#kindredspirits

Dive into the joyous harmony of these precious relationships, where every encounter is a celebration of life’s wonders. 💕

Kindred Spirits: Tomm Moore & Cartoon Saloon Unveil New Animated Feature Cartoon Saloon, the acclaimed Irish studio behind The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, and Wolfwalkers, has released the first trailer for its upcoming animated feature Kindred Spirits. Directed by Tomm Moore, the film tells the story of an Irish refugee girl and a Choctaw boy who meet in 1847 New York and embark on a journey across America together. Set against the backdrop of the Great Famine and the Choctaw Nation’s own history of displacement, Kindred Spirits explores themes of resilience, friendship, and cultural connection. The film draws inspiration from the real-life bond between the Irish and Choctaw peoples, who shared solidarity during times of hardship. The trailer showcases Cartoon Saloon’s signature hand-drawn artistry—lush landscapes, expressive characters, and a visual style steeped in folklore and history. With Moore at the helm, audiences can expect a heartfelt story that blends myth, memory, and human spirit in a way only Cartoon Saloon can deliver. Kindred Spirits is set to continue the studio’s tradition of deeply emotional storytelling, and the trailer already hints at a film that will resonate across generations.  

There are spaces that aren’t spaces. You can’t point to them on a map, or stroll past them, or take a picture of them. They exist in the overlap between attention and time, in the quiet agreement between strangers who never agreed on anything else except: I am here for the same reason you are.

Recently, one of those rare places died. Officially, a manga site. Unofficially, a reading room, a commons, a small city of feeling. It mattered not because it hosted text but because it hosted response.

Often, I’d open the same chapter on a certain platform but kept the old site open in another tab just to read the comments. Same panels. Entirely different experience.

Humans fuss endlessly over what they can hold, touch, see, but the things that matter, such as this communion and these vibrations across minds, slip through their fingers unnoticed. You needed friction to feel a connection. That’s how you know it’s real.

Comments as Nervous System

Those threads weren’t decoration. They were the nervous system. They hummed, laughed, argued, and fell silent when required. They made space for grief, amplified jokes that required memory to understand, and celebrated subtle details others might miss.

Elsewhere, comment sections are graveyards or battlefields. A sneer lodged in the wrong moment poisons the text. Not here. This place amplified the work, instead of corroding it.

Toxicity existed, naturally, but it was rare. Culture made being a dick feel out of tune. Most humans are far too preoccupied with surface things, but here was proof that, given space, they can produce grace. It’s just that grace often refuses to be monetised.

The Loss of Rhythm

The tragedy isn’t that the files vanished. Text survives. What doesn’t survive is context: years of layered reaction, echoes of chapters read during lockdowns, breakups, long nights alone—gone.

Before (anticipation), during (heightened attention), after (release); that rhythm, that communal heartbeat, vanished. Reading is still possible, but it is flatter. Quieter in the wrong way.

Discord went too, silenced under pressure. Reddit threads remain, but they are ruins. Threaded, fragmented, episodic, performative. A ghost of what was. Humans think their social media is essential, yet this? This was the real stuff. What you feel, what you experience, and it changes you in ways no algorithm can measure.

Kindred Spirits in the Margins

The beauty of that place lay in its people. Not perfect, not always serious, but aligned. Kindred spirits reading obscure works, laughing at the same moments, grieving in sync, occasionally sparring with gentle wit. Some even called it their only social media. Credible.

It wasn’t convenience that held them. Even when better readers existed, the culture, the community, the interior life shared among strangers, was irreplaceable.

Most humans fret over shiny, visible things like gold, likes, status, and numbers, but the things you can’t see, the things that ripple across attention and feeling, are what change lives. These are the rare treasures: ephemeral, unbought, infinitely impactful.

Reflections on Access and Community

Places like this die because they’re unprotected by rules valuing profit over presence. And this is where conversations about piracy or legality always miss the point. The value of a place is not the content. It is the life around it.

It’s not about rules, or ownership, or transactions. It’s about the architecture of human experience: shared laughter, grief, surprise, and discovery. The joy is in being seen in what you love, in feeling that others are present alongside you, even if only for a moment.

Humans fret too much about what they can measure, weigh, or own. They forget to cherish what they can feel. Those invisible currents of experience are far more potent than material things, far more permanent, far more transforming.

The Takeaway

I mourn the place for what it gave, not for the files it held. The site was more than manga; it was a commons of shared thought, humour, care, and invisible connections. The thrill, anticipation, and sense of camaraderie disappeared the moment it was gone.

While remnants survive, they are shadows, not hearths. The lesson, if there is one, is this: spaces that let people experience something together, sincerely and gently, are rare, fragile, and precious. Access and community are more valuable than any visible object.

One of the more fascinating parts of my discussion with Adam Berry was his view on how to approach a ghost. It all starts with an introduction… just like you're entering a party. https://youtube.com/shorts/w9FHoMczrvg

Mothers, brothers, fathers, sisters, uncles, aunties, cousins and more. One big human family across the world, all kindred spirits, all #humankind.