#back when i did a redraw of that one final scene from the trailer in like. july?

[daeyumi]

“I pray for you, Richter Belmont…” 🧿🩸

[cryptid-condor]

last king, chosen king

click them for better quality i promise they wont bite you

[elnotwoods]

You don’t go out in a field very often, right?   You’re being so shy.

Is it so difficult to be a super disciplined cop?

No.  Being a cop has always been my dream since I was a kid.

Is your dream as beautiful today as it was then?

Hey! Hold that pose. And hold that feeling. Can you straighten your right leg a bit?

Hands together. Hold that, please. What’s wrong?

I just feel like I’m confessing my sins.

I did something wrong before. But I can’t go back and fix it again. I tried to reclaim justice but I failed. In the end, I could do nothing.

It’s done. Do you want to see it?

I like it.

This is not the final, just the sketch. I need to redraw and color it. Just wait to see the final version.

It’s okay. It’s in the past.

You did great.

You’ll be fine.

This scene is, undeniably, one of the best scenes of this show. Few will top this, if any. The inherent intimacy, softness of it, the raw emotion that comes to the forefront once Dan strips. This could have been a very basic scene - sexually charged, filled with want, lust. Instead we got something so genuine, that it actually made me sit down and think about it for hours.  

I have tried to come up with how Dan is tied to the plot - because him just being an underground artist and a cop doesn’t feel… enough? I have the feeling that Dan is much more entangled in the conflicts and problems the gang is facing than initially thought. The first trailer for Not me made us think that maybe Dan is the reason why Black ends up in the hospital, but after today I have a different theory. Thanks to this scene in which Dan reveals his soul.

“I just feel like I’m confessing my sins.  I did something wrong before. But I can’t go back and fix it again.”

We know that Sean’s father has been shot while resisting arrest. We don’t know how long ago it was, but I think it’s safe to say it must have been like 4-8 years ago? Somewhere in that time frame. We don’t really know much about Dan yet, how old he is or how long he’s been a police officer. He is a lieutenant though, that doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why I have a feeling that maybe he was one of the arresting officers in Sean’s fathers case. He carries a burden from the past, a grave mistake he can’t undo, can’t fix. Something like bringing someone back to life….

“Being a cop has always been a dream since I was a kid.”

“Is your dream as beautiful today as it was then?”

Dan must have dreamed of a world he could change, a world he could make better, of helping people and serving them. Protecting them. And his dream must have crumbled in front of him when he saw the reality of the world he lived in, the brutality happening on the job, when he saw the way people lived and starved and existed in their own misery. And what if he accidentally killed someone on the job? Or if he was told by an older officer while arresting Sean’s father that he should shoot the moment the whole thing goes south, consequences be damned. That would leave a mark. Something Dan can’t shake, can’t change.

So how can he go on? Continue on the force? How can he make his 5 year old self proud?

What he cannot change as a police officer he ends up highlighting as UNAR. He points the masses towards these issues he would like to help solve as a cop but he cannot. Because the force itself is corrupt and he himself is now tainted by this too. So the only way to honour his younger self’s dream is to create this other persona and express through art what he cannot do as a cop. Cause that’s the only way he can still continue honouring his dream.

To express this whole inner dilemma, this torture and shame, this burden Dan carries with himself through art and being immortalised in his current state of being?

Only for Yok to tell him this:

This is not the final, just the sketch. I need to redraw and color it. Just wait to see the final version.

To me it says: You are not your biggest mistake, you are not only the bad things that happened to you or the bad things you have done. It shapes you, it will leave a permanent mark but as time goes on you can do better. You can atone for your sins and you are still good. You might not see it yet, but once you get older and look back at this past version of yourself, you will see it for what it is, was: merely a foundation for you to grown into the person you were supposed to be.

Because right now, you are not the final version of yourself. Like this artwork, you too will evolve and change. Be better. Don’t lose hope yet. Cause I can already see it.

[metalliveblogdramon]

Adventure Episode 16

The Digidestined are walking through another desert. I’m starting to think the Digital World just automatically fills in desert terrain if there’s nothing important nearby.

The group are worried about keeping ahead of Etemon. Tai tells them not to worry too much, they just need to figure out how to use his new crest to get Agumon up to Ultimate. Tai figures all he needs to do is make sure Agumon is well-fed for energy and he’s in danger- which Etemon will provide either way.

“And if that doesn’t work, I’ll just get a new Digimon!“

Probably a joke, but Agumon visibly doesn’t take it that way and Tai doesn’t notice.

Yep, we’re doing the “don’t be a  dick to your partner“ episode all kid with monster partner shows need to go through.

Tai has in fact confiscated everyone else’s rations and is attempting to give Agumon 14 shares of food. Not sure why they allowed that, they’re in a damn desert.

Sora and Izzy have a conversation to the effect of “You know, Tai isn’t usually a complete douche what’s up with this“ until Joe’s tag starts glowing.

Which I guess answers “Do tags actually do anything?“ the answer is that it apparently helps you find your crest.

Joe runs towards a colloseum in the distance, then faceplants after tripping over a Dark Network cable, immediately letting Etemon know where everyone is. He recognises the colloseum as where he holds his annual tribute concert to himself. He calls his minions in the area and tells them to roll out the welcome wagon and keep the kids occupied as he’s on his way.

The colloseum turns out to contain a football pitch, causing the group to form a humans vs digimon team game whilst Joe looks for his crest... Until Tai throws a hissy fit at them for trying to have fun.

Honestly, I know from meta-knowlege that Tai is team leader, but in the early arc they weren’t organised enough to have leadership. This is the first time he’s really tried to take charge beyond simply having a fairly confident personality and a self-percieved responsibility to keep morale up.

Etemon speaks to them via the Jumbotron, still being a long way off, and when they try to flee he drops one of the goal nets over them, electrified so that they can’t escape. Agumon was too slow and lethargic from his deviantart stuffing session, so got isolated from the rest of the group. Etemon takes this opportunity to release another Greymon into the arena to force Agumon to fight in a mirror match.

The amimation team miss an opportunity to redraw the digivolution scene to reflect a bloated and lethargic agumon. To be expected though.

Greymon recieves a predictable beatdown from the other Greymon who’s in fighting condition, including getting shoved into the electric fence, a period of literal curbstomping and an uncomfortable burp instead of being able to breathe fire. Tai spends the entire period yelling at him.

Also Tentomon keeps flying into the fence like it’s a bug zapper.

Tai, at this exact moment: “GET UP AND FIGHT!”

Etemon orders one of his Gazimon to break out the fireworks for his arrival, and I wasn’t actually going to mention that in this liveblog because I thought it was a trivial detail but no, so:

The Gazimon runs up this weird statue and starts letting off fireworks.

Gomamon tries using his Marching Fishes attack, and water pours out of the statue’s mouths and releases fish, which start flying, grab the fireworks, fly up to and harass Etemon’s Greymon, then leave.

Joe asks Gomamon how he did that, gets back “I don’t know but if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.“ Izzy cuts in and says it’s “probably just a dimensional vortex rift” then Sora waves goodbye to the fish as they fly off into the upper atmosphere.

...Anyway,

The Digidestined set to lifting flagstones so as to try to tunnel out from under the goal net. One of the flagstones is Joe’s crest, and removing it causes them to fall into a tunnel network beneath the arena. In the meantime, Greymon is being choked out by Greymon. The kids get out without incident, and instead of doing the sensible thing and ganging up on the Greymon Tai insists on going out alone and throwing rocks to provoke it whilst yelling at his own Greymon to just frickin’ digivolve already.

The other kids catch on and start digivolving their ‘Mons to try to rescue him, but they’re too late and a beam shoots out of Tai’s crest turning into a roiling cloud of darkness spreading across the sky, which turns into pillars of dark fire which shoot down into Greymon.

Technically, this does count as achieving ultimate.

The other Greymon tries to flee, but is backhanded into the Jumbotron then he, the jumbotron and half the stands on that side of the coloseum are evaporated by one of the weird shark-missiles Skullgreymon can shoot from his back.

Tai yells at Skullgreymon that he’s his partner and he has to obey him.

Skullgreymon attempts to step on Tai, then is engaged in battle by the other partner digimon. They aren’t able to do any meaningful damage, and Etemon flips out back in his trailer as the collateral damage severs his Dark Network connection to the area and cuts off his ability to observe what’s happening.

Skullgreymon smashes through a wall of the coloseum and runs off into the desert smashing everything in his path until he runs out of energy and devolves all the way back to Koromon.

Koromon has a different voice actor than he did in his first appearance, that is to say, he used to just have the same voice as agumon, now he’s clearly a woman doing a high pitched falsetto to sound babyish. That aside, he’s freaking out over all the damage he caused and attacking the others. And for disappointing Tai. Matt tells Koromon it’s not his fault, as Tai finally catches on to how he’s been acting.

Tai: Sora this is all my fault isn’t it?

Sora: Yes.

Other than that though, he basically gets away with looking kinda sad and saying “Please forgive me?“

This was a really chaotic episode, even by Digimon Adventure standards, with weird goings on and asspulls left and right. That said, Skullgreymon’s design steals the show by being a freakishly huge, lanky-proportioned terror with strange bony protrusions, an exposed heart and uh... a shark missile.