epithet erased!!

epithet erased is a tv show turned novelisation of an actual play called anime campaign! though it's heavily based off the ap it's based on, a lot of characters have been changed, improved upon, and/or given more depth, and the story is a lot more cohesive and expansive!! (more on anime campaign later. it's like the poor little meow meow of actual plays to me)

the tv show covers the first two arcs - the museum arc and redwood run, which both have their own unique cast of characters. the first covers the third arc - prison of plastic - and returns to some of the characters from the museum arc, plus some new additions! in my opinion, while the tv show is very fun and likely more accessible to some people, the transfer to book form leaves a lot more space for expanded casts and nuances of character. there are eventually going to be novelisations of the first two arcs, and i'm really excited for any additions if there are gonna be some!

• you can find the show for free on youtube here!
• you can buy the novelisation of prison of plastic here! (there's also an audiobook but i haven't personally listened to it - i've heard it's good, though!)

anyways. here's where i stop recapping and go completely off the rails to ramble - the cast of epithet erased is extremely endearing and good, and i love them all. SO much. my personal favorites are giovanni potage, molly blyndeff, rick shades, and sylvester ashling, but you could give me any character and i'd give you something i like about them tbh. gio & sylvie & molly make for a really interesting trio that i'm excited to see more of in the future, and rick is just… really good. he's really good. you'll see

beware! prison of plastic & very very itty bitty minor anime campaign spoilers up ahead!

rick shades - guy of all time

"VERY WELL!" the stranger bellowed. "My name is RICK SHADES. Would you like to . . ." He extended his gloved hand to Phoenica. ". . . Be my friend?" Something was wrong about the way he held out his arm. It had an unusual weight to it, as if it was in traveling slow motion. Like a car in bullet time just before an accident.

rick shades, real name toidei gourami (odi, to his friends), is a wizard and inscribed (name for epithet users!) from ocean country, which is kind of a supremely fucked up place right now! don't even fuckin' worry about it. his epithet is SOULMATES, and so if he makes friends, he can use their abilities (as he perceives them) and is connected to them via a small string he can summon that can find them pretty much anywhere! his proficiency (a measure of strength in the world of epithet) is marked as ???? because it depends wholly on how many friends he has. he gets one point of proficiency per each one!

he wants to make friends, but he comes on... really strong! especially for a guy who just washed up on the beach and hasn't socialized properly in like. eight whole years. he spent years 12-20 of his life in what he describes as "experience farming" for the leader of ocean country, and created the rick shades persona so that he wouldn't have to fight his friends as himself! excerpt from prison of plastic that makes me feel normal vvv

"Well . . . It feels . . . wrong. You can't hurt the people who are supposed to be your friends. Right? Even facing them in battle felt wrong. So instead I faced them under the 'Rick Shades' persona! After all, our value as Proficiency cattle was entirely based on winning and strength. My friends all needed to win the battles, but I didn't need to win any! I just needed them to like me. So . . . I would lose! I would lose every fight." He pulled up the edge of his patchwork jacket. The silver scars sparkled across his skin. "For them, winning was the only thing that mattered. So I would lose. And that way, we all won! Letting myself get hurt was best for everyone!"

THIS GUY HAS A LOT OF THINGS WRONG WITH HIM. i love him a lot. he doesn't know what's edible or not in sweet jazz because apparently he didn't get any gifts during those eight years that weren't things he was supposed to eat - aka gruel. there's a bit where phoenica hands him her business card and he just keeps eating them as she hands them over and molly and trixie are both going "what are you doing. stop." he tries to eat a phone before its explained as inedible and then he's VERY touched about the gift

in anime campaign he's friends w sylvie ashling (they haven't met yet in epithet!) and i am ridiculously excited for if that gets carried over!! right now i really adore the neo trio & rick dynamic + the possibility of giovanni and rick being fwiends. also the concept of rick shades being that one bdg video about being your own boss but at bliss ocean

GIOVANNI POTAGE BA-BEY

Giovanni was less upset about the loss of the necklace than he was with his organization's conduct. He had always seen the Banzai Blasters as a way for passionate youths to get together and channel their energy into something positive. Like crime! But it turned out that apparently the only thing the higher-ups in the Banzai Blaster organization cared about was turning a profit.
What was that!? Whatever happened to making a STATEMENT through your crime!? Where's the passion? The intrigue?! Where's the HEART!?

giovanni potage, also known as VINCENT MURDER, is the leader of a currently-between-names group of crime boys (gender neutral) and a SUPER EVIL GUY I PROMISE. his crew was originally a subset of the banzai blasters, but after a falling out in redwood run they decided to ditch those losers and do their own crime! he has practically adopted molly at this point - after adopting her as one of his boys during a museum heist, like normal people do. at the end of prison of plastic, he kidnaps her (with permission) because her dad is a neglectful piece of shit and now they're hanging out in his hideout (a treehouse in one of his boys' backyards.) giovanni likes cooking (though he can't taste anything after testing his epithet (soup) and also trying to eat hot coals) & often wears skirts, which!! i'm bigender and it makes me really happy to see it!! he looks really good doing it too :3

i think about giovanni a lot because like. first of all he just rules. he's a dork he's cool he's everything to me. but he's also a really significant like? leader figure to his friends? he has a lot of drive and passion and that carries over to his boys because it's just!! contagious!! there's a snippet from his prologue piece (again) that sums this up really well:

Whenever the group was in danger of settling into that "standing around in a parking lot and doing nothing" flavor of teenage boredom typical of a Banzai Blaster squad, Giovanni would light a fire under them. He came up with schemes, gave them goals to work towards. Midnight snack runs to the gas station turned into elaborate heists. They had show-and-tell nights where they would see who could steal and present the strangest item. Winners got star stickers. One time, they snuck into a convenience store and replaced all of the gas station hot dogs with cattails from a nearby pond.
It was undeniably stupid. But it was fun, and it gave them stories to tell. And that was all they really wanted.

i think about the last bit of that a LOT - it was undeniably stupid! but it was fun!!! and that's, in the end, what matters! they managed one big heist, yeah, but most of time it's about doing silly stupid shit with your friends and finding purpose in that, and that. like. owns. it owns!! it resonates. i love giovanni potage so much. the motif of you have to be willing to lose as a testament to being a good minion is incredibly hitting, too, even if it's really silly! you aren't here to win you're here to have fun! you have to be ready to lose and take that with some kind of grace. man. love you gio thank you gio i can see why crusher has such a huge crush on you

molly blyndeff! littlest guy EVER

"Heh . . . so, gonna slay a dragon, huh?" Giovanni's mouth opened in a big, sideways, crocodile smile. "Careful, Bear Trap. It almost sounds like you're trying to play hero." She took her hands off her backpack straps and wrapped them around his arms instead.
"Heroes spend their whole lives doing everything for everyone else! I'm tired of that! We're working together!" She smiled at him with the most earnest smile she'd had in her entire life. "I don't wanna be a hero anymore!
". . . I wanna be a bad guy!"

molly blyndeff, also known as BEAR TRAP (nickname assigned by giovanni), is a 12-year-old inscribed with entirely too much weight on her shoulders! after her mom died, her dad and older sister retreated away from responsibility, and left molly in charge of pretty much everything important in the toy store - working the register, taxes, cooking, cleaning, and... everything else. her friends tried to get her out of her home life a few times, but due to circumstances and legal stuff they couldn't - and then giovanni, who does not give a shit about the law WHATSOEVER, just decided to kidnap her. and it worked!! she's happy with it. giovanni is the one to start her on the path of being more assertive and letting herself be a kid and have fun, while naven (weird twink supreme) teaches her speech classes, which are meant to help with conflict resolution and communcation - something she struggles with, being very anxious and generally forced to grow up too fast!

molly is a part of the neo trio, a group of three twelve-year-olds named after the fact that together their hair colors make neopolitan ice cream. (the other two members are trixie roughhouse - giovanni's cousin, she/they who can talk to ghosts, weird girl (tm) who makes potions & phoenica fleecity - rich girl who has no concept of the significance of her money and generally speaking is. VERY sheltered and strange.) she's also friends with sylvester ashling after the museum incident, and, of course, giovanni and his boys. she's the only one in prison of plastic who rick tells his real name, and they have a very sweet conversation about their respective pasts! generally speaking. very sweet twelve-year-old who is very determined to not take on every burden anymore! working together win!!

above is the end card image for prison of plastic, after molly wakes up post-kidnapping to giovanni and crusher having made her breakfast (so that she wouldn't try to make THEM breakfast too, which she's a little embarassed to be called out on) and it just. IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY... she's getting nice things she doesn't have to take on the entirety of her family's burdens on her shoulders she can just be one of the boys! augh

sylvester ashling, beloved weird loser

I WILL TALK ABOUT HIM WHEN THE FIRST TWO SEASONS ARE NOVELIZED I HAVEN'T WATCHED SEASON 1 IN WAY TOO LONG

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anime campaign excitements

here's the real anime campaign spoiler zone :p aka where i talk about guys i want to see put in epithet erased because i miss them

• MERYL - i want to see her so bad. i love her gun i love her healing gun i love that she's just a fucking mess i wish she was in redwood run but since she isn't i wanna see her in the upcoming [redacted] arc or SOMETHING cmonnn
• RYATT - he is my babygirl send post
• SLIM & ALCATRAZ - the implications of your epithet being able to be sentient yeah yeah whatever it is OBJECTIVELY HILARIOUS that slim's epithet has manifested itself as a loserboy ghost to try to get him to be more heroic and i'm pretty sure this duo has already been confirmed to be showing up so. WIN FOR ATTICUS
• JERICHO - noclip :)
• more to be added probably. i'm not FULLY through anime campaign but one day

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hiiii!! if you made it this far congrats :D & thank you for reading!! your compensation is a silly little sylvie doodle i did in like 5 minutes