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IT’S HERE. IT’S DONE. IT’S FINISHED. NOW…IT’S YOURS. Happy Holidays, my friends.

Vanna here! I have posted some already about this project, and the responses I got, public and otherwise, have been absolutely incredible. Y’all have been reblogging and hyping this before it even finished…I haven’t felt so encouraged about an Utena project since the musicals! (Yes, streams soon, I promise.) You can read the other post to get more details, and catch my post here with more details about the process if you’re interested. The long and short of it?

This is the first artbook I ever scanned. I did it in 2001. In Photoshop, using multiple scans per page that took hours to process. But it was 2001. A half megabyte file that was 1250px wide was considered extremely hardcore and impressive. That’s just always been the business I’m in when it comes to Utena art, you know? 

It’s now the latest artbook I’ve scanned, and so much of the process, and effort involved, is unchanged. What has changed, is the result. Welcome to your new desktop background. Your new phone background. Your new poster print. 

What I’ve done here is attempt to create definitive digitized images of Chiho Saito’s work as offered by this book--I have removed the print moiré of the original scans, and used my literal decades of experience to try and tease out as much information from them as possible. Without being physically in front of the original artwork (which is a thing I’ve had the great fortune to get to do) this is The Most Chiho Saito you are ever going to get. I’ve tried my best to make sure there is a way to get it that works for everyone:

Do you just wanna scope 'em out? Look at some disaster gays? Grab your favorite one or two? This is the path for you! Check out the ‘compressed’ (not very) 10k ‘web friendly’ (not really) copy at the Bibliothèque, the media archiving wing of the Something Eternal forums at Empty Movement*. All the following links are also available from here. Do you want these copies? All of them? Don't just grab them individually, friend. This batch is 375MB and can be downloaded as a zip of the individual files here on our Google Drive.

Do you like digital archiving? Are you looking for a copy that preserves the archival quality of the effort but sits nice and comfy in a single file? This is for you. A minimally compressed 10k, 513MB version worked into a PDF is now up, shiny and chrome, on the Internet Archive. Do you like the idea of the minimal compression, but want the individual files in a zip? Yep I did that too, here's the drive link.

Are you looking to print these in a larger size? This is probably the only reason on Earth you’d ever want them, and yet a bunch of you are going to go straight for these. Here are the zero-compression JPG full size copies, most of them are 15k across, like simply a ridiculous size. Pick your fave and download it from our Google Drive! 

I am genuinely really proud of this work.** I was able to tease out so much new detail from these…her incredible layering techniques, the faintest brush of her highlights, and the full range of her delicate hand at whites and blacks… details commonly lost in digitization. I sincerely hope you find something here that you’re looking for, as an artist looking for inspiration, as a weeb looking for a desktop, as an archiver excited to see incredible 90s manga artwork saved forever in the digital realm. I feel like I have already said so much about them, and could keep going, but you know what? This work speaks for itself. Enjoy, use, explore, and definitely tell us what you think!

We love y’all. ~ Vanna & Yasha

And does Thomas blame Cordelia for everything that happened with Guinevere & Niniane’s death?

(And what was the reason Thomas thought Niniane was insane?)

I think he pulls a “I didn’t know her too well, I can’t say much” and changes topics whenever it comes to Niniane, he completely converts into being a follower of Reina similar to Lyre and Phillip. I think he really struggles to grapple with the fact that it’s apart of his life that they are his relatives, he wants to erase that part of himself that has a relation to Maida and Julius. He completely avoids the lake, and reprimanded his daughters when they tried to go play in the lake.

He absolutely blames Cordelia, and ceased all contact with her, which was incredibly rare for a descendant to do, as they relied on Cordelia for her wisdom and charity. However Thomas despised her for making Guinevere believe she was a weak link, ultimately leading to her demise and Niniane’s death. He avoids her in the Temple, and keeps to Lyre’s side

I've wanted to draw some fan art for my favorite YouTube series for a long time—I love the characters and projects in Vivinos

Ivan durian 😔

Reference/character notes for Operator Graceless.

Crabmir

The terrible, horrible, no good context:

Hidden Aboard the Zariman

Chapter 6

Dracula book: an evil count who only sees the world as a resource to be drained for his own pleasure is stopped by the group of people who deeply care for each other

Dracula in media: a tragic romantic hero, main love interest of one of the protagonists who must be liberated from her dull little life

Frankenstein book: any human has capacity for evil when completely abandoned and shunned by the world and the people who brought him into it

Frankenstein in media: don't play God because it's against nature's laws

Jekyll and Hyde book: repression and only caring about external appearances can cause your worst impulses to indulge themselves in dangerous ways if ignored for too long

-Elif Batuman

Dracula: I’m a powerful man who sees the world as nothing but a resource to be drained. My name is Executive Producer. This book is awesome but these Power Of Love idiots don’t understand how Cool and Relatable To Me Dracula is.

Frankenstein: I’m not a Bad Parent. It is the Children who are wrong, they should be more Grateful for the Harsh Lessons I teach them so that they’ll grow up to be Hard like me

Gay sex as a contagion.

There's a REASON Dracula (and Carmilla) are portrayed with sexual overtones, and it is disingenuous to pretend that vampires are sexless metaphors for capitalism or aristocracy. That is a very modern view that completely ignores the fact that Dracula was modelled after Oscar Wilde, and written during the infamous libel trial that destroyed his life and brought homosexuality into wider public awareness at the same time.

Bram Stoker was a closeted gay man who admired Wilde and then had to watch him go through all of that. While writing this book.

This is why you need context of when a book was written and what was going on in the author's world at the time, and who the author was.

Otherwise you get people INSISTING that Dracula was purposely written as a metaphor for something that just so HAPPENS to be relevant right this second, and INSISTING that Dracula the character is "not supposed to be sexy, why do [all you FREAKS, is the implication] think he's sexy, ew!".

You cannot divorce Dracula from its portrayal of the homosexual as a corrupting influence on Good Normal People. To ignore this is revisionist.

The film Dracula was directed by Tod Browning, who also directed Freaks (the latter of which cast many of Browning's former friends from the circus as characters). Tod Browning was a former circus performer who constantly made films about the fringes of society, because that's where he was from, and about humanising those individuals. People were very aware that Dracula was a sexual metaphor--not just for queerness as a contagion but also the immigrant as an outsider. Dracula was made pre-Code, meaning there was allowed to be much more of an ambiguous portrayal of Dracula both as corrupting and sinister monster AND as sympathetic and tragic outsider. If you bother to ever watch the 1931 film, you will notice there is a great deal of accuracy to the book.

Frankenstein was directed by James Whale, a gay man who was actually pretty openly gay during a time when that was very dangerous. It's also a pre-Code film, meaning it's allowed to portray Adam as sympathetic. This film too is fairly accurate to the book, other than making the monster non-verbal and pretty much portraying him in his very early stages. Whale, being gay, empathised with the monster, and portrayed him as tragic and misunderstood--something he knew very well, as a gay man from that era. It's a well-known analysis that the film has queer undertones, and was very controversial at the time because it portrayed the monster as sympathetic, as the hero of the tragic tale, a victim of the greater world refusing to understand him.

The 1931 film Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was by no means the first film adaptation, but it is one of the earliest that still survives and (I believe) the first with sound. I have seen it. It is accurate to the book in a degree that has not been possible since the Hays Code went into effect. It preserves the fear of the effects drugs can have on a person, which is actually one of the undertones of the book as well as the commentary on Victorian social organization, particularly the way the upper classes could quite literally get away with murder so long as they were murdering the "criminal classes"--people in abject poverty, and particularly sex workers. The book Jekyll and Hyde is not about "you have to walk in balance with yourself, repression is bad"; that interpretation is based on modern psychological ideas. Repression was seen as a good thing in Victorian society, and in particular Jekyll and Hyde hammers it home that it is a good thing to repress your evil urges, and that drugs will make you spiral out of control immediately and that "indulging" your evil will make it stronger. So it's not just a modern interpretation, it's completely and totally not understanding the book at all.

The truth is that producers did not meddle much in the filmmaking of yesteryear, and they certainly were not the ones writing the script or directing the film, so the idea that Dracula was somehow an avatar they particularly projected on is absolutely just made up nonsense that has no evidence historically. It was beneath them. As long as the movie was making money, that was all that mattered. To that end, horror was incredibly lucrative. And every single adaptation of all three books since the films I mentioned above has actually been adapting that film more than it has been adapting the book. And then subsequent films are influenced by the films that came before. They are not in direct conversation with the books, they are in direct conversation with each other, with society at the time, with filmmaking at the time. You cannot take them out of that context.

To not address the queer undertones of Frankenstein and Dracula and the books they were adapted from is ignorant. To not address the social commentary and fears of drug-use in Jekyll and Hyde is equally ignorant. To not address the fears of grave-robbing and science without ethics in Frankenstein is ignorant.

The interpretations in OP are suspiciously Puritanical in their sterility and a little too relevant to present-day social fears. This speaks to the longevity of the stories, but to insist that those are the ONLY correct interpretations, that somehow someone in the 19th century was commenting on issues in the 21st, is ridiculous and bull-headed. To in particular keep hammering that to see sexuality and sensuality in these stories is Wrong and Bad is not just foolish, it erases that these stories are part of a very real body of evidence telling us what people feared in that time, in that place, and--in the case of Dracula in particular--are part of the history of a marginalised group of people that regularly has their presence in history erased. And you're being part of that erasure in so doing. Maybe don't.

Dracula is Ooh Scary + European + Blood, which, in retrospect, should've put me on edge. It didn't, so I was surprised when I read it (this is incomplete):

Dracula is explicitly described with a hooked nose (classical imagery of Jews).

At one point he literally DRINKS THE BLOOD OF A (PRESUMABLY CHRISTIAN) CHILD, aka the ACTUAL LITERAL BLOOD LIBEL.

The boxes of dirt he transports are said to smell of Jerusalem by one person.

He looks normal, but don't be fooled, he's really the Other. He's good at disguise though.

He is wealthy.

He is from vaguely Eastern Europe, as most Jews at the time in the UK were.

He is fundamentally parasitic.

The cross (a religious symbol of Christianity specifically) keeps him away

It is important to note the context -- antisemitism is on the rise in the UK due to Jewish immigration provoking latent cultural antisemitism. At least one reviewer explicitly interpreted Dracula as being about Jewish immigration to the UK, if I recall correctly. The image of Jews-as-vampires still persists today, and the image of vampires draws a LOT from Dracula.

What you need to know about this scene:

The outcome of this room was not what he wanted or expected — the close-up depicts sweating, dismayed expression, confusion

Luka intentionally came into this room with a knife — early production image on Patreon of him with a knife-shaped object likely walking here

Luka is the culprit — his arms are elbow-high in blood

Luka pulled a lever to sound the alarm and the segyein came running — as shown in frame order, the light of the alarm is flashing throughout this sequence

His close-up focuses on his inability to cry but his desire to do so — his sweatdrop follows the same path and drawn the same way as the tears during Hyuna's final scene. The illusion of crying is further enforced by the streak of blood running from his eye to the sweatdrop

It is a very human part of Luka that "cries" — The blood running from his eye to the sweatdrop is red not green

Additional context:

Luka's fellow clones seem to have been treated as disposable tools by the segyein on his behalf — in the first image the segyein performed surgeries on them to ensure the Luka's success rate will be higher when he goes through the "real thing"

Luka's drawing of paradise include only him, Hyuna, Hyun Woo, and his fellow clones — he and his fellow clones are faceless presumably because he hates his face -> He hates what he and they all are, but he doesn't hate the clones themselves

Putting everything together:

Luka shared a form of comraderie with his fellow clones. Knowing the fates they will be subjected to as essentially lab rats for his sake, he tried to free them by cutting them out of the pods. However they weren't able to survive and his naive rescue attempt ended with a floor of corpses.

Far from his intention of saving them, Luka became the culprit who ended their lives early with his own two hands. His expression shows the horror he feels from the price of his careless actions laid out in front of him. Literally.

He pulls the lever to sound the alarm that would summon the segyein.

It is simultaneously a sign of him giving up once and for all, and possibly a last ditch attempt to save the clones by alerting the segyein to the crisis he had caused.

At this point he does not care about Heperu finding out about what he had done, or the punishments that will undoubtedly follow.

-

This scene is so important because it's the root of his character's tragedy. The source of it all, which then impacted everything that followed, becaming the source of Hyun Woo's and Hyuna's tragedies too.

This is the one and only time we've ever seen Luka's horrified face up until then.

"Under sacred light, we are lifeless stars..." (X)

Here I'm back with my bullshit

I mean, since we have an official announcement for the anime of Alien Stage, I ended up recoloring this other drawing I made.

Is not that the other was terrible, or that I hated it, it's just that I always felt like it could have been better, so here it is, with hopefully better use of lighting, shadows and cleaner colors overall.

I also corrected some stuff on Luka's clothes (specially so it would look more like a bride's dress :P)

Yes this was because of the anime announcement.

Someone linked me this beautiful poster, and I'm just really impressed.

My contribution: