#i reread the whole manga recently so like i already knew he was like this its just very endearing to me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

song-of-the-swans · 3 years

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Natalia did nothing wrong.

I recently reread Bronze no Tenshi and oh my God I love Georges D’Anthès with all my heart - as if I already didn’t love him enough when I first read this manga. He’s so respectful, he’s ready to sacrifice everything for Natalia and he understands a woman’s struggles.

I don’t despise Pushkin in Bronze no Tenshi as it often happens to me with the other “love rival” of Saito’s stories, sometimes I pity him, but I also think a lot of people overlook his flaws and mistakes in his relationship and attitude towards Natalia out of their admiration for the figure of the real Pushkin, the poet. On the other hand, I see a lot of blame put on Natalia, when, if you really think about it, Natalia did nothing wrong. Natalia cannot be the usual strong, single-minded, fierce woman that Saito portrays in her stories: it wouldn’t be realistic and true to the time when the events take place. In my opinion, Natalia was a good person that always sacrificed herself for the people around her, who had for once the chance to do something exclusively for herself when she met the love of her life, D’Anthès.

I personally am analyzing the events and the characters of the manga as someone who didn’t know Pushkin the first time she read Bronze no Tenshi. I see a girl who grew up in the country, with her relatives advising her not to speak her mind or reveal her true personality to anyone, with a crazy father who traumatized her, with a strict, oppressive mother who forbade her to read books, only ingraining religious concepts in her, and who tried to sell her to the best offerer when she was only 16. Everyone makes her believe her only merit is to be beautiful. When she is 16, she meets Pushkin who feverishly falls in love with her and, moved by his persistence, she develops a crush on him and agrees to marry him. She sees him as an escape from her condition and as a chance of independence from her mother. She knows he can treat her right and, in her innocence, she believes that would be enough to make her happy, because she is not interested in love, having never experienced it. Natalia says that love scares her because people in love act irrationally, so she keeps on living a peaceful life with Pushkin fulfilling her duties in the way she was brought up. But she doesn’t know love and... she’s never truly happy or satisfied. Then D’Anthès arrives in Russia. In a certain sense, he’s someone used to be treated as an object of desire by the others just like Natalia. When he sees her the first time, he finds her beautiful just like every other man, but he doesn’t try to pursue her, nor is he interested in her. When Natalia tries to get close to him for her sister’s sake, he misunderstands her at first because he thinks she’s just treating him like the other women. Then their interactions increase and they find each other insufferable. They bicker, because D’Anthès doesn’t idealize her. People do nothing but point out Natalia’s beauty to the point of exhaustion, but D’Anthès actually treats Natalia as his equal - even recognizing how it must be tiring to be always told the same compliment over and over - and more importantly as a woman. And during their arguments, Natalia’s personality comes out to her own surprise, the personality that we only saw at the beginning of the story when she’s alone with her sisters and that she was told to suppress. She gets emotional and worked up. He gets a reaction out of her. They get to know each other as two people of the same age. He advises her. He protects her. He starts to understand her and he realizes she’s genuine and naive, that she doesn’t scheme, that she doesn’t do things for her own good, that she doesn’t want to hurt others and that she has no experience of life… and love. And they fall in love madly, to the point they will sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of seeing the other safe and at peace, since there’s not a place on the earth where they could possibly be allowed to be together. Anna Karenina is quite an example. Their only option was to flee abroad but that would’ve meant for Natalia not to see her family and children anymore. Leaving aside that I wouldn’t even have blamed Natalia for abandoning a whole brood of children that were literally put into her as if her body didn’t belong to her, D’Anthès understands that for her. When the day comes, he decides that he has to be stronger for her sake, because even if Natalia was willing to leave, she could’ve blamed herself all her life and died out of guilt. Ironically, D’Anthès has understood and known Natalia more during their illicit affair of stolen glances, confessions that lasted the time of a dance and secrete meetings, than her husband, who’s lived with her for years, ever did. Natalia always thought about the others. She first sacrificed herself for the sake of her family when they wanted her to get married. She restlessly gave her husband children he put in her one after the other without even letting her recover from the previous pregnancy, without ever objecting. After her marriage, she took her older sisters in her house to allow them to live a happier, social life in town and she escorted them at balls to chaperone them even when she was pregnant and had to take care of her body. She started to interact with D’Anthès to introduce him to her older sister who had a crush on him. She never wanted to hurt her admirers, even those who were pestering her. When she finally meets the love of her life, she fights back her feelings as much as she can and even avoids to be intimate with him because “her body doesn’t belong to her”. The moment she’s about to flee with him and make love to him, she physically stops herself because “she was about to be happy” in such a dramatic situation and “that is unforgivable”. Natalia is not even free to put an end to her life, because she has obligations, she’s leaving a family behind. So when she thinks D’Anthès doesn’t love her anymore when he sends her back home, she also knows she has to keep on living. And, in the end, we know her biggest sacrifice was to give up for good to the only person she ever loved for the sake of her children, her husband, her relatives and for social pressure… but even that is not enough for her husband.

Nevertheless, readers still blame her, just like Natalia blames herself for having fallen in love, just like she guilt trips herself throughout the story when she thinks she’s become someone who only thinks about her own happiness. After Natalia puts an end to her affair for her family, Pushkin decides to duel D’Anthès anyway and die, leaving her not only alone, but also making impossible for her to remarry with her lover decades later and abandoning the children just like Natalia would have done had she fled abroad with D’Anthès. With the only difference that Natalia would have done it to be with the one she loved after having lived a life that didn’t belong to her, whereas Pushkin did it for pride and vanity.

I suppose people blame Natalia because they think that she cannot make up her mind, but the truth is that the characters’ feelings are very clear in Bronze no Tenshi: Natalia doesn’t love her husband romantically and never has. You hear her thoughts, you watch her actions. She repeatedly confirms that she sees Pushkin as a relative and a father figure, even before D’Anthès came in the picture. Natalia didn’t fall out of love because of D’Anthès and D’Anthès didn’t steal her from Pushkin: she simply never loved him and Pushkin knew before and after marrying her. But he does nothing about it, he is happy to have her because she is beautiful and because he idealized her. Sure Pushkin loves his wife, but he doesn’t actually know her. He treats her like a muse, he calls her angel, he acts like a father towards a child, he scolds her, he keeps secrets and financial issues from her and when Natalia begins to show a firmer and more mature personality after she meets D’Anthès, he admits he liked her childish side more. He doesn’t treat her like a woman and an equal like D’Anthès does. If Pushkin had been depicted truer to his real physical appearance and age, I don’t think many people would’ve overlooked his obsession with making Natalia pregnant out of insecurity to “leave his mark on her” because she’s his possession.

When Pushkin got engaged to Natalia, he even promised her mother that he would’ve stepped aside in case Natalia realized one day that her life could’ve been different had she not married him. But he doesn’t. Or let’s say he does, but in an egoistical and manipulative way. Yes, it’s understandable on his part because it’s not easy to give up to the one you love and Russian society didn’t allow divorce. Yes, he doesn’t blame his wife for falling in love and he also waits for Natalia to come back to him... but he doesn’t realize that Natalia cannot be who he used to think she was through his rose tinted glasses and this to me shows that he’s actually more egoistical in his love than D’Anthès is with Natalia. D’Anthès is ready to be hated by her for the sake of seeing her happy. The moment D’Anthès is close to obtaining happiness and fulfilling his dream to live with her in France, he realizes that Natalia won’t ever have the chance to live with him in a dream, because she has too many things at stake that even love cannot make up for: the price she has to pay for becoming his wife is too high, it would kill her. So he sends her back home and he hurts her, pretending he never loved her in order for her to give up on him more easily. D’Anthès never once tried to force himself physically on Natalia, he never had to be told “stop” twice. He is ready to die for her, to marry someone he doesn’t love to protect her honour. D’Anthès doesn’t want Natalia to break under the burden of having left her family to be with him, Natalia doesn’t want D’Anthès to willingly die in the duel with Pushkin because he can’t live without her. Natalia returns home but becomes an empty shell because she thinks her love hates her, D’Anthès goes mad because everything he did to see her happy turned out to be useless. They aren’t allowed to find peace whether they’re together or not.

When that becomes evident, Natalia will finally do something for herself. She makes love with her lover to say goodbye and to carry that memory forever in her heart, before returning to her husband’s side. But we all know what her husband’s final decision was to put an end to this situation. He dies, D’Anthès leaves Russia forever, Natalia loses her dear husband and her lover. She meets D’Anthès again 15 years later in the same place they became aware of each other, they reminisce about their young days, but they can’t be together this time as well.

Despite her tragic endings, Saito always treats her heroines more kindly than her male character (s). It’s like she protects them. They’re always mentally stronger than their lovers and they are resilient… in a way they are always able to find a happy ending in their misery. Natalia is mentally stronger, she survives, she remarries to protect herself, but, partially because this is based off real events, she also is probably the most miserable heroine portrayed by Saito. In the end she doesn’t find her happy ending, nor does she succeed in anything. She just finds peace of mind that she imposed on herself by sealing her feelings for D’Anthès and grieving her first husband, fulfilling the role society required. And I truly pity her. I honestly don’t know how people can blame her.

#spoilers #bronze no tenshi spoilers #bronze no tenshi #chiho saito #natalia goncharova #natalia pushkina #alexander pushkin #natalia #georges d'anthès #d'anthès #pushkin

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hueswrites · 4 years

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hq kinktober [day1] tendou

main hq kinktober list

hq kinktober [day1] tendou satori/cosplay

includes: a bit of story, some angsty broody stuff on reader's part, cosplay (obviously), fingering and female receiving oral sex

wordcount: 4,827

ok this turned out to be more fluff and actual sort of plot than smut. i just started writing at 12:30am and kept going until 6 in the morning. this is the result. if you were looking forward to straight up smut on this first prompt, i'm sorry but THIS IS NOT IT LMAO.

i absolutely adore tendou and the perspective i gave him on life in this. stay quirky, my friends. (as kenma would say... stay interesting, shouyo)

Being Satori was hard. It was unfortunate, exhausting, and just plain miserable - that's what his junior high school classmates wanted him to believe, at least.

In his early years of school, Satori Tendou was teased for his awkward, gangly appearance and unusual mannerisms. His attempts to interact with his peers were often shunned due to the offbeat semblance he exuded, which left most of the other kids feeling unsettled.

His mother, equally peculiar in her own way, urged Satori to make the most of his eccentricities. "Think about the characters you like from the manga you read. Would you want to keep reading the story if all the characters were the same?"

Satori shook his head, already concluding the point his mother was trying to make. "I get what you're saying, Mom," he grinned from ear to ear, a smile the width of his perfectly straight cherry red bangs, and pushed himself away from the kitchen table. He plopped down onto the wooden floorboard with exuberance. "Life is boring when everyone's the same. Who wants to live a boring life?" He padded over to his room and jumped onto his bed, going back to the first page of this week's issue of Jump. The warm, tingly feeling of adventure took over as he reread the newest chapters of his favorite series for the thirteenth time that week.

A decade later, Satori found himself living in France, where he stood out more than ever before. Not only did he need to learn how to adapt to the country's unfamiliar customs, he also had to learn how to speak its language: the language of love. He found his self-appointed tutor in the bookstore he frequented once he felt comfortable navigating the streets of Paris, which happened to be the same bookstore you browsed when you had a little bit of money to spend.

There you stood alongside him in the graphic novel section, your form hidden under an oversized hoodie, brows scrunched together in what appeared to be deep concentration. You were extremely aware of his presence looming over you, and it created a feeling of unease that sunk into your bones. You braved a glance up at his face, and he quickly turned his head back to stare at the row of the slice-of-life series that lined the very top shelf before him.

Tall, you thought to yourself. That's a very tall man.

You shuffled away from him just a bit, browsing the very bare section of "how-to-draw manga" guides that you knew were second rate to how real manga artists crafted their work.

Moments later, a silvery voice spilled into your consciousness and caught your attention. "Hmm, if only Matsuo-chan realized Hibari's feelings for her in the very beginning..." You can't help but look back up at the lanky man next to you, listening as he changed his speech from French to Japanese. "Then perhaps sweet misery would've never crushed their poor, little hearts." He turned his head to look down at you, heavy lids lowered over brilliantly crimson irises. A cheeky upward curve lifted his thinly shaped lips, and your heart skipped a beat.

Your mind went blank, rendering you speechless.

"I saw the Todai button on your bag," he said, voice now light and cheerful.

You blinked once, twice, then looked down at your messenger bag decorated with various pins from the clubs you took part of in college back in your home country of Japan. Your body relaxed, and a breathy laugh escaped your lips. "Yeah, Tokyo University. Are you from Japan?"

"Yes! Came here from Sendai. How's my French?" He beamed a child-like smile.

You produced your most sarcastic chuckle, turning to lean a shoulder onto the bookshelf so you could face him. "It's kind of terrible."

He mocked a look of despair and dropped his head in feigned embarrassment. You noticed how the pale skin of his cheeks turned a faint shade of red, and you wondered how someone could go from intimidating to adorable in a matter of seconds. Then his eyes snapped back to you, and a toothy grin spread across his face. "Wanna be my tutor?"

Your cheeks flushed pink, and your breath came to a halt again.

"I'm not sure I'm qualified to do something like that," you said, pushing yourself away from the shelf to stand square.

He hummed and straightened his posture, shifting his eyes away from yours, down to your shoes, then back up to your face. "Why not?" The look on his face expressed genuine curiosity.

You decided to pretend you didn't notice his blatant evaluation of your physical form just now.

"I've only been here for a year. I can speak enough French to get by, but I'm not sure I can teach someone else how to speak it."

"So little faith in yourself, little miss."

You furrow your brows at the nickname.

He whipped out a volume of a manga you recently started reading and held it up to you. "You have a pin of this on your bag, too," he said with a wiggle of his sparse eyebrows. "How about you try and get me to start reading this subpar manga by making me read it out loud in French?"

You gave him a look of piqued interest. The possibility of roping someone into reading your favorite series was tempting.

Then he continued, "And we can get yakitori and beer while you teach me?"

The hue of red on your face extends to your forehead.

"You've got pins of beer and yakitori on your bag, too."

A few weeks later, you and Satori were on your sixth date seated across from each other at a cat café in downtown Paris. It took the first three dates (he'd somehow coerced you into) for you to realize that the strange man was just that - strange, but harmless. The one friend you'd managed to make in your year in France introduced you to some very attractive and very gregarious men that you just couldn't see yourself with. Your friend's idea of fun was clubbing and bar hopping through the streets of Paris, and that was unsurprisingly the same kind of fun those men preferred as well.

To you, fun was something much more personal and intimate. Your past experience with relationships lead you to believe that you are meant to be on your own - that there is nobody in this world that will appreciate your oddities and make you as happy as you can make yourself.

Your interests lied in worlds of fiction and fantasy - games, books, movies, and manga, which you learned Satori was just as passionate about as you. Not surprising. He seemed to fit the socially awkward, emotionally inept stereotype you knew most men fit into that also liked anime. He asked too many questions, didn't understand when his questions push personal boundaries, and just wouldn't. Shut. Up.

He did smell nice. You gave him that.

"So little turtle-in-her-shell, do you ever go to conventions?"

You paused your chewing of the last bit of coffee cake you ordered. "Turtle in her shell?"

That carmine, wide eyed gaze of his remained fixed on your face. "You wear that big hoodie all the time like a turtle in a shell."

"It's comfortable," you state. “And yes, I go to conventions.”

Nearly a minute of silence passed between the two of you, and if it weren't for the chatter of others seated around you and the clinking of cups and plates, you'd have really retracted into your "shell" of a sweater.

So you changed the subject, deciding to ask a question that stepped a hair outside of your comfort zone to a man you weren't quite sure about yet.

"Were you just trying to get my attention with that whole "be my tutor" spiel?" You asked following a sip of your iced cappuccino. A little calico feline had chosen you as its scratching post, kneading its nails into the fabric of your jeans. You ignored the little stings of pain for the sake of the cat's enjoyment.

Satori multitasked between feeding himself scoops of his chocolate parfait and playing with the lashing paws of the black cat that sat on the table between you. "Hey now," he said, lightly squeezing the cat's tail before quickly retreating his hand away to avoid the tiny beast's teeth. "I wouldn't know all the different ways to say "I need to take a dump" in French if it weren't for your tutoring thus far, little miss.”

"That's a weird nickname you have for me." The cat on your lap suddenly hopped to the ground, skirting across the ground to the human it suddenly deemed more worthy of its attention than you. You frowned, the action wounding your cold, bitter heart.

"You wouldn't remember me if I called you by just your name, would you?" He used a straw to slurp up the remaining concoction of sugar at the bottom of his cup.

"Do you even remember my real name, Satori?"

He pushed the now empty cup aside and ruffled the black cat's ears with his fingers. It hissed and gave a quick swat of its paw to his hands, then jumped off the table and scurried away.

"I never forget the names of all the cute girls I get to add to my harem," he said with a smirk, his cheeks rising to meet the crinkled corners of his eyes.

You gave him a lopsided glare. "You're kidding, right?"

Satori laughed - a lilted giggle that sent a shiver straight down to your gut, and then his expression darkened and his eyes captured yours in a binding stare. "Would you like to come over and see for yourself?" The way his voice rumbled an octave lower than you've ever heard had you squeezing your hands into nervous balls of tension above your knees.

You frowned. You genuinely couldn't tell if he was being serious. If you hadn't known how much wit and jest the man exuded in nearly every one of his actions, you wouldn't put it past him to be a basement dwelling, serial stalking NEET that kidnapped girls and made them dress up to suit his twisted fantasies. The thought had you questioning every single thing he's said to you so far. He had your number, he knew where you liked to eat, where you liked to drink, and he even knew where you worked. Was this guy like the others?

Suddenly his laughter burst through the air, the sound so boisterous it made you flinch.

"You look so petrified! Are you that gullible to believe everything I say?"

You grit your teeth and grabbed the paper wrapper from his straw to chuck it at his face. "That was so not cool!" You huffed, getting your wallet out to leave a tip on the table.

His laughter continued to tumble through the café, disrupting conversations from nearby customers only for them to direct their attention towards you. You rose to your feet and hurried towards the exit. You absolutely hate being the center of attention!

Satori followed you and matched your stride easily, one of his steps covering three of yours. He stood unbearably close, and if he didn't smell as sweet as the parfait he just ate, you would've shoved him away,

"___-chan," he sang, and you realized it was the first time he said your name. You allowed yourself to relax just a little and slowed your steps. A brief moment of silence settled between the two of you, and he used that moment to gauge your current state of emotional wellbeing.

"___-chan," he said again, this time demanding your attention.

You remained silent. Satori had picked up on so many of your habits in the past few weeks of talking to you and observing your actions that he understood your silence as your cue for, "Go on, I'm listening."

"I'm sorry for upsetting you," he said, bending at his waist so he could meet your line of sight, continuing to stroll alongside you. He must've noticed the creases under your eyes disappear as your tension eased away because that smug little smirk returned to his face. You glanced at him out of the corner of your eye, turning your head to look at him just slightly. A shade of pink colored your cheeks when you met his gaze - his wide, inquisitive eyes studying you with childlike innocence.

You looked forward.

He chuckled and stood up straight, sliding his hands into his jean pockets. "Adorable," he said aloud, further deepening your blush.

You steeled yourself and regained your composure. "Which way do we go?"

Satori hummed. "What do you mean?" he said, bending down again to look at your face. Why must he always have to stare like that when he speaks?

"Aren't we going to your place?"

He grinned. "Really?"

You threw a glare his way. "I'll change my mind if we don't start heading there right now."

Satori grimaced. "___-chan does not cool down so easily after bursting into flames," he mumbled, and you ignored the comment. He sighed. "This way, little miss," he took your hand and pulled you along, bounding across the street as the pedestrian crosswalk countdown hit zero. Your hand wrapped around his, holding on tight to keep up.

You couldn't help but laugh at the stupid sound effects he made as he continued to leap from the street onto the sidewalk, giving you no choice but to run and jump over the curb with him.

Your self-conceived belief that you are all you'll ever have and all you'll ever need to be happy now faced a challenger. This strange person - this bizarre character - punched a hole through the wall you've put so much effort to build on your own.

Satori's twenty-seventh birthday came just after your one year anniversary of the strange... relationship... you managed to maintain despite your ongoing struggle against the warped, pessimistic reality you believed about relationships through years of self-doubt. Slowly but steadily the glass case you built around yourself chipped away due to Satori's freakish ability to see beyond your façade and understand your feelings.

You learned about the bullying he faced in his childhood, and how his mother and high school volleyball team helped him accept the fact that life will always have real jerks with nothing nice to say to test your tenacity. He created a routine of reminding you that you can choose whether or not you let those nasty words bring you down or give you motivation to build your self worth.

Life is more fun when things are a little out of the ordinary. Who wants to be the same as everyone else? These are words you considered when you felt down.

For Satori's birthday, you wanted to do something different, something unique that he would remember about you if you ever went your separate ways.

Since the beginning, you noticed Satori had a thing for cute girls in cosplay. When you told him about your own cosplay projects and showed him pictures, his whole demeanor changed. He became shy - something hardly anyone had ever seen in his usually indiscreet personality.

One thing that helped you feel a little more confident in yourself and your relationship was your experience in physical intimacy. From what you gathered in the little bit of discussion you've had with Satori on the topic, he seemed to have far less experience than you. It was cute how his face went bright red when you managed to pry the details of his past encounters out from the tiny little box of insecurities he still held within. Perhaps it was your turn to bring something out of the wicked Guess Monster (you thought it was a cheesy name but he really took pride in the title whenever he reminisced on his youth at Shiratorizawa Academy) that he kept so carefully hidden away.

"Why are you so shy about this?" You asked the first time you had sex.

Suddenly, the creepy, unwavering eye contact he managed to hold with anyone he came face to face with vanished from the list of unsettling and seemingly unashamed habits and mannerisms that made Satori Tendou so uniquely... Satori.

"The one thing I still have trouble with is..." he looked down at where your naked bodies connected on the plush mattress he swore really was worth the $2,000 he spent. (I don't mean to diss your profession, but do you really make enough money as a chocolatier to afford a bed that expensive?) you asked, immediately regretting having asked the question when a gloomy grey cloud appeared over his head).

"Fucking?" You said, giving him a cocky little smirk.

He buried his face in the crook of your neck with a groan.

"I know you get turned on by cute cosplays of your favorite anime girls."

"...and cute actresses," he muttered, now stuffing his face between your breasts.

That's when you decided to shake things up.

Satori's weekends were usually occupied by work at the sweets factory. He was in the process of getting promoted to a position that freed up his weekends, but it wasn't happening anytime soon.

It was just your luck that his birthday fell on a Saturday this year, your only day off on the weekends. You left your cosplays and wigs back in Japan, boxed up in the bedroom you grew up in. While Satori was slaving away at work, you went shopping. You managed to find a decent sewing machine and plenty of fabric at a (pricey) thrift store on the other side of town. The wigs you looked at were ridiculously expensive - definitely for the high end fashion scene of Paris, not for nerdy cosplayers.

Once you returned to his apartment, you spread all of your findings across his bed and bedroom floor.

A maid's skirt that you will definitely chop up to be anything but modest.

A coreset you honestly weren't sure would fit your little love handles and tummy that lost its tone after all the dessert dates Satori insisted were good for "self care."

Cute devil horns with a pointed tail to match.

Knee high stockings and garters he mentioned as being one of the sexiest things a woman could wear.

And a simple leather collar to put around your neck... with the option to hook a leash.

You looked at the spread before you and wondered how such a quiet, reserved person such as yourself could be so... kinky.

You checked the time on your phone. You had three hours to put something together.

9:43pm Satori:

i'm leaving! boss said he'd let me leave 27 minutes early to celebrate the 27 years of my blessed existence on this planet

@( o･ꎴ･)@

9:44pm

that's all he did for your birthday? and wtf is that emoji

9:44pm Satori:

it's supposed to be a monkey but now that i look it really doesn't look like one. be home soooooon!! ＼(^o^)／ he gave me a $1000 bonus too #stacked

9:45pm

omg you are so lame! come straight to your room for your present :)

9:45pm Satori: (͠≖ ͜ʖ͠≖) ohooOoOOo??

9:46pm stop sending faces and just get your skinny butt over here

9:46pm Satori:

┏( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)┛┏( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)┛┏( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)┛

You heard the front door open, followed by the thump of Satori's shoes hitting the wall. The sound of the lock sliding into place once he closed the door sent a little shiver up your spine.

You sat on his bed, back against the headboard, legs crossed in front of you. You fixed your little devil horns, made sure the tail was pulled out from underneath your butt, and pushed the coreset up to give your cleavage a boost.

Inhale. Exhale.

You'd never dressed up for something like this before, and you had no idea how Satori would react. You imagined he would immediately pass out with a nosebleed.

His footsteps neared his room, and you heard him in his chipper, sing-song voice. "What is my little ___-chan up to, hmm?"

Once he reached the doorway, his eyes landed on you, and his entire body froze. His jaw went slack, looking like a fool with his mouth wide open in dumbstruck awe at the sight before him.

You gave him your most innocent smile, spreading your legs open just a hair. "Come eat up your dessert, Satori~" you said with a tone so sultry it turned his bones into mush.

Satori's shoulders slumped, and he ran a hand through his matted hair in exasperation. His rusty red locks had grown longer than when you first met him - curling behind his ears and covering his forehead. "Baby..." he said, walking into the room, towards the bed. "Baby, baby, baby," he repeated in English, his favorite language to express excitement. He crawled onto the bed, stopping just before you to sit and cross his legs while he looked you over.

Your skirt was cut so short he could almost see the sweet spot between your legs. The garter straps hugged the meat of your thighs and hooked onto the thigh high stockings that fit the muscle of your calves.

Those pointy little horns sat just a little bit lopsided on your head. That slim, pointed tail traced back to your rear, and the collar around that gorgeous neck of yours drew his eyes down to your barely contained cleavage.

"Baby," he said again, almost a whisper. He leaned forward onto his knees to hover over your body and cradled your face between his hands. Hungry crimson eyes gazed right through you, a shade darker than you've ever seen before. "I'm the luckiest man in the world," he said, then pressed the softest, most gentle kiss to your lips.

Your heart fluttered, hands coming up to thread your fingers into his hair. "Happy birthday," you murmured, bringing him back down for another kiss.

The kiss quickly went from gentle to fervent, his hands slipping up your calves over the stockings, over the garters and up to your thighs, rounding out over your ass. He gave your fleshy cheeks a squeeze and broke the kiss, going straight to your neck, kissing every bit of your exposed skin.

You spread your legs more, asking him to come closer, and he did. Your hands slipped underneath his shirt, lifting it above his ribcage, up to his shoulders. He barely moved back to remove the shirt completely before pressing his lips back to the skin over your collarbones, giving you gentle nips with his teeth.

This was the Satori you wanted in bed.

He sighed into your chest, going down to kiss the swell of your breasts. "My little devil," he said, sucking on the skin right above the coreset. "You're so sexy," he bit down a little bit harder, eliciting a hiss through your teeth. "So beautiful," a kiss over the bite, moving to your other breast. "So irresistible," both of his hands came up underneath your ass to lift you up off of the bed and into his lap. You yelped, forgetting his lithe frame could muster so much strength. He placed you in his lap, leaning forward to run his tongue across your lips and into your mouth once you opened up for him.

"Take your pants off," you mumbled, pulling at the waistband.

"I don't wanna stop kissing you," he whined, hands running up along your waist and over your back to press you up against his chest. At that moment you wished you could feel the warmth of his skin, if it weren't for the coreset.

"How are you gonna fuck me if you don't take them off?"

"Mmmfgh," he groaned, a funny sound that only Satori could make without killing the mood.

He pulled away, then quickly leaned forward to steal another kiss, and pulled away again. You crawled off his lap and sat back, watching him rise to his knees to shimmy pants down his hips. He sat back on his butt and kicked them off then crawled back to you, caging you between his arms and legs.

You pushed him away and gave him a devious smirk. "If I knew dressing up like this would flip your switch, I would've done it a long time ago."

He returned your grin with a wicked gleam of his own, eyelids drooping down to look at you with his most perverted leer. "Achievement unlocked?"

You slapped your hand over his face, pushing him away with a laugh. Spreading your legs again, you drew his attention down to your skirt and flipped it up over your stomach to show him your bare cunt.

He groaned, a mix of a whine and a curse, before diving down to attach his mouth straight to your dampened folds. He licked and sucked, pressing the flat of his tongue against your clit before sucking on the little bud, repeating the motion over and over until you started to writhe.

"I-" you began, letting out a huff of a breath, "would tell you to slow down," your hand flew up to grip onto his hair tightly once he pushed a finger inside you. "But it's your night," you huffed again, a strangled moan leaving your throat. "Go wild, Satori."

He removed his mouth and went straight from one finger to three, rubbing the pads of his fingers up against the walls of your core stretching you out and looking up at you with glossy, hazy eyes. "Best dessert I've ever had," he groaned, watching you tilt your head back, chest heaving as your body started to tremble. He went back down to lap at your folds, replacing his fingers with the muscle of his tongue, pushing it deep into your little hole.

"Fuck, Satori, I'm already close," you sighed, rocking your hips up against his mouth. He pulled away again. "I want you for breakfast," he pushed his fingers back inside your cunt, now sloppy with the slick of his saliva and your arousal. He gave a bruising kiss to the inside of your thigh, "And I want you for lunch," a kiss to your other thigh, "And dinner," he groaned, feeling you clench around his digits, pumping harder, faster - long, nimble fingers reaching the very depth of your core.

Those little horns started to slide off your head as you tossed your head forward and back, watching him work between your legs and thrashing back against the headboard whenever he hit your sweet spot.

You lifted your hips off the bed, urging your body to the peak of pleasure. Your voice kept going, encouraging him to go faster, harder, sighing, panting, moaning.

And just like that, every muscle in your body tightened, and a gush of liquid splashed out over his fingers and onto his tongue, his nose, and his chin. Your moans turned into brief, choked sobs as your orgasm rocked your body. You gripped your fist into his hair, so tight you ended up bringing his body forward.

"God," you groaned out load, dropping yourself back down to the bed, your body now spent. He kissed the spot under your navel, over your belly button, back up to your chest, your neck, and your chin. You felt the tips of his fingers slip underneath one of the stockings and pull up and away, letting it snap back down against your skin. You giggled, bringing him up for a slick, sloppy kiss.

You both remained as you were, his forehead now resting against yours, eyes closed, soft pants easing back to controlled breaths. Your left arm slung over the back of his neck, and your right remained tangled into his messy locks, the pads of your fingers giving a gentle massage to his scalp.

"How do you feel?" you asked, too tired to open your eyes.

"Hmmm," he hummed, not quite coherent enough to give a substantial response.

Suddenly, both of his arms wrapped around your waist, and he flipped himself over so that you were on top, straddling his waist. His back rested flat against the bed, that mischievous look once again casting a wicked shadow over his face. He glanced over to where the little devil horns fell onto the bed and placed them back where they belong atop your head.

"I feel like I'm just a peasant, sentenced to be one of hell's slaves for all eternity."

You grin, catching onto his narrative. "Such an unfortunate fate. You were once a hero, but were corrupted by the temptation of lust."

Satori grinned, a toothy, mischievous grin, and his eyes narrowed maliciously. "Now I'm cursed with the inability to ever be satisfied..." He breathed a laugh. "We're so fucking weird," he murmured, "Sounding like Team Rocket..."

You leaned down to give him a kiss. "Weird, normal. Whatever. As long as we're having fun, right?"

#hq kinktober 2020 #hq x reader #hq smut #hq kinktober #reader x hq #tendou x reader #haikyuu #should i even put these in the haikyuu tag or will people try to fight me #whatever

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dyaz-stories · 4 years

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After reading your kiss analysis, I have to say I’m still quite bitter about the Kao scene. Up till Kao I was certain he loved Kagome the most, after that it felt like he loved both equally or only learned to love Kagome more in the last few chapters and that just doesn’t feel right with everything we’ve seen up til that point. It’s sad to think he could have loved Kikyo more even though he barley knew or trusted her, while Kagome loved him unconditionally and couldn’t even get a kiss from him

Hey anon, I completely get how you feel. Again, this is way too long so I’m putting the whole thing under the cut.

The reason why the Goodbye Kiss and other elements, including the Kao arc at first, were so annoying to me was because, based on everything we’d seen until then, like you, I felt Inuyasha loved Kagome and, specifically, only Kagome (you can love more than one person and all that jazz but Kagome was explicitly not okay with him having feelings for both Kikyo and her at the same time). For me the Goodbye Kiss was a bigger deal, but it was basically because I felt the grounds on which I had loved Inukag up until then were destroyed. Basically, I felt betrayed by the way the story unfolded.

I wasn’t able to shake off most of my feelings on those arcs, even after reading perfectly reasonable analyses on the Goodbye Kiss. I mean intellectually I could understand it but I felt very differently when I thought back about it. I feel different about the Kao arc, though.

The thing about it is that it’s just... not a great arc in my opinion? I don’t know, I just reread it to answer and it feels more or less like a cheap repeat of the Illusionary Death arc. Everyone but Kagome is affected by some mind-control trick, except here it’s not because of Kagome herself

but because of a talisman Miroku gave her, which is sad in and of itself but makes sense after a year of continuous trauma for her (see this meta piece I wrote for more details),

Inuyasha sees a fake version of Kikyo who wants him to die with her,

he snaps out of it because of Kagome,

arc over.

The Kao arc is at this weird place where it’s necessary for the story, as it works as an arc where Inuyasha mourns Kikyo and ‘decides’ to keep on living (more on that in a second), but also it’s kind of like... been there done that. It’s the third time that Inuyasha is under some kind of spell and his guilt about Kikyo is used against him and he risks dying and something about Kagome snaps him out of it. Except the two first times showed a clear evolution about his character and this time it’s solved the same way as it is the first time.

This is probably unclear so let me develop that. The first time I’m referring to is the time when Kikyo herself hypnotizes Inuyasha or something and tries to take him to hell. He hears Kagome’s voice and the second he realizes she needs help he stops paying attention to Kikyo.

The second time is the Illusionary Death I just mentioned, but it actually shows a really interesting evolution of Inuyasha’s character. As you can see in the example above, Inuyasha was able to break the spell because he heard Kagome’s voice, and saw she was in difficulty. I really like that one because we see Inuyasha acting completely on instinct and naturally putting Kagome first. I do want to point out though that this is a case where Kikyo is just trying to kill him, so it can’t be compared to what happens later. Him ignoring Kikyo when she wants to murder him vs him wanting to protect her are just two different situations — though Kikyo does take him as him loving Kagome more than her at the moment.

Anyway, back to the Illusionary Death. Interestingly, Inuyasha doesn’t need to hear Kagome’s voice this time. He’s in the process of letting himself die with fake-Kikyo, when he thinks about Kagome, unmprompted.

And then he realizes that oh damn, they’re in Naraku’s trap, Kagome might need him, and he says he can’t let her die. Again, saving Kagome is his motivation not to let himself die, but this time he thinks of her without her intervention, and he manages to free himself with that added motivation.

So yeah I thought it was kind of cool that he goes from having to hear Kagome’s voice to simply thinking about her himself. Though it’s still really sad to read him say this.

Anyway back to the Kao arc, as you can see, it’s again Kagome’s voice that wakes him up. Obviously, Inuyasha is in a very bad place after Kikyo’s death, but I still see that as sort of a regression of his character personally. Like it’s been 400 chapters since that first time. Inuyasha’s definitely grown, and I think it would have been a great moment to either have him thinking about Kagome and going ‘that’s right I have so much to live for!’ or not thinking about Kagome at all and just deciding to live for himself.

But... considering what his relationship with Kikyo was in those recent chapters — he almost seems closer to her than he was at the beginning — I can’t say it doesn’t make sense that he was crushed by it. Though I will say that the fact that him being basically suicidal isn’t addressed does bother me.

Anyway, back to Kao. As you can see, I have many problems with this arc, so I can just shove it under the carpet and act like it was a miss. However, concerning what you were talking about, while Kao does say that Kikyo was the woman loved most in the world

and Kagome later implies that Kao can sense emotions/read people’s minds, I just don’t think it makes much sense? I mean, Kao goes on to say that Kagome is in more pain than Inuyasha.

Don’t get me wrong, Kagome has gone through a lot since she first went through the well, and I don’t have any doubts that she was traumatized. I also think she did a lot of healing for Inuyasha at her own detriments.

But this is Inuyasha. If Kagome’s gone through a lot, he’s gone through hell and back before he even met her, and while I’d argue the year he’s spent with her was an improvement, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses either. Not only that, but he’s shown as suicidal, and if he’s lost “the woman he loved the most”, I just don’t see how Kagome’s soul could be “more wounded than his”.

He also adresses his feelings for Kikyo in a way that doesn’t seem to show him having particularly intense emotions about her, I feel.

I don’t know, my interpretation of it would be that Kikyo’s death mainly triggered the guilty feelings he’d had since the beginning. Now, crushed under all this pain, he might have thought things along those lines about Kikyo, and that might be what Kao felt. Kagome does go on to say that Inuyasha is the one who’s the most hurt by Kikyo’s death, which makes sense even if she wasn’t “the one he loved most” and to me shows that Kao’s power was maybe not super effective.

So in conclusion, Kao’s arc was needed considering where the story was at by then. Unfortunately, because of the (inexplicable) restrengthening of the relationship between Kikyo and inuyasha, Kikyo’s death pushes Inuyasha back into a place he’s supposed to have grown out of for a while. I think it was really important to acknowledge his feelings before going forward. However, I think it’s a rather poorly handled arc that doesn’t particularly serve Inuyasha’s character. We just see, again, an evolution he already had.

I will say, I think that him showing empathy for Kagome and apologizing for not noticing her feelings is an evolution,

but I don’t find it super useful because Kagome immediately tells him that his feelings are important and he shouldn’t feel bad about it. Don’t get me wrong she’s absolutely right to do that, but I think in order for this to really work it should have lead to her acknowledging her own feelings.

Back to the subject at hand, Kao’s arc is a weird arc that’s not super well handled, and I think it just goes to show that Rumiko was getting tired of the manga and wasn’t super into it. It’s a personal interpretation but she strikes me as the type of person who thrives with stories that do not go on for too long and who grows bored of them when they do. Inuyasha is absolutely symptomatic of that. Again, just my feelings, but I feel like at the beginning of the manga she was really enjoying it and having fun with it and by the end it’s more of a chore than anything.

But that’s just speculation on my part, really. Anyway, I totally get why you would feel that way, I basically have the same feelings as you do except they’re directed to the Goodbye Kiss, but I’m pretty chill about Kao’s arc for the reasons mentioned above. I hope this wasn’t too long or that it was at least interesting, I’ve been working on this for literally hours because whenever I finish a point I go off on another tangent lol. Thank you for your message anon, I’d been meaning to talk about Kao’s arc for a while so I’m glad you gave me a reason to!

I haven’t even talked about Kagome’s reaction at the end of the arc but no one needs to read another five paragraphs on this.

#inuyasha #kagome #my analysis #asks

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sugoi-writes · 3 years

Text

I Think Therefore I am (Dabi & Hawks Thoughts)

Because recent chapters have sent me FLYING and this song is stuck in my head!

Basically: SPOILERS for most of the LoV/War Arcs! Especially 290/291.

The new Billie song Therefore I am is a very fitting, acidic song that I feel can depict Hawks and Dabi’s relationship (if you can call it that). So hear me out--

Dabi, this entire time, never fully trusted Hawks in any way/shape or form. He even doubts the validity of Hawks killing Best Jeanist (which, he was right to doubt)! And with some of the theories that were spun in the fandom resurfacing (Touya and Keigo KNEW each other, Keigo’s father was a serial killer/thief, Touya may have gone under the same program as Hawks)... I can see WHY Dabi kept Hawks so close. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. The easiest way to bring the heroes down is by the top (Enji and Keigo).

So with the song, it lays it out that whoever is singing is absolutely setting boundaries, and separating themselves from another person party.

“I’m not your friend or anything/Damn you think that you’re the man/I think therefore I am”

ALREADY, this song is gutting Hawks’ ego, and separating the him from Dabi (whether they were really close at one point or not). I also like the tie in from Descartes; it’s a right hook to Hawks and his infiltration tactics. He has immersed himself in philosophical dogma before, to get close to the MLA (The Meta Liberation Army), and despite how well he was able to pull it off, Dabi was already several steps ahead of him. Also, again, this is a line that can cut further into his ego, as Dabi probably thinks of Hawks as less of a man, or even an animal.

Verse 1? Dabi continues to rip them further apart, and even makes witty comments. “Keep my pretty name out of your mouth/.../ Don’t talk about me like how you might know how I feel/ Top of the world, but your world isn’t real/ Your world’s an ideal”

Dabi is also tearing apart most hero’s desires about world peace, equality, etc. And between his leaked videos of himself? The DNA Test? The killing of Twice? Oh, that world is FAR from obtainable, and tarnished in his eyes. (Also: this is fucked up because this could mean that Dabi INTENTIONALLY watched Hawks kill Twice so he could have more dirt about Hawks! That’s FUCKED UP?)

Hawks would also be the type to try and get under Dabi’s skin, to get to know him better or know how he ticks. That’s why he goes through great lengths to get closer/join the league, leading up to his “murder” of Best Jeanist. You could seriously pull so much from just this verse, it’s insane--

Verse 2??? PHEW--

“I don’t want press to put your name next to mine/ We’re on different lines So I wanna be nice enough/ They don’t call my bluff/.../Articles, articles, articles/ I’d rather you remain unremarkable/.../When they say your name, I just get confused/...

Lumping in the Pre-Chorus/Hook:

Did you have fun?/I really couldn’t care less/And you can give ‘em my best, but just know/

Firstly, did you have fun? Dabi is taunting Hawks, knowing that Hawks got close to some villains, especially Twice: who actually trusted him. And now that Hawks rendered helpless and his rep is ruined, DABI’S the one having fun. Dabi doesn’t care if he’s going down, because EVERYONE is coming with him (which we saw his intent in 291).

Dabi saying that he doesn’t want Enji’s or Hawks’ name next to his, because again: he’s cutting any and all possible ties he can emotionally, and plans to get nuclear level revenge against Hero Society: especially towards his father who upheld its ideals.

This whole time, Enji/Todorokis and Hawks didn’t have a single CLUE who he was. He was “playing nice”, and dodging direct encounters with Enji because he was saving all of his aggression and payback for a MASSIVE payload. He was going to nuke the top heroes of Japan all in one go, and ALMOST got away with it (we’ll probably see whether this holds up or not in 292 and so forth...)

Dabi’s intent is not to give Enji any credit for what he has done to be better. He doesn’t want Hawks to be painted as a martyr or a victim. He, himself, is a casualty of Hero Society/upbringing, and he wants to throw the world further into discord/distrust with the amount of shit and dirt he has. And the thing is, based on some of the reactions we saw in 291, it is PROBABLY working. I wouldn’t be surprised if Todo and Enji completely regress in progress, or that Enji gets completely disowned.

THIS SONG... JUST FUCKING SLAPS? And between my rereads of the manga and me sitting on the edge of my seat, thE ANGST TRAIN WANTS TO PULL INTO THE STATION

TLDR; WHAT A GOOD SONG. It can be used for angst, betrayal, and all kinds of juicy stuff. While it could easily work for Touya and Enji, I feel it’s also BEST reserved for Hawks, as there’s some tension that’s seemingly RESERVED for my fav birdman. Dabi ghostwrote Therefore I am, and I am taking NO CRITIQUES (jk)

*~*~*

Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED Talk, and pray that I never get my hand on more angst songs for Dabi and Hawks, OTHERWISE A BITCH WILL WRITE SOME DABIHAWKS.

#dabi bnha #touya todoroki bnha #keigo takami bnha #hawks bnha #bnha manga spoilers #mha manga spoilers #endeavor bnha #enji todoroki #ANYWAYS MY QUEEN HAS RELEASED MORE CROP FOR USE TO HARVEST AND IAM WILLING ENSNARLED AGAIN #I fucking love Billie Eilish and you can't stop me motherfuckers #chapter 290 spoilers #chapter 291 spoilers

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chibivesicle · 5 years

Text

Re-examining Ogata in his absence. Hindsight is 20/20. Part 1.

It has been almost a year and an undisclosed number of rereads of the manga on my part since I first put an analysis on Ogata out into the world. With all of the recent events of the Karafuto arc, it has given me a lot of new points to consider and through more recent events I’m adjusting what I think will happen. My original idea was that Ogata’s is a protective character who was misunderstood to be a much more aggressive character than he actually is. It really showed in scenes like this one here:

Like all things, the further the plot progresses the easier it is to see where past events fit into the current plot line.

Last summer when I was pondering Ogata, I thought that his role as a sniper, was what others saw him as but that his role in the manga was to be a support/protective/cover the rear type of character. With lots of the recent events though, I have changed my read on Ogata.

My updated thesis is that Ogata’s role in the manga is the strategist. Ogata does have good leadership skills but he lacks the charisma of someone like Tsurumi, Sofia or Wilk. Ogata’s great leadership skills appear when needed and the core group of Asirpa - Sugimoto - Shiraishi need someone like that on their side. I have to admit that I wish I thought of this earlier but it took the reveal of his role as a subordinate for Tsurumi in 1902 which means he was working in military intelligence likely since the start of his career. To approach this idea, I’m just going to go back to the beginning and add in commentary where it shows what’s going on with him.

Ogata was the third character introduced. He was watching Sugimoto and Asirpa question the small fry tattooed convict here. His decision to shoot that man was key and foreshadowed him also shooting Wilk.

By shooting the man, he can’t tell them anymore information. This gives him an advantage over them since he clearly knows more about the gold hunt than Sugimoto does at this point.

Ogata approaches cautiously. He immediately recognizes the sound of a type 26. This tells us he is sizing up the firepower of Sugimoto and Asirpa. He’s impressed by the smokescreen and moves rationally. When he’s tackled by Sugimoto, he’s able to steal his bayonet and rifle bolt. All of this introduces him as a character who approaches everything with a rational mindset.

What is most important is when he and Sugimoto stop, he drives the conversation. He gets Sugimoto to admit important information about himself and he even gets him to blurt out his motivations for Umeko.

These are all mistakes on Sugimoto’s part - all he knows is what he can see about Ogata, he’s in the 27th, and it is assumed they were at 203m hill. He warns him but that’s it. When he’s pinned down and almost killed by Sugimoto, Asirpa saves him by yelling out his name. This allows Ogata to determine exactly who he is and then makes an immediate plan to escape. By glancing at Sugimoto and asking if he’s the immortal Sugimoto, it gives him the ability to poke him in the eyes and flee.

All of these behaviors are the first indication that Ogata is not an ordinary superior private. He approached the situation with caution, prevented the convict from giving away info, tried his best to get an advantage against Sugimoto and then he fled. Intelligence requires one to usually flee and not sacrifice oneself.

The first indication that he isn’t working alone is shown when the reader learns that he survived his encounter with Sugimoto. The other soldiers mention that he was found at the riverbank at dusk, he was injured when it was still light out and they can’t figure out how he was able to make it up on the bank.

Kiro was likely working with him and tracking him or staying hidden. When Kiro finally finds Asirpa he tells her that he’s been looking for her, and that implies he’s been trying to bump into her.

Ogata passes information along to Tsurumi that he was attacked by an immortal and when Sugimoto is questioned by him, he tries to lie but it is too late. Ogata has already tipped off what his identity is.

When Ogata appears again, it sets up his role as a military sniper. This is the regular image of him and will become the read of Ogata that most of the cast will have of him.

What is interesting is that when Ogata comes to Asirpa’s kotan and to Huci’s home, he immediately questions Tanigaki. Just like with Sugimoto, he asks the questions and drives the actions of him. He asks him what happened to Tamai and Co. He doesn’t inform Tanigaki that he’s actively rebelling just that Tamai and Co are missing and that he knows that they approached Tanigaki about *ahem* rebelling.

With Tanigaki his ability to read people is on point. He knows that Tanigaki is lying - what he’s lying about is different but he is weary enough to steal his rifle bolt giving him the advantage. Ogata is incredibly blunt here. He flat out asks Tanigaki if he killed them, likely b/c he knows that Tanigaki is a bad liar and does like to follow the rules and the chain of command.

What is most interesting is that he doesn’t make eye contact with Tanigaki when he says it and instead makes him sweat it out before looking at him. Ogata knows how to put pressure on others when he needs to. Yes, the entire thing is a mix up but Ogata can’t risk Tanigaki going back to Tsurumi and giving any intel on his movements to Tsurumi.

When he leaves his whole plan is to deal with things efficiently and to avoid any unnecessary actions. Killing Tanigaki in the kotan would make the death further from Tsurumi’s information network and eyes. It would have allowed him to get further away before Tsurumi would know that it was Ogata who killed him.

His conversation with Nikaido reveals that he’s playing a much longer game plan that Nikaido is by joining their rebellion group. Not only is Ogata fond of grandmas and doesn’t like to kill people just b/c but it would have attracted even more attention.

Spies and those in intelligence would take this line of action to not attract attention to their actions. Ogata has got to go somewhere and he thinks it is critical to keep Tanigaki away from him. His read on the situation is incorrect - but his rationale will prove to be 100% spot on. His introduction as a skilled sniper is impressive. He mentions the role of sniping in the American Revolution, the lack of leadership to listen to his idea to form divisions of snipers to combat the Russian pillboxes.

He shows that he observed all of his surroundings and entered Huci’s house so that he knew the layout for easier sniping. He is cautious and even though he has the advantage he does not assume anything is a given. When Tanigaki makes the smoke screen, he knows that he beat them with another escape and he immediately changes position b/c he knows that they’ve been had and also doesn’t give Tanigaki and idea of where they could be.

Again he shows no problem to adapt to a rapidly changing situation and he knows his enemy well. Nikaido seems to question the abilities of Tanigaki, as I’m guessing the were both in the 27th for the same time period.

This is the first instance were Ogata does not underestimate another member of the 27th and reasons things out based on his background and strengths. He knows Tanigaki will use his Matagi skills and it puts them at a disadvantage.

When Tanigaki sets the trap for them, he knows full well that it is a trap. He does everything he knows from his war experience - he eats snow to conceal his location, he’s ready for Tanigaki. The fact that Tanigaki can’t find him at the beginning shows that his concealment is successful.

The only reason Ogata loses the sniper battle is the fact that he actually stands up over confidently giving away his position since he didn’t see Nihei’s rifle at Huci’s. However, despite that he successfully escapes.

What is most significant though is that as he escapes from the 27th, he states that he can understand why Tsurumi’s superior officers were incredibly suspicious of him. Why does Ogata know this? This would not be common knowledge for a Superior Private - Ogata had another way to get information on Tsurumi. Did he know this as Tsurumi had his men keeping tabs on what the upper level military brass thought of Tsurumi? Or did Ogata have his own source from working in intelligence that Tsurumi didn’t know about or he kept the information to himself. Ogata indicates a better than average knowledge about the military culture/organization . . .

After this Ogata then disappears again and likely in coordination, goes in search of Hijikata, while Kiro tries to connect with Asirpa.

What does he do? He goes in search of intel. He does this in a casual fashion going to a barber shop - a common place for gossip and information, to determine that Hijikata is indeed in town and looking for the rumored skin. Since it was likely Ogata and Kiro’s plan from the beginning for Ogata to intercept Hijikata this is the best way for him to achieve this goal.

At first Ogata’s behavior in Barato seems out of character. He’s incredibly aggressive and violent with the corrupt police chief. This is not how he acts, he usually hangs back and determines the situation but here he has to be showy. He needs to get Hijikata’s attention. And he does that with bravado. After cutting the chief, he dominates him and publically humiliates him in front of the gangs so that he makes sure that Hijikata has seen him. Ogata has to nail this - the only way he can get into Hijikata’s inner circle is to show off his skills.

He succeeds in this so well. He figures out that Hijikata shot his own allies, and when Hijikata leads them into battle fearlessly. Ogata leads the yakuza from a top the tower and it finally gives a little bit of information about his background and a possible motivation. It also sets up the image that Ogata has the potential to be a great military leader. Tsurumi also tells Nikaido that Ogata is not a man you want to have fighting against you. I keep coming back to this panel. This is doesn’t show a weak man, this shows a man who can lead others and lead them effectively.

Ogata also uses his position to observe everything with a distance and advantageous perspective. It really shows when he’s watching the true leader of the gang, the mother. His observations indicate he did a fair bit of recon on her and knew she’d be greedy but she doesn’t act that way during the conflict. It tips him off to the fact that the skin isn’t there and he needs to get her to reveal the true location. Hence, he lights the herring mansion on fire to get her to pull out the real skin.

When Ogata saves Shinpei from his father, he reveals that he’s killed both of his parents and that he can’t tolerate people who can fight for themselves. Yet, he doesn’t hurt Shinpei and then attracts Hijikata to find him with the skin.

I think the reason why Ogata appeared so reckless during the entire Barato arc was that he had to catch Hijikata’s eye and appear to his Shinsengumi idea of forward men! You couldn’t turn back around and flee, it was a victory or death situation and Hijikata would not respect a younger person who didn’t follow through. So Ogata had to meet the expectations that Hijikata wanted in a subordinate - one willing to risk his life for a cause.

What is interesting is how he introduces himself to Hijikata. He was only in Barato for the skin, but then he immediately knew Hiijkata was there.

He flat out tells him that he was able to recognize him b/c he’s the former subordinate of an excellent intelligence officer. Here in chapter 59 Ogata has flat out admitted that he worked in military intelligence. When I’ve previously read it, I took it that he knew things b/c Tsurumi told him about them as a part of the hunt for the gold. But that isn’t quite true - it has the additional concept that he actually did intelligence work - something that is not 100% clear a this point in the manga. And again like with Sugimoto and Tanigaki, he drives the introduction and conversation.

By getting the skin he’s now working with Hijikata. Working with Hijikata serves multiple purposes for him - 1.) he can confirm that Hijikata knows about Noppera-bou (Wilk) 2.) he can determine if Hijikata knows about Kiro’s identity and his role with the gold. He does this so well. With Hijikata as his senior in age (and Hijikata being a very traditional Japanese man) and also his current boss he can’t directly ask him questions like Sugimoto and Tanigaki.

Instead, he has to temper his forwardness. He’s pleased with the praise about his role in getting the skin and he does his head pat to prepare himself before he asks Hijikata what his purpose is. He needs to know what Hijikata’s plans are and he floats out the idea of making the Republic of Ezo as a futile one.

Interestingly, Hijikata is not looking at him when he asks if he is concerned for the men working with him. This gets no reaction from Hijikata, he just smiles to himself which he can’t even see that Ogata had to goad him into talking. Since Hijikata worked with Noppera-bou in prison he has to play dumb. He asks him if he’s an Ainu.

Ogata then delivers more information about the murder of the Ainu over the gold. Even though the men were murdered, all of their goods were properly treated for proper Ainu burial and he reveals that Tsurumi was the officer involved in the investigation of the murder. With chapter 200, it revealed that Ogata was working with Tsurumi in 1902, there is a strong possibility that men involved in the crime scene investigation were likely Tsurumi, Tsukishima, Kikuta and Ogata. He likely has first hand knowledge of what happened, but he’s not revealing that to anyone outside of those who were there with him.

By telling Hijikata that Tsurumi thinks Noppera-bou is an Ainu, he has baited him to tell him that he actually a partisan. Ogata’s facial expression during this is interesting, his face is hidden from Hijikata’s line of sight (an advantage to him) and he visibly has gone for a relaxed position leaning back to defensively hunched over.

Ogata also doesn’t seem pleased hearing this. It means that Hijikata knows more about the situation.

And of course Ogata isn’t going to be pleased with this information since his partner in the quest for the gold is a partisan. Hijikata then goes on to state that Noppera-bou is likely working with other partisans who are hiding as Ainu and to make it clear it shows Kiro.

Ogata plays this situation so well. He summarizes what Hijikata says - and look at Hijikata’s body language, he’s relaxed and in power while Ogata is hunched over and letting him “figure out” what the situation is by using this “new” information that partisans are involved and that the gold was destined for outside of Hokkaido. Again, Ogata doesn’t even make eye contact with Hijikata and now he’s even turned away from the rest in the room. He lets HIjikata even state that the allies of Noppera-bou are likely partisans that appear to be Ainu e.g. his partner in the cat alliance Kiro.

Ogata only wants Hijikata to know a little of what he already knows. He’s working with Kiro and he knows a lot of what Tsurumi knows in the quest for the gold. He needs to work with Hijikata until they can meet up with Asirpa’s group that had Kiro.

The next time Ogata appears is in Yubari to figure out why Tsurumi went there - this means someone floated him information to Tsurumi’s movements or somehow Hijikata had someone tell him and he sent both Ogata and Ushiyama there.

He set up a good position outside of Edogai’s house and waited until Tsukishima left. This shows that he knows Tsukishima well - he saw him leave with his bathing supplies and knew it would be the best time to take out Maeyama and then question Edogai. This is the second example of Ogata using what he knows about another member of the 27th and takes it into account with his plans.

He needs to know why members of the 27th are there and it is clear that he does not want to encounter Tsukishima. Is this b/c he knows he’s a skilled solider? I sometimes get the feeling that Ogata and Tsukishima respected each other - he doesn’t underestimate him and tries to work things to his advantage without him around.

Ogata shows that he figures out quickly what Tsurumi’s plan is - he finds the samples of dyed skin and then realizes that Edogai has been swayed by Tsurumi’s magic and that interrogating him will be harder. Ogata also shows the viewer that he noticed that the other polar bear was missing and that Edogai escaped. This implies that he was noticing everything around him in the house as he searched for him. This is not a standard thing to do, he was clearly trained to always understand the layout of his surroundings indicating his active role in intelligence.

Either way, his plan doesn’t quite work out as planned due to Tsukishima forgetting his wallet and rushing back, to find Ogata investigating the house. Ogata stole the rifle bolts but Tsukishima immediately noticed and attached this bayonet and uses that to attack Ogata and steal his handgun.

Their shootout is interesting. It is essentially a stalemate between the two men. Ogata is hunkered down but has likely more rounds while Tsukishima is in a more flexible position but doesn’t have much firepower. Tsukishima tries to appeal to Ogata’s emotions and how he should have a sense of camaraderie. Ogata points out that Tsurumi is a rebel group and implies that he’s in the right.

Tsukishima calls him the pet cat of the Imperial Military HQ and he thinks Ogata is doing this to get a promotion. They have been working together since at least 1902 but I really think no one has a clue or good read on what Ogata wants. Even though this is floated as a plausible motivation for Ogata, I still don’t think he’s working for central command. He’s given no indication of wanting a role in the military establishment despite being a capable man. I don’t think he’d be accepted by the military establishment no matter what he did due to his background. He’s not from the winning side of the Meiji revolution, he’s from the losing side and they were excluded from the highest levels of government.

Either way, this exchange reveals to us that Ogata is onto how Tsurumi manipulates men to following him and he isn’t having any of it. Unlike many other characters, Tsukishima also makes a strategically sound decision - he retreats to find Edogai knowing he’s not in the best situation against Ogata. This is the first indication that Tsukishima isn’t just a yes, man for Tsurumi, he has more skills and training and it shows. Neither of them underestimate each other and this really highlights they have a good understanding of each other as a solider.

Even with the escape of Edogai and Tsukishima, Ogata takes full advantage of the situation. He uses Shiraishi and Sugimoto to do his dirty work for him and he thinks that he’ll just be able to get the fake skins for himself as well the one real skin. Look at this smug cat, just following the others to get things.

His plan was working well until they hit the gas pocket and then he almost got trapped in the mine, but after confirming the death of Edogai, but not Tsukishima, he followed miners out safely.

What is most important is that he then takes charge of the situation. He’s clearly Ushiyama’s junior but he decides to tell them what is happening with the fake skins. No one even questions this, out of all of the characters present; Sugimoto, Shiraishi, Asirpa, Ushiyama and Kiro (his partner) agree to go with him. I’ve been wondering if Kiro told Ogata that there was a skin in Barato and he then passed it on to Ogata who quickly noticed that Tsurumi’s men were there. He’s even the one who ordered Ushiyama to contact Hijikata.

Once Hijikata arrives and he and Sugimoto begin their standoff Ogata and Kiro look at each and nod. It is clear that if shit goes down between these two, they must have some sort of plan and they are also just checking in with each other visually.

As the tension escalates Asirpa tries to get involved in the Sugimoto - Hijikata battle of wills and goals for the gold. Ogata at first is watching and then stops to think about what just happened. Hijikata cutting her off prevented Asirpa from saying that her father may be Noppera-bou, but Ogata immediately fills in the rest. Going only on “my father”, he looks shocked to figure that she could be his daughter.

This means that Ogata knows that she is likely a known element in the hunt for the gold and he’s shocked that she’s there with the rest of the men involved in the hunt for the gold. Most of those involved in the hunt for the gold are first under the idea that she was “promised” the gold but once Wilk dies, she becomes the key to the gold. He likely knows Wilk is Kiro’s partner on the outside and Kiro likely told him that his daughter is the key and he’s just putting it all together at that point.

When the 27th attacks to destroy all of the evidence, he is able to snipe effectively and interestingly, Hijikata gets him as far away from himself as possible and instead tries to get information from Kiro. It is clear the entire time that Hijikata doesn’t trust Ogata, but not for the reasons that Sugimoto tried to warn him for at supper. Sugimoto’s reasons for not trusting Ogata are in a way “Sugimoto specific” he didn’t like the fact that Ogata betrayed the 27th, but as many people have stated before, he has no issue with Tanigaki who betrayed the 27th and tried to use Asirpa as a human shield. Hijikata’s reasons for not trusting him likely have to do with his own suspicions about what Ogata did for Tsurumi and how much he actually knows. Hijikata must know that Ogata is working with someone else, but he just can’t figure out who it is.

While Ogata is with the group he is quiet for the most part. He acts like a model team member but reveals little.

He is simply watching and observing everyone. He does his best to not arouse suspicion even though Sugimoto has a bone to pick with him constantly. The entire time they eat woodcock brains and then make citatap he’s just watching everyone. Always in the background silently observing.

For the most part he puts others at ease, they don’t may much attention to him and he can keep watching. The only person who is always watching him is Sugimoto. I’d say that Sugimoto is watching Ogata the wrong way, he’s watching him b/c he’s expecting him to betray him all the time, and he doesn’t pay attention to read in between the lines to really figure out Ogata’s background. Yes, he’s a former subordinate of Tsurumi but it is clear that Sugimoto isn’t making the full connection between Tsurumi’s role as an intelligence officer.

The next indication to Ogata’s role as likely working directly in intelligence is during the silent kotan arc. He immediately notices that something is off since Asirpa realizes that something is off. During the entire time in the house, Ogata is watching, watching, watching. Here is just one example, when Asirpa needs an excuse to leave they are confused and Sugimoto is embarrassed by her behavior.

With Asirpa out of the room, Ogata then begins to put pressure on the fake Ainu. And this is just like how he interacted with Tanigaki - he senses that he has an advantage and he begins to push hard on them. Ogata is able to start questioning them and when he gets no reply he pushes them even further.

One woman yells through the window for them to please save them. Then the woman in the room with them makes the same request. The yakuza is clearly concerned and Ogata looks down upon him based on the angle of the shot. And since he has confirmed that they did not know what Asirpa said, he knows they don’t know what the women are saying.

I’ve begun to wonder - does Ogata know what they are saying? He’s working with Kiro and he’s worked directly for Tsurumi. At this point in GK it is not crazy to assume that Ogata may know some Ainu as well. By not saying citatap or hinna hinna unless he really wants to he keeps people in the dark about if he could know some Ainu.

Ogata tries so hard to get the others to realize that something is off. He notices yakuza tattoos, the odd behavior and he even makes the man who is supposed to be the village head scream out in Japanese and Sugimoto is still completely dense. And this shows that Ogata’s pressure on them has paid off.

He lays everything out for Sugimoto and only b/c of Sugimoto’s stubbornness and dislike of Ogata does he keep ignoring them. During this arc it is interesting, he acts as the leader of their group, gets them to figure out something is off and then provides some support but really lets Sugimoto deal with most of it.

I also wonder about this scene. Ogata asks the yakuza if he knows how to beg for his life in Ainu. Is this Ogata just gloating or does Ogata actually know how to?

The entire silent kotan arc is one where Ogata steals the spotlight and the leadership of the group and it works well. He even notices that the women make dango with the pestle they used to hit and kill a man. . . .

Ogata then is key to their plan to rescue Shiraishi from the 27th. First off, he eliminates any plan that may not work from the start. Nagakura points out that they will be on guard since their attempt to rescue Shiraishi failed. Sugimoto thinks a high ranking officer and this shows how unaware he is of the composition and politics of the military elite are. Ogata stops the idea before it can even get off the ground. When he says this he looks very introspective and almost sad or disappointed about something. He knows based on his background that someone like him is not able to enter that realm b/c he’s not from an elite family. Working in intelligence he would be privy to the information about the higher ups in the military. This also alludes back to his earlier statement about knowing how the military brass were suspicious of Tsurumi.

Interestingly, Kiro is the one who mentioned that the men were from the 27th and Kiro is the one who conveniently has a map of the 7th division base/fort shown on the previous page. How did Kiro have this map so easily?

Kiro is also great at playing along to be ignorant about Ogata’s background. He damn well knows he was in the 27th and working for Tsurumi.

Ogata than flat out says that the 27th will likely have Shiraishi hidden away and not easy to get access to. He knows their standard operating procedures and what would likely happen.

When they then go to rescue Shiraishi, he takes up position to watch things and provide support from afar. Here he is able to determine when things will become problematic with the arrival of Koito. As soon as he notices him, he knows that they are in for a rough go since Koito is Tsurumi’s pet Satsuma hayato.

As Sugimoto and Shiraishi escape he gives them covering fire - just enough to prevent them from chasing out the window. This was smart - Ogata fires once and he flees and he knows that Koito will run out to pursue from the other direction. At this point, Ogata takes full command of the situation.

He directs Sugimoto and Shiraishi to follow him and then he orders him to run like hell. What is really neat is when Ogata takes charge, he takes charge.

As the reach the edge of the base, both Sugimoto and Shiraishi are in awe and shock at the sight of the blimp. Ogata meanwhile is not only unfazed, but he correctly tells them that it is a prototype from the dirigible division. Of course Ogata knows what it is - he knows more about the military than anyone else in the groups outside of the 27th. Not just b/c he was in the 27th, as Tanigaki was only added to Tsurumi’s men after the war, but b/c he was a major part of Tsurumi’s inner circle of intelligence.

Shiraishi quickly realizes that they should steal it and at that point Ogata conceals his face with the hood of his cloak. What is very interesting is that Sugimoto manages to steal a rifle but Ogata is the one who single handedly is able to allow them to steal the blimp.

Once on the blimp, they have to deal with Koito. Sugimoto orders Ogata to give him his bayonet while Koito now for the third time uses his information on a member of the 27th agains them. He flat out tells Sugimoto about his Jigen-Ryu style and that he’s at a disadvantage. With that reveal, he doesn’t bother to conceal his identity from Koito and it he uses it to try to throw him off to an extent.

With Asirpa’s distraction of almost hitting Koito with an arrow and Shiraishi knocking him off they are able to escape. While the rest fuss over Sugimoto, Ogata borrows the type 38 and softly smiles at it.

After the blimp crashes, he again takes command of the situation. He knows where they are, their distance from the 7th and that he was watching the 27th following them on horseback. He flat out tells them that need absolutely need to outrun them and it is their only option.

As they continue up into the mountain, Ogata is totally in charge of the group, Shiraishi wants to head down. He stops him and tells him they can’t b/c they are being pursued. Either Sugimoto or Shiraishi suggest trying to hide in the snow and he also says there is not enough snow to hide them. It really becomes a conversation between him and Asirpa.

He knows they are going to suffer from hypothermia if they don’t act quick and Asirpa tells Sugimoto to shoot some of the deer and Ogata immediately obliges getting two at once. As they begin to descend the mountain, there are two major events. Asirpa prompts the first Ogata flashback.

This is key for several reasons. We get a look at the fact that Ogata grew up in poverty. His mother was a geisha who had him in the hopes that it would allow her to be with his father and likely she would be loved and supported by him. Where Ogata fit in this is unclear - she gave him a noble samurai name but it is implied that she came from a samurai family on the losing side of the Meiji revolution while Hanazawa was a Satsuma man from the winning side.

Whatever the cause of his mother’s mental illness, it was not good and it hurt him and his grandparents. He tried his best to get her to change. He brought her fowl for dinner and she was so far gone that she never even noticed him. His mother was obsessed with Hanazawa and he suffered because of it.

Ogata got a rifle from his grandfather. @goldenkamuyhunting has a nice summary of this in a meta which you can find here:

https://goldenkamuyhunting.tumblr.com/post/184630357773/do-you-know-exactly-what-rifle-ogata-grandfather

What is key is that Ogata has a carbine, not a full size rifle. The Ogata family was on the losing side of the Meiji revolution meaning they fought and/or supported the side of the Shogunate. From research, there were Western military style calvary units that fought for the Shogunate and they used carbines. This information tells us that Ogata’s grandfather likely fought in the war and was in a cavalry unit. Therefore, his grandfather could ride horse and may have told Ogata about his times. This also would imply that his grandfather was up fighting in Hokkaido potentially as a part of the Republic of Ezo.

He is telling this to Hanazawa as he as stabbed him to stage his suicide. What is more interesting is how his grandparents react to his mother eating the poisoned nabe. They are trying to get her to throw up whatever it is while Ogata is blankly in the background. Based on her mental state they may have thought that she did this to herself and they are trying to prevent her death by suicide.

Here is the interesting thing, if this is approached from a classic samurai household mindset, her suicide would not be something they would celebrate (that sounds terrible) but they wouldn’t potentially try to save her. But here both of his grandparents are trying to hold her up and get her to vomit. This would imply that some aspect of their lifestyle of background would not want her to do this e.g. that they are Christian in background. Ogata’s mother messed up big time, she got pregnant, had Ogata and then was unable to work as a geisha anymore. Yet, Ogata’s grandmother brings her back and takes care of her and her illegitimate child.

His entire confession to Hanazawa is interesting. He tells him how he was abandoned by him and what it did to his mother and this leads him to tell him that he didn’t have the option to chose his parents. Hanazawa reveals that he knew his mother hand mental health issues and this implies this in part lead to him abandoning her. He likely didn’t want to risk having a son who could also have the same issues and he says that Ogata felt like he did.

I don’t think Ogata was disgusted by his mother - he just didn’t get the attention he deserved and required from her. He goes on to tell him that children are unable to chose their parents.

Therefore, he does not believe that love is a certain thing personally. But he still leads Hanazawa through a thought exercise that a child raised without love from their parents will be missing something fundamentally human. He throws it that it also has nothing to do with one’s position or social class since, his father’s eliteness is meaningless.

All of this leads to Ogata’s thoughts that knowing that Yuusaku was a respected and upstanding man and being of high moral character showed him evidence that when his father cared for his son, he was able to become the type of person that Yuusaku was from the outside. This then leads into Ogata’s question if all of a sudden Yuusaku were missing would this lead to a blessed path for him. The lighting on tihs panel shows Ogata over Hanazawa and lit from behind by light.

This lighting is then matched with the sun rising over the mountains has he looks off into the distance as a child with a recently shot duck looking for a blessed path.

Now the language that Ogata uses here is very unusual. Through my very limited understanding of the Japanese readers of GK, many of them picked up on how his language is very Christian in nature with the use of one being blessed. There was a nice meta post by @1010mush about this and how this is something that many people were confused by.

What chapter 103 tells us is that Ogata’s grandparents were on the losing side of the Meiji revolution, they went to great lengths to try to save his mother and took care of him and he’s looking for blessings and love. A major aspect of Christianity is the idea that “God is Love” and Ogata does not believe in love and likely does not believe in God either. All of this likely indicates that the Ogata family may very well have been Christian.

The next time Ogata’s skills of information gathering and keeping things in perspective happens in the swamp. Shiraishi finally asks Sugimoto why he wants the gold and he says he’s doing it for the widow of his friend for her eye surgery and Ogata immediately determines she is the woman he loved from thei first encounter. Since Ogata already interrogated Sugimoto when he first met him, he now has this additional information about him.

He watches at Asirpa tries to distract everyone off of the topic of the woman who Sugimoto loves and he knows that she has a kid crush on him. This will come into play much later when he’s trying to convince her to work with him.

The time in the swap brings up his encounter with Tanigaki. He still thinks that Tanigaki killed Tamai and Co and now he’s upset that he’s met up with the group and he thinks he’s directly following him on Tsurumi’s orders.

Instead of asking Ogata to help him, Tanigaki lashes out at him. Yes, Ogata plays this the wrong way and thinks that he can still use his rank on Tanigaki but it backfires. Tanigaki only becomes more upset and thinks that Ogata will murder the other Ainu to save him. This is very interesting since Ogata has demonstrated numerous times that he does not kill people without reason, and especially civillians. The thing that seems to push him to the edge is when the one Ainu man tells him to throw down his rifle in Ainu - Ogata gets white eyes and he tells the man to not aim at him and that he will kill him.

There is so much tension that has built up here. What is interesting is that even though the man is holding the rifle aimed at Ogata, he’s still holding his rifle down and in a ready but not aimed position. The next page shows that Ogata is still not aiming his rifle at the other men even though the Ainu man has the rifle pointed at him. The Ainu elder then orders the man to lower his rifle.

Despite being very threatening, Ogata never followed through on even aiming at them. He looked livid and he had the white eyes but didn’t actually do anything. And with that the situation resolves itself.

He despite not trusting Tanigaki, manages to rescue him easily. This shows that he had a good understanding of the situation and also of human behavior, escaping earlier rather than later when they would be watched much more closely. He sacrifices his precious sniper cloak and his cloth that protects his rifle as well. Note, out of all of the characters who have rifles, Ogata is the only one who frequently has it covered when not in use. Clearly this it to in part protect the rifle but it may also serve a purpose to be more polite around others with it and indicates a time when he is not threatening.

Asirpa later thanks Ogata for helping to rescue Tanigaki without hurting anyone else. At this point she clearly has picked up on the other adults attitude towards Ogata and tells him that she has changed her opinion of him. In between him sniffing her hand, Ogata tells everyone what they would expect to hear from him. He stops and thinks before he replies. He’s smirking and his face is completely shades from the eyes up and the rest of him is also shaded as he tell them that he’s an old war buddy.

The reader knows this is utter bullshit - he tried to kill Tanigaki, he shot Mishima and Maeyama who were both war buddies. Tsukishima was shocked that he did so and Ogata is just reusing Tsukishima’s line here. Ogata does not feel connections with others being war buddies but this is the easiest line to say to keep others from pressing him for more information. A smart move on his part to just play to basic military ideas (that he clearly does not believe in).

The next two important instances of Ogata knowing more military information than a regular Superior Private during the swamp and at the beach. Only after Sugimoto fires the wet rifle does he notice that Ogata stole the type 38 from him. Yes, Ogata knows his firearms and he is a nerd about it.

But he explains all of the full details about the improvements in the type 38 rifle both with range and the cartridges as well. His knowledge is well beyond all of the other characters when it comes to firearms. Part of this is probably his own personal interest but also from his time in intelligence.

The second time he is again a major information dump for the rest of the group. He describes in great detail what happens during locust swarms. Ogata explains this for an entire page. He knows the type of damage that they can cause, how frequent they have been in Hokkaido during the Meiji era and the extremes that the 7th had to go to deal with them.

He uses interesting language here, that “they would tell stories about it in the 7th.” maybe they did or maybe he knew more details about this due to his time in intelligence. Tanigaki was also a member of the 7th and was working as a frontier solider - he could add information in here but instead he’s silent the entire time. Either Tanigaki wasn’t in the 7th long enough to hear these stories, he wasn’t paying attention or this information was not something most cared to remember.

The locust swarm gives Inkarmat a chance to talk to Asirpa alone. Meanwhile, Kiro catches up with the rest of the group on the beach. While the rest of the group jumps in celebration upon reaching the ocean, Ogata is looking off into the distance with his binoculars. Since Kiro was able to find them, I think that Ogata found a way to leave him a message or signal to him letting him know where to find them.

Inkarmat, essentially goads Asirpa into confronting Kiro, but in doing so, she gives enough evidence that, she must be working with Tsurumi. Ogata immediately pulls his rifle up to aim at her and explains to everyone that her evidence for Kiro killing Wilk was collected by Tsurumi.

Therefore, he has proven that his suspicions around Tanigaki were correct, but that it was through Tanigaki’s presence that she was passing information along to Tsurumi. Inkarmat was privy to information that Ogata knew that she shouldn’t know.

Ulitimately, Kiro gets Ogata to back off a bit and he calmly asks Shiraishi about Noppera-bou and if he looked the same as Wilk. Inkarmat has racheted the tensions up in their group and the are all tense as the get closer to Abarashi.

The next time that Ogata takes on a leadership role is during the blind bandit arc. Based on their attacks during the new moon, he realizes they could just go in search of them instead of waiting for an ambush.

Instead, everyone follows the advice of the Ainu man and they go to the onsen to try to find out information. This gives Toni time to watch them and they are able to attack them during the new moon. Ogata is the only one who brought his rifle to the onsen and he is the smartest person when they are attacked. He uses his shots sparingly and does not waste them. He even then trails Toni and two other men and identifies their hideout.

When they enter the abandoned inn, Ogata takes charge the entire time directing Sugimoto what to do. The two of them are very successful and he’s able to shot another man thanks to Asirpa’s help of dropping the small seed pods on the floor. Out of the entire group, Ogata and Kiro were much better at fighting the blind bandits than Sugimoto and Tanigaki.

When the group swings by the photo studio, Kiro is nervous about gettig his photograph taken. Hijikata has been trying to figure out if he’s a partisan and what his connection to Noppera-bou is since he never knew his real name. Kiro lets them take his photo despite the risk. Who does not get photographed to our knowledge is Ogata. He’s at the studio, as shown here.

But Ogata is not in any of the photos taken during the chatper and nor is he at the end when the images are developing, hung up with the clothes pins. Right now, there are no photos of Ogata from this stop that are known. Kiro has an obvious reason not to get his photo taken as it will later be revealed he’s a wanted man in Russia. Other than Tsurumi wanting Ogata dead, it is unclear why he’d be avoiding a photo unless he’d be recognized by someone who would know him from his intelligence days.

If Ogata did not get his photo taken on purpose, this is likely what made Hijikata a little bit more suspicious of him. Keep in mind that the tankoban version has Hijikata saying that both Tanigaki and Kiro told him about his background and that he was Hanazawa’s illegitmate child and a lot of people know this. It is his background that has Hijikata troubled and keep in mind the entire time, he’s being keeping Ogata out of his group when possible. He clearly never trusted Ogata to begin with but he thinks that Ogata’s motivations have to do with his background.

This leads to what I think is one of the most blunt yet honest statements from Ogata, he summarizes what Hijikata thinks his personal goal is - since Ogata never reveals much, he likely just avoids discussing it b/c his father clearly makes him upset and that he flat out calls everyone else’s trust of each other. He calls it like it is - everyone is working for their own motives and they have different ways to achieve their own goals. Hijikata, will betry Sugimoto and Shiraishi at Abarashi with the help of Kadokura. Inkarmat will sell them all out to Tsurumi. Kiro and Ogata, knew that they would have to kill Wilk to prevent him from passing along info - just like with the convict that Ogata shot all the way back in chapter 4.

Ogata likely knew that if the 7th would attack Abarashi and they were to move during the new moon that they would use the long burning star flares from the war to provide ample light. This likely explains his overall absence from the pre-Abashiri prep. He spends most of his time looking at the area with his binoculars and likely is trying to determine where he will snipe Wilk from when the time arises.

This really is highlighted at how Kiro double and triple checks with Asirpa when Inkarmat spots Wilk. When he’s on the roof Kiro looks back towards Ogata. He hangs back at this position and instead yells to Asirpa to confirm that Wilk is actually Wilk.

That allowed him to make the signal to Ogata to go ahead and shoot. Ogata and Kiro had an additional level of trust with each other than others in the group. Kiro prepped a canoe, one that was only big enough to take Asirpa, themselves and Shiraishi - they were planning on ditching the rest of the group from the get go.

Ogata gives the command to leave, meaning that Kiro was only waiting for him and that he wasn’t brining anyone else with them. Kiro already told Shiraishi that Inkarmat was Tsurumi’s informant so she had to be left behind. Ogata reports that Tanigaki was taken by Tsurumi and then he tells Asirpa that Wilk and Sugimoto are dead to get her to leave with them.

He’s both lying and telling the truth here. He did not go in for a closer look but he’s established this lie which will become important later on. It is 100% true that Wilk is dead, what he’s unsure of is if he was able to really kill Sugimoto or not. It boils down to the idea that Sugimoto is the type of person who may still survive. By mixing in the truth with lies, it makes it harder for anyone to tell if he’s outright lying or not and this entire statement is very clever.

When Kiro asks Ogata why he had to shoot Sugimoto in addition to Wilk, it was the idea that Wilk may have revealed more information about the gold to Sugimoto. It was a strategic decision on Ogata’s part to shoot Sugimoto and it was a smart one to make. Even though Ogata and Kiro have been working in their cat alliance, Ogata wants to make it clear that he doesn’t 100% trust Kiro or anyone really.

I still read this conversation as Ogata making it clear to Kiro that he will not completely follow him blindly and that he still has power in their partnership. The fact that he knows Sugimoto will come racing after them puts pressure not only on Ogata himself, but on Kiro as well by proxy. Ogata read Sugimoto like a book from observing him and the story reveals that Sugimoto will behave exactly how he predicted.

As they continue north to the Russian border, Ogata is reminded that Sugimoto may be still alive and following him when he was unable to kill a sea lion.

He seems more concerned about this that normal, his facial expression is one of concern and worry, not just a basic observation of fact. Of course, Asirpa tells him how to guarentee a kill on animals such as bears and sea lions. That he should shoot them in the eyes! I wonder if Asirpa has given away the key for Ogata to kill Sugimoto in the end. . . . or maybe Tsurumi since his forehead protector may make it harder to kill him.

One of the parts of the current Karafuto arc that continues to stand out for me is the entire visit to the fox farm. Kiro not only has them sell the sea meat so that they can make enough money to quickly travel to Shisuka by dogsled but also to help educate Asirpa on her father and parts of his past that she never knew.

He gravely mentions on imperialism lead to the loss of Wilk’s hometown. Due to his mixed nationalities, his father who was a Polish political prisioner couldn’t leave Karafuto even though he was married to an Ainu woman. They stayed behind and many of the Ainu moved to Hokkaido.

But most of those Karafuto Ainu died of disease in Hokkaido and no one returned to what was once a healthy kotan on Karafuto. Kiro highlights that the Karafuto Ainu were simply small human pawns at the mercy of these great colonial powers. While Kiro is explaining this, the panel shows Ogata, looking at the foxes in the background and he’s almost completely shaded.

@goldenkamuyhunting and I have been completely stuck on this panel for almost a year or so. Why is Ogata shown here? Is it b/c he’s a former Japanese solider and a representation of imperialism? But, Noda could have also put Shiraishi here as the other Japanese member of their party. Furthermore, Ogata clearly is not one who has bought into the midset of the Japanes imperial government and what it wants its citizens and soilders to think. He does not believe in the power of the elites, he thinks the military higher ups made poor decisions and he does not like men leading their subordinates to die pointlessly.

We have already hand a long discussion if this implies that Ogata has Karafuto ties. Is Ogata mixed race? Ogata is cannonically lighter in skin tone and he is a bit hairier than the rest of the Japanese cast (sans Tanigaki who is Matagi). His mother had to have been seen to be a beautiful woman since she was a geisha. On twitter Sei Kobiyama has mentioned that Japanese men were very attracted to Ainu women due to their unique beaty (and of course the implied sexual violence that went along with it). I can’t help but shake the feeling that if Ogata’s grandfather fought on the losing side of the Meiji revolution he may have ended up in Hokkaido and further north and met his grandmother who was either Karafuto Ainu or maybe even mixed race from there.

There must have been some event that allowed Kiro and Ogata to meet and from the cat alliance, why would Kiro want to work with Ogata as a partisan? It would be an additional “bonus” if part of his family were from the north and it just happened that he grew up in Ibaraki which was where his grandfather was from making him appear to be a regular country boy. Keep in mind that through genetics, if Ogata were mixed race, he’d be 1/4 Karafuto Ainu (or something of that background) and 3/4 Japanese with 1/2 of that being Satsuma from Hanazawa. It makes one wonder if Hanazawa knew that Ogata’s mother was mixed race and was a contributing factor to him not wanting to have that child suceed him in addition to her mental health issues. Ogata was born around 1880-1882; mixed race individuals were definitely not seen as a positive thing by the elites of many places around the world.

Anyways, Ogata serves as the force that allows Kiro to explain their rationale and plan for heading noth. He knows that Wilk told Asirpa the key to finding the gold before he “died”. Kiro knows it has to be something culturally linked and that the trick would be getting her to figure out what it is. The code would be something almost banal - nothing remarkable to Asirpa but unable to be known by anyone else.

Again, Ogata’s past in military intelligence comes through in this conversation - he works though all of the possibilities including the fact that she could be lying to them - even though, he likely doesn’t think Asirpa is lying to them he doesn’t rule out the possibility.

This entire conversation says a lot about both of these men’s personalities, Kiro plays to the strengths that he’d a friendly and personable guy and Ogata runs through the possible outcomes through logical reasoning. Really, these two make an excellent team that is balanced and despite their low level distrust is one of the most effective groups in the manga to date.

As they travel along Ogata shoots a musk deer and Kiro explains how he and Wilk were muskies. Asirpa looks so happy that she learned something about her father, The screentones on Kiro are dark as he is manipulating her for his own needs (and partisan needs) while in contrast Ogata is half dark/light. Both men can see that Kiro’s plan is working yet, Ogata’s committement to the plan is shown as not quite as negative as Kiro.

This part of the arc is also a very silent phase for Ogata. As he lets Kiro take the lead, his silence becomes more obvious and is at first confusing for the reader. It makes the power dynamic between Kiro and Ogata seem off balance and myself among others started scratching my head about this. Ogata would not be the type of character to enter such an unequal arrangement with Kiro pulling all the strings and him along for the ride.

When it is key to helping Asirpa figure out the code Ogata does speak, which gives his words more power to Asirpa. They go on the reindeer hunt to apologize for him shooting one and Asirpa is so happy to join him. She’s blushing and she excited to learn something about her father. She also physically tags along with him behind him under his cloak on the skies as they get closer to the reindeer showing that she trusts him enough to be physically close with him.

As Kiro explains the dyanmics of reindeer herds, Ogata concludes that they are just like people. This statement implies that he has a deep understanding of human interactions and how humans behave in groups. None of this is out of character for him and if anything, he is adding this fact to his already vast knowledge of many things to keep in mind for the future. This implies that in the past he’s seen people fall into choas when their look out was removed. This may be in reference to his role as a sniper during the war or maybe an military intelligence mission under Tsurumi. Or maybe he’ll use this in the future?

The reindeer hunt demomstrates that when given the freedom to act on his knowledge and skills, he is incredibly capable. Again, even though Kiro and Ogata never 100% trust each other, both of these men allow the other to shine when needed. Kiro is also the same age as Tsurumi, so it could be that Ogata respects him and does see him as a much more “normal” leader and a more compassionate leader as well. Again, post reindeer hunt, he’s oddly silent, nomming away on food in the background listening to everything.

He’s letting Kiro handle the logistics of crossing the border and he’s okay with this arrangement. When they are attacked by the border guards, several things happen. Ogata immediately moves to protect Asirpa. He tells her now to hide and he begins to assess the situation to determine that they are up against a skilled sniper.

What is most interesting about this is how their battle against the border guards plays to both of their strengths. Kiro is ballsy enough to rescue the injured man, almost goading Vasily to shoot him while Ogata takes advantage of his hesitation to shoot Ilya. Kiro and Ogata are both confident and proud men, hey says he was able to resue the Uilta man due to the gods (and his confidence) while Ogata states it was simply due to his smart actions to shoot the spotter.

I don’t want to dwell on the sniper battle too much, I’ve looked at it at length previously. The take home from the sniper battle is that Ogata wants Asirpa to realize that the border guards were tipped off to them and it is likely linked ot Kiro. He likely knows that Tsurumi would be the one to float that information to try to stop them or verify that they indeed crossed the border.

This event serves a few purposes it allows the backstory of Wilk and Kiro to be introduced as partisans and it leads one to begin to guess at Ogata’s background in the military. It also allows Ogata to learn from his loss in the sniper battle with Tanigaki to beat Vasily.

This panel here though is yet another example of Ogata all but admitting part of his skill set and again alluding to his role in the military not being a “normal” one. He states that he will have to get the answers directly from them. Unless the border guards are fluent in Japanese, Ogata is all but admitting that he can speak Russian. The sniper battle with Vasily shows that the partnership between Ogata and Kiro is much more balanced - yes, he still can’t speak the native people’s languages but he can speak Russian and it makes his decision to form the cat alliance with Kiro all the more reasonable. He’s not being blindly lead to Russia, he’s capable of working things out on his own if need be.

Okay, this is the end of part one, please see part 2.

#golden kamuy meta #gk meta #ogata hyakunosuke #asirpa #sugimoto saichi #tsurumi tokushirou #kiroranke #wilk #hanazawakoujiro #vasily #tanigaki genjirou #koito otonoshin #military intelligence

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murasaki-murasame · 5 years

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Thoughts on Sarazanmai Episode 5: “I Want To Connect, But I Can’t Be Forgiven”

I’m just gonna go and open a window and casually scream into the abyss because this show is already destroying me and we’re only :) five episodes in :)))

We’re already rapidly approaching the part where the established episodic patterns start getting broken, and oh boy I can only imagine how the rest of the show will go from here.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

Oh boy where to even begin with this one. There’s already so much happening and we’re not even halfway into the story, lol. Part of me’s still slightly worried that we haven’t really gotten into anything related to Sara, Reo and Mabu, or the apparent otter-kappa conflict going on in the background, but this episode does make it more clear that those parts will get more important soon enough. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if the next episode mostly wraps things up with Kazuki, and the second half of the anime is focused more on Reo and Mabu.

But anyway, on the topic of Kazuki, there’s a whole lot to say about him after this. I ended up being mostly right in my guess that he was adopted and that Haruka’s disability was caused by an accident that Kazuki feels responsible for, but it was still interesting to see how it all played out. I think one of the things that surprised me most is how, in spite of everything we learned, it still feels like there’s a lot going on with the topic of Kazuki’s birth mother that we don’t really understand yet, and there’s the whole lingering question of why Haruka apparently had her scent pouch. So I think there’s some further reveals to be had there. I was kinda confused about how casual Kazuki’s birth mother seemed to be about reuniting with him, since that’s not really how you’d expect it to go, especially since it also didn’t seem like she was looking to bring him back into her family. It made it come across like she was kinda oblivious to how much turmoil the adoption situation had put Kazuki in, but I want to wait until we learn more before I try and judge her.

I reread the last few chapters of the ReoMabu prequel manga recently, and it’s gotten me wondering if there’s a deeper connection between Kazuki and Sara than what we’ve seen thus far. At the very least, it feels like too much of a core, recurring part of the story for it to not have some deeper meaning to it, though most of all I just think it’d be a bit lame if there’s nothing more going on there.

Specifically, I was wondering if maybe the ending of the ReoMabu manga was about Sara transforming into her teenage self and leaving her dads, but deciding to leave a clone or a sibling of herself behind for them to raise in her absence, and I was wondering if maybe that hypothetical other baby could somehow be Kazuki himself. I don’t really feel confident in that theory after this episode, at least not after how we outright saw Kazuki’s birth mother, but I still feel like there’s something going on with how the ReoMabu manga ends on the confusing note of Sara leaving but them seemingly still having baby!Sara with them, and there’s also the fact that Sara’s connection to those two has yet to come up in the anime, but it doesn’t look like they’re still raising her.

The whole reason why Kazuki has even been doing this whole cross-dressing ruse in the first place still feels kinda mysterious and confusing after this episode, but I think the simplest explanation just based on what happens in this episode is that Kazuki has a lot of self-loathing about his “fake” connection to Haruka, and the whole situation with Haruka’s accident, so he probably doesn’t feel able to connect with Haruka ‘as himself’, and so he latched onto whatever alternate persona he could find instead. I still feel like it’s deeper than that, but I dunno.

One thing that stuck out to me in the flashbacks was the part where Kazuki and Haruka talked about how Kazuki has been ‘dressing differently’, and how Kazuki ‘doesn’t want to look like his family’. Which makes me think that Kazuki developed a habit of cross-dressing sometime after learning about his family situation, before the whole Sara thing began. And if that’s the case, then I think there’s probably more to the idea of Kazuki cross-dressing than just Sara being a convenient persona for him to adopt to connect with Haruka indirectly. But it’s kinda hard to piece together the logic of it if Haruka did get into regular cross-dressing if it was to ‘not look like his family’. I mean, unless we assume that he actually is trans. If it wasn’t for the whole Sara thing I’d assume that it was just about him, like, getting piercings and stuff to try and assert his individuality, but I don’t think it’s that.

I’m curious to see more of Haruka’s side of things, since I think there’s more going on with him than what we’ve seen, going by stuff like the mystery of why he has Kazuki’s mother’s scent pouch. I think that he must know something about Kazuki and his birth mother, since the entire reason for his accident seemed to be that he was afraid that Kazuki was going to abandon him. Which makes me think that Haruka knew that Kazuki was meeting with his birth mother, and he assumed that it meant Kazuki wanted to go back to his real family and leave him behind. So I wonder how Haruka might have known about that, since Kazuki apparently kept his meeting with his mother a secret.

I also get the feeling that, even though on some level he’s probably hurt for obvious reasons now that Kazuki’s whole secret has been revealed, he probably cares more about being able to connect with Kazuki. I think that if they were able to talk things out, Haruka would just be happy about being able to properly connect with his brother, without the whole Sara thing.

And on the topic of Sara, we got to see her in the flesh in this episode, and it certainly looks like she’s some kind of a kappa that has a human form it transforms into. Which I think was fairly obvious by this point, but it was nice to see it laid out explicitly. It’s also worth noting that it also means that she is indeed a real person who is separate to Kazuki. After the narrative misdirection in episode 1, I was wondering if maybe there’d be some larger twist about Kazuki literally being Sara, somehow, but they seem to be pretty distinctly separate people.

Since we’re nearing the halfway point, this seems to be where the patterns are breaking and things are coming to a head, which is happening on a few different fronts. For one thing, Kazuki’s big secret has finally been laid bare for everyone to see, so we’re gonna have to see how that whole mess pans out now. This is also the first time that they’ve failed to defeat a kappa zombie, so now they’re gonna be stuck in their kappa forms until they actually beat this one. Which might be difficult, since Kazuki seems willing to just live as a kappa forever now. Last week, Reo and Mabu said that they’d try and raise the desire power of their next victim, but I get the feeling that the main trio ‘losing’ wasn’t because the kappa zombie was tougher than usual, but more because Kazuki was so viscerally unwilling to acknowledge whatever truth was being made apparent by his secret leak that the entire process forcibly stopped. Which seems to be about the mystery of why Haruka had Kazuki’s mother’s scent pouch. It looks like Kazuki probably has an idea of what it means, but it’s somehow so extreme and shocking that he refuses to look at it.

Considering how it looks like Kazuki is going to have to come face to face with his current situation in order for them to beat the kappa zombie and return to normal, I think a lot of this will probably get answered and resolved in the next episode, so I’m really curious to see how it turns out. And after that, it looks like Reo and Mabu are gonna be more important in the second half.

And on the note of those two, we got another post-credit stinger scene that was about them this time. I think I’ve basically already been spoiled on this from stuff I’ve seen on twitter that I guess was from people who’ve read the first light novel volume, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise to me, but it was still a good scene. My understanding of the situation is that Mabu is maybe possibly dead, but his body is being kept alive by some outside force, and thus he has a mechanical heart, and he apparently needs to be ‘maintained’ regularly. It also looks like his situation has also lead to him becoming emotionally dead, which you can really see when you read the prequel manga about them, in which Mabu was a huge dork who was very emotionally expressive. Which really makes their whole current situation even more tragic.

I was reading a translation of a recent magazine interview where Ikuhara said that these two have a ‘completed relationship’ that has begun to fracture, which gets to the heart of why I think they’re such a surprisingly interesting duo. It just seems very rare for Ikuhara to write about characters that have regular, healthy, adult relationships like this, especially not ones between gay men. So it’s interesting to see him writing about how a pre-existing relationship can be warped by time and circumstances.

We’ll see how it goes, but it looks like Mabu’s ‘maintenance’ might involve him pretty much going out and sleeping with random people, which on the one hand seems kinda odd, but on the other hand we’ve already heard about the idea of ‘desire energy’, so maybe casual sex is literally the fuel source for Mabu’s mechanical heart. And if that’s the case, there’s a whooooole lot of interesting subtext going on there, especially when you think about the ‘desire/love’ conflict that’s been set up. I’ve also been wondering if this series would end up exploring monogamy vs polygamy via the conflict between them and the main trio, and so it’d make sense if their own relationship is currently in conflict because of the struggle between casual sex and faithful monogamy. I get the feeling that Reo wants to have him and Mabu stay strictly faithful to each other, but he also might not want to force himself to regularly have sex with him just as a fuel source for Mabu’s heart, since that would be all kinda of messed up, and it’d probably make Reo feel insecure about the validity of their relationship. And so Mabu has to find other people to have sex with, and because he seems emotionally dead now, he doesn’t understand Reo’s concerns. Reo’s mocking line about how Mabu ‘is just seeking pleasure’ also seems to play into the whole desire/love conflict.

I’m really curious to see where things go with these two. I have a feeling that Reo might end up allied with the main characters, given that it seems like he’s only working for the otter empire because he needs to.

I still wonder if they’ll show off their backstory in the anime, especially with them having raised Sara, but we’ll see how it goes.

#murasaki rambles #sarazanmai #this got pretty long but there's a lot to say about this episode lol

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juzuya-13 · 5 years

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The 5 things tag, this was super interesting! Thank you so much for tagging me! @thefandomsurfer ♥

5 things you'll find in my bag :

1. Baby things. I don't carry a normal purse with me, I always bring a fully equipped maternity bag with everything my daughter needs, diapers, baby wipes, cream, water, food, fresh clothes in case she gets dirty, toys, among many other things.

2. My phone, I always make sure I have it fully charged when I'm out in case of an emergency or if I need to Google something, take a picture and whatnot.

3. My wallet, I always carry some money with me in case I remember something I might need from the store or if I see something cute for my daughter.

4. A notebook and a pen, I always carry it in case I need to note something down like a phone number, a date of an appointment or just a reference in general.

5. A book, I usually always carry something to read with me, usually it's a manga volume but it can also be just a regular romance novel, a book of short horror stories or a fun magazine, in case I find a good spot I can sit and relax a little :)

5 things you'll find in my room :

1. Toys, lots of TOYS, I have baby things all over my apartment and my room is no exception, also my daughter's crib stays in my room because I still can't seem to sleep without her (I get anxiety when she's not close to me) so I have many of her little squishy, fluffy toys in my room.

2. Manga, I have all of my manga in my room, I plan on moving it to the living room but for now it stays in my bedroomroom very neatly organized, it's very precious, all the stories that I own mean something important to me so it's sort of my treasure.

3. Some of my figurines, I have many of them and they're a little bit all over the house.

4. Candles, I have a little obsession with candles, especially scented ones so I enjoy my collection of cute, colorful, yummy scented candles.

5. Mystic books, I have a few books about mystical beings like dragons, mermaids, fairies, elves, among others, I love it very much, I've always been into magical things, I have a wild imagination and love to day dream.

5 of my favorite things :

1. My daughter, my daughter is definitely my number one, she's the person I love the most in the whole universe. I thought I knew all about love before but when she was born I felt something like I had never felt before, I look at her and I just genuinely, selflessly love her and want her to be happy and safe, I would die one thousand deaths for my daughter, she's everything to me. ♥🐥

2. My fiancé, he's the best person I know, I love him with my whole heart, he's always so selfless, caring, patient, constantly making sure we're alright, he's hard-working, intelligent, sensitive and unlike anyone I've ever met, he's also my best friend and the best father for our daughter, even when we disagree we never fight, he never raises his voice or loses his temper, I could go on and on about how grateful I am to him but I'll stop here. ♥

3. Nature, I love nature, I love taking long walks by the river or just lay down on the grass, listen to the rain and thunder, the wind, how colorful flowers are, everything about it is very poetic and soothing for some reason.

4. Anime/manga, I love reading manga and watching anime, it's always very entertaining, I enjoy the different art styles and I can always relate to the characters to some extent, I enjoy the different stories and morals behind it, it's something I've always really enjoyed since I was a child, it makes me happy.

5. Music, music is a huge part of my life, I'm always playing some sort of music throughout the day, even if it's just soft background music, or nursery rhymes for my daughter, music has always been a safe escape from everything and reality itself when I need it, it's funny how sometimes lyrics can speak for us, all the things we can't say.

5 things I'm into right now :

1. I'm currently rereading Death Note and I find myself falling in love with it all over again, I also plan on rewatching the anime with my fiancé soon, it's always been one of my absolute favorites alongside Tokyo Ghoul and Tokyo Ghoul : re.

2. My fiancé is ethnically South Asian and his native language is Bengali (he's also fluent in Urdu and Hindi which is pretty similar). We're both fluent in quite a few languages which is pretty awesome but in my case I only know European languages while he knows both South Asian and European (he's pretty awesome) so even though I already know the basics I've recently started really investing more of my time in trying to learn Bengali so I can one day surprise him by being able to hold a conversation, not to mention I love Bengali and Hindi music. 😁

3. The Arcana, I recently downloaded this game called The Arcana because I was searching for something interesting to play on my phone and it came up so I thought "Why not?" I've only been playing it for around 3 days but it seems pretty entertaining thus far and I love the art and mystery in it, it also has a very mystic vibe to it.

4. The Death Note original soundtrack, Death Note is wonderful in general and not only have I been obsessing over it all over again but also the music in it, it's just beautiful, I play it a lot around the house all day lately.

5. Fruit, I know this sounds weird but I've been eating a lot of fruit lately, probably because it's been extremely hot and fruit is fresh and juicy, I'm not sure but I've been definitely eating a lot of it, it's my favorite thing to eat at the moment.

5 things on my to-do list :

1. I'm currently organizing my daughter's birthday party, it's her first birthday and I'm a little obsessed with it, I'm a perfectionist and I want to make sure everything goes well, it's in less than a month and I've already got it all planned out so I'm pretty optimistic.

2. I've been wanting to watch an anime called Kakegurui, I've got my eyes on it for a good while so hopefully I'll start it soon!

3. Going to Europa-Park, we're planning on going a few days following my daughter's birthday and I'm super excited about it.

4. Take care of my mom's dog, my mom is going for a small trip this weekend and I'm supposed to take care of her dog so I'll have an extra baby in my home this weekend. 😁

5. Take care of the house, my usual domestic chores, do laundry, cook, keep the house clean, take care of my daughter, make sure she's safe, that's about it. 💛

(I feel for everyone that made it through reading this whole thing, I turned this into a proper interview :3 )

5 people to tag :

@mirrors-never-lie

@waternios

@haveanicedaymyself

@rilillia

@kit-kat57

🍓

#5 things tag #thank you so much for tagging me!!! ♥#I always have so much fun 😁#about me #tag game #tagged

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genie-of-the-4th-wall · 6 years

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Found

@hatofulshipweek Day Seven: Home

AO3 Link

This one’s a little late, but I’m usually terrible when it comes to consistently writing and posting, so I feel I’ve done a pretty good job this week. Speaking of which, participating in this Ship Week was a blast! It was really fun, and I feel like I’ve improved just over the course of the week. So thank you to @hatofulshipweek for hosting this event, thank you to all of the other participants for your amazing works, and thank you to the people who read and enjoyed my stuff! Enough rambling, here’s the story.

Nageki was used to Hiyoko frequenting the library, especially since she found out he physically couldn’t leave the area. She wasn’t very good at staying quiet (much to the dove’s chagrin), but he appreciated her company nonetheless. She had even taken to checking out the books he recommended so they could discuss them. Nageki had to admit it: Hiyoko was his best friend. So it didn’t surprise him too much when the hunter-gatherer girl snuck into the library after school hours, toting a sleeping bag and a full backpack.

“What is all that?” Nageki asked.

“We’re having a sleepover! The staff is all gone for the weekend, I already checked,” Hiyoko answered with a grin.

“A... sleepover?”

“Yeah, a sleepover! I figured it must get lonely spending your nights in the library, so I thought I’d stay over tonight. Have you ever had a sleepover before, Nageki?”

“Maybe. If I have, I don’t remember.”

“Well, I’ll make sure you have a blast tonight!”

Nageki learned that you didn’t really do much sleeping at sleepovers. You played boardgames, and watched movies, and just talked a lot. It was different from his quiet norm, but it was an enjoyable experience. As Hiyoko finally settled down to sleep, she gave Nageki her signature sunny smile.

“I’m gonna help you experience all of the great things in life, Nageki. It’s a promise,” she said.

A couple days later, she told him that the detention she got from stealing the janitor’s keys was completely worth it.

Ryouta didn’t often come into the library on his own. Sometimes Hiyoko would drag him in there to hang out, but Nageki could always sense a strange awkwardness Ryouta had around him. Nageki wasn’t the most socially adept bird in the world, so he couldn’t really do much about it. Thus, he wasn’t quite sure what to do when Ryouta approached him in the library, alone.

“H-hello, Nageki,” Ryouta stammered.

“Hello,” Nageki responded, pretending to be engrossed in his book. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the most polite of responses, but Nageki didn’t know how else to proceed.

“Um, what are you reading?”

“‘Destined to Find You’. It’s a romance novel about a world with predetermined soulmates. Romance novels aren’t usually my favorite, and I’ve already read it. However, it has some very interesting themes of destiny and the importance of both platonic and romantic relationships. I find that I can appreciate it more upon rereading it.” That was probably the most words Nageki had ever said to Ryouta directly, but he couldn’t help but ramble when it came to discussing literature.

“Oh. Sounds really interesting, actually. Does the library have another copy?”

“I don’t think so. Here.” Nageki gave the book to Ryouta.

“Uh, weren’t you reading this? I wouldn’t want to take it away from you while you’re busy with it...”

“It’s okay. Like I said, I’ve read it before.”

“Well then, thank you! I’ll let you know what I think of it when I’m done!” Ryouta accepted the book, giving Nageki a warm smile. As he left the library, Nageki smiled too. The tension was broken, and Ryouta definitely seemed like the kind of bird anybody could be friends with.

Nageki usually didn’t mind being confined to the library. A place full of books was probably one of the better places to be trapped, especially if you enjoyed reading as much as he did. And with the recent discovery that he could move vertically, he could go to the roof for a breathe of the outdoors. However, he found himself wanting to leave the library more and more lately. Maybe it was his brief freedom of movement on the Holiday Star, or maybe it was Hiyoko’s determination to help him experience as much as he could. Regardless of the reason, there were days when Nageki desperately wished to escape the confines of the library.

Today was one of those days. Most of the students had shuffled out for the day, but Nageki could hear the faint noise of somebody playing the piano. It was a beautiful sound, and it sparked Nageki’s curiosity. Who was playing? What song was it? If only he could find out... Nageki found himself drawn to the door of the library, straining to hear the music better. He leaned closer and closer to the boundary that kept him trapped within the room... and stumbled into the hallway. Nageki blinked, unable to believe his eyes.

“What...?”

Nageki wasn’t sure how he had managed to leave the library, but he knew what the first thing he wanted to do was. He followed the sound of the piano, leading him to what he could only assume was the school’s music room. A fantail pigeon that Nageki recognized as one of Hiyoko’s friends was playing the piece. Hiyoko and Ryouta were also present, watching him perform. Hiyoko, ever alert, noticed Nageki enter the room. She stared at him, eyes wide.

“Nageki?!” she exclaimed.

That got Ryouta’s attention, whose mouth dropped open at the mourning dove’s presence. The fantail (Sakuya, he believed?) stopped playing and looked them, annoyed.

“Who is this, and why do you find the need to interrupt the flow of the music?” he grumbled.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. It sounded so beautiful, and I wanted to hear it bett-“ Nageki was interrupted by Hiyoko grasping him in a bear hug, spinning around in excitement.

“YOU’RE OUTSIDE OF THE LIBRARY! HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?!” she squealed.

“Er, Hiyoko? I think you’re making him dizzy,” Ryouta commented. Nageki was greatful, considering Ryouta was right. Hiyoko stopping spinning him and loosened her grip, but she didn’t let go.

“Hehe, sorry. I’m just really happy for you, Nageki. How did this happen, anyway?” Hiyoko said, smiling.

“I’m not really sure myself. I really wanted to listen to the piano music, and when I went to the entrance of the library to hear it better I found I was no longer trapped,” Nageki explained.

“Weird. Well, I don’t really care how. I’m just glad you’re here,” she said.

“Will somebody please tell me what is going on?!” Sakuya interjected.

Hiyoko introduced Sakuya to Nageki and gave a basic explanation of his backstory as the library ghost.

“But wait, I thought you couldn’t see Nageki, Sakuya. At least, you couldn’t when we all went to watch the eclipse. Oh! Is it because you’re no longer a classist jerk?” Hiyoko mused.

“What?!” Sakuya sputtered in indignation.

“Um, I was wondering, what song were you playing?” Nageki asked, changing the subject before things could get out of hand. Sakuya noticeably relaxed when the conversation was brought back to music.

“The piece is called Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy. Would you like to hear it in full?” Sakuya asked, giving Hiyoko a sharp glare.

“That would be lovely,” Nageki said.

Sakuya started the piece again. Nageki thought it sounded even more beautiful up close.

“Coo, coo!”

Nageki sat on the bleachers, watching an energetic dove run laps around the track. Since the piano incident, Nageki found he could now go as far as the school grounds. After that, he hit an invisible wall much like he had before in the library. Hiyoko was disappointed he couldn’t leave the school, but Nageki was content with any improvement. It certainly made it easier to hang out with his friends, given that they tended to cause a bit of a ruckus in the library. Case in point, Okosan. The dove always managed to make a mess or anger the librarian whenever he stopped by, so he was overjoyed to hear Nageki could meet him outside instead. Despite his oddities, Nageki thought Okosan made for pleasant company. Okosan paused after finishing his latest lap, flying up next to Nageki’s spot in the bleachers.

“Coo coo? (Is Nageki enjoying watching Okosan run?)” Okosan asked.

“Yes. Your speed is quite impressive, Oko,” Nageki replied.

“Coo coo! (Of course! Okosan is the fasted member of the track team!)” Okosan puffed out his chest proudly. He noticed Nageki staring beyond the track.

“Coo? (Is something bothering Nageki?)”

“Not much. It’s just... weird, being out here. I was trapped in the library for so long, and now I suddenly have the whole school. Will I be able to go even farther? I wonder...”

“Coo coo. (Okosan thinks it’s just like running.”

“Hm?”

“Coo coo, coo! Coo coo! (Like, Okosan started out only able to run a few laps at a time. But Okosan trained and trained, and now Okosan can run many many more! It’s the same for Nageki. Nageki’s spirit needs to get stronger and stronger, so he can run farther! The stronger you get, the farther you can run!)”

Nageki thought about it. He did feel stronger than he did before. Bonding with Hiyoko, and making actual friends... he had certainly grown a lot from when he had first awoken as a ghost.

“Heh... maybe you’re right, Oko.”

“Coo coo! (Okosan is always right!)

“Estelle, I must implore you to take this cursed painting from my possession!” Anghel said, thrusting a piece of paper in Nageki’s direction. He seemed flustered.

Nageki examined the the paper. It contained sketches of Nageki and all of their friends, but it was different from Anghel’s usual fare. Instead of the fantasy style he drew his manga in, the drawings were much more realistic. He vaguely remembered Anghel busily sketching the last time everybody hung out together as a group. He must have drawn everybody then.

“What’s this, Anghel?”

“The other day, I came across the Golden-Winged Messanger on my way out of these cursed halls. As I made haste so as to not waste my crimson blood on him once more, the Tome of Epics was nearly lost. The Golden-Winged Messenger retrieved it, and remarked that indulging in a study of the profane would allow me to better harness my abilities. However, now that the training is complete, I can no longer hold onto this page, lest it infect me with the despair of the unenlightened,” Anghel explained.

“I... see,” Nageki said slowly, “Why are you giving it to me?”

“I thought... you would appreciate an illustration of those you have formed the pact of blood with,” Anghel muttered, embarrassed.

“Pact of blood?” Nageki echoed.

“Yes, a pact of blood! The spiritual entwinement of souls, interlocking fates!”

Nageki stared at Anghel, confused. He had gotten used to interpreting Anghel’s... Anghelisms, but he couldn’t possibly mean what it sounded like he meant. Anghel sighed in frustration.

“Family, as the unenlightened would put it,” Anghel grumbled, clearly unhappy with having to use normal language.

Nageki stared at the paper. Family, huh...? Nageki remembered having a family. It was blurry amd distant, but he did have one at some point. But now...? He thought about Hiyoko’s bright encouragement, Ryouta’s gentle conversations, Sakuya’s strong presence, and Okosan’s exuberant advice. And of course, Anghel’s strange brand of affection. Nageki smiled brightly, tears pricking his eyes. Yes, he supposed he did have a family now.

#hatofulshipweek #hatoful boyfriend #Nageki Fujishiro #hiyoko tosaka #ryouta kawara #sakuya le bel shirogane #okosan #Anghel Higure

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