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It was a very fun fan meeting! 🌟

▼I will post a detailed report later, but for now, just some photos and brief impressions ▼

The theater where the fan meeting was held:

Below is a photo taken near the theater where you can clearly see the Tokyo Sky Tree, one of the inspirations for the design of Kanai Tower:

------------------------ There was a display of official goods near the entrance and many fans lined up to take pictures:

The tapestry that will be a bonus for the purchase of the art book that will be released on April 2nd:

------------------------ Plushies!:

------------------------ Life-size panels of the main characters. Lots of fans lined up to take pictures of this, too, but some fans in line behind me said that Yuma looked very small. (Yes, that's right. He's only 150cm tall!)

------------------------

Overall, it is no exaggeration to say that the entire content of this event was a surprise, as there was no prior announcement of what the event would be about, but one of the most sudden announcements was that Kazutaka Kodaka would be signing autographs for those who purchased the official soundtrack at the event's merchandising. I had already bought the OST, but there was an announcement that the version signed by Masafumi Takada would be sold, so I thought I would buy one if there were any left. As it turned out, a lot of people bought the OST, probably because they could get Kodaka's autograph. And of course I bought it too.

I was very nervous to talk to Kodaka directly! but it was a very good experience XD I will make another post about this later.

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As for my impression of the event, the first thing I'd like to say is that I was very impressed. I felt the fans deeply thanking the developers and voice actors for making or working hard on RAIN CODE, and the developers and voice actors thanking the fans for playing and supporting RAIN CODE. Well, it seems kind of generic when I put it into words… but I think the event clearly showed a high level of passion for RAIN CODE.

What was particularly surprising was that the guest voice actors had probably played the game properly. I expected Katsumi Fukuhara, VA for Yuma, and Sayumi Suzushiro, VA for Shinigami, to have played the game, but I was surprised that even Yui Ishikawa, VA for Halara, and KENN, VA for Desuhiko, were able to discuss the game in detail.

And what is impressive is that they all "mentioned" a sequel. When I say "mentioned", they just said they wanted to do a sequel; unfortunately, there was no announcement that they had decided to do a sequel. But I think mentioning a sequel in front of the fans carries a different weight. Also, not just once or twice, but on various topics, Kodaka hinted at the possibility of various developments in the future. On the other hand, if something is already decided, it would be a good time to announce it at an event like this, so it is a bit sad that no concrete announcement was made, but I was very happy that all the guests showed their motivation to make a sequel.

I took notes on what they talked about and will post a report with some illustrations based on those notes. The event lasted about two hours * twice (day and night), but it was packed with a lot of topics, so it's hard to put it into text properly! But it was a lot of fun, and there are a lot of scenes I want to illustrate, so I'll post them one by one.

#rain code #raincode #oohh thank you for the report and photographs! #especially the tokyo sky tree is a fun detail #kodaka is always teasing about wanting to make sequels but i suppose it's because it's ultimately in spichun's hands #though it is promising that the company seems to believe in the IP enough to have events like this for it!

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btw protip: when making fankid designs, look at the concept art of the parents for inspiration

#you know not to blatant about this headcanon i like to think about for funsies but #naegiri #pretend that the concept designs are buried somewhere in their genotypes or somethin #more fun that way and you can get some interesting variations #danganronpa #rain code #makoto naegi #kyoko kirigiri #shuichi saihara #yuma kokohead #raincode

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Also I would like everyone to please be aware of this concept art for Makoto Naegi next to Shuichi.

#same person #danganronpa #drv3 #danganronpa v3 #makoto naegi #shuichi saihara

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Looking at the concept art sheets again, and seeing this Kyoko Kirigiri design. Hmm?

#danganronpa #rain code #raincode #master detective archives: rain code #kyoko kirigiri #yuma kokohead

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Analysis of Yuma's Design ②

The design of Yuma's head has several features that are related to "question" or "mystery".

Everyone has probably noticed that his ahoge design is based on a question mark. Also, anyone who has watched him closely has noticed that his pupil design (or perhaps I should say the area around the pupil) resembles a keyhole. Some might argue that it is an abstract shape and perhaps something else, but "key" is a symbol used frequently in RAIN CODE, so I think it is reasonable to interpret it as a keyhole.

The main consideration I want to talk about in this post is that the outline of his eyes is a closed ellipse. My guess is that this is because it is based on the letter Q of the alphabet. There are several characters designed by Rui Komatsuzaki in Danganronpa and RAIN CODE with closed eyelines, such as Gundham, Kazuichi, Gonta, Ryoma, K1-B0, Aphex, Zilch, Desuhiko, and Vivia. While there are exceptions like Ryoma, most of them have sharp or semicircular eyes. Characters like Yuma with rounded eyes and closed eyelines are rare, so I think there is an intention behind it. He has a single long eyelash at the corner of his eye, which to me looks like a diagonal line coming out of the circle of the letter Q in the alphabet.

Yuma's eye line is not a simple single line, but rather a line that branches out a bit, so this analysis may be a bit of a stretch. I just think it could mean something, and I think it's one of Yuma's most distinctive parts, so I personally always want to draw him with his eyeliner closed when I draw him. Please don't get me wrong, this is just my preference! I have no intention of criticizing any fanart that doesn't. In fact, in the art for the Danganronpa and RAIN CODE Collaboration Cafe, Yuma's eyeline is broken at the inner corner of his eyes. If Tookyo Games supervises this art properly, it may not be so important whether Yuma's eyeline is closed or broken.

#interesting observation of his eye line being closed to look like a Q! #the question mark hair and keyhole in the iris are conspicuous but i never thought of the Q before #rain code #raincode #yuma kokohead #reblog

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The first thing I thought when I saw Yuma was "ohh Komatsuzaki's dreams of making a bobbed cut protagonist came true"! The character I considered to be the closest to having a bobbed hair protagonist before him was Komaru for sure, but Yuma's went even shorter.

He definitely took the bucket hat and curled ahoge from Shuichi's concepts. It's very fun when they find a use for past designs.

Rain code's reflection of danganronpa doesn't even stop there, I recall Kodaka saying that chapter 0 used a trick that they wanted to use in V3, but danganronpa's setting just made it too difficult.

Analysis of Yuma's Design ①

I don't know if this has already been discussed, but I think Yuma's hairstyle is similar to the earliest design ideas for Hajime (the protagonist of SDR2) and Shuichi (the protagonist of NDRV3).

Hajime had a bob cut in the earliest design. According to Rui Komatsuzaki's comment in the official art book (ダンガンロンパ1・2 Reload 超高校級の設定資料集 -再装填-), he suggested this because he wanted to create a bobbed protagonist. He also commented in the book, "I hope to realise a character design that is cool even with a bob cut (おかっぱでもかっこいい、というキャラクターデザインは、いつか実現したいと思っています)", so I think that Yuma's bob hairstyle is based on Komatsuzaki's hope.

Shuichi's ahoge was thick and curly in the earliest design. This is very similar to Yuma's ahoge design. It seems that it was decided from the beginning that Shuichi would wear a hat when he first appeared, and several hat design ideas were included, one of which is very similar to Yuma's hat. (That's what I drew in my illustration.)

In fact, Komatsuzaki often diverts design ideas he had for different characters. For example, the hood design of Chiaki's cardigan (the character from SDR2) was diverted from the hood originally designed as Nagito's coat (personally, I don't think they're that similar, but Komatsuzaki himself said so in the art book). So I think these are not coincidences, but the result of him hoping to realise the ideas he could not realise in the past.

What I'm trying to say is that even though Danganronpa and RAIN CODE are completely different worlds, what the developers had in mind when making the Danganronpa series seems to be reflected in RAIN CODE, and the characters seem to be somewhat related in that way :)

#i love the art here it's so cute #rain code #raincode #danganronpa #reply #reblog

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Right! I suppose that she could be tsukumogami that's a type of shinigami at the same time.. since she's still a spirit of death that reaps souls. Albeit, still a shinigami created from the soul of a supernatural object in the first place. But because of that, she doesn't seem to have any authority or knowledge much at all, so she definitely doesn't come off as a deity. She is pompous to an almost suspicious degree. She refers to herself as オレ様ちゃん, spells her name 死に神ちゃん to seem distinguished, refers to herself as blue-blooded, has an exaggerated disgust of poor people... I think she must be overcompensating for being a small-fry death god in comparison to others lol

Yeah, imagine! There must be more supernatural objects that grant power... and maybe even have to deal with actual gods/spirits that are beyond that of someone like Shinigami?

If there are more objects that can grant a power similar to Shinigami, you would expect perhaps someone without a forte would seek one out in order to gain an ability?

Concept: Shinigami is a Master Detective Case File?

Shinigami's barely explained nature gives me a lot to chew on. She's a god of death who is barely even knowledgeable on the subject of death besides a fanatical interest in murder. She has a specialized power revolving around a realm of mysteries, yet she sucks at piecing together any sort of logic. Even her name is weird. She certainly does not fit many conventional assumptions of a deity.

It's almost like she's more of a tool than a god. She exists in service to be used by whoever forms a pact with her. She's basically a personified power.

I think my immediate unconscious assumption, if I assumed anything at all, was that Shinigami is probably a god that was then sealed into a book for being dangerous. It's a common enough trope. Though, something about that seems a little off... Perhaps mainly because, although happy to have opportunities to form a pact, she doesn't seem to mind or be bitter about being sealed away either. Or so that's how I'm used to that sort of trope going, anyways.

But perhaps Shinigami should be thought of as the book itself? A magical item rather than a god?

If you think about it, couldn't you refer to a murder case file as a "Book of Death"? What if this book is an ancient collection of murder records written by a detective that possessed supernatural powers equivalent to a forte? This supernatural ability would be powerful enough to become imbued into the book (likely with the gem as the nexus). Perhaps this caused the book to eventually gain a soul of its own akin to a tsukumogami?

(I can totally imagine... that Shinigami's appearance and personality is a manifestation of this particular Master Detective's ideal girl lol)

#rain code #raincode #reply #shinigami #shinigami chan #shinigami rain code #shiutpost #hc

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Concept: Shinigami is a Master Detective Case File?

Shinigami's barely explained nature gives me a lot to chew on. She's a god of death who is barely even knowledgeable on the subject of death besides a fanatical interest in murder. She has a specialized power revolving around a realm of mysteries, yet she sucks at piecing together any sort of logic. Even her name is weird. She certainly does not fit many conventional assumptions of a deity.

It's almost like she's more of a tool than a god. She exists in service to be used by whoever forms a pact with her. She's basically a personified power.

I think my immediate unconscious assumption, if I assumed anything at all, was that Shinigami is probably a god that was then sealed into a book for being dangerous. It's a common enough trope. Though, something about that seems a little off... Perhaps mainly because, although happy to have opportunities to form a pact, she doesn't seem to mind or be bitter about being sealed away either. Or so that's how I'm used to that sort of trope going, anyways.

But perhaps Shinigami should be thought of as the book itself? A magical item rather than a god?

If you think about it, couldn't you refer to a murder case file as a "Book of Death"? What if this book is an ancient collection of murder records written by a detective that possessed supernatural powers equivalent to a forte? This supernatural ability would be powerful enough to become imbued into the book (likely with the gem as the nexus). Perhaps this caused the book to eventually gain a soul of its own akin to a tsukumogami?

(I can totally imagine... that Shinigami's appearance and personality is a manifestation of this particular Master Detective's ideal girl lol)

#rain code #raincode #master detective archives: rain code #shinigami #shinigami rain code #shinigami chan #shiutpost #hc

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I decided to revise the prologue that I had posted a while ago and combined it with chapter 1 into a single document for an english translation of what's officially available for free of the Rain Code prequel novel.

#rain code #raincode #master detective archives: rain code #waiting for yuma #rain code novel #ユーマを待ちながら #yuka kisaragi #halara nightmare #my translation

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I have thought about this too. Though my conclusion is that it's likely Makoto who's the one that's gone out of his way to change his appearance as much as he can, considering he has much more motivation for it: He ran from the government. He would likely benefit from hiding his identity (because imagine how fast Number One would've been on him if a random photo or description of him somehow floated around). And he just straight up dislikes his original so much that it's in his profile, so it'd stand to reason that he wouldn't want to look like him.

Number One had very little reason to change his appearance much when he became Yuma. Probably only just a select handful of very important people even know what he looks like in the first place. He knew he'd have no memory, so what are the chances that his amnesiac self would even maintain any type of dye when it starts growing out? And he was probably very aware that a haircut and color wouldn't fool his homunculus at all.

At most, maybe I imagine that he cut his hair to become Yuma. I seem to remember concept art where his hair was long, but the bowl cut would much more inconspicuous. (but really i bet they scrapped the long hair so that it wouldn't be too easy for the player to connect Yuma and Makoto together lol)

It's really cool how much editing Makoto's expressions onto Yuma's sprites and vice versa drives home just how different they are despite having identical faces. The art team probably could've gotten away with just using Yuma's sprites as a base for Makoto's, but they went out of their way to give him fully unique expressions, and it really emphasizes how even though Makoto started out as an exact 1-to-1 copy of Yuma, mind and all, both characters have been heavily shaped by their experiences in Kanai Ward and are now fundamentally different people. It's so good, I love it.

For sure it made me notice their small differences! Makoto has a bit more sickly look, such as him being paler and having darker and more sunken in eye rims (the only sprites where Yuma's eyes look like this are when he's either tired or angry). Despite being a homunculus, they do make it obvious to make him look like Yuma but in declining health, and I'm sure the lack of sun doesn't help. Not to mention, some of the expressions Makoto makes just somehow feel a bit uncanny on Yuma just because of their different personalities. They're nice touches.

And I figured out while changing the eyebrow colors that basically all I had to do to match the hair color was make them the opposite hue (and mess with the saturation a little bit).

#i do remember in a tweet where kodaka prompted people to comment with things that they wondered about rain code #or something like that #and i commented that i wondered if makoto's blonde hair was like liquid snake lol #i may have accidentally deleted that tweet though... #rain code #reply #rain code spoilers #yuma kokohead #makoto kagutsuchi

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With the last post.. the reason I think about the theme of "what you're effortlessly good at" and "what you actually want to do" is because I somewhat relate to it..

Contrary to the sloppy way I type online, the thing I often find myself effortlessly good at in academics is english/literature/writing type subjects. Yet despite this I despise having to do things like writing papers. I will be so dramatic over having to write so much as a couple pages and will be like "well I'll just half-ass it and get it over with, I don't care if my grade is bad at this point" and then it'll come back as an A or B when I've already just resigned to merely passing.

And you know what? I'm absolutely baffled and kind of annoyed that I don't actually want to pursue anything that involves the subject I don't even have to try at.

Sure, I do write obnoxiously long and detailed character/plot analyses on here. Actually, previously I never thought of them as an "analysis" so much as they were insane disjointed ramblings, so I didn't tag them that way until I started seeing other people reblogging them with analysis tags... I guess I have to accept that I've accidentally stereotyped myself with my pfp lol

I'm not any sort of media analyst or writer though. Really, I'm just a mere biology student... well, I guess 'analysis' is part of my specialization, but that's not the same. I mean, I am good at my field just because I enjoy doing it and I think it's cool, but I actually have to put more effort into learning and applying it than I do with the actual subject I'm more natural at.

So the idea of talent, the thing you're naturally inclined with, being different than your actual passion/what you enjoy doing is one of those things that draws me in.

#i guess i do have interest in foreign language as kind of an outlet #though i'm not very good at it because my declining memory makes retaining vocabulary much tougher now lol #text #shiutpost

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Both danganronpa and even rain code have this underlying but incredibly persisting theme of the cognitive dissonance between one's personality vs their own nature that I can't help but think about a lot.

In my head I tend to call it the "Leon paradox" because he's the first and most obvious character I think of in regards to this, though he's far from being the only one. Despite being an effortlessly talented baseball prodigy, he dislikes doing it and his actual passion is becoming a musician. However, he's pigeonholed into doing something he doesn't enjoy simply because he's good at it and it's a means to an end since it's his only way of getting anywhere.

This gets expanded in dr2. Imposter's dissatisfaction with having to always be someone else. Akane not caring about being a gymnast much at all aside from the perks it gets her. Nagito's disdain for his luck talent that brings him constant misery while also acknowledging that it's the one thing about himself that he can count on the most.

It even becomes a focal point with Hajime, who did everything to fight his nature of lacking a talent. However, Chiaki points out that it's the fact that he has no specific talent that gives him more freedom than any of the ultimates that he admires. Turned out, gaining every talent put Hajime into his own prison, and it's his loss of personality that made him essentially useless.

Even in V3 you have Kaede who actually loves her talent so much that she feels like it's an obsession that affects her ability to socialize normally. Kokichi also seems to have brief moments where he acknowledges that his talent is a huge barrier to being able to actually connect with people and causes his loneliness, but decides that it's a compulsion that's too troublesome to change so he just accepts it.

Shuichi sticks out to me when it comes to this theme. He's extremely good at detective work and will often do it on impulse regardless of reward. However, even just stumbling on his first murder case and solving it before the police could even touch it, he could not cope with the results of the person he'd affected. His emotional sensitivity traumatized him into being avoidant, even using a hat as a literal blinder. He was prepared to die in the first trial in fear of revealing the truth. His compulsion to do detective work even kind of ruined Kokichi and Kaito's plot in ch5, as he got so ahead of himself with revealing the truth that just kind of blurted everything out before realizing that he shouldn't have. His compulsion with detective work even seems to make him comparatively calmer and more focused during investigations than the other protagonists, despite easily being the emotionally weakest-willed out of all of them. He repeatedly keeps falling back into his talent despite the emotional toll it has on him because he just can't help himself. He kind of acts as an example of one of the reasons why Kyoko was trained to be emotionally detached.

Jin actually is very much like Shuichi. He tries to actively avoid detective work because he despises the emotional detachment required for it. You wouldn't even know that he's actually really good at it, but you see glimpses into his skill in the novels where he'll end up figuring things out before even Kyoko does on more than one occasion. I can talk a lot about Jin, but I do get the feeling that one of the reasons why he works at Hope's Peak is because he knew more about what would end up happening there than he let on. He probably could have gotten quite a few things done if he wasn't so insistent on fighting his own nature as a detective.

Very honorable mention to Yui, who turned down an invitation to Hope's Peak for her high-jumping talent in order to pursue her passion as a very mid detective. She might've even lived if she went to Hope's Peak because I'm pretty sure she would've graduated by the time of the tragedy, but at least she died in the most based way possible by rejecting them.

And of course, Junko is a prime example of the detrimental effect of talent. Because of her analytical abilities, she can practically guess everything that's going to happen. Her obsession with despair is a desperate attempt at being mentally stimulated in a society that has let the status quo stagnate to such a critical degree that it's the reason why the very concept of talent had been rotted to this point. Sorry to Kodaka, who has repeatedly said that Junko is meant to be a truly evil villain with no motivation, but he did kind of accidentally give her a motivation in dr0 where we're shown for a fact that without her memories and ability to analyze, she's relatively normal and tame. That is her nature, just a kind of weird girl who wants to be a tradwife and go grow corn somewhere. However, I think it can be argued that what is meant by "pure evil with no motivation" is that she doesn't have any sort of tangible tragic backstory. You can even say it's not her analyst ability alone that caused her madness, since there's plenty of normal non-world-ending analysts. It may simply be that her personality happened to mix terribly with her talent, and that's the nature of what makes her pure evil, because both of those aspects of her are part of her nature that she can not (nor does she even want to) control despite the misery it causes her. She simply learned to love the misery.

Makoto himself is very clear about being bitter about his luck. For the most part, what's apparent to him is that it causes him constant trouble and the good that it actually does for him is so subtle and disjointed that he doesn't even realize it's his luck. However, I think what makes him different from people like Nagito or Junko is his personality. He doesn't obsess like they do, and his optimism makes him bounce back easily. I think his luck even feeds into his personality and, inverse to Junko, it's the unpredictability of his luck that makes him hopeful and optimistic. Since he never knows what's going to happen to him, he had to develop a way to roll with the punches.

The aspect of personality vs ability also carries over to rain code. The master detectives are people who have innate psychic abilities that are seemingly based on their nature, and then it gets refined and specialized based on their personality. Not only does their personality help to refine these powers, but you see that their personalities and abilities often have detrimental impacts on each other.

Halara can't see living things in their postcognition because they aren't good at looking at people. Pucci's ability makes her hearing so sensitive that it's at least partially caused her emotional detachment. Melami not only likes fashion so much that she must wear the clothes of someone to use her power, but she also has to actually like the clothes too. Vivia is constantly fatigued and has depressive tendencies due his tenuous attachment to his spirit.

Former Number One/Makoto are a great example of this sort of destructive feedback loop of cognitive dissonance. You can infer that their empathy and obsession with helping people is what gives them the ability to use coalescence and share anyone's abilities, yet it's the fact that they can do anything that makes them feel like they must do everything. Ironically, the fact that they've convinced themselves that they must do everything makes their ability essentially useless because they end up only working alone. As a result, Former Number One became detached with every emotion except for his obsession, and it's what caused Makoto to ultimately spiral.

#danganronpa #rain code #raincode #rain code spoilers #my analysis #shiutpost

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I think it's fascinating that the english fandom says "ahoge" while in japanese it's called an "antenna"

英語のファンの間では ”アホゲ”と呼ばれるが、日本語では ”アンテナ” と呼ばれるのは面白いと思い

#text #shiutpost

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Of course, despite having done 74 sprites for Makoto with Yuma's face, there's a few I skipped because I'd have to just actually draw new art for them...

Though, Makoto didn't actually have an equivalent to Yuma's most common neutral stance sprite (Makoto only has the one where his head is tilted slightly down), so I had to do a little more work on making those ones. Along with editing the spiky hair for his angry sprite. Maybe one day I could do the difficult ones... but I'm pretty satisfied with how many I managed to do just lazily using my mouse and keyboard : P

I'll admit that the original reason I made the Yuma ones were to not only see the expressions he's technically capable of making, but it was also kind of a shitpost where I secretly hoped that people who hadn't finished the game would stumble on it and wonder what the heck happens to him lol

#text

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It's really cool how much editing Makoto's expressions onto Yuma's sprites and vice versa drives home just how different they are despite having identical faces. The art team probably could've gotten away with just using Yuma's sprites as a base for Makoto's, but they went out of their way to give him fully unique expressions, and it really emphasizes how even though Makoto started out as an exact 1-to-1 copy of Yuma, mind and all, both characters have been heavily shaped by their experiences in Kanai Ward and are now fundamentally different people. It's so good, I love it.

For sure it made me notice their small differences! Makoto has a bit more sickly look, such as him being paler and having darker and more sunken in eye rims (the only sprites where Yuma's eyes look like this are when he's either tired or angry). Despite being a homunculus, they do make it obvious to make him look like Yuma but in declining health, and I'm sure the lack of sun doesn't help. Not to mention, some of the expressions Makoto makes just somehow feel a bit uncanny on Yuma just because of their different personalities. They're nice touches.

And I figured out while changing the eyebrow colors that basically all I had to do to match the hair color was make them the opposite hue (and mess with the saturation a little bit).

#reply #rain code #yuma kokohead #makoto kagutsuchi #shiutpost #rain code spoilers

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Completely normal Makoto sprite sheets.

#rain code #raincode #master detective archives: rain code #rain code spoilers #makoto kagutsuchi #yuma kokohead #sprites #sprite edit #shiutpost

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I had actually almost finished the Makoto sprite edits a long time ago as a followup to the Yuma edits that I did, but personal projects and assignments distracted me from finishing them...

But guess who's got a week long break right now 😏

#i only have a few more to do so i might as well finish them up tomorrow #text