As someone who is wholeheartedly a part of the SK8 the Infinity fandom, I find myself having something SK8 related to tweet about on a weekly basis. This isn’t because of a second season announcement or a movie or anything like that (but the stage play is an absolute godsend), it’s because of the promotional art that gets released.
The promo art usually has the characters in new outfits that spawn a hell of a lot of fanart or headcanons written around the looks. The promo art also has characters in scenarios that can come off as being rather intimate.
Case in point? This new Joe and Cherry art on the cover of the Japanese anime magazine “Spoon 2Di.”
The full image is below:
This is a private dinner for two, right?
I mean… we’re supposed to interpret this as Joe trying to prepare an intimate meal for him and his childhood friend/obvious teenage crush/bickering husband, Cherry, but Cherry’s being a brat by stealing a taste, right? The smug, sultry finger lick. The wine. They WANT us to ship MatchaBlossom (the ship name for Joe and Cherry), right?!
This isn’t the first time SK8 has been on a magazine cover that made fans go “thank you for validating my ship,” but this may be the most blatantly flirtatious one. I’m sorry, but this man and his wine glass are flirting right now.
Set the appetizers down, Joe.
Maybe, perhaps, Cherry’s getting revenge for that time Joe ate the whipped cream from his fluffy cloud pink drink in that “Animedia” cover.
Welcome to the SK8 fandom. We don’t know if we’re getting a season 2, but we do know that our promo art will make you see Joe and Cherry as the two dads chaperoning the teenage boys in love. Cherry is the wine connoisseur with the husband killer robe in his closet while Joe is the friend dad who you ask to borrow the car because he’ll always say yes.
The dub voice actors know what’s up
MatchaBlossom is one of those blessed ships that is so beloved that even the dubbed voice actors are into it. Whenever new art of them is released they’ll cheer about it as much as the rest of us do – maybe even more than we do.
Daman Mills, Cherry’s voice actor, made sure to tag Jonah Scott, Joe’s voice actor, who responded with a proud admission of, “And Joe fucking loves it.”
Because he does. We all know he does.
The beautiful moment of “friendship” (giggle snort)
As delightful as that exchange between Mills and Scott is (note: this isn’t the first time these two have done this), it was a tweet from the French anime streaming service, Wakanim, that had me doubling over in laughter.
If you translate the tweet it says, “New Japanese magazine cover dedicated to SK8 where we see two ‘friends’ having a good time between ‘friends’ a beautiful moment of ‘friendship’.”
The air quotes have ended me.
Because it really feels like that’s where we are right now with the ships in SK8. Everyone’s just really good “friends” who go on ice cream dates or have private meals or who stare longingly at their sleeping “friend” or turn to their mom for advice about their “friend.”
It’s all a shipper’s paradise of ongoing content where a single picture will make a character or ship name trend all weekend.
If this is how we’re acting over a magazine cover, just wait until more anime is announced or, heaven help us, the manga adaptation gets licensed.
(Image: Spoon 2Di)
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