#tozx

another Christmas, another Reindeer Mikleo redraw! 🦌

each December i recreate reindeerleo in my style, so it's a great way to see my progress as an artist and show myself that even if i don't always notice it, I'm constantly improving little by little!

Look at them go!! Fuckin' dorks <3

I wanted to do the longer sequence starting when they release the armatization but tumblr spat it back out even after I compressed it so what can ya do

(here it is in video form tho!)

The problem I had with the anime is multifold and a lot of it can unfortunately be boiled down to Alisha. Again, this doesn't mean people hate her, people seem to have very warm or neutral feelings for game Alisha and legitimately missed her when she left, but the problem with anime Alisha is that she's like a black hole in the center of the story just stretching and bending reality till it dissolves and disappears into her existence to never be seen again. Like we WANTED her to leave at some point because we missed the remaining 6/8 of the cast.

The writing is screwed because Alisha is now the mc and everyone is suddenly a minor or side character that barely contributes anything outside of being cardboard cutouts occasionally rattling off info dumps.

The narrative is screwed because Alisha's story is more important than the core aspect and message of the story is secondary to Alisha's personal life.

The characters are screwed because, well, they are no longer characters. They are utterly replaceable and honestly you could just turn them into a bunch of rocks cause all they really do (outside of bait people with dry sormik) is turn into pretty magical outfits for Sorey, Alisha and Rose. Why? Because Alisha was far more important to explore by shoving her into every situation with Sorey in season 1 and Rose in season 2.

Seriously, what's the real value of each of the seraphs to any of them in the anime? What's Dezel's real value to Rose? What's Mikleo and Lailah's to Sorey? Nothing. You know why? Because they have no value to Alisha, they mean nothing to her so you couldn't explore any other bond they could share with Rose or Sorey because that would reduce the focus on Alisha.

No I'm not calling Alisha a callous character, I'm saying that anime Alisha can rarely be bothered to really interact with or acknowledge the seraphs properly in most scenes.

How is it that Alisha armatizes but somehow still doesn't have conversations with the seraphim? Wasn't her dream in the anime the exact same as Sorey's? Why is she so unbothered about the fact that the seraphim are sitting all along watching humans eat while she Sorey and Rose have conversations?

Also the fact that Sorey is also not interacting with any of the seraphim whatsoever as though they were afraid that it would diminish Sorey's weird ooc obsessiveness with Alisha. "Hi I'm Sorey, my dream is to create a world where Seraphim and humans can live together in harmony, excuse me while I focus solely on humans and ignore the existence of my best friend who I supposedly love deeply and all the other seraphs who can't even talk to or interact with anyone else".

Like anime Alisha doesn't have any relationships. She is adored by everyone, but she barely does anything to actually help them, runs away to go off on adventures and makes the shepherd her personal PA with a clear bias (yea anime Sorey has a clear bias towards Hyland, shocker!!!)

Even Alisha's relationships aren't developed, she has conflict with a few people, her conflict with Rose (which was done...okay but they kind if destroyed Rose's entire character anyway) and conflict with her dad apparently but like...I don't really give a shit about this random ass dragon(really now?!?!?!).

Anime Alisha is pretty trash overall as a character because she is the definition of a black hole sue. This is the official description. 👇. Its a sign of really poor f tier writing.

Game Alisha was flawed and sweet and went out of her way to make seraphim feel accepted. She was saddened at the losing her position as the squire because she could no longer see the seraphim and go on adventures and learnt that she has duties and a role that she couldn't run from. The manga did her more justice and clarified things far better but it stayed true to who she was.

Like people insisted Rose was a Mary Sue in the game when she was just gifted and acclimated to being armatized via certain events. She wasn't ever OP tbh but nobody would have cared if Rose was a dude with the same storyline. But then you have anime Alisha who is literally bending the world to her will and thats good characterisation.

I think my biggest problem with the anime only fans is that some of them will make snide remarks about why SorMik is popular and call it blatant fujo bait because that was all it was in the anime, bland meaningless over sensual moments that ultimately meant nothing. They don't hold a fraction of the connection these two share. Hell half the game sormik shippers were convinced they were married or something with how they acted like a couple that's settled into that years long casually intimate relationship. The anime only fans also often claim that Alisha was the best character and deserves more love and everyone else is bland and boring. And you know what? I can see why, because like I said, everyone else was cardboard. "I don't get the hype around Mikleo" well of course you don't, that was barely even Mikleo. All Mikleo was in the anime was a pretty white haired anime boy sensually screaming out to the het dark haired protagonist every ten minutes. But you tell them that canon source material is different and they use it as an excuse that "well I only know the anime" and then there's others insisting that people skip the game and only bother with the anime.

I’ve had this newborn baby seraph for five minutes and a half, but if anything happened to her I would kill everyone on this mountain and then myself - Eizen, the world's okayest brother, probably 

The illustration I did for @tozanniversary mini zine! I was invited by my dear friends to be a part of it ;w; But also just a thing for the ToZ 5th anniversary because the game still means a lot to me. Without it I truly wouldn’t have met the people who are very dear to me today <3

A big thank you to @toradh for helping me with the mountains and for giving the quote up there to go with the illustration lol 

If you wish to download the mini zine, you can find it it here, completely free of charge! 

drive.google.com/file/d/1Tv99Zj3kvSK27zpx1UlHK1QoNyG2Fauu/view?usp=sharing