#ippu-do

Oh, and because it's cool Hibari has stuff like this this is the song she's singing in the culture festival. The anime just uses Kongara Connection for licensing because yeah...they definitely weren't going to invest seriously in this one but we can dream for a remake right? The manga does have a lot of little bits like this, where you can make out a popular song on the radio or something. Eiiguchi has excellent taste, and Ippu Do is canonically one of Hibari's favorite bands. New Wave is dope and I refuse to entertain contrarian arguments to the contrary.

There's also something real like, sure I can karaoke the right Blondie or Fiona Apple song well but it's a little easier to make something like Oasis more feminine. Bumping a Tenor up to a smoky Alto always hits. Helps when I had plenty of experience practicing a couple my old band used to cover but still. There's an elegance to it, and I appreciate seeing little touches like this out of Kiku & Hibari both. It works to your advantage the audience will understand the girl is trying to replicate a male singer. Tracks with, found it interesting when I did a theater program for a lot of queer youth the trans ones almost always wanted a role in line with sex assigned at birth "because it helps put the before in my own life more in the sense of playing a character." For the record, my first choice for karaoke is Prince's Never Take the Place of Your Man. Which I'm certain is a choice Hibari would approve of.

She's just having fun right? But for being so fun and cute you get the prize of snotty bitch Hanazono deciding you're so conceited you need to be taken down a peg.

I dunno, didn't really want to clip the boob stuff. We play with the implications of all this on things like locker rooms. We are pretty grounded in reality here. Hibari's not immune to comparing herself but pretty shy about her body and more concerned with getting in and out quickly. It's only when Hanazono starts pressing the issue that we have any. And through the magic of Hibari, the entire plotline is really just a Trojan Horse to showing a girl dealing with normal body image issues in a shonen manga. In hindsight, I wonder if any of this (or Rumiko Takahashi's similar flair in Ranma 1/2) was influenced by the very popular 70s American sitcom Three's Company. Which started from a premise of main character Jack acting gay to get away with a landlord approving him renting a room in a suite with two single women...but often used that humorous premise as a way to showcase real homophobia in a light you typically couldn't in that era.