Vermilion Bird, 2018
Fude de mannen, ink, watercolour
The Suzaku Emperor is Genji’s older half-brother, son of the Kiritsubo Emperor and the politically powerful Kokiden Consort. He has all the setup and incentive to be a perfect antagonist: his mom hated Genji’s mother and also hates Genji’s guts, everyone keeps saying Genji is so brilliant and should’ve been Emperor instead of him, and Genji keeps foiling (accidentally/unintentionally, for the most part) his path to practically any woman he loves.
Except he’s actually a very nice and sweet man who gets along really well with Genji. He’s also super laid back. In fact he’s so laid back that when he learns Genji’s having an affair with his intended consort (Oborozukiyo), his reaction is “lol that’s funny. Welp, good for them I guess”. Unsurprisingly, his mom is like THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!! HE’S TRYING TO DETHRONE YOU EXILE HIM NOW and pressures Suzaku until he finally does. Thus begins Genji’s hard times in Suma. Until a series of events convince Suzaku that terrible things are happening because of this and he’s like “GENJI I OVERRODE MY MOM AND UNBANISHED YOU. COME BACK!!!”
Eventually he abdicates the throne to the Reizei Emperor, and later becomes a monk. But he has a hard time detaching himself from the material world because he keeps worrying about his youngest daughter the Third Princess, and even sneaks back to check on how she’s doing. Ironically, it’s his concern and love for his daughter that results in Genji’s downfall. Royall Tyler also has an interesting theory that, based on various clues in the text, he’s actually the vengeful spirit that appears in Part 3. Guess he did fulfill the role of antagonist in a roundabout way after all…
PREORDERS ARE NOW LIVE!!!
Thank you all for your patience! After half a year of going into production, we are finally excited to finally release this and show how hard everyone has been working on it! We’ve had such an great time working with all the extremely talented and amazing contributors, and they’ve done an amazing job and are truly the most passionate people we have had to work with!
Today we celebrate Kingdom Hearts 16th birthday with a beautiful zine!
With so much amazing works in this book, be sure not to miss out on it!
Pre-orders will be running from March 28th 2018 to April 24th
PRE-ORDER HERE
Reblogs are much appreciated! Please spread the word out to fellow KH fans around the world!





