Oh thank god the biscuits were okay - I imagined them arriving in crumb form.
You sent me eps 1-17 and I've watched them all. Are there more than that? I got the impression from the minimal surfing I've done that they comprise the first (only?) series.
There is so much pretty! It's got some of the best animation I've seen in an anime, especially for the fight sequences. The more I watched it the more I liked Mugen - it's like he never really grew up and he's still a child in a lot of ways in the way he doesn't think about consequences. Although in the priates episode, when he tells the girl (Kohshua sp?) that he won't rescue her from her brother - it seemed to me then that there was some self loathing there: he wasn't trustworthy or dependable enough/didn' deserve to be with anyone. Also, he has this self image as a loner and says that he never teams up with anyone. Well, this is beatifully undermined by his actions through the whole series - he sticks with Jin and Fuu, and *always* comes back. Jin seems to spend a lot of his time waiting around in order to save Mugen's ass.
The whole 'I'm going to be the one who kills you' thing they have going - I love the possessiveness of that, and there's the rather nice aspect of them knowing that the other one is the one, ultimately, they *really* want to fight, which for me translates very nicely into an emotional attachment.
I 'll go and read those fics - have you read Eleanor K's fic? It's rather wonderful.
Thanks for the fic rec. there are definitely more episodes coming out in January. I checked the official site.
There's also a manga to be released.
I have a whole bunch of stuff to talk about those episodes with-- women, and why Fuu and Shino are one thing and Kohshua (I need to check the spelling too) is another.
I love Mugen and Jin and how they relate to each other, but also the characters around them. I love that the series actually talks about the Ainu, let alone has an Ainu character, making it pretty much unique in anime. The episodes... sometimes, they're such crack, and then you have angsty *serious* episodes that talk about stuff a lot of anime doesn't and...
And it had a Comic Gaijin episode I didn't find, you know, personally offensive.
Yes, one of the best things is the way it's stuffed with so many historical and cultural details - the stuff about homosexuality in the Edo period, and the code of male love that the samurais followed. I agree about the comic gaijin who wasn't offensive - his reason for coming to Japan seemed to me like it was based on real experiences and stories.
I like the women in this series - they're often stronger and more forthright than the men, but also they're also trapped in a way that the men aren't- often literally, in brothels. I don't know if it was common practice in that era for a man to pay off his debt by selling his wife to a brothel, but it was mentioned so often that I'm guessing it was.
One little thing that made me go 'oooh' was the samurai who fought using his ki - he called the technique 'hakkei'!
I did *research* on this and you know, it's that thing were the higher the status of the woman, the less equality she had.
Peasant women could -and did- divorce by moving out. A Buddhist priest could negotiate things, or her family, but she wasn't penalised for it. It was accepted that working class people had to be *compatible* in their marriage- they couldn't afford not to be, when they needed every able-bodied member of the family to survive.
Samurai-class women couldn't, though again... Okay, for a guy to divorce, he just had to state it. there where these things, three-line letters, which was how a wife knew she was divorced. once done, she had not say over it, and not necessarily any forewarning that it was going to come and no way of contesting it. Her only method of obtaining divorce for herself was either to get her husband to agree to it (by negotiating through her family) or by going to divorce temples (themselves pretty unpleasant).
But when people read a bunch of these three-line letters, it sounds like less statements of divorce, and more license to remarry, freely and without hinderence (men could take concubines and first wives were required to raise them as their own). Marriage for the upper-class was about families, money, alliances, and so was divorce. But there was no real prejudice against people who had been divorced.
Going back to peasants, again, no real bias against divorced/remarried and in many cases no real favouring of virginity before marriage. It varies with region, but many places, women were expected to have at least one lover before marriage, and in some communities, "shopping around" before marriage was encouraged by villiage youth organisations.
Which brings me to my favourite bit: Nightplay. yobai 夜這い, "crawling around at night", varied in different regions, but basically meant pairing off after festivals etc. Common peasant practise. It gets better. In the Ryuukyuu Islands (now Okinawa, and where Mugen is from) this had a bunch of different names (môashibi 毛遊び, "play in the fields;" tsujiashibi 辻遊び, "play at the crossroads" and yûashibi 夜遊び, or "night play") and groups of unmarried young people (could be anywhere from 10-80) would gather for competetive singing and dancing, then pair off.
Now Shino's situation was such that she had no family to negotiate for her, and her husband refused to let her go. She was of too high status to just *leave*, though not samurai class, but without the family-protection (and the usual distance from her spouse) that would bring. She was stuffed, basically.
Most of this cribbed from http://www3.la.psu.edu/textbooks/172/ch11_main.htm
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-31 01:59 am (UTC)What episodes did I send you? anime-forever are fansubbing, but only eps 1-17 have been released. I need someone to talk meta with. And pretty.
And yuletide came through with some Samaurai Champloo fic, if you haven't read those yet.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-31 12:59 pm (UTC)You sent me eps 1-17 and I've watched them all. Are there more than that? I got the impression from the minimal surfing I've done that they comprise the first (only?) series.
There is so much pretty! It's got some of the best animation I've seen in an anime, especially for the fight sequences. The more I watched it the more I liked Mugen - it's like he never really grew up and he's still a child in a lot of ways in the way he doesn't think about consequences. Although in the priates episode, when he tells the girl (Kohshua sp?) that he won't rescue her from her brother - it seemed to me then that there was some self loathing there: he wasn't trustworthy or dependable enough/didn' deserve to be with anyone. Also, he has this self image as a loner and says that he never teams up with anyone. Well, this is beatifully undermined by his actions through the whole series - he sticks with Jin and Fuu, and *always* comes back. Jin seems to spend a lot of his time waiting around in order to save Mugen's ass.
The whole 'I'm going to be the one who kills you' thing they have going - I love the possessiveness of that, and there's the rather nice aspect of them knowing that the other one is the one, ultimately, they *really* want to fight, which for me translates very nicely into an emotional attachment.
I 'll go and read those fics - have you read Eleanor K's fic? It's rather wonderful.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-31 02:27 pm (UTC)There's also a manga to be released.
I have a whole bunch of stuff to talk about those episodes with-- women, and why Fuu and Shino are one thing and Kohshua (I need to check the spelling too) is another.
I love Mugen and Jin and how they relate to each other, but also the characters around them. I love that the series actually talks about the Ainu, let alone has an Ainu character, making it pretty much unique in anime. The episodes... sometimes, they're such crack, and then you have angsty *serious* episodes that talk about stuff a lot of anime doesn't and...
And it had a Comic Gaijin episode I didn't find, you know, personally offensive.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-31 03:32 pm (UTC)I like the women in this series - they're often stronger and more forthright than the men, but also they're also trapped in a way that the men aren't- often literally, in brothels. I don't know if it was common practice in that era for a man to pay off his debt by selling his wife to a brothel, but it was mentioned so often that I'm guessing it was.
One little thing that made me go 'oooh' was the samurai who fought using his ki - he called the technique 'hakkei'!
no subject
Date: 2004-12-31 03:55 pm (UTC)Peasant women could -and did- divorce by moving out. A Buddhist priest could negotiate things, or her family, but she wasn't penalised for it. It was accepted that working class people had to be *compatible* in their marriage- they couldn't afford not to be, when they needed every able-bodied member of the family to survive.
Samurai-class women couldn't, though again... Okay, for a guy to divorce, he just had to state it. there where these things, three-line letters, which was how a wife knew she was divorced. once done, she had not say over it, and not necessarily any forewarning that it was going to come and no way of contesting it. Her only method of obtaining divorce for herself was either to get her husband to agree to it (by negotiating through her family) or by going to divorce temples (themselves pretty unpleasant).
But when people read a bunch of these three-line letters, it sounds like less statements of divorce, and more license to remarry, freely and without hinderence (men could take concubines and first wives were required to raise them as their own). Marriage for the upper-class was about families, money, alliances, and so was divorce. But there was no real prejudice against people who had been divorced.
Going back to peasants, again, no real bias against divorced/remarried and in many cases no real favouring of virginity before marriage. It varies with region, but many places, women were expected to have at least one lover before marriage, and in some communities, "shopping around" before marriage was encouraged by villiage youth organisations.
Which brings me to my favourite bit: Nightplay.
yobai 夜這い, "crawling around at night", varied in different regions, but basically meant pairing off after festivals etc. Common peasant practise. It gets better. In the Ryuukyuu Islands (now Okinawa, and where Mugen is from) this had a bunch of different names (môashibi 毛遊び, "play in the fields;" tsujiashibi 辻遊び, "play at the crossroads" and yûashibi 夜遊び, or "night play") and groups of unmarried young people (could be anywhere from 10-80) would gather for competetive singing and dancing, then pair off.
Now Shino's situation was such that she had no family to negotiate for her, and her husband refused to let her go. She was of too high status to just *leave*, though not samurai class, but without the family-protection (and the usual distance from her spouse) that would bring. She was stuffed, basically.
Most of this cribbed from http://www3.la.psu.edu/textbooks/172/ch11_main.htm