#which is still basically nonsense lol.

[lonepower]

time for part 2 of Pet Peeves That Bother Literally Only Me Personally And Would Actually Be An Active Hindrance To Cater To

[icewindandboringhorror]

Hrmm... put together a roommates quiz finally after years of thinking it would be an interesting idea lol.. Though obviously not meant to be taken super seriously, I just like thinking about this aspect of personality compatibility. Like yeah, maybe you could get along with someone just chatting with them, but living together is such a different thing. .. curiouse...

[sysig]

Haven’t seen your slimy face in a while (Patreon)

Bonus original concept sketches from 2018 (left):

Tbh even I find some of these shapes kind of hard to read lol. Really showcases my style progression tho like woah - I was aiming at the time for a kind of shoujo-parody style anyway, but now I struggle with those kinds of shapes! I’m used to a much more cartoony, and darker, and smaller style haha

This was all me tho lol, he’s just a gangly greasy fucker

It’s uncanny right

I had to put in a good bit of interpretation and filling in the details for this one lol - something like a punk vampire aesthetic?? He’s too good for the MC anyway lol, but that’s by design

[laufire]

one of the many reasons I tend to be down on romantic happily ever afters is that... well, simply put, I'm a very unforgiving person lol. I think when someone crosses a certain line, be it something big-picture or just something callous and unkind directed towards *you*, there's a point where taking them back (over and over again) only makes you a sucker. so if the ending is a reconciliation after a wrong that I think any person should find irreparable, the result is that I will either despise one member of the pair, lose any respect I had for the other, or both xD

[puppys-rhythm-heaven]

i am being so fucking autistic about a video game i've only played an hour and a half of and have absorbed like 99% of my information about through osmosis from my bestie(s. it's complicated) and fanfiction. catastrophic levels of autism. i can't stress this in words i don't think y'all understand. or care honestly sdflkjfdskdfsjsfdkj-

[bmpmp3]

i was like. thinking about the software situation with the cryptonloids and i got curious if there was any progress on the non-miku NT banks yet so i went to listen to those vocals they use in that mobile game (if i remember correctly they use beta versions unreleased to the public?) and like. you know. despite how contentious miku nt herself is i think some of the betas for the others sound pretty good, len sounds fantastic and rin sounds about on par with her older banks (although i do miss a bit of her sharpness) and like. i may be killed with hammers for this but i was listening to the heat abnormal cover and i think i like the kaito nt beta sound more than his v3 like he sounds fantastic here. i dont dislike his v3 or anything but the nt bits ive heard has like some of the depth and richness i so sorely miss from his v1 while having the old-yamaha-keyboard-keyboard-key-spring sound that i do enjoy of his v3.... i do wish it had more of the v1 strength tho

[transmascaraa]

multiple characters headcannons!

how are they when you tell them you're tired and ask them to carry you?

characters: lyney, wanderer, gaming, neuvillette, wriothesley x gn!reader

author's note: FIRST TIME WRITING MORE CHARACTERS IN ONE WOOHOO 🙌 🎉 anyways i hope you guys like this one<3 i tried to include chars that everyone loves, and chars that i love myself and stuff so yeah i'll try and see if it works out(i'll continue doing these either way)

⑅ Lyney

-he's the type to look at you surprisingly. you??? asking HIM to carry you? he'd be flustered for a bit, and then try to act confident again.

-like "oh, of course, mon amour! come here!..."

-he's strong enough, but he would STILL be worried. he would overthink so so sooo much.

-what if he drops you? well, he won't. he's just an overthinker.

-and when he'd finally pick you up, bridal style because he's the most comfortable like that, he would start sweating.

-but of course, masking it all with some "confidence". so the two of you ended up in either one of these situations:

-one, it was quiet with him smiling at you half of the time. not being able to talk because he was so happy.

-two, he'd end up talking to you about some nonsense or his magic shows, not wanting it to be too awkward or too quiet for you.

-either way, thank him in the end. he'll be jumping over clouds because he managed to help you in some way.

-just keep praising him, he'll be all over you. he's a complete simp for you like that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

✯ Wanderer

-he's the tsundere. you'd ask him and he'd look at you with such a disgusted look as if you just told him you eat dirt and cement for breakfast. again, with his sassy attitude.

-"ME? to carry YOU? because you're "tired"? yeah. that won't work on me." turning his head away from you, fighting the urge to just surrender.

-but of course, his ego was too big. but not until you started showing clear signs that you were tired. he gave you a few glances, "side-eyes", before stopping and looking at you. looking at you as if he was waiting for something.

-you'd just say "nothing." which would make him even more angry. at that, he just rolled his eyes and said "oh, shut up." before taking you in his arms and continuing to walk with you in silence.

-if you mentioned a single thing about that EVER, you would basically be asking for punishment (whichever type of it lol).

-just say a little "thank you" after you're done and let him quietly mutter that "you're welcome".

-he was glad he got to be close to you like that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

✿ Gaming

-now HE would be VERY happy to help. you'd ask and in a single second he'd be picking you up. he just loves you that much.

-"i'm more than happy to do so, my love~!" smiling brightly at you.

-he couldn't be more happy, he was close to you, he was hold you in his arms, what more could he ask for? especially because you're tired, he would be so nice to you when you got home. he's a real gentleman when it comes to love.

-while he walked like that with you in his arms, the two of you would chit-chat and talk about random things, just making sure you're not bored. or maybe, if you preferred silence, he would stay quiet, whatever makes you happy<3

-after a bit of more walking, he would take care of you at home, letting you rest for a bit, and making your favorite food with your favorite drink.

-he just wanted you happy. to see you smile.

-and then, during dinner time, discussing some more random topics, or just him ranting about his next performance.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

๑ Neuvillette

-he would be so sweet. trust me. so sweet and gentle with you. you're tired? he's there to help. you want him to carry you? no problem. you'd ask him and he'd not slowly, smiling fainly at you, even blushing a bit.

-"let me help you." and he'd pick you up.

-finally, after he's got you in his arms, and he continues walking, it's going to be so peaceful. if you want to talk, sure, he will talk. but since you're with him, the silence couldn't be more peaceful.

-listening to the birds chirping in the background, or maybe even the townspeople talking about some things, it was peaceful nonetheless.

-it was very calm. and at some point, he would start humming some melody. compliment him. he'll blush but he'll be extremely thankful, and will definitely hum next time you take a walk around fontaine.

-and when you get home, he'd make you rest and give you some cuddles, hoping that you would "recharge" that way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

◉ Wriothesley

-he wouldn't make much of a reaction, and treat it like it's an everyday thing, but tease you occasionally, of course. as soon as you asked, he just said:

-"okay." and looked at you for a few seconds before taking you in his arms. you'd tell him "thank you" already then and there and he'd just nod and say "mhmm."

-but... for the rest of the walk, he'll be winking at you and giving you teasing smirks.

-oh how you wanted to punch him.

-and after getting home, when he puts you down, you'd say "thank you" and then give him a playful angry look.

-to which he would reply with yet ANOTHER teasing grin. "you're welcome."

-he would tease you A LOT. but still, don't worry, he'll still take good care of you.

-value his teasing. actually, you can hit him if you want to. it won't hurt him that much anyway, he has the muscles.

-but it'll be impossible to be mad at him for too long.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I ACTUALLY REALLY LIKE THIS.

it's pretty good tbh

TELL ME IF YOU WANT MORE AND YOU CAN ALSO SUGGEST CHARACTERS😋😋

edit1: STOPPPP Y'ALL THIS IS MY MOST FAMOUS PIECE OF WORK IT'S AT 395 NOTES RN😭😭🫶

edit2: bro it's at 1k💀

edit3: i love you guys sm ty all for 1.2k😭

[frogcroaks]

How I deal with shapes

@spadefish @kobothesmall So for shapes, the way I work with them is from studying how things break down individually, instead of following a broader ruleset for character design that you see a lot in tutorial posts (the triangle, square, circle theorem basically).

The way shapes work in humans is different from other animals (which also differ from each other), which is different from objects. The same shape can be used for different goals depending on what you're drawing. So there's no one size fits all, and especially in styles that have a bit more of realism going on, those shapes will behave differently than extremely cartoony styles.

Process wise, a lot of it ends up happening in my head than in the canvas, because I spent years dealing with this shape philosophy of "just bang your head for each thing you're drawing", which I understand is very tedious to some people, but I love studying individual things vs following tutorials because it teaches me 1. how that thing works in a context 2. gives me a new book to my visual library which I can pull from, which is often what happens! That, and a lot of it is just staring at references too. Still, I'll try to draw something up for this.

There are 2 ways to approach shape design. You either start with the shapes and then apply a concept to it, or you start with a concept and apply shapes to it. The former is much harder to do without practice (and also comes more in concept art which is rough, unfinished and meant to be done and redone dozens of times by design). So, I tend to do the latter: I start with a concept of what I want. This can be as simple as "I just want a character that's fat/standing" or more abstract like "I want a character that feels like a river/I want this to feel like an outburst".

Let's start with a concrete concept: I want a design that looks like a pacman frog, and just a standing pose that isn't too stiff.

I grab some pacman frog references, and sometimes if the pose is complex, I'll find references for that too. Pacman frogs are pretty pudgy, and their legs aren't that long compared to most frogs, even when unfolded, and their faces have a nice triangle-ish forehead with a nice shape for the mouth.

The result is that i use large shapes for most of the body. Curves contrast with sharper lines, giving the sense of something geometric but still organic. The line of action here helps me pose these shapes in a way that gives some movement to something as simple as standing (and you'll gain a lot of mileage from learning how to rotate shapes! this is how you're able to position them in different ways and create more dynamic poses).

For something more abstract, like a crouched pose meant to be angry, I take some references when i can and start doing something like this:

Note that these shapes seem weird because I'll have a naked fullbody wip below any clothed characters to have some anatomical guidance, but for actual final shapes and silhouette, what matters is the final elements, and that includes clothes! so i try to build shapes that emphasize this droopy, closed off feeling. This sketch isn't even that good really, there's plenty of errors, but I hope it gives an idea of whats going on.

I hope this weird rambly nonsense helped LOL

[sergle]

Every time YouTube nonsense happens I'm always like "I can't wait to see what Sergle says about this" because you're the only person I follow that talks about YouTube nonsense.

Please take this is an invitation for you to talk about the Watcher's apology video lol

I am a filthy youtube enjoyer so you can absolutely count on me and GODDDDDDDDDDD... I mean the apology is not NEARLY as funny as the blunder, so it hasn't kept my attention as much but like the obligatory upfront thing is that, like, it is good that they posted it, they apologized for being insensitive and whatever, they're not scraping their channel clean or going forward with their old plan to only post their shows on their own platform, and these are technically good and correct things, because they could have pretended not to notice all the negative feedback. So like, responding is good. BUT LIKE I HAVE QUESTIONS NOW... Because they took SO LONG to film and upload a video that basically is just "we fucked up, we're sorry, we're not gonna do that anymore", which doesn't exactly take a writer's room several days to cook, but I DIGRESS... They were quiet for long enough for everyone to LOOK REALLY CLOSE. After the initial reaction, people had time to do some pretty comprehensive cost breakdowns for their stuff, and for what they have to be pulling in from adsense, sponsored segments, patreon, merch, and touring Like, they'd need to be really mismanaging their finances, because they're doing very well for themselves, making good, stable money, and the vids they make are super duper advertiser friendly. SO... you take long enough without putting out a holder statement or a quick heel-turn apology or anything, it gives people more time to get comfortable with not liking you, and also to dig around and google things about you, or scrape up info/trivia about you to corroborate their new opinion of you. It gets personal, is what I mean. So pulling this move has still, at BEST, caused some permanent damage to their relationships with fans, in both directions. They all got a huge flood of negative feedback, and even a perfect, emotionally mature, non-entitled person would have a negative reaction to people being upset with them at such a high volume. But now they're gonna remember the things that people have said about them, and there's no way that at the very least, Steven isn't gonna feel spiteful about this. People TOTALLY unloaded on him (funny) (valid) about his evangelical christian conservative leaning tesla privileged out of touch boy gold flaked ice cream eating ways. He definitely is going to remember that ppl said they never liked him in the first place. As for Ryan and Shane, people didn't have any dirt on them, but they definitely still received a lot of angry messages from people, most of which will have been reasonable, but they're gonna remember the really really mean and intense ones. Anyway, they made a booboo dumb enough for jack to want to make a skit about it, so for that I'm very grateful, because I thought it was really really fucking funny

[weirdmageddon]

💿⚛️ davejade headcanons

sorry for leaving you guys waiting on this for like a week lol i kept being like “tomorrow for sure” but falling asleep but anyway here it is. i might add more to this if i think if anything but reblogs might not reflect the up to date source version so you can always find it here

most of these are pointing out stuff thats basically canon anyway but whatever lol. basically canon headcanons

dave tries to impress jade to get her attention because he likes her

this ones for you *misses hoop by 5 feet*

he doesnt mind jade’s inane riddles honestly. he isn’t perturbed by how she just knows things like rose is, because he doesnt think into it too far. he trusts her

he spends a lot of time indulging in her interests and showers her in his music and poetry

they draw things for each other a lot <3 jade has the pictionary modus and seems pretty good at drawing and of course dave sent her sbahj as furries in the mail. sending jpegs over the internet is BABY NONSENSE. real boys send their childhood friend/crush pictures they drew for them through the INTERNATIONAL POSTAL SYSTEM to an unspecified island in the middle of nowhere, pacific ocean that gets packages dropped by plane so the recipient can tangibly hold it and hang it in their room

actually i was going through the commentary and hussie addresses it as such:

“Also notice her SBaHJ furry poster, which was clearly a very thoughtful gift from Dave”

aww

jade would give dave a "cool" plushie of a tiger or something nd he keeps it on his desk . froot’s beautiful idea

he loves her plushie sensibilities. so much less unnerving than his bro’s phallic puppets. they're still soft but no cognitive dissonance this time about the softness coming from foam puppet ass hoorayyy

theyre still reading homestuck on act 4 but they understood them instantly

jade humors dave’s ironic cool facade because it makes dave feel more comfortable without feeling too exposed, but it’s because of this that he feels like he can open up to her because she isnt prying. (im still not over the smile here btw. only jade could make dave smile after a fucked evening where he spilled juice on his turntables and accidentally skewered an innocent crow with his sword and broke his window this mf is TYPING. also getting a bit of joy out of the fact that the only visible suit on his cards-themed bedcover in this panel is a heart)

but he knows that jade is not unaware of what he's hiding. couldnt even refute her lol

from the knight’s perspective, it’s “i’m not as [blank] as i appear. i want you know that about me if i know you well and trust you, or i DON’T want you to know that about me if i DON’T know you well. the reason is that i want to know that i can trust you to avoid turning my insecurity into a Whole Thing”

basically she allows dave to take initiative when HE feels comfortable and confident in sharing the things he’s self-conscious about. this really helps him be comfortable and form a strong bond with her

dave would wrap his arms around her to “ironically” imitate a pair of tangle buddy squiddles (while actually concealing genuine affection basically unbeknownst to himself) but he winds up looking just a little too into it for just an “ironic” bit yall……

jade is slower to realize her deeper feelings since she shows love to everyone (so long as theyre deserving of it!!!) it just hits her one day that she actually Likes him in a special way, while for dave it is more dynamic and gradual but very on the downlow, expressed in creative acts and services

once dave actually recognizes he’s really caught feelings for her down the line, dave and jade happily do the tangle buddies hug all the time. its like their handshake. its their weird couple thing

these two when together as a unit they do not give a shit about what other people think of them

this shit lol:

Creative Fucking Powerhouse the two of them

davejade ass song to me

jade is quite spacey and super appreciates dave’s level-headedness and steady pragmatism while at the same time not being a rigid stick in the mud about it. for example when they were acting as each others’ server players dave was advising her but it was appreciated by jade

sorry its just literally socionics duality LITERALLY THIS IS THEMMM (also i spent WAY too much time making these graphics and integrating texts from multiple sources please appreciate it)

fittingly with that, as ouroborista writes about the opposite space-time aspect dichotomy,

Space and Time are the fundamental Aspect pair. Their job is to make shit take place. To create novelty. Between them they span not only all of existence but also the inseparable twin approaches of any creative project. Space goes for breadth, for ideas, for expansive, holistic input, while Time goes for needlepoint focus and a rapid-turnover ability to pull through on the prompt. There’s a reason why these are the two Aspects necessary for any successful session of SBURB.

jade is literally always having a little giggle about him. dave is a funny guy. lame court jester ass boyfriend

he’d draw his post-ironic fursona and show it to her with the usual deadpan expression on his face, eyes obscured by his shades. but jade will look at it and when he sees her smile and laugh it makes it all worth it. his cheeks feel warm and he’ll smile slightly like “heh heh”. dave the type to smile like an idiot over anything jade does like his mouth keeps making a thin line and hes trying to fight it but . Jade

dave thought jade looked absolutely stunning in her 3 in the morning dress his mouth probably stupidly hung open the tiniest amount seeing her after swapping into it

of course she only wears it for what she considers "very special occasions"…..spending time with dave seemed to be a very special occasion :)

jade think dave looks sharp in his suits!!

imagine jade adjusting daves crooked bowtie and lapel and his palms start to sweat and he darts his eyes from behind his shades and chews the inside of his cheek she making him nervous bro 💯

jade is definitely the teaser and dave is the teased. still i dont think jade teases dave as much as john and rose which is why he feels more comfortable opening up to her about his shit. her teasings are much lighter and inconsequential

despite how funny and informal he is dave is a classy well-put-together romantic. he is responsible and harmonious in how he choses to present himself. remember when he got secondhand embarrassment from rose when she was drunk before her date with kanaya and he suggested to her and kanaya that the two reschedule? … he’d NEVER do something like that. sober. suit is ON. hair is neatly combed. he is right on time, not too early not too late, and his first words are “yo whats up”

dave has this designated driver energy about him

after dogtiering jade’s dog ears can perk and flatten, adding even more expressiveness

jade has so many hobbies and interests i think she’d get dave into horticulture somehow unironically

theyre both the kinda mf to ask “would you still love me if i were a worm”

dave’s hands are warm

jade’s skin can be cool to the touch in some places like the back of her arms or shoulders and dave places his hands there to warm them. or by rubbing them or something

idk just some associations space is cool and time is warm to me. the vaccuum of space is cold and time is associated with gears which are associated with generating heat and dave’s classical element is fire and jade’s is earth and her planet is initially covered in snow and daves is covered in lava idk…. just makes symbolic sense i guess but its also cute in its own right

dave would love going to the beach with jade on earth c cause the ocean is so boob i mean boob i mean boob i m,ean boob i mean SHIT . blue. blue

this Fucking animation bro

she infodumps about science and he sits his ass down to listen

jade does this (excuse the fact that the url is roselalonde)

[mr-jack-letterman]

AAAAAAND WERE BACK with more Subway to Stardew silliness NSNNDD.

Thank you to the folks over at @subwaytostardew for making this wonderful mod and letting me make silly art about it lol.

In any case time for some headcannon nonsense.

(click for better quality because Tumblr makes it crunchy)

If Stardew Valley were to have a box legendary I think it would be Cresselia. It's literally Lunar pokemon and represents the crescent moon so it being the patron legendary of Stardew Valley just makes a lot of sense to me. Also Cresselia is underrated NSNDN.

Maybe there would be a secret special encounter for Darkrai. (the other half of it and Cresselia's duo but is a mythical for some reason?)

Also the Lunar wing would be very neat item to have in-game ANSNDND.

If it were to exist within the mod I imagine the farmer would be like "oooo shiny feather. Maybe it's a pokemon feather? Emmet/Ingo would probably like it :D" so then they make it into a necklace, or maybe just give it to one of them outright without knowing what it is. So Emmet/Ingo sees it and just starts freaking the hell out cause their crush/friend just gave them a piece of a literal legendary pokemon meanwhile the farmer is just....clueless NSNDND.

Now onto some of the other characters.

As basically the resident nurse joy of Pelican Town I think Harvey would have some pokemon common in the medical field. Though, pokemon like Chansey and Audino don't really fit his whole "whiskey neat, coffee black, bed at three"/ref vibes so I thought Indeedee would be best NSNDNND.

I also decided to give some pokemon to the characters mentioned within my ask.

Willy is very fond of water types, clearly NSNS. Specifically fish pokemon like Lanturn, Seaking, Whiscash, Wishiwashi, or Dondozo. (Though his actual team probably has a good chunk of pokemon that are still water type just not fish lmao) The crowning jewel of his collection is a shiny Magikarp he fished up. Maybe one day it will evolve, but for now it just swims around the docks next to his house entertaining anyone that visits.

He also has a Bibarel. (which I imagine is the grown up version of that one Bidoof that snuck into Pelican Town) It acts more like an overgrown housecat than a battle ready pokemon but it is incredibly bulky so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯.

Morris also has a few pokemon of his own. Most of which he keeps at home. But his main two he's seen with is a Gimmighoul and a Gumshoos. (IDK he just has Gumshoos vibes to me NSNDNND) They run around Joja pickpocketing people's gold cause Morris is just a dick like that.

"It's Wizard time mother fucker, FIREBALL-"/ref

Wizard likes psychic types, but I like to think he also has a fondness for fairy types too. Also, most of em has at least one strong fire type move just so he has an excuse to yell "fireball" and blast something NSND. His Malamar is named Illithid (a wack squid monster guy from DnD lol)

Sandy likes rock types, given that she lives in a desert it's probably the only type of pokemon she sees on the daily lol. She also has a key stone on her earring. With how colorful a keystone is when compared to sand I think she would be the most likely to find one there. Idk exactly if she'd mega evolve an Aerodactyl or a Tyranitar, if any pokemon at all. But I think she'd carry it around regardless. It's pretty :]

Also she has a shiny Rockruff. I don't rly have an explanation for that one I think it just fits the vibe lol.

And now, shenanigans.

Emmet then proceeds to grab the child and just.... speed walk away HSBBDBDJJR.

That's all I have for now, I'll probably throw some other pokemon at the bachelorettes and other bachelors another time but this alone took a solid week due to finals 😭/lh

Time for me to go to bed lol, have a good one 👍

[starbylers]

Mike ‘rejecting but accepting’ Will cannot co-exist with Will getting a happy ending

Even when I try to genuinely picture a scenario in which we get an ‘I accept you’ ending to Byler (it’s not happening this is just a thought exercise lol) I just…can’t? It's impossible to do without sounding like someone who's never read or written a story in their life:

Mike says 'You'll always be my best friend but I'm straight and I love my girlfriend sorry' and then what? They just never talk about it again? Ignore the elephant in the room every time they're together? Mike can't do anything to help Will with this, other than distance himself to make it easier but it's practically confirmed they will be a team next season so that's not happening. Will is not a robot, he won't just stop loving Mike because Mike says he's straight. Will already believes Mike is straight and in love with El, and yet his feelings are strong as ever. They won't just disappear, it would take time and active effort.

So if this 'rejection' happens early in the season (giving Will actual time to feasibly move on), if his arc was really to 'get over Mike', is he just going to hang around the rest of the season feeling sad but trying to forget about it? So it's just another season of Will being in unnecessary emotional turmoil...and then one day he just kind of does forget about it and the storyline fizzles out? What even is that. Like try and picture how this would actually play out on screen, it's ridiculous to even consider.

The only solid place Will's acceptance story could go after confessing to Mike is coming out to his family (and hopefully the party) which we obviously all want for him and I hope they get a really beautiful scene, but the problem is the audience knows everyone will love Will no matter what (he might not know, but we do and we are the target audience here) so there's no stakes. The only real stakes in Will's coming out from a storytelling perspective is how Mike will react (it’s the only uncertain variable), and if we get this very early on in the season (giving Will time for a believable 'moving on' arc) his storyline would be incredibly anti-climactic, it would have peaked and have nowhere else to go. It's not like he's going to date someone else.

And if we don't get the 'rejection' early on, Will won't have time to feasibly get over it (especially since we already established that being rejected and moving on would not be an automatic process for someone as unconditionally in love as Will is with Mike), and he would inevitably end the season unhappy. But we know that's not happening so...

And no him getting over it during the time-skip is still not logical or good storytelling, it would be a cop-out and an unsatisfying plot device. Like Will confesses and is rejected by the boy he loves then it’s the next episode and he just doesn’t care anymore and the whole storyline is dropped? If it was an early season time-skip, then he’d have no real personal arc for the rest of (majority of) the season. If it was a mid-late season time skip, we’d still have him either pining or trying to move on (which is a painful and hard process for anyone) for the whole pre-skip, depending on when exactly the rejection occurs.

It's not that Bylers think Will couldn’t ever be happy without Mike but it's that the narrative as it's set up is not going to accomodate that whilst also adhering to basic storytelling principles (and without the writers letting a gay character constantly suffer with no pay off). He will either end up with Mike, spend the season hurting/pining/struggling again but by the end it just sort of fades into nothing (‘moving on’), OR they will drag his unrequited love to the final episodes guaranteeing his unhappy ending. Anything else would be nonsensical and unrealistic aka him just being fine and happy and completely over it right after he's rejected. Or them completely forgetting about the build up of this storyline with the excuse of a time jump, cutting short his personal arc and leaving the character with nowhere to go. These are literally the only options for the end of Will's story, and the only one that is happy and is objectively the better-written story is Byler.

[stxrmxtsu]

Hi sweety May I've popular fem reader x Matsuno brothers . Like some scenarios of their dating with fem reader.

yup yup!!

i’m so pissed, i had something ready and it didn’t fucking save i’m gonna-

anyway. this isn’t my proudest work due to me not knowing what its like to be popular but, uhh hope this is still to your liking!

tag(s): fem reader, popular!reader, fashionable reader,

—————————————————————————

osomatsu:

SHIIIIITTT SIGN HIM UP. your look, your outfits, your willingness to be his girlfriend-

no but seriously, osomatsu LOVES you so so much

i think he definitely overthinks about it though :(

like, he loves you and he wants you to be happy and all that stuff, but there’s still this thought of “why is she dating…me? of all people?” that lingers and clouds his mind. the days where he’s like that, you go out of your way to rid him of those feelings because you love him with all of your heart, popular or not. and your reassurance definitely helps him out! which he will always be grateful for.

otherwise, he shows you OFF. at every opportunity, he will always be like “yeah. look at her, that’s MY girlfriend”, “see that gorgeous girl over there? yeah. that’s my GIRLFRIEND”, etc.

sometimes you have to shut him up because, WE GET IT OSOMATSU but you love it (don’t lie)

ohhh but when he took you to meet his family….

left, right, center, he was RUBBING IT IN HIS BROTHERS FACES.

he had his arm wrapped around you and when he thought you weren’t looking, he made mocking faces at his brothers because LOOK AT WHAT HE SCORED GUYS!

karamatsu:

i think he’d be slightly intimidated. ‘course he’ll do his usual ‘sweet romancing’ karamatsu thing to woo you, but other than that, he’d be all nervous. i mean not as nervous as choromatsu, but…nervous.

when you two get together though, those nerves definitely subside and go away! he loves you with every fiber of his being! he definitely tries to make a good impression around your many friends and of course, they all approve! at first it was questionable but his antics and romantic gestures showed them that he means well!

one thing i think he ADORES though, are your outfits.

he tries to match your style but sometimes it doesn’t work in his favor lol

choromatsu:

nervous and slightly envious. but mostly nervous.

you know that one episode in s3 where he talks about people being ‘sparkly’? k, take that and apply it to here.

your ‘sparkle’ is something he wishes he could achieve but the difference with that is the fact that he’s actually AWARE that he wouldn’t 1. be you and 2. be WITH you.

but then you asked him out and told him you liked him.

great, now he’s just nervous, look what you did!

anyway, besides the silliness and nerves and all that, choromatsu ADORES you. every fiber of his being and everything he does is dedicated to you. he’s out of a job and basically lounges around all day, so that boy has his entire life revolved around you.

i mean sure, your outfits and the amount of friends you have aren’t something he’s used to being around or seeing, but he loves all of that for you! he’s your number one fan, after all!

ichimatsu:

ichi was terrified of you when you guys first met. he literally steered away from you and tried avoiding you at all costs.

the way you just…shined. it kinda freaked him out…

but i guess it was admirable in some kind of way for him because that’s something he just wishes he could be.

when you guys DO get together by SOME miracle, he’s still a tad bit scared but not as much as he was before!

his logic was literally: ‘if she loves me at my worst, then that means i have no reason to be scared of her! omg big brain’ (like common sense ichi, cmon now)

anyway, dating ichimatsu was easy but there are times where it’s a little hard.

see, take osomatsu’s insecurities and double it. and make it happen often.

ichimatsu KNOWS his place in the world and hates the way he is.

but, the light in his life (you), makes him forget about all of that nonsense and he will be eternally grateful for having you around. you’re like.. his balance. you know?

ichi loves you <3

jyushimatsu:

excited to be around you. then again, jyushimatsu’s excited to be around ANYONE.

he likes when you smile at your friends and have a good time, and your friends LOVE jyushi! they love how silly he is and how lively he can make things when you guys are out.

jyushi’s happy that you’re happy and popular or not, your happiness comes first!!

todomatsu:

a LEECH.

no i’m kidding.

but seriously, he soaks it UP when people notice that you now have a boyfriend (him) and they start talking to him.

like, HE FINALLY HAS FRIENDS-

speaking of friends, todomatsu filters out your friends list. what does that mean you may ask? well, first of all, he’s a neet. meaning he has time on his hands.

so initially, what he’ll do is sit comfortably somewhere, get some tea or some coffee, and go through your friends’ list to see if they’re fake or not and literally block and report them.

and you LET HIM.

you have full trust in totty so you guys know each other’s passwords and stuff, but…you just let him.

when you found out though, you questioned why and he literally went “i want what’s best for you” and gave you a sweet kiss. so there’s that.

also at first, he tried SO HARD to get your friends’ approval and such but you reassured him to just be himself and it paid off!

sometimes, he’ll feel bad because he feels like he’s just taking advantage of your popularity so he makes sure you feel extra loved when you guys have your days where it’s just you two at home and you don’t feel like going out.

—————————————————————————

and that’s that my friend! sorry it took so long to get this out but i hope it was worth the wait!

peace and love,

jarvis ❤️

[ianthe]

you’ve been on tumblr so long- what is it like to be a tumblr elder?

oh my god. so fun story, the only reason I had friends in college was because we were all posting in the tag for our college and then we decided we should all meet up and hang out and blog together and we all became basically inseparable (you can look at my #tumbirds tag for the nonsense lol). I also accidentally became a minor Tumblr celebrity for a little while and had strangers coming up to me telling me they followed me and I was just like ??¿¿?‽ and it was a wild time

Tumblr was such a great place for making friends and I don't know if I've just been away too long or I'm just Old Now but I've struggled to catch that same vibe in recent years

I have had a front row seat to many of the utterly absurd and iconic Tumblr dramas and single-purpose blogs and I have had my share of viral posts which is always fun. I think I have a tag for them, maybe #popular posts or something like that? idk.

it's always been an amazing place to connect and learn from people and share resources and forge ridiculous bonds with people and it seems like it still might be that way which is wonderful. im hoping to do a bit of a redesign soon to make it easier for people to find some of the resources I've pooled on here over the years (on desktop I have drop down menus with loads of great stuff, but that's not helpful to people on mobile!!!!)

I am generally heartened by the community that continues to be built here, even if it is no longer the end all be all center of my social world. I'm hoping I can still find a way to recapture some of that spirit, though.

[tamamatango]

“Holy shit they actually froggin did it”: A Keroro Gunso anime revival preliminary info and speculation post (late as hell edition)

Okay first of all,

AWAKEN

That’s right, vanished-into-the-void bastard Kirb here, I am an alive person still, though I’m certain a lot of stuff on this blog is horrifically outdated. Don’t get too used to my presence, I’m a whole ass adult with a 9-to-5 now and don’t really have the energy to put into consistently maintaining this account, at least not to the degree that I used to (took me well over a whole ass MONTH just to write this post). However, I’ve returned for a special occasion, as basically anyone still in this fandom is already aware considering it’s been forever now:

We are so fucking back

It took thirteen years and counting, but here we are, a brand new Keroro anime project is in the works—no “the short anime of all time” Flash series here, this is the real deal, straight out of 2004–2011, and goddamn is it beautiful. I might’ve been off the mark when I called it for the 15th anniversary, but it’s now the 20th, five years later, and the madmen did what was once thought impossible by many.

So let’s break down what the hell is actually going on here, because when this got revealed last month, Keroro fans on all sides of the globe basically started collectively running around like headless chickens. I’m gonna divide this aggregation post into the following sections:

Where did this even come from

Clearing up misconceptions

Okay so like what is “““Project”””

Collection of statements from official accounts, staff and cast, etc.

The Localization Question (TM)

Miscellaneous thoughts that don’t really fit anywhere else

I was originally going to make this a living document of sorts but some small stuff has already happened since I started drafting this the day after the reveal happened, so this should be it for the time being. It’s a hefty enough post as is. I am just a master procrastinator :V

That takes care of all the goofy intro nonsense, now for the parts you actually want to read, starting underneath the cut!

Section 1: The Signs Were There

As previously stated, 2024 is the 20th anniversary of the Keroro anime, along with the 25th anniversary of the manga’s serialization but apprently even they don’t care about that since they’ve made no fanfare around it whatsoever, unlike the joint 15th & 20th anniversary back in 2019. Maybe they will as we get closer to the manga anniversary in November, but for now-obvious reasons the anime has been overshadowing the manga side by a lot.

If you’ve been monitoring the Keroro PR account on Twitter (you bet your ass I’m still calling it that) you’ll have noticed an increasing output of Stuff over the last year or two, even compared to the prior anniversary. These include but are not limited to:

In 2021, the series opened an official YouTube Channel, where they’ve been doing reruns of the anime (region locked to Japan), PR podcasts, etc. It’s also where the revival announcement premiered on April 1 at midnight JST.

In 2023, the series opened an official Fan Club with a paid membership. Originally it was a temporary project meant to last for only the two anniversary years (2023 for the pilot oneshot’s anniversary, and 2024 for the anime/manga), but was ultimately extended indefinitely due to “good reception” (my guess is it was always planned to be more than two years but they didn’t want to make it too easy to guess as early as last year that the anime was returning lol). They have a merch store, giveaways, and some kind of social component. I don’t know much about it otherwise because it’s a paid membership that I don’t have access to.

The series has had an overall increase in merchandise and collabs since 2022 or so. This has pretty much always been the case, but there was a bit of a lull between the Flash series ending and the ramp-up period to this (I’d start at 2021 when the YouTube channel opened). Save for the 15th/20th stuff in 2019, for which the major project was Keroro UC, a spinoff manga/plamo line that just…never released all the models and has never been brought up again. Guess it didn’t do very well :V

A number of international releases/rereleases happened as well, but I’ll get into that a little bit more in its dedicated section. For now let’s just say that the anime being finally licensed and put up on streaming in North America may indicate the new series will be English translated in some capacity. It’s also made a resurgence in Korea, its biggest market outside Japan, where it’s had new exhibitions and collab cafes, a redub (that only got through 2 seasons I think), and even a new mobile game.

And finally, a week or so before the announcement, a new Twitter account was created specifically for the anime side of the brand. I think this was really the big tip-off, as Keroro PR has been the hub for all things related to the franchise for the last nearly 15 years, even when the original anime itself was still running during Twitter’s infancy. Keroro PR has posted everything for every other anime anniversary. The fact that now all of a sudden they had to sector off the anime stuff into its own account made it clear something bigger was going on. (Accordingly, the Keroro Anime account has labeled Keroro PR the “original work” account, AKA the manga side of things.)

Essentially I think they’ve been planning this to some degree since as long ago as 2021, the first time the president of Bandai Namco Pictures (animation studio comprised of Sunrise staff that took over the Keroro IP in 2015 and are now producing the new anime) openly acknowledged the possibility. I’ll just link my own tweet with the translation of his statement here. This was right around the opening of the YouTube channel, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

tl;dr Momentum for the anime component of the franchise has been building for the past couple of years pointing toward a new anime around the 20th anniversary, so I wouldn’t say this comes off as a huge surprise, though I was expecting something smaller scale than what we might be getting (more on that in the “what is this” section).

Section 2: No It’s Not April Fools, Guys, Plus Other Clarifications

With the announcement spreading across the internet, I’ve seen a few points of confusion going around that I’d like to clear up before I go any further.

As I’ve made clear in the section title, yes the new anime was revealed on April 1, no this is not a prank. A lot of Japanese companies do post April Fools pranks, but keep in mind April also marks the start of the new fiscal year in Japan, so many legitimate announcements are made as well. Plus, the original anime’s exact anniversary was on April 3, just a couple of days after the announcement.

I’ve seen a lot of people call this a new series, season, etc., but officially, the only term used to describe this so far is “new anime project”. That could mean literally anything, from TV series to movie to ONA and so on. I am leaning closer to a certain interpretation, which is what the entire next section is for, but for the time being, calling it anything other than “new anime” is technically not concrete info.

There seems to be a little bit of confusion on what studio is working on this, but in short: it's Bandai Namco Pictures (BN Pictures or BNP for short). As previously mentioned, this is the studio that inherited the Keroro IP when it spun off from Sunrise in 2015. Sunrise, the anime's original studio, is now a brand name for the larger anime management company Bandai Namco Filmworks. Although they've held the IP for almost a decade, this is the first time they've really gotten to do anything with it besides merchandise licensing and some anti-piracy commercial from a few years ago that they’ve ironically scrubbed from the internet now. If you've seen the name Studio BIND (Mushoku Tensei, Onimai) floating around, they're assisting with the production but are not the primary animation studio. Of course this is all assuming this setup continues on to the final project and not just for the PV, but I see no reason to assume otherwise at the moment. It would be rather unusual for BNP to outsource anything if it was solely for a 30 second trailer.

I think that does it for the main points of contention I wanted to address for now, so moving on to the thing we all really want to know…

Section 3: Okay But What Is It Actually???

Well, as I said in the previous section—we don't know, lol. At least not officially. But if we put our thinking caps on, we can make a few deductions:

The anime project will be broadcast on TV. In other words, it won't be an ONA (original net animation). This is determined based on the fact that TV Tokyo, the network the original anime aired on, is on the production committee. For those who don't know, a production committee for an anime is the collection of parties/companies who contribute to the production and funding of the anime. For comparison, the Keroro Flash Series, which aired only on the TV channel Animax to accompany a dedicated timeslot for the original anime reruns, did not have TV Tokyo in its committee. So, it will likely air on TV Tokyo once again.

It's (probably) not a movie. This is going to be more evidenced by point 3 than anything, but BNP has been pretty clear about when something is a movie specifically in the past, such as when Kaiketsu Zorori had various feature films in the 2010s before getting an actual TV anime revival in 2020. Still, we can't be 100% sure until someone directly says otherwise.

It's going to be more than a one-off. I will post the statement in full in the next section, but the Keroro PR account uses specific wording (“resumption,” “new start,” etc.) that sounds very much like they’re making a longer term commitment, so this is straight from the horse’s mouth, essentially.

The series will be a continuation of the 2004-2011 series rather than a reboot. This one’s probably my flimsiest prediction as the PR statements sort of obfuscate whether it’s one or the other, but the character bios section on the new anime portal site gives away a big hint: the Garuru Platoon, Pururu included, is there. This means that we can reason that, at minimum, all or part of Season 3 has already occurred. The character bios themselves also summarize things that weren’t revealed until a little while into the show, such as how Momoka and Tamama met. That all said, the Garuru Platoon members do not have bios, so I suppose they want to keep what’s being done with them a bit of a secret; perhaps they intend to reintroduce them with some kind of dramatic arc again. Either way, if the series does retread/retell some old material, it probably won’t be the bulk of the story. This makes sense to me, as it’s not like the show has been so hard to find in the last decade that a reboot is necessary to get a modern audience on board—it reruns constantly on kids’ TV channels like the Japanese version of Cartoon Network, is available in full on multiple streaming platforms (movies included), and is now on its second rebroadcast of the whole series episode by episode on the YouTube Channel. Unless you’re a literal toddler, if you’re interested in the series, you’ve probably watched at least some of it already.

In conclusion, based on the above (admittedly sparse) evidence, I am inclined to believe the new anime project is a TV series that will air on TV Tokyo as the 2004 anime did and will be a continuation rather than a reboot; however, there is no way to determine episode length, episode count, etc. at this time. It could be a cour (for those who don't know anime, "cour" is your average 12-episode season), it could be consecutive cours, it could be split cour (in other words, goes on break for a season before returning), it could even be a year-round anime if they really wanna go all the way with it. Granted, I hesitate to believe that they would do the latter simply due to the nature of anime production these days, and as far as I know, BNP has not done a single year-round airing since its founding. Even the aforementioned Kaiketsu Zorori revival was a two cour (24-25 eps) series each year from 2020-2022. My guess is we're looking at something similar here, but Keroro is a pretty big deal, so could they make an exception? Maybe, but this setup would already lead to more episodes than the vast majority of anime these days, so it would still be plenty enough to be happy with.

Considering all this and the list of numerous hints that we were potentially getting a new anime as far back as three years ago as bulleted in Section 1, you might question what made me doubt that it could be a series in the first place. Well, besides just the series being so old and it being so long since the anime ended that it felt a little like wishful thinking, at least three members of the cast said that a new series was not something they were specifically looking to do...I think, anyway. Let me explain.

Last year, on December 9, a Keroro birthday event with Kumiko Watanabe (Keroro), Etsuko Kozakura (Tamama), and Takeshi Kusao (Dororo) was hosted in person and livestreamed on TwitCast for fans that paid for a ticket. There were two timeslots for the in person event, and only the evening show was streamed, with the afternoon one being in person only. Now that I have adult money, and being the impulse driven gremlin that I am, I paid for the virtual ticket. Most of it was just cute little segments like the three cast members doing live commentary on some of the birthday episodes, discussing the results of a “favorite lines from their characters” poll hosted on Twitter a few weeks before the event, and a brief visit from Jashin-chan of Jashin-chan Dropkick/Dropkick on My Devil, a series that Keroro recently collabed with for a series of merchandise. Unfortunately the event wasn't archived publicly and they specifically asked to not upload materials to social media, and I'd like to respect that request mostly out of consideration for the cast, so you will just have to take my word for it :P (besides those who were watching me talk about it in real time on discord).

The reason I'm going on this tangent is because, at the end of the stream, a special prerecorded video featuring the three cast members was shown exclusively for virtual attendees. In it they essentially explained that they still greatly enjoy the characters/series and would love to partake in more events and projects, but "not necessarily a new series." I promise you I listened to this clip over and over the entire time it was available and that's what I heard. Now look, the room they recorded this in was echo-y, and my Japanese is pretty decent (enough for my N2 anyways, yeah I did that while I was away from here clap clap) but listening comprehension is my weaker area, so maybe I just take a massive L here. When I started writing this post there was a sentence here guessing about whether they were just being cheeky or didn’t know yet, but an interview came out last month that gave what’s all but a conclusive answer to that. More on it in the next section but tl;dr, they likely did not know it was happening at all. Well, at least they got to be as surprised as we were :V

Anyways now that the thing has been revealed none of the last two paragraphs even matter, so I just prattled on for no reason besides to admit my own shame. Next bit.

Section 4: SAUCE PLOX??? (Current testimonies from relevant people/entities)

Naturally, when the trailer dropped, we got a pretty decent handful of comments from whatever staff and cast are on social media. Most of these are just people going “yay we’re back hooray!” (paraphrased) but the Keroro PR account statements are actually kinda sorta hints? So I’ll start out with those. There’s two tweets that I want to highlight here:

First is from April 1 (JST), the day of the reveal. In this tweet the account wishes everyone well for the new school/fiscal year, but the important part is the last sentence, This can be translated any number of ways (thanks to yoroshiku onegaishimasu and its 50 potential meanings, every Japanese translator’s worst nightmare), but essentially it’s something along the lines of “we hope you’ll support the restart/resumption of the Keroro anime for a long time to come.”

The keywords here are obvious: 再始動 (saishidou) meaning either restart or resumption. I know you’re probably thinking those are two very different things, but the nuance here is that it’s more of a restart in production than restart of the continuity. For the latter, I think it’s more common to see リメイク, which is just the English word “remake” in katakana. Worth noting that the Flash anime used none of these words in its marketing, but it did use language such as “brand new invasion plan,” “rebirth of Keroro,” and so on…in addition to, you know, having a completely different artstyle and a title change to just “Keroro”, which this clearly does not (the artstyle is relatively faithful to the old one and the project is under the original Keroro Gunso name).

The other big word is 末永く(suenagaku), which…also doesn’t have one exact translation, but implies somewhere between years or even an indefinite period of time. I didn’t want to say a specific unit of time in my translation of the statement because well, we can’t really be sure of anything here, but either way, they’re signaling that they’re most likely in it for the long haul.

Then there’s the tweet from the PR account commemorating the actual anniversary of the original anime (April 3). This one uses 新しいスタート, “new start”—no real multiple definition shenanigans here, this is about as literal and straightforward as you can get. In terms of the reboot or not question, this could lean either way, but it definitely adds to theory that it is a series of some sort.

Okay, that’s all for the individual tweets I’m gonna totally overanalyze, otherwise I’d be stuck here for even longer than I already have been. Here’s a quick list of involved staff who tweeted about the reveal:

Unsurprisingly, Kumiko Watanabe (Keroro) posted that day, reiterating that it is real and saying “believe usssss!” (As a reminder, half the internet was convinced it was April Fools for like a whole week)

Adding to the cast comments, Etsuko Kozakura (Tamama) says, “Whoo-hoo! Can’t wait for more news! Keroro Gunso is still the greatest!!”

Jouji Nakata (Giroro) didn’t make a specific comment about the trailer, but has been retweeting the other official accounts and such and replying about it, so he has acknowledged it otherwise. As a substitute, here’s a picture of him visiting the Keroro Exhbition in Ikebukuro a day early.

Here’s an interesting one—Haruna Ikezawa (Momoka) said about the trailer, “Really?! Is this real?!?!?!” While no cast members outside of the Keroro Platoon were officially revealed to be reprising their roles, I’m assuming they’re going to try their best to reassemble as much of the cast as of season 7 as possible—besides Keiji Fujiwara (Paul/Narrator), who sadly passed away in 2020—so I kind of figured Ikezawa would know about this, but maybe not…? Well, considering that the main five were completely blindsided by this to the point where they weren’t even sure this was a real thing until they were in the middle of recording it (as I said previously, more on that later), I suppose the other cast members were just. Not told. I don’t really doubt Ikezawa would return (she even stated it could happen someday all the way back when the then-final season ended in 2011 and did come back for Flash)…but unless they were like really worried about leaks why even keep them in the dark to learn with the rest of the public, idk man :V (so much for not overanalyzing tweets huh)

On to production staff now, here’s the tweet from Satoshi Koike, animation director of the latter third of the original and also the reveal trailer, indicating that he’s most likely back for the new project. It’s just a simple “Welcome back! (de arimasu)” but the images he used were drawn back in 2019 to commemorate the start of the Reiwa era, spoofing the original lyrics of the first opening. The reveal trailer tweet itself from the Keroro Anime account does this too (“Starting today, the Reiwa era shall be known as the Keroro era!”).

New to the staff is Jouji Furuta (yes we have two Joujis now har har), who did the storyboards and direction for the trailer. He’s relatively new to the scene as a whole, with his most well known project being Shaman King Flowers. Although he never worked on the series before, he did a pretty good job emulating the original, and based on the last line of the tweet, it seems like he will be staying on for the full project as well.

And now for a kind of weird section where I talk about the few related accounts that the Keroro anime twitter is following but haven’t made any kind of verbal acknowledgement yet.

First and foremost is Mine Yoshizaki—you know, the guy who created the fucking series, whose name is on the copyright string and whose explicit permission they had to get to do another anime in the first place? Yeah so it’s been over a month since the reveal now and there has been zero acknowledgement from him. I do know his personal social media account has been inactive for quite a few years now (I feel like the anime account is only even following it for symbolic reasons), but he had multiple other opportunities to say something at this point. He did contribute some signed artwork to the anime-focused exhibition that just ended but nowhere in it does he directly mention the new adaptation, and so far he hasn’t commented on it in Shonen Ace (maybe in the next volume, assuming that’s soonish). I have my theories about his relationship to the anime, especially now that the Kemono Friends fiasco has occurred, but that’s all a story for another day or never. I’m sure he’ll contribute something later, but even so it’s just really bizarre to have nothing to say about your biggest creation’s first new adaptation in over a decade. Oh well.

Character designer Fumitoshi Oizaki, who has been around since the beginning if I remember correctly, has been retweeting things, but no official comment just yet. (He discretely left a message at the expo apparently, but didn’t post it online, so no idea if it mentions the new anime.) He isn’t credited on the trailer, but considering he’s still been pretty involved with the franchise’s promotion over the last few years, I would be very surprised if he wasn’t returning.

Last but certainly not least is Junichi Sato, the chief director for the original anime for the first two seasons, arguably its most well-known and critically praised era. He’s also a very notable director in his own right, having headed other famous series like early Sailor Moon and Ojamajo Doremi. Sato didn’t direct the original anime for the majority of its runtime (though he did direct the first four movies), but he still directs and storyboards on projects to this day, including for other franchises’ major anniversaries (namely Doremi and Precure). Though not certain, I think it’s very possible that he returns for this in some capacity, if not as director than perhaps for storyboarding or general advising.

To close out the testimony section, I’m going to share here the translation I did of the aforementioned interview with Kumiko Watanabe in last month’s issue of Newtype (anime-centric magazine published by Kadokawa). I won’t re-summarize it here since it’s not particularly long, but the main takeaways from this in terms of hints as to what we can expect are that a) the cast was surprised by this and potentially didn’t even know back in December when they last discussed the possibility of working on Keroro again, and b) as I previously speculated, this is going to be a long term enough project that at least Watanabe feels the need to physically prepare for it lol. And thankfully, it seems they’re all excited to go back to the series. I spent a long time thinking they might not be up to it again since it’s been so long and they’re much later in their lives/careers (Nakata just turned 70 oh man) but I’m glad I was wrong! Though I don’t expect this to be another 300 episode commitment anyway; in spite of the PR comments I don’t think we’re going for that long with the nature of anime production these days lmao.

And now for a topic which I think many of you are concerned about…

Section 5: “But what if my 日本語 is not 上手???” (The Localization Question)

If you did not get the joke in the above headline without looking it up, it’s probably safe to assume that if you want to watch this Thing, you will need it in a language other than Japanese (and even if you did get the joke you will know if you are truly 日本語上手 when people stop saying 日本語上手 to you). I’m going to focus on English for this post since that’s the primary language of the audience here, though I would be very shocked if there isn’t at minimum a Korean translation—dub more likely than sub imo, since the most famous version of the show there had different names for the characters and was changed to be set in Korea, and the series is HUGE there to the point where it almost rivals the Japanese market.

So, English. Well, if it were a few years ago (say, if this came during the 15th anniversary like I was originally coping over), I would be markedly less optimistic about getting any official translation at all. At that time, the dub was explicitly dead and the only English sub had been delisted for a few years, and even that was only available in a select few countries in Continental Europe on a pretty obscure streaming service called Viewster for like a year or two before getting pulled. It’s no surprise that this particular sub eventually became more well known as the subs on the torrents compiled by ColdFusion (whoever that was, I’m still not sure myself). That was until…

…the magical year of 2021, when our heroes at Discotek licensed the ENTIRE SERIES (minus the movies) for an official English release using Viewster’s existing translations! That’s right, we got all of it. And not only that, the whole series was also added to Crunchyroll, though only the sub; Discotek had the Funimation dub but it seems it did not get ported to Crunchyroll when the merger happened this year. It does seem that Crunchy has still not made the series available outside of the US and Canada, which is a shame, but man is it still surreal to have the entire series legally available both digitally and physically after nearly two decades of scattered fansubs and hardly accessible official releases. Surely this was a huge win for Discotek, right?

Weeeeeell…no. Of course they weren’t able to say it out loud, but it’s been extremely heavily implied that unfortunately the BluRay/DVD releases flopped for them, and they did say they definitely won’t be getting the movies or the Flash series. They also stopped releasing the discs on a one season a year basis and started bundling them together, with seasons 5–7 coming out all at once later this year, so they’re clearly trying to just get it off their plates. To be honest, this was pretty predictable because…it’s been on Crunchyroll since before the discs even came out. Look, physical media is super cool and all, but who in this economy is going to pay $40-60 per box for a handful of seasons at most when they can get the whole damn thing on their phone for like $8 a month. Crunchyroll isn’t necessarily a disc killer; their release of Digimon Adventure, for example, still seemingly did well despite that series being available on Crunchyroll two years prior, but in addition to Digimon being more popular in the west, it’s one $60 purchase for the whole series versus having to spend like over $200 for 358 episodes. I applaud them for rolling the dice and trying to get this behemoth of a release out there, but I’m not surprised about the lack of financial returns.

However, since Crunchyroll now has set a precedent of having the original series available on their platform, we just might get the new series available on there as well—if not as a simulsub, then at least dropped in batches later on. I’m not 100% confident in this, particularly because technically Discotek still holds the license, but my guess based on the way they’ve talked about the series is that they’re pretty open to someone else taking it off their hands when they’re done releasing the original series (and the translations weren’t originally theirs to begin with anyways, they purchased them and did some touch-ups to the existing translation with added typesetting). As far as simulsubs go, the kids’ shows that get simulsubbed tend to be from Toei, with whom Crunchyroll has a known partnership. But if it is split into cours rather than being a year-round anime, I think the chances of a simulsub go up. Whatever the case may be, it’s for sure in a better position to get an official subtitled release than it ever was before. I’m certainly praying this happens because I believe most of the people capable of fansubbing (with good translation anyway) have gradually moved away from the fandom over the last decade for various reasons—myself included, though mostly I just quit fansubbing/scanlation in general for Personal Reasons(TM). Fingers crossed, everyone.

So subs remain as a not-guaranteed-but- definitely-not-low possibility. But what about a dub? If you recall, Keroro has had a very rocky history in 3D with English dubs, with the American dub being in licensing hell for years before finally falling into Funimation’s lap and subsequently failing to take off despite remaining a beloved cult classic to Some Fans (I am not as high on it, but longtime Kirb followers probably know that by now), and the only other English dub is relegated to the network Animax in Hong Kong + Southeast Asia with no official home release, leaving all of it besides parts of seasons 3 and 4 as lost media (and the voice acting sucked ass but at least the script was accurate). But we’re not in the mid 2000s to early 2010s anymore; this is the screamin’ ’20s, baby! So much anime is getting dubbed now, sometimes at almost the same time as the Japanese release! There must be a chance, right?!

Eeeehhhhhh I wouldn’t bet on it. Even the Toei kids’ shows Crunchyroll started simulsubbing usually don’t get dubs (Digimon is an exception, and the reboot’s dub took YEARS to come out). Anime dubs, as far as I’m aware, are not cheap to produce (though it’d be great if more of what the companies are pocketing went to the actors’ wages >_>), and if the show does have the potential to become somewhat of a long runner, I think they’ll need to see more interest around the IP to fund one, and both Funimation and now Discotek’s releases have proved that the audience for it isn’t always there. I also speculate they’d be doing a lot of recasting; the casting process is not as smooth and (I believe) more expensive than it is in Japan, and a lot of the original cast are not working as often in the field anymore and/or have been involved with some pretty serious controversies—I’m sure those in the know are thinking of a specific drawn-out conflict but I’m pretty sure it’s more than just About Him at this point. So let’s just say that while some of the cast still remembers the show fondly, I think trying to get them all in the same project again would potentially open some cans of worms better off left closed. It’s not 100% impossible it gets dubbed, you never know what the industry can manage to make work these days, but I’d wager it’s like 90% not happening. Just a hunch. If anyone more knowledgable than me on anime localization (this goes for both the dub and sub stuff) would like to argue me with better explanations than I have I’d very much be glad to hear it.

Section 6: The Stuff That Doesn’t Fit Elsewhere + Final Thoughts

There’s not going to be any real organization to this section. Here’s just some bullets of miscellaneous stream of consciousness thoughts related to whatever:

The character bios page on the site linked in section 3 has some WEIRD romanization choices. I don’t expect these to reflect on any official localization because chances are they’ll go with what Viewster used, which is largely what the fandom is used to besides the Kululu/Kururu split. It is indeed Kululu here and Kululu has been the de facto official spelling for a very very long time now but I still have a personal preference for Kururu because “Kululu” loses the onomatopoeia joke and I’m a rebel. But like. “Tololo”? Since when has Tororo ever been called that in any media? And worst of all, “Pole”? POLE?? That’s literally never been a thing what glossary did they pull these from.

Also worth noting, Alisa and the Narrator had merchandise sold at the Keroro expo (will talk about that next btw) despite not being on the characters page. This isn’t a confirmation of anything but I would be very surprised if Alisa doesn’t return at some point since she was pretty prominent later in the show and Yoshizaki seems to have a particular fondness for her, and the Narrator will obviously be there with a recast, though jury’s out on if his little ’sona guy will show up too. It won’t be the same without Fujiwara :(

I do want to touch upon the “Keroro expo”, officially known as the “Keroro Gunso Super Gerogero Museum” (expo is a fine shorthand because the Japanese word can mean exhibition also), since I’ve mentioned it a couple times throughout this write-up. This was an event that was held in Ikebukuro just recently from April 27–May 12 that was basically a walkthrough experience recreating settings from the anime, having artwork and stuff sprinkled in between (all reused, no new concept art or anything sadly). The main gimmick was that the venue had an exclusive app that let you take AR pictures with models of the Keroro Platoon. It also had an AI chatbot feature where you could talk to each member of the platoon, and not too many posted pictures of this feature but apparently the chatbots were uhhhhhh weird. I have no idea how much of it is generative from other LLMs, and I’m assuming they programmed it at least partially with their own original input/databases (which is the only way to make generative AI even close to ethical), but from the few screenshots I’ve seen their speech was just a little bit awkward and some of the stuff they said was really bizarre. At one point users started to turn it into an otome game and successfully romanced the frogs, which I’m assuming is a little bit out of the bounds of what they were expecting from this experiment. If they do release that app publicly at some point—they labeled the version at the expo to be a “test version,” so maybe—I sincerely hope they at least fine tune it because Good Lord. Finally and maybe most importantly, there were new voice lines recorded for the exhibit to give it an audio-drama type simple story, but unfortunately it was probably not archived because video recording was not allowed inside the venue. The platoon all had new voice lines along with Fuyuki and Natsumi, reportedly still played by Houko Kuwashima and Chiwa Saito respectively, so most likely they will return to reprise the roles for the new anime, though I don’t think those two were much in question. That’s really like the only important part of this for the purposes of this post I’m not sure why I mentioned anything else here actually. AI chatbot Dororo wants you to know he enjoys tickles from Giroro and Tamama. Yeah this thing’s a little fucked

I didn’t want to get too deep into this in section 3 because it’s not really a production related question, but…are Shin Keroro and related new characters gonna be in this or not? For what it’s worth the site seems to count the Flash series as part of the anniversary celebration, and screenshots with Shin in them are there even if he is completely absent from the character page. Flash was a total reboot so I don’t think it will be that exact iteration of the character if he is in the new anime, but there must be some way to work his stuff into the existing anime canon even with its many differences from the manga. Honestly I think the main obstacle to him appearing is just that the guy is not very popular lol. He’s hardly in the manga anymore and Tomosu and Myou are in it even less. I’m not sure if it was just franchise fatigue following the end of the anime but the reception to Shin was very meh across the board (at least among longtime fans, kids might’ve liked him I think. Which makes sense). So I could totally see them skipping him entirely. There’s still a lot of post-anime manga-only stories without his involvement at all, some that included him but he could easily be changed to some other character, and for the stories that revolved around him, well, the Flash anime got to a decent amount of them. This could really go either way but for now I’m going to lean toward him not being included. If he’s put in I think it will not be until the “second season” (whatever the definition of that ends up being) so we can be eased back in to the existing cast first before shaking things up significantly.

I like the new artstyle, assuming it carries over from the trailer to the final project. It looks like they hit a happy medium between the early and late artstyles of the original anime. This is the most obvious with the human cast who haven’t received new official artwork by Koike and/or Oizaki in a looooong time, and they look much better than the last time we saw them in season 7 where everyone got weirdly lanky for some reason.

Okay FINALLY I’m done here for now I think. At the time of writing we’re pretty much just in a “wait and see” phase with no other real concrete info around that I haven’t touched upon in this post. Trust me, I’ve tried digging for more, but I couldn’t find anything really interesting staff-wise and very few of the staff credited in the trailer are even on social media (sometimes staff can be a bit loose-lipped so it’s possible to get hints there). I’ve also checked every nook and cranny of the official sites of both animation studios and the companies on the production committee and turned up with nothing of note. I’m hoping we get some more info at least sometime between now and autumn.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end (or speedscrolling here, don’t worry I won’t be disappointed lol). I hope you found it informative even though I probably spent way too much time yapping about dumb shit. It took me entirely too long to write this post, but I don’t have as much time as I did as a teenager and it’s been a good few years since I’ve done a really deep dive into Keroro stuff. Needless to say, I’m beyond excited for this project and can’t wait to see how the last seven years of me huffing unhealthy amounts of copium pays off. I’ve had like a month and a half to sit on it now and it honestly still doesn’t feel real!

I will most likely return to report when we get some amount of substantial info—hopefully with way fewer words lmao. Until next time! Ge-gero~

[robotsandjunk]

how do each of the decepticons prefer to give and/or receive aftercare? it's ok if u don't do all of them, im really thinking about soundwave, shockwave and megatron or whomever other favs urs are! knowing that some of them are into more rougher sex, would that translate into aftercare being brief? or would they prefer to be held and cleaned, maybe a shower together? Etc. even with shockwave going solo with his machines, does he take care of himself after like his partners might or does he just collapse and nap lol

I’m just going to do Soundwave, Shockwave and Megatron since they’re the one I have the most practice writing, but maybe in the future I’ll give some other cons some love

Soundwave treats aftercare like a mission in some ways when he’s giving, he’ll have everything ready to go be it towels, energon, or extra blankets before he even thinks about touching his partner. His basic routine before he modifies it to suit his partner is to get them set up with a snack/drink and some blankets and let them settle down whilst he runs an oil bath, once the bath is run he’ll get in with them and go over how the scene went. When he doms it’s definitely in a service top way, so he treats aftercare as an extension of those responsibilities. On the flip side he can be a bit weird about receiving aftercare, his need to be of service run even deeper when he subs so often times if it’s a rough session or even if something was to go wrong he’d see it as part of his ‘duties’ to kinda just deal with it. He works best with a no nonsense partner who can tell when he’s just saying he’s fine. Soundwave is easily overstimulated so the best aftercare for him is to have what he needs in reach and his partner passing them to him as needed.

Shockwave is very similar in how he gives and receives aftercare in that he makes sure everything is in working order, gets a ‘report’ on how his experiment went and then sends his partner on their way. He provides things to eat and a place to clean up but aside from that he’s relatively hands off, unless his subject asks in which case he’s willing to change his usual post experiment debriefing (as he would call it) to suit his subjects needs, but his partner would need to be able to take some initiative. In receiving he’s likely to just state plainly what he wants his partner to do, if he’s going solo he ideally wants to be able to clean up and make sure he’s not done any damage but most of the time he’ll end up taking a quick nap. (He probably has a system that alerts Megatron or Soundwave if he’s still sleeping after a certain amount of time)

Megatron is very direct when it comes to aftercare, he’ll do the basics of cleaning his partner up and making sure they’re cared for appropriately. He’s an old man with lots of experience so he’ll usually insist on discussing what aftercare will entail beforehand regardless of whether he’s giving or receiving so it can feel a little like he’s just going through a routine. He does pay very close attention however and those years of experience lend themselves to him spotting when his sub needs something but won’t ask for it. When he’s receiving he prefers just a quick wipe down and a bit of energon, and if he’s feeling affectionate a nice lie down with his partner whilst he discusses literature he’s fond of. Megatron gets a little sentimental after bottoming so there aren’t many people he does it with.