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yue-muffin · 3 years

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well, cherry magic was absolutely devastating and yet another example of why i love jdramas: when they set out to do so, they are full of so much heart and understanding of what it means to be human. i have had so many emotional rollercoasters over the years, but the angst is not usually angst for its own sake; there’s a purpose: to paint a tragedy and make you think ah, if only..., or testing the bonds of friends and family to show that what makes us human can just as easily tear us apart as be the cause for us to overcome obstacles in life.

i usually don’t like romances. i avoid them. which is also why i like jdramas. romance-centric ones are clearly marked and indicated in the summary, if a romance appears in a non romantic drama, it doesn’t often take anything away from the plot or characters. in fact, aside from old bl movies, i’ve never watched a single romance jdrama, no matter how highly recommended.

this got LONG so.

two things: 1) im really glad i gave cherry magic a chance. 2) my mind was blown by how far the japanese romance genre has come in terms of depicting same sex relationships. all you have to do is look to the old bl movies i used to watch- even if the characters are respected within their medium, they all end in tragedy.

so, cherry magic along with several other jdramas coming out or that have come out recently, really impressed me. i stepped away from the jdrama world for a while, and im glad that i slipped back in.

so about the whole drama since ive really been talking about the overall genre - it’s so damn good and relatable, to a painful degree. to me, particularly, who has lived a privileged life and moves through the world without too much fuss, it’s that self-sabotage of adachi’s that really hit me hard. you’re your own worst enemy sometimes. and, indeed, his anxiety is also really relatable. how many times do i always think the worst of my performance, when the grades, the instructors’ assessments, my friends and family, all say i didn’t do as bad as i think in my head? or thinking whatever you do, it’s never going to be enough to match so-and-so’s expectations, and if you fail their expectations you fail them and yourself. man, that spiral of his thoughts in the last two episodes was painful but the resolution of which was so cathartic.

(also, i guess i just have to own up to the fact that i do have some sort of anxiety. i never really talk about myself to others, and to my family who i do, they don’t believe anxiety is even a thing beyond a funny feeling in your gut which is like “wow, really”, but a thing i’ve learned to ignore, except this ongoing pandemic situation has really made it rear its ugly head, which i can normally keep in check ok)

but the drama as a whole...it’s so realistic, and positive. it’s a perfect balance. it handles the “typical” bl tropes well, giving a bit of its original manga flair but taking it to a realistic level. like all the classic kabedons! the mind reading bit is actually really helpful here to break those tropes apart a bit by being able to know kurosawa’s thoughts even tho on the outside he’s mostly as suave as ever

and another thing! it’s so...life-affirming. that it’s ok to not know where you’re going even at age 30, to set little goals for yourself, to pursue happiness in your relationships. the way society is these days, there’s so much pressure to be the best and succeed - even to the point, it’s not just good to be happy with what you’re doing, you must be successful by society’s standard (the minato storyline particularly addressed this)

and i, at least, really need that reminder. i love the career im working towards now, but when i was only 21, i was just about having a breakdown every other week bc i was coming to the end of my undergrad studies and didn’t know where i wanted to go next. it felt like ‘if i don’t make the right choice in these 3 months, it’ll ruin the rest of my life or i’ll just never be happy’. that’s so crazy, thinking back.

and another thing: the characters are all so different, but i found a bit of myself in each of them nonetheless. unlike fujisaki, i do want to be in a relationship someday, but i don’t want one now and i would greatly appreciate people in my life to stop pressuring me into one with their well-intentioned comments. i thought at first that kurosawa wasn’t going to be super deep, just a really nice guy in love, but actually his mask of perfection and need to meet others’ expectations as his self-perceived redeeming qualities really hit hard. and adachi, who is like my spirit animal, his anxiety and worries over whether he’s worth a love that seems so good and perfect, running away rather than face the possibility of getting hurt from that interaction. even rokkaku, who acted all energetic and excited at the drinking party but really just wanted to get the heck out of there

the actors were all just. so good. i mentioned this last time, but they got the perfect balance of comedy moments + realistic reactions/nuanced acting that isn’t exaggerated, for the non-comedy moments. they all did a stellar job of selling this drama!

so, the bad thing is that this has set the bar high on modern romance dramas for me, and considering i don’t give them much of a chance in the first place, lol.

#the muffin's drama watching adventures #cherry magic

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orchidbreezefc · 6 years

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bih you already fucking know all the charas im gonna list but here ya go: izuru, nagito, sigma, junpei, magnus, juno, twogami, juuzo (dr), yomo

holy SHIT helEN THERES FOUR FOR EACH YOU KNOW THAT RIGHT

(contains spoilers for all these series, but please do not give spoilers for zero time dilemma, we are only partway through ;w; no spoilers for penumbra podcast either please)

izuru kamukura (dangan ronpa):

A (realistic): he actually likes sakuramochi just fine, it's hinata who hates it for Trans Reasons

B (funny): hinata is pan but izuru is like, a little boy crazy??? hes just really into dudes. chiaki is an exception.

C (sad): he’s not actually stoic or emotionless so much as deeply depressed and desperate for anything to break through the lack of interest. he’d engage in a lot of risky behavior for the thrill if he had the motivation.

D (my city now): he and hinata become a beautiful binary system with medium length hair everyone can fuck off

nagito komaeda (dangan ronpa):

A (realistic): he gets a seRVICE DOG

B (funny): he then sternly tells hinata to do his part as a dog parent and badgers him about child support

C (sad): he had to go on a helicopter once when a ship wasn't an option and he shook with fear the entire time. hizuru held his hand all the way through it. (everything turned out fine)

D (my city now): future foundation medics find cancer treatments that keep his lymphoma under control. if he were cured hed be fucking terrified his bad luck would kill everyone and hed probably flee the country, but hes not cured. just under control.

sigma (zero escape):

A (realistic): he's silly but has a good head on his shoulders. in school he's kind of a class clown type but he gets solid grades.

D (my city now): he awkwardly apologizes to the ladies for hitting on them all not realizing what it looked like and luna already knew his deal so she says she forgives him and kisses him on the cheek and he explodes

B (funny): he does the same thing to alice and shes like ‘you didnt really hit on me though’ and hes like ‘oh? well i thought about it. a lot’ and she slaps him

C (sad): in ztd, phi misses the sigma she met. she’s used to a silly but wildly inappropriate old dude, she doesn’t like this serious and stoic young dude. it’s really uncomfortable.

junpei (zero escape):

A (realistic): he uses hair gel 😘

B (funny): he knows he’s hot, and he is INSUFFERABLY SMUG. ‘would you stop going around base with no shirt on it’s unprofessional’ ‘why akane does this BOTHER YOU *runs hand through hair and smolders*’

C (sad): he remembers every bad timeline from 999. you’d think he’d be haunted by like, clover with an axe, but mostly he has nightmares about snake caught in the coffin.

D (my city now): somebody in america taught him how to dress lmao

magnus burnsides (the adventure zone):

A (realistic): he's a dog person but he's ok with cats too. he's not good at treating them how they like, but he likes them. they remind him of taako.

B (funny): what if he was trans and had magic bottom surgery and became considerably bigger than average and thats why he always gets squawky when anybody implies anything about his dick size

C (sad): he still has moments of dissociation where all his sensations go numb like when he was a mannequin

D (my city now): magnus is asexual from trauma post julia but pre and during julia he was... kind of a horndog oops

juno steel (the penumbra podcast):

A (realistic): he didn't tell anyone he was nb until he was like 35. vicki picked up on it before he had figured it out himself. not counting her, the first person to know was rita, which is one of the many reasons he can never fire her.

B (funny): he's really into chinese food which is unfortunate bc the only good chinese food he can get in town is owned by the triad

C (sad): he's never been off mars. never had the means. both cassandra and his own nature have made him desperate to see the rest of the galaxy, which is why peter's offer was so tempting, but he's too terrified of being legitimately happy and losing it later.

D (my city now): he got married when he was like 22, and the guy quickly devolved into being cruel and horrible. juno suffered through it for a couple years then went fuckin carrie underwood on his ass and split

twogami (dangan ronpa):

A (realistic): postgame, he is one of the most forgiving of komaeda's behavior. people dismiss it as him not having to deal with post ch1 koma firsthand, but it's mostly because he's a very compassionate dude.

B (funny): he and togami would get along fucking great when hes twogami. posing as anyone else or himself, hes a little appalled by togamis... togaminess

C (sad): postgame he finds out akane starved herself and takes her under his wing

D (my city now): he and ryouta are fucking married i know this because i went to the ceremony and it was beautiful

juuzou sakakura (dangan ronpa):

A (realistic): he is autistic and very bad with people and words and things that arent punching

B (funny): this gap moe ass man loves stuffed animals. chisa gave him one once at a festival and he was like IM NOT CRYING YOURE CRYING STOP CRYING YOURE MAKING ME CRY

C (sad): juuzou’s not good with words so he can’t say what munakata is to him precisely, but he's not his best friend. that was chisa. :’(

D (my city now): hes ALIVE and he FOUND MUNAKATA and he SUPPORTS HIM WITH HIS LIFE even though all munakata is doing with his life is like. starting a post apocalyptic animal shelter

yomo (tokyo ghoul):

A (realistic): hinami helps him learn to read ;3;

B (funny): he does fingerpainting with touken’s kid and gets inordinately proud/emotional about his own painting

C (sad): he asks haiseneki to tell him about what arima was like. it's a difficult conversation, but yomo seems to find it important, so they do it.

D (my city now): he and uta got married at one point. probably drunk. yomo doesn’t wear the ring, but he keeps it in a safe place.

#deer tag #sage headcanons #long post #ask mem #disordered eating /#alcohol /#genital talk /

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nomurapls-inactive · 7 years

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What’d they do to Sora?—A visual analysis of KH 1, 2, & 3

One of the biggest staples of the original Kingdom Hearts games is their visual charm. The team managed to do what Disney rarely could: transform the animation giant’s 2D into amazing 3D and then some.

But something kinda funky is happening in KH 3. Somehow Sora and the gang are looking less, well, Sora-and-the-gang-y, and it’s not just the new wardrobe.

Before I get into what’s off about KH 3, I need to map out what makes KH 1 and 2 so visually appealing. There are three big reasons for why KH’s visuals have stood the test of time:

Color

Style

Animation

Color is usually what our eyes notice first in a given scene and is a vital tool for setting the mood. We universally associate color with so many things that we can immediately assume the tone of an image with a quick glance before even looking at the details. This psychology of color is utilized in everything from retail, to movie posters, to social media, and so on. Unsurprisingly, KH has also tapped into this with lush, playful color palettes that hearken back to each respective property. Disney takes us to places with magic, fairytales, talking animals, and monsters—nothing of the “real” variety, and KH reflects this first and foremost with color palettes that immediately tap into that fantastical setting. The color schemes that exist throughout KH are not likely to exist in real life settings, and they work hand-in-hand to assist cartoony shapes.

(At least, I would hope you don’t find something like this in real life.)

This lack of realism ties directly into style, another key factor in letting your audience know what kind of vibe you’re going for. KH sets this fantastical tone by taking elements from Disney and breaking them down into their most basic parts, playing with stylistic choices popular in both Western and Japanese character design to create something new. It’s a “less-is-more” approach to art direction. Simplify, simplify, simplify. This, combined with its vibrant colors, allow for unreal environments, ones reminiscent of the same childhood wonder classic 2D films instilled in audiences. Likewise, Final Fantasy characters, who normally exist in realistic settings, become softer in order to accommodate their new space. The end result is a world that seamlessly blends the simplified visuals of hand-drawn animation together with the complexities of 3D modeling.

(The gang’s all here.)

These would not be complete, however, without equally fantastical animations. No matter the medium, the best way to tell the audience more about your character is through body movement. How characters move is also dictated by the overall tone of your content. Sora and the gang are animated with exaggerated motions and grandiose body language to remind us of the fanciful world they inhabit, and the larger-than-life personalities they have.

(Donald’s hat jumps with a mind of its own while Sora’s facial features spread across his face. Goofy unfortunately missed the pantomime memo.)

Contrastingly, characters from live-action movies rather than animated films move with much less grandiosity because they exist in realistic worlds. They are dictated by their setting just as much as stylized characters.

(Jack Sparrow may move in dramatic ways for a human, but Sora’s got all that and more thanks to being a spiky-haired shounen with giant feet and hands.)

Levels like Port Royal are where we can begin to see the problem with KH 3: once you strive for realism, you’ve already aged.

Achieving realism is still incredibly limited by technology. We’re getting closer, but as it stands we don’t have the necessary technology to make 3D indistinguishable from reality. Games especially fall victim to what’s known as Moore’s Law, which (as far as games are concerned) states that a graphics chip will upgrade every two years. So, once something is put out, it already has to worry about looking dated within as little as two years. Because of these limitations, a lot of media dip into uncanny valley real fast. Simply put, when something is meant to look realistic but fails, our brains take issue with it. We think, “Hey, I know that’s supposed to be a real bear, but it doesn’t quite look or move like a real bear, so I’m uncomfortable.” But take that same bear and turn it into a stylized cartoon and we no longer have a problem with it not looking like a real bear. The former is what’s happening to the KH 3 crew, while the latter is what they should be aiming for.

To begin, let’s look at these two screenshots of KH 2 and KH 3 respectively.

(Feel old yet?)

The bottom shot may be an early reveal, but it’s not far from the material they’ve released recently. As you can see, it’s much more detailed than the top image, but this is actually hurting the scene rather than helping it. The colors are muted and muddy in comparison, which would more accurately represent a real environment, but it’s so starkly contrasted by the unrealistic characters that it doesn’t connect. Sora is harder to see against the background because his colors and effects are also mimicking a more realistic application. Even the UI is harder to see, compared to the brilliant colors and shapes of the top image. What the top image lacks in explicit detail it makes up for in readability, creating a cartoony scene of implied information that more closely resembles a classic Disney film (which is the point of KH’s art direction to begin with).

(While both swatches contain brown hues, KH 2 is more vibrant and thus allows for better readability and contrast. KH 3 literally looks like mud here.)

KH 1 and 2 largely avoid this readability and incohesive problem because hardware limitations were used to their advantage. When you’re tasked with creating a game full of Disney- and Final Fantasy-inspired assets but lack the technology to make anything look as “real” as pre-rendered cutscenes, you opt for airbrushed gradients, vibrant colors, cartoon features, and exaggerated shapes. Everything needed to look distinguishable from one another because PS2s were still developing and TV screens were fuzzier. Looking at the games now, it’s easy to see that they were made in the early 2000s, so of course they show age, but it’s also easy to see how beautiful they still are when compared to other games of the era which took on a realistic approach. (Also, imagine if Okami had gone with realism like it originally planned instead of sumi-e, and you can get a further idea of why style can easily trump realism in 3D aging.)

(Only one year apart. Neither are ugly, but when you aim for realism like in the first game, your age shows more and you dip a bit into uncanny valley.)

Now, I don’t think all of KH 3 looks terrible. The technology and efforts should be applauded, and in truth the Disney characters and Heartless shown thus far retain much of their original charm, and definitely benefit from the graphical upgrade most of the time. The animation is spot-on, as well.

(You just can’t look too closely, or else you get a face full of suddenly detailed textures that do not belong on a cartoon character.)

The counter is, unfortunately, that based on other released material, the art direction is not cohesive yet. You have some great-looking enemies and allies, those of which you know right away belong in a KH game, but stacked against a realistic background with lighting, effects, and muted colors that make it difficult to see. Details that are there solely because the technology allows it. More-is-less rather than less-is-more. They can’t seem to find a balance between simplified and detailed, 2D and 3D, Disney and Final Fantasy, that the original games built.

(I don’t even know what to say about this. It’s just straight up ugly. Why do his hands look like that? I feel like I’m looking at one of those nightmare-fuel fan renditions of “X character in real life.”)

(fix this.png)

Until they make up their minds about modeling Sora and other original characters, and about how to handle the lighting, effects, and other issues which are holding simplification hostage, there’s always going to be something off, something that isn’t translating well from the jump to next-gen consoles and preventing the games from feeling as KH as possible—and it has everything to do with the industry’s fixation on realism. Cartoony/anime-esque characters comprised of simple shapes and designs, like 90% of the ones in KH, do not mesh well with realism, whether it’s in the details on their clothes or their environments. Hopefully the team can see that before release date, otherwise, KH 3 is going to be full of uncanny valley and readability issues.

im still gonna play the shit out of it tho

#kingdom hearts #kh #kh3 #kh tag #for the record I like the Toy Story models but overall the scene was difficult to see #also if I see anyone regarding this as hate...............do u know me #Do U #kingdom hearts is my momther #this should also be titled WHATD THEY DO TO RIKU???#bc wow. that shot of him with kairi i just. water u doin

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