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yamcha-thelonewolf · 5 months

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🫂Toriyama forgets, Yamcha doesn't!

This time I want us to relax a little bit. My last analysis, The Heart's Savior, was very challenging both for me who wrote it and for you who read it, so now it is only fair to lighten the load.

In a poll, I asked you whether you would prefer to know more about Yamcha's life as a fighter or as an ordinary earthling, and if you remember, the second choice won. So here I am analyzing a little trivia that has nothing to do with battles. Well... Sort of! Martial arts still has something to do with it, but it only serves as a background. In fact, I will tell you about an extremely strong friendship, not because the bond is actually intense but because it goes against the narrative choices of Toriyama and Toei Animation. Believe me, guys, this analysis could maintain the connection with a character we hear little about now. Lastly, just because I know it's a kind of topic that many people like, I'm going to talk somewhat about one of Yamcha's many looks.

Let's be clear, this is just my theory, it's quite silly, but at least it might make you smile a little... Well, I hope so!

Before we begin, it seems only fair to warn that the following is likely to be coincidental. Dragon Ball has never dwelled on details, at least not the ones I care about, so it is highly likely that this topic is meaningless. But... What if it doesn't? Assuming Yamcha has a life of his own in this show, talking about it might be worthwhile... Because it would once again show what a beautiful person he is in everyday life.

So... Let's get started!

Don't worry, I told you. I am not going to talk about Yamcha as a fighter, but as I had anticipated it is necessary to understand how incredible he is as a normal earthling.

We are at the end of the Fortuneteller Baba Arc. Goku has finally found out where the last dragon ball is and so sets off with Upa to resurrect his father Bora. Meanwhile, Yamcha and the others await their friend's return at Baba's palace. It is during this wait that Yamcha reflects at length on his own life and he finally decides to ask Muten to make him his pupil.

A new orange Gi is definitely needed!

Freeze! It is not the Turtle School uniform that I want to talk about. Let's go back for a moment... A few hours before the 22nd Tournament begins.

Alright! We've got it!

We are on the plane bound for Papaya Island. Bruce Lee Yamcha has completed his training under Muten, and with this proud pretty face he lets us know that we are going to see some good things. He also seems more mature. He is in his 20s. Guys, many things could be said about this drawing, but in this case I will simply dwell on his outfit. This is the first time we have seen Yamcha in such an elegant look. We were used to seeing him in martial artist outfits or otherwise with looks more suited to his wild nature, so this is a very nice surprise. For a change, he looks great. I mean, you can dress and style him any way you like: Yamcha has the incredible power to be charming in any way. Yes, even with that bowl hair from DBZ...

Jeez, I love him. Let's go back to our outfit now.

Some will remember it for sure, but for those who do not know I want to let you show that this dress has its own origin.

One more step back now.

We are in the 21st Tournament Arc. Yamcha is in town with Bulma and he's training on his own. Muten's only pupils are Goku and Krillin. Many people do not pay attention to it, but if these two boys managed to get into the Turtle School it is because of a character who unfortunately met a brutal end in the show: Lunch.

The deal is clear: If Goku and Krillin can find a nice girl to stay at the Kame House, then Muten can train them. It is the only way to access. So we can safely say that if Goku has become so strong, it is also thanks to Lunch. Fortunately, she is found in her quiet form, but soon her secret would come out...

...Whatever! Goku and Krillin can finally train under Muten. Well, there really would be so much to say about Lunch. She is a character who deserves a lot. She should not have disappeared at all after the great contribution she made to Goku and Krillin. Not only that. She even defeated some Red Ribbon soldiers, she helped Yamcha defeat some criminals because he had a broken leg, in a filler she saves Goku from an attempted "kidnapping," and among many other things she allowed to find front row seats during tournaments! Seriously, she would deserve a separate post.

If we look at Lunch as a function of the protagonist, it is undeniable that she was the mother Goku never had. At least in her good personality.

The same of course applies to Krillin. Let's think it through. She cooked for them, cuddled them before bed, and who knows how many other mother hen things she did. Goku definitely lacked such a figure, so this is also why I consider Lunch an important character in his growth. If Bulma is more like an older sister, Lunch is definitely his mommy. Have you noticed that? Every person Goku meets represents a family member. It's extremely cute.

Be that as it may, as proof that Lunch is a real mom to the two pupils, she decides to give them a nice gift at the end of their training.

Tadaaan! Okay, I admit that Goku and Krillin are really funny dressed like this. They look like two little gangsters, something like Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro as kids, but that's okay. Lunch sewed these outfits for them, and that's what matters. It was done with love.

Seeing her satisfied like a loving mommy getting excited for her kids going to school for the first time always moved me. Although in this case the destination is the tournament, the meaning is the same: Lunch gave importance to their big day by honoring it with this outfit as awkward as adorable.

Well, friends. Now that the puzzle is almost complete, we can go back to our boy! As I said at the beginning, Yamcha begs Muten to make him his third pupil. Once inside the school, it doesn't take long to realize that for all of his three years of training he has been dealing with Lunch as well.

It should be mentioned, however, that the two had actually met for the first time during the Red Ribbon Arc, when everyone leaves to help Goku.

This is the first real moment when they meet. Lunch is in her "evil" form, but a little later Yamcha will also make the acquaintance of her good side.

This meant that during these three years he also cohabited with Lunch, who must surely have cooked for him as well. I think it's a really interesting detail. Unfortunately, we don't know what has happened during these three years, but I would like to point out that this is the first time Yamcha has dealt so closely with a girl other than Bulma. Imagining that he is still very shy with girls, I have no doubt that he has been embarrassed many times in being so near to her. Stop!, I'm not saying he had feelings for her, but she is still a pretty girl, most of the time very naive as well as sensual, so I wouldn't be surprised if Lunch made Yamcha blush without even meaning to. By the way, it would be interesting to analyze Bulma's feelings in this situation, since she has visited Yamcha several times. I don't think she was ever jealous of Lunch, but she may have punched her boyfriend in the head a few times anyway just because.

...They were so cute...

Okay, now the topic is clear, isn't it? The bond between Yamcha and Lunch is one of the least explored things in Dragon Ball. There is no point in talking about it because it leads nowhere, but believe me, for an earthlings fan it is worth discussing.

First, let's start by saying that this is a different relationship from that she had with the other two pupils. If with Goku and Krillin Lunch was able to act like a caring mother, the same cannot be said for Yamcha. Yamcha is not a child like them. He is almost the same age as Lunch, so the relationship must be absolutely equal: they are two friends. Nothing more, nothing less. This does not mean that Lunch took less care of Yamcha. Surely she must have avoided giving him a good-night kiss and things like that, that is.

As for her second personality, it becomes more complicated. We will never know whether "Bad" Lunch felt attracted to Yamcha. We know she loves wild guys and Yamcha certainly is, but I don't think she was that disloyal to her friend Bulma. In short: I am convinced that there was never any sexual attraction between Lunch and Yamcha. They have always been two great friends, proving that friendship between boys and girls can exist.

So... Maternal or not, one thing is certain: when the big day comes again, Lunch gives her gift to Yamcha too.

I don't know how many of you have thought about this. I'm sure I'm not the first one who has thought about it, but geez... It's a detail that has always excited me for no real reason. Perhaps because it is one of those details that indirectly deepens the relationships between Dragon Ball characters, which are unfortunately poorly told.

I mean, try to think of the scene!

Yamcha at that time was not really the type of guy to wear stuff like that. He has lived for many years in the desert, where it is not necessary to wear fancy clothes because the only priority is to survive. Yet in the desert, we don't know how, he also learned good manners, especially with girls. I'm sure he did everything possible not to disappoint Lunch's expectations. Yamcha has always been like that. In order to please others he has often sacrificed himself, so I think something like that happened in this case as well. Let's try to put ourselves in his shoes. He may be gentle and all, he surely must have thanked Lunch for this, but how much he must have cringed wearing this?

It is a bit like putting a bow tie on a wild wolf...

This is precisely how I imagine him: deeply embarrassed and on the verge of sinking underground. "Boy, I feel so ridiculous!"

Don't worry, silly, it actually fits you much better than you think. I don't believe anyone found him as funny as Goku and Krillin were the first time they wore that thing. Anyway, I assume that this is why we don't see himwith that Al Capone hat. "Hell, I can accept the dress... but spare me that thing!!"

Here you can see Yamcha now comfortable in his elegant look and Lunch by his side totally unaware that she was the one who sewed it for him. By the way, I think it's superficial to say this but... It's really nice that she handmade this dress for Yamcha. I mean, his body is much bigger than Goku and Krillin's. She must have struggled a lot! It's a proof to how much she loved Yamcha, too.

Come on, look at her! Here Lunch is as worried as everyone about Yamcha's condition after Tenshinhan broke his leg. The way she addresses him does indeed have something maternal about it, but it mainly shows that she has become attached to him over those three years.

She is so precious...

...even when she is about to kill Yamcha and Bulma in one shot.

Gosh, I love her! It is so nice that everyone has learned to accept Lunch as she is. Yamcha is like that. He always accepted his friends, no matter how they are, he is always there for them and always took care of them. I am convinced that he loved Lunch as he loves everyone else.

So... the topic could end here, but it is not like me to conclude so trivially. I like to go beyond the impossible, in fact even this time I want to extend the whole situation.

The real point of the topic is another.

Unfortunately, Lunch's fate is the most horrible of all. In truth, I don't know which is worse between being forgotten and being ridiculed throughout the show. Let's just say that neither Lunch nor Yamcha were lucky. They also have that in common, besides the fact that both are very close to Tien. I would call it the trio of outcasts. However, if we at least know what happens to Yamcha during DBZ, we know nothing about Lunch. The last time we see her is in a bar, completely drunk because Tien is dead. Another appearance, which is really brief, is during the Buu Saga, when she gives her energy to Goku. I consider these two scenes to be frighteningly sad because in both cases we see her alone and that hurts me a lot. It is as if she has lost contact with her friends. After all, she could not even return to the Kame House because it was now inhabited by Krillin, Android 18 and their daughter. There was no place for her anymore. This hurt even more, because we really don't know what happened to her. Finally, she appears without ever saying anything in the OVA Dragon Ball: Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return!!

This is quite consoling, but it is not enough. Her presence is highly unnecessary. I think she was thrown into the rabble just to actually pay homage to those who were Goku's friends, but what's the point if she doesn't even say a word? She certainly deserved more since she had been forgotten for almost two decades.

Whatever... Thank goodness Yamcha exists!

He is seriously the hero we do not deserve.

Well yes, Yamcha may be the one who partly solves this great riddle:

...What ever happened to Lunch all this time?

The truth is that there are no answers. Everyone can imagine what they want. One can think that she stayed with Tien (although DBS has ruled out this possibility for the umpteenth time), one can think that she opened a food truck or that she came to visit Muten sometimes. I personally believe that she has not completely lost contact with her friends. At least, not with Yamcha. I mean, we've seen how Yamcha is not the type to quit. When it comes to loving someone, Yamcha is always in the front row. This makes me believe that he has not stopped seeing Lunch. He is too loyal to forget a person who has done so much for him. Plus, if we add that Yamcha was left alone at one point in the story, it makes even more sense that he spends his time with an equally "lonely" friend. I imagine Yamcha as a very nostalgic guy. It would be unthinkable for him to exclude such an important memory as Lunch from his life.

At least, that's how it is for me. Until now I didn't know it for sure, but a few days ago I had an epiphany. That's when I realized that maybe Lunch is still there, we just don't see her.

Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might, 1990.

Did you notice anything?

Oh god yes, it's that damn gangster outfit again. I mean, the dress sewn by Lunch. Although it is difficult to identify the timeline of this film, it is still clear that we are in a context far away from OG Dragon Ball. At first I anticipated that all this might just be a coincidence, but personally I like to believe that there is much more behind it. Assuming that indeed it is the dress made by Lunch, we need to consider one thing: it can never be that one she gave him for the 22nd Tournament. It would be really old, plus I don't think it would be able to hold up Yamcha's new body. He's now in his 30s, he has not only grown taller but also added a lot of muscle mass. It is practically impossible for him to have been able to wear it. So... Maybe Yamcha asked Lunch to renew that old dress? Think about it, it makes sense to me. Yamcha is also very cheap. Being a former thief, he knows the value of money well and knows that it is easier to lose it than to find it. He is really funny, but also very cute.

The money accumulated through baseball certainly does not change his stingy nature, that's why it is not strange to think that he turned to Lunch. Of course, also as a matter of affection. I think Yamcha is a guy who is very attached to things, especially if there are a lot of good memories behind them.

I mean, something could have happened like, "Hi Lunchie, how are you? Long time no see, it took me so long to find you! Let me guess, you're hiding from the cops, right?" and then... "Anyway, I wanted to ask you a favor. Going through my closet, I found that fancy dress you had sewn for me for the Tournament. Do you remember? Here it is. I tried to wear it but I only gained a hole in my pants. I'll let you guess where. So... Could you fix it for your bestie?"... So she would say: "Are you kidding, Yamcha? There's no way I'm going to fix that! I'll definitely sew you a new one!"

If so, we could assume that they are still in contact! It would really comfort me to know that Lunch is still part of the gang, even if we don't see her. Yamcha in this case could seriously be the link, simply because he is brought up to be.

That would be great.

I want to believe it.

After all...

...Toriyama may forget his characters, but Yamcha will never forget his friends.

Thank you!!

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fancoloredglasses · 4 months

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Voltron (two very different series with the same name set in the same universe? That's not gonna be confusing!)

[All images are owned by Toei Animation and World Events Productions. Please don’t sue me.]

As I mentioned before, my first exposure to anime (or, as I called it back then, “Japanimation”) was Star Blazers and an anthology series called Force Five (again, if anyone finds any footage of this series online, please let me know!)

However, years later I was exposed to another anime series that is likely to be more familiar to everyone.

[NOTE: As with Star Blazers, I am covering the American version of the series rather than the original Japanese, though there’s one difference between the two I’ll briefly mention when it comes up]

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(Thanks to Peacock Kids)

(Yes, the narrator is none other than Peter Cullen, who is the voice of Optimus Prime. Nice to know Voltron has the support of the Autobots!)

Voltron (AKA Voltron III, Voltron of the Far Universe,or Lion Force Voltron) tell the story of a team of five Space Explorers who travel to a planet known as Arus to assist the government against an alien invasion. The five are entrusted to reawaken the planet’s primary defense: Voltron (why didn’t they have Voltron online before the invasion?)

(Thanks to Al Kennon)

…a squadron of giant robot lions which…well, we’ll get to that in a bit.

The leader of the team (henceforth called the Voltron Force) is Kieth, who pilots the Black Lion.

Keith’s second in command is Lance, who pilots the Red Lion.

Sven pilots the Blue Lion…until he’s hospitalized by an enemy agent (here’s the one difference I'm discussing: in the Japanese version “Sven” (I’m not looking up his Japanese name) is killed in the attack (obviously we couldn’t have the kids see someone die!). However, his twin brother appears late in the series; the American version has Sven make a return after his recovery) to be replaced by…

…Princess Allura, ruler of Arus.

Pidge pilots the Green Lion

Hunk pilots the Yellow Lion.

The Voltron Force defends Arus against the forces of…

King Zarkon

Aided by the witch Haggar, who creates giant monsters (called Robeasts) to send against the Voltron Force.

Zarkon’s son Lotor commands Zarkon’s armies and has a bit of a crush on Allura, determined to take her for his bride.

The battles are pretty much the same: The Lions attack the Robreast Of The Week, but are overmatched until…

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(Thanks again to Peacock Kids)

After that, the fight’s a bit more even until Voltron finally creates its Blazing Sword weapon and slices the Robeast in half (why doesn’t it start with that?)

However, Voltron isn’t the only Defender of the Universe!

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(Thanks to T. Winters)

The Galaxy Alliance is overcrowded and it’s up to the Space Explorers of the S.S. Explorer (really original name, guys!) to find new planets to colonize. This inevitable puts them at odds with the Drule Empire (it’s never officially stated if King Zarkon is part of the empire, but Drule’s giant monsters are also called Robeasts)

Like the Lion Force Voltron, this version of Voltron (AKA Voltron I, Voltron of the Near Universe,or Vehicle Team Voltron; there was supposed to be a third Voltron series, but negotiations between Toei (the animation studio that produced the original manga) and World Events (the American company that converted the series into Voltron fell through), the team consisted of smaller vessels that combined to form Voltron. Unlike Lion Force, the vessels were three squads of fighters that specialized in either air, land, or undersea combat.

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(Thanks to reminators)

As many of you are aware (mainly due to the fact that NO ONE remembers the Vehicle Team series), the Lion Force became the most popular of the two, and their story has been retold at least twice.

As always, if you would like to see an episode reviewed, please let me know!

#voltron #lion force #vehicle team #anime #Fan Colored Glasses

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izzyizumi · 1 year

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vimeo

Digimon Adventure (Series) + 2020 reboot series x Zutomayo - {note: if top is not displaying properly, check the above link!}

"STUDY ME?" / "Figure it Out?" / "I'M (/KOUSHIRO'S) NOT A 'PROBLEM' TO BE 'SOLVED'"

Featuring duo/ship/O.T.P.: KouTai / Taishiro[u]; Koushiro[u] Izumi x Taichi Yagami

It is recommended you read the lyrics before or after watching! (Check under the 'read more' for more info/lyrics!)

(Characters Koushiro is otherwise involved with, like Izumi family, Tentomon, Jou, Yamato, Menoa, and Mimi; + vs. Vademon also show briefly at times but the focus is Koushiro & 2020!Koushiro + KouTai with minor spoilers from tri, Kokuhaku, BNM, Kizuna, and 2020 + its ending)

This A.M.V. was pretty much made on a complete whim after I heard this thanks to a Japanese Taishiro/TaiKou fan on Twitter recommending another by this group as "DEFINITELY a TaiKou song" and let's just say Yes I see a Theme & Patterns going {with this group's songs+lyrics!} and I am Spilling Koushiro Thoughts Via Analysis by A.M.V. As a result it IS in actuality semi canon compliant to a very strong degree, but please keep in mind the intended pairing is mainly KouTai (though I ship various other Koushiro ships too!)

{DO NOT COPY OR REPOST!}

{DO NOT RE USE MY EDITING WITHOUT PERMISSION}

{I do Not own DigiAdvs / DigiAdvs (C) Toei; this is FAN MADE}

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meandmyechoes · 1 year

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Kingohger ep15

starting this one early coz ritamoru ig live after this

eh we still don't get a film preview yet

i'm so nervous lol

from the preview images it looks like the team will split in two with the Colours rescuing Suzume and the Greyscales on negotiations

even their fortune stick is bee theme

woah the expressions change!!

guess i shouldn't be surprised by Kuroda dropping in to hand him his phone but this does nothing to clear up that fanart of Kaguragi making a "old man squint at phone" face when Yanma tried to teach him how to use a smartphone

Kaguragi ringtone !

you kings like to talk hand free so much lol

WAIT that's a video call Racles can't use smartphones booooooo

ehh throne shot?! (bet it's before they got dragged into whatever the colours are up to)

lol Jeremy in takuan land

Shutup prima you know how hard your sausages are to find

Soy rice ah soy rice ah Kagu 😏

"his only sister"… so no more dybowskii siblings :(((((

he overthrew the last king because he was taking all the food for himself?????! 🤩

YOOOOOOO practically going as everyone thought

is Rita a screenshot again

sickling! I was right... or am I?

(waiting for "2m Suzume" if even tv asahi made fun of it)

alright i get it Gira is basically living with Yanma for now huh

Jeremy outright told them!! Good boy!!

BETROTHED BETHROTHED BETROTHED!!

Yanma 'translating' Gira's evil plans 👌 one of us Himeno

"let's steal the bride!!!" Gira… (tired kogane voice)

Rita's here to provide illegal advice 👌

I feel like Rita would gladly ignore their illegal activities if they hadn't heard anything but they DID and it's WRONG to lie so now they have to be there to hold the brain cell

i'm so here for Suzume outplotting those two

one second makeup on

omg

(sound of Tools and Farming Tools shattering)

okay 16 rita is rising if Suzume is not leaving

PLS give us more political intrigue 🙏

ah Her Majesty's new earrings

Gorokke nei dou yau gum yat lah 😏

(rewind) hmm Suzume's performance really has that naivete… makes speculating her age even harder

I'm so here for Kaugracles fic after this developlment

or see how canon goes if Racles was 竹馬 with Betaria

Kaguragi's speech and determined look… So-san's acting 🙇

Gira making sentai history again transforming fetal position

yeah 16 is definitely Rita + team esp. director changes at 17

King Kong reference?

Moffun Ep 2 TODAY??!??

ugh heartbreaks at Kaguragia's face

YES HIMESAMA PLEASE KICK RACLES' ASS thank you for sticking to the Suzume hachi motif of taking over others' territory!

禍國殃民嘅女人…ありがたい…

production notes: Director purposefully look for designs from students + wait five weeks for Gokkan lah (more later)

cast blog: ahh a wild yuzuki appears! Team Wings... my team wings...

+ Morphonia is a pro in helping me close the zipper before filming. Somehow that's not easy so thank you for always helping!

Ritamoru real

SPOILER

Gokkan had a royal family???!!? Everything Rita is RITA and not GOKKAN KING??!!（😍😍）Morphonia is the last princess!! Rita as Morphonia's Knight😭😭 Ritahime next ep Himeno bringing Rita a Moffun gift😭😭 Ritamoru Ritahime can be so real

---

tangent: seeing the Tools actually broke Toei's servers trying to order Racles's acrylic stand, very admirable

#kingohger #kingohger spoilers #kolb #kolbb

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tsuki-sennin · 6 months

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Episode 40 of HiroPre! A play wedding, how precious~! Now don't worry, despite initial worries about Toei making it weird, this is all above board and wholesome. Very wild of them to make this the episode there's a delay for though, but I guess life's just funny like that.

Spoilers, I guess...

-I see Sora likes BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs.

-Sagely studies~!

-Oh ye gods, weddings.

-Ohhhh, worldbuilding!

-An all night party following an announcement of engagement. Don't even need to dress up.

-Quite a fun time, actually, I wish weddings in our world were that easy. And it might just be you two up there next, Mashiron~!

-...I have to wonder how polygamy works up there.

-Y'know, now I've got much more PreCure knowledge accrued, I've noticed that the casts have gotten smaller over the years.

-It's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you! It certainly makes sense, as the teams get bigger you'll have less time to devote to big supporting casts, but this has a side effect of us feeling isolated to our heroes.

-We still have plenty of weirdos to go around in Hirogaru Sky, but having more of them stick around more often would be fun. How's Berryberie doing?

-Just sayin', we would've really benefited from a Masukomi, Kaoru, or even a Yuriko.

-Ah, the cake. All the motivation you need.

-Kinda like Booster in Mario RPG.

-Royal wedding, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

-I'm sorry Elle, I don't care how much cake we eat or how shiny your cardboard crown is, nothing can make me give a crap about a royal wedding. In my junior year of high school, people were really going wild for Harry and Meghan, and I had no idea who these people were so I just kinda had to sit there in the corner.

-I see Ageha disagrees.

-Tsubasa-kun, your bowtie is somehow a brighter red than your jacket's orange.

Ageha: You're doing great, boy~! Just think of the doves flying out~! Tsubasa: No talking during the ceremony!

-Best of friends!

-Ageeeeee~!

-That was nice, wasn't it?

-Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand there's the rub~!

-I have to hand it to Murase, Tsubasa sounds genuinely terrified here.

-I don't think Yoyo can officiate anything, so

-You should marry Mashiro twice over, Sora.

-I suppose it's not too surprising Elle could develop a crush on Tsubasa, considering he's like... the only boy she knows. Still though, I get why some people were put off by this.

-Frankly, I'm really surprised Toei haven't been doing a Dipper and Wendy ship tease thing with Tsubasa and Ageha. Thank god they haven't, by the way, that was always the worst part of Gravity Falls.

-I guess Toei knew that would be a little much, especially with the (quite understandable mind you) backlash Nozomi and Coco's relationship gets nowadays.

-Nightmare time.

-King Bitchin' Mustache can add Shotgun Papa to his list of titles.

-Even his own parents!

-He has been left comatose.

-That looks like quite a heavy book, I'm impressed she can carry it.

-"Nooooooooooooo?"

-It's always the simplest sentences coming from a kid that kill you, huh?

-Ladies and gentlemen, the bird boy is dead!

-Ageha appears.

-In the pursuit of great knowledge, one has neglected their friendship. A tale as tragic and old as time.

-That uh

-Might've been a good thing to let him in on earlier, Ageha.

-Skearhead appears.

-A wedding beast.

-Majesty leads our charge today.

-Skearhead's not even talking today!

-Oh, nevermind.

-Aaaaand she's caught!

-That Wing, ever gallant a knight and pal.

-Oh cool, team attack. Paralleling the cake cutting.

-Knighthood is much more fun than marriage.

-Friends and family forever!

-I'm... perplexed! I was expecting 24 minutes of mid cringe comedy, and got a fun and sweet exploration of these two characters' friendship instead on top of well executed cringe comedy. What a ripoff.

-I guess if I had to bitch about anything, I think having them talk as Wing and Majesty more would've been a fun way to tie the battle into their conflict.

-Speaking of which, the battle was pretty dang weak, they... absolutely could've done more with that. And why pick a church bell, Skearhead? Like, diegetically. In-universe. Watsonian argument. I usually don't mind this kinda thing, but like... a bell and a holly wreath are very specific imagery to just conjure up out of nowhere, but I think it'd make a lot more sense if Skearhead weren't just... seemingly slapped into the script because they needed a monster fight that episode.

-Like, Skearhead happens to see Elle and Tsubasa's play wedding and considers playing mind games by preying on Tsubasa's worries about the whole thing, or hell, even just wreaking havoc at someone else's wedding to draw out Pretty Cure would've been good enough for me.

-Anyways, forget all that, we're celebrating a harvest next time!

-Hi, this is Mashipan. I'm out looking at the fall colors. Please leave me a message, and I'll call you right back.

-Monda jumpscare.

-Business as usual, we see!

-See you next tiiiime, maybe!

#Hop! Step! Jump! Hero Gals Dream of the Everlasting Sky!#hirogaru sky precure #hirogaru sky spoilers #pretty cure #precure

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longmonthartist · 1 year

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ChestnutFest2k22 Award Unboxing (And what K18 Xmas might bring)

I’ve never done unboxing before but felt this one is very necessary given how much effort had been put in by the ever so generous and awesome Jen at @chestnutisland @xfadedmemoriezx

As the fortunate contributor chosen at random to receive this year’s Chestnutfest 2k22 Giveaway, I received these two lovely figures, along with a heartfelt thank you note from Jen.

Yes, they are the stars of K18, Krillin the strongest Earthling Man (クリリン－地球人最強の男） and his spouse, Android 18 (人造人間十八号）. Yes, those are titles given to them on the box, sorry Tien, but Krillin’s the strongest Earthling not just human.

Also here we can see that there are several official trademarks from the merchandise copyrights holders. What this meant is these figures were released with the official acknowledgement of Toei, Bandai, Funimation...etc. No, the presence of these logos does not impact the figures themselves, but it does mean they cost way more than unlicensed merchandises and are possibly of higher quality.

Now onto unboxing. Let’s start with Krillin first. This is a fully posable figure with 4 expressions (heads) and 6 hand gestures plus the Destructo Disc and Senzu bean.

Next, we have Android 18. Unlike her spouse, she is not posable but the craftsmanship on this one is no less amazing. I mean just look at how she wants to blast anyone who has annoyed her or cause her family harm.

No, I don’t want to stand in the crosshair of these two badasses (Note: These figures are not accurate depiction of Krillin and 18′s heights relative to each other as they were made by different companies and belong to different figure series).

While I do not know what kind of Xmas gifts participants of K18 Xmas 2k22 will receive and cannot guarantee the prize will be equivalent to what I have here, it’s safe to say Jen is very generous and does not cut corners when giving out gifts. I myself couldn’t imagine giving away two licensed figures of such quality and shipping them free.

If you have time this coming week and the next (Xmas event goes from Dec 14th - Dec 25th), please consider creating something for K18 Xmas. I was lucky enough to be picked as the recipient despite this being my second time participating in ChestnutFest and let me say this, even without the gifts (they are amazing beyond doubt), sharing contents with like-minded individuals is definitely worth it.

#k18mas #android18 #Android Eighteen #krillin #chestnutfest2k22 #chestnutisland #dbz merch

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duhragonball · 2 years

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[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (187/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation. This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: This story takes place about 1000 years before 66 years after the events of Dragon Ball Z.

[19 April, Age 850. Toki Toki City.]

Luffa's most recent mission had involved a harrowing battle against Kid Buu. She had prevailed, but just barely. Upon her return to the Time Nest, she was taken to the Toki Toki City hospital as quickly as possible. The Namekian healers could mend her injuries in mere minutes, but they could not undo her fatigue, and so Luffa was kept under observation while she slept.

When she awoke, the first thing she saw was a creature with pink skin, cruel eyes with black sclera, and a toothy grin. Luffa transformed on pure reflex, and in a flash the room was bathed in a golden light from her Super Saiyan form.

"Wha--?!" she blurted out. "What the--?!"

"It's all right, calm down. I'm just checking your readings."

With the room lit up, Luffa could now see the figure was wearing a white coat and black pants. It was a Majin woman, like so many others Luffa had seen in Toki Toki City, including her own roommate.

"I'm Dr. Reca," she said. "You're in the Toki Toki City hospital. Everything's fine."

"Sorry," Luffa said. "But you look a lot like--"

"Kid Buu, I know," Reca said. She pointed at her nostrils, which looked like the holes one might see on the snout of a reptile. "It's the nose, isn't it?"

"Yeah, kind of," Luffa said. "Also, I just fought him before I got here and..."

"Yes, I've heard," Reca said. "It sounds very impressive. Not many fighters could stand up to our ancestor, especially in his pure, original form. How did you do it?"

"I... I was just doing my job," Luffa said. "It's not like I beat him or anything. I just kept him busy for a while."

Reca walked around to the side of the bed and began checking machines connected to wires that were taped to Luffa's arm. As she worked, Luffa noticed a pair of pink tentacles on the doctor's head, which were intertwined to resemble a length of braided hair.

"Well, word's gotten around the city," Reca said. "I think you've definitely captured the Majin community's attention. We don't take much seriously, but our Grandfather Buu is kind of special to us all."

"Look," Luffa said, "It wasn't anything personal. He was possessed by Demigra. I had to fight him, or he would have altered the course of history."

"Of course, of course," Reca said. "All in the line of duty. How are you feeling?"

Luffa sat up and flexed the fingers on each hand. "Pretty good, actually. Last thing I remember was getting healed up and then falling asleep."

"Yes, that was three days ago," Reca said.

"Three days?"

Reca pointed at Luffa's arm. "Yes, we had to insert an IV tube to keep you hydrated. You're probably hungry. Let me see..."

Reca reached into the pockets of her coat until she found a pen. She then raised the braided tentacle up from her head until the tip was pointed at her hand. A beam of pink light shot from the tentacle, and the pen was suddenly transformed into a large chocolate bar, which she handed to Luffa.

"It's got peanuts in it. Saiyans like peanuts, right?" Reca asked.

"Uh, sure..." Luffa said. "Thanks."

"I did a few touch ups on you while you were asleep," Reca said. "Sometimes Majin healing powers can help things that Namekians can't. And sometimes it's the other way around, but Trunks told us you've been having some trouble with your ki ever since you got here."

"I have," Luffa said. "But I'll need to test myself before I can really tell if you did me any good."

"Of course," Reca said. "Drop by and let me know, okay?"

*******

Luffa returned to her apartment to find Jayncho lying on the floor, thumbing through a magazine about cars. She would occasionally sip from a glass of creme soda with ice cream scoops in it. Jayncho looked a lot like Dr. Reca, except she was red instead of pink, and her head tentacles were styled into a faux ponytail instead of a braid, and her nose looked more like a nose.

"Where have you been?" Jayncho asked idly.

And so Luffa explained her latest mission, and the convalescence that followed, leading right up to her encounter with Dr. Reca.

"She just seemed kind of... strange," Luffa said. "Like she was of put off by me fighting Majin Buu, but she wouldn't just come out and say it."

"Well, he's our ancestor," Jayncho said. "You'd be kind of ticked off if I beat up your ancestor, wouldn't you?"

"Not really," Luffa said. "Actually, I think I'd like to see that. You're not mad at me, are you?"

Jayncho shrugged. "Kid Buu's kind of a jerk anyway," she said. "Goku's the one who killed him. You just did what you had to do for the sake of history."

"Yeah," Luffa said.

"Besides, it's the Good Buu who was our ancestor. You saved his life by intervening. So, you know."

"Sure," Luffa said. "You know, the fat one, he's really tough. You should be proud of him--"

"It's just that... the Kid Buu form is where it all started," Jayncho said. "He's like the pure Majin, you know? We all carry him inside of us. I guess it means more to us than we wanted to admit."

"Great, he puts me in the hospital for three days and I'm the bad guy."

"You're not the bad guy," Jayncho said. "It's just kind of weird for people. Majins, I mean. It's like you being the Legendary Super Saiyan and all. How would you feel if that just went away, and it didn't matter anymore?"

"'If'?" Luffa shouted. "That's what happened! I've been dealing with that since I got to this stupid town!"

"Oh, yeah," Jayncho said.

"I lost most of my power, then I finally managed to turn Super Saiyan again, only to find out everybody else can do it too! And no one even remembers me in this era! All they care about is Kakarot, and apparently when he beats Majin Buu, he gets a free pass!"

"Are you hungry?" Jayncho asked. "You always gripe about Goku when you're hungry."

"Enough!" Luffa said. "I've got better things to do than listen to this!" She grabbed a bag containing a spare set of clothes and headed for the door.

"What about lunch?" Jayncho asked.

"Make it yourself!" Luffa growled. With that, she slammed the door behind her and marched down the hall.

*******

[1 July, Age 761. Earth.]

The Parallel Quests were the optimal training exercise for Time Patrollers. Each PQ was created using a fragment of altered history, usually involving a battle. These fragments had been cut off from the main timeline, and were completely isolated. Most of them only spanned fifteen minutes or less, with no true beginning or ending. As such, nothing in the PQ's was genuinely "real", and the Time Patrollers could do practically anything they wanted without causing any damage to the space-time continuum.

In this particular instance, being able to do "anything" meant not even completing the assigned mission. In this PQ, the opponents to face posed no great challenge, and so Luffa was free to unleash her power in a remote wasteland on Earth. As she screamed, the intensity of her ki formed dust devils on the sandy flats, and the ground beneath her was pulverized into a crater. Luffa simply floated in place, the eye of a miniature golden hurricane.

"Oi! Could you turn that down?"

Irritated, Luffa reduced her power level to something more manageable, and waited for the others to approach.

"That's better," said Dewar. As he floated down beside Luffa, the third member of their group, No. 44 followed close behind.

"What is it?" Luffa grumbled.

"Wellll now," Dewar said. "You don't have to be so grouchy about it. Your friend here was doing so well taking on Raditz that I thought I should check up on you before she finishes the mission."

Luffa glared at 44, who was now wearing baggy yellow pants and a black shirt. She still wore her "98CIAL" hat and jacket, and the bulky tool belt around her waist, but otherwise it looked very much like she was trying to imitate Luffa's fashion.

"Good," Luffa said. "But you two can do better than that. At your level, Raditz should be child's play, and a few Saibamen shouldn't be any trouble either. I don't know why you wanted to tag along on such an easy mission."

"I fought them alone," 44 said. "Dewar didn't help me, I promise."

"Yeah, I only wanted to join you guys because it seemed like the only way to talk to you, Luffa!" Dewar explained. "First you're on a mission, then you're in the hospital for three days, and now you're back to training!"

"I've got things to do," Luffa said. "What's on your mind, Dewar?"

"Did you ever spend much time in Camelian space?" Dewar asked.

"What?"

Dewar produced a Hoi-Poi Capsule from his pants pocket and opened it to release a folder of printouts. He then shuffled through these and handed a few select pages to Luffa.

"We've made some good progress on narrowing down your history," he said, "but there's been some conflicting reports about you. In particular, there's a Saiyan man who conducted raids on the Camelian Empire's frontier. Of course, he doesn't match your description, but a lot was made about how he did things no single Saiyan could do. He'd tear through heavily armed planets like he had a whole raiding party at his back, but witnesses claimed he was acting alone. You would have been--ohhhh-- let's say nineteen at the time."

"Nineteen?" Luffa exclaimed as she glanced at the pages. "That couldn't have anything to do with me. I spent most of that year--"

She suddenly grew very quiet, as she recognized a printout of a blurry photo of the mysterious raider. Then she blurted out a profanity that had not been heard for a thousand years.

"Ehhhh?" Dewar said, taking a step back. He did not recognize the word Luffa spoke, but the look on her face was enough to communicate its meaning. "You, uh, know the man?"

"He's my father," Luffa snarled. "This was what he was doing the whole time I was... Never mind."

"He had incredible power too, I take it?" Dewar asked.

"No he didn't," Luffa said. "By Saiyan standards he was strictly average. He only got this powerful by letting others experiment on his body. They used...!"

She quickly shoved the papers back into the open folder Dewar was holding.

"Hey, you don't have to fill me in on the whole thing," Dewar said. "He's not you, and that's the main thing I needed to clear up. It's just that there were a lot of sources that claimed you were a man, and it seems like a lot of the most credible ones were based on these reports. It definitely helps to have the real thing live and in person for questioning, hah?"

Luffa's hands began to tremble, and she quickly shoved them in her pockets. "It explains a few things," Luffa said. "There was a lot of confusion about me at the time. Mostly, it was a lot of fools who couldn't accept the idea that a woman could do the things I could do. But sometimes it seemed like people were genuinely confusing me with someone else. I never could figure it out, but it looks like Father was sabotaging me before I even got started."

"What happened to him, Luffa?" 44 asked.

Luffa looked at the girl as if she had forgotten she was there. "What do you care, kid?" she growled.

"I'm just... curious," 44 said.

"Oi, 44, read the room, will you?" Dewar said. "The lady obviously doesn't want to talk about it, and--"

Luffa faced 44 and stood about the same distance apart from her as she had with her father that day. The teenage girl was taller than Luffa, and so Luffa had to tilt back her head to lock eyes with her. The wild glare and dark circles under Luffa's eyes were no less intimidating, however.

"He betrayed me, so I killed him," Luffa said. "I gave him a free shot, just to see what he could do. Then I punched him, right about here--"

Luffa made a fist and gently held it up against 44's abdomen, though there was nothing gentle about her expression as she relived this moment.

"One strike, and I destroyed his liver. It would have taken him hours to die that way, so I offered him a quicker way out, if he told me something I needed to know.

She held up her hand in front of 44's face, mimicking a ki blast technique. "He answered my question, so I blasted his head off."

"I... I see," 44 said.

"Not a very wholesome story, is it?" Luffa said with a mirthless smile. "I doubt a cyborg like you could relate, 44. You don't even have a father, do you?"

"No," she said. "I don't.

"Trust me, you're better off," Luffa said. "You know, the stupid thing is, I actually miss him sometimes. He never really cared about me, but he had me fooled for a lot of years. Sometimes I wish I had let him live. But I guess I would have lost him anyway when I got brought to this era. So, 44, now that you've heard that story, are you sure you still want to wear my colors in battle?"

44 took a deep breath before answering. "I just thought... well, you seemed to enjoy my company during the Broly mission," she said. "And you invited me to accompany you on other missions. I thought if I wore the same clothes... well, it seemed like a show of solidarity..."

She looked like she was about to tear up, and Luffa decided to back off. "Forget it, kid," Luffa said. "I'm just in a bad mood, that's all. You can wear whatever you want, just don't assume I'm some sort of role model, all right?"

The girl nodded anxiously, and Luffa returned her attention to Dewar. "Well, was there anything else you wanted to know?" she asked.

"Uhhh, no, I think that'll do 'er," he replied. "Heh-heh...That's my little joke. "Do 'er? Dewar? Eh?"

"Fine," Luffa said. "Let's get the mission settled so I can reset to something more challenging. I really need to be alone right now, with something I can hit."

*******

[19 April, Age 850. Toki Toki City.]

"I think she doesn't like me," 44 said after they returned to the PQ station. Luffa had already taken off in the time machine to embark on a more difficult mission.

"Nah," Dewar said. "She's just under a lot of stress, kiddo. I'm in research and you're a clerk. The biggest problem we gotta deal with is a papercut, but she's out there tackling the real trouble. Super Saiyan or not, it takes a toll!"

"I hope you're right," 44 said.

"Don't worry," Dewar said. "It's not like she's gonna take a poke at you or anything. If Luffa were the type to fly off the handle like that, she would have done it to me a long time ago!"

"I hope you're right. I just... want her to like me," 44 said.

Dewar waved his tail sympathetically as he put his arm around her shoulder. "Hey hey hey," he said, "it's all right. Once you get to know her better, you'll see she's a real sweetheart. I should know!"

"How?" 44 asked.

Dewar proudly pointed his thumb at his chest. "Welllll, I happen to be a pretty good judge of character," he said. "You learn what makes folks tick when you study history, and when you've spent as much time around people as I have, you can start to tell these things. Luffa's not the hothead she comes across as. Trust me!"

As he finished speaking, one of the PQ Time Machines suddenly blinked into view. It descended onto the platform and the blue canopy began to open. Luffa jumped out as soon as the opening was wide enough for her to fit through, and she stormed through the crowd with a murderous look on her face.

"Where is he?!" Luffa growled. "He's going to answer for this!"

"Er, problem, Luffa?" Dewar asked as she walked up to him. The only answer she gave was to shove him to one side so she could keep going on her way.

"Something must have gone wrong in one of the PQ's she was using," 44 suggested, but she said this only after Luffa had walked far enough past them that 44 was reasonably sure she would be out of earshot.

"I guess so, but she was only gone a few minutes!" Dewar said. "What could have set her off so quickly?!"

*******

"She's still alive!"

Luffa had found the one she was looking for on the baseball diamond in Toki Toki City's residential zone. The field lacked even the most modest accommodations that players were used to. The dugouts were simply a pair of benches positioned just beyond the foul lines. But for those passionate about the game, it made no difference. Big League Chew was such an individual.

"Something wrong, Ace?" he asked as Luffa stormed onto the field.

"I sensed someone on Planet Namek!" Luffa shouted. "Trunks told me you were the most qualified to investigate it, and you found nothing!"

"Oh, that," he said. "Real sorry that didn't work out the way you hoped."

He was big, even by the standards of male Majins. Big League Chew looked a great deal like his famous ancestor, the fat version of Majin Buu. Except he was purple instead of pink, and even taller and rounder. He also wore a purple baseball uniform at all times. The only other colors he wore were on the red-green-and-yellow cap that shaded his eyes. It was a memento of his extraordinary career with the West City Taitans ball club. And Luffa did not care about any of this.

"You blew it!" Luffa said. She was now close enough to stand directly in front of him, though she was too short to poke him in the chest like she would have normally done in such a confrontation. Instead, she jabbed her finger at his belt buckle as she glared up at him.

"Say what?" Big League Chew asked. "Ma'am we went over that time frame at least a dozen times. And not just me. We're not perfect-- nobody bats a thousand-- but we're not exactly Bush league, either. Your friend wasn't on Namek that day."

"But she was on Earth a decade later!" Luffa. "I know because I sensed the same familiar ki when I went through the Parallel Quests involving Majin Buu!"

"Is that what this is about?" Big League Chew asked. "Listen, I know there's a lot of Majins giving you the Bronx Cheer for fighting Kid Buu the way you did. Truth is, I feel a little choked up about it myself, but I know what it's like. I was on the lineup that day when Lefty Wallace pitched his last game. He was on-track for a no-hitter, a perfect game to cap off a brilliant career. But when I went to bat, the ball sailed right into my wheelhouse. For a split second, I thought about whiffing it, but I couldn't do it. Lefty Wallace deserved my best, and that was what I gave him. I hit a triple, and the crowd wasn't too happy about it. For a few weeks, my self-respect was all I had--urk!"

Luffa had levitated up to the height of his head and she grabbed him by the collar of his uniform. "Shut. Up!" she said. "Listen to me. Keda somehow ended up on Namek. I don't know how you missed her, but she was there. From what I hear, she would have been teleported to Earth right before it exploded. She must have laid low there, but while I was in the PQ, I sensed her energy again."

"Where? When?" Big League Chew asked.

"Somewhere near West City," Luffa said. "The day Babidi and Majin Buu were going to destroy it. That's all I could sort out before the time fragment ended. There's so many people on Earth that I can't get a good fix on her location. And the whole Majin Buu thing was a distraction, so that only made things harder. But then I remembered you, and how Trunks said you were so skilled at tracking people down."

"Shoot, Ace, if you wanted my help, you should have just asked," Big League Chew said. He had only been momentarily surprised by Luffa grabbing him, but now he had fully regained his cool composure. "Thing is, if I struck out before, what makes you think I can find this girl now?"

"Because this time, we're going to do it together," Luffa said. "I'll keep Majin Buu off your back, and you can sniff out her exact location."

He thought this over for a moment and smirked in approval. "Shoot. It just might work. I know West City, and it's starting to sound like this kid of yours only shows herself when you're around. You can flush her out, and I can step in to clean up."

"I'm glad you approve," Luffa said. "Because we start now."

*******

[7 May, Age 850. Earth.]

"Majin Buu, what are you waiting for? Finish her off, now!"

For all of his wicked magic, the Evil Wizard Babidi was nothing more than a spectator for the battle between Buu and Luffa. She had no idea where Goku or the rest of the Earth's defenders were supposed to be, but it didn't particularly matter. This was only a fragment of time, and the people who existed within it were of no great consequence. Luffa wasn't fighting Majin Buu to defend anyone, or to preserve the timeline. She wasn't even doing it as a training exercise, although that end was achieved all the same.

The purpose of this battle was to produce enough ki to get Keda's attention, assuming she really was somewhere on Earth to be found. The last two times Luffa had sensed Keda, it had been while she was using her Super Saiyan form. Keda was the type to keep as low a profile as possible. When Big League Chew and the other Time Patrollers had searched for her on Namek, Keda might have suppressed her energy, because she didn't want to risk being discovered by unknown aliens. But Luffa's power represented something Keda might trust, and if Keda sensed Luffa fighting Frieza or Majin Buu, that would definitely get her attention.

This particular fragment was only seven minutes in duration. Luffa's plan was to raise her power as high as she could go and to fight Majin Buu as aggressively as possible. Majin Buu's strategy, on the other hand, was to kill anyone who got in his way.

"Mean lady really strong!" Buu squealed, "but not as strong as Buu is!"

"How are we doing?!" Luffa called out. She was speaking into the communicator hidden in her left ear. This confused Babidi, who kept demanding to know to whom she was speaking, but she had no intention of explaining it to him.

"Struck out again, Ace. I lost her," came the reply from Big League Chew.

"Dammit, we may have scared her off!" Luffa said. "She can sense your power too, and if she senses a Majin coming, she might think it's another enemy working for Babidi."

"Should we reset the mission, Ace? Try again?"

"Not yet," Luffa said. She was fistfighting Buu in close quarters while she spoke. At first, she had been reluctant to try this, due to Buu's great size and his fluid body structure. And yet, she had managed to frustrate him this way, as he seemed to lack experience in melee attacks.

"You no beat Buu!" he squealed.

He was right, of course. Luffa was stronger than she had been during her first battle with this version of Majin Buu, but even if she could defeat him, she doubted she could finish him off before the PQ mission ran out of time. And yet, Keda was sure to hide her power as long as Buu remained a threat.

As Luffa considered the dilemma, Buu's voluminous gut suddenly spread out and enveloped her.

"Brilliant move, Majin Buu!" cheered Babidi, who was hovering at a safe distance from the fight. "Crush the life right out of her!"

Luffa threw up her elbows over her head, and pushed back against the Majin flesh that now pressed against her from all sides. The pressure was manageable, but she could tell that he was only enjoying the moment before he began to bear down on her with his full power.

Resetting the mission, as Big League Chew had suggested, would be useless. They would just have to face the same problem all over again.

Ignoring Buu was no answer either. With no one to stop him, he would destroy West City long before they could locate Keda.

It seemed like the only answer was for Luffa to search West City while Big League Chew held Buu off, except that would be even more difficult than what they were already doing. Her senses weren't as sharp as his, so it would take longer to find Keda, and Big League Chew simply didn't have the strength to last in a battle like this.

And then, just as Buu's body had collapsed around her completely, cutting off what little air she had left, Luffa suddenly knew what to do.

She erupted out of Majin Buu's stomach like golden magma blasting out of a volcano.

"No! Majin Buu! What has she done to you?!" Babidi cried.

Luffa didn't waste time looking back to see. If she had done any damage to Buu at all, he would pull himself back together in no time. Instead, she moved away from them, and closer to West City.

"I've got to shoot you down, Chew!" Luffa said. "Prepare yourself!"

"Run that by me again, Ace?" Big League Chew replied.

"Keda thinks you're a hostile, and we don't have time to convince her you're not!" Luffa said. "But if I attack you, and you suppress your power, she'll think you've been neutralized!"

"Don't see how beaning me helps us steal a base," Big League Chew said.

"Because I'm going to shoot you down right over the city," Luffa explained. "You'll seem to be falling, but you'll actually be landing as close as you can to wherever you sensed Keda before. At that range, you should be able to pinpoint her, right?"

"Sure, Ace, if she stops suppressing her ki," Big League Chew said. "But if she balks..."

"Don't worry about that," Luffa said. "She'll power up again once she senses me winning. She wants me to find her, she just doesn't want to give away her position to the enemy. Now get ready! I'll try to be gentle, but I have to make this look good!"

"You're in the nosebleed section, Ace," Big League Chew said. "How're you gonna tag me from all the way over there?"

Luffa might have made a confident rejoinder to him, but Majin Buu had already recuperated and was preparing to attack her again. Luffa kept her back to him until the last possible moment, and she his giant yellow mitts were just inches away from her head...

...She let herself drop, allowing him to pass by her. In the moment of confusion, she flew back up to his level, then raised her index and middle fingers and swung her arm out at the back of Buu's head.

With a furious scream, she fired, sending a crimson ki blast straight through Buu's head and into the horizon beyond. Without delay, she pressed her assault on Buu, punching his back while Buu's arms flailed around his damaged head.

A moment later, she sensed a sudden drop in ki from West City, and she heard a yelp from her earpiece communicator.

"Th-that's some fastball..." Big League Chew gasped.

"Majin Buu, what are you doing?!" Babidi screamed. "Stop fooling around this instant and do something nasty to this young lady, do you hear me?!"

Luffa continued battering Majin Buu, and as she did, she began to yell. Her power level increased, rising higher and higher as she continued to press her attack. It was a theatrical gesture more than a true strategy. It would take long minutes to defeat an opponent like Majin Buu, which meant that she would need to conserve her energy instead of making a grandstand play. But Keda didn't know any of this, and Luffa only needed to make it look like she was winning.

"You're finished, Buu!" Luffa shouted. It was a lie, but it helped her get in the spirit of the deception. At the very least, fighting him at this intensity would make for an interesting exercise. As her fist pounded against his pink, rubbery flesh, she noticed the impressions left by her knuckles were getting deeper and deeper. Buu did nothing to counter, but that was typical for this version of the creature. He always let his opponent run wild before turning the tables on them. Even as she pummeled Buu, Luffa was mentally preparing herself for the payback he would dish out.

And then, Majin Buu suddenly decided he'd taken all he could stand. With a high-pitched "hmmph!" he tensed his entire body, repairing what little damage Luffa had done to it, and knocking her away like an errant crumb on his vest. The look on his face was so grim and spiteful that Luffa wondered if he was about to transform into one of his more sinister forms.

"You make me mad," Buu seethed. "Big power."

If looks could kill, Luffa would have already been dead in that moment. As it was, she backed off and raised her arms over her face, expecting the worst.

What followed was something she could only describe as "an explosive wave, but pink." For a moment, Luffa simply tumbled through the blast like a leaf in a hurricane, but the ki she used to protect herself held fast. When Buu's fury subsided, she was surprised to find herself relatively unharmed.

The rest of the Earth, however, seemed to be a different story. There had once been green terrain and blue waters below them. Now, there was only exposed bedrock, and veins of glowing orange where magma threatened to rise up between the cracks in the scarred landscape.

Not far away, Majin Buu still floated in the air. He looked much happier now, having vented his frustrations. Luffa could find no sign of Babidi. If Buu had spared any concern for his master's safety, there was no way to be sure.

"You still alive?" Majin Buu called to her. "Wow, you strong. More fun for Buu!"

Luffa set her teeth as she reached out with her senses. She was reasonably confident that she could hold out against Majin Buu for a while longer, but she wasn't sure if there was anything left of West City to protect. And then, just as she found a great emptiness where a large Earthling population had once been...

*******

...Suddenly, she found herself standing next to Big League Chew, at the same spot where they had left the time machine they had used to get there. Majin Buu was gone, and the destruction he had wrought was undone.

"What happened?" Luffa asked.

"We struck out," Big League Chew said. He pointed in the direction of West City, then gestured in the other direction, where Luffa could sense Majin Buu's immense ki, rapidly approaching. "Whatever he did a minute ago, it wiped out the whole town, so we failed the mission. Time Machine automatically reset us back at the start, Ace."

"Yes, I gathered that," Luffa said testily. "I meant what happened on your end? Did you find her?"

"Came real close," Big League Chew said. "Your pal raised her ki again, just like you said she would, but I needed to get closer, and I couldn't get there quick enough without raising my own power." He placed his right arm over his left shoulder and grunted. "And that beanball of yours didn't do me any favors. You really are a headhunter, y'know?"

"Sorry," Luffa said. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that she could see the results of her attack, it only shamed her to caused such harm to an ally. "I owe you one, Chew."

"Not yet, you don't," Big League Chew said with a shrug of his good shoulder. "I'm a little sore, but that doesn't mean I can't throw. We can try this a couple more times, and we're sure to pull this one out in extra innings."

"No, it's no good," Luffa said. "We've established she's here, and that's something, but even if knew exactly where to go, it doesn't do any good to contact her in this time fragment. And I don't know how to convince the Supreme Kai of Time to let me take a time machine to the actual West City of Age 774. She won't let us do anything that will alter the past, so until I work that out, it's not worth putting you through all that pain."

Big League Chew looked out at the horizon. Majin Buu hadn't flown into view yet, but he soon would. He moved his jaw a few times, then spit out the gum he had in his mouth.

"Think you might be right, Ace," he finally said. "Squeeze play isn't the way to go, but that doesn't mean we can't try something else..."

"You've got an idea?" Luffa asked.

*******

[19 April, Age 850. Earth.]

The house was one of the older Capsule Corp models from the previous century. Some of the siding was worn or covered in moss, and the garden surrounding it seemed to threaten to overrun the entire property, but the lawn ornaments were relatively new, and the mailbox flag was pointing up, and a modest air-car sat parked in the driveway.

Luffa and Big League Chew stood on the sidewalk that ran alongside the yard. It was an idyllic suburban scene. Nearby, children were playing a game of street hockey, and a man was repairing a grill in his garage. No one paid much attention to the Saiyan and Majin. Neither species was an unusual sight on the Earth in this era, but the two Time Patrollers had also taken the precaution of wearing disguises to be even less conspicuous.

"Gotta keep a low profile," Big League Chew had said before they left Toki Toki City. "This is my native era, and I played for the West City Taitans until recently. Someone might bug us for autographs."

Luffa trusted his judgment, but she didn't care much for the denim jackets and baseball caps he had picked out for the trip. They drew a few curious stares from the neighborhood, but no one recognized or suspected them, which she took as a good sign.

"So this is the place," Luffa said quietly as she gestured to the house.

"No doubt about it," Big League Chew assured her. "I remember this area from the mission. After you shot me down..." He pointed his massive thumb over his shoulder, "...I ended up just on the other side of those houses there. I sensed her, but I didn't have time to get a good fix. But they kept good records back in '74, and the pencil jockeys back at the Time Patrol are first string. All we had to do was cross-reference all the census records for this neighborhood."

Luffa nodded. They had checked and double-checked their research before coming to this place. She already knew it was the right address. All they had needed was a place to start looking, and the rest had come together quite easily. Keda might have made the search more difficult by using an alias, but she hadn't bothered. After all, she had been stranded on this strange planet, centuries in her future. She never would have expected anyone to recognize her name. Even better, she had stayed in the same house long after the Majin Buu crisis.

"'S'matter, Ace?" Big League Chew asked. "We're here. We already cleared it with the Supreme Kai of Time. Trips to the past are fouls, but nothing in the rulebook says you can't visit Earth in the present. You can walk right in and see your buddy whenever you want."

Luffa swallowed hard. "That's not what I was trying to accomplish," she said. "I wanted to prove that she was on Earth, that she got stuck here somehow, and that we needed to send her back home. If what those recordkeepers found out is true, she would have shown up around 763 or so. But now it's 850, and she'd have to be..."

As Luffa did the math in her head, she heard a latch click from the house. There was a creak as the door swung open, and then a voice...

"Come on outside, and I'll show you the tomatoes. They're really growing up fast."

Several seconds later an old woman stepped out, accompanied by a pair of small children. Once they were clear of the doorway, Luffa noticed a third child, a little girl, standing hesitantly at the threshold. The old woman looked back and waved to her.

"Well come on," she called out. "Don't you want to see the tomatoes?"

The girl smiled meekly and shook her head.

"You don't? Well suit yourself. We're gonna look at the garden."

She continued on her way with the other children, a boy and another girl, and led them through the rows of plants that took up most of the yard. There seemed to be no particular rhyme or reason to the tour. The old woman would stop occasionally to point out something trivial, or to gently ask the children not to play in the loamy soil. Eventually, the girl in the doorway finally decided to join the others. If any of them noticed Luffa and Big League Chew watching them, they did not show it.

"Is that her?" Big League Chew asked Luffa quietly. "I mean, she looks old enough."

"I'm not sure," Luffa said. Keda was a shapeshifter, which had surely helped her infiltrate Earthling society. Assuming her Dorlun powers worked as well as they did when Luffa last saw her, then Keda could have looked like anyone. The old woman, one of the children, or the man fixing the grill on the other side of the street. There was no way to be completely certain, and yet, according to the records, the house did belong to a woman named Keda, age ninety-nine.

"What are those, Mammaw Keda?" asked the older girl.

"Oh, that's loofah, dear."

Luffa had to stifle a gasp when she heard the word. For a moment, she thought the old woman had noticed her, but they never looked in her direction. Instead, the old woman simply gestured at a row of vines growing alongside the west wall of the house. They clung to a wooden frame that had been build onto the carport. Lengths of twine and wires were wrapped around each vine to support it. Several long, green fruits hung from the vines, which the old woman showed off to the children.

"They're not quite ready to be picked," she said. "Honestly, I don't have much use for the taste anyway."

"Then why do you grow them?" the older girl asked.

The old woman smiled gently at her. "Oh, I like the challenge, I suppose. It's not easy to grow these things at my age, or in this climate. And they remind me of someone I knew when I was a little girl."

"You were a little girl, Mammaw?"

She chuckled softly and patted the child on the head. "Well of course I was. But it was a very long time ago..."

Luffa tapped Big League Chew on the arm. "We need to get out of here," she said.

"What's wrong, Ace?"

"Nothing," Luffa said. "I just... We need to go. Now."

"But you didn't even go talk to her--"

"Come on," Luffa snarled, and she took him by the hand and led him away. Once they had found a secluded spot, they took off into the air, and Big League Chew followed her back to the time machine that had brought them here from Toki Toki City.

"I don't get it, Ace," he said. "We went to all that trouble to find her, and you didn't even say hello. Not that big a deal, I guess. You can always come back tomorrow, but it seems kind of funny to stop just short of home plate."

Luffa didn't answer him. She didn't know what to say, or how to feel. It had all been so simple to her before. The problem had seemed like an abstraction. An eleven year old girl was thought to be dead, only to turn up alive and lost in time. But the woman she had just seen, who had settled down on the Earth, started a family, and lived most of her life there...

Luffa had no idea how to respond to that. She didn't know what to think, or how to explain it to Big League Chew, or anyone else. And so she simply flew back to the time machine, and let the onrushing wind dry the tears that were now running down her face.

NEXT: Partycrasher.

#dragon ball #fanfiction #lssjluffafic #super saiyan #luffa #big league chew #keda #majin buu #babidi #dewar #44 #dr reca #jayncho #earth #toki toki city #westwingconvert #dunno if you're still around but here's your answer

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translationandbetrayals · 8 months

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Movie review: Hakujaden (1958)

A little history and context first. Also titled in English as "the legend of the white snake". is the first feature film (in color) and also of the theatrical type created by Toei Animation and released in 1958.

It is also important to mention that a restored version of this film was screened in April 2019 at the renowned Cannes Film Festival. So, it keeps being relevant and important for the culture.

Toei Animation Co., Ltd. is a Japanese animation studio that has produced numerous series, many of them world-renowned, such as Sally the Witch and Gegege no kitaro. Their most recent production is elemon (in case that you're looking something to watch).

So, the plot of the film in question tells the story of a boy who once had a pet snake in West Lake until his parents forced him to give it up. Years pass and during a violent storm, the snake magically transforms into the beautiful princess Bai-Niang. Bai-Niang finds Xu-Xian, but the lovers are separated by a local monk, Fa-Hai, who believes Bai-Niang is an evil spirit. Xu-Xian's two panda pets, Panda and Mimi, try to find Xu-Xian. In the end, Bai-Niang gives up his magical powers and remains in human form to prove that his love for Xu-Xian is genuine.

Now, at this point of the post it's important to mention that I've never been a fan of Oriental productions. To give you an idea, the only series I have seen on this subject was "Doraemon".

As a consequence of this, my knowledge is pretty basic, so, when it comes to describe or give an opinion on the film I would stay related to images, sketches, colours and the plot (especially the plot).

Of course that before this course I have never heard about the movie neither the producer, but, after watching it and doing some research on it, I find it important to emphasize on the historical aspect of this. I mean, a lot of people doesn't feel amazed by the plot or the characters (even tho they made characters that are not really evil, cause they tried to give an example for the kids) they aren't really that impresive. The thing is that is very well know for being the first feature film in color and especially, in being the first production on the area (even before the URSS).

I really liked the love story between the characters (yes I know it's weird to fall in love with someone who was a snake, but what can I say). Panda reminded me of Mushu (Mulan's dragon) and I really hated the priest or monk who tried to blame Bai-Niang and make her a liar. Still, I would have enjoyed it much more if the woman in the beginning was a butterfly or other animal, since I don't like her being understood as a snake or other analogies. Actually, I didn't really enjoy the dialogues (because they were out of sync) but as a child I watched movies with bad internet so it wasn't that annoying. If I had to choose between recommending it or not to a friend, I would, but only if, like me, he/she doesn't know much about this kind of productions and is looking for a first encounter.

In broad strokes, the film has everything, a love story with an antagonist, it has great historical merit, it is digestible and keeps you attentive, it is also beautiful and has good songs in my opinion. The characters are well constructed and consistent. So, thanks for the recommendation, I will continue to delve into this world :)

--- Francisca Tamayo Honores

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 2 years

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How you enjoying i believe you said Fresh Precure??

Yep, and after watching the first seventeen episodes, I can confirm that unfortunately, despite the title, the show is not about Will Smith becoming a Precure. It’s still good though, even if the first arc is a little slow at times.

The main character, Love/Cure Peach is a very energetic girl who tends to prioritize the happiness of others to the point where her first scene is her crying over someone else’s romantic advances getting turned down after she tries to help them confess, and almost immediately gets over it. Her compassion for others is obviously how she gets her powers, since she saves a dancer she idolizes (which I’ll get to later).

I still think Love is a pretty good character. She’s compassionate, and wants to help others, but she’s still impulsive, and tends to push herself too far at times, not unlike what Nodoka would do nearly a decade later.

I generally think these Pink Cures are more consistently likable compared to the more hot-headed Red leads in one of Toei’s other heavy hitters, Super Sentai.

It’s also implied that Cure Peach is kind of like a split personality because of how Love acted while transformed for the first time, but it’s pretty much dropped afterwards

Another thing I think is interesting is how Love is friends with the people who become her teammates.

Miki/Cure Berry tends to act more high class (Criminy, is every Blue in this franchise either rich or this stoic?), and tends to balance out Love more, though she still tends to be just as impulsive at times, all while trying to make it seem like she’s perfect. She also has dreams of being a model, which isn’t explored that much compared to what would later happen with Kirara.

Inori/Cure Pine or “Buki” to her friends is the soft one of the three who’s a total animal lover with not a lot of self-esteem, but being a Precure and a dancer helps boost her confidence greatly. There’s not much to say, but I still really like this character and how she connects with the mascots this time around.

Tarte is a ferret from the Sweets Kingdom who was tasked with finding the Precure and raising Chiffon, this... I want to say bear fairy with psychic powers. They’re both pretty fun characters. There’s a little subplot with Buki being afraid of Tarte thanks to a traumatic experience with ferrets in the past, but it’s not drawn out and gets resolved by Episode 10.

Chiffon’s also pretty cute with how he uses her unholy magic to pull pranks and generally acting like an actual infant the Cures have to raise. The whole reason they get new weapons is because they all had their own episodes to bond with Chiffon, with Love making baby formula for her, Buki taking care of her when she gets sick (It was constipation, and yes, the ending was worse than when “Backwarder” did it), and Miki was aware of how she was the last one, so she voluntarily took care of Chiffon but realized she was trying to extort her into getting a new toy. It’s such a clever way to introduce the new weapons while giving some character growth.

Another major ally comes in the form of Miyuki, the leader of a dance group Love enjoys, and as a reward for Love saving her in the first episode, decides to give Love, Miki, and Buki dance lessons.

I like how they set her up as this sort of mentor figure who gives them some advice, and she’s really like a big sister for Love at times.

They seem to be implying she’ll get a bigger role as the fourth member of the team, but I’m pretty sure she’s just a red herring. GET IT?

But my favorite character has to be Kaoru, the donut cafe owner whose donuts Love and Tarte can’t get enough of. This dude is just awesome. He’s normally laid back, but other times, he’s implied to be aware of the Cures identities after learning Tarte can talk, but most importantly, he’s hilarious.

The villains this time are called Labyrinth, lead by Lord Moebus, searching for something called Infinity, believing human misery caused by Nakewamekes will reveal whatever the hell Infinity is.

The first general introduced is Eas, a sly girl who tries to manipulate Love into giving her her transformation device while disguised as a friend.

It’s really interesting because they don’t just dumb down the characters for Eas to get close. She genuinely acts like a friend to Love, and love sees her like a friend too. There’s this one episode where she wins a four-leaf clover necklace and gives it to Eas, and in her next major appearance, she’s shown to be wearing it.

In another episode where Love and Miyuki have a brief falling out, Eas tries to get Love to cut off all ties with Miyuki to drive up her sorrow, and in next time she hangs out with them, Miki and Buki (under the influence of a Nakewameke making them tell the truth) acknowledge how much that hurt Love. It wasn’t just a random filler episode that was forgotten. It was a really tough moment for Love.

And I think all of this is building up to some kind of redemption arc where she either betrays the villains or gets killed for her troubles.

Westar is the brute/comic relief of the team, and he’s pretty funny, though he’s the least interesting of the three.

Soular, on the other hand, is far more menacing and tends to strategize more. His first Nakewameke seemed harmless and just erased toys and food for kids to cry about, but then he thought of doing the same to their parents, and had he succeeded, would have a massive body count in his first episode alone. Compared to Eas and Westar, Soular doesn’t screw around, and I love him for it.

But yeah, while I think there’s a little too much filler at first like with the other seasons I watched, I’m still really looking forward to seeing where this show goes and if it’s really as good as the fans say it is.

#immaturity of thomas astruc #iota #not miraculous ladybug #precure #pretty cure #fresh precure #fresh pretty cure

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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"Canon” and “not canon” in the Adventure/02 universe

This is something I want to talk about, because it has a certain degree of relevance to the question of what I choose to take into account in my analyses and what I don’t. I write a lot about Adventure and 02 because both series are ridiculously consistent over their 104-episode runtime, but there are times when things contradict or don’t quite track together, and I have to figure out how to best rationalize them -- which means I need to make arbitrary decisions on what to count and not count, and when one does make those kinds of decisions, you’re very liable to get the complaint: “but that’s not canon!”

Which always makes me think: who decided that? And in the end, this is something that I think extends beyond just Digimon; every fanbase for everything always wants to believe there’s a clear-cut answer to things that everyone’s supposed to follow in a canonical timeline, and things that fall outside it. And sometimes, for some franchises, that is doable, because official staff will actually say outright that “this counts, and this doesn’t.” But that’s not how Toei and Bandai work, and their modus operandi has always been to toss a bunch of often-contradictory stuff at everyone and go “figure it out yourself,” and I think at some point the fanbase really needs to acknowledge that this so-called clear-cut boundary of “canon” and “not canon” doesn’t actually exist at all. Or in other words, any assertion of something being “canon” or “not canon” in the Adventure and 02 universe is purely something arbitrarily defined by fans, and was never determined by official - which, conversely, has actually encouraged you to take as much as you want and figure out the rest yourself.

Before we begin, I do want to make clear that this is not about one’s personal canon based on one’s own preferences -- that is to say, if you’re going “I don’t consider this canon because I don’t like this/don’t want to work with this,” then that’s entirely your right, especially if you’re doing creative work and need to decide what to apply and to not to apply. (Although, as always, one must be conscientious and respectful of those who do like it and consider it canon, because everyone’s going to differ on this.) What I am talking about is when people take a substantial part of the franchise that they otherwise like, such as a movie or drama CD, see one detail that’s contradictory in terms of the timeline or lore, and take that as evidence of “yep, the entire thing’s not canon. We’ll just throw the entire thing out, then.” It just makes me think -- you threw out a perfectly good work for that?! That’s such a waste!

First of all, Toei and Bandai don’t work that way

In general, a lot of the contradictions in the series have a “right hand is not talking to left hand” problem, because as much as we would like to believe that a Digimon series is written by a single consistent entity, the franchise itself is a huge trade-off between Toei and Bandai, and a lot of things from Bandai -- spinoffs, crossover material, games, what have you -- don’t exactly have a stellar track record of being vetted by Toei anime staff. It’s pretty well-known that game portrayals of certain characters can be really off or have misleading info, and even V-Tamer’s somewhat guilty of it. So this is going to happen no matter whether you like it or not, and it happens with any long-running kids’ series that involves a collaboration between multiple companies like this.

Moreover, the traditional custom for Toei “side movies” (in this case, meaning things like the original movie, Our War Game!, Hurricane Touchdown, and Diablomon Strikes Back) is that they’re produced with minimal involvement from the original series’s core staff -- at most, the producer is lightly involved -- and are sometimes even worked on simultaneously with the start of the original series, so you often end up with a movie that’s impossible to fit anywhere in the series timeline because there wasn’t any communication with the two sides. And for that, it’s all too easy to dismiss those movies as “non-canon”, with the fanbase arbitrarily deciding that canon ones are canon because they fit -- but Toei itself has never taken this stance.

The other thing is that, given that Adventure/02 is famous for its ridiculous level of worldbuilding consistency thanks to its director Kakudou’s conscientious efforts on it, it means that as a result, anything not made by him was prone to running afoul on it, and it’s not like the stance back then was to just reject all of it wholesale. “Doesn’t comply with the lore” is so often equated with “not canon”, but Kakudou, the author of that lore, not only made no indication of invalidating or disliking those non-compliant things, but also conversely made an active effort to make those things relevant in spite of that! (See: Our War Game! below.) The official stance is to not deny those works for being noncompliant -- it’s just that Kakudou seems to be the detail-oriented kind of person who personally prefers to work with things that have a high level of consistency (he’s very quick to say “I wasn’t involved on that” whenever someone brings up something from said external materials, not in any condescending way, just “I wasn’t involved, so don’t attribute that to me”). In fact, one of the reasons there wasn’t initially a third Adventure series was that he had difficulty finding a way to adhere to the higher-ups’ pressure to keep all of these contradictions consistent -- so the official stance itself is to try and maintain all of those side works, and that it would be better to end the series itself than to have to do something like deny them.

Which makes things very frustrating for the fans, of course, but nevertheless, that’s how it is -- even back in 2000, the right-hand-not-talking-to-left-hand phenomenon was this significant! And it would have been easy for official to step in and go “okay, we’ll put a statement out here that these don’t apply,” but no, the stance was be that it would be better to stop dragging it out longer and cancel a whole series than to deny those works, which leads us to the current situation. (Plus, think how insulting it would feel from a PR perspective if someone got attached to one of those “non-canon” materials only for official to come out and outright say “yeah this doesn’t count anymore”; we can name examples of this happening in other franchises that have understandably gotten a lot of people upset, and it would be especially offensive to do this right after said material had been released.)

Bolstering the concept of official staff’s very loose opinion of “canon” are the Adventure novels, which were supervised by Kakudou himself and written by Digimon episode screenwriter Masaki Hiro, and are non-compliant with Adventure timeline by design, because it’d be bad for the format to try and depict every single detail in the anime in the form of three novels. Several events are condensed or shuffled out of order, or even sometimes completely different (Koushirou’s incident with Vadermon goes very differently from the anime version). Despite that, this is said directly to be intended as a series of novels to help people understand Adventure and 02 better, and several details in Two-and-a-Half Year Break and Spring 2003 are incredibly consistent with it (namely in the sense of details meant to retroactively connect Adventure to 02, and other background details like Daisuke’s backstory). So you are supposed to do some kind of mental leap where you don’t take the contradictions around the actual events too seriously, but still accept the spirit and the background information you learn from it and retroactively apply it to Adventure and 02 -- and, presumably, that’s probably what you’re expected to do with everything else, too.

And this isn’t even getting into the fact that the anime itself has occasional contradictions and errors due to things like animator error or simply different writers writing different episodes -- the Adventure and 02 staff were certainly very detail-oriented, but they are human and of course inevitably slipped up here and there. How seriously do you take honorifics shifting from episode to episode in ways that don’t seem intentional, or the fact every background material refers to Osamu and Ken having a bunk bed and yet the actual episode with both of them fails to depict it? How do you deal with the fact that the Animation Chronicle is one of the most extensively useful post-02 reference materials with tons of production background info not revealed in the anime, and yet is infamously full of suspected typos that would cause some pretty massive implications if true, or all of those other Bandai and Shueisha-commissioned “side books” and other pieces of media meant to entertain the kids while the series was airing but clearly had no input from Toei staff whatsoever?

In the end, frustrating as it is, the answer seems to be the same as ever: figure it out yourself.

The standards for what’s “canon” and “not canon” are way too arbitrary

Let’s look at a handful of things that have been historically dismissed as “non-canon” by the fanbase:

The Adventure mini dramas and Armor Evolution to the Unknown: Drama CDs that were generally dismissed as non-canon because they’re “too crack” to be canon (their writing style is of the “it’s okay to push the boundaries of characterization for the sake of comedy” sort, and it wouldn’t be until later when we finally got some more serious drama CDs). The latter is full of honorific inconsistencies, most prominently Daisuke and Ken still being on surname basis at a time they’re not supposed to be (due to the fact that it was released while the series was still being produced). But official word is that you’re still supposed to consider them canon -- and yes, that’s Kakudou himself giving official sanction to a drama CD that involved a massive amount of fourth wall breaking and a completely unexplained reunion between the Adventure kids and their Digimon sometime between 1999 and 2002 (apparently this wasn’t the only one, either). How is this supposed to work? Figure it out yourself.

Hurricane Touchdown: The funny part is that up until Kizuna validated Wallace’s existence, there was no actual consistent agreement on why this movie shouldn’t be canon (the Western side being “evolutionary form timeline violations”, the Japanese side being Wallace’s status as a Chosen Child prior to 1995), which really goes to show you how arbitrary all of this is. It also has a sequel drama CD in the form of The Door to Summer, which is also contradictory with Hurricane Touchdown’s ending, so we’ve got two layers of “it can’t be canon because...” -- and yet it has a lot of interesting Daisuke characterization, and, heck, the whole character of Wallace himself, that would all be rejected if you throw this out wholesale. Then Kizuna came along, and there’s a general sense of hesitation against easily denying officially-sanctioned “main” entries like that, which retroactively forced people to somehow skip past all that and accept it, just for the sake of Kizuna’s notability.

Diablomon Strikes Back: Similar to the above, it used to be constantly dismissed as “a non-canon fun movie” because of the evolutionary forms that appear in it, despite the fact that 02 itself established that it wasn’t that hard to restore evolutionary forms if you figured something out. Somehow, a ton of people treated it as such an impossibility that “they figured it out in the first three months of 2003″ would be a viable explanation, and yet official word is that of the second through fourth movies, this is the one that had the most amount of initial consultation with the TV anime staff! And then tri. and Kizuna came along and clearly had high-level evolutions in play too, and dismissing DSB on these grounds meant dismissing those by proxy, and a lot of people were too intimidated to do that and decided to retroactively validate DSB instead, after years of having dismissed it for this reason. Again: look how arbitrary this all is.

The tri. stage play: Mainly because its timeline of events doesn’t fit tri. at all (in regards to the reboot and part 5). This is a fair assessment to make in light of the fact that it doesn’t seem to work very hard to be compliant with the very series it’s branded with, but, funnily enough, it’s actually more lore-compliant with the original Adventure and 02 than the tri. anime series is, and yet the few minor contradictions it makes with the tri. anime series are sufficient to consider it completely kicked out of canon, yet those same people who declare it so aren’t as willing to hold the anime to that same standard just because it holds a more prominent “main” position.

On the other hand, let’s look at some of the things that have been more likely to be accepted than the above:

Our War Game!: Reading this is probably going to make everyone go “whaaaaaat?”, but yep: according to Kakudou, the second through fourth movies were all made without his supervision or involvement and thus have lore contradictions (although he also made sure to say that they’re very fine movies, too). We still haven’t figured out what the lore contradiction is, and so the fanbase considers it canon, and even 02 itself makes multiple references to “the Diablomon incident” in 2000, so you can’t consider this non-canon in the slightest...but yes, according to the official side, it’s actually got a contradictory incursion somewhere in there. There is one hypothesis as to what it is, and it’s such a minor thing that no fan or even official member of staff would dare deny the movie for it, but it still contributes to how arbitrary this entire concept is: Kakudou didn’t want to give anyone (except Miyako, who’s based off a real person) canonical birthdays or blood types for the sake of preventing horoscoping, but Sora’s birthday is portrayed as being around March in the movie. And yes, Kakudou himself refers to this as being something that only happened because he wasn’t involved. (Remember what I said about him historically being quick to disclaim involvement on anything he wasn’t involved on, regardless of how much of a minor detail it is, yet doesn’t necessarily intend to deny the work entirely due to it?)

Tag Tamers: A very vital part of Ken’s backstory that establishes a lot of context behind the Dark Seed and the elusive Akiyama Ryou, which also does not make sense with 02′s timeline and characterization at all, presumably because Bandai and Toei weren’t properly communicating on what kind of details they needed to iron out for this. But of course, all of us would like some explanation to Ken’s backstory, and we have to apply some kind of logic as to how that makes sense, and I’ve yet to see people declare Tag Tamers (or any of the other WonderSwan games) as entirely non-canon as a result.

tri.: For obvious reasons, it’s a “major entry in the franchise”, so people are generally more averse to dismissing it so easily (or, at least, for reasons that aren’t related to pure preference), but I find it rather ironic that Kizuna’s the one that got all the attention for apparently being lore non-compliant, when the exact same lore points mentioned in Kakudou’s reasoning as to why it’s non-compliant (along with a ton of things that actually were in Adventure and 02′s text) are gone against even more regularly and prominently in tri., whereas Kizuna still goes out of its way to adhere to most of these and only seems to have incurred a contradiction in terms of originally intended ideology, and, possibly, its extensive use of the aforementioned movies. (Recall that this got brought up for Kizuna specifically because Kakudou was initially consulted for it; he wasn’t involved in tri. to begin with at all.) See above on how people’s unwillingness to write this one off so easily despite everything ended up retroactively dragging DSB into “accepted canon” territory; that’s how arbitrary this entire thing is.

Then, tied to all of this and making it even more confusing is Kizuna, which, again, putting all issues of personal preference aside, is basically being torn back and forth between all of these whenever you try to apply one of the above arbitrary standards. It’s allegedly lore-noncompliant with Kakudou’s lore and thus lacks his involvement, but it does have the involvement of original series producer Seki Hiromi who was known to be responsible for the series’s original human drama themes (including the premise of 02 itself) and personally vetted the scripts so that everyone could be properly in-character and the original themes still intact; it’s supposedly a “main” entry to the point where people will stop denying older works’ canonicity because of it (see Hurricane Touchdown above), but, legally speaking, is actually classified in the same “gekijouban” category that the first four movies and things like the Tamers through Savers movies are; the staff will say to hell and back that the 02 epilogue still holds (and the movie makes abundant retroactive references in both worldbuilding and themes to it), but many people out there will still insist that the movie ending that way means that (like with DSB above) “they figured it out” between the movie’s ending and the epilogue is apparently some kind of impossibility, and either the movie is non-canon or the 02 epilogue is invalidated now. (My personal stance on this is that the epilogue itself provides the answer to how they figure it out if you look closely at the movie’s themes, but that’s a tangent.)

The point I’m trying to make is that regardless of whatever stance you take on all of the above points, this is all extremely arbitrary, and these fanbase rationalizations on why this and that isn’t canon are constantly contradicting each other, shifting, and occasionally based on really meaningless things. And, again, it’s fine if you’re saying that you don’t consider this or that canon because you personally dislike it or where it went, or you find it difficult to work with, or between two contradictory things you prefer one or the other (I certainly have my fair share of strong opinions in this regard) -- but it would be better if we all admitted this and went “I just don’t consider this canon” instead of acting like there were ever some universal consensus or official backing.

"It didn’t happen this exact way, but something resembling it still happened”

So, we’re in this uncomfortable situation where we’ve been handed a ball of knots and have to work with it (a very frustrating situation especially for fanfic writers), and I have to personally say that I think all of this comes from people having far too inflexible of a concept of “canon” and “not canon”, especially to the point of rejecting a full-on perfectly fine entry just because of one timeline issue. I honestly think it’d be better if we could rather take a certain stance close to the Pixiv dictionary wiki’s view of how Wallace can appear in Kizuna: “(some version of) Wallace exists in the timeline of the main story.”

Right, so: Hurricane Touchdown is contradictory. The evolutions don’t work at that point in timeline, and Wallace shouldn’t be able to be a Chosen Child from before 1995. Those things don’t work with Adventure and 02′s timeline and lore. However, let’s look at the following story: let’s say that, between 02 episodes 14 and 15 (when the movie first screened), while school was on break, Daisuke and his friends went on a summer adventure to the US and met a boy named Wallace, who had a struggle regarding one of his partners losing his sanity, and bonded with him and helped put his partner to rest. No part of this contradicts 02 at all. There we go! So we can safely say that some story that mostly resembled Hurricane Touchdown happened in the canon timeline. Some of its details weren’t exactly the way they happened in “the movie we, as the audience, saw” -- but something that substantially resembled the movie still happened in the universe of Daisuke and his friends. And you can apply that same logic to Tag Tamers, or any other vital canonical but ostensibly contradictory material -- the media that we as the audience got may not accurately reflect the events in universe, but there’s absolutely nothing saying that some more timeline and lore-consistent alternate version didn’t happen in canon instead.

Moreover, even Adventure/02 itself gives you a bit of precedent for this concept -- namely, the fact that the final episode of 02 reveals that the entirety of Adventure and 02 is part of Takeru’s novels. It’s a pretty common theory that there might be differences in the way “the story we got” was presented, versus how they actually happened in the world Takeru lived in -- of course, Takeru certainly went out of his way to remove as much bias from the situation as he could, but you can hardly say that he, as a human, would be completely free from it, and he himself even admits that everyone he consulted had differing opinions on the events in question. And not every single piece of Digimon media has the Hirata-Hiroaki-as-Takeru narrator, which means that perhaps it’s not entirely out of the question that the different takes on the stories that the Tokyo Chosen Children went through in their youth would not be entirely consistent with each other, depending on who’s telling it. But that doesn’t mean that those events necessarily didn’t happen at all, just that some of the details were different from what we as the audience saw.

In the end, I leave the rest to everyone else to figure out -- as I said, I think this is a decision everyone will have to make for themselves, whether they’re a fanfic writer picking and choosing what to include for the sake of a coherent fic, or whether they’re just expressing a preference to not have to think too hard about or work with something they’re turned off by. (And in the case that there is someone who expresses their dislike of working with something and doesn’t want to consider it canon, I think it’s very rude to give them grief for that, and conversely, if you don’t want to consider something canon but encounter someone who doesn’t have as much of a problem with it, it’s very rude to try and expect them to change their opinion to yours.) But I do think it would do well for all of us to have a bit more of an open mind and a creative attitude towards these kinds of things before trying to shove everything into a “fully canon” and “fully not canon” binary.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #shihameta #kizuna spoilers

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giuliafc · 3 years

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Betrayal Chapter 4: Lila's Plan

<< 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4: Ao3 || FFN -- 5 >>

Written by: JuliaFC

Beta: myimaginationflows

Summary: Nathalie was right, and luckily she'd reached out!

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by (c) Thomas Astruc, TS1 Bouygues, Disney Channel, Zagtoon, Toei Animation. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Written for the "Snippet July" challenge of the Miraculous Fanworks Discord server @miraculousfanworks AND for LadyNoir July @ladynoirjuly Day 15 — Affair/forbidden. Let me know what you think!

oOoOoOoOoOo

"Girl, CODE RED."

Marinette cringed when she saw Alya's message as she got dressed the following morning. They were lucky to have developed their plan the night before. Drooping her shoulders, she picked up her school bag and ruefully walked downstairs, and then to school.

When she went through the gates, she was attacked by a hoard of upset girls.

"Who do you think you are, Dupain-Cheng?"

"The superheroes of Paris are property of the whole city!"

It took her a few minutes to detach herself from the infuriated girls. She received a lot of glares that followed her as she walked up the stairs and gulped, thanking her lucky stars that Nathalie had reached out the previous night. When she entered her classroom, the only friendly pair of eyes she could see were Alya's, Nino's, and Adrien's. Everyone else was scowling at her, while Lila shot her such an evil smirk that her heart cringed.

Luckily, Mlle. Bustier was already there and the lesson started after she walked in. The atmosphere was tense though, so tense that even Mlle. Bustier sensed it and tried to relax everyone by focusing on satire in the history of French literature, especially the works of Rabelais', Molière, and Voltaire. Reading some of the material did cause a few laughs, but the atmosphere didn't get any lighter.

Luckily, the situation degenerated when Marinette was walking down the hall, knowing that in order for their plan to work, she had to be challenged while in the open.. One of the girls who'd attacked Marinette earlier stood in front of her, arms folded on her chest.

"Where do you think you're going, Dupain-Cheng?"

Marinette flashed her eyebrows, pretending ignorance. "Home to eat. Maman and Papa are waiting for me. Now if you excuse me…" she said, but the girl challenged her.

"You're not going anywhere until you explain this!" She took out a picture that showed Marinette and Chat Noir wrapped in a hug.

Nobody noticed Alya winking at Marinette and disappearing for a few seconds before coming back. She approached Marinette and looked at the picture.

"Nice one!" she exclaimed. "Can you send the original file to the Ladyblog?"

"No!" The girl looked almost outraged.

"Why are you showing it to us, then?" Alya blinked.

"Don't play with me. Dupain-cheng is a two timer and a terrible person. The whole school knows that she's in love with Adrien Agreste. Yet, she starts an affair with Chat Noir! The hero of Paris isn't a trophy to collect!"

Alya's smirk widened. "Okay, girl, let's rewind the tape. First, what you just said about Marinette's crush is cruel, since her crush is just standing over there." She pointed at a very relaxed Adrien who was resting his back against a tree while observing the scene, not taken aback at all by what he just heard. The girl looked towards Adrien, as if she noticed his presence for the first time. "Besides, all I can see is a nice picture of Marinette hugging Chat Noir. He's a very touchy kitty, he even hugged me once, and caused a row with my boyfriend, but there was nothing between us. What makes you think that Marinette's having an affair with him?"

The girl was taken back by Alya's straight-forwardness. "B-but Lila said that…"

"Lila? Oh… did she take that picture and show it around?" Alya raised an eyebrow.

"Y-yes. She sai—" As the girl was saying that, various exclamations of joy resounded in the air as Chat Noir made his appearance, propelling himself with his baton on top of the school's hall. Alya started waving and calling him, trying to be heard.

"Alya! Chat Noir has more important things to do than—" But she was cut off by Chat Noir landing behind them.

"Did you call, fur Lady-blogger?" he grabbed Alya's hand and placed a kiss on her knuckles.

"Flirt," smirked Alya and Chat noir gave her a playful wink. "We were wondering if you could clear up this misunderstanding for us, Chat Noir, before these people throw any dirty glances upon Marinette." She put both hands on his shoulder and looked him in the eye.

"Ask away. I'm not the type to leave a fur damsel in distress."

Alya pointed at the picture the girl was still having in her hand. "Maybe you could explain that?"

Chat Noir looked at the photo and furrowed his eyebrows. "Oh." He scratched his chin. "That's from the other night. When I posed for Marinette's line and you recorded the video?"

Alya's eyes widened. "Oh, that night?"

"Yes. I hugged her to congratulate her, because her line is fantastic." He turned to the girl who held the picture. "You should visit her website, MDC.fr. There's a video of me posing for a new line based on Ladybug and I. All great stuff; I'd recommend the hoodie—so soft."

"Y-you mean there's nothing between Marinette and you?" asked the girl. Chat Noir made an outraged face.

"You wound me! This cat only loves his Lady. And besides, I don't start affairs with purr-incesses that are already taken!" He looked at Marinette and wiggled his eyebrows. "As purr-etty and talented as they may be, they're forbidden!"

"Taken?" Alya widened her eyes. "What do you mean, taken?"

Marinette's gaze moved from Chat Noir to Adrien and blushed. "Uh, well," she groaned, but Adrien grabbed hold of her hand and showed it to Alya, pointing at a small, but shiny golden ring on her finger, and matching it with one on his left hand.

"Right what he said. She's taken. Private property." He winked at Chat Noir, who bowed theatrically.

"Since everything is cleared, I'll s-cat!" But his words were ignored by everyone because Adrien placed a kiss on Marinette's lips—which made the whole school squeal.

The whole school except the green-eyed Italian girl who spied the scene from the distance and groaned.

To be continued… day 16

-------------

Author's Note

Here's Day 15! This is so much fun :) Hope you liked it as much as I liked writing it, and will leave me a comment. You know that comments are my bread and butter!

Until tomorrow, bug out!

#miraculous ladynoir #miraculous love square #miraculous lb #miraculous les aventures de ladybug et chat noir #miraculous adrien #miraculous ladybug #miraculous #miraculous nathalie #nathalie sancoeur #lila rossi #lila's plan gets debunked #ladynoirjuly2021 #miraculous fanworks

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fancoloredglasses · 3 months

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Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (live action anime)

[All images are owned by Saban Entertainment and Toei Company Ltd. Please don’t sue me]

youtube

(Thanks to Power Rangers Official)

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 30 years since this show came out. I’ll admit, I thought it was dumb then and not much has changed my opinion, but Saban is still releasing new Power Rangers shows, with the final installment based on the original series released last year and a reboot scheduled for next year!

Much like with most anime shown in the US, Power Rangers used footage from a Japanese show (in this case Super Sentai), removed any Japanese cultural imagery, then re-formatted and re-dubbed it. However, in this case they also used original footage filmed in the U.S. and spliced it in.

The Earth is threatened by the evil Rita Repulsa and her horde that have been trapped in what’s best described as a “space dumpster” for 10,000 years. Her first act upon gaining her freedom is to make plans to conquer the nearest inhabited planet (three guesses which one)

Fortunately for Earth, the sage known as Zordon learns or Rita’s escape and recruits 5 teenagers from Angel Grove, California as the planet’s defenders. He gives them enhanced abilities and snazzy faceless suits to battle Rita’s forces, christening them…

…the Power Rangers!

Jason Scott, the Red Ranger, is the leader of the team. The other Rangers are…

Billy Cranston, the Blue Ranger

Kimberly Hart, the Pink Ranger (Oh, cute! The girl is the Pink one! Very clever, guys!)

Zack Taylor is the Black…SERIOUSLY?! The BLACK Ranger? Are you going to make the Yellow Ranger an Asian?

OH, COME ON! Yes, Trini Kwan is the Yellow Ranger

Whenever Rita sends her army of minions to invade (and they ALWAYS start their invasion in Angel Grove for some reason), the Power Rangers suit up and get ready for action!

youtube

(Thanks to RANGERVERSE)

Of course, once the Power Rangers are on the scene, Rita sends in a giant monster. However, part of the Power Rangers’ abilities include telepathic command of giant robots (known as “Zords”) that resemble the prehistoric creatures they gain their powers from. Much like with the Lion Force, individually they’re not much of a match for the monster until…

youtube

(Thanks to tallarun2005)

…they join forces to form the Megazord, then Save the Day.

Of course, being teenagers, they have typical teenager stuff to deal with, including comic relief bullies.

Meet Skull and Bulk, who are often causing mischief that almost always blows up in their faces.

Of course, after a season of getting beaten by five teenagers, Rita’s superior Lord Zed stuffed her back in the dumpster and took over. The last thing Rita did before getting trashed was make her own Ranger…

Tommy Oliver

AKA the Green Ranger, commanding the Dragonzord. Tommy eventually shook Rita’s control and joined the Power Rangers. However, Zedd took away his powers, so Zordon gave him new powers and christened him…

…the White Ranger, commanding the White Tigerzord.

The series lasted three seasons, but has had several movies and spinoffs (Of course, with new Rangers as actors decided to move on, with David Yost (who played Tommy) being the last of the original five to leave in 1996. Jason David Frank, who played Tommy, left in 1997 but made sporadic appearances until 2022)

If you would like to see the series, it’s available on PlutoTV or behind your favorite paywall.

If you would like to see an episode reviewed, let me know!

#mighty morphin power rangers #Fan Colored Glases

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wolfhowls · 2 years

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Purple Noir Week day 4

This Fanfic is part of @purplenoir-week (see their tumblr for details).

Day 4 - Purr

A Purr-fect patrol

Summary

When Ladybug asks Purple Tigress to take her place during a patrol (because Marinette is busy preparing a birthday party for Adrien), Juleka discovers by accident the identity of her feline companion, and not only. She finds out how hurt Chat Noir is that Ladybug keeps him in the dark. So, even thanks to the Miraculous lifting her confidence, Juleka decides to help him, like he did when she needed support (Guiltrip). But things aren't as easy as they look…

Miraculous: tales of Ladybug e Chat Noir - Zagtoon, Method Animation, Toei Animation, SAMG Animation, De Agostini Editore, Nelvana, Cartoon Network Studios All rights are reserved to their owners.

"Come on, Alya, I know that you took my place as Scarabella this morning," snaps Marinette, sitting next to her friend on the chaise longue in her room. The floor of the room is covered with multicolored paper chains, which the girls have just finished. On the sewing table is a neatly folded long banner; near the hatch is a box of paper hats and other party decorations.

"But there's something else that worries me about the fight!" continues the bluenette, her serious gaze full of concern. "Someone else was wearing the Black Cat Miraculous. I mean someone other than Chat Noir! And I can't believe you've got no idea who that person was!" She gives Alya another serious look. "I'll have to give Chat Noir a good lecture, you don't just entrust a Miraculous as important as the Black Cat to other people without letting me know first!".

"No, Mari! Mari, Mari, don't get carried away..." begins Alya, holding her by the shoulders. "Chat Noir did nothing wrong! On the contrary, entrusting the ring to someone else was a great idea! Alone I wouldn't have been able to break that chisel. And besides, YOU also entrusted ME with the earrings and..."

Marinette interrupts her, sulking. "Yes, but I trust you, and I had already given them to you once!"

"But you don't know what's happened to Chat Noir AND you don't know whether that girl is his best friend in civilian life, or his sister or whatever, someone that he trusts exactly like you trust me. You're too stiff, give that boy a little confidence!" Alya looks up, trying to remember details of the fight that happened that morning. “However, you're right in one thing. I have absolutely no idea who that girl could be. Because it sure was a girl. Slender, more or less as tall as me. And…she was also very pretty! She was also a really good fighter; it was as if she'd already used a Miraculous before. " The girl stops to think. "But maybe that depends on Plagg...don't know how much of the Black Cat's personality depends on him, even this girl was saying silly puns.."

“Alya, I'm not bothered about what she looked like or whether she punned or not. My concern is why did Chat Noir entrust her with the ring? In almost two years it's never happened. It can't have been the first time that he was, let's say, unable to transform, but now it's the first time he has entrusted the ring to someone," insists Marinette.

"Well, the same can be said about you, in two years it's only happened to you twice. So…" She flashes her a smile. "I think the best thing you can do is ask him."

Marinette looks at her with a confused expression. "You say I'm exaggerating a little?"

"Maybe a little, yeah...Changing subject…do tell. How was it posing with Adrien for the statue?" She rubbed her hands and looked at Marinette expectantly.

“Horrible! That is, not Adrien, he's gorgeous…but Rocheux! Don't misunderstand me, but when he looked at me I felt as if I was...naked...Or maybe it was because of Adrien?" She raises her gaze, blushing. “Anyway when the sculptor asked me to take off my shirt, I almost panicked! I was too embarrassed! Then I told myself that I ended up all over the Internet in my pajamas, what could've been worse than that? So I took it off."

Alya looks at her a little disappointed and Marinette continues, “What is that face? And anyway, you were there too, I can't tell you anything more than what you already saw!"

“Actually you would have a lot to tell me, as Adrien kept whispering things in your ear. And then I saw how he looked at you, or rather how he looked at your tummy…button,” exclaims Alya, jokingly jumping towards Marinette and tickling her. The two girls roll on the floor laughing, then Marinette squeals, breathlessly, “Stop it! Enough! We could ruin the decorations for Adrien's birthday party!"

After catching her breath, Marinette asks her friend, "Did you remember to ask your father for the keys to that warehouse near the zoo?"

"Sure" says the other, waving a bunch of keys at her. "But we've to bring all this stuff there by tomorrow!"

“That's no problem,” explains Marinette. “I can use the yo-yo when I get back from patrol tonight. To make it quicker, I'll ask someone for a favor again. Remember to give the invites to everyone. And tell them not to tell anything to Adrien, please!"

Alya nods and Marinette continues, “Did Nino find the limited edition of the Knightowl action figure? We need it to delay the Gorilla and allow Adrien to come to the party."

"He hasn't answered me yet, I'll see him later," replies the brunette.

Marinette gets up from the floor and begins to put away all the decorations in the box. "Well, then let's carry on with 'Operation Surprise Party'!"

After dinner, Marinette says goodnight to her parents and goes back to her room. At around 11 pm, knowing for sure that her parents are sleeping, she approaches the box, getting ready to transform.

Tikki flies beside her and asks, a bit dubious,“Are you sure you want to bring this stuff with you on patrol? Last time it didn't go very well, with the letter to Adrien."

"Tikki, I already told you. There are no risks, there is only one box, I cannot confuse it "he explains, smiling" You worry too much. But thank you ... now let's go, I even have something else to do! Tikki, spots on!"

Once transformed, Marinette opens the yo-yo and brings it closer to the box, which disappears inside of it. Shortly after, Ladybug knocks again on the porthole of the cabin where Juleka sleeps. The girl looks out from the small opening, and Ladybug notices that she's wearing an oversized purple t-shirt with a neckline that leaves one shoulder uncovered.

The polka-dotted heroine puts her hand over her mouth. “Oh my sorry, Juleka! Were you already sleeping? " she asks.

“Don't worry” replies Juleka, “I was already in bed, but I was still awake, reading.” That said, she takes two steps back and gestures to Ladybug to come in. The red polka dotted superheroine is clinging to the edge of the porthole with her feet resting on the hull. As she slips into the porthole, Juleka turns to close the window. "Do you need another favor, by any chance?"

Ladybug notices that Juleka uses the oversized shirt as a nightgown, and has bare legs and feet underneath it. "As a matter of fact, yes, I do Juleka," explains Ladybug. “You told me that you would have liked to go out on patrol again and there you go, this is your chance! Besides, I also wanted…well…to take advantage of your presence to take a different route than the usual one. I thought we could split up at some point and then meet again at the end. Usually, at this time of the day not much happens on the usual route, and there was all that chaos this morning!"

"Oh, I'm aware of what happened this morning," mutters Juleka, sitting cross-legged on the bed and hiding a smile.

"What did you say?" asks Ladybug.

"Oh, no, nothing!" replies Juleka, “I said that…. Ok, I'm in. And don't worry, I always stay up late and my brother will be back very late, we have at least two hours before anyone will think of checking on me."

Handing the Miraculous bracelet to the other girl, Ladybug says,“Great then! Here we go! Ah, remember that the transformation replaces your clothes with your outfit, but when it ends, you wear again what you wore before you transformed. "

"Ah, ok...Is there something wrong with my clothes?" asks Juleka in a low voice, lowering her gaze.

"Nothing! Just try not to have to recharge Roaar's power on top of the Eiffel Tower in your nightgown! " giggles Ladybug. "I'm always terrified it could happen to me!"

The other looks at her legs. “Hm, good advice! But I don't think it will happen to me." She shrugs and whispers, “Roaar! Stripes on!"

Chat Noir arrives at the meeting point at the same time as the other two and looks amazed at the Purple Tigress. "Hey Tiger, I didn't think I'd see you so soon!" Then he takes her hand and kisses her knuckles softly, while looking at Ladybug. "M'lady, you could have warned me that she was going to be with us!"

Ladybug raises an eyebrow at him. "Why, Chat Noir?"

"Well," he says, "I would've groomed myself a little more, maybe!" He flashes her a toothy smile. "Shall we go, girls?"

"But don't be silly, Chaton, you're always perfectly groomed, aren't you!" comments Ladybug, holding back a laugh.

Chat Noir pretends to be offended. "You wound me, M'lady. Yes, this cat is purr-fect, but there's always room for improvement!" He takes his baton from behind his back and leaps away, announcing, "See you at Notre Dame!"

Ladybug looks at Purple Tigress, shrugging. “Better if we go. Once at Notre Dame, we'll take three different directions and meet back at the zoo."

In a couple of jumps the two girls reach Chat Noir, who has slowed down to wait for them. Then Ladybug manages to go past them, helped by the greater mobility of her yo-yo. The two feline heroes end up standing side by side. "So..." begins Chat Noir, jumping on a chimney "...Was Plagg his usual annoying self, this morning?"

"No, not at all!" says Purple Tigress. "Except when he called me Bangs..."

"From what I've heard, you were great, for being your first time with my Miraculous! And your costume was really cool! " he continues, keeping an eye on Ladybug and on his surroundings at the same time.

"T-thank you..." mutters the girl, remaining a little behind.

Chat Noir realizes that the other is no longer following him closely and waits for her on the terrace of a hotel. When Purple Tigress reaches him, he signals her to wait. “Can I ask you something?" When the girl nodded, he nervously touched the nape of his neck and his gaze ran upwards. "How did I do? I tried to put Marinette at ease, but she was always so nervous."

“W-well, isn't that obvious? You two were half-naked…of course she was nervous!" she replies, spreading her arms up.

“Yeah, but when I did the photoshoot at the pool she wasn't as awkward as that,” he thinks to himself.

"What?" asks an astonished Purple Tigress.

“Yes, it was for a perfume ad. Those damn pigeons! To save money, the advertising company had decided to use pigeons rather than doves, and I'm allergic to pigeons, so it was a real disaster. Marinette was there, no idea why, by the way, but she was in her swimming suit, and she didn't look embarrassed about it. And I was only wearing my swimming trunks," he explains, blushing slightly when a flash comes to his mind, "The umbrella closing on my head...her genuine laughter…"

Purple Tigress looks at him, then shakes her head “Ok, then. Forget it, maybe it was just my impression."

"Yes, but as I went, I saw you were looking at us..." insists Chat Noir, impatient to reach Ladybug who, by now, has surely reached Notre Dame.

"You did very well; it was a good start," says the girl, then she lowers her voice and adds, "even Rose said the same." She gave him a sidelong look.

"Rose?" asks Chat Noir.

"Gah, I should shut my mouth! Now he'll find out that everyone knows about Mari's crush!" panics Juleka. "W-well she was also looking at you, remember?" she says, trying to mislead him.

Chat Noir is thoughtful for a moment. "Well yes...So I wasn't too…weird?"

She shakes her head, a little embarrassed. "Not at all..."

He looks up. "We better go. Come on, Ladybug must be there already!" Chat Noir uses hir baton to jump, then Purple Tigress takes a run and jumps across the street, making a pendulum with her tail tied to an antenna.

The three debrief at Notre Dame and head in different directions, agreeing to meet again at the zoo half an hour later.

While following the agreed path and looking around for possible problems, Purple Tigress thinks about the exchange she just had with Chat Noir. "I would never have thought that having a Miraculous would've helped me...well, I finally got out of my shyness a little...Who knows if even the others feel like this. Adrien, at least, is completely different when he transforms. Even though…I don't know, there's something I can't put a finger on. It's as if he's playing a character when he's Chat Noir and another one when he's Adrien, but he's neither really. It must be the mask: when you wear a mask you're not yourself anyway."

The ears of the Purple Tigress costume turn towards a noise and she is roused from her thoughts: in the street underneath her, someone is shouting. The girl stops to understand where the noise comes from and sees flashing orange lights in an intersection a few meters below her. With a leap, she reaches the roof of one of the buildings and looks out onto the street. Two cars are stopped in the center of the intersection, facing each other. One of the two appears to not have seen the red light at the junction and have hit the back of the other.

The damage does not appear serious and the two drivers do not appear injured. One of them is shouting to the other, “You're an idiot! Didn't you see the traffic lights?"

"Why should I give a damn about the traffic light?" replies the other. "At this hour of the night there's never anyone around anyway!” They are both furious and start insulting each other. Suddenly one of them leans into the boot of his car and comes out holding a wrench, which he waves menacingly against the other.

Purple Tigress sighs, and activating the Miraculous's power, she jumps off the roof, landing on the ground near the two men fighting. She glares at both as she lands on all fours, and pushes her fist into the asphalt, roaring, "CLOUT!" The violence of the punch she gives on the asphalt causes the two drivers to tumble to the ground and the cars involved in the accidents to almost jump up. A couple of parked cars sway in the blast and alarms begin to ring.

The two arguing men end up with their backs to the ground and get up on their elbows, terrified, backing away from the center of the intersection, without understanding what was going on. Purple Tigress stands up, brushes her hair away from her face and glares at them. "Talk to each other instead of arguing!" she growls. "Your cars aren't even damaged. Why are you getting so angry at each other?"

The two look at her, giving her a terrified nod, then they exchange a glance, jumping to their feet. "Yes, of course.." says one, at the same time as the other one says, "You're right".

“Now, Shake hands,” urges them Purple Tigress, her arms crossed over her chest. The two look at her, evidently nervous and start shaking hands very awkwardly. Eventually, a police car arrives from the distance, probably alerted by the tenants of the surrounding buildings.

Juleka thinks, “Well, now the police will take over from me. I better go, or I'll be late!” she thinks, and then mutters,“Good, good,” and with two jumps, she disappears on the roofs, running towards the meeting place with the other two superheroes.

Now within sight of the zoo, Purple Tigress spots the silhouette of Chat Noir coming from the opposite direction to him, and places his feet on the roof in front of the entrance at the same time as the boy. The two exchange a glance and Chat Noir comments "Strange, Ladybug hasn't arrived yet."

She doesn't have time to finish the sentence that the sound of the yo yo wire makes them turn and a slightly breathless Ladybug appears on the roof "Thank goodness I managed to leave the decorations ... I have to tell Alya to have the lock checked He thinks, trying to hide his shortness of breath. "Here I am! Everything OK?"

"Purr-fect, now that you're here!" Chat replies

"Yes, a small car accident but all settled." says Purple Tigress, then whispers "It was enough to scare them a little"

Ladybug nods, catching her breath.

In the distance you can hear a bell ringing a single time, Chat Noir looks at the girls, makes a bow leaning on the stick “Well, it's time to say goodbye. Thanks for my pawsome company! " he says theatrically.

Ladybug takes the yo-yo from her waist, as Chat Noir nonchalantly approaches Purple Tigress and rubs his back on hers, in a very feline gesture.

She whispers, "What are you doing, Chat?"

"What you suggested to me to do," whispers him back.

"But I said to let yourself go as Adrien, I didn't tell you to start flirting with me as Chat!" she whispers again.

"Oh, so you mean that when I'm Adrien, I can do it?" he asks, faking innocence.

"Pff ... I didn't say that!" hisses Purple Tigress.

Ladybug turns towards them, sees what Chat Noir is doung and facepalms with a big sigh.

Purple Tiger stretch an arm behind Chat Noir’s head, scratching him near his ear.

Suddenly, a low rhythmic vibration rises from the boy's throat, his eyes widening in surprise as he hears himself doing it.

Purple Tigress also freezes, takes his hand away and looks at him. "Did you... just....you purred!"

"Wha—? Did I? No way—!" He shields himself by putting his hands out, but the sound from his throat doesn't stop.

Ladybug can't hold back a smile, her arms crossed across her chest.

"Yup! And you're still doing it! Come here, kittykittykitty!” Purple Tigress reaches out to him and scratches his head again in the same place, laughing. An even louder sound comes from Chat Noir's throat as he tries to wriggle out, his face as red as Ladybug's costume. The latter keeps looking at them with her arms crossed.

"Don't make fun of me," he mumbles. "I'm sure that… if I scratch behind your ears…you will make them too, purr ..." and he ends up putting himself in the same position as Ladybug, still all red

"Chat, you should know that tigers, like all big cats, unable to purr. " Ladybug says, sighing in exasperation.

“Come on, Ladybug, it's fun! He's such a…a cat! "

"Are you finished, you two?" exclaims the heroine in red again, sulking

"M'lady, won't you be jealous of me-ow?" asks Chat Noir, winking the eye

"Jealous, me? Not even by idea, mon minou… ”Ladybug replies, her pout transformed into a treacherous smile. "Move, Tiger, after all this kitty has TWO ears!"

“No, what are you doing? No, it's embarrassing! " Chat Noir raises his voice, putting his hands forward, but the two girls have joined him and each is scratching his head behind his ear. "Stop it now...." he starts to protest, then, while the purr is getting stronger, he relaxes "aaah no please… ok keep going on!".

Ladybug and Purple Tigress immediately let him go, exchange glances, and burst out laughing.

Finally, Chat Noir regains control enough to stop purring. "I-I have to go," he announces, looking maybe genuinely sorry about it. "Sweet dreams, girls!" greets, taking the stick to jump on the building opposite.

"We better go too, Tiger, I want to show you something before I go home," exclaims Ladybug, twirling her yo-yo and hooking it to a lamppost. The other girl nods and steps closer, allowing Ladybug to put her arm around her waist and jump.

Thanks to her yo-yo, Ladybug moves faster than the others who can only run and jump. So it takes her only a minute to reach the Eiffel Tower.

As they jump from beam to beam to get to the top, Purple Tigress sees that the fourth sector of her Miraculous starts flashing. "Oh, geez ..." she mumbles under her breath, as she jumps onto the platform at the base of the antenna at the top of the Iron Lady.

“I thought I'd bring you here. To say thank you for your great help today,” explains Ladybug, turning towards the view.

Juleka follows the other girl's gaze and suddenly, the beeping of her Miraculous becomes the least of her worries as her eyes widen in awe and admiration. The view of the city lights all lit up and flickering under the dark sky under the rays of the half-moon is so pretty that it's taking her breath away. It's not every day that you can admire a sight like that. She had already, in the past, gone up the tower to look at the view, but what you could see from the tourist platform was nothing compared to this. This was different…more intimate and wonderful.

A light breeze rises and hits the two girls. "Wow! It's beautiful here, Ladybug," comments Purple Tigress with a faint voice, as her transformation ends making her come back to being Juleka.

But as soon as the transformation ends, Juleka feels the cold metal of the floor under her bare feet, and the chilly breeze on her legs. "Oh, dear," she squeaks.

Ladybug turns seeing the purple glow and finds Juleka hug her waist with one hand and try to prevent the hem of her shirt from rising to reveal her underwear with the other. She sees her crouching down as soon as the sense of surprise fades, but gets even more embarrassed as she does that and realizes that maybe this position flashes even more skin.

Ladybug does try to hold herself together, but she had never seen Juleka so embarrassed and eventually she bursts out in a little laugh. "Juleka, don't say I didn't warn you!"

“L-Ladybug, don't make fun of me, please! I know it's my fault," she says apologetically.

"Don't worry, nobody can see you up here! " comments Ladybug noticing how Juleka kept looking around.

Juleka looks at herself from bottom to top, still in a crouch. "Now h-how am I going home?" she stammers, even more embarrassed as the reality of the situation sinks into her.

Ladybug gives her a serious look, then moves her gaze to the purple kwami who had appeared in a flash of violet as her transformation had faded. "Sorry, Roaar, you'll have to settle for a cookie," she tells it, taking the sweet treat from her yo-yo.

The kwami nods, picks up the snack offered by the guardian and starts to eat the cookie. “Don't worry, Juleka, you'll be home again very soon. I like that you were so looking forward to transforming that you did that while in your pajamas, but maybe next time..."

Juleka mumbles something almost incomprehensible that sounds like, "Don't you start too!” Then, she gets up, her arms still wrapped around her middle, and begins to move nervously, looking at her feet.

"I'll need a shower when i get home," he mutters.

Roaar flies in front of her face. “I'm ready! You know the words!” the kwami announces.

“Yeah. Roaar, stripes on!" exclaims the girl, transforming back into Purple Tigress. "Oh, this is so much better," she comments. Then she looks at the shorter girl and sighs. "Sorry, Ladybug, I haven't been very careful this time!"

“Ah, don't worry, Juleka, you're still getting used to all this. The first time I used my power I ended up falling on Chat Noir and tying both up with my yo-yo. Now that was embarrassing,” she says.

Purple Tigress looks at her, eyes wide. "Really?"

Ladybug nods and then asks, "Shall we go?"

The other girl nods and a few minutes later, Purple Tigress slips into the Liberty's porthole, then gives the bracelet back to Ladybug who has remained outside.

"See you soon, Juleka," says Ladybug. "But next time..." She smiles. "...put on a pair of pants!" She winks at her, then zips away, followed by Juleka's soft laugh.

+++

Part 3

#miraculous ladybug #ml #chat noir #purple tigress #adrien agreste #juleka couffaine #fandom event #purplenoirweek2022 #mlb s4 spoilers

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