The World at WarMay 19, 2024
Smoke bellows from the Japanese oil refinery at Otake near to Kure Naval Base after an air raid by US B29’s- Kure, Japan, May 1945 #otake #kure #hiroshima #japan #b29 #oilrefinery #may1945
Show threadmaijiNov 25, 2023

"fight / flight" - part 4 of 5 is up with alt text/transcript and commentary!

Read it at https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/4005898
More info on the North Bound series: https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/951181

Content warning for people with blood on their faces.

#MastoArt #CreativeToots #comics #fancomic #fanart #YuYuHakusho #Hokushin #Otake #TomoeGozen #supernatural #JapaneseMythology #tennyo

maiji: fight / flight part 4 (Yu Yu Hakusho North Bound fancomic)

[images: First two pages of a comic drawn in a digital ink-brush style with greyscale shading.]fight / flight: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 (to come!)Alt text, full transcript and commentary continue below the cut.A YYH North Bound story. This story takes place after I Heard A Cicada Cry (4 parts - all 4 parts are linked in each post) and Survive (one-shot).Content warning: People with blood on their faces.[READ-MORE][images: Remaining four pages of comic.][page 26]*Otake and Tomoe Gozen are still facing off with their respective weapons at the ready when a flash of light appears in the air just over Otake*Tomoe: ??Otake: ![page 27]*A beautiful woman descends. She is bathed in moonlight, her long hair tied up with gilded ornaments, a beauty mark on her lower face near her lips, and with a halo of robes fluttering behind her.*?: Otake, stand down.[page 28]*The woman notices Otake's bloodied state and responds with comedic expressions of disgust*?: Eeuuugh!! Yuck!!! Gross!!!Otake: *looking annoyed* Go away.?: Didn’t you hear me?? I said stand down!!Otake: I don’t have time for your games, tennyo.Tennyo: Games? This is a command from the great Enma Daioh Himself.Otake: …Enma Daioh has canceled my quest?(Footnote: Tennyo = "sky maiden", heavenly beings in Buddhist mythology)[page 29]*The tennyo folds her arms self-importantly while Otake continues to look irritated. Tomoe Gozen observes their exchange alertly*Tennyo: Not specifically. He’s calling everyone back. It’s important.And not that you asked me, but I think you should quit wasting your time on this silly pet project of yours.Otake: *walking away from her* You’re right. I didn’t ask you.Tomoe: ...Tennyo: Well, the great Enma Daioh hardly needs to rely on a dirty toy mirror to achieve his goals. Anyways, even if you don’t care about promotions, Yoshinaka’s days are numbered. It’s going to be a bloodbath even worse than the mess you made of that body.*Tomoe is silent but clearly alarmed by this mention of Yoshinaka's name and the scenario the tennyo is suggesting.*Tennyo: Don’t get yourself caught up in petty human affairs.[page 31]Otake: Hmph.*He sheathes his sword, then walks towards the tennyo as she tosses a cloth over him. They both disappear, leaving Tomoe staring up at the empty sky over the forest.*[page 32]*Tomoe continues looking up at the sky for several moments, then turns to Hokushin behind her* Tomoe: What did you do to get emissaries from the Underworld after——you——!!*She breaks off as she realizes Hokushin appears to be lying fully unconscious on the ground. The view changes to the moon high above the forest and mountains*Tomoe: Come on…!! A demon like you can hardly die that easily...!!Obviously, Hokushin’s not dead. He’s just in need of a very very long nap. “Tennyo” (Sky, or Celestial, or Heavenly Maiden) is a new character I needed to create for some important reasons. One is to be a pain in her coworker Otake’s side, and the second (maybe more important reason) is to do some of the plot work I need done that Otake won’t be able to do. Tennyo is not her name; it’s just a descriptor. Otake referring to her as “tennyo” is like when Tomoe calls Hokushin “rokurokubi” - similar to saying, “look, woman,” or “hey, kid,” or “listen, squirt”, etc. She will have a name, to be revealed in time!Tennyo are based on apsaras of Hindu and Buddhist mythology, and are sometimes described as the Buddhist version of angels. They are obviously not the same by far but is mostly sufficient as a general comparison. There’s actually a tennyo in the first Yu Yu Hakusho movie, Kotennyo, who had a relationship with Koenma. The movies are not main series canon and the first one was more silly than anything.In North Bound, tennyo are the predecessors to Reikai’s ferry girls like Botan, Ayame, Hinageshi - just a different appearance/presentation for the time period they are in. I have planned some stuff around this oooh ahh. Here, instead of floating on oars, the tennyo’s robe allows her to fly (per the hagoromo tradition). Hence, the cloth she uses to teleport Otake back to the Spirit World is an Easter egg - a reference to the cloth that Shishiwakamaru uses to teleport Kuwabara around during the Dark Tournament, hahaha. That cloth in Japanese is not-so coincidentally 死出の羽衣  or Shide no Hagoromo (roughly, "feathered cloak/robe of death"), so very obviously connected to the tennin (sky/celestial/heavily people) tradition. (My headcanon is that's all Suzuki's doing - as the leader and source of all of Team Uraotogi's tools, that he's the one "designed" the team, coming up with the names including all their items and special moves. He clearly seems to have a thing for thematic drama.)The tennyo’s comment on Otake messing up “that body” is also a reference to the fact that Spirit World folks are not beings with physical bodies. Had Hokushin managed to “kill” Otake in this battle, he wouldn’t be dead; only his physical vessel would be destroyed. We see this in the actual series, where Botan uses a temporary physical body to interact with people in the Human World. The most obvious instance of this is during the fight against Sensui, when she jettisons the vessel to return to the Spirit World to deliver an urgent message, shocking Yanagisawa. Whoohoo, only one more part to go to finish fight/flight!! And then… we can move back to the core time period of North Bound with Raizen…!![/READ-MORE]

Pillowfort
Show threadmaijiSep 5, 2023

"fight / flight" - part 3 of ?? is up with alt text/transcript and commentary!

Read it at https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/3692920
More info on the North Bound series: https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/951181

Content warning for violence, blood, people fighting with swords. I cannot believe I finally got to the part I did test drawings for two years ago...!

#MastoArt #CreativeToots #comics #fancomic #fanart #YuYuHakusho #Hokushin #Otake #BodyHorror #yokai #supernatural

maiji: fight / flight part 3 (Yu Yu Hakusho North Bound fancomic)

[images: First three pages of a comic drawn in a digital ink-brush style with greyscale shading.]fight / flight: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 of ?? parts Alt text, full transcript and commentary continue below the cut.A YYH North Bound story. This story takes place after I Heard A Cicada Cry (4 parts - all 4 parts are linked in each post) and Survive (one-shot).Content warning: Violence, blood, people fighting with swords.[READ-MORE][images: Remaining seven pages of comic.][page 16]*Hokushin slowly stands up, facing Otake, looking as if he’s in a daze. Then the look in his eyes changes.*[page 17]*Hokushin’s arms both extend rapidly, one arm whipping out to grab his sword. Otake realizes that Hokushin's aiming for Otake's fallen sword with his opposite arm and quickly pounces for it before Hokushin’s other arm can reach it. Closeup of Hokushin’s feet as he dashes towards Otake.*[page 18]*Hokushin screaming and charging at Otake as the latter blocks the attack*[page 19]*Hokushin continuing to scream and cry while slashing viciously at Otake, who is now struggling to parry the blows.*Hokushin: How could you?! How could you?? Of all the humans!! Out of all the humans in this godforsaken world!![page 20]*Flashbacks of Semimaru: playing his biwa; smiling and pointing out a frog on a lilypad; hand reaching out to touch Hokushin’s face before they parted; walking off into the crowd at Ausaka Barrier.*Hokushin: (Semimaru…) …how could you…[page 21]*Otake, who is taking a beating, loses control of his sword and it flies into the air spinning. In desperation he grabs his energy bracer again for one more power up, and shoots out another energy attack that slams Hokushin from the side, snapping his head/neck with great force.*[page 22]*Hokushin is slammed face first to the ground. Otake has retrieved his sword and stands, panting. Hokushin has a flashback of him Semimaru walking through blossoms falling from the trees*Hokushin: (Live happily... Those few days were the happiest I had ever known. I have no desire for any more.)*He closes his eyes.*Otaku, raising his sword in a final attack: Ha!![page 23]*A new figure with long flowing hair and a white ribbon wrapped around the forehead blocks Otake’s sword with a naginata.*[page 24]*Powerful spirit energy emanates from the new warrior like a flame.*Otake: (Tomoe Gozen…!! Her spirit energy is as strong as the reports say…![page 25]*Otake and Tomoe Gozen have an unblinking staredown - but Otake, with blood running down his face, is clearly not in the best of shape and is perturbed. He lowers his weapon.*Otake: …Have you any idea what you’re dealing with?Tomoe, adjusting her naginata stance: I care not. Any who seek to harm my lord and his men stand in the way of my blade.Tomoe Gozen to Hokushin’s rescue yaaaaah!!! Yeaaaahhh I did it!! This is the scene I did test panel drawings for ~2 years ago (2021)! That sure makes the ~half a year it took to get this out since Part 2 feel a little shorter, haha. Part 3 was actually supposed to be the "short" part, but somehow it ended up being 10 pages and thus more pages than each of the previous 2 parts (8 and 7 pages, respectively). This is because action is hard to panel. I am very proud of myself for screaming and crying getting all the way through this; still a lot to improve on but I learned a lot and it is definitely not something I could have drawn back when I first started working on North Bound in 2017 (?! time flies). Semimaru pointing at the frog in the pond is supposed to be a cute moment from their travels for Hokushin to remember, and is a reference to Basho’s famous haiku. Except that's just a reference for us because this story takes place in the late Heian/early Kamakura period and Basho won't be born for another several hundred years (he lived during the Edo period) so it’s totally anachronistic. But so are rokurokubi anyways.Please do not worry about Hokushin's neck on page 21, remember he's a rokurokubi so his neck can stretch further. Still hurts though. (And even with a boost from an artifact, Otake's blow was nowhere near as powerful as Yusuke's, since that one made Hokushin's neck twist several times.)Japanese history buffs, kindly ignore the fact that due to Semimaru being dated to early Heian era and Kiso Yoshinaka and Tomoe Gozen living during the Genpei Wars it is very likely that at this point, even if Otake didn’t kill Semimaru, he would be dead regardless because normal human lifespans and all. But it’s ultimately the principle of the matter that he didn’t get to live out a peaceful life and was instead massacred by Otake. And who am I to not take advantage of creative license for the convenience of storytelling to compress time and whatever history anyways? And we don’t really know a lot of details about Semimaru anyways, and anyways this is a fanwork being done in spare time. Anyways anyways, thank you for your patience and understanding.I am working on another behind the scenes post to show the progress from thumbs to page sketches, will link here when it’s up![/READ-MORE]

Pillowfort
Show threadmaijiJan 2, 2023

"fight / flight" - part 2 of ?? is now up with alt text/transcript and commentary 🙌

Read it at: https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/3115579
More info on the North Bound series: https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/951181

#MastoArt #CreativeToots #comics #fancomic #fanart #YuYuHakusho #hokushin #Otake #BodyHorror #Yokai #supernatural

maiji: fight / flight part 2 (Yu Yu Hakusho North Bound fancomic)

[images: First two pages of part 2 - a comic drawn in a digital ink-brush style with greyscale shading.]fight / flight: Part 1 | Part 2 | of ?? partsAlt text, full transcript and commentary continue below the cut.A YYH North Bound story. This story takes place after I Heard A Cicada Cry (4 parts - all 4 parts are linked in each post) and Survive (one-shot).[READ-MORE][images: Remaining five pages of comic.][page 9] *Hokushin and Otake clash swords. After a while of dueling, they split apart, both panting.*Otake: How pointlessto fight like a common human.*He clasps his sword wrist with his opposite hand. Hokushin cautiously takes note of the movement. The area around the gauntlet/bracer Otake is clasping glows*[page 10] *Otake releases his grip on his wrist*Hokushin: (Some kind of Spirit World artifact?)*unexpectedly, a sudden blast of organically shaped energy spikes slice through Hokushin*[page 11] *Hokushin coughs up blood and is slammed and pinned against a tree by the spikes*Hokushin: Ugh...Otake: *charging and slicing at Hokushin's neck* Your head is mine!!*Otake’s blade comes bearing down on Hokushin’s neck. At the last second, Hokushin's entire head stretches into a long ribbon and whips out of the way*[page 12] Otake: ?!*Hokushin's head/neck whips towards Otake and around his torso and arms*[page 13] *Otake’s hands are bound tightly, causing him to drop his sword. Wrapped up in Hokushin's neck, he's tossed through the air and his head is rammed against a tree. Meanwhile, Hokushin pulls the spikes out and slides down to the ground, trails of blood against the tree trunk*[page 14] *Otake continues to get his head slammed against trees. He struggles and manages to grip his bracer again. It glows. It sends a shocking sensation through Hokushin's neck, and Hokushin unwraps and withdraws. Sweating and bedraggled, he covers his neck with both hands gingerly, then lowers his arms, revealing a series of burn marks around his neck. Otake, blood running down both sides of his face and one eye bruised, braces one hand against his knee and slowly gets up.*Hokushin: !!Otake: …A male rokurokubi. That must’ve been why the old man was so intent on not revealing your whereabouts. Not that it did him - or you - any good.[page 15] Hokushin: *with a shocked expression* Old man?Otake: *eyes him* The blind biwa player of Ausaka Barrier.Hokushin: …What happened to him?Otake: He earned a one-way trip to Enma Daioh.*As Otake speaks, Hokushin stares at him in shocked silence. A flashback of a smiling bearded man holding out a flower plays in his mind.*Otake: He wasn’t long for this world anyways. That is the fate of humans as overseen by my master.Cliffhanger! How should the next part start? I haven’t decided yet but right now my top candidate is Hokushin screaming his head off. (But not literally his head off.) But I’m also debating whether or not this is too stereotypical or if something else will work better for his character. Some thoughts!  My sis said “You’re really trying to make people hate Otake.” I was like, he’s already revealed to be a bad guy in canon! Everyone knows he’s a bad guy!! That’s why he made it into North Bound in the first place, because he was a perfect fit for this role I needed. My sis also asked, “Is Hokushin going to get to kick butt?” And I was like, hmm. Yes? I guess? But he needs to get knocked around a bit first, because it is the shounen manga way. Also remember Otake can’t die here.  In my mind, at this point in history Hokushin and Otake are pretty evenly matched powerwise, except Otake has the element of surprise. A.k.a. random Spirit World gadgets, the precursor to all the stuff Yusuke gets in his Spirit Detective kit. This one is a bracer that something something. I’m just making stuff up to be able to progress the fight in the ways I need it to; I hope it seems to make sense. Otake was tracking Hokushin and knew he was dealing with a demon, but not the details. This is mainly because it’s super fun to draw a fight for Hokushin when the opponent has no idea what his special skillset is. Alternatively, in my mind Otake prescribes to the horses not zebras school of thought (“when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras”), so it didn’t occur to him/he didn’t think it was anywhere near likely that Hokushin would be a rokurokubi. Male rokurokubi are extremely rare in both traditional youkai mythology and in North Bound. I explain this in this post, and A House That Holds Long Limbs also uses this same idea.  The blind biwa player of Ausaka Barrier is, of course, the legendary Semimaru, who appears in I Heard A Cicada Cry. I talk more about his historical/cultural impact in the notes throughout that story. The memory of him holding a flower is from when he gives Hokushin a flower during their travels. In the Hokushin VS Yusuke fight in the manga, Hokushin says that in S class at full strength, he would’ve been able to throttle Yusuke after wrapping him up with his neck - we can imagine like a boa constrictor. Limited to D class, the most he could do was stretch his neck continuously and confuse/ freak the heck out of Yusuke. Here, ~700+ years ago, Hokushin would be closer to D class. I imagine he can still constrict things, but it depends on the size and strength of the target. He’s also not at full strength at this point, so that’s why he’s trying to give Otake a flying concussion. Also he’s trying to pull those spiky energy arrow shard things out of himself/the tree and multitasking is hard. In First Meeting’s Hokushin VS Raizen encounter, Hokushin has gotten a bit stronger and is trying to constrict Raizen, but that doesn’t work for obvious reasons because it’s like an ant (a very long ant, I guess) trying to constrict god.. Feel free to question my judgement on anything. Choreographing logical fight scenes is really hard, haha. [/READ-MORE]I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but right now it looks like fight / flight will likely net out at 4-6 parts (I’m thinking 5 most likely...?). I really feel like I leveled up in a tiny fashion while working on this, and it was a lot of fun after I got through the actual thumbnails and panel compositions. A sequence like this is something I would never have been able to compose years ago when I first started working on North Bound. I’ll make a separate post about the technical comicking aspects, along with the thumbnails and the sketches for each page!

Pillowfort
maijiDec 31, 2022

Yay I did it! 💪 "fight / flight" - part 1 of ?? is up with alt text/transcript and commentary!

Read it at https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/3110236
More info on the North Bound series: https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/951181

#MastoArt #CreativeToots #comics #fancomic #fanart #YuYuHakusho #Hokushin #Otake

maiji: fight / flight (Yu Yu Hakusho North Bound fancomic - part 1)

[images: First three pages of a comic drawn in a digital ink-brush style with greyscaleshading.]A YYH North Bound story. This story takes place after I Heard A Cicada Cry (4 parts - all 4 parts are linked in each post) and Survive (one-shot). This is "fight / flight" part 1 of ???? parts. Alt text, full transcript and commentary continue below the cut.[READ-MORE][images: Remaining five pages of comic.][page 1]*Text reads: "fight / flight - a North Bound story by maiji." Opening panel depicts a moonlit site in a forest. Hokushin is grooming a horse. He detects a new presence. The horse grows nervous.*Hokushin: (It’s not one of the new recruits.)?: Don’t waste time pretending. I know what you are. [page 2]*Otake, as he appears at the end of I Heard A Cicada Cry, leans against a tree, arms folded.*Otake: You’ve killed many humans. Devoured many more.*Hokushin turns his head, but says nothing. The horse nervously skitters off.*Otake: Not going to defend yourself? ‘“I did only as my master bid! I must eat humans to survive!” [page 3]Hokushin: You’re not human either. Why do you care?Otake: Very perceptive. What gave me away?Hokushin: Nothing. Thank you for confirming.*Otake twitches*[page 4]Otake: Unlike you, I serve a greater power. A power commanding life and death itself, that watches over this sinful, lost human world. A power a pitiful demon like yourself has the rare opportunity to serve,*he holds something up to show Hokushin, causing Hokushin's eyes to widen in shock*if you answer my questions about this Mirror.Hokushin: How did you convince the monks to unseal the Mirror?Otake: Convince? So many are casualties of war these days.Hokushin: …What do you want to know?Otake: Certain conditions must be fulfilled in order to access its powers. I must know what they are so that I can inform my master. [page 5]Hokushin: And if I tell you, you’ll spare my life or something like that?Otake: It will be considered.Hokushin: Fair enough. I will tell you all I know.*The two of them stare at each other in silence*Otake: I am waiting.Hokushin: *smiling and shrugging* Alas, I have no idea what the conditions are. Why don’t you ask the Mirror yourself?*Multiple veins pulse on Otake’s forehead*[page 6]Otake: *draws his sword as he speaks; Hokushin’s face reflected in the blade* No matter. The power I serve sees no future for vermin that terrify and corrupt the vulnerable creatures of this realm. Your head will be good enough to show my master.[page 7]Otake: *raises his sword over his head* I am Otake and I serve Enma Daioh![page 8]*The perspective flips to Hokushin also rapidly drawing his sword*Otake: Now stand your ground and fight for your life, demon!!And now we shall enjoy a nice indeterminate break until I figure out how to choreograph the rest of this fight!! Action sequences will be the death of me. At least there’s no suspense in the end result, since we know they both must survive this encounter in order to be able to appear in Yu Yu Hakusho!! Otake has finally caught up with Hokushin, after picking up the Mirror of Darkness from the temple that Hokushin left it in at the end of Mirror Most Dark. I estimate here they’re both around 100 years in age, and neither of them are anything close to the powerhouses they’ll be by the modern era. I’ve been plotting fight / flight for a long time because I wanted an opportunity to draw a cool fight sequence for Hokushin. (He has one with Raizen in the first North Bound comic I ever drew, First Meeting, but it wasn't much of a fight. Also, it's been a few years; hopefully I have developed my skills somewhat, so now is the time to try again!) It turned into “well why don’t I have him fight Otake” after I managed to work Otake into the story, then I had to actually make proper narrative connections and give it consequences for the trajectory of North Bound. I kept intimidating myself while trying to work on it, periodically doing some script work and test drawings to try to psych myself up. You might recall the drawing tests I posted a while back here. I mentioned in that post that at one point I debated making this a visual novel (possibly interactive fiction) format, but also felt that was a copout to my shounen manga roots. The title is actually a tide-over from when I was considering that. Aside from the actual still-to-come fight sequence, I struggled with resolving some pretty big considerations like, uh, where this encounter actually takes place?? And how to end it without one of them dying?? But in early October 2022 I went for a walk and then took a shower and an inkling transformed into a fleshed-out solution. Go walks and showers and subconsciousness magic!!! Then I continued to struggle on and off for months being too scared to deal with the action. Finally over the holidays I figured I might as well just flesh out the first part to light a fire under my own butt and inch along to the next part! This took about three days to thumbnail, sketch, draw and clean up on the computer, but there was a lot of time... months, years of behind-the-scenes work to make these three days possible...I have some photos of the thumbnails and wip saves of the page sketches, so I’ll make a separate post with those. But one last thing I wanted to note is that I am really really proud of the speed lines on the last page with Hokushin! They’re far from perfect but I think they’re my best radiating speed lines to date! I manually eyeballed and drew them all individually because that’s all I know how to do, hahaha. The vertical/horizontal ones are easier since I know to hit Shift to force them to stay straight, lol.[/READ-MORE]

Pillowfort