Today’s deck is the Anime Tarot.
I was gonna make a joke about how many “Anime Tarot” and “Manga Tarot” decks I’ve tried out, but this one specifically makes me think about something interesting.
Comparing it especially with earlier anime/manga tarots I’ve tested, I think about how over the years the presence of “gaijin hand” has diminished drastically.
Basically “gaijin hand” refers to this phenomenon I remember seeing in the early 2010s (AKA when I started being more directly involved with anime communities) where a lot of illustrators would try to make “Anime/Manga Style” illustrations, but since they trained either in more comic-adjacent styles or in more traditional art, the result was this skinwalker-esque uncanniness where it didn’t look like anything barely manga-adjacent.
And I’m not merely talking about the big-eyed kind of style, I’m talking about how distinct it felt even from styles like Katsuhiro Otomo’s or Tetsuo Hara’s.
Anyway, this is something that’s kinda wild to talk about nowadays because a lot of western illustrators just don’t suffer from this “gaijin hand”, case in point this deck, which is good! But it also brings me to talking about why I don’t like it when decks don’t have individual illustrations for minor arcana.
Aside from the fact that those being illustrated is an amazing aid no matter your level of expertise, there’s also the fact that if you really like a deck’s theme, then tough luck bucko you’re not gonna see the artstyle 90% of the time.
…wait…
78*(22+12)=2652/100=26.52-100=-73.48
…then tough luck bucko you’re not gonna see the artstyle 73.48% of the time.
I think that’s the math, I’m not gonna double check.
Today’s reading explains that the solution to feeling left out is to put yourself out there. As you’ll see, this does align with today’s happenings.
So I HAD set an appointment at a doll photo studio in Nipponbashi, but I woke up too late so that plan is out the window and I called to cancel.
Almost as if in a trance I basically went from my bed to finishing the latest Forsaken Gaia chapter.
I’m proud of it, also the song that Carmen is singing at the start of the chapter is a very haphazard translation of the Lyrics of Honki no Uso (Wild Arms XF’s opening theme).
Between finishing the chapter, transferring the manuscript to the website and adding all the fun color stuff it has, Japanese lesson time arrived before I knew it.
After I finished that and came back I started to wonder why the fuck I was so… listless and tired, before I realized I HADN’T EATEN.
Running on empty and having no energy? Couldn’t be me.
I felt perked up enough so I decided to go to Evil again and I actually caught it open.
It was nice! Catching up on travels funnily enough. Then at 10PM-ish I was invited to go with the bartender to a bar a couple of floors up. It’s an SM bar, though it’s mainly the sort of thing where you can play with the bartender with a chain and whatnot rather than anything too explicit or hardcore.
Seeing a different bar and Evil’s bartender in a different context was fun, but the funniest thing was them asking me how old I was and learning that (almost) EVERYONE IN THE BUILDING is in the same age bracket.
Now I know of a new bar I can go to. I’m not even into BDSM, the staff is just nice. Finding bars is fun, but I know better than to do it alone and I do live alone, so…
…I guess that fact that it’s SM instead of BDSM is why it’s not more hardcore? Again, not my thing so no clue.
By the way, here’s an update on the saga of the posters on the wall.
For those just tuning in (and a refresher for everyone else): I’ve been trying to hang a couple of posters from a wall that’s pure concrete. My first attempts involved 500g hooks before realizing the frames I was using were SLIGHTLY over that weight (600g or so).
When I left the topic a while ago, the main problem was that the right side of the wall had some sort of… grease or dust or something that just outright refused to allow things to stick. I’d put the 3M sticker and it wouldn’t fall but at the slightest tug it was off and smooth.
So I started escalating the matter bit by bit. First a wet wipe, no luck; then an alcohol wipe, still no luck; soap did nothing, degreaser did nothing, I was *this* close to using something stronger or painting over with white paint to give it a better surface, but I notices something in a different wall.
In one of the walls by the kitchen, the “paint” bubbled slightly and that’s when I realized that the walls don’t have paint, they have a white textured wallpaper.
It’s wild that I know the threat assessment of this building in relation to tsunamis and earthquakes but it took me 5 years to know that the walls had wallpaper instead of paint.
So anyway, with that in mind it occured to me to spray some matte topcoating (the kind for plastic models) on the annoying section of the wall and see if it worked.
It dried and I let the 3M sticker also curate a little, but I’ll put up the posters as a test later because I don’t wanna wake up from the ungodly noise of posters falling while I’m asleep AGAIN.