Scene 5
? I don’t have a mouth in my midsection! I’m not Bemstar, for crying out loud!
Bemstar is a kaiju from the Ultraman franchise, originating in its fourth entry, Return of Ultraman, which aired in 1971! A consistent feature of Bemstar’s design is the relatively small, pentagonal mouth on its midsection, which is what Andou’s alluding to.
? “Common sense to assume stuff hidden under loose clothes!”
Feitan—the character who Andou quickly explains he’s quoting—is an antagonist from Hunter x Hunter, known for his skill as a torturer and his grammatically awkward, stilted manner of speaking.
Scene 6
? It was also sure to guarantee that the character would be handsome under the mask—well, Gein aside, anyway.
In this context, Gein refers to an antagonist from Rurouni Kenshin! Gein constantly wears a mask throughout the majority of his appearances in the series, but said mask is eventually broken, revealing him to be a rather shriveled old man.
? Like Tuxedo Mask!
Tuxedo Mask is a mask and tuxedo-clad love interest in Takeuchi Naoko’s Sailor Moon! Though he’s definitely a heartthrob in the context of the series, aspects of Tuxedo Mask’s character—from his outfit, to his persona, to his tendency to enter and exit the scene out of nowhere—can come across as, well...a bit dorky, from a certain perspective (a perspective it seems likely Tomoyo shares).
? If I had to describe it in short, I guess I’d made it look a little like Kurei’s mask in Flame of Recca?
Flame of Recca is a manga created by Anzai Nobuyuki! The manga ran from 1995 to 2002, and it was adapted into an anime series that ran from 1997 to 1998. Kurei is initially an antagonist who wears a mostly flat, white mask with a single eye hole on its left side and four large, painted-on yellow eyes on the right.
? Since when did putting a mask on make you scream your head off? It’s not like it’s made out of stone or anything!
This is, of course, a JoJo’s reference, shouting out the stone mask that turns Dio into a vampire at the beginning of Part 1!
? Oh, and it makes you look sorta like an Arrancar too.
The Arrancar are a type of being in Bleach! Specifically, they’re Hollows who have managed to remove their masks, gaining tremendous powers in the process. Presumably due to the mask removal theme, most of the Arrancar have partial or broken masks worked into their character designs.
? People don’t power up by eating other people, assuming they aren’t ghouls!
This line is in reference to Tokyo Ghoul, a manga by Ishida Sui! In the context of that series, ghouls are humanlike creatures who can’t eat anything other than human flesh, and they gain supernatural strength—and sometimes powers—upon doing so.
? Just as I decided to ask Sayumi where that old ritual came from...
The origins of the old ritual in question are somewhat unclear! Some sources claim that writing the character for “person” three times in your hand represents the audience, and swallowing them helps minimize their presence in your mind, while others try to justify the practice using more complicated plays on words. It’s just one of those things that’s been around for so long that it’s hard to say definitively what brought it about to begin with.
Scene 8
? There was another, ultimate guard pulling the strings of the Four Heavenly Guards this whole time, and now I have to fight him too?!
The Four Heavenly Kings (or Guards) is a very long-standing and widespread trope in Japanese fiction! This isn’t even the first time it’s come up in this series, as it so happens—the literary club girls formed a Heavenly Kings set in the video game they made for Andou back in volume 4, as well. The source of the trope, as well as its most common go-to translation, traces back to entities from Buddhist theology who are believed to watch over the world, each one representing a cardinal direction of north, south, east, or west. The term shows up just about everywhere in media these days, with perhaps the most accessible example being the Elite Four from Pokémon.
...And, that’s all for now! As always, I’ll see you in the next volume!
-Tristan Hill
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