yesterday’s gone. so what’re we gonna do today?

a really defining moment of aang and sokka’s relationship is that sokka literally lets himself get beat up for aang’s amusement and entertainment like a day into knowing him. like he is literally letting aang drop him onto the ground from a not insignificant height over and over again just to see aang smile and laugh. he is putting his own safety and physical wellbeing at risk because it makes aang happy. and there’s a lot we could get into here about how sokka fundamentally views himself and his body as a vessel through which to provide services to others instead of a whole human being in his own right, but what matters for the purposes of this post is that it’s very immediately established that sokka will do anything to see aang enjoy himself, to the point that he will quite literally put up with physical abuse without complaint to make aang happy. so when people are like “it’s crazy how sokka is so smart and yet loses all his braincells whenever he’s around aang,” it’s like yeah, teenage boy adhd2adhd communication will do that, but also a large part of it is sokka contorting himself into an image that he thinks aang will appreciate, because he knows just how valuable preserving aang’s childhood joy and laughter is.

“April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.”

i know a lot of people extol the fact haikyuu is so much more than just volleyball and i count myself as one of them (i literally made this whole side blog bc of it), but also? hq is honestly just that: volleyball. that volleyball is fun. even furudate has said they wrote hq to show that volleyball is fun. the title of the series is literally “volleyball!!” i think that’s one of the main reasons hq is so good, that what came out of furudate wanting to prove how fun volleyball is was this incredibly transformational work of media packed with astute observations on life, relationships, coming into yourself as a person, and self care…all within the simple framework of volleyball. all the underlying themes such as connections, being strong is being free, surpassing your limits, hunger, genius vs talent, etc stem from the story’s central core of playing volleyball. i think i said it before, but the plot of hq is not complex or inherently unique especially in the realm of shounen manga: the main character who is lacking but wants to be the best, his rival he wants to surpass, and the mc or group’s collective goal of wanting to reach a virtually impossible goal (in the case of sports series this is usually nationals). everything that happens during and in between…it is all about volleyball and playing volleyball.

Kid Kenma reference sheet redraw

Kid Kenma reference sheet redraw