#general ramble

[wwreckers]

big fan of artists and writers who make cybertronians have very expressive audials / finials (or whatever the term) like cats. i love when artists and writers make Optimus Prime's huge "ears" twitch and move, it's so awesome.

or even other more subtle body language; engine revving, panels moving (like in the wfc/foc games), and a bunch of other cues.

keep doing it forever

(i'll work out a better tagging but hi, transformers specific side blog where i ramble nonsense and the like, i couldn't think of a better username)

[general-thinks]

Some forgotten knowledge i want to share with someone

The first Komi-san fanfic I’ve ever seen were a weird fanfic on Wattpad written in indonesian

Sorry for the interruption

[endless-sketching]

Ngl I might need to make a separate folder just to store and credit all of the Mizuki and Mizena fanart I've been saving on my phone

[endless-sketching]

I've only played "one night, hot springs" and I'm at the start of the second one, but I got all of the endings for it. So I wanna share my thoughts on this really lovely game.

Quick heads up: my impressions with visual novels are rather limited. Seeing how I only know about visual novels on a surface level and I've only played a small amount of them in the past. (I rambled a bit so feel free to skip this section and read what I thought about a year of springs)

The only ones I've that I've properly finished was Va11halla, Synergia, Slay the Princess, missed messages, You Left Me, Doki Doki Literature Club (original and DDLC+), Coffee Talk (only Episode 1), and If Found.

Technically Alter Ego, Alter Ego Complex, and Aznana count as visual novels but they're more idle games that progresses the visual novel story than proper visual novels. (would Smile for Me count as a visual novel? wait does Ghost Trick and Ace Attorney count??? oh god does that also means Helltaker counts????)

I listed all of them cuz I didn't think my list would be this long.

Aside from that, my impression of VNs are more gamified in a sense. That you'll have to fill up a bar with a certain character to progress or romance that character. To get the girl and all that. Actually, yeah now that I'm thinking about it, my only impressions of vns were romance vns.

Those felt more for people that wanna experience a more self insert type romance story. And with how they're usually done in a really fan service centric way. From just the jokes I've seen that were made of this type of game was enough for me to just not play vns all together.

Even with yuri vns like Kindred Spirits on the Roof, the presentation felt weirdly mediocre. It's not bad but I would've liked it a bit more if the artstyle was a bit more interesting or it had those fun limited animations that ace attorney has. Though I'm being rather unfair to this game since I haven't finished it yet. That and its plot would've been better suited as an anime or manga as far as I can remember it as. I dunno honestly, take all of what I've said about this game with a massive bucket of salt. Especially when I haven't fully played it beyond just the beginning.

The vns that I did stuck around to finish either had a fun visual or gimmick to them like Va11halla's diegetic manual music player, or stories that hook me like any of the other vns I mentioned.

I will admit that the way vns show their story is super hard for people to get into since it's basically a different way of reading a book to put it bluntly.

Ok I'm actually getting into the game that I wanted to talk about now.

I first heard of "One night, hot springs" through a random Twitter post of someone making fan art of the game. I wish I can find which one it is since I didn't even knew that Haru was a transwoman, the only thing I knew about it was "three women? Ah so it must be a cute yuri. It is cheap so I might as well buy it" and then it blindsided me with a genuinely sweet and super well written story with queer characters with zero compromises or any dumb wishy washy "erm acktually" and actually presents the reality of the situation for characters like Haru.

I love this game to bits because of how well done the routes are too. The game gives you the option to turn on a hint system where it'll give you 3 hearts on the top left to keep track of what dialogue option you should or shouldn't pick. I had it on to see how the game deals with this kind of system and see how certain routes are triggered. And I'm super suprised that you can get all of the game's endings (minus the bad ending) without losing any hearts. Which is a really big deal because it means you get to get these endings in more than one way. And it also shows that you don't compromise yourself with the world to get these endings.

See, you lose a heart when you choose to seclude yourself from the world. Like the choice you get after Haru finishes filling out the paperwork, be upfront and asks if there's any problems to the lady at the front desk and you don't lose any hearts. You actively see that when you pick options where Haru doesn't get to live as herself, she loses a heart.

But the fun part is how this doesn't entirely affects how you get the Manani or Erika endings.

The hint system cleverly points out how certain choices are just straight up bad or wrong. Like when you're talking to Erika about trans stuff and she unintentionally says a transphobic thing like "oh so a nickname for when you were a boy?" If you don't call this out, you lose a heart. But it doesn't lock you into a route. The only time you get any of the endings is if you lose all hearts before a certain point of the game or lose all hearts during one of the character specific routes OR chose specific dialogue options without losing any hearts.

It's an amazing message to tell to your players that living as yourself shouldn't be a compromise. You only hurt yourself if you're lying to yourself.

Words really can't fathom how much this story means to me by just doing this simple act alone.

I really can't wait to see what the other chapters are and where they're gonna take the story.

[endless-sketching]

So chapter 85 for "How to make a 'girl' fall in love" by Banjo Azusa came out, and I am so concerned about what they're gonna do with Hirua now.

Big disclaimer:

- I'm reading Koisuru Otome through fan made translations so some nuance might be lost

- and I'm kinda dumb so some things might just not make sense

V

If you were on Twitter when this manga got picked up by Seven Seas for an official English translation, you would know the whole shibang that happened with the story's localization. I'll pin this topic for later.

Gonna establish some characters first before I continue ranting: Midou is a guy that likes to do cosmetic stuff like make up, and Hirua is a guy that doesn't mind dressing up as a girl and is actually happy with themselves with how they look now. I'm going to be referring to Hirua as they/them because currently on this chapter they're actually tackling Hirua's gender identity.

Also a brief story recap ig: the story so far is about a guy that's embarrassed and a bit ashamed about liking make up because it's "for girls" and a childhood best friend sparking a bond they thought was lost once they entered highschool, said childhood friend was also "turned into a girl" with their friend's cosmetic skills. Said action made them decided to go to school wearing the female school uniform and the rest is too much for me to recap. This gender debate takes a backseat to let potential romance between Hirua and Midou grow, this would lead up to them actually confessing to each other but not officially going out until this beautiful kiss scene

Bbbuuuuuuutttt it kinda had me at a really concerning chokehold, I'm extremely ecstatic when this happened don't get me wrong but it is such a massive cliff hanger because the story was also developing Hirua's gender questioning. The few chapter before this started showing Hirua having a sore throat of sorts so they went to the doctors to go check it out, only for the chapter to end with a shocked and scared expression. Hirua's body is growing.

And it was until this chapter that they revealed that, and they also revealed that Hirua is very much not happy about their body's growth. A lot of stuff happened here that I can't exactly describe well, but the general gist of it is that now the next few chapters will be both establishing Hirua's gender and their relationship with Midou.

Alright let's unpin that thing I had with Seven Seas Entertainment's localization of Koisuru Otome, so there was this massive talk about this manga's localization of Hirua's character. See the localization team decided to make Hirua a trans girl in the first chapter. And this sparked the debate between the fan translation team and the localization team leader on Twitter.

The main issue with making Hirua trans is that it destroys a lot of the suspense and story integrity, yeah it kinda sucks that the story is referring to this character that dresses like a girl with male pronouns but that was done deliberately by the author of the story. Making Hirua trans would ruin a lot of that original intention, it's the one time where actually getting other trans people's opinion on the matter was a bad idea. The story and the author clearly has a massively different culture behind gender than what the localizers had in mind, and I don't have firm proof that they also got someone from Japan to proof read this localization but the matter of the fact is that this localization changed was a bad idea.

Despite me being trans, I actually agreed with the fan translators on this. Yeah the story doesn't exactly make it explicit that it's secretly a yaoi romance, with how Hirua is dressed up femininely a good chunk of the story, and I was ready to just assume Hirua was just a cute femboy considering that the story hasn't exactly gone back to questioning their gender at all and was content with keeping Hirua at a weirdly conveniently sudden stop in their growth spurt just perfect enough to let them crossdress seamlessly.

It actually did have very strong intentions of developing Hirua into a maybe a trans girl. It's that part of the story that the localizers kinda missed. Hell, it's like they only got the first chapter and actually didn't read up to the chapter where the cast went to the beach to do club activities.

Which leads me into these very early signs of Hirua being potentially trans, the beach chapter. See despite dressing up as a girl, Hirua still has a male body, so when the topic of going to the beach for club activities for their photography club, that made Hirua really anxious and understandably scared.

A lot of stories with femboys would just not focus on this aspect at all and just pick either making them go full girl or full boy, here it's being directly emphasized by Hirua as a major concern and fear. In which they confine and tell their club president, Yoimachi, and it makes for a really sweet scene. I can't exactly say I have the same type of fear, but I definitely felt a familiar fear when I first went out dressed as a girl. So you can't exactly say that Hirua isn't at least trans coded.

It's just these next few panels is where things get a bit dicey since the story is clearly mixing in Hirua's confidence in expressing themselves with their love for Midou. It's very hard to clear if Hirua's dressing up for Midou or for themselves. It's definitely a deliberate move on the author, and it's this specific kind of nuanced representation that I really love about this story.

Tho the fact that we haven't gotten an answer to this until 80+ chapters later does make it easy for people to just assume a lot of stuff about Hirua without much nuance, which is fine honestly, beyond just the whole gender questioning thing there's also Hirua and Midou's relationship to chew on. And it is such a fluffy romance between the two, they're so sweet with each other it's just so gosh darn cute!!!

I'm happy with how the story has paced itself because it wasn't just this beach chapter but also the chapter where Hirua's mom comes home to visit them, and they actually tell her every and their mom actually accepts them for who they but she also reminds them that they'll have to think about what they want to be eventually. The story just doesn't forget that Hirua will have to face how they want to perceive themselves, that's what makes the story for me.

And now they're actually doing it!! And it scares the shit out of me because the author can very easily mess it up!!

Especially after the whole mess up with Seven Sea's localization, I don't exactly have a source so take it with a bucket of salt but the author did an interview talking about the manga itself. I haven't read all of it and I'll definitely be going out of my way to read it just to be sure that this story is in good hands before I get my hopes higher for the next chapter.

(Oh my god I found the interview, I'll be reading it after I post this: link to the interview )

So, why am I exactly writing about another manga about a gender non conforming character? Because painoko got an anime adaptation before koisuru otome. Yeah I was ecstatic when the anime got announced since there isn't exactly that many openly trans anime out there, yeah there's some but those ones are rather outdated and are weirdly hard to access nowadays. So I'm really hoping koisuru otome does eventually get that anime adaptation, and it actually gets a bit of a higher animation budget than painoko.

I'll be happy even if Hirua isn't trans, I just want the story to not flunk Hirua's characterization especially at this part of the story. Especially when they've heavily established that Hirua's gender expressions is sitting comfortably in it being not defined.

Credits:

Koisuru Otome (How to make a "girl" fall in love) by Banjo Azusa.

Translated pages by Ethylene Scans & Peruvian Bad Quality Translations.

Any images used in this post goes to their respective owners.

[endless-sketching]

Just finished watching the first ep of the senpai wa otokonoko and my god do I just love it

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime ED)

Spoilers! I will talk about future events so shoo if you haven't read all of the manga plus some bits of the prequel manga

All that being said, goodlord I still hate the title the anime- wait no the entire story is name using that name god damn it

The name in question is "senpai wa otokonoko: this is him (can't be anyone else)"

And I want to say I like the title but something about it just rubs me the wrong way, I've prob talked about it before in one of my previous posts but I get that it's supposed to be a title subversion. You see a cute girl on the cover and the titles says it's a dude, cool and it's stupidly smart how it will catch people's attention.

But the story later on doesn't exactly tackle it fully, it side steps the "is makoto trans or just likes to dress femininely as a guy?" Question too many times in the manga for this title to really sit right with me.

I will acknowledge that we did have that amazing chapter of Makoto at their grandpa's place and how it's an excellent reflection of Makoto's mental space and how it leads up to them deciding to confront their parents about who they are

But oh my god they didn't give Makoto enough screen time to decide who they are

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime)

The story focuses too much on the traumas of the side characters, I love Aoi don't get me wrong. The scenes she have and how her life is with divorced parents tugs on my heart strings to me genuinely crying when she breaks down crying in front of her grandma, but oh my god why can't we have this kind of scene with Makoto too.

Like genuinely, the story revolves around Makoto's identity and how it affects their relationships. And at the start, the story leaves it a mystery because even they question and try dressing up normally as a guy after their mom found the cutesy handkerchief Aoi gave them. And then an extremely heart wrenching scene of them throwing away everything they love that hits too close to home for me when I first read it.

That whole arc was basically a big first step towards asking "What is Makoto's gender?"

Only for us to never find out, aside from a really subtle hint at the end of them going to school, in the female uniform,from their hom, without their wig.

Not only that but I am so afraid of what the internet is going to think about Makoto's grandpa, because it's a genuinely interesting take on the "man in a dress" trope that hinges too much on controversial story elements like lying and traumatizing Makoto's mom to never dressing up femininely again. It's a very controversial point in the story that I'm afraid Twitter will not have the nuance to take it in properly and discuss it civilly.

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime ED)

I get that the story doesn't have to be explicit about Makoto's gender to run the story well. There's been plentiful of hunts that they will stay the way they want no matter what people say. It's just not having a firm confirmation of what Makoto is frustrates me because this anime will just become another means of ammunition to use against queer people if done by some loud asshole on the internet.

I really do hope the anime rectifies this problem I have in any small way possible. The creator knows the importance of this story to a lot of people and how fragile of a topic it is as stated in one of the post she made after the announcement of the anime. Take that info with a grain of salt because I think she never really explicitly said that the topic of Makoto's identity, but acknowledged that the story is near and dead go many and wants to do it justice.

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime)

The anime itself is beautiful, and I just love how they adapted the more goofy scenes the manga had into these more stylized scenes with thicker lines

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime)

It must've been a massive budget help with how simple these scenes look and animated while still staying true to the manga without it feeling cheap

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime)

Like this scene is surprisingly really good looking with the mix of both styles. I really like this style but it can't really beat the normal style the anime has.

Seeing how all of the characters from the story is featured in the anime's opening, I hope the anime is a full adaptation of the entire story.

So you should check it out too! If you haven't read the manga then this anime is the next best thing.

[endless-sketching]

Caution: I'm an idiot so many things I say here might be inaccurate

A title that describes a story accurately compared to a title that echos the feeling of the story is such a compelling case

Painoko for example, the original Japanese title is called "Senpai wa Otokonoko" and Otokonoko is often used to described girly boys, a male daughter if you will. Despite that, the word itself is shrewd in a rather undefined mystery because of how Japanese queer people, like trans people, would use it to describe themselves in some fashion. So using this word tends to beckons the reader's past history to these types of gender nonconforming people, be it tomboys or femboys, otokonoko carries history but not a solid definition. At least from what I've seen a commonly agreed upon definition. If anything Otokonoko has sort of become a code word for trans safety in Japan of sorts. I'm sure that there's more history behind this that I'm ignorant of since this is basically just the tip of the iceberg to how Japan handles gender.

In short, Otokonoko is an accurate description word but a word that echos a feeling.

And when Painoko announced their anime, I was really excited about it until I found out that the title is done different from what I wanted.

A brief background check on the mangaka of Painoko, Pom (or Pomu from certain sites). More specifically what they created before Painoko, is a manga called Menhera Shoujo Kurumi-chan and how often Kurimi is used in a lot of trans memes.

(This is going to heavily focus on the trans femme side of things so my condolences for my transmen out there)

Im sure that it's pure coincidence that the many trans girls on the internet started using Kurumi specifically and that overtime people had just associated her with being the default anime trans girl rep aside from the other ones. But to go from that manga to Painoko surely means that Pomu knew about the trans memes that's been made with their character right? That in some way these trans memes had incfluenced them into exploring and making Painoko. A story that has very heavy queer coding with Makoto with how they present themselves and the turmoil that many trans girls will heavily relate too, that's just heavily intertwined with other stories within it.

Surely Pomu at least knew about the trans memes before making Painoko right? I mean people went out of their way to get Kurumi's Line stickers to make these memes.

I'd be delighted to talk to someone from Japan's side of the LGBT community about this, but as of now all I know that Kurumi is often used in a lot of these trans memes.

So it's just rather hard to see when the chosen English title they gave Painoko is called "this is him (can't be anyone else)"

It's more accurate to a certain degree but the story never directly confirms that Makoto is really trans. We see them dressed femininely without there wig they usually wear at the end but the story still addresses them with male pronouns here and there. Even up until the last chapter.

I honestly would've munched preferred a sequel to Painoko, exploring where everyone is now rather than what the currently ongoing Encounters Arc is doing by retreading old grounds again. Y'know how Yamada to Kase-san is a sequel story exploring the relationship between Yamada and Kase after the events of Morning Glories and Kase-san? Not only did it further expand on the two's relationships but it also went back and addresses a lot of uncertainty about both characters.

So it would've done leagues of clearing up many possible misconceptions about Makoto if they just made a short sequel story having Makoto directly confirming that they are a transwoman.

You've built the story up with how Makoto questions their gender identity and how they very much prefer to present femininely so why the drop the ball at a vague ending? The hints are there but you are basically giving the general masses a deadly tool to use against trans people by making it vague enough that people can twist the story in their favor instead of what you intended.

In Pomu's final afterword for Painoko, it really did feel like they were rather scared of what it'll do to them if they directly confirm Makoto is trans.

Japan in general has a very center focused "Don't break the norm" mentality in a sense. And being trans in Japan is somehow more accepted than being gay in Japan. The push for legalizing same sex marriage in Japan is there but it's been a brutally quiet battle since 2020 but that's going into politics.

If anything I'm just nitpicking over a mere title for a story that's going to be getting an anime soon.

I'm holding out hope that we'll get an interview with Pomu once the anime is out and they'll hard confirm Makoto being trans there while still keeping everything about the story and title intact.

Crunchyroll you better not fucking mistranslate it.