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arminsumi · 6 months

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I WANT TO KISS YOU [3]

GOJO さとる + fem!reader

You and Satoru falling in love despite a language barrier.

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CHAPTER INDEX

Summary : you've come to visit Japan to meet these two boys you met online. Though Satoru can't speak English and you can't speak Japanese, the two of you still fall in love. Very cute. Very cheesy. Oh no... wait is there a tension between you and his best friend, too? Oh boy...

Taglist : @miwanilla / @sukunasdirtylaugh / @coco-cat / @babydiamondblog / @mp3playerblog / @froufrousnowman / @lovesickramblingsofmine / @arminswifee / @instantmusico

Visit : INBOX / LIBARY / JJK / GOJO / GOJO FAVES

You, Suguru and Satoru were stood in the shade of a flowering tree near a vending machine, getting drinks after a long hour of exploring Tokyo.

Since Satoru was tall enough to reach, he stretched his arm up and pulled down a flower from the tree overhead.

Then he turned to you.

「お花だ。」 he said softly, 「綺麗じゃないですか？」 Ohanada. Kirei jyanai desu ka? (Flowers. Aren't they beautiful?)

You listened and tried your best to understand the whole meaning of what Satoru just said.

When he saw your unsure look, he said it all again but slower and better pronounced.

Your eyes lit up with excitement as soon as you understood what he said.

It was a small moment in which you and Satoru felt triumphant over the language barrier between each other.

「はい、綺麗です。」 you replied with confidence. Hai, kireidesu (yes, it's beautiful)

Satoru tried to speak a little more, to test how far you could understand him. His heart was beating harder.

「この花。。。それはあなたのためです。」 Kono Hana... Sore wa anata no tamedesu.

"Huh?"

Suguru started laughing after seeing your expression to this — it felt like such a complicated sentence to you — but Satoru thought it was simple enough for you to piece together.

Suguru was about to translate for you but Satoru waved his hands to say no — don't translate.

「いやいや、できるよ！」 Satoru interrupted. Iyaiya, dekiruyo! (No no, I can do it!)

Suguru laughed and nodded, "Okay." he said and gave you a vending machine soda then opened his own grape soda.

"Flower... for you." Satoru said to you.

Your lips stretched into a smile.

"Thank you, Satoru."

His heart throbbed because of the way you said his name.

He gave you a gentle look as you took the flower. The small skin-to-skin contact between your hands felt electric.

Satoru looked at the flower as you twirled it in-between your fingertips.

なんて面白い。彼女の美しさはこの花の美しさを鈍らせた。 How interesting. Her beauty dulled the beauty of this flower.

He nudged his best friend.

("Hey Suguru, it's definitely pronounced like "Flower", right?")

("Flour...?")

("Flower...?")

"Suguru, are you messing with him?"

"Yes, I am."

("Well, did I pronounce it correctly or not?")

Suguru gave him an assuring nod. Satoru seemed a little proud of himself now.

"Niiice." he said.

You gave him a cute thumbs up. He gave you a cute thumbs up back.

"You two are the cutest..." Suguru smiled softly at the exchange between you and Satoru. "I won't translate this for him, act like I'm saying something boring. But I wanted to tell you that he's been wanting to ask you out to an aquarium date — but he's too worried that you won't feel safe with him, since you can't rely on him to translate anything into English."

"Aw... that would be okay, though. I don't understand why he would be worried. We can use our phones like how we do anyways to translate stuff."

"Yeah, exactly. When I say "worried" I actually mean he's insecure. He told me he doesn't like it when — (私たちは政治について話しています) — "

He quickly said something to Satoru because the poor boy was starting to look back and forth between you and Suguru confusedly as the two of you talked more and more.

彼女とそんな風に話せたらいいのに。言いたいことはたくさんあるけど、言葉が通じないからこそ、僕らの愛は特別なものになるのかもしれない。 I wish I could talk to her like that. There are so many things I want to say, but maybe our love is special because we can't communicate in words.

" — sorry — wait, what was I saying?" Suguru returned his attention to you.

"Haha, you already forgot?"

"Yeah. Damn... what was I gonna say?"

Then Satoru asked him something, and he talked a bit with him and intermittently translated things for you.

And god, it was so attractive to listen to Suguru switch from Japanese to English for some reason. His voice changed. In English it became deeper, and in Japanese it was rumbling with sensuality.

You three took the train to somewhere.

Suguru and Satoru had been on either of your sides, the one acting as a translator and the other acting as a puppy — oh Satoru was just thoroughly obsessed with you.

彼女は天使のようだ。 She's like an angel.

("Suguru, how do I say... that I think she's like an angel?")

("Oh wow, that's quite something to say. Should I say it for you?")

("No, I can say it to her myself...")

So Suguru teaches him; "You're angelic."

And Satoru turns to you and says; "You're angelic."

Satoru looks at you, you look at him and gently raise your brows. He feels his heart start to pang fiercely in his chest and he giggles to cope with his overwhelming feelings.

"You too, Satoru."

"Thanks..." and then he said your name so gently, it made you fall a little bit more in love with him.

You three went for lunch somewhere after a lengthy walk.

Suguru ordered something spicy and offered for you to try it.

"Careful; it's spicy." Suguru told you caringly.

Satoru felt a lighthearted pang of jealousy, and acted on it;

"Hey!" he makes a barrier between you and Suguru, "No way."

"What's the matter?" you asked, thinking that Satoru maybe didn't want you to eat spicy food for some reason.

"No flirting."

"OH MY GOD! SATORU! WE WEREN'T — ughjndbs. We weren't flirting!" Suguru became completely flustered and hid his reddened face.

His overreaction showed that he felt like he'd been caught... uh, flirting. It was funny. Then Satoru made you two laugh even harder because he offered you a bite of his food a few minutes later.

("We weren't flirting...")

("Yes, I know. I was kidding, dude. Kidding.")

("You're so embarrassing, Satoru.")

("But you love me, right?")

("Nope.")

("Ah come on! Well it's fine — if you don't love me, she will love me.")

He turned to you and batted his lashes. Everything he was doing was making you and Suguru laugh.

"Love me?" he said cutely.

"Yes, I love you." you responded.

His heart throbbed.

私を愛して。

私につかまって。

キスして。。。

ああ、キスしてください。

You wondered what Satoru was thinking when he looked at you dreamily.

You three were on the train ride home after a long day spent exploring Tokyo.

Satoru sighed and slid down tiredly in his seat, arms folded over his chest like he was getting ready to take a nap. He glanced over at you in his peripherals, and his heart fluttered.

彼女の肩の上で寝たいです。 I want to sleep on her shoulder.

He brought out his phone and typed into the translator, then nudged for you to read it.

JPN : あなたの上で寝てもいいですか？ Anata no ue de nete mo īdesu ka?

ENG : Can I sleep on you?

You went through Japanese responses in your head, but then decided that a simple nod and encouraging pat on your shoulder sufficed.

So with your permission, he shyly rested his temple on the edge of your shoulder.

天国とはこういうものに違いない。 This is what heaven must be like.

He felt soft and drowsy.

You and Suguru talked in quieter voices so that Satoru could doze off, but then the two of you stopped talking altogether and instead adoringly watched him fall asleep.

His lips were a bit parted as he slept gently on your shoulder. You noticed a teeth mark on his lower lip.

"He must have a habit of biting his lip." you remarked.

"Yes, he does." Suguru confirmed, "It's a nervous habit, he's done it since middle school. I remember he said he bit his lip raw once when he was outside the principle's office after he got in trouble for getting into a fist fight with another kid — "

"He got into a fist fight with another kid when he was little?"

"Yeah. To be fair, though, the other kid started it because he said Satoru looked sickly." Suguru said.

"What!" you exclaimed.

"Yeah, middle school was ruthless. A lot of kids in our class didn't like how Satoru looked. Someone spread a rumor that his hair and eyes meant he was sick, and so if they got close they'd also get sick. So besides me and Shoko, no one really approached or befriended him."

"Jeez! I want to go back in time and also get into a fist fight with those middle schoolers now... teach 'em a lesson about spreading stupid rumors..."

"Haha... don't worry, he and I got into more than plenty fist fights to make up for it. Though, I was usually the one prying Satoru off of some other kid — they didn't stand a chance against him." Suguru laughed reminiscently.

"Oh, was he strong even as a kid?" you asked.

Suguru nodded and looked at Satoru, "Yeah... he's always been the strongest person I've known. But he's still got weak points."

"What weak points?" you asked.

"You, for one." Suguru replied, "... and sweets."

"I'm his weak spot? Ahah... well now you've made my face all hot." you chuckled embarrassedly while feeling your cheeks.

"Have I?" Suguru tilted his head.

His voice got deeper.

Suguru felt up your cheeks to test — and surely enough, they felt hot under his cool touch. You shared an electric moment with him.

「ああ、お姫様のほっぺは本当に温かいですね。」 he said.

"Huh? What does that mean? What did you say?" you asked.

"... I just said your cheeks are indeed very warm." he lied.

"Oh..." you take in a breath and stare at him, "Hey, Suguru..."

"... yeah?" he replies a little breathlessly, trying to close the proximity between you and him.

"... uh, I think we missed our stop..."

"Oh...? Oh — shit, yeah we did. Well, let's wake up the polar bear..."

So Suguru woke up Satoru.

「さとる？私たちは電車の停留所に乗り遅れた。」

「ああ、くそ。」 Satoru replied sleepily.

His head lifted from your shoulder, yawned and stretched and made noises like a cat, and then brought his phone out to type into the translator.

JPN : あなたの夢を見ました。

ENG : I dreamed of you.

You replied.

ENG : I hope it was a good dream.

JPN : 良い夢だったらいいのですが。

Satoru smiled sleepily at you. His eyes were puffy and lidded.

JPN : 夢の中で私たちは猫でした。

ENG : In the dream we were cats.

You let out a laugh as soon as you read the translation.

Suguru was checking train schedules, and said to you then to Satoru that the next train home was in an hour.

"Well, how are we going to spend the hour? Loitering around the station?" you asked.

"No way; spending an hour loitering around the station would be a bore and a shame. Let's go somewhere nice." Suguru said.

So you three disembarked the train and navigated through the station.

Satoru was giggling while desperately trying to communicate with you using his eyes and body language, as well as broken English. Each time you responded with a confused smile or "what?", he giggled harder.

Then once you surfaced from the metro steps you took a moment to look around at your environment in wonder.

"The feeling here is different." you commented. "It feels calmer."

"Yeah, you're right it is. Where we've been exploring all day was very busy." Suguru nodded, then promptly translated what you said for Satoru, then Satoru also nodded in agreement.

"Satoru and I haven't been around these parts, so we don't know any places to go."

You took a deep inhale and caught a whiff of a good aroma.

"Well, how about we go wherever that delicious smell is coming from?" you suggested.

The aroma that you smelled lured the three of you into a restaurant nearby.

When you sat down, Satoru pulled out your chair for you.

The atmosphere was warm and homely. Soft gold glows of lanterns lined under the outside roof of the restaurant.

You were sat outside in the cool night air.

Satoru apparently made a snobbish complaint about the dessert when it came.

"Satoru's a fussy princess about desserts." Suguru told you, "If they're not sweet enough he thinks they're bad."

Satoru interrupted and urged the two of you two look under the table.

「おい、見て見て！猫。」 he said. Oi, mitte mitte! Neko. (Hey, look look! A cat)

He petted the cat, meanwhile Suguru didn't even bother.

"Minto may not like you, but maybe stray cats do." you said.

"It's probably not a stray. It looks healthy, the restaurant owner probably takes care of it. Anyways..." he raised his hand to remind you of how Minto scratched him recently, "I won't risk getting another cat scratch, I'm not carrying any bandaids or antiseptic."

"Cutie..." Satoru was talking to the cat. It seemed to really like him, but then a clattering noise of dishes from inside the restaurant scared it off.

"Don't go!" Satoru whined, then grumbled something in Japanese that made Suguru laugh.

"Aw, Satoru did you just get heartbroken by a cat..." You laughed.

Satoru looked at you as soon as you said his name.

He had been half stretching off his chair to pet the cat.

His hair flopped when he turned his head at this odd angle, looking cat-like himself.

He winked at you.

You giggled flirtatiously back.

"Wow, this tension..." Suguru looked between you two. "It's just eating me up."

"Haha, shut up..."

"You two need to kiss."

「キス？」 Satoru perked his ears up.

"Yeah, kiss." Suguru said.

"Kisu, or Kisshu, from Tokyo Mew Mew?" you joked.

"Huh?" Satoru looked at you.

"Huh?" you looked at Satoru.

"Quiche? Kisshu? Kisu?" Suguru looked at Satoru.

"What??" Satoru looked confused.

The three of you started laughing, not sure what anyone was saying anymore. But anything you did say seemed absolutely hilarious. Maybe you were just high on each other.

After food, the three of you went exploring again, and got lost in each other's company.

Whenever Satoru looked at you, his eyes glittered with wonder. He looked so in love, so enraptured with you, that no one else in the world seemed to exist anymore to him except for you.

You were becoming his everything.

The three of you debated an interesting topic while getting lost in Tokyo; what is love?

Satoru was grumbling and making frustrated noises because he didn't know how to tell you what he thought in English, and he also didn't want Suguru to translate too much because he thought it might be overwhelming for him.

He got a little jealous when you and Suguru understood each other perfectly and seemed to reach a conclusion.

But actually, Suguru was saying something different to what Satoru thought.

"I think the two of you have the purest kind of love. Neither of you say almost anything to each other, instead you just feel love. Which is what you're supposed to do — love is not meant to be declared with words, only felt with hearts."

"Wow... Suguru, you're pretty poetic. But yes, I agree. Wordless love is very pure. Then again... it would be nice to understand each other, you know?" you said.

Suguru shrugged in response, "Enjoy it for what it is now. You'll understand each other one day anyways."

"Love is..." Satoru interjected, thinking hard.

You and Suguru looked at him expectantly.

He'd been preparing himself while you and Satoru had been talking.

"... love is small stuff." he said. "You know?"

"Love is... in small things?" You tilted your head at him, "I like that."

"Mhm. Small things... you know... like... uhhh... like... flowers." he said, and made the giving motion — from his heart to you, "Flowers, you know?"

"Yes, flower giving is a love language." you smiled, recalling the flower that he gave you. You'd pressed it into your Japanese pocket phrasebook to preserve it.

Suguru translated what you ha said to Satoru, and then the latter boy nodded and started blushing.

でも、桜の木全体では、私がどれだけあなたを愛しているかを表現することはできません。 But a whole cherry tree can't express how much I love you.

I do not permit the copying/reposting/translation/plagiarism of my works. Do not steal what I've worked hard to create.

This is fictional work.

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gofancyninjaworld · 10 days

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Disentangling One-Punch Man (please reblog/make additions)

If you follow One-Punch Man religiously and keep up with all the twists and turns of its making, this post will feel like old hat. Please pass on the message anyway.

If One-Punch Man (hereafter OPM) is something you watch when there's a season out or read when there's a volume out, what I'm saying may seem rather odd. Pass on the message anyway.

This is for you, the person who likes OPM well enough but isn't a fanatic, especially if you only check it out every few weeks. You may find yourself at sea frequently. Don't worry, you won't be long.

In brief:

One-Punch Man is a webcomic that is serialised on Young Jump. If you can read Japanese, it is 100% free, legally. It is periodically collected and sold in volumes, which also form the basis of the anime.

It is also a passion project for ONE and Yusuke Murata. Every author and writer has things they would like to change, and if they have second thoughts about the way the story flows, they change the online version. Which can be hard to keep up with: many fan archives have a lot of trouble. To make it worse, the ShonenJump app does not change the chapters when they're updated, meaning that successive chapters can feel VERY discordant.

So, where can you go?

Up-to-date fan archive: https://cubari.moe/read/gist/OPM/

Fan archive of redacted chapters: https://cubari.moe/read/gist/Z2lzdC9mdW5reWhpcHBvL2RkMTlkNjU3NjhjOGJlMTk3MTFmZTllMjAwNDVkOGY1L3Jhdy9vcG0tc2NyYXBwZWQuanNvbg/

Site with up-to-date published (i.e., finalised) chapters: https://mangasee123.com/manga/Onepunch-Man The published chapters are labeled 'Punch XXX'.

If you read Japanese, then Tonarinoyj.jp has the current chapters here: https://tonarinoyj.jp/episode/13932016480028985383 and the superseded chapters here: https://tonarinoyj.jp/episode/13932016480029130874

Use these and you'll never be lost. :)

What if you prefer another language? I don't know: please, if anyone has links to updated archives in languages other than English or Japanese, please add to this post in reblogs.

Let's help each other out.

#OPM #one punch man #one-punch man #manga #archives #fan resources #reference #please reblog #I don't want this to end with my mutuals: consider the people who like OPM and just want to catch up sometimes without getting a headache #additions welcome

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vashtijoy · 30 days

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Hiiii!

I don't remember if people asked you this hut I suddenly got curious

Is "Don't troll me online" an ACTUAL quote in Japanese?

Hi! Not only is it a thing, but he says more than in English:

Akechi 『マナー悪いぞ明智!』とか、ネットで叩かないでくださいね? “manaa warui zo akechi!” to ka, netto de tatakanaide kudasai ne? Please don't troll me online for this interruption, okay? Don't troll me online with things like "You're so rude, Akechi!", okay?

manaa warui zo—literally, "you have bad manners". tataku is a verb meaning to hit or strike. But it also corresponds to what we call trolling or (so very long ago) flaming on the Internet—telling people what you think, usually of them, in the most unvarnished terms.

It's pretty clear that Akechi doesn't enjoy it when his fans turn on him. He has a similar line on 11/23, in his post-interrogation room TV interview, better known for "the same strategy used in romance":

Akechi 実際、ネットとかですごい叩かれましたし。 jissai, netto to ka de sugoi tatakaremashita shi I mean, people often lashed out at me online and whatnot. In fact, I had to deal with so much trolling online and so on.

It's almost the same wording, except this time it's passive—netto de tatakaremashita. Essentially, in context, "They were trolling me all the time, and it sucked, I hated it."

There's also the week of 8/28 and 9/3, of course, when Akechi shows up at Leblanc not once but twice, having finally found somewhere people won't attack him:

And Futaba has a similar usage about a month later, at the start of the Okumura's Palace mission, in one of its missable chats:

Futaba 叩かれまくって逃走 tatakaremakutte tousou He's in hiding now that everyone turned against him. He's on the run from all the nonstop trolling.

This is another example of a line that loses its impact in translation; Futaba is not Jane Austen! Literally, she's saying "he's in flight from being tataku'd nonstop with reckless abandon"—the -makuru verb ending there. The public from mid-August onwards really don't like Akechi.

In short, tataku crops up extremely often, sometimes for physical violence (Makoto's "Do you want to be smacked?"), but more usually when people are being criticised or attacked online.

revision history

Click here for the latest version.

v1.0 (2024/04/01)—first posted.

#asks #persona 5 #p5 meta #japanese language #goro akechi #futaba sakura

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shadowxamyweek · 12 days

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Is Shadow being immortal canon? I thought it was just a generally accepted headcanon by the fandom

...Yes?

The pause and questionmark are not directed at you, they are directed at Sega.

I confess, I'm a bit of a stickler for what lore I consider canon. If it's in the games, it's canon to me. If it's anything outside of the games, including the game manuals themselves... then it's not.

I have such a narrow-bracket view of the story and these characters due to two things:

1: There seems to be a disconnect between the different 'branches' of the Sonic Franchise. There's the Shadow we see in games, there's the Shadow we see in marketing and social media (like Twitter Takeover), There's the Shadow we see in IDW, and then there is the Shadow we see Sega write about in character profiles like on Sonic Chanel and the official Sonic the Hedgehog website. This exists with all the characters to a degree, but I feel Shadow presents an egregious case of it. 2: Sega has a tendency to retcon things or change their language or act like stuff didn't happen and... I don't like it XD But they can't change games that have already been published and played. As such, to me, in-game dialog/play/story/etc is the crowning jewel of truth within the Sonic story.

But that these are *my* paramaters. They do not have to be *your* parameters.

So while there hasn't been any mention of immortality *in game*, there has been plenty *outside* of it. Lots of different official Sega sources say Shadow is 'immortal', but no examples or specifications have been provided in game. There's also plenty of times the whole 'immortality' portion is omitted. Most noticeably, it's not mentioned in the Sonic Channel character profile, nor the character profile provided on the official Sonic the Hedgehog website. At best, it is mentioned intermittently in game manuals and external sources.

(And I know we see Shadow in stasis in 06- I'm aware- but I'll also point out we don't know *when* he went into stasis. Furthermore, I cannot help but wonder if, much like Black Doom in SHtH, Mephiles took a portion of truth and twisted it to scare Shadow. (Also, like.... Shadow was under such heavy security when GUN put him down for an ice nap the first time. Why would they just leave him out and about like was shown in 06? I doubt the truth of what Mephiles shows Shadow.))

I actually reached out to @squid-in-a-party-hat, @fyeahsonicthehedgehog (x), and @forgottensonicfacts (x), as well as some friends of mine like @shadamyheadcanons for help collecting information to provide you with as well-rounded answer/opinion as I can. In fact, Squid has a video on this very subject XD They do a great job of weaving together all the different types of canon (comic, anime, social media, etc) so if that's how you prefer to operate, I really, really recommend them.

Anyway, Here are some game manual examples in chronological order.

SA2 (2001):

Sonic Heros (2003):

And...I want to take a moment to show something interesting between the original Japanese and the English translation. The japanese translation says 'unaging and undying' which gives us narrower guidelines, but the Heros profile is the only time I've seen that.

Shadow the Hedgehog (2005):

Which OUT OF ALL OF THEM you'd think it would be mentioned in his title game but like... *gestures*

Sonic 06 (2006):

Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games (2020):

Then there are these online examples, stemming from both Sonic Chanel and the Sonic the Hedgehog Website. They are both officially owned and operated by Sega/Sonic Team. Note they don't mention his age or the immortality at all.

Sonic Chanel, 2007:

Sonic Chanel, 2010:

Sonic Chanel, 2022:

This is the character profile put up on the Sonic the Hedgehog website 2024, separate from Sonic Channel but still official.

(In talking to @forgottensonicfacts- I had asked about times Shadow had been called 'ageless' or '50.' Turns out the 'ageless' bit was written in a Scholastic's book and, so far as anyone has found.. there is no official mention of Shadow being listed as '50 years old.' I had been so sure it had been officially listed at one point in time. Really glad to be wrong on that one, frankly, because that would have been daft XD)

So this is what we have about Shadow's 'immortality' that has been put out by Sega themselves. Not the comics, not the media team, just Sega/Sonic Team.

Now... this is where I pick apart that word 'Immortal' and broaden the scope a bit.

Not to be 'that bastard,' but I popped on to the Oxford Dictionary just to get a concrete definition for you and they define the adjective use of the word as being, "living forever; never dying or decaying."

1- Shadow's already almost died. He *would* have died were it not for Eggman saving his sorry ass. We know this. It's a whole-ass plot point in his story because it's due to this he ends up with amnesia.

2- Even though Gerald was tinkering with immortality, that doesn't mean he succeeded. We also don't know how that immortality would look/work/act like.

3- In Sonic Battle (for Gameboy), several of the characters have a healing ability. Shadow is one of them. However, Shadow's healing ability is one of if not *the worst in the game.* Also, in the story itself, he get shot and is down for the count *for a while*.

4- We have not seen any of the characters physically change in game save for the big age up/design shift that happened when Sonic went 3d in Adventure. As such, we cannot personally test/see whether or not Shadow goes through any changes at all, be them aging or just changes to their body.

So... all in all... I feel this leaves a huge amount of room for interpretation.

Maybe Shadow isn't immortal after all. Nothing spectacular, it's just that portion of the Ultimate Life Form project didn't succeed.

Maybe the 'immortality' is his healing factor, and it needs to willfully be employed. As such, if Shadow WANTS to age, they need to intentionally and willfully allow themselves to do so by NOT employing the healing factor.

Maybe the 'immortality', being the healing factor, can wear down/slow down over time, especially due to overuse.

Maybe Shadow can live forever barring any really traumatic physical harm, but their body will physically change over time.

Maybe Shadow is immortal like how Oxford puts it, but there is a way to stop that perminantly if they so choose (like genetic therapy).

Maybe Shadow is immortal in the sense that they will never physically age, grow, or change. Ever.

Truthfully, that's pretty cool! Like, this gives people a lot of stuff to work with and play around with, compare notes, talk- that's the fun part of fandom! And no singular person is right! @shadamyheadcanons has this one that's fun. I personally like the idea that Shadow's 'immortality' wears down over time and gets weird, causing their Black Arms genetics to kick off (like a third eye ooooough gimmie gimmie gimmie.)

I don't know if this was the answer you were looking for. Perhaps I've just confused things further- I've been known to do that XD

Ultimately, what I'm trying to say is- it's whatever you want it to be, and nobody can stop you <3 So go have fun!

#shadow the hedgehog #shth #sonic #sega #anon #ask #op rambles #lore #thoughts #I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you #There's been a lot going on- but I really wanted to give you as well rounded an answer as I possibly could

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animanga-bc-tournament · 1 year

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What is animanga Before Crunchyroll

This is a period in time roughly from 2005-2014 when the world is fully post-internet and Japanese anime and manga was already fully integrated into international youth culture and readily available to people outside of Japan.

Animanga fans had access via legal offline channels such as: television, home video, libraries, and bookstores. And illegal online channels such as: Youtube, pirate streaming sites, and torrenting. It is also a period with a sudden change in our general media viewing and reading habits impacted by events and technological innovations like the 2008 financial crisis, the introduction of social media as a primary way to be online, smartphones, and the slow death of live TV

Why start this period in 2005?

This page will be primarily dedicated to the English language distribution and fandom around anime and manga. By this point in time we are well beyond the stage of “evangelizing” animanga as mediums and a canon of “must watch/read” series has already been established.

The above mentioned channels were well established and readily accessible. Depending on where you lived you had a higher chance of being able to go to the bookstore and read the latest Fruits Basket volume, go to anime conventions, watch anime on TV, or join your school’s anime club, than in say 1996. The media industry in several countries outside Japan has or will soon start investing in the distribution of translated animanga for the first time ever. The US manga bubble spearheaded by Tokyopop is also still a few years from bursting.

From this point on online fan communities dedicated to anime and manga also steadily expanded via forums, database sites, to eventually meme aggregator sites, or facebook groups around 2010. In 2005 Geocities pages dedicated to sharing information are mostly dead and platforms such as Livejournal become the new place to engage in fan activities and access unofficial translations until the site was en masse abandoned following its 2009 acquisition by SUP Media

Why end this period in 2014?

Short version: 2014 is when the Naruto manga ended a mere 2 years after the Bleach anime ended its Japanese broadcast. Marking the end of the chapter on a seemingly endless period where every week without fail you could expect not just a new chapter of the manga, but a new episode of the anime version for the mega hits Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach. Kids today will thankfully never know what it was like for years have all of these series as a constant presence in 2 mediums simultaneously. This trio was controversially called the “Big 3” by fans. I could also easily leave it to the fact that of course after 9 years fans have obviously grown up and moved on and the face of the industry itself is completely different. But was just the medium that changed? What about the way international fans interacted with it? I will now present my case on why we can use the popularity of Crunchyroll as a service to make a pre- and post- era in the way international fans consumed animanga.

When the US manga bubble burst after the 2008 financial crisis there was a massive shift in which manga was licensed. The publishers that survived the collapse had to downscale their output leading series to be cancelled or go out of print for several years. The cost of manga also went up turning translated print manga into bigger investments for consumers. Another major shift is online fan translations (scanlations) becoming more prominent and accessible, with new aggregator sites appearing one by one. Not only could you read as much manga as you wanted for free with unedited art and a translation that felt more “authentic”. The high output from the fan translators revealed not just how much manga was not being licensed; the international publishers were often really far behind and much slower than the original Japanese serial.

The popularity of scanlations has always caused obvious tension to the decisions on what US publisher would license as companies like Viz Media and Vertical inc repeatedly expressed the belief that fans would never buy a title they already read for free online. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that as the fansubbers of the 1990s proved, unpaid fan translators were and still are the most significant tastemakers and gatekeepers of Japanese media for an international audience.

This sets the stage for what i personally believe forever changed the way international fans watch anime (and in turn read manga): social media and the premiere of Kill la Kill and Attack on Titan. Prior to this the average international animanga fans experienced anime rather delayed. There is little awareness of what was actually new in Japan and to the average fan watching anime recommended in online or offline communities may have been enough. But how many official channels like TV, video rentals, and home video sales were actually available as distributors went out of business or lost their licenses how was a fan supposed to watch the series they wanted to see? And what if you didn’t even live in a country with any of these official channels? Fansubs or DVD rips uploaded to Youtube, torrenting sites, or other unauthorized streaming aggregators successfully democratized access to anime for anyone with a stable internet connection. The high output of fansubbers just like scanlators also revealed again just how far behind the official channels were. Why wait for the right to purchase something when you know you want it and can just get it for free online?

Enter Crunchyroll: the site was founded in 2006 as a for-profit media hosting site for east asian media. A lot of the media hosted was unauthorized and illegal but some distributors chose to look the other way. This was until Crunchyroll started securing more and more funding in turn letting them enter legal partnerships and distribution deals. Eventually striking gold with partnership with Studio Gonzo and the acquisition of the Naruto Shippuden anime rights. Eventually all unauthorized media was removed from the site as they built a catalogue of anime for consumers to legally stream, at a price. In parallel to this, by 2012 fansubbers could and were expected to keep up with just about every new anime airing in Japan.

Another change happened in our daily lives: smartphones became a piece of technology most people owned. And the abrupt consumer shift from live TV to streaming was right around the corner.

A gradually acquired awareness of just how far behind and slow official “legal” channels were was already completely reshaping the way the most avid fans viewed anime. So was our new phones. The smartphone wasn’t just good for watching anime while you were away from home it also made reading manga online an even easier experience. How were the official distributors supposed to compete with this?

Unfortunately most pirate streaming sites were slow to implement players that functioned on smartphones, Youtube was also not far from implementing an aggressive DMCA strike system preventing new anime uploads. A service like Crunchyroll became more and more attractive as it was available in almost any region outside of Asia. With a big catalogue of titles that put Netflix and hulu to shame and a smartphone app that worked smoothly, it didn’t seem like a bad deal for people who wanted to watch anime on their phones or other devices, not to mention the premium gave you HD quality. A luxury the illegal sites couldn’t always grant. And it offered what previously only fansubbers could: you got to see brand new episodes of subtitled anime only an hour after it aired in Japan. It’s second major selling point to younger and less financially free individuals was that free users could watch as much as they wanted as long as they sat through ads, were fine with SD quality, and being 1 week behind on brand new anime.

Socially the immediacy and size of large scale social media like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter cultivated bigger and bigger and more public communities. It became more and more commonplace to not just watch and read whatever was recommended to you but to keep up as well as finding the next cool thing before anyone else. So what channels would keep you updated on everything new? Trustworthy sources were for many still difficult to discern. More and more fans were watching new anime at the same time as Japanese viewers via illegal and legal channels, but what would it even look like if everyone watched the same show the same time as Japanese viewers?

When Attack on Titan premiered in April of 2013 we learned. Its immediate success was unprecedented and shocking. In a matter of weeks previously unprecedented changes happened within the official channels. Not only could the US industry observe how overnight every online community was discussing this new series, Crunchyroll who streamed the series from episode 1 could provide them the actual numbers proving its success. For the first time the dub specialists Funimation would offer an unsubtitled and ongoing series for sale on iTunes. Kodansha America as well had lucked out by licensing the manga over a year prior giving the US industry another rare example of how a successful anime can give a previously niche series an unprecedented boost in sales. For fansubbers and anime and manga aggregators to keep up if a hit like this was to occur again they had to somehow work faster than Crunchyroll, or just steal from them.

Attack on Titan i think was the first time such a huge group of people all at once learned and experienced how to keep up with a brand new anime and still ongoing manga. October the same year Kill la Kill, an original story and the first work by Studio Trigger directed by the already acclaimed Hiroyuki Imaishi premiered. Once again there was an unprecedented amount of attention from international fans given to a series that was still airing in Japan. This new desire to be part of a series as it was happening was not just significant to the way international fans started viewing and evaluating anime and manga but also new opportunities for the industry to make a profit by investing more and more into “simultaneous” streaming

I didn’t read all that, sorry

Fans come to expect instant access to brand new anime and manga -> Crunchyroll is the only service able to fulfill that expectation and can do it faster than a fansubber -> in 2013 an unprecedented hit opens the eyes of the industry and anime fans alike -> now discussions and trends among international fans of anime and manga is more than ever centered around what’s “new”, a huge shift from when awareness around “newness” was vague or less relevant to how international fans interacted with animanga

How will you qualify an anime or manga as B.C. (Before Crunchyroll)

This blog and its polls will be primarily centered on the offline and online English speaking fan communities. English Second Language speakers are included in this.

Any survey will include works that received translations (official as well as unofficial) into the English language. And with consideration of these criteria

If anime: did it air on TV in the US, Canada, UK, or Australia? If so when and through which channels. Because the aforementioned delays in distribution this will matter more than when it first aired in Japan. I will continue to make 2005 my start point but exceptions might be made for series that were in some way rereleased or put in long term syndication. 2014 is the end point because of the above mentioned changes in how a lot of us watched anime was completely changed by this point in time.

Did it receive a fansub? When and by which group(s)? Identifying the groups also allows us to map out who were the tastemakers and what they wanted to make accessible to other fans. This is very key for anime that sustained popularity despite not being accessible through official channels for extended periods in the years 2005-2014. Also if you don’t live in the countries listed above it was most likely the only way you watched anime.

How often did it appear in “Anime is life” collages? (VERY IMPORTANT DATA!! how else are we supposed to quantify its cultural impact)

If manga: was it licensed by a US publisher? If so when and by who? This also matters more than when it was serialized in Japan. Viz Media’s Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump, and Tokyopop’s catalogue are very defining of the first half of this era and shaped our manga starter pack years after they stopped existing.

Did it receive a scanlation? When and which group(s)? Once again key to identifying the true tastemakers starting around 2010. Scanlations were not just key in bringing fans brand new manga hot off the Japanese presses faster than a US publisher could, but was very important in making manga that were neglected by publishers accessible in English.

Any criteria you want to suggest or already use yourself to determine eras of animanga? Or perhaps your own memories of this time? Feel free to share!!

#long post #introduction #people who were on livejournal are especially encouraged to share their experiences!!

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centrally-unplanned · 3 months

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To recount a twitter story, Kenny Lauderdale posted this very normcore review of the English release of Gainax VN Princess Maker 2 from the May 1996 edition of the (Michigan) Times Herald:

It includes some great quotes, like Japanese professor Etsuko Yamashita believing its existence is a step back for feminism - very amusing given how gender-equal the player base for these games is today! Time marches past us all. Sometimes for the better - it cost $140 in Japan on release!?

But what I found interesting was the art featured - because that isn't Princess Maker 2?

This is PM2, that girl above is not our player-named protagonist.

Turns out that is art is from Princess Maker 3:

You can see specific scenes like the beach as well, in case you had any doubt. This is weird though because, well, Princess Maker 3 came out in January of 1997? More than half a year after this article was published! Which means they somehow had access to promotional material for Princess Maker 3? Which to be clear absolutely did exist at the time - in fact, Princess Maker 3 was bought up by Sony as a limited release for their brand-new console the Playstation. PM3 was actually featured on the cover of the first ever volume of the Dengeki Playstation magazine, released in January of 1995 (the PS1 coming out in December 1994):

Alas I haven't found a copy of this scanned online, so I can't say what it contained. This being two years before the game's release does honestly point to some development hell drama, the timeline for a game back then should not be that lengthy. Man, wonder what was happening at Gainax in 1995 that might have been a distraction...

Still, we have a question of how this American newspaper article got their hands on them. It also seems worthwhile to note that this article is syndicated - it was published in a dozen newspapers across the country around this time, but with different titles and photos to fit each paper's needs. And other papers do have correct Princess Maker 2 screenshots on them!

I have no grand answer here or anything, sorry guys, but I think we can infer it. The article itself actually mentions that a "third one" is now in the works, which is something they would have learned from the publisher of the English version, IntraCorp (they weren't reading Japanese press magazines in 1996!). IntraCorp likely wanted them to mention it because they themselves were going to hopefully license it, assuming the first (well, second) one was successful - this was their first foray into this specific licensing niche, previously making action games like Witchaven II: Blood Vengeance. In early 1996 they sent out copies & press kits to reviewers, and I am guessing that copy almost certainly included - perhaps poorly labeled - promotional material for Princess Maker 3 as well that Gainax had provided them, so they would mention it in the article and seed hype. The harried layout editor at The Times Herald opened the wrong folder and threw them on the page by mistake - after all the author didn't work for him, he worked for the Associated Press. He had no experience with the game to know his error.

We will never know because this is a niche curiosity from almost 30 years ago, sure, but we will also never know because the game being reviewed above...was never released! IntraCorp declared bankruptcy soon after the publication of this article. They were not the localizers themselves - a team of 4 people called SoftEgg were - but their contract with them was binding enough that it left the virtually-finished translated copy in perpetual legal limbo. Eventually it was leaked onto the internet as a form of abandonware a few years later. The hard-working men of America never got to be "Sim Dad" in 1996 unless they were intrepid enough to be UseNet Forum users hunting down and running Japanese-language romhacks.

Which is not a hypothetical, that was occurring. I will leave you all with the opening quote from the rec.arts.anime group's User Manual for navigating your Nihongo copy of Princess Maker 2, preserved still in the roms you can download today:

We all know of Gainax as being the wonderful company that brought us Wings of Honneamise, Otaku no Video as well as multitudes of garage kits and other paraphenelia. However with the release of Princess Maker 2, one might think that their true calling is in computer software! This band of self described otakus which managed to lose almost all their profits in the anime business have come back by releasing several computer games (some of which were on display at Anime Con).

...written, of course, in 1994 :)

#princess maker 2 #Ash Obscure Anime History Annals #gainax

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erieautumnskies · 7 months

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(This will be constantly updated!)

About Me:

My name is Claire but you can call me Eri or Echo! I go by they/them pronouns (also found in my bio). I'm an 18 year old based in the United States.

Since I was young, art and writing have played a major role in my life. Hense, it has been a passion of mine that I'm endlessly turning back to. I'm currently studying creative writing, book publishing, and graphic design online; later hoping to study art history and print production. If I could, I'd indulge in every form of art that there is. I deeply enjoy helping other indie writers and creatives alike out in their journey, from ARC reading to showcasing their small business'!

To date, my poetry has been published in nearly 50 magazines and lit journals across the globe. I plan on releasing 4+ poetry/prose chapbooks, so keep an eye out for any updates regarding them! Moreover, I'm in the process of writing a few novels in an array of genres, sneak peaks of the stories may be shone!

You can find out more about me on my Website as well as on Instagram, Pinterest, and Spotify.

Languages I know: English (native), Vietnamese, Thai, Norwegian, Irish, Japanese, Hebrew, Czech, Indonesian, Hungarian, Hindi, Finnish, Ukrainian, Italian, Icelandic, Arabic, French, Malayalam, Swahili, and Swedish.

Languages learning: ASL, Korean, Mandarin, Urdu and Spanish.

Some of my favorite things: Rainy days, any kind of tea, flowers, exploring, the night sky, sunsets/sunrises, bookstores, cozy coffeeshops, nature walks, old books, sweaters, making art, creating playlists, volunteering, and learning about other cultures!

Fun Facts: I have undiagnosed ADHD, dyslexia, am queer identifying, gender non-conforming, and practice Shintō.

Blog:

Erie Autumn Skies will center around creativity and where I find inspiration. Expect postcard-poems, letters of prose, possible short stories, translated works of original poems, artwork, and so forth! I may post book reviews and travel photos now and then, too! This will be a writeblr blog and a personal blog! I am open to tag games, asks, etc. as long as they are writing related.

I'm open to DMs and collaborations if you ever want to chat or write together! Everything is okay to reblog. However, no resharing my work outside of Tumblr without my permission. Additionally, I'm open to requests for short poems as long as the prefered theme is included in your request and credit is given wherever the poem is shared.

WIPs:

Poetry Chapbooks

Book Recs:

Fiction Novels

Colorblock Interlude

Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw

The Littlest Tea Shop in Lower by J. Lofton

The Mirror Visitor Quartet by Christelle Dablos

Secrets & Stars by Alix Klingenberg

Sakura Park by Bailey Rae

And numerous others!

Pov My Pinterest Feed:

All original posts will be tagged under erieautumn! Tag games will be tagged under erieautumn tags. Asks are under erieautumn asks.

It was nice to meet you! Happy to have you along on my creative journey and hang around for as long as you'd like! 🌸

#pinned post #writers and poets #introduction #erieautumn

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yonemurishiroku · 7 months

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Sending all my blessing and prayers to the kid who'll play nico 🙏 may he be safe from the insane fans

Tbh, for all the development the internet has been going through, it's not a well-regulated place, as a whole. So, for better or worse, there will be negative comments. Like. It's nature. A given.

Ngl at this point maybe just take him/her off the Internet until the show dies down. It'd work better than hoping for the criticism to be civil.

And there will be disappointment. I guarantee you. Out of 10 live actions I'm aware of, 11 of them are disappointing. One Piece (Netflix), Gintama, Gambling Academy are the rarest of the rare to have made it to meet the readers' expectations, afaik. And even then: two of them are Japanese with highly skilled actors/actresses, the other (OP) involves Oda Eichiro himself as a strict supervisor. I don't watch it but I think Heartstopper did a good job too?

And we're talking about Disney? I, with all due respect (which is none), do not trust Disney. I don't have a reason and I don't need one Chances are they'll try to make some changes to it and it'll all be a bloodbath again smh.

For all it's worth, I know that a part of the readers/audience will be disappointed. And rightfully so. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

I'm talking about general dislike, not straight-up death threats, harassment, doxxing and all the nasties.

Nico di Angelo, whilst just a deuteragonist/ side character/ plot device (?), has a widespread effect on a minor community. Many, many have considered him some sort of emotional anchor/support (i don't have the English capacity for this lmao). As in: his existence - and along with that, a certain image of him - matters to a number of readers. And though that's not how I connect to him, I do think the number is not small.

To have an image you've been holding dear replaced by another that might or might not be totally different? - Some can accept that. Some cannot. And that's not unnatural or unethical.

I have to say, though, the kid who takes up the role isn't at fault either. I'm sure they'd try their best to bring Nico to the screen, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with wishing to bring out the best in playing your character.

But there are many factors contributing here. Do you think the kid would be free from criticism as long as they do a good job at it? I don't think so. The kid does nothing wrong, but that doesn't mean all the audience has to like him. That's not how entertainment works, no matter what Twitter tells you (hell even in life you'd have someone/thing you dislike right?).

The moment one concludes that the kid is not the Nico they want to see, they will consider leaving, and they can.

What matters here, though, is that those who turn it down don't go online spilling nasty things about the kid, and the rest don't suddenly become SJWs and go around harassing anyone not liking the in-show Nico.

Anw this is getting long. So. What I'm trying to say is that:

I don't wish for harassment of the young actor/ actress (? who knows srsly) who would play Nico, though I won't be surprised if they don't meet a few's expectations. I hope they won't be disheartened or god forbid feel/be threatened by crazy fans. I hope no one gets threatened.

Tbh if I have it my way, Nico di Angelo would never made it into real life. But that's just me gatekeeping (or hating on Disney... that depends).

Who knows anw? Maybe the Internet will learn the etiquette by the time Nico comes on stage, I'll just be deemed a pessimistic shit and we'll all be happy watching/ not watching the show. 🤷‍♀️ God bless us rlly.

#Why can't you just do it like it's supposed to really...#nico di angelo #pjo #pjo show #hoo #toa #yone rambling #percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olympus #trials of apollo

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pretty-idol-hell · 1 month

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Where do you get the PriMagi cards in the US 😭😭

Um. Truth is I was just in Japan for about a week, so... No..where...?

Well no, I will answer seriously.

Do you have an Asian market near you, like HMart? If so, I would check there first to see if they have the PriMagi gummies that come with cards.

Admittedly, I've never seen them at my local HMart, but I have bought PreCure candy there before, so it couldn't hurt to check!

And of course, there are probably multiple ways to buy them online.

For example, I like to use ZenMarket to search and buy from Japanese Mercari. Lots of people resell their anime and arcade stuff on there. Most of the time you can search in English, but sometimes you do have to use Japanese. This turned out to be one of those times...

But, by typing プリマジ into the search bar for Mercari, the very first thing that came up was a big lot of cards for $11.67! It will be more expensive with ZenMarket fees and shipping, but if you want more than one thing you can combine shipping at least.

Good luck!

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theblurbwitchproject · 5 months

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The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

Published: August 23, 2022 Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

The Author

Sangu Mandanna writes books about magical sketchbooks, romantic witches, and characters who discover they’re a lot stronger than they think they are. She was four years old when an elephant chased her down a forest road and she decided to write her first story about it. Seventeen years and many, many manuscripts later, she signed her first book deal. Sangu now lives in Norwich, in the east of England, with her husband and kids.

˗ˏˋ ´ˎ˗

The Story As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don’t mingle and draw attention. She’s used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos "pretending" to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously. But someone does.

An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and the handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House, Jamie.

˗ˏˋ ´ˎ˗

The Vibe: cosy, found family, (one-sided) enemies to lovers, romance, eccentric characters, grumpy/sunshine pairing, diverse cast, LGBTQ+ characters

The Style: standalone, cosy romance, easy-going prose, wholesome, whimsical

Trigger Warnings: discussion of past homophobia, child abuse, abandonment issues, sex

˗ˏˋ ´ˎ˗

The Review

You know what? I loved this book.

I’m not a big reader of romance, and am often turned off by cutesy sounding plots, but I am so glad I gave this a go. I was in a pretty bad reading slump, just not really enjoying anything I picked up, but this sweet little novel really pulled me out of that funk. I’ve seen negative reviews of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches calling it too “twee” but seriously... the title alone tells you twee is what you’re getting, let alone the protagonist being named Mika Moon. I picked up this book wanting twee, and it was lovingly presented by Mandanna.

As the blurb explains, the plot centres on Mika, an Indian born witch in her early-thirties who only gets to interact with other witches at pre-decided meetings once every three months. These meetings are run by Primrose, the powerful witch and stickler for the rules who raised Mika. The rest of the time the witches avoid each other so as not to draw the public’s attention to their power. When Mika is invited to care for three young witches at Nowhere House, who, going completely against the rules, live under one roof as adopted sisters, she encounters something that she has never had but desperately wants; a family. Now, I’m a sucker for a good found-family trope, and this book really delivers on that front.

“Over the years, Mika had embraced all the things that made her different and had discovered that she liked herself very much. But what was that worth without human connection? How was it possible to live, truly live, without the companionship of other people, without a family formed in any of the thousands of ways families could be formed?”

The writing style is very easy-going, but where Mandanna shines is creating unique and diverse characters, including: Ian, an elder gay “luvvie”-type English theatre actor who knits rainbow scarves; Ken, his Japanese, professional gardener husband; Lucie, the round-cheeked and loving housekeeper; and Jamie, the scowling but handsome Irish librarian. And that’s just the adults of Nowhere House; the three young witches are also fantastic: there’s Rosetta who is 10, black, friendly and an avid reader; Terracotta, 8, Vietnamese, rebellious and fierecly protective of her family, and Altamira, 7, Palestinian, hilarious, and maybe my favourite character in the entire book. And lets not forget Circe, the friendly golden labrador.

One of the outstanding aspects of this story was the examination of intersectionality among the different characters. Each of the witches at Nowhere House not only have magical powers, but are people of colour living in England; “They were witches, they weren’t white, and they’d been born far away. Much as they might all wish otherwise, there would always be people who would question whether they were British enough, normal enough, anything enough.” I also admired the inclusion of Ian and Ken’s desire to protect the young girls, having their own experiences living on the fringes of society. It’s all so thoughtful. And the characters are all so lovely, even cranky Jamie who has “the soul of a cantankerous old man who yells at little kids to get off his lawn”, but in actuality likes kids more than he does most adults. The found family aspect feels so solid in this book; they feel like they have years of history. Nowhere House also feels super cosy and real- I want to move in like yesterday.

“It’s not always enough to go looking for the place we belong,” Jamie said, his eyes on the house ahead. “Sometimes we need to make that place.”

As I said earlier, I’m not massive on the romance genre, but I did enjoy the grumpy/sunshine pairing in this story, it has a good slow-burn progression that felt natural. And it gets a little spicy too, just fyi. I did enjoy that there was reasoning behind Jamies’ attitude; he’s not just a crank for no reason. Like Terracotta, he is fiercly protective of his family unit and puts their safety before anything else.

There is a good level of new witch-lore in this story, from witches going into a state of hibernation if they get seriously injured while their body repairs itself, to the methods Mika uses to harvest ingredients for her potions. The only thing I wanted more of was the inclusion of the lessons Mika delivers to the girls. They’re all so entertaining, especially Altamira, who is a perfectly written child who drops some hilarious swear words even though she’s only seven. And her logic of “I’ll stop when Ian and Jamie do” is totally fair in my book. Seeing more of their growth and development as young witches would have been great, particularly as that was the reason behind Mika’s moving to Nowhere House to begin with.

“The thing is, being a witch is extraordinary,” she said. “It might seem sometimes that all we are is odd and different, but the truth is, we’re amazing. We’re part of the earth below us and the sky above us. Our veins echo the patterns of rivers and roots. There’s sunlight and moonlight in our bones.”

This book was just so nice. I desperately want a sequel or five. There are plenty of options for world building, and I want more of Rosetta, Terracotta and Altamira learning to control their powers. Sangu, if you’re reading- pretty please expand this lovely universe? It was a lovely escape from reality that I will probably return to in the future.

Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗

[Goodreads]

#book review #bookblr #reading #books #witch fiction #fiction #witches #witchy #witchblr #The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches #Sangu Mandanna #witchy books #witchcore #witchy vibes #witch #witch books #reposted due to blog move

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chocobox · 27 days

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perpetually weirded out by the culture in western online spaces* that encourages usage of japanese phrases (otaku, fujoshi, YUMESHIPPER please stoppp) to refer to oneself despite a complete lack of personal connection to the culture they're derived from. didn't we already go over this why is this back in vogue, mainstream now. tangential string of the issue, but i also hate when people who aren't japanese call themselves weebs as a tongue in cheek cutesy thing... like ok. so you admit the way you engage with japanese media is demeaning and racist

*western spaces is a crude generalization, but i find it to be more accurate than simply saying english speaking spaces since people from all over the world, including those from countries with histories of persecution by japan, engage with others online in english. there are a lot of twists and turns of nuance to this issue, but overall, i just gripe with normalized cultural appropriation! the way people treat japanese culture is really weird

#sparkletwinkles

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luigiblood · 1 year

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The oddities of Nintendo Switch Online retro service

I've talked about a lot of things about this service, on Twitter, on Tumblr, but also a lot on Discord, but I have been thinking about a post where I could put all the accumulated information that I've gotten over the years through datamining and leaks.

Here's a post about all the little things that you may not know about the retro service of Nintendo Switch Online.

Identifiers and Stats

One of the most obvious parts of datamining these apps is that each game have a unique identifier rather than just being a game name.

On NES Switch Online, they use identifiers identical to the NES Mini ROMs, which are usually like CLV-P-H***J or CLV-P-N***E for Japanese and English, usually. On SNES, they use now an identifier like this S-****_j or S-****_e and other consoles follow suit.

The thing about these identifiers is that they have an order, they all usually follow each other. But in all the apps, there are always gaps, and those gaps can tell a huge story.

Currently as of February 2nd 2023, there are 66 Famicom games, 63 NES games, 53 Super Famicom games, and 55 Super Nintendo games on the service on all regions. If you start counting the gaps, it seems that internally, they have 185 NES titles and 174 SNES titles MINIMUM. This is a pretty huge difference.

Thanks to a leaked build of NES Switch Online from last year, we can figure out some of those missing titles, involving mostly Capcom and Konami, which are unlikely to release on the service as most of them were rereleased through collections before, though it hasn't necessarily stopped them.

That said, if you remember, we had done a similar research with Nintendo 64 and Genesis titles at launch, which the press have definitely talked about, where we found out there were potentially 38 N64 titles and 52 Genesis titles running internally at minimum, but Nintendo has actually done us dataminers a bit of a response: All IDs on N64 and Genesis are now randomized since the first updates, which means we cannot do this kind of research anymore.

That said the updates to NES and SNES apps have not done this change, they probably decided it wasn't worth it. But all that to say that Nintendo is definitely taking notice of our datamining (and won't be the last time) and won't necessarily hesitate to throw us for a loop.

The secrets of NES Switch Online 2.0.0 update

Now I'm definitely going way back in December 2018, 4 months after the debut of the full Nintendo Switch Online service after a year delay (do you actually remember that?).

In January 2019, people started to take notice of SNES game descriptions within the language files, hinting SNES Switch Online coming in the near future, and the potential games coming.

To this day, all the games except two released on the service: We're missing The Legend of the Mystical Ninja and Contra III: The Alien Wars.

The other thing that was noticed is what's called an enumeration of emulator types:

EMULATOR_TYPE_CANOE = 0 EMULATOR_TYPE_KACHIKACHI = 1 EMULATOR_TYPE_HIYOKO = 2 EMULATOR_TYPE_COUNT = 3

Canoe is the name of the SNES emulator since SNES Mini, Kachikachi is the name of the NES emulator since NES Mini, Hiyoko was, at the time, unknown, but turned out to be the Game Boy (Color) emulator, and Count is most likely a counter, to say there are 3 different emulator types, it's a programming standard.

What most people ignored at the time is that the app also included a function called getEmulatorTypeFromCode, which would return the Emulator Type based on the identifiers I talked about earlier.

Once I took notice of this and checking other code making use of it, I figured out something huge, and after talking to an actual reliable insider who also confirmed it (don't get used to this), my conclusion: They had originally developed a multi-emulator app, which would have included all games from NES, SNES and GB in one single app.

Now you may wonder why this didn't pan out, I don't have the exact reason but I can have some educated guesses: Aside from the accidental reveal of SNES emulator on Switch which I think is not that huge, I think the seperation of systems is probably because of the developers wanting to compatimentalize the development instead of having to test a huge app every time they wanted to update it to avoid potential huge regressions.

I think it's not necessarily a bad reason, as a developer I also take importance of the ease of development VS user experience, and I do think this decision is not really a bad thing overall, making a multi emulator can be extremely hard and you could deal with problems because of decisions taken extremely early on.

The secrets of SNES Switch Online

The SNES emulator derived from the Wii U Virtual Console by NERD has a bunch of secrets that you may not know about... such as the currently unused SNES Mouse emulation.

Once you start checking around the code about how to enable the SNES Mouse emulation, you find out two things:

It can be enabled using metadata within the custom ROM format.

It was able to be force enabled using specific internal emulator Game IDs.

The most interesting part of the Game IDs is that only 3 Game IDs specifically forced the SNES Mouse to be emulated: 0x11A0, 0x11A2 and 0x11A3. If we just keep ourselves to SNES titles that could only work with the SNES Mouse... we could think of only two, actually. Most of the SNES games that supports the mouse can also just work with the controller.

We can only think of Mario Paint and Mario & Wario as SNES titles that only works with SNES Mouse, but also both are first titles, so in terms of rights, there's no issues here.

The problem is like, what's the third title? And that's where we can have a lot of ideas here.

The thing about those emulator Game IDs is that they don't correspond to the Switch Online IDs, they correspond to IDs that have been populated since the Wii, but especially Wii U Virtual Console, but we don't exactly know when NERD took over the emulator from Intelligent Systems. It is currently impossible to tell for sure.

So we can only think of the following:

The third title is actually the PAL version of Mario Paint, when they used to seperate game versions in different IDs.

The third title is Sound Fantasy, the unreleased but confirmed to be completed third SNES Mouse first party game.

Or it is a game that Nintendo decided it was better to play with a mouse rather than the controller, but I don't think it's likely.

Unfortunately I don't know for certain.

One other thing about the SNES Switch Online service, you may have noticed that some of the games currently on the service can actually be played up to 4 players at the same time... at least outside of it since the emulator locks you up to 2 players maximum.

If you thought that they did not emulate the Multitap, you'd be wrong. In fact, the games in question all contain metadata saying up to 4 players, unlike what the menus might tell you, and they all technically emulate the SNES Multitap, but the user interface can only allow you 2 players, so it's sorta funny that the second player is technically plugged to the multitap from an emulation standpoint.

Funny.

The secrets of N64 Switch Online

This part has some plot twists to it, but in fact I should rather say the secrets of the N64 Wii U Virtual Console emulator, as most of these things were brought over from this.

Unlike what most people might tell you, NERD has not much to do with the N64 emulation, it was developed by iQue. If you wonder what's my evidence, the debug menu between the NES/GB VC emulator for 3DS (which is confirmed done by iQue because the source code of it leaked in 2020), and the N64 VC emulator for Wii U are pretty much the same.

I may as well mention the biggest secret of all which had a plot twist later: The N64 emulator used to have unfinished 64DD emulation code in it, since Wii U.

I do insist on unfinished because it was nowhere near enough to boot a single 64DD game, but they for some reason included a Sim City 64 configuration file on Wii U at one point, probably for initial testing.

When the emulator was ported to Switch with improvements such as Vulkan graphics rendering on Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Nintendo 64 Switch Online app, a bunch of the 64DD emulation code stayed as is, in the same unfinished state.

However something funny happened in between, the emulator had code to recognize the fanmade 64DD cartridge ports, and those are definitely fanmade, and they must have looked at other emulation code for it, and most likely, code that I even wrote myself as I did add support for these in emulators before. Note that at that point, the code to boot those games were not seemingly present, or maybe I missed it.

So I would like to assume iQue had still wanted to make 64DD games working, but wanted to test on easier to emulate versions of the games. That said, I did mention this on Twitter... and then they removed every single line of code involving 64DD in the 1.2.0 update build in January 2022. It was probably not literally removed, just not compiled as it is still a good skeleton code for it. I am definitely convinced that I'm being looked at.

When it comes to other stuff in the emulator... well did you know that the Controller Pak, the memory cartridge that you put inside the controller's slot to save in a bunch of games, is actually fully emulated since Wii U?

It is very annoying that they had something like this working, but couldn't figure out to swap between both that and the Rumble Pak for games that could make use of both.

If you wonder about the Transfer Pak, the Wii U has a bit of it, but it's just turning the hardware ON and OFF, and this code has stayed as is on Switch. I know Emily Rogers has mentioned there were experiments and I believe her, but unfortunately, the code must be in a seperate branch and not put in place in N64 Switch Online builds.

If you tell me "oh they didn't plan Pokémon transfers for Pokémon Stadium," please look at the japanese Direct about it and you'll find a widely different sentence that does not actually rule out support for this, stating that "Pokémons cannot be transferred from the Game Boy." I dunno about you, but that's a statement that makes it vague because they could just mean the actual real Game Boy.

Now I'm not really dumb, as Nintendo has showed that Switch Online is mostly low budget and does the bare minimum, but there are things that shows a bit more attention to things...

When it comes to new things that weren't in the emulator on Wii U, they actually emulated the Real Time Clock chip from Animal Crossing's N64 original version. This code actually isn't in Super Mario 3D All-Stars, this must be a fairly new addition, and since there's only one game using it, it is fair to assume Animal Crossing is actually in a working state in the emulator.

When Mario Golf was added to the service, the Lua script dedicated for it is... a bit odd. It includes code for asynchronous netplay, where each player would take control of the game in turns in an attempt to optimize the netplay and reduce lag. This code is fully unused, there's not even the functions that it uses in the emulator yet.

This could also be additional evidence towards my theory that the NSO apps would see a refresh including user experience to some extent, but this stuff was added since April 2022, so whatever they are doing, it's certainly in private and has been in the works for almost a year now.

This post... is a bit long already, and there are still a bunch of other little secrets to uncover, but I think I covered the most technical ones so far, I hope this post is mostly clear about these secrets. Feel free to give me feedback.

#nintendo switch online #snes #super nintendo #nintendo 64 #nes #secrets #tech #nintendo

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apple-pecan · 6 months

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Sin and Punishment (2000)

once upon a time, a small company called Treasure existed. they made a bunch of awesome games but none of them sold particularly well, but that didn't stop them. until the early 2010's in which case they actually did stop. oops. either way they had a bunch of cult classics under their belt and had the idea to partner up with nintendo themselves to work on their first fully 3D game.

thus Sin and Punishment was made and it sold twelve billion copies and solved world hunger and world peace was finally achieved. just kidding, no one bought it because it was a japan exclusive N64 game, a country the N64 did awful in. a north amercian release was in mind from the very beginning (to the extent that all the voice acting is in english and not japanese) but it was cancelled because nintendo are cowards. thankfully they rectified this mistake in 2007 when it got released on the virtual console and it's been playable on all their main home consoles ever since. about time.

so what's the deal? why's this game so good? think star fox 64 with the plot of end of evangelion. it's a rail shooter where you have a rapid fire gun, the ability to melee enemies if they get too close, and a player character bound to the laws of gravity that can walk from left to right, jump, and dodge roll. there is also a worthless lock on mode that you should never use.

what follows is a non-stop barrage of action, explosions and vast amounts of awesome boss fights. so, like the best kinda games treasure made. BUT IN 3D!!!!!!! it's always a rush of energy and fun and there's never a dull moment. but it comes at a price: this game is horrifically short. you can easily beat the entire game in around 40 minutes, and aside from unlocking harder difficulties there's not that much of a reason to play again. except yes there is because the game is fun as balls and you can replay it to get a high score. i guess what im trying to say is think of this more as an arcade game rather than a full fledged AAA adventure, and you'll be good.

if you bought this game back when it first came out (somehow) the steep price would've been an issue. but if you have the nintendo switch online expansion pass, this is included in the nintendo 64 catalog for the low low price of 0 dollars. i mean, besides paying for the expansion pass but. you know what i mean. or you could pirate it that's fine too. either way, play this game however you can, it's the very definition of short but sweet. definitely treasure's best game on the N64, just narrowly beating mischief makers, and honestly one of the best games on the N64 in general. play it, you won't be disappointed.

9/10

NOTE: my favorite part was when saki turned into EVA-01 and said "AWW YEAH IT'S SIN AND PUNISHMENT TIME" and he sinned and punished the evil twin clone of the planet earth so hard it exploded. this joke is still funny right.

#apple's media review #apple's media: games

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animebw · 11 months

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Re: oshi no ko fans,

What'd they do?

Yeah, I guess I should probably give some context to that statement.

So, for those not keeping up with Oshi no Ko, last week's episode featured a plotline where a character on a reality dating show is swarmed with cyberbullying after a minor dust-up, and it escalates so badly that she tries to commit suicide. It's a brutally effective episode that really captures the horror of online abuse, the almost addictive masochism of scrolling through comment after comment calling for your death and dragging your name through the mud. It's easily the best Oshi no Ko has been, and I will stand by that opinion despite how messy things are going to get in the rest of this post.

See, this plotline doesn't just a wholly fictional exploration of online abuse; it has a very direct real life inspiration. Shortly after the manga started publishing, Japanese wrestler Hana Kimura committed suicide following a chain of events very much like this. She was on a reality show, she had a minor altercation with a fellow contender, and she was bombarded with online abuse until she took her own life. It's likely Akasaka already had the general idea for this plotline sketched out before this event, but the connections are so specific that it's pretty clear this real-life event influenced how it played out in the story. And in the anime at least, some of the mean comments the character gets are lifted wholesale from comments Kimura received during her harassment. So clearly, Oshi no Ko is pulling on this real life tragedy to further its themes of darkness in the entertainment industry and how it affects people.

The problem is, Kimura's mom isn't happy about it.

See, apparently no one- nobody working on the manga or the anime- thought to ask Kimura's family if it was okay to use their tragic circumstances as part of their narrative. Nobody bothered to check if it maybe might be a little insensitive to drag out the corpse of a dead girl for an edgy reincarnation revenge idol drama without asking that girl's parents if they were okay with it. So the mom did an interview where she expressed her anger at the whole thing, and how her daughter was essentially being used as "free source material," which, yeah, seriously, how the fuck did nobody check with her before this went to air? I don't care how good your intentions are or how excellent the finished product turned out, you do not use the real words and comments that drove a girl to suicide without getting the go-ahead from her family first. She even mentioned that a friend of hers watched the episode without knowing its content beforehand and it basically triggered all those traumatic memories all over again. It's just really fucking ugly all around.

Now, the whole point of the episode in question is about how terrible online harassment is and how you should never toss mean words around online so thoughtlessly, because you could be hurting people in ways you can't possibly understand. So you'd think that Oshi no Ko fans, being faced with this very understandable anger from someone with more stake in this mess than any of them either well, would take the situation with grace and try to reach an understanding. You'd think they'd try to have the kind of compassion in discussing this difficult subject that Kimura and the character inspired by her never got.

If only.

Now, to be clear, it's not like the entire Oshi no Ko fanbase ganged up on Kimura's mother. Plenty of people took the situation in stride and treated it fairly. But even just on the English speaking side of the internet, I've already seen way too many people becoming exactly the kind of mindless hate mob the show portrayed in that critical episode. And while I can't speak for the Japanese side, people who keep up with Japanese online spaces have confirmed there's harassment going on over there too. People saying she's only doing this for attention (gee it's almost like HER DAUGHTER'S DEATH IS BEING USED WITHOUT HER CONSENT), she shouldn't complain because it's raising awareness about cyberbullying (which totally justifies cyberbullying her in response, naturally), even claiming the arc totally wasn't inspired by Kimura's circumstances and it was just a coincidence the storyline released around the same time. Which is funny, because I distinctly remember when the episode first came out I saw tons of people praising how it took inspiration from Kimura's circumstances and how it was totally speaking to real life events so you had to take it seriously. But now Kimura's mother comes out saying she's upset with how it was handled, and suddenly those same people are going "Uuuuuuh actually it's just a coincidence, if you think it's intentional you're stupid."

I mean, if I didn't know better, I'd say it's almost like they never actually cared about the message. Like they only wanted to use the shiny coat of real-life tragedy to massage their own egos for liking Good(tm), Serious(tm) works of fiction that talk about Real(tm) Issues(tm), only to discard that talking point when it no longer suited their narrative. I might even call them a bunch of worthless cunts who care about protecting themselves from even the mildest emotional discomfort and moral uncertainty more than they give a damn about anyone else's genuine struggles with actual issues far beyond what any of these fuckweasels will ever have to face. Hell, if I was feeling particularly spicy, I might even connect this bullshittery to my criticisms of Oshi no Ko as a whole and point out how despite its thin veneer of deep societal criticism, this show really is the kind of vapid, pandering edge-masquerading-as-depth spectacle that presents just enough illusion of substance for people to feel smart for watching it without actually challenging them to leave their comfort zone of an "edgy" male antihero saving the day and making all the cute girls fall for him, thus attracting the exact same kind of insincere, cowardly fanbase that reacts to the slightest real challenge to their sense of self-righteousness by become the exact kind of monster the story they supposedly adore was trying to warn them against.

But that's probably unfair to all the normal, perfectly well-adjusted Oshi no Ko fans who don't deserve to be lumped in with this vocal minority of losers. So I'll call it a day here. Bottom line, ask before you use a real person's misery for Content(tm), don't be a dick when people criticize the fiction you enjoy, and online harassers can go suck on an exhaust pipe.

#anime #tabw #tabw q+a #the anime binge watcher #oshi no ko #cw: suicide #cw: cyberbullying

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