#it's. it's his name in the manga. i use all of the persona protags' manga names. i always have. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

greatsealed · 2 months

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have you played fes or portable? it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on how they differ from reload to you!

oh i grew up playing FES & p3p!!!! i would love to go off

i won't lie, persona 3 is an extremely nostalgic and comforting game for me, so i was honestly terrified about a lot of p3r's changes. i remember reading articles months before the game came out about how all of the voice actors for SEES were new and how all of the tracks were gonna be remixed and i was legitimately terrified. i grew up with the original cast and got so attached to them/their careers that i looked up other media that they were in. to this day they are voice actors i can recognize and name right away!

the original soundtrack for p3 is so iconic too and i thought it'd lose its charm when it got remixed, but boy, was i wrong. the new battle theme (it's going down now), the lyrical changes to burn my dread - last battle, even the exam music and changing seasons. UGH, changing seasons has to be my absolute favorite of all of them... adding lyrics to the most catchy part is the best thing they could have done.

i will say (and this might be nostalgia talking), i am still really sad that yumi kawamura got replaced as the singer for nearly every song. i think the main songs that mess with me are the ones where her iconic vocals are replaced ("deep mentality" Specifically doesn't sound right with the new vocals imo), but on the whole, i like a ton of the new songs and the remixes.

onto things that aren't surface-level changes, lmao-

i absolutely adore the screentime they added for strega. they played a part in persona 3, but they were always in the background. chidori got 90% of the screentime. seeing takaya have a crisis over his feelings for the protag & jin being super codependent with takaya was SO good. hearing more about their reasoning and their backstory being more fleshed out ugh;;; the bit with the prototype evoker fucked me up especially. and seeing takaya eventually resort to using an evoker in his boss fight? HURTS

(aigis vc) RYOJI RYOJI RYOJI, DEATH DEATH DEATH. the original game (while playing as the male protagonist, at least) did not focus on the relationship between him and the protag, like...at all. which is so funny because they made it a highlight in the manga AND the movie! i've always loved ryoji to bits, but i've also had to rely a lot on the femc's route and the movie to think about how they could have bonded in the original :( thank god reload gave my boy more content because he NEEDED it. ryoji's connection to the protagonist should really be emphasized in every piece of media, and they FINALLY did it. also just about every day before i reached november, i would rant to my husband about how "there needs to be more ryoji/protag content. it doesn't HAVE to be on the level of "i'd love you even if you were a boy" but i need SOMETHING." and then atlus smacked me with "i want to be something more" and i LOST IT. THEY DID THE THING. atlus embracing the romantic tension between them MY BELOVED. (in case it isn't obvious, ryomina is my favorite ship)

SHINJIRO. the first time i played persona 3, i really didn't care for him (i've never liked characters who are stand-offish and constantly push people away without apparent reason). it was only after i realized the greater backstory that i learned to appreciate and sympathize with his character, and imo, one of p3r's greatest additions was the ability to interact with shinjiro and ken before shit goes down. shinjiro's plotline where you try to convince him to go back to school is devastating, especially when (spoilers) you find a re-enrollment form filled out in his room. absolutely fucking HEARTBREAKING. i already cried during his death (way more than i did in the original game, which is kinda crazy), but damn, they got tears out of me AGAIN with that one. i also noticed that there's a lot more foreshadowing and it is SO effective. i already went off about this on my shinjiro blog, but damn, they fucking nailed it with him.

FRIENDSHIP ROUTES!!! i can't tell you how frustrating it was trying to balance social links between all of the girls. it made me lean more into focusing on yukari (best girl) and nobody else lmao. one of the points of persona 3 was that social links were near-impossible to complete, and they really realized that goal with the girls imo. however!! getting to see the protagonist opt for friendships is really sweet. i love seeing a good rejection where neither party holds a grudge or feels humiliated. it's a really nice touch, especially because i've always wanted to see how friendships would pan out between the mc and the Gorls.

general quality of life changes & the addition of theurgy. i love that theurgy had more depth to it than just a "super move;" looking at the personality conditions is so nice and adds more to the characters than they already had. seeing that shinjiro's resolve deepens when his hp is less than half made me so :'))))

those are big things i love about p3r's changes. aside from the protag not being able to change weapons (my favorite part of original p3), i think the biggest complaint i have is that they left out the answer (p3p has been ported to modern consoles, so you can still experience the femc's route, but the answer is ONLY on ps2 to this day), and even then, i've read that they're planning to add it as dlc.

i've said this before and i'll say it again: i know people have gripes with the answer, but i absolutely adore it. it's the most realistic portrayal of grief among the dorm, which hits differently for EVERYONE. every single change to their personalities makes sense, especially taking their reliance on the protagonist into account. it's made so much more obvious in p3r (which i love), but everyone cares deeply about the protagonist. losing him is a devastating blow. and then aigis gaining his power? yukari is SO justified for being distraught and jealous. that's the realest shit i've ever seen.

also the fights between them because they can't decide whether to go to the past or look to the future...the entirety of the answer is heartbreaking because it hits so hard. yukari, who (aside from aigis) was hit the hardest by losing the protag, obviously wants to go to the past, back to a time when he was alive. the others either want to compromise or move on. the answer is about accepting life's hardships and finding a way to move on and that's beautiful. it's always hit so hard for me.

that's not even delving into metis and aigis UGH... i could go off about the answer forever.

as for p3p-

i played p3p nearly every day when i was in middle / high school. i'd bring my psp to school and play it religiously. i still remember blasting "heartful cry" on my ipod and playing p3p on the bus, lmao.

it's not my favorite iteration of persona 3 now (p3p was good for travel + when i was in school and needed something to get me through the day), but i do have a soft spot for how much effort was put into the femc's route. i will say that i'm not as devastated as a good chunk of the fandom that the femc isn't in p3r or even p3d, but i do love her character and i hope she's also eventually added as dlc (if they're gonna add the answer, then why not add femc again?). i'm really glad she was included in pq2 though, ESPECIALLY because there were so many validating twin moments between her and the male protagonist :')))

i will say, as a final note, that p3r REALLY nailed the feeling of original p3, but i think it made me way more emotional with how it was executed. i've PLAYED the game a million times! i knew every plot detail, i knew exactly how the game would play out (aside from the new additions), and i STILL sobbed several times by the end of the game. i've said this to my husband, but p3r was so well-executed that i felt like i was playing the original game for the first time!! and as someone who has experienced the game MANY times, that's such an incredible feat. i adore the remake. i'm so glad that none of my initial fears were warranted.

for once: thank you, atlus.

#🌕 || time for bear. (ooc.) || 🌕#🌕 || the answer to life's greatest question. (answered.) || 🌕#{ you gave me permission so i went off DKSJFJDKS SORRY }#{ i love p.ersona 3. p.ersona 3 is my LIFE }#{ thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to ramble about it. i don't think this is everything but it's already a lot so fsdkjfjds

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essentionesque · 4 years

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AU Concept Time: Mirror AU

Personas and their users swap places.

The personas are human and become persona users while the original persona users become the personas for the humanified personas.

Their Tartarus/Midnight Channel/Metaverse can be accessed by using mirrors as portals (like how P4 used TVs) and their awakenings involve them witnessing their original counterparts in perhaps imagery or in a Shadow Self like case... And then syncing with the power of said counterpart through weird understanding and realizing that nothing is impossible anymore if the infinite truly expands beyond their one universe. The awakening part I'm still unsure about but I made it concrete that it would involve finding out about their original counterparts.

Like, for example, Otoji (the name I came up with for protag 1) enters the Mirror World and discovers his alternate self (Orpheus).

The humanized personas will have the last names of their users... For the initial personas of the wildcards, they take on the last names of their manga counterparts rather than the anime counterparts to still have that connection but also able to be distinguished.

That would mean...

Otoji Arisato Naruaki Seta Hato Kurusu

I have also thought up an event in which these mirrors encounter the canons... After all, I have called the weird shadow place where all the fighting happens the "Mirror World". Think of it like cognitions without the weird distortion stuff. Thanks to the Mirror Selves establishing a firm connection to their persona counterparts as part of their awakenings, the memories of the counterparts gradually grow in their subconscious as opposed to the vague dreams the Mirrors have had before the plot kickstarted. A neural link, in a way. When those memories finally come together and the Mirrors are able to understand what they mean to them and what they meant for the other side of the mirror; "Reflections" of Makoto, Yu, and Ren are formed as Mirror World residents... And as allies. The Reflections gift the Mirrors with both knowledge of the Other World and strong weapons that resembles the ones of their own personas...

Messiah's winged blade... Izanagi-no-Okami's sword... And Satanael's large gun.

Otoji, Naruaki, and Hato share the Wildcard position; able to summon both the personas of the Other World, general personas, and their initial personas. HOWEVER, due to the whole mirror theme, they cannot summon their own persona counterparts.

Naruaki summons Jiraiya and gets warm feelings like he's meeting a good friend after a long time. Otoji summons Palladion and starts tearing up like he feels connected to this one, too. You know, with how the Answer went and Aigis. Hato summons Robin Hood and gets that wave of conflicted feelings.

They cannot summon their own persona counterparts due to the link they have already established. It wouldn't really make sense, too. So Otoji can't summon Orpheus, Naruaki can't summon Izanagi, and Hato can't summon Arsene.

Their initial personas are referred to as symbolic titles related to their human counterparts. Otoji has his own Messiah, Naruaki has Seeker, and Hato has Phantom.

That would also mean Otoji won't be able to summon canon Messiah.

This is still a work in progress but yeah.

#persona au #persona mirror au #persona 3 #persona 4 #persona 5

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muzzleroars · 4 years

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Okay but Akira Kurusu taking the name Ren Amamiya because he wants a flower name like Lupin. Fair compromise no? It makes his name being Ren in Dancing in Starlight canon without invalidating Akira Kurusu or any other name he’s given. IL s’appelle Ren Amamiya. (He calls himself Ren Amamiya.)

omg this is actually kind of funny because i headcanon ren amamiya is actually his real name, but akira kurusu is one he takes upon arriving to tokyo (the first of many pseudonyms). personally, i see it as the name he ultimately prefers to associate himself with because the kanji used for akira here is the one for daybreak as well as the one used when spelling venus as the morning star, a direct reference to lucifer. he initially does this to avoid problems at school in case anyone tried to look up his record (falls flat, considering kamoshida’s bullshit) and so he can take on a more detached identity, so that he can live as someone else for that year in an attempt to mitigate his own anxieties. but through everything, through becoming “akira”, he feels it’s a stronger identity by the end of the year, the one he associates with joker and with the power he gained, so he adopts it as his “real” name in many ways. it goes back to the insecurities he has about being human, essentially, the fact that he does have weaknesses and flaws that prevent him from being perfect, and so “akira” is his go-to mask, the one that’s most like joker and his ideal self. privately, friends can mix it up and call him ren or akira, but most other people only know him by the latter name.

BUT i like the reversal of this idea too, for the reasons you mentioned and particularly this whole idea of a lotus representing rebirth and renewal, as well as being distant from his loved ones. it’s really wonderful symbolism for who he is as a character, and one of the reasons i just wish i could go along with the ren name. love the connection to arsene too, because i will ALWAYS want to draw more comparisons between him and akira whenever i can. but i totally agree on not wanting to invalidate any name people use for akira from the anime, the manga, the stage play, WHATEVER. he can be ren, akira, or anything else and i wish there was less discourse about it, because all of the names from any piece of media that’s come out, if it’s licensed and recognized by atlus, means it’s canon in some sense. i guess i never really understood why the anime name gets canon precedence over the manga or anything else? none of it is actually the canon story of persona, so people should be able to pick and choose...personally i tend to prefer the manga names for all the protags, but it doesn’t bother me if people use the anime names because???? it’s all canon enough???? so i’m always here for headcanons that are inclusive of all protag names uwu

#i just love the idea of akira having a ton of names tho #just like arsene he's got an identity for everything #so for me while ren is like his real name #akira is his preferred name and he has ALL his canon names as pseudonyms #because i will incorporate them all no matter what!!#p5 #akira kurusu #askmarietheapprentice

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that-fandom-pan · 4 years

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So I did Persona 5 x Hunger Games and this happened...

Character Rundown and Districts

Since I decided to use codenames for the Phantom Thieves and the extra names for the bosses (but you probably know them already and some of them are pretty self explanatory):

District 1:

Joker - Protag/Akira Kurusu (I usually use the name from the manga) Panther – Ann Takamaki

District 2:

Skull - Ryuji Sakamoto Queen - Makoto Nijima

District 3:

Fox - Yusuke Kitagawa Oracle - Futaba Sakura

District 4:

Crow - Goro Akechi Noir - Haru Okumura

District 5:

Mona - Morgana Sophie - Sophia (from P5 Scramble)

District 6:

Mishima - Yuuki Mishima Takemi - Tae Takemi

District 7:

Coffee Dad - Sojiro Sakura Violet - Kasumi Yoshizawa (from P5 Royal)

District 8:

Asmodeus - Suguru Kamoshida Ohya - Ichiko Ohya

District 9:

Azazel - Ichiyuasai Madarame Chihaya - Chihaya Mifune

District 10:

Bael - Junya Kaneshiro Hifumi - Hifumi Togo

District 11:

Mammon - Kunikazu Okumura Leviathan - Sae Nijima

District 12:

Samael - Masayoshi Shido Kawakami - Sadayo Kawakami

Let the Games begin!

The Bloodbath

Mona and Chihaya fight Leviathan and Violet. Leviathan and Violet survive. Bael accidentally steps on a landmine.

Day 1

Skull, Coffee Dad and Panther unsuccessfully ambush Queen, Mammon and Sophie, who kill them instead.

Arena Event Acidic rain pours down on the arena

Mishima trips face first into a puddle of acid rain. Oracle trips face first into a puddle of acid rain. Hifumi refuses Kawakami shelter, killing her. Ohya refuses Mammon shelter, killing him. Leviathan refuses Takemi shelter, killing her. Sophia trips face first into a puddle of acid rain. Crow injures Violet and leaves her in the rain to die. Samael is unable to find shelter and dies.

Night 1

No deaths occurred

Day 2

No deaths occurred

Night 2

Fox decapitates Joker with a sword. Azazel’s trap kills Asmodeus

The Feast

Queen bashes Noir’s head against a rock several times. Hifumi cannot handle the circumstances and commits suicide. Crow severly injured Ohya and leaves her to die.

Day 3

No deaths occurred

Night 3

No deaths occurred

Day 4

No deaths occurred

Arena Event A swarm of tracker jackers invade the arena.

Crow is stung to death. Azazel is stung to death.

Night 4

No deaths occurred

Day 5

No deaths occurred

Night 5

No deaths occurred

Day 6

Fox cannot handle the circumstances and commits suicide.

Night 6

Queen strangles Leviathan after engaging in a fist fight.

Placements

1. Queen 2.Leviathan 3. Fox 4. Azazel 5. Crow 6. Ohya 7. Hifumi 8. Noir 9. Asmodeus 10. Joker 11. Samael 12. Violet 13. Sophie 14. Takemi 15. Mammon 16. Kawakami 17. Oracle 18. Mishima 19. Panther 20. Coffee Dad 21. Skull 22. Bael 23. Chihaya 24. Mona

District Placements

1. District 2 2. District 11 3. District 3 4. District 9 5. District 4 6. District 8 7. District 10 8. District 1 9. District 12 10. District 7 11. District 5 12. District 6

Kills

5 - Queen 3 - Leviathan 3 - Mammon 3 - Sophie 2 - Violet 2 - Crow 1 - Hifumi 1 - Fox 1 - Azazel 1 - Ohya

My reaction

That was a wild ride! Funny how Morgana was the first to go, guess everyone got tired of him yelling at them to go to sleep all the time. I like how very few of the deaths were actually caused by the Shadows, and a lot of them were caused by confidants or the Phantom Thieves themselves. Yusuke decapitating Akira really caught me off guard, especially with that being his only kill of the whole thing and he still came 3rd. And Makoto... I think she just needs to calm down, after killing 5 people to win the games.

Screw it, I’m turning this into a fanfic. Keep an eye on @that-fandom-bi-stories, I’ll be posting the chapters on there when they’re finished!

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penebui · 4 years

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Lgbt manga pt.1

If you had to put up with my sorry ass for a few years then yes you know that I have been searching for lgbt mangas!! I put up with the pain of going through most genres that sexualize/fetishize gender identities and sexualities (like yaoi and gender bender) and reading mangas to find if they have lgbt content so you dont have to suffer the pain of trying to! Clown on this post and please face my wrath

Keep in mind that these aren’t in order of ratings!! Its just a list. I also give summaries of the plot, the things that make it lgbt, and some content warnings!!

1. Welcome to Room #305! by Wanan

Kim Jung Hyun moves into an apartment (room #305) with a friend of a friend, named Kim Homo! Who (you guessed it) is gay! As Jung Hyung begins to live with Kim Homo, he slowly learns to accept him for his sexuality. Once he overcomes his homophobia and completely accepts him for who he is, other lgbt characters pop in too!! They all have their struggles with their identities, and it is very realistic, but the art style helps keep all that angst at bay! As far as english translations go, we have several lesbian characters, and a trans guy. You can read the english translation on several manga sites, but if you want the link to the original since this is a webcomic, here’s the [link]! Unfortunately english updates are very slow since translation teams have other projects, and legal companies who translate take their sweet precious time.

2. Bokura no Hentai by Fumiko Fumi

The title might seem misleading, however it can be translated as “Our Transformation”! Buckle up buttercup cause this manga will fuck you over emotionally. Three crossdressers meet up after being in a crossdressing group, with different reasons as to why they crossdress. Parou crossdresses to fall in love with a straight guy, Marika is actually a trans woman, and Yui crossdresses as his dead sister to “help” his mother with her grieving. There are some other characters who don’t fit within the gender norms!

Now let me tell you if you are dealing with some trauma and can’t handle very sensitive topics, this manga might not be the one for you. Although it isnt just homophobia and transphobia, it also contains content of sexual harrassment, pedophilia, and suicide. However these topics are not glorified or sexualized. They are trauma of some of the characters and they must learn how to overcome from it individually. However, there is a happy ending for them!! Please let that be known! I enjoyed reading it if sobbing your heart out counts as enjoying it, because it has indeed pulled my heart strings (although I am not a trans woman, I am a trans guy and I can identify with only some of the things Marika goes through, as trans women go through different experiences than trans men and have it harder on them.)

3. Hourou Musuko (Wandering Son) by Takako Shimura

This manga is one of the most well known mangas realistically depicting trans identity. It became popular when an anime adaptation came out! However the anime adaptation only covers the middle school part of our protagonists lives, however it encourages you to read the manga to find out what happens to them and their life! We have two protagonists. Shuichi who identifies as a girl, and Yoshino who identifies as a boy. Shuichi is the primary protagonist while Yoshino serves as a secondary protagonist.

This manga also realistically depicts how hard it is for transfeminine people to come out and be themselves while transmasculine people seem to have it easier (dont clown on this dear fuck). We have lesbian, gay, and genderfluid characters galore! Although they do have some touchy topics like transmisogyny and transphobia in general, it is less heavier than Bokura no Hentai.

Some people might not like the outcome of this story when it comes to Yoshino, however I am content with it because it shows that people should be able to explore their gender identity, and they are welcome to change it anytime as they see fit. Sometimes you won’t figure out your identity if you don’t explore.

4. Shimanami Tasagore / Our Dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani

Also one of the more well known ones, the mangaka of this beautiful story is X-gender and asexual! It follows the protagonist, Tasuku is contemplating suicide as rumors circulate that he is gay at his highschool (he is). He sees a woman jumping off a building nearby and runs to her aid. Her name is Anonymous/Somebody and she sees herself is asexual but other than that she does not like labels, she invites Tasuku inside the building she just jumped off, which contains a group of exclusively lgbt characters.

We have both trans, lesbian, and gay people. We see their struggles. We see how they overcome it. We see how even we ourselves can harm others even if we’re both lgbt. Of course there is homohpobia, transphobia, etc. however it is all handled perfectly and we get the satisfaction of these characters speaking up for either themselves or for each other. I also love Anonymous simply because she doesn’t like labels and chooses not to use them (excluding the asexual part). Not everyone whos part of the lgbt community has a label, however they are still a part of us!

5. Fukakai na boku no subete o (Fukaboku)/ Love me for who I am by Konayama Kata

Fukaboku is a very special manga to me, as it goes in depth on gender identity and sexuality. There are two protagonists, Tetsu who is a cis guy and supposedly straight (we later find out that he is not), and Mogumo, who is both intersex and nonbinary.

Tetsu works as a chef at Question Cafe, and everyone employed in fanlations are called girlyboys, however in the official translation they use otokonoko which is anyone crossdressing as a girl regardless of their gender. There are plenty of transwomen, gay people, etc.! Tetsu falls in love with Mogumo, so he isn’t straight, however he isn’t explicitly gay because he recognizes Mogumo as what they identify as, nonbinary. It is safe to say that he could either be pan, bi, omni, etc. however we can’t confirm since it hasn’t been explicitly stated.

We learn how transfeminine people have certain struggles, like shoes that dont fit them, breasts, and voice feminization. We also have a dose of family struggles when it comes to Mogumo in later/current chapters.

Before you dm me, yes. Yes I know about the shit prequel. The prequel actually features a gay couple in fukaboku. I have read it. Reluctantly even if it was only 24 pages. However just because the prequel is shit does not mean we should cancel Fukaboku. There is a thing called being critical of the content you’re enjoying. If we treated it like cancel y because of x, then things like persona 4 and danganronpa would be cancelled, but lets not get into that.

6. Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku by Umi Takase

I haven’t heard of this one as much as I have the others, so I was very much pleased when I heard about this! There are two protagonist (yes there are a lot of lgbt mangas with two protags I’ve noticed too), Hime and Akira. Hime has a crush on Akira, who identifies as a girl. However this manga is also realistic, as Akira doesn’t fully ‘pass’ as a girl herself. Hime wants to do anything she can to help Akira feel comfortable on her first day of school wearing a girl’s uniform. Because of Akira being made fun of, Hime shows up to school in Akira’s male uniform to help Akira in solidarity.

Their teachers are fully aware of Akira’s situation, however instead of discriminating her they accept her. Their homeroom teacher helps Hime overcome her internal problem about lashing out at others who try to befriend Akira, and she slowly realizes that just because people can’t accept Akira straight away, they will slowly get used to her and come to terms with the fact that Akira is trans in their own time rather than have it being forced on them.

Hime and Akira make friends slowly and we see that even little things (like calling Akira cute and/or a girl) helps Akira, even if theyre small things we dont usually notice. Hime also struggles with her crush as she sees Akira as a girl, yet she cant accept the fact that shes attracted to girls.

Although Akira doesnt feel the same way as Hime does, she doesnt just like her as a friend, but also not as a lover either. Its safe to say that these two have a quasiplatonic relationship with each other.

7. Yuzu no Koto by Arai Shou

I have noticed that there are plenty of mangas with transfeminine characters as the focus, rather than transmasculine, so heres one for the transmasculines! Ichigo’s best friend Yuzu comes back to school, however he is enrolling as a boy! It is very humorous as Ichigo tries to understand and get used to her best friend’s new identity. Although it is slow as each chapter is a single page, it is hinted that Yuzu has a crush on Ichigo (or if thats just me squinting really hard).

8. Ohana Holoholo by Torino Shino

It is a story about two bi women who are ex-girlfriends, raising one of the women’s baby together as a little family! There is also an idol/actor who helps them out and visits them occassionally! If you want something warming and wholesome, this is the manga for you!!

9. My Androgynous Boyfriend by Tamekou

Wako, a woman who works for a publishing company is in a relationship with an androgynous/genderless man! Her boyfriend wears dresses, makeup, and is an instagram model! It is not necessarily treated as crossdressing. It is handled pretty well, and the chemistry between Wako and her boyfriend is very strong. They both love each other so much and help each other with their hobbies and interests. This is what a loving and healthy relationship is supposed to look like!!

10. Inside Mari by Shuzo Oshimi

It is debatable if this is actually considered lgbt, considered the circumstances, however I put it on this list because it shows how mental illnesses and disorders really feel to the person whos suffering from it. Please read throughout this whole section to understand why.

Inside Mari is about a man named Isao who stalks this young girl named Mari. He follows her back outside of a little convenience store, but when she turns back and looks at him he wakes up inside her body and doesn’t know how to cope with it. He tries to find Mari while putting on a facade and living as her. He meets a girl named Yori who instantly recognizes that Isao isn’t actually Mari from his mannerisms. This girl has had a crush on Mari, just like Isao. Isao tries to prove to Yori that he switched bodies, and when he goes to his apartment, he finds someone living as him, but it isn’t Mari.

The more we delve into this manga, the more we figure out exactly what happened to Mari and Isao. As Isao and Yori visit and retrace his steps, Isao gets flashbacks to memories of Mari. Isao soon realizes that he isn’t actually the real Isao, but a introject of Isao, and that Mari actually has DID because of childhood trauma. The ending is bittersweet, as Mari comes back but Isao unfortunately becomes dormant/disappears since I don’t think what happened was them merging.

11. Seibetsu "Mona Lisa" No Kimi He by Yoshimura Tsumuji

In the world, people can choose what gender they want to be when they’re 12. When they’re 14 their appearance corresponds to their gender. Hinase however, is 18 years old and they still haven’t chosen a gender. They prefer to be neither. However when their two best friends suddenly confess to them, their hormonal development suddenly starts to increase.

Imagery and symbolism is very clear in this manga!! As we revolve around the color blue/cyan and the debate and interpretations of Mona Lisa’s gender. I’m very hopeful that Hinase will stay as nonbinary rather than choosing a gender, simply because both of their best friends confessed and asked them to become the opposite gender to be with them. It is very much hinted that Hinase will be in a romantic relationship with their male best friend however. I love this manga simply because the protagonist doesn’t want to identify as either male nor female.

12. Jun And Kaoru: Pure And Fragrant by Neiki Zui

Jun and Kaoru have a special condition, by midnight they both switch genders. Because they both have this condition, they hang out with each other and help each other with clothing, etc. It should be addressed that these two do not have the “I wish to be a girl/boy” etc. The problem that they have though is their growing crush on each other. They are either genderqueer, or genderfluid, or whatever you prefer since it isn’t directly stated within the manga. They’re not cis or straight! It is a very fun and comedic love story and I wish to see further updates on it!!!

13. Sakura-Chan to Amane-Kun by Asazuki Norito

This story revolves around Sakura who identifies as a girl and Amane who identifies as a boy. Amane spots Sakura dressed as a girl and instantly recognizes her, however instead of belittling her he asks her out on a date, only if she goes as a girl. During school however, they have to pretend to be the gender theyre assigned with while not interacting with each other.

Since there is a lot more but I dont want to break tumblr, I will be making a part 2 and I’ll post it tomorrow!

#lgbt #lgbt manga #manga #lgbtq #lgbtq manga #trans #gay #my post #long post #i enjoy doing stuff like this #prolly because its how i found out i was bigender

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jestdrabbles · 4 years

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I hate silent protags, but especially for the persona series because it robs us of genuine character interaction between our main character and the others. Playing the game at face value, you can assume Akira is a guy who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty if it means saving someone in need, but he’s also more of an observer than an active participant in his daily life. He eavesdrops a lot, doesn’t get involved in club activities like past persona protagonists, and a lot of his body language indicates that he’s a bit awkward despite his confidence in the metaverse. Take away his party members, and the victory screen no longer shows him strutting and confidently calling everyone along but instead shows him shyly rubbing the back of his neck and averting eye contact with the camera.

But then you have to pay attention for the rest of it. Morgana mentioning that his hands shake when he writes his name, the fact that he repressed the memory of being arrested even though it’s glaringly obvious to the player who Shido is from the very beginning, Morgana mentioning that Akira doesn’t eat well, really factoring in how many part-time jobs he has as well as how many tasks keep him busy from morning to night as the leader (seriously, it’s no wonder Morgana’s always nagging the poor kid to Stop and Sleep), his competitive spirit that comes out when you really take a look at his dialogue choices, the fact that he sleeps on a thin mattress on top of crates, etc. etc.

Spin-off material like the manga and anime offer more insight to his actual characterization, but I just wish we had that in the base game. It wasn’t really until looking into those other sources that I started to genuinely feel something other than “oh, this is my son” for the character and really got invested in his story as an individual who goes from being seen as a dangerous burden for everyone around him to the legendary trickster that shoots the god who dealt him this hand in the face.

Royal did give us something that the base game never did, and that was further exploration of his personal regret in not being able to save Akechi. It’s not up to the player to decide if Akira cares about him because Akira will wish for Akechi’s life no matter what. He carries his glove with him in his pocket every day, as implied that he still has it in his pocket months after it was given to him. The game never tells you outright “Akira is still grieving,” but if you care enough to pay attention, you can start to understand just how heavily this weighed on him, likely in the original version of the game, as well. And who could he have spoken to about any of it? His friends didn’t like him, there was no body, no funeral, no grave, and no professional available to him had any idea what the metaverse was, so he could never be entirely honest about what he’d been through.

And speaking of professional, Royal also introduced Maruki as the school’s counselor who should have been able to notice Akira’s troubles throughout the school year but decided to accept Akira’s mask of stability and write him off as being stable enough to instead listen to his own problems. I love that disaster man, but he really failed this kid. I still don’t quite understand how he found out about what happened to Akechi considering he was no longer working at the school at that time, nor had he been in contact with Akira at all, but the fact remains that he could see the grief in Akira enough to know what his wish would be had he ever spoken it aloud, and still there was no real effort to reach out and help him truly process any of it. Obviously Maruki was the antagonist at that point and rather than help anyone through their trauma, his answer was to let everyone forget their pain in favor of a happy dreamscape, so there’s no reason for him to offer any helpful advice. But still. He’s the only adult with knowledge of the metaverse and at least a root desire to help others, and even he couldn’t help Akira.

This has gotten away from me, but my point is that Akira went through a lot that year. Even if the game paints it as a fun thrillride, it’s also obvious these experiences were traumatic, and there’s no way he won’t be affected by the things he did and saw for years. Especially since he has no one looking out for him, and he has no reason to feel as though he can actually open up about anything. But we don’t get to really see that. We don’t get to see the cracks in his mask in favor of mostly silence and the occasional dialogue option that’s only a few words. It’s implied that he can hold lengthy conversations (seriously, how many times does Akechi mention how meaningful their talks are and how insightful Akira is), but we don’t get to experience it. It’s a shame, and I wish we’d stop with the silent protag/self-insert approach to games like this because it doesn’t make it more immersive. If anything, it disconnects you from the actual events taking place.

#jest talks about persona #i had one whole encouragement to share my Thots even if they're lengthy and uninteresting but ya know it's fine

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jczala · 5 years

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For the Yu-Gi-Oh ask: Ryoken "Revolver" Kogami

Answering also for @cameron33268110 and @breakdawn-avenue

Kicking this off with our resident pretty boy of the series (^･o･^)ﾉ”

Why I like them/why I don’t

Ryoken Kogami aka Revolver has a depth and roundness that is unique not just for a Yu-Gi-Oh! Rival but throughout the franchise’s history. Of course, there is no true measure of quality of characters, especially in this series, but Ryoken is truly a rare character with depth, complexity, and an exceptional arc of character development. The first time we see Revolver on screen, he’s summoning destruction upon Cyberse World in an attempt to destroy the Ignis. He’s the leader of the Knights of Hanoi, a cyber-terrorist, a hacker whose only priority is completing his job for his father. At the beginning of the series, we were treated to a villain.

But along the way, layers of Revolver’s facade are peeled away. When he learns that Playmaker is the boy he saved, he becomes torn, confused, hesitant. Underneath the charismatic and confident mask of a leader is revealed to be a scared little boy who carries a lot of guilt over his past mistakes. His entire background is mired with so much guilt and disappointment that he represses it in order to make it up to his father.

At S1′s halfway mark, he becomes obsessed with Playmaker, and eventually learns his true identity. He knows who Yusaku is now, knows that he was the boy he had encouraged in the past. However, Ryoken never did tell his father about Playmaker’s IRL identity, and stays true to his code of dealing things with him purely in the network, which is carried out in S2 as well. He even goes as far as creating a Protection Program for Yusaku and hands it to him personally, in spite of him telling the Knights to stay away from them in the real world.

His thoughts and feelings surrounding the Lost Incident effectively make him act that way towards Yusaku, as well as the other victims; he becomes somewhat protective of them outside the network due to a genuine sense of guilt and loss, and at the same time keeping them at a distance–except for Spectre who is a different case altogether.

The Cyber Terrorist, the one who hunts the Ignis, eventually becomes the Dark Hero of the network in a sense, as the series progresses. His journey is not just a sudden motivation shift, but a gradual odyssey that manifests through the events in the series, which accent his character arc so well. He is an amazing character because he has this flaws and issues, and the strength to push on.

What I like about their appearance (≚ᄌ≚)ℒℴѵℯ❤

I REALLY

NEED

TO EXPLAIN???

Do I prefer their dub names or original names?

I speak Japanese, I’m used to saying it and hearing it in Japanese, so Original names it is. 鴻上了見とリボルバーは好きですからなああ。。。

OTP

With the crux of the series being the card games and the AI vs humanity at stake, you can’t really hope to find any romance here (aside from hints and teases). But, hey, we’re free to ship (even the most silliest and bizzare ships in any anime/game/manga), so for VRAINS, my definite OTP is DatastormShipping.

Bumping into Yusaku one day, the two share a love for Duel Monsters. However, thanks to Dr. Kogami, shit happens which leads Yusaku to end up in the Lost Incident. After witnessing the horrors of the experiment, Ryoken steps up and becomes Yusaku’s voice of hope and later on calls the authorities to save him and the other children. Ryoken later on becomes one of the major catalyst into shaping up Yusaku’s Playmaker persona, giving him the motivation to stand up to the Hanoi and to save the one who saved him.

As complicated it may seem, the burgeoning relationship between Ryoken and Yusaku serve to add a unique twist to the YGO protag-rival mix, where their motivations slowly and gradually changes due to their views, rivalry, and interaction. Ryoken becomes distraught of himself because of his past and obsession with Yusaku, whereas Yusaku instills his desires on him to seize a new future together.

Throughout the course of this show, no matter how little or subtle it is, Ryoken shows he does care for Yusaku, not just because of the guilt and not only out of duty, but out of compassion and understanding.

NOTP

Hmm… I haven’t really thought about it, since I’m a multi-shipper and shipping Ryoken+Everyone seems good? (^･o･^)ﾉ”

OT3

Yusei x Ryoken X Yusaku… (⁎˃ᆺ˂) Don’t ask why… XD I mean, why not?! Ai x Ryoken x Yusaku… ~(=^‥^)/ It’s good IMO XD

Favourite card they use

I love all of Revolver’s cards from Rokkets to Borrels to Topologics, but if I had to choose only one…

Favourite moment they were in

I CANNOT CHOOSE!! There are so many good ones like damn… I need to make a GIFset of my favorite Revolver moments soon. Every Revolver vs. Playmaker Duel were just pure gold to me! And his meme OG trap card moments were awesome! Let’s not forget his spectacular lightning bolt entrances (cuz a Rival’s gotta be extra AF). But I guess this one stood out the most…

Least favourite moment

STOP RUNNING AWAY ON THAT STUPID BOAT (*✧×✧*) Sorry I just had to… XD

Would I fuck, marry or kill them

I would hug him and marry him off to Yusaku. ฅ( ͒ᵕ̳ωᵕ̳ ͒)｡o○

#ryoken kogami #datastormshipping #yusaku fujiki #vrains #revolver (vrains)#yugioh #ryoken analysis #ygo character discussions #reply

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c-is-for-circinate · 5 years

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A while ago you mentioned really hating the Persona 4 protagonist as Yu Narukami (from the crossover games and possibly the animation) but liking him as Souji Seta (from the manga, I think?), which is also the name you seem to use most regularly. If you don't mind, could you explain the difference and why you prefer one over the other?

FUCK YES I CAN

(there are Persona people on my dash, that’s so fucking exciting, I have many things to say about these video games and the fandom is small)

Okay so I have lots of thoughts and feelings about the protags from Personas 3, 4, and 5 in general, and about the various versions of them that show up in various media. It has to do with names and gender and how the very specific conventions of being the silent protag of a JRPG translate into creating character, and I could ramble about this forever, so it’s going behind a cut.

Step one: all Persona Wild Card protagonists are genderqueer and neurodivergent. Period.

A persona is, theoretically in game lore, a reflection of your soul–specifically, a reflection of the part of you that you choose to show the world, because it’s strong and powerful and keeps all the weak parts of you safe behind it. In early Persona games, every PC had a couple of different masks they could switch between, and that makes sense, but starting in P3 our party members each get one mask that eventually evolves into another one, and we-the-protag get more than a hundred.

We switch between masks constantly, at the drop of a hat. We learn to level these personas up, we figure out how to be these other people, by watching and learning to understand our friends. And there is something intensely queer about the fact that the masks we put on, with no pause or hesitation, can be male, can be female, can be both, can be neither. Sure, it’s possible to argue that the protag has any certain specific gender identity underneath/behind those masks, but then we’re heading straight towards a complicated discussion about what it means to pass as one gender, vs what it means to model yourself after individuals of one gender while passing or identifying s another, vs what it means to model your actions after a theoretical version of yourself that has a different gender than your own, and like, let us be honest, just having to get that deep into the weeds on that discussion is pretty inherently queer to begin with.

Add to that the essential nature of who Persona protags are as people, based on their reality as video game characters, and we get someone who really does not fit a ‘straight cis neurotypical’ frame. The entire scheduling system in Persona just speaks to every single part of my brain that understands executive dysfunction. You do exactly one thing per unit time. You can wander around town forever, but as soon as you stop to talk to another person, that’s it, that is your One Thing, that is all of the spoons you have for this time period, you can maybe do another thing later. This really hit home in Persona 5, where your protagonist has a goddamn talking service cat without whom he can’t remember how to start any task up to and including going to bed (and people bitched about Morgana so hard, but also #RELATABLE oh my god), but it’s there in 3 and 4 as well if you look. The P4 protag does favors for every single person in town. The P4 protag stands out in the rain fishing for hours. The P4 protag can accidentally spend an entire afternoon petting cats. The P4 protag tries to make tomorrow’s lunch and has to think for a while over whether to add soy sauce or sugar.

So: the video games give us these characters who are intended to be hollow so that we can fill them with our own self-projections (and maybe I am self-projecting here, why not, everybody else gets to do it), but that very hollowness is also a shape, do you see what I mean? You can extrapolate a person based on assuming the dialogue options the protagonists get are actual things that run through their minds, based on what choices are even available for them to make. You can ask questions about what it means to be so hollow in the first place, what it takes to be the sort of person who can switch masks in the blink of an eye when everybody else around you makes do with all of one. It’s really interesting to ask those questions.

Step two: the naming of Persona protags is complicated, and is as much a fandom question as it is a canon question.

In general, persona protags starting with P3 have gotten two names: one in the official manga that starts coming out right around the same time as the video game, and one in later animes and tie-in games. What this means, at least in Western fandom (I don’t know a ton about Japan-only fandom!) is that for the first year or more of having a protag, the only name we have for them is the manga name, and so that’s the name 99% of fandom jumps on in those first several months.

When we explore and extrapolate and do all of that extremely transformative fandom work, looking at the empty spaces around a protag and figuring out who he has to be to fill them (or she, the P3 FEMC is all of this dialed up to a hundred), we at least start doing that work under the manga name. To me–and, in my experience, to most of fandom, whether they think about it or not–the name has relatively little to do with the manga itself. It’s the name fandom had to hand when they first played the game and began to figure this person out. It’s the name for thousands of different interpretations that can fit inside the shell of a person the video game gives us.

I find that transformative labor, and those thousand different interpretations, wildly fascinating. I enjoy doing it myself. I like seeing what other people come up with. Figuring out how to fill the outline of a person who can be anyone (figuring out the difference between Minato Arisato, and Souji Seta, and Akira Kurusu, and learning who they are as individuals by picking out their contrasting spaces) is one of my favorite things about Persona.

The characters from the tie-in animes, then–and from P4 games like Arena and Dancing All Night, which are as much visual novel as video game, where the MC has an extremely distinct personal voice–each present one version of that infinitely-variable character. They’re a single interpretation. They’re a specific interpretation, separate from the many open options of the game itself, they just happen to come with a specific name.

Makoto Yuki, from the P3 anime, is a very different person than the character I played when I played P3, and they’re both very different than the person I write when I write Minato Arisato, the human I extrapolate when I look at all of canon and put my analysis goggles on. Now, I happen to love the P3 movies, and their interpretation of Makoto Yuki, who is a giant ball of severe depression and whom I consider an excellent exploration of the game’s themes of despair and mortality, but I love them like a really, really good fanfic. They don’t trump the ‘canon’ of the game for me; they’re an outgrowth of it. Likewise, I don’t know Ren Amamiya particularly well, but he’s a quiet guy with an inner well of sheer rage that really works for me in what I’ve seen of him. Not my Akira, but a cool dude.

In general, when I’m talking about Persona protags, I use the anime or tie-in game name to refer to the specific version of that character written in that game or anime, and the manga name to refer to that earlier, slightly hollow character of infinite possibilities and fandom interpretations. Which leads us to Souji and Yu.

Step 3: Yu Narukami is a fucking jackass

I think the big thing for me about Yu Narukami, the specific interpretation of P4 Protagonist as seen in the anime and tie-in games, is that he isn’t genderqueer or neurodivergent. Yu Narukami is perhaps the straightest character in all of Persona with the possible exception of Junpei Iori.

I don’t actually hate him in the anime all that much, but thinking about Arena-Yu…he’s a dude. He’s a fucking bro. He screws around with Yosuke over the suggestion of dirty magazines and he’s vaguely uncomfortable about Kanji. It’s been a while since I went through any game LP’s, but I remember the attitude Yu took towards his friends and Labrys, and it was authoritative. Certain. Of course Labrys can overcome her past, now that she has us here to be friends. Yukiko isn’t talking like I expect Yukiko to talk, so of course something is wrong with her.

Yu Narukami, as presented in the Arena games (and I’m pretty sure P4DAN, though it’s been even longer since I’ve seen that) is an In Charge kind of guy who Knows What’s Best for people, and doesn’t particularly need to listen to what they have to say to do it. He shows no sign of ever having molded himself around someone else; he does not present himself as a man (as a boy) who would or even could switch up who he is at a moment’s notice, because he doesn’t seem to be somebody who ever thinks there’s anything wrong with exactly who he is in the first place. Yu Narukami never had a shadow because he just thinks he’s Exactly That Cool all the way down. He pops the collar on his polo shirt not because he doesn’t know any better, but because he is actually that guy and always was.

Needless to say, that is not my Seta Souji, who spends hours petting cats, and rarely speaks up to bring order (let alone authority) to his rambunctious bickering friends in any discussion. It’s an interpretation, sure–and it’s even an interesting one!–but he is not a guy I particularly like.

So how do those two people, Yu and Souji, even fit together at all?

And this is where we go from me having opinions on various actual versions of characters as-written, and start diving into themes, theories, and mythological parallels. There is a way to tell the story where it all makes sense, where Souji (and even the Yu of the anime, who’s got more shades of asshole than my typical headcanon but still sits far closer to my personal version of the protag than any of the douchebro versions of Yu in the sequel games) ties into later-Yu and it’s a graceful, interesting, thematic choice.

I don’t think it was intentional on the part of the writers. But it does work. And here’s how.

Step 4: I go on a digression about persona protags and sacrifice

I have spent way too much time thinking about themes and parallels between Personas 3, 4, and 5 (someday I’ll watch some decent LPs of 1 and 2, but today is not yet that day, so we’ll stick to the Wild Card trilogy for now). One of the things that I love is the way each protag interacts with the big major theme thing of their game, losing it and gaining it and sacrificing it only to gain it yet again, and it happens in all three games.

In P3, the thing at the center of the game is life, in contrast to mortality. You’re in a car crash at age 6, your parents die, you carry Death Himself in the space behind your heart, you spend all game struggling to survive and also trying to figure out why you even care to bother. At the end you die so your friends can live, but also you’re not, quite, entirely dead–you are asleep, and at the end of all the world you’ll wake up and still be there, just you and Aigis and Elizabeth at the end of all things, alive and mortal. In P5 it’s freedom, and you start the game in chains, flash forward and flash back, breaking bonds and forging them right up to the point where you turn yourself into the police, only to eventually be found innocent of even the original crime that bound you to begin with. There are metaphors and angles to the whole thing, the way becoming Satanael is in its own way both a defiance of Yaldabaoth in front of you and a surrender, complying with the will of every furious desperate angry follower-believer-worshipper in the Tokyo streets, but what we care about most right now is how this shows up in Persona 4, where our thing is identity.

The Persona 4 protagonist, whoever he is, shows up in this small town with no identity at all. He had a life where people knew him, but the people in this small town don’t even have rumor and hearsay about dead parents or criminal charges to go on. And sure, every protagonist starts out on a train to a new town, but the P4 protagonist goes even farther than that. You show up in Inaba, and one of the very first things that happens to you, something that doesn’t happen to any Persona protag in any game I’ve ever seen, is that you lose your persona.

The starting persona in P4 is Izanagi. Based on the fact that Adachi’s persona is Izanagi, too, based on the fact that Izanami is the one who granted you access to the TV world and presumably a working persona to begin with, based on every theme and implication in the game–Izanami gives you your starting persona. She chooses who you are. She declares that you’re ‘hope’, and maybe you had some qualities that suited you for that role to begin with, but anyone you’ve ever been is gone now in service to your part in Izanami’s play.

One of the things I really liked in the P4 anime was the protag’s terror of being alone and empty. Now, I enjoy my Souji Seta as someone who’s a little bit hollow and empty–not in a bad way, but like a clear glass that can be filled with anything, and takes on the color and nature of whatever it holds–but right, in a story whose main theme is identity and accepting yourself, being infinitely transformable is both ideal and terrifying. If the P4 protag can be anyone, how can he be someone? In the end, the only identity that’s really his and not copied from one of his social links is the one that Izanami gave him. His final persona, Izanagi-no-Okami, has more to do with her than anything that comes from inside him.

Loss and gain, sacrifice and victory–the P4 protag goes back to his old life, sacrificing the person he’s created for himself here in Inaba to reclaim the person he theoretically used to be. Depending on how you read the ending, he gives up his infinite adaptability in order to fill himself with a final persona that is chosen for him, sacrificing his innate capacity to be anyone (which is in its own right a key characteristic of his self) in exchange for becoming someone, specifically a someone who was chosen for him.

(This is more my interpretation than anything I’d consider strictly canon, but–in my head, the P3 protag achieves that final moment of apotheosis, and the god-binding power that comes with it, from the sacrifice of his own life and also the fact that after Death lived in his heart for ten years straight he’s explicitly no longer entirely human to begin with. The P5 protag achieves it by sacrificing his own individual freedom to the collective belief and prayers of literal hordes of desperate people, which we know is full of power because that’s how cognition works. The P4 protag, I have always suspected just a little, gets it from the actual Izanagi–because if the actual Izanami is the source of all of this trouble, the actual Izanagi must exist too, and to trap a god you must be a god, in some small way. Our protag is given the tools of power to seal Izanami away, and in return he must become a tool of that power.)

There are a lot of ways to interpret the themes and echoes and actual events of P4 vs P4 Golden vs P3 and P5, and this isn’t necessarily Objective Truth, but this is very much where my head goes when I think about Souji Seta and Yu Narukami. Souji is the empty, unflappable chameleon boy who spends his time becoming whoever the people around him need him to be, whether that’s a silent confidant or a valiant hero. Yu is the bold, self-assured young man who has discovered or decided exactly who he is, and knows deep in his heart that he never has to hide or change for anyone, ever again.

Step 5: Yu is a dick because Izanagi is a dick, and okay, fine, I kind of love it that way

All of Persona 4 is about retelling the myth of Izanagi and Izanami, and changing the ending.

This is true for P3 and P5 too, of course. In P3 you walk into Tartarus with everyone you love already at your back, and you set them free to do their own thing (they make their own moves in battle, you don’t turn back to check on them, you trust them to follow or not follow on your own and every member in your team makes their greatest moments of personal growth without you there), but eventually one of you has to stay behind so the other can leave–so you fix Orpheus’s mistake, you stay in the underworld yourself so Eurydice and everyone else you love in the world can go home and live. In P5 you tell Satanael’s story backwards and forwards, the rise and the fall and the rise again; you start at the very bottom of your own pit (you start as the God of Control’s very own chosen one and don’t even know it), and eventually you climb so high that you’re the one who gets to cast God down into perdition instead. Start with one tale, end with another.

The story of Izanagi and Izanami is: once upon a time, through no fault of her own, Izanami was sent to the underworld, and Izanagi loved her so well he ventured down after her. But she was changed down there, her own darkness grown gross and rotten, and though she tried to hide her ugly parts Izanagi did see them. And then he didn’t love her any more; he fled, and trapped her there in darkness forever, to protect the whole world from her flaws, and never ever looked at his own.

You spend all of Persona 4 doing exactly the opposite: venturing down into another world to find people trapped there, and facing their ugliness, and embracing them and drawing them up into the light anyway. Namatame is Izanagi-who-dooms-them, though his intentions are good (Izanami died giving birth to Izanagi’s child in the first place). Adachi is Izanagi-corrupted, claimed and twisted by the darkness of the underworld and his own power, with no mercy in him. But the P4 protag gets to play the Izanagi of compassion, who tried to save his wife in the first place–and we get to fix it. We get to save people. We get to save everyone.

Until we get to Izanami herself, because Izanami can’t be saved. This all gets way more complicated in Golden when we add in Marie, but in the end, we’ve still got our protag standing in front of the goddess Izanami, sealing her away with Izanagi’s power for the sake of everyone else in the world, because she’s too dark and corrupted to bring back out into the light after all.

It’s really interesting coming at all of this from a Western perspective, because I…can’t actually tell if, playing through P4, we’re meant to like Izanagi? Are we meant to be on his side in the end? Are we meant to feel like we’re on this whole quest serving penance for his ancient mythological fuck-up? Are we meant to think that Yu Narukami, who’s embraced Izanagi in all his pride and self-righteousness as his own inner self, is the good guy?

Because yes, Izanami was trying to destroy the world. And yes, we saved it by trapping her, just like Izanagi did in ancient myth. But the Yu Narukami I see in the sequel games is so very much the guy who thinks he gets to decide who’s good enough to get saved and who isn’t. Labrys deserves to be saved, and because he’s decided to be her friend now, she will be, just like that, because of course he has that power.

By the time Arena happens, Yu has embraced and accepted Izanagi as his true self, flaws and all. (Let me not forget to point out the sister-complex kingpin title, for the man whose persona is a god that married his own sister. Let us literally never discuss Nanako as Izanami, because that gets really uncomfortable so fucking quick.)

And Izanagi is a dick. Which means that Yu isn’t, can’t be the quiet, gentle person I see when I try to extrapolate a most-probable Souji out of P4 canon alone. Yu is an asshole because that’s the person he’s chosen to be, the identity he’s claimed to replace the one he sacrificed, and I am on reflection kind of into that.

But also he’s still a dick, and therefore I kind of hate him for it.

#acelania #persona 4 #driveby meta attack #yu narukami #souji seta #gosh I should rewatch some of the anime or the later tie-in games #if I can stand to #I do love this series

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tricksheart · 4 years

Text

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Meme.

Mun

& Muse

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

tagged by: Stolen from: @niflheimqueen tagging: Everyone else who hasn’t yet! You have been tagged!

MY MUSE IS: canon / oc / au / slightly canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated. IS YOUR CHARACTER POPULAR IN THE FANDOM? YES? / NO. IS YOUR CHARACTER CONSIDERED HOT™ IN THE FANDOM? YES / NO / IDK. ( Have you went through his character tags? Every day I see a post that comments on Akira / Ren / the Persona 5 Protagonist and how good looking he is, with or without his glasses or in his Joker costume. And between the 3 wildcard protags: Minato. Yu, and Akira , everyone mostly agrees that my character is the hottest out of them ). IS YOUR CHARACTER CONSIDERED STRONG IN THE FANDOM? YES / NO / IDK. ( He becomes a freaking god / demon lord temporarily, defeats gods 3 times, the greatest control over his own personas and has stronger personas of protagonists from the past aka picaro versions. He’s extremely overpowered and has several METAs in his tags to back that claim up from the fandom’s point of view ). ARE THEY UNDERRATED? YES / NO / IDK. ( Actually he’s a little overrated. Probably will be until Persona 6. Mainly because he’s in so many games besides the persona franchise. He’s even in a SAO game for crying out loud and him being a playable character in Super Smash Bros doesn’t help either since a lot of people that can’t play persona get to see and like him ). WERE THEY RELEVANT FOR THE MAIN STORY? YES / NO WERE THEY RELEVANT FOR THE MAIN CHARACTER? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAGONIST ARE THEY WIDELY KNOWN IN THEIR WORLD? YES / NO / IT’S COMPLICATED. ( He’s mostly known to the world as Joker / leader of the Phantom Thieves and of course the rumors about his reputation around the school as being the troublesome delinquent transfer student. Other than being somewhat infamous, he tends to blend in with his surroundings and doesn’t stick out that much. It’s in fact a ruse but a really good ruse to fool almost anyone. The only one that barely calls him out is Goro Akechi but mostly out of jealousy ) HOW’S THEIR REPUTATION? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. ( In most cases, his reputation is quite bad but it’s not really his fault. Getting falsely accused, having it get leaked by a teacher in his new school and having people generally spread rumors that aren’t true about him really hurt his social status. He’s not even allowed in the library in the beginning of the game and several people actually root for him to drop out of school completely. That doesn’t even compare when a few individuals call him actual garbage / trash. And he even can’t join any clubs at school despite wanting to join. He’s the only one of the wildcards that can’t join any after school activities. With his friends and confidants, it’s really quite neutral. Some people adore / rely on him ( ‘Kasumi’ / Sumire, Futaba, Ann, Ryuji, Yusuke, Hifumi, Shiho, Shinya ) and others initially don’t want anything to do with him ( Sojiro / Iwai / Mishima / Kawakami, Takemi, and yes, even Goro but it’s more hidden away because he is capable of hiding it so easily). He’s had the most bad luck in game between the 3 wildcards. HOW STRICTLY DO YOU FOLLOW CANON? — ( I try to stick close to canon as possible but I’ve had Akira even before his game was released so a lot of things are headcanon’d but honestly, Akira is basically a self-insert as there is no set canon. Even his name isn’t permanent ( not counting all the names he has, why atlus why?? ). The great thing about persona protagonists are that you can use just the bare bones of what the game gives you and just run with it because everyone’s interpretation is different / unique.)

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting

in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — ( He’s always fighting for freedom and justice, actually seeks out to destroy the injustice placed on the younger generation or the weak by rotten adults or people that just don’t care that bad shit is happening to others. He’s always looking towards a brighter future and sticks to his own beliefs and never wavers ( unless it’s a bad end AU or just fails to complete a dungeon on time ). He’s willing to rescue / help anyone in need, even if it’s harmful to himself and never sells out his friends, even under pressure. Plus, he’s pretty and has a smirk so devilish charming that you can’t help to notice that he’s a really handsome boy, with or without his glasses. ).

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). ( His anime counterpart is so bland when compared the game and manga series, mainly because it really doesn’t focus on him too much and mostly on the other characters that surround him. He’s also quite rude to some of his confidants and he can take deals that only benefits him ( like with the Demiurge and Maruki’s happy world reality ). He can be a little selfish and moody, cranky even and I don’t think some muses / people would find that appealing).

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RP YOUR MUSE? — ( I guess it was how similar I saw myself in him. I actually relate to this protagonist the most. Isolated, away from home with no relatives taking care of him, few to no friends while in a strange place, everyone doesn’t care about his situation and told him to basically be complainant and not to cause trouble. Also what he represents and strives towards. I truly believe he is the best protagonist out there, with Maya Amano from Persona 2 right behind him. He basically inspires others which in return, inspires me to write this character. ).

WHAT KEEPS YOUR INSPIRATION GOING? — ( I actually have the most fun when writing him and those who interact with me and my character really seem to enjoy him and his characterization. Plus, I spend a lot of time and effort into him that it keeps me motivated ).

Some more personal questions for the mun. Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

DO YOU THINK YOU GIVE YOUR CHARACTER JUSTICE? YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? DO YOU FREQUENTLY WRITE HEADCANONS? YES / NO / SORT OF? DO YOU SOMETIMES WRITE DRABBLES? YES / NO / IT’S COMPLICATED DO YOU THINK A LOT ABOUT YOUR MUSE DURING THE DAY? YES / NO ARE YOU CONFIDENT IN YOUR PORTRAYAL? YES / NO / SORT OF? ARE YOU CONFIDENT IN YOUR WRITING? YES / NO / A LITTLE BIT. ARE YOU A SENSITIVE PERSON? YES / NO. / SORTA DO YOU ACCEPT CRITICISM WELL ABOUT YOUR PORTRAYAL? — ( Yes and no. If it’s legit constructive by all means but if it’s met with ill content, I get defensive. If anyone doesn’t like my version of the protagonist then by all means block me and then go find another one. ) DO YOU LIKE QUESTIONS, WHICH HELP YOU TO EXPLORE YOUR CHARACTER? — ( Yes, I do!! I love when people are general curious about my version of Akira, although sometimes I have to think about something a long time before I can answer them ). IF SOMEONE DISAGREES TO A HEADCANON OF YOURS, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY? — ( Sure I’ll listen to their side. It’s great to hear different opinions since everything is up to interpretation. ) IF SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOUR PORTRAYAL, HOW WOULD YOU TAKE IT? — (If my portrayal doesn’t fit your idea of Akira / Ren / Persona 5 Protagonist / Joker then perhaps I’m not the Akira / Ren / Persona 5 Protagonist / Joker for you and the block button is always there. No harm done really. ) IF SOMEONE REALLY HATES YOUR CHARACTER, HOW DO YOU TAKE IT? — ( My rules state that all hate towards my character will result in a block and I am not afraid to do so if I get any sort of messages or downright horrible comments. Why even follow me if you hate my character, you know? ) ARE YOU OKAY WITH PEOPLE POINTING OUT YOUR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS? — ( Sure. Even if English is my first language, I still make mistakes here and there. If I do spell something wrong or the sentence doesn’t make sense, please let me know ) DO YOU THINK YOU ARE EASY GOING AS A MUN? — ( I like to think so. There’s not a lot that makes me mad or angry. I’m really chill for the most part ).

#long post: tw #[ we call them TRICKSTERS. HEADCANON ]#[ akira kurusu in disguise. SERE ]

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aesthetic-survivor-of-twd · 5 years

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(A Lot of Persona Questions) Do you prefer the manga or canon names? Minato Arisato or Makoto Yuki? Souji Seta or Yu Narukami? Akira Kurusu or Ren Amamiya? And how would you rank the Persona Protagonists in terms of favourite as well as the games you've played? Who is your top 3 male and female characters each game?

1) I prefer Minato Arisato for P3. For Persona 4 I’m used to both names but I think I might like Yu Narukami more. And Persona 5 will always be Akira Kurusu to me (Ren is okay and I like the kanji meaning, but I hate the Amamiya part).____2) From most to least:

1. Akira Kurusu / Persona 5 protag2. Tatsuya Suou / Persona 2 Protag3. Maya Amano / Persona 2 EP Protag4. Minato Arisoto / Persona 3 Protag5. Yu Narukami / Persona 4 Protag6. Naoya Toudou / Persona 1 Protag7. Minako Arisoto / Fem Persona 3 Protag_____

1. Persona 5 2. Persona 3 FES3. Persona 2: Eternal Punishment4. Persona 2: Innocent Sin5. Persona 4: Golden (and original)6. Persona 4: Arena Ultimax 7. Persona Q: Shadows of the Labyrinth8. Persona9. Persona 3 Portable (I like it but it’s inferior to FES)10. All of the Dancing All Night games11. Persona 4 Arena _______

Persona 1:

1. Kei, 2. Hidehiko, 3. Masao 1. Eriko, 2. Yuka, 3.Yukino

Persona 2:

1. Lisa, 2. Maya, 3.Yukino1. Eikichi, 2. Tatsuya, 3. Jun

Persona 3:

1. Junpei, 2. Ryoji, 3. Akihiko1. Aigis, 2. Yukari, 3. Mitsuru

Persona 4:

1. Chie, 2. Rise, 3. Naoto1. Yosuke, 2. Kanji, 3. Adachi

Persona 5:

1. Ann, 2. Makoto, 3. Haru1. Akechi, 2. Ryuji, 3. Yusuke

___

In my opinion: Kanji, Junpei, Akihiko - only from the original p3 game though (his portrayal in Arena sucks balls), Aigis and Maya are the most well written persona party members.

#asks

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lycorogue · 5 years

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Who Wants to Meet My OCs? (Part 2 - Gyateara)

First and foremost, I meant to have this whole series to be sort of churned out the same day/week as Part 1. Life.... didn’t let that happen. I then figured “okay, I’ll update the series every Sunday” and then yesterday came and went...

Regardless, from the NEXT POST onward, I’m aiming to update every Sunday. Now, back to the series itself.

Ever since at least November, I’ve wanted to do individual posts for each of my OCs so you could meet them all. Well, I’m finally getting off my butt and working on this massive project (we’ll ignore that I’m spending hours working on this instead of my ML fanfic.... >_>).

In Part 1, I gave a broad overview of this whole Meet My OCs series, as well as gave some generic IRL background to the two main worlds my OCs hail from:

1) Gyateara

2) Glitches

Well, in this part of the series, I’m going to stay IRL as I explain where each individual OC within the Gyateara universe came from. If this is interesting to you, feel free to check below the break.

If you’d rather just skip ahead to the character bios themselves, my first one about my Glitches character Willow should be up in two weeks (sorry for the wait).

If I’m talking about Gyateara characters, I should probably talk about the one that first birthed the world:

Amara Yori

Amara was my first-ever D&D character. I had known of the game for ages since my father used to play it frequently (and apparently roped my mother into at least running the monsters so she’d be included; ignoring that she’d rather not be included XD).

I really got interested in D&D when I was a teen and saw the gorgeously stylized covers for AD&D ver 3.5. My father had passed away before officially introducing me to the game (although we did used to play Dungeon all the time, so that was a start...), and none of my friends were going to touch that “nerd culture” with a 10ft pole, so I simply admired the books, but never actually played. Then I went to college and managed to Nerd Out.

Hubby (then boyfriend) offered to help me build my first-ever character, but in 2004 the D&D 3.5 expansions were so massive I had far too many choices to choose from.

So Hubby had me go through some of his extra minis, and let me pick out one that I really liked. With his help, I ended up with the 2003 version of the Wood Elf Skirmisher.

Based solely on this mini, I started building Amara.

Hubby suggested that I try out the Scout class for my first one, since I couldn’t choose between a Rogue, Ranger, or Druid, and Scout is sort of in between at least the Rogue and Ranger classes. For whatever reason - I can’t remember it now - I also decided I wanted to play a half-elf.

Upon reading the generic backstory description the D&D books had for the Scout class, I figured my character needed some sort of Tragic BackstoryTM that would explain her scouting skills. Things like trap finding and dismantling, masterful rope use skills, hiding and tracking skills, and connection to animals.

I was in a big The Vision of Escaflowne kick at the time - which shows up in a couple other characters’ backstories - and was fascinated with the history between Van Fanel’s parents. Van’s human father Goau stumbled upon Varie, a Draconian woman, in the woods one day. Draconians have the ability to manifest feathered wings which allow them flight. It was rare to see a Draconian, and her beauty - with her wings shimmering in the moonlight as she waded in a small pool of water - mesmerized Goau. He instantly fell in love and brought Varie home to be his wife. The duo seemed to love each other deeply. Amara’s parents, on the other hand....

I’ll get into more when I break down their actual bios, but I took the idea of “Human stumbles upon exotic non-human in the woods and instantly marries her” and twisted it slightly. Amara’s mother was very much emotionally, and possibly even physically (I haven’t confirmed this yet), abused by Amara’s father. Amara, being a half-elf, also had to deal with abuse at the hands of many of her fellow clansmen - both the human and the elven clans; pretty much exclusively because she was a “half-breed” (Yes, I was really into InuYasha then too).

As I kept building Amara, I kept adding more and more tragedy to her backstory. I do enjoy what I created, but, especially after reading a lot of posts here on Tumblr, I’m afraid her history is nothing but a giant knotted ball of cliches and tropes. For now, though, I’m running with it. Perhaps I can figure out work-arounds later....

I never did get to play more than a session or two with Amara before the game disbanded (which seems to be a repeat thing with my gaming group), but she still lives on in my mind, and eventually in Gyateara.

Natalie

As I mentioned above, The Vision of Escaflowne very much inspired me while I was working on the earliest bits of Gyateara. Therefore, Natalie is your basic Isekai protagonist.

For those who don’t know the term (I didn’t know an official genre term existed until about a year ago), Isekai refers to a subgenre of fantasy/speculative fiction where the main character is abruptly teleported from their world to a new one; usually one with a fantasy setting.

It’s a massive subgenre and includes most of the fantasy animes I’ve watched:

InuYasha

The Vision of Escaflowne

Fushigi Yuugi

The Devil is a Part-Timer

The Rise of the Shield-hero

The Saga of Tanya the Evil

The Familiar of Zero

How to NOT Summon a Demon Lord

Sword Art Online (technically)

.Hack//Sign (technically)

Digimon (first season, specifically)

Psyren (manga)

The list can go on, but that’s not the point of this post. Getting back to the actual point, I clearly enjoyed this genre without even realizing there was a term for it, and created my own Isekai story. Natalie is from our world, but is abruptly teleported to Gyateara’s main Northern Isle, where she must save the country from being destroyed by a power-hungry, put painfully charismatic, villain.

I had taken elements from Kagome (InuYasha), Hitomi (The Vision of Escaflowne), Miaka (Fushigi Yuugi), and I think I had Ariel (The Little Mermaid) in there as well at one point. She was - and still kind of is - just “Generic Isekai Female Protagonist”, which is one of the main reasons the story she was in failed so soon into NaNoWriMo back in... 2014, I think. Almost a solid decade after I started dreaming up her Isekai story. She definitely needs to go back to the drawing board a bit to be properly fleshed out.

Connor

He was from the same story as Natalie. Connor was a denizen of Gyateara’s Northern Isles, and became Natalie’s traveling companion as he helped her try to find a way home. Ya know, that old Isekai chestnut. I even leaned heavily into the cliche and had the two of them fall in love throughout their journey. Which would lead to a third-act twist of “Okay, we can defeat the villain, but then what? Could they stay together? Would Natalie stay on Gyateara? Will Connor instead try to go home to Earth with her?” Real original. I know. Add in that Connor was a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of a character. Grab a snack, this is going to take a minute...

Connor’s traits included:

The basic backstory and drive of the player character in the video game Fable, in which his father was killed, his mother and sister tortured (and presumed dead, only to be proven still alive and captured), his home village burnt down, and he was taken in by the local guild so the guild master could train Connor to become the hero the GM believed Connor was prophesied to be.

The half-demon traits of InuYasha (InuYasha), which transformed him into a sort of were-cat. His mother, a full-demon, could become a 15ft (4.57m) tall panther with split tails. Connor’s half-demon heritage was hidden from him, and he only transformed under extreme moments of stress.

Yes. The “love interest is the only one who can snap the protag back from a monstrous rage” trope was heavily evident throughout the story.

His overall look was inspired by Link (Legend of Zelda video game franchise). His basic fighting style - swordsmanship and expert archery - was a sort of tag-teamed “thieving” from Link as well as Van (The Vision of Escaflowne).

A highly resistant, and begrudging submission to become the Hero of Prophecy lifted off of Tamahome (Fushigi Yuugi).

I know he was much more influenced by Van from Escaflowne when I was first making him. I even used Van as a reference guide when I tried to create character head shots of him. I just can’t recall now what else I swiped from that character.

I feel like there are also other male anime/video game protags I swiped traits from, but I can’t recall them anymore. Regardless, I threw them in a blender, and poured out the mixture that became Connor.

Jolene Crisslebalm

Ah, the character whose last name I always have to look up, because I can’t recall how I spelled it. Good starting point, right?

I am a very reserved person. In particular, a very sexually reserved person. But I do enjoy sex, and I love the act of flirting, and the “thrill of the chase” when it comes to dating, so a part of me always wonders what I would be like if I had let go of my reservations and just enjoyed the carnal pleasures of life.

So, two characters in particular - Willow (from Glitches) and Jolene - are my exploration of that Path Not Traveled.

A friend of mine was hosting a D&D campaign via Roll20.net, and wondered if I wanted in. I hadn’t been involved in a D&D game in a year or so at that point, and I’ve enjoyed playing a couple of one-offs with him DMing, so I leapt at the chance to join. I had almost always played a form of Rogue class (hence the internet persona) in previous D&D campaigns, so I decided to stay the course, but with a twist I hadn’t tried before.

I wanted Jolene to be a sort of reluctant adventurer, preferring instead to be a cat burgler, but I also wanted that sexual/sensual exploration of character. So, she was a traveling prostitute (not exactly legal without proper ties to a brothel; much like a Sex Trade Guild sort of thing), but she also used her “alone time with clients” to scope out the place to see if it’s worth robbing.

Fast forward about 3 years, and I end up watching the first episode of the Freeform Marvel series Cloak and Dagger... where I saw Tandy doing the same thing, but roofying her targets instead of sleeping with them first... Great minds, and all that?

Eh, Jolene figures “might as well make money off of them before coming back and robbing the rest... less to carry later...”

In the end, while Jolene had an.... interesting run... and one I actually did enjoy role playing, even if it did leave me a bit frustrated afterwards (a good frustrated?)... Jolene just didn’t fit the world the DM created, nor did she fit in quite as well as I would have hoped with the other players.

They were all AMAZING players, by the way. Some of the best role players I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and such fantastic writers as well. BTW, we wrote out everything in the Roll20 chat log instead of verbally playing or using video-chat. I must admit, I was quite envious of their skills. It was just a tighter knit group, and I wasn’t able to feel out their play-style well enough to continue with the group. Eventually they all had to go their separate ways anyway when their schedules no longer lined up.

Still, I LOVED Jolene, and she was the D&D character I had the joy of running the longest, so she NEEDED to live on. She did, in my first NaNoWriMo “win”. I managed to hit those 50,000 words, but I still had about 3/5ths of her story to write.

See, while coming up with Jolene’s jaded attitude towards love and her pull towards a more hedonistic lifestyle, I went with the good old cliche of Heartbreak Was The Culprit. (With so many cliches in my character builds, is it a wonder why I just stick with fanfiction... the characters are already created...)

Jolene had her heart broken five times between the ages of 13 and 21. She was the type who fell quick into love, and fell HARD into it, and always felt intensely betrayed by her lovers when they left her. To be fair... they did routinely leave her for a woman of better social standing, or - in her youth - someone more willing to put out, or just straight up abandon her without so much as a farewell note. Eventually, she gave up on trying to find love, and joined a brothel, and then the thieves guild, and then headed out on her own from there.

The DM thought it unlikely that she was a prostitute for the better part of 5 years without a single pregnancy, so he rolled for it, and Jolene had one miscarriage, one still born, and one healthy child she gave up for adoption. I was not expecting to include that in her backstory, but it actually worked fairly well.

And all of that was the subject of my NaNo project: Lost Loves and Paramours. Jolene’s full biography leading up to the campaign: every man she fell in love with, every person she slept with, the one client who tried to murder her to avoid a scandal of his lust getting the better of him, the pain of her miscarry, the devastation of her stillborn, the heart break of giving up her surviving child, the struggles against a stalker, and her over-all YOLO attitude.

(Bitmoji is a beautiful thing...)

Well, second long post of this series is now complete. Next week, I’ll talk about the IRL inspiration for my Glitches characters. Thank you so much for indulging me on these epic ramblings.

#writing #LycoRogue writing #OCs #Meet My OCs #character creation #IRL character inspiration #writing process #cliches #long post #Gyateara #Amara Yori #Jolene Crisslebalm #Natalie #Connor #series post #2 of 17?#LycoRogue original

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thenichibro · 6 years

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Spring 2018 Anime First Impressions

Two weeks into the season - basically on schedule by my standards! This season, as always, has ups and downs as well as popular shows I’m not watching (Megalobox) and shows I immediately regret starting (Devils Line). As a further point, I don’t do impressions of sequels, and in this case I’m including Steins;Gate 0 as a sequel because it is so based on the events of the main show. Regardless, here’s what I’m watching with MAL links and original shows marked:

Legend of the Galactic Heroes - Die Neue These (MAL) Look, I'm not going to immediately say go watch the original LOGH, but I'm kidding that's exactly what I'm going to say. LOGH is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. My issue with this series is not that they will not represent the characters badly, but that 110 episodes shoved into 12 episodes and three movies is simply not enough. LOGH has a scale, a grandeur, a weight that is conveyed as you invest yourself into it for hours on end, from bombastic space battles and the minutiae of day-to-day politics. You need both scales, the imperial and the individual, to really experience LOGH, and I feel like 12 episodes isn't enough time to have both. The LOGH remake looks and sounds fine (though with way too much CG and a bit of same-facing with Reinhard and Kircheis), but I am incredibly nervous about the pacing. This is a first impression, and if Production I.G. pulls this off it will be a classic reimagined for a modern audience that deserves it. But I simply don't think that's going to happen. I'm hopeful, but apprehensive. And again, watch the original. It is pure class.

Persona 5 the Animation (MAL) Play the game first. Please.

Devils Line (MAL) A world where vampires exist under the guise of normal people and some lose control and kill under cover of night. Basically Tokyo Ghoul with less of a vampire "society" and more just individual threats, with more of a sexual twist. Tsukasa is our helpless college heroine, adrift as she finishes school, when she finds out the guy who likes her is a serial murderer who wants blood! So wacky! She's saved by Anzai, a calm, collected member of the agency tasked with dealing with vampires, before unintentionally revealing himself a vampire. Yet we are expected to just accept Anzai forcing himself on Tsukasa because he's the savior? Right. Background sound design isn't bad, art/animation are bland and at times awkward. Devils Line is trying real hard to be a new Tokyo Ghoul, but now with more sexual undertones for whatever reason. Pass.

3D Kanojo: Real Girl (MAL) Ah, otaku love. At least it can't be worse than Saekano, right? That'd be a serious challenge. 3D Kanojo follows Tsutsui, an otaku that suffers the typical ostracization of anime, when he meets Iroha, a blunt girl who for once doesn't ostracize him. The first episode has plenty of the classics - falling into a pool, talking about "3D women" being out of his league, heroics when he knows he can't win. Everything you'd expect. By the end of the episode, things progressed a helluva lot more than I expected, in many ways. It seems thus far that the otaku thing is the impetus for Tsutsui's low opinion of himself, rather than anime being the point of the show. More introspective than I would otherwise think, I think 3D Kanojo holds a lot of slight surprises. It's interesting, for sure, and I hope it continues that way.

Tachibanakan Triangle (MAL) One of two short anime I'm watching this season, Tachibanakan follows a girl who moves into a girls apartment complex and gets more yuri than she bargained for. We've got the fang-sporting short one, the quiet one, the onee-san, the blonde foreigner, you name it. I don't expect a lot of character development or anything similar, but three and a half minutes of yuri sounds just fine to me.

Uma Musume (MAL) First off, props to the show for making the horse girls' names just as stupid as those of real racehorses. I mean, I know it’s because the girls are named after real racehorses, but still. Uma Musume involves a world where horseracing is hugely popular, only the racers are anthropomorphic horse girls. Our main girl is Special Week, a newbie transferring to a popular racing school in Tokyo. She's your typical genki type - eager, energetic, bright-eyed. Enthralled by one of the top girls Silence Suzuka, she aims to become one of the top horse girls in Japan. Oh, and the top horse girls perform as idols after each race. This sure is a mobile game adaptation, god damn. P.A. Works' art looks solid as always (props to the flowing tail animation); the OP and ED are pretty standard idolish stuff. I prefer the ED. Anthropomorphic racing is fine, yet for some reason the idol part is what makes it weird for me. This show is strange, but if it's not much more than cute horse girls doing cute horse girl things, I'll keep paying attention.

SAO Alternative: Gun Gale Online (MAL) I hate SAO. I have a laundry list of reasons that I despised both seasons of SAO. The reason I'm giving GGO a chance is because the main charater is a girl playing a cute chibi girl in-game and she just wants to make friends. Hopefully, that will avoid the terrible pitfall that was anything relating to Kirito. GGO starts right in the action, with a topical Battle Royale mode putting our pink girl and her partner right into the action. The tactics are good and help set up the basic premises of the gametype, if that necessitated a bit too much monologuing by M, the partner. Also, plenty of pouts. Always a bonus. As always the invincibility of the protag is annoying, but I don't really expect breakthrough plot changes from an SAO spinoff. I mean, SAO S1 was good for the first 10 episodes too. Keep this cute girl and not-harem, focus on connecting with others through video games rather than shanking perverts in a parking lot, and it'll be solid.

Hinamatsuri (MAL) A super-powered middle-schooler falls into the life of a nicer-than-normal yakuza. Nitta is the yakuza, with a penchant for fancy porcelain. Hina is the middle-schooler, your typical otherworldly killing machine set into an unfamiliar world. Hinamatsuri puts a lot of good spins on the taking-care-of-a-supernatural-girl trope, with the main character being a yakuza rather than an "average high schooler." Furthermore, there are some nice father-daughter vibes going between the two, though it's clear Hina maintains the upper hand. Won over by Nitta's refusal to use her as just a tool, their life together begins. The comedy is your standard boke/tsukkomi, but the lightning-quick delivery of the lines had me cracking up regardless. Hinamatsuri looks like it could go darker any second, but if it doesn't I'm perfectly content to stay around.

Comic Girls (MAL) Probably the most classic cute girls doing cute things show this season, Comic Girls follows a group of mangaka girls living in a dorm together. Moeta is the worrywart crybaby, Koyume's the genki blonde, Ruki is the less-than-secret pervert, and Tsubasa is the tomboy. There's plenty of nice compliments between the girls' personalities, and Koyume and Moeta seem like a great fit as the newbies in the group. Furthermore, their personalities being informed by the manga they draw allows for a nice exploration of manga cliches through their interactions. This looks to be more on the character-driven side than a deep dive into the logistics of manga production, but that's just fine. Animation and sound aren't really anything special, but they're by no means bad. As a slice-of-life fan I'm all in, even if this show doesn't turn out to be anything super unique.

[ORIG] Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai (MAL) Tada-kun follows, well, Tada-kun - a student and photographer who runs into Teresa, a rich European while taking pictures. Tada-kun, following the show's title "Tada Doesn't Fall in Love," has a calm, somewhat stoic demeanor, while Teresa is your bright, beautiful girl finally in the Japan she'd only seen on TV. After meeting multiple times as Teresa wanders lost, Tada helps her out of the rain before she finds her hotel, right next to his family's coffee shop. And then, of course, she transfers into his school along with her bodyguard, the fiery-tempered Alec. The art is crisp and animated well, and both the OP and ED have their charms. I personally like romance focused tightly on a single pair (Tsuki ga Kirei and Ore Monogatari are two stellar examples), and I hope this delivers. With a single couple development becomes the key, but if this show keeps it up - increasing interactions leading to discovered feelings, all starting from a photo (sounds a bit like Just Because, don't you think?), this will be a emotionally engaging experience.

Fumikiri Jikan (MAL) The other short show I'm watching, Fumikiri Jikan is about conversations while waiting for the train to pass. The first episode ran the gamut all the way from peppy slice of life to romantic character drama. Being so tightly focused on conversations and with limited time, a show like this needs to nail the dialogue to set up the characters each episode. I felt like I almost watched a movie in three minutes this time, and that's a good thing. The main sticking point is that with individual stories each time, quality can vary wildly. This show is a bit strange but equally interesting, but it will certainly depend on the story being told.

Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii (MAL) Ah, otaku love. It can't be worse than Saekano, right? That would be a serious challenge. Wotaku ni Koi puts a spin on the genre by situating the main characters as adults who met each other in middle school and just now reconnected. The main cast of four and especially the banner couple Hirotaka and Narumi are uniquely quirky and their personalities gel so well with each other. Despite the long gap in meeting each other I feel the chemistry immediately between the two, and as episode one ends with their relationship actually beginning I'm all in. Not only does Wotakoi change things up by having the main characters as adults but it also gets past all the roundabout bullshit that often bogs down high-school romances. Furthermore, the true enthusiasm with which Hirotaka and Narumi can nerd out about what they like is refreshing, kind of like Animegataris before it became the Matrix. Combine that with a crisp art style and great musical themes, and maybe Wotakoi can provide the grounded otaku love story we've been waiting for. Oh, and fuck the Saekano shout-out. Not that I'm going to let that cloud my thoughts on Wotakoi - I just really, really don't like Saekano.

Golden Kamuy (MAL) This season's "a popular manga is finally getting an anime" show, Golden Kamuy is the story of a soldier and an Ainu girl suriving in the north of Japan in the Ruso-Japanese War era just after the turn of the 20th century. The pair aims to find a hidden treasure, stolen from the Ainu and stashed by a criminal somewhere, with the location hidden on tattoos of various escaped prisoners. I enjoy historical shows, and Kamuy is great in that it is more than just feudal Japan or something similar - the snowy, late-Meiji Hokkaido setting is undoubtedly unique. Sugimoto, the soldier, has earned his nickname "Immortal" due to his war exploits, and his personality shows it - confident in his skills yet cautious of threats. Asirpa, the Ainu, is the resourceful, collected partner Sugimoto needs in the wilds of Hokkaido, and shares Sugimotos motivations, having lost her father to the criminal who hid the treasure. The art is clean, and while the main characters look good there needs to be mention of the awful-looking CG of the two bears and the wolf that make appearances in the first episode. It just looks horrible. The dynamic between Sugimoto and Asirpa is great - the contrast between violence and peace especially - and I look forward to see where they're going. I only wish the overall tone was more consistent - the first episode is a great solemn look at the task in front of them, while the second episode inserts a whole lot of "comedic" moments that seem out of place with the action and Sugimoto himself. Regardless, quick shout-out to Man With a Mission for the OP - one of my favorite bands and this song is no exception.

#legend of the galactic heroes #persona 5 #devils line #3d kanojo #tachibanakan to lie angle #uma musume #sword art online alternative: gun gale online #hinamatsuri #comic girls #tada-kun wa koi wo shinai #fumikiri jikan #wotaki ni koi wa muzukashii #golden kamuy #spring 2018 anime #my anime reviews

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nexttrickanvils · 3 years

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Please forgive this anon's ignorance, but what does the "shuyuka" pairing mean? If we're using "shu" as in "shujinko/protagonist" like in Persona 5 shipping, are you talking about pairing Persona 3 protagonist (his name's Minato Arisato in the manga and Makoto Yuuki in the movie) with Yukari?

Yup Shuyuka is Minato x Yukari, it can also refer to FEMC x Yukari since she’s also a protagonist.

As far as I’m aware, more people started using “Shu” for Persona ship names for the P3 and 4 protags along with Joker since unlike say P1 and P2′s protags, there’s still fan debate about their names (and protag shipping uses different names or fan nicknames for Bancho for P4 or Pego for P5) and it’s easier to collect all the content under one umbrella instead of having them get separated because one version uses the manga name and the other uses the anime name.

Also don’t worry I don’t think you’re ignorant, I was confused over the “Shu” part in P5 ships for a while until I learned what it meant.

Hope this helps, Nonny. :)

#Reply #Anonymous

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ac-liveblogs · 6 years

Text

PERSONALOG 1: Kamoshida’s Palace

I decided to straight up restart the game from the beginning, and over the past couple of days have made it past the first boss, Kamoshida. Let me say this: I know Shiho Suzui isn't going to be a party member (she isn't on the box art), but if she's not a confidante I'm gonna be piiiiissed.

My name is AKIRA KURUSU, which I ripped from the wiki (I almost always go with the generic name and default appearances in JRPGs, hit me up in FEA with my army of identical Robins). I know it's the manga name, but I like it better than Ren Amamiya. Already disappointed this is a self insert game instead of letting Protag be his own character, because there's a lot going on with him that I'd like to see in deeper detail. His backstory is pretty personal, his entire life got upended and the Velvet Room has those weird twins that say he 'desires imprisonment'... there's enough here to build an interesting character out of. I think I'm gonna be a little sour about this for the whole game.

Especially since his responses, and even his damn menu portraits, give a really solid idea of what his personality could be! What a waste.

Gameplay is slick and stylish, but the crouching mechanic is awful. Not quite Arkham level smoothness when it comes to stealth, here. Bitter about the SP mechanic slowing me down, but that'll hopefully be less of an issue going in. I don't get the gun thing. Give me more bullets. Teach Ann to aim. Music is so good.

Kamoshida looks ridiculous, but he's a brilliantly uncomfortable boss to deal with. In a society like Japan where abuse of authority is absolutely rampant, someone like Kamoshida assaulting and abusing his students is almost certainly a possibility. I've heard P5 addresses a lot of the social issues in Japanese society, and maaan it starts with a banger. I knew it was going to get dark, but I didn't expect sexual abuse of minors right out the gate.

Kamoshida is an excellent starting villain. Team mascot that clearly has his own agenda aside, everyone had their own individual stakes in dealing with him. It's a strong starting chapter for the game all in all.

But. But. Buuuuuut.

You can’t really... make an arc about how wrong it is that an older man is abusing teenage girls, and make a point to stop and be disgusted about how he’s sexualising them within the confines of his mind, and then turn around and cram Ann into a sexy outfit she isn’t comfortable in and have her male friends eye her up as a joke. The message “older men sexualising teenage girls is bad” kiiinda loses some legitimacy when it’s older men that chose to design a teenage girl that way. And also. The bikini DLC.

Making Ann a dominatrix doesn’t really fix the problem, because while she’s “in control” she’s still being sexualised for the benefit of a male audience. Even her Persona – Carmen – was a femme fatale that used her feminine wiles to seduce and then discard of men as she saw fit, but neither of these quite fit with Ann not actually wanting to seduce or control men outside of helping her friend. It sort of reeks of that whole “SHE’s in control because she’s a dominatrix so the tables have turned and its feminist!!!” angle, but it’s just not a smart angle to take. I’ve yet to even see Ann take interest in men, so….

anyway i put her in her summer clothes bc they’re cute. you’re welcome ann

Bonus: What Is This Inspired By, The Minigame

Most Phantom Thief media are either drawing from Lupin III or Magic Kaito at least a little. This game clearly seems to be more of a Magic Kaito.

High school students lead secret Phantom Thief double life. While JUSTICE is involved and is a side effect of their actions, they’re clearly doing this for more personal reasons (revenge).

Fancy, completely unncessary Phantom Thief outfits that catch more attention than they conceal. Style over stealth, always.

The badly doodled calling card caricature with focus on the top hat. (P5 ver 1, MK) Weird focus on top hat in the ~perfected~ logo, given I was forced to ditch Arsene for a magic pot almost instantly.

Main character’s butler DLC has a moncle. Not a big thing but... funny.

Not sure if Ann's outfit is a shoutout to Catwoman or Fujiko Mine. There's the whip and the cat theme, but Fujiko's rocked the red catsuit before. Potentially both.

#ac plays persona 5

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