straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2026-02-27 10:49 am
straightforwardly) wrote2026-02-27 10:49 am
346 | my birthday, kpop demon hunter, & anime thoughts
► Yesterday was my birthday! I have a soft spot for Thursdays, despite its location within the standard work week—enough so that I actually briefly considered going with “thursday” as a username before settling on “straightforwardly” /lore drop—so it always feels weirdly fitting when my birthday lands on a Thursday. Anyways—I had a pretty great day. Lots of good food, plenty of fun special drinks, good weather, and wandering around my favorite town to visit for a day trip.
Then I went to my mom’s place for cake and tea and presents, and we ended up watching KPop Demon Hunters together—second watch for me, first time for her. That was not at all planned, and in fact I had no plans to rewatch that movie in general. But somehow we got on the topic of kpop while we were eating cake together (she knows nothing about kpop, so I was telling her about what little I do know), which got me thinking about that movie (which she’d also never heard of), and then it occurred to me: my mom might actually really like it?
Specifically, what occurred to me was that she really liked Frozen when we watched it together, and I know that Elsa’s conceal, don’t feel plotline resonated with her. And while KPop Demon Hunters has a very different vibe than Frozen, there are some pretty strong parallels between that character arc and Rumi’s whole self-hating journey with her patterns and being half-demon! And once the thought hit me, I suddenly really wanted to watch it together with her; she was down for it, and so we did.
I think… I actually enjoyed the movie more the second time around? I still stand by my previous opinion of the movie, which is: I didn’t like the opening scene, the concepts and story they were going for is genuinely good but the execution is messy, BUT it absolutely nails that climax—especially everything from “Your Idol” onwards, though I do also enjoy the confrontation with Celine. But even though my opinions didn’t change, I still liked the experience of watching it more. And I get why it has such a big fandom, even if I’m not about to jump in myself: while it’s messy, it’s also fun, with a lot of genuine heart and emotion.
► Unrelated to the above, but I posted that Lia/Emer ficlet I was talking about in my previous entry. It’s a small thing, but I mention it because—unless I missed something while scrolling through my works page—I believe it’s actually the first fic I’ve posted to AO3 outside of the context of a fandom event since like… summer of 2024 or so. Here’s hoping for more of that energy coming from me in the future, since that is literally one of my goals for this year <3
► Since talking in my previous post about my sudden desire to tackle my crunchyroll watchlist before my subscription runs out, I decided to make a spreadsheet for myself to motivate me and track my progress! Because that is the kind of person I am.
So far, the columns I have are: title of series, status (unwatched, in-progress, dropped, or complete), total number of episodes, last episode watched, and episodes remaining. I decided to include Betrothed to My Sister’s Ex on the list (so I could have the satisfaction of marking it as complete, haha), but delegated two other series technically on my watchlist to a different section, mainly because Crunchyroll is not currently offering English subtitles for them in my country. (One of them is Go! Princess Precure, and I’m very dismayed about it, because I do very much want to finally finishing watching that one.)
Anyways! According to the starting stats (and including the episode count of Betrothed to My Sister’s Ex), I would have to watch nearly 700 episodes of anime before November to get through everything on my watchlist… which is absolutely not happening, haha, but fortunately, I also know that I won’t actually need to watch everything to clear that list; I’m absolutely anticipating that I’ll end up dropping plenty of those series without finishing them.
And, in fact, I already have dropped a series! I tried out Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion the day before yesterday, and got most of the way through the first episode. My feelings about it were that it was fine, but I wasn’t feeling particularly excited about it, so I went and looked up episode summaries for the remaining episodes… which in turn had me looking up spoilers for what’s the deal with (vague spoilers incoming) Beatrice, and the answer to that made all my interest in the series die. I think… in a different context, that type of reveal could be interesting, but seeing as the one thing that I did find intriguing was the dynamic between the original Raeliana and Beatrice—specifically, that original Raeliana wasn’t a villainess type of character, and that she was in fact friends with the protagonist before her tragic death kickstarted the plot… it made the twist feel like it was reverting to a more standard, tired scenario instead.
After that, I checked out The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies, and I’m about two episodes into it so far. And so far, I’m liking it! I do have some qualms—namely, I wish the FMC had a slightly less youthful-looking face, because while I’m very much enjoying the dynamic between her and the evil lieutenant, sometimes that aspect squicks me a little. The height difference doesn’t help on that front either… though, of course, I’ve said many times before that I’m not into height differences in general; I am that fabled person with a size similarity kink.
But otherwise, I’m finding it cute and fun, and hoping that it continues on being both of those things. It’s definitely serving my fondness for villain/heroine ships, and of course I’m always here for magical girls <3, which were the reasons why this ended up on my watchlist in the first place.
Also, there was a bit in the second episode where the evil lieutenant goes, “The next time we meet, we might be forced to kill each other”, and immediately I went, “I don't think that's gonna happen, my dude…”
Then I went to my mom’s place for cake and tea and presents, and we ended up watching KPop Demon Hunters together—second watch for me, first time for her. That was not at all planned, and in fact I had no plans to rewatch that movie in general. But somehow we got on the topic of kpop while we were eating cake together (she knows nothing about kpop, so I was telling her about what little I do know), which got me thinking about that movie (which she’d also never heard of), and then it occurred to me: my mom might actually really like it?
Specifically, what occurred to me was that she really liked Frozen when we watched it together, and I know that Elsa’s conceal, don’t feel plotline resonated with her. And while KPop Demon Hunters has a very different vibe than Frozen, there are some pretty strong parallels between that character arc and Rumi’s whole self-hating journey with her patterns and being half-demon! And once the thought hit me, I suddenly really wanted to watch it together with her; she was down for it, and so we did.
I think… I actually enjoyed the movie more the second time around? I still stand by my previous opinion of the movie, which is: I didn’t like the opening scene, the concepts and story they were going for is genuinely good but the execution is messy, BUT it absolutely nails that climax—especially everything from “Your Idol” onwards, though I do also enjoy the confrontation with Celine. But even though my opinions didn’t change, I still liked the experience of watching it more. And I get why it has such a big fandom, even if I’m not about to jump in myself: while it’s messy, it’s also fun, with a lot of genuine heart and emotion.
► Unrelated to the above, but I posted that Lia/Emer ficlet I was talking about in my previous entry. It’s a small thing, but I mention it because—unless I missed something while scrolling through my works page—I believe it’s actually the first fic I’ve posted to AO3 outside of the context of a fandom event since like… summer of 2024 or so. Here’s hoping for more of that energy coming from me in the future, since that is literally one of my goals for this year <3
► Since talking in my previous post about my sudden desire to tackle my crunchyroll watchlist before my subscription runs out, I decided to make a spreadsheet for myself to motivate me and track my progress! Because that is the kind of person I am.
So far, the columns I have are: title of series, status (unwatched, in-progress, dropped, or complete), total number of episodes, last episode watched, and episodes remaining. I decided to include Betrothed to My Sister’s Ex on the list (so I could have the satisfaction of marking it as complete, haha), but delegated two other series technically on my watchlist to a different section, mainly because Crunchyroll is not currently offering English subtitles for them in my country. (One of them is Go! Princess Precure, and I’m very dismayed about it, because I do very much want to finally finishing watching that one.)
Anyways! According to the starting stats (and including the episode count of Betrothed to My Sister’s Ex), I would have to watch nearly 700 episodes of anime before November to get through everything on my watchlist… which is absolutely not happening, haha, but fortunately, I also know that I won’t actually need to watch everything to clear that list; I’m absolutely anticipating that I’ll end up dropping plenty of those series without finishing them.
And, in fact, I already have dropped a series! I tried out Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion the day before yesterday, and got most of the way through the first episode. My feelings about it were that it was fine, but I wasn’t feeling particularly excited about it, so I went and looked up episode summaries for the remaining episodes… which in turn had me looking up spoilers for what’s the deal with (vague spoilers incoming) Beatrice, and the answer to that made all my interest in the series die. I think… in a different context, that type of reveal could be interesting, but seeing as the one thing that I did find intriguing was the dynamic between the original Raeliana and Beatrice—specifically, that original Raeliana wasn’t a villainess type of character, and that she was in fact friends with the protagonist before her tragic death kickstarted the plot… it made the twist feel like it was reverting to a more standard, tired scenario instead.
After that, I checked out The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies, and I’m about two episodes into it so far. And so far, I’m liking it! I do have some qualms—namely, I wish the FMC had a slightly less youthful-looking face, because while I’m very much enjoying the dynamic between her and the evil lieutenant, sometimes that aspect squicks me a little. The height difference doesn’t help on that front either… though, of course, I’ve said many times before that I’m not into height differences in general; I am that fabled person with a size similarity kink.
But otherwise, I’m finding it cute and fun, and hoping that it continues on being both of those things. It’s definitely serving my fondness for villain/heroine ships, and of course I’m always here for magical girls <3, which were the reasons why this ended up on my watchlist in the first place.
Also, there was a bit in the second episode where the evil lieutenant goes, “The next time we meet, we might be forced to kill each other”, and immediately I went, “I don't think that's gonna happen, my dude…”