Strange Land

it's december so time to stare at my art output for the year!!!

Managed to finish one more piece of animation before the new year! Part ?/??? of my Super Sons anim project, based on Superman #10 by Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason.

Like for sure it's a gag, but in the same line in which Makoto's whole deal is also one but it's acknowledged that something is fucking wrong with him to be like that, I think there can be more to Toritsuka in that sense as well.

Because here's the thing: he has his questionable magazines and he does objectify women a lot, which feels like it comes in part from the fact he doesn't know how to talk to them. The one exception might be Aiura since they end up bickering, but he's treating her more like a person than he does with girls he usually interacts with.

And of course, that's a really scummy trait of him (get better soon, king 🙏), but there's something about that...

Toritsuka sees women as objects to be gained. He doesn't care for men. The two people he gets along with the better are Saiki and Aiura, aka, the two other psychics, and as such the ones who can relate the best to his specific circumstances because neither of them is normal either.

I think this comes from how he understands ghosts far better than he understands living people. The psychics are the exception because they live in a somewhat supernatural way same as him, but he cannot understand the "normal" world. It's fascinating because Toritsuka will see a ghost being weird and he's like "well, some ghosts are like that", but then he will see another living person being weird and he judges. It's like he can't understand people being people other than in concept, while he can with ghosts because they're what's more real to him.

He sees living people as concepts. Women like he sees them in magazines: objects of desire, something to be obtained. Men in that sense fulfill no purpose in his life in the way he understands it. I feel like he's seeing life in the way you would assume it has to be if you were an alien or something foreign trying to understand how humans work from the outside.

I think something that really called my attention in regards to this is how, Saiki aside, he doesn't really... pursue friendships? But he likes Saiki and he hangs out with Aiura for the Psykickers stuff just fine. He likes them I would say. The thing is it doesn't seem to occur to him outside of that that friends are something he should want (which is interesting too compared to the characters that do seek out friendships and connections and the ones who doesn't, but I digress).

You would think he doesn't care about other people at all due to that, and in a sense, he does treat others as just means to an end. But all of that contrasts SO intensely to the way he treats ghosts, going as far as scolding an evil spirit "like a mother" because he doesn't want other ghosts to be scared or bullied.

What I made for them:D

i feel like people don't talk about their dynamic enough but like. i love how you can retrace nanamis grief for haibara in so many of his good actions, be it taking yuji in, mentoring ino, his general protection of the youth...it all stems from the trauma of haibara's death, and the fact he sees haibara in yuji makes it all the more harrowing. he is basically lead by the grief and guilt and his caring disposition is his way of "saving" haibara, his own blue spring.

in fact, in the colored page for chapter 100, haibara is seen putting cherry blossoms on nanami's weapon bag thingy. in japan, cherry blossom flowers not only represent beauty, but also the fleeting nature of life, which applies to haibara, who died when he was just a teenager, when his life was just beginning, but you can also say that with the beauty part of the flower's meaning, you can deduct that haibara was the most beautiful person nanami knew, in every single way possible.

haibara's existence, to nanami, was beautiful, yet so short lived. this is more of a personal thing, but they also have that icarus/sun dynamic; nanami's grief for haibara is so strong, the guilt from his death is what pushed him away from jujutsu society but later on back into it, cause nanami being a sorcerer and helping innocent people would have been what haibara would've wanted, right? of course, this indirectly leads him to his death in shibuya. and the first person whom nanami sees, on the bring of death, is haibara. even when he's near death, he sinks into the comforting and sunny presence of his beloved sunshine.

nanami loved haibara so much it led to his death. his love for haibara indirectly killed him. and yet, haibara's last "appearance" is so off; there's many speculations on why, be it that nanami's memory is failing him, or that the last time he saw haibara was when he was cold and dead in the morgue, but there's also a personal favourite of mine; it's a metaphor for how nanami's grief has tainted his memory of haibara. the haibara nanami remembered never really existed, he was tainted by guilt, grief and hatred and nanami clenched onto that memory so hard it bent and broke in the end. in the end, grief and guilt taints everything, especially the memory of your beloved best friend. and yet, this presence is so oddly comforting to him. his last smile, in a way, was because of haibara.

haibara was nanami's sun. his blue spring. his whole world. his other half. they complete each other, metaphorically and literally - haibara loses his lower body, nanami loses his upper body. his ideals were a reconciliation between his own and haibara's. without haibara, nanami became a drone, both for capitalism and for jujutsu society. he cannot function without his other half. they complete each other, but one half was ripped so briskly from the other that it staggered the other half for life. nanami built walls around him all his life because of haibara's death. the death of the only person who saw sides of him nobody else had ever seen. nanami had lost his sun, and his world went dark until they met again in death. in fact, nanami says haibara made his last moments more enjoyable.

DRAW YOUR FAVORITE AUS (but only John Dory) CHALLENGE!

Brotherhood AU by @0ketlyn-s

World Tour AU by @year2000electronics

Not the Only One AU by @ryssbelle

Blast to The Past AU by @that-cool-guy

Im Still Here AU by @blade-that-was-broken

For This You Were Born AU by @blade-that-was-broken

Had fun coloring this but it took foreveeeeeerrrrrr because of school. As you can see from the "Im Still Here" AU, John Dory is just a tombstone 💀. It's because I made this before it was revealed that John Dory wasn't dead. I legit thought he was seriously dead so I did what I do best and use humor to cope LMAO.