#m mnis

[marsreds]

ichi is the guiding light, huh?

everyone's putting their hopes and dreams and wishes and expectations on him, you say?

i am genuinely emotionally compromised by the fact that desscaras is the only person in ichi's life that expects nothing and wants nothing of him. she wants him happy, healthy and alive.

desscaras of the star eater clan, is the only one who's prioritizing ichi the person above "ichi the guiding light". desscaras of polaris is there to provide him a home, a place he can always come back to.

no one else is doing this for him. no one but her. because they're family now.

[marsreds]

like. i need people to understand: in ichi the witch (which you should be reading, if you aren't already) magic is sentient.

it's been around in this sentient form as majiks for at least a thousand years, and in the story's present 402 out of 3185 known majiks are "acquired" by witches:

in the whole world only 402 are with witches. once acquired, they take the form of a jewel:

there are 35 majiks in this panel:

Desscareas single-handedly holds at least 8.72% of all majiks in the entire world.

"Everyone's Favorite Uber-Talented Badass" indeed

[marsreds]

one thing i'm really enjoying in Ichi the Witch is the top-down worldbuilding. what i mean by that is that the story introduces something monumental but we don't understand just how much of a big deal it is right away. for example, the very first witch we meet is Desscaras. we're also immediately told she's The Strongest™.

however the real scale of that strength doesn't really come across here. both because of the comedic tone and because Ichi just doesn't have any frame of reference for it. he knows nothing about magic or majiks or witches, nor does he care. but we begin to receive context for it slowly: there aren't that many majiks in this world and Dess holds at least 8% of them all on her own.

(and yes, some amazing double spreads but even in those Dess doesn't really do much, it's mostly aura farming)

as of the latest chapter, we're finding out that there's also very few full fledged witches out there. so few that being a senior witch cadet is a position of prestige and honor. the full-fledged witches are called "monsters". and Desscaras is The Strongest™ of them.

it's like we've been placed on top of a cliff but there was fog down so we didn't understand how high up we are. turns out it's not fog it's clouds

[marsreds]

so!

rose earrings, cuts to lower left cheek, fujimine having the butterfly of death and reberth and "immortality" in her name, chun being very deliberate with using that "many years ago"....

i'd guess fujimine is a lot older than she looks

[marsreds]

itw 76 spoilers

ah i see. ichi who sleeps like someone who has never felt safe in his life.

who says as much.

sleeps soundly on desscaras's lap.

i see. i see. i see. i see. i. see.

[marsreds]

[marsreds]

from what i've seen, i feel like a lot of the dissatisfaction with how ichi the witch handles its characters (not plot, characters) comes from the way ppl didn't clock the fundamental immaturity of majiks.

they're immortal and unchanging by default. they don't grow, at least not without interaction with humans.

this is reflected in literally everything they do: lack of object permanence, refusal of responsibility, no heed for consequence... the majiks exist as capable of doing whatever they want forever, and they have personalities that reflect such a stagnation.

then in order to contrast that, you have a main cast with unusual (for shounen, wsj shounen in particular) levels of emotional and social intelligence. and (to me) it works!! it works really well!

[marsreds]

ah, i see. it's time to chew glass i guess!

are you okay? you seem tired. you seem sad (you always seem sad). i can see you're hurting (it's upsetting me). is there anything i can do? you've given up a lot to be here now (with me). are you thinking of leaving (me)?

but i don't have words to say any of that so i'll just curl up on your lap and hope that that's enough. (at least i'll be right here to see you leave me if it isn't.)

(you'll have to kick me to leave.)