#animeta

my epic ship chart. what happened to those anyway. you guys used to love ship charts

blank version under the cut if you want one

alternatively, how fandom enacts the very concept the manga condemns.

it's a striking concept but, bear with me. usami is no less pure than asirpa when he was her age. he was just as twelve as she was. from what we can infer, the usami family is a loving one; mother, father, and children who love one another and get along. poor and hardworking, sure, but nothing to suggest that tokishige is missing anything. unlike the others who come into the fold, tsurumi plays no fatherly role to usami; the "love" that he is "missing", as tsukishima tells koito tsurumi is good at finding, is not familial in any way, but purely romantic.

in fact, the lack of familial issues is why ogata seeks him out in his quest for proving his own delusional worldview about guilt & love - while ogata had no loving family, he ended up the same as usami, which must mean that love means nothing at all. (unbeknownst to ogata, usami is simply Built Different.)

but back to asirpa. her feelings for sugimoto parallel usami's for tsurumi. an attractive older man who shows them attention and makes them feel special, spurring a developmentally normal crush. to both of them, their happy ending is having their crush at their side forever. asirpa is sugimoto's partner, usami is tsurumi's number one friend (or person, depending.) asirpa's animal motif is the wolf, usami the loyal seta dog. these two are foils, and so are their relationships with that older figure they love so much.

and yet, the idea that sugimoto and asirpa may end up as romantic or sexual partners is met with a sort of violent disgust that usami and tsurumi's coupling simply isn't. the same people who say "DNI if you ship freak ships (namely yuuo and sugisirpa)" will have dozens and dozens of tsuruusa images & fic on their page. now, why is that?

I can think of a few reasons.

first, framing comes to mind. we spend most of the story with asirpa at 12/13, and usami at 26/27. we meet them as child and adult respectively, with usami's backstory coming in the final third of the story when we finally see him as a child in a flashback. in this way, it makes the fandom's stomach turn to think of asirpa as a sexual being because all of the art & story we have of her is as a child- whereas we see usami as a full-fledged adult for 90% of his appearances, and a violent and sexual one at that. asirpa is thus locked in as an eternal child where usami is forever a young adult.

second, there seems to be an implied pass given to tsurumi and usami because they're villains. they are sadomasochistic antagonists who care only about their own desires. of course, the ship is permissible - they aren't the good guys, they don't have to be morally righteous. they are expected to be sexually deviant and repugnant in this way. (A pass that is not extended to yuuo, which is also textually evident, a coherent reading of the themes, and also centered around, at least in part, a selfish sexually perverse antagonist with a complex even freud wouldn't touch. i digress.) sugimoto, however, is the bastion of morality; he only kills because he must, he is virginal (implied), he is in his own way pure. to have any change to his dynamic with asirpa, even those in line with the time period or culture, is to strip him of his good boy status, even in a future exploration of their relationship. therefore, it's hot and taboo when usami & tsurumi do it, and disgusting and taboo when asirpa & sugimoto do it.

however, i think the last point is the one i find more worth discussing. and that is that asirpa is seen as pure, and usami is seen as not. while asirpa's purity is a long debated & grappled with thing - a standard forced upon her, until she takes destiny into her own hands, fires the arrow that kills ogata - usami is simply never seen as pure, not even as a child. usami is aggressive and volatile in a way asirpa is not at the same age, and he is much, much more sexual.

asirpa blushes and turns red at the thought of her feelings towards sugimoto. she has a natural childish interest in penises - she is curious to see them given she lacks one, she thinks they are funny, it is a cute and amusing topic. she does not have a genuine interest in sex - which is normal for her age. she has much more important things on her mind that command her attention & are the focal point of her turning from sad and naive child to a mature leader as a teenager/young adult. her coming of age does not center a romantic or sexual experience to have her cross the threshold from child to adult.

usami, however, is the opposite. usami's coming of age has everything to do with sex (and violence.) in his first appearance as twelve, his eyes are drawn much like asirpa's; big and round and with sparkle. innocent. its not until he has his meltdown and kills tomoharu that he gets the eyes we know him with. (eyes say a lot about a character; not just in golden kamuy either. a similar example is in "the phantom of the opera", when christine descends with the phantom; in the theatrical version, her eye makeup changes to show she has become sexually mature and lost her innocence.) usami immediately connects the murder of his friend - his first kill - with sexuality - his first time, his loss of virginity. he sees it as an act that he and tsurumi did together, and remembers it fondly and as explicit masturbation material.

usami does not see himself as a pure being. very explicitly, he calls even his child self a pervert when he likens his own repeated masturbation with that of the Sapporo serial killer. "he's a pervert who will return to the scene of the crime to jack off over and over. i'd know all about that!" usami is not, in his own mind, traumatized by what happened. usami is happy and content and in love. this is normal for him, but not what we would call normal for anyone else. but the fandom, yet, labels him a freak, a creep because well, tsurumi didn't make him that way, tsurumi didn't explicitly hurt or abuse him, usami was just born like that. he was always rotten.

sure, tsurumi fed him all of the classic lines, whether to his face or to us, the audience. you're special to me. you are not like the other sheep. you are different. you are my number one person. we are partners in crime. i will wait for you. we as an audience know that tsurumi knows exactly how usami feels about him, both as that child at twelve, at fourteen, and as an adult, dying in his arms.

"you will live on inside me as the one i hold dearest."

"i'm so happy i could come."

if tsurumi means it, and has meant it all along that he loves usami in this way, he is a pedophile. if he doesn't, then he is an opportunitistic predator like he is to everyone else. no reading really looks good for tsurumi, and yet that does nothing to curb his fanbase or the shipping community.

it makes me cringe inside, just a little, the implications that are made therefore.

usami isn't a victim or isn't worth protecting because he isn't pure. because he asked for it. because he wanted it. because he's happy. because he's a pervert. because he's horny and deviant.

when i was the age of asirpa and usami, i was not like asirpa. i was like usami. i was horny and hypersexual and unlike my peers. i had early exposure to sex and erotica and porn. i had a frequent masturbation problem (that led to a lot of shame and i hid it well.) an older teen took advantage of that. she told me all those things, too - I was special, I was her number one, she used special foreign love words that she taught me for me the way tsurumi cannibalizes usami's fingers (equating usami to his wife and child all at once.) for years, i considered her my first love. she was my first kiss that i didn't have to ask for or initiate, among others I don't want to get into here. (and I shouldn't have to.) i told people about our escapades like funny party stories as an adult, once i didnt have to hide anymore (my partner in crime.) she said she would wait for me too. i didn't find what she did to me as traumatic until i was in my mid twenties and someone else had to show it to me. even now, i struggle to really condemn her. how much is she really at fault if i asked for it, wanted it? how bad was it if back then i had always fantasized and wanted more? i, too, was rotten.

i don't write this this to guilt trip or persuade one way or the other on a ship. quite frankly, at least in the circles i run in, i look at shipping dynamics with more nuance than just "this is hot"; my circle of fandom is full of nuance and dynamic thought and depth beyond aesthetics. i don't condemn anyone for this ship or that ship; there's often a lot going on under the surface, and i never know why someone might like something. furthermore, golden kamuy is a deep story with lots of meaning and exploration into the human experience and all of the nasty fucked up things that come with it.

that being said. i am open about my story because usami was one of the first times I felt seen. he is an unsympathetic victim. he is not cute or waifish or sad; he enjoys everything that happens to him, quite literally to the end. and this essay is meant to ask this; when you condemn one dynamic and not the other, what message are you sending? when one has a victim and the other an accomplice, what are you saying about the "bad" and "impure" victims and survivors? are you upholding the idea of purity - the very one the source material goes out of its way to criticize and condemn? what does that say about you and your ideas about victimhood, grooming, abuse, etc?

im only ranking these if we know BOTH 1. vaguely what they look like 2. anything else about how they work. so visser three's one-off morphs and races only mentioned in passing don't count. ALSO if i didn't list something that falls within the criteria i laid out, keep your damn mouth shut

hork-bajir - THE ABSOLUTE GOATS. awesome design. in-depth, tragic lore. they're so fucking good. the best by far, in every way

iskoort - i love these little freaks. what if accordions were alive and wanted to buy your memories

pemalites & chee - one of the most fascinating bits of animorphs worldbuilding. i really wish we'd been able to meet a pemalite in the flesh, but i think it would cheapen the concept a bit. ALSO. funy dogy

yeerks - the perfect design for the main antagonists of a dark kid's series about an alien invasion. SO much potential, and a whole lot of that potential is touched on at least once

helmacrons - LOVE these daft cunts. the concept is objectively funny and i think people just hate them because they hate "filler"

taxxons - fucking brilliant and horrifying. as much as you are disgusted by them and afraid of them, you pity them in equal measure. im glad they got a happy ending

howlers - this shit was deranged of applegrant to put in writing

nartec - sorry i like their corpse museum. beat me take my blood whatever

ketrans - gamer birds who live on a big crystal in the sky. they'd be #1 in any other series

leerans - you know what i was going to rank them lower cause they would stress me out but then i remembered that they will respect your brain privacy if you ask. chill as fuck of them

mercora - My awesome weird crabs #RESTINPIECES #BLOWNAPARTBYCOMET

venber - very cool🧊 guys. they should have gotten a 2nd appearance

jubba jubba et. al. - SO BADASS. some shit that would have scared me as a kid. Monsters In The Mist

unimites - rocker aliens that are born with punk hairstyles. the ellimist learns music from them. and that's all you need for this to be a great alien

graffen's children - gumbys killed en masse. thats all you need to know

mortrons - My weird dog

orff - YUCKY!!!!!!!!! GET MY YUCKY UP

garatrons - these are just biker centaurs with super speed. fucking awesome

inner-worlders and jallians - shoutout to Life-Giver of the Jain Sea

kafit birds - they get points for having 12 wings and being more interesting than djabalas which i did not include on this list because theyre not interesting enough for me to have anything to say about

chadoo - they get points for sounding cute and being one of the few named Alien Animals

veleek - pretty cool. i like them better than the nesk

vanarx - scary star wars episode v planet worm = loves it

gedds - i really feel for them but theyre not that interesting to read about. poor fuckers should have been left alone to roam the yeerk homeworld in peace

skrit na - i have no strong feelings about the skrit na one way or the other

generationals - these bitches are autistic. good for them

nesk - these cunts gross me out but i respect the vision

capasins - jump to conclusions too quickly but their designs are really cool

andalites - god fuck these guys LMAO they're not dead last cause they have a great design and we have ax and elfangor and aldrea but their society irritates the shit out of me

Previous: Reading+Listening Log 2024.11 - November

Year's ending. What's going to be waiting on the other side of the tunnel?

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Reading languages: German, English, French, Japanese, not listing which was what. (There’s also been some continued music listening attempts at Chinese.)

Titles are as I’ve read them either first or most and thus remember it for that title mostly.

Not going to bother putting in the original titles of translated reads unless there is something worthy of note to it.

Bold titles means series completed, or it was a one-shot.

If it says a volume number, it may mean it has been finished or is still in progress.

Some notes’ content may be subject to repetition here and there, as I also copy some older notes from casual conversations over into these logs and don't go through any rounds of cutting things down.

I will freely use some very lunatastic terms like cheese and fluff, you can find an explanation here: Luna-Lingo.

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December

Pretty short list for this month.

Somewhat stuck between lethargic can't get out of bed and falling into the pit-trap called bedtime revenge procastination.

Which resulted in a few stunts of staying up really late to make a few deadlines, that I really, really do not wish to repeat.

Light Novels/Web Novels/Asian Novels:

Hell Mode V5p3-6 

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? v15-18

To Every You I've Loved Before + To Me, the One Who Loved You (v1-2)

You Like Me, Not My Daughter?! V2-3

(classified #1 v2)

Manga:

Animeta! v3-5ch28 Black Butler v33ch195 Delinquent Daddy & Tender Teacher v4-5 Der Mond in einer Regennacht/The Moon On a Rainy Night v1-3ch12 Detektiv Conan v102 Domestic na Kanojo v28 Haikyu v45 Kemutai Hanashi ch32.2 Knitter's High ch32.1-3 Lonely Castle in the Mirror v4-5 Okazari Ouhi ni Nattanode, Kossori Hataraki ni deru koto ni Shimashita ~Usagi ga Iru no de Hitorine mo Sabishiku Arimasen!~ ch30.3 Safe & Sound in the Arms of an Elite Knight (Manga) v2ch6-11 The Valiant Must Fall v3ch28 Unnamed Memory ch42.1-2 Watashi wo Tabetai, Hitodenashi ch43.1-3 Yomei Ichinen to Senkokusareta Boku ga, Yomei Hantoshi no Kimi to Deatta Hanashi ch15.2

Webtoons:

Actually none again, huh

Music/Music Videos:

Bold are what were more memorably stuck in my head.

a mesh up from the tail end of the last month and some evergreens, but mostly pretty much the same as last month:

Zhou Shen - 若梦 Zhou Shen - 借梦（《宁安如梦》影视剧“梦”主题曲） YLL GRYM - Wretched City - 15 - the escape Troye Sivan - Blue Neighbourhood - 07 - TALK ME DOWN Troye Sivan - Something To Give Each Other - 07 - Got Me Started SVRCINA - Lucid YLL GRYM - Wretched City - 14 - LUST. VALORANT - Die For You ft. Grabbitz Joywave - Life in a Bubble I Blew (bonus track) (more or less the whole Bubble OST album by Sawano Hiroyuki) Joywave - Traveling at the Speed of Light Joywave, PVRIS - Coming Apart (PVRIS Remix) London Grammar - Oh Woman Oh Man Zhou Shen, Terry Zhong - 春雪 Joywave - Tongues (Eyedress Remix) Joywave - Tongues London Grammar - If You Wait - 17 - When We Were Young Joywave - Every Window Is A Mirror Joywave - Tongues (Giorgio Moroder Remix) London Grammar - Dancing By Night Joywave - Feels Like a Lie The Stickmen Project - Alright The Stickmen Project - Alright (Extended Mix) Zhou Shen - MINE (Live) Zhou Shen - 等你 (Live) 【音乐缘计划】 Zhou Shen - 只与我有关联 (Live) 【音乐缘计划第4期】 Zhou Shen - 忘了我 (Live) 【音乐缘计划第6期】 Zhou Shen - 颠倒之间 (Live) 【音乐缘计划·第2期】 LUNAX - No Heroes ycccc - 万叹 Story of Yanxi Palace OST - 01 - 看 (電視劇《延禧攻略》主題曲) Memphis May Fire - The Burden (Interlude) (Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei OST by Iwasaki Taku)

Notes:

Animeta! v3-5ch28: Not a bad series, and I do like it better than say Shirabako, which came along with too much dramatized pathos. But somehow... it's so down to earth and filled with technical details it's more like a documentary than anything, but still feels like trying to make a plot narrative with the characters, but that somewhat falls flat for me, because the characters aren't very interesting to me. They aren't even badly characterized or anything, but they also just don't stir up any interest either. As a documentary it throws a lot of technical details in, but doesn't really go very deep into it, so not a lot gets retained after walking out of it. In any case, not it's not a bad read, it's apparently it's in bad hiatus land.

Black Butler v33ch195: Right, Mr. Lawnmower-kun is back and I just... Well, whatever.

Delinquent Daddy & Tender Teacher v4-5: The series is pretty comfy and everything, but every so much more now the horny porny content gets a bit errrrr, partly because the explicit level of scenes make it somewhat of a hard recommendation to anyone and now the choice also seems a bit questionable (them going out to some love hotel or like just look for a good time when they are alone at home is one thing, but now they're just doing it in some whatever garden corner outside?? Besides, does that even work with no equipment at hand?) That really just feels too bad. It could have been pretty perfect title to go outside of the BL bubble into even mainstream all ages otherwise.

Der Mond in einer Regennacht/The Moon On a Rainy Night v1-3ch12: What I expected after reading ch1 a long time ago in a preview: Soppy random cheese and a more in your face and thus less nuanced version of I Hear the Sunspot in terms of thematizing the hearing impairment. What I got: Some surprisingly serious discourse on disability with the equality vs. fairness discussion as well as how this is actually more queer than it's genre GL. Like MC already kind of knows she is into girls, which is refreshing as it's none of these meets the other MC and the dramatized OMG-what-is-this-confusions. It's transported very delicately too (like how it's never ever stated she had a crush on her piano teacher, but if you piece things together you get the picture), all mixed in with doubts and also a heavy deal of subconscious denial, which also isn't dramatized, despite there being material for trauma substancially implied, it's there, subtly nagging and eating at her, fuelling her guilt, about the ulterior motives accusation of Miss little sister, and it's both right and wrong at the same time. The invitation of the hairdresser lady and her stated intention of she really just wanted to tell her "before she starts believing what society tells her", is a pretty nice supportive thing to be there before all the usual notorious suffering-because-queer sob stories could even start to sprout their traumatizing tentacles into a big tree you need a see-saw to fell. (That is also one of the things I quite like about Kieta Hatsukoi so much.)

Detektiv Conan v102: I've been thinking this for a while, but yes, this series has definitely become more and more of a romCom...

Domestic na Kanojo v28: Oh hell, I'm through. What a dumpster cheese ride. Hina really has had it for her with all the creeps trying to destroy her life. The whole coma and waking up from it is a little bit Plot Suffering and Plot Armor (same with how just about anyone gets to be pretty successful in life), but I do like what Rui has to say about their relationship to her mother and how she already has all she could want from him, and it's not like any of that going to go away, marriage or not or with her sister is back in the picture, so none of it is a problem. Now, this is vastly more interesting than anything else in the series and the series would have been so, so much more interesting if it had simply started that way. Oh, well. The surprise GL-Side plot was also fairly decent. (Actually did we ever see what became of that friend of Miss acterss who was into the latter? Last thing I remember is her comforting her when she got rejected by just being a friend for that one time or something.) All things said and done, it does have its good scenes. And then also many a few creeps too many. And even more dumpster cheese.

Haikyu v45: And there the series ends, and well. I did like the series in the beginning up to around where the Anime season 1 ends, that's where it kind of still remained tangible. But after that it increasingly was just... they take it so super serious, also they are going to do it professional and everything, and it just feels like something far beyond the other side of the fence and with that sense it just also went to be increasingly boring to me. (Didn't help I'm not too interested in volleyball itself.) Also had me to think back to the Anime of Stars Align which specifically picked up soft tennis as a sports theme to avoid exactly that sort of impression.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? v15-18: Ok, v14 was all action and drama and Lyu is best girl, so v15 being a slower breather and a sort of calm before the storm volume was fine. It also probably is the first volume that feels like it expects you to have read the Oratoria spin off, with all the ominous implications about Aiz and then not doing anything with it really. I did very much like that part where Hestia and Bell ruminated over their old times and the narration kinda makes pretty clear what their sort of relationship really is beneath all the daily antics. So then, after the slow and pace reducing calm of that volume, v16.... is a romCom. All of a sudden a RomCom?! Looking at the cover, I was kinda thinking Syr had to be some sort of sister, daughter, clone or homunculus or some such from Freya, because they looked so incredibly similar. Well, way to be warm, but still completely off the mark. Also, the RomCom definitely was one, but also pretty serious business after all, and I'd say the narrative structure and plot twist of it all is really quite cleverly done. I also like how the volume numbers have started to get integrated into the art since v15. Pretty eyecatching. v17 comes along with an AU-not-really setting as someone who has some base interest in alternate reality settings that one was fairly interesting, too. And I hadn't even known about Hestia being a viginial goddess before somehow. Now that sheds a whole different light in her antics of trying to protect Bell from any sort of nefarious cheese and at the same time makes it ever so much more ironic, that she is running around in that outfit of hers. V18 went on to be weaker until Lyu showed up, and she's so badass!! Go kick anyone else out of the cheese race! .... Though I feel like it's probably not going anywhere given v15 has her join the band of brutes to hit Bell in her jealousy. Why did you have to dooo thattttt. ;_; Anyway, here is hoping she comes back to her senses...

Kemutai Hanashi ch32.2: It's literally a 1:1 adaption of the doujin version with updated art and a bit more visual space to breathe, but all the dialogue lines remained the same. Pretty much word by word. You really get to notice, this is the core of it all and it didn't just remain unchanged, this has always been in such a pristine form, it did not really need any more to be said. Curious what is to come after this milestone. The commentary on Hayashi-sensei's pixiv fanbox also mentioned that things are starting with this, because after this there are things possible only because it has come though this and it definitely has my curiosity.

Also.

I'm wincing in signs.

You know this series has quite a lot of passages, that kinda... are like something like cinematic still life? Like those zero dialogue scenes. I didn't even notice it the first round of reading when I started the series back in 2022, but if you look closer a lot of those scenes are crammed full of little sign details or loads of sfx. And for reasons after the previous month of November passed I probably also can never read things the same way as in the past again. Paying overproportionally too much attention to signs totally is my new occupational hazard/disease which I've not thought though before it all whatsoever. @_@

Lonely Castle in the Mirror v4-5: This is not a bad series and I guess its message is also nice and everything. But it's plot twist was just a little bit too easy to see through, especially in a world after the mainstream blockbuster Your Name has come to existance and given that some of these characters live past the timeline in which that movie exists it just seems a little bit stretched that any of them realizing it took so long. Especially when they even discussed typical SciFi-Plotlines. Otherwise slightly confused about the sister character being dead, but also saying she'd see to what she can do to her brother when he asks her to live and then also an aged version of her showing up in MC's random daydreams and doing... something?I'm not even sure what the daydreams are good for.

To Every You I've Loved Before + To Me, the One Who Loved You (v1-2): This was an interesting series. I do like those AU, alternate dimensions, multiple world theories things and all the what if contemplations quite a deal to begin with and this one even has some pseudo science in place that makes just about enough sense while also not going into techno babbling. And a few things that essentially are just a Reading Steiner and attraction fields without using those series specific terms. I also hadn't heard about the guiness beer downstream bubbles part and finding out that this was a real thing was definitely quite intriguing. Narratively it's being fairly clever with the two volumes standing opposite to each other. The first even manages to somewhat stand alone, but still leave enough open for a second. When I started the second volume I kinda expected it to be about the MC who didn't become a scientist, has met Kazune in school, but still didn't get to be with her, to whic world he did slip shortly, but instead it was an entirely timeline altogether. I also quite like the focus on, this is this timeline, things are like this because this was simply the one possibility the narrative followed and there is plenty of others. This is something I kinda missed in e.g. Orange, where everything in that timeline just fell in line towards a happy ending while feeling kinda shoehorned at places. Always felt like if it just mentioned in the prologue or anywhere, that this was just the one lucky world of so many other failures, it would have come off so much better. Here it didn't even feel really all that shoehorned and the emphasis makes it even more grounded. But I'm just a bit confused about the ending and the ghost. The whole point of v2 was to save Shiori from her ghost existence was it? But at the end of of v1's timeline MC still gets to see a ghost shortly before meeting the elderly Shiori. And the epilogue of v2 features the PoV of some ghost, even if it's amnesiac, so we don't know if it's still Shiori or maybe even a ghostified MC. Anyway, wouldn't mind a third volume exploring more timelines, the base premise has enough ground to lend itself to many more character fates, but those two volumes are pretty roundly conclusive.

You Like Me, Not My Daughter?! v2-3: .... I suppose I am at fault myself to continue reading it in the train, but the double down on the spicy fanservice illustrations was just. Haaaahrghh. Anyway, I quite like the discourse about Miu rooting for them both and this whole going from the childish want to marry Taku to thinking it's even greater if he could just become her dad. It does it's share of subtly dismantling a few role stereotype, also with how at times she is more in the role of the Mom rather than Ayako. Ayako's blushy innocent maiden bits are a bit exhausting at times, but she can go back to being an adult too. The Magical Girl Otaku reversible thing and Miu's picture are a neat narritive tie in. Just curious how much more it may get, because it's had quite some paragraphs (or a whole chapter at that) devoted to it. (It just pops out more, because the volumes remain rather short.)

Music: