Hibiscus, Cornflower and Orchid by Harley-Chaplin.
yay redraws
(i can’t get it to upload as a photoset cries)
This may just be my favorite bit of official art from this franchise. It captures a moment of what I would have liked the story to be as, bonus in featuring some of my favorite flowers.
Logically, Lucia would have been oblivious to all of land life, and would do eccentric things like step of the garden path to sit down between the plants to enjoy the beauty and the sparkles.
Granted, this particular scene couldn’t happen because the water drops would turn her to a mermaid, but there are a myriad other ways the dry world could enrapture and stump mermaids. Culture shock, technology, a whole different natural environment, inability to write and read, never having gone to school or dealt with money. Seeing them blend in so perfectly was disappointing.
I always thought about how weird it was that they blended in so well. Even weirder is that while Lucia had people to fall back on, Hanon and Rina came on land without any help. Two 14 year old girls without any kind of family or guardian starting school, living in their own apartments, somehow making money to buy stuff like food? How didn’t anybody think that’s slightly strange?
This picture is actually originally part of a calender image that included Rina and Hanon, but sadly the only thing I have found over the years is this tiny little thing.
They’ve actually got apartments in the anime? That’s even weirder indeed. In the manga Hanon’s guardian is Nicola as well and she works at the bath house with Lucia. Rina got herself into an exchange student program (never see the family she lives with, but it is something that can be arranged long distance) and earns her money at the Awami temple.
That said, the mermaid kingdoms would need some hardcore document forgery skills to make any of that happen, and if they’ve got those options, it should have been a piece of cake for the pink court to dig into news archives and find out whether any little boys mysteriously survived a sinking ship at this location and that time. Would’ve made it a lot less of a contrived coincidence that Lucia ends up in Kaito’s class.
Ah, too bad, the full one looks lovely.
This may just be my favorite bit of official art from this franchise. It captures a moment of what I would have liked the story to be as, bonus in featuring some of my favorite flowers.
Logically, Lucia would have been oblivious to all of land life, and would do eccentric things like step of the garden path to sit down between the plants to enjoy the beauty and the sparkles.
Granted, this particular scene couldn’t happen because the water drops would turn her to a mermaid, but there are a myriad other ways the dry world could enrapture and stump mermaids. Culture shock, technology, a whole different natural environment, inability to write and read, never having gone to school or dealt with money. Seeing them blend in so perfectly was disappointing.
POP QUIZ: Name a bunch of narrative elements guaranteed to make pre-teen and teenage girls fork over all their money.
- mermaids
- princesses
- pop stardom
- Sailor Moon
- foofy dresses
- shirtless surfer dudes
- forbidden romance
- Gackt
In 2003, Michiko Yokote and Pink Hanamori had the bright idea to mash all these things into one guaranteed-to-sell manga called Mermaid Melody. In fact, it’s possible they were a little too confident in the failproof nature of their brainchild, because they don’t seem to have put much effort into making it, y’know, not suck.
(click the link to read more about the suckage)
I don’t understand why Lucia was the leader in Mermaid Melody. She wasn’t the most powerful Princess, and no more special than the others.submitted by anon
Rina would have made more sense, out of the main trio, if only because she’s the most mature. Out of universe, Lucia’s just the leader because the author says so, I suppose in universe it could be blamed on everyone subconsciously feeling her destiny as Aqua Regina, but that begs the question what the world was smoking when it decided she was the best candidate.
As an audience redwire, she isn’t ideal to showcase the events because she had very little to do with either of the two conflicts. In the first arc, she dated the guy who turned out to be a family member of the villain, in the second arc, the same guy become a love interest to a girl who ended up being battery to the villain. Any other unique plot involvement she has were choices made by authority figures on base of how special she was (the harp, Seira’s custody), while the emotional core and the actions that change the course are carried by secondary and even tertiary characters.
I’ve got this goal to draw at least seven scenes from each story that I write. These belong to Grave Mentor.
This closes off a project that I started in early 2010. All in all, Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch was entertaining in that the manga provided both material that I liked to draw, and a setting that was interesting to deconstruct.
While I like how some of the images turned out, in retrospect I’m not satisfied since they don’t really give a good feel what the story is about, and doesn’t really show there’s four focus characters (Seira, Michel, Lucia and Michal). I didn’t really think it through.
Lucia from Mermaid Melody is one my most hated anime characters. I can’t stand how weak and male dependent she is. My worst memory of her is during the first season finale, when she was trying to rescue Kaito, and she just kept on going “Kaito, save me!” over and over again even though he was the one needing rescuing.submitted by anon
Word, though she’s not severe enough for me personally to hate her. Rather, I dislike how she was written.
Both anime and manga are based on a story concept from Michiko Yokote, and Lucia’s passivity seems to stem directly from this draft. I have not seen the anime, but the manga has the same problem. Kaito is abducted and when Lucia finds him, she doesn’t do anything till Kaito wakes up and vows that he will protect her. The seventh volume also reveals that during their first meeting, when she supposedly saved him, it was actually him who got her to keep going when the waters got too much for her.
What bothered me the most is a scene that I’m pretty sure wasn’t in the anime. In the manga’s second arc, they run into a villain who uses physical force. Kaito is reduced to a bloody pulp on the ground within seconds. Lucia responds to this by weeping over Kaito’s prone body and begging for it to stop, at which point the villain tries to steal her pearl. These pearls hold enough power to level an oceanic kingdom, but Lucia doesn’t even try using this power to defend herself. She also is hosting the soul of a toddler mermaid who already lost her pearl. This toddler uses what little power she still has to manifest and throw back the villain in defense of Lucia and then creates a magical escape route for her and the others. Lucia was supposed to protect her, not the other way around, and since she still had her pearl she had the means to do so far better than Seira.
Physical weakness doesn’t equate personality weakness and most definitely not character weakness. However, Lucia is an absurdly powerful entity who just doesn’t use her vast potential because the author wants her to be in the protected damsel role.
Lucia’s origin as a sheltered girl could have been used as a stepping stone for character development, about learning to use her powers in more effective ways and conquering her insecurities, and facing where those insecurities come from. But nope, her dependency sticks till the end of the story, where at one point she threatens to fall to her death from a collapsing stairway and asks Kaito to let her go and keep himself safe when he is already pulling her up easily, and he needs to give her a pep talk to get her spirit together. Kaito may claim she taught him something, but apparently that was a side effect rather than her conscious effort because he’s teaching her to stick to life. Kaito acts both as Lucia’s physical strength and her mental strength.
So I recently decided to dive into fanart of this little fandom, and I’ve seen a few of these uploaded by people on at least six sites without credit, or even a disclaimer asking for whether anyone knows who the real artist is.
Figured I’d rectify it : Happy Together is where the artist originally hosts their work. If anyone shares their fanart, please credit them.
This post is Seira oriented because I like her best and there’s a limit of 10 images, but the artist also did art of several other characters, so if you see any of Yuri or others that have a similar style, it likely came from here.
Okayokayokaaaay~Roxy this story
it’s good
;w;
It makes lots of sense of confusing things in the manga, too.
But it’s not so happpyyyyy.
This made my (previously not so cheerful) day ^_^ I had thought I had scared off all readers after chapter 10, so I’m glad to know someone’s with a positive opinion of it.
