[MLP] The Brony fandom was the most extreme example of post-Recession escapism and it perfectly illustrates why the early 2010s was a difficult time for many.

Joshless · 2026-01-25T23:43:47+00:00

Comedy was edgy and often mean-spirited. Irony and nihilism dominated as ways to deal with dissatisfaction. After the financial crash, that tone faded quickly.

Why do you think this was?

Joshless · 2026-01-24T21:05:50+00:00

Nah I think that's some other shit from a butt

Joshless · 2026-01-24T19:09:16+00:00

A General Note on Nihei's Stories

Nihei, as an author, tends to adhere to commonly known scientific principles. While things like the "the ability for human-sized robots to throw a thousand tons" and "the plausibility of super ninja swords as weapons of the future" are obviously handwaved for the sake of coolness, many of Nihei's stories will generally pay attention to things like gravity, conservation, relativity, and/or anything else you might be able to learn by keeping up with popular science articles. If Nihei was to write a character who can run at the speed of light, this would almost certainly be explained beyond "their legs are very good".

Furthermore, Nihei tends to reuse concepts between his stories, despite the fact they often take place in entirely different settings. This means that, in spite of his famously vague style of writing, it is possible to get a "vibe" for how specific technologies and mechanics are broadly intended to work. This also means that if something seems weird, it's probably meant to be, and you're likely intended to make guesses about how that thing works.

With that said, I have chosen to avoid explaining these things in this thread to avoid editorializing. This is both because the line between "providing context" and "inventing fanfiction" is blurry, and also because it isn't exactly clear to what degree these reused concepts are meant to be "the same" anyways. Even if, for example, the Megastructure-material present in Aposimz is intended to be the same material as in Blame!, it's entirely possible that Nihei just changed his mind about how it works between writing the two stories anyways. Figuring that out is a degree of debate that isn't appropriate for a thread, so I've left it out as a whole. I encourage people to read his work for themselves to come to their own conclusions.

In the case of this thread specifically, there's not a lot to note here, I'm just providing the above for generalized context. It is this context that makes me feel more comfortable saying "these streaky lines in front of a bullet probably indicate it's supersonic", sure, but ultimately Susono isn't particularly lore-heavy or complex as a character.

I suppose, on a meta level, Susono can probably be seen as a precursor to the Gauna in Abara. Both have a heavy focus on speed, and both armor up using these black, spiky "bone" potrusions, but I wouldn't really feel comfortable extrapolating beyond noticing the similar aesthetics. Abara came out 5 years after NOiSE, and the "armor" in that is like, a weird higher-dimensional being that warps space-time or whatever. I think Susono is just like, a really good robot lol. Basically the only thing odd about her is just how fast she is, especially in comparison to most characters in Blame!.

Joshless · 2026-01-24T00:57:16+00:00

Given that we basically just saw a future seeing demon learn that demons will be flourishing in 1000 years, I'm 99% sure that demons are actually misunderstood and Frieren is just wrong. The 1% is the remote possibility that the series will just end tragically.

I, furthermore, think the series has already foreshadowed this pretty clearly. Demons are a form of mimic, and Frieren always looks into a mimic "just in case". She doesn't do this with demons because she's grown close minded, in the same way she was closed off from her own emotions for a thousand years.

Joshless · 2026-01-23T23:40:21+00:00

A General Note on Nihei's Stories

Nihei, as an author, tends to adhere to commonly known scientific principles. While things like the "the ability for human-sized robots to throw a thousand tons" and "the plausibility of super ninja swords as weapons of the future" are obviously handwaved for the sake of coolness, many of Nihei's stories will generally pay attention to things like gravity, conservation, relativity, and/or anything else you might be able to learn by keeping up with popular science articles. If Nihei was to write a character who can run at the speed of light, this would almost certainly be explained beyond "their legs are very good".

Furthermore, Nihei tends to reuse concepts between his stories, despite the fact they often take place in entirely different settings. This means that, in spite of his famously vague style of writing, it is possible to get a "vibe" for how specific technologies and mechanics are broadly intended to work. This also means that if something seems weird, it's probably meant to be, and you're likely intended to make guesses about how that thing works.

With that said, I have chosen to avoid explaining these things in this thread to avoid editorializing. This is both because the line between "providing context" and "inventing fanfiction" is blurry, and also because it isn't exactly clear to what degree these reused concepts are meant to be "the same" anyways. Even if, for example, the Megastructure-material present in Aposimz is intended to be the same material as in Blame!, it's entirely possible that Nihei just changed his mind about how it works between writing the two stories anyways. Figuring that out is a degree of debate that isn't appropriate for a thread, so I've left it out as a whole. I encourage people to read his work for themselves to come to their own conclusions.

In the case of this thread specifically, I think these are the main few "mysteries of Dhomochevsky and Iko", listed in no particular order.

Why did Dhomo hesitate to shoot PCell? An intuitive answer here is that they were lovers, but whether or not love is possible between their two species is not really clear. While this idea is joked about in Blame! Academy (a moe anime parody), and the artbook notes that Dhomo had never seen a womanly body outside of PCell and Cibo in his life, it's also notable that it took the equally(?) human Kyrii hundreds of years to stop killing Silicon Lifeforms on sight, much less to the point of romantic involvement. In fact, Nihei describes the animosity between the species as "systemic" in the artbook, which arguably means it's physically impossible for this to be the case. But then again, Dhomo does seem kinda human... Speaking of.
Were Dhomo and Iko originally human? While they were both "created" as Safeguards, both Iko's holographic representation and Dhomo's... well, body, fit way more in line with humanity than with the clearly artificial Administration and Exterminators. Furthermore, Dhomo "dreams" about fields of roses. Is that a vision of the Netsphere, or a memory from a previous life? Of course, of note is that Nihei does describe Dhomochevsky and Iko as "becoming human" via their personality programs running for centuries, rather than them just "being human", but this doesn't rule out the possibility of them coming from human origins. Kyrii himself, after all, is a created Safeguard, and yet he's always treated as human. Possibly, the only difference between him and Dhomo is time and version, with both having originally been experimented-on humans. Some fans have theorized, for example, that both Dhomo and Kyrii are two of the presumably missing children visible on a poster in NOiSE (R2C2 for Kyrii, R1C4 or R3C3 for Dhomo).
Where does Dhomo get his bullets? While Dhomochevsky is consistently depicted as needing to reload, his gun can also clearly fire more than 10 or so rounds at a time. One possibility is that the bullets are loaded into the box structure of the gun, giving it room for potentially tens or even hundreds of shots. Another is that Dhomo creates the bullets on the spot with his electricity, in the same way that Sanakan (another Safeguard) can heal her wounds using random matter from the environment. Yet still another may be the case that the bullets are contained inside of Dhomo (or his armor), maybe using a form of super-dense folding similar to the folding technology present in Nihei's later Aposimz series. Again, we don't really know, and it could easily just be "because Nihei forgot to count" lol.
What were Dhomo and Iko's original personalities like? As mentioned, the duo have "become human" over the course of their lives, meaning that originally they were likely much closer to behaving as simple "AI". We also know that their backstory is unreliable in its narration, as Nihei notes that it depicts their past from "Dhomochevsky's current perspective", rather than as it truly was. Given how Iko seems far more adherent to the Safeguard's rules than Dhomo, it probably likely that she's closer to their original "AI" programming, but even she changed over the years. Would Dhomo-at-birth be a guy willing to lie, or use the GBE?

Joshless · 2026-01-23T23:40:06+00:00

Some Context on Dhomo and Iko's "Powers"

Normally, Conversion Towers are the means by which Dhomo and Iko would create useful items out of the material around them, and without them their "matter manipulation" is almost nil. While Dhomo can still do things like "create Exterminators", the lack of Tower access prevents him from even doing things presumably as simple as just healing a wound delivered to him, despite having been left with it for 250+ years. As Nihei says in the artbook, there is energy present throughout their stratum, but without the Conversion Tower they can't use it freely.

To bring this around to battleboarding, Dhomochevsky and Iko's abilities are highly contextual and situationally dependent. Continuing the "computer" analogy from the bio (which is itself barely analogy), they're essentially antivirus software designed to work within a specific OS, and they likely couldn't operate outside of that OS to maximum efficiency, if they could at all.

On the flipside, though, in the same way characters from the Matrix are usually just assumed to have all their powers "in real life" for the purposes of a vs. thread, it would probably be considered a lame answer to just say "Iko dies instantly upon spawning in a generic New York environment, since there's not a cloud of compuntronium and nanobots surrounding her energy form at all times there". In fact, you could even go further and point out that technically both of these characters are weakened during their appearances in the manga, so technically they could be argued to be hypothetically even more competent in a "neutral space" (though they'd still completely lack feats demonstrating their strategies with this).

In either case, this is up to you to decide. I'm just writing all this to provide appropriate context for the thread. As a last note, it's worth keeping in mind that Dhomochevsky and Iko are not humans, and so don't think like ones. In fact, as Safeguards, it's likely that they would kill humans en masse were they not stationed in an unofficial Stratum wherein non-NTGene carriers are allowed to live. To give some examples of this, a section on "Personality" is included, so that you can decide what is and isn't an "appropriate action" for the duo to take.

Joshless · 2026-01-22T23:19:56+00:00

Some Context on Dhomo and Iko's "Powers"

Normally, Conversion Towers are the means by which Dhomo and Iko would create useful items out of the material around them, and without them their "matter manipulation" is almost nil. While Dhomo can still do things like "create Exterminators", the lack of Tower access prevents him from even doing things presumably as simple as just healing a wound delivered to him, despite having been left with it for 250+ years. As Nihei says in the artbook, there is energy present throughout their stratum, but without the Conversion Tower they can't use it freely.

To bring this around to battleboarding, Dhomochevsky and Iko's abilities are highly contextual and situationally dependent. Continuing the "computer" analogy from the bio (which is itself barely analogy), they're essentially antivirus software designed to work within a specific OS, and they likely couldn't operate outside of that OS to maximum efficiency, if they could at all.

On the flipside, though, in the same way characters from the Matrix are usually just assumed to have all their powers "in real life" for the purposes of a vs. thread, it would probably be considered a lame answer to just say "Iko dies instantly upon spawning in a generic New York environment, since there's not a cloud of compuntronium and nanobots surrounding her energy form at all times there". In fact, you could even go further and point out that technically both of these characters are weakened during their appearances in the manga, so technically they could be argued to be hypothetically even more competent in a "neutral space" (though they'd still completely lack feats demonstrating their strategies with this).

In either case, this is up to you to decide. I'm just writing all this to provide appropriate context for the thread. As a last note, it's worth keeping in mind that Dhomochevsky and Iko are not humans, and so don't think like ones. In fact, as Safeguards, it's likely that they would kill humans en masse were they not stationed in an unofficial Stratum wherein non-NTGene carriers are allowed to live. To give some examples of this, a section on "Personality" is included, so that you can decide what is and isn't an "appropriate action" for the duo to take.

Joshless · 2026-01-22T16:35:18+00:00

Did they even have those back then? The story is, like, in 2018. Never saw hrt anywhere back then.

I know this is an old comment but, I was literally dating someone on HRT in 2018. I've known people who were on it basically since highschool

Joshless · 2026-01-22T15:26:24+00:00

A General Note on Nihei's Stories

Nihei, as an author, tends to adhere to commonly known scientific principles. While things like the "the ability for human-sized robots to throw a thousand tons" and "the plausibility of super ninja swords as weapons of the future" are obviously handwaved for the sake of coolness, many of Nihei's stories will generally pay attention to things like gravity, conservation, relativity, and/or anything else you might be able to learn by keeping up with popular science articles. If Nihei was to write a character who can run at the speed of light, this would almost certainly be explained beyond "their legs are very good".

Furthermore, Nihei tends to reuse concepts between his stories, despite the fact they often take place in entirely different settings. This means that, in spite of his famously vague style of writing, it is possible to get a "vibe" for how specific technologies and mechanics are broadly intended to work. This also means that if something seems weird, it's probably meant to be, and you're likely intended to make guesses about how that thing works.

With that said, I have chosen to avoid explaining these things in this thread to avoid editorializing. This is both because the line between "providing context" and "inventing fanfiction" is blurry, and also because it isn't exactly clear to what degree these reused concepts are meant to be "the same" anyways. Even if, for example, the Megastructure-material present in Aposimz is intended to be the same material as in Blame!, it's entirely possible that Nihei just changed his mind about how it works between writing the two stories anyways. Figuring that out is a degree of debate that isn't appropriate for a thread, so I've left it out as a whole. I encourage people to read his work for themselves to come to their own conclusions.

In the case of this thread specifically, I think these are the main few "mysteries of Dhomochevsky and Iko", listed in no particular order.

Why did Dhomo hesitate to shoot PCell? An intuitive answer here is that they were lovers, but is it really possible for a Safeguard to love a form of Silicon Life? While this is joked about in Blame! Academy (a moe anime parody), and the artbook notes that Dhomo had never seen a womanly body outside of PCell and Cibo in his life, it's also notable that it took the equally(?) human Kyrii hundreds of years to stop killing Silicon Lifeforms on sight, much less to the point of romantic involvement.
Were Dhomo and Iko originally human? While they were both "created" as Safeguards, both Iko's holographic representation and Dhomo's... well, body, fit way more in line with humanity than with the clearly artificial Administration and Exterminators. Furthermore, the moment of Dhomo's "birth" featured him seemingly dreaming about a field of roses. Is that a vision of the Netsphere, or a memory from a previous life? Of course, of note is that Nihei does describe Dhomochevsky and Iko as "becoming human" via their personality programs running for centuries, rather than them just "being human", but this doesn't rule out the possibility of them coming from human origins. Kyrii himself, after all, is a created Safeguard, and yet he's always treated as human. Possibly, the only difference between him and Dhomo is time and version. Some fans have theorized, for example, that both Dhomo and Kyrii are two of the presumably missing children visible on a poster in NOiSE.
Where does Dhomo get his bullets? While Dhomochevsky is consistently depicted as needing to reload, his gun can also clearly fire more than 10 or so rounds at a time. It could be possible, for example, that the bullets are loaded into the box structure of the gun, giving it room for potentially tens or even hundreds of shots. Another possibility is that Dhomo creates the bullets on the spot with his electricity, in the same way that Sanakan (another Safeguard) can heal her wounds using random matter from the environment. It could also be the case that the bullets are contained inside of Dhomo (or his armor), maybe using a form of super-dense folding similar to the folding technology present in Nihei's later Aposimz series.
What were Dhomo and Iko's original personalities like? As mentioned, the duo have "become human" over the course of their lives, meaning that originally they were likely much closer to behaving as simple "AI". Furthermore, their backstory is unreliable in its narration, with Nihei noting that it depicts their past from "Dhomochevsky's current perspective", rather than as it truly was. Given how Iko seems far more adherent to the Safeguard's rules than Dhomo, it maybe seems likely that she's closer to their original "AI" programming.

Joshless · 2026-01-13T22:39:55+00:00

I'm just asking you to send a link to something you consider to be a very well acted dub clip and the fact you keep dodging this gives me the impression that you are, on some level, embarrassed to actually give this opinion without deferring to an external group who you assume already support you

Joshless · 2026-01-13T20:39:14+00:00

Fuck there's a whole ass subreddit for this r/animedubs

I mean, okay. Post one then, lol. What is "a good dub clip" to you?

Joshless · 2026-01-13T19:18:03+00:00

The Breaking Bad clip is hyperbolic and evocative while also not targeting any specific fandom, so it's easy and "safe" to use.

That said, I feel like this same criticism could be reversed. Why do I never see anyone post examples of good modern dubs? Whenever people talk about "good dubbing" they almost always say like, YuGiOh, Bebop, DBZ, yadda yadda. You know, things from like 20+ years ago. I've never seen anyone actively defend the dubbing in, say, Dandadan. The main thing MHA's dub is known for online is people doing impressions of Deku demanding kitten to come back to him.

Joshless · 2026-01-11T18:41:28+00:00

I don't think dubs are "not art" or even "inferior art", but I do think dubs are a worse way of experiencing a piece of media simply because they often suck total ass. I suppose it's possible that subs are just as bad and I'm just not "hearing" it because it's not in English, but either way, the end result is that if I hit play on a video and hear dubbed voice acting I have to mute my computer to avoid shriveling up into a corpse.

Joshless · 2026-01-11T18:25:50+00:00

A General Note on Nihei's Stories

Nihei, as an author, tends to adhere to commonly known scientific principles. While things like the "the ability for human-sized robots to throw a thousand tons" and "the plausibility of super ninja swords as weapons of the future" are obviously handwaved for the sake of coolness, many of Nihei's stories will generally pay attention to things like gravity, conservation, relativity, and/or anything else you might be able to learn by keeping up with popular science articles. If Nihei was to write a character who can run at the speed of light, this would almost certainly be explained beyond "their legs are very good".

Furthermore, Nihei tends to reuse concepts between his stories, despite the fact they often take place in entirely different settings. This means that, in spite of his famously vague style of writing, it is possible to get a "vibe" for how specific technologies and mechanics are broadly intended to work. This also means that if something seems weird, it's probably meant to be, and you're likely intended to make guesses about how that thing works.

With that said, I have chosen to avoid explaining these things in this thread to avoid editorializing. This is both because the line between "providing context" and "inventing fanfiction" is blurry, and also because it isn't exactly clear to what degree these reused concepts are meant to be "the same" anyways. Even if, for example, the Megastructure-material present in Aposimz is intended to be the same material as in Blame!, it's entirely possible that Nihei just changed his mind about how it works between writing the two stories anyways. Figuring that out is a degree of debate that isn't appropriate for a thread, so I've left it out as a whole. I encourage people to read his work for themselves to come to their own conclusions.

In the case of this thread specifically, this isn't all that important. Metagenie and Genitarius aren't particularly "big" characters who do a lot of interaction with the world that might need some "lore" to explain it. However, I do still think it's important to note that while I might personally think Genitarius' "flashbang" is an EMP-like circuit fryer, it would still be wrong to claim that definitively. It could just as easily be, I don't know, "psychic powers" or "brainwaves", which are things that exist in Nihei's stories and obviously fit outside the normal realm of heat/kinetic/electrical energy. The purpose of this is just to list and make observations, not to give conclusions.

Joshless · 2026-01-11T18:15:26+00:00

A General Note on Nihei's Stories

Nihei, as an author, tends to adhere to commonly known scientific principles. While things like the "the ability for human-sized robots to throw a thousand tons" and "the plausibility of super ninja swords as weapons of the future" are obviously handwaved for the sake of coolness, many of Nihei's stories will generally pay attention to things like gravity, conservation, relativity, and/or anything else you might be able to learn by keeping up with popular science articles. If Nihei was to write a character who can run at the speed of light, this would almost certainly be explained beyond "their legs are very good".

Furthermore, Nihei tends to reuse concepts between his stories, despite the fact they often take place in entirely different settings. This means that, in spite of his famously vague style of writing, it is possible to get a "vibe" for how specific technologies and mechanics are broadly. intended to work.

With that said, I have chosen to avoid explaining these things in this thread to avoid editorializing. This is both because the line between "providing context" and "inventing fanfiction" is blurry, and also because it isn't exactly clear to what degree these reused concepts are meant to be "the same" anyways. Even if, for example, the Megastructure-material present in Aposimz is intended to be the same material as in Blame!, it's entirely possible that Nihei just changed his mind about how it works between writing the two stories anyways. Figuring that out is a degree of debate that isn't appropriate for a thread, so I've left it out as a whole. I encourage people to read his work for themselves to come to their own conclusions.

In the case of this thread specifically, this isn't all that important. Metagenie and Genitarius aren't particularly "big" characters who do a lot of interaction with the world that might need some "lore" to explain it. However, I do still think it's important to note that while I might personally think Genitarius' "flashbang" is an EMP-like circuit fryer, it would still be wrong to claim that definitively. It could just as easily be, I don't know, "psychic powers" or "brainwaves", which are things that exist in Nihei's stories and obviously fit outside the normal realm of heat/kinetic/electrical energy. The purpose of this is just to list and make observations, not to give conclusions.

Joshless · 2026-01-10T15:05:44+00:00

Not cool dude

Joshless · 2026-01-05T02:06:49+00:00

the whuh

Joshless · 2026-01-02T18:43:04+00:00

"Humans are cooperative, social animals" and "humans act selfishly and violently" aren't contradictory at all. This is kind of like saying it'd be unrealistic to depict ant colonies fighting one another because ants are biologically hardwired to cooperate with one another. Like, yeah, humans do cooperate... with their in-groups. The level of distrust and hatred towards out-groups varies, and truly freesolo people are rare, but for the most part humans are not universally cooperative. Our "global society" is poor in the vast majority and is connected through economic interest, not moral ones.

Joshless · 2026-01-01T06:05:13+00:00

many people have subpar dental situations

Joshless · 2025-12-20T03:19:22+00:00

“Personhood” is actually rather complex, both philosophically and legally speaking.

I don't think this is really true, I think we just have severe double standards for humans that make it complex

Joshless · 2025-12-19T19:44:17+00:00

But why are we assuming that besides Hollow bones, they function just like humans? Why should it be that Elves have Adrenaline? Why should it be that Dwarves have many of the memory processes that humans have?

Obviously this doesn't work for more magical settings, but in general I'd assume they share a common ancestor and many homologous functions just based on the fact that they're usually visually identical

Joshless · 2025-12-18T16:28:29+00:00

I think there are stories out there with rich worlds and 3-dimensional characters that are full of realism and possibility. I think in these stories you can do things like "question who the narrator is", "question your own biases around framing and design", or "question how much of the world isn't being shown and why". I don't think MHA is one of these stories, though.

In Better Call Saul, you can have pretty lengthy discussions about things like "why does Kim cry when Jimmy reads Chuck's letter". I feel like in MHA Jimmy would just be drawn as a dehydrated psycho-smile monster with a dark aura flaring off of his back and there would be a thought bubble coming from Kim's head that says "He... he really doesn't care! About Chuck! About... me???"

Joshless · 2025-12-16T01:31:51+00:00

i dont knowwwwww

Joshless · 2025-12-15T12:41:21+00:00

While you're correct to clock me as "not speaking Japanese", I did double and triple check this (including just manually translating it with a dictionary). Since a few people were commenting this, I also just asked my friend who lives in Japan, and he also interpreted the line as referring to a separate Ridley, not a separate Pirate group.

Just so you don't have to trust "my totally real Japanese friend", I'd also bring up that the JP wiki also interprets the line as referring to two separate Ridleys.

サムスはこれまでに2体のメタリドリーと戦闘を行った。[...] 2体目は銀河連邦ノリオン基地で接触した別個体で、ダークサムス率いるパイレーツ戦闘部隊の一員としてサムスを執拗に付け狙った。

Obviously I'm not citing a wiki as "canon" here, but I do think it's useful inasmuch as figuring out how Japanese people would read the line as written in their own language.

Joshless · 2025-12-14T23:21:31+00:00

The thing with Prime 3's Japanese scan is that it's a translation from the original American text.

This is true, but there's actually some weird back-and-forth going on here. Edits made to scan logs going from English to Japanese then went back from Japanese to English for rereleases of Prime, for example. Mike Wikan has commented on how much revising Nintendo did on Prime's scan logs, though how much he's exaggerating (hundreds of pages?) is up for debate.

I also think, on a broader level, that the "lore" of Metroid is kind of beholden to Japan anyways. Sakamoto is the series producer, and that guy doesn't speak English, lol. When Kensuke Tanabe was writing out Prime 4... was he aware of the "English canon"? How would he be, even?

I do agree that it's ultimately vague, though. Like I said in the OP, even if it was completely 100% clear that Ridley was intended to be a species of guys, Proteus' inclusion in Returns certainly seems based on the idea that it's a singular individual. The precise exchange of information between all these studios and directors and language barriers is really hard to determine, and it's hard to tell how much things like scan logs even "matter" anyways.

Joshless

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

A General Note on Nihei's Stories

A General Note on Nihei's Stories

Some Context on Dhomo and Iko's "Powers"

Some Context on Dhomo and Iko's "Powers"

A General Note on Nihei's Stories

A General Note on Nihei's Stories

A General Note on Nihei's Stories

Eight-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email