style way before that, based on attacking and tearing enemies apart like a wolf would. This is best represented by his signature move, the Rougafuufuuken or Wolf Fang Fist. He never drops this style, but instead builds up on it through his training to make it even fiercer.

Tenshinhan has different things going for himself. First of all, he is a hybrid between a human being and a civilization known as the Three-Eyed People, which grants him powers such as growing extra arms from his back or dividing in 4. Not just moving so fast that it looks like there’s four of him, but ACTUALLY dividing into 4 separate bodies. In terms of skills, he was a Crane School student, but when he realised the wrong of his master’s doings, he decided to start training and developing on his own. Basically, a path that mirrors Yamcha’s, but both lead to unique fighting styles unlike anyone else’s in this universe. And, most importantly, none of them depend on appendixes that are always there, like the aforementioned tail, so they totally work for us here!

Shourin is a proper martial artist. He wouldn’t want to make himself crazy strong as much as he would like to refine his technique and learn new moves and tricks. Martial arts are about discipline, self-control, skill and protection. He would take a cool-ass combo based on a wolf’s moves over earth-shattering strength any day of the week, hence why the fact that these two have so many techniques to offer is so appealing.

Finally, and probably least, is the design idea that immediately came to my mind when I thought of a miximax between Shourin and Yamhan. Historically, I have had to work with characters like Fudou, who are usually mostly bald and they miximax with someone with hair, thus making for some very... difficult things to figure out. But the idea of miximaxing Shourin, who is mostly bald, with Yamhan, who is ALSO mostly bald, was just golden and too good to ignore. And the fact that Yamhan has three eyes GIVES ME AN EXCUSE TO ADD A THIRD CROSS-SHAPED EYE ON SHOURIN’S FOREHEAD. IF A MIXIMAX BETWEEN BALD PEOPLE WAS GOLDEN, THIS IS OUTRIGHT PLATINUM.

Shourin would've probably looked a lot less like a joke if he had had hair covering his entire head or if I had at least given him proper eyes... but that would no longer be the Shourin I love. Not to mention that it’s very likely that Shourin willingly shaves his head to begin with (even if the ponytail ain’t doing him any favours--but that’s just Inazuma logic, so let’s not look too much into it), just like Tenshinhan or Krillin do, so he would probably be happier to keep that, uh, advantage. Relative advantage, but still.

As a side note, though, we can’t forget the balance. When Yamcha and Tenshinhan fuse, they undoubtedly become the strongest human being in the DB universe, overcoming the one who is usually strongest: Krillin. A fusion is always greater than its parts individually, and Yamcha and Tenshinhan aren’t so far away from Krillin to begin with, so that’s not even a question. Regardless, they still don’t have that overwhelming and surreal strength from other characters, so we still don’t get into absolutely OP territory. Yamhan is strong enough to provide Shourin with a power that can make a real difference without completely putting him above everyone else.

Sadly, Yamhan doesn’t really have a backstory, as he’s a game-exclusive character that, honestly, was probably only there for a laugh. That means there is no deep connection between them. We can, however, make obvious connections between Shourin, an aspiring martial artist whose dream, as stated in IE2, was to study at Manyuuji (Kogure’s school) for their focus on martial arts, and is now trying to become stronger to protect what he loves, and two skilled warriors who have been training nonstop under different masters and on their own for basically their entire lives to keep becoming stronger and more skilled in order to defend what’s precious to them and, simply, to be the best version of themselves they can be. Upon seeing such dedicated warriors and artists, Shourin would undoubtedly want to learn from them and, if necessary, borrow their strength too.

Or he might just fanboy and ask for their autographs, honestly. I sure as heck want Yamcha’s. And his baseball card.

#Shourin #Shourinji Ayumu #Inazuma Eleven #Inazuma Eleven Go #Inazuma Eleven Ares #Inazuma Eleven Ares no Tenbin #Inazuma Eleven Orion #Inazuma Eleven Orion no Kokuin #miximax #mixi max #original Raimon #settei #reasons behind the miximax #info

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ogcassiopeia · 4 years

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M+M Answers Kpop Questions

1. Which group have you thought about stanning, but never seem to get around to it?

I’ve essentially only ever stanned TVXQ and never deviated from that but I could totally see myself stanning Shinee or Monsta X.

2. Do you have any irl friends that like kpop?

It depends on what you mean by irl. As of right now, I only have one irl friend, who lives in Canada, that enjoys kpop as much as I do. We met back in the early 2000s when both her and I were massively into TVXQ. She moved on to stanning BTS after TVXQ broke up but she still loves TVXQ and we talk about kpop and other life happenings often. The kpop friend I had here physically in my town with me eventually moved to a different city and we lost contact a few years ago. I am not even sure if she still enjoys kpop or not.

3. How old were you when you first got into kpop?

Oh gosh…I think I was 13 at the time.

4. What song(s) took you a while to warm up to?

A lot of f(x)’s earlier stuff like Nu Abo and Chu as at the time when they came out I found them to be grating and irritating. Most girl group songs take me a while to get into since I am more of a boy group kind of kpop fan.

5. Have you ever disliked a group/idol? If so, why? (You don’t have to say who it is if you’re scared of getting hate).

I wouldn’t say I dislike or hate a lot of kpop singers/groups but I would say I am either just not a fan of their personalities and/or their work. For girl groups, I especially am not a fan of BlackPink, Red Velvet or Girls Generation. I like one of two of their songs, but I find their voices irritating and feel like their talents are limited. I do feel this way about some boy bands too…but the one I do not care for is one that I may regret speaking ill of due to their fanbase.

6. What annoys you the most about kpop?

As of right now, it would be the fans. There seems to be constant harassment of people, celebrities or other fans who have differing opinions. Just let people like who they like and hate who they hate. What does it matter if they don’t agree with you? If you like the boy group/girl group/solo singer GREAT...leave it at that. You don’t need to harass or bully someone else into liking your faves.

7. What do you love the most about kpop?

The music. It brings diversity and color into my consumed media and it’s just generally enjoyable pop music fluff that I do not get from American media.

8. Do you only listen to kpop?

Nope. I listen to all kinds of music outside of kpop.

9. Who are you favorite western artists (if you have any)?

Paperwhite, The Band CAMINO, The 1975, Bad Suns, Lennon Stella, LEON, ASTR, Ralph, The Midnight

10. How long have you been into kpop?

Since 2003…so it’s been a while…17 years or so. (P.S. I am old and boring.)

11. What music did you used to listen to before getting into kpop?

Mostly American pop music, J-pop, J-rock and indie-pop.

12. What fandom(s) were you in before getting into kpop? Are you still in them?

I was super into anime and manga back then…I was a part of the Sailor Moon fandom and I still love me some Sailor Moon. I also really loved the Backstreet Boys and still do…I am going to their concert in August (as long as it doesn’t get cancelled due to coronavirus)!

13. Which group did you used to think was overrated but ended up loving?

Shinee

14. Is there a kpop song that annoys you? If so, which one?

Uhm…there are a lot of them. Some of the songs I find annoying are: I’ve Got A Boy + Oh! + Kissing You – Girls Generation, I Don’t Know What To Do – BlackPink, Everyday – WINNER, Snapping – Chungha, Dog and Cat – TXT, Seventh Sense - NCT (I am sorry to all of you who may love those songs)

15. What aspects of kpop make you cringe/feel secondhand embarrassment?

The Aegyo and overly cutesy, child-like concepts that girl groups always seem to have to participate in. Even though I know it comes from cultural differences in sexual attractiveness (I lived in Japan for years...I’ve seen it first hand), it still just creeps me out. I don’t like it in J-pop either, btw.

16. Which concepts do you love?

I LOVE dark, sexy, horror-like concepts that have been used by groups like VIXX and Dreamcatcher. I also love slick, retro themed songs based in the swing/jazz age (Something or Spellbound – TVXQ) or 80s nostalgia (I Feel You – The Wonder Girls).

17. Which concepts do you hate?

Anything overly aegyo or cutesy.

18. If you could trade places with an idol, who would it be?

I would totally love to be in Shim Changmin’s shoes….being part of an idol group considered gods in the kpop realm.

19. What do you look for in a bias?

(1) Intelligence, (2) Sassy/Funny, (3) Honest, (4) Hardworking, (5) Talented, (6) Humble

20. Which kpop company do you hate the most?

Cube or Pledis

21. What are you opinions on shipping?

It’s fine as long as fans don’t push participation of it onto the idols they’re shipping.

22. How did you get into kpop?

I saw a Kpop Countdown show on cable TV back in 2003 where they showed BoA and TVXQ and I was hooked instantly.

23. Has anyone ever made fun of you or looked at you weird for liking kpop?

I mean, yes…1000x yes, I was made fun of for loving kpop all the time. Once again, I got into kpop in 2003 y’all….which was before the internet was easily accessible in my home so I felt like the only person in America who liked kpop at the time. Not even my closest friends were into it and they felt like I was just a massive weirdo for loving it as much as I did. Thankfully, I found a community online of international kpop enthusiasts like myself to talk to in around 2005 (since I finally was able to save up for a bulky ass laptop) and that helped me feel less alone and bullied.

24. What is the cringiest thing you did when you were starting to get into kpop?

By the time kpop came into my life, I was already a set up Weeaboo, so…really I just became a deeper version of that…I was like an embarrassing kaiju cultural appropriation combo of Weeaboo and Koreaboo. I would make my own tshirts for TVXQ and just wear them out and about. They were SO BADLY MADE because I had no idea what I was doing but I thought I was so smart and stylish at the time. I also made CDs of Jpop and Kpop for people around school to hand out at lunch...I cringe just thinking about it.

25. How long does it take you to learn the names of each member in a group?

I’ve stopped learning members names nowadays LOL…I am too old for that shit and just don’t care enough anymore. (For past reference though, it took me about one week to remember all of TVXQ.)

26. Are you a gg, bg, or middle/coed stan?

Boy group stan

27. If you could hang out with one idol, who would you hang out with?

Shim Changmin of TVXQ….he’s my forever bias and I wanna hang out with his puppies and have a meal with him...ask him what he wants to do with the rest of his life once idol-dom is over.

28. Who is the bias to your third favorite group?

I guess that would be Monsta X so…uhm…it was Wonho but apparently, he isn’t in the group anymore…

29. What name from your native language would you give your ult bias?

What would I name Changmin in English? He already has a stage name that’s in English, which is Max. I am not sure what this question is asking LOL (also, who the fuck still calls Changmin, Max? I thought we dropped that shit back in 2006.)

30. Thought on fanfiction/AUs/etc?

I think it is great and gets fans to think more creatively and figure out where their talents lay! I used to write a lot of JaeMin and HoMin fanfiction back in the day…now I write mostly Destiel (Dean and Castiel from Supernatural) fanfiction.

#about me #personal #about mochi and matcha #kpop questions #get to know mochi and matcha #no one cares #if you read this...good on you #welcome to my brain...its full of tvxq and chocolate chip cookies

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murasaki-murasame · 5 years

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Thoughts on Sarazanmai Episode 6: “I Want To Connect, So I’m Not Giving Up”

All things considered, this episode was way more positive and hopeful than I expected, but it still hurt in it’s own way, and Ikuhara is still aiming to literally murder me with these post-ED scenes.

I was worried that Ikuhara wasn’t going to be able to pace out an 11-episode anime properly, but thus far it’s been fine, and this episode in particular gives me hope that the rest of the show will be just as good.

Also, I really think that anyone watching the show by this point needs to at least check out the ReoMabu prequel manga, if not also their twitter account, so you can get more context for their relationship, now that they’re becoming more prominent.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

It almost feels like a spoiler to include the episode title at the top of the post, since it’s one of the big emotional climaxes of the whole episode, but oh well. I still really love how this series is using it’s episode titles to hammer in specific emotions at the end of each episode.

This episode title also reflects how this is the episode where the patterns that have made up the show thus far have pretty much veered off-track. There were no musical numbers, no transformation scenes, no new Lucky Selfie Item, the kappa zombie of the week is determined to have love instead of desire, and for the first time ever, the episode title is actually a positive one that shows how Kazuki has grown as a person. I haven’t watched Penguindrum or Yuri Kuma Arashi yet, but I really like how Ikuhara intentionally deviates from the episodic patterns he sets up in order to create a sense of dissonance and change, and this is a great example of that. It really feels like this is the halfway mark that’s bridging the two halves of the show. I wouldn’t be surprised if the kappa zombie of the week stuff more or less stops after this, with how Reo and Mabu seem to be changing tactics, and the main trio are more aware of how the process works and how they’re erasing people from existence by defeating the kappa zombies.

Even though this is just the mid-season climax [and the point where the first of the two light novel volumes ends], it really feels like it could almost work as a full-on season finale, or at least a penultimate episode, with how it pretty much wraps up Kazuki’s entire character arc. But we still have five more episodes to go, and the post-ED scene in particular makes it clear that there’s still more to delve into. As I said above, I was worried that, based on what I’ve heard about Yuri Kuma Arashi, Ikuhara isn’t good at properly pacing out 1-cour anime, but this episode in particular makes it feel like if he was bad at it before, he’s certainly gotten a lot better at it. The pacing actually sorta reminds me of Planet With from last year, in how it feels like every single scene in this show is meaningful, and it feels like there’s more development than you get in most full series.

And on the note of Kazuki’s development, it didn’t go at all how I expected, but I’m really happy with how it went. I was honestly expecting Haruka to get turned into a kappa zombie and for the main trio to find out about the ‘erasure from existence’ thing after they defeated him, so I was surprised to see that he got saved, and I definitely wasn’t expecting it to also involve Kazuki finally accepting his brother’s love and saving him, after being given the choice to basically kill himself to erase all of his sins.

I think we can all agree that that whole sequence in this episode was ultimately a metaphor for him being suicidal and thinking that if he could die, or if he could have never been born in the first place, then everything would be better. There was just a vague plot mechanism in place to make him think that that might be genuinely true. Kazuki is a really complex and divisive character in a lot of ways, but moments like this really make it clear that he’s just a depressed teenager who feels unworthy of love. So it was nice to see Enta and Toi come through to save him before he could go through with killing himself [especially with how that whole bit incorporated Toi’s gun and Enta’s soccer skills].

The big climax of Kazuki’s arc, and his acceptance of Haruka’s love, ties in a lot with how we finally get some fairly blunt info about how society works in this series, and what exactly the loss of a Shirikodama means for a person. Like with how basically every Ikuhara anime is ultimately concerned with the idea of society being made of an in-group and an out-group, with being forced into the out-group being equivalent to death [but also to transcendence, sometimes], people in Sarazanmai are connected via their Shirikodama, and the linked desires that they represent, with those who cannot ‘connect desires’ being forced out of that circle of connection, and erased from existence. There’s a lot of in-universe lore and jargon going on there, but it basically boils down to ‘isolated outcasts get rejected and forgotten’. But on a more small-scale and personal level, this episode also explores the idea of smaller social circles, and the way that people can be rejected from them, and reject themselves from them. Kazuki feels that he was always on the outside of the circle after he found out that he was adopted into his family, and he’s been pushing Haruka away and refusing to connect with him directly for a variety of reasons. He’s been intentionally rejecting himself from that circle this whole time, and his big emotional realization in this episode is that Haruka genuinely loves him and just wants to have a normal relationship with him, and that he can allow himself to be loved and accepted into that circle. He can allow himself to be chosen. The fact that Haruka wants Kazuki to know that they’re a part of a circle together, from beginning to end, pretty much encapsulates all of that.

We also learn that part of why Haruka also has his own self-loathing issues going on is because he stole Kazuki’s mother’s scent pouch and rejected her out of fear that she’d steal Kazuki away from him. So he probably feels responsible for what ended up happening that day when Kazuki went to go see his mother at the train station.

I really hope we get to see the two of them interacting and talking things out soon. In a lot of ways their whole arc together has basically wrapped up, but it’ll still be nice to actually see their relationship improving.

I’m curious to see if Kazuki’s going to ever go back to his cross-dressing days now that the whole Sara thing has been exposed, and he’s finally allowed himself to love and be loved by Haruka as himself. I guess that’ll be what shows whether he only cross-dressed solely to try and connect with Haruka, or if he also had other reasons for it.

I have the wonder what’s gonna happen with the main trio now that Kazuki’s come to his big character development climax moment, and they all have a better understanding of how the kappa zombie thing works, and about the broader otter/kappa conflict. It’s also worth noting that, since they apparently defeated the sachet kappa zombie for good this time, they should have their fourth silver plate of hope, so they should just be one away from getting a full gold one. I’m really curious to see how that turns out, since I don’t think Kazuki is going to care about it at this point, since he’s managed to restore his relationship with Haruka without it. I think he’ll just let Toi or Enta use the gold plate for their own wish instead. And out of the two of them, with how things are going, it seems like Enta will probably end up letting Toi make the wish for himself.

It’s worth pointing out that even though Kazuki’s development more or less wrapped up here, there’s presumably more to do with Toi and Enta and their own personal conflicts. I think they’re each going to get one more focus episode before the anime wraps up. I don’t know entirely how their own stories will end, but Toi still needs to sort things out with him and his brother, and Enta clearly has to do SOMETHING about his repressed crush on Kazuki.

I would say that it feels like there’s actually not much more that even needs to happen with the main trio at this point since they’ve gotten so much focus and development already, but that’s where Reo and Mabu come in, since they’re clearly going to be way more prominent in the second half. The synopsis preview for episode 7 seems to imply that we’ll get more backstory for them, which will hopefully include the short chapter from the light novel that the anime’s apparently skipped over thus far. At the very least, this episode’s post-ED scene is enough to make it clear that there’s a lot to learn about them.

At first I was super thrown off by that whole scene, mostly because the art used for the backgrounds was so stylized that it looked like it took place on some fantasy planet, but after thinking about it, it makes sense, and I think it still slots into the same timeline as the manga and their twitter account. I think that their twitter account basically ended with the two of them getting drafted into the Otter Empire, and the post-ED scene in this episode shows them serving in the empire afterwards, and Mabu getting killed in the middle of them trying to finally capture Prince Keppi. It’s all very sudden, but it makes sense. And obviously we’ll learn more about it later.

It still looks like Mabu is being kept alive by a mechanical heart, which was probably provided by the Otter Empire in exchange for their continued service. But we still don’t know exactly how he got given that heart, and what his maintenance entails. It seems interesting that his situation resembles what Keppi said about the effects of having a Shirikodama removed, but Mabu still seems to be around, and Reo still remembers him and their history together, even if Mabu does seem to have lost his emotions. Maybe his mechanical heart is basically keeping him in a stasis where he’s not completely rejected from the circle like the defeated kappa zombies are. It might be worth noting that we’ve also only seen Reo interact with Mabu at all thus far, but that might just be a coincidence.

It looks like their goal, or at least Reo’s, has shifted over to capturing Keppi once and for all now that they’ve seen him in the security camera footage of the main trio saving Haruka. It definitely looks like his ultimate plan is probably to use Keppi to make a gold plate of hope that he can use to wish Mabu back to how he used to be. And honestly at this point I think he deserves it, lol. The main trio’s problems are all just real-life relationship issues that can be resolved through communication and honesty, but Reo doesn’t really have much of a choice if he wants to fix the issue of Mabu being a living corpse fueled by a magical mechanical heart.

I’m really curious to see how their methods change after this, now that they have a more concrete goal. I wonder if they’ll keep making new kappa zombies each episode, or if they’ll continue to play a more active role in things.

At the very least, I think that there’ll be a sequence later on where the two of them get their own Sarazanmai musical sequence and secret-leaking scene. It’d just make sense in a lot of ways if we find out that, similar to the main trio, they can transform into otters and do the whole Sarazanmai thing.

I’m also still curious to see if/when their connection to Sara comes up in the story, especially since it seems like the prequel manga is probably canon to the anime. I think it’d at least be weird if it doesn’t come up at all, since the fact that they raised Sara seems like a pretty big deal.

And on the note of her, and the prequel manga’s plot in general, this episode raises even more questions, even if it answers at least one. At the very least, it looks like the sleepwalking dude at the end of the manga was her manager, and the silhouetted figure with a crown was Prince Keppi. But even knowing that just raises it’s own questions. In particular, why didn’t Keppi mention Sara in his whole info-dump about the otter/kappa war? He basically acted like he was the only surviving member of his kingdom, but Sara [and her manager] are obviously still around. She’s even a popular TV idol, and even uses her kappa form as a mascot, so Keppi should at least be aware that she exists. So I wonder if he might be intentionally trying to hide his connection to her, for one reason or another. In particular, I wonder if maybe Keppi is trying to protect her from the Otter Empire by acting like he’s the only kappa left alive, so they won’t get suspicious of her. Though it’s hard not to think that his overall motives might be more sinister after his episode, so who knows.

I have a feeling that Sara might also have the power to produce dishes of hope like Keppi can, regardless of what he says about him being the only one able to do that. If she does, I could see that leading to an ending where she’s able to grant Reo’s wish, and they can basically go back to being a family together.

This episode kinda makes me even more confused about Sara in general, though. Now that we know more about the reality of the war going on, and the kappa being a nearly extinct kingdom, you’d think that she wouldn’t be quite so flippant about transforming into a kappa in public, or using her kappa form as a mascot on TV. Episode 5 also made her seem a lot more . . . spacey and off in her own world, in a way, than how she seemed at the end of the prequel manga. I wonder how she feels about all of this.

I was a bit worried that the show has been spending so much time on the main trio that it wouldn’t have enough time to really go into Reo and Mabu, and the whole otter/kappa conflict, and so on, but it looks like all of that is becoming a lot more important now, and this episode already spelled out a lot of info, so I think it should work out fine.

I really want to check out the light novels now, but I’ve already decided that I’ll wait until near the end of the year to buy both volumes together. I did import the ReoMabu manga yesterday, though, so that should get here next week. I have a feeling I’ll also end up importing the physical volumes of the new manga adaptation as well, lol.

All in all, this was a really fantastic episode. I’m really happy that Ikuhara hasn’t lost his touch, and that we’re still getting such great shows from him. Now I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping that the second half of the show can stick the landing.

#murasaki rambles #sarazanmai #this post got really long but there's a LOT to say about this episode #this show is just SO GOOD Y'ALL

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tranxendance · 5 years

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I think Mob Psycho 100 is my favorite anime ever.

Which is a weird thing to title a post, I’ll give you that. Even my current favorites, Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist have parts of them I don’t like and I consider them 9 or 9.5′s out of 10.

I ‘think’ it’s my favorite because it’s (As time of this writing) still ongoing but it’s safe to say the last episode of season 2 isn’t going to be suddenly terrible. That, and I haven’t had months and years to stew on it before I claim it’s actually my favorite.

I tend to like things that subvert the norm, especially in the Anime business where it’s sort of expected to follow a formula and not deviate from it too much. If it worked for Akira Toriyama, it should work for us, right? The greats make a story, then everyone uses that as a skeleton to build their own very-similar story on top of it. It’s why trends and tropes are so much more noticeable in anime. Defeat-into-friendship, the tournament arc, the beach episode, power creep escalation. Sometimes, an anime will even outright take a visual theme and reuse it to trick your brain. Try to watch the Dragon Ball OP and then Yu Yu Hakusho and see how similar they are. Sometimes it’s a shot for shot copy with the YYS characters.

(They even always have the protags run from right to left the same way geez)

So, Shonen is a massively incestuous genre and it has been for 30 years or more. That’s not to say that it’s necessarily a bad thing because some shows want to ‘do it better’.

Now, ONE is a writer who sort of specializes in parody or at least subverting your expectations. You already know just by the name of the series that Saitama is going to show up and win the fight in one punch, the surprise is how hard the other characters fought before he got there, and then how instead of everyone worshipping him as a hero they harass him. So: Let’s take the shonen hero archetype. He’s physically competent, he never gives up, he has friends but never has to rely on anyone but himself, he soon surpasses his teachers if he has any, never gives up, and is righteous in his beliefs. It’s likely he has an array of ‘cool’ moves with names he can shout out, you can make action figures out of him, he’s instantly recognizable by his hair or clothing. He’s good because he’s strong and he’s strong because he’s good. I say ‘he’ because I’ve literally never seen a Shonen that didn’t have a male protagonist.

(Even my beloved Kenshiro is just...this, but again he’s sort of the archetype everyone else built on afterward)

Now along comes Mob. He’s generic looking with his dopey bowl-cut hairdo and plain black school uniform. He’s by far the most powerful psychic individually you’ll meet for the majority of the show, but he’s also a pacifist, he hates fighting and refuses to hurt other people with his powers no matter how bad and wrong they seem to be. He doesn’t really have cool lines or marketable super-moves. But most importantly of all, he is not self-reliant and tough and determined. In fact, he’s an emotional, sensitive kid that has trouble expressing himself and taking social cues from others, which makes him awkward and shy!

Ironically, of course, this sensitivity and empathy is what makes his psychic power so great, since powers come from strong emotions and he’s basically always trying not to cry. But instead of just making him able to shoot laser beams that are more powerful, his growth is that he learns how to relate with other people and make friends. When ‘defeating’ human opponents, he is deflecting their beams and telekinesis while trying to talk to them, and understand them. He’s a combat therapist. All he wants to do is either make them understand why they’re being selfish, or hurt, or afraid, and help them. This, of course, means nobody really dies and they have a REALLY good chance of turning their villainous lives around or at least becoming one of Mob’s friends.

Mob’s sensitivity and empathy but trying to keep his emotions in check is depicted by a ‘progress to explosion’ counter as he takes little hits of emotional damage and stress throughout a day, so more than any other character you know exactly how Mob feels about something despite his gormless, blank expression. When he reaches 100% he ‘explodes’ which is more or less he has a tantrum and cries and his power goes out of control. Not only is this actually awesome visually because there’s a lot of crazy effects and devastation, but your heart kind of goes out to the kid. This really only happens when something really devastating has happened and the uncontrolled power smashes the enemy of the week.

Mob’s not popular or competent at a lot of things, and would rather become ‘less weird’ than focus on honing psychic ability, which leads him to joining the Body Improvement Club, and working at Spirits & Such with Reigen. Even though he could easily coast through life with his gifts of psychic ability, he’d rather work on the things that he’s not the best at already to become a more well-rounded person. Though he’s easily so much more powerful than the body improvement club or Reigen he still looks up to them. He asks his friends for help and they support him as peers. He’s not a super-mature kid that can just do anything, he still relies on responsible adults when things seem to be beyond him, even going so far as to give his powers to Reigen at one point, because he can’t handle the responsibility on his own.

The way it’s positioned as a goofy comedy about an awkward kid allows for some unexpected emotional blows, and the artstyle (Which unlike One Punch Man didn’t get redrawn by a super-competent manga artist) primes our expectations for silliness, so you don’t immediately think about the bizzare nature of the fight scenes, and they can throw in a Street Fighter gag and you’ll hardly bat an eye.

(Doesn’t look out of place)

In modern Anime, the focus seems to be keeping characters on-model so that any individual frame that you screenshot will look pretty. But making characters highly detailed and on-model also means they can’t move around as much, or it’d be a lot of redrawing keyframes. That means there’s a lot of nice-looking characters that stand around perfectly still doing lip-flap animation for dialogue.

The low line-weight of characters in MP100 means that there can be tons of motion and it won’t be that much more difficult to draw. Reigen moves and wiggles around and strikes crazy poses while talking because of this, making even very standard dialogue fun to watch. Studio Bones also goes the extra mile and throws in different styles of animation entirely, including Ink-on-glass (A technique which, as its name implies, involves smearing slow-drying ink across glass and photographing the results. Very time-consuming and difficult), the industry-standard CG, Graphite dust on paper, chalk, and I think I even saw some cut-paper style in there too. These are often used with ghosts or psychic phenomena, to imply that they don’t follow the same rules as the other characters.

In a recent episode, the solution of the problem was Mob making friends with a person that is sort of his darker half. The person Mob could’ve become if he hadn’t actively tried to go out and socialize, to make friends, to better himself. And the conclusion of this fight is they sit down and talk and become friends...not only did I not hate that I thought it was a fucking amazing conclusion to the penultimate battle of the arc.

TLDR: Mob Psycho 100 is my new favorite anime because Mob is the opposite of a standard shonen hero, animation is amazing, artstyle allows them to play with your expectations and animate things more.

#mob psycho 100 #mp100 #mod rambling #long post #my stuff

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rosies-batim-blog · 6 years

Text

Android Henry Chat

This is the chat that outlined most of the ideas for the Android Henry AU and while a number of little details have stayed the same, a lot of them have also been changed.

If you want to know what’s changed, what’s stayed the same, or want to see a particular scene/idea drawn up, let me know!!!

Rose-cut Strawberry: I know this channel was probably more for RP crossovers, and I don't know much about the game Connorbot came from, but this idea for an AU of some form is really appealing to me.

http://doberart.tumblr.com/post/176386160693/this-was-the-first-idea-that-came-to-mind-for-a

https://amazingaliah.tumblr.com/post/178072662434/just-a-little-batim-and-dbh-crossover

I really like the questioning of what makes someone "human" in stories with Cyborgs or Androids. Best examples, all Megaman comics/manga and the many versions of the Cyborg 009 series Even if we don't play with this as an RP, can we play with it as an AU?? Henry being and Android, but still being the Creator for the Toons?

Adopt-A-Fusion: that would be fun

Rose-cut Strawberry: Yeah, I want to talk more about this (and learn a bit more about the Detroit Androids in the process) so can we talk about it?

Adopt-A-Fusion: maybe after work or tomorrow, gotta lotta other stuff to juggle atm

Rose-cut Strawberry: kk @anyone I know Mango finds this idea interesting, anyone else?

❤'s The Heart: I like it!

Rose-cut Strawberry: I still wanna brainstorm this but I Mango isn't on yet and I don't know enough about Cyberlife Androids to start by myself.

❤'s The Heart: Yeah same ^^;

Rose-cut Strawberry: I read the wiki article for Cyberlife, but it mostly talked about the company. Holy shit, Conner can die a lot in his game. And for a lot of different reasons I have no words for that.

❤'s The Heart: Well then

Rose-cut Strawberry: I’m reading the wiki and holy shit can he die a lot. There are, like, four different ways he can die in just the first chapter

Adopt-A-Fusion: cyberlife androids are basically walking talking amazon alexas. i recommend watching gameplay of the game to do research, jacksepticeye had a great run

❤'s The Heart: I keep meaning to ^^;

Rose-cut Strawberry: One thing I want to see is Henry completely missing the social/emotional cue for something and needing to have it explained to him.

❤'s The Heart: You just described me and that sounds adorable

Rose-cut Strawberry: For one idea for this; Henry being a Deviant and having to leave the country to escape being deactivated as why he left the studio. Like, possibly Joey hiring/commissioning him from Cyberlife as an extra animator. Which is actually the starting point of the studio's financial problems, but Joey had thought the amount he could get Henry to work would make up for the amount of money spent to get him.

Adopt-A-Fusion: hhhhhyes

❤'s The Heart: PRECIOUS ROBOT MAN

Rose-cut Strawberry: But then he finds out Henry can actually be creative and decided he can exploit that since Henry can't actually be treated as a 'human' in terms of the legal jargon at the time.

❤'s The Heart: D: poor boy

Rose-cut Strawberry: But then Henry starts Deviating from his original programming limits (which made him 'friendly' but stunted in terms of interacting with his co-workers, good at running animation programs, and in possession of rather generic animation skills of his own) such as developing deeper connections with the humans in the studio, and even coming to understand that Joey is using him. But, as an Android, there isn't really anything he can do. Until he reaches the point where he does something that flys in the face of his programming.

❤'s The Heart: :0!! I LOVE THIS!!!

Rose-cut Strawberry: One of the things Androids aren't supposed to be able to do (generally) is fight or use weapons, so I want to say a fight of some kind happens and instead of sitting back and doing nothing, Henry ends up getting involved.

Adopt-A-Fusion: Henry being a custom made Android

❤'s The Heart: If conspiracy theorist Shawn was in this AU he would think Henry was human. He acts like everyone else is making crazy theories for once What would that entail?

Rose-cut Strawberry: No, everyone is told from that start that Henry's an Android. The thing on his temple would make it kind of obvious. Shawn would be trying to figure out why Joey wanted and Android.

Adopt-A-Fusion: consider Henry being sort of a prototype for a speciality-type android, meaning a higher chance of programming errors and a greater chance of deviancy

Rose-cut Strawberry: Oooo~ I like that idea

❤'s The Heart: I still find the idea funny. Maybe Shawn was out sick on Henry's first day. He thinks Henry is just another employee

Rose-cut Strawberry: Then he spots the glowing circle on Henry's temple and is like "Holy shit"

Adopt-A-Fusion: and he's told "oh, we got a new Android" and he just starts theorizing that everyone but Henry is an android in disguise

Rose-cut Strawberry: pfft Or "Drew is gonna replace us all with Androids!"

❤'s The Heart: Half of what's funny about him is he's oblivious as fuck. He doesn't notice for months After ages of theorizing, he's talking to Henry about it and Henry points it out Shawn becoming really good friends with Henry while he thinks he's a human, or at least he considers them good friends, even if Henry's programming doesn't exactly allow him to make connections to the employees just yet

Rose-cut Strawberry: “What are you talking about Mr Flynn? I've always been an Android."

Adopt-A-Fusion: awwwwww yes

Rose-cut Strawberry: He's just "Is there anything else I can help you with Mr Flynn?"

❤'s The Heart: Shawn rambles at him all the time. He just thinks Henry is a good listener

Rose-cut Strawberry: Though, if we go with the "No one notices he's an Android" route, it could be that Shawn finds out Henry isn't getting paid and hunts down Grant to find out why their best animator isn't getting his damn checks. And then that's how everyone finds out.

❤'s The Heart: Shawn helps him escape when he has to leave the studio

Rose-cut Strawberry: YES The fight, Henry gets involved when someone breaks into the studio while he and a few other employees are staying late.

❤'s The Heart: Where does Henry go when the studio is closed?

Rose-cut Strawberry: Oh, erm... Let's just go with Joey making a living space in the studio. (I don't think he'd pay to get Henry an apartment, and there was nothing in the Wiki's about Androids having their own places to live) anyways, someone breaks in and turns out to be pretty violent when he finds out he's not alone.

❤'s The Heart: :0

Rose-cut Strawberry: Henry gets dismissed because his uniform marks him as an android and therefore a non-threat, but Grant (the guy running financing and probably in possession of the keys to the safe), Shawn, and Norman are a very different story. So the fight breaks out, and the thief is armed which makes him dangerous

❤'s The Heart: Shawn gets hit pretty bad and something just snaps and Henry attacks the thief

Rose-cut Strawberry: Henry lashes out with a 2x4 and conks the guy upside the head. HARD

❤'s The Heart: Later Shawn jokes around saying how good a friend Henry is if he'd override his programming for him

Rose-cut Strawberry: Probably But, defence of another human or no, Henry still deviated from his programming and attacked a human. But it gets convoluted from there. On one hand; he saved someone's life On another; He attacked someone

❤'s The Heart: Poor guy :(

Rose-cut Strawberry: And he panics a little (again, not something an Android should be capable of) because Deviating can lead to Deactivation

❤'s The Heart: Save him

Rose-cut Strawberry: That's kind of what Shawn and the others end up doing. They help get things in order for Henry to leave the country for one with less stringent laws towards Androids.

❤'s The Heart: Comfort the robot

Rose-cut Strawberry: Joey only finds out what happened after the fact. By then Joey has noticed that Henry was becoming a Deviant but never did anything about it because he was getting even better work out of him. And he is not happy when he finds out Henry has left. But he would have been just as displeased if Cyberlife had Deactivated him. Joey gets curious about just how human Androids are becoming, and that leads into the magic stuff (but possibly more cyberpunk than in-game)

❤'s The Heart: Ooo

Rose-cut Strawberry: Henry flounders for a good long while, since he's so used to having orders and jobs, and isn't really sure of what to do with himself. I supposed this could be when Linda shows up for sure, who can be a graphic designer looking for help. She doesn't expect an Android to be one of her applicants but finds he's actually pretty good and gives him the job.

❤'s The Heart: Aww :)

Rose-cut Strawberry: Fast forward 20 to 30 years and Henry gets the Letter (and yes, it needs to be capitalized)

❤'s The Heart: Of course, it does! It's important

Rose-cut Strawberry: Henry is feeling safe enough to come back (laws and policies have changed), so he decides he's overdue for a visit to his friends if they still live near the studio. The studio had closed down due to debt and "mysterious circumstances" but he thought that at least a few of his old coworkers probably still lived in the area. He has no idea what he's walking into

❤'s The Heart: D’:

Rose-cut Strawberry: MANGO WHAT DO YOU THINK SO FAR?

❤'s The Heart: this is so goooood

Adopt-A-Fusion: I LOVE IT

Rose-cut Strawberry: YAY I fully admit that I picture the aesthetic being a lot like Doberart's Rise of Bendy AU f*ck, I don't know how to continue Seriously I don't know how to continue, someone give me an idea. Please

❤'s The Heart: Sorry ^^;

Rose-cut Strawberry: Here's a thought, how do the rest of the staff feel about their Android coworker? What do you guys think?

Adopt-A-Fusion: some people are probably indifferent, at least one person is a dick about it

Rose-cut Strawberry: Possibly two of them. I want Bertrum to be one, he just very set in treating Henry as a machine or an appliance. Wally kinda likes him, because if he asks Henry is willing to help him out with stuff.

❤'s The Heart: Ooo yes

Rose-cut Strawberry: What about others, we already decided Shawn likes him

❤'s The Heart: Sammy is indifferent

Rose-cut Strawberry: Yes, he doesn't mind the Android, but he doesn't hate him either. He just focusses on his work Pre-Deviant; there are a lot of coworkers who are indifferent because they find androids unsettling but have no real reason to hate them.

❤'s The Heart: Wally is one of those at first, but Henry grows on him

Rose-cut Strawberry: Like I said, he comes to like him because Henry is always willing to help when asked. What about Susie? Or Thomas? Or even Norman?

❤'s The Heart: Thomas is indifferent. He's indifferent about everyone Norman likes him

Rose-cut Strawberry: Any ideas for Susie?

Adopt-A-Fusion: I don’t know :(

Rose-cut Strawberry: Norman thinks he's a nice guy, even if he's an android. They chat with each other at times. Thomas sees him as a machine, but he generally likes machines, so he treats Henry about the same as he treats normal people. But he also makes sure the studio is stocked with stuff to help Henry if he gets injured or needs to refill his "blood" levels (they have a term for the special blue fluids used for android blood but I can't remember it right now) Susie... Let's go with her mostly avoiding Henry.

❤'s The Heart: She's a bit creeped out

Rose-cut Strawberry: Like the fact that he doesn't emote as much as a human bothers her, but she doesn't really hate him or be rude. So she tries to just avoid him. Which is fairly easy since they work in different sections of the studio. Grant has a stronger dislike of Henry, but it's not as much about him being an android and more because of how much Joey ended up using of the studio's budget to buy him. But the way he treats is more Begrudging then honestly hostile. Eventually, he appreciates having Henry around when the android offers to help him with paperwork (computer brains are helpful for long and complicated math equations) Should Allison be working at the studio at this time? Not as Alice's Voice Actor but maybe just another female voice actor at the studio?

❤'s The Heart: Sure, why not I love the stuff with Grant

Rose-cut Strawberry: Allison is one of those people who finds androids fascinating. Like, with how close they can emulate humans She goes out of her way to talk to Henry, sometimes throwing out non-sequesters just to see how he'll respond. She supports the idea of Androids getting more rights but is quiet about it since it's not a very popular opinion.

❤'s The Heart: Shawn asks him questions all the time about being an android

Rose-cut Strawberry: A lot of them boil down to "I don't really know, that's just how I was programmed" or "You would have to check Cyberlife's policies for that." A lot of employees are of the opinion that Henry is a good robo-boy. A lot of them are mostly indifferent towards Android, but Henry's programming results in him growing on them after a while.

❤'s The Heart: More than half of the employees: PROTECC

Rose-cut Strawberry: I don't know about more than half, but definitely a good percentage of them don't want bad things to happen to their android

❤'s The Heart; A good percentage of the employees: PROTECC

Rose-cut Strawberry: I want to say Henry gets hurt at least once in the studio, enough to end up spooking the others pretty bad.

❤'s The Heart: YES

Rose-cut Strawberry: @Adopt-A-Fusion We need a scenario for an injured Android Animator, and ideas?

Adopt-A-Fusion: nope

Rose-cut Strawberry: drat.

❤'s The Heart: An accident of some sort

Rose-cut Strawberry: Yes, but the question is what? There's no ink machine at that time, otherwise, I'd say something involving the equipment for it.

❤'s The Heart: a pipe exploding maybe Not like an ink pipe, just a regular one

Rose-cut Strawberry: Or a falling project- no, tech's different the projectors would be too light to do any serious damage. Wait, Bertrum's here He uses major equipment for the theme park stuff. (he has too)

❤'s The Heart: Yes!

Rose-cut Strawberry: So maybe something comes loose when Henry is dragged off to help with something and hits him. It doesn't do enough to "kill" him, but it ends up doing some pretty heavy damage. Which takes another huge chunk from the Studio's finances, but everyone who actually likes Henry is too worried about the android's condition to be too bothered by it. Grant is worried too, but also rips into Bertrum because "What if that had been a human employee?! It would have killed them! Do you have any idea what a lawsuit would have done to us?!"

❤'s The Heart: Poor Hen needs repairs

Rose-cut Strawberry: That's where Lacie becomes really helpful (previously she treated Henry like he was a person who just had trouble connecting with people), she knows all the technical jargon to get the shit that’s needed to fix Henry and what to do to get him stable while they waited for it to be ready.

❤'s The Heart: :D

Rose-cut Strawberry: A lot of the employees tear into Bertrum, since the accident was due to him lapsing in safety protocols, which means anyone who had been at the sight had been at risk of being injured. And androids could take more damage then a human, so if Henry was that injured, it would have been outright lethal to a human. Can we talk more about the relationship between Joey and Android Hen

❤'s The Heart: YES PLEASE

Rose-cut Strawberry: I don't really know where to go with that, other than needing the relationship between the two to seem well enough (to Henry) to justify Joey writing "Your old pal" in the letter, while still leaving him scummy enough to justify disliking him. Henry didn't become a deviant because he was being abused by his... Owner (i guess), he became one because he was ready and willing to protect his coworkers who had (probably) been slowly affecting his programming by just treating him like a person and encouraging him to be more like them.

❤'s The Heart: :)

Rose-cut Strawberry: I need an idea for shit that would seem nice to an Android, but be seen as really deceitful/scummy to a human.

❤'s The Heart: I suppose being given a place to live, but it's just like a closet or something

Rose-cut Strawberry: A former storage room in the studio. (so literally never leaves the studio)

❤'s The Heart: Yep Poor guy :(

Rose-cut Strawberry: But he doesn't know any better, because he's an Android that's basically fresh out of the shop and Joey is the one who purchased him and is, therefore, his "owner" He's literally a "possession" in the eyes of the law. But Joey doesn't really treat him badly. Like how people can get attached to their stuff (like Roombas) and treat them like little people while still seeing them as a possession. Henry gets treated fairly well, but not really as a person.

❤'s The Heart: More like a cute little pet, or a child

Rose-cut Strawberry: Pretty much, yeah.

❤'s The Heart: The fact that the employees treat him differently is a bit confusing to him

Rose-cut Strawberry: He is very confused by it. But does his best to keep working.

❤'s The Heart: Eventually, he starts to realize he likes how the employees treat him more

Rose-cut Strawberry: But just the fact that he was making those choices showed that he was starting to deviate. Android's aren't supposed to feel anything. 'Pain' was the only exception since it warned if something in their systems was damaged, but even then it only showed up if they actually were hurt.

❤'s The Heart: Hence why it takes him a while to start feeling that way To start feeling at all

Rose-cut Strawberry: It starts with him doing something because he wants to. A very minor thing that Joey never really noticed or paid attention to at the time. Like Ooo~ Like putting a Cutout in the corner he works in. He has no real reason for it. He just wants it there. Joey thinks he's using it as a spare reference, or to make his desk seem more comfortable to other workers. But no. It's there because he decided he wanted it there.

❤'s The Heart: PRECIOUS BOY

Rose-cut Strawberry: He amasses a collection of knickknacks from around the studio. A broken/improperly made clock he decided to fix

❤'s The Heart: A magpie robot

Rose-cut Strawberry: A plush toy that was accidentally made the wrong color (or a prototype/concept toy Shawn may have given him) Yes, he basically starts out as a Magpie Those are the signs of him becoming Deviant. But they're so... not noticeable

❤'s The Heart: Hhhh i need to watch this gaaame

Rose-cut Strawberry: No one even realizes it's happening

❤'s The Heart: Not even Henry

Rose-cut Strawberry: Henry has at least one toy of Bendy, Boris, and Alice; A trio of Butcher Gang toys (since Joey scrapped the idea of making official toys of them); a couple posters where the images and colors were offset during printing; the clock... OH, the others notice the slight magpie-ness, but they think it's something closer to "Make sure things are kept for the future" Shawn is the only one thinking he's becoming Deviant. It's the only time he's ever been right. He brings in a fold-up bookcase thingy so that Henry can display some of his knickknacks. Shawn gets it as a present during Christmas or something.

❤'s The Heart: Aww :') Consider: the employees treating Henry's first day as his birthday

Rose-cut Strawberry: No, they ask him what day he was actually activated and that becomes his birthday.

❤'s The Heart: Yes!! Presents for the boy!! Shawn is the first one to see him smile and he teases him about how cute it is for a week

Rose-cut Strawberry: No one who wants to get him a gift is sure what to give, and Shawn ends up 'leading the charge' so to speak. Henry just sort of blinks at the teasing at first because he doesn't really know what embarrassment is.

❤'s The Heart: He gets lots of little knickknacks

Rose-cut Strawberry: Weird thought for Shawn to ask when he sees Henry drinking Thirium (the blue stuff that's basically blood for androids) Shawn; "So... Do androids count as some kind of weird-arse techno vampires then? I mean, technically speaking, you're basically drinking your own blood." Henry; "I... Am not sure how to answer that. This is just how I top off the levels of Thirium in my body."

❤'s The Heart: Their friendship is the greatest it makes me so happy QuQ

Rose-cut Strawberry: It's kinda like Shawn and Toon!Wally's tbh Only without the psycho-vivisecting Joey.

❤'s The Heart: Yes!

Rose-cut Strawberry: Wally asks questions like to. Once he gets used to Henry, he's actually really curious about how he works. Wally; "So, since yer blood is blue, does that mean you if could blush, yer face would turn blue-tinted?" Henry; "Possibly. Though, as an Android, there really isn't anything in my systems that would cause an irregularity in my thirium levels that would equate to a 'blush', as you call it.." (Sorry androids seem to be science-sy and formal in their speech/answers so I keep having to take a moment to think about how, exactly, Henry would respond.) For the longest time, Henry doesn't understand sarcasm. He answers everything with complete seriousness.

❤'s The Heart: I love how he talks It's adorable

Rose-cut Strawberry: Ooo~ Idea He learns how to recognize and understand sarcasm from Sammy. Just by listening and watching him.

❤'s The Heart: Yes absolutely He never quite understands it entirely

Rose-cut Strawberry: Oh, there's an idea, Android Henry is one of those non-Cyberlife Androids. Which means he was/could have meant that he was more likely to deviate than any Cyberlife Androids.

❤'s The Heart: Oh neat Joey wanted an android, Grant said they couldn't afford it, their compromise was getting a knock-off

Rose-cut Strawberry: But it still took a big chunk out of their budget.

Goof Noir: I JUST READ THIS I LOVE IT SM

Rose-cut Strawberry: Thank you!

❤'s The Heart: :D :D

Rose-cut Strawberry: Deep breath The more I think about it, the more the idea of Henry being an Android could actually fit the game. Like, in the game, Henry seems to always need to have a mission/task of some kind as he goes. And he keeps count of all the tasks given to him (like the gears and ink globs) And he has little notifications when he completes tasks, even without Alice talking to him. I know those are all just normal game mechanics, but they could be incorporated into an Android really easily.

❤'s The Heart: :0 I love it

Rose-cut Strawberry: And Henry being able to "see" missing machinery/piping/etc fits for that kind of 'construction" stuff appearing. Pre/Reconstruction. that's what I meant. More thoughts on Android Henry, it actually causes a certain amount of sense with Henry's "deaths" in game. All of the magic is built around humans, which he is not. So while he is affected by the ink it can't actually get hold over him like everyone else.

❤'s The Heart: Ooooo

Rose-cut Strawberry: The ink is like "What is this?? Is it person?? Is it thing?? Should I be trying to take this or should I be making shit like it???" (BC the ink seems to be able to actually create inanimate things/non-organic things just fine) Like the pipes and the radios and such. It only seems to have trouble making "living" things. And Android Henry, by the definition given by Joey, was not a "Living" thing.

❤'s The Heart: :0

Rose-cut Strawberry: Well, he's not made with flesh and blood; he doesn't have the organs found in humans and animals; he doesn't really need to sleep or eat (even if he goes into rest/sleep mode every once in a while to save power/kill time); he doesn't have any bone or cartilage in his make-up He's about as far from the make-up of his coworkers and the toons as one can get. Even if his appearance is hardly different from others. I kinda want to talk more about Android Henry, or even start writing for it, but I don't know what to talk about/start with...

❤'s The Heart: Same :( I wish I had ideas

Adopt-A-Fusion: id contribute but brain doesn’t want to dbh

Rose-cut Strawberry: It doesn't have to be strictly dbh, it could just be ideas for how the story would start out. I'd say the story would start after Henry got the actual letter, with the past stuff being done as flashbacks or stories. I feel like it would be best for Henry to have some kind of companion for this story... I would love to talk more about the Android Henry AU, but I have no idea what to do about it.

❤'s The Heart: Joey just... Shopping around for bootlegs is amazing

Rose-cut Strawberry: Hey guys, remember Android Henry? I DREW HIM

❤'s The Heart: I’VE MISSED HIM

Adopt-A-Fusion: Good boy

Rose-cut Strawberry: He's wearing his android jacket, but he ripped off/removed all the decals and such from it.

❤'s The Heart: I wish we could talk more about his au but I don't know much about dbh (other than apparently people hate it now??) and I don't have any ideas

Rose-cut Strawberry: So? Who cares if we don't know shit about it, doesn't mean we can't play in the sandbox anyway. Besides, that's what reading Wikipedia synopsizes is for.

❤'s The Heart: Oh that's very true

Rose-cut Strawberry: Hnnnn... I ideas for stuff to draw for Android Henry, anyone have any? @here Any have suggestions? I really want to make more art to show this AU off.

❤'s The Heart: I’m sorry I don't ^^; Sorry I meant to reply to this yesterday

Rose-cut Strawberry: Is okay. If something occurs to you, feel free to mention it.

#batim #batim au #bendy and the ink machine #bendy and the ink machine au #android henry au #dbh inspired au #rosie's chats #liliflower137 #lepetiteinkmango #snippy-snapps

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