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eldesperadont · 11 months

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hello and welcome to the start of my rough Despe/Hiromu recap essay! I'll go over their history in relation to one another. A big reason for this recap is to explain my fascination with the 10+ year long history of these characters, and why I, a queer person, is so drawn to it — this post will include links, spoilers and cover the first 9 years of their careers. If you have corrections or additional infos pls DM me!!

egg, (2010-2012)

Hiromu Takahashi and El Desperado started their pro wrestling training around the same time in NJPWs dojo – both passing NJPW's entry exam in 2009 and training for roughly a year till they officially debuted in 2010.

Desperado in March under his real name, Mikami Kyōsuke, and Hiromu later in August. And here we already have some key moments:

Takahashi's professional debut was a singles match against Mikami. (its on YouTube btw)

Despe's first ever singles victory was defeating Hiromu in said debut match.

Mikami is older and ahead of Takahashi, going on to have an impressive winning record over Hiromu, who only managed to get a sole victory over Despe during their time together as students. (two if you count in a dark match)

Hiromu genuinely struggled a lot as a Young Lion (dojo trainee), having been close to giving up on wrestling if it weren’t for main roster wrestler Tetsuya Naito, who took him under his wing.

So yeah starting off Despe had the upper hand.

This part of their career is the hardest to research given that 1.) the language barrier was way higher a decade ago, 2.) there straight up is barely any footage. So instead, I want to explain the emotional importance of the NJPW dojo background:

The time as Young Lions in NJPW is kayfabe canon. These guys are rivals but also teammates, live and train together, fight with/and each other, cheer each other on in their bouts with the seniors, carry each other to the back when they once again got beaten – these guys are close, they have to, it's them against the world.

And that is the case for pretty much all the homegrown NJPW talent. This system provides feuds with an emotional core; why would someone who was that close be so cruel to each other now? What turns brothers, best friends, partners into enemies? So much room for juicy rivalries with a real weight behind it, after all we watched these guys grow and learn, saw their highs and lows.

Also on a less serious note it's simply amusing to watch old stuff and see two guys that will be bitter rivals, who’s matches will get praise and awards - tag together in mostly fruitless efforts, stumble behind the curtain together and be so clueless about all the greatness they’ll achieve one day thanks to each others hard work.

Young Lions my beloved <3

oceans apart, (2012-2016)

As is custom with most Young Lions both went on excursion: Mikami graduating first, in 2012, and working in Mexico for a year as "Namajague" - Hiromu leaving Japan the year Desperado debuts on the New Japan main roster, in 2014, touring in Mexico and the US as "Kamaitachi" till August 2016.

Both worked in CMLL as heels, as is custom for foreign trainees, starting as masked wrestlers, loosing them in a stipulation match, and also getting their hair shaved at some point.

Here you have unmasked Namajague, who went on to rock a half facepaint look and had half of his hair bleached (in 2014, a trendsetter)

and here you got a young unmasked Kamaitachi (yes he was in a team with Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian in RoH)

These are the years Mikami and Hiromu don’t interact in canon, but in an 2020 interview Desperado confessed that he kept an eye on Takahashi during the latter's excursion, cause of his success in Middle/North America and spectacular matches with Dragon Lee.

Love confessions, (May - June 2018)

Their rivalry was fully rekindled in the “Best of the Super Juniors 25” tournament, so let’s set the scene:

Takahashi’s successful: having won the most important championship for their weight division in his first year on the main roster. He’s beloved by fans and critics and a valuable member of his mentor's faction, Los Ingobernables de Japon.

El Desperado is struggling: unsuccessfully having fought for singles titles several times in the last couple of years. His only championship victories so far having been in the tag division, after joining Suzuki-gun, a shady group that tolerates him, but not without hurdles. The masked man debuted in 2013 as a cheerful honourable guy, but by now he was just a bitter, sinister bastard.

They will have their first singles meeting in 6 years, and their first on the main roster.

They are winking and nodding towards the fact that Desperado already has several wins over the younger guy, but do not address who Despy really is - officially Mikami Kyōsuke hasn’t wrestled in New Japan ever since he left for Mexico.

Leading up to the BOSJ Hiromu made a booklet in which he describes all of his possible opponents, Desperado's page is kept blank at first, but later Takahashi adds “I know who you are, and I hate you.”

Despy wants to impress Hiromu. He was one half of the IWGP Jr. Tag champs at that point and took both belts with him to the ring - he's also wearing a special mask, that is mostly white, a colour Japanese wrestlers tend to only wear on special occasions/in big matches.

A lot has changed since they last fought 1 on 1 - except one thing: Hiromu cannot beat Desperado.

Both didn’t shy away from using dirty tricks, but in the end Despy has the upper hand once more. As his opponent lays defeated in the ring the masked menace has this to say:

(postmatch promo) (the match)

Hiromu will go on to win the tournament and IWGP Jr. Heavyweight belt from Will Ospreay at the 2018 Dominion show, but the loss to his fellow former Young Lion means that the latter has the right to challenge him, and so he does, in this now infamous promo.

please watch the whole thing: link

(funfact, this happened the same night Kenny won the IWGP Heavyweight Title with Ibushi in his corner, the gays were EATING that day, in pride month no less)

Leading up to their confrontation Hiromu would post a video on his twitter playing the 'love me/not' flower game, landing on "he loves me" - which promptly makes him eat the flower in frustration

On the day of their match, June 18 2018, he brings Desperado a present:

A bouquet in a guitar case, a cruel call back to Desperados main roster debut back in early 2014: after Kota Ibushi won the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight belt at Wrestle Kingdom 8 a masked stranger approached the ring with a guitar case, revealing it to carry a bouquet of black roses for the freshly crowned champ (who was a lil confused by the whole situation)

It was the start of Despes unsuccessful run as a face and partnership with Ibushi (which you can read as the first man he tried to pursue).

The masked lad wasn't that fond of Hiromu bringing back old memories.

Their match is an all out war, both using underhanded tactics to keep the other one down, including Hiromu unmasking Despy, who shockingly doesn’t care at all - which is a huge deal, I'm going to quote Japanese NJPW commentator Milano here because he said it best:

“To a masked wrestler that’s your identity. It’s everything. But Desperado has it ripped off and then just puts it on like he was fixing his necktie. He was saying that this very essence of himself wasn’t as important as Hiromu or the belt." (translation by Chris Charlton)

But in the end Hiromu is victorious, finally ending his losing streak. After the match he has some interesting things to say:

(postmatch promo) (the match)

Life’s a b*tch. (mid 2018 - late 2019)

Hiromu's next title defence is in August 2018 in the USA against Dragon Lee, a match I still haven't been able to watch and probably never will. Due to a messed up move from his opponent, Hiromu lands hard on his neck, breaking it in the process. He somehow managed to finish the match but collapsed backstage, immediately being rushed to a hospital.

In the documentary RED HEADED REVIVAL Hiromu shared that he knew right away that something was wrong – he saw his life flash before his eyes and feared that this is the end of his career, but he decided against stopping the fight:

It took Hiromu over a year to fully recover.

That wasn't the only unfortunate incident though: in spring of 2019 Desperado broke his jaw in a deathmatch against his idol Jun Kasai. The timing couldn't have been worse: the highly anticipated BOSJ Tournament for that year being just about to start. Despe had to withdraw mere days before its opening.

Neither of them would make a return till late 2019. And their next actual confrontation wouldn’t be till 2020.

It was a sad time to be a fan of either - with Hiromu we didn't know till his return if he will even be able to wrestle again. And with Despy we had to witness fans being unnecessarily rude to him, ridiculing him about doing a deathmatch in the first place, eventho the injury could have occurred in any type of match. (if I remember correctly, Desperado even deleted his twitter due to the fan backlash)

BUT I'm gonna end this post on a good note:

1.) Despy's return marked the start of a new era for him:

He wasn't gonna apologise, he broke his jaw, so what? Shit happens. He wasn't going to pretend that the situation didn't happen either tho, hell - Despe returned in a shirt covered in blood spots, making direct references to the match he got injured in. (sth he talked about in this video) And his mask? Dons a fractured jawbone now, the cracks filled in with gold - reminiscent of kintsugi, a Japanese method for repairing broken ceramics with a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. The philosophy behind the technique is to recognize the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair into the new piece instead of disguising it.

2.) Hiromu wasn't giving up on his way of life either, making a spectacular return - the best was yet to come. Individually and together/against each other.

Stay tuned for the next part, that will absolutely also take me ages to finally put out, I'm apologising in advance,, anyways thx bye!! <3 👹🐱

#el desperado #hiromu takahashi #percht.txt #wrestling thoughts tm #🐱👹#njpw #desperomu #namajague #kamaitachi #mikami kyosuke

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the-mononoke-facade · 1 month

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Alright, gonna be posting the translation stuff and other Mononoke-related stuff here going forward, anyway!

Got the second story from the Mononoke book translated and edited. Took me a while to get what this one was going for, and I think I still don't necessarily understand all of it even still, but is it really Mononoke if you're not sitting there staring at the screen like 'wtf' for at least some of it and going to need a few exposures before it really sinks in?

And if you haven't had a chance to check out the first story (Kamaitachi) and you would like to, you can find it here

So again, obligatory disclaimer that I don't own any of the rights to this book and this is just a fan translation done by someone making slow but steady progress in Japanese. You can buy a digital version of the raw version of the book on Bookwalker for $5 (i need to find the link for that again, but that's where I got it)

And then, for content warnings, let me know if I missed any big ones:

-Mentions of period-accurate pederasty -Graphic depictions of violence -Attempted ritual suicide -Body horror

With all that being said, here's link to the translation below:

I also just want to check in, is sharing through Google docs generally accessible for everyone or would there be a better format to share it in? If I knew more about OTW policies on fan translations I would rather stick it on ao3, but since I don't and since this isn't fan fiction I'm playing it safe and not going that route for now, but if anyone's got suggestions for a more convenient way to share, I'd appreciate it

That's it from me for now, hope y'all enjoy :)

#mononoke #mononoke 2007 #mononoke 2024 #mononoke book #mononoke kusuriuri #mononoke medicine vendor #mononoke kamehime

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crepes-suzette-373 · 7 months

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Youkai AU-verse of the pre-Grand Line squad.

Luffy = rokurokubi, Zoro = kamaitachi, Usopp = tengu, Nami = nekoshou, Sanji = 7-tail (shichibi?) kitsune

I'm still thinking about what youkai to assign the rest of the crew, so the other Vinsmokes are there to fill the space. Masks and "ninja head protectors" (hitaiate) are in place of the goggles and headphones.

I wonder if I should just make Chopper an actual Tanuki? He gets mad about it all the time in canon, but it's actually kind of fitting in this AU. Aaah, I also want to try designing what "Stealth Black"'s mask would look like now. I need 20 arms to draw everything I have in my head.

More youkai AU

#one piece #my art #youkai au #monkey d luffy #monkey d. luffy #roronoa zoro #usopp #nami #sanji #black leg sanji #cat burglar nami #vinsmoke family #vinsmoke siblings #vinsmoke reiju #vinsmoke niji #vinsmoke yonji

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elitadream · 2 months

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I see all of these Tanooki Mario asks and I love them all, but I raise you Kitsune Luigi : your thoughts on it ?

I must confess that I hesitated to give Luigi a different form in my version at first because I initially felt like the exception would be difficult to explain (the power-up being named the tanooki leaf after all). But then I considered the possibility of the term not designating this specific animal per say, but rather referring to the 'spirit' in a general sense, which I think could definitely work! 👀 And thus, while Mario and Peach's natural auras would both manifest as a tanuki, Luigi's animal spirit would take on the form of a kitsune instead; the same way someone else might transform into a bakeneko or kamaitachi. 💁‍♀️

Personally, I really like the thought of Luigi transforming into another creature entirely. It gives an air of mystery and hidden depth to his character; a visual confirmation that there's indeed something about him that is distinctly unique and beautiful in a way that is completely different from his brother or the princess. And it also makes total sense in my version since I headcanon Mario and Peach as having a very similar heart and temperament, whereas Luigi is a bit more of a wild card. 💚⚡

#asks #mario #princess peach #luigi #headcanon #tanooki #kitsune #personal portrayal #animal spirit #concept #thoughts and ramblings

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monstersdownthepath · 3 months

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Monster Spotlight: Kamaitachi

CR 13

Chaotic Evil Medium Fey

Bestiary 6, pg. 176

These wicked and fickle fey can appear just about anywhere that there's pain to be caused and lives to be ended. They appear cloaked in their Dust Devils, magical winds that whip around them at all times, carrying their little weasely bodies around like a single spaghetti noodle in a pot of boiling water. Despite how cute and silly they look, they're among the most vicious and sadistic of all Fey, maximizing the fear and agony in whatever creature crosses their path for no other reason than their own twisted amusement. What's worse is that there's almost no warning before they strike; depending on what sort of debris is in the Dust Devil, one may not see the beast within until the wind blows past them and tears the flesh from their bones.

While in their shell of wind, Kamaitachi (which I will shorten to 'itachi' from here on out) can fly at speeds of up to 120ft a round without issue, bending and twisting through the air with the ease of a barracuda in the open sea. Their sole offense is their quartet of Deadly Claws, scythe-like limbs so razor sharp that they can straight up do the Samurai Diagonal Cut at will, but more on that later, for now we'll focus on the claws themselves. Each claw deals 1d6+12 damage boosted by their constant Greater Magic Fang to hit even harder, and as previously mentioned these claws are especially deadly, critically hitting on a 19 or 20 and dealing x3 damage on a successful crit. Every blow also lacerates the target to deal 1d6 bleed damage a round, and the weapons of the Itachi are designed to flay the targets so agonizingly that a struck creature must make a DC 23 Fortitude save every time they're hit or become sickened by the pain for a round.

Able to make upwards to four of these attacks if it manages to Full-Attack, an adventuring party will rarely have to deal with that except against a foolish Itachi. It's got Flyby Attack and no reason not to use it to cut a party to ribbons bit by bit, savoring their slow and terrible demise. It can get away with this kiting behavior, too, because while a cursory glance at its stat block reveals only DR 10/Cold Iron as its primary physical defense, you have to look a little further down to realize that you're going to need to be able to fly or have a way to ground the beast to actually fight it and win, because Dust Devil automatically deflects ALL small projectiles; arrows, bolts, and bullets are utterly useless against it, and any throwing weapon has a 30% miss chance. Magical AoE, lines, cones, and rays all still work, though they have to contend with the wonder weasel's 24 Spell Resistance.

Side note because I'm legally required: If you or a loved one has ever been beaten to death by a creature with Flyby Attack, please remember to regularly apply readied actions to your party bruisers.

Anyway, these vicious weasels have another, far more horrific use for their claws than ripping someone to shreds: blackmail. As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, Itachi can swing their cutting limbs with such speed and ferocity that the victim doesn't even realize they've been cut until the violent fey blows on them just a little too hard and they fall to pieces. Delayed Doom allows the fey to 'store' its claw hits up on any number of targets, preventing the damage, bleed, and Pain but leaving it on a trigger delay, allowing it to deal otherwise fatal damage to a creature but refrain from killing them outright.

Such unfortunate creatures are walking time-bombs, the Itachi able to cause the stored damage, bleed, and agony to blow up all at once with nothing more than a free action at any point within the next two weeks. This allows the Itachi to wring poor souls for all they're worth in the hopes that it will choose to spare their life, turning friends and family against one another or forcing victims to perform painful, humiliating, dangerous, or otherwise criminal actions at its request... only for many such victims to suddenly fall to bloody pieces anyway, as the Fey has no compulsion to honor any deal it makes.

This also means an Itachi can do a drive-by scything on someone and make them believe it missed, so it can just float in the air above them, giggling to itself as it picks the perfect moment to make their head fall off. Being hit with a Full-Attack causes, at minimum, 52 damage + 1d6 bleed, so an especially sinister DM could have one of these creatures ambush the party multiple days in a row, FA-ing them one at a time before flying off, and then once it's stored up damage on everyone over a few days, drop in and instantly take off half the party's HP with a free action. That, or fly down, hit someone a few times, then fly back into the sky and carefully wait for their HP to drop below a threshold where the Delayed Doom would kill them. Is that unfair? Yes. I only recommend this tactic if you want to be especially evil to your party!

How does it know if someone is below a specific threshold, though? Because Itachi can also cast Status at will, and frequently do so in order to keep track of interesting or amusing victims. If a victim manages to get further than 1 mile from the weasel, or is so amusing to it that it doesn't trigger Delayed Doom for 2 weeks, all the stored damage falls off harmlessly, so the weasel has a vested interest in keeping them relatively close if it wishes to prolong its suffering.

Delayed Doom also ends if the Itachi is slain, and doing so is actually a little bit simpler than it looks... if you have access to specific spells. See, the Dust Devil of a Kamaitachi gives it incredibly offense and defense, but the weasels must maintain control of the wind in order to keep its shields up. If it enters the radius of any spell which controls or alters the winds, no matter the spell's level, it must save against the spell or the Dust Devil dissipates, taking away the Itachi's fly speed, immunity to projectiles, and 6 points of its AC (lowering it from 29 to 23). Alter Winds and Control Weather are both options presented by the book itself, but with such long cast times (and Control Weather being a spell level too high for a party encountering a single Itachi besides), you may want to aim for more practical spells such as Calm Air, Tailwind, Air Geyser, or Gust/Blast of Wind, all of which either end the Itachi's flight or can easily be argued to do so.

The Itachi can still make a saving throw against the incoming inconvenience, but if it fails it has to waste its entire turn using one of its 3 castings of Control Wind on itself just to restart its Dust Devil, giving the party enough time to surround it and beat the snot out of it. Without its defensive tornado it's both less mobile and more vulnerable to being beaten into the ground... and depending on how high up it was when your party invoked the winds, it might already be damaged by the fall. I think, after all the trouble one of these little bastards can put a party through, they may take some satisfaction in seeing it hurl towards the ground, tumbling end over end like a dropped pasta noodle.

You can read more about them here.

#Monster Spotlight #CR 11 to 14 #Pathfinder #dungeons and dragons

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madcatdaderpydrawer-blog · 24 days

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Underfell Souls dealing with my Voidtulouched Souls…in their animalistic forms.

Harland with a massive centipede creature. Colton and the harpy owl that won’t stop being a little shit.

Immy and the very silent and patient kamaitachi weasel.

Felix having to deal with a DRAGON.

Diana and the large anglerfish mermaid that may or may not

Oh and Isaac has to deal with the werewolf! And if any of the Voidtouched Souls manage to attack their souls, they’ll also get infected and it gets Worse.™️

Isaac just wants to put them all in one room. They don’t know if whatever this is is contagious and Isaac doesn’t want to risk it.

#undertale fallen humans #undertale human souls #undertale six souls #undertale au #underfell

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kamaitachi-hime666 · 4 months

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#ALSO REAL #it's actually takasugi i swear #his gradual downfall #Gintama #gtm: takasugi #gtm: gintoki #gtm > icons #kamaitachi-hime666

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alangdorf · 3 months

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Oookay, first up, a silly little experiment trying to draw in ZUN’s style (I think for the first time ever? I never did back in the olden deviantart days almost a decade ago now, wow) kicked off by me noticing that there aren’t any Touhou characters based off of kamaitachi (type of youkai, lit. “sickle weasel”, has sickles for claws and flies around in strong winds causing cuts in your skin which are actually just it cracking open from it being dry and cold), but the pokémon Sneasel is! So, Touhou Sneasel gijinka. I’m not 100% happy with the design, I think I could’ve been more creative with the head area for example, but I figure I’ll just fix it up if I ever draw her in my normal style. Didn’t put too much thought into my character; I’m sewing and I’m using Ephy as a pincushion (I did used to do this; his middle section is full of beans) and my title is just a pun on my name.

Speaking of names though, hoo boy I spent like two days crawling through Jisho for these (eternal disclaimer: I’m not a native or even particularly fluent speaker and don’t have a perfect grasp on what does/doesn’t sound natural in certain contexts; my name is deliberately silly though). Hitsuki’s last name was pretty easy, I just put together the kanji for “wind” (風) and “weasel” (鼬), using pronunciations that together sound like the word for winter, variable amount of extra u’s notwithstanding. For her first name I ended up using the first syllable of the kun’yomi for several kanji, which I think is a thing people do for girls’ names irl? So the first kanji is “conceal” (潜), part of the word “sneak in” that bulbapedia says is part of the etymology for Sneasel’s Japanese name, Nyula/Nyuura, and then it’s “claws” (爪) and “fangs” (牙), and then after I decided this I found out that Sneasel’s old pokédex entries talk about them hiding their claws lol. Also less of an influence, but Hitsuki sound like the word for “starting fires”, which is used metaphorically in at least one compound word to mean troublemaking, which seems appropriate. I couldn’t resist alliterating the title, though I super didn’t want to bother writing out titles in Japanese or figuring out abilities so I didn’t.

As for me, I found some fairly uncommon kanji I could stick together to sound like “Rendoufu”, which is close enough, and they mean “tangle/fasten with thread” (縺), “stab/prick” (撞), and “fabric” (布). And then Kit (the word kitto means “for sure” but also just the English word kit). So I named myself Sewing Kit in the funniest possible way I could find (which is why my names aren’t in Western name order; idk where the initial should technically go but eh), and then threw “picture/drawing” (絵) on the end for good measure. Ok that’s everything I think

#art #digital #touhou #pokemon #sneasel #me #not tagging Elfilin lol not gonna jumpscare y’all with voodoo doll Ephy #I don’t use him as a pincushion anymore I just did for a little bit when I wanted to be in my bed while sewing and needed a place to put my #needle but didn’t wanna bring over my whole pincushion and risk losing the other pins in my bed #not 100% confident on having replicated the style well but it was fun to do

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