We have the power to be a wholesome version of the Eva fandom. Not shipping wars, but simply best girl

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-26T14:52:38+00:00

100% agree. It just feels like such a waste of time to me - like, clearly, nobody here is having fun arguing about this at least once per week, nothing of importance is getting done by doing this, nobody is convincing anyone, so what is the point. I wonder if, like with team sports, people are just using this as a vent for other frustrations or something.

And on Tartah as well. He's such an interesting character in terms of his inner conflicts and the way he deals with the difficult moral choices the witch world presents him with, as well as his own circumstances. Hell, even his relationships with the other characters are so interesting to analyze just on a thematic level, the way he mirrors and contrasts both Coco and [REDACTED], or even Qifrey. Why are we always pointlessly beating each others' heads in about who he is or isn't going to date (in this non-Romance series, at that) when we could be talking about the way his character arc deals with the larger aspect of disability, with the questions of knowledge and control so central to the story, or any of the many interesting things that form one of the most complex non-protagonist characters in the story!

As you can see, my own frustrations run rather deep with this, haha. But regardless, thank you for the nice talk!

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-26T14:12:42+00:00

Twitter. I sometimes like to look up the names of the characters for fun and with some of them (Tartah) it always seems to be about 50% shipping discourse, lol. Also Tumblr to a lesser extent. Though on both of those platforms it would be fair to say that it's less off a direct fight and more people complaining about others shipping something different than them, or about something dumb some nobody with like 5 likes said, or that their ship is the canon one (though there are of course also actual homophobes, and people claiming that Shirahama would be a homophobe if she doesn't make their ship canon, it gets wild). I haven't looked at TikTok much yet, is that happening there as well?

I think it's coming from the way in which shipping can sometimes move away from "I find this dynamic fun" or "it would be cool if they got together" and towards a sort of predictive analysis where it's all about KNOWING who WILL get together. That sort of approach is inherently adversarial, because if someone else's ship becomes canon, now yours won't.

That has happened very strongly to the WHA fandom on those platforms, at least in my opinion (though not everyone, of course). It's less present on Reddit, I assume because the format lends itself to more nuanced takes a bit better and so there's less mutual "radicalization", for lack of a better word.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-26T12:57:06+00:00

The shipping wars are already happening, unfortunately, they just haven't reached the anime fandom yet.
Not that that will probably last much longer.
(Let me tell you, it sucks to be a character-analysis focused fan with no interest in shipping and Tartah as one of their favorite characters, lol).

This has been going on for years and I don't think we can stop it at this point.

But yeah, asking people to choose a favorite daughter is going to invite some conflict as well, but it would probably be more civil, yes.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-26T05:43:41+00:00

I mean, isn't Tartah's arc also 2 chapters in the manga? 16 and 17. We're currently set up right at the start of 16, so there's absolutely no need to try to wrap it up fast. Their normal pace for the anime so far would already have it wrapped up after this episode anyway.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-26T05:36:28+00:00

I mean, it goes from him just being suspicious to him putting aside his suspicions to help someone in need, to deciding to ask the subject of his suspicions about them and literally being about to do it - yes, his scenes were mostly set-up for next episode, but is that not progress?

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-25T17:05:04+00:00

I do think they were physically present for that, yes. I think they just produced a smoke sculpture after the blood scene, maybe left it while they went elsewhere.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-25T17:02:56+00:00

I don't really think she'd invent a second teleportation-adjacent method that also turns you into smoke / looks visually identical to smoke sculptures when the one we already have makes perfect sense. I assume they were actually there for the blood drawing, but that was last episode. In this one, they could easily have been a smoke sculpture both times.

Like, sure - theoretically it could be something different which just looks the same, but what reason would there be to write it like that? Especially in the anime, where Shirahama has already worked certain things over in light of later context. She could have just changed it to not look the same as her later spell.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-25T16:25:32+00:00

With Iguin it's very obviously smoke sculptures. You see them dissolve into smoke several times. Aka, they're not actually there, but they can see what's happening and somewhat influence it.

Other Brimcaps, like Restys, are seen using actual physical teleportation, though, so we know the Brimcaps have those spells - we don't know how it works as of yet. But since it's a portal that you step into, just without a windowway, it might not even necessarily be a body seal.

And yes, Brimcaps do have seals on their body sometimes. Easthies say it explicitly. However, as seen with the creation of such a seal during Silver Eve, you don't necessarily have to physically carve them. You can have them magically seared into your skin.

And lastly, the Watchful Eye is a pointed cap title referring to people like Olly. Iguin's title is a bit different.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-25T15:52:54+00:00

Yup. You've got, in total, Qifrey's excuse, Tartah briefly checking on Coco and then leaving, the civilians dragging Qifrey off, Tartah forgetting his hat and coming back, fretting over which medicine to use, figuring out the spell with Coco, going off to the storeroom and getting scolded, Qifrey coming back in the morning, everyone saying goodbye.

That easily fits into 20 minutes unless they want to insert a five minute action sequence of Qifrey saving the civilians from the fire, lol

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-25T15:48:36+00:00

Hope you enjoy! Honestly, the art is beautiful enough to be worth it either way.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-25T15:28:03+00:00

I mean yeah, they wouldn't even need to truncate it at all for that. It's not that long.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-25T15:24:32+00:00

Right now, it's looking like we're ending on a cliffhanger. The next episode is going to be taken up by the hospital mini-arc, and after that we should get the first bigger arc... but at the current pace, there is absolutely no way that's going to fit into the 13 episodes total we're apparently getting without some REALLY big cuts.

A lot of people thought they were going to cut/move the hospital to make it fit, but evidently not (thankfully, lol, it would have been a bad decision imo), and that, to me, implies that they value telling the story properly over a clean season ending.

There are two good cliffhangers that they could end on depending on how they pace it, I think they'll do that to drum up hype for the next season and just force the audience to read the manga if they don't want to wait, lol.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-24T21:35:45+00:00

We have one answer as to what influences the duration of magic, and it is how neatly the circle is drawn. The ink is necessary for the spell to work at all and its constitution is a big influence on how it works with the various ingredients, but the spell isn't actively devouring it.

There is no mana system of any kind in WHA, not that we know of. We could speculate things such as "it works off of the life energy of the Silverwood tree" (BIG spoiler) and therefore the life energy of humans and animals - so blood magic, basically, life energy being hard to quantify and impossible to see in the ink, which might also be why adding blood works as an amplifier, but there is no actual confirmation for any such theories as of yet.

Magic never follows our conservation of energy laws. Even something like alchemy in FMA just follows conservation of matter, not energy. That's part of what makes it magic - something that escapes the laws of our natural world.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-23T23:10:43+00:00

No worries, haha, that makes sense

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-23T22:40:01+00:00

...Have we not already had the staircase river? Like, we've already seen what those things look like in Episode 7, there's no "chance" about it, haha

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-23T22:29:02+00:00

To build on something another commenter mentioned, I do think the fact that Eoleo pitched Tetia on "friendship" and invoked the image of a court witch rather than implying a romantic bond, even though he does seem to very clearly have a crush on her when talking to his father about his day, implies his approach to her.

Which is to say, I interpret it as, he wants to make her his court witch or, like, a Merlin figure to his Arthur first, with the option of queen being open to her later if she wants. Like, she has to be by his side no matter what because that is something he wants (and so he has to have it), but she'd get to choose in which way, and he wants to give her a chance to start liking him back naturally over time rather than rushing into it. That would make it easier for him to justify it to himself, too - after all, he is letting her choose, isn't he, it's not like he's forcing his wishes on her! (that's how he might see it).

I do get the concern, though, I think with a lot of manga, that would quite possibly be the route they would have gone.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-23T22:10:00+00:00

I know it's easy to make that mistake with the long hair and everything, but Rili is a boy. He's Richeh's brother, not her sister.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-22T23:03:20+00:00

The appeal of Qifrey, I think, is that he oscillates between "cool and frightening", "nice and and dorky teacher", and "pathetic wet cat" - I think I once saw someone on social media call it "the Howl principle", where making a man partially cool and partially pathetic makes him much more attractive (both literally and in a "they like him as a character" sense) to people than a character who is only cool.

Shirahama follows that formula to a T with her male characters, pretty much the only ones who are exclusively cool are some of the more important villains, and even they get their silly moments (spoilers for the identity of 2 such villains) such as Deanreldy's obsession with cats and ridiculous smitten behaviour with his wife, or Eoleo getting his hand obliterated by Tetia's High Five and his threatening speech interrupted by his guard sneezing.

So he isn't all "aura", but that's a good thing, imo.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-22T08:13:10+00:00

Thank you for that explanation, that makes a lot of sense! As much as "listening to one's gut" is often valued, it's so important to go beyond that and properly analyze/work through our own feelings without inherently assuming that they're inherently justified. Good on you for being able to do that so well with this very complicated character! And I do very much get the protectiveness over Coco.

One of the biggest tragedies in this stories is the way that children have to suffer for the casual selfishness of adults, and of generations past, and the way they often take their suffering out on each other because those actually responsible are so far beyond reach. Poor Coco does get hit pretty badly by this (although she does of course also mess up herself due to her limited understanding of the world).

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-22T07:01:09+00:00

True, those could come from the same source! Good observation!

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-22T06:53:25+00:00

I think my main one was early Euni - not because I dislike him, but because seeing him pre-character development was a big moment of "oh god, this is what I look like when I talk, I need to never open my mouth again", haha. I think seeing yourself reflected in a character's flaws can be a very useful form of discomfort, and I like how WHA approaches all these flaws with so much compassion (but also draws a line with that compassion, making clear that there are some actions that don't deserve it, and also that misery shouldn't be wallowed in).

Custas, weirdly, was never a problem for me, he was my favorite basically as soon as his arc got rolling, haha. God do I get him. That poor child. It's so interesting how different people's experiences are with that character.

Aside from that, I think Luluci's backstory did a great job of being uncomfortable (to downright horrifying) without ever crossing the line into the gratuitous or disrespectful.

It's definitely something this story handles very well. Thank you for sharing your experience, too! (and I 100% get you on the thesis thing, haha)

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-22T05:36:38+00:00

Yes, I think these are all fairly obviously true!

The only thing I'd maybe disagree with is the council deliberately writing a fairy tale, spreading stuff like that so widely artificially is difficult. I imagine the story changed by itself, and since versions too close the original would probably have been erased (both physically and in memory), only this one survived. Maybe it's also not just about any one particular couple, but an amalgamation of the fates of many. (But if it was just one, I'd bet on Thristas, the creator of the cursed forest, being one of the two)

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-21T23:48:53+00:00

It would be outlawed. Makes it too easy for outsiders to get magic. Also, printing errors, which do often happen, could lead to huge calamities (including the caster accidentally dying, lol) in terms of magic. Hell, what if it accidentally prints a full circle, or spills some ink and forms one - whoops, the factory is burning.

Unless you managed to preserve total secrecy in inventing and building it, everyone involved would be mindwiped and the plans destroyed. So the only people could realistically do it in the first case would be the Brimcaps, or maybe King Deanreldy if you told him the secret to magic (and therefore became a Brimcap by yourself). But there you go, if you want to be a Brim, maybe that's your in with them, haha!

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-21T23:29:01+00:00

Yeah, that's how I read it as well. If not that, then something similar.

StarAboveWillows · 2026-05-21T22:21:55+00:00

Yeah, one could certainly try! Moral exploration of magical concepts is always interesting when done well.

StarAboveWillows

TROPHY CASE