It's a bad thing that I want Cellbit to snap in a paranoiac mess when he discover that Jaiden entered his Fear Room?
Is a bad thing that I wanted him to hide in his castle and refuse to go outside as the cryptic creature he is?
Is a bad thing want him to stop helping anyone that aren't from his little family (the favela 6+Roier and his son)?
It's a bad thing that I want Cellbit to close his castle to anyone that aren't from his little family?
That I want the islanders to know that whiteout Cellbit they had lost one of the people that most helped to impulse the lore? The one that will give his life for an investigation whiteout asking nothing as a payment?
That I want them to see how fucked up is him rn, how they have lost one of the most dedicated soldier they had against the federation?
I want qJaiden to feel bad about braking into Fear Room, going to say sorry to him and finding the shell of a man Cellbo is looking rn and see that her "being silly" has consequences to other characters?
Is it a bad thing?
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Sasamiya's guide book rant: a bit upsetting
Sasaki to Miyano is a very casual read, a simple, cliche BL story with gorgeous art and interesting main characters that hooks out from beginning to the end of the romance and gets you to a satisfying conclusion.
But to a person who's been hooked in this silly story like I'm committing substance abuse, the real key of Sasaki to Miyano's storytelling are its side characters, and I am not happy about what I found.
The Slice of Life genre, and consequentely shoujo manga/BL manga tend to rely on the side cast for most of its lighter moments: jokes, exposition and expanding the story.
Harusono-sensei has a habit of discreetly releasing the lore of these side characters in contexts that extrapolate her main manga story unless said lore has influence over one of her MCs.
Merch products with little story snippets, captions for her birthday art posts, little comments over her Fanbox exclusive livestreams, artbooks, light novels and Volume Extras all paint this interesting landscape of characters much richers than you'd firstly assume when picking up SasaMiya or HiraKagi to read for the first time, and as an avid fan of this Manga Universe she's built, I was anxiously waiting for the SasaMiya guidebook in hopes of getting to know one of her most recent additions to her cast: Shirahama Kyouji.
Offically debuting in the manga by chapter 42, Shirahama was previously established as Tashiro's childhood friend from the basketball club in the First Year's Novel. In 2019, when Tashiro's birthday art was posted, his name was revealed to the readers for the first time through a quote-retweet from Harusono clarifying that no, she had not invented a character out of the blue, this guy's always been Tashiro's companion. In 2020, he made another appearance in his friend's birthday art, later then becoming an established member of Miyano's now group of four friends.
In the guidebook, like she does with all her side characters, Harusono establishes his gimmick: Shirahama is a boy who wants to be popular with girls and is upset at his state of perpetual loneliness.
His current function in the story is to be the one guy who's more aware of romantic social cues, considering Kuresawa's is constantly talking about his girlfriend, Miyano is the main character who's dating for the first time and Tashiro is...
What the fuck is Tashiro doing?
Being the guy with no girlfriend was Tashiro's thing at the start! He's the one whos compained about wanting to live some kind of high school romance even if he studied in an All Boy's School (ie: the Bazaar Drama CD), he's the guy who was afraid his friends would leave him for their S/O's.
By Shirahama's official debut I started noticing a process I could only call "straight man-fication" of Tashiro's character. The author quite literally transferred his gag to Shirahama.
I abhor this decision with my whole heart, not because I don't believe Tashiro can be anything but a funny character, on the contrary, he's proved in both his novel chapters that he can be interesting and funny, specially if he's interacting with his narrative foil.
Enter Hanzawa and the contradictions of his hinted romance storyline
Harusono has established pretty well who Hanzawa is by the latter half of SasaMiya, her most developed side character apart from Hirano, who has his own manga, his family issues and his overall aversion to romance when it came to his own life made for an interesting one-time side character beyond his gimmicks with the rest of the cast.
Hanzawa's role in Tashiro's chapter in the First Years LN is to guide him into believing he can and wants to be responsible for something for once. Tashiro's role in Hanzawa's later development is to show him there's need for balance in everything and that the man deserves to rest for a while instead of trying to work his brain into repressing his personal issues.
This is a fine dynamic on its own and that, in my honest opinion, never needed to be turned into the hinted romance the manga has been giving us in the newest appearances of these characters. In the guide book, these two characters gain a whole pages long fully colored extra about the two of them missing each other.
Tashiro doesn't feel like himself when he's nostagically reminiscing the departure of his upperclasmen, his internal monologue feels divorced from the guy we cam to associate with a carefree and lighter nature. But that's fine, isn't it? Giving the carefree guy a serious moment is a classic Anime Character Development move.
Tashiro's been serious before, in moments mostly associated with Hanzawa and with worrying about him (the Movie extra where he gives him a juice bottle).
What bothers me the most is what Hanzawa becomes here.
In this guide book comic, Hanzawa's attachment to his high school life is comically exaggerated as he repeatedly refuses to leave his classroom at the last day before the Third Year's graduation ceremony and has to be forcefully dragged by Hirano.
When these two out of pocket moments for these characters appear associated with each other by matching internal monologues, they feel OOC to me.
I do not think Hanzawa's story needs a romance. I absolutely do not think Tashiro's pair should be his overachiever upperclassman.
I think Harusono's haste is apparent when you look at what these two characters became and associate it with Shirahama's persistent appearances in the story. It feels contradictory to all these established characters, but specially unfair to Shirahama, since his role in the narrative as Tashiro's companion is lost and he becomes a flanderized mess of exposition dialogue and Miyano's personal tutorial to dating life.
Not the first time she does that to a character, don't get me started on my poor boy Ogasawara.
If the guide book's a guide to anything that's bound to happen in SasaMiya's last volume and the upcoming spin-off, I don't think Hanzawa and Tashiro (or poor Shirahama, he doesn't deserve this) are on a good path.
I love SasaMiya and this has not hindered my enjoyment of the series at all, but it does hurt a bit, specially considering their individual potential.
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I'm sorry things really suck lately. i hope you feel better soon, i hope things get easier for you. i hope you know you don't have to go through things alone, and that it's okay to ask for help. I'm really sorry. i hope you're okay.
thank you it's just that there really isn't anyone I can go to. at this point I'm debating just going dormant and letting my headmates take over because I just really can't do this shit anymore. I'm treated like garbage at home and there's nowhere I can go.
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ugh, I'm devastated. Bandai Namco has been on a killing spree copyrighting songs. All of the classic, well known playlists of the Darks Soul soundtracks are gone and so are the channels, which sucks, cus one of them also uploaded no commentary walkthroughs. My playlists are decimated. Demon Souls got eviscerated, which sucks cus those extended tracks of Ivor(?) were the only versions of certain remake demon souls tracks that didn't audio peak. (hope he manages to get his channel back, was actually subscribed cus I liked his work and he introduced me to a lot of cool games)
Worst of all the've gone after Alex Roes beautiful remixes, which originally is what brought this to my attention.
I get its Bandai Namco's right (except Alex Roe, that's just wrong) but they removed all the topic versions of the soundtracks years ago, so its the only way to really listen to them on YouTube. Ugh, I'm not excited to do damage control on my dnd campaign playlist
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