the bottomless a3 pit

proofreading: @asordinaryppl

The true faces of today’s flourishing young actors

This month’s cover features Hyodo Kumon & Izumida Azami. Azami didn’t have any particular school he wanted to go to. So when Kumon invited over him to Tsukushi High School, the two became senior and junior. The two of them show close they are by walking to and from school and eating lunch on the rooftop together.

We bring you a newly written interview that provides a closer glimpse of their true faces.

budding spring | dream catcher | painful re:bake | crossing paths

all parts of this story are also proofread by myuntachis!

last updated: 16/10/2024

every episode of this story was also proofread by myuntachis!

In-game summary:

MANKAI Company has finally reached the Winter Troupe’s 10th performance. According to  Guy’s wishes, the theme follows a bartending wizard! The lead role will be played by Guy, with Hisoka as the co-lead. One day, Syu brings a man to Journey with him. As Guy continues to interact with that man, he starts noticing similarities between him and his biological father, and those suspicions slowly start to turn into certainty–

budding spring | dream catcher | painful re:bake | crossing paths

last updated: 10/5/2024

budding spring | dream catcher | painful re:bake | crossing paths

last updated: 4/9/2024

Where Juza comments on what he bests Banri at, his recommended sweets, and more! You can read about the fanbook here.

(Did not rank on any of seven different character-ranking surveys held throughout 2021)

Vil, Trein, Vargas, Jack and Cater are all from the same area, and Vil and Jack were childhood friends. Vil has said that he is disliked in his hometown, but he is fond of Jack, who never treated him poorly.

Vil’s (presumed, but unconfirmed single) father is a famous actor who goes by the stage name of Eric Venue. We have not learned much about their relationship, but Vil says he is a doting father who would take him along when he traveled for work, rather than leave him at home. Vil explains that those experiences meeting people in other countries were like treasure gifted to him by his father.

Vil and Jack went to school together “for one or two years” before NRC when Vil was a child actor, and they would go skiing and snowboarding together after classes, with the younger but more experienced Jack in the role of tutor. Jack also recalls a time he crafted a throne out of snow according to Vil’s design.

For Vil’s birthday, Jack once taught him the location of a secret place to watch the aurora. Jack and Vil met for the first time when Jack interrupted a group of children that were bullying Vil for his role as a villain on a children’s TV show.

Being type-cast as a villain is a sensitive point for Vil, who longs “to be on stage until the very end”, but his ethereal beauty betrays him by making him too unrelatable to be cast in main character roles. This does not stop him from keeping himself to a strict lifestyle designed to uphold and increase his physical beauty in every possible way, and actively increases his envy of Neige LeBlanche, his rival at Royal Sword Academy who is often cast in the main character roles he desires so badly for himself.

Vil’s frustrations with his circumstances reach a breaking point in Book 5 and lead him to attempt to poison Neige but, instead, result in his overblot, with Neige left unharmed.

He is strict with both himself and others in regards to not tolerating slovenliness or laziness. While quick to criticize, he is also willing to compliment when he has been sincerely impressed, praising Crewel for his fashion sense, Idia for his design of Ortho and (reluctantly) Leona, for being objectively attractive.

When Trey brings baked treats for Ace and Deuce while they sleepover in the Ramshackle Dorm, Vil says, “Trey is the type of person that you have to watch out for the most—he’ll spoil people until he ruins them.”

Vil dislikes mayonnaise, not because of the taste, but because it makes his skin break out. According to the official fan book, “Vil” is German for “bad/despicable/abomidable”, while “schoenheit” is German for “beauty”.

Unlike other dorm heads, Vil is heavily involved in his role as house warden. He is harsh with the underclassmen in his dorm, but also fiercely protective of them.

Vil goes for early morning runs on a daily basis, but is careful not to overdo his weight training and risk adding too much bulk. Barbells can be seen in his dorm room, however, and we learn through Epel that he has a surprisingly powerful grip. Vil is a professional model, actor and influencer, with 5 million followers on his magicam account.

Vil founded the school’s Film Studies Club in order to keep his acting skills up while on hiatus from movie- and commercial-acting in order to focus on his studies. The club is often short-staffed as its ten members generally all wish to be actors themselves rather than work behind the camera, so he often receives help from Rook, Epel, Kalim’s flying carpet and members of sports clubs to set up and break down sets.

Vil pushes his club’s members to fulfill their greatest potential in their student-made films, but he is also pragmatic, saying, “hard work does not guarantee anyone success”.

Vil butts heads with Epel during Epel’s first opening ceremony, at which point Vil says that he hopes Epel will not be placed in Pomefiore dorm. Epel and Vil fight one another in the hallway, with Vil beating the younger student soundly without magic.

In Book 5 we learn that battles between the two are very common, as Epel struggles beneath Vil’s strict rules. Vil has offered Epel his freedom on the condition that Epel beats him in a duel, which has yet to happen.

The two have worked out a precarious balance where Epel is not allowed to speak in the accent of his village in order to try and curb Epel's outdated and and crude forms of speech, such as Epel's associating anything he perceives as "feminine" as "feeble and woman-like". (removed from ENG server)

It is an uphill battle for Vil throughout all of Book 5, but he does not write Epel off as a lost cause for his backwards ideas on gender, instead choosing to educate him on how physical and inner strength are not gender-exclusive--as harshly as need be.

(I've been asked this before, so just to mention it here: Does Vil go by she/her on JPN-server? No. It is extremely rare to use her/him/etc in Japanese at all because of how the language is set up, but Vil is referred to as male and has yet to contest it. There is an interview where Vil's voice actor says the direction he was given for the character was "Vil is androgynous".

I followed up with Japanese-language articles on being non-binary and gender-fluid, etc., and none of them used the same term, so "androgynous" is the closest thing we have to a pseudo-official explanation, but it was said by the voice actor who was quoting the director and not by Yana herself.

There seems to be a rumor going around of otherwise because of Vil's pronoun of "Atashi", which is used more often by people who identify as women, but as far as we know Vil does not. Japanese is not a Romance language, so if you read something somewhere that says 'Ore is the masculine 'I'', what it means is that it's less formal/polite. There are people who identify as women who use 'Ore' as well! It's all very complex, not black-and-white, and not at all like the difference between 'la table' and 'le livre' etc :> )

As a part of this regime Epel is also forced to pretend he enjoys things he does not (i.e. he must lie and say that macarons are his favorite food, help with the Film Studies Club at Vil's request, etc.), but Vil does not contest Epel’s membership in the Spell Drive club.

Similarly, when Epel’s grandmother ships Epel several crates of unsold apple juice and Epel expresses worry for his family’s livelihood, Vil promotes the drink on his magicam, unprompted. This results in a dramatic increase in apple juice sales for Epel’s struggling family.

Vil was vice-housewarden in his second year of school, becoming house warden in his third year after being nominated by the previous Housewarden. In addition to lotions and cosmetics, Vil is also extremely adept at crafting poisons, which earned him this position (it is revealed in Chapter 5 that, according to Pomefiore’s rules, the housewarden position can only be held by the most proficient poison-maker in the dorm). Vil says his poison proficiency is in thanks to having been studying potions from even before he enrolled in the school.

He occasionally receives inquiries from companies interested in buying the rights to manufacture and sell the beauty products that he invents, but he refuses all offers in order to one day launch his own line of cosmetics.

Although Vil is proud of his position of authority, he does not hesitate to go to others for help when it comes to matters of beauty, such as when he entered into a contract with Azul for an improved moisturizer (that was crafted from mucus squeezed from Floyd while in his eel form by Jade, a fact of which Vil is unaware).

Floyd refers to Vil as “Beta-chan-senpai” after beta fish, and Rook calls him “Roi de Poison”, for “King of Poison”.

Vil’s unique magic is “Fairest One of All” (Japanese: Poison from a Beautiful Flower). In Book 5 our first exposure to the magic is when he poisons a cake that he has forbidden others from eating, paralyzing them on the floor of the the kitchen until the following morning.

Some great artists for Vil fan-art and more (SFW, no story spoilers) Vil and Overblot Vil together

Multiple characters and Vil with short hair

Mainly Jack and Vil, feat. Leona and Jamil

This artist does a lot of Vil art

Voice Vil is voiced by Aiba Hiroki (相葉 裕樹), whose other work includes Fuji Shusuke in The Prince of Tennis musical from 2005 to 2008 alongside Malleus' actor Katou, Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors, Takano Yuya in 3150 Manbyou, Sukoshi, Tezuka in Doughnut Hakase and GO!GO! Picnic, Hitachi Izuru in Ginga Kikoutai and Rocks in Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 3.

A fascinating interview (that includes the "androgynous" explanation above) with Aiba Hiroki can be read here.

More seiyuu information available here.

Mankai Company is invited to take part in the "VELUDO" exhibition once again. This time the theme is "Gymnasium" and the featured members of this special event are...

This is a collaboration with the amazing An who helped with proofreading, thank you!

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] Epilogue: Favourite Photo

Good Omens Episode 3 Bonus Scene - London, 1800 

Oh holy one, cast thy purifying light upon these corrupt souls.

I hadn't drawn my sweet daughter in so long. I also hadn't yelled to the world how much I love Symphonia's glittery wings in a long time. I was obsessed with them as a kid and still am as an adult.

Old version of this below, as usual !

unblurred closeup of the drowners