My Journey to You Ep. 13 visuals: Lanterns of fate
"Be it manmade or natural fate, I want all these fates." -Thirsty Sister
No matter how many times I see them, I always love a good lantern festival scene. And when those scenes use said lanterns as a visual motif to represent the significance of Fate in our characters' relationships? Yes, please.
Sigh, such lovely framing. And I'm glad to see Jolin Jin get an opportunity to exercise those dramatic chops.
Gong Zishang's rumination about Fate really encapsulates so many of our characters' current relationships, no? Both Yun Weishan/Gong Ziyu and Gong Yuanzhi/Gong Shangjue collided into each others' lives because of nefarious, political machinations, not natural Fate.
Weishan was planted in the Gong residence by Wufeng to destabilize the clan's stronghold in the martial arts world. And yet Fate is a funny thing. Weishan probably never imagined the Sword Wielder to embody the type of soft life she has always desired but never deemed herself worthy of so it almost seems like Fate that two individuals who desire the same thing would find each other and fall in love despite living in such a cutthroat world. Ultimately, she decides to challenge the fate dictated to her by Wufeng by deciding to save Ziyu, thereby permanently changing the course of their lives (and the plot of the show).
It's also revealed in today's episode that Shangjue and Yuanzhi first met soon after Shangjue's mother and brother were assassinated by Wufeng (starting to see a pattern) and Yuanzhi's own parents had died. Through their mutual grief, they formed a strong bond, although it seems for most of their relationship Shangjue hasn't always been able to fully reciprocate Yuanzhi's open devotion and warmth despite caring for him deeply.
But seeing his cousin near death seems to have shifted Shangjue's perception of their relationship. As he cradles the new lantern Yuanzhi made to represent their relationship (independent and distinct from the one Shangjue shared with his younger brother), it finally seems like he's accepted their Fate as an inseparable found family despite the terrible circumstances that had brought them together.
God I love being an animation nut it allows me to bring in who I call Louise and Jacques as they never had official names and explain they are the oldest animated characters still alive in the cartoon meets reality world.
They are from the 1870s. However, what throws people for a loop is the factor they are the only animated characters not to be animated on celluloid,
As they were animated via rubber strips instead, with cutouts in them illuminated by this old piece of technology known as a Magic Lantern you have enough of those in sequence with each other add in a background and you had animation
However with the invention of celluloid this was quickly phased out it's why they are the only two characters to have been made this way,
But the fact that I get people in disbelief saying there's no way all animation was on Celluloid and I get to sit there like a smug cat because nope theres 2 of em that were on Rubber.
I love Louise and Jacque, since they were made by a French man I pictured they live over in Paris and typically can be found around the Louve they're the old couple that have been through everything so they're just relaxing, the Goverment taking care of them as Cultural Heritage Toons since they hold the record of being the very first Toons to hop off the film reel.