Working full time in the computational science field can get crazy. Many times, it required me having to make do with 3 hours of sleep in as much as two weeks straight. It was only back last year, when the pandemic was in full swing, that I ironically had some more rest.
I took advantage of the extra time a work-from-home set up entailed, and finally managed to catch up to some of the "main stream" anime that I initially never got the chance to check out. There were lots of anime and manga that I watched and read since last year. In my head, I think some of the story lines got messed up because I would end up binging one too many anime and manga series at once. One of these anime was Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.
I first watched the anime on Netflix around May last year. At that time, it's been completed, so I didn't have to wait each week for episodes. Right after watching though (I think I completed it in under three days, LOL), I just had to read the manga.
I binge read the manga in under two days, when it was still ongoing. I'm not even kidding. It surprised me that many people didn't like it, because I thought it was an awesome and action-packed story. Granted, it's a generic shounen story-telling and character building, so maybe there really is more to work on (in theory).
The characters -- I think the antagonists more than the protagonists and deuteragonists! -- had such depth to them that I ended up being heavily invested in them, especially one of the Demons, Akaza. While he's my most unforgettable Demon Slayer character, he's a story for another day. :) Let's just leave it to me being an emotional mess about many of the characters' back stories.
If I had anything to complain about, though, it was how, as the story progresses (in the manga), its pacing suddenly turned for the worse, at least in the final arc. Now that I think more about it, it seems that this was where most of the criticisms to the story fell; how some of the deaths felt unnecessary and -- dare I say it -- cheap, like there is more that could have been done... except it didn't.
I wish I could write more about my thoughts on how the story played out, but I have little to no recollection of my critiques on Demon Slayer from last year. (I could have sworn that I had many.) If I had any final say, it's that I didn't enjoy it from the onset, but eventually grew on me. :) It's worth the shot of checking it out.
Akaza was the sole Demon Slayer character (and antagonist) that I got so hung up on, but Kochou Shinobu comes a close second. There was more to her than was initially presented and while I couldn't relate, her personality and points of view were things about her that I could understand.
I drew my second Shinobu fan art, and I think there's a vast improvement on this one compared to the fan art I did last year. That said, it makes me a little prouder on myself.
Here, I was testing out a drawing style I've been trying to work on since a few weeks ago. I'm ever-so-slowly getting the hang of it, but it's still far from what I was aiming for. The purpose of drawing this was two-fold: 1) practice; and 2) check on my improvement.
I believe that the best way I can practice is by drawing fan arts or portraits of real people. Processes that would require me to have references.
The whole thing took me 3 hours of work, but I think the improvement I saw from how I did last year was definitely worth the time and effort I put into this.
I mean, look at this. The picture on the left. That was my first ever Kochou Shinobu fan art, and I cringe looking at it right now. Perhaps in the future, when I look back at this second Shinobu fan art, I might cringe again and hoped I didn't share it with anybody. xD
Here, I have a little more control over how I draw and color, and I have more knowledge of how I could fully utilize the programs I use in drawing -- MediBang Paint for Android and Adobe Photoshop. That said, even with all the cringiness, it's fun seeing the obvious difference in the techniques I had then and now. :)
What do you think about it?
Below is a close up of my DTIYS Kochou Shinobu. :)
The timelapse video is the progress I did when I was drawing on my phone, with MediBang. I did some final touches on the drawing with Adobe Photoshop, which wasn't captured in this video.
Music is IV by SawanoHiroyuki[nZk].
Now that was fun! I still have a couple of other anime/manga/webtoon fan arts I started in the last couple of days but never really continued (Solo Leveling and The Beginning After The End). Their progresses would depend on how motivated I would be. :P
