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premise: iruma, a 14-year-old who was molded into an extreme people-pleaser by scum parents who only really paid attention to him when exploiting him for their own comfort, is sold by said scum parents to a literal demon from hell who proceeds to adopt him as his grandson and dote on him exorbitantly. living under the constant threat of being eaten if anyone finds out he's a human, iruma gradually learns about concepts like eating until he's full, wanting things, and being loved while unintentionally charming everyone around him with his uncommon kindness

it's aimed at young teens so it's mostly a comedy with occasional action leanings but it also goes in HARD on found family themes and general wholesomeness. because of its demographic and genre it takes a largely light-hearted approach to the subject of iruma's childhood and how his parents treated him, but it doesn't shy away from the lasting effects it had on his overall personality and makes his very gradual character growth feel extremely rewarding to watch

it can be experienced as both as the original manga (300+ chapters) and an anime adaptation (three seasons, 67 episodes total, covers up to around halfway through the manga) that has a good dub if you're into that kind of thing. I think it's commonly consumed by watching the anime first and then picking up the manga where it leaves off but the first season especially can feel pretty slow at times so going all-in on the manga where you can kinda set your own pace may be preferable depending on your tastes

immediate, visceral cognitive dissonance that has still not quite resolved since first seeing the promo image

like, huh?? whose idea was it to cross wholesome slice-of-life stakes-driven comedy iruma-kun x Dick Jokes The Anime??

the efforts continue

focusing on shoulders, upper body, torso

the excruciating arms training arc. first page is mostly cropped out because the first day went baaad

and then I wanted to draw a picture for breather so these are all just working out what kind of picture to draw. I kinda liked the end result though so I'm considering maybe taking it to digital for color. maybe.

oh man!! I didn't think there was anyone left in the world still paid any kind of attention to my zestiria fic! (or the snx ones either I suppose. somehow those still feel so recent but damn, it's already been two years.) I definitely wouldn't say I've moved on from tales - I'm actually smack in the middle of a long-time-coming abyss replay and have been seriously considering a zestiria replay afterwards - but.... yeah, unfortunately neither berseria nor arise did much for me, save for the parts of berseria that functioned as zestiria lore.

I'm hopeful for the future of the series, though, with snx's director heading the team and with all the talk about rereleasing older titles to be available on modern hardware! I have my fingers crossed hard for the abyss remake of my dreams, featuring updated graphics and all-new character models and fully orchestrated music and new content with all the original voice actors AND full english voice acting for all the skits (not going to happen), and for an eventual new title that I can really sink my teeth into (more plausible)

you may have noticed that in the official releases - both the anime and the manga - what fans usually call the "ring of gluttony" is instead called the "gluttonous feeder ring." this doesn't sound nearly as concise and catchy while communicating basically the same concept, so why'd they go with it?

the og name of the ring is 悪食の指輪/akujiki no yubiwa, where yubiwa = ring and akujiki, according to weblio (online jp dictionary), = eating things that aren't usually eaten, things that others would consider strange, or things that are crude/shabby/low quality. (it's also apparently a word for how eating meat is forbidden in buddhism, but I don't think that's relevant.) "gluttony" is a valid enough translation for this, BUT

this is a story about demons, so when we hear "gluttony," it's just a short mental hop over to the seven deadly sins. however, the jp wikipedia page for the seven deadly sins translates gluttony to 暴食/boushoku, a completely different word that weblio defines as overeating or eating voraciously - in other words, uh... gluttony. so actually, the ring and the sin have completely different names.

this isn't to say that there's no connection at all between iruma and the sin of gluttony, of course - our iruma represented gluttony in the 7-year anniversary artwork featuring all the deadly sins, and he's well known for inhaling way more food than he needs (i.e. exercising gluttony). but I think there's a tendency to see "ring of gluttony" and think that it has something to do with iruma embodying sin or that it suggests the existence of a ring of pride, a ring of sloth, etc., but these kinds of associations are almost assuredly not intended since, if the author did want to invoke that connotation, there's a different word that would have done so much more effectively

in conclusion official tls call it the gluttonous feeder ring precisely because it's not the ring of gluttony, it's the ring of will-eat-anything-indiscriminately. all-consuming ring? too ominous. all-hungry ring perhaps? or maybe they specifically wanted to use a word similar to "gluttony" as a nod at the demon-ish setting, since the og term uses the 悪 kanji (aku/evil/the first kanji in the word "demon")