keyofnik: Tumblr’s doing that stupid thing where it hates pink, so I had to tone down the saturation on the gif to get it to go. Here’s the actual bright vibrant version Minako deserves: Sometimes what’s tough about making these attack gifs is in choosing what frames to cut. Minako really doesn’t make that easy, when it seems like every singe frame gives you something awesome and either important to the frames around it or entirely new. Minako, like Ami and Mako before her, is using her attack phrase in this sequence. While I see Ami having to say her phrase to summon her power, and Mako saying it to boost it, I see Minako’s as for entirely personal reasons outside of her power. Here, she’s already got her chain out and swinging before she starts her phrase. While it is made up of her power, I kind of see it as a single power level throughout. She can’t really “boost” it, she simply creates it, and it is how it is until she dismisses it and summons it again. So saying “Venus Love-Me Chain” doesn’t really DO anything because she already has it in her hands before she even starts speaking. So instead, I see this as all for Minako, like a way of announcing herself. Giving herself a handicap, almost. The Love-Me Chain is here, and it’s coming, and you might hear her say that and think you can get away, but that will never happen. It’s like Minako’s being her own cheerleader. I LOVE how this is animated though. Minako whipping it around and around her head before sending it flying, and how it curves in the air at her command. The part that made editing this one so difficult was that every frame added another layer of grace to Minako’s movements. Ami is precision and Mako is chaos, and Minako is CONTROL. Like Mako, Minako’s movements are like a call-back to her stock footage, but not at all the same, but the differences are fantastic. In her stock footage, the chain spirals around Minako, until she points and off the chain goes. Here, it’s ALL MInako. She has it by the end. It whirls around her, but as a result of her direct actions. And when it flies, it’s due in part to the fact that she flings it. It’s a much more aggressive look at Minako with this attack, and a fantastic blend of her physical involvement with it and her mental control over it. It’s a fantastic parallel to Minako herself.
