thinking about izutsumi bringing the party small dead monsters as gifts. marcille is horrified (mostly because izu is keeping the dead thing in her mouth and that has to be unhigenic), chilchuck is really not giving two shits, laios is really excited and bombarding izu with questions and senshi is just ^c^ dinner is here!
i feel like i had a very different reaction to the izutsumi lore comic re: her beastkin being constructed from an eastern big cat with a human soul put in (vs starting out human and having a bit of monster soul introduced to transform her) than what i'm seeing in the tags. to me, that doesn't mean "oh she's literally a cat with increased sentience", it means she was once a person who has taken from her own body and put into this artificial construct. the translation of her timeline i've seen ("taken from her family" at age 6 i believe) supports this, implying she once had a normal human life.
this has so much potential. she was a human girl once, but something happened to her body and she was forced into a new one. you can come up with a lot of headcanons and stories behind this reverse-beastkin experiment. maybe she was kidnapped randomly (the wording kind of implies this, but again - its a translation), but i'm an angst lord so i already have a headcanon about her family willingly giving their young daughter up when she was dying hoping it would be a way for her to live with her own body failing. maybe they were tricked into it and she was taken away after it was a success, but hey, if i want to be really angsty, maybe they were horrified by the result and willingly gave her up to the freakshow once they saw her new form
I know we all joke about Izutsumi (Izutsumi) but I do think she represents an important aspect just like the other members of the part and that’s Self Advocation.
She was kept from making her own choices for herself for a long ass time, most of her life if not all of it I’d wager. And now??? Even for survival she’s not going to do it if she wants. She wasn’t going to eat those dumplings just because she’d had them too much until Senshi took a chance with a changeling ring. And even after agreeing to help her and travelling in the dungeon a bit, Izutsumi just wandered off after the dire wolves showed up. Because she wanted to.
So if different characters can act as voices in your head for things, like Chilchuck with your rights as a worker, let Izutsumi give you permission to advocate for yourself.
If a doctor isn’t listening, be firmer and clearer. If you don’t want to be somewhere, find a way to leave. You want to learn a new skill but people have doubts, fuck them and try. People complain about you being a picky eater? Fuck em again, why shouldn’t you eat things you like?
Unless it’s something you kind of Have to do, make sure you’re putting yourself first. And if you have to do it but don’t want to, do it in a way that’s better for you.
Think of Izutsumi, would she put up with that bullshit??? Don’t put up with more than you’re willing to
Commented this in a youtube video but I wanna share it here cause more people should hear it, actually. (also op of the video was really nice about it once I pointed it out so wanna share it w more people)
"I’m actually really sad about your take on Izutsumi’s ‘picky eating’ esp after the praise for how Laios’s autism was handled. It was honestly so refreshing, when it's so often dismissed as childish, to see Izutsumi get treated with respect for it and have it accommodated as best they could. So often these things are glossed over in shows, and for a bit I thought our only take on it would be Marcilles cultural food hangups which would be treated as a flaw to be overcome. So seeing Izutsumi, and that the story would actually address this topic for once was… amazing, if scary as idk how it’ll be handled fully yet. I have a lot of difficulties with food from a lot of underlying mental health issues, most other ‘picky eaters’ do too (I’m sure Izutsumi with her cat nose and tongue and many on the spectrum can relate to the sensory hell certain foods can be, as one example). It's always been a huge source of shame and serious difficulty in my life, particularly because so many people view it the way you do in this review. With ridicule and seeing it as unreasonable, as just choosing to be difficult. But asking me or Izutsumi to “just get over it” because it's not convenient right now is every bit as unreasonable as asking Laios to “just take the hint/read the room”. It's just this behavior is from a disorder you don’t respect.
Sure yes it causes problems! Of course it would, disabilities do that! But honestly, as an anime only, I deeply hope that while Izutsumi becomes less selfish, she DOESN’T stop being a picky eater. That those two things are decoupled from one another! I am so sick of seeing it portrayed as some character flaw people just have to get over whenever it actually comes up. Having someone who doesn’t stop being a 'picky eater' but still has a healthy and respected relationship with food, in a show so focused on the philosophy and morality of food, would be amazing. I don't know if that's how the story will take it, but I hope it does. I'd be really sad to see it treated as a childish flaw here.
All this to say: seeing Izutsumi treated with respect for what food she can and can't eat, and through being treated with respect starting to work with Senshi and doing what she could to compromise, was every bit as therapeutic for me as the Laios/Shuro fight was for those on the spectrum. And I just wish people would treat that with a bit more respect and understanding."
So beyond her just being picky- or seemingly so- What if Izutsumi isn't actually simply just ' a picky eater' and just appears so on the outside.
Consider what if the reason she doesn't like/won't eat Mushrooms for example is because she CAN'T. After all she is a CAT Chimera, and cat's don't eat, and outside of like extremely controlled small amounts of like commercially grown Mushrooms, can't and shouldn't eat them anyway.
So sure maybe taste/texture wise they're off putting but on a deeper level, perhaps that not even Izutsumi understands it's the feline side of her body basically telling her "No, DO NOT EAT"
Like don't get me wrong I love me a picky eater character. Picky eater rep goo, But also given the series it is I think it' would have made for an interesting challenge for Senshi himself to be faced with a situation where sure ordinarily beggars can't be choosers about their food, but instead of just him simply making a lecture on not wasting foods- which you could still have- but then him also having to come to understand Izutsumi's side of things of sometimes there are people who literally CAN NOT eat certain things having to adapt and accommodate for it.
Maybe even learning the hard way of feeding her something but she ends up sick while everyone else feels fine.izu
Easily being in Laios' vast knowledge of monsters/animals he could bring up the suggestion that since she is a Chimera and has the partial body of a Cat what if that means it reflects in her diet as well (Meaning she likely needs a high protein/animal based diet)
Yet another band AU from me!!! But its DUNGEON MESHI💥 I think I did well with assigning them each instruments. Falin is on vocals bc I'd feel like she would have a really good range in singing. Then Izutsumi in the bg rattling the tambourine off beat.
Isn't it confirmed in the comic where itzutsumi talks to lycion that she was actually a cat turnt into a beastman?
She's a human soul and a monster soul fused together 😔
That comic's revelation is that its impossible for her to be freed from her monster half like Lycion. Not that she's a cat.
It's a little disheartening to me that that comic somehow convinced everyone she isn't human when a big part of her character is her accepting that she is both human and monster.
Proof that she's still a human child that was turned into a beastmen ALONG with a monster cat
Profile says she's a tallman beastman
This says HER SOUL is mixed with a monster soul
Succubus chapter
Lycion confirming the human soul is the one in charge
The issue with izutsumi's body is that she's more cat than human. She's still very much the human child that was kidnapped and fused to a monster cat. What Lycion can tell her is just that she's more cat than girl. I don't like the wording that she's actually "A cat cursed to be a human" she's both human and cat, there was a child involved in this fusion.
Here's another post I made about my thoughts
I love Izutsumi.
I know people who are like her, on a surface seem like they completely lack empathy and are selfish assholes, but it's so much more complicated than that. In the snow golem episode everything Marcille said to her hopefully will help me get through to my own friends who are also like that
this show is just so awesome, it seriously has representation on every flavour of autism and treats it so kindly, i'm so glad it exists
I am the monster you created. ↳ Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
If Izutsumi only has a 'bit' of human soul where's the rest of it? Dead and gone? She doesn't suffer for the lack of it, so it doesn't seem like people need their whole soul. Could someone even take the piece she's missing and stuff it into another monster??
Well, this is gonna be a lot of speculation and very little facts, so beware (will never forget you anon who said I posted my opinions without clarifying it was speculation)
My theory is that in dungeon meshi bodies and souls have some sort of relationship? After all Marcille used the dragon's flesh to resurrect Falin and that cause part of its soul to be mixed in with hers, and at the end to get rid of his soul so Falin could be brought back without being a chimera they ate it's flesh and ground up it's bones so plants would absorb it. So I think it's safe to say there's some relationship between body and soul, at least inside the dungeon where resurrection is possible.
If we take Izutsumi's timeline as a basis, she was a 6yo child when she was taken from her parent's and turned into a beastmen (you could argue that it was a 6yo monster but Izutsumi's ages like a tallman so I doubt only here it would be referring to the monster)
So she was a small child fused with a big monster, so maybe that in itself is why there's way more monster?
The other possibility is that only part of the child was fused with the monster, or perhaps they did take the soul out of her body to put it in the monster, maybe like how ghosts that don't have a body might posses someone that dies and is resurrected and their souls are fused??
But here she only talks about the "personality" changing not their appearance, I really think beastmen and chimera fusions where parts of each show up in the final form makes more sense if their bodies (along with the soul) is fused too? But I'm just speculating.
Anyway, two possibilities
The (whole) child was fused with a much bigger monster and that's why it's the smaller part
The child killed and then only part of her (or her soul) was fused with the monster
Very fucked up either way, about your question if there could be two izutsumis made from the soul of the same child I doubt it, if we take resurrection as an example I don't think they can "divide" the human soul in two different beings? Same as how they couldn't separate part of the dragon soul away from Falin's without before consuming it's flesh? So maybe they burned the rest of the child's body to get rid of the rest of her soul in that second possibility
The AB comic about resurrection says you can't really bring back someone from pieces even if you try to resurrect all of them, so I'd ASSUME that's true for trying to use the same soul for different beings
Anyway these are my thoughts, I love Izutsumi's backstory is so fucked up and tragic... what was done to her is horrible.
20 | he/they/it | just thinking about a certain cat... could be transgender but who knows...
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