Thinking About How The Two Children In Dunmeshi Were Both Sold Into Slavery And How Their Enslavement

There’s just something extremely touching about watching Izutsumi work through a wide range of emotions when she sees Marcille cry for the first time.

She’s sleeping on Marcille’s lap when it happens—something she hadn’t willingly done since her human consciousness was subdued in the Golden Country.

Izutsumi was initially very embarrassed when she remembered showing Marcille such unbridled affection when her monster (cat) side had full control in Melini. But now, shortly after, she did it again without any fuss, seemingly over this embarrassment.

But when she notices Marcille crying—not crying expressive tears over a situation with low stakes, but tears of real sorrow and loss—Izutsumi physically recoils.

She reacts with the childlike fear and panic that one feels when someone they heavily rely on and trust (like a parent or teacher) shows vulnerability, doubt, or weakness. She lashes out, trying to use words of reproach to get Marcille to stop crying. Or, in childlike terms, to try to force Marcille’s pain go away.

When that doesn’t work, we see her physically struggle as she tries to sit by and wait it out. But Izutsumi can’t do it.

Marcille’s pain causes her so much intense distress that Izutsumi immediately offers physical affection as a response—something she has not done for anyone up to this point.

When Senshi told the party about his traumatic backstory, Izutsumi did not touch him. She did support him, tried to offer words of comfort, but she did not embrace him like the others did. Maybe she didn’t know how; maybe she didn’t have a proper example on what comforting someone looked like. But she saw all three of them reach for Senshi, she saw them hold him in their arms, and anchor him as he cried.

This is the first time another party member has cried out of sadness since that moment. It’s possible that she saw how the others helped Senshi, and maybe, subconsciously, she saw that it worked. That it made him feel better.

She is clearly unused to it, and has her own rollercoaster of emotions as Marcille gratefully accepts the comfort Izutsumi is offering her. But it helps. It helps Marcille immediately, and Izutsumi knows this.

These acts of vulnerability are foreign to her, and thus make her feel uncomfortable, but she lets Marcille lean on her afterwards anyway. She wanted Marcille to be okay, wanted it so badly, that she accidentally overcame an emotional obstacle she never even knew she had.

Parents… Fambly…….

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

Izutsumi

LETS GO anti poaching win

catnap

same energy

'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

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

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.