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canmom · 1 year

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Animation Night 155: Kunihiko Ikuhara

...or Ikuni to his fans. The Utena guy.

Since the very beginning of this series, Ikuhara’s been someone I’ve been desperate to cover. He’s exactly the kind of weirdo we like around here. And you know how much the Tumblr girlies love Utena.

But only now, at Animation Night 155, is Ikuni getting his due. Why so long? Well, let’s put it like this. Ikuni’s very much a TV guy. Revolutionary Girl Utena is 39 episodes and a movie. Mawaru Penguindrum: 26 episodes. Yurikuma Arashi is 13, as is Sarazanmai.

And if we’ve managed to cram in 13-episode series into this format, it’s always been with difficulty - take Heike Monogatari [AN91], Alexander Senki [AN125] or Houseki no Kuni [AN97]. It generally takes multiple nights. So I thought, that’s fine, we’ll do Adolescence of Utena, the movie, and, um... hmm.

Luckily for us they just made a new Penguindrum compilation movie! Problem solved let’s go!

And with such a long wait behind us, let’s try and do the guy some justice.

So. Who is this guy with the rabbit? (Picture from his website. Though this is a plain outfit by Ikuhara standards!)

If you were trying to summarise Ikuni’s works... you could probably say something like this: surreal, densely symbolic stories about the difficulties of real human connection. Sort of like the anime version of Lynch. But if that sounds too cerebral, let’s not forget that an episode of Utena involves a character gradually turning into a cow for no particular reason. He’s just as much a goofball who loves to tell lies.

Ikuni came into the business back in the mid eighties, at Toei. [c.f. AN149 for a brief history of Toei!]

So. In the late 70s, Toei had established a powerful niche to themselves in long-running, wildly popular series such as Galaxy Express 999, but most of their work was much less high-profile. Take a glance, see how many of these you recognise - I would guess not many! Hot out of art school, Ikuhara became an assistant director under the wing of Junichi Satō, later well known for shōjo anime such as the avant-garde Princess Tutu (2002-3), or Ojamajo Doremi (1999-2000).

But of course, the most renowned Satō project is Bishōjo Senshi Sailor Moon (1991-7, Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon). Satō directed the first half, and then Ikuhara took the reins for the rest. For Satō it was his debut as a director, I’ll talk more about his tenure on Sailor Moon in just a minute, but first, let’s get a little context about... magical girls!

(quick! tell me which sailor this is! you have five seconds)

Magical Girls! 魔法少女 mahō shōjo. An ordinary high school student makes contact with a powerful magical being, who may also be a cute mascot character, and agrees to help. Now she can transform: manifest a stylish outfit, gain suitably themed powers, and fight monsters of the week... but she’s got to maintain a double life as a regular student. The henshin (transformation) sequence itself will usually be an extremely elaborate sequence that is played regularly (a ‘bank’ shot).

By now it’s one of the absolutely central anime archetypes, one people are likely to recognise even if they’ve never watched a magical girl show. It’s been parodied, it’s been genderflipped, it’s spun off a dark otaku-oriented variant.

But it wasn’t always so! Everything must begin somewhere. Very quickly reeling this off then... Osamu Tezuka’s 1953 manga Princess Knight is seen as the earliest proto-magical-girl work; Himitsu no Akko-chan (1962-5) as the earliest true magical girl manga with the elements of the genre, and 1966′s Sally the Witch as the big populariser. In the 70s, Toei started producing them in a big way, known collectively as 魔女っ子 majokko series (‘little witch’).

The actual phrase 魔法少女 mahō shōjo was introduced in 1980 with 魔法少女ララベル Mahō Shōjo Lalabel. With the economic bubble in full swing, other studios started to join the party - notably AshiPro with Minky Momo, and Pierrot, the studio behind epoch-defining megahit Urusei Yatsura, who entered the arena with Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel (1983-4). Why is she creamy? I don’t know, but that’s her stage name as an idol; the manga was designed to promote an actual idol singer Takako Ōta. This business model proved wildly successful, and even today anime production committees usually include record companies who use the show as a vehicle to promote a song or group. Toei no longer had exclusive hold on the matter of girls, magical.

Visually here we’re seeing 80s-style bishōjo, the same as over the fence in sci-fi series such as Macross. Mostly the stories are comedies, following in the footsteps of Urusei Yatsura.

What was missing from the formula at this point? Surprisingly, the henshin sequences! It’s not that magical girls didn’t transform, but they would be more likely to transform into something like an aged-up version of themselves, and the act of transformation wouldn’t be given the same importance. This final ingredient was to be found over in tokusatsu land - Kamen Rider and Super Sentai.

So, that’s where Sailor Moon came in at the beginning of the 90s - first a wildly successful manga by Naoko Takeuchi, and in very short order a TV series at Toei. Takeuchi came up with the idea of fusing the magical girls with sentai: instead of a motorbike-like Rider suit, the girls would get sailor fuku. And that means every magical girl transformation is in a sense a homage to this one.

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Sailor Moon tells the story of a girl called Usagi. She’s a clumsy and forgetful audience-identification character - perhaps even to point of being a Huineng-type character? - but she’s informed by a talking cat that she’s the guardian of Earth, soon to be joined by a number of other girls from her area who are, collectively, the Sailor Guardians (セーラー戦士 sērā senshi). To fight, she activates a magical brooch and, that ^ happens.

Why? Well, the Dark Kingdom is invading! They want to free the villainous Queen Metaria. In past lives the Sailor Guardians fought those guys, and now they need to get back on the job. The forces of the Dark Kingdom (and numerous subsequent enemy factions) arrive in the form of a series of themed villains, much like the villains in a tokusatsu show. Outside of fighting those guys, it’s gentle comedy with a large cast, not so far from the works of Rumiko Takahashi. In fact it’s apparently a fair bit more comedic in tone than the manga, and a chunk of that can be credited to Ikuhara’s influence.

It’s hard to try and summarise the 90s for anime, it wasn’t just one thing. Even as the economic bubble popped, the movies got increasingly ambitious, reaching for more complex emotions and darker themes with incredibly complex animation to match. And to a certain extent, that was also true on TV, by which I mean “Evangelion happened”. But it was also an age of a return to more limited animation. If you wanted to make a TV anime, you had to be smart about using all the tools you could to cut corners. You could keep a bank of reused shots, or for a joke, transform a character into a much simpler caricatured design with more limited animation. At the same time, photography was getting more advanced, and animation techniques were getting more sophisticated.

Even so, a lot of the credit for the art of working effectively in limited animation goes way back to Osamu Dezaki, who back in the 60s and 70s established many of the iconic ‘anime’ techniques. I’ve written about him before back on Animation Night 95, but as much as that covers the history, it doesn’t say a lot about Dezaki’s style. So let me pull in this video, which will helpfully illustrate the important examples...

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The relevant period is when Dezaki directed on Aim for the Ace! (エースをねらえ! Ēsu o Nerae!) - where, in contrast to his earlier work which was comparatively cinematic, he started to push in a more theatrical, abstracted direction, prioritising conveying emotion over realism. Still frames (with the famous ‘postcard memory’ effect), simplified background details framed to draw attention to the important stuff, repeating an important shot multiple times - oh, that’s just Utena, huh? And while Dezaki influenced just about everyone, but for Ikuhara, he’s a massive touchpoint.

Designs were also changing - in contrast to the rounded bishōjo of the 80s came more angular and blocky designs. Take Slayers for example:

Hold onto that thought because we’re going to talk about Utena in a minute. Sailor Moon didn’t go quite that far, but Kazuko Tadano’s designs were very effective in conveying a lot of appeal in quite simple shapes. Usagi in particular has an instantly recognisable hairstyle. But it’s also a style very amenable to simplification.

TV anime in this period ran long. Nowadays, the norm is one cours (‘cour’ if you’re not feeling pedantic) of 12-13 episodes, sometimes not even that. Back then you could easily see counts in the 50s or even hundreds. Such is true of Sailor Moon: crazy popular in both Japan and, in its heavily localised dub, America, and with a premise flexible enough to run for years. In the end it racked up some 200 episodes and several movies.

The Ikuhara period starts with the Sailor Moon R movie in 1993, then the series proper starting mid Sailor Moon R and then Sailor Moon S in 1994. Not sure which episode he took over, but S begins at 90. This is a post about Ikuhara (no, really!) so we should ask, how did Sailor Moon change once he took the reins? Let’s have a look at some of his favourite themes, as they appear in the Sailor Moon R movie, based on his own notes...

Lesbians - Not so much in the R movie, but once S gets going... big controversy! Sailors Uranus and Neptune were a couple whose dynamic was one of the most popular in the show, but this would be heavily censored in nearly every localisation, notably the American one which made them cousins.

Flower imagery - Ikuhara decided to set his first project as director in a botanical garden, naturally.

Lost connections, the distance between people - to quote the linked blog...

Ikuhara compares the reunion between Fiore and Mamoru with that of being stuck on a train in-between stations when suddenly you notice you’re standing next to an old friend you haven’t seen in years.

At first you’re both excited to see each other again and kill the time by catching up on each other’s lives. But eventually you run out of things to say, and the conversation just kind of dies off, leaving you both standing there in awkward silence.

Creative editing, use of music - 18 second long scene of Tuxedo Mask getting stabbed? Musically timed fight? Mm.

Darker themes - let’s watch the girls incinerate a field of flower monsters! At one point Usagi would nearly die! Ikuhara tried to keep it ‘fun’ and lighthearted, but just couldn’t do it, he says. Nothing on the level of where his later work would go, but definitely harsher than your average episode.

Vaguely hinting that some element is key to understanding everything, and then refusing to elaborate further - oh yes.

Which isn’t to say that Ikuhara’s Sailor Moon instantly became Utena. Rather, the seeds of his interests as a director, the sort of emotional arcs he’d like to portray, were there. I regret that I can’t really comment in much detail on what Ikuhara did in his actual run on the TV series - I’m sure I have some big Sailor Moon fans here who could fill me in and tell me if I’ve described anything wrong.

Working on Sailor Moon, in any case, also got Ikuhara used to technical elements that would become part of his stylistic fingerprint. We mentioned the transformation sequence, the elaborate bank shot with accompanying music that would recur in nearly every episode. I am less sure about other Dezaki-esque elements, like jokes based on repeating the same sequence with minor variations.

Eventually, Ikuhara’s run on Sailor Moon would come to an end. The final arc of the show saw the Sailor Guardians facing... themselves, from a distant bad future. But for that final season, Ikuhara had already stepped down. Where did he go...?

You see, Ikuhara chafed under the creative restrictions placed on him by Toei. Turning down an offer from Anno to work on Eva(!), he set off to found his own group, Be-Papas, along with...

the famous shōjo manga artist Chiho Saito, animator Shinya Hasegawa, writer Yōji Enokido, and producer Yuuichiro Okuro

and before long also recruiting composer J.A. Seazer, known for his work with avant-garde dramatist-filmmaker-writer-poet Shūji Terayama - another big influence on Ikuni, incidentally. What did Be-Papas make? Just one anime, after which they disbanded. That anime was... Albert Ei-

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That anime was Utena.

Oh man. This is the one.

少女革命ウテナ - Shōjo Kakumei Utena. In English, Revolutionary Girl Utena. Now the time has finally come to write about it, I’m nervous. Could I possibly do justice to Utena in a single blog post? Is that why I spent so long writing about Sailor Moon?

Let’s start with the aesthetic: French Revolution-esque outfits that would be comfortable in Rose of Versailles. A school made of white stone; architecture that is strange, avant-garde. Roses. So many roses oh my fucking god. It draws heavily on the Takarazuka Revue, which I wrote about previously on Animation Night 92 in the context of Ikuhara’s protege Tomohiro Furukawa.

Utena is about a girl called (wait for it) Utena, who attends a school of sorts called Ohtori Academy. But it’s a school only in a fairly abstract sense - it’s more like a palace. She wears a distinctive masculine uniform, and shortly after transferring in, discovers a mysterious underground duelling society who go to a strange abstract battle arena outside of school hours. There, they attempt to strike the rose from the other duellist. The winner of the duel gains custody of Anthy Himemiya, the ‘Rose Bride’. At some point, whoever possesses Anthy will gain the nebulous power to ‘revolutionise the world’. With me so far?

Utena walks in and immediately wins her first duel, establishing an initially frosty relationship with Anthy. But the White Rose duellists won’t take this lying down. Over the first series of episodes, we learn about each of the duellists and their motivating conflicts, culminating in an attempt to defeat Utena. (She walks up the stairs every time.) They lose every time, but the point isn’t really about whether Utena will win or not - it’s about introducing us to a collection of fucked up guys, and then making them even more fucked up.

But it’s not all high drama. A lot of Utena is just straight-up antics, which is to say, just about any time Nanami is on the screen. There’s a greek chorus of shadow girls who comment on the events of the episode. The broad strokes are hard to miss, but the subtler, more obtuse stuff is the sort of thing that can get you into an almost endless rabbit hole of analysis. Don’t take things too literally! You could probably call it at least a little Brechtian in how much it foregrounds its own artifice.

After Utena’s defeated just about everyone at the White Rose, the Black Rose arc introduces a new element. Now, characters from beyond the duelling circle will go down an elevator to guy who renders a fucked up sort of anti-therapy which will motivate them give into their worst impulses and have a go at Utena. Utena, meanwhile, is harbouring a complex where she needs to live up to an ideal of fairytale prince following an incident from her childhood - and oblivious to what’s actually going on with Anthy.

Then at last Anthy’s brother Akio shows up - the actual prince from the upside-down castle in the sky that represents the power to revolutionise the world, and the architect of the monstrous system. It turns out he’s been incesting Anthy, that she’s complicit in all his shenanigans (guess who was behind the Black Rose thing). Moreover, Utena is pulled in to Akio’s orbit, an ugly, abusive relationship... that is conveyed mostly through visual metaphors involving cars.

The finale is... complicated to explain. But it gives us one of the most iconic pieces of cinematic lesbianism ever animated, as Utena reaches for Anthy, refusing to be pushed away (by stabbing) or let Anthy remain in her state of self-inflicted pain, and they are able to escape the academy and its system, at the cost of being separated. What future they have outside the academy is left unspoken...

And that’s just scratching the surface. If you ask the hardcore Utena fan, just about every element of every shot is dripping with meaning. You can’t take everything too literally, but you definitely have to take some portion of it literally or you don’t have a story and characters at all.

Visually, the characters in Utena are designed by Shinya Hasegawa - and as much as they are recognisably ‘90s’, they really push it. People are long and faces - noses and chins especially - are pointy. Characters tend to be reserved and stoic in their facial expressions, unless they’re Nanami, in which case all bets are off. Animation-wise, JC Staff did the work under Be-Papas’s direction - and as much as it uses limited animation for effect, it’s really got the goods, especially in the duel sequences and the bank shots (Utena climbing the stairs? Not CG!).

Did you know Yoh Yoshinari was on it? I didn’t until today! So too was Mamoru Hosoda.

Remarkably for such a deliberately challenging show Utena was pretty successful! This was the era between Eva and Lain: it was an excellent time to be making something really experimental and push those genre boundaries. (One thing I don’t really know is how Utena got funded in the first place, but all the big names attached to the project probably gave them some pull.)

Alongside the anime came a manga by Saito - but neither is really an adaptation of the other, they’re just two different interpretations of the same general concept and premise, produced at the same time. And in fact, Ikuhara and Saito clashed heavily over the direction of the series, particularly in regards to whether the relationship between Utena and Anthy should be presented as romantic. Saito did not believe that shōjo audiences would be on board with the yuri, but Ikuhara refused to back down. (Saito eventually changed her mind.)

With all this success, they went ahead to make a movie. Now, usually a compilation movie of a successful TV series will cut out down the story to fit the runtime, reanimate a few scenes and call it a day. But this would be all but impossible with Utena, which is so tied to its episodic structure and use of repetition. And in any case, Be-Papas had bigger ambitions!

The film would be titled 少女革命ウテナアドゥレセンス黙示録 Shōjo Kakumei Utena: Aduresensu Mokushiroku, literally Revolutionary Girl Utena: Adolescence Apocalypse, though in English it’s usually given the shorter title Adolescence of Utena. It is kinda sorta a condensed version of the series at first... and then in the latter half it goes completely off the rails. This time Akio is long dead. And he’s not the only one! It ends with this absolutely nuts sequence where Utena turns into a car to drive Anthy out of the academy, pursued by Shiori, who also turns into a car. I still can’t say I really understand it, or how it relates to the ‘car is a rape metaphor’ role in the TV series? But it looks beautiful.

Compared to the series, the movie features the expected higher drawing counts and flashier animation... but the really novel aspect is the architecture. This movie goes absolutely wild with it: the Ohtori Academy this time is far stranger and more intricate, looking less like a regular old European palace and more like something dreamed up by the Russian avant-garde.

It’s less of a summary of Utena and more of a companion piece. Seen on its own by someone who’s not familiar with either... I’m not sure how it would come across! Maybe you’ll just think I’m insane. Maybe you’ll be right.

So, some 3000 words into this post, I’ve finally told you the first movie we’ll be watching! That’s right: we’re going to jump in at the deep end and enjoy Adolescence of Utena. You don’t need to have seen the series.

After Adolescence, Be-Papas disbanded, as if following Monsieur Dupont’s injunction that radical groups must exist for a single purpose and then disband. Ikuhara left anime for a long time, like twelve years. He wasn’t entirely cut out from the industry, occasionally dropping in to storyboard an episode or two (for example, Episode 2 of Diebuster, or the OP to yuri series Aoi Hana). But for the most part, he turned his attentions to other mediums.

In that time he published a shōjo manga, which was poorly received for being a lot more conventional than Utena; he also wrote a novel called Schell Bullet which, get a load of this...

As a result of gene manipulation, society is segregated by genes into "Majors" – intersex humans who maintain a monopoly on stronger genetic material – and lesser dual-sex "Minors". (Ikuhara stated that he chose to make the Majors intersex because he wished to create "a race which combines the good parts of both women and men."[1]) Protagonist Ors Break is hired by the intergalactic trading company Balt Liner Corporation to pilot a schell, a bio-organic mecha, by claiming to be a Major. When the truth of his Minor status is revealed, he comes to an agreement with his superior, a Major named Delbee Ibus, to continue working for the organization.[1][2]

...and another serial novel called Nokomono to Hanayome, described as ‘Lolita hardboiled’ (I believe as in ‘Elegant Gothic’ rather than as in ‘Nabokov’s novel’). This last was a precursor to Penguindrum - animal costumes, the a story about the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attacks.

In 2011, Ikuhara came back to anime. Why? And why did he leave in the first place? itsamystery.jpg. In any case, his new project was... Mawaru Penguindrum. It’s about, I guess you might say, the abandoned children of cultists who connect to a supernatural penguin being through a hat. But honestly it’s even tougher to attempt to summarise than Utena. There’s a “child broiler” involved. That’s just the start. And this post is already very long.

So, it’s time to split it. You’ll be able to read more about Penguindrum tomorrow (or later today, if you’re also staying up insanely late in the UK).

Animation Night 155, in its cosy new Sunday timeslot, will be running (if all goes according to plan) at 8pm UK time. That’s about 13 hours from the time of this post. The plan will be to watch Adolescence of Utena and the two movies of Re:cyle of the Penguindrum, for a total of about five and a half hours. (Sorry Sailor Moon fans! I’d really like to squeeze in the R movie too, but I underestimate how long Penguindrum is in movie form. We’ll find another day to do Sailor Moon though!)

If you’ve read all this so far, thanks so much! I’ve wanted to do a proper Animation Night on Ikuhara for ages, and there’s so much I can write about. So far it’s all history, but we wanna do some analysis too. For now... hold on tight.

#animation night

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askkirbyocs · 4 months

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🩷ASK MY KIRBY OCs!!🩵

My other blog is called @asktadckrew

Check out my AO3 account: Manxwashehe

There's a lot of lore there

Story names:

Into the Mirror (btw Into the Mirror is cringe af so yeah but it's important also not canon anymore) 17+

The Scuttlebug Club 17+

The Scuttlebug Club: THE WAR OF SUCCUBUS 17+

Beyond the Døllhouse (first episode just came out) 17+

Our Favorite Søldier (not posted yet) 17+

Cosmic Frontiers (not posted yet) 13+ (Marx says a swear word)

Fun Facts!!:

In Our Favorite Søldier, there are two AUs intertwined so you gotta specify which AU you're asking

Meta Knight's last name is Martínez

Proto is obviously a self insert please don't bully me for that

The Dreamy Gear Kirby is an adult

Taranza got remarried

Bandee and Susie have a daughter named Lumie

There's a difference between Magolor and Magolør (Magolør is Dreamy Gear)

Dreamy Gear Meta Knight is transgender

Marx has had 4 1/2 exes

Darx is non-binary

Jecra's fling/Knuckle Joe's mother's name is Juliette

Magalie is transgender! Male to Female (She/Her and They/Them please!)

Marx is intersex

Meta Knight's nickname is Alexander so he's Meta Knight "Alexander" Martínez

FAMILIES:

Martínez Family: Garlude, Meta Knight, Proto, Sirica, Sailor Waddle Dee, Kirby, Kit, Poyolicious, Comet (formerly), Persimmon (deceased), Bellatrix (formerly), Lotus

Koshkin Family: Beelzebub (Magolor's mother, not the deadly sin), Hyness, Zan Partizanne, Magolor (Zan and magolor are twins), Flamberge, Francisca, Wyllo, Freya (Francisca and Flamberge's daughter) Madeline, Nova and Cosmo (Marx and Magolor's kids. Nova is a girl Cosmo is a boy), Sleep-zee (Magolor and Marstella's daughter)

Koshkin family cousins: Vividria, NESP

Astrea Family: Marx, Nova and Cosmo, Shadow Kirby, Suīka (suīka is a boy), Lemon and Lime, Blinx

Florabelle Family: Taranza, Sectonia (formerly), Magnolia, Nectar, Marmalade, Rosie, Lunaria

Haltmann Family: Susie, Bandee (kinda) Lumie

The other Martínez Family (Galacta's side): Galacta Knight, Callista, Sniper Knight, Gooey, Galaxy and Callisto, Ceres, Sirius, Astra and Cyclone, Phillip aka Pip

The Skielar Family: Marcī, Hennry, Angelica (AKA Magalie! Magalie is transgender woman), Eliza, And Jazzmynn! Proto (he's their sibling too)

King Dedede's kids: Bandana Waddle Dee, Scribble, Doodle

Sweet Family: The Confection King, Sugaree Sweet/Artzy, Sir Chip, Mon Roll

The sweet family belong to @browniboxx

Korn Family: Carrie, Kathy, Trikk & Treet

Cosmia Family: Queen Cassiopeia, Princess Andromeda, Max (he's a pet but he counts anyway)

COUPLES!!:

Dreamy Gear Meta Knight and Dreamy Gear Magolør

Dreamy Gear Kirby and my OC, Praline

Bandana Waddle Dee and Susie Haltmann

Sniper Knight (oc), Galacta Knight, and Callista (another oc)

Sir Dragato (Galahad) and Sir Falspar

Waddle Dee and Tiff (WADDLE DEE IS A PEDOPHILE AND I FUCKING HATE HIM pls don't support this ship I just want to make my readers mad) (haha the Skielar sisters killed him)

Taranza and Magnolia

Gryll and Prince Fluff

Jecra and Juliette

Proto, Meta Knight/Alexander, and Garlude

Marie and Magolor (arranged marriage)

Kandyland Cast:

These characters belong to @browniboxx

The Confection King and Queen Cassiopeia

Sir Chip and Kandi Sugarose

Mon Roll and Creme Brulee (MON ROLL AND CREME BRULEE ARE MINORS)

Plutø and The Seven Dwarfs:

Plutø (Fae Goddess yass)

Star (AKA Proto/Cry-Baby)

Moon (AKA Taranza)

Yin and Yang (AKA Marx/Hyacinth. THEY AREN'T SIBLINGS, THEY'RE ACTUALLY DATING)

Crystalline (AKA Magolor/Amulette)

Sky (Her real name is Dream but ew. AKA Marstella/Melatonin)

Aeon Hero and The Seven Heavenly Virtues:

Aeon Hero

Pazienza (Patience)

El (Temperance)

Lucretius (Charity)

Millie (Kindness)

Miralax (Diligence)

Phoebus (Chastity)

Hortensia (Humility)

Marcī and The Seven Deadly Sins:

Marcī (Queen of Succubus)

Vesperrolii (he's literally bootleg Fizzarolii and he's also Asmo's boyfriend)

Satan (Wrath)

Beelzebub (Gluttony)

Mammon (Greed)

Leviathan (Envy)

Belphegor (Sloth)

Asmodeus (Lust)

Lucifer (Pride)

GHOST FAES AKA MOONLINGS:

Suqarplxm (She was Proto now she's Cry-Baby)

Cookii (Yin)

Creme (Yang)

Cascade (Crystalline)

Aurora (Marstella)

Beyond the Døllhouse:

Cry-Baby (Proto)

Hyacinth (Yin and Yang)

Melatonin (Dream/Sky)

Amulette (Crystalline)

Molly McDolly (She's not a rebirth but she's got Cry-Baby's powers)

Melanie (also a fae)

Øphelia (another fae)

Brittany (she's secretly an orphan also another fae)

Luna (Taranza's daughter)

Kelly (little bitch she's not a fae)

Kittie (also not a fae. She copies Cry-Baby)

Mirror World Counterparts:

Darx (Mirror Marx)

Dark Meta Knight (Dreamy Gear)

Shadow Dedede (only in the Dreamy Gear AU)

Shadow Kirby

Corrupt Kirby (Mirror Shadow Kirby)

Marziepan (Mirror Marcī)

Shadow Bandana Waddle Dee

Skippy (Normal DMK)

Shadow Kirby (Dreamy Gear)

Proto (Mirror Magolor, formerly)

Shadow Spinndle

Dark Taranza

Parallel Susie

MARX'S EXES:

Skippy

Marcī (kinda)

Magolor (formerly)

Marstella

Magalie/Angelica

He was crushing on Magolør but nope

REVIVED:

Magolor

Proto

Dead Peeps:

Marstella (cause of death: drowned in the ocean)

Yin and Yang (cause of death: hung by Uma and HyperGlitch)

Persimmon (cause of death: shot with a pistol in the thigh at 3 years old)

HyperGlitch (cause of death: Proto beat her to death with an axe)

Lotus' unborn sister (cause of death: unknown)

Waddle Dee (cause of death: The Skielar Sisters ripped him apart)

Grape Gang:

Marx (leader)

Eugene

Maritza

Dark

Marcī

(WARNING!! DON'T BE OFFENDED BY THIS NAME! THE GRAPES HAVE DARK ASS HUMOR) The New KKK:

Marx (leader!! Disc User: MamaMarx)

Eugene (DatPinkPuffball)

Maritza (MariTheGrapist)

Dark (MyTwo)

Marcī (GrapeyYoshī)

F.R.I.T.Z (aka Fritz. RoboticJester84)

Neebee (FluffysHusbando)

Fluffy (FluffysAdventure)

Meta Knight (ImmaFaerie)

Darx (MirrorMarxy)

Corrupt Kirby (MustyMang0)

Magolør (Evil!Magolør)

Plutø (SnøwWhite)

Violyte (VibrantEchoes64)

ButterScotch (LiceLicker)

Philippa (PippaPipKin)

Magolor (StaleBaguette!)

Francisca (IceKween)

Flamberge (FLAMETHROWER)

Zan Partizanne (ThunderBringer)

Proto (SuqarplxmPARIDA)

RULES:

Suggestive asks are allowed (Sniper Knight would love them)

Don't be a bigot

Don't be weird towards the minorz

WARNING!!

The grapes make very offensive jokes so don't be offended by them pls

Be safe and have fun!!

#kirby series #kirby au #kirby dreamy gear #kirby oc #kirby anime #ask them anything #ask the characters #ask the artist #kirby fandom #kirby gsa #i love them #be safe #mature audiences only

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radix-outpost · 5 months

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Various Sailor Moon fan design things (not in chronological order).

The big sheet 'o fanon form concepts was born out of some sprite edits I'd done recently: y'see, I wasn't satisfied with my first pass at the "Ultra" forms and tested something out on those sprite edits (using Sailor V's armour as a basis instead of that one proto-Moon sketch). Then I thought about what other forms I could make for everyone, getting as far as "Speed" and the basic idea for "Aqua" before I needed to draw them.

In addition to all the new stuff, "Mystic" and "Defender" got redesigned, too (mostly just putting the bow back on Mystic). Other notes:

"Elemental" is a simplified form of the early Sera Myu costumes; the name (and its attachment to Myu) came from AmethystSadachbia's AU.

"Blue Shift" has the distinction of being completely uniform (even Moon and Chibi Moon would have the same outfits), with only the brooch and tiara gem reflecting the wearer's normal planet colour. Largely inspired by cheerleader uniforms.

Everyone wears shorts in their "Gravity" form; the coats are about the same length as Mystic.

"Omni" is similar to what I was gonna have everyone's Cosmic form look like; more on that later.

"Aqua" is probably the most situational out of all of these; maybe it would see use on a planet that's 99% ocean?

Other stuff:

Redesigned Sailor Charon/Celia Spiros; her new hairstyle is modeled after a character (Monaka) from another Naoko Takeuchi work, "Toki Meca".

After going to the trouble of adjusting Naru-as-Sailor-Earth's colours... I ended up dropping this element from my AU entirely in favour of just elevating Mamoru to "Sailor Earth" (and Helios to Sailor Sun). :U But I didn't want the concept of an empowered Naru to go to waste, so now she's a pseudo-Guardian who uses Usagi's Disguise Pen to transform and takes the alias "Sailor Comet". (It's a common fan-Senshi name, but realistically not something that could spawn a Sailor Crystal.)

Omni Form Sailor Moon, the "good future" alternative to Sailor Cosmos--or, "I had to write around using the Classic anime as a basis for my AU". (Chibi Chibi will become Sailor Cosmos eventually, but because she's Galaxia's disembodied Sailor Crystal/daughter by technicality, she's not going to look like canon Cosmos) Uses Cosmos as a basis, with elements from manga!NQS.

#sailor moon #anime #fanart #radix art

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piro-piroooooo · 10 months

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hi! welcome! I've been on Tumblr since 2016, but I've never made a serious effort to post or interact with anyone. Because of this I understand a lot of the culture of the site but my etiquette and interaction skills are shit. Be patient with me please. So, twitter is dying and I want to start using tumblr more properly :^) My name is JM Rivera, also known as acropiromaquia or piro in most of my social media, my pronouns are he/him. I'm queer but I'm not telling you exactly what flavor. I'm not a minor, but I'm not telling you my exact age. Mexican, I can interact both in Spanish and English. Well I draw digitally, I'm gonna be posting some art soon :^). I want to make friends! Here are some things I like, if you like any of these, let's be friends about it :^D:

Adventure Time

Sailor Moon

Magical girls in general

Witch Hat Atelier

Animation

Obscure animated films

amazarashi (favorite band! :^D)

I enjoy researching topics such as history, anthropology, and history of religion (somethimes gnosticism, sometimes proto indoeuropeans, big fan of the kurgan hypothesis), but I'm in no way a specialist in any of these topics, I just like reading about them. Feel free to correct me if I ever say something stupid.

No side blogs. Art, thoughts, reblogs, everything goes in this blog. This is my art tag. This is my textpost tag, for my thoughts.

Thanks for reading have a nice day :^)

#intro post #textpost #artists on tumblr #adventure time #sailor moon #magical girl #witch hat atelier #animation #amazarashi #piro art #digital art #illustration

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centrally-unplanned · 7 months

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Though it is fun to go through those actual Usenet threads, you could actually write a good paper from that. Doing some poking around and found an adorable thread from 1998 of people speculating that MTV would air Evangelion? Based on someone visiting, uh "Magnum Opus [comic store] in Grand Rapids, Michigan" and saying oh yeah im working on Eva, but I work for MTV, not [presumed rights holder] ADV". Replete with some people thinking hmmm that makes sense and others going bro this is My Uncle at Nintendo level of rumor mongering bullshit.

But it was apparently a real rumor at the time, I saw evidence from Evageeks threads and Gamefaq discussion - and MTV was the proto Adult Swim of the 90's, the only channel airing cartoons aimed at adults. And someone quotes an article from Japanese Newsweek mentioning it? Is it a real quote? Who knows!! And the thread devolves into a conversation about how the show would be changed to air on MTV - with the general idea being that it might be "Saban'd", aka severely censored and localized like the Sailor Moon anime was. Which would have been a frikkin project, what a writing exercise that would be.

Also worth noting, Carl Horn - the editor of the Evangelion manga who I discussed previously - is name-dropped several times as someone who would "know" and is active in the community. Its very interesting how concrete the list of "big names" in the west were, it was a very countable set.

#evangelion #anime fandom history

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dial-p-for-placey · 5 months

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The last of the proto designs! Now there is a lot I want to say about this design especially because I had to compile it from a handful of partial designs.

I get into all of this and my process under the cut! Please read this one! I put a lot of work into coming up with this complete design!

Okay so this design is based off of these 3 images

And as you can see there are already a lot small differences between them all but they are all too similar so I didn't want to draw each of them as their own (especially since the bottom pic the only real thing it has going for it is colored for reference)

So I combined them all. Took the crown and the double pauldrons and the battle bra since those are the most unique elements and very different from the other designs. I decided not to add the bow from the one pic since that looked similar to another proto design, though i did use her school bow color for the bra. Also the second image makes it look like the skirt was longer and I also remembered there was an interview (might have been included in the back of a manga printing) where Naoko said she originally wanted the skirts of the senshi to be longer but her editor made her shorten them so I kept the long skirt.

Next was the hardest part because none of these images have full color or Usagi's full body. So this is when I reveal to you that I do actually believe all these designs where supposed to be Minako for Sailor V (since Naoko came up with that story first). I don't have any proof of that and none of these designs have notes, but with that as a possibility I decided to pull from a proto Sailor V design

I took the skirt design/coloring since the middle image is probably just a lighting effect on it, but does make it look like there could be a white stripe on the bottom. Also made the stripes on her shirt ruled to tie into that. Also just took Minako's shoes since I have no idea what the design of them would be.

Also directly pulled Minako's color palate (the blue, orange/gold and purple-ish color) and the green from her gloves for the design on the top pauldrons (which was a clip studio brush for a ribbion/fabric that I molded to fit)

Like I said... I did a lot of work to compile this design together. It's not an official one and could argue that this Minako, but considering Naoko abandoned a lot of these design elements and then came back to them for Usagi I still think it's fitting to say this is a proto Sailor Moon

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studentofetherium · 1 year

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What are some important Yuri works other than RGU, i want to delve into the genre more. (Also if you can provide links that would be super helpful!) /nf

Girl Friends by Morinaga Milk is a neat one. it's not the most significant from a historical perspective, but it's very of its era and that era was a liminal time of change for yuri as a whole

Sailor Moon, obv. it's the proto-Utena in a lot of ways including its shipping culture

Kase-san by Takashima Hiromi was a precursor to the modern era of yuri, and is pretty standout in its own right

Citrus by Saburouta is the most popular yuri manga of the last decade and one of the most significant yuri works of all time. it brought forth tons of new fans into the genre. even if you're not a fan of incest, it's worth giving it a read

Mai-HiMe was huge in yuri culture during the 00s, and it has aged somewhat poorly, but it can still be a good watch and it's some insight into what himejoshi of the past had to put up with lol

unfortunately, my expertise drops any earlier than the 90s. pre-Sailor Moon/pre-internet, the culture existed in a different form (and didn't exist in the anglosphere much at all), so i'm not really equipped to talk about it other than from a historical perspective like class-s and what inspired yuri

#yuri

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tabby-shieldmaiden · 9 months

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I'm still working on my current WIP, which isn't really Shonen with Women. This is to practice finishing projects from beginning to end, from conceptualisation to posting. And I'm making good progress on that, writing 400 words a day.

And I do have a list of works I want to finish before engaging with a lot of Shonen umbrella works (presently it's all the books I bought but haven't read yet -> Bayonetta 1 and 2 -> finish Sailor Moon). This is to clear my watch/read/play list because I get to anything new. (And if I'm not done with my WIP yet, it may be more toyetic media so as to continuously motivate me to write; I tend to do best researching as I write).

I think I do want to share some ideas I have right now though. Also some thing which I want to do first.

My next WIP is probably a bit closer to SWW, even if it wasn't really conceptualised as such. It's post-apocalyptic fiction, it explores gender relations, I play around with tropes and cliches, I'm hoping to make it relevant to SEAsia as a story. And the current protagonist I'm conceptualising is probably going to be something special. When I write original fiction I tend to just make up ocs as I go along, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what she is even before putting down a word. She's blorbo from my brain to me.

I know I want to do yuri. One appeal from Shonen already is the homoeroticism. I think we should have Shonen yuri, as a result. Like just. Shonen lesbians. And avoid the heteronormativity prevalent in the genre too (it's both a heteronormative and homoerotic genre, funnily enough). Make them canon lesbians.

Though it would also probably be interesting to explore F/M in such a setting. I had discussed this with a friend before, but basically she pointed out that a part of the reason for Shonen's heteronormativity is because of the misogyny, because men typically aren't expected to really be invested in women's inner lives. So playing around with gender there could also be interesting. (My F/M couples will also likely be queer in some way, bi4bi, T4T, A4A, or any combination of them.)

I also do want to see if I can write a work that's also rooted in an aspec sensibility. This is mostly to do my part in creating an aspec culture in some way, beyond the flags and the emojis and the basic 101 stuff. I know it's possible within this genre. I mean, just look at the popularity of One Piece! I can do that but with more girls, I'm sure.

As for characters and themes, I think it'll be interesting to have a work about exploring the politics of disgust. Especially as it pertains to women/intersectional feminism. I'm even envisioning a protagonist already. I want her to have some sort of 'gross' power. And I know I want her to be curious about it. Like, if she can control people's large intestines, I want her to want to know what that means. If she learns she controls large intestines via talking to the bacteria in them, I want her to do things like buy some Yakult or fish meat out of a dumpster and try and see if she can communicate with that too. I want a curious protagonist, because I think they're fun to write.

I think I should be open towards the various subgenres found under the Shonen umbrella. Competition to be the very best, battle series, superhero, mecha, what have you.

I do kind of have a concept for a story that plays on 'elemental masters'. And especially when elements go beyond the Wuxing elements/the four classical elements (think stuff like the element of ice, sand, tech, what have you). Mostly, this is because a surprisingly large amount of Western Shonen is like this. I want to see if I can play around with it and do my own version. (Also more focus on female leads lololol.)

I want to read some classics like the Iliad and other epics, because they are very much proto-Shonen in a lot of ways.

I also think it would be really funny if I watched Ninjago and read Naruto simultaneously. BUT every time I finish a season of Ninjago I watch a woman-centred Asian film and every time I finish an arc of Naruto I read a Japanese novel written by a woman. And at the end I read the Wikipedia page on ninjas. I don't know what this will do to my brain exactly, but it will probably do something to my brain.

In all seriousness though, I think I would like to do silly exercises like that to ensure I keep getting ideas. Just need to think of more thematically appropriate silly exercises to do after that.

But yeah. Assuming I finish my watchlist, I guess the media I'll prioritise engaging with first is peripheral SWW, Shonen with female leads, and Shonen written by women. We'll see where all of that takes me afterwards. My watchlists tend to be fickle, but yeah. I guess I have a rough plan. Just gotta fuck around and find out where I go after that.

#also if you're reading this dana hi. what you said about the heteronormativity of shonen did stick with me.#tabby says something #shonen with women project

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