betti • 30+ • she/her
personal tumblr of @trufflecookie.
I'm just a dumb girl, reblogging all the gay anime stuff.
Main fandoms: Mob Psycho 100, Kuroko no Basket
This is NOT a spoiler-free blog!
Opening theme to “Fafner In The Azure: Exodus”. The song is “Exist” by the well loved singer Angela. Seeing this op and all the parallels it has the openings of the original series bring a tear to my eye, and I can’t wait to see where this show takes us. Beautiful opening all around, and thought I’d share this with all the other fans out there who are just as hyped for this final chapter in the story as I am~
One thing that’s always fun about coming very late to a fandom that’s been established for a long time is how your perceptions as someone experiencing it all for the first time can differ from the wider fandom opinions of those who’ve been in it for years or decades. Something I’ve noticed about Fafner is that it seems the general fandom opinion is that soukazu got less insane and were toned down in terms of their queercoding in Exodus, Beyond, and even BTL and… I just don’t agree with that? At all???
For context, the only things I knew about Fafner when I started watching it about 6 months ago was that 1) it was a mecha and 2) it had the same art style as Gundam Seed (which I was obsessed with as a teenager). I think I may have watched the first few episodes as a teenager too, as I have a fuzzy memory of renting the first DVD from blockbuster and subjecting some friends to it at a sleepover lmao, but I never finished it for whatever reason. But I knew nothing, so I had no preconceived notions about any characters or relationships
(cut for length, this is like 1500ish words)
And Dead Aggressor, while I do personally think it’s the strongest part of the series (especially if you include the side materials of the audio dramas, the novel, etc.) due to it just feeling more character-driven, to me… I didn’t really notice anything fruity at first beyond anime-typical homoeroticism (and I have a personal theory that anime tends towards that in no small part because of heavily gendered genres – people point it out a lot more with shounen, as shounen tends to be more popular overseas in my experience, but shoujo absolutely does it too. You’re just going to get more gay vibes when all/most of the significant relationships in the show are between characters of the same gender, but that’s a separate topic lmao). Like yeah, okay, things are kind of intense between them, but no more than I’d typically expect of an anime, at least when not looking at it with a magnifying glass. I also was 100% certain Maya and Kazuki would be endgame cause that’s just how straight people write shows, of course it’ll happen (and to this day I am absolutely shocked it didn’t lmfao)
It was Heaven and Earth that prompted me to start going ??? cause… excuse me, what are we doing here lmao. I even made a post about it because psychic connections and The Hug and promises to wait forever… something is happening here and I’m not sure what it is but I’m intrigued
So then I go into Exodus and now I’m Looking For It. Because hey, that was really fruity, will it continue? And I won’t argue that Exodus has less in terms of volume of soukazu moments, but that’s simply because there’s way more going on. The cast got bigger, the story is very plot-driven, everything has expanded; they just have less screen time than they did in DA. I wouldn’t say the moments we do get are any less insane, though. I was very much live-reacting to all of it to a friend during my watch and I remember being very ??? several times, in fact most times the two of them are on screen together. Remember when Orihime (who we have to remember, the cores are basically god-like in their knowledge of things) calls them “two powers as one”? Hey, what the fuck does that mean! That’s really gay! Also the bit where Kazuki, who’s been suicidal on some level basically the whole series, chooses life because, as he tells Soushi, “I’ll choose the path you’ve chosen”? What the fuck! That’s a marriage vow!!! Not even mentioning that when Soushi dies, Kazuki tries to follow him. Not even hysterically, he seems completely calm, just in a ‘well obviously I go where you go’ way, which is. That’s also pretty fucking gay (and we’ll get into Kosoushi with Beyond lmao). There’s more scenes I could name, arguably pretty much every scene they have together, but this is already turning out way longer than I intended so lmao
So like. Exodus is not any less intense and weird imo, it’s just there’s so many more characters and events happening and they don’t have time to put soukazu’s insanity on screen as much in order to cover everything. And I can’t blame them for that. Exodus probably should’ve had more episodes tbh to cover all they wanted to cover without sacrificing the character moments, but it is what it is (and I still like Exodus – I just would’ve liked it even more if it had’ve slowed down a bit more at times, like DA does)
Now Beyond. Kazuki gets even less screen time here, as he’s not the main character anymore and it is a shorter series, but again, less volume does not equal less insanity imo. First off, the whole… everything about Kosoushi. Soushi is haunting the narrative AGGRESSIVELY throughout Beyond. He never really stops doing it either. And the thing is, Kosoushi and Kazuki’s relationship will never be free of Soushi’s ghost. Kazuki knows how festum-ish reincarnation stuff works – he’s an element for one, and secondly he also met Orihime. He should know that Kosoushi won’t be Soushi. But he still named him Soushi!!! That in and of itself is insane! He knew better and did it anyway!
(And I do have a half-written meta digging into just how bizarre and codependent soukazu are, and how I think by Beyond Kazuki fails to see Soushi, either of them, as a person anymore and more of as a concept that he’s devoted himself to, but I feel like while there’s definitely some overlap, that goes beyond (ha) what I’m trying to say here lmao so I’ll save it for later)
I don’t remember all the endings/openings 100%, but I do remember the first ending because it shows how Kazuki can’t look at Kosoushi without also seeing Soushi. And then there’s the three (3!!!) separate times Kazuki tries to die, explicitly to be with Soushi. When he gets Alles (which he evolved from a mech called ACHILLES!!! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!!?!?!), he sees Soushi’s image and he tries to reach it, only to be stopped by Kouyou and Misao again. Then the other two times he’s trying to get Kosoushi to assimilate him which 1) would make him part of Kosoushi (who he never sees as entirely distinct from Soushi imo) and 2) was what happened to Soushi, and thus would mean they’re in the same place again. AND! During the Alles/Nicht fight, there’s that insane flashback sequence that still gives me chest pains to look at right before Kazuki loses and tells Kosoushi to assimilate him. It’s literally the “dead wife montage” taken to the extreme like seriously lmao, it could not be any less subtle
(There’s also that fucking interview about the glasses… and how they didn’t say the reason why Kouyou and Misao wearing glasses would make Kazuki feel better but. We can put two and two together here. Goddamn)
And! BTL! In BTL we firstly have the broadcast moment, which is both insane and hilarious, and is also one of the main scenes I’ve been showing willing victims of my infodumping to explain just how these two are when it comes to each other. That whole bit is truly deranged (affectionate) behaviour on Soushi’s part and the fact that Kazuki is not even really that bothered is also deranged tbh. Yeah, okay, there’s some moments kind of re-affirming that the girls are into Kazuki too, but there’s also a moment where he basically turns both of them down, saying they’re on different paths. Which! You know, when his two other friends are like hey, we can walk this path together, I can help you, etc. he’s like oh no, you can’t do that, you need to do your own thing; he’s basically telling them they’re just friends. But at the end, when Soushi is all ‘I’m going to devote my life and career to making you live longer’, Kazuki doesn’t even offer up a token protest. He just goes okay :) make sure to memorialize me if you fail though. Which is also something! Given that it’s not Fumihiko he’s thinking of being the one to take care of his memory (even though their relationship is also weird, like. That’s still his dad), nor Maya (who he is also close with and she’s kinda been entrusted with everyone’s memories), it’s Soushi. Of course it’s Soushi. And Kazuki doesn’t even think about it in that moment, which means he’s thought about it before and Soushi being the one to do so is just to obvious conclusion to him
And yeah, okay, after experiencing all of that and the audio dramas and the novel and knowing everything, does Dead Aggressor hit harder than just “shounen-typical homoeroticism”? Absolutely! When I rewatched, I noticed way, way more than I did the first time lmao but that’s cause I had more knowledge then, everything had way more context and weight. But I still don’t think Exodus, Beyond, or BTL are any less soukazu-y than Dead Agressor is in terms of intensity. Maybe we could wish for more moments (and/or to see them smooch in canon, and/or a happy ending for them lmao), absolutely, but I personally didn’t see any drop in the intensity level of whatever the hell soukazu have going on throughout the series. Volume, sure, such is the nature of the story expanding, whether you like that it expanded or not, but not intensity. They were truly, irrevocably insane about each other the whole time and not even death stopped it <3
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