Trying To Convince My Dnd Friends To Watch Dungeon Meshi...

izutsumi is such a fun character bc she hates being a beastman and desperately wants the curse that turned her into one undone, and you're probably thinking "well being part animal sounds fun actually but ig i can see where she's coming from, developing these new physical characteristics due to a curse must feel a bit uncomfortable or even violating of one's self image and relationship with one's own body" but then you learn she's not a cat girl she's a girl cat and it all makes more sense if i was just living my jolly little life as a jolly little cat and one day a curse burdened me with human knowledge and awareness of being i'd be pretty pissed too!!

And then she did. Happy pride.

(Alternate versions under cut)

I think what people miss about Laios/Izutsumi interactions and why she doesn't like him at first and thinks he's creepy, isn't because he's a grown man petting a teenage girl, but because he's so fascinated with the Wrong Parts of her.

Izutsumi hates her cat half. It was what made her a circus freak, what made her mother abandon her, what made Maizuru put a literal leash on her (from her perspective). She said it outright in the sauna scene: nobody would want to look at a beast. Her feline parts are freaky, gross and she wants them cut off because nobody wants to look at her the way she is. It's teenage body disatisfaction turned up to 11 + actual CPTSD.

But Laios does! Everybody knows that Laios would, given half a chance, absolutely love to look Izutsumi all over! The party knows it's not in the way a normal man would look at a pretty girl, though they still don't like the optics, but Izutsumi would probably be miles more okay with that. Because then Laios would like the half of her she thinks has actual value, and she's a teenage girl coming from a Certain Kind Of Society and that would be affirming to her more positive self-image, whether or not she felt any interest in him.

But Laios doesn't even register her as An Adult Member Of The Opppsite Sex, partly because he's autistic, partly because she's young enough that he sees her as a kid and partly because she really does act more like a cat than a human and THAT is the real stinger. Because here's a healthy young man who actually wants to look at her strutting around in armor bikini and he's interested in the wrong part of her. He's not interested in what makes her a girl, he's interested in what makes her a cat, and THAT'S what rubs Izutsumi the wrong way. At least the other party members look at her like a girl with some extra appendages, but Laios sees her as a cat with some human appendages (which we learn she actually is, thanks to Lycion) and that just feeds her self-hate.

Like, eventually she learns that Laios is just a freak, and when he's in Team Leader mode he treats her like a proper party member and she warms up to him. But the damage he accidentally did, confirming that only the parts of her she considers undesireable are what makes him want to look, are definitely contributing to her teenage angst.

Having a Laios moment but thinking about the implications of Izutsumi. Do you think she could squeeze into impossibly smaller cracks? Like how cats can? And I wonder what her flexibility is compared to other tall men. lol I’m just imagining her forcing her way through the underside of a door

From how she moves I think she has above average flexibility for a tallman, I think possibly she works like a cat (if the head passes the rest of the body can too)

Speaking of cats the way they flip in the air is really interesting!

"The photos revealed that the cats turn over by twisting around the middle and rotating the front and back halves separately. By controlling the amount each part turns, they’re able achieve a net rotation while still keeping their total angular momentum constant."

Is this what Izutsumi is doing here? Her front does rotate first and is followed by her legs <3 (thought she wasn't upside down she fixes her position midair very well)

also look at this gif from wikipedia

something i see a lot in the dungeon meshi fandom is attributing izutsumi's personality traits to her being a cat. and while ryoko kui definitely gave her cat-like traits intentionally, she's a talented enough writer to also give her a backstory with reasons for those traits. for example, her tendency to only do and eat what she wants.

izutsumi's character arc revolves around freedom. she grew up caged in a circus. and although she was fed enough to survive, this was only because a living catgirl attracted more customers than a dead one.

[id: first image is izutsumi as a child framed behind bars and standing on all fours, making it clear how skinny she is. a hand in the foreground holds out a bowl of what appears to be kibble. narration says “thrown in a cage and given food every once in a while… is that what you would call ‘being raised’?” in the second image she is now sitting on the floor of her cage and eating a rat. end id]

look how skinny she is! we see her eating what appears to be... kibble? oats? and then a rat that she possibly caught for herself. she had no choice but to eat anything she could.

[id: part of the dungeon meshi manga. a slightly older izutsumi is tied to a post and tade sits next to her to say "we've got a roof over our heads, beds, food, and clothes. they've got everything here. is there someplace nicer than this out there?" izutsumi thnks for a moment and says "i hate that someone's already decided what i'm going to eat tomorrow. my name, the clothes i wear, where i sleep, where i go next... here, all of that's been decided by another person... even though, come tomorrow, i might want to eat something else instead. that's why i'm leaving." at this, tade cries out in shock. end id]

when she's taken into the nakamoto household they begin to treat her much better. she's on about equal footing as tade, who also had a rough living situation before being taken in, and tade loves it there! they get healthy and tasty food and they're not sleeping in cages. but izutsumi still isn't free. she can pass off her chores and vegetables to tade and disobey in any way she can but she can't leave. maizuru even put a collar on her, further dehumanizing and trapping izutsumi.

when izutsumi joins laios's party, she's finally 'free', but it's not the kind of freedom she wants. she has to eat even more food she doesn't want or else she'll starve. but the difference now is that she's can leave at any time, and if she stays, she's treated as an equal. they're not feeding her monsters because they see her as inferior. they're all eating the same food so they can reach their goal(s). and this is part of izutsumi ultimately learning that in order to do what she wants, she has to be willing t do the things she doesn't want to

Dungeon meshi does such a great job at displaying platonic intimacy. Like all the characters in our main group are comfortable around each other by the end of the season. And we get to see them get more comfortable the more they open up to one another. Allowing us to have cute scenes like this showing a normal form of trust that's built over time.

'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

Maybe its because I'm bitter or because I just left a fandom that reduced one of the main characters to a one off joke when the POINT is that they're complex but I hate how this fandom treats Izutsumi.

I hate how some people who interacted with the fandom before watching the anime thought that she didn't even speak because EVERYONE just draws her as a cute stupid cat whose personality is just being a cat

Again, maybe I'm just bitter, but I hate how the most common joke is the "Izutsumi: izutsumi" cause apparently no one can be bothered to actually consider her thoughts and feelings and personality.

Like yeah I'm not saying it can't be funny but it quickly becomes tiring when she's reduced to just that

Especially when her entire arc is about finding her identity as a person and as part of a community, finding a balance between her human and cat souls because she's both but also neither. Especially when canonically she's ashamed of the one time she behaved like just a silly little cat (golden kingdom)

Some alien bat dromaeosaur doodles

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.