i like just the way you are

Title: Stephen King's 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi
Universe: 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi, Kamen Rider Zi-o, Akumaizer 3
Character(s): Ohara Asako, Iwadate Mosuke, Hanako, MJ-kun, Tokiwa Junichiro (Takeda Rinichi), Munakata Masaki, Chibibara, Yuko
Rating: U
Warnings: N/A
Summary: To the children, the town was their whole world. Ohara Asako, once the daughter of a local neighbourhood barber, now a member of the Alchemys Union's Investigation Department is chasing the trail of counterfeit Chemy cards, yet as she uncovers a plot that overshadows her future she is forced more and more to confront the secrets of her past. "Stephen King's 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi will overwhelm you... Characters so real you feel you are reading about yourself... scenes to be read in a well-lit room only." - Los Angeles Times. "A great book... a landmark in American literature." - Chicago Sun-Times. "The Moby-Dick of horror novels." - Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
Length: 1209, 1099, & 865 words
Author's Notes: Like doubling down on a joke you've told yourself that no one else finds funny. also: external links 1, 2, 3



( 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi )

( 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi, Kamen Rider Zi-o )

( 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi, Akumaizer 3 )

I promise these are the last two little fics I will post about this for now. As an indication of how on it I am right now, I've literally put in the dates for every big skating competition in my calendar and I very excited about the ISU Junior World Championships this week, and I have been quietly listening to the streams with one ear throughout these past two days. Again, I don't know anything about figure skating really, but I looked through the roster and realised that Hong Kong and Japan are both sending athletes to this competition and I started thinking... one day these kids might actually be at the Olympics, and wouldn't it be really great to be able to look back at that and think "Oh, I remember when they competed in 2026." So far, from the men's short programme, my favourite has been Nikita Sheiko of Israel, and from the women's programme, I thought New Zealand's Renee Tsai should have ranked higher, but I was obviously supporting Hong Kong's Ariel Guo. I felt like I was suddenly seeing behind the curtain seeing the lady who makes the flower crowns for athletes at almost every one of these big events, and learning that Thailand's Phattaratida Kaneshiga now trained in Niigata, and Japan's Oka Mayuko came from the same clique as Chiba Mone. It's kind of scary for me to reflect on how young some of these kids are, it's kind of crazy seeing Italain pair skaters gliding across the ice to Ghibli music also. I feel like I'm learning a lot about how pop culture bakes into people's lives lately; the people who chose these pieces for the free skates, I'm sitting here watching and listening and trying to understand how these songs informed those choices, what they mean to them, what they're trying to tell me.

Everyone has been very kind to me whilst I'm going through this and beating myself up for no reason about simply liking something that my friends like. I feel very self-conscious in "sports circles," having been a deeply unatheletic child, but I really fell in love here and it was only when a wiser, kinder friend phrased their own enjoyment of sports as being about narratives, as being about the hope that "your guy can win against the other guy"—I'm paraphrasing here—that I began to forgive myself a little for being here. The clarity of that statement just really resonated with me, it made sense to me. Through dance and movement, I felt like I understood the stories that skaters during the Olympics were trying to tell and that really hit me heard. I love storytelling, guys, I love exploring different ways of telling stories and... well, the Olympics felt like a masterclass in telling stories for me. I also love the fact that the pairs skating has moves with names like "death spiral" because instantly that makes me feel right at home. I do, however, promise to post something else soon, I again have a bunch of things that I've just stockpiled, and I recently watched all of 5 Nen 3 Kumi Mahogumi, a Toei tokusatsu show from 1976, and I really, really liked it, it stayed in my head for a long longer than I thought it would, becoming a quiet favourite of late.

On Monday, I stumbled across the collaboration between KATE Tokyo's lipstick brand, Lip Monster, and Kamen Rider for an advert featuring Amane Tensho as Mikazuki Nayuta, previously from the Girls Remix specials, and I was really blown away by it. It felt like Kamen Rider and I felt it did not compromise on the idea of Nayuta being both feminine and really, really mad with her lot in life. I feel these brief ten minutes recontextualised the character and ignored certain aspects of Girls Remix in order to allow her to stand on her own, and I'm really okay with this. I think everyone knows that I didn't enjoy the Girls Remix specials and I'm really, really over director Sakamoto Koichi's "quirks," so... yeah, I'm good with this, there's a specific moment in which I feel Amane Tensho's real life family connexions influence how you are supposed to interpret her character and I'm absolutely fine with that too. I never thought Kamen Rider would try and sell me lipstick, but here we are.