Mahoro, Matakara, Aladdin And The Princess

DID SOMEONE SAY BUCCHIGIRI GENDERBENDS 🔥🔥💪

first batch! had some much fun designing all these even though some of them don’t look too different 😭 some of these were difficult to do since imo bucchigiri would be chock full of butches n some of the designs were already androgynous (i.e. hagure) but anyways…

extra notes: matakara had a long skirt originally but it didn’t make sense w his fighting style. arajin has a qipao and shorts bc I liked his gym uniform. jabashiri has a half skirt and hagure has a skirt. I kept the male uniforms since the black breaks up the colours well + gangs have different uniforms.

Questions Of Love In Bucchigiri!?

Hiroko Utsumi is no stranger to distilling homoeroticism into their works, but Bucchigiri!? is able to take it a step further as it intertwines with the hypermasculine idea of fighting and gangs. Because of that, Bucchigiri!? poses two questions to the definition of love and how people experience it.

"What is love versus lust?"

Truthfully, it's a rather simple question to answer (at least to someone outside of high school). The point being the depth of feeling. Lust is strong but shallow, while love moves much deeper.

And the second episode in particular expresses this very strongly through the two gang leaders, Marito and Ken.

They don't feel any way in particular about Arajin until they feel their punch. After that, like Marito says, they just can't forget about it. That's all they know about this kid, "his" punch. And that's all they want from him as well.

The point is to express superficial lust towards Arajin because of something they only experience one single time. They believe that they want the strength behind the person no matter what because of a single moment.

And it's a great comparison to make against Matakara's feelings for Arajin.

Matakara doesn't need to feel "Arajin's" strength to know how he feels about him. On the contrary, he only ever needed to fight (really train) beside him to come to understand that emotion. Even more than that is Matakara's understanding of Arajin outside of fights, and he focuses in specifically on Arajin's passivity and carefulness.

Because of that, you can begin to draw the conclusion that "Lust" is represented by actions involving violence and action, while "Love" stems more from passivity and aversion in this context. Which I think is really really great. It's sort a sort of symbolic explanation of the whole point of violence being boorish and shallow while other communication is deeper and more valuable.

"How much is love worth if they don't love you for who you are?"

Super easy example here with this one. Just look at the Love Forever stone Arajin gives Mahoro vs the friendship one that he gave Matakara.

The whole point is that Arajin's love in the hands of someone who doesn't love him isn't valuable at all, nor is it valuable in the hands of someone that doesn't love him for who he is.

Marito and Ken can only feel something for Arajin because of the strength channeled through him by Senya. It's something entirely foreign to Arajin as a person, and represents both how shallow the gang leaders are, but also how shallow Arajin is.

Loving yourself is something that's tricky to do, and obviously especially so for high school kids. I think it's well understood at this point that Arajin struggles to love himself in a meaningful way, and that's expressed by his willingness to take on Senya.

Case and point being that he intentionally used Senya's strength to try and make himself look good in front of Mahoro, and in the same way used it against Ken to the same effect.

He's afraid of being and accepting himself, so he's allowed something else to speak for him. And while that catches the eye of many, including Matakara, Arajin himself already knows that it's nothing more than a farce to save face.

It's just... really great work in terms of narrative as it bundles so many different aspects of love together to create this complicated web that all stems from Arajin's inability to love himself. Matakara loves the current Arajin, but that Arajin is unable to face himself so he runs from the reflection that Matakara offers and buries himself in lust and unrequited romance.

And that all just comes from high school kids duking it out for fun alongside mystical fighting people that can merge with humans.

It's definitely a step up the symbolic ladder in comparison to Sk8 The Infinity, but I think it's allowed Utsumi to express much more in terms of romance through implicit narratives.

These first two episodes have been incredible, and I'm loving every moment and want to share every bit, but the overall production effort Mappa's been putting in leaves me in an awkward spot for sharing stuff like this.

I really love to, and I want to celebrate the efforts of the staff behind the series, but Mappa rains on that parade with its terrible scheduling and work ethic. The credits are a veritable mess that make episodes like this an incredible feat. And I'll celebrate that and share what I want to, but I do also want to call out Mappa for their terrible work as a studio.

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oh my god is this gonna be a thing where it’s revealed that ichiya turned on senya out of guilt for being unable to protect him at one point in the past and 2 billion lightbulbs go off in arajin’s head

MaJin moment from this episode~

whoopsie forgot to post this here!!

no p:eg spoilers in this one folks

"Arajin doesn't care about anyone"

The thing people don't get is that Arajin doesn't HAVE to care about others, about strangers. They're not his friends. They're nobody important to him. They're random men who want him in their gangs -- gangs that Arajin only got involved with because he wanted to impress a girl he liked and wanted to be her friend. Even then, Arajin doesn't show he doesn't care when others get physically hurt?? He gets freaked out, he doesn't like fights, he found Outa beat up and bloody and screamed for his life lol. He caught Matakara so he wouldn't fall and get hurt, then pressed a cold handkerchief to his forehead. He's trying and failing to distance himself from these men and their gangs.

The only person who he considers a friend (Mahoro) never got hurt, and yet just a simple threat of her being a trophy girl got him really defensive and angry. Which is why I believe that he's not the same as he was when he was a child... I don't think he realized yet that he's gotten less cowardly. He throws punches easier, because Senya was there in support, Senya kind of helped him become less of a coward. But he punched that dude without asking for Senya's help, in a pure rush of anger (then immediately got sick when he realized what happened lol), which is something he would've never done before. When Matakara got bullied, Arajin ran away. This time he stood his ground and punched first.

Also, he has no real friends, the only person who used to be his friend is getting rejected because Arajin is filled with guilt and avoids him. He doesn't want to be in gangs or fight, he wants to experience a highschool romance story with a cute girl lol

So of course he doesn't care about random gangs ?! Those aren't his friends, he never wanted to be involved in fighting, bloody stuff, anything like that. Its annoying to see people shade him for... being "self centered"? He's surrounded by strangers who just wanna fight and he doesn't wanna die lol. I think Arajin trying to avoid that life is the most normal thing anyone in that anime did lol

Arajin: man maybe i do kinda want him...

Matakara: i NEED to kill him so that the voices stop.

renee from style savvy 🩷 I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCHHH