Because a new one was long overdue and I don't want anything relating to that oc showdown blog as my pinned anymore
And I figured it'd be fun if I answered some questions still because I'm sure plenty of people by now have gone;
"Sege I thought this was the Sonic brainrot always blog, what the hell is all this Pokemon Gurren Lagann stuff going on?!?"
At the end of summer 2024 I rewatched Gurren Lagann for the first time since 2011. And then the brainrot took hold. The difference between me in 2011 and me in 2024 is that I can draw humans and anime men now. Which means I can just keep making my own stuff for this anime that's been over for almost two decades--
At the same time my dormant Pokemon obsession finally became active again for the first time in like 2 years. And it became VERY active. So Gurren Lagann did what it does best and combined with the reignited Pokemon hyperfixation rather than being pushed out by it.
It didn't help that I was being enabled via my friend @/riftclaw who's had a long time Pokemon au xe is now writing and went "Kamina and Simon can be canon to my au" (I originally intended for it to be an au of an au)
You should go read the stuff xe has out for the au so far btw I love it and it's part of what threw me face first back into pokemon GO READ IT
Anyway obv these are not my OCs so it's not like I have written out lore here or have OC memes to reblog and answer questions for. So I'm gonna answer some questions under the cut as a sort of FAQ as to what's wrong with me lately and what's going on with these au versions bc I think they'd be fun to answer.
AU FAQ under readmore
What are Simon and Kamina doing in your friend's Pokemon au??
Chilling-- shdHSGDHS. Ok in-univers they're just regular(ish) dudes that were born in that world. The irl reason? My sudden Gurren Lagann hyperfixation happened simultaneously as my Pokemon one. And I'd spent like all year reading snippets of the fic Blake was working on, along with worldbuilding for it.
In that au's lore, a lot of the people in Blackthorn are dragon hybrids. This results in them having naturally occurring bright red hair, or blue hair. They also have some dragon-esque traits like fangs or sharp teeth. The Tatsumi family (Lance's and Clair's family) have red eyes.
The red eyes given are EXACTLY like the ones Kamina has in canon. So while juggling these two hyperfixations I was like "Haha hey Blake you know how Kamina gets drawn with fangs in canon super often, has red eyes, blue hair, and an affinity for capes? What if I made an au of your au where he's Lance's and Clair's brother" and then Blake was like "He's canon TO the au now" and the ball kinda got rolling from there (Thank u Blake)
Simon is also a hybrid tho not a dragon one. There's a town in the au that gets literally wiped off the map because of an earthquake/massive sinkhole. So I plopped Simon in there to keep his earthquake trauma. Even tho they're not from the same town, Kamina and Simon still find each other and Kamina takes him in to Blackthorn after the town's disaster happens and Simon loses his parents in it.
Extra bit of info: Kamina's full name in this au is Kamina Tatsumi, and Simon's is Simon Takashi. I know it's popular fanon to give them the last names of Jiha/Giha since other characters in canon have their last names be the villages they came from. But I don't subscribe to this since they tried so hard to get AWAY from their village I don't think they'd adopt it into their names, so I got Simon a whole new last name even tho this is an au.
Are other Gurren Lagann characters in this AU?
PROBABLY although they would be background/side characters since Kamina and Simon are what I focus on here. They have a whole wide world to exist in so they could be out and about. Like I can't imagine Simon NOT meeting up with and eventually dating Nia. If Kamina gets to live then she should get to live too. She'd probably be a fairy hybrid of some sort because I mean. Look at her.
Kittan might be somewhere out there too as a friend Kamina occasionally meets up with and bickers with, kind of like a rival. I don't think he'd be a hybrid because I think it's funny how in episode 4 when Kamina met him he was like 'SHOW ME YOUR TEETH SO I CAN SEE THAT THEY'RE FLAT AS PROOF YOU'RE NOT A BEASTMAN' like he doesn't frequently get drawn with fangs.
Tl;dr: Yes the other GL characters could potentially be out there even if my focus isn't on them. It's a big world out there and Kamina and Simon are traveling it, so they're meeting all sorts of people all the time.
Ok but Sege you appear to have gone insane over Adaman/Kamina? How did this happen? Is it a crackship?
This is not a crackship-- at least not by the og definition. Nowadays it seems to get used as a term for 'a ship that isn't canon' but the og definition meant 'silly unserious joke ship'.
Adaman/Kamina is canon to the au and is treated completely seriously.
Did I mean for it to happen? Nope! It was another case of 'author does the writing and then the character end up doing whatever they want instead of anything that was planned for'
In this au Kamina is the one that ends up living through the events of Legends Arceus-- except unlike in the game he gets to bring himself and Ingo home after fighting Arceus.
To me Adaman is bisexual af, and I figured he'd have a crush on Kamina. It was meant to be silly-- Kamina is an acearo that hasn't found the words for it because he's just not focused on that. He's focused on Pokemon and battling and traveling the world. He's oblivious to a lot of advances. So Adaman runs into a lot of situations where Kamina's absolutely dense about how he feels.
But then I was like 'well. Adaman is impatient, and he's got no lack of confidence. I don't think he'd keep these feelings to himself for the entirety of Kamina's stay in Hisui'
And things kinda spiraled from there because then we have Kamina, who's been stuck in Hisui for a couple months or so at that point. The Pokemon team he's familiar with-- some of which he's grown up with, isn't there. There aren't even that many dragon types in Hisui for him to speak to and be himself around (he's hiding the whole dragon thing given how the people of Jubilife are around Pokemon alone)
He's been separated from his family and friends. Ingo and Adaman are the people he hangs around the most, and some of the only people that know (save for a few other Diamond clan members that were there when Adaman himself found out)
He's got no people to be around most the time, no one to really let in his personal space. And as someone that's grown up with a bunch of siblings and then gone on to make a bunch of friends, that's a big thing for him.
He's lonely af, so when Adaman confesses by kissing him, he gives in to that. They end up with a sort of arrangement where they both get affection for different reasons. And then it starts deepening beyond that. It's queerplatonic rather than a strict romance, so what that means to them fluctuates through the story. All the while they're keeping it a secret just so it doesn't seem like the guy who fell from the sky is playing favorites with one of the clans over the others.
But by the nature of how Legends Arceus would end if there was an option for the player to go back from wherever Arceus plucked them from, it does mean that they get separated in the end. They know this will happen but they stay with each other until the end anyway.
They move on with their lives, but they do end up reunited even though it's years down the line
Anyway that's why I've been insane lately SHDGSHDHHSD. Will add more stuff if I think of any or get asked
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these were my thumbnail sketches! i spent only a few minutes on each, then i had some friends vote on their favorite, which was 3! 2nd place was 1, which i might still use some other time <3
next i did a color test, which ended up fairly close to the end product. I mostly focused on composition, light, and movement, keeping it loose and sketchy
sadly i deleted my sketch layer somewhere down the line, but i basically pencilled in the final composition before laying down the colors! the linework was actually added later in the process after i could judge how everything was flowing together. I’m a painter at heart, so this tends to be better for my eye and workflow <3
hey so. for absolutely no reason whatsoever. what would pokemon au kamina’s reaction be to lance dropping out of a portal in front of him be, in that split second before he realizes that Hey, This Might Not Be My Guy? or possibly just. Falling from the Sky. totally hypothetically–
Oh BOY the reaction would actually differ a bit on whether this is pre or post Hisui
Pre-Hisui he's entirely unfamiliar with the concept of alternate universes and timelines and the sort. He'd run up to Lance (or catch him if he's falling from the sky) and immediately be all "what the hell did you get into this time??? What happened?? Why's your scent Off, who were you with??"
Post-Hisui it starts out the same with him rushing over, but then as Soon as he catches a whiff of the different scent on this Lance he'd be tipped off to this being an alternate. But seeing as its still A Lance the worry would be the same. Hell, given he's had his own dealings with portals and/or falling out of the sky, there'd even be rage there based on what he assumed happened and just "Lance? Did Arceus do this to you?"
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as an animation major I would love to hear your animation nerding out thoughts haha. I’m not very far, but I’ve been enjoying the show from what I’ve seen! the animation and expressions are really fun. I like kamina’s character so far too! I appreciate his spunk, and the sibling dynamic between him and simon is so cute :3
YEEEE god ok ofc now that im asked my brains empty, but ill try my best
But its like-- i even thought about it recently because i had the Edgerunners music video for This Fire playing on the side while i worked like...even now with Trigger's latest animations, you can see the style that imo started with Gurren Lagann there. The character designs, the movement, the expressions, the way the action is framed and done...if anything it's only gotten more defined as anime has gotten bigger budgets over the years.
And the story structure is often like a mix of our world and something alien. Humans living underground because beastmen are forcing them down. A world where clothes both signify where in the societal hierarchy you are, and are used for battle. A world where animal-human type hybrids exist but are relegated to a single city. A world where beings of fire are the main enemy, so firefighters are all decked out to fight them, etc.
All of these are worlds not so alien that they couldn't be seen as an alternate Earth. Familiar but not completely so. The stories also often have a group that's oppressed, whether it's immediately obvious or not. And sooner or later they have a reveal that make the audience realize that things were not what they seemed all along (Gurren Lagann has 2 of these moments imo)
I think out of all the Trigger anime ive seen (and ive seen most) Dungeon Meshi is the only one that doesnt follow this stylization or structure, understandably so because its adapting an existing manga. But even so the style of their animation still comes through at times like the expressions and the way they do their action shots!
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WHEEZE poor Kamina. nearly got mauled by an alternate version of his older brother and then got sucker punched in the gut by the differences between his lance and pokespe lance lmfao–
…that wasn’t even all the Situations he also survived falling into an active volcano and then get shot point blank in the face by lugia. what a man. actually in the manga he might not even be part of the blackthorn clan? his dad got kicked out for marrying a woman from kanto, but lance’s own involvement with them beyond being close to Clair is… vague lol. out of everything, that might be what shocks his family the most
(YEAH the magic powers are very fun and also thematic towards his character both in the manga and out of it. the viridian powers are basically the ability to feel a pokemons emotions/read their minds and see their memories, as well as heal their wounds. those abilities are, at least in part, what drove him to hate humanity 👍)
I. know too much about pokespe Lance specifically lmfao
HDHSHSHDH UR GOOD my friend @riftclaw holds the Lance knowledge and p much anything i know about pokespe Lance other than 'he was the scary hard to beat bad guy' comes from xem more than it does my own memories
I also at least know Clair is there bc of the one panel ive seen of little Lance and Clair being sad with a hurt dratini
Geoverse Lance tends to get himself into situations too so the volcano and Lugia thing would have Kamina frowning Very Deeply but otherwise hed think 'yeah that might as well happen'
The situation with the parents would have him go "Oh so Blackthorn sucks here. Their biggest problem is 'oh no, someone married someone from the next door region, how horrible'??? No plagues??? You got no plagues so you had to fill out your time making problems outta things that aint problems at all???"
ALSO BLAKE (riftclaw) FILLED ME IN on the magic powers being how he talks to pokemon but id forgotten he can heal them. No wonder he was a menace to fight
pokespe lance anon! yeah his main crime was trying to wipe out humanity but he Also blew up a city. just for the fun of it haha. his redemption arc is being mildly amused by silver trying to kill him once after like 3 years of faking his death and then telling prof. oak about arceus being Angry. and then 1v1ing palkia–
fun fact he also has magic powers due to being born in kantos resident sentient forest (the viridian). and so does giovanni!
…the manga is wild lmfao
JFHFHFH YEAH now and then i see random panels of the manga out in the wild and im like "good god, whats happening in there?"
Poor Kamina would be so confused by it all like "Viridian??? But youre from Blackthorn!!! WADYA MEAN YOU BLEW UP A CITY!?! YOU DON'T D O THAT!!!-- YOU'RE MAGIC!?!" He gets to 1v1ing Palkia and is finally like "ok yes this one tracks"
The lesson he gets from all this is to grab his own Lance and go "forget timespace, dont ever have any kids in Viridian forest. Dont ask."
one of the funniest things about geo!lance is that without the intervention of like two very specific people he probably would've gone full pokespe. instead he channelled all that into threatening and/or beating the shit out of anyone he caught using corporal punishment (whips, choke chains, etc) on their pokemon until everyone stopped doing that. it mostly got it out of his system until rocket resurfaced.
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