Analysis of Riddle and Azul's Overblot Animations
In case the Riddle and Azul fans thought I forgot about breaking down their overblot animations... Nope! Life just likes to come for me at random points. But I didn't forget, so here's a breakdown of Riddle and Azul's overblot animations. TW: There is talk of abuse in Riddle's bit! Just so you know. Now, let's start with Riddle.
So right before the animation, Riddle has lost all control and tried to attack Ace. Trey has stopped him because Trey's been trying to protect both sides, Riddle and the rest of the dorm during all of Book 1, but Riddle took it so badly.
Trey is Riddle's only friend. Too many people are scared of Riddle's extreme strictness to try and really know or understand him and Riddle isn't oblivious to it. He knows his dorm is scared of him. But Trey is the one who would brave the gap and try to calm Riddle in his fits and bridge that gap between Riddle and the dorm.
Trey knows his homelife, knows exactly what Riddle went through, watched Riddle sob and plead to his mother for those five hours Mrs. Rosehearts yelled at the whole Clover family, and knows how gentle Riddle really is when Riddle is being himself, not what Mrs. Rosehearts forces him to be. But Riddle views Trey stopping him as Trey pulling away from him and the loss of that friendship, that one lifeline to other people, makes him freak out.
Because if Trey is RIGHT and what he's doing is wrong, why did he have to live like that for SEVENTEEN YEARS? And if he's wrong, that makes him BAD. And if he's bad, he'll be shut away and isolated again like he was when his mom found out he was sneaking off to go play with Trey and Chen'ya. So he can't be wrong. He has to be right to be "good". Because if this isn't right and good, then his life, his whole way of living, and his proof that he's a good kid, will come crashing down like a house of playing cards.
Let's get into the animation!
Starting off, we see how isolated and heartbroken Riddle looks. The only things around him are the perfectly painted red roses to show how isolating his life has really been. He's been fighting to keep his small bit of freedom he's gained from attending a private boarding school like NRC. But Riddle's trauma from his childhood has made him afraid his mother could yank him out of NRC and stick him to homeschooling or another stricter school where she could monitor him. He's maintained that strict adherence to the rules, so she won't have a reason to do that. But while he's tried to live perfectly adhering to the rules to keep his mother from pulling him back into being micromanaged, Riddle has inadvertently pushed everyone away from him in the process. Riddle longs to make friends and, with Trey turning on him, he feels he has no one.
The second part of this, where we see his shadow become the Phantom of the Queen of Hearts, drives this home. Riddle, by trying to keep his mother away from him, is slowly morphing into someone just like her. He's becoming just like the person he so desperately wants to escape from, even if he cannot verbalize that want to not have to live perfectly with no mistakes. Following rules is right and being right is being "good", so he has to follow those rules and enforce them so they don't break them again. That way everyone in Heartslabyul can be protected from the bad things that will definitely happen to them when they aren't "good". Thus, Riddle cannot see the "fat, pompous, bad tempered, old tyrant" he's turning into.
RIddle removes his hands and you can see how his face is turning red in rage and how livid he looks. There are two big psychological reasons for this. 1. Riddle is very emotionally stunted because he's had to manage his mother's reactions to his behavior since childhood, meaning he hasn't had time to really explore or express his own negative emotions in a healthy way and 2. Riddle's whole worldview right now is being challenged.
When someone is presented with new data that challenges their worldview/belief system, there are two ways they can go about it. They either accept the data and work to change their beliefs they cling to their worldview harder, trying to make the data either fit their beliefs or ignore it completely. When someone can't accept a new perspective and it's being shoved in their face, anger is a common response. Riddle can't accept a paradigm shift in his beliefs right now, plus he's emotionally stunted from not being allowed to express his own negative emotions healthily, so he's about to fly off the handle in rage.
The Phantom slowly manifests, drifting up behind Riddle, like a mother coming to check on her child, before she grabs him by the chin to tilt his head to look up at her. This is something parents do to check over their child if their child has been injured (Riddle did just recently get hit the head by an egg) or to make sure their child is looking at them when they are speaking. Oftentimes, when a kid is trying look away to escape being disciplined.
As the blot comes towards his face, Riddle looks so frightened. He looks like a little kid who wants comfort but instead of getting the comfort he needs, he is about to get punished. Ink drops heavily from the Phantom Queen's face and it feels like a visual representation of when parents use "I'm only doing this for your own good" or "This hurts me more than it hurts you" when disciplining their kids. Those words are supposed to explain the motive or that they don't actually want to do this method of discipline to their kid, but it doesn't get rid of the fact that they are still doing the discipline they say they don't want to do, even if it is harmful to their child. Actions speak louder than words.
While the blot runs down his face, Riddle clenches his fist. A sign of anger and determination. I view this as having multiple meanings rather than Riddle is mad and about to extract vengeance. Not only is he angry at his dorm and about to punish them all, Riddle is determined not to be dragged home by his mother, determined to keep the small bit of freedom he has, and angry that no one in Heartslabyul gets that he's been trying to help them and instead turned on him because they couldn't handle being disciplined.
The blot morphs into bindings the wrap around Riddle almost like a straitjacket while he screams. This is pretty layered imagery.
Someone in a straitjacket is a common symbol of when that person has lost their sanity a.k.a. "gone mad" and straitjackets are often associated with insane asylums. As the Cheshire Cat says to Alice when she says she doesn't want to go amongst mad people, "Oh, you can't help that. Most everyone's mad here." Wonderland is a country of madness and nonsense, so it would make sense that trying to bring strict and tyrannical order to country of disorder and nonsense could be interpreted, in and of itself, as a sign of that person's own insanity.
Straitjackets also restrain and confine a person from moving freely so that they cannot destroy things around them, harm themselves, or another person. This is how rules have been used on Riddle. He adheres so strictly to them, they dictate every moment of his life and have restricted him from being able to do things like make friends and confined him to emotional isolation. They're also painful for him to follow which is why he screams, but he can't get loose because he's so restricted by them and he doesn't know how to break free from them.
Thirdly, the straitjacket isn't only the rules, but the parental love Riddle's received from his mother. To put it bluntly, Riddle's mother abused him. Just to name a few of the things she did, she restricted his caloric intake to the point his growth has been stunted, she made him do way too much work to be considered healthy for a child, she's forced the burden of her emotional state onto her son, and she's isolated him from kids his age. She is an abusive parent, and her love is just like a straitjacket. Straitjackets were often overused and used as a means of torture and punishment, likewise, Mrs. Rosehearts used her "love" for her son as justification for the mistreatment and physical, mental and emotional abuse she put him through.
The Phantom's fingers close over Riddle as if she's protecting him from the outside world, something Riddle's mother claimed she was doing for Riddle as he was growing up. However, she's not protecting him. She's molding him into a miniature copy of herself. Riddle is still screaming as he's being forcibly formed into a miniature copy of the Phantom as if he's made of clay, rather than being allowed to grow and become his own person. His eyes look blankly ahead, like he's unable to even see past the torturous pain he's experiencing.
The Phantom removes her hands as if showing off her perfect creation. A mini copy of herself that will be her puppet to enforce her will and ideals onto others. I've discussed how Riddle takes on a dressing pose like a queen here before he slumps over, so I'm not going to rehash the queen side of that, but I will point out by taking on that pose, it could also be viewed as Riddle being more of a doll than a person to his mother and that's manifesting in the Phantom's behavior because of how much Mrs. Rosehearts has influenced her son.
What's so sad is Riddle has lost a ton of his identity with this transformation. Riddle's eyes aren't even GRAY anymore. They've become a bloody rose red to imitate the Queen's temper ruling her and likely coming from the phrase "seeing red". Riddle's lost his gentler, sweet side that genuinely wants to make friends and get along and, in this transformation, has been molded into someone who revels and finds enjoyment in causing pain and terror. An abuse victim who's continued the cycle and become the abuser, rather than learning to free himself of it and not perpetuate what's been done to him.
Azul's is probably the most innocent looking of the overblot animations, but if you know octopuses and what they do, it's so terrifying. We'll start off with what sets Azul into overblotting and then we'll get into why this simple animation is so freaking scary.
Azul's whole trauma stems from the extreme bullying he experienced as a child. As a result, he's built a massive collection of contracts to fortify himself, but those got destroyed by Leona. Afraid to go back to being his old self that got bullied, Azul starts forcibly stealing powers from other students nearby to try and amass a new collection. However, because he's not using a contract, the students are going unconscious like husks sucked dry of everything.
Without his contracts, Azul has no sense of moderation. When Floyd and Jade try to warn him against what he's doing, Azul perceives this as them bullying him, gets upset at being perceived as his old self, and keeps taking more and more, sackling as he starts to go on a power high.
Let's get into one of the more deceptive animations in the whole set of all seven Overblot animations.
First, we start off with Azul is hunched over and you actually can't see much of him. His clothing appears to drown him a bit, showing that Azul hides behind so many different layers like his clothing, his attitude, and his contracts to keep himself from ever feeling as small as he did when bullied. He's wrapped himself up in layers upon layers to protect himself.
We then see the Phantom of Ursula looming behind him. An interesting thing to note with the animations? All the overblotters look tiny when compared to their Phantom, but Azul looks the SMALLEST. Phantom Ursula towers over him so much more than the other Phantoms do to their respective victims. I interpret this as the Phantom representing the attitude and facade Azul has tried to maintain for years to make himself seemingly untouchable. Now that the facade is cracking, Azul feels so small because he's no longer able to be this unflappable, untouchable force at school. Also, Ursula is looming over him for a much more sinister reason that I'll get into in a moment.
Azul's laughing here, but the way he's pulled the blot down, it looks like tears. Azul is so, so desperate to not be bullied, to escape being picked on, to not be a target, that the fact he is now vulnerable has cracked his sanity. He is so sad and frightened of his old life that he's lost all composure and can't think clearly, laughing in despair. He has to quickly make himself untouchable or he's going to be a target. But he already is, because the Phantom is approaching him.
Now this isn't so scary right? All she's doing is swimming above Azul, similar to how Ursula poses when she's discussing payment with Ariel. It's just getting close to splash him with blot, but it's not that threatening. Just a nod to Ursula's pose right? WRONG. She's HUNTING. She's going head/eyes first towards Azul, like an octopus does when it's mealtime and they're going down to the ocean floor to find food. Secondly, the backdrop behind Azul has turned black and the Phantom is very hidden amongst the black backdrop, camouflaged as she comes towards him. Octopi use camouflage as part of their strategy when they hunt so it's easier to sneak up on their prey. She's sneaking up on Azul to EAT HIM. The reason she was looming over Azul earlier and he was so small comparatively? He was her PREY.
What's even more chilling it's a reference to how Azul uses his contracts. In his OB song, Abyss, he says "Awarena kokoro itadakimashou." Now, I translated it in my fan translation as "Your pathetic heart, let’s have it then" and I know mysteryshoptls translated it as "Just give your poor, unfortunate soul over to me." But a more accurate meaning/usage of "itadakimashou" is "Let's eat". The powers Azul takes is like food to him. He sneakily preys upon people and then sucks out their talents from them to feed himself. When he is taking powers from people without a contract, consuming everything and leaving nothing but a husk? He’s basically fallen back into his childhood habit of stress eating.
Azul gets splattered with ink, knocking him out of his manic despair laugh like someone throwing dirty water on him. It's reminiscent of the way people get bullied by having dingy, mop water or trash thrown on them like that. He flinches away, shaken by the shock of being splattered and looks at the blot horrified. In a sense, he's realized he's been marked as a target. The one thing Azul never ever wanted to be again. And then the tentacles DESCEND ON HIM.
Now how octopi kill their food? They wrap their tentacles around the prey in a super strong grip the prey can't escape and YANK them to the super sharp venomous beak hidden in the middle of all those tenacles. If it's eating a crab, that beak can SHRED through the hard shell that's supposed to protect the crab, or it can use the venom to immobilize more agile prey like fish. This is why Azul panics and looks so scared. HE JUST GOT GRABBED BY A MASSIVE OCTOPUS FOR ALL HE KNOWS. He didn't see anything but the tentacles. The minute an octopus's prey is grabbed by those tentacles? They are pretty much dead. All he knows is he got targeted and turned into prey by something with tentacles and when you get preyed on by a much bigger cephalopod, the tentacles are a death grip. You are not getting out alive.
The Phantom forces Azul to show his true form. Not the bossman facade he's been using at school to hide the past he's ashamed of, but what he looks like as himself. What he looks like when he's not using potions to be human or dressing well to show off how he can afford those things and knows how to present himself. He's down to the core of who he is. The person Azul has been so desperately trying to hide. The real Azul who was picked on relentlessly underneath it all. Worse, since he's bound to her, once he's consumed, he's going to go back to an overweight form, a form that he was horribly bullied for as a kid. Which only happened because he wasn't able to stop becoming a target. Except, the thing targeting him wasn't a bully. It was the personification of his own inability to stop himself from glutting on other people's talents and weaknesses. So in a way, he'd targeted himself.
And that's my take on Riddle and Azul! Even though @avionvadion did run through Malleus's OB and I did add on that, I am planning a thing on Malleus, so Malleus fans, you may want to prepare! But yeah, thank you for reading!!