I want to know how the butterfly that Ogata is trying to catch ranked higher than Kiro!!!!! I love you Kiro!!!!!
@chibivesicle actually, I believe you could choose more than one character, so it’s kinda funny that the butterfly was selected, but it must be the result of a lot of Ogata fans, I guess. xD
As for Kiro, well, I think that him being a mysterious traitor doesn’t speak in his favor. 🙂 He did rank 18 out of 165 tho, that’s quite good!
The reason why I bought the TG manga was not just because I wanted to own a story I love, I also wanted to support the person who caused that I had a good time. Ishida had been then of course luckier than a lot of other mangakas because his story got so popular that it probably didn’t matter after a while if everyone buys the manga. But not so well known mangakas will suffer because of scanlations. While my post won’t change anything at all, I just don’t understand why people insult an author for stuff like that. He has the right to complain if this causes that he has not enough income because of not being so well known.
Like I admit, if I would buy every series I read on the internet then I would be poor now, but exactly for this reason I feel a bit guilty. Like the people who read scanlations should be grateful for being able to read it at all and feel a bit guilty for not supporting the person who causes that they have fun instead of being rude.
(sorry for re-reblogging) I don’t know what happened, if Koshke sensei is the one who got criticized or if Ishida-sensei was also hit by something similar lately, but anyway: even tho’ it’s a form of enjoyment for us, it’s a way to make a living for them.
Of course, not everything is released in every language or country (or the official translation in your language is not always the best, I speak as a first hand witness for several French official translations which are horrid), but English remains the language in which most series are translated across the internet and that’s how they are made illegally available.
So an alternative, I find in general less expensive or taking up space than owning a material copy in English/Japanese/your language, would be to buy the Japanese digital version: it’s a way to support an author + you can still keep up with the English illegal releases across the internet and understand what’s going on.
It gets more and more expensive the more series you enjoy, I know, but try to do this as much as you can or for the series you really are looking forward to every release: again it’s how these people whose work we read can make a living.
And if you can’t for financial reasons, just please simply be grateful.
There seems to be a recurring theme in Gokushufudou: The Way of the House Husband where Tatsu, deapite terrifying people with how overwhelmingly powerful and dangerous he remains, that he also leaves them nostalgic for their mothers and simpler, more innocent times.
It’s both absolutely hilarious to see a scam artist moved by the simplicity of a simple meal often prepared for children and a defeated, low-rung mobster crying as he remembers being gifted mittens by his mom (all she could afford to keep him warm, being poor).
If I HAD to read anything into this silly manga, the theme seems to be:
Hey, housework is really tough and being a homemaker involves balancing a lot of different, equally important skills, it’s nothing to scoff at.
Hard-hearted men would benefit from remembering the softness with which their mothers/grandmothers, etc. raised them (where applicable).
…….. “have these mittens, so you can stay warm, even when you’re not packing heat” remains the most awesome line to throw at someone you just disarmed and slipped mittens on, before they catch on, because you move just THAT fast.
So I was thinking about this and its possible repercussions in the current arc, i.e what Lizzie may still do before the arc ends.
I know this might not please everyone, since she’s often targeted by criticism, but she’s still a huge part of the arc (and of our!Ciel’s life) and Sensei dedicated an entire chapter recently to how she’s feeling, so you can bet it’s going to matter. 😀
Anyway, when you look at Lizzie in ch58, what she’s describing regarding the twins are two opposite dynamics:
when it comes to real!Ciel, she expresses passivity => she’s the one being protected
and when it comes to our!Ciel, she expresses activity => she’s the one who protects
Granted that this shouldn’t be taken too literally because she indirectly protected real!Ciel by fighting against Seb in ch117, just like our!Ciel protected her in ch14 for example, but this may still be interesting to consider the next developments.
After all, even though she did fight against Seb to stop him from investigating the labs, otherwise she’s been rather powerless when it comes to real!Ciel’s situation…
…or to what he (and UT) did in the current arc, which fits the passive dynamic.
Similarly, where real!Ciel telling her that he found strong women scary (when they were kids) is what led her to think she should be protected by him, the Campania arc happening 3 years after she decided that she would protect our!Ciel gave her the opportunity to reveal her true self to him…
…which is something that he accepted and he didn’t think any less of her after that (even when she almost kicked him in the face in ch107 xD).
So back to the current arc, where is this difference of dynamics supposed to lead Lizzie? Especially now that she’s freed from real!Ciel and the blue sect (who most likely didn’t give her a single chance to figure out why our!Ciel would even lie in the first place)?
Most importantly, if the current arc so far had Lizzie being passive because she was by real!Ciel’s side, now that she’s left him, can we expect that she takes on a more active role, especially considering how she’s not even pissed at our!Ciel but just super confused and blaming herself?
In any case, I think a little detour by home is a great thing because her family always supported her and also taught her how to be strong. And, I don’t know if Frances’ current absence so far is supposed to play a role in helping Lizzie realize on which side she wants to be, but it might (especially if Frances already knows about our!Ciel lying and since Sensei said that Lizzie took her mom as a role model).
My personal opinion is that if Lizzie eventually decides that her place is by our!Ciel’s side (which I think is likely to happen for many reasons), then I bet you that she’ll most likely become very active again in striving to protect him, even from her original fiancé (aka taking up the sword again and fight like a badass).
EDIT: forgot to mention but there is still that random info that Sieglinde now understands how blood transfusions work + that Wolfram has got the same blood type as Liz => could be a hint that she might get hurt because she’s going to choose our!Ciel.
I just love
the way Sensei in ch144 is kinda deconstructing everything that she slowly revealed about Lizzie in ch58.
It doesn’t mean that Lizzie is in need of a clear-cut change, she already had that change during the Campania arc when our!Ciel acknowledged that “what she’s made of” was nothing shameful…
So that basis of her character is still going strong, because it took such a long time for her to fully be proud of it and there is indeed nothing wrong with it. That’s also why it makes sense that later in the arc she goes back to this state of mind, in my opinion.
In fact, it’s the passivity and powerlessness that she showed towards the twin that proves to be in clear contradiction with “what she’s made of”.
In any case, she has been wearing the low-heeled shoes throughout the arc (there is even a clear emphasis on them when she shows up in ch142), so where we are right now, maybe she needs another of her mother’s lessons (in case Frances did know about everything from the beginning) before she will decide to take up her swords again, with which to protect our!Ciel. 🙂
BTW I still can’t get over the fact that Sorachi-sensei gave us the Love Potion arc, because it’s one of the best written comedy arcs of the whole series: I love how you can either take it at face value and say it doesn’t mean anything, or you can try to see a little beneath the surface and acknowledge how meaningful it is on some aspects, just like all the other comedy arcs.
Knowing how popular and famous Gintama is, it’s logical that Sorachi-sensei will never voice a clear position about which ships he probably has a soft spot for, but it’s not like he gave an arc or several to all the possible ships of Gintama. And I’m not talking just about GinTsu.
For example, is it really a coincidence that the other ship getting a lil’ focus in this arc is the love triangle Kondo/Otae/Kyuubei? Is it? Considering the Dekobokko arc or even, later, Kyuubei’s own resolution along with Tsukuyo’s about being a woman and being in love, during half of ch620? Or even just Kondo’s failed gorilla marriage in the last arc?
I don’t think so. 🙂
(more rambling under read more)
Anyway the whole arc is presented as being comic relief and as not to be taken seriously for those who don’t like the ships it is focusing on (that’s Sensei’s skill right here), but still Sensei subverted the whole thing and that’s what’s so unbelievably cool about this arc.
Like, I love how the introduction is that “whoever smells the aizen kou drug will fall in love with the first person they see” but even tho’ he applied that to Kagura and Shinpachi for a short while, Sensei ended up throwing even that to the bin, especially when you see how the arc went for Tsukuyo and Kyuubei.
The first thing Tsukuyo saw was Gintoki’s dick after she smelled the drug but the whole arc is about realizing her feelings for Gintoki, the man.
On the contrary, you have Kyuubei who ended up going after dicks for most of the arc (no matter who the guys were), even tho’ I doubt that she actually saw a forest of dicks right after she smelled the drug.
So it’s interesting how Sensei adjusted the very first rule of the arc to eventually make it about what he wanted to explore for his characters.
Even when you see the monologues for Otae and Kyuubei, it does seem to reflect what their personal arc is revolving around: Otae always had conflicted feelings to sort out about Kondo; Kyuubei always had this hesitation about whether to live as a man or a woman (until she made her final choice in ch620).
Granted that poor Kondo himself is often reduced to comic relief, but it should be pointed out that his monologue only reached us after Otae kinda manhandled him so, ahem, hard to have any conclusion on what he said, even if it’s not like his feelings about Otae needed any clarification. 🙂
It gets trickier for Gintoki because, on the one hand you could argue that “he smelled so much of the drug that he lost his sense of reason” (something I’m sure a lot of readers who disliked this arc did), but on the other, why shouldn’t he also get serious/honest moments in this arc about his own feelings when everyone else did?
Sensei is just way too good at hiding these moments amidst all the jokes, so that no one can complain about him having a soft spot for a few ships in particular.
Anyone who’d argue that Gintoki was never serious once in this arc is just shooting their own foot actually, because Tsukuyo acted way unlike herself because of the drug several times and so did Otae, Kyuubei and Kondo.
So even though Gintoki did/said stupid stuff because of the drug, if everyone else did too but also got to face/admit about some of their inner feelings, then it’s logical to think that the same happened with Gin.
And that’s what’s so amazing about how Sensei wrote this arc: I’m not saying that this arc is implying GinTsu is ever going to get canon (tbh I doubt it, even if Tsukuyo is the one who got the most focus about her feelings for Gintoki out of everyone), but to say that Gintoki has literally 0 interest in Tsukuyo would be misreading in my opinion.
If anything we already know that she’s physically his type (that pool episode/chapter with the Shogun) xD
Anyway, Gintoki has way too many issues about not wanting things to change + being scared of getting too attached to many people (because of everything that happened with Shoyo and the consequences of his choice back then) that this arc could only go max comic relief in appearance, as far as he was concerned.
Since the last arc is finally targeting Gintoki’s whole emotional trauma surrounding his choice towards Shoyo back during the war though, I guess that if Sensei wanted, he could choose to hint towards a Gin ship maybe becoming canon at the very end after daily life kicks in again, but as I said I doubt that, mostly because of the massive ship wars (tho I’m also all for Gin/Hasegawa 🙂).
Final thing: if anyone were to argue that this arc is only comic relief and can’t be taken seriously on some aspects, then I guess they wouldn’t see the homeless arc and its heavy focus on Katsura’s complicated dynamic with Ikumatsu as being literally the same thing but in another context, because Zura just didn’t need the aizen kou.
Just like Hijikata didn’t need it either when it came to Mitsuba.
tl;dr Sensei is good at crafting the tone of his arcs depending on what he wants to address for his characters and that obviously includes the love potion arc, which is in my opinion one of the best examples of a comedy arc that’s actually hiding a lot of meaningful stuff.
An arc is hardly ever a stand-alone in Gintama anyway, so the love potion arc can’t be meaningless if what took place ended up having consequences at some later time (like ch620 or even the last arc, post time skip).
Dissecting the narrative isn’t going to lead anywhere: no one “has to” ship Gintsu or enjoy the Kondo/Otae/Kyuubei triangle, but let’s not pretend that the characters are oblivious to each other and that comedy arcs can’t strengthen their feelings, whatever they are.
I really enjoy how compelling Noda-sensei’s writing is (it’s really a strong point of this series) because (spoilers for ch177, I checked the Chinese version) you can just feel what he’s going to set up for the Karafuto arc and how shit is gonna go so down as a result.
Like, that incoming Asirpa/Sofia foil around Wilk’s character? It’s going to be so good because I bet whatever you want that Wilk and Sofia had a thing
(Kiro even said that Sofia should know more about Wilk than himself did) and, seeing ch177, I guess at least Sofia might have wanted a family with him (?)
but then she was arrested and Wilk & Kiro scrammed to Hokkaido.
And now Sofia will meet Wilk’s daughter that he had with his Ainu wife: Asirpa. Who is the only one who can, in theory, find the gold everyone is after.
The second thing is, this thrill is even more intense considering that the initial plan years ago was most likely for Kiro and Wilk to get the Ainu gold and return to Karafuto, except that “Wilk changed” (most likely thanks to being a father, so thanks to Asirpa), leaving Kiro to be a in a bind because he didn’t (and maybe that led to him framing Wilk for those Ainu men’s massacre).
=> Probably double backstabbing for Sofia I’d say (if they really had a thing and she hoped for a family) so I personally don’t envision her liking Asirpa so much.
The final thing is that Asirpa doesn’t know the truth about her father and believes that he really killed the Ainu men to steal their gold, in order to fight for the cause Kiro is still strongly advocating for. So whatever Kiro and Sofia will tell her about her father, she will just have to take as such, because she has no way to know.
However, one person knows the truth and is catching up: Sugimoto.
He took a bullet in the head because Asirpa trusts him more than anyone and Ogata guessed (rightly so) that Wilk had started telling him stuff he shouldn’t have, but he’s catching up (hang in there in the meantime, Shiraishi!).
I don’t know if Sensei is planning the big moments of this arc to be a Christmas gift, but damn, this whole arc is slowly building up to several amazing confrontations. I can’t wait to find out even more!!
midnight-in-town 