#I'll show closeups of some of my favorite things I got!!!

[meownotgood]

japan haul!!!!!!!!! geez I buy way too much

[animehouse-moe]

Heavenly Delusion PV: Am I Dreaming?

I'll say it again, am I dreaming? Heavenly Delusion, for the unknowing, is a series that's licensed by Denpa. Now that's no offense to them, but they're not a Viz or Yen or anything like that. They sort of squeeze between the giants to get what they can, which is usually not massively popular series that will get stellar adaptations. But here we are. Somehow. So let's get started with my fangirling!

Firstly, the overarching direction. I absolutely, 100% adore it. Mori Hirotaka is already working wonders in this trailer. The sense of space, isolation, and emptiness is so prevalent, and they contrast it wonderfully with the cramped closeups that focus on legs and hands. A positive to that is that it confuses the viewer perfectly. Who's hand is doing what, who's walking, who's doing this who's doing that. It's absolutely expert misdirection which they use to the fullest in regards to the source material and the PV.

My favorite piece of this direction though has to be the hands. God, it's so perfect. They had the idea and absolutely nailed it. There's not words to describe how it makes me feel seeing this execution.

What I love so much about this is how they animate it. It's uncanny valley. It's something that's almost real, and that makes it unsettling. It's riding that line to provide discomfort while looking stupidly good, and that's exactly the vibe that this anime can do wonders with.

This trailer is really just full of standout material, down to the smallest things. Take the music, for example. It's so ridiculously fluid as it dances between all sorts of different vibes. From mystery to horror to subdued action, it's got it all. It really has me excited for the work that Kensuke Ushio is going to provide.

And as if a strong sense of direction that meshes with the material wasn't good enough, the cuts and tricks included in just the PV alone are outstanding.

Take this aggressive zoom out that provides an ominous feeling in regards to the building, as it lingers for just a moment at a distance.

Or this cut of the camera flying right past Kiruko and Maru. A perfect idea that you don't see used, let alone executed as well as this one is.

Or maybe you like more traditional and really enjoy the use of a Dolly Zoom to put the focus on a character's thoughts in a moment.

And I mean, look at these environments as well. Everything is just perfect. It's more than perfect, it's like a hallucination, a delusion that Production IG has placed directly in your head to show you the absolute ideal version of this series.

I could probably pick apart every frame of this PV and extrapolate some sort of meaning or value, because that's just how dense it is to a manga reader. Every little piece has value, significance, purpose. It's incredible what they're doing because overall the manga is more methodic and paced than the frantic look that this trailer gives us, but it works perfect. It doesn't stop to let you try and figure stuff out, or piece anything together (unless you're a manga reader).

This PV focuses on one thing and one thing only, selling you on the anime. And it 100% does its job, and goes above and beyond. You get a sense of the direction, you see the stellar art, you hear the dynamic music, the characters, the bits of story, it hits every single note it needs to so that it can get viewers invested in what seems like an insane production.

[fourseasonsfigs]

Colorful Black

We're taking a short break from our foray into the Junzhe Extended Universe to come back to our own. A little less exciting, perhaps, but just as cute!

This fig set includes Gong Jun dressed in his Mujosh endorsement finery, complete with orange-tinted lenses:

Looking good, Junjun! I'm bummed out his Mujosh partnership is over - we sure got some great looks out of it. I also got some really nice eyeglasses frames out of it too. Very nice quality!

Zhehan's looking absolutely gorgeous in this photoset here:

Why his sweatshirt has "The Age of Stupid" on a laptop screen is beyond me, but Zhehan doesn't control what stylists put him in!

No matter, he's incandescently beautiful.

Here's our two adorable figs from this set, and I love them. Absolutely love them. Zhehan is so soft haired and sweet looking, and Junjun's rocking his shiny leather jacket and will very soon have some rockin' shades. I'll do the pics without the sunglasses first, and then with them.

You might notice here that Junjun has a groove in the side of his head there above his cute little ear. What this is, is the most brilliant notch for his Mujosh sunglasses! As someone who has struggled mightily with fig glasses of all kinds, this is a godsend. The little stems fit right into it and they don't fall down his face!

Classic that we have Junjun all fancy and Zhehan all casual wearing socks with slides! I love it.

It never fails to make me laugh when we get to this angle and see the relative proportions. I love JZP fig makers so much.

May I also just say how much I love Zhehan's hair in all incarnations. I'm so happy he's done so many things with it over the course of his career - we get so many awesomely varied hairstyles with him.

Junjun's hair, on the other hand, is generally a variation on his usual medium-short length, but even then fig makers add a little flair to it somewhere! Usually his bangs. Which of course, has nothing to do with this angle.

You can see the matching groove for the sunglasses here by Junjun's ear.

The shininess of Junjun's coat is fantastic. I like when the fig makers play around with texture for the figs, adds so much great interest. Hehe, Zhehan's slides look particularly good (?!?) here!

Top down is often a bit uninteresting, but I like this one! We get the style-y hair parts and the relative look of the outfits all in one go.

This photo took me aback for a second when I went to go crop it, I thought, what piece of styrofoam did I get on Zhehan's shorts! But no. Zhehan's shorts tie is just at an awkward place. I scrolled back up to the photo inspiration, and whoa, yep, what do you know. I wonder if you know what, I'm just gonna stop here and not try to figure out the photographer's mindset. Moving right along!

Please notice the red heeled soles on Junjun's shoes, so nice! This is also a great opportunity to check out the modeling, and see the relatively wider looking face they gave Junjun and the smaller, little rounder face for Zhehan. These figs are so well done. Believe it or not, these are actually some of my favorite figs, I just love them.

Alright! We got some cool shades for our Cool Boy. Here's an extreme closeup of the hair grooves and the matching tabs on the sunglasses.

On to the pics with the glasses! Yikes, I gotta watch my photo count since we're definitely hitting the max 30 on this post.

So handsome, Gong Laoshi!

The glasses are sturdily on, thanks to the grooves! Speaking of sturdy, these figs do stand fairly well. No balancing issues with mine.

Here's the back of the box cards, along with the an optional add-on for some stickers.

Wow, I barely managed to stay at the photo limit! I did want to show the artwork on both boxes. When I read the quotation on the first box, I was like, oh ho ho, this fig seller has an opinion on who fell for the other first! I got so excited to read the other box quote and see what it said, and then I realized it was just the same. Bummer! I've read a lot of fan fictions that have one or the other falling in love with the other first (and plenty with both at the same time, of course), and frankly, they're all fantastic. I could read them daily hourly every minute and not get tired of them!

Material: PVC

Fig Count: 328

Scene Count: 24

Rating: My personal opinion is at the same time, myself.

[link back to Master Fig Index for more posts]

[frenchifries]

this one scared me awake straight into a sleep paralysis episode lol

sometimes i get these dreams that play out exactly like lost media creepypastas you'd hear people insisting they saw on some weird VHS they had as a kid but can't find any information about and when they try to talk about it to other people no one knows what they're talking about.

so this one was presented very much like a sort of 'storybook' video, with still images set to narration. the backgrounds looked like watercolor paintings and the characters looked like paper cutouts drawn in a cartoony but overly-detailed style, like the creepy closeup shots you'd see in shows like courage the cowardly dog. the people had small bodies and stubby limbs and bug-eyed blank expressions—very grotesque, somewhat in the vein of jhonen vasqeuz's art style.

it was about this little girl whose parents hated her; she was referred to as "the neglected girl" and the narrator talked about how her parents were happy and she was not. she was always alone and nobody loved her and basically nothing good or interesting happened in her life. then she grew up and met a man and they had two kids together, a boy and a girl. the man loved his kids but he didn't love the woman, but they got married anyway. after they got married, they had a third child, who the man also didn't love, who in turn became the next "neglected girl."

the main thing i remember is that it ended with a shot of everyone sitting on a big bed while the narrator said "and so the man was happy, and the woman was not. there was the oldest son... the favorite daughter... and the neglected girl." and as they're listed off their images appear on the bed one by one; i especially remember the woman sitting and staring into the distance with the most haunted expression on her face, and the "neglected girl" in the back corner of the bed appearing only as a smeary silhouette, sort of twitching and writhing.

and then the narrator says, "but some say, her real name is—" and in that moment, where i was really focused on this twitching silhouette, she leaps forward and jumpscares me, filling my vision with black and an unsettling noise, which of course scared me awake, but not all the way awake, because i was stuck in a sleep paralysis state and could only stare at the shadows in the corner of my room. i started calling for help and, in my half-dreaming hallucinatory state, thought my mom was standing in the corner, with the lights from my AC as the reflection off her glasses, and that she was like, intentionally ignoring me.

i kept yelling for help and eventually my dad came and helped me wake the rest of the way up. this was at like 5 in the morning i guess. i was scared to go back to sleep because i was worried i would have another episode, but thankfully it was all fine. the worst part is never knowing when they're going to happen—they're usually spaced pretty far apart, but having one is also no guarantee that i won't have another soon. it especially makes me worry for times i'll be home by myself overnight, because if nobody comes and wakes me the rest of the way up and helps me start moving my body again, there's no telling how long i'd be stuck like that...

[katedrawscomics]

Hi! Widdershins has been my favorite comic for years now, I admire your storytelling so much. I was just rereading, and I wondered how you choose the composition of your panels? They're so dynamic-- you use so many dramatic angles and I hadn't really realized how much energy is conveyed that way. Any tips to an amateur artist?

oh gosh, haha, thank you :) if i'm being honest a lot of my composition stuff now is just kinda natural- i've learned a lot of rules that are jammed into my head after so many years of practice, but i'll try to articulate a few for you.

largely, i try not to keep the "camera" static, so i like to move it about and try out different angles where possible. this isn't necessarily a hard and fast thing you NEED to do while making comics- widdershins is an adventure comic though, so its best to keep it snappy and dynamic, and flipping angles helps that. you run the risk of things looking chaotic though, so i generally try to stick to the ol' 360 degree rule- this means if character A starts on the left of the panel and character B starts on the right, try to keep them in that order, as it reads much smoother that way. you can see me doing that in this recent page here-

lei is to the left, vee is to the right on every panel. yes i know they literally cannot move but i'd have positioned them similarly were they able to run about, i promise :V

don't treat this as an unbreakable hard and fast rule though, it's really more of a guideline, so don't feel trapped by it. note i flipped vee and lei's positions in this final panel here-

-because it's more vital that the reader gets a good solid closeup on what vee's hands are doing before they read her speech bubbles there.

but trying to keep to the 360 degree rule while still keeping the "camera" in motion can keep visual interest high! you can do some fun stuff too like having characters visibly crossing from left to right to set up the action.

another thing to note on these pages is that it can really help to have your actions- vee's flip, rattaker's swing of the spanner- go from left to right as that follows the direction the reader is reading. it gives more of a vague sense of forward motion, if you get what i mean? this also means you can have the action going in the other direction when you want to convey someone moving backwards-

or having their progress halted, or moving slowly-

sometimes if it's an intentionally slow paced scene, or something where you wanna show a distinct change in two states, you can keep the camera static, like so-

-since the lack of relative movement can help to highlight a change in scenery or facial expression.

another tiny helpful thing i like to keep in mind is to try to pull out the camera enough to show a full body shot of the characters at least once per page- i call it the boots rule, gotta see a pair of boots on the page to establish where they are in the environment, and not just constant closeups of faces. again this isn't a hard and fast rule, it's something i made up for myself since i found i was doing too many close panels, which got kinda crowded and confusing. if your characters are moving about or changing position though, you do wanna pull back the camera to show where they now are relative to the scene, and keeping the boots rule in mind can help remind you of this.

in general just keep in mind that readability is key, and easily the most important but invisible part of making a comic. you wanna make it so your reader doesn't have any moments of stopping for a second like "huh? which panel is next?" or "when did that guy move over there". consider the flow of your page, how your composition of both art and speech bubbles can follow the way a reader's eye will naturally scan the page, and you're heading in the right direction.

uh, hopefully that helps! if you wanna know anything more specific please ask, i can ramble on about this sorta thing for ages!

[anime-onlys]

Spring '21 anime list: What I tried, what I'm watching, and first impressions!

Shaman King (2021)

I hadn't heard about this show until the reboot was announced, and it seems neat so I'll give it a shot! Hesitation isn't quite the right word, but I am watching cautiously because there's a lot about early 2000's anime that should stay in the early 2000's. I'm prepared to take a certain amount of product-of-its-time-ness, but only so much.

I really like its unique visual style. It feels like it's got a similar vibe to Soul Eater and TWEWY with its chunky proportions and face design, and the squash-and-stretch animation really lends itself to comedic moments. I feel like there are some eminently cosplayable designs in my future.

Character-wise, it's only been one episode but I'm taking a liking to Yoh. Based on the OP I hope that Ryuu will be an early-antagonist-turned-loudmouth-friend like JJBA's Okuyasu or Sk8's Shadow. That's one of my favorite character tropes.

The World Ends With You the Animation

My friend is a huge TWEWY fan, so our group was really looking forward to this anime. I saw a little of the gameplay when the Switch version was released, up to the end of episode 1's plot. I know it's going to be excellent story wise, and I already may be planning on making cosplay of that Reaper with the skeleton hoodie.

I love a unique visual style and an awesome soundtrack, of course TWEWY already had that coming in. The CGI Noise are a little clunky, but allow for some really great fight sequences. The characters' CGI models are nearly seamless with the 2D. It feels like the plot is moving fast, but according to my friend they just skipped some fetch quests and puzzle solving that wouldn't have been interesting to animate.

I'm really looking forward to this one each week!

Dragon Goes House-Hunting

One of those "eh, we'll give it a shot" shows. A bunch of us have been eyeing real estate lately, so at the very least it's topical. If done right, the concept could be fun!

We spent most of the episode HATING the dragon's character design. Its proportions are just...awkward in every way. The neck is extremely short and thick and leads into a human-muscled torso, the arms are tiny twigs, and the legs are a little too human and a little too thick to be anything but unnerving. It's bad.

Oddly, except for the dragon, the rest of the creature designs are pretty great! In contrast to a lot of anime, they let them be really non-human and had a good design sense. The humor was solid, the Monster Hunter references were on point, and the character interactions were fun. The OP is GREAT, too!

We'll be continuing this one! If you can make your eyes stop hating you for forcing them to look at the Monster Factory reject of a dragon, I'd say give it a shot.

You Can Make A Mug Too

Now that Yuru Camp is over, we wanted another lighthearted anime that might teach us something while it's at it. You Can Make A Mug Too was one of our picks to sample because one member of anime night has recently acquired a kiln.

My impression is an approving but unenthusiastic "Fine, really." You can definitely tell it's an anime made to bring in tourism to the town it's based in. The characters don't really grab me, but they set up a solid emotional backbone for the story. The production quality isn't stunning, I was hoping for some nice pottery wheel animation but didn't get any.

It's probably a decent show, but we won't watch any more because of the next one on the list.

Supercub

Going straight from You Can Make A Mug to Supercub was like going from store-brand ice pops to fresh gelato. I can already tell this is my favorite anime of the season, hands down.

First, the production quality is excellent. The backgrounds are beautiful, the score is understated but well done to the point that Debussey's Clair de Lune felt like it had been made for the scene it was used for.

More than the production quality alone, this anime's direction is exceptional. It takes 'show don't tell' and uses it perfectly, using body language and soundtrack and shot composition to communicate as much or more than the sparse dialogue. Like, they made my heart skip a beat with nothing but color grading. THAT kind of exceptional.

I haven't spoken much about the plot because I really have no idea where it's going to go. Will we fill in why Koguma is so alone, or will we only move forward to seeing her connect? Will the past of that Supercub come back to haunt her? This feels like an anime that can and will absolutely wreck me, but at the starting line all I can say is I'm READY.

If you only watch one thing this season, watch Supercub.

Continuing anime:

My Hero Academia Season 5:

This season is interesting because for the first time, I think I'm going into it with almost zero spoilers (Dabi's real name is the only one I have). The only plot spoiler I thought I had, that Hawks was somehow working with the League of Villains, was revealed at the end of episode 1. I really enjoy going into things blind so I'm looking forward to this season!

However, the OP is the most disappointing thing out there. Nothing about the song, animation or composition is memorable or even noteworthy. Bones and MHA have access to all the money and talent in the industry and they best they can do is "Fine, I guess".

Yuukoku no Moriarty season 2 (Split cour):

I really enjoyed Moriarty's first season, but the second part of a split-cour always has the risk of running off the rails. What I enjoyed most about the first cour was the reverse-whodunit formula: Here's a terrible noble and the people they hurt, how does Moriarty get rid of them while making it look like an accident? The end of cour 1 started to focus heavily on Sherlock and I don't want the show's namesake to end up sidelined.

Knowing Irene was coming, I was really hoping for a Scandal in Belgravia that follows the books...at all, where the end of the story is that Irene escapes with the photo (except this time aided by the Moriarty brothers). Few or no Sherlock adaptations actually want to engage with the sexism of the era or today's, and just want to paint her as a blackmailer or temptress instead of a woman holding onto the power to protect herself. The beginning was extremely promising, but that went off the rails pretty quick. I still haven't yet seen an adaptation of Irene Adler that I like.

Zombieland Saga: Revenge

I watch this show because it's fun and ridiculous, and I get to hear Mamoru Miyano having the time of his life in the recording booth. I love this show because it always ends up surprising me with its solid emotional backbone. It looks like this season is shaping up to be more of the same!

What blew me away was this episode was the first time I saw a CGI dance sequence that I LIKED. Ever. The characters used different mocap so they weren't eerily in sync, the song and dance itself was well made and supported by excellent camera direction and shot composition, there were 2D cuts to closeups of the dancers as well as audience, and they actually pushed facial expression!

It's a good time. Give it a shot.