yurisorcerer

[yurisorcerer]

More than a story in the usual sense, it might make more sense to compare Air to a composition.

It has motifs, themes, imagery, and core ideas, but the anime's orbiting, circular structure makes it feel like any traditional forward plot motion is an impossibility. The world of Air is suspended in its namesake; a bubble riding a wind current, sealed off from the outside world. And yet, as soon as I had this realization, that sealed-off world was disrupted in this, its sixth episode, making me question it. Air is, if nothing else, great at getting you to think about its characters and its world, and how those aspects interact.

Air's two characters named Michiru are, as heavily implied in the last episode, revealed to be one in the same. "Our" Michiru confesses her status as a living dream of Minagi, a waking fantasy that must be, in her own mind, discarded for her dreamer to be happy. Still, she is given a good sendoff, and in a beautiful and understated scene, is allowed to try "her" mother's cooking. It's a wonderful sendoff for a very memorable character, and the moment in the closing minutes of the episode where Minagi, visiting her father, meets the 'real' Michuru are also exceptional.

Michiru's departure marks a rare change in the otherwise hermetic world of Air. Maybe more are to come? After all, there is still talk of that girl who dreams in the sky, and there are the episode's final moments.

#Air (2005) #yurisorcerer talks about media

[yurisorcerer]

Help a disabled mouse stay squeaky clean!

I need help affording a new shower chair. I just moved house and mine was broken in the move.

It'll cost me $100-$150 depending on how sturdy a chair I get. I've bought cheaper ones before and they never last very long.

I cannot shower without my chair, as standing that long to shower leaves me exhausted, in pain and lightheaded. I also cannot sit on the shower floor, as it's a small shower and I won't be able to get back up.

If you're able to help me with affording a new one, thank you.

Here is my paypal and kofi

[yurisorcerer]

what if we entered a virtual world that was a simulacrum of an empty city, completely devoid of life, except for two people who look exactly like us wearing dresses and who are obviously romantically entangled. And we were both girls

#yuri #Lily System #<-the name of the manga

[yurisorcerer]

I feel bad posting this again so soon after last time, but I have to pick up my HRT medication in a couple days, and my dosage has been increased, so I'm not sure what it's going to run me. (On top of the price generally being unreliable/unstable anyway.)

So I'll be posting this link to my Ko-Fi again. Please consider donating if you've enjoyed any of my writing recently, and consider sharing this around if you can't help directly.

[yurisorcerer]

More Machine Witch

The smile on her face (⊙v⊙) is just an etched trail, not the real mouth making an expression

Not that she's a treacherous or gloomy kind of figure at bottom though. She genuinely lives up to the jolly vibe she gives off

#(⊙v⊙) #witch art

[yurisorcerer]

This is what older Touhou dialogue looked like to me

[yurisorcerer]

Why are so many people tagging bocchi the rock posts with hitori bocchi no marumaru seikatsu

#hitori bocchi no marumaru seikatsu

[yurisorcerer]

Sudan still desperately needs aid--it needs a lot of things, but it is approaching a dangerous point with famine and mass death due to hunger imminent.

These are the kinds of headlines we're getting now:

Here's an ongoing fundraiser:

I linked it before, to help with Ramadan, but it's an ongoing initiative, the need has not stopped.

I picked this gofundme because it's been boosted by people I trust and you can see pictures online of the food they've provided, e.g.:

But I also picked this because you can see the amount of donations. It's 2pm ET on Saturday, April 20th right now? For the next week, whatever's donated, I'll match for a total up to $2,000 (we'll say 2,750 CAD, since the gofundme is in Canadian dollars).

You don't have to send me a receipt, I just ask that you donate and boost.

#sudan

[yurisorcerer]

SHE! IS! HERE!

The menace, the power, the unease, and yes, the beauty. These are all traits present in Chimera-Falin, who makes her grand debut this episode. It is probably the most hype I've been for a character introduction in a TRIGGER show in a decade.

No anime could reasonably match the almost radioactive presence that Chimera-Falin has in ink, on paper. Instead, this episode's team bring an impressive arsenal of tricks of motion to convey her narrative (and literal!) weight. Chimera-Falin as a character literally bends the story around her, and the show displays this by showing in gruesome detail just how thoroughly she absolutely annhiliates all opposition. To dredge up the tired Dungeons & Dragons metaphor oft used for Dungeon Meshi once again, she's one of those really high CR, thoroughly unfair monsters. She's huge, incredibly robust and durable, can claw her foes---characters we've gotten to know over the past several episodes, mind you!---to shreds, and on top of all that, enough of her human mind remains that she can still cast spells. Can you imagine how absolutely defeated that mage must feel when Falin simply dispels his summoned undine? I'd be somewhere between furious and suicidal. In general, Falin is drawn an animated in a way that emphasizes her strength and presence. I'd also say she's drawn with just about the right level of

After Falin clambers offstage, we of course get the long heart-to-fist-to-face-to-heart between Shuro and Laios. I actually think this works slightly better here than in the manga, as it's a case where stripping some of the ambiguity inherent to that format actually sharpens the show's emotional beats.

We end with some comedy to take the edge off as our heroes venture ever-deeper into the dungeon, with their objective changed to explicitly defeating the Lunatic Magician.

Some stray observations:

Not to be a huge pervert, but I am surprised they were allowed to draw the harpies' nipples.

There is blood EVERYWHERE. Several others have pointed this out, but the difference between how striking the visual contrast is in the anime vs. the manga is pretty interesting. And more generally this was an extremely gory episode.

Marcille looks absolutely miserable throughout this entire episode. Not without reason! But still, my poor girl.

To completely shoot myself in the foot vis-a-vis what I said in the first bullet point, I think Chimera Falin might be even more beautiful in motion than she was in the manga. Where's the HRT I can take to get that body, huh, medical science?

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #yurisorcerer talks about media #chimera falin #falin touden

[yurisorcerer]

Update: North Gaza Aid!

As part of his promise, Hussam sent 20% of your HelpGazaChildren donations ($4000) to Mahmoud AbuSalama for the 5th time now, including the earlier North Gaza Campaign (as location on our notion site) to buy food and necessary products for families still surviving the dire situation in North Gaza. The food package contains, as you see in the picture below: flour, lentils, canned food, formula, diapers, and women pads!

Please continue donating and spreading the word — every penny means so much! Feel free to share our campaign link to other platforms as well!

Donate to our GoFundMe which goes directly to Hussam, who manages camps in Rafah, with NO middleman in between!

HelpGazaChildren Notion Site || #helpgazachildren tag

GoFundMe Link

[Quick ID: The video is of Mahmoud speaking in front of bags of flour and a tumblr sign. There are captions to the video in english. The image below is of groups of packages of items in front of a tumblr sign.]

#Palestine

[yurisorcerer]

More like A Salad Bowl of Peak.

A fairly straightforward episode this week, about stopping a middle school girl from being bullied. That said, it then swerves into a solid three minutes of casually-insane worldbuilding toward the end, which is enough to remind me why I like this show.

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics is one of a kind, truly.

#a salad bowl of eccentrics #yurisorcerer talks about media

[yurisorcerer]

#yurisorcerer's good post tag

[yurisorcerer]

what are your two favorite traits of women

Two! Two whole traits! The women reducer returns, gracing me with double the single trait they gave me last time. And yet, woe, I must still say it is not nearly enough. Not to capture the infinite prism of light that is wondrous femininity.

#yurisorcerer answers

[yurisorcerer]

"There was never such a thing as magic."

In episode 4, we get what seems an awful lot like an after-the-fact rationalization of Kano's condition. A clear-headed, scientific explanation. But the show itself seems almost as desperate as Hijiri is to explain away her younger sister's "illness."

Surely, there must be some rational explanation, it pleads, as the theory turns to DID and a feather in a shrine as a psychological trigger. It can't truly be cursed, of course. No rational person, no doctor, could believe that.

"It was only a dream, it has nothing to do with you."

Until this episode's halfway point, this desperation feels like it might still point toward some kind of grounded explanation for all this, but that notion shatters into light when Yukito touches the shrine feather. In an instant, AiR becomes a different story entirely; a history of persecution, of a mother and her child cursed from birth, fleeing wars, storms, and death to find refuge in the village that once stood on the same spot that Yukito and the others stand on now. Even here, there was no real refuge, and the scene morphs into some distant echo of the binding of Isaac; a mother sacrificing herself to save her child. No story, it is worth remembering, is ever just one story.

"You don't have wings, be happy down there."

In episode 5, we turn to dreams of the ocean. Yukito's own, from when he was a child. Here, the show again takes a somewhat more grounded approach, but "grounded" is relative, and perhaps inappropriate, given that even the series' episodes that are more "grounded", "down-to-earth", an other such terms that conflate mundanity with the soil beneath our feet, are themselves preoccupied with the heavens above, as we learn when we're introduced to Tohno's "Astronomy Club" here, consisting of more or less just herself and a large portable telescope. Despite briefly meeting her mother, Yukito returns the next day to find the woman claiming she has no daughter, and Tohno herself is missing.

Elsewhere, we learn that Kamio suffers panic attacks when she gets close to people. This is a distinct yank back to reality from a show that has so far spent most of its time with its head in the clouds, but the loneliness Kamio's condition creates---typified by a quick cut to a shot of a lonesome cloud---works with what Air has previously done. A profound loneliness connects most of the show's characters, although they largely don't yet seem aware of this connection.

If there's an emerging theme here, it's that of lost or broken connections. Tohno is kicked out of her home because her mother has replaced one delusion with another and doesn't recognize her, Kamio feels unwelcome in her own house because her "mother" is actually her aunt whose care she was put in as a troubled, younger child, etc.

The cruel reality of the sky is that it can't truly be reached from the ground, and the show's color palette shifts drastically in the episode's final moments to reflect this line of thought, running red and black like a gaping wound. A strange, stark turn from a strange, stark show.

#Air (2005) #yurisorcerer talks about media

[yurisorcerer]

What is your favourite trait of women

You want me to express my love for the infinite cosmos that is femininity while at the same time reducing them to a single aspect? Ridiculous.

#yurisorcerer answers

[yurisorcerer]

After all these years, it finally happened

It happened

I had a dream I was a worm

I was a worm in a relationship with a human man

He still loved me even though I was a worm

The question has been answered

#yurisorcerer's good post tag

[yurisorcerer]

Featherine

#featherine #umineko