Uff Da I Need To Make Somethin Worth Sharing Again

A bat drawing I'm making for a college class

Perhaps this is a hot take in the fandom But i really dislike how the wider fandom at large has reduced izutsumi to just "cute kbitty that does kbitty stuff and is the parties funny cat" Congratulations, You have completely stripped izutsumi of the nuance and personality of her character and reduced her to this one specific extremely exaggerated trait that the fandom has played up so incredibly beyond belief that the character is genuinely unrecognizable and the impression people get of them is so radically different than what she actually is that people do not even recognize that she is the same character and end up disappointed on how she actually is or even actively dislike her because of it. Ive seen people say they thought she was this cute cat girl (one person not even realizing she spoke) and were caught off guard she is actually an incredibly abrasive, mean, and even selfish at times person. Its even more heinous to me because the fandom has reduced her to nothing but being a cat, the very thing she hates the most about herself and the sole reason for her joining laios party to try and get rid of. The thing that has caused her so much pain and misery in her story and the aspect of herself that she actively hates more than anything else. It is a key part of her character that she HATES being fused with a cat and she gets furious and even physically aggressive when people treat her like a cat or a helpless child and will yell at people and even physically attack them. The fandom at large has somehow managed to reduce izutsumi to nothing more than the very specific part of herself that she hates the most. They have dehumanized her so much they view her as nothing more than the party cat(girl) and do not see her as the fleshed out tragic character who struggles with her identity and who she is as she tries to separate the very thing the fandom has latched onto as her only trait. It just feels especially heinous considering what her character arc actually is about

Parents… Fambly…….

something i see a lot in the dungeon meshi fandom is attributing izutsumi's personality traits to her being a cat. and while ryoko kui definitely gave her cat-like traits intentionally, she's a talented enough writer to also give her a backstory with reasons for those traits. for example, her tendency to only do and eat what she wants.

izutsumi's character arc revolves around freedom. she grew up caged in a circus. and although she was fed enough to survive, this was only because a living catgirl attracted more customers than a dead one.

[id: first image is izutsumi as a child framed behind bars and standing on all fours, making it clear how skinny she is. a hand in the foreground holds out a bowl of what appears to be kibble. narration says “thrown in a cage and given food every once in a while… is that what you would call ‘being raised’?” in the second image she is now sitting on the floor of her cage and eating a rat. end id]

look how skinny she is! we see her eating what appears to be... kibble? oats? and then a rat that she possibly caught for herself. she had no choice but to eat anything she could.

[id: part of the dungeon meshi manga. a slightly older izutsumi is tied to a post and tade sits next to her to say "we've got a roof over our heads, beds, food, and clothes. they've got everything here. is there someplace nicer than this out there?" izutsumi thnks for a moment and says "i hate that someone's already decided what i'm going to eat tomorrow. my name, the clothes i wear, where i sleep, where i go next... here, all of that's been decided by another person... even though, come tomorrow, i might want to eat something else instead. that's why i'm leaving." at this, tade cries out in shock. end id]

when she's taken into the nakamoto household they begin to treat her much better. she's on about equal footing as tade, who also had a rough living situation before being taken in, and tade loves it there! they get healthy and tasty food and they're not sleeping in cages. but izutsumi still isn't free. she can pass off her chores and vegetables to tade and disobey in any way she can but she can't leave. maizuru even put a collar on her, further dehumanizing and trapping izutsumi.

when izutsumi joins laios's party, she's finally 'free', but it's not the kind of freedom she wants. she has to eat even more food she doesn't want or else she'll starve. but the difference now is that she's can leave at any time, and if she stays, she's treated as an equal. they're not feeding her monsters because they see her as inferior. they're all eating the same food so they can reach their goal(s). and this is part of izutsumi ultimately learning that in order to do what she wants, she has to be willing t do the things she doesn't want to

I haven't touched this wip in FIREVER but this head is peak character design right here

i dont know why theres so much confusion and discourse about the “age of maturity” in Dungeon Meshi races, like a 16 yr old tall-man is still 16 like they would be irl, its not like in this world humans mature differently, its 16 the same reason we have Sweet 16s and Quinceañeras and Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, humans have marked the “being a man/woman” point around 13-16 for most of human history, it doesn’t mean that in Dungeon Meshi humans age in some crazily different way?

I REMEMBERED HOW TO DRAW DRAGONS AAAAAAAAAAA

Look at this handsome boy :]

Do you guys think Izutsumi does teenager talk and chilchuck is the only one who can understand her? No? Aw man ☹️

Idk how to draw senshi if you can’t tell

Chimera Izutsumi 🐈‍⬛

Creating prints for an upcoming convention and had a literal lightbulb moment