I wrote this blog post a few times over the past few weeks and never actually posted anything.
It's funny reading it back, seeing all the different moods and feelings but the general points not changing.
I've deleted most of it, this is the final draft, re-written and actually posted.
There are only four days left of the year and I want to do a blog post and I want to post these photos that have nothing to do with anything.
*I'm giving up on December. I would say "I'm just gonna sleep for the next two weeks" but i need actual rest and sleep isn't a restful thing right now. My throat hurts, I can't breathe properly and I wake up every hour with a dry painful throat unable to swallow properly. I'm so sick of being sick and all i wanted this month was to work really hard on new items for my shop and have a nice fancy start to the year with all new things and fun lucky bags of the older things and just be in a good place in terms of work at least. But I've just been ill and useless (more useless than usual) and I'm over it.*
My colds are mostly gone now. I still can't taste or smell everything properly though.
I'm normally quite reflective at the end of the year but I'm not really feeling it this time. I think I messed up and I think there were hard things and I want to move on from thinking so much. I've reflected too much without moving forward. I want to be thoughtful but I don't really want to think about things anymore. I don't know if that even makes sense but I know what I mean.
*But even this is more thinking and trying to sort it out. How many of these blog posts have I written. I'm so annoyed at myself. I think I'm reaching breaking point. I'm not going to put up with myself anymore. I need to stop.*
Resolutions? Goals? Um, I want to just get on with it? Is that a goal? Do things without them needing to be added to a list so I remember to do them at some point. Actually live?
I'm pretty sure I've been holding myself back and I need to relax and live and let my brain come up with stuff and do the work when it comes and do the hobbies when it doesn't.
*I've been trying to remind myself lately that I don't have to go work behind a till or get to the office or look after kids or any of the other things people are dealing with, why don't i take advantage of that? What's the point of dealing with all the negatives of the lifestyle I chose if I don't take proper advantage of the positives?
I need to actually rest and with that will come the creative productivity that I want. Not because I think I should be productive but because making things is so important to me and makes me feel like myself. The need to make money from it is just it's own issue, it's not why i want to be doing it in the first place.
If I'm not getting anything done anyway then i may as well get nothing done in a resting way than a stressful energy zapping panic way.*
Stop being a dummy.
I've already been making changes and I'm already changing. I'm not waiting for a magical date change to fix me but also I love the magic of that date change.
I've been wondering about starting again with the blog. I want a blog but I've been taking my full name off of my profiles and such. I'm not sure why but it feels right so I'm doing it. I don't think I can change the url and keep the blog? I'd have to start over? Can I make this private so I can keep it? Deleting this would be tough but maybe it'd be good for me. I hang on to things. I dunno. A lot of the photos got deleted anyway.
Wait. I didn't add it to a list for later. I checked and it looks like I can change my url. Awesome, now I just need to decide what it should be...
So, I don't have any rats now. I'm not going to do the same post as I did with Tank but I wanted to write about it because it helps.
Sharky and Pixel had been ill for a while and got much worse over the course of the same week and we decided it was time to let them go together. We were really hoping that Sharky would die at home because taking him to the vet caused him so much stress but we also didn't want him to be hurting more than he needed to. Will went and spoke to the vets about it and arranged an appointment and literally within about 10 minutes of Will getting home Sharky died on my lap, all four of us were sat together and he just went really peacefully. This was about an hour and a half before we had our appointment so Pixel didn't even have to be the only rat left which we knew he wouldn't have coped well with at all. For such a horrible thing, it worked out the best way possible.
We're pretty sure Pixel had said goodbye to Sharky the day before, he just seemed to be grooming him and sitting with him in a slightly different way, he knew it was happening, like we did. I'm glad he didn't have to be lonely rat.
I am so broken by them dying. They were my whole life. We were a family, they meant so much to me, made me a better person and literally everything is connected to them. Rats are magic, they are like us, it's such a mutual connection. It's going to take a really long time to get used to them not being here.
When Tank died it was awful but we had the other two to look after us and to hang out with. This is so much worse.
Going downstairs the first morning was scary, I had to make myself get out of bed at the usual time rather than just laying there and avoiding it. Even on a good day the first thing I'd do is say hello to the rats, tidy up any poo and old food, put in new food and water and recently with Sharky being so clingy my mornings were dictated by whether he needed to come out or not, whether my morning would start with an hour or so of just sitting on the sofa with him and Pixel had been having medicine in the morning that I'd have to sort out. Once they were sorted and safe I'd have a shower and have my breakfast (which I'd share with them). Coming downstairs now I have nothing I need to do except for myself and just getting on with my day. It's a big change. I don't want to start a new routine that doesn't have them in it.
Some things that have caught me off guard because my whole life is them:
Putting away the teaspoons. I've been giving the rats medicine for a long time and I mix it and give it to them on a teaspoon.
I was getting changed and thought "I'll put a cardigan on instead of this jumper because Sharky likes to get in it".
Leaving the house the first time (and second time, there hasn't been a third time yet) upset me. Not having them to say goodbye to, knowing no one was at home. Coming back and them not being there to say hello to and to be said hello to when I got home.
I was going to keep adding to this list but honestly, everything makes me think of them so I'll leave it here. I started writing this a few days ago and I still feel broken. I'm making myself go through the motions of day to day, I get up, I take showers, I eat, I tidy up, I go out, I'm trying to start work again, because I know I should, because how bad would I spiral if I didn't so I'm making myself do these things. It's weird to think from the outside I would look like I was getting on ok but I know how empty it feels to be doing the things.
I feel like I must sound so dramatic but it's how I'm feeling and I know it will get easier with time, I know but right now I'm just so sad and sad doesn't even get close to covering it.
They were perfect magic and they made me a better person and I'm going to work really hard at being that better person as my own little way of honouring them.
They were very special and I miss them so much.
I'm doing it. I'm watching Naruto. All the way through. I've never seen any of Naruto before and that just feels wrong, it's such an ingrained piece of weeb pop culture that I just feel like I should participate.
I'm actually going in pretty blind because I'm wonderfully out of touch. All I have in my Naruto knowledge bank is that I read the first volume of the manga in March last year and I saw these drawings at the british museum.
That's literally it.
I'm 5 episodes in, some initial thoughts (that are basically the same as I thought when I read the manga).
I don't really like Naruto. lol. I'm just not a fan of annoying, cocky, 12 year old boys. I'm pretty sure I have some mild school boy based ptsd, I find it really hard to enjoy characters like this. But I get it, he's had a hard life, he's still a baby, he doesn't know how to not be annoying. I am on side with his love for cup noodles though.
Sakura better get some fucking character development fast because wow she's a bad portrayal of a girl. Like, how is she even a ninja if she's so stupid? It better not be just because she fancies Sasuke because arhgjkhgkdsksdaghl (there's already mention of family stuff though..?)
Sasuke is just a different type of dumb boy, there's not even much to say about him yet because he's just so cold. It did make me laugh a lot though when there was a scene where it went from Naruto to Sakura to Sasuke and we were hearing what they were thinking in their head and Sasuke just wasn't saying anything.
I have a soft spot for characters with eyes like this, even if you can only see one of them...
Now, why am I watching this if I think the three main characters are dumb and annoying? I'll tell you why! They're clearly going to grow and I want to see it. There's enough going on that it feels like we're heading somewhere and even though I don't like them yet it's still fun to watch and it feels like I will like them soon. They're kids! Of course they're stupid!
Not to mention with the wonder of hindsight, it's a 220 episode anime with a 500 episode follow up based on a 72 volume manga that has really, really beautiful artwork. I'm not going to drop it after 1 volume or 5 episodes!
So yeah, I'm watching Naruto and I'll probably share my idiot thoughts about it here every now and then.
Here is the story of one of my rats, Tank, dying.
Writing it down felt helpful to me and I know that this is the sort of thing I would find helpful to read about so maybe sharing it is helpful to someone else.
I know people are a bit funny about death so here's my warning that I'm not funny about death and I don't knowingly use any euphemisms, he wasn't put to sleep, I'm happy to just talk about it how it is. And to be honest the reality of how it is isn't that bad. I don't hold back from what happened but there's also nothing horrible to hide. The physical part of death isn't as scary as we sometimes imagine, it's just the losing someone part that's awful.
In case you don't know, we have three rats, Tank, Sharky and Pixel.
So, last month after a long time with an ear infection and an abscess and just lots of antibiotics and pus nothing was getting better and we had Tank x-rayed. He had a tumour in his ear and there's nothing that could be done about it. We were given lots of pain medicine for him and just had to keep him happy for as long as he could be.
A month later and all three of them went to the vet for a checkup and we knew Tank wasn't doing too good, he still had a great personality and seemed happy but he obviously must have been in a lot of pain.
His tumour had spread into his mouth and was effecting his teeth.
We weren't sure whether we'd have him for another week or not when we went in to the appointment but the vet very quickly told us about his teeth being too bad and it was time to have him euthanised.
She left us for a bit to go sort things out with the nurse and when she came back we had to sign a form and had a bit more time to say goodbye to Tank.
She'd explained before and went over again that they would anaesthetise him and then give him an injection so he wouldn't feel anything, like how he'd been anaesthetised for his x-ray last month.
We gave her a piece of fleece from their cage and she carried him on that. She took him away while we waited in the consultation room and cried and kept an eye on the other two who had just fallen asleep lol.
A nurse brought him back wrapped up in his fleece, she checked we were ok and offered us more time in the room but we wanted to get home.
As we left, the vet met us and said when she'd be in next and that we could call her about anything and that we didn't need to worry about payment now, we could sort it out when we were ready.
The vet and the nurse we saw briefly were really good, I can't talk highly enough of them and how they handled it all.
We live very close to the vet so we walk there, I carried Tank and Will carried the other two in the cage.
When we got home we laid Tank down in the cage on his fleece. He was laying on his side and was still warm and his little hands and feet were adorable, poking out from his big ol' bod.
After we'd had a minute with him we put the other two in the cage. Pixel didn't seem to notice and headed off downstairs for a drink. Sharky sniffed all around Tank and in his mouth and stayed with him.
We brought Pixel back upstairs and he sniffed right in Tank's mouth and then quickly went upstairs, got in the sputnik and fell asleep.
Sharky snuggled up to Tank and sat with him for about an hour then went and got food and came back and sat pretty much on Tank and ate. He sniffed all around him and in his mouth a lot and sat with him for at least another hour I think.
Towards the end of Sharky sitting with him he started sticking his nose right in Tank's mouth and was sniffing all around and seemed to be mouthing at his teeth a bit and then he started pulling on his tongue. We gently moved him off from that because we know rats can try and clear up a body by eating it which makes sense in the wild and while we wanted Sharky to mourn however he needed we really didn't want to see him eat Tank's tongue. Even though he was pulling on it he was being careful so I don't think that's what he was doing but we didn't want to find out. He went back to it a few times, so Tank ended up with a bit of a blep but honestly it really helped. Taking the time to sit with them and watch Sharky go through his way of dealing with it and then watching him pull on Tank's tongue was comforting and then funny. And for the rest of the day we had his little blep tongue to simultaneously laugh about and cry about because honestly I would cry about their adorable little body parts when they were perfectly healthy.
After about 3 hours he was starting to get colder and something I wasn't expecting at all, his tail started to shrink. Over the next few hours it ended up a lot shorter than it was when he was alive. His tongue was sticking out the side of his mouth but it was just a little bit, it was cute not grotesque.
We woke up Pixel again to make sure he'd had chance to realise what had happened and he groomed him a bit and sniffed in his mouth again and then just got back in a hammock.
We had Tank in the cage and sat with them for just over 3 hours and then we took Tank out of the cage on his fleece and laid him on the floor.
I went out into the garden to tidy up around where we would bury him. It felt really good to be doing something, not at all like a distraction, it just helped to be proactive about something I had no other control over I guess.
When I came back in Tank had fully gone into rigor mortis, he was still just laying on his side but when you touched him he was cold and his joints were stiff and if you picked him up he didn't move at all. His flubby tum was still soft though.
While we had him out on the floor before and after he'd started to stiffen we both held him and stroked him whenever we felt like we needed to and the rest of the time we sat and chatted and gave the other two attention and treats and it, I was gonna say it was like a wake but I guess it was a wake. We sat with his body and drank tea and ate crisps and cried and laughed and tried to come to terms with it with as much time as we needed.
Neither of us wanted to cook and Will went out to buy pot noodles. While he was gone I cleaned Tank's nose. He had a small amount of red discharge on his nose and I just carefully wiped it off with a baby wipe.
When Will got back it was dark so we decided to wait till morning to bury him.
We left him on his fleece on the floor and carried on as we were, crying, laughing, watching bad tv and just saying goodbye to him.
Having his body there with us for that amount of time helped so much. Watching Sharky sit with him and go through his little mourning helped a massive amount. No offence to Pixel, everyone deals with things their own way lol but I'm so glad that Sharky sat with him for so long, it really helped calm me down. I'm also glad he pulled his tongue out, just the right amount of humour.
While we sat through the evening we had Sharky on the sofa with us and let Pixel have his free roam time. He mostly ignored Tank but a couple of times as he ran past him he stopped to sniff him and one time he stopped and had a really good sniff all around his head, in his mouth, in his ear, his nose, using his hands to manoeuvre him slightly and then he carried on with his business.
Our living room is quite cool so I imagine it might be different in different temperatures but he stayed in rigor mortis all night until we were ready to go to bed. When we did go to bed we wrapped him up in his fleece and put him on his own shelf in the fridge.
In the morning we laid him out in the living room again. There was some discharge on his nose again, a very small amount and Will cleaned it for him.
We had our breakfast and when we were ready we went out into the garden, dug a hole, brought Tank out, had some last cuddles and laid him in the ground, carefully covered him up with the soil making sure he was nice and safe and once the ground was level again we put a slab on top. This is so we know where he is and also as an extra deterrent, a cat or something can't just easily dig that soft dirt we'd moved.
I pulled some flowers up when I was clearing the area the afternoon before and I laid them down on the slab.
It was really tough. It was easier to have his body with us in the living room than it was to bury him. It was so strange seeing him in the ground, it was simultaneously the most natural thing and seemed right but also why would we put Tank in the ground, we should be looking after him.
But yeah, that's that. I wanted this to be more about the physical aspects of what we did, I can't really talk about the grief, I'm still in it and also I think you just have to feel what you feel and move through it it's not something that can be explained or tips given for it. We're absolutely wiped though, we were a five people unit and one of us is gone and it's so tiring. I'm just exhausted.
I have cried so much so randomly since he died, my whole face hurts, I miss him so much but this slow process of dealing with it, and as a group too, feels so right and I think it helped a lot. If we'd rushed through it and buried him straight away or left him at the vet I don't think we would have had as many calm moments. Sometimes I looked at his little body and cried but equally sometimes I looked at him and didn't, it just helped me come to terms with what had happened even if I was simultaneously wishing it hadn't happened.
I'm not saying this is the one right way to do things, I'm just sharing what we did. Although, I would recommend letting your other rats see the body. I've never had to deal with it myself but I imagine a decent vet would let you take them home for a couple of hours and then bring them back for cremation. Rats are such a unit and can grieve, I think it's important to let them process what happened for themselves if you can.
The few days since it happened Pixel has seemed very out of sorts. He was always very attentive, if they were ever apart for any amount of time he'd go round the cage and stomp on everyone to say hi and check they were still there and go back to sleep, he's very nosy and keeps an eye on everything. When Tank had his x-ray Pixel went with him and all the nurses and vet mentioned how he'd been looking after Tank. He seems to be taking it quite hard. Sharky seems ok, his behaviour is pretty much normal except that he's sitting with Pixel more, I think he's comforting him. Hopefully they can readjust soon.
These three are our first rats and this is our first rat death and it is hard. The only bad thing about keeping rats is their short life expectancy, it's so unfair that someone with such character that can bond with you so much only lives a short time. It's so tough but it's only so tough because it's so worth it.
*update* Pixel seemed to mourn for four days, barely ate, super lethargic, no interest in anything, total opposite personality and on the fifth morning it was like a switch went and he was back to himself. I was so worried about him but he seems to have gotten over it ok 💜
After we watched Yuri On Ice, Will's sister told us we should watch Haikyuu. I added it to my list but didn't have any particular interest in it. I was new to anime and so my assumptions were still heavily based on western things/ideas/stories/media/people because it's what I'd grown up with and I was like, yeah YOI is a sports anime but it's skating which is beautiful and the romance element was a big part of why I liked it AND Yuri is too adorable. Why does that mean I'd want to watch something about volleyball?
I am not into sports or the men that like sports or the boys at school that liked sports, when I think about sports and the men involved I think about how they're aggressive, cocky, jerks that think too much of themselves and are not people I want to spend any time with. I know this isn't true of all sports and everyone in it, but the idea of watching something with sports as the topic just didn't interest me. Stereotyping over, sorry.
Jump forward a year and a half and I'd watched and read about a lot more anime and knew now that these stories are different to what I would expect based on my western upbringing so I figured I'd give it a go, it'll probably be alright.
I love how perfectly this shows all their personalities💜
Hahahahahahaha!!! I'm so in love with it!
They try so hard to be good at something they love and they support each other and they're good boys (´；ω；`)
Some lessons from Haikyuu.
Even if you're small and people think you can't play volleyball you can learn to jump high. You can figure out your own way of doing things.
"There are truly various kinds of strengths." Ikkei Ukai
Its not over yet! It's so easy to give up on things that seem to be going badly but you need to try your best until it's actually finished, maybe you can turn it around! Don't give up.
Its worse to not be playing volleyball. When I watched Ennoshita and how he stopped going to practise because it was so tough and he thought not having to go to the club would be better but then he realised that the difficulties of volleyball were better than a life without it I cried. Let's be honest, I cry easy but this hit me because I could so strongly connect it to my situation. Sometimes (often) I wonder if I'm making the right choices with my life but I know what I have now, however difficult it can be, is better than the other options and it is what I want to be doing. Doing this, even with the hard parts, is better than not doing it.
Being inspired by people who are better than you so you can improve yourself. The number of times they go up against someone better than them, whether it's overall or just in that one moment and rather than being put off by it they just use it as encouragement. "They're so cool, I want to play them again, I want to be as good as that, I want to be a part of this." It's so easy to just negatively compare yourself, I want to look at other creatives and think "they're so cool, this is awesome" and just be a part of it all and continue getting better.
The teamwork is so nice to watch. It's not one I can directly relate to myself because I'm a goblin loner but seeing these boys support each other and believe in each other and be like "don't worry, I'm here, you're not doing it on your own" is just so wholesome and cosy. They mess up and it doesn't matter and they just support each other back and forth and it's lovely.
I love that while you very much are following Karasuno and you're on their side and you want them to win and that means you want the other teams to lose we still get to see the other teams history and we get to see them cry when they lose and even if they're the bad guys you get to see how much they care as well, all these teams are going through the same things. They all care about it so much. It would be really easy to just not show the other team at the end of a game, to concentrate on the fact that our side won but being reminded to feel for the other teams adds so much heart to the story. Everyone is doing their best but not everyone can be at the top, sometimes you lose.
I want this hug please, for cosy reasons obviously.
Something else that it's building really well is how I simultaneously don't want the third years to ever leave but I'm also excited to one day see how the second and first years evolve. I could just gush nonsense about my trash birds forever (I love the third years so much and Hinata and Kageyama are obviously adorable and Nishinoya and Tanaka are such good boys and oh my god I'm gonna stop before I just list everyone but I feel bad not mentioning everybody, oooo the managers!!! and the other teams!! aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh) but I'll stop here.
I'm glad the next season has been announced, it's not till January but at least we know it's coming.
I definitely won't shy away from sports anime anymore. I've added Free to my queue after I saw Kimya Dawson gush about it because I trust her deeply. If you have any recommendations I'd love to know, my watch list can never be long enough, I worry about getting to the end of it one day
ヽ(￣д￣;)ノ
Teenage girl slice of life but she's a witch? Yes please! I watched the anime before I read this and both are lovely, I hope I get to read more of these. Special mention to this mandrake, I love him so much.
Tank Girl Visions of Booga by Alan Martin (writer), Rufus Dayglo (artist), Christian Krank (colours)
Tank Girl holds a special place in my heart and Rufus Dayglo's art is so good. I'm pretty sure I read this years ago but don't really remember it. Reading it this time I was just obsessively staring at the artwork. Also I'm not sure if it was part of the drawing or the colour but I love all the screen tone. I don't know if it's "real" or digital but ever since the manga exhibit I've been craving some screen tone to have a play with so I particularly enjoyed staring at that.
Hayate the Combat Butler volume 12 by Kenjiro Hata
This is one we picked up at the library sale and is all I know of the series. Considering I started at the 12th volume and haven't seen any of the anime either I still enjoyed this. I always enjoy when things break the fourth wall and I like it when there's pop culture references in stuff too. And the alien character with the eyeball hair that was also wings? One of those "I wish I'd designed that" moments, I loved them.
Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
After seeing Nerdburger's new hair I had a hankering to re-read Ghost World. Shockingly I don't actually own it but it's okay, the library is my best friend. I think this really does portray being an idiot, confused teen-almost-adult really well. Plus that green *chefs kiss*.
The day after the exhibit I basically just slept on the floor. I never normally sleep in the day, naps make me feel kind of ill. I was wiped.
Friday
With Sharky being ill and basically living on the sofa now and the weather still being super hot I stayed in the living room and spent all day editing photos and sorting out a blog post, the one before this one. I love sitting on the floor these days.
Saturday
We went to the Pride march. I was feeling really grotty so didn't hang around for the entertainment but I wanted to at least attend. Every time I heard a teen call it the parade I wanted to say "it's not a parade, it's a march" but I didn't because social anxiety and also I don't want to be a rando old creep lol, at least they were there💖
This many people coming together for something so important is very special, I cry a bit every year.
Walking through the city centre with hundreds of others while shoppers have to get out of the way and wait feels good. The perfect combination of colour, fun, love and disruption. It was so busy this year😊🌈
We'd been saving up since they announced it at the start of the year and last Wednesday we went to the Manga exhibit at the British Museum. To get it as cheap as possible we booked the train in advance so we had no idea it was going to be in the middle of a heatwave and that our train home would be super hot, busy and delayed by an hour but hey! it was fine, we just took it easy.
We were very excited (and hot).
Photos were allowed in the exhibit except for a few pieces and I have tried to credit everything but a few things got forgotten, sorry!
Miyuki-chan in Wonderland by CLAMP
Sitting on the floor with our soysage roll packed lunch before the exhibit which had this beautiful CLAMP piece in the opening area.
The exhibit covered a kind of history of manga so there were old pieces right up to new work. The second picture here is from the choju-giga (scrolls of frolicking animals) which is said to be the oldest manga and the first image is from Gigatown by Fumiyo Kono which uses the animals from the choju-giga to explain all the different symbols (manpu) used in manga.
Look at this grass!
(this whole post might just be me shouting "look at ___!!"...)
Takao Saito
I was very excited to get to see up close lots of screentone and white ink. It's not surprising that an exhibit at a museum would have original pieces but it was very very very exciting to me to get to see original drawings. Prints can obviously look absolutely amazing but the original is almost always better and to me is always more interesting. You get to see how an image was made in a way that you can't once it's been cleaned up for print and as someone who draws it's super interesting and a good way to learn new things. (I'm sure it would be super interesting even if you don't draw!)
Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist's Journey and Princess Jellyfish by Akiko Higashimura
Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama
Tomorrow's Joe by Ikki Kajiwara / Tetsuya Chiba
Look at this cross hatching!! It's so curved and beautiful! And you can see the use of white to tidy up the edges💖 The hatching on the body is beautiful too.
The Warrior Saito Daihachiro by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi / Blue Giant Supreme by Ishizuka Shinichi / Katsuhiro Otomo
A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka
The Astro Boy pieces were, unsuprisingly, amazing. Just look at them, look at them!
So good!
Screw Style by Yoshiharu Tsuge / Chi's Sweet Home by Kanata Konami
Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama
I thought my favourite thing was going to be seeing all the uses of white for mistakes and highlights and it was amazing but also amazing was seeing the original blacks. Like how around an edge would be blacked out with one pen and the bigger areas then filled in with a different pen and you could see the different black inks, you could SEE IT and it was amazing. And like in the above dragon ball if you look closely you can see the "black this bit out" marks through the black and it's magic. Getting to see actual original pieces was so magic. I haven't stopped thinking about it since we left.
Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi
This Sailor Moon piece was actually a copy, not the original but it wasn't cleaned up so it looked just like the original and I nearly cried.
I would like to live where shops look like this pleaseðŸ˜
Shintomi theatre curtain by Kawanabe Kyosai
This curtain was incredible. It was one of those moments when you can't help but think "it must be a reproduction, surely it's not the actual piece" and you have to remind yourself that that's what museums do, is look after actual things and you feel lucky and just wow.
Here's the blurb from the museum "On 30 June 1880, artist Kawanabe Kyosai went to the Futami photography studio in Tokyo's Ginza district, downed several bottles of rice wine and set to work with a hemp-palm broom. Four hours later he had finished the curtain, signing it as "a picture done on the spot"(sekiga)."
Four hours drunk. Incredible.
I tried to film it too, it's much more than these three pictures. I'll add the video at the bottom.
Colossal Titan from Attack on Titan / Tomorrow's Joe drawn by Tetsuya Chiba
Please stare intently at the shore line and how the use of harsh black and white makes it look raised off the page even though it isn't, it's just magic.
Toward the Terra by Keiko Takemiya
So beautiful💖ðŸ˜
Uzumaki by Junji Ito
Ok. I didn't know there was going to be any Junji Ito there. There were multiple pieces. They were perfect. They had a printed version of that first page with the wooden lids next to the original and you read the book or look at the print and think "wow this art is amazing" but honestly seeing it in real life is something else. It is stunning. None of my photos do anything justice (because of the whole, originals look better than reproductions thing) but the Junji Ito pieces just, I don't even know how to explain it, they were incredible. It was something special to get to see them. And you know how I was saying about how cool it is to see all the white used? Yeah it was also pretty magic to see how he barely used ANY because he's surely not real, like wow.
Also, I'd only just got over fearing spirals but thanks british museum, you horrified me all over again.
Keiko Takemiya
"This is a copy of a notebook used by Takemiya to explain the story of the Kaze to Ki no Uta to her editors. It illustrates the first section of the manga and conveys Takemiya's design process and her fluid drawing style."
Look. At. The. White. Over. The. Blue. It. Is. So. Beautiful.ðŸ˜
Love love love these trees.
Naruto by Masashi Kishimoto
I've only read the first volume of Naruto but when I did I intensely fell in love with the artwork. I kind of just let it go because the next available volume at my library is the 10th I think and there's lots of other stuff I can just wander in and pick up so it fell into the depths of my "one day I'll read it" list BUT look at itðŸ˜I'll definitely be putting in a lot of requests at the library soon because it's just so beautifully drawn, I love it.
Naruto / JoJo's Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki
If I didn't already like public transport this advertising campaign would 100% get me on board with it, it's so pretty.
This middle piece is a poster used at the train station near Comiket one year reminding people to make sure they have the correct fare on their travel card so as to not cause queues.
These catalogues from Comiket were amazing. I want them. I want to stare at all the tiny images of all the available at the time but probably not anymore and definitely not to me in the uk work. I both really want to visit Comiket one day because it seems amazing and am also kind of scared of the scale of it. How do you decide which of the doujinshi to buy? How?!
Detective Conan by Gosho Aoyama
Look at how the screentone goes up into the black of his fringe. Lovely.
Drawings of drawings is a special favourite. And also patterns inside bubble writing💖
Iris by Kitajima Yoko
This is so cool and strange and beautiful but when I tried googling more about it nothing really came up except pinterest pages. I will have to spend more time researching, a lot of this exhibit has given me a lot to look up actually.
Rohan at the Louvre by Hirohiko Araki
So beautiful and I need to know more about that guys face being a book.
So pretty, look at all the lovely white usage :)
Chubby Pikachu is best Pikachu.
In the middle of the exhibition (but we came back to it at the end) there were bookshelves full of manga, tankobon and magazines.
I've never seen any of the manga magazines in real life before and I can't really explain it but this was really special for me. Whenever I see pictures of these magazines my hands just cry out for them and I finally got to have a rummage. Not for as long as I would have wanted because we spent hours in there and I mentioned the heatwave, I was getting a pretty bad headache but any amount of time was fine to me.
Look at this Deku!! Is he Mothra? Why is he Mothra? We recently started watching My Hero Academia and it's another one I'm going to have to badger the library for (shonen volumes have a tendency to go missing out of my library) and it was pretty cool that out of all the Shonen Jumps that exist, and all the ones they had on these shelves we happened to pick one up that had this in it. I love it so much.
So beautifulðŸ˜
I don't know if it's just in shoujo magazines or just that's where I've seen it but I'm so in love with the coloured pages. I knew it was a thing from photos online and was already kind of obsessed with it but to see them in person, *sighs*. The use of a single colour instead of black and different colours through the magazine and how some are even on coloured paper too. Argh, I tell ya, this exhibit has got me itching to make stuff, drawings stuff.
Red on yellow paper! Us, sweaty and hungry and very very happy. I wish I'd bought these Naruto socks so much.
I got some postcards, if there had been even more designs they'd have made a killing from me but I'm very happy with the ones I did get.
Also want to mention but wasn't allowed to take photos of:
There was a video playing of the Shonen Jump offices and it was so cool. It was part of a section about how a lot of manga production includes people other than the artist and they'd put a static camera in amongst the desks and it was really nice to get to see in there, with all the stacks of previous issues and bits of Shonen Jump merch dotted around on everyone's desks. I'm so nosy so I love seeing stuff like that.
The end pieces of the exhibition were made especially for it. Three big drawings, probably about A1 size, of portraits of Togawa, Nomiya and Takahashi, characters from REAL by Inoue Takehiko. They were so cool, the level of skill and detail in the drawing combined with the huge size made for really awesome end pieces. There was also a video showing some clips of him drawing them which I love, I could watch videos of people drawing all day and it was really cool to see the video and then get to look at the actual pieces.
Here's my video from the day. I didn't even try to make a coherent vlog, I just tried to film things so I could look back at it later. There are some bits filmed that I also have photos of but there's also some bits in the video that I don't have photos of. Plus we wandered around Soho for a bit after the exhibit so there's clips from that too.
The exhibition is on until 26th August and if you can go I strongly recommend it. And if you can't I hope you enjoyed my attempt at sharing my visit😊
I dream of a world where I can go to more exhibitions for illustrative things, manga, comics, anime and cartoons, all of it. I want to stare at originals and storyboards and special one offs. Fingers crossed because getting to press my face up against these ones (almost literally) was even better than I thought it would be.
