#karasu-tengu

@ranarenee - I already replied to you on the original post, but I genuinely just wanted to feature this comment cuz I'm glad ppl are having a positive reaction to this post xD

I also think it was probably a bit easier to animate them! in addition, because it provides an interesting change of technology in the world of Usagi Chronicles, it means that it might have become more interesting to design this hypothetical descendant-world. I'm sure they might have also just thought it was an interesting and unique element of what they were making, but from Art Director Khang Le and Stan Sakai's CBCC interview, and the SDCC@ Home 2021 panel I remember it was mentioned a few times how many clever things they found to make the production spending smaller on the more trivial things.... so the magnetic holsters feels like a thing that might have hit many birds with one stone, so-to-speak. You have the easier drawing of boards and maybe a few things made lighter for the 3D crew (no extra models or rope to animate, for example), but you also have a pleasing design element to give the main fighters in the cast - Usagi, Gen and Chizu - as well as other characters who would happen to wear weapons on their person aside from Karasu-Tengu. Like mentioned in the post, Kitsune is an interesting exception here, because of course, she's based on UY Kitsune who is also not a direct fighter or anything, but also, the world of SR appears to be at peace of some sort, and it's mentioned several times that there were wars at some point, so not many ordinary citizens of Neo would even have these unless they wanted to use or carry weapons every day. Kitsune wants to blend in with this ordinary citizenry and does so quite well.

I just thought of this today and I guess my post sort of mentioned it, but this existence of the magnets also seems to imply some hierarchy of income or money flow. Kitsune doesn't have any because she doesn't need them and she wouldn't spend money she doesn't have on them anyway. Chizu is Lady Fuwa's favourite student despite how she treats her - and gets the best undercover gear, so like Gen and Usagi, custom magnets. I suspect also that Chizu deliberately somehow got herself assigned to the temple-job (headcanon for now), or perhaps hoped it would be something like that, because she didn't want to get any of the more victim-heavy missions the Neko Ninja do. Gen obviously has spent his own money on the holsters and they are there out of pure practicality - can't be a bounty-hunter without wepons, can you? So the magnets seem more like they're ordinary but custom for the outfit. And Usagi, as discussed before, possibly inherited them because of the clan mon adorning the inlay of the magnet.

@kinokothere - thank you!! I will probably continue making posts like this even if I have no audience! why I made this blog at first was to collect my SRTUC fandom theories and drawings under a more organized platform compared to twitter, where this specific fan-account started. I now write almost explusively about SRTUC so you can bet I have way fewer notes than if I wrote about shipping or something else popular for example xD

Thank you @0yasumi-0-ya-su-mi! it's a fun little world-building detail that I really liked when I started wtaching and I hope other fans also include it more in their work x3

@umhuhwellthen x3 thank you!! i love seeing reactiong tags like this one!