cool greens and warm yellows

Higher resolution concept art for Cloud's Bahamut armor for the EC anniversary event, downloaded from Famitsu (after some digging to get to the full-res lineup, you're welcome) and cleaned up by hand.

And upon reading this for the first time, I felt a huge wave of emotion over his expression because it just felt to me like when he heard that, he was seeing something else. Almost like a memory that we weren't being shown.

And then later when Ace and Luffy's backstory plays out, this is revealed;

That Ace was suicidal. Feeling like it was wrong for him to have even been born and to live. Feeling hurt, angry, alone and unwanted.

And that the only reason he felt like he had the strength to keep living was because Luffy told him that he didn't want him to die.

Ace never directly told Luffy that he wanted to kill himself. But with the way he carried himself and the obvious disregard he had for his life, it was easy to see for someone as empathetic and intuitive as Luffy. And so Luffy stayed close to Ace desperately until he felt strong enough to stand on his own.

Luffy has had so many suicidal people in his life since such a young age and he always saves them in such a seemingly effortless way just by saying

"I'll be there with you. I'll stay."

But what alot of people don't understand is that in spite of Luffy's endless empathy, compassion and love that's deeper than the ocean, when somebody he loves wants to die it always hurts him so bad and it shows so much on his face at even a hint of it.

He bounces back with a smile so often and kicks so much ass that it's so easy to forget sometimes that he's just this 17-19 year old kid...

(Yingxing is Blade's old name)

So uh. Yay a tiny slice of canon interaction!

This proves my theory right that Blade was a short life species, and here we see he's referred to as "Middle aged" - I think it's quite likely that Blade spent most of his life span with Dan Feng, considering his age here.

There's also this shot from the trailer:

Perhaps his hair turned darker due to Mara/trauma related reasons, however I think it could be white here because Blade was physically old. Whatever happened to make him immortal might have also restored his youth.

Which is sort of. Really tragic, if you think about it. Blade getting older and older while Dan Feng watched? Dan Feng inviting Blade into his realm, saying whatever they're doing will "make them even" - how so?

Even... Lifespans? He grants Blade two hours with sacred vidyadhara texts for something.

how many long stretches of journey were there, where they never would have made it in time to close the doors before it was too late, were it not for strangers giving and repaying kindness alike?

even from that very first door, it’s implied that if Suzume hadn’t jumped in to help close it, Souta likely wouldn’t have been able to at all. Suzume could have listened to him and run—she chose to help him instead