yurisorcerer

[yurisorcerer]

Sudan still desperately needs aid--it needs a lot of things, but it is approaching a dangerous point with famine and mass death due to hunger imminent.

These are the kinds of headlines we're getting now:

Here's an ongoing fundraiser:

I linked it before, to help with Ramadan, but it's an ongoing initiative, the need has not stopped.

I picked this gofundme because it's been boosted by people I trust and you can see pictures online of the food they've provided, e.g.:

But I also picked this because you can see the amount of donations. It's 2pm ET on Saturday, April 20th right now? For the next week, whatever's donated, I'll match for a total up to $2,000 (we'll say 2,750 CAD, since the gofundme is in Canadian dollars).

You don't have to send me a receipt, I just ask that you donate and boost.

#sudan

[yurisorcerer]

SHE! IS! HERE!

The menace, the power, the unease, and yes, the beauty. These are all traits present in Chimera-Falin, who makes her grand debut this episode. It is probably the most hype I've been for a character introduction in a TRIGGER show in a decade.

No anime could reasonably match the almost radioactive presence that Chimera-Falin has in ink, on paper. Instead, this episode's team bring an impressive arsenal of tricks of motion to convey her narrative (and literal!) weight. Chimera-Falin as a character literally bends the story around her, and the show displays this by showing in gruesome detail just how thoroughly she absolutely annhiliates all opposition. To dredge up the tired Dungeons & Dragons metaphor oft used for Dungeon Meshi once again, she's one of those really high CR, thoroughly unfair monsters. She's huge, incredibly robust and durable, can claw her foes---characters we've gotten to know over the past several episodes, mind you!---to shreds, and on top of all that, enough of her human mind remains that she can still cast spells. Can you imagine how absolutely defeated that mage must feel when Falin simply dispels his summoned undine? I'd be somewhere between furious and suicidal. In general, Falin is drawn an animated in a way that emphasizes her strength and presence. I'd also say she's drawn with just about the right level of

After Falin clambers offstage, we of course get the long heart-to-fist-to-face-to-heart between Shuro and Laios. I actually think this works slightly better here than in the manga, as it's a case where stripping some of the ambiguity inherent to that format actually sharpens the show's emotional beats.

We end with some comedy to take the edge off as our heroes venture ever-deeper into the dungeon, with their objective changed to explicitly defeating the Lunatic Magician.

Some stray observations:

Not to be a huge pervert, but I am surprised they were allowed to draw the harpies' nipples.

There is blood EVERYWHERE. Several others have pointed this out, but the difference between how striking the visual contrast is in the anime vs. the manga is pretty interesting. And more generally this was an extremely gory episode.

Marcille looks absolutely miserable throughout this entire episode. Not without reason! But still, my poor girl.

To completely shoot myself in the foot vis-a-vis what I said in the first bullet point, I think Chimera Falin might be even more beautiful in motion than she was in the manga. Where's the HRT I can take to get that body, huh, medical science?

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #yurisorcerer talks about media #chimera falin #falin touden

[yurisorcerer]

Update: North Gaza Aid!

As part of his promise, Hussam sent 20% of your HelpGazaChildren donations ($4000) to Mahmoud AbuSalama for the 5th time now, including the earlier North Gaza Campaign (as location on our notion site) to buy food and necessary products for families still surviving the dire situation in North Gaza. The food package contains, as you see in the picture below: flour, lentils, canned food, formula, diapers, and women pads!

Please continue donating and spreading the word — every penny means so much! Feel free to share our campaign link to other platforms as well!

Donate to our GoFundMe which goes directly to Hussam, who manages camps in Rafah, with NO middleman in between!

HelpGazaChildren Notion Site || #helpgazachildren tag

GoFundMe Link

[Quick ID: The video is of Mahmoud speaking in front of bags of flour and a tumblr sign. There are captions to the video in english. The image below is of groups of packages of items in front of a tumblr sign.]

#Palestine

[yurisorcerer]

More like A Salad Bowl of Peak.

A fairly straightforward episode this week, about stopping a middle school girl from being bullied. That said, it then swerves into a solid three minutes of casually-insane worldbuilding toward the end, which is enough to remind me why I like this show.

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics is one of a kind, truly.

#a salad bowl of eccentrics #yurisorcerer talks about media

[yurisorcerer]

#yurisorcerer's good post tag

[yurisorcerer]

what are your two favorite traits of women

Two! Two whole traits! The women reducer returns, gracing me with double the single trait they gave me last time. And yet, woe, I must still say it is not nearly enough. Not to capture the infinite prism of light that is wondrous femininity.

#yurisorcerer answers

[yurisorcerer]

"There was never such a thing as magic."

In episode 4, we get what seems an awful lot like an after-the-fact rationalization of Kano's condition. A clear-headed, scientific explanation. But the show itself seems almost as desperate as Hijiri is to explain away her younger sister's "illness."

Surely, there must be some rational explanation, it pleads, as the theory turns to DID and a feather in a shrine as a psychological trigger. It can't truly be cursed, of course. No rational person, no doctor, could believe that.

"It was only a dream, it has nothing to do with you."

Until this episode's halfway point, this desperation feels like it might still point toward some kind of grounded explanation for all this, but that notion shatters into light when Yukito touches the shrine feather. In an instant, AiR becomes a different story entirely; a history of persecution, of a mother and her child cursed from birth, fleeing wars, storms, and death to find refuge in the village that once stood on the same spot that Yukito and the others stand on now. Even here, there was no real refuge, and the scene morphs into some distant echo of the binding of Isaac; a mother sacrificing herself to save her child. No story, it is worth remembering, is ever just one story.

"You don't have wings, be happy down there."

In episode 5, we turn to dreams of the ocean. Yukito's own, from when he was a child. Here, the show again takes a somewhat more grounded approach, but "grounded" is relative, and perhaps inappropriate, given that even the series' episodes that are more "grounded", "down-to-earth", an other such terms that conflate mundanity with the soil beneath our feet, are themselves preoccupied with the heavens above, as we learn when we're introduced to Tohno's "Astronomy Club" here, consisting of more or less just herself and a large portable telescope. Despite briefly meeting her mother, Yukito returns the next day to find the woman claiming she has no daughter, and Tohno herself is missing.

Elsewhere, we learn that Kamio suffers panic attacks when she gets close to people. This is a distinct yank back to reality from a show that has so far spent most of its time with its head in the clouds, but the loneliness Kamio's condition creates---typified by a quick cut to a shot of a lonesome cloud---works with what Air has previously done. A profound loneliness connects most of the show's characters, although they largely don't yet seem aware of this connection.

If there's an emerging theme here, it's that of lost or broken connections. Tohno is kicked out of her home because her mother has replaced one delusion with another and doesn't recognize her, Kamio feels unwelcome in her own house because her "mother" is actually her aunt whose care she was put in as a troubled, younger child, etc.

The cruel reality of the sky is that it can't truly be reached from the ground, and the show's color palette shifts drastically in the episode's final moments to reflect this line of thought, running red and black like a gaping wound. A strange, stark turn from a strange, stark show.

#Air (2005) #yurisorcerer talks about media

[yurisorcerer]

What is your favourite trait of women

You want me to express my love for the infinite cosmos that is femininity while at the same time reducing them to a single aspect? Ridiculous.

#yurisorcerer answers

[yurisorcerer]

After all these years, it finally happened

It happened

I had a dream I was a worm

I was a worm in a relationship with a human man

He still loved me even though I was a worm

The question has been answered

#yurisorcerer's good post tag

[yurisorcerer]

Featherine

#featherine #umineko

[yurisorcerer]

I am still kind of astounded by how much less this story works as an anime.

Granted, the particular choice of adapter definitely has something to do with it, but the resolution of the whole Dribblers arc here (I still hate typing that) just feels way less satisfying on screen than it did on the page. Also, why the hell was this episode so YELLOW? Everything was absolutely drenched in the color. I get that the flashback scenes were, you know, flashbacks, but the sepia look they were going for did not come across at all. The present-day scenes in the hallway look that way because of the time of day, but it kills all the visual dynamism giving us easily the worst-looking episode of the show so far.

The one thing that survives is the series' very goofy sense of humor. A particularly memorable moment tonight as I watched this with some friends was when one of them ( @central-avenue ) remarked on how uncomfortable Sumireko's tracksuit must've been right before it popped open in the most elbow-jabby we're-playing-this-as-a-joke-but-it's-mostly-here-so-you-can-ogle-this-girl's-tits sequence I've seen in anything in a hot minute. I guess Studio Passione know their strengths.

Granted! All that stuff is in the manga, too, but again, just the simple facts of the format make it stand out way more in motion than it does in a manga.

#Mysterious Disappearances #yurisorcerer talks about media

[yurisorcerer]

lesbian wizards will flirt by saying shit like "ponder THESE orbs" and taking their top off.

[yurisorcerer]

#Youtube

[yurisorcerer]

youre too late, ive already portrayed you to be the twee, virginal, fandom-obsessed tumblr shut-in, and me as the wry yet rational popular funny-poster

[yurisorcerer]

Something very interesting about how the "shocking", overtly supernatural moments of the episodes are crammed into the margins, usually only truly laid bare in their final minute or so. That's so far, of course, there are still ten more episodes of this thing left for me to watch.

The image of the girl in the sky that every character seems to be chasing in one way or another is a haunting one, one that burns with a pure white light that I can't quite call clarity. It feels like something I have an intuitive understanding of, but can't quite articulate. It means something different to everyone.

On another level, this series dearly loves its characters. You can tell, by the way it portrays them as whimsical little dolls when they roam around the scenery far from the 'camera.' Air is a beautiful show, so far, which makes the moment of outright violence at the end of this episode shocking and a little heartbreaking.

Which sky do we fly to next?

#Air (2005) #yurisorcerer talks about media

[yurisorcerer]

#YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS #yurisorcerer's good post tag

[yurisorcerer]

"I had a dream. A strange dream about the sky."

So yeah, I started watching this today, because my buddy @joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh is watching it, and I am easily influenced by outside forces I suppose.

This is Air, a 2005 Kyoto Animation production from just before their legendary run that began with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It's adapted from a KEY visual novel, and my first impression is that it is very visibly "VN-y" indeed.

The main feeling I get is one of overwhelming "summer energy." There are near constant cicada sounds in the backdrop, the skies are a clear crystal blue with huge, billowing white clouds which flip to creamy streaks of the Milky Way across an inky black at night. Everyone, especially our main character, is sweating all the time because it's so goddamn hot, and the whole thing takes place by the shore. The vibes are absolutely on-point.

In addition to this impeccable sense of place---a deliberate artistic vision---there is also a decidedly non-intentional sense of time. This show absolutely radiates 2005, most obviously from the character designs which are of a highly sexually dimorphic kind that was common in VNs and adjacent work at the time. The main guy is tall, lanky, and angular. Almost all of the women are comparatively short, round, and have the massive headlamp bug-eyes inextricably associated with the period.

The plot, such that it is, is simple but also rather odd. Essentially, our main character, Yukito, who we are given no backstory for at this point, simply arrives in town one day, nebulously "looking for" something, and attempting to earn money by plying his trade as a puppeteer---it is very much worth noting that he appears to control his puppets with no strings or other tricks---but has little success. When he meets an odd, clumsy girl named Kamio Misuzu, who trips a lot and says "gao!" when upset or frustrated, he ends up following her home, and improbably, the girl's drunkard mother drafts him as a live-in babysitter.

Some of this is probably a remnant of the show's origins as a VN---an eroge, at that, although this particular pipeline of H-game -> clean visual novel -> anime or manga adaptation was not rare back in the day---where a man randomly shoehorning himself into the lives of various women about town is the norm.

About the "gao" thing; Kamio's mother disapproves, and this dynamic can't help but remind me of Rosa's disapproval of her own daughter Maria's verbal tic from Umineko, itself a visual novel that later got a (particularly poorly-regarded in that case) anime adaptation. So far, the dynamic here seems far less fraught and abuse-laden, but it's an interesting parallel, and given that Umineko postdates Air, I wonder if it was an intentional reference. (Ryukishi07 surely would've been aware of Key at the time.)

The second girl our protagonist meets seems to style herself an alien, from a planet where everyone is "free." Freedom. Air. 'Free as a bird'? There's something here, especially when she rebuffs the idea later and makes fun of Yukito for believing her in the first place.

I cannot shake a strong feeling that this show is keeping its cards close to its chest. Given how crazy the visual novels of this period could get, I really have no idea what to expect. Although, to sell the show more on what it's doing *now* than what it might do *later*, the comedic aspects are very well done. It's a nice mix of slapstick and conversational comedy. Also, as mentioned, the show's atmosphere is just absolutely immaculate; you can practically taste the salt of the sea on the wind as you're watching this.

At the end of the episode, at around sunset, Kamio gives a little speech as she's standing, arms stretched out, with her head tilted toward the sky. I don't normally just include a bunch of screencaps in these little writeups because I like to keep them short, but what she says here just struck me as so…profoundly odd, strangely beautiful, a little reminiscent of my own experiences with mania and spiritual fervor, that I just kind of need to include it.

In a much more serious sense than usual; what DOES she mean by this? This is the most taken I've been with the first episode of an older anime in quite a while, and I really feel like I need to know more.

Sadly I probably shouldn't watch more right now, so I suppose I'll save my next batch of episodes for tomorrow or Wednesday....but gah, the temptation to just stay up until 6am and try to marathon this all at once is SO present.

#Air (2005) #yurisorcerer talks about media