Saiyuki - the one where they fall off the cliff

[louiselux]

Something telophase said recently about how Minekura mirrors panels in Saiyuki reminded me to post this. It's a comparison of the two 'falling off a cliff' scenes.

The first one happens in vol 7 where Sanzo is pushed off a cliff by a youkai, the other happens in vol 8 and is a flashback to Gojyo's childhood memory of falling off a cliff and being saved by his brother Jien.

So, of the two occurrences, although we see Gojyo's falling-off-a-cliff experience later on, Gojyo's experience is actually the first one. It's much shorter than the scene in vol 7, where he saves Sanzo. I noticed that almost every panel in the scene in vol 8 has a counterpart in the longer scene in vol 7, and the comparison between the two, in terms of positioning of protagonists, what they are saying to each other and the mood at some points very comical, mostly because Jien is very caring towards Gojyo and Sanzo is vehemently not. There are other things going on too though, like Gojyo's instinctive need to 'pick things up' even at a price to himself.





One of the first panels: Gojyo falling off a cliff in vol 8, caught in the nick of time by Jien.





Sanzo falling off a cliff in vol 7, caught in the nick of time by Gojyo.





The next panel in vol 8, with Jien offering supportive advice...





... and the one that I think corresponds from vol 7, with Sanzo offering slightly different advice.





Over the page, they huff and puff and recover...





... and so do Gojyo and Sanzo, in much the same configuration, although the panels are arranged on the page differently. Sanzo sitting in exactly the same postion as Jien in the previous picture, with Gojyo puffed out on his right.



The next panel from vol 8.

In the panel below from vol 7, Sanzo and Gojyo are again in pretty much the same configuration, and the angle the scene is viewed from is the same too. Jien mentions his arm and in vol 8 just after this, there's a shot of Gojyo's arm complete with bruises and scrapes.









The next panel from vol 8, each full face and looking at each other.





The panel I think corresponds from vol 8. Gojyo is in pretty much exactly the same pose as Jien, and while his gaze is saying something different, there's also the same affection there that Jien has. Note that Sanzo isn't meeting Gojyo's eyes fully in this danger period where Gojyo might be beginning to think Sanzo has a heart. Cue fairly intense flirting from Gojyo after this.





The final panel on that page, and it marks the end of the scene--after this their mother appears and their closeness is lost, literally, as their mother comes between them. Jien is affectionate and teasing- touching the top of his head is a very intimate gesture and this is also something that Gojyo does to Goku often.





This panel is slightly out of order as it comes before the full face panel above, but the similarities made me laugh. Sanzo's affection takes a different form. Kicking the top of someone's head- does that count as intimate, or just plain bitchy?



There are things that can be drawn from this, although a lot of points have been made before and far better more eloquently than I can make them. In a previous post, I looked at specific scenes from vol 7 and Gojyo and Sanzo's relationship, where Sanzo hits Gojyo and Gojyo reverts back to a childlike pose. Sanzo takes on the role of Gojyo's mother. In the cliff scene Sanzo is cast as brother. Does he play the father anywhere? I can't think of an instance but then we never get to see Gojyo's father. In fact we there's a lack of parents altogether-- dead, missing, imprisoned or non-corporeal-- but ever present?-- in Goku's case. We also only get to see two other blood relatives apart from Jien, both female: Hakkai's sister, Gojyo's mother, and with both of them there is incest.

I think the mirroring in these two scenes is there to underline the point Minekura makes just a little bit further on in vol 8, when Gojyo kills his (fake) mother: that Gojyo has a new family, and that Sanzo, Hakkai and Goku together form some ungodly (haha) combination of mother, father and brother to Gojyo, at different times and in different ways.

Someone else made this point, but unfortunately I can't remember who. Throughout vol 7, the way Sanzo talks to Gojyo has a big brotherly feel to it-- 'give me my gun back before your stupidity gets all over it,' is absolutely the type of obnoxious thing you might say to an annoying sibling, and Sanzo says things like that to Gojyo throughout vol 7. This bickering, at times spiteful and nasty (just like siblings get) is undermined by Gojyo's instant and total commitment to rescuing Sanzo, and Sanzo's little flare of gratitude.

Any other thoughts would be very welcome.

ps, I hope the image formatting works for everyone. It seemed to go a bit squiffy at times on my pc, but I think I've fixed it.

Comments

[hungry-worm.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I hadn't noticed the mirroring going on. o_O

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I really love the way she uses the same sort of images over and over again-- it adds extra dimensions to everything, I think.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It's from the opening sequence of Samurai Champloo, which has incredibly pretty art.

[hungry-worm.livejournal.com]

:o Another story which I haven't seen or even read yet. I've seen it mentioned so often, I might as well pursue it...

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Samurai Champloo is an anime, although I think it's in manga form too but I've never seen it. It's by the same person who did Cowboy Bebop and I think it's absolutely amazing. Very high quality art, great scripts and so very pretty. You can download it at animekraze.org, I think, or if you want me to I could snail mail you the whole thing (26 eps).

[hungry-worm.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you, I would love to take up the snail mail offer (my address) (http://www.livejournal.com/users/hungry_worm/46227.html)... of course only if it isn't too much of an effort. Anything you want/need in return, like shipping costs etc.?

[hungry-worm.livejournal.com]

That's one of the things I adore about Minekura's work. You can read the manga once, and just adore the pictures and story. Then you can read it again and again and always find there's more to it when you look closely.

And that's a very pretty icon with the diving/floating frog.

[emungere.livejournal.com]

Ooh, cool. I never noticed that. I think one could make the argument that Sanzo is both father and brother to him, just like Jien was. Gojyo more or less willingly accepts Sanzo's authority, and Jien was the only authority he grew up with, given that his mother was less a parent and more a unpredictable source of random violence.

And I find it interesting to look at Hakkai as his mother, considering their closeness and both their families' history of incest--and Hakkai's...um...slight mental instability.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

The mother thing is very interesting. Hakkai seems to think of all of them as children and Gojyo more than once says Hakkai acts like he's his mother-- obviously I don't think he means like his *actual* mother, but a sort of idealised one, maybe. One who fusses and tells him off and keeps the house tidy. In the flashbacks to Gojyo's childhood, his house is bit of a tip and it's clear that Gojyo's mum wasn't exactly a 'homemaker'. And Hakkai is. Even though it made Gojyo uncomfortable (which you get to see in the Burial arc) he moved in and made Gojyo's place tidy and clean and somewhere that Hakkai wanted to be.

It makes me wonder for who's benefit Hakkai's mothing is for-- his own or Gojyo's? Or more likely a mix of the two. He acts like the mother Gojyo never had and the thing that was so hateful to Gojyo's mum was exactly the thing that was so important to Gonou, so you could say Hakkai is a mirror image of Gojyo's mum.

[emungere.livejournal.com]

(sorry, LJ just now saw fit to tell me about your comment.)

Or more likely a mix of the two.

Yes, exactly. It was probably the only thing letting him function while he was recovering at Gojyo's--that and the thought of going back for his sister's body. And even later, he's almost never still, never just sitting unless it's raining and he's brooding. One gets the impression that at least part of his mothering is done to keep himself from having too much time to think.

so you could say Hakkai is a mirror image of Gojyo's mum.

Ooh, interesting. What a mother is supposed to be, but not what either of them think of as a mother, since Hakkai never had one and Gojyo's was so horrible. I wonder how Hakkai learned that kind of behavior.

[snowyheart.livejournal.com]

Cool--I'm glad you posted this! I never even saw that their poses were the same... Minekura says volumes just about relationships and replacement relationships and so on and so forth with just repetition like this... she rocks. ^^

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Thanks! These two scenes side by side really amuse me and I do think it's there to underline the replacement relationships. I really like how the reader has to work a bit to make the connections too - it's one of the most satisfying things about Saiyuki: you know that if you go looking, you'll find things like this everywhere.

[scribblemoose]

Very interesting indeed. My respect and awe for Minekura just grows every time I look at the manga.

I think you're right about the family parallels, too. It works for all of them, in different ways, too.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Saiyuki is such a domestic sort of drama. Apart from the fighting, most of it seems to take place in domestic settings and is about eating and travelling and sleeping and shopping. I sometimes think that Sanzo is such a father figure, even down to reading the newspaper of an evening with his spectacles on. It'll be a pipe next;) It's very sweet when he tells Goku to eat vegetables as well as meat.

[thawrecka]

Ooh, this is so neat. I definitely hadn't noticed this before you pointed it out, but it just goes to show the depth of Saiyuki and the relationships contained therein.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

There are so many things happening in these two scenes that I can't even begin to pick them all out-- like the things it says about Gojyo and Sanzo's relationship, and also Gojyo's relationship with his brother and more obliquely with Goku.

Thanks!

[wildelamassu.livejournal.com]

There definitely is a "family" theme recurrent in Saiyuki, which I think this is integral to, but what I also find interesting about these panels is how Gojyo and Sanzo were both clearly "taught family" by single men (as opposed to Hakkai, raised by nuns, or Goku, raised by the Gaiden-tachi). They interact in ways defined by a certain boys-don't-cry bravado (with regard to injury and affection) that the other two don't share.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I think that's a really good point and it ties in to something I was thinking earlier, about how hard it is to write Sanzo/Gojyo convincingly - they're never going to express in words how there might be something more to their relationship than mutual loathing, so you have to show it in a more roundabout way. In the panels above Minekura does that very thing wonderfully well.