What kind of saber is baxia anyway?
I love my bloodthirsty princess of a cursed blade, and in my heart of hearts i am nothing but a sword nerd, so i've been extremely fascinated by Baxia and how we know frustratingly little about what she actually looks like!
I mean, look at bichen, right?
Bichen in the donghua:
Bichen in the drama:
They're clearly not exactly the same. The scabbards are different, and the guards have a different shape. But these are recognizably different iterations on one theme, right? Thin jian with a white grip silver guard, light blue tassel and silver mounting accents on the scabbard.
Now this is baxia in the donghua:
And baxia in the drama:
????????
THAT'S A COMPLTELY DIFFERENT WEAPON
it doesn't stop there either, the audio drama is kind enough to give us ANOTHER COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BAXIA
pretty! But how is that he same sword??
And when we go back to the novel, we get very little information on her appearance other than the fact that her blade is tinted red with all the blood she's absorbed. Which none of these designs incorporate.
This is not a dig on the designs itself, they're all quite gorgeous in their own right and i'm going to spend a while discussing all of them! Because isn't it fascinating how, since we know little about novel baxia beyond "saber" all of these designs ended up so different? What kinds of sabers are these, anyway?
So, a chinese aber, aka a "dao" (刀) just means a sword that has only one cutting side. As opposed to a jian, which has two.
You can see how that leaves a LOT of room for variaton.
I've actually seen some people get confused because Huaisang's saber in the untsmed is thin and quite straight, making it superficially resemble the jian more than drama!baxia, but it is still clearly a saber!
See? only one cutting blade!
This, to me looks a lot like a tang dynasty hengdao
credit to this blog for providing his image and being a great source for all this going forward.
TANGENT: during all this I found out the english wikipedia page for dao is WRONG! Ths is what they about the tang hengdao!
So that sounds like the hengdao was called that during the sui dynasty, but then, after that, started being called a peidao, right?
WRONG
I LOOKED AT THE SOURCE THEY USED AND IT SAYS THIS:
IT WAS CALLED THE PEIDOU UNTIL THE SUI DYNASTY, AT WHICH POINT IT WAS CALLED A HENGDAO. Which would carry over to the Tang dynasty. This was the source wikipedia linked! and it says something else than they say it does!
Anyone know how to edit a wikipedia article?
ANYWAY
BACK TO BAXIA
Since we're already at the drama, let's look at drama baxia: She's also straight! the general term for straight-backed saber is Zhibeidao, but that's a modern collector's term, and doesn't really say anything about which historical kind of saber baxia could be based on. Another meta i found on the drama nie sabers already went on some detail here.
I'm gonna expand on that a little: The kinds of historical straight-backed sabers we see resemble the hengdao a lot more than they do baxia. They don't go to their point as harsly as she does (she's basically a cleaver!) and they're all way skinnier.
No, my personal theory is that instead of being based on any kind of historical sword, drama!baxia is based on a Nandao.
I mean, come on, look at it!
Baxia!
The Nandao... isn't actually a historical sword. It was invented for Wushu forms. There's a really fascinating article about its conception, but that's why the swords in the images look a little thin and flimsy. Wushu swords are very flexible and light, they're dance props, not weapons to fight with. There are actual steel versions of Nandao, but they're recreations of the prop, not the other way around.
So That's one way in which Baxia differes from the Nandao: she's actually a real weapon. The other is that, as you can see above, the nandao has an S-shaped guard. Baxia doesn't. She's also much more elaborately decorated, of course. Because she's a princess.
Now: audio drama baxia!
This is much easier. with that flare at the tip?
Oh baby that's a niuweidao, all the way!
There are more sabers with that kind of curved handle, but the broad tip is really charcteristic of the niuweidao. The Niuweidao is also incredibly poplar in modern media, often portrayed as a historical sword, but it originated i nthe 19th century! And it was actually never used by the military!
That's right, the Niuweidao was pretty much exclusively a civilian weapon! That makes its use here anachronistic, but so is the nandao, and considering that the origin story of the Nie is that they use Dao intead of Jian because their ancestors were butchers, portraying them with a weapon historically reserved for rebels and common people instead of the imperial military is actually very on theme!
Finally, Donghua/Manhua baxia. These two designs are so similar I'm going to treat them as one and the same for now.
Unlike both previous baxias, The long handle makes it clear this baxia is a two-handed weapon, though Nie Mingjue is absolutely strong enough to wield her with one hand anyway. Normal rules don't count for cultivators.
Now, this is where things get tricky, because there are a lot of words for long two-handed sabers. And a lot of them are interchangable! This youtube video about the zhanmadao, one of the possible sabers this baxia could be based on, goes a little into just how confusing this can get. This kind of blade WAS actually in military use for many centuries, making it the most historically accurate of all the baxias. But because of that it also has several names and all of those names can also refer to different kinds of blades depending on what century we're in.
So here's our options: i'm going to dismiss the wodao and miandao, because these were explicitly based on japanese sword design, and as we can see manhua baxia has that very broad tip, so that won't work
(Example of a wodao. According to my sources Miaodao is really just the modern common term for the wodao, and the changdao, and certain kinds of zhanmadao... do you see how quickly this gets confusing?)
Next option: Zhanmadao.
Zhanmadao stands for "horse chopping saber" so... yeah they were anti-cavalry weapons. meant to be able to cut the legs and/or necks of horses. That definitely sounds like a weapon Nie Mingjue would wield. But if you watched that youtube video i linked above, you'll know the standardized Qing dinasty Zhanmadao looked very different from earlier versions. It was inspired by the japanese odachi, and more resembles the miandao than its ealrier heftier counteprarts.
Earlier Ming dynasty Zhanmadao on the other hand were... basically polearms. the great ming military blog spot, another wonderful source, says these are essentially a kind of podao/pudao (朴刀) which looked like this
Now that blade looks a lot like baxia, but the handle is honestly too long. Donghua!baxia straddles the line between sword an polearm a little, but while zhanmadao have been used to refer to both long-handled swords and polerarms, this was undeniably a polearm, not a sword.
If you want to know what researching this was like, I found a picture of this blade on pinterest-- labeled as a "two-handed scimitar"-- and the comment section was filled with people arguing about whether this was a Pudao, Wudao, Zhanmadao, Dadao, Guandao, or a japanese Nagita.
So... that's how it was going. This has kept me up until 2 AM multiple times.
However! Thanks to this article on the great ming military blog I found out there have historically been pudao blades with shorter handles!
Specifically, Ming dynasty military writer Cheng Ziyi created a modified version of the pudao to work with the Dan Fao Fa Xuan technixues-- aka technqiues for a two-handed saber, which would alter heavily influence Miaodao swordmanship-- thereby, as the article points out, essentially merging the cleaver-polearm type Zhanmadao with the later two-handed japanese-inspired design.
This is the illustration for the Wu Bei Yao Lue (武備要略) a Ming dynasty military manual
This blade shape in the illustration doesn't match Baxia exactly, but since it's a lengthened Pudao-like blade and we've seen above that those can match Donghua Baxia's shape, i'm gonna say that calling Baxia a Zhanmadao with a two-handed grip isn't all that innacurate!
However, because all of these terms are so intertwined, there are a dozen other things you could call her that would be about equally correct.
To show that, here's a lightning round of other potential Baxia candidates:
Dadao (大刀)
Which are generally one-handed and too short. However!
Another youtube video i found of someone training with a Zhanmadao that resembles baxia a little also calls it a "shuangshoudai dao" (雙手带 刀) shuangshou means two-handed, and while 雙手带 seems to refer to a longer handled weapon, when looking for a shuangshou dao or shuangshou dadao (双手大刀) we find a lot more baxia-resembling blades like here and here
I also found that, while the cleaver-like Dadao is strictly a product of the 20th centuy, since dadao just means big sword or big knife, it has been used to refer to loads of different weapons! Some people could've called the zhanmadao and pudao "dadao" during the Ming dynasty as well.
Another potential baxia candidate that mandarin mansion classifies as similar to the later dadao (though longer, as seen in the illustration below) is the "Kuanren Piandao"
Which piqued my interest because this diagram classifying different tpye of Dao:
Claims that a Kuanrenbiandao (diferent spelling, same sword) is the same as a modern day Zhanmadao.
(So once again, all of these terms are interchangable)
Another opton Is the Chuanmeidao/Chuanweidao (船尾刀) below you can see a diagram, based on the Qing dynasty green standard army regulation, of blades all officially classified as types of "pudao"
The top middle is the Kuanren Piandao, and bottom left is the Chuanweidao.
Both of these have a lot of baxia-like qualities.
So there you go! live action baxia is based on a Nandao, audio drama baxia is based on a Niuweidao, and Manhua/donghua baxia is some kind of two-handed Zhanmadao/Pudao/Dadao depending on how you want to look at it.
I'm honestly surprised no one has made the creative decision to portray Baxia as a Jiuhuandao, aka 9 ringed broadsword yet.
I mean look at it! Incredibly imposing. Would make for a great Baxia imo. (@ upcoming mdzs manga and mobile game: take notes!)
413 notes
·
View notes
What Cyberpunk DeadBoy Means and What it's Potentially Foreshadowing (aka very complicated analysis that makes a lot of sense and could happen depending on how colorpalet is feeling while writing the story)
Now I'm seeing so many people like running around wondering what this event could mean for the future for multiple reasons and like I've made like one post throwing my hat into the ring.
I've been frustrated with people's unwillingness to realise that this comm is prob foreshadowing because this is not the first time Colorpalet has hidden foreshadowing into comms weither subtely or not
Exemple's being :
-Akito's second comm foreshadowing his third event
-Lower's cover art literally foreshadowing what would happen to Mafuyu's phone in her event
-88 vocals being emurui and nenekasa foreshadowing the kind of dynamic the disbandement arc had with nenekasa wanting to move forward with emurui being scared of isolation
-Probably way better exemples that I forgot
I've seen people make Some assumptions which I don't agree with but there is one thing I think is true
There is 100 pourcent gonna be struggle between corporation/reality and WxS.
Purely because that's been WxS's entire theme since the beginning. They constantly bash you over the head with the theme of compromising with reality and the importance of dreams. In fact the pick of Maiki-P is not at all surprising as he basically has the same message WxS has just... well harsher.
The Big thing people have ignored however is by focusing on the lyrics, they've ignored something that's personally to me even more telling and that's the line distribution
We know for a fact colorpalet loves to mess around with line distribution, weither it's to make characters say lines that fit them or to kind of foreshadow their headspace.
Now something Big happens with the line distribution of Cyberpunk Deadboy that i've seen NO ONE notice and that's in the last chorus (that and also Tsukasa's lines which people have pointed out but it works less on it's own which is why I'm gonna analyse his lines afterwards).
This is the only time the chorus is like that, the others have a much more even distribution.
In fact the distribution choice makes it look like the rest of WxS is Talking to Rui.
It's even more evident considering the lines they chose to make WxS sing compared to only just Rui
Emu/Tsukasa/Nene saying kimi (you)
Rui saying boku (i)
Which honestly makes me think this is colorpalet foreshadowing some kind of issue reguarding specifically Rui. Remember Emu's second event ? The story of Rilley whose imagination was crippled by the industry to the point where he didn't really have any artistic vision until Emu's grandpa helped him.
In fact remember how the flashback that showcases that has Rilley working on a film
Now we get to Tsukasa's line which have been pointed out to be kind of sus but it's not just his lines.
Tsukasa refuses to sing with Rui (unless it's a line they all sing together but i consider those exceptions). In fact pretty much everyone has a duo line with each other except those two.
In fact in the section where Rui has duo lines with everybody, Tsukasa is the only one he doesnt sing with and the visuals make it clear that it's something that we're supposed to find strange
And then we of course have Tsukasa's solo lines
Tsukasa is the only one that say "fuzakeruna" outside of Rui (of course ignoring entire group WxS lines) and i've seen some people pointed out how it sounds like he's saying it in response to Rui's lines. Which I agree with.
Then we got his big boy solo lines
These lines will make more sense with my theory/analysis but right now if we go with the idea that WxS in the last chorus were speaking to Rui and Tsukasa in this comm refuses to sing with Rui then this implies those lines are Tsukasa speaking to Rui.
And this is where the insanity begins because people have pointed out a concerning trend with Ruikasa that I know some people use for shipping fuel but for me kinda feels more so like foreshadowing.
IGNORING all the ARG ass weirdness of the Fixer 2dmv, this choice to switch Ruikasa's colors have to mean something in my opinion outside of just wholesome shipping influence especially considering the two songs they do this are less than jovial.
What this kind of color switching signifies to me is that, Ruikasa somehow are/or will switch places.
And with that let me bring back Tsukasa's lines
These lines stand out because Tsukasa before remembering his dreams was extremely shallow only doing things for fame and probably the money that would come with it.
Now if you think about everything I've layed out I think you can gain a pretty clear picture.
Of Rui falling into the trap Rilley did, becoming jaded and losing the true motivation of his dream (or at least starting to have doubts). Becoming stuck with the struggle of managing dreams and reality.
Rui's costume even has a mask which can be a metaphor for his artistic voice and individuality being silenced .
Which now you get into the line distribution where WxS is implied to be talking to Rui.
And you get to Tsukasa, who is refusing to sing with Rui and in fact seems to be arguing with Rui if we really want to overthink it. In fact almost switching their roles from the main story.
Because Tsukasa has grown now and how else to show that growth than to switch Rui and Tsukasa's perspectives/roles.
Now how this would happen really depends since there are multiple ways they can go about it with the time they have.
There is obviously mystery dude dude (who i know now is sakaki) who still gives me bad vibes. However there is actually two way they can make mystery dude trigger this sort of plot :
-Mystery dude is malicious and actively manipulates/confronts Rui to make him rethink his worldview
-Mystery dude isn't malicious but instead is just jaded/has been through a lot of industry bullshit which ends up rubbing off on Rui accidentally
But you can even just not have mystery dude involved with this at all (which i doubt but still) because you know what loose plotpoint is still lingering over WxS, fucking Asahi
Rui still has not talked about Asahi to WxS, in fact Curtain Call ends on an explicit cliffhanger which is never really emotionally concluded (at least in Rui's own events, technically the arc ender did but there are still a lot of loose threads from that arc). Why would Colorpalet make Asahi come back after Rui graduates, they could've just had him disappear into the sunset but instead they hint at his potential comeback.
Unless Rui will be forced to again confront similar feelings he did during Curtain Call this time with possibly an added layer of whatever happens during WxS's freelance arc.
Anyways yeah this is overly complicated but then again colorpalet is not being easy with us so...yeah.
306 notes
·
View notes