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#sfmt2025 42. Getting caught up with the Fabulous Beasts manhua Spoilers in the notes screenshots. It's kinda very popcorn-media, in mostly a good way, as getting endeared to the characters makes the rare gutpunches hit. Veery looking forward to the anime adapting more of this.
Apr 27, 2025, 4:35 PM
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"text": "#sfmt2025\n42. Getting caught up with the Fabulous Beasts manhua\nSpoilers in the notes screenshots. It's kinda very popcorn-media, in mostly a good way, as getting endeared to the characters makes the rare gutpunches hit. Veery looking forward to the anime adapting more of this.",
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"alt": "Comparing this to a sitcom is very anglocentric of me to do....and a very reductive \"it's just like this!!\"-ism to do, but at times, downing thirty chapters or more at once, it really does feel like a sitcom. I'm not a sitcom aficionado or anything, but like any American with some amount of \"white\" blood in me, I've seen a few. It's an effective format - endear an audience to a status quo of characters, shake it up and add drama or spice when needed, rinse and repeat. The hard part is making the new status quo feel fresh enough without losing what makes the original status quo so comfy, funny, etc.\nI'm presupposing that this lens fits this manhua - and maybe an argument can be made for saying it doesn't apply - but it neatly fits and explains the feelings I've had reading this manhua. I get attached to the status quo established at first, and I love it. Tianlu/Pipi is a cute, gluttonous menace, and gets kinda dog/kid coded for hijinks. Sibuxiang is the caretaker, money hungry, laid-back, and old-man coded. And Tu Ye is Desperate Gay and Rich. Add a rotating cast of side characters that stay at and visit the deerman's store. Yay! I love it. But no one can, nor should, keep that status quo for 1000+ chapters. And yes, part of the comic's appeal is that the characters are very cute furry designs. The chinese mythology premise also adds a certain playfulness, since the same culture that we humans enjoy are both present and also subverted constantly with chinese mythology and also, These are Animals. They hunt, mark territory, etc. ",
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"alt": "Anyway, back to the status quo. There's something a little melancholy about enjoying the status quo shake-ups and then looking back and realizing that because of things unraveling, the comfy status quo that you enjoyed before is like...gone. Like Michael Scott leaving The Office, or any character introduced in Community's pilot that's not Pierce leave Community. I won't say that the manhua is worse off for it, as characters can't leave a show like actors do - but when the manhua has a dramatic backstory that ends up showing that the status quo established at the start was actually a tenuous plot to control one of the pillars of the status quo, well, you kinda have a duty to eventually pull at those strings and see things irreparably changed. For the worse, for the better? After 1000 chapters, it's yet to be seen, because god, there was a Lot of stalling. Before the real shake-ups happen sometime in the second half of the first 1000 chapters, it starts to feel like the creative wheels start to sputter a bit as new characters are introduced pretty rapidly and the amount of side stuff happening balloons quite a bit, kinda aimlessly, to the point where even alternate universe stuff starts happening. Most of it gets dropped and the side stuff starts intertwining and \"mattering\" in a plot sense (not to be a \"but bro the plot, the main story\" guy), so it seems like the creator eventually got around to figuring out how to tell the story they want to. Now the story \"moves forward\" actually quite a bit in between the quota of always hitting a major-ish story beat every 100 chapters. Characters get shuffled around in meaningful ways, advance their own stories, sometimes even hit a poignant emotional beat out of nowhere. But still...man, I miss the days when Tianlu was as Deermans. ",
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"alt": "Anyway, I hope to see a lot going forward for this manhua. While chapter 1000 was a major story beat, perhaps one of The defining story beats for the manhua, it's clear there's still some to go, a few mysteries to unpack. I'm not convinced that the mostly new crew for Deerman's store will be as endearing as the crew of the past, but at least everyone I care about is still relevant to the manhua. And while I'm sure this manhua will never stop ballooning the character count...there's still more hits than misses, and the ones that get more appearances tend to be more enjoyable than not. I just hope Tianlu gets to reconcile with deer Sibuxiang in the end!!",
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