And here area couple of doodles from me in celebration 🥹🥳🎂
— sorry it’s not really good — I’m still learning
He is the King ✨ of the day 😌
(Photo reference used)
A bit more 🗣️ under the cut:
I had to prepare the birthday photo in advance, since there are a few personal things going on (family bereavement and other new beginnings / transitions), and I only had orange marigolds at the time...
But amazingly, this singular yellow one bloomed just in time for his birthday.
So Geto gets an additional celebratory pic 🥰 Since I try to be fair, Gojo gets to join in for a hrhn GoGe photoshoot 😂
Sorry I’m not really active on here, but if you ever want to find me, I’m on X (formerly known as Twitter):
I painted these a while ago and posted it only on X / Twt (formerly, Twitter).
Inspired, of course, by the official art by the animator for the anime series. The first one (of their younger selves) is a copy of it. So I take no credit for it; just for the idea of them being in their older forms, together, from there onwards 🥹
Full under the cut
I did my best 🥲 And I guess… I’m reasonably satisfied with the result, but mostly because I’m actually not experienced with watercolours and haven’t painted much at all.
I just had a vision of this for Gojo and Geto that wouldn’t leave me.
I’ve missed so many special dates (bdays, the end of the series, release date of the final volumes, etc.) but this time with a bit of encouragement from some friends, I decided to post a sketch I made of my favourite pair 🥹
Hi, I'm the mai/maki kiss anon. Thanks for the reply. Looking back, I think my ask came from a reactive annoyance at the perceived version of the common creepy trope regarding twins especially girl twins, since while Gege is better than most shonen writers when it comes to certain things, he's definitely had his moments. You focused on themes and I completely agree it had to written with symbolic meaning; it was more "how/why the themes of sacrifice/souls/exchange etc. translated to an incest kiss?" but what you said about unconventional preferences and a hunger for freedom opened my eyes. How I see it now is that Mai's "every sorcerer is crazy" characterization IS her unconventional crushes. Her feeling stuck alone in a lunatic clan yet shackled to her twin, someone who feels like a part of her yet not (a connection unique to twins), combined with already hinted at "lesbian/incest tendencies" warped into a "crush" towards Maki (which can feel like romantic feelings for the person, though one-sided here). We've seen Mai's anger/betrayal at being left behind while knowing she is holding the person she felt the most safe with and loved by back. This "I hate you yet I'm obsessed/linked with you" type of crush is not sexual at all in concept and in the kiss, solidified by the fact that on closer look the scene cut before the lips fully connected, no full kiss no nothing because it's not fanservice. There are millions of ways to say "we'll finally become one" at the time of sacrificial death without a kiss but for Mai, she saw only one. Fucked up mind? Yes. JJK character? Yes. Gege explored a taboo subject with a female character, who was not just a victim of it with no agency, in the serious manner it warranted; her crush is not made to be just another overt sexual incest gag. Most female characters are not exempt from taboo themes; they are exempt from it being expressed seriously. Again thank you, I'm still not fond of the incest route but I reached peace with the scene because of you.
Hello!! It’s so good to hear back from you so soon!
I enjoyed hearing your clarification and expansion on her lack of agency and twisted obsession/connection to Maki. It is a pity if there are readers who take it & reduce it to a moment of fanservice, rather than observing it with the seriousness it deserves.
You wrote about it & summarised it far better than I did/could.
Thank you for letting me be a part of your process to peace with the scene 🙏🏼
I hope you won’t hesitate to connect/reach out again ☺️ these days, I tend to be more active on X/Twitter but I like having a reason to come back to tumblr.
Do you have any analysis that makes the "Maki/Mai kiss" scene abit more bearable? I can understand all the other weird stuff in JJK, but this just always bothers me; most of all because it seems so unnecessary. MeiMei's incest plot at least had a point to show her greed and manipulation. People try to explain the scene as just a very intimate way of showing love at the moment of death and I definitely don't believe Gege meant it sexual. So I keep asking, then why? It's weird in Japanese culture and most cultures to kiss a sibling on the mouth especially when neither of you are kids anymore so what was the point of purposefully drawing that? Was it that hard to find a way to express grief/love between sisters that didn't involve an incest moment? Was it to play into Mai's characterization as having her first crush be "Maki or Megumi"? Am I just supposed to accept it as another weird quirk of Gege? For now, I'm holding on that it was necessary to transfer CE because I really really hate it and hope it's removed from the anime.
Hey anon, thanks for taking the time to send me an ask!
To be very honest, it didn’t stand out to me much, so thank you for bringing it to my attention. When I first read it, I foolishly thought it was like CPR 😓 (I’m an idiot for skimming it).
I read it properly this time. 🫡
To be honest, I agree with you, and to be really transparent, it made me a little bit uncomfortable too 🤔 Not homosexuality, but rather, the need for a kiss in that context between siblings.
So, I sat with it for a bit and after having had a think about it; considering the other parallels with “twins” that we are aware of... my own interpretation (at least preliminarily), is that it isn’t sexual as you also seem to feel/believe. There just aren’t any other signs that it should be interpreted that way.
Further to that, I also know/sense Gege isn’t the type of author/mangaka who sexualises things. I have faith in him as a self-deprecating man who avoids making his characters “sexy” for no reason.
Sorry, this for a bit long, so… More under the cut:
Thinking about the pace of the story, themes, interactions, and narrative thus far, I don’t think Gege wanted it to be romantic or even sexualised, because there are many other ways to express the “perversion” of a scene... like a breast grope? It would be convenient, and it wasn’t done - so, I think this is an indicator in itself it wasn’t sexual. The next scene cut to the death fantasy we see many characters being given. So it seems to depict that death was at least occurring when Mai & Maki’s lips touched.
At least, imho. Based on logic and deduction.
Also… as for the fear over how/why it could be interpreted as such (sexual) could be due to several factors in the fandom’s belief of Mai having a preference for women.
Which is fine and I appreciate that need for a young person to explore their sexuality or preferences. My view of Mai is that she was trapped on a path where she was not allowed freedom. Just like Maki (and many others like Yuji who felt they were born to be a vessel, and Gojo & Geto as the strongest that needed to hold a heavy responsibility, and Kamo who had a lesser-known arc).
This seems to be a themes Gege revisits that has shaped the jujutsu world that needed reforming. Geto tried to change the world, Gojo tried to change the students that made up the jujutsu future.
After doing some digging and thinking about these central themes, I think it also touches on character growth through parallels and foreshadowing. It isn’t a story about romance, to paraphrase Gege’s words, I’m reminded of the only other kiss we saw which was like a binding vow between Yuta & Rika in which the latter was also a curse. And then there is the subject of pain that leads to focus and growth. And we can’t ignore how Yuji broke free from the “cog mentality” which demonstrated transcendence in his character growth... I’ll expand on this as we go along. I hope I’ll make sense.
Anyway… We also know Gege is a bit liberal and finds opportunities to draw or depict characters who are on the fringes of Japanese society (like Larue, Miguel, orphans, people within oppressed systems, etc.) and some have had opportunities to love, but face obstacles or tragedy.
So, unrealised potential and broken/shattered dreams plague many of them. Death also comes abruptly and unfairly... so with Mai, I wonder if her openness to “unconventional love” / affection / a crush like with her sister or Megumi or even with Takada - simply represents all the things she may have wanted to have - freedom to be herself and to explore - but it was a path that could never be.
Also, a crush is sometimes also like a sense of love or longing - and we know Gege likes pure love as a central theme that is the underside of a curse.
It’s not a far stretch to say that Maki and Mai were cursed. And there was a pure love between them. When you’re young, I think only pure love exists anyway. I think we as a fandom have to also be careful not to sexualise things...
Like many other characters, it was as if her presence as a twin was doomed from the start. They were doomed as long as they were split as two entities. For her to say that she knew it would come to this (“gonna happen one day” seems to mean that she had already prepared herself for the possibility that she would die for Maki.
For the parallel to be drawn between Yuji & Mahito, with the latter bringing it up first, and then for Yuji to demonstrate that he sat on that statement (adding that his instinct was initially to reject it), showed initial growth. He expressed relating to Mahito “I am you”. Overall, this was regarding their innate instincts (to save and to kill) and as a character with a role.
I am reminded of this scene, where Maki reflected on the path they were on. Being separated or even rejected (the rift/conflict between them). And what she was bestowed with... idk if it’s a binding vow of sorts, but this seems to tie together with Yuji accepting his role at this stage.
For more character growth… We saw Yuji expand on the “i am you” theme relating to predestined roles, etc.
So with Sukuna, he echoed the same sentiment/phrase - I see it as a demonstration of empathy (much like Gojo -> Sukuna — in wanting to reach him) where he was expressing relating to being born a curse/was cursed but did not have to choose to remain one. And in becoming one, or in embracing themselves wholly, they could exist. (Also, in both circumstance, one died and the other lived. More on this later when I address the actual kiss).
There may be more to unpick about that, or an even deeper meaning, but it seems to say that there are many parallels and connections between characters in their trajectory as well as their fates. Mai and Maki said the same thing...
So I doubt that there was anything romantic about their relationship. It seemed like an inevitable thing that the stronger of the two would have to die for the other to thrive/survive.
But what becomes of the soul... I have no idea. This is a mystery! Now this is a Gege quirk for not explaining it. If Sukuna’s twin’s soul could reincarnate, maybe Mai did? Or did Mai’s essence become imbued in the katana? I really... have no idea.
I hope this line of thought helps make that scene easier to swallow.
As for the kiss. I’m reminded again of Sukuna - who devoured/ate his own twin to become “whole”. Maki and Mai had to become one in order for Maki to reach her full potential. She also had to experience loss and pain in order to find a stronger reason or resolve. Doesn’t this remind you of both Gojo and Yuji (and countless others? Even Megumi? Is that what it means to retain humanity? To have known/treasured something only to have lost it, for someone to be able to find a reason to live? Hmm.)
It’s possible that it was an exchange of CE, as we know it took everything Mai had to make a weapon for her sister. If I’m not mistaken, she took whatever Maki might’ve had, in order to complete it.
Again, as soon as their lips connected, we saw the death vision/fantasy scene... that seems pretty telling.
Could it also symbolise the unity of the soul, to connect in such an intimate way? Like a “breath of life” that CPR would bring. Mai said that their connection / relationship went far everyone a binding vow. So maybe we could also see it as her exchanging a vow with her sister. Like allowing herself to be consumed by her sister in a symbolic way, and the vow/exchange was - she took Maki’s CE and gave her sister a weapon (her life). Also reminds me of Rika and Yuta. In her death... Yuta gained Shikigami Rika. An exchange.
Anyway, those are my thoughts and ponderings.
Feel free to leave a comment, add your own thoughts in a reblog, or ask away!
Edit: I realise this wasn’t the most coherent 😂 but thank you for those who read it to the end.
i feel like people don't talk about their dynamic enough but like. i love how you can retrace nanamis grief for haibara in so many of his good actions, be it taking yuji in, mentoring ino, his general protection of the youth...it all stems from the trauma of haibara's death, and the fact he sees haibara in yuji makes it all the more harrowing. he is basically lead by the grief and guilt and his caring disposition is his way of "saving" haibara, his own blue spring.
in fact, in the colored page for chapter 100, haibara is seen putting cherry blossoms on nanami's weapon bag thingy. in japan, cherry blossom flowers not only represent beauty, but also the fleeting nature of life, which applies to haibara, who died when he was just a teenager, when his life was just beginning, but you can also say that with the beauty part of the flower's meaning, you can deduct that haibara was the most beautiful person nanami knew, in every single way possible.
haibara's existence, to nanami, was beautiful, yet so short lived. this is more of a personal thing, but they also have that icarus/sun dynamic; nanami's grief for haibara is so strong, the guilt from his death is what pushed him away from jujutsu society but later on back into it, cause nanami being a sorcerer and helping innocent people would have been what haibara would've wanted, right? of course, this indirectly leads him to his death in shibuya. and the first person whom nanami sees, on the bring of death, is haibara. even when he's near death, he sinks into the comforting and sunny presence of his beloved sunshine.
nanami loved haibara so much it led to his death. his love for haibara indirectly killed him. and yet, haibara's last "appearance" is so off; there's many speculations on why, be it that nanami's memory is failing him, or that the last time he saw haibara was when he was cold and dead in the morgue, but there's also a personal favourite of mine; it's a metaphor for how nanami's grief has tainted his memory of haibara. the haibara nanami remembered never really existed, he was tainted by guilt, grief and hatred and nanami clenched onto that memory so hard it bent and broke in the end. in the end, grief and guilt taints everything, especially the memory of your beloved best friend. and yet, this presence is so oddly comforting to him. his last smile, in a way, was because of haibara.
haibara was nanami's sun. his blue spring. his whole world. his other half. they complete each other, metaphorically and literally - haibara loses his lower body, nanami loses his upper body. his ideals were a reconciliation between his own and haibara's. without haibara, nanami became a drone, both for capitalism and for jujutsu society. he cannot function without his other half. they complete each other, but one half was ripped so briskly from the other that it staggered the other half for life. nanami built walls around him all his life because of haibara's death. the death of the only person who saw sides of him nobody else had ever seen. nanami had lost his sun, and his world went dark until they met again in death. in fact, nanami says haibara made his last moments more enjoyable.
even in death, nanami falls into the radiant, solar comfort of haibara. the one person who brightened up his dark world. his sun to his dark side of the moon.
Happy Lunar New Year to everyone who observes / celebrates! May you be blessed with the best of luck, joy, prosperity and good health for the year to come.
Let’s usher in the Year of the Snake!
Just a small messy doodle I shamelessly did on my own strawpage 🥹 please pardon my shortcomings (and handwriting!)
annaxmalina
discoholicmusic
romaincrisis
jacobvanloon
baratheonpilled
dededos
titsay
