sliding you a note that says "do you fantasize about putting me under extreme physical, emotional, and/or mental duress? circle yes/no" with a bunch of hearts doodled around it
I am so utterly fascinated by “Saki”, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decades’ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.
I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:
the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from “the fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheek” to “the pussy is completely out on center page” over the course of 18 years; and
the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.
Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.
Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in “Saki” don’t wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And it’s still going.
In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. It’s because the underwear ran out of places to hide. I’m obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of “Saki”, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didn’t even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!
And of course there is also the breast expansion. I don’t know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, “the one with the big boobs”, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesn’t get lost in the noise. It’s just that normally—in like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for example—normally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and you’d go, “Well, this is now untenable.”
That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.
Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.
It’s like this, okay: there’s no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. There’s a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.
The vibe with “Saki” is different.
It’s hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as “leering”, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into it—I can’t imagine anyone is making her do this—but “Saki” the comic has no opinion on the matter.
There are essentially no male characters in “Saki”. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of “Saki”, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so it’s no problem. It’s so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.
So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of “Saki”, right: it’s just normal that they don’t wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. It’s been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. It’s just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, it’s in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like what’s the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.
The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because it’s mahjong time now, and we’re playing mahjong.
Do you get??? why I’m so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???
Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????
I have so many questions... How does one SUSPECT a manga character isn't wearing underwear? Like, sure, boobs are front and center amd you can see them get bigger panel by panel but how does this work for panties? Are there just that many upskirt shots?
Also how do you keep a manga about Mahjong going for 18 years, what??
some character duos i drew as a gift for someone that i wanted to share hehe
Should be noted i do notttt go to half of these fandoms (gravity falls, amphibia and toh i’ve Watched (only toh in full though admittedly) and i like them but i don’t rlly draw fanart for them). so don’t follow expecting more of those /silly
And if I said Megamind through its three subversions of Superman shows a deeper understanding that the point of Superman is that he was loved and taught to love by good, present parents, and because of that he is able to return that love to a world even if it doesn't always accept it, and he is not corrupted by his power, than many other films either subverting or playing the superman story straight.
Megamind has three Superman subversions. One is obviously Megamind himself. He was not raised loved by the world, but rather was loved by those hated by the world. Because he was still raised with love, he does care about other people, hence his character development. But because he didn't receive wider love growing up, his own is misplaced at first.
Metro Man was not loved growing up in a way that mattered. His adopted father was clearly very absent, and while we don't know much about his family, their relationship seems superficial. Because of this, his sense of duty to the world is also superficial, hence his boredom.
Hal wasn't raised with power. He gained it and was shown how to use it by a 'space dad' who only taught him power and not love. Hence, he sees it only as a grasping means to an end.
All three of these subversions, in their negative space, create the silhouette of the superhero that they are parodying. That silhouette is of a space child that came to earth and was cared for very deeply by the world, and taught love through his experience of love, and because of that holds fast to his duty to the world. Which is Superman.
Saving this post to show my boss who I told the AI flier makes us look lazy and ignorant, and offered to hand draw one. She still printed tons of ai fliers and I'm tempted to make a better one just because it annoys me so much.
i commend your body to the stars
[ get it as a print here! ]
[ID: A Project Hail Mary illustration. The artwork consists of a 5x7 grid, with smaller illustrations inside the squares. The smaller illustrations include: the xenonite Tau Ceti system; the Hail Mary drawn across three blocks; Grace’s bicycle helmet; Adrian’s green auroras; the Blip-C capsule; the crocheted Earth; the small xenonite figure; Rocky drawn across three blocks; the Petrova Line; the rainbow from Grace’s blanket; the shoreline on Erid; the Taumoeba collector; the green Skittles pack; and Astrophage as seen through a microscope. The squares differ in background colors. There are “empty” squares that reveal Grace on a red-orange background from beneath the small illustrations, only his side profile visible. He’s smiling softly. The overall artwork has an off-white background. The text above the grid reads “PROJECT HAIL MARY” and the text below it reads “LIFE IS REASON.” There are stars at each corner of the artwork. END ID]
it's a long way to erid, and sometimes grace gets a bit dramatic and in his head about things. rocky, as always, is more of a practical kinda guy 🪨
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a silly comic drawn at the behest of my good friend @letruinendhere, who came up with both the concept (inspired by this post) and the paneling/dialogue after i dragged them along to my third viewing of phm. i simply provided my dubious artistic skill to their vision ✨
+
bonus panel bc i thought the idea of rocky being able to take the (human, christian) lord's name in vain was conceptually hilarious
you jump and say "jesus christ!" once and suddenly you have to explain catholicism to an alien, happened to my good friend ryland grace—
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