13 comments

  1. L

    I was told the manga went a step further at the juncture and explicitly said that Marin too, paid Wakana for more than just the raw materials. She paid the full fee. (Shouldn’t be a spoiler because this episode covers the chapter in which this was said). Though given all their youth- I don’t think Wakana’s well-versed in the “business” part of “family business”- I wonder how he works the numbers out.

    It’s pity they cut it out.

    I like how easily Marin took in stride that the Veronica cosplay was too much. I saw some comparisons to blackface being made, but I think such comparisons are inexact, to put it mildly.

  2. I would have to think most people making that comment are unfamiliar with the whole gyaru subculture, because stuff on this level is pretty pedestrian by those standards. Some ganguro stuff is legitimately offensive for me, but this is not anything like the same thing.

    It is a shame they cut out that but about Marin paying Gojou, if in fact they did. No idea why they would.

  3. s

    I can verify the whole Marin paying Wakana in full bit being cut out. I was glad I predicted that the conversation would probably come up due to narrative context clues, but after reading a comment suggesting there was more to the conversation, I took for the manga and lo and behold; they cut that part of the conversation out. In the manga, Juju sternly lectures Wakana on accepting payment from others (see? She never had any intention of taking advantage of a free ride), then assumes Wakana has been letting Marin go scott-free with paying, to which he confirms she has been paying him for the actual service in addition to obviously paying for the materials. The conversation makes clear the difference between paying for the materials and the actual work. After learning about this, I am absolutely puzzled as to why the hell they cut that out. Guess the anime assumes we as the audience already expect that people with paying jobs are paying Wakana for his work; still it’s odd the anime didn’t address this with what was only a few lines in the manga. Oh well.

  4. I read it too (just today). To me it seems ever-so-slightly ambiguous – as if Gojou is trying to say the right thing to get Juju off his back. But that’s probably just me projecting, so assuming we take him at face value the question then becomes – why would the anime decide to cut it? It’s obviously not a question of time, so presumably they wanted the matter to remain ambiguous. Which then begs the question, “why?”

  5. s

    “Why?” indeed. Well at the very least we know Juju definitely paid Wakana; she wouldn’t have hassled him like that about payment otherwise so he’s definitely taking the money for his services. I think Wakana is mostly anxious by the idea of demanding high quality materials from his customers due to how specific he gets with his craft. Realistically speaking, his demands for cosplay would make the price for paying for the materials quite exorbitant in addition to the fee to even commission the work. Either way, I think its safe to say Wakana was telling Juju the truth in the manga; from a storytelling perspective, it wouldn’t make sense for Juju to bring up such a crucial detail only for Wakana to deny it and then us as the audience not know whether or not he was telling the truth or not. In that kind of writing scenario, the author would let you in with some kind of direct hint whether or not the character in question is being deceitful; here however, there are no concrete or even vague signs indicating Wakana is lying I figure he’s telling the truth. Reading it in any other way without any evidence would be as you said, projecting, which ya typically want to avoid when analyzing the authenticity of events in story.

  6. M

    I was always under the impression that the whole Gyaru thing was more to imitate a tab through makeup (or just get a really Dark tan) rather than anything with blackface.

    Then again, I’m not too familiar with this Chuck of Japanese pop culture.

  7. M

    Tan* autocorrect betrays me once again.

  8. There are subsets that are pretty cringey, believe me. This struck me as pretty tame.

  9. My twitter feed exploded with discourse on whether colouring your skin for cosplay purposes was problematic.

    I have to say I was hoping that the anime wouldn’t get to the Veronica cosplay precisely so that this could be avoided.

  10. Crud- double-posting. Sorry, Enzo.

  11. You owe me $100. That’s the rule.

  12. “If this is the controversy we were warned of, it’s kind of a nothingburger for me.” Ah, your twitter mentions must’ve been very different from mine this weekend. I was chatting with another cosplayer, who had made a pretty innocuous tweet (“hey guys, don’t do this, colorism is a thing in Japan as well and changing your skintone for cosplay just isn’t something you should do [talking about realistic colors and not like, blue]”) that pissed people off so much that randos then made a fake tweet of her saying the n-word and spread it around on twitter, facebook, and youtube and she’s had to change twitter handle like five times in 3 days.
    I was only on the peripherara of the convo but even I had to report 24 tweets and accounts (up to and including straight-up neo-nazis) and block god knows how many people who were either telling me to eat shit, that I didn’t know what I was talking about (guys I’ve been cosplaying for 14 years), or just to pre-emptively try to keep anyone from making those fake tweets about me. I’m about the only person from that convo who’s still unlocked and I’ve STILL got people name-searching the show’s name and commenting on my tweets from mid-January on the topic.
    So, I assure you, not a nothingburger everywhere!

  13. Well, I was using that term is reference to whether it was something worth getting upset about, not about whether it would cause a tempest in a teapot. So for me it still applies, pretty much.

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