#so japan has a LOT of gun laws

[caffeiiine]

i would like to see either nikolai or sigma's sentences please :3 /nf

THANK YOU!!! YOU ARE FUELING MY TWO FAVORITE THINGS!!!

under the cut bc length. [it got REALLY long]

anyways, nikolai and sigmas prison sentences as they would be in michigan.

note: i’m not using the wiki for this. i doubt it covers everything, so im going back through the manga and analyzing everything from there. aside from finding out manga appearances, everything else is research and pre-memorized info.

note 2: i may have made a few mistakes with the sentencing but it should be accurate enough give or take 10 years.

note 3: there’s no minimum sentence since majority of research i’m doing leads to me picking the minimum years since it usually states “punishable by life imprisonment or any number of years” which is unspecific and sucks so i just dropped the category

nikolai!!! - crimes - sentence - reference state - references/citations

Crimes :

first degree murder [7 accounts]

second degree murder [1 account]

domestic terrorism [16]

mutilation of a corpse [1 account]

shoplifting [implied, counted as 1 general account/misdemeanor]

assault with/using a deadly weapon [1 account]

impersonation [2 accounts]

[1]

disturbing the peace

theft of public property [2][3] [1 account]

verbal assault/threat [4] [1 account]

aiding and abetting

aiding in prison break

drugging [1 account]

attempted poisoning [5] [2 accounts]

fleeing arrest [1 account]

[6]

robbery/general larceny [4 accounts]

unlawful possession of explosives

attempted first degree murder [implied] [7]

kidnapping [4 accounts]

aiding a convict

breaking and entering [1 account]

sentence :

at maximum = 14 life sentences + 61 years + 186 days and/or up to 7,063,000$ in fines; no parole

reference state : michigan

references via michigan legislature : [first degree murder] Section 750.316 Act 328 of 1931 + [second degree murder] Section 750.317 Act 328 of 1931 + [domestic terrorism not counted, i can’t find definitive punishments and it'd probably be with the supreme court] + [mutilation of a corpse] Section 750.160 Act 328 of 1931 + [shoplifting] Section 750.356 Act 328 of 1931 + [impersonation] Section 750.217 Act 328 of 1931 + [felony assault] Section 750.82 Act 328 of 1931 + [disturbing the peace] Section 750.170(?) + [theft of public property] section 750.356 act 328 of 1931 + [terrorizing/verbal assault/harrassment] section 750.411h act 328 of 1931 + [aidinh and abetting] section 750.450 act 328 of 1931 + [aiding in a prisoners escape/aiding a convict] section 750.183 act 328 of 1931 + [attempted poisoning] section 750.91 act 328 of 1931 + [fleeing arrest] section 760.479a act 328 of 1931 + [robbery] section 750.529 act 328 of 1931 + [unlawful possession of explosives] section 750.200 act 328 of 1931 + [attempted first degree murder] section 750.91 act 328 of 1931 + [kidnapping] section 750.349 act 328 of 1931 + [breaking and entering (with explosives)] section 750.112 act 328 of 1931.

Sigma!!! - crimes - sentence - reference state - references/citations

[8]

threatening an officer [2 accounts]

domestic terrorism [16]

unlawful possession of explosives

attempted first degree murder [1 account]

criminal negligence [9]

aiding and abetting

negligent attempted mass murder [10]

attempted first degree murder by proxy [several accounts] [11]

felony assault by proxy [12] [3 accounts]

[13]

attempted manslaughter [14] [2 accounts]

attempted second degree murder [15] [1 account]

aiding in a prison break

aiding a convict [1 account]

breaking and entering [1 account]

felony assault [3 accounts]

sentence :

at maximum: 5 life sentences + 45 years 93 days and/or up to 8,000$ in fines; possibility of parole

reference state : michigan

references via michigan legislature: [aiding and abetting] section 750.450 act 328 of 1931 + [felony assault] section 750.82 act 328 of 1932 + [aiding in prisoner escape/aiding a convict] section 750.183 act 328 of 1932 + [unlawful possession of an explosive] section 750.200 act 328 of 1932 + [attempted (any type of) murder/manslaughter] section 750.91 act 328 of 1932 + [breaking and entering (with explosives)] section 750.112 act 328 of 1932 + [threatening an officer] section 750.478a act 328 of 1932 + [criminal/gross negligence] section 8.9 michigan legislature

#[1] i wouldve included something about his gun but the laws vary so much state by state itd be difficult to find a proper middle ground and- #-gun control laws are really iffy and varied in general with a lot of uncertain elements like concealed carry etc #[2] referring to the poles he used to fight atsushi chapter 58 #[3] not entirely sure since nobody stole support infrastructure before so theres no law for it #[4] verbal assault is an umbrella term so its a little difficult to pin down; when he asks one of the government people if theyre ready to- #-“say bye-bye to their lower halves” going based off the context; it fits the legal definition of verbal assault #[5] taking the syringes at face value and assuming theyre actually poisoned despite inconsistencies with approximate death times #[6] not entirely sure how nikolai got the floor plans to the prison; and as far as i looked; the act of possessing them doesnt seem illegal #[7] its implied that he tries to kill fyodor very often; i cant find examples but 111 fyodor states nikolai has tried to kill him on - #-several occations #[8] at about chapter 72 sigma states the casino is run under international law; i’m not running nikolai’s sentence in japan so i’m ignoring #-that piece and giving him the same reference state as nikolai #[9] the coin explosives being held in a customer room #[10]the coin bombs that were to be distributed via the casino and explode once distributed enough #[11] via the customers in the casino and security; sigma really likes his crimes by proxy doesn’t he. #[13] the gun in the comms room is definitely illegal but to keep things in line with Nikolai i’m not counting gun law violations unless its #-obvious like murder or manslaughter #[14] attempted manslaughter in of itself is a contradictory term; the way it’s defined and the way i’m using it is in reference to sigmas- #-state of mind right then. where he was engaging in a desperate attempt to save his casino via stopping teruko by any means necessary- #-and was not in a proper state of mind to be accurately tried for attempted second degree murder as he normally would’ve been.- #-the legal term for this is “in the heat of passion” i believe. #[15] trying to take teruko with him in death #[16] i can’t find punishments for terrorism so it’s not counted in the final tally #i spent actual hours on this [not regretted one bit] #oh my hod i don’t want to look at the michigan legislature for another month after this #it was so much fun though ty xan #soda incarcerates your faves #bsd #bsd nikolai #bsd sigma

[barid-bel-medar]

Thoughts on how I write the Commission and their views on Quirkless heroes

I like writing the Commission as not actually caring if there's a Quirkless hero, because I view them as being more interested in having someone easy to manipulate, rather than even necessarily their Quirk. Let's look at for example the two heroes we know were Commission-controlled. And well, then at why they'd be fine with it.

Lady Nagant's Quirk would have some pretty negative connotations. We see her in the flashback where the Commission is making her the offer that her rifle arm is wrapped up. Japan has very stringent gun laws and her Quirk would have a negative association to it (versus the US for example, were it would have had a positive association since Second Amendment). That makes her easy to manipulate, because the Commission is making her an offer she didn't imagine possible; they're going to support her to be a hero. They're not going to treat her like just because her Quirk is literally a gun (note that with Snipe's Quirk he likely *could* use a different weapon than a gun, but if he's younger than Kain [very possible since she's in her late thirties] then the stigma isn't there quite as much for a gun user) she's a future villain or shouldn't be allowed near heroics. Instead they're going to support her, but there's just this one other thing they need her to do...

With Hawks he gets scooped up super young. Like I think we gloss over the fact sometimes he likely wasn't even ten when everything happened. He already had very heroic tendencies, but he was also the son of a villain. His mother and he after his father got arrested (and even honestly before) were extremely impoverished. They were in a garbage situation. Then the Commission comes knocking an offers them a way out, the funds to support themselves and all Hawks has to do is something he already wants to do; to become a hero. He's going to be Commission trained and controlled, but he's also going to get his dream. He's not going to be held back for being the son of a villain, his identity is as good as private, and he's going to be able to do what he's always wanted.

A Quirkless hero!Izuku (or even another person who wants to be a Quirkless hero) is someone who they would view as easy to manipulate. It's unlikely they'd have prior support, it's unlikely that they'd be able to get the sort of mentorship or access to training someone who had a Quirk could have. They could be viewed as being able to have good PR or make for a good story (look! Even if you're Quirkless you too can be a hero!). Yes Quirkless people are a steadily decreasing minority, but it also doesn't really effect the Commission's bread and circuses. If anything it allows for greater distraction, and may even give the Commission a PR boost (look at how supportive we are!).

So yeah, I know a lot of people go with the idea of the Commission being anti-Quirkless hero, but I'd actually argue for the reasons mentioned here that it's just as likely they'd be fine with it.

#hero public safety commission president #midoriya izuku #hawks (bnha) #takami keigo #kaina tsutsumi #lady nagant #meta #basically #more me musing to some extent #on writing choices in contest of #build yourself up #and a thing with #think before you speak #words may hurt #sticks and stones

[gunsatthaphan]

~ Monthly BL Breakdown: July 2023 ~  

🕶️ Happy August!!! 🌻

Disclaimer: ALL shows can be streamed here or here, as well as on Youtube and other platforms. For more info on where to watch what, check out this post!

New breakdowns are coming at the end of every month - feel free to add stuff!  -> previous breakdowns

What came out this month? (green = seen/currently watching)

🌟 Be Mine SuperStar - July 3rd (Thailand) ✅

🌟 Minato Shouji Coin Laundry Season 2 - July 5th (Japan)  

🌟 Stay by My Side - July 7th (Taiwan)

🌟 Stay With Me - July 7th (China, censored) 

🌟 Senior Love Me? (short film) - July 7th (Thailand) 

🌟 Low Frequency - July 8th (Thailand)

🌟 Hidden Agenda - July 9th (Thailand) ✅

🌟 Bump Up Business - July 9th (South Korea) 

🌟 Laws of Attraction - July 15th (Thailand)

🌟 The Star Season 2 - July 15th (Myanmar) 

🌟 Wedding Plan - July 19th (Thailand) ✅

🌟 After Sundown - July 20th (Thailand, cinema-release)

🌟 Jun and Jun - July 20th (South Korea)  

🌟 Monochrome (short film) - July 25th (Thailand) 

🌟 Papa, What Is Love? Season 2 - July 28th (Philippines) 

Monthly likes/dislikes

❣️ Be Mine Superstar - once in a while a trashy low budget show comes along and hits just the right spot - this is that show lmao. I was looking forward to seeing JaFirst again but I did not expect to like it this much lol. It’s ridiculous but the kind that makes me laugh a lot. JaFirst completely reversing their roles has me rolling and is working extremely well. Love Stage vibes all around. I love it so far. 

New series & movie announcements

🎥 Night Dream - Date TBA (Thailand) 

🎥 I Love You I Kill You (novel adaption) - Date TBA (Thailand) 

🎥 Beyond The Duo (short film) - Date TBA (Myanmar) 

🎥 UniverSad (novel adaption) - Date TBA (Thailand) 

🎥 Iridescent love - Date TBA (Thailand) 

🎥 Nai Hia Bok Mai Chop Dek - Date TBA (Thailand) 

🎥 The Hell Guards (Hey Don't Mess With My Heart) - Date TBA (Thailand) 

🎥 Even If I Try To Fall In Love With You (君となら恋をしてみても, manga adaption) - Date TBA (Japan) 

🎥 Wishing Upon the Shooting Stars - Date TBA (Taiwan) 

🎥 Bad Guy My Boss - Date TBA (Thailand) 

Other news from the BL world

❗️ The following BL productions & actors won at this year’s Asia Top Awards 2023:

Ohm Thitiwat: Best Actor (609 Bedtime Story)

Tar Atiwat: Rising Star (I Will Knock You)

PeeTitle: Popularity Award (La Pluie)

Gun Napat: Best Performance in a BL (Luminous Solution) 

Mew Suppasit: Best Serial Actor (Love Me Again) 

KinnPorsche: Most Popular BL Series

❗️ Former StarHunter actor Bas Suradet (2Moons, Gen Y) has joined Studio WabiSabi, along with 4 other new faces in their New Generation Lineup. 

❗️ The novel ไหนเฮียบอกไม่ชอบเด็ก will be adapted into a series by MFlow Entertainment. Auditions are currently being held. Further details are unknown. 

❗️ The upcoming GMMTV BL Cherry Magic released its pilot trailer after an 8 month delay due to copyright issues. Workshops are currently happening. The show will likely air in early 2024.  

❗️ GMMTV announced that GeminiFourth will no longer be part of the upcoming BL/GL drama 23.5 due to changes in storylines & characters. They have been replaced by View Benyapa and June Wanwimol who will play the roles of Aylin & Luna, making it a GL-only drama. Further cast additions include Ciize Rutricha and others. 

❗️ Actor Tul Pakorn (Together With Me, Manner of Death) announced his retirement from acting as he is pursuing a career in real estate in New York after getting his master’s degree. 

❗️ The upcoming Domundi BL Middleman's Love has started workshops. The show will likely air towards the end of the year. 

❗️ The Japanese BL Ossan's Love is rumored to get a third season which will likely premiere in January 2024. Further details are unknown. 

❗️ The Norwegian web series SKAM (2015-2017) will get a Korean adaption called Skam Korea. The series has a total of 7 remakes from 6 European countries + the US. Auditions are currently being held. 

❗️ GeminiFourth announced that they will be starring in another BL series which will be a novel adaption. Further details are unknown. 

Upcoming series & movies for August

👉🏻 Stay Still - August 1st (Hong Kong) 

👉🏻 Sing My Crush - August 2nd (South Korea) 

👉🏻 The New Employee (movie version) - August 3rd (South Korea) 

👉🏻 Love in Translation - August 5th (Thailand) 

👉🏻 My Personal Weatherman - August 11th (Japan) 

👉🏻 Love Class Season 2 - August 11th (South Korea) 

👉🏻 Only Friends - August 12th (Thailand) 

👉🏻 Friend. Boy Friend - August 19th (Thailand) 

👉🏻 Lucky Love - August 20th (Thailand) 

👉🏻 My Universe - August 20th (Thailand) 

👉🏻 Kiseki: Dear to Me - August 22nd (Taiwan) 

👉🏻 Why R U? Korean Remake - August 24th (South Korea) 

👉🏻 Crazy Handsome Rich - August TBA (Thailand) 

#doreens monthly bl breakdown #thai bl #bl drama #upcoming bl #update #bl news #august is gonna be wild im so ready #bring it

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Sometimes I gotta wonder how in the fuck L had credibility as a detective, when during the Kira case he committed a whole list of other crimes that would realistically get the case thrown out if Light ever went to court, is that just always expected when it comes to fictional detectives?

I've written a lot on this here, though caveat that I am not a lawyer and certainly don't know how law works in Japan in the early 2000's when Death Note is set.

Obviously, depends on the show/book/whatever in question. I've seen it both ways where there's a maverick cop who doesn't play by the rules and "FUCK YOUR WARRANT" and media that features detectives/lawyers/law enforcement very bound by legal restrictions. I will say that I see more of the former than the latter, the former's more exciting for viewers and usually features things like explosions and guns.

Also helping is that the world of Death Note doesn't question it. We never see the task force question the legality of what L's doing. They question whether it's necessary, if Light even is Kira, but L justifies himself and they quickly move on if a little :/ about it. Rather than bring details of the case to light when Light is imprisoned over nothing, Soichiro imprisons himself in protest then willingly participates in his son's and Misa's fake execution to prove their innocence to L. Which, of course, doesn't work because L refuses to believe they're innocent (I love that L is correct but has no right to be at all).

You're not supposed to think about what L's doing in depth or see it as anything other than brilliant/necessary, so the story doesn't aid you in realizing what's happening.

Personally, I think L would have solved this by simply not going to trial. Light has an unfortunate accident and is taken care of.

#death note #death note meta #death note headcanon #l lawliet #anti l lawliet #meta #headcanon #opinion

[fandomsandfeminism]

1. We should reinstate the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (which expired in 2004.)

Now, studies have shown that this ban didn't have much impact on overall gun deaths (since gun deaths that only impact 1 or 2 people are so so common.) However, there is evidence that it helped prevent mass shooting events.

A 2019 DiMaggio et al. study looked at mass shooting data for 1981 to 2017 and found that mass-shooting fatalities were 70% less likely to occur during the 1994 to 2004 federal ban period. This didn't stop all mass shooting events, obviously (the spike you see in 1999 is Columbine.) But it is an improvement. You don't get to own a grenade launcher or a tank. Maybe its time we took AR 15s and the like off the table. (For cops too, for the record.)

2. Universal background checks.

In 2015, a national Public Policy Polling survey of gun owners found overwhelming support (83%) for background checks, a 2018 Gallup poll found that 95% of people supported “requiring background checks for all gun sales,” and in 2019, a Quinnipiac University poll from 2019 found that 94% of American voters supported universal background checks.

These are popular and obvious steps forward.

3. No more permitless carry.

Texas has a permitless carry law. This legislation allows individuals 21 and older to carry open or concealed handguns without a permit. This means that most Texans no longer have to undergo a background check or complete training in order to carry a handgun in public.

This is, obviously, fucking lunacy. You have to pass a test to get a driver's license. You even have to pass different tests to drive different kinds of vehicles.

The same should *obviously* apply to firearms. Just. Obviously. A test for rifles, a test for hand guns, a background check for either, you only get to buy what you have a license for.

4. Inspections

Ok, so this is the most logistically and legally complicated, so it would be the one that we would need to work up to. Yeah? But I know Japan has a similar system, and yes. We are much bigger and own a lot more guns than Japan, so I know I know. But let's talk about it.

I have to get my car inspected every year. Make sure the brakes work and the engine won't explode. Yeah? For public safety.

So, let's say every year (3 years? 5 years? I don't know the logistics here) someone from the county comes out, checks that your guns are in good working order, that your gun safe is in good repair (that you aren't stockpiling a bunch of illegal ground to air missiles and land mines)- that everything is on the up and up and safe.

5. Gun buybacks.

Gun buybacks are straight forward systems to help get excess guns out of a community in a safe and legal way. A robust and generous federal buyback, like what Australia did in 1996 and 2003 would be a simple and easy step.

I'm not saying that we ban all guns. I'm not saying that no one never has any legitimate reason to own a gun. But this wild west mutually assured destruction arms race that America is currently in against itself is eating us alive. Eating our children. And there are simple, tested, popular steps forward.

#guns #gun laws #gun regulation #gun control

[leagueofgardens]

The Origins of Assault Lily

In 2005, Obanazawa Kenei (the original creator of Assault Lily, which officially launched much later in 2013) posted a description of a setting that he called "Private!¹ Yurigaoka Girls' Academy" on his blog. Later, he put up an expanded write-up on the website of a model dealing partnership he was a member of. This is an English translation of the expanded write-up.

In translating it, I tried to be as literal as possible while also conveying the rather casual tone that most of the original writing has.

I translated this because I think it's genuinely interesting to see how some of these ideas continued into Assault Lily, while others were changed or discarded. I have assumed that Obanazawa doesn't mind people reading this because it's still online and he has mentioned it in interviews about Assault Lily, but if he ever indicates that he no longer wants it to be public, I'll delete this post.

¹ Private as in "Yurigaoka is a private school", not as in "Obanazawa didn't want anyone to see this."

Yurigaoka Girls' Academy — Setting

In the 23rd century, because of various changes in the planet's environment, living things have also rapidly mutated and evolved.

Some of them have turned into monsters that prey upon humans.

Developed countries have invented new weapons to oppose these monsters, and it's the responsibility of all of humanity to use these weapons. This is so that every single person has the means to defend themselves.

Teenagers are the best at learning how to become warriors, and to train them in advanced fighting techniques, the high school curriculum now includes combat as a subject of study.

Japan is no exception to the state the world is in, and the Ministry of Education oversees the new curriculum. It's been 30 years since that happened. The story begins in 2230, when the belief that humanity can't survive without fighting has spread throughout society.

Yurigaoka Private Girls' Academy… a missionary school for girls that moved to Ikuta² after the new education requirements were implemented.

It's an elite high school that's recognized for teaching its students everything from advanced tactics and strategy to one-on-one fighting, training in the use of the latest weapons, and more. Atop a low hill stands its beautiful cathedral, and its gate rises towards the heavens. A garden in which the chosen maidens gather… that's what Yurigaoka Girls' Academy is.

The setting of Private! Yurigaoka Girls' Academy

Well, it's the year 2200, and all sorts of creatures on the planet have evolved, in a bad way.

So you see, humanity isn't at the top of the food chain any longer. Uh-oh, lizards got all big, so there's dragons and stuff now. Other wacky creatures (you know, monsters! The real gross kinds! Ones with tentacles and stuff!) are spreading all over the place. That means that by the time people are high schoolers, they've gotta be stronger than anyone believed possible! They'll already be drilling like soldiers! Because that's how strong humanity is, y'know? Everyone on the planet is a warrior, that's what this is like! But there hasn't been a world war or some kind of disaster that destroyed the Earth, so civilization is still moving right along. There was a lot of inequality in the world once, but when the monsters showed up, they wiped all that away. So things aren't like that any longer. Anyway! Civilization's progressing in all sorts of ways. Humans aren't Night Heads³ anymore, for the most part. Almost everyone can use over half of their brainpower now. And among those hidden powers, people have plenty of abilities that are a lot like magic and superpowers. So now, with these powers they've gotten that completely ignore the laws of nature, humanity is fumbling for a way to try and remove themselves from the food chain once again. Even in this world, Yurigaoka Girls' Academy is amazing. Guns of all sorts, swords, hand-to-hand fighting—their graduates have all found a way of fighting to call their own, and are throwing themselves into the battle to protect humanity.

Yurigaoka's Unique Educational Systems

1: The Schutzengel System

This is a system where an older student becomes the Schutzengel (meaning guardian angel) to one of her juniors. It's a system dating from the time when Yurigaoka was a Christian school. Well, this part is just like it is in "Someone-sama is Watching"⁴, hee hee. This is a parody, after all, so please excuse the silliness. Anyway, the three school years are known as Erzengels (archangels, 3rd-year students), Schutzengels (guardian angels, 2nd-year students), and stray sheep⁵ (1st-year students), with students from each year taking care of the younger ones. This is a big deal for the party system, which I'll talk about later, and other things too.

2: The party system

At Yurigaoka Private Girls' Academy, there's a system where three people will join up into a party. Of course, the girls in a party together have a super-strong bond! Students can form whatever parties they like, as long as at least one member is a senior. Fighting monsters isn't so easy that three inexperienced girls from the same school year could get together and do it, after all.

3: Sororities⁶

Sororities are a bit like social clubs, but it's not like everyone has to join one. They're like any other club or after-school activity. There are a whole bunch of sororities at Yurigaoka, but five of them are officially recognized by the school, and these five all have their own requirements to join. Being a strong fighter or a good student, that sort of thing. Sororities are an opposing force to the Student Council, which has immense power, and the fact is that it's their presence that allows the school to operate in a democratic manner. The leaders of sororities are called "Masters", and each of them has inherited one of the several special deposited⁷ weapons that are called Gears.

Yurigaoka's Curriculum

Year One

Yurigaoka uses a credit system, and the first year is used to determine the aptitude of new students. Basic fighting skills, handling and practical use of their main weapons, simulation games, mock battles and so forth are all used to choose the best warriors among them. The available electives are equipment training (with missile launchers, bombs, communication gear and so forth.) The most important thing is for students to find a fighting style they're good at. They're also trained to fight in the parties they'll be in later. Normally, during this year, every student will find a Schutzengel who she'll call "Onee-sama." Second-year students also believe that to become a proper student, they need to choose a stray sheep to guide, so they'll be looking for a younger girl who they like during this time. But those who enter into an oath with one another also usually join the same party, so it's not solely about liking or disliking each other personally.

Year Two

It's well known that Yurigaoka is strict with allowing only those who have earned it to graduate, and advancing to the next school year is equally challenging. To progress to their second year, students must have mastered the Deposition⁷ Synchro-System. The Deposition Synchro-System, which allows someone to instantly materialize various weapons, serves as proof that one is a senior Yurigaoka student. (This is a rip-off of Gavan.)⁸ The students will continue advancing the skills they learned during their first year, as they begin fighting real battles as parties. Second-year students also study, as a required subject, the Deck Battle System that uses Sealed Card Decks. By collecting cards, each of which has a special technique with unusually potent offensive ability sealed within it, they'll get highly effective attacks they can use while fighting monsters, although there's a limit to the number of times they can be used. (This is a rip-off of Kamen Rider Ryuki and Blade.)⁸ Notably, the reason that the 13 special weapons used to protect the school are considered special is that because they can take cards that are unusually powerful and effective. These 13 special weapons, called "Gears", belong to the leaders of the student council and the masters of the sororities, and are passed down to others through various means.

Year Three

All the third-year students of Yurigaoka, with their amazing powers, hold the future of Japan in their hands. They've gotten even more accurate and proficient with the Deposition Synchro-System they learned in year one, and the Deck Battle System they learned in year two. They can now elevate party battles to new heights. Third-year students don't need to use wild strategies. They can just charge right in and overwhelm the enemy. That's the true mark of a third-year. As many important positions in the school as possible are held by third-years, like the three student council presidents (the Yellow Lily, White Lily, and Red Lily, hee hee.)⁴ If you hear a girl say without hesitation that she'll take on a thousand enemies, you know she's a senior Yuri girl.

Later On

Graduates from Yurigaoka Private Girls' Academy can proceed straight to Yurigaoka Girls' College. The college's clubs also attract strong fighters who aren't students there.

Weapons and That Sort of Thing

It's not part of the curriculum, but Yuri girls are expected to take many credits' worth of electives during their three years at the school. Depending on their decisions and how motivated they are, they can earn a lot of credits doing this. The electives include weapons training and live combat courses. Oh, and also, the weapons should be the futuristic sort, but the near future. The reason is that I don't know a thing about weapons, hee hee! The only gun I know about is the P-90 from Gunslinger Girl! The only thing I know about warships is some are called Aegis warships! That's why! So keep in mind this is fantasy, in a lot of senses of the word! Someone lend me their brain here! Weapons! I know nothing about them!

The Location

Well, Yurigaoka Girls' Academy is near Ikuta Station on the Odakyu Odawara Line (but this story takes place in 2200, remember? Don't try to find it!) Not Mukogaoka Yuen! Ikuta! The school's on a small hill, where there used to be an experimental facility⁹ used by the old Japanese Army. Yeah, that place! You think the neighbors know about it? By the way, the only trains on the Odakyu line nowadays are those "Romancecar" express trains¹⁰. What's with that?

Gears

These are the 13 special weapons. Not only are their fundamental abilities an order of magnitude better, they have special card readers which can read advanced decks called High Rankers' Decks. They're the latest weapons used to protect the school, and can only be used by people whom they themselves deem worthy. It's impossible for anyone else to use them. Those who can use the Gears also become able to use High Rankers' Decks. The case holding the decks has a thin LCD display that can be used like a touch-sensitive PDA. By entering the right password, you can use super special techniques! The passwords are things like 555, 333 and 000. (This is a rip-off too.)⁸

Yurigaoka Girls' Academy Character Illustrations

I've chosen not to repost Obanazawa's illustrations here because I don't like reposting illustrations that belong to people and not corporations. But you can see them on the original website.

These are characters that I, Obanazawa Kenei, drew.

My scanner is broken, so I took and uploaded these with my mobile phone's camera!

It's crazy, I know! But even if they weren't photos they wouldn't be great!

1: Ruri and Miki¹¹

On the left is the model for this kit. She's a new student who just entered Yurigaoka by passing the high school entrance exam. Yurigaoka has a junior high school, high school and university, so it's pretty tough to enter midway through. But fortunately! Ruri has a gentle, yet sometimes strict onee-sama to guide her! (Yeah, yeah…) On the right is her onee-sama, Miki, a second-year at Yurigaoka. Miki is one of the student council presidents. She's a remarkable person who will soon be one of the pillars supporting Yurigaoka! Oh, and she's rich enough that it'll blow your mind!

Text on the first image My scanner's busted as usual, so I took this on my phone. On the left is the main character, Ruri. I imagine her voice as Saito Chiwa's! On the right is the girl who becomes her onee-sama, Miki. I imagine her voice as Hitomi Nabatame's! My drawings don't have a pattern to them, huh? I can't tell them apart myself!

2: The Commander of the Tricolor Lilies! Shigure Hisae

Yurigaoka's student council has three presidents, and one of them is her, Shigure Hisae. She's a straight-laced person who seems like she's similar to a samurai, but she's one of the most capable student council presidents of all time. She's especially skilled with swords and uses the Gear "Mistilteinn."

So, this girl, before I get too into things, I want to say she's based on Signum¹²! It's fine, isn't it? I just can't say "Laevateinn!" Oh, and watch out for the tentacles, hee hee!

Footnotes

² Ikuta is a train station in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture on the Odakyu Odawara line. It's two stops before Yurigaoka (the station called that, not the Garden, which in current canon isn't even in Kawasaki.) ³ "Night Head" refers to the 70% of their brain that most humans (supposedly) don't use. Those who can use more of their brain have psychic powers. The term comes from a 1992 Japanese television series of the same name. ⁴ This is a reference to Maria-sama ga Miteru. ⁵ Obanazawa wrote this as "stray sheep" in English, otherwise I'd have translated it as "lost lambs." ⁶ I haven't talked about them on this blog before, but this concept survives in Assault Lily as the "Labyrinth Sorority", a clandestine society that acts as a check on the power of Yurigaoka's student council. They operate an unofficial legion, LG Ginnungagap, whose members are registered with the school as freelance Lilies and sortie together. ⁷ Deposition (in Japanese, 蒸着, jouchaku) is a reference to the tokusatsu show Space Sheriff Gavan, where the titular sheriff yells "Deposition!" to have his spaceship encase him in Granium particles that form into his combat suit. In physics, deposition is when a solid surface is coated by individual molecules of another substance (metal plating is one type of deposition.) ⁸ Just to be clear: Obanazawa actually wrote these things here himself. They're not some kind of editorial by me, the translator (the only things I added were these footnotes and the sentences all in italic.) ⁹ This seems to be referring to the Noborito Research Institute, which is now a museum. ¹⁰ I think this is Obanazawa complaining about the real world, not anything related to the setting… Can't be sure though. ¹¹ Ruri's name is almost definitely Ruri, but I'm less sure about Miki. It's not as likely, but the kanji in her name could be pronounced Mitsuki or Miyuki instead. It's impossible to tell from what's written here. ¹² From Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's.

#assault lily #asslily #assault lily lore #yurigaoka girls' academy

[skrunksthatwunk]

yakuza: dead souls - american vibes, bigass guns, and why zombies are super weird to have in ryu ga gotoku thematically/ideologically speaking

so i've been playing dead souls recently (hell yeah hell yeah hell yeah) and although i'm having the time of my life with it, there was something about it that kinda felt off to me, and i think i've figured out what it was, but i'm gonna have to walk you through a bit of my thought process to get there.

my first instinct was that it felt... american? and upon further examination i think that boils down to a couple of things:

everyone suddenly has lots of guns and also way way bigger guns

high emphasis on individual heroism (this itself is quite typical for rgg, but it manifests differently here; more on that in a bit)

military/government incompetence, which must be solved by the right individuals having the biggest and bestest guns

[for the sake of transparency i will note that my experience with zombie media is pretty limited and skews american (and i myself am american), so that may create bias. however, the 'this feels american to me' instinct is a rare one for me even in genres where i have seen little/no non-american media, so i think the fact that it did occur to me is notable. what about dead souls triggered that response when little else has? that's why i examined it and, truthfully, i think there's merit in the idea itself.]

the first point is pretty self-explanatory. america's got more guns than it does people, and its gun worship is infamous. japan's ban on guns (aided by its being an island state) means there's far fewer guns in the country, as well as far fewer people with guns (and likely far fewer guns per gun owner, excepting arms dealers/smugglers) than somewhere without such a ban. obviously, there are guns anyway. due to their illegality they are clustered within the criminal population, which explains their presence within organized crime within the series. very few guns will be sitting around in the homes of otherwise law-abiding citizens.

and yet, when the zombie outbreak hits kamurocho, plenty of civilians suddenly have access to quite an arsenal. everyone has the knowledge they need to aim, fire, and reload smoothly and quickly; ammo is infinite for certain guns. characters we've never seen using firearms before suddenly have shotguns under their couches (looking at you, majima). it's not only very different from reality, it's very different from guns' place within the series up until this point, when they were limited weapons used primarily by the enemy.

and they're making a zombie shooter, so of course they would have to do this. it has to be unrealistic to be simultaneously in this setting and in this genre, in the same way that yakuza solving their problems with bareback fistfights instead of guns is itself both unrealistic and necessary to being the kinds of games rgg are.

my point is that this is a kind of focus on and valorization of gun ownership and competency unusual for the series and setting. further, it serves as an argument for why an armed, competent populace is crucial typical in american media.

which brings us to the third point (we'll get to 2 in a minute). guns are often marketed as self-defense weapons. the implication is that the government's defense of the individual (via law enforcement or the military, but particularly the former), are insufficient. this is objectively true. if someone pulls a gun on you at the gas station, will a cop manifest out of thin air to intercede? no. that's impossible. but if you have a gun, or if some bystander has a gun, you or they may be able to do something with that gun to stop the armed person. thus, there is an undeniable gap in the effective immediacy of such responses.

many gun advocates also point to the incompetence or insufficiency of law enforcement, even when they are present to stop an armed aggressor. the fact that law enforcement do not have a 100% success rate in protecting the citizenry is also objectively true.

so, when you are in danger, arming yourself increases your chances of being able to put down (or at least take armed action against) a present or potential threat. whether it is viewed it as a supplement to or a replacement for law enforcement, it is meant to make up for the shortcomings of the government's ability to completely protect all its citizens. it's a safety net for state failure.

back to dead souls. rgg has always centered political corruption in its stories, including politicians, the police, and sometimes even the military, though usually the former two. sometimes this is treated sympathetically (i.e. tanimura, a dirty cop, whose dirty-cop-ness allows him to work outside/against the law to help disadvantaged people, not unlike how kiryu views being a yakuza), and other times it's simply a matter of greed or lust for power (i.e. jingu).

however, something that's almost never touched on so clearly is government incompetence. when the government fails to help people or hurts them or does corrupt things, it's usually due to a competent, malicious bad apple who is removed from power by the end of the game. this implies holes in the system because it keeps happening all the time, but that's on a series-wide scale, a pattern ignored by the series in favor of the individual game solution of "this guy's gone now :) yay".

but in dead souls, the SDF's barracades fall, their men are killed, they are unable to help protect the people outside or inside the quarantine zone. they are weak in a way the government usually isn't in these games. and who is stronger than them? our individual good guys with guns. so we need to be armed because the government is weak and can't protect us. boom. america.

returning to point 2, i'd like to say that dead souls is not particularly more individualistic than any of the other games in the series (other than, perhaps, y7). rgg is an incredibly individualistic series, actually. its protagonists are usually men who defy, oppose, and skirt around the law as a way of helping others and doing what is truly right (with a few exceptions, like shinada and haruka). the romanticized view of the yakuza as a force for helping the community in the face of government incompetence is a real one, and one that tends to manifest itself most in kiryu and how the series treats him. it shows us yakuza who aren't willing to kill, yakuza who cry about honor and justice and humanity and brotherhood, yakuza who never dip their hands into less palatable crimes, or only do with intense regret (and only ever as part of their backstory). the beat-em-up style emphasizes this as well. i mean, what's more individualistic than a one-man army?

put more clearly, this series is about men defying legal and social laws and expectations to live in a way that feels right to them, and about making themselves strong enough to combat those who would get in their way. the individual is placed before the society in importance, (though generally in a way that benefits the community, because they are good guys who want to use that agency and power for good).

all of this is true in dead souls as well, technically. those who live on the outskirts of society are the ones who actually save the day, and the ones who go in there and save people rather than just walling them off and pretending like they don't exist. they have the guns, which are illegal and mark them as criminals, but this broken law is what gives them the power to save themselves when the government will not, and to save their community if they so choose.

where dead souls differs is in the nature of that strength.

rgg places a lot of emphasis on self-improvement, both of one's body and of one's character. do both of these, and you will be strong enough to back up your ambitions. what allows someone to carve their own path in life is the ability to put down ideological and physical resistance by having resolve and the ability to tiger drop whoever won't be swayed by your impassioned speeches. you make yourself a weapon. you make yourself strong. in dead souls, that strength comes from an external, material possession. strength is something you buy (or that you take from someone else). who is able to survive the apocalypse comes not from the heart, nor from rigorous training, but from who has the most, the biggest, and the most bestest guns. it's an intersection of capitalism, militarization, and individualism. simply, deeply american.

[when i was talking myself through this a few days ago, i spent a lot more time on the capitalism + individualism stuff, but i think i'll keep this moving. consider this aside the intermission]

dead souls also differs for a few other interlocking reasons. it can be described with this equation:

zombification of enemies + lethality of guns = loss of emphasis on redemption

if your best friend turned into a zombie, could you shoot them? or your child? or your lover? it's a common trope, but it's a damn good one. watching your family, your neighbors, your town, everyone turn into a husk of themselves, something that looks like them but cannot be reached, is deeply tragic. it's even more tragic when these husks are trying to kill you. unable to be reasoned with and unable to be cured, you must incapacitate them before someone innocent is hurt--or hurt, then themselves made dangerous; each loss adds to the number of threats surrounding you. your life is seen as more valuable than that of your zombified friend, not only because the zombie is attacking you and it's self defense, but because they are no longer a person to you. to be a zombie is to no longer be human; zombification is dehumanization.

and so in a series so focused on connection with one's community, on saving innocent civilians, often on saving kamurocho specifically, one would expect similar tropes to occur. even if one's friends aren't turned, perhaps the cashier at poppo you chat with sometimes is. it's the destruction of that community and of the members one has tertiary relationships with that i expect would occur most within a kamurocho zombie story, since they are likely unwilling to axe anyone more important than that, even if dead souls isn't canon. i'd especially expect to see that in the beginning, before the need to kill zombies rather than contain or redeem them becomes apparent.

this does not happen.

i cannot speak for the entire game, but i can speak of gameplay choices that affect this, and ones i think will not be subverted throughout, even if they are somewhat contradicted by plot events i am presently unaware of.

kamurocho is not a community to protect, nor is it filled with your fellows. it is a playground filled with infinitely respawning, infinitely mow-downable, infinitely disposable zombies. you are meant and encouraged to kill them by the thousands, and never to hesitate or consider whether they may be cured or who may be mourning them. who may be unable to identify their loved one because you were trying to reach a headshot goal from hasegawa. you are not meant to consider them as human, nor beings that were once human, nor beings that could be human again, in the eyes of the zombie shooter. they are merely bodies, targets, and obstacles.

the zombies are contrasted with the true humans, those barricading themselves within the quarantine zone or those living in ignorance outside it. humans are meant to be saved, zombies are meant to be killed. the player character is the only one who can truly help with either of these goals, because the other humans are cowardly, ignorant, or unarmed/helpless. you must be their savior. to be a savior is to eliminate zombies, who are less than human.

the black and white nature of this is also emphasized by another gameplay characteristic: the lack of street encounters. when you traverse the peaceful parts of kamurocho, you are never attacked. you are also never directly attacked by the humans within the quarantine zone. kamurocho feels very different without its muggers and hooligans, but it's because this is a zombie shooter, not a beat-em-up. in a normal rgg title, you'd subdue threats by punching, kicking, and throwing them. you'd use your body in (supposedly) nonlethal ways. dead souls does not have a combat system meant for civilians. you have your guns. you subdue threats by shooting them, preferably lethally. the game doesn't want you to do that to humans, so you never fight humans. this furthers the black and white divide between the salvation-worthy, noble humans and the death-worthy, worthless zombies. combat is only lethal, and only used against the inherent other.

this leads me to the part of dead souls i find most conflicting with the ethos of rgg broadly, and perhaps its greatest ideological/thematic failing.

because the enemy are incurable, dangerous, and inhuman, you must kill them to protect yourself and others, others who are still human. humanity is something that is lost or preserved, but never regained. once someone's gone, they're gone, and you not only must kill them, it is your duty and your right to kill them. you should kill them.

in dead souls, there is no redeeming the enemy.

and that's a big problem.

rgg is about a lot of things, but a key one is the ability of people to change for the better. its most memorable, beloved villains are those who see the light by the end and change their wicked ways (usually through some form of redemptive suicide, though that's another essay in itself). its pantheon of characters is full of those who come from questionable backgrounds struggling to be the best people they can be, to live as themselves authentically and compassionately. it's about the good and the love you can find in the moral and legal gray zones of life/society, and the potential/capacity for good all of us have, no matter how far we may have fallen. it is a hopeful series. it is a merciful series.

this is something bolstered by its gameplay. countless substories are resolved by punching a lesson into someone until they improve their behavior, either out of fear or genuine remorse/development. the games don't just discourage killing your enemies, they don't allow you to (yes, we've all seen the "kiryu hasn't killed anybody? umm. look at this heat action" stuff before, and while they've got a point, i believe it's the narrative's intent that none of this is actually lethal, based on how laxly it treats certain plot injuries (cough cough. y7 bartender) and the actual concept of taking a life, the gravity it is given by the text, particularly when it comes to characters crossing that threshold into someone who has killed. explicit killing is not an option open to you, even when you're being attacked by dozens and dozens of armed men. conflicts are resolved by simply beating up enough guys in this nonlethal manner.

but dead souls is a shooter. to avoid conflict with the series' moral qualms about letting its characters kill, the enemies cannot be human. furthermore, the zombie shooter genre can only fit within the series if its zombies are completely inhuman. this means their pasts as humans cannot be acknowledged, nor the possibility of a cure, nor the characters' own potential conflicts about killing them; or, at least, not in a way that impedes their or the player's ability to gun them down afterwards.

if you can't kill humans in your series, then it cannot be possible to save (in this case, rehumanize) zombies. this is especially true in a game where you are unable to fight humans, and thus human lives are universally more valuable than zombie lives. because if you kill a zombie that can be cured, you are, in a way, killing a human.

and so, in a series where you should always assume your enemies (and everyone, for that matter) are capable of reason, compassion, change, and redemption, and where they are always worth that effort, even if they reject it in the end, dead souls' enemies are irredeemable and only worth swift, stylish slaughter. there are only good guys and bad guys. good guys must be protected, lest they be turned irreversibly into bad guys. good guys are only protected by killing bad guys, and the only way to save good guys is to kill every last one of the bad guys. do not spare them, and do not ask whether or not it's right. only kill.

i love dead souls. it's a silly game. i like seeing daigo in decoy-drag and majima gleefully cartwheeling his way through zombies and ryuji with his giant gun arm prosthetic. it's fun. but when i was trying to figure out what felt off about it to me, one of the words that came to mind (besides american) was indulgent. that, too, felt odd, because i love indulgent media. i am not one to scorn decadent, hedonistic, beautiful high-calorie slop type media. if dead souls was just fan servicey, that wouldn't really bother me. i am a fan and boy do i feel serviced. it rocks. but i think my problem is in what dead souls is indulging.

i think dead souls indulges in the desire to cut loose, and to see these characters cut loose. thing is, they're cutting loose all over kamurocho, and all over the bodies of people they used to (at least in concept) care for. with lethal weapons. it is catharsis via bloodbath, not by pushing your body and mind to the limit in man to man combat, but by pulling a trigger before the other guy can hurt you, or even think about hurting you, for the crime of existing as the wrong kind of thing.

and i just don't think that's in line with rgg's beliefs.

yes, it's probably fair for dead souls' characters to kill zombies. i'm not against that. i'm also not against games letting you do purposeless violence. i spent a good amount of my elementary school years killing oblivion npcs for shits, like. that's not what bothers me about dead souls.

rgg as a series has always taken a hard stance in both its game design and narrative choices against killing and for the potential for redemption in its enemies. and i think the lengths to which it goes to promote that despite the probably-lethal moves you do and the improbability of a harmless do-gooder yakuza is one of the most endearing things about the games. so for this one entry to disregard that key theme for the sake of a genre shift that flopped super hard, well? i dunno. it feels weird i guess. it's out of place not just because it's a dramatic shift in gameplay and style and also zombies are only a thing here (and the supernatural/fantastical are thus only prominent here), but because of what those shifts imply.

so, uh. yeah. my pre-dead-souls thoughts that dead souls wasn't that out of pocket bc rgg's just kinda weird? turns out it was actually super weird to have a zombie shooter in there, but for way way deeper reasons than anyone gives it credit for.

(footnotes in tags)

#1) i deemphasized the physicality of shooting to emphasize my points about the viscerality and personal nature of rgg #brawls and the colder more detached nature of gun use relative to that but i do NOT mean that shooting has no physical component to it #obviously it takes a lot of skill to shoot quickly and accurately and lugging a bigass gun around kamurocho would tucker me out for sure #2) no i don't think all those things i said were american were usa-exclusive. it's a big world out there. i'm just saying those things #combined feel like a particularly american flavor of thing to me #3) there's probably more to be said about the connection between wanton killing and american styling or anti-immigration theming in zombie #stories or dead souls But i figured that was a bit too disconnected to the funny zombie game. this shit was a lot anyway y'know? #4) also i don't think most of this was intentional on the part of rgg studios. i genuinely think they just wanted to make a fun zombie #shooter and didnt really think about it all that hard. whenever you make smth there's gonna be implications you never considered. it happen #5) is it ballsy to write a giant essay on a game i'm like 1/4 the way through? yes. i've done smarter things. i'll revisit it when im done #if i'm wrong then i'll figure it out probably. but like. i don't think they'd set up the hasegawa objective stuff or have akiyama just #unflinchingly start shooting zombies and then later challenge that. we'll see but my hopes aren't high y'know? i know rgg #6) i should also clarify that violent catharsis is a) a part of all rgg games and b) cool as hell. it's the lethal bit that doesn't fit with #the series y'know? #rgg #ryu ga gotoku #yakuza #like a dragon #yakuza dead souls #dead souls #classic skrunk 4 hr middle of the night impulse essay hooorayy

[nite-puff]

I don’t think Taka has ever shot a gun. I believe you have to be over 20 in Japan to even get a license to use a gun, not to mention the tests and fees associated with it. And with how strict Japan is about gun usage for civilians, I don’t think it’s feasible to even think that Takaaki would’ve been able to train him at the police department’s shooting range (if they even have those located in the city and not further out in the countryside). If they did it illegally and in secret, I don’t think that would’ve sat well with Taka’s morals.

If we’re going with “the DR cast in America” then I can definitely see him learning from his dad.

It was really interesting to think about the concept and whether or not he would! Tell me more about your training headcanons!

Yeah, we kinda went over the logistics of Takaaki being able to train Taka considering gun laws and stuff like that. But I’m considering letting it slide since dangan is already so detached from reality, even before the tragedy, what with the hypnotism, brainwashing, and super complex robotics in what is most likely the early 2000s-2010. Also how there is a member of his class that knows how to use military weaponry despite being the same age as him. So hey, we’ll just say that Takaaki was able to train Taka how to use a gun legally and safely.

There’s been a lot of people under the initial post saying that Taka does know how to use a gun but has never actually shot one before, and to that i say… i mean, sure, i guess, but not really. Because it’s really not that smart to only teach someone the mechanics of gun with the full intention of teaching them how to use one without actually, y’know, using one. Especially if Taka is only meant to use this information in a high stakes situation like extreme self defense. So I do think Taka has handled a gun before, but never outside of their training. If that’s what people meant by “he’s never shot one before,” then i agree.

I don’t have that many training headcanons because, granted, i don’t know that much (if anything) about gun training. But here’s a few:

- Taka has only known how to use a gun for about a year. He’s no expert. He just knows the basic background info (like safety, how to hold one, the specific parts and what they do) and how to simply aim and shoot.

- Because of how Takaaki is disliked at the police station, they don’t use their shooting ranges for training. Mainly to keep his coworkers off of Taka’s back. They used an abandoned one near the outskirts of their town, one that was always fairly empty outside of some teens looking for a place to hang out very sparsely. It’s some sort of strange father-son bonding time between them considering the reasons why they’re doing it in the first place.

- Yes, Taka does know how to use a gun and has shot one before during training, but would absolutely let his nerves get to him if he ever had to use one in a real situation. That’s why he never actually has plans to use one in any situation, no matter the stakes.

- I guess the only bit of humor that could come with this concept is Taka having the knowledge and experience of using a gun. I imagine him bringing up his training one day for whatever reason and his classmates doing a double-take. Like he was the last person they thought was capable of knowing how to use one. They act a little more hesitant to misbehave and are more cautious around Taka. He’s at first happy with the change, but becomes devastated once he learns why they’re acting differently. He’s so genuinely offended that any of them thought that he would actually resort to that level of violence as a form of punishment.

I guess I’ll use this to open the door for more people to share their headcanons on the matter. :)

#kiyotaka ishimaru #takaaki ishimaru #ramblepuff #askpuff #ask #can you tell I don’t actually know that much about guns???

[best-underrated-anime]

Best Underrated Anime Group F Round 1: #F2 vs #F7

#F2: 90s maid girls with guns

It’s the year 1999 in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan. 17-year-old girl Nagomi excitedly moves there to work in a pig-themed maid café. Once she starts working, though… she realizes that the world of Akiba maid café is darker and more violent than she thought...

#F7: Transmigrator heals a reincarnation revenge story.

Dongfang Xianyun transmigrates as the eldest disciple of the Care-free sect. But the only thing that goes through his mind is to make sure he doesn’t end up dying by the hands of the “main character.” He believes he’s just a side character. He just wants to relax and survive all the mayhem surrounding him while dealing with one of his jealous sect teammates, who grew corrupted in the past life.

*Transmigration = similar to isekai, but the world where the characters get isekai’d to is not always a western fantasy type. And a transmigrator is one who transmigrates.

Titles, propagandas, trailers, and poll under the cut!

#F2: Akiba Maid War (Akiba Meido Sensou)

Propaganda:

It was animated by P.A. Works! As far as I know, they also worked on Buddy Daddies, Angel Beats, Ya Boy Kongming, etc. Cygames also contributed to this anime!! The story is creative as well. Who would’ve thought of a cute maid mafia anime? Keep in mind, this is a P. A. Works ORIGINAL. They went SO crazy on this anime. There’s also 12 episodes, which means that you can binge it all on one day and still be satisfied :D The OP and ED are also catchy, creative and unskippable. Despite its dark themes, it can sometimes get a little more “lighthearted” and silly, even in the most violent scenes ;P

Trigger Warnings: Flashing Lights, Graphic Depictions of Cruelty/Violence/Gore.

Just like what I explained, it’s violent. A lot of guns. And a lot of blood. Yes, they kill fellow maids in like every episode ever lol. Also, since Akiba is known to have flashy street signs, like every city ever…. And the guns, of course…that’s why I put the Flashing Lights warning.

#F7: There’s a Pit in my Senior Martial Brother’s Brain (Wo Jia Dashixiong Naozi You Keng)

Official English title: What’s Wrong With My Big Brother

Alt Title: My Dashixiong Has a Pit in His Brain

Propaganda:

This series is kind of insane but also just a lot of fun! The thing is, the shidi (junior martial sect brother), Yin Feixing, felt betrayed by his dashixiong (eldest senior sect brother), Dongfang Xianyun, after he was seemingly rejected for ending up studying the demonic arts. After he dies, he decides to take revenge in the next life, and this is where our story starts off…

The only problem is his dashixiong has been replaced by a transmigrator. And our new Dongfang Xianyun is not as cold or uptight as the past dashixiong (but as the story unravels, was he even that bad?); rather, this version is silly and goofy and fun. And because he believes wholeheartedly that Yin Feixing is the protagonist, he doesn’t act the way a dashixiong is expected to—but it’s in this silliness that one can find sincerity…

So as Yin Feixing exacts his revenge, turning Dongfang Xianyun into a demonic arts practitioner, Dongfang Xianyun’s new soul means he won’t follow the same path as Yin Feixing. Rather than fall to ruins like Yin Feixing, his empathy and creativity means he challenges this entire world by making his fellow demonic practitioners into law-abiding heroes, even as people hate him for the demonic arts. So as multiple plots unfurl, we get a pretty emotional, thematically interesting story, even amidst all the (very funny) crazy comedy, and a clever parody of xianxia* and other transmigration stories. 😆

(*Xianxia (仙侠 xiānxiá) – literally means “Immortal Heroes”. Fictional stories featuring magic, demons, ghosts, immortals, and a great deal of Chinese folklore/mythology. Protagonists (usually) attempt to cultivate to Immortality, seeking eternal life and the pinnacle of strength. Heavily inspired by Daoism. Source)

Oh, and Gong Changsheng is best puppy! He’s such a good sunflower boy with the biggest crush on Dongfang Xianyun, and I love them so much. I think lots of others will love them too if they gave this series a chance. 🥺

The slightly evolving names for each season are fun too:

S1: 我家大师兄脑子有坑 (My Dashixiong Has a Pit in His Brain (aka “he’s really dumb/ridiculous”))

S2: 我家大师兄是个反派 (My Dashixiong Is a Villain)

S3: 我家大师兄有点靠谱 (My Dashixiong Is a Bit Reliable)

(Plus, besides the original manhua, there’s a fun chibi OVA where the cast are like actors!)

Trigger Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Cruelty/Violence/Gore. The donghua isn’t as intense as the manhua, but there is one character who flirts in a somewhat creepy manner.

If you’re reblogging and adding your own propaganda, please tag me @best-underrated-anime so that I’ll be sure to see it.

#anime #donghua #best underrated anime #polls #poll tournament #tournament #anime tournament #group stage #group stage round 1 #tournament polls #chinese anime #akiba maid war #akiba maid sensou #wo jia dashixiong naozi you keng #what's wrong with my big brother #my dashixiong has a pit in his brain #我家大师兄脑子有坑 #akiba maido sensou #group f #there’s a pit in my senior martial brother’s brain

[moonsb1996]

How to write convincingly, part 4

hello everyone ! I'm not dead yet. And come back with the regular series while waiting for MHA to end so that I don't have to write and complain about them again. This time I think We have to talk about the unforgivable mistakes that Kohei Horikoshi made as a writer. (As a writer I felt very insulted) and that was it. “Show, don't tell” > “Tell, don't show” As mentioned above, how are these two things different? As I am a writer These two things are very different. It is the imagination of the reader that will make whatever story you write believable, apart from the history. Character stats when fighting and reasonableness that is still within the laws of the created world Another thing that is indispensable is “Show, don't tell.” So what do you do with it? With showing, don't tell? Let's take a look at the information we have on what to do and what not to do regarding the above topics.

example “UA is Japan's leading hero division school. If you want to be a top hero, there is a strict rule that you must graduate from UA.” From the words above, the general conclusion is that MC or Izuku must go to UA school in order to become the number 1 hero in Japan, and we have seen that there are quite a few pro heroes in the Top 10 who graduated from UA. At least 4 people, but! Out of a total of 10 people, only 4 were from the UA. The remaining 6 were graduates from hero schools, but I don't know where they came from! You see the different numbers, right? If UA were to be a hero school that says It is a true rule to become a top in Japan. There must be more than just 4 students from UA who are in the top 10 in Japan! This is the result of your choice to "tell and not show" when it enters the reader's brain. When we saw the real thing It's a disappointment. Or another meaning is Getting incorrect information

character intelligence oh ! I have to come with these two people. Which is the first person that we all know about: Gray Stu, Bakugo, the beloved son of Horikoshi Kohei, who is revealed to have talents and special powers that are as great as God's blessing. (Excuse me, go pick up the paper bag for a moment.) First thing! You have other characters (Yoyorozu and Todoroki) tell the reader about Bakugou's godly abilities. despite the fact Destroying the enemy's vision It's a very basic method because Izuku uses it too. AKA, do you remember who burned down a commercial district because he was being held hostage? yes ! Bakugo!

Lots of deadly moves But the benefits are the same: bigger explosion + loud random shout. What followed and we saw was the same as before, explosion, explosion, explosion, even though it changed shape until it could shoot like a machine gun. (which I don't know how to do) still had the same effect, exploding. When he went to help the teacher himself (which was only 7 days when he went for an internship, I don't know how a close relationship can be expensive??) it just exploded so loudly that it got faster (and now it's so fast that it follows. Villain drama on Saturday and Sunday. Just in time. I vomited for a moment.) Already upgraded (again?! What the fuck?) The technique is the same as before. Bigger bombs = faster ??? I'm sure Bakugou is really smart. Met a villain Bakugou : Blast you bastard ! People are being held hostage by villains. Bakugou: Blast you bastard! People will commit suicide. Bakugo: Explode. Is this… really a smart person?

Toga Humiko (I Hate You OK), the girl with the cutest smile in the world. The type that when praised becomes A psychotic killer's wet dream which the mouth says “I'm a normal girl.” (Grabs the paper bag for a moment.) Okay…where do I start? First of all, when Ochako knew her name when she entered the camp, if the writer (Horikoshi) wanted the readers to think that she was Really smart killer Who has been through life and death throughout the era of escaping. She…must not reveal her name and surname to anyone outside of LOV. You're imagining it. When you have a database of your special powers that includes your name, surname, address, and parents, when your name is “Toga, this is Toga Himiko!” and “I really “like” blood,” and her victims. (Ochako and Tsuyu) didn't die or lose consciousness. Won't you tell the police this SSR level information? The answer is, you have to tell the police! When taking the information and the case that Toga had committed In the end, it points to the only suspect still escaping, “Toga Himiko (kanji).” Easy, right?! At least the police and heroes know what she can do. And some of the police would definitely know her face. (At least if you check it in your former student register) Even if the people don't know But do you think she's going to walk around invisible without being caught by the police or any hero? Except that the hero and Lazy police actually do their job, but hey! Now the hero is a good person. Police are good people, stop thinking too much! (Grabs another paper bag for a moment.)

bad hero They say there's Endeavor (and I don't deny his badness), but aside from Endeavor, are there any other heroes that appear? We're not talking about MLA heroes, because that's a cult (= villain). Where is the evidence that says there is? Bad heroes live in MHA society. Don't take the words of AM fan club psychopaths who call themselves. The hero assassin is the judge. Where? Where is the evidence or events that indicate that there are bad heroes and corruption in MHA's superhero society? Letting characters talk like this without evidence showing it to readers is okay? And although in the end there was confirmation from Lady Nagant's story, in the past several episodes (Including her story Happened long before the matter of stain) The weight that stains words does not have. It's almost ethereal. Until the reason for attacking Iida's brother He became a crazy person when he saw a person wearing a costume and took a knife and cut him to injure him… Such strong evidence.

Look at him! He's changed! Don't you see it? Wah wah (Hold still, let me throw the bag in my vomit for a moment) By having other characters tell the reader, “He/she has changed,” while their actions remain the same. consistently Look to the edge of the universe, Andromeda and black holes. I didn't see anything substantial.

example Bakugou called out to Izuku with all his might. But in the end, he let out the word Deku until other characters (Izuku) came and said that if it's difficult for you, don't force it, Kacchan (PS, I encountered this incident in X, it's a drama CD) or a legendary scene By throwing a mask and drilling into the MC's brain that everyone saw as a funny joke.

Toga who helped Ochako By direct blood transfusion (Do not clean the equipment or close the wound before taking action) because a world without Ochako I don't want that to happen. Oh! God, she has changed. Did you see that she helped her girlfriend? Even though the truth is “A world without favorite things You have to destroy it.” Ochaco = things you like + don't let the police catch you = make yourself lifeless. Successfully saved Ochako. Everyone will pity and understand me.

Wall of TEXT Ah…what I really hate about reading MHA Volume 34, America, is our villain's struggle to get a new power that ends with an analysis of the enemy's special power in multiple essays. Even though in reality…it doesn't have to be that long. Because throughout the fight that occurred between both of them If you're really smart, you'll be able to read the game from the beginning of the fight (page 5 of chapter 330 and page 7). Page 5: First use of power I saw her hand first. And then she continued. and captured Shigaraki and use her power to do something (I can't remember much) Page 7: Hand holding the laser and continuing talking (again) Do you know what these two pages are telling the reader? Yes! Show, don't tell! which is the same as when it happened at Shigaraki knew that. Aizawa uses his power and his hair floats into the sky. And time will continue to decrease! Does it need to be explained at such length? Are readers like me this stupid? Okay, this is getting long. Thank you for reading until the end.

#mha critical #bnha critical #anti toga himiko #anti bakugou katsuki #Hori is a bad writer

[absolutebl]

September 2022 BL Line Up

9/11 Fahlanruk (Thai) 

GaGa Sundays, 10 eps, 45 min ea.

Fahlan (smart jock) meets Sherbet (edgy bad boy) sparks fly and they end up in bed together. Fahlan feels a lot more for Sherbet than is allowed, so he hides his feelings. Fahlan’s friends Ping and Tap, try to help their boy win his man, but are struggling with friends-to-lovers woes of their own. Looks to be a strong contender in the Thai BL pulp dumpster fire of joy arena. It’s using tropes we rarely see and it tonally seems like a combination of Nitiman + Y-Destiny’s players episode (2 of my 2021 favorites). I like sexually messy and identity confused college dramas but Love Mechanics might have tapped me out. 

Y-novel adaptation featuring a pining seme and high heat, from director Koo who has a long back catalogue of shows, if not a great track record with BL (Club Friday and Tonhon Chonlatee are his). 

9/14 Once Again (Korea) 

Viki Thursdays, 8 eps, 25 min ea  

Time-slip fantasy BL from Moving Picture studio & Idol Romance behind Wish You, Ryu's Wedding, Tasty Florida, Tinted With You, and Kissable Lips (also forthcoming Happy Ending Outside The Fence and The Circumstances of Pungdeok Villa Room 304). Stars actors (no idols) Moon Ji Young (also star in an upcoming BL The New Employee), Lee Hyuk Jun, and Kang Woo Jung. 

JaeWoo lives with childhood trauma. He travels to the past where he meets JiHoon, a law student who JaeWoo admires most in the world. Will he be able to change both their fates?

9/16: More Than Words (Japan) 

Amazon Prime Video JP (only?)

Adaptation of Etsuko’s two mangas In The Apartment and More Than Words, starring Ryōko Fujino (Fujoshi, Ukkari Gei ni Kokuru), Yuzu Aoki (Kakafukaka), Daisuke Nakagawa (Colorful Love), and Daiki Kanechika (EXIT).

Told from the perspective of the female best friend who is against (?) the workplace gay relationship of her bff. Also there is another gay plot line. 

9/22: My Tempo (Thailand) 

Unknown distribution. 

BL movie about the Thai music industry. What joy is mine.

9/26 Ai Long Nhai (Thai) 

No international distribution as yet, 10 eps 45 min ea. 

About a man expelled from foreign university who returns to a Thai university in disgrace and meets A Boy.

From Thailand’s Mflow Entertainment for Ch3Thailand. Adapted from a Y-novel, directed by Nob (La Cuisine, Gen Y). Secondary couple Nan & Sippakorn are IRL husbands Arm & Porsch (Together with Me). Familiar faces include Gun (Love Area’s Valen) and Jom (Nitiman’s Jin).

This is actually the inception story of the characters of AiNi in Tonhon Chonlatee which I didn’t realize. Now I loved those characters, but I disliked that series from a story standpoint and this is the same author so I’m now nervous.

Comfort the Boy AKA A Shoulder to Cry On (Korea) 

No international distribution as yet, 12 eps 20 min ea (?)

Looks to be a longer than usual KBL, got an R15+ rating for topic & vulgarity (we likey), stars idols Jaehan & Yechan BOTH from Kpop group OMEGA X (we scairedy). Interesting that an idol company is allowing two idols from the same group star in a BL together. *danger will robinson.” 

Adaptation of Dongmul's manwha A Shoulder to Cry On, high school set, features a teasing confident gay, and a rich/poor pairing, about homophobia/gossip putting a scholarship in jeopardy. 

SELF the series (Thai) 

No international distribution as yet, no known length.

From Studio Common about a young artist who mysteriously loses his reflection and sees a strange boy in the mirror instead. Stars fresh faces, directed by Too (Triage) and NutSor (screenwriter of Dew).

Happy Ending Outside the Fence (Korea ) 

No international distribution as yet, probably usual KBL length. 

JungWoo is a writer who disappeared after being treated unfairly in the publishing industry. TaeYoung, the head of a publishing company, admires and wants him to write again. JungHyun became a star by borrowing JungWoo's writings. The three characters interact and drama results. Stars idol Leo of VIXX. 

Magic of Zero: Zero Supporter (Thai) 

GMMTV feat advertisement specail (c 45 min) on their YT channel 

Cupid's Last Wish spin off, features EarthMix in another bodyswap on this time with each other (KornWin). I disliked the origin show intensely, so I can’t see myself watching this. 

MPD (missing presumed dead): 

Ghost Host, Ghost House. Thai PNR pulp BL was billed as dropping in August. 

(source)

Information dated beginning of September 2022. If you have updates, leave a comment share the love. 

#upcoming bl #2022 bl #september bl #bl line up #coming in september #new bl #forthicoming bl #forthcoming bl #Thai BL #Ghost Host Ghost House #PNR #body swap #Cupid's Last Wish #EarthMix #KornWin #Magic of Zero #Zero supporter #Korean BL #KBL #Happy Ending Outside the Fence #VIXX leo #VIXX #Triage the series #SELF the series #Comfort the Boy #A Shoulder to Cry On #adapted from a manwha #OMEGA X #Tonhon Chonlatee #AiNi

[justatalkingface]

i really like how you analyze things you know how hard it is to find people who can criticize things properly? Very lol but I guess I'm guilty of that myself but I really like the analysis you've given about MHA. I kind of have a question even though it might be a lame one? But what's your take on the female characters of MHA? I'm personally disappointed by them because... I don't know they have potential yet haven't shown any sort of real depth that makes me really root for them. Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense, actually. In the simplest, most brutal way possible, there's nothing actually there to root for, though I hasten to mention that's not actually their fault; they have potential, like you said, plenty of it. Hori's female characters have just, broadly, been abandoned on the side of road, like he has so many others (Class B, literally the entire school of Shiketsu, who has a nigh Todoroki level character, to name a few), but it's just that much worse because it's all of them.

Seriously, off the top of my head, the last time a female who isn't Toga or Mirko did anything really relevant was... when Uraraka talked down the crowd? If I'm being honest, (and minor manga spoilers here, if you're not up to date) Hori's about to have all the female characters involved in a fight in the manga, so maybe something will happen there, but to be even more honest, there's something about that whole scenario when the main members of the fights are all female that screams 'catfight' in the worst kind of way. I know they just joined a bunch of others, but how much do you bet that it'll end up being Toga, Uraraka, and maybe Tsu again somehow?

Also, I'm going to note Toga and Miruko for later in that they have special issues, but I'm on a roll here.

The potential is there. The way that the ones in 1A alone could be more relevant are broad; Mina's acid could be used in ways like water attacks are in Naruto, for example. Give me an acid dragon, Hori, that sounds awesome. Kyoka's sounds are strong enough to shatter the ground, with some support tech, yet she can't get something to focus them, make them hit harder? You know, how Bakugou somehow does with his explosions, and, like, his fingers, somehow, yet you have all this support gear right there. Concentrate all that noise down to foot of area and it'd hit like a truck. Momo is literally the poster child for wasted potential here, along with how Hori just left all the women behind: she's a recommended student, which comes with this built in hype of 'this one, this one is going to be good'. And... she never is. Out of the all the stuff we've seen her make, has a gas grenade of some kind never came to her? One with sleeping gas maybe? Or how about a tranq gun? And don't tell me about Japan and their gun laws; Snipe exists. (On a personal note, do you know what I yearn to see? A little cartoon or comic or something of Momo going, "I'm going to beat you with the power of friendship. And this gun I found!" Can you imagine? She's so serious, so refined, then she says that, dead ass serious, while pulling out one out of her arm??? I laugh every time I think about it. I really do.) Momo is scary in a way lot of the characters aren't, and it's not for her raw power, but her flexibility, and how she can target weaknesses with it. Weaknesses like breathing. The thing is that she's just not allowed to use it. Seriously, they struggle so much to try and put Gigantomachia to sleep, yet a few arc later she pulls out this giant ass machine to drug up Izuku, and it's just so... overcomplicated, how many steps they're taking to make her less useful. The tools are there. The potential is right the fuck there. These two things I've mentioned alone are simpler than some of the things she's made before, and the narration has made it clear that she's more than smart enough to think of these basic ass solutions. She's just not allowed to be, well, that useful. And Asui, honestly, is an interesting case. On the face of it, Frog is kind of a weak Quirk, but Mirko exists. In all brutal honesty, Asui has the same kind of Quirk as Mirko, it's just the less sex appealing version. And if Mirko could be a top hero on Rabbit, why can't Asui with Frog?

And that's the other thing. Out of all the female cast, we have a small handful of relevant people, like Mirko and Toga, and all of them seem to embody some sort of sex appeal. Midnight, before she was killed off off screen, was a joke character that got more development in a spin off in her entire run, and was literally a walking bondage costume. Toga is the token female for the League, but the reason she has so much focus is that she's popular, and she's popular because she's, as I've heard someone put it, some kind of Yandere otome character. Uraraka is the Hinata to Izuku's Naruto, and so has some One True Waifu energy. Nana's built like a brick house. Mirko is literally a bunny girl. These things? These things that people find attractive, and judging by his sketches, I'd expect that Hori is one of those people. Moreover, almost all of them have their characters defined by this one attractive quality, if only because they aren't allowed to show literally anything else.

It gets worse when you realize how many things happen just for that, for the sex appeal: Toga needs to be naked for her Quirk. Actually, this is an oddly common 'flaw': Toru has no clothes for her hero costume. She is literally running around naked. Momo's descriptions all talk about how she exposes skin to use her Quirk better. Mirio exists. Mirio literally phases out his clothes, but because he's a man, and thus not attractive, his costume is made of his hairs, somehow, and so phases with him and he never accidently flashes anyone. Hmm, UA. I wonder who else could use something like that. This is so mysterious.

That's not even mention how Mirko keeps getting brutalized like a toy owned by a particularly careless child, and by the way it keeps happening, the way it focuses on her pain, it seems Hori is into that? The worst part of that, I think, is if he had just done that once, he probably could have gotten away with it, and no one would have noticed. But it keeps happening. Mirko has no limbs now, Hori what the fuck?

So, yeah, Anon. I'm disappointed in the female characters too. I'm disappointed that Hori never gave them a chance.

#ask #mha critical #bnha critical #Hori's chronic loathing of women #Momo has been nerfed #Really they all have #Please just give them all some clothes

[missysotomeworld]

Collar x Malice Review (Non-Spoilers)

After a year of playing this game and after hearing so many things about it, I finally managed to play the game. Buying ten Otome games on the switch to get me started, since up until now all I’ve played were mobile games which I still play but I wanted to expand my horizons. I knew Collar x Malice is a “Big” Otome game which is a lot of people’s first Otome and I thought; let’s start with this classic game. Let’s see what I thought about this game.  

Plot  

Set-in modern-day Shinjuku, which once was a bustling city known for its nightlife, but that’s not the case anymore because of a terrorist group calling themselves Adonis. This group deeming themselves the true fighters of justice have taken it upon themselves to rid the world of its sorrows and for people that are suffering every second. So they've taken it upon themselves to kill those that are the very reason before they can cause the people's sorrows. Now it's December and the "Rebirth" of Japan is supposed to happen. On January 1st the day Adonis deems to be X-Day has caused Shinjuku to be under lockdown and no one can leave or enter the city and under strict protocols the police set up everyone on a curfew, those 18 and under must have a chaperon with them when going to school and home. The government redacted laws that had banned anyone from carrying a weapon, so now everyone over the age of 20 can carry a gun as a means to protect themselves. Now it’s December, the police are panicking as they try to crack down on these crimes and are having no luck. Sitting in the middle of all this chaos is 21-year-old rookie police officer Ichika Hoshino. One night Ichika is heading home when she gets a call from her superior that there's a disturbance and is told she needs to put a stop to it until he can come as backup.  She goes to Shinjuku Garden and gets knocked out and wakes up in a church with a poisonous collar attached to her neck and a voice comes from within the collar. Turns out the very organization that the police are trying to catch (Adonis) have given this collar as a way to experiment on her for them to see her "justice" and find out the truth of the crimes. She is told she must never tell anyone about the collar, especially not the police. Thankfully Adonis had the common decency to send assistance in the form of three ex-cops to rescue her. These men were tipped off when a letter from Adonis letting them know a "sympathizer" of theirs is at the church and to go get her. So now Ichika must work with these men along with two more allies.  

Company  

Collar x Malice is created by Idea Factory under the Otomate brand and is localized by Aksys games. It's rated M for its dark themes because we've got ourselves very detailed death scenes, violence, drug references, strong language, and mild sexual content. The game was originally released on the PS Vita in Japan in 2016 and later to the West in 2017 and became re-released for the switch in 2020 followed by its 2018 fandisk "Collar x Malice: Unlimited" only on the switch. I played on the switch and from what I understand there were a lot of grammar errors in the initial release that seems to be fixed for the  Switch re-release but then again, I'm not a huge stickler for these types of problems unless it's broken English and that is where I draw the line. 

Mechanics  

It's pretty rare for an Otome game to have gameplay mechanics so it's refreshing to take a reading break and do activities related to the task at hand and makes you feel like you are a real cop on the case.  There's three different mechanics in the game that will come up sometimes.  

Investigations: This happens when Ichika is investigating a crime scene to find clues to whatever month of Adonis' crimes, she ends up pursuing. You just click around the room when the red and black arrow turns into a target symbol and if you ponder too long Ichika will nudge you to move on.  

[Go to] Elevator: This happens when Ichika is traveling through the police station in the elevator to different departments to talk to someone on that floor.  

Trigger Mode: There’ll be times where Ichika will draw her gun, and this will make or break if you get a bad ending, if you make the shot or not. You cannot save during these events either save when you kind of see lines like "Ichika touches her gun" or if you don't make it you can rewind the conversation. The objective is to aim for the first inner circle of the bigger circle. If you are unsure, that's normal at first.  (Believe me I was confused sometimes if I did it right. I was told if you see a red outline, it means you did it if it's gray you missed or look at the log and it'll say so) If you aren't confident in your skills, you can always go to the shooting range in the police station, and it will show you how to do it without the tension.  

Extras  

There are two collectables you get within the game: there's the Dictionary explaining the police terms and other topics related to the characters and the Materials that you collect the evidence of the X-Day cases within the routes.  

After each Good Ending for each of the LIs you get a short story after the events of the route and once you collect all the CGs you get an extra CG of the guy. And at the end when everything is completed you get to read Episode 0 which tells how the members of Adonis were selected. 

Ichika Hoshino 

I liked Ichika. She's definitely one-of-a-kind type of Mc. She's one of those rare Mc who can think for herself. She's really not the type of Mc you can self-insert like other Mcs, more or less that you can simply put yourself in their shoes because they are more like a Lego piece and you can put yourself into the story, but the Mc usually doesn't have much personality. Ichika is her own character sure you are making the decisions, but they feel like her own thoughts rather than your input. She sticks with her justice and will stubbornly stand by it. She's a skilled marksman and is a smart lady. Of course, she isn't perfect (none of us are) and she's aware of her shortcomings. She's very realistic and when she's in a scary situation she knows much more is at stake, so she stays as calm as possible. That is a strength I don't think a lot of us could pull; most of us would be freaking out if we had a poisonous collar and we were told to follow whatever it says or our lives would end. She's also aware she's a rookie and naturally her department she works in the Special Regions Crime Prevention Office (SRCPO) isn't really in the field like the rest of the police station. The SRCPO handles the public's complaints and checks out disturbances they are called to. So naturally Ichika doesn't have the skills as one may have hoped for since her conclusions, she draws at are probably anyone else could come up with in the grand scheme of things if you want to ponder it. But that doesn't matter much to me since the game kind of makes you think as you play along and it's cool to think (even if I had a walkthrough but I did wonder about stuff). I will say it's thanks to her job she can communicate when the need arises and can gain some information that could be important. Though there's also a nitpick that kind of bothers me and that lies with her younger brother Kazuki, and her communication/listening skills go out the window when it comes to him. Like we get it Ichika it's a scary world out there right now but lecturing him isn't going anywhere and it'd help to just ask him and LISTEN to what he has to say. Now it's not just her fault Kazuki doesn't make it easier for her either like dude its a blessing you get to stay with her you could show some appreciation. Like she cooks for him, pays the rent, and he gets his own room, and he gives her attitude because he's in his "Teenage Rebellion" phase that's not an excuse! Kazuki's behavior depends on the route he's fine. In some other times he's just too cruel to Ichika. I mean eventually they come to some kind of understanding at the end. But these are just minor flaws. I had to sit back and think, and it didn't deter me from liking Ichika. I'd befriend her in real life. She's a breath of fresh air as someone who has her fair share of normal Mcs. Do I call her my favorite Mc? I don't think so, I feel like there'll be better Mcs better than her the more I get my feet wet in my journey of my switch journey. I feel she kind of blends into the crowd especially with the generic appearance, heck she and I could be twins because I have brown hair and hazel eyes as well.  

The Love Interests  

So how the routes split off is that Ichika will team up with one of the guys and investigate one or two cases with them. This game has an affection meter feature that is broken into two parts: Trust and Affection.  It makes sense for it to be like this since Ichika and LI are complete strangers and they need to learn how to work together. The first part is Trust which Ichika needs to build trust with her partner in a way that they can work as a unit. After the Trust meter is full it will restart and start the second part the Affection where the love grows between them. Fill the Affection all the way up you got yourself the Good Ending! There is a recommended order for this game since this game builds overtime and gets spoiler heavy the more you read it so it's nice slowly chipping away at this iceberg of a game in a way that has a natural flow to it. The route order I did was: Mineo Enomoto, Takeru Sasazuka, Kei Okazaki,  Kageyuki Shiraishi, and Aiji Yanagi. Mineo, Takeru, and Kei are the only three unlockable in the beginning. Shiraishi's route is locked until you play at least one of those three and Yanagi unlocks when all the other four boys have been completed since he's the "true" route that reveals all. I don't regret my order choices. I felt it built up nicely over time! But you can kind of choose however you like between the first three and that can probably be done in any order. With that said let's talk about my thoughts on our boys!

  

Mineo Enomoto (23): Mineo was a great first route to me since when I was deciding which way to play since the walkthroughs around said different route orders for the first three, but I ultimately saw someone say choose between him or Takeru. So I went with Mineo since he seemed nice enough since Takeru intimidated me a little. To me, Mineo's route seemed less about Adonis as a whole and more about his problems surrounding the particular case we were investigating because it was a personal thing for him. The whole route was basically him overcoming his problems with Ichika helping him through it. I did like his cute moments, and I chuckled at the banter with Ichika, and I feel because they were relatively close in age, they just got each other. I'm a big history buff myself so him liking Masamune Date (going as far as having an eye patch despite not needing it, now if that's not dedication I don't know what is) Though I've always been a Nobunaga Oda kind of girl (especially in Otome games some people have deemed me Lady Oda for my undying faithfulness to the Demon Lord regardless of game).  

Takeru Sasazuka (24): I feel like Takeru's route is a good explanation of Adonis' actions throughout the month of December since most of the crimes they do relate to the case Takeru and Ichika are investigating. We do get to learn a pretty decent sized spoiler in this route sure I was shocked but that didn't deter me at all but if someone is really sensitive then doing Kei's route is probably a good idea to do since I think Takeru and Kei's route are the most interchangeable out of the three. I did okay with Takeru himself who’s such a smartass and knows it (it helped to get used to the prickly genius because before I played this route, I was playing another character with a similar personality even down to the hair color and loving sweets). I feel he and Ichika really didn't fit well together since he never saw her as an equal and the whole Kazuki stuff was the worst here and Takeru didn't help things which probably made it worse. I know Ichika really did her hardest on this case, but he kept calling her a stupid cat, that doesn't sound encouraging. Like dude cut her some slack it's not her fault she works in a department where these skills are limited and so what if her thought processes are basic at least she is thinking and taking this seriously. I like tsunderes but there's a line that just shouldn't be crossed, like I don't get how they fell for each other. I guess if you buy him enough doughnuts, he'll fall for you. If this game were a visual novel it holds up pretty solid like his background and motives of why he wants to solve this particular case, make sense. But as a romance route I have to say no it's probably one of the weakest out of the routes here in terms of that it felt so thrown in for the sake of this needs to be an Otome game so romance needs to occur even between people that don't go well together. Like Ichika I feel wasn't at her finest like defend yourself I know you are capable of this as seen in other routes then this one. Once your mind is set you don't back down where was this in this route!?  

Kei Okazaki (25): The last of the initial trio definitely has some heavy weight compared to the other two which is why I thought Kei worked best for a third route for me. But I do see Takeru and Kei being interchangeable like I said before. Kei is the odd duck out of the love interests not just his airhead, liking weird snacks personality he displays but he actually works at the police station as an SP officer that's normally tasked with protecting VIPs at events but for some reason, he is tasked with watching Yanagi and the others to "protect" them. They don't know why as previously mentioned SP officers don't protect civilians like Yanagi and Co. so it's odd and it's dangerous since one of Adonis' demands was that police cannot know about the collar or her involvement in this investigation. And with Kei always showing up at random times to check on them it's frustrating and gets on their nerves especially Yanagi in particular. It's also hard since Ichika is a working police officer herself. It looks odd she always goes to the Detective Agency to consult with them on her findings. So, knowing this you may be asking yourselves how a romance would brew between these two and it's definitely an interesting one. Again, the same events that happened in Takeru's route, but they are just shown and kind of thrown away because it really didn't go anywhere for Kei's route. Maybe apart from one event but it was a minor part of the story. As for how I felt about Kei as a character, he really didn't appeal to my tastes. I'm aware he has quite the fanbase. His backstory had really given us some brain food for later when we started putting stuff together but once we figured out his motives throughout the route as to why he sticks by Ichika's side it really got so annoying. I was with Ichika through this. I just wish it was addressed earlier but at least she gave him a good grilling when she put together what he wanted to do. He's an amazing fighter, like he could whip my ass to the ground in a second. He may act like an airhead but that's such a trap that's how he gets you to reveal your secrets because he's way smarter than he appears to be. I guess he's cute with the liking weird snacks or sleeping wherever. But he just isn't my cup of tea. I was too busy frustrated at his antics, but other than those gripes it's an interesting route since it did give us something to chew on for the next two routes.  

Kageyuki Shiraishi (29): I beg of you please do this guy fourth before Yanagi is unlocked! You are free to choose whoever you want for the first three routes but PLEASE for the love of God DO NOT PLAY his route as soon as he unlocks. His route is spoiler heavy central! Everything you see in this route will change your outlook on everything you thought you knew about this game. This route is the perfect lead up to Yanagi's route after he's unlocked after this route! I won't say what this very important information is because it's best to find out for yourselves and just watch your jaws drop to the floor in shock once you learn what this key information is hehe. I absolutely loved this man and his route like Day 1 playing this game. As soon as his first scene happened, I was laughing and going "I'm in trouble". He had me at the teasing like ‘yes sign me up!’ As you can tell I love guys that tease! I love the fox, cunning type of character; the Kitsune in Ayakashi games are my favorite character/Ayakashi always! So, did he meet my expectations? YES! Oh my God Yes! It was pretty much a story of how their relationship changes over time, which I'm a sucker for (one thing to know about me is I love character development in my routes). Kotoho Sakuragawa and Eriko Mukai are Ichika's friends in all the routes and omg they were so funny in this route since they both hate this man with every fiber of their being! Ichika is at her finest in this route and it's exactly what someone like Shiraishi needs in a partner. This had my favorite case as well and sure I had my trusty walkthrough on hand, but I was actively trying to think of where the case was going to go with all its twists and turns! He is hands down my favorite route in the game and my husbando of the game without a shadow of a doubt! Love you my cat loving man hehe!

  

Aiji Yanagi (28): Ah the dad of the crew (though he won't admit it hehe) but he's literally husband/dad material he can clean, cook, and is a sweet guy. As for his role as the truth route we finally answer the undying question "What is the truth behind Adonis' actions?" Does it hold up as a route? Yeah, it does the job okay, but did I feel satisfied with it? No not really, I feel the writing lost momentum at the midway point and just rolled downhill from there. The plot twist they put to throw conflict for the sake of conflict because Yanagi is too damn perfect. Let's add this piece of information that came out of nowhere and make his only real weakness being a chain smoker. If you wanted this plot twist in this route it should have been implemented in passing in all routes it would have had a better effect of why Ichika and Yanagi are an OTP pairing not that they needed a reason they got along with each other from the get-go. The other downer was the ending showdown between the leader of Adonis and the good of the police to decide the fate of Japan! Who is going to win in the end? It was anticlimactic to say the least like it ended like that? I was expecting something more like we came all this way and we got this?  Other than those critiques I liked the relationship between these two like if this wasn't a final route, I may have liked it more. I teared up at the end of the good ending mostly because the music was swelling and the realization of my journey with this game is coming to an end! This route did a good job pulling together everything we learned including the other boys' pasts coming together beautifully! As for how I feel about Yanagi as a character he's just a nice/safe guy that is great to have around but that's just it he's kind of too plain for my tastes. Hehe he's the perfect guy for Ichika!  

Final Thoughts  

Overall I enjoyed my time with this classic Otome game and can proudly call it my first console game!  The story was compelling from beginning to end, always keeping you wondering what twists this game  will take you on. This game felt real looking at what’s been going on around me the past couple of years  like I feel if I played this game closer to its original release I don't think it'd hit as hard or make you think  like is Adonis wrong here? Their methods of showing the wrongs and killing those people isn't right but  what they say regarding the issues the game tackles is one for discussion. What's interesting is that this  game makes you question your own morals like who is really right here and which side should we be  siding with? And to rank the LI overall are: Shiraishi, Yanagi, Mineo, Kei, and Takeru. Out of five stars I  give CxM a 4.5/5. This game is flawless and the reason it's not a five is how the Good vs Evil showdown was a bit of a let down. This game is easily recommendable to anyone of any gender since there's  something about it that can draw anyone’s interests. The romance is low key and you kind of forget it's an Otome because of its level of crime drama aesthetics. So if you like crime dramas, strong female heroine, don't mind low key/slow burn romances, and like serious action packed, this is the game for  you! Thank you for reading this review! Maura out! 

#CollarxMaliceReview #ichika hoshino #mineo enomoto #takeru sasazuka #kei okazaki #kageyuki shiraishi #aiji yanagi

[mushiemadarame]

↳ watch & rewatch drama list

@khaotunq tagged me, my sweet sweet bestie 💖

currently (actively) watching

609 Bedtime Story - technically on pause until I manage to find both final episodes. I was impressed at first and then it kind of lost me as it went on but I gotta know how it ends.

A Boss and A Babe - I hate this show's title but I love how surprising the second episode was for me. Wasn't super excited about it at first because most of the shows I've given up on halfway were by the same director but after episode two, I'm cautiously optimistic.

A Man Who Defies The World of BL - enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would! It's not my favourite, but I'm very curious about how it'll end now.

All The Liquors - Korea?!?! What is happening!!! I love how different this is so far, can't wait to see where it goes.

Bed Friend - this one came out of left field. I was NOT expecting it to go the places it's been going but I am not complaining, holy shit!

Chains of Heart - I understand nothing, I never know what's going on, I absolutely love it. I want it to stick the landing so bad.

Jack o'Frost - I love amnesia storylines, what can I say. Also it's intriguing so far.

Love Syndrome - Jesus Christ. Jesus Fucking Christ. I love garbage.

Midnight Museum - been LOOOOVING the early 2000s supernatural teen show vibes. Gun Atthaphan is always a win as far as I'm concerned and I'm doubly here for the queer vibes.

Once Again - also technically on pause. I took a break halfway 'cause I found out it doesn't have a super happy ending. Will finish it eventually.

Our Dating Sim - AAAAAHH!!!! just AAAAAAAAAAAAAHH! South Korean BLs have burned me so often right at the end, but I wanna believe in this one 'cause the mutual thing going on with neither (or more likely just one) of them not knowing has captivated me.

Past-Senger - too early to comment on quality, but I do love the premise! Let's hope it doesn't crash and burn.

The End of The World With You - why do I keep getting surprised by Japan putting out banger after banger is a mystery. I've been bracing for the emotional devastation of the finale for like five episodes. Can't wait to sob!

The Promise - this show inspires so much faith in me. I wanna believe in it, I wanna give it a million chances, and it hasn't disappointed me this far even though it hasn't been special either.

Tin Tem Jai - I don't want to be rude about it but this is bad. I don't know why I'm still watching.

As you can see, I'm watching an embarrassing amount of BLs at any given time.

rewatching

Love Mechanics

Not Me

Theory of Love

I don't really do rewatches but these three I'm always kind of in the middle of rewatching. And also,

KinnPorsche - I started a rewatch recently and I'm very very slowly working through it.

looking forward to

A Shoulder to Cry On - I saved this ages ago, I don't remember why but I'm excited all the same!

Cherry Magic (Thai version) - the one TayNew show I've seen I hated but somehow I'm unbelievably attached to them so this is exciting to me. Plus, I actually think Thailand could elevate this story which, for me, as far as the show is concerned, wasn't great.

Cooking Crush - I cried when they announced this 'cause I thought I'd missed my window to watch a new OffGun show as it aired. OFFGUN! OFFGUN! OFFGUN!

Last Twilight - I thought Vice Versa was a waste of the JimmySea chemistry, but I wanna believe in this one.

Laws of Attraction - I couldn't get through TSWL because it was too soap opera-y for me, but I heard wonderful things and this immediately caught my eye when I saw JamFilm would be working together again!

Middleman's Love - I was infinitely more excited when it was a Mii2 show but Yim has impressed me so much so far in Bed Friend that I'm looking forward to it again!

Only Friends - do I even need to say anything?? I think this is my most anticipated one this year, yes probably even more than Wuju Bakery.

Our Dining Table - I loved the manga this is adapted from so I'm excited.

Transplant - I believe this will come out eventually. I will believe it 'till my dying day.

Why R U - I loved the Thai version so I'm really curious about what Korea will do with it!

Wuju Bakery - the premise is so ridiculous to me but JeffCode so grhgarhagraghrahgarhgraghgrahgrah

TAGGING: @jeronnamo, @poisoneevie, @dirtygermi, @notme-rainbowfart, @nattawinlove :)

#tag meme #the blogger #friends tag

[mechanicalinertia]

Bubblegum Black: For A World Without Gold - Chapter 3 & Author's commentary

This is the longest chapter I've written for this fic, despite it being mostly characters talking to one another. 11k words of this shit, man. That's either great or terrible, depending on who you ask. Anyway, here we go!

Doctor Hartland: Relatively obscure character, the guy who provided Roberta with her murder-meds during the Blood Trail / El Baile De Muerte IIRC. He, like many such characters Cyberpunk 2020 would call 'ripperdocs', is what I assume is the front line of medicine in a city like Roanapur. I imagine a city where hospitals are either for syndicate soldiers or extremely rich people, and everyone else can rely on doctors who import or print any medicine they can get their hands on. Presumably 'Traditional Chinese Medicine' is pretty popular, too (did you know that the Chinese government, at least in Hong Kong, prescribed traditional remedies for COVID awhile ago? It did not, of course, help, but it was an alternative to Decadent Western Pig-Dog Medicine I guess. Eugh.)

Revy's Custom Ammo: Delayed-fuse HESH rounds, truly terrible fleshripping monstrosities, are actually something I got from Masamune Shirow's work. You know how in the original manga and in the 1995 movie, Motoko goes "Oh, is that so", shoots up the one guy, and then it takes a second before his cyborg body is blown to bits? That's the effect I'm going for. The tungsten tip is to penetrate body armor and dig into a target's vitals, although that doesn't work 100% of the time with heavier armor. Still, even if there's no penetration, damage can still be done. HESH rounds were originally designed to kill a tank crew through spalling, hitting the armor with shockwaves such that slivers of metal inside the tank would break off and kill the crew. This is something one can easily mitigate with composite armor and a Kevlar inner lining in the tank, but to translate that back to body armor is probably a little more difficult. One can imagine shockwaves and slivers of armor lining pulverizing human or light Boomer innards even without penetration.

Seburo M-057: A completely fictional Seburo handgun. For those readers who don't slobber over Shirow's non-porn work the way I do, Seburo is a Japanese gun company built up after around World War Three (in the 1990's in Shirow's timeline). Apparently it might also be a subsidiary company of Poseidon Industrial, the megacorp that becomes the entirety of Japan by the time Appleseed rolls around. Either way, it's a famous Japanese arms company, which makes one wonder: Are handguns legal in Japan in Shirow's world, where they are not in ours? For the sake of lore, let's say that Japan allows organizations like GENOM to possess and manufacture weapons for security purposes, but not individuals. Remember how in BGC2032 there was that whole subplot about how military-grade Boomers in Japan were technically illegal and ideally should only be manufactured offshore? And GENOM just ignored that law for the most part? Well, fuck that game. In the 2060's GENOM happily supplies the JSDF with whatever Boomers they want, the better to defend against China. Anyway, yeah, the M-057 is a caseless pistol, ammo stored in the gun's handle like normal, but a whole lot more of it, we're talking 18+1 per magazine. In the 2060's, caseless weapons are juuuust starting to make a comeback as a concept, aided by new chemical configurations with higher ignition temperatures and better structural integrity. Revy's handguns are the equivalent of a high-performance electric car compared to everyone else's Toyota Corollas, is probably the best way to think about it.

Second-Highest Boomer Per Capita City: First is Anchorpoint.

Lightning Hawk: A silly Resident Evil reference.

The Master: Okay, this is going to take some explaining. Or at least a picture:

Yeah, okay, you see that gun Priss has? Sure looks like a laser magnum to me, doesn't it? And, hey, look closer, that's definitely its name on the side alongside the name of the sight! So, since no one has never done anything with this information, I have decided to do it my goddamn self. Now, as I've said before in the Hardsuit Tech document, laser weapons are actually pretty viable so long as you dial down the pulse train to femtoseconds and thereby jack up the pulsed power to the gigawatt or terawatt range. I do not know what the effective overall damage of a tactical-vehicle mounted terawatt laser would be, so in the end I settled on measuring the gun’s stopping power in joules, easy enough to compare to ballistic weapons. For the record, that max power level, 5KJ, is more stopping power than even 7.62 NATO. Which might be overkill even for futuristic high-density capacitors, but what the hell.

Chiborgs: Abbreviation of Chinaborgs. In this particular iteration of the future, following World War Three between the US and China's respective power blocs (and all the ruination that has brought upon the earth), Cold War 2 has been going on ever since neither side could claim absolute victory due to climate change-induced mass crop failures starving their armies out. So GENOM has one big rival in the 'Sinobloc': The China World Prosperity Corporation, a conglomerate of old State Owned Enterprises that privatized themselves following the war, rolled themselves up into a separate power structure, about as independent from the CCP as one can get, and resumed Chinese imperial efforts in the old Belt and Road bloc. But - but but but - they've never quite managed to emulate the entirety of Boomer technology. Oh sure, they've got robots, but Boomers are biomimicry nanotech down to the cellular level, a common platform for alternative life. WPC doesn't have that, so they've aligned with the turbo-Leninists in the Party, arguing that GENOM's Boomers alienate the proletariat from their labor on a societally toxic scale, and simply continued the use of prosthetics and augmentations coupled with inferior robotics to an absurd degree. A Chiborg, then, is a WPC-produced set of augmentations designed for relatively specialized labor, turning a human into a near-machine relying on constant maintenance and subject to constant surveillance. It’s not like these ‘shells’ are expensive, or cheap but low-quality. The WPC is more than happy to sell, as per Party directives, at an ever-so-slight-loss even in economically turbulent times. The insidious part, besides the addiction to maintenance and the monitoring of every micro-movement the brain orders the body to make, is who ends up with these things permanently grafted into themselves. Migrant workers in the bottom tier of the hukou system; ethnic minorities treated as culturally and mentally inferior to the Han majority; Taiwanese or Koreans or North Viet treated as near-slaves, the ‘curse’ of their WW3-era resistance against the benevolence of True Socialist Xi Jinping Thought with Chinese Characteristics For The Eternal Bright Future having marked entire families with generations of debt only payable by concentration camp labor. Voluntary, of course, but, y’know, not really.

Mycoplastic Packaging: Fungus-derived materials that have replaced most petrochemical-based plastics by 2060. In the case of easily-biodegradable packaging like what the Master comes in, it's more akin to a sort of micromesh made from hymenophore tubes. Check out this Vice article about more high-performance materials that fungi could help make. It's not really the same principle, but I imagine it's... plausible, to grow the right materials with some funky bioengineering.

Singto Phumici: Proud Lion in Thai. Note how some districts have English names and others have Thai. You could, I imagine, track the economic bracket of a given district, or perhaps who it relies on for authority, by the language used in a name. Might throw a Cantonese name or two in there later. We'll see.

Sawyer's Bloody Business: Yes, most of the meat in the 2060's is lab-cultured tissue or an imitation thereof, 3D printed into a meal. And yes, Sawyer feeds human corpses to flesh-eating bacteria which are supposed to build up a nice big blob of biomass that can then be fed to meat cultures. One meat becomes another, just with more extra steps and less maintenance than feeding human remains to pigs as one might do in the old days. You know, they've managed to print lab-grown Wagyu. How much longer before Mickey-D's is marketing luxury synthmeats in its products? I wonder.

Sawyer In General: The idea of Sawyer being an obsessive Priss fangirl has been a fairly crucial part of this crossover ever since I started thinking about it in early April. Perhaps it runs against her canon characterization as a stone-cold killer in Gore Gore Girl, but all we have to go off of for G3 so far is chapter summaries on the wiki, and it strikes me as a somewhat sillier spinoff than mainline Lagoon. Which is fine, but then what the hell, I have license to fuck around with what we're given in terms of Sawyer, because It Is Fanfiction. I guess I find her at once intimidating but kind of pathetic? I mean, those scars on her arms definitely aren't something someone else did to her, if Hiroe's claim that she was based of a friend with depression is to be believed. Without spoiling anything, suffice to say that in earlier drafts of this chapter Sawyer was even more of a mentally unwell gore fiend than she is here. My beta took issue with it, said that there was no way that what I want to do with the character in the long run made sense if she was like that. And you know what, he was right. We haven't seen the last of the Gore Gore Girl, not by a long shot. I didn't write that scene to set a big ol' nothingburger up. You'll see.

Priss vs. Revy: Okay, could Priss actually beat Revy in a shootout, even by one point or whatever? Hard to say. Priss's skill as a marksman is more up in the air just because we've seen less of her overall, and less emphasis is placed on her ability to shoot well. But I think that she's got some skill, at least, from her time as a bosozoku and from having to make crucial railgun shots as a Saber. Also... she kind of cheated. A little. Not a lot, but enough to win. Those who have read Anatomy of a Lovedoll, or remember a little side bit from Chapter 2, will recognize how.

Fediverse: Mastodon is the most famous of these platforms, but the fediverse is more than just 'the open-source Twitter replacement', it's more... federated networks are disconnected communications networks that can still talk to each other over a common platform, so the idea behind the fediverse is a galaxy of 'instances', small servers run by a person or organization that can all share common accounts with differing rules of operation and moderators and stuff. No one company owns the protocols used, and so it's a lot more of a wild west - plenty of people who were kicked off Twitter for good reason (Nazis) have taken root on fedi instances - but the idea in mentioning fediverse-like platforms in the noosphere of the future is that they're sort of the alt-internet, the cyberpunk-y version of the internet that has otherwise been carved up by big platforms and those Everything Apps I was talking about in the Chapter 2 notes (even more prescient now that Twitter-cum-X is being set up by Elon to be Explicitly That). Forums that run the gamut from respectable to shady; software and 3D printing libraries of varying quality and trustworthiness; piracy and crime and all the corrosive forces that eat away at the respectable foundations of the Noose - these are the kind of networks Benny and Jane love to hang out on. In other words, the only ways to use the internet of the future are Facebook, Amazon, and 4chan. God, don't you miss the days of nonplatformed webpages? Let's bring Geocities back, guys. Let's do that to save the internet.

Tewwowizm: Are the Knight Sabers terrorists? In the eyes of many, they probably are, a menace against the prosperous GENOM-lead global order that... you get the idea. The hope is that enough people can recognize that the Sabers mostly kill GENOM execs and blow up GENOM assets like industrial facilities and Boomers, and avoid killing innocents for the most part. To make them superheroes and not supervillains in the eyes of the body public. This was something I wanted to play around with in this conversation as it organically unfolded. At least, I think I did. This conversation textually pulling double-duty as a way to lead Eda off the trail of the Sabers working with the Lagoon Company and also letting Dutch get all weird and philosophical... I'm happy with it, but it's weird all the same. Either way, it does get to the desired outcome, highlighting how easy it is to needle Rock now after... well, have you Lagoon manga readers figured out who died yet? Yeah, I bet you have.

Eda's Pet Naming: Not in the manga, but I think it's funny and kind of mean-spirited on Eda's part, so in it goes. Okay, what else to put in here...

What I'm Stealing From: You may have noticed, dear reader, that I'm writing a lot of Rock. Hell, the next chapter is mostly his perspective again. This is probably not a good thing, because even if I find him super interesting as a character, most people are probably here for the girls, not him. Too much Rock, too much of the Lagoon cast in general and the Sabers risk being only bit players in a larger drama, which they should not be. So that's a balancing act I haven't quite gotten the hang of. Anyway, there's one Lagoon fic I want to bring up real quickly that has had a major impact on how I think about the franchise. It's called Apotheosis, which is, in my opinion, perfect in every conceivable way. While it lacks the balls-to-the-wall super-action of Lagoon as we know it, it makes up for that by having really interesting prose, heartfelt character development, firm grounding in late 90's history, and really getting inside Rock's head, both his best impulses and his worst ones. It almost made me cry at the end, and the only reason I haven't reread it extensively is because I'm afraid I'll either succumb to Fic Envy and start kicking myself, or I'll just rip off chunks of characterization and plot wholesale. Which is kind of what I'm doing now to navigate the Lagoon cast as people, but to a lesser degree. The Sabers have to provide a catalyst, a reactant, stuff like that - that means the plot can't be the same thing beat-for-beat. It better not be. Are there other fics that have made me think about this franchise deeply? Yep. Sure are. But I don't think any are going to be as radically influential on this fic as Apotheosis. We'll see. I have high hopes for this project.

Anyway, rough draft of Chapter 4 is already done, it just has to get edited but it's pretty short. Next time, a deal will be made that will change the way you think about Roanapur forever...

#bubblegum crisis #fanfiction #black lagoon

[anti-katsuki-lounge]

Unless Quirk status is shown on any form of identification, in which case, the only reason why it would help is for medical purposes to prevent accidentally harming/killing the patient, I don't see that there isn't clarification between a Quirkless person and a non-mutation Quirk person out in public due to (Japanese) Quirk laws practically forbidden public Quirk usage from non-hero. Realistically speaking, in the adult world, there isn't any noticeable Quirk usage especially since the Japanese government and HPSC want to have a passive population, which cause a lot of the problems in MHA. Other countries likely have different laws since Japan is an island with a mountain of issues while a country like the USA may based their Quirk laws on gun laws.

There isn't any proof if there is discrimination to prevent the service for Quirkless people because we have proof in the post-Overhaul arc that Izuku, who has the Quirkless toe joint(whether of his parentage and whether if this fact is true or not), gets a full examination and the doctor doesn't note of anything unusual. There also isn't any statement by Izuku nor Inko if they have to "pay the Quirkless tax" in the form of increase prices of goods, which is legitimate discrimination.

Medically speaking, I would think that a Quirkless person would be a universal donor due to lacking traits that makes it easier to adapt to other Quirks. Hospitals would go out of their way to help out a Quirkless person given their rarity and usefulness. There's probably value in a Quirkless person, but then this would lead to eugenics.

The only form of Quirkless Discrimination comes in the form of school, especially form young children because they don't know any better and they will bully the kid who doesn't have a power. Depending on the school, they'll likely passively encourage discrimination on the students but still act like a normal school *cough* Aldera *cough*.

You know, now that you mention it, we never see any form of quirkless discrimination outside of Izuku. Melissa claims that on I-Island she’s never felt the discrimination against the quirkless and All Might never mentions if he faced any form of discrimination either. It’s something that Hori never really delves into, so outside of us knowing that kids bully each other based on quirks, we have no idea how the adult world treats the quirkless, whereas we know that mutants are still discriminated against due to their appearances and quirks. I blame Hori’s lack of world building for this.

#mha critical