That cokerant anon here, & I WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOUR VERSION OF ONS PLEASE POST IT IF YOU DONT MIND
i definitely wanna put my Fake Shinya Lore out there one day, but it's kind of a lot and i want drawings to go with it, so let's talk about mika and yuu first!
you might know that i haven't been particularly fond of them for the last few years, but i actually used to adore them a lot (and their old versions, i still do!)
in the beginning i thought the idea of mika actually being an angel/the antagonist's son was really special and cool, but as time went on and the lore surrounding them became more complicated and nonsensical, i began disliking it altogether.
what i would like to do is keep mika and yuu as just mika and yuu.
the angel mikaela is only a mentioned character and does not appear in the story at any point. shikama's goal is to take their soul and put it in a suitable vessel to 'revive' them.
and that's what our mika is. the perfected vessel that shikama spent centuries trying to selectively breed, which is why they share a name. taking angel mikaela's soul and putting it inside mika's body would erase his own soul - which gives yuu an incentive to help in killing shikama, to be able to keep his mika.
yuu is the host of the third trumpet as in canon. i'm thinking of the seven seraphim as control devices placed on earth by god to spy on shikama in his prison. to observe him they have to hop from human to human until they're 'activated' by a grave sin occuring.
i feel like yuu being angel mikaela really clashes with this concept, like it wasn't planned from the beginning (actually, the whole story feels like that at this point). seriously, is he mikaela, or is he the third trumpet!?
i'd like to focus on his trauma with being treated as a monster, and eventually learn that he's not 'evil', that he's only being used.
this also means that mika would not get turned into a demon.
guren would try, to 'save' him from becoming a vessel and thwart shikama's plans, but for yuu, witnessing guren almost kill mika would be a turning point in his trust in him and his compliance, which was largely fueled by his fear of being perceived as monstrous.
i also believe it should be possible to turn a vampire back into a human, but for demons, it'd be too late, as they have no physical form left. as for how this works, that's explained with the general shikama/god lore i made up, which i haven't posted yet lol
this past year has been feeling like all my life my special interest has been planes & i've been following every development in the industry looking forward to the construction of The Most Awesome Plane Ever that has just been announced but then immediately after for some reason people just stopped building planes. leaving me sitting there with all of my research on planes as they now build trains instead and nothing else. and then one day they get rid of every plane and try to convince me that planes were never a real thing in the first place.
To mourn the loss of gureshin in recent chaps I draw that shinya panel in yamamotos old artstyle. I personally enjoyed & liked how it turned out, hope it makes you smile too!
Hello I'd love to see your obsidian folder of notes
you're gonna have to be a bit more specific than that! here's the little prologue though :3c
Somewhere in the vast open universe, or perhaps above it, or beyond, lay God's Great Kingdom.
A place too grand to be described by human word, it had three unshakeable laws.
For anyone that is not the One Holy God Himself,
it is forbidden to create life from nothing
it is forbidden to return life to that which is passed
it is forbidden to alter the being of another.
His creations lived by these laws as if it was their only purpose.
But there was one creation among them, named Sika Madu, who would break God's holy law.
Of their own free will, by their own hand, Sika Madu created a child.
Mikaela, they called it, Gift from God, in appreciation of his Lord. Made of pure light, Mikaela was like all of God's creations, flawless and angelic and beautiful.
But not to God.
To God it was proof that He could err, that He created something that was less than perfect, a being that would disobey His rule.
He could not accept this.
So God gathered up the power of Sika Madu's sin, that of creation, and from it He created seven keys.
With these keys, Mikaela was killed, and Sika Madu sentenced to leave God's kingdom, forever.
And thus Sika Madu the Angel was banished to Earth - a place far away from God's kingdom, entirely untouched by His hand.
And yet, there was life. After billions of years of sitting in nothingness, pure chance seemed to be what had brought life to this godless place.
It was teeming with creatures the likes of which he had not seen before, from too small to be seen to unimaginably huge, from high up in the air to deep under the glistening sea, from active and noisy to quiet and unmoving.
Sika Madu sat for a long time, observing, learning this different form of existence, studying the laws that it brought.
He found that the life that had taken hold here, far away from the Holy, could not simply be created from nothing.
It could only copy itself, or perhaps spit out something that seemed new, but was merely a combination of multiple preexisting lifeforms.
(Although sometimes, once again by pure coincidence, an anomaly would occur in the genetic code, a whim by the universe itself, a miracle - and bring forth something entirely new.)
Did God know of this, Sika Madu wondered. Of this power that came not from Him.
Knowing that Mikaela had been sent down with him, although he could not yet find his corpse, what Sika Madu would need was a new vessel to hold his soul. One that would not attract God's attention, an unremarkable shell not worthy of His gaze. This prison he'd found himself in seemed to be the perfect place.
And with his newly gained understanding of the world around him, Sika Madu began to interfere.
He would a require a creature with a strong mind, one that would resemble his kind, might even resemble Mikaela. It was a long road that would take patience, careful studying and a myriad of errors, but he knew it to be possible.
He picked the most suitable of organisms, and he encouraged it to bend itself, to change, to evolve.
And through all of it, Heaven lifted not a single finger against him.
After all, he was not creating - he was merely mixing, using this world's rules and the universe's whims to his advantage.
And eventually, from the fish that had greeted him came mammals, four-limbed and land-dwelling, from which eventually came apes, social and intelligent, from which, after millions and millions of years, finally, came Sika Madu's most perfect recreation of his own kind - Humanity.
Please keep posting cokerants about ons I love reading them it also validates my hatred for author handled shinya idc if you end up shitting on entire cast, guren or even my fav characters im pissed too I need to read more people pissed at kagami carry on the hater energy
cokerants, that sounds about right
unfortunately i feel like for my own mental wellbeing i reaaally shouldn't spend any more thoughts on this story lest i hurt myself and/or others.
buuut if it makes you feel better i do have an obsidian folder full of notes on how i'd rewrite the entire story and a couple of character notes & snippets. so far it's largely about shikama, shinya (surprise! i made up a whole new backstory to try and explain every question i've ever had about him), shinoa and mahiru.
of course i can't promise anything, this is a huge endeavor, but i'm definitely having fun! i call it End of the Seraph.
i am going to fucking kill this useless piece of shit goddamn author how could you possibly fuck up your own story this fucking badly it is inconceivable
is what i would say if i were to say something bad. which i'm not gonna do
Takaya Kagami and his Chekhov's guns that never fire
For the past almost 5 years I have been constantly saying, "what is Kagami doing", "the writing is so bad", "it doesn't make any sense". Well, as I promised, after the disastrous chapter 152, I finally cohesively compiled my thoughts.
I will be talking about Shinya, Guren, their relationship, and characters that are significant to their story.
Disclaimer: this is purely my interpretation and my opinions about the characters are very biased, enjoy.
Chekhov's gun - the literary principle that a writer should not include an object, detail, character, etc. in a story that is not necessary to the story.
An object, detail, character, etc. that appears near the beginning of a story and does not seem important, but becomes important later
The playwright Anton Chekhov observed that if there is a pistol hanging on the wall in the first act, it must go off before the end of the play, an observation which has become known as "Chekhov's gun".
Shinya
In the novels, Shinya is one of the main characters, sometimes (for example, in volume 4) we even get chapters completely from his perspective. That gives the reader an understanding that his plot line is important and we should consider every piece of information we get about him. So what were these details that we should keep in mind for the future development?
Shinya's identity
We don't know his actual last name, we don't know which clan he came from, his appearance, like his rare white hair and blue eyes, is noted by other characters.
Chekhov's gun here: Kagami intentionally adds these details to Shinya's character design. In Q&A's he mentions the fact that the Hiragi clan deleted all the files about Shinya's past, there is always mystery surrounding Shinya's past.
Now that this is "on the wall" we expect that at some point near the end this gun will "fire". We expect the big reveal of Shinya's identity. How it can be done is up to the author. Maybe it's a conversation, maybe it's a transformation, but still it should happen.
Now, after chapters 151-152 we saw what happened to Shinya. Actually it happened even earlier, in the beginning of 2020, when Kagami's approach changed drastically. Shinya did not appear in any chapter for years, and even if he did appear on one page he would be unconscious, a flashback or just a mention. After chapter 83 with a very good dive into his character you would expect the focus would finally be partially on him. But suddenly Kagami forgets him. In the last years he finally brought him back, but still Shinya doesn't get any meaningful lines, we barely see him, he's like a shadow. In the meantime, we're still waiting for the big reveal, the gun is still on the wall, and now after his death will we ever get it?
Shinya's resurrection
In the end of CA16 after his death, to give Shinya and the others 10 more years of life, Guren activates the apocalypse, where 80% of the population all over the world dies and 7 people are resurrected. Shinya, however, was not brought back to life, and Ferid manually started his heart again. If the resurrected find out about what happened, they die instantly.
Chekhov's gun here: There was no need for that to happen in the plot, all of them could have been successfully resurrected, and nothing that we know to this point would change. So that means Kagami intentionally did that to Shinya. Then in RA19 and the main manga there are multiple occasions where the resurrected (mainly Shinya) almost find out about it.
Now we expect that to "fire" at some point. A build up like that only has one logical conclusion - the secret is to be revealed. What happens to these characters is up to the author again. Maybe every resurrected character except for Shinya dies when they find out, maybe he is the only one who accidentally finds out and doesn't die, because for some reason it didn't work on him. Still, with that many instances of that secret being almost revealed by the end of the manga, it must be revealed.
What we got instead was Shinya dying by being cut in half as the best sniper of humanity in the middle of a sword fight. Big sigh.
Now overall, I was very disappointed by the development of his character in the last 5-6 years (and even before that, to be honest). Shinya is a very tragic character. Since he was little, he was going through hell every single day. No one was there to help him or support him. That made him develop a belief that there is nothing worth going after in this world, that his life didn't matter. After he met Guren, he gained a meaning to his life, but that belief that he didn't matter was still there. He didn't find out that for Guren he mattered more than the whole world (both literally and figuratively), that he mattered and was not just a weapon. This ending for him that we got is ridiculous. After all the pain he endured not even knowing what the person who he lives for hides from him constantly and that actually it was to protect him, he dies in a battle being "useful". He never gained an understanding that he himself is enough. And it's not just a tragic ending in the sense that "well, not everyone has a happy ending", it's just bad writing.
Guren
Guren is the main character of the novels and arguably one of the main characters of the main manga. He's a very important key character who moves the plot the most. So what exactly did chapter 152 do to him?
Similarly to Shinya, since he was 5 he was subjected to experiments and a very intense training, did not have a "normal" childhood in the slightest, and there was always Mahiru manipulating and abusing him. All of this made him very self-destructive. At first glance you might not notice that, but throughout the novels and the main manga he's willing to endure anything as long as his family is okay or he's doing the right thing. Sometimes he has no regard for his life, he always blames himself. And being subject to constant abuse from the Hiragi clan, Mahiru, and Ferid, he still fights losing everything.
If we look at his character plot line, we see someone who constantly can't catch a break. After killing almost the whole population of the world, he starts developing a plan to bring all the people back, save his friends, and make it all right again. Now, Kagami wrote only 2 volumes of RA19, saying that the further volumes will spoil the main manga (yeah, very believable from someone who can barely focus on writing the main manga and still does it like he saw it for the first time yesterday), so we don't fully know the extent of Guren's plan. But we do know he has been developing it since he was 16, and we saw him execute it until the very end.
Now here it's where it's getting ridiculous. Making a subsequent series of novels about the main character developing a plan, making him be successful at the stages of this plan in the span of 8 years, and then making him fail in the last minute of that plan for absolutely no reason except to make Yuu actually bring everyone back. It's been a long time since I stopped blaming characters in ONS for their decisions because the writing got so bad and obvious there is no one else to blame except for the author. These decisions no longer seem to flow as the plot goes, the reader can actually sense the author having a hand in the making of them as he goes. When reading a coherent fictional work, you do not think of the author, you don't question his decisions. You question other characters and the circumstances. It's not an essay, the plot should flow.
When Kagami actually cared about this work, the reader could discern the moral of the story - to never give up, to be true to yourself, and that the main strength comes from caring about others and being selfless rather than abandoning and using everyone while staying alone. Right now, after chapter 152 the moral is… no matter what you do, no matter what hardships you go through, you will fail?… All that Guren did in his life did not matter in the end. And again, it's not just a tragic ending, it doesn't make any sense. The gun is still on the wall.
Guren and Shinya
Now finally the Chekhov's gun that did fire, or so Kagami thinks. Guren and Shinya dying together as humans. It was mentioned by both of them several times. Many years ago I said the same thing - it is to be expected for them to die together in the end. Because what can I do? The gun is on the wall. But yet again it didn't actually fire.
When we look at their relationship, we can see that it's two people who care about each other more than anything in their lives and who are separated constantly by the circumstances, with miscommunication born amidst all of it. Shinya's mask drops when he's with Guren, and Guren feels the immense connection to Shinya. Their feelings towards each other are very sincere, but every time something is in the way. After the apocalypse, the main obstacle is the secret about resurrection.
Then in the RA19 novels and the main manga, we get numerous scenes where Guren senses that Shinya will deduce what's actually going on and prevents it to save him, and Shinya accepts that, but he knows something is wrong, and his patience wears thin. That's when the reader expects that by the end of the work we will get a proper communication between them. It's not the case of "probable" or "likely". It must happen, period. That's how storytelling works.
And Kagami is someone who used that in the past. Think of CA16, they always had communication problems, but in the end, Shinya reveals to Guren, that meeting him was the meaning of his life. And we see in chapter 83 that it changed him. For Guren he was willing to go against that belief he had that you should only rely on cold logic in your decisions. And what does Kagami tell the reader in 152? Care about somebody, follow your heart, find meaning in your life by being with that person, and die horribly without communicating with them. But hey, at least they died together, right… The gun fired, but the cartridge was blank.
Bonus
Narumi is still nowhere to be found ever since he last appeared in chapter 77. His story line started in the novels too, but I guess Kagami didn't want to bother continuing it anymore and thought no one would notice if he just threw out a whole character from the plot. It feels like he did the same to every other character figuratively, especially with the way he suddenly started giving Shinya's words and personality traits to Mahiru in the recent chapters.
I have many more things to say about Kagami's sudden change in approach to ONS, but these were the main points that were completely disregarded with who knows what intention, really. When ONS was popular in 2015 with anime coming out, then novels coming out, Kagami still had that spark. That's why many readers look back fondly at those times, and that nostalgia is what's keeping us all reading the disastrous writing now that butchers our favorite characters every month. This train wreck only makes us wonder what could have been. And readers are left looking at the wall full of Chekhov's guns, symbolizing the potential this story had.
really awkward time to be posting this, but i've always found it strange how he acted towards shinya compared to other demons, and pretty much refused to play by the Demon Rule Book. so here's a summary!
first of all, we need to talk about what a demon's purpose is (disregarding the black demon shikama subplot that mattered for like one chapter and was never mentioned again. yes i'm still mourning raimeiki and byakkomaru plot relevance. leave me alone).
so the ultimate goal of a demon is to regain a physical form by permanently possessing their host. to do this, they need to 1. awaken some sort of strong, usually trauma-based desire in their host by showing them hallucinations and then devour those desires to turn them into power, and 2. convince the host to lower the walls in their heart to be able to take over their mind.
this was shown very well in the beginning of the manga, where gekkouin 1. taunts yoichi with the image of his deceased sister that was killed by a vampire, awakening the desire of revenge in him, and 2. tells him that if yoichi lets him take over, he'll avenge her in his stead.
what this means is that a demon isn't supposed to be your friend. they don't give power to you to help you, but for their own selfish goal, to eventually thin out those walls that keep them from possessing you. they're meant to haunt you, give you custom-made nightmares for maximum terror, take your sanity in exchange for power. a demon technically wouldn't want their host to die, since it'd take away all chance to take their body, but they logically shouldn't care if you're harmed as pain could very well be used to manipulate you.
so! let's get to the part that's actually interesting. Exhibit A: Dad Mode
despite my earlier ramblings, byakkomaru seems genuinely protective of shinya. keeping him from being hurt means no benefit to him, and yet he goes so far as to straight up threaten mahiru. this scene also stands out because it was the first (and only?) time a demon took action to confront another without their host's knowledge.
byakko, i hope you know that you're a real one. the only real one, perhaps. keep loafin'.
Exhibit B: Refusing To Do His Goddamn Job
wow! your host wants something really badly and is asking YOU for power, offering up their everything in exchange! every other demon would be jumping at the opportunity. how easy it would be to ramp that desire up to the max and let him go mad! but, for some reason, byakkomaru entirely goes against his nature, and is just like, "no❤". he even acts like shinya is some stubborn child for even considering asking for more power.
and here you might say, well he has to act responsibly to make sure shinya doesn't die, because that would mean byakkomaru's end as well (#RIP to y'all... rough times...). and you would be correct. except in catastrophe, noya had absolutely no issue with endangering guren. he didn't care if they died as long as he got what he wanted first. but well, the demons were all human once, and they do have their own personalities.
Exhibit C: Abandon The Source Of Your Desire And Let Me Starve Or Whatever
other than threatening mahiru, byakkomaru repeatedly tells shinya to abandon guren.
he doesn't try to twist it in any way to manipulate shinya into giving him control, he just straight up believes clinging on will hurt him and he doesn't want that so he tries to steer him away. it doesn't seem to matter that guren is the source of most of the desire byakkomaru is supposed to be feeding on.
i don't know, maybe he's a vegetarian?
Exhibit D: What Even Is Your Goal, Honestly
as you may or may not know, this scene's chapter is titled "Two Demons". both guren and shinya turn into demons, horns and teeth and all. seems serious, doesn't it? this whole 'giving up being human' was the main thing they were trying to avoid in catastrophe. shinya's literal last words were telling guren not to give in to it. turning into a demon was a terrifying and dangerous thing that took an incredibly difficult exorcism to reverse. because once the demon has your body, they're not just going to give it back, are they? since that's like, their ultimate goal and all.
but fuck that! byakkomaru just turns shinya back to normal immediately after.
while guren, yuu, yoichi, kimizuki, have to actively fight against their demons to stay in control, byakkomaru never even tries to obtain it. which is especially odd considering it's been stated multiple times that Black Demons are the worst, the meanest, the most vicious of all. and then one of them just didn't read the user manual.
byakkomaru seems more like he's trying to protect shinya and keep him grounded than anything else. which is literally the opposite of what he's meant to be doing.
unfortunately, this is probably a result of the world's logic bending to whatever plot kagami thinks of, and not of byakkomaru actually being something special or kind. this whole thing is. none of it means anything to the story, as usual. but it's interesting to think about nonetheless.
Just read your Shinya character analysis and it was awesome! I had a lot of fun reading that! Thanks for compiling all that evidence. It really couldn't be more obvious that Shinya's in love XD
Also, I would really like to know your thoughts on Byakkomaru and his odd behavior and how he's so different from all the other demons.
In my mind, Byakkomaru has already fixed the whole shitty plot through the power of fatherly love and gurenphobia🤣
Anyway, I'd love to know your thoughts on him! Not something so detailed like the Shinya analysis (I don't wanna bother you or ask for too much 🤧), but just your thoughts on it!
thank you!! <3 love to hear that people are interested even in these dead times.
i'm working on that byakko post, and don't you worry, it will be at least a little bit detailed🗒🖋 been wanting to for a long time, and i feel like if i'm gonna try to leave this fandom, i HAVE to get that out first. especially now that they're dead. lol. fuck
Idk if I send this anon earlier or not I have foggy memory, just got hit with whiplash of my ons phase so forgive me I just kinda want to ramble & you are one of the first blogs I followed back then idk who else to yap about this. So I already had moved on from ons like a year or two ago, ig it was around that truck scene w guren & mahiru, & their simps blaming themselves for their crimes, I don't really remember what was the convo but it really just made me hate the whole series right there, iirc it was mahiru & her devil advocates running a propaganda about how she was just a girl trying save everyone actually (yeah kagami please go back & read your own garbage someday), which pissed me off for many reasons, as much as I loved gureshin I just cannot imagine shipping shinya with the guy who after years not only hold sympathy for his murderer but also erases her crime entirely? Like you are not one to decide if she should be forgiven, you may have suffered grief but you were not killed you were killing your squad murderer right in front of their dead bodies that were still warm. Like on ca16 he was a kid I can forgive that but on VR hes older than me & ik no person who actually gives a fuck about their "friends death" would do the shit kagami writing about guremahi. I read the chap, ofc I was a little sad because shinya was once my big comfort character but at same time I didn't care much because of how anti climatic & forced it was, at most I felt relieved because I no longer need to check ons ever again. I didn't feel any anger towards guremahi or rigr tho because they are just characters, in fact I felt very much of a pity at guren & mahiru both for how trash their writing has gotten that even on being "bad" they don't interest me enough to hate them they look like a very bad joke of an attempt on making some complex characters, but that's just how kagami's writing in general is; write a self insert with sob backstory, then your ideal woman as love interest who is prettiest one among all women who are secretly simping for the self insert & ofc a punching bag of a rival guy who will die a thousands times, who also just happens to be most decent characters he ever written ironically.
oh wow, hi! i'm honoured.
it's insane how long ago that truck scene was. it was, what, chapter 97? with the tiny little hiiragi siblings (didn't really appreciate it as much as i should have at the time, given it was the last time we ever got any sort of shinya characterisation...)?? and it made me just as mad. greater good or not, it's incredibly bizzare to follow up a scene of horrific abuse with a slam-dunk justification of said abuse.
you're right, guren squad's murder is only ever made about guren and how he suffered, never about the wrongness of it or the consequences it carried for his friends. it doesn't matter that people were murdered, all that matters is that it hurt guren. unfortunately it seems this story is just not that complex, and topics like the ethics of resurrecting someone against their will or the emotional turmoil of your loved one being a horrible person for your sake, were never going to be addressed. guess it's our own fault for having high expectations, or whatever guren said.
at this point i also just feel relieved that shinya is gone. he's simply a faceless statistic now, one of many people guren couldn't save, and nothing more. i hope they don't bring him back. free him, free me, please.
i wanted to ask you this because i feel your opinions and takes are always well thought out. Do you think Guren’s desire to have the best outcome in most situations stems from self pitying? Because I was kind of thinking about his behavior in recent chapters, and he’s been doing a lot of “It’s all over I should just kill myself why does this happen to me”. and then i remembered how mahiru always has to drag him out of this state and back into reality by reminding him why theyre doing everything.
I feel like the fact that he hates himself is kinda obvious, but I feel like maybe theres hints of desiring pity within his words, like when he goes on tangents about how he feels he doesn’t deserve everything happening to him.
sorry if the ask is a bit long 🥹🥹 it’s just something i’ve been thinking abt
hellooo!! 💖 i think you might be spot on, or at least that's what it feels like.
whenever guren speaks of The Plan it's more of a tired "ok we settled on this and i'm too exhausted to care so let's just get it over with" than an actual conviction of wanting to do the right thing. he's letting mahiru do all the thinking for him and doesn't spend a single thought on what the things he's doing mean for other people (e. g. caring about shinya's state of Aliveness, but not at all considering he might not want to live, especially with guren gone). that self-awareness he shows, saying "i've hurt too many people😔💔" seems sudden and out of place, a lot like kagami trying to force fans to feel sympathy for him. i'm done with that, unfortunately. fuck you, guren
kaledo-art
areudirty
dededos
theartofmadeline
dailybridgerton