Hi, I’m SO sorry for such a late response. It’s not weird at all and I actually really appreciate it. Life irl has not been super awesome and I’ve kinda been extremely going through it, so I haven’t had much energy and motivation to get to things here. It’s kind of a comfort to see this message, so I thank you for it.

I hope YOU enjoy using it 🌴🦦❤️ I’m really happy with the last huge overhauls I made with the design of it, so I’m glad people like it too. Thank you for such a kind message.

Anyways, the last name ties in with who I think will be Ibuki's unit mates. While Ibuki has a high solo potential, story and card-rotation wise, it would be easier if he had unit mates. I think his unit mates will eventually be NEGI and Nice, with the unit's theme being an "international" unit + "playing tag/鬼ごっこ." There is no basis for NEGI besides liking her and feeling like her story could expanded + she was hiding out in the US. For Nice, this is pure unsubstantiated speculation, but I think Ibuki is chasing after him, similar to Canis Major (Sirius) and Lepus (Arneb). Perhaps out of admiration or to have Nice return to being an idol?(He is pretty young for a famous retired idol, being the same age as Rinne). To do so, Ibuki will be "tagging" or collaborating with other idols until he finally "tags"/catches Nice. Or something lol!

I tried to cut the amount of text to just the main points, but it was still a lot huh... though I have zero expectations that any of this will come true, but theorizing is very fun haha. I'm excited to be completely wrong.

And for your website's pages, yes I like them a lot! Especially the infographic page! I feel like I learn a lot of interesting perspectives/insights that I would never come to by myself. So thank very much! (2/2)

OP I LOVE YOUR THOUGHTS. I'm sorry for posting this late, yesterday was like, 12 straight hours of TL and event grinding, steam is coming out of my ears. FIRST AND FOREMOST I LOVE THE ALT UNIT NAMES, and I LOVE Sirius. Your brain is so huge. I also think he's going to be in an alt unit, but I hadn't thought that far ahead, so NOW I WANT SIRIUS.

I think you choosing NEGI is super interesting to me, considering NEGI and Hitsugi's father Priest was born in Hoshijima (the island near Okinawa, that Ibuki's potential relative Mizusaba runs supplies for). I don't know much about the Godfather arc besides the basics + what's in Submarine and Stella Maris, so I didn't know she'd also hidden out in the US. You've literally convinced me, OP, now I REALLY wanna see them interact.

I think somewhere in my TL notes while working on VS AUDIENCE I picked up something about the name of the star for Nice, but I wasn't really sure what to do with that information theoretically. I love what you came up with.

I'm happy you like the infographics I make! Literally like, your insights and perspectives are things I never could have come to. The 4Beasts thing is proof of that alone. THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR THEORIES.

I'm transcripting and translating as we speak, hehe. Once I get the first half done, I'll probably put summaries on the wiki so everyone's caught up!

Hi! They’re not currently active. Recently I decluttered a lot of my website, so I took most of the pages that were there out 🦦 I plan to upload the AKARYUSEI choreography videos to Youtube so I can host them there and imbed them on new pages.

I’ll make sure to get to that soon! I’m super sorry for any inconvenience, and I’ll definitely let everyone know when they’re back up. 🙇 Thanks for asking!

PART 1 | FOUR BEASTS I LOVE THESE. You're also a genius, OP.

For the uninitiated, the Four Auspicious Beasts are mythological creatures found in Chinese constellations. These are the Azure Dragon (Seiryū), the White Tiger (Byakko), Vermilion Bird (Suzaku), and Black Tortoise (Genbu). You've probably heard about feng shui: the Four Beasts are the directional elements to it.

I'm going to attach a graphic I made for this ask (applying feng shui to Tenshou KAGETSU), because now that OP's pointed it out, I totally agree with the assignments, they fit really well with each other (and I've learned too much about fengshui while building my Ryukyu doc, I'm happy to do something with the information in my head /lh)

To be honest, I can't really recall exact lines in stories (I just have bad memory). I can try my best with stories, but they're more like, stories that would fit the vibes. If anyone with better memory wants to jump in, by all means.

Keito as Seiryu (Azure Dragon): Can represent prosperity, growth, and abundance. AKA any story where Keito furthers AKATSUKI's future /lh. Dragons are also associated with storms (although Seiryu's element is wood). Here's an infographic from a time I applied the idiom 海千山千 to Keito (a snake turning into a dragon). A good story for prosperity and growth is probably Daikagura. Comic World has storms, water. Keito's also connected to water with his penname, Mizuhanome (a water goddess)

Kuro as Suzaku (Vermillion Bird): Can represent daytime, life, destruction, war. In feng shui, the vermillion bird is where Chi (energy) pools I think a good story for this would probably be Kabukimono, where Kuro's exhausted and overworked, but gets revitalized by the people who care about him.

Souma as Genbu (Black Tortoise): Can represent longevity, offers support and protection. Its name "genbu" actually means black/dark/mysterious warrior. The tortoise also has a snake wrapped around it, which goes well with Souma being tied closely with Keito (notoriously snake-coded). Palace of the Ocean is the one that immediately pops up for me -- this story is the one with Souma and Kamegorou (a little turtle). The scout is referencing the tale of Urashimako, not Genbu, though.

You can find translations here.

PART 2 | SYNERGY YEAH so, I've always firmly been in the camp of "I truly don't think he's going to join" these past few months (it's not a thought in my mind, not a consideration, etc.), Before the event came out, I had this whole list of predictions I made for card rarities, plotlines, etc.

And then Keito was revealed to be the 5*. And my pre-event predictions became 0/6 right. And then the MV came out, and it's amazing and it indicates a really, REALLY good story. And it makes me at a total loss for what's gonna happen.

I still have my theories (probably as outlandish as yours), but like, I'm definitely just going into translating the event head empty at this point, no expectations. I'm happy to see what I thought would come out of Souma and Ibuki looks to be true. I'm just happy to see AKATSUKI and Ibuki. I'M JUST HAPPY. I LOVE THEM. WAH.

Please feel free to give your delusional Ibuki thoughts btw, I am also full of delusional Ibuki thoughts.

PART 3 | RECC TOOL You are totally right, the stories in the recc tool are just stories I have personally read (and thus can recommend). Because of that, it's not complete. CROSSFIRE, Dark Night's Passing, etc. are all stories that should be on there for sure. I might ask friends who know the stories better than me to help make descriptions and ratings for them just so they're up there, because it was a thought in my mind.

Thank you for using the recc tool by the way! I have no way of knowing whether people use my pages, so it makes me happy to hear you do 🦦🥺

When you're researching a topic you don't know very much about, two best friends will always have your back: the citations section of a Wikipedia page and Google Scholar (I have this linked to "okinawa assimilation" so you can see how it works). We all get taught that you shouldn't cite Wikipedia, and this is true, but the resources they cite are fair game. These often have direct links to the PDFs they're sourcing from, so when you see a claim, you can go to the original source and double check it or even see more of what it has to say.

For my main ones: Early History of The Ryukyu Kingdom and its Relationship with China and Japan. The Okinawa Peace Network of Los Angeles (2005). - I wasn't sure where to start with outlining my book report, so a friend was helpful and sent me this. I started with this one as an outline.

“Shioki (Control)”, “Fuyu (Dependency)”, and Sovereignty, Yanagihara, M. (2015). Meyer, S. (2020, October 15). Between a Forgotten Colony and an Abandoned Prefecture: Okinawa’s Experience of Becoming Japanese in the Meiji and Taishō Eras - I couldn't find which Wikipedia pages I jumped off of, but I'm pretty sure these were from citations sections.

Haynes, M. G. (2021). Samurai Invasion: Japan’s 1609 Conquest of Ryukyu. - I looked this one up because I wanted more information about Satsuma and why it invaded Ryukyu. This is from a website, written by a U.S. Army veteran with a degree in Asian Studies, so I felt it was valid to include.

Meyer, S. (2007). The rhetoric of the assimilation ideology in the remote islands of Okinawa: becoming Japanese or Okinawan? - Google Scholar Tsai, S. S. H. (1996). The eunuchs in the Ming dynasty. Suny Press.(pp.144-145) - Google Scholar Hendrickx, K. (2007). The origins of Banana-fibre cloth in the Ryukyus, Japan. (pp. 38-41.) - Google Scholar Takeo, S. (1997). Culture in Struggle: Experience of Okinawa. - Google Scholar All of the Additional Readings I put at the bottom of the document were Google Scholar or just search results.

But some of the sources above are also in the Ryukyu Kingdom Wikipedia page. If the subject is niche, you're going to run into it sourced in different places (especially if it's keystone literature).

Limitations Section

• Because it was meant to be an entry-level book report, these sources felt like enough to plainly state the overall historical turn of events.
  • However, it's not adequate to capturing the FULL PICTURE, because (a) there's nowhere close enough resources in this paper to say that (b) I think it's a little lacking when it comes to any Ryukyu perspective or literature.
• Depending on who is writing it, there can be bias (i.e., Did historical accounts come from China? Japan? The US? Any other country outside of it? Each has their own potential bias).
• Additionally, these sources are the ones that were publicly available: a lot of the good ones I saw were not.

I appreciate his Ryukyuan identity being prominent. I think his existence alone, along with the discussion about him and AKATSUKI, brings awareness to Okinawa, its history, and the issues they encounter with mainland Japan. Culture awareness and education will never be a bad thing!

I definitely wouldn’t say I’m an expert on Okinawa itself or its indigenous peoples, nor will I ever claim to be, so I don’t think I should be seen as any kind of authority about how good or bad it is. I think it has the potential to be handled… very not well, and that does worry me a lot. A lot a lot, to be honest. But I want to have faith until the writing proves me wrong.

That being said, I would love to learn more about Ibuki’s culture through whatever he’s going to be doing with AKATSUKI. When Ibuki was first announced, I was like “omg, RYUSEITAI helped Konata and Hoshijima, maybe AKATSUKI can help Ibuki with something”, so I really hope he takes them back to Okinawa. Kuro clinging to the dock like a cat because he doesn’t want to get sick for weeks again, while Souma pulls at him trying to get him on the boat. Keito buying a load of guidebooks, and chattering facts at Ibuki that Ibuki literally knows already. AND THEY CAN MEET MIZUSABA. PLEASE. HAPPY ELEMENTS. CONFIRM IF MIZUSABA AND IBUKI ARE BROTHERS— (dragged away)

But yes, I feel like because I’m not an expert, that makes me really really hope we see and learn more about Ibuki and his culture.

To be completely honest, I lack the personal experience, expertise, and/or eloquence needed to give a satisfactory answer to this question (hence why I work within the bounds of what the lore tells us), so I’ll provide a summary, links to informative threads, and what we can surmise based off of AKATSUKI’s (scant) interactions in Okinawa.

Here's a summary from The Rising Powers Initiative

"Okinawans, formerly known as the Ryukyuans, existed as the Ryukyu Kingdom since the 13th century until Meiji Japan forcefully annexed the island nation. Under the Japanese colonial rule and assimilation policy, the Ryukyuans lost their own culture, language, land, and political institutions."

Here are a few threads that I think get at the very real political implications from people who know the subject more extensively than me: @mika_enstars - a summary about the relationship between japan and the ryukyuan kingdom, and how that applies to AKATSUKI and Ibuki's identities @gitsunegal - on potential implications of cultural assimilation, should the writing be mishandled

I personally agree with them in that, if the writing direction were to be mishandled and AKATSUKI were to "assimilate" Ibuki from his Okinawan heritage, it would be very disgraceful. That being said, speaking within the limited bounds of the lore (since AKATSUKI hasn't had much to do with Okinawa since Submarine), I think canon somewhat suggests that Keito and Kuro appreciate Okinawan culture.

|| When AKATSUKI steps foot in Okinawa (Submarine, Ruthless Battlefield 2):

Keito: The weather is so pleasant, it doesn't feel like it's winter. Seems we’ll make some good headway on our idol activities.

Souma: Heheh. You’re talking quite a lot more. It’s unusual to see you in such high spirits, Hasumi-dono.

Keito: Is that a bad thing? Temples are rooted where they stand, and I’ve rarely left my hometown. It makes my heart race just to set foot in a distant place like this. How fun.

|| When Kanata offers Keito a dish in Okinawa (Submarine, Ruthless Battlefield 4):

Kanata: alrighty, [make way] for all of the [food]. temple guy cannot eat [meat or fish], right~ so here’s a [salad] ♪

Keito: My family isn’t as strict as that. Still, these sea grapes are so Okinawa-esque, I’m a little delighted.

|| When AKATSUKI are performing on the live stage with their costumes (Submarine, Epilogue 2):

Kuro: The outfits we're wearin’ now were commissioned by ES and made by the local Okinawan people. It suits the local climate and it’s got an Okinawan feel. It’s sure to be a hit with the tourists too. I think it’s a real honor to get to wear ‘em.

Keito's thesis gets mentioned in VS AUDIENCE: taking the traditional performing arts and evolving them into something one of a kind. I want to have faith that “traditional” could mean highlighting Ibuki’s traditional customs. With how much Keito appreciates Ibuki and what he brings to the table, I would be severely disappointed if the writing were to turn in a way where Keito stifles a key aspect of what makes Ibuki Ibuki.

TL;DR If the writing around Ibuki joining Akatsuki is mishandled, there are very dire political implications to it, and they should certainly be called out. However, from a character-perspective, it's possible AKATSUKI could adopt Ibuki's customs if he were to join, given that AKATSUKI's thesis is "taking tradition and evolving it into something new".

But it's very much a question of "we have to wait and see when it comes out."

I would love to know, HAPPY ELEMENTS. We should probably start with Ibuki, and go from there.

The great part about Ibuki's Final Ceremony chapter is that we can see exactly where his head's at. In the story, Ibuki leaves the 4piece Final Ceremony early after he sees that he hasn't been selected for the dream unit. He feels a little left out to dry, because he came from America to participate in 4piece expressly because Nice invited him to. When Keito comes to make his offer, Ibuki is equally as interested in performing with him.

When it comes to future direction, we have three certain possibilities: A) Ibuki joins AKATSUKI. B) Ibuki joins another unit. C) Ibuki becomes a solo idol. I have theories and explanations for two of them.

A) Ibuki joins AKATSUKI: ★★★☆☆ I'm not sure at all if this is going to be permanent, but I guess it's not as out of the realm of possibility as I initially thought.

The difference between Ibuki and the members of Esupuri is that he's had set up long before the Audition Arc: Submarine (2021) puts AKATSUKI and RYUSEITAI in Okinawa for SS, which sets the stage for Supervillain (2023) and Stella Maris (2024), which have references to him/Okinawa Oni directly. Read more about that here. Ibuki says that he's heard AKATSUKI music because he's from Okinawa.. So while it might seem out of nowhere, I really don't think it's out of the blue.

However, if he joins AKATSUKI in the center event they'll have in December, it's probably going to have to rely on either Souma or Kuro's arc. Keito has had two center events, and VS Audience + Final Ceremony is enough (in my opinion) to cement their relationship. The event will likely be about how Ibuki meshes with Kuro and Souma (which will be fun!!) but I don't know enough about their arcs to really theorize how either would tie into "Ibuki joins AKATSUKI" thematically.

B) Ibuki joins another unit: ★☆☆☆☆ This one makes the least sense to me personally, given that Esupuri's dynamics and theme seem pretty set (the unrequited square, etc.). They might as well have written him in there to begin with. And him joining another unit makes even less sense because he has no existing relationships there -- so if he's joining one, AKATSUKI would make the most sense.

C) Ibuki becomes a solo idol: ★★★★★ I personally think Ibuki will temporarily perform with AKATSUKI, before branching off in his own direction as a solo idol. Ibuki was left with no clear direction (in his POV, since he skipped the ceremony), and I think Keito's offer provides him with time to get back on his feet, get used to the area, and see what he wants to do as an idol. Being a solo idol would provide him with the flexibility to carve out his own vision: performing with AKATSUKI is just a safe space for him to discover what that vision is.

I saw one thread (pre-livestream) that predicted Esupuri would be in RhyLin because they were the only agency that didn't get anything new in !!-era. Now that Esupuri is a NEWDI unit, I feel that it's completely within the realm of possibility that Ibuki could be a RhyLin solo idol. He could still work closely with Keito and AKATSUKI, and they could be good mentors he can rely on. Additionally, with the RhyLin veteran situation, I can see Keito wanting to keep Ibuki in RhyLin to completely shake things up.

I'll be posting a much longer, more detailed response on Twitter, because this topic deserves lots of care and space to breathe, but at the end of the day, Rin "There's a 0.0000005% chance" Citrinesea has no more expectations for what they're going to do with Ibuki and AKATSUKI so I'm along for the ride with you guys until December, hehe.

I haven't, actually! Thanks for asking! I'd say my first instinct is California, because A) a sizable amount of Japanese-Americans live in California, B) I feel that's a very easy place for NiceP to have scouted him after seeing him perform (show biz, baby). As a coastal enthusiast myself, C) since he's from Okinawa, I also felt like California's weather and climate might be more his speed (rather than, say, New York, where show biz would also be big)-- I could see him living along the west coast because he's tied with water and feeeeeesh. However, I also like the idea of him being from or going to Hawaii a lot. That state has both large Japanese AND Okinawan populations..

In the scene where he's hyping up Keito, he says "よっ、 あんたが大将!" with 大将 being "taishou" -- basically "Yo, you're the boss!", but I chose to make it "Yo! You're the big kahuna!" because of the reasons above, hehe.

TL;DR Ca. Li. For. Nia Boys. Are Unforgettable.

Here you go! https://citrinesea.github.io/translation/lets_have_some_sushi/

This is the best question I've ever been asked. I'm sorry to say I'm a ginormous cat person, so my views are very skewed. Obviously, they have their canon animals (Keito, snake. Chiaki's been a deer, Shinobun a squirrel, Midori dog, Kanata ram), but these are my associations based on my heart and what I would like to cuddle most. I'll toss in Madara and Ibuki for good measure.

Keito Panther || Kuro Tiger || Souma Horse || Tetora White Tiger || Midori Lop Rabbit (100% needs floppy ears) || Shinobu Netherland Dwarf Rabbit || Chiaki Eastern Cottontail Rabbit || Kanata (+ Konata) Sea Otter || Madara Fluffy Calico Cat || Ibuki (+ Mizusaba) Snow Leopard

And thus the scripture was written and all was well.