Anonymous asked: Hi, I was wondering if you knew how Ryuko’s red glove thing works? I’ve seen KLK many times but I just don’t understand how it’s supposed to draw blood and feed it to Senketsu… and why it’s considered a part of him later on (after he gets cut up by Nui and Ryuko has to get him back, Satsuki has the red glove and it apparently part of him even though it was’t before)…?
As I’ve always understood it, the glove has a pin that, when released, activates a needle that draws blood and allows Senketsu to transform:
I wish I could be more detailed, but that’s all I can really say about it! I’m not quite sure I fully get how it works myself, but I think a part of this show is to just… kinda go with things.
Still, to go on a little bit of a tangent, the needle part has always interested me, since Ryuko hates needles and is terrified of them—probably because of what was done to her as an infant. Yet, she still goes through this in order to work with Senketsu.
As for the second part, I too thought the glove being part of Senketsu all of a sudden was a big plot hole until I saw murasakidoku’s post here. As it turns out, the glove was always with Senketsu—in fact, you can see it poking out of his sleeve as soon as Aikuro finds him:
Still doesn’t explain why Ryuko never saw it or thought to put it on, but, well, I guess she’s just impatient and not exactly the most detail-oriented, hah.
I remember for the longest time I thought the glove was used in silting her wrist (because of the action when activates it? And when first doing it Omiko Hakodate commented on how it looked painful, so I assumed it was something worse than a needle pinch) for the blood until it finally occurred to me it was a needle piercing her. It would’ve made sense considering her healing ability (she would assume it’d be the syncing not letting it harm her or something), and her wrist just heals up before harming her anymore than it could.
We don’t know where the needle is drawing the blood from though, and with my experience of IVs and blood-draws, the more proper place in the area would be the back of the hand, in the metacarpal area, and having to find a vein there too. Considering how much muscles move in the hand its not the most comfortable place for an IV, but considering its a quick “blood-draw” for her it might not matter much.
But there doesn’t look like much room to work with a needle in the area. (maybe if it was going in at an angle, but it’s not). So I guess it’d make sense the needle pokes her in the wrist area as well, drawing the blood from there. Being a small poke she probably wouldn’t have questioned its healing rate.
Either or not the blood actually draws into Senketsu, or she’s poked and bleeds onto Senketsu is probably a better question along with if it actually pokes into a vein or not.
Junketsu’s location of poke for Satsuki has always considered me though. Its not exactly the easiest way to get blood from when compared to Ryuko’s prime locations. That might explain why Jenketsu takes three needles, and Senketsu only needs one though.
I considered mentioning this in my initial response, but Ryuko’s way of transforming with Senketsu quickly led to a very controversial article from Kotaku claiming that it glorifies wrist-slitting. I think there’s clearly a lot of confusion on how exactly this process works.
As for Omiko’s comment, though, I always thought that was referring to how… um, uncomfortable this particular transformation sequence looks:
Yikes.
Regardless, though, thank you for sharing your input about where the needle might be taking the blood. Personally, I’m really terrible at this sort of technical stuff, so these kinds of discussions are really eye-opening. I can also point to a couple of argentdandelion’s posts about this process, which are good reads for anyone curious about how this all might work: Calculating the Amount of Blood Senketsu Needs and Technical Thread Detail of Kamui.
