The Bleh Family

Man, thinking of Izutsumi is making me cry. Like, the succubus chapter and the monsters taking on the form of her mom (that she thinks what her mom looks like but she doesnt remember, she was taken/implied kidnapped when she was very very young).

How at first she was frozen and her small, cracked voice, calling her, "Mom?".

Then, the next without effort kills her 'mom' and the agony that she thinks that she doesnt have a human heart, that she's a heartless monster. Thinking how easy it is to kill her. Until, a big cat monster appears. As the fight stops, she looks at the cat monster and questions why it doesnt affect her. The realization that she does have a human heart, it just beats alongside the monster heart. That she's slowly starts to accept who she is, I mean she still has the desire to go back to being human, but she does start to not hate herself. And the fact that nearly her whole life being carted around, she was never alone. Her monster part protected the little girl, gave her its strength and agility.

I'd like to believe that's where the part where this snip of her thinking of herself, comes to fruition

what if we saw shapeshifter versions of izutsumi?

Explanations under the cut

#1 is Laios' Izutsumi:

extra detail on her cat parts

more monster-y traits present

outfit mistake

#2 is Marcille's Izutsumi:

influenced by their time in the Golden Country

a little more chill than the others

softer hair

#3 is Senshi's Izutsumi:

details of puffed up fur

this izutsumi is skinnier than the others (ribs showing)

^^ senshi must take care of the child

#4 is Chilchuck's Izutsumi:

rounded ears like marcille's

eyes kinda look like his kids puckpatti and flertom

stanced

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

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

Thinking about the way dungeon meshi does queer horror. Using horror to tell queer stories is already subversive, but dungeon meshi subverts it even more

Normal queer horror is like. A monsterous desire and immortal love of something isolated/hated and the uncontrollable but suppressed need to consume someone to live and they only die if you break/pierce their heart. its great.

In dungeon meshi, the group is STARVING. they do things the way they're expected to and they're so deprived that eventually, one of them is consumed by that monsterous desire.

Then when Falin becomes a monster, she doesn't eat Marcille because she doesn't NEED to, Marcille already offered herself up as part of Falin by mixing her own blood with the dragon's for the resurrection.

Also Marcille is a monster too!! She doesn't need to be turned by Falin. She's a 'witch' doing black magic for one but she's also very vampiric

Her name is super vampirey especially given one of the translation spellings was Marcilla, an annogram of Carmilla*. And Marcille is very similar to Marceline from Adventure Time so it's a name with heavy connotations to me. Also her staff is Ambrosia which means immortal.

*ps Carmilla is the original modern vampire that inspired Dracula and also a lesbian. she used annagrams of her name to disguise herself across hundreds of years.

Marcille is like. a vampire in that death is a big part of her theme. She can breathe that immortality into someone else using her resurrection black magic and death is a huge part of her character. She wants them to live as long as she does. To make them immortal. Like. Like a vampire.

But once again this is subverted!! she doesn't 'turn' Falin, she makes her undead by giving her own blood instead of taking Falin's. Falin becomes a monster not because she's attacked or turned, but because her DNA, something INHERENT about her is now intertwined with the monster. so a god-like figure merges them. Then the only way to free her from that frenzy and grant her autonomy again is to finally consume her. something inherently lesbian about all that i think idk about you

'That means my curse can dispelled as well!! Please, just help me get rid of this animal spirit possessing my body!!'

I freaking love the Izutsumi pictures we took at Babelsberg, everything was perfect that day and it's so much fun cosplaying her. :3

Photos - @misskrone

A very experimental art for me, i want to try out some new style. ihnmaims radio drama got me in a chokehold and possessed me to draw this.

Also I'm giving Ted zero gyatt cus that man did not deserve it.

Note :

- the binary translates as "HATEHATE" on repeat.

- the pair of punchcode tapes representing AM's talkfield, are from the original short story. The left one is "I THINK, THEREFORE I AM" and the right is "COGITO ERGO SUM".

โอ้ยปวดตา

We need an Inutade-Izutsumi spinoff series!

Of all the directions to take a potential spinoff, I can't think of a prompt with more potential than "Izutsumi and Inutade go on a road-trip adventure".

As a duo, the two characters are perfect foils with an excellent dynamic that's just begging to be built upon. Likewise both characters individually have plenty of room for further growth. This parallels Dunmeshi's world as a whole, which is basically nothing BUT untapped potential. What better way to explore it further than through a pair of young warriors who know nothing of the lands and peoples beyond their home?

Narratively, it would be extremely easy to set up. Inutade is sent to retrieve the escaped "Asebi," but Izutsumi refuses to return until she's killed the wizard that originally turned her into a beast-man. Izutsumi (falsely) promises that she'll return and never attempt to escape again, IF Inutade helps her with this first.

Thus begins the adventure of the cat and the giant! Two foster-sisters, seeing strange sights, getting into hijinks, and bonding as fellow oddities within this world where their kind is rare.

To tie it back to Dunmeshi, you could use the story to explore the cuisine of different cultures, and how a society's approach to food can define its wider values.

I gotta say I’m impressed with what they done with Falin as a character.

She was set up as a plot device character, a sort of fridged character for her male relative’s main drive for the series and a sort of manic pixie dream girl for the other male character but she’s more than that.

She’s the autistic coded human mage who was set up as the weird girl who couldn’t make friends besides Marcille at the magic school she was attending. She followed her brother because she wanted to not just because she was asked. Falin chose to save everyone else at her own expense but she got to be revived thanks to the dungeon’s magic that keeps them alive. She was willing to eat the dragon that ate her. Even when she became the “damsel-in-distress” again she was also the fierce dragon for the mad mage.

She’s not motivated by romance. At least not initially. Especially with guys. At the end of the manga (spoiler alert), she turns down Shuro’s proposal and opted to follow her own desires rather than follow others like she has done her whole life. Falin doesn’t let the permanent feathers on her body phase her and she still wanted to partake in exotic monster cuisine like her brother and his party had been doing.

She got to be weird, flawed, and not limited by the relationships to the other male characters in the story.

IZUTSUMI IS HERE!! THE KIBBY IS REAL!!