The biggest of thanks to this series, for all the wonderful memories <3

Sorry, drama again, just remove ask if you are tired/don't want to talk about it anymore and take care <3

I feel bad, but also I am kind of sipping tea, because when I was able to recognize his voice easily, because Lucifer, but... Welp... Somehow his voice never fitted Lucifer for me, both in gbf and rage of bahamut anime (didn't played the game) and generally when I head him I felt like I would like to punch him. No idea why, just his voice alone was pissing me off, the more I was able to recognize him in anime or game from sigh alone, like "it's you again, Sakurai". I have no idea why, seriously, it was few years ago and now I think it's kind of hilarious.

Tbf, I wouldn't mind recast or something, especially if it would help get Lucifer faster or something. *Sips tea* i feel so unable of emotions, like I should feel sorry and bad for those he cheated, but on the other hand... Will it change anything? My brain is rewired too much around Lucifer to really care... Oh welp, I will deal with it some day

I must say I am pretty excited for next stream. I think gbf mentioned earlier evokers 5* around this time and curious about Vikala uncap. Oh, don't they show trailer for anniversary around this time? Also I am finally getting close to my first transcend eternal and right now I am blocked by... Whorls and orbs, damnit. I think have most/can easily get most of materials for 150lvl and here I am... With not enough whorls and orbs, damnit *angy* Super Ultimate Angel Halo when with Super Ultimate Rewards, hmphf

Remember to drink water, but not too much!

ahah it's okay

I can't relate at all to how you feel about it since Sakurai was legit one of the first seiyuu i really obsessed over (he played two formative characters from my childhood that i was obsessing over when i was 13, ironically also paired with Suzuken, so i've had a lot of affection for his voice ever since, and seeing him paired with Suzuken in gbf again felt really on brand. All the more reasons for me to be sad), so personally i could never find he was out of place anywhere, it was just, ah, funny Sakurai following me around and giving me characters with similar thematic to haunt me!

I guess now you have justifications to your kneejerks reaction lmao

of course i feel bad for the victims of it all first and formost, especially since both mistresses came forward with a lot of health issues due to the stress the whole situation put them through it's just. another layer of horrible. I don't think it's fair to think about the outrage in the sense of "will it change anything?" i think just having compassion for the people involved is enough. We don't even have to address it per se, it's not like our voice matters, but i think it's at least the minimum before talking about our grieves for fictional matters that don't matter as much.

When it comes to his roles, it's so tricky because it's not just GBF to take into account. None of the big franchise that relies on Sakurai's name has done anything to distance himself from him, hell, between those two scandals ff7 released a new game where Sakurai took back his iconic role, and mp100 got its new season where Sakurai's character is just as beloved as ever. And we know GBF brought him back for the NY's intro with Lucio as well. And i also saw a recent anime announcement of a brand new IP hiring Sakurai, while they don't even have the excuse of trying to stay consistant with legendary characters he played.

It's like everyone is agreeing it's a very fucked up things he's done but he's too associated to their brands for them to do anything about it. It's so wild and confusing and hard to really predict where it's going to go from here.

GBF alrready announced 5* Lucifer and i don't see them announcing a recast so far, so it's really difficult to know if they even can terminate their countract with Sakurai at this point.

(To this day the only efficient seiyuu scandal solving i saw was with a3 when one of the seiyuu came out as rancid and a3 and his company literally dumped him the day after everything about him came to light, and they replaced him in the following week by the actor who played his character in the stage adaptation of the game. Then in the month that followed his voicelines were completely muted from the game and they revoiced the whole thing with the new VA in the following year. It was so swift and efficient that now when i just see them all go silent and wait for it to get quiet again, i just think they don't think it's worth addressing to start with lmao. Tho we are talking vastly different level of crimes so it is probably not the best scale for me to judge that with).

Next stream should mention things about Evokers's 5* yes, and we're all waiting for Vikala's 5* announcement. They should also show a trailer for the new anni event there, so we gotta stay tuned.

Congratz on the soon transcendance! Whorls and orbs are the worst, sorry you have to deal with it o7 this is such an Eternal grinding thing to happen lmao. More Halo jail for you rip.

Thanks for the reminder, and same goes to you! take care!

Hey ! As you may have noticed I really like your blog and everything you post ^^ I love Pouf’s character and I wanted to know how you « discovered » him, your first thoughts when you seeing him, and what is your global relation with him ?

This is such an exciting question to get, not just in general, but also as my first ask on this blog! Though I am gonna have to say, I'm not totally sure what you mean by global relation? So please feel free to either reply or send another ask to clarify, because I'd love to be able to answer every part of this!

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I first got recommended hxh after seeing a "holy trinity of good anime" meme around 3 years ago and, while I'd already seen the other two mentioned (fma:b and mp100) and absolutely loved them, I hadn't seen hxh and had a moment of "huh, this show must be really good to be on this list" and a very good friend of mine saw me say that and messaged me to tell me to watch it, while also sending me a link for it. At 148 episodes I wasn't totally sure I would have the attention or motivation to actually watch the entire thing, but as it went on I felt less like I was watching it for my friend and was more really enjoying the series as it progressed! I had been blown away by the york new/auction arc and then dismayed and bored by the greed island arc, which brings me to the main point: the chimera ant arc.

I'd known about it, but didn't know any details, no one really seemed to talk about it in detail so I had no idea what to expect. I'd seen hushed whispers about it and braced myself for an impact, especially when I was reading the crunchyroll comments at the end of the greed island arc and so many of them were talking about how the 99 series had stopped there, so everything afterwards would be new material. It definitely started strong and, as someone who already has a special interest for insects, I was excited by the discussion of the ants and how their biology worked! It was pretty easy to tell that humans were gonna be added to the mix and I'm not gonna lie, I think the arc did an incredible job with character design as a result. I personally hold cheetu up as a design pinnacle in the arc, he strikes a very nice balance between "furry" and "insect", with all his joints being articulated like those of a bug. Speaking of design, I'm very excited to talk about our man of the hour over here, but I'd like to finish this thought off by saying that I don't think any piece of media I experience will ever impact me the way the CAA did; I don't remember the last time I'd ever felt so excited to keep watching something, nor do I remember ever feeling such genuine tension over how the arc progressed, especially seeing how much there was still left to resolve when there weren't very many episodes left, really giving a huge push towards plot resolution. Needless to say, like a lot of people, I was blown away. The character arcs were especially important to me, and that only grew with my rewatches and engagement with other people, which very neatly brings me back to him, the insect love of my life, Shaiapouf.

I always watched the openings while I watched hxh and was immediately drawn in when I saw Pouf in the last few seconds of it. I can't think of any other occasion where I'd seen a male character associated with butterflies, so that pulled me in and I was anxiously waiting for him to finally show up. His debut did not disappoint me at all, with the violin solo, the fairy chimes, the rainbow wings catching on the breeze. Youpi's debut is actually when we see Pouf play the violin for the first time and that scene actually made me realize that I missed playing music (because I actually do own a violin! I'm not very good with it, but his music made me want to try again!); seeing him fully open his wings and seeing that they had hearts all over them also really hammered in his design for me, and I absolutely loved it. Also he is an absolutely beautiful man 👀

Being a comic relief character seemed to be expected, given how emotional he was even fron the beginning, as well as how him being a butterfly felt like a little more of a silly design, even with his serious royal guard role. I never found him to be annoying, I was more amused by him than anything else; I thought he was pretty funny in how volatile he could be, with the best example being the infamous "screaming and crying while playing the violin" bit, where I really wondered why he wasn't everyone's favorite lmao. Really, it was seeing him respond wildly to inconsequential things that kept me interested. The throne room breakdown sealed it further.

I suppose I wasn't really all that surprised that Pouf turned out to be complex (with me being most surprised by Youpi actually!), but I think it was the severity and polarization of his arc that got me so interested. Him going from comic relief to antagonist (in an arc about gray morality, no less) felt absolutely stunning to watch, and what's more is that you can see every single step he took to get to where he ended up. Nothing he does is out of the blue; while it does get progressively more extreme, it all makes sense in the context of his character. I know a lot of people brushed him off as annoying and it's such a shame bc doing so prevents you from actually looking into how he thought and interacted with the world, and how those things played into how seemingly irrationally he acted.

People seem to have flat out forgotten about Youpi and diverted most of the attention to Pitou, whose growth has been analyzed over and over at this point; Pouf had an incredibly interesting arc that was mostly, if not entirely, emotionally driven, and looking into what happened with it necessitates actually understanding his character, which seems like something not a lot of people were all that willing to do, and I think that's really upsetting! Pouf was a really neat character with complex motivations and I don't think I've really seen anything else quite like him!

Continuing on, after the throne room breakdown and the realization of how he was shaping up as an antagonist, the entire bit with him in the cocoon happened and I had expectations that were a little bigger than what actually happened lmao. I was expecting something huge after he came out, especially since it took so long while everyone else was fighting for their lives while him and Morel were having an intense staredown. That bit led to the reveal of the Beelzebub ability which blew me away; I saw it in the episode preview right before it happened and didn't think very much of it, but actually seeing it? Actually seeing the ten thousand clones, hearing him become his own chorus, with all the little voices overlapping? What got me most was that his voice didn't get higher while he was so small, and all of this combined while he messed with Morel absolutely sealed the deal for me. I feel like you have to form your opinion on Pouf during the throne room scene because it's just so revealing about who he is, but I feel like if you still can't decide how you feel about him then, then you decide during the Beelzebub reveal because when I say I sat there with the biggest dumbest grin watching him go, I really do mean it. The sheer chaos coming from the same polite and dignified man we saw at the beginning of the arc was incredible to see.

His growing desperation and the way he went straight to violence after the rose bomb was also a lot to take in, and also something I myself have talked about because, while Pouf is resorting to wanting to kill Komugi, he is 100% convinced that it's the right thing to do, and he even acknowledges that he could be killed for doing it; he's desperate not because he's mean and petty, but because he's afraid he's going to lose absolutely everything he holds near and dear; ultimately, he's a tragic character. Of course, none of this was on my mind the first time I watched this, I was mostly taken aback by how quickly Pouf was able to think and resort to some underhanded tactics, trying to lie to and manipulate so many of the people around himself, which felt a little bit like a showcase on how awful he could be, but also, once more, he was working through self preservation in a literal life or death scenario. Yes he did bad things, but knowing why he did them is so very important to me.

And then the final scenes. Him swearing to keep Komugi a secret, Meruem regaining his memories, Pouf dropping to the ground sobbing, and then the final pan across him, dead in the dirt, utterly alone, the wind ripping apart his wings. The first time around I honestly didn't feel anything, just looking at him thinking like "wow, godspeed you wild wild man, WHAT was that all about!!", but the more I revisit it, the sadder I genuinely feel to see him like that. Pouf's last moments are so upsetting when you see that he was almost entirely driven by love and fear (which, don't quote me on this, are rumored to be the two most basic human emotions that all others stem from 👀). Overall, he had some very human emotions and motivations for someone who was so aggressively mis(ant)hropic.

Overall, that's my play by play initial thoughts on Pouf! I love his design and how complex his motivations were, he had me completely gripped for the entire arc and I was always so excited to see what he would do next because he felt so unpredictable, especially after the bomb drop when the plot was beginning to hinge almost entirely on what he was gonna do next! I could honestly talk about him for hours and have already done some writing about him on my main blog, which is something I'm planning to continue doing as well! I really do love him a lot, so once more, I was really glad to see this ask! Thank you and feel free to stop by any time!