#shaman king English opening

[sorenblr]

I've been going through my 4kids nostalgia phase and recently rediscovered Shaman King and its FMA brotherhood remake. I know its probably way after your time, but do you have a history with it and/or do you have any thoughts on it from either a personal or a mythological standpoint?

Way after your time? How old do you people think I am? Anyway, I've read the manga, watched the 4Kids dub etc., even played the completely serviceable Aria of Sorrow clones that were released on the GBA. I have a lot of fondness for the original series, especially the early chapters, which are rendered in this lovely style that was dominant from about 1998 to 2003. You know, early One Piece, Ravemaster, Law of Ueki etc. The high foreheads and chunky hands and almost squarish eyes. It quickly went out of fashion and is now only an artifact of that generation's juvenalia, but I really adore it. And Takei's linework in that period is phenomenal. I have very fond memories of reading the short-lived English Jump serials and opening up to the Faust arc and thinking to myself, wow. It's badass how that guy looks.

On the other hand, it operates on the Kinnikuman principle of world tournament racial dynamics, so it's understanding of myth is filtered through this parade of cultural and ethnic stereotypes, and a lot of it is 'playful' or at least deliberately unserious. And then there are characters like Chocolove who are so racist that both the localization and subsequent anime adaptations have been running damage control ever since. I assume that would be a hurdle to modern audiences, this not neccesarily ill-intentioned but very clueless replication of stereotypical imagery from imported media. On the flipside, there's an Italian guy who compels the Archangel Michael to transform into a 1992 Ferrari Testarossa.

Anyway, it's cool. I like that everyone gets stronger by going to hell. They fucked up by introducing numerical values as assessments of individual strength. You should only be able to defeat your opponent by deftly reading the flow of their 'ki' or some bullshit, not by leveraging the basic principles of arithmetic... like how a fucking nerd would do.

#ask #shaman king #hiroyuki takei #manga #shonen jump #michael

[babygorewhore]

Hi dear!! I saw that you were making Evan ships and I decided sent a request too 🥹 It's okay if you don't want to do it. You have a very nice blog, I love it so much ❤

English is not my first language, so I'm sorry if there is something strange or incoherent

I'm not sure how exactly to do this, I hope everything will be in order (´｡• ω •｡`)

I am 5'2 feet Asian with brown eyes and dark hair. I'm pretty slim but not athletic (I hate sports haha)

My style ranges from cute things like light floral tops and pink skirts to something dark. It's hard to make a choice when there are so many cool things :(

I'm very impressionable, emotional and empathic, a big crybaby actually. Pretty funny and have good, stupid humor. A little delulu and silly person. Shy at the beginning of communication, but then I open up as an active person.TOUCH CONTACT!! I bite a little, but it's like a love language. By the way I cursing a lot, so unfamiliar people around me are shocked by the inconsistency of this with my cute appearance. I prefer to spend time at home, cause I don't like the street and large, although sometimes it can be fun

I built my personality on Steven Universe, Undertail, a little on some anime like Sailor Moon or Shaman King. I love drama movies. La La Land is my favorite. I love The Office even more. Favorite artists One Direction (each member solo), Joji, Lana Del Rey, The Neighbourhood

Thank you so much and just wanted to say again how amazing you are!!♡♡

You’re seriously the sweetest and I’m sending you a hug rn. BUT YEAH IF I LOVE SOMEONE I BITE THEM MUNCH MUNCH.

I ship you with…

Kyle!!!!! So if we’re going with frat boy Kyle he’s a super extrovert and I feel like he would make shy people really comfortable. And he would love your style. I feel like he would fully support delusions because he’s low key that way too. And he would be always comfort you if you’re crying and he’s also really empathetic.

And he would absolutely jam out to one direction (I saw them in concert heheheh) and if he’s Franken Kyle, he would literally be your pet. No cap. Like he’s your baby and you’re his baby and he would protect you at all costs and snuggle AHHH

#personal

[sir-phineas-lost]

Oh...no

No by now the entire anime-community knows, but Akira Toriyama passed last week and it was announced this morning.

There is literally nothing I can say that others haven't said better. Anyone who is even a little bit into anime and manga has at least something to thank him for.

I guess I just need to express how someone you have never met or talked to can have a profound effect on your life.

Edit: OH! And I can't believe I almost forgot to share my most seminal DB-memory.

So DB was actually not my first foray into manga and anime, not by a long shot. Pokémon and Sailor Moon were airing as Saturday morning cartoons in Sweden from around the year 2000, but Shounen Jump began publication in late 2003. Pretty soon after that I was reading Yu-Gi-Oh, Naruto, One Piece, Detective Conan and Shaman King, but not Dragonball. And the reason for that is hilarious.

I have this friend of mine who is American and he lived in Sweden when we were kids. He was into anime and manga way before I was and he did have about 20 volumes of Dragonball in his room. He told me to give it a try one day and that I should just pick any volume (he didn't have the first ones of either Z or the original run). So I pick one out and I open it up in the middle and I remember it being this page specifically:

So the reason I didn't read Dragonball until I was 15 was because 13-year old me had to read the words "triple Kaio-Ken Kamehameha" (before even learning English mind you) and promptly went "Nope".

#akira toriyama #in memoriam

[frankenkyle19]

Hello cutie!! I'm a fan of your work and I want to say that you are very cool <3

I've already requested a ship with Evan characters from another amazing author, but I'd like to write to you again if that's ok!! You know, it’s nice to get an opinion from all the authoritative and knowledgeable people whom I trust in this regard hehe (=^-ω-^=)

English is not my first language, so I'm sorry if there is something strange or incoherent

I am 5'2 feet Asian with brown eyes and blue short (about 3 cm) hair, but my natural color is dark. I'm pretty slim but not athletic

I love a variety of clothes. All sorts of cute things like Hello Kitty, but I also have a lot of dark things.

I'm very impressionable, emotional and empathic, a big crybaby actually. Pretty funny and have good, stupid humor. A little delulu and silly person. Shy at the beginning of communication, but then I open up as an active person.TOUCH CONTACT!! I bite a little, but it's like a love language. By the way I cursing a lot, so unfamiliar people around me are shocked by the inconsistency of this with my cute appearance. I prefer to spend time at home, cause I don't like the street and large, although sometimes it can be fun

I built my personality on Steven Universe, Undertail, a little on some anime like Sailor Moon or Shaman King. I love drama movies. La La Land is my favorite. I love The Office even more. Favorite artists One Direction (each member solo), Joji, Lana Del Rey, The Neighborhood

Thank you very much, have a nice day/morning/night xx

I ship you very much with Kyle spencer! My love, my baby boy!

Specifically Franken!Kyle because he’s my fav

Loves your blue hair! Finds it so pretty and nicknames you blueberry because he likes blueberry and he likes your hair as well

Hello kitty clothes??? Kyle absolutely adores it. “Kitty!” He’d mumble, smiling at whatever you were wearing that day.

He’s shy and it takes him a while to trust people, but when he does he’s all in. Physical contact is his biggest love language! He’s not great at expressing himself but he’s able to show it through touch! Although sometimes he may be a little too rough. He doesn’t mean it!

loves to stay with you, wherever you are, but also prefers to stay in. He likes to be alone and have you all to himself for all the snuggles his undead heart could desire

feel like he was definitely a one direction fan as a frat boy, although the rest of his fraternity thought it was cringe, but now he loves it even more because it gives him some sense of comfort and remembrance of how things used to be

[snowmantita]

Frequently Asked Questions

Maybe this can answer some of your questions about me, both as an artist and as a person. So, here we go!

Who am I?

I'm Snow, nice to meet you! I'm a chilean freelancer artist who likes anime, who wants to become a well known artist.

What can I call you?

Usually my friends call me Snow but you can call me Manta or even Hana (the latter because of one of my Ocs).

What are your pronouns?

To be honest, you can use whatever pronoun you want as I don't care much about how you address me.

What does your name mean?

It is a combination of words between English and Spanish, in English it would be "Snow blanket" but for my taste, it sounds better Snowmantita.

What programs/ do you use?

I usually use the Paint Tool Sai to sketch, outline and color my illustrations, to make symmetrical sketches or add effects with brushes I use Clip Studio Paint and finally to add other effects, texts and modify I use Photoshop CS6.

What kind of series or anime do you like?

I love fighting, paranormal or rhythmic anime. The anime I love are Saint Seiya, Tokyo Ghoul, Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle, Shaman King, Demond Slayer and Record of Ragnarok.

Do you have comfort characters?

Of course! I tell you who they are: 

Hades (Record of Ragnarok). Rosho Tsutsujimori (Hypnosis Mic). Giyuu Tomioka (Demon Slayers). Faust VIII (Shaman King).

Can we ship our Ocs?

Of course it is! It's fun to make ships, more so if their personalities are different and curious. My Persephone has ships with Greek and Aztec gods.

Can I make/send you fanart of your OCs?

Sure

Can I use, resubmit or use AI from your drawings?

The answer is a resounding no. You can't use my drawings unless they are a gift, art trade, collab or commission, but I know there are people who do it anyway so all I ask is that you give me credits and tag me. In the case of AI, is a NO.

Do you accept request?

Sadly no, because there was a problem with a person who did not like my art and it is also difficult for me to organize my time to do my work, so I decided to close them indefinitely. Currently I have open commissions.

Can I share something with you?

Of course you can. You can send me an ask, tag me, DM me or send it to me in "submit".

Which social network can I contact you?

Tumblr (Fan Division) ✦ RoR OC IG ✦ Twitter

#.faq

[himebushou]

HI – I am finally watching Shaman King 2021!

The 2001 anime consumed my head and my heart (many a Maths lesson was spent discussing what had happened in Last Night’s Episode), so I’m happy to be diving in at last!

I’m grouping my rambles for convenience.  Here are some squiggly thoughts on Episodes 1-9!

Episode 1

Ep 1 of Shaman King and I'm getting emotional – the way Anna and Yoh go up against Hao in the opening sent a chill down my spine!  And wow, they didn't waste any time establishing the twin connection, huh?

There's definitely a lot packed into Episode 1, which means that it goes super fast but hey, that's fine!

It will take me a while to get used to the voices because I love and adore the 4 Kids dub – but I'm watching this subbed and having fun so far!

Episode 2

AMIDAMARU IS ADORABLE.

SHAMAN KING is one massive eco message and I loooove iiiiiit!  Having Ren spend all that time staring up at the stars rambling on about air pollution… you tell ’em!

Episode 3

Phew, the bit in the Lee Pyron episode where he starts crying... that takes me back…  (Though I think they missed a trick here by sticking with ‘Lee Pyron’ in the dub; ‘Lee Pai-Long’ made a lot more sense to me, back in the day.)

Anna literally slapping sense into everyone, including Jun fhdjdn

AND WATCHING HER USE THE BEADS GAVE ME CHILLS YAHHH!!

Episode 4

Episode 4 is my favourite so far – the introduction of Tokageroh!  There was a proper laugh-out-loud moment as well as plenty of action... though I have to ask how in the world baby!Mosuke was making swords, lol.  Him and what resources?  The knife from his father? Gosh.

Tokageroh’s backstory was delivered pretty quickly… I also appreciated Ren in this episode.

I wish that the English dub had stuck with 4Kids’ term ‘sacred hang’ – that had so much flavour.  Ryu talking about a ‘happy place’ doesn’t really have the same pizazz.

However!  Amidamaru referring to Yoh as ‘Lord Yoh’?  Amazing.  Splendid.  Beautiful.  I believe it was ‘Master Yoh’ back in the 2001 days.

Episode 5

SCREAMS

THIS

THIS IS MY FAVOURITE ONE

First of all, starting off with Ryu was cute!  Though I don’t understand how Anna summoned Mosuke to fix Harusame considering that he's dead dead (having passed on at all), but hey, I think we'll have to let it slide…

SILVA IS HERE!  I had to skip back and watch most of the episode in English because hi, DAN GREEN, HI.  He was so great and I just felt so happy hearing his voice again after all this time~ it helps that Silva is an AMAZING character and so much fun!

I cracked when Yoh lobbed Amidamaru like a baseball and tfjfj the bit where Amidamaru's spirit nearly ascends is so good –

I actually squealed when Over Soul started playing, sheesh.  Oh well.  It wasn’t too late, so I’m sure my neighbours were fine.

And man, Ren is such a lil creep at this point... The Tao family give off serious Zoldyck vibes, tbh.

(Shaman King 2021 is still super fast and I think it’s okay for people who’ve got 2001 or the manga as a baseline, but if I were completely new to the IP, I would be LOST.)

Episode 6

Horohoro is so cute.

That’s pretty much all I have to say!

Episode 7

Faust the VIII is a FREAK what the hell!

At this point, I’m flip-flopping between the sub and the dub based on whether it’s a Silva screen or not dndjkd but Faust sharing a seiyuu with Saurtobi Sasuke (from Sengoku BASARA!!) is making that complicated!

THIS EP IS FULL OF TWISTS AND TURNS

YOH LOSING

REN COMING TO THE RESCUE WITH "I DRINK THREE GLASSES OF MILK A DAY"?

SILVA'S COOL SPEECHES

AMIDAMARU INSPIRING YOH AND ANNA GETTING JELLY –

Also, the soundtrack is perfeeect for Shaman King I loooove it

Episode 8

Manta comes from money?? I don’t remember all of that stuff with his family from 2001 at ALL.

Also, the funny thought of Ryu going to America to train as a sushi chef like... surely it would be more prudent to stay in Japan?  lol

I'm pretty sure Amidamaru uses "de gozaru" when he speaks, which is super cute

This episode introduces Tamao!  I think she might be a little younger than Yoh and Anna (11?). Ponchi and Conchi were absolutely vile which was definitely, definitely left out of the dub.

I feel like we could have had more of Yoh's struggle in Yomi Cave, for sure, but that’s 2021's breakneck pacing again!  Also, I really have to question the tournament format considering that something like 10 days have passed since Yoh's loss to Faust – there wasn’t any mention of how long the qualifiers would last.  I love tournaments in anime, but they MUST be well structured!!  Or I get mad!!

Bason is adorable...... Also, I completely forgot that Ren disdains the Tao family?  What a dweeby child.  I love him.

How is it that Tamao has an Over Soul but Yoh didn't even know what it was called nfjfjd Just HOW slack was Yoh in his training??

Episode 9

YOH'S REMATCH AGAINST REEEN

THE HORSES ARE COOL

I love how much this episode focused on Yoh saying things like, “I'm not going to force myself" djdj I wish he was the shounen protag whose example I'd followed… Yoh says such important things about not working to death that many of his peers could listen to!  And me too sigh sighs

Once again, the timeline is whack – the preliminaries are over but Ren’s only had two battles?  Huh??

#shaman king #shaman king 2021 #NORTHERN LIGHTS INTENSIFIES...

[sakuranoumi]

Fandom: Shaman King

Characters: Hao, Yabisu

Word Count: 629

Prompt: Unexpected Visitor

Warning: there is allusions to plot points in TSS that have not been released in English yet

When he first became Shaman King there was an invasion into his private society because Yoh couldn't leave well enough alone. Hao won't admit he liked or appreciated it. Instead he crossed his arms and grumbled about it the whole way. He kept grumbling even as his society finally emptied out and it was just him and the throne he had coveted for so long.

Quiet. Blissful quiet and solitude, even as his heart panged in fear that maybe everyone was out of his reach once again.

He opened his eyes at the slow and steady thud of a cane echoing in the silence followed by the shuffling of feet and dragging of cloth.

“Still kept that limp I see,” Hao taunted, “Missed me that much?”

“Wanted to always remember that pathetic look on your face when I bested you,” Yabisu spoke, drawing into Hao's line of sight, “It's been an exhilarating 500 years and I look forward to 500 more.”

“Patch Officials can't become Shaman King—“

“They're supposed to serve their King in the Great Spirits,” Yabisu interrupted cutting him off, “And we all saw how well that worked out didn't we?”

Hao clicked his mouth shut because it was true. He cheated the system then, and he had planned to cheat the system to take the throne that rightfully belonged to him. Yohken had just proven to be a road bump. A 500 year set back.

“Then you also understand that I'll be taking that back.”

The leer on Yabisu's face was lecherous as madness danced in his eyes eyeing the throne.

“You need a majority to enact the Flowers of Maize. I doubt anyone will side with you.”

“Yet you forget there are two kings that faced you down and came out triumphant. You forget that every king before them has been able to observe you. 500 years is an awfully long time to gossip. This day was inevitable. Eventually you'd cheat enough that it would be basically handed to you and then it would become our god given duty to take that all away from you.”

Hao scoffed, “The earth sure went to shit in the 500 years I was gone. Why'd they hand it back over to you? I'll know they're serious when they send Jesus or Buddha here to challenge me. Kings the world remembers. Kings the world still follows. You're just a long forgotten whispered conspiracy theory.”

Yabisu raised an eyebrow, “Am I a conspiracy theory? Remember who brought the technology to the Patch. Remember who started the Shaman Fight?”

Hao rolled his eyes, “You're not Grey Saucer.”

“No,” Yabisu conceded, “but Grey Saucer's type is so easy to push around. So easy to control. The real mastermind has always been in the shadows. Have always been controlling things under a human guise. I heard you're going to be an uncle. Congratulations by the way even though you won't be there to see it. I hope he's not afraid of lizards. I'm afraid he might be running into a lot if he upholds your ideals.”

“You're delusional if you think you can touch him.”

Yabisu smirked, “The lizards might be closer than you think. I've been planning for this just as long as you have. I moved all my pawns into place ages ago and I'll continue to move them right under your nose. Enjoy it while you still can Aho-sama.”

Just like that Yabisu disappeared and Hao was once again left in silence. He was left to seethe. He was left to think over everything.

“I swear to myself, Yoh, if your human friend you insisted on bringing is my downfall I'm going to make you regret ruining everything for me.”

#shaman king #hao asakura #yabisu #i have a podcast that talks about aliens and cryptids #so yes I'm living my best life with takei's narrative choices #and yes I'll use any opportunity to flex that alien knowledge

[kaiiscottage]

── ୨୧ Welcome dear! 🍡⁺ 𓂂

🌷Hiii my name is Kaii but you can also call me Vivy or Milo :D!🌷

🌷I'll be using this blog to mainly post about my interests and ramble about them but maybe I'll also post some of my art,fics,amvs,icons,layouts etc~

🌷More info below!

┈ ୨୧ 💐About me:

✿ 17 | she/her but any pronouns are fine tho! | Bi/Ace | Latina | INFP

✿ Ambivert | ADHD | I can speak Spanish,English and French !

✿ Some of my current interests rn are Trigun,Idolish7,MahoYome,Good Omens,OFMD,MP100,Kyo Kara Maoh!,Natsume Yuunjinchou,Sarazanmai,Yuri Kuma Arashi,H*talia,Shaman King,Sabikui Bisco,Kuroshitsuji,The Owl House,Sonic,Urusei Yatsura,Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha,seasonal animes,angelology,demonology,forgotten 2000's animes I casually stumble upon one day and then make them my whole personality for 2 months and A LOT more stuff ~

✿ In general I love animation! That includes animes,cartoons and animated movies; Aside from that I also like films,manga and some books :]

✿ My two main comfort and favorite characters in any media are Violet Evergarden and Mafuyu Sato <3!!

✿ I like drawing,writting,reading and baking :3

✿ Feel free to message me I'm open to meet new people even if my replies can be a bit late :D !

┈ ୨୧ 🌿DNI:

◌˚ 𓂂Basic dni criteria like racists,homophobes/transphobes or lgbtphobic people in general,ableists,xenophobes,pro-lifers,Terfs,sexists etc

◌˚ 𓂂Pro-shippers/Maps/P*dos

◌˚ 𓂂Dude bros (especially the anime ones...), people who fetishize wlw or mlm relationships,people who sexualise underage characters,NFT/Ai Art supporters

◌˚ 𓂂HATE vividly any of my interests

◌˚ 𓂂If you make fun of people for having "childish" interests

◌˚ 𓂂Rude or overly negative people

┈ ୨୧ 🍃BYF:

☆༚.I'm mainly active on:

🌼 ig: xc.lartand/kaiiscottage [priv acc] 🌼 MAL: Bluexia3 ~

☆༚.English IS NOT my main language so I'm really sorry if I make any typos or mistakes qwq

☆༚.I might also speak spanish from time to time =w=~

☆༚.This is an SFW blog since,well,I'm asexual but there might be slight nudity and some blood so please be aware of that!

☆༚.I may use tone indicators from time to time but not always!

☆༚. If you need cw for anything let me know!

☆༚.I post some of my headcanon/ships so if you don't like/agree with any of them please don't be a jerk about it u_u

☆༚.Please give credit to me if you use any of the content I make!

🦋˚✧So yeah I might add more info in the future since I can't think of more rn qwq

I'm also gonna make a please interact post since I want more mutuals or just people who like the same stuff as me-

But for now, enjoy your stay ily ♡! ༉‧₊˚‬

#intro #blog intro #introduction post #introductory post #introducing myself #pinned post #searching for mutuals #looking for mutuals #first post #anime blog #<3 #kaiicore

[hanafubukki]

old anime dubs = 4Kidz 😭

Hello Anonie 🌺🌸🌻

Okay, okay, okay, and I might be one of the few ones who liked the 4kidz dubs but their Openings were wonderful! and catchy!

(wasn't sure if the crying face was happy crying or sad crying lolol)

As a kid I adored the 4kidz dubs, I thought they really fit and it was such a fun and interesting dubs. maybe didn't like the cuts, but the voices were good.

But I especially loved the openings! like Tokyo Mew Mew and that opening with there "la la la la and the whole I didn't count of this" really hits me with nostalgia.

One piece and the whole " dealing! got give it up luffy!" was so so good, and I thought, even now that Luffy VA fit him so well!

Shaman King and Yu-gi-oh was really good too! I prefer those English dubs to the dubs we have today.

Now, excuse me while I look them all up on YouTube. 😂☺️🌺💜👏

#answered #anonie ask #hana talks anime

[ghostfriendly5]

‘Choose Your Enemies Carefully’ Book Review  (Fewer Problems)

SPOILERS

The second book in the early Shadowrun ‘Secrets of Power’ trilogy, is a bit better and quite a bit funnier. Mostly due to the British setting, with Dodger even dropping in on my home port of Bristol. Surrounded by an unfinished biodome in 2051, much of a muchness with our current mayor’s absurdly unsuccessful plans for a new arena and underground. For the record, we never say ‘criminey!’, a ‘rotter’ isn’t a situation but a person, cricket has a ‘first ball’, instead of an ‘opening pitch’, and it isn’t ‘three leopards’ on the shirt. 

We do have some twits who hang around Stonehenge pretending to be druids, so it was rather amusing to see some upper class twits remake Wicker Man with all the deftness of Nicholas Cage. I’m not quite clear (again) whether their plan was to place Gordon-Windsor on the throne or sacrifice him in a ‘sacred king’ ritual to gain power, but ‘real’ druids would be speaking Celtic instead of Old English, and sending the Anglo-Saxon invaders back to Germany with their German royals. The Welsh are unhappy enough about an English ‘Prince of Wales’ at the moment, apart from our pinching the whole of England off them.

It was a pity Sam Verner never dropped in on the West End to take in Pirates of Penzance, and the only outlaws as insensibly over-virtuous as himself. Although it’s absurdly contrived that he ends up fighting deranged druids in Blighty at all. Dodger has to forge evidence that his sister is involved, for no good personal reason of his own, except preventing a few murders on the other side of the world. Without apparently knowing at the time that Janice was actually involved in the first place (And grateful for the obese Hyde-White shagging her, according to dear Sam, because orks are so ugly)! Dodger himself is alright though (he even has a cameo in the HBS games). His ‘verily’s are too artificial to be pretentious, much more bearable than fake-RP or mockney would’ve been. Funny voices and laughable accents are more essential to roleplaying than dungeons or dragons; Dodger is essentially a roleplayer placed in a roleplaying game.

As for Sam, the British setting reminds us that his handle of ‘Twist’ is at least appropriate; Oliver Twist was led by the Artful Dodger into a life of crime. He was also an absurdly sanctimonious little goody-goody; better if Sam had gotten out straight away, like Oliver, instead of hanging about as an insufferable prig with one foot in the deep end. Syncretism of shamanism with Christianity is a deep, real topic, the stupidity of bedhopping shadowrunners is a worthy one, but the superficial self-righteousness of everything Sam says or thinks on any topic is nauseating. He finds time to badmouth poor Hanae as well as his ork sister, and Janice’s fall/redemption would make a massively more interesting story; her sections are certainly the best parts of the book, set in a truly treacherous and corrupting Sixth World. An actual story about Sam’s search for his sister might also be worth reading. Poor Hart continues her slide into the ineffectual Bond girl zone; at least sleeping with Sam didn’t destroy Sally’s ability to do her job. Sam’s final takedown of Hyde-White was written considerably better than he deserved. 

While it’s still unbelievable that a character like Sam could last a minute in the Shadows, defeat major villains with a few weeks half-hearted training, or get the time of day from Runners like Dodger or Sally if they’d stolen a crate of watches, the good old Shadowrunning action is on display; rather sharper than the last book. Willie quietly and efficiently does good work, Dodger’s matrix warfare and sally against Camelot were strong sections. Although I expected his romance with Megaera, a far-reaching event in Shadowrun history, to get a lot more attention than it did.              

#shadowrun #Novel #book review #rpg #bristol #uk #druids #wales #oliver twist #Dickens

[fendissxc]

intro

hi hello! you can call me roz or rozlyn.

but remember that we are actually a system.

i am an adult - i dont mind minors interacting with me though, as long as you dont try to get access to my nsfw content - and if you do manage to find my nsfw twitter, just dont interact with this account. thank you. my tumblr page isnt age restricted, but i may post/interact with smut content.

im in these fandoms:

shaman king, inazuma irebun, papers please, rusty lake, jojo's, metal family, eddsworld, ace attorney and much more!

im autistic, so please, be patient. i may not understand your intentions, so ill politely ask you if im unsure.

im emo-looking alternative person, i love both creating and listening to music; im a bassist that also sometimes plays (classical)guitar. im open to many genres, mostly metal (dsbm, bm, death, trash, sludge etc) or punk subgenres (pop, rock, hardcore, post). totally open for band recs, preferably underground skramz/post hardcore~

also, english isnt my first language - im polish! however!!! i dont mind you speaking any language on my page, ill try to translate your comment if i dont understand it myself.

dni: antis, ableists, blackwashing non-believers, furry hunters, believes that fiction affects reality 1:1, therian haters, p3d0/m4p/z00.

personally i also prefer you to dni if youre a jackalope (rl) or pike (sp) shipper.

note: i block very liberally. i dont like labeling myself as either proship or antiship, discourse makes me sick, but ship whatever you want to ship, i wont harass you over your fiction preferences, ill just block or scroll down if i dont like content provided by you.

+ i do believe fiction affects reality only if the recipient is severely mentally ill, uneducated, young or simply chronically online. i dont post heavier topics on tumblr tho if i would want to, i would put a cw.

#introduction #intro

[lesbianakaashi]

The Forgotten Shounen: Katekyo Hitman Reborn

This is not a “Why you should watch/read khr” or anything like that. This is just me going into the deep dive and throwing my findings at you. I’m making this because khr used to be my favourite series when I was 15 (I had plushees, posters, tradingcards, the art book etc) and now as an adult I constantly find myself baffled at how unknow it seems to be.

1. Okay first what is khr?

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! or just Reborn! is a series by Akira Amano which was published in Weekly Shounen Jump from 2004 to 2012 (with 42 volumes) and got an anime adaption which run from 2006 to 2010 on Tv Tokyo (with 202 episodes and one OVA).

2. What’s it about?

Khr is a parody of the italian mafia and plays in a world where the mafia is heavily influencial. The protagonist is the japanese middle schooler Sawada Tsunayoshi who is known as “No good Tsuna” because of his failing grades, general weak and cowardly personality and weak physics.

He becomes aware of the mafia world when a 2 year old baby called Reborn arrives at his house claiming to be the greatest hitman and declaring himself his home tutor. Reborn was send by the 9th head of the Vongola famiglia who is ready to retire and looking for a new heir. Which of course, is supposed to be Tsuna and now it's Reborns job to shape him into a worthy sucessor.

Tsuna rejects the violence of the mafia world and refuses the position as the 10th. Thanks to Reborn and his general craziness Tsuna meets different people and starts to make real friendships. Reborn wants 6 of those friends to be Tsuna's future guardians, basically a group of people which will be closest to him in the vongola famiglia. Tsuna might have no interest in those positions but the friendships he builds with them become really precious to him.

Reborns arrivial also brings in the enemies of the Vongola family which leads to Tsuna being forced to engage in battles. Generally Tsuna openly avoids fights and prefers to run away but will put himself in danger for his friends' sake or because of something Reborn did.

Through out the series Tsuna matures and gains strenght but he never becomes a power fantasy. He's just a guy with many flaws who grows through the human connections he makes.

Personally I think the relationship between Reborn and Tsuna is one of the best student teacher reltaionships in all of manga only topped by Mob and Reigen from Mob Psycho 100. Especially the last arc really underlines their unique relationship to me.

Furthermore, khr offers a new and unique battle system: The flames. I'm not gonna go into to too much detail but the general idea is that one fights with their dying will flame which basically turns off your the savety switch so you can fight with everything you have. The flames are seperated into different categories such as: sky, storm, mist, rain, sun, lightning and cloud and have different attributes asigned to each one. Tsuna's use of the sky flame and his transformation when using it is still one of my favourite shounen transformations to this day.

3. What happened?

The series did really well and then not so well over the course of its serialisation. After the manga got an anime adaption it increased in populairty and video games, light novels, and other products such as CDs were created based on the series. Reborn is one of the best selling series of Weekly Shōnen Jump and has sold around 30 Million volumes overall. It was and still is very popular in Japan but rather unknown in the west.

According to the article "The Rise and Fall of Weekly Shonen Jump: A Look at the Circulation of Weekly Jump" khr was the 10th bestselling series in Weekly Shōnen Jump, with a total of 7 million copies sold in 2007.

This number increasing to 15 milion in 2008. Which placed khr into the 4th best selling series of 2008 in Japan.

Between 2008 and 2010 those sales declined but still kept strong with khr as the 6th top selling manga in 2009, 8th best selling in 2010 and then 24th best selling in 2012.

In November 2014, readers of the Da Vinci magazine voted khr number 17 on a list of Weekly Shōnen Jump's greatest manga series of all time.

After the anime came to an apprupt stop in 2010 for unknown reasons the manga sells took a visible hit. (Apparently the studio wanted to put the anime on halt because they were busy with other projects and give Akira Amano time to develop her story but I couldn't find any source for this claim) Furthermore, the rushed last chapters of the manga in 2012 declined the popularity of the series even more. There's no offical statement as to why the manga was ended in such a way but it's reasonable to assume that Jump either cut it considering the decreasing sales or Akira Amano choose to end it for personal reasons.

Nontheless, Tsuna not being included in Jump Force (a fighting game where you can play as different characters from Jump) in 2019 even tho he made it in earlier Jump Stars games also underlines the decreased interest in the series.

Rumors on a reboot or anime adaption of the last two arcs surface from time to time but are genereally unlikely. Artland the studio which made khr has gone bankrupt around 2015-2016. It might be taken on by another studio but rather uncommen especially with such an old series.

4. Art style

The khr anime ended over 10 years ago and the old art style might not be appealing to newer audiences.

Especailly because the anime adaption follows Akira Amanos old art style which heavily developed within the years. Here a picture comparing characters in the new art style:

A modern anime adaption in the new art style would be aesthetically pleasing. It would probably look similiar to Psycho Pass since Akira Amano did the concept art for this series.

(My personal art student hot take is that both art styles are unique and fun. Up to this day Akira Amano still has my favourite art style and even if the amount folds in the characters clothing is a little extreme I love it dearly.)

5. Criticism

The show is not without flaws and even if I greatly enjoy it it wouldn't be right not to adress them.

Daily Life Arc:

A lot of people view the first 20 to 25 episodes as fillers and quickly lose intererst in the series. This is due to the fact that Akira Amano inteded the series to be a gag manga and focuses the first chapters on world building, character introduction and comical narratives. It's rumored that the decision to develop the story into a battle shounen was made because the sales weren't doing well enough at first. So the first chapters/episodes may seem titidious but are necessary for the story and the development of the characters. The tonal shift from a more gintama like gag manga to a darker battle focused story can also be offputting to some viewers.

Either way a lot of people blame this arc when discussing why khr never got an english dub or didn't end up on Toonami. I've also read that the manga never finished serializing in the north america. However, it finished in other western languages like german and spanish.

Censoring:

The anime censors A LOT. From Gokudera's smoking habit, Yamamoto's whole character arc which deals with heavy themes such as depression and suicidal thoughts. The general bloodiness of the manga was censored and sometimes whole chapters and characters were left out even if those were important to the devolopment of others.

Filler episodes:

Out of the 202 episodes the anime has around 29 filler episodes which makes roughly 14 %.

Sexism:

Even if Reborn was written by a woman most female characters are rather flat and their storylines often tied to a male character in one way or another.

Genereal things:

Khr, like many other long running series, is sometimes criticised for a lack of world building or unpopular narrative choices.

6. Hope?

Khr isn't exactly dead. As stated before the series is still very popular in Japan and still gets new merch pretty regulary. There are also petitions floating around for a reboot or a new anime season but those never get a lot of traction. Furthermore #Reborn2期アニメ化 (#Reborn2ndAnimation) used to get some traction on twitter not too long ago. Last year the Anime News Network did a poll on which anime the readers would like to see a rebooot of and khr placed second.

Either way here's a collection of recent khr things I could find.

- In 2018 a new bluray set was released in north america

- The khr stage play reached yet another new season

- A mobile game was released last year

- Currently ongoing anime cafe event called "Concerto di Vongola"

- Last month there was an event with the former VAs and stage play actors where they discussed their favourite khr episodes.

- There has been an increase in blind reacts to the openings on youtube which might bring in a new fan base. The biggest one I could find had around 90k views and was made in 2019. On this note check out the soundtrack. The first openeing Drawing Days by SPLAY still makes me go insane (but I'm biased of course)

There also renewed hope for a new season/reboot because Shaman King, Inuyasha and Bleach got anounced for new seasons after a long hiatus. It's important to keep in mind that the circumstances for those series are differnt tho. For example bleachs new anime is often tied to the immense success of the gatcha game.

7. Conclusion

Khr is a series which used to be a flagship for Weekly Shounen Jump and is deeply beloved by it's fans, especially in Japan. It influenced other shounen series like bnha. It would be nice to see it gaining a bigger fanbase in the west :)

#khr #khr meta #anime analysis #shounen jump #katekyo hitman reborn #mirytalks #long post #manga

[nodangnameisavailable]

Thoughts on Shaman King 2021 as an OG Shaman King fan

I posted this as a comment on a youtube video recently... So

!!Long post warning!!

First I just wanted to say that I completely agree with everyone saying that the pacing is very fast, and that it's harder, if someone was a new viewer coming into Shaman King, to be convinced that in two episodes a deep bond has formed between Yoh and Amidamaru and Yoh and Manta. But I think people (especially some of the fans of the OG Shaman King) are being too hard on this adaptation. I think there are a few things we have to take into consideration when viewing this adaptation right now:

 1. There are 300 chapters of the source material to be adapted in 52 episodes (that's obviously going to cut a lot out, and they've already cut so many chapters out that I personally enjoyed, but the meat of the story is still there and there's so much to the story that I can't wait to see animated and WILL be animated because that's what Hiroyuki Takei wants)

 2. It shouldn't be the norm to compare this adaptation to the 2001 adaptation because what it should be compared to first is the source material which is the manga. While I do think it's inevitable that people will compare the current adaptation to the old one, the old one takes a lot of creative liberties (because the manga wasn't done yet when that adaptation was being made). Therefore, first and foremost we should compare it to the pacing and order of events in the manga, which the current adaptation is doing very well (despite some chapters being cut), rest assured we WILL get more of Ryu and his journey, but it's going to be ordered slightly differently from the 2001 anime. If we look at the list of chapters of the manga on wikipedia (if the manga isn't on hand), they do kinda leave the Ryu storyline untouched until the third volume. And in the manga, by the time they explore Ryu's storyline they've already introduced Ren, Jun and Anna (slightly different from the 2001 anime's pacing and order of events). The current anime's depiction of how Yoh and Ren meet and subsequently fight, is almost panel by panel exactly how they met in the manga and subsequently how Yoh learns from Ren what 100% gattai is and how he can do it in his own way.

3. The voice actors are largely the original cast of voice actors from the 2001 Japanese series. If someone grew up watching the anime in another language (like me I grew up watching Shaman King in English and in Tagalog dub), the difference in voice acting and their stylistic choices of how to bring these characters to life can be a bit jarring. Especially since, if you experienced it in another language first, you might have associated those characters already with the voices that those dubs provided. But the dubs are dubs, and the decision to keep a lot of the original voice actors was a choice made by the creator of Shaman King. In fact, the reason why it took so damn long for this reboot to be even made was because back in 2017, Hiroyuki Takei refused to let it happen if the original voice actors can't come back. So what does that tell us? The voices of the characters we hear right now are largely the voices that the creator has acknowledged to be worthy to bring his characters to life in anime form. A lot of people might not like it, like how a lot of people HATE Goku's voice in the Japanese  version of Dragon Ball. And these are things we as fans are allowed to comment on. But I've seen someone on twitter say that they refuse to continue watching the current adaptation because the voice acting was not what they expected. And as a fan of the manga, that really hurts me. A lot of people have been waiting FOREVER for this to happen, and we should be thankful that the creator is so invested in his work that he would go to great lengths to ensure that this time around, he gets to control the anime being released to us fans.

 4. There's only been 2 episodes. We get a taste from the first episode exactly how good the animation can get (with the opening segment of Hao and Yoh's birth), and I'm willing to bet they're saving the more fancy animation for the juicier fights we're going to see in the future. I believe what they're doing right now is laying down the groundwork: Introducing most of the main cast of characters, and giving a little exposition so that we can either be refreshed if we haven't touched the series in a while, or giving a simple and brief introduction that isn't boring or dragging (which the 2001 anime was, at least in the beginning for me) for a completely new viewer.

 5. People are always going to find something bad to say about everything, it's impossible to please every single fan of the series. But I just wish that people, especially OG fans of Shaman King, won't be so quick to judge or be disappointed. The rate it's going now, it's going to cover a lot of ground and the story later on is where it gets REALLY good anyway. And judging from this episode, this adaptation of the anime likely isn't going to censor out things like blood and just exactly how ruthless Ren and the Tao family can be. So, while I appreciate all the talk and buzz going on about Shaman King in social media, maybe we should just sit back, enjoy the ride.

 Anyway, I hope that for everyone that is quick to judge or to refuse watching this adaptation of the series, I wish we can all just relax a bit and trust that the creator of Shaman King will not screw us fans over, because he really does care about this series. And because in the end, just like how Yoh always says, everything will work out.

#shaman king #thoughts #shaman king 2021 #mini rant

[aer-in-wanderland]

구미호뎐 | Tale of the Nine Tailed - Lost in Translation EP03

The saga continues: part three in a series in which my sister and I pick our way through all the (mis)translations, humour, and cultural subtext that dropped from the fan-subbed version of TotNT. Thank you so much to everyone who bought us coffee - this one’s for you. ;) 

Before we begin, for anyone just joining us: EP01 / EP02. 

We pick up back where we left off last episode with Yeon dressing Ji Ah’s wound. 

Yeon’s line that’s subbed, “Stop being a crybaby” can be a bit hard to translate. The word he uses is ‘eomsal,’ which literally means, ‘the exaggeration of pain; feigning pain; a great fuss about nothing.’ So he’s essentially saying she’s overreacting. I'm not a fan of the use of the word ‘crybaby’ here though personally.

“Long time no see, Lee Yeon.” > > > 12 Hours Earlier.

We see Thirsty meet his ignominious end in a toilet (we never got character names for these guys so I’m just going to call them ‘Thirsty’ and ‘Hungry’).

Elsewhere on the island, Rang fishes a curse doll with the man’s picture on it out of the surf. That’s quite the atmospheric shot. Point to the director.

Episode 03 Title Card: The Secret of the Dragon King 

We open the following morning as Ji Ah and the man who found the body (who Ji Ah refers to as ‘Captain’) examine the scene.

Sub: “Being at sea wasn’t enough and he drowned himself to death.” I’m not sure that sentence even makes sense. I would have translated the man’s line as: “Ho~ Let no one say he wasn’t a seaman. He managed to kick the bucket by drowning [even on dry land].” 

Sub: “Talk about it being all for nothing. This is what he gets after throwing himself at his life.” Um, what now? The line is: “Human lives are so futile. And after he clung so viciously to life, too.”

Lol Yeon. “I see someone threw a party.” I like this sub. What he literally says though is: “Oh~ Looks like it was a really special night.” (‘special’ here is in English). 

Sub: “He smells like a stinky fish.” What Yeon literally says is: “Ugh, a smell like rotting fish is coming from this kid!” Yeon refers to the man as ‘yae,’ which literally means ‘this kid,’ but can also be used to refer to inanimate objects. So, either way...pfft

Appropriately, the BGM playing as Pyung Hee casts her curse is ‘Shaman.’

Back over to Yeon and Ji Ah as they investigate the body. The chyron on the screen reads: ‘The first survivor of the Milky Way (Deceased)’ Irony-(probably)-not-intended. 

We get another chyron not long after, over a shot of Pyung Hee’s father’s head being returned to shore that reads: ‘Seo Gi Chang (Died aboard the Milky Way)’

Lol None of this has stopped Yeon from nomming on his banana milk. I had thought the milk made him seem like a little kid, but according to Korean fans, it’s also, apparently, commonly enjoyed by old men. heh

Sub: “Besides, they’re not good looking enough.” This is a mistranslation. Yeon’s line is literally: “And besides, I don’t like the look of their faces.” What he means, though, is the feeling they give off, rather than their actual ‘looks.’ It’s a common expression in Korean. If I was translating instead of explaining, I would probably render this as, “I don’t like the look of them.”

As Ji Ah drags him out, however, Yeon can be heard saying, “Ah~ I judge people by their looks~!” I’m 98% sure this is another LDW ad lib. Basically, LDW made a joke of his previous line, as if to say Yeon cared about the look of them because they weren’t attractive enough, when really his line meant they seemed shady. It’s almost as if he predicted the bad sub...

We get a brief scene featuring the second (and only named) survivor of the Milky Way, Jin Shik. Oh, and his headless ‘visitor.’ Creepy.

The music underscoring Hungry gorging himself on raw meat is making everything worse (or possibly better, if disturbing is your jam)

I’ve said it before, but I would watch an entire series of Yeon and Ji Ah being a supernatural investigative duo.

Pfft Yeon refers to Seo Gi Chang as ‘the head’ (mogaji). I’m not sure if I should call that indelicate or irreverent. It’s a bit of both, really. 

Yeon’s line here is subbed as, “What happened on the boat?” but it should more properly be: “What did you do on the boat?” He’s not just asking after the sequence of events; the line is a clear accusation.

Sub: “We met an unexpected storm that day.” Actually: “Rough wind and waves hit the side of the fishing boat.” (i.e. causing it to capsize) 

I appreciate that Yeon sits back here and allows Ji Ah to take the lead. 

So, as it turns out, the 11th hell is actually a fishing boat (I’m sure the cast of 1N2D will back me up on this).

Fun fact: This sequence was filmed in a green screen pool and then made to look like the middle of the ocean with CG.

As an aside, I love that Ji Ah deduced the whole story on her own and that she uses that knowledge to corner Hungry psychologically. Also, that her strategy proves more effective than Yeon’s threat of violence. It’s not so much a ‘you catch more flies with honey,’ as a ‘brain over brawn’ sort of deal. 

Ji Ah: You were frightened, weren’t you? Twenty-eight days straight on a perilous life boat without water or food. They’re the perfect conditions for a person to go mad, aren’t they? First-degree burns from the hot August sun striking your body mercilessly, the boat pitching about all day; despite not having eaten, you feel as if you’ll throw up. Clenching your teeth and waiting to be rescued only works for a day or two. The more you think about it, the angrier you get. ‘Why, me? Why?!’ Around the fifth day was the crisis point. Since, in that time, not a drop of rain had fallen. Dehydration would have set in first. [...] But it’s odd, isn’t it? For having starved for 28 days, you lost too little body mass. [...] What did you eat?

Meanwhile, Yeon’s contribution to all of this is: “And you couldn’t have used a delivery app in the middle of the open ocean where there’s no wifi signal.” Pfft He has, of course, caught on to her strategy. As usual, though, he decides to take the cheeky route. 

Side note: I find it interesting that, in this universe full of monsters, the first incident Yeon and Ji Ah end up investigating together turns out to be an entirely human horror. 

Yo. Hungry deciding Ji Ah is food is just...ugh. Never trust a cannibal. 

Luckily for Ji Ah, her guard dog fox is on the job. 

Over to Rang, who asks a weeping Pyung Hee what she’ll give him in return for granting her ‘wish’. We don’t get to see her answer him, but it was included in the backstory collection.

It’s unclear to me just how much Rang is involved in ‘granting’ Pyung Hee’s wish. Like, is he the one fueling the curse somehow, or did he just teach her what she needed to know? I’m inclined to believe it’s more the latter. 

We cut to Taluipa at the Afterlife Immigration Office, who’s pissed that someone’s messing with her Death List. There’s a fun mythology-related chestnut in this scene: when Hyeonuiong comes running in, he’s carrying a watering can. Taluipa accuses him of having been watching dramas, but Hyeonuiong insists he was watering the Uiryeongsu. 

The chyron for it reads: ‘The Uiryeongsu. A tree that measures the sins of the dead by the weight of their clothes when they’re hung on it.’ The hanja for ‘Uiryeongsu’ (衣領樹) literally mean ‘clothing-amount-tree,’ so its name is essentially its function. In traditional mythology, it grows on the near bank of the Samdocheon. This is also the same tree that the Uiryeong’geom (geom = sword) mentioned in EP13 is made from.

“You watered a tree for 3 hours?” Pfft Hyeonuiong and watering can, exit stage right. 

Minor detail: I just realized I can actually see from Taluipa’s List in this scene that one of the two fishermen is named Kim Gil Sang. Still not sure which one though, so I’m going to stick to calling them Hungry and Thirsty. 

The Dragon King Scroll

Back over to Ji Ah, who examines a creepy scroll hanging in Jin Shik’s vacant quarters. Once again, the show cuts into its own dramatic tension with a moment of levity as Yeon startles both Ji Ah and me by popping open his bag of snacks with a massive bang. The contrast between Ji Ah, who’s in serious investigator mode, and Yeon, who just continues his one-gumiho snack parade, blasé as can be, adds humour to an otherwise grim situation. 

Yeon’s response of, “Oh. Sorry.” is in English, making it sound, if possible, even less sincere.

On the off chance that anyone was wondering, the snack Yeon claims as his favorite here is 솜짱 (somjjang). According to the Korean fans again, this is also a food commonly enjoyed by elderly people.

Subs: “Do you know how many people in Joseon died during the 50 years of war? 3.5 million. I’ve seen more deaths than all the funeral companies in this country.” This is another case of diagonal translation. Yeon’s line is more properly: 

Yeon: Between the Imjin War and the Manchu War, do you know how much of the population of Joseon-era Korea was lost in just 50 years? 3,500,000. I’m a guy who’s seen more funerals than all the funerary companies in Korea put together.  

[Note: Yeon is talking about The Japanese Invasions a.k.a The Imjin War (1592-1598) and The Qing Invasion of Joseon a.k.a. The Manchu War (1636)]

As a linguistic aside, Yeon refers to himself here as a ‘nom’ (rhymes with ‘home’). If you read the breakdown of EP02, you’ll recall that ‘nom’ can mean anything from ‘guy’ to ‘bastard.’ It’s not that Yeon means to call himself a bastard, though. It’s only that the typical alternative here (i.e. ‘person’) carries the implication of 'human.’ Since Yeon is, of course, not human, he opts for ‘nom’ instead. The word gets a lot of mileage in this show in relation to all the supernaturals for that reason. 

Lol This exchange about the Dragon King was great. Point to the writer. I would translate it as: 

Yeon: You’re right, but it looks nothing like him. 

Ji Ah: You’ve...seen him? 

Yeon: Back when I was a mountain god. Well, in today’s terms you’d say we attended a leadership conference together. They over-glamorized him. He’s not this good looking.

Ji Ah’s reaction is perfect too. Her, ‘I don’t even know where to begin with that statement so I’m just going to move on’ look came across loud and clear. 

Yeon’s line as he leans over Ji Ah’s shoulder is subbed: “This is just like ‘Where’s Wally?’” In Korea, the game is called ‘find the hidden picture’ (‘sumun keurim chatgi’). So the line is actually: “What is this, ‘find the hidden picture’ or something?” I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance this line was another ad lib by Lee Dong Wook.

On an entirely different cultural note, ‘Where’s Wally?’ is know as ‘Where’s Waldo?’ in North America and exactly nowhere else. Don’t ask... 

This scene features the first mention we get of Imoogi. Imoogi are among the most famous Korean mythical creatures. In most tellings, they are essentially proto-dragons, though occasionally they can be baby dragons. For example, one imoogi tale claims its imoogi was the son of the Dragon King (the same one Yeon attended a ‘leadership conference’ with). Most of the lore agrees that if an imoogi stays submerged in deep water for a thousand years, it earns the chance to become a dragon, though the caveats vary widely, and many imoogi fail. Finally, while the imoogi in TotNT is evil, imoogi aren’t categorically so; some are good, some aren’t.

Rang and the Mudang

Fun fact: Kim Beom explained in his Instagram LIVE that he chose to wear a red suit partially because the color gave off the feeling of a villain, but also because it contrasted well with the green of the forest. He also named this as his favorite Lee Rang outfit.

For anyone keeping track, Rang speaks to the mudang in banmal. She, in return, addresses him as ‘Lee Rang-nim’ and speaks very respectfully.

Okay, there are a couple of things to unpack in Rang’s following exchange with the mudang: 

Mudang: The Corrupt God, King of the Wicked. He is Lee Ryong-nim.

Rang: [Laughs] What’s with that? Ugh, I seriously just cringed! If you slap a fancy title* from the next world in front of its name, does a snake become a dragon?

First, the mudang’s line here is said in an archaic cant. Second, ‘Lee Ryong’ (properly pronounced, ‘i-ryong,’ since there’s actually no ‘L’ in ‘Lee’), is another name for imoogi.

Finally, when Rang says ‘a fancy title from the next world,’ he’s referring to a posthumous name/title. Nearly every kingdom to have occupied the Korean peninsula has used posthumous titles (시호), most often for deceased royalty. By giving one to Imoogi, the mudang is venerating him. Rang mocks this, seizing on Imoogi’s failure to become a dragon. (Let no one say he and Yeon aren’t brothers).

The subs have Rang referring to Yeon as just ‘Yeon,’ but he actually calls him ‘Lee Yeon.’ That’s a very impersonal way to refer to one’s older brother, which is, of course, intentional on Rang’s part. It serves as another linguistic cue to the audience as to how Rang regards Yeon at this point. 

A note on the evening primrose: tvN released a short blurb about it, since, as far as I can tell, the mythology was invented for the show. It reads: 

Evening primrose that has grown while feeding on the blood and flesh of corpses is the same as poison to gumiho; if they so much as touch its powder, their bodies catch flame.

While the subs consistently just say ‘evening primrose,’ this should more properly be ‘burial ground evening primrose,’ which is how the various characters refer to it. 

Fun fact: ‘Evening primrose’ in Korean is ‘dalmaji-kkot’ (달맞이꽃), which means ‘flowers that welcome the moon’. 

Sub: “Half-brothers, to be exact.” The term Rang uses in Korean is quite literally, ‘brothers from different stomachs,’ so it refers specifically to half brothers who share a father but who have different mothers. I mention it only because Korean viewers will have been given slightly more information about their familial relationship here than was provided in the subs. 

Back over to our leads, as Yeon urges Ji Ah to leave the island post-haste. His line is subbed: “I’m saying you may die if you stay here.” That’s a perfectly fine translation. For anyone curious, though, his line is quite literally: “I’m saying if you stay here, [the conditions are] perfect for dying.” 

Sub: “That’s none of your business.” Yeon’s line is more properly: “That’s not for you to know.”

Ji Ah’s response to this is very literally: “I have no intention to go home for a reason I don’t know. So Lee Yeon should find the person Lee Yeon came here to find. I have to know why my parents came to this island.” This is the first time Ji Ah uses Yeon’s full name as a second person pronoun (so basically to mean ‘you’) when speaking to him. It’s hard to make generalizations about any form of address that don’t have multiple exceptions, but in this case, using his name is a more neutral, and somewhat more familiar, alternative to some of the other pronouns she’s been using when speaking to him. To my sense, it softens her rejection of his advice a little bit.

Back to Rang. His line is a bit awkward to translate, but essentially what he says is, ‘Calling my brother a ‘mountain god’ is an overstatement/ putting it nicely.’ I might approximate this as, ‘Sure, my brother was called a mountain god.’ This is the only time in the entire drama that Rang refers to Yeon as ‘uri hyung,’ and it kills me a bit that it’s not out of fondness, but rather derision. ㅠㅠ

Similarly, when Rang says, “I’m a fox, after all. I have to repay eunhye properly,” he is, of course, using eunhye sarcastically.

The subtitle here once again says ‘the underworld,’ but Rang’s line is actually: “I’m going to go to hell, without fail. Together with Lee Yeon.” The subs really need to do a better job of distinguishing between hell and the afterlife. 

We see Ji Ah instruct Jae Hwan over the phone as to what to search for in the library records. She’s split off from Yeon since we last saw them. 

Elsewhere on the island, Yeon also makes a call, only his is to Halmeom (Taluipa) to ask about Imoogi. When this episode first aired, I thought it was odd that Yeon was using ‘Imoogi’ as if it were a name, since this would be like referring to Yeon as ‘Gumiho.’ He later taunts Terry-Imoogi about just that though (i.e. not even having a proper name), so obviously it was an intentional decision on the writer’s part. 

Sub: “If by chance Ah Eum was born again into this world, I can’t let that thing coexist with her.” This sub went a bit sideways. The ‘by chance’ has been mis-attributed. The line is properly: “There’s no way I could possibly (i.e. by any chance/under no circumstances can I) let such a thing exist in a world in which Ah Eum has been reborn.” Yeon is already sure that Ah Eum has been reborn at this point. He’s saying that because she’s been reborn, he can’t allow Imoogi to coexist with her under any circumstances.

Rang vs Ji Ah

Ji Ah returns to Pyung Hee’s to find ‘Pyung Hee’ reading Moby Dick. This is an ironic enough choice of literature to clue her in to the fact that this isn’t really Pyung Hee. Smart cookie. 

On a character note, I loved that Ji Ah’s knowledge of, and love for, world literature was threaded believably throughout the drama in a way in which it feels natural that she caught on to Rang’s hint here. Point to the writer. 

Again, for anyone keeping track, Ji Ah and Rang speak to each other in banmal, as has been the case since Rang revealed himself at Ji Ah’s house in EP01. Not because they’re close, obviously, but because they have zero respect for one another. It’s a bit of a power play on Ji Ah’s part, too, since she’s (hundreds of years) younger. 

Over to Yeon, who barges into the local market owner’s personal quarters to interrogate him. His line when he catches sight of the scroll on the wall is subbed: “Look at this.” This should more properly be: “Check these people out. There’s one here too.” The word he uses that I translated as ‘these people’ is ‘i-geot-dul,’ which is very literally ‘these things,’ so I sort of understand the confusion in the subs. He means the islanders though, not the scrolls. In contrast, ‘there’s one here too’ does actually refer to the scroll.

The knife Yeon throws hits directly over the slit pupil of the scroll dragon’s eye. Nice aim.

Back to Ji Ah and Rang. When Ji Ah accuses Rang of orchestrating the deaths of the Milk Way survivors, ‘to distract us,’ what she says quite literally is ‘to cover our eyes and ears.’

When Rang applauds Ji Ah’s deductive abilities, his line is subbed, “Awesome.” This should more properly be, “Outstanding,” or, “Exceptional.” I honestly believe he’s being sincere in his praise. Being Rang, though, he’s probably just delighted this makes her more challenging to toy with.

Having completed his interrogation, Yeon’s eyes change as he erases the man’s memory of the event. I suspect the reason Yeon is so cavalier about revealing he’s a gumiho is because he can basically ‘undo’ it whenever he wants using this power.

Ji Ah’s quiet, “I decline” is so satisfying. Also the way Rang pulls back in surprise haha I guess he’s not used to being turned down. 

Rang’s exchange with Ji Ah is subbed as: “Loosen up. Why be so stiff when it’s just good old me?” / “Let me give you some advice since that’s how you feel. Don’t gamble with another’s tragedy just for kicks. There’s a word for people like you, you know. A colossal jerk.” This is difficult to translate, and I think the subs have done a pretty good job, but a closer translation would be:

Rang: Augh— So uptight! Are you going to keep acting this uptight, just between us* (literally, ‘between you and me’)? 

Ji Ah: Between you and me, then, I’ll give you just one word of advice: Don’t carelessly role the dice atop others’ misfortune. People call jerks like you ‘sleazy bastards.’ 

[*Note: Rang’s phrasing implies that they’re somehow close/on good terms, but he’s being sarcastic, of course.]

First off, the word Rang uses for ‘uptight’ (빡빡하다) means ‘stiff; uptight; rigid; inflexible; strict.’ By this, he’s referring to how she never lets her guard down. I don’t know that any of those words properly conveys that, though. 

Second, while I translated Ji Ah’s line about the dice very literally here (in keeping with the spirit of this post), I actually like how the subs handled it from a translation/subtitling standpoint. 

Finally, the subs have Ji Ah calling Rang ‘a colossal jerk,’ but the term she actually uses (‘yang’achi saekki’) is a much stronger expletive. ‘Yang’achi’ is a term for a thug, gangster, or hoodlum. ‘Saekki’ literally means ‘child of.’ In practical use, though, it’s close to ‘bastard.’ (I really didn’t think I’d be explaining the finer points of Korean expletives when I started this series, but here we are). I approximated this as ‘sleazy bastard’ above. 

Pfft Rang being genuinely offended at Ji Ah’s language. Jo Bo Ah talked a bit about what she thought of all the explicit language Ji Ah uses towards Rang in her wrap interview. 

Subs: “When he finds what he wants, you’ll be begging for mercy.” No idea where they got 'begging for mercy.’ What Rang actually says is, “When he  finds what he wants, you’ll see hell.” Unlike in the subtitle, Rang’s warning actually has substance to it, since he’s referring to the fact that, once Yeon identifies Ji Ah as Ah Eum’s reincarnation, their fate with Imoogi will repeat itself. 

By the time Yeon rushes back to Pyung Hee’s, Rang is long gone. His line subbed as: “What did he say?” is, quite literally, “Lee Rang, that nom, what’d he say?” This use of ‘nom’ manages to come off as fairly mild. (He may be a jerk, but he’s Yeon’s jerk). 

Ji Ah’s response has undergone cultural translation to become: “Even when I order pizza, I never go for half-and-half. I always choose just one.” Honestly, though, I don’t know that it was necessary. What she actually says is: “Even when I order chicken, I don’t go for half-seasoned, half-fried; I’m the type to just pick one.”

This scene was originally longer but part of it got deleted. They released the clip, though, so I’ll translate the full exchange here:

Ji Ah: I'm saying I turned him down, your younger brother. Since I bet on this fox.  

Yeon: Let no one say you aren’t a learned (wise) woman. Is that all?  

Rang (voiceover): Don't trust Lee Yeon too much.  

Ji Ah: That's all. But...you said the two of you are brothers.

Yeon: Yeah. We’re brothers. 

Ji Ah: Why are you so hellbent on destroying each other? 

Yeon: It seems like you don’t know since you’re an only child, but, as a rule, the relationship between siblings is a lot like noir, just without the guns.

Ji Ah: There you go, deflecting the question again. Is that a secret, too? 

Yeon: If you ever happen to run into that guy again just the two of you, no matter what, run fast. That kid* despises humans. Especially humans that look like you. 

Ji Ah: Why do you keep taking cracks at people's faces?

Yeon: ...I'm hungry.  

Ji Ah: Why don’t you take the opportunity to pack up and leave while you still can? Your younger brother...it seems he’s preparing some sort of special event. 

Yeon: That’s what I’m waiting for.

*Note: The word Yeon uses that I translated as ‘kid’ is ‘jashik.’ This is another word that, depending on how it’s used, can either be fond or rude. ‘Jashik’ literally means ‘[one’s] child,’ but it’s also commonly used in the sense of ‘punk.’ It’s a bit softer than nom. You wouldn’t use it to refer to yourself, though. 

Ji Ah’s “Why do you keep taking cracks at people’s faces?” (meaning he’s insulting/taking issue with how she looks), is referencing their exchange the previous night when he told her not to smile because she was ugly.

We cut briefly to Shin Joo eating at the Snail Bride as he sizes up Yoo Ri from a distance. Come to think of it, we never got this BGM for the Snail Bride, either...

Ramen Heart-to-Heart

Lee Yeon’s one-gumiho meokbang continues. I feel like Yeon has been nomming on something in nearly every scene this episode. 

The BGM while Yeon and Ji Ah eat is a remix of Yeon’s theme, ‘The Fox’s Wedding Day.’

Sub: “Just because these ladies wear baggy pants in floral prints doesn’t mean they have kind hearts. Get digging, and you’ll find all sorts of dirty secrets.” Yeon’s line is more literally: 

Yeon: Living is all the same [everywhere]~ Just because grannies in the countryside wear flower-patterned pants doesn’t mean that even their insides are flower-patterned. If you start digging, venomous and insidious years come pouring out. 

Ji Ah’s response then plays off of Yeon’s turn of phrase: “Is that the case for you too? I just wondered, ‘With what pattern did you live all those long years?’” (referring to the ‘pattern’ of his heart).

On a minor cultural note: the word Yeon uses is ‘mombbae pants’ (몸빼바지), which are a fashion(?) staple in the countryside. You’ll know what I mean if you run the hangeul through a google image search. That’s where the subs got ‘baggy’ from even though Yeon doesn’t explicitly say it. 

Sub: “Why have you been searching for your parents all this time?” Yeon’s line is more properly: “Then what about you? What has made you wait for your parents for such a long time?” 

Sub: “I’m the same. I’m waiting for the one I miss.” I would have translated this as: “I’m waiting for someone I miss,” which is literally what he says. 

Sub: “Why did you part ways when you still miss her this much?” This is a bit hard to translate into natural-sounding English. The word Ji Ah uses is ‘mi’ryeon,’ which means ‘lingering attachment.’ So her line is quite literally: “Your face is so full of lingering attachment, how did you come to part ways/break up?”

Sub: “The first being I loved was a human girl who ended up dying. It’s why I’m still hung up on her. Happy now?” Hmm... I would translate Yeon’s line as:

Yeon: My damn* first love was a human of all things, but she died, so I’m foolishly unable to let go of my lingering attachment. Happy now? 

[*Note: Yeon is cursing is the phenomenon of first love itself, not Ah Eum.]

His statement is witty, because the word he uses for ‘foolish’ is also pronounced ‘mi’ryeon.’ In this case, though, 'mi’ryeon’ means, ‘foolhardy and dense enough to be stubborn to a preposterous degree.’ Which is probably a fair assessment given he’s been waiting 600 years. The sub for this line made it sound like he’s saying, ‘I’m hung up on her because she’s a human girl who died,’ which would just be weird. 

Shin Joo Meets Yoo Ri

Okay, minor detail, but what exactly was Yoo Ri trying to accomplish here before Shin Joo stopped her from entering an off-limits area of the Snail Bride?

The BGM here is called ‘Skip a Beat’ (‘Kanju Jump’). I found the track title slightly surprising since it’s actually taken from an ad lib made by Kim Yong Ji (Yoo Ri) in a later episode. 

For anyone keeping track, Shin Joo and Yoo Ri are speaking in a mix of banmal and jondaetmal in this scene.

We next see Shin Joo on the phone with Yeon, whining about the whole ordeal and asking an unsympathetic Yeon to come back and retrieve his necklace for him.

Yeon’s line that’s subbed as, “Deadly?” could mean more than one thing. The line is literally, “What? The thief was deadly?” The word for ‘deadly,’ though, could equally mean that she was a knockout (i.e. gorgeous). It’s probably a bit of both.

Subs: “There’s nothing more pathetic than being blinded by a woman’s beauty...” / “But you also ruined your life by falling for beautiful woman.”  For the record, neither of them actually uses the word ‘beauty/beautiful’ here. I would translate this exchange as: 

Yeon: You... The most pathetic thing in the world, is being blinded by a woman, and... 

Shin Joo: But being blinded by a woman and wrecking your life is something Lee Yeon-nim did too, isn’t it? 

Yeon: What, you punk?!

Lol Yeon’s “What, you punk?!” is a familiar refrain whenever Shin Joo unwittingly(?) insults Yeon. The word is ‘imma’ (임마) or sometimes ‘inma’ (인마). Yeon consistently uses the former.

‘Bad Fate’

Subs: “Why is that branch broken? It must’ve hurt.” Yeon is actually personifying the tree here, which makes sense seeing as he can communicate with it. So his line is more literally: “Now why has this kid gone and made a fuss breaking [his] branch? It must’ve hurt.” Which is cute.

I actually really appreciated this short scene of Yeon healing the tree. Yeon may no longer be the master of Baekdudaegan, but this scene showed that it’s still very much a part of who he is; not just his powers, but the care he has for the forest. 

Fun (?) fact: It turns out this simple scene was actually a huge pain to film. 

Subs: “I hope you grow well.” Actually: “Eat well and grow well.” I realize that sounds awkward in English, but the line is a directive. He’s once again speaking to the tree. 

Sub: “The wind is blowing from the northwest. Something is coming.” I would have translated this as: “A northwest wind blows... Something is coming.” That’s partly a tonal choice, but it’s also a more literal reflection of the original Korean. 

We finally catch back up to the end of EP02, as Jae Hwan calls Ji Ah from the library to tell her what he’s found. This time, we see her connect the first dead body in 1954 to what the forest spirit told them more explicitly. 

The dates of the four incidents are: August 13, 1954; August 25, 1961; September 6, 1979; and September 7, 1987. Ji Ah quickly deduces that these all work out to be the same date on the lunar calendar: July 15th. In 2020, that works out to be Wednesday, September 2nd. If you’ll recall, the wedding at the start of EP01 was held on August 29, so it’s only been 3 days since Yeon and Ji Ah crossed paths at the wedding hall. 

“Long time no see, Lee Yeon.” What is it with Imoogi and choking Yeon?

Subs: “You should’ve let me go.”  More precisely: “I know, right? You should have let me go.”

Yeon’s final “What are you?” should probably have been subbed as: “I’m asking what you are!” since both his tone and phrasing have grown more insistent. 

Subs: Our ill-fated relationship would’ve ended if you hadn’t stopped the boat from crossing the Samdo River. More literally:

Jimoogi: Our ak’yeon should have ended. That is, if only you hadn’t stopped the boat from crossing the Samdocheon. 

The word the subs translated as ‘our ill-fated relationship’ is ‘ak’yeon’ (悪縁), which literally means ‘bad fate.’ In contrast to the broader, ‘destiny’ sort of fate (‘un’myeong’) however, ‘yeon’ (縁) is inherently relational. It refers specifically to the fate between two people (or even between a person and a place). ‘Ak’ (悪) means ‘evil.’ So 'ill-fated’ is a bit misleading as a translation since the word actually refers to the relationship between Yeon and Imoogi (i.e. mortal enemies), rather than the fact that Yeon and Ah Eum’s story ended tragically (as in, ‘an ill-fated love’). 

WAIT. Subs: “No. That woman is born with a face that only I can recognize. And I don’t see it in you.” What?? That doesn’t even make sense. Yeon’s line is: 

Yeon: No. That woman is born carrying a sign that only I can recognize. You don’t have it. 

Obviously, Yeon is referring to the fox bead, and I’m fairly sure that was apparent since the line was intercut with the scene in which he imparts the bead to Ah Eum, but that seems like a pretty critical line to fudge up. 

Jimoogi: “You really don’t know anything, do you, Lee Yeon?” It’s weird to me that they have Imoogi addressing Yeon as just ‘Yeon’ in the subs. That makes it seem like they’re friends or something...

Subs: “The scar is gone.” Actually: “The wound disappeared.” 

Deadball

Subs: “We hate each other too much to play catch. I actually meant to kill you.” Wait, WHAT?! Yeon’s line is: 

Yeon: Our relationship is too makjang for that. That was meant to be a deadball, actually. 

Makjang, for the uninitiated, is a slang word taken from the phrase ‘the final scene’ (‘majimak jangmyeon’) that has come to refer to an entire genre, as well as particular dramatic elements or conventions of Korean storytelling. Dramabeans explain the term here. When Yeon says his relationship with Rang is ‘makjang,’ he’s essentially saying it’s overly fraught, not that he hates his brother. 

He also doesn’t say he meant to kill Rang. ‘Deadball’ is a Korean baseball term for a pitch that hits a player (typically causing the game to be paused). So Yeon’s just saying he meant for the ‘ball’ to hit Rang, rather than for Rang to catch it. 

On a personal note, it really bothers me when the subs spread all over the internet and they’re wrong like this. I don’t mind slight changes in phrasing or wording, but when they grossly misrepresent the characters like this it can be a bit upsetting. It’s no wonder I sometimes feel like I watched a completely different drama. ㅠㅠ

Yeon’s cheeky smile™ XD

The BGM in this scene is actually ‘The Forest of the Agwi.’

Subs: “Run away.” Yeon’s line is quite literally: ‘Get away from here,’ or even, ‘put distance between here and you.’ I mention it because I really appreciated that, despite all the danger she confronts, Yeon never once tells Ji Ah to ‘run away’ (‘domang ga’). His second ‘run away’ in the subs is also just him telling her to hurry up (literally ‘go quickly’).

The following banter between the brothers is something I mentioned in an ask a while back because all the humour had been lost in translation. To recap, though, one recurring joke the show uses plays off the word for ‘bastard/son of a bitch,’ which translates literally as ‘child of a dog’ (kae-saekki). As you might imagine, this gets a lot of mileage in relation to Rang, our resident ‘baby fox’ (agi yeou) a.k.a. ‘child of a fox’ (yeou-saekki):

Rang: This is domestic violence, you know?

Yeon: (Nodding) They say you’re supposed to raise wild children* with a firm hand (literally: hit them as you raise them), but I couldn’t do that, so I ended up raising a fox child into a dog child (son of a bitch), didn’t I?

Rang: And who was the jerk who kicked that child (saekki) to the curb? You treat me like a stray dog any chance you get. 

Yeon: My little brother, I’ll have to gift you a muzzle this Christmas. 

Rang’s line was subbed: “You keep blaming it on me, when you were the one who turned me into an orphan.” which I find fairly problematic since that makes it sound like Yeon killed Rang’s parents. It’s also just plain wrong; to the extent that I’m not even sure what went wrong in the translation process. 

The word Yeon uses here for ‘wild children’ is ‘horo jashik’ (호로자식), which many Koreans understand to mean something like a barbarian child, but the true origin, as it turns out, is a parentless child. It’s also a term used predominantly by elderly people heh

Finally, because the dog jokes dropped out ‘muzzle’ became ‘mouth guard’ in the subs, which is both less funny and less sensical. The two are also conceptually opposed, since ‘muzzle’ implies that Yeon means to protect the world from Rang whereas ‘mouth guard’ is more about protecting Rang.

As Ji Ah continues to put distance between herself and the brothers, she happens upon the mudang’s house, which she immediately clocks as such from the obangi. 

I like that Ji Ah doesn’t immediately call the mudang out for lying, but instead continues to question her knowing she’s lying. Sometimes the lies people tell can be as telling as the truth. 

When Ji Ah questions her, the mudang tells her the fishing ritual is held during the ‘Ghost Festival’. This is a Buddhist festival similar to All Souls Day. In Korean it’s called ‘Baek Joong Nal’ (literally ‘hundred-gather-day’) meaning ‘the day when all the spirits gather.’ It falls on the full moon of the seventh lunar month (so July 15th of the lunar calendar), which is, of course, the date Ji Ah identified as the day when the murders were taking place. That’s why we get the zoom in and the flash to the newspaper dates: Ji Ah has put everything together. 

Chyron: “Obangi (五方旗) A five-colored flag symbolizing ‘life, death, illness, sacrifice, and ancestors’”. This is the quick quotes version. Obangi have their roots in the Chinese philosophy of Wuxing, but for more on that, I’ll refer you to Wikipedia. In Korea, the colors of the obangi (red, blue, white, black, and yellow) are known as the five orientation colors, and are closely tied to both shamanism and fortune telling. You’ll notice these same colors flying outside the fortune teller’s in EP06.

I also appreciated that Ji Ah didn’t just foolishly drink the tea here. She was properly on her guard. It’s only that she mis-identified the source of danger.

Back over to our fox brothers. Rang’s line is subbed: “That was plenty of time.” This is more properly: “I think I’ve bought more than enough time by now.” So he’s actually quite overt in telling Yeon exactly what he'd been up to.  

Subs: “Don’t you know why she ended up on this island?” More closely: “Do you still not get it? Why that woman ended up coming to this island of all places?” 

We see the mudang encircle the creepy well with burial ground evening primrose to ward against Yeon, who is currently searching the island for Ji Ah to no avail. 

Subs: “You tricked your mom while you were in her womb.” This is a bit difficult to translate. The word the mudang uses that was translated as ‘tricked’ is ‘ggweda,’ which means to ‘lure’ or ‘entice.’ So what she means is that the part of Imoogi that was reincarnated with Ji Ah ‘lured’ her mother to the island by sending her recurring dreams. 

Gumiho

Lol Yeon: “I am the original mountain spirit, the master of the mountains and streams. Lift this darkness and lead me to her!” This is more literally:

Yeon: I am the original mountain god, the master of your mountains and streams.* Part this darkness and lead me to that woman!

[*Note: ‘Mountains and streams’ here can also be taken to mean ‘nature’ at large.]

Lol The line is met with silence and the soft hoot of a lone owl. That’s basically the director’s version of *crickets* isn’t it?

This line is another rare case in which Yeon speaks archaically, and it serves to make the command sound more formal and potentially magical. It’s also worth noting that he’s addressing the forest directly as a whole here (thus the ‘your’). 

Fun fact: When Lee Dong Wook did his TotNT VLIVE, his promotional team made him perform this line again live just to mess with him haha

The BGM here as Yeon heads off through the forest led by his (supernatural?) fireflies is ‘Opening Title: The Legend of the Fox.’ It sounds vaguely Harry Potter-ish to me (not complaining). 

For the record, Ji Ah is now speaking to the mudang in banmal out of disdain. 

Sub: “Be a sacrifice. You are a very special child.” Pfft ‘Be a sacrifice’ sounds oddly funny to me. Her line is: “Become a sacrifice. I’m told you’re a very special child.” So the implication is that this information came from someone/something else. 

Does anyone know what BGM this is as Yeon sprints though the forest? I think it might be another unreleased track, but I’m not positive...

Yeon’s “Halt!” is once again in olden speech. It indicates linguistically that he's in Gumiho mode.  

Out of curiosity, is it not odd for people watching with subs when Ji Ah’s only utterance is ‘Lee Yeon’ but the subs just say ‘Yeon’? 

Subs: “This has nothing to do with the old master of the mountain. Why don’t you keep walking?” I would have translated this as: “It is a matter unrelated to the former master of the mountain. Beg, go along your way.” She’s once again using olden-speech in her second sentence.

Lol Sub: “Says the living corpse.” I like this sub. Yeon’s line is quite literally: “With the ‘juje’ of a living corpse...” ‘Juje’ is essentially your station or lot in life, and it’s used almost exclusively derogatorily. 

Sub: “Who was it that provided you with longevity you don’t deserve?” More closely: “Who was it? The one who gave you a lifespan so much longer than you deserve?”

Yeon: “I asked you whom you serve!” (literally ‘what’ you serve). Yeon once again drops into an archaic cant for this line. It serves to underline his full age and gives his demand an extra air of authority. 

Yeon’s TAILS. I can’t believe this was the last we saw of them. ㅠㅠ Personally, I interpreted the firey tails as being a sort of ‘shadow’/ projection of his actual tails, which I assumed were actually more physically there (since he talks about shampooing them in the teaser interview). My sister thinks differently, though. Guess we’ll never know...

The BGM for this sequence is naturally ‘Gumiho.’ If you read our EP01 breakdown, you’ll know I was fully expecting this to be Yeon’s theme. But no, it’s the whimsical 'The Fox’s Wedding Day’ instead haha

Okay, Yeon just casually smiting the mudang is pretty badass. Seeing as he can command lightning, I’m pretty sure he was joking when he told Ji Ah, ‘even gumiho are afraid of electricity.’ 

If by chance you wondered what was going though Yeon’s mind when he smote the mudang, it’s featured in the EP03 subtitle poster.

I appreciated that Yeon just accepts Ji Ah at her word here when she tells him all she needs from him is one arm for support. I feel like in most dramas the male lead would have just forcefully swept the heroine off her feet amidst her protests, which I always find more problematic than romantic.

For that matter, when it became clear that Ji Ah really did need help, I appreciated that she didn’t act shy or coy and just accepted being carried without making a big deal of it. 

Pfft The way Ji Ah’s eyes flash when Yeon tells her the mudang was just a human being says it all. 

Yeon: “So you say... Excuse me, but you nearly died just now, you know?” This line is once again cheekily in jondaetmal.

*Ominous close up of the well*

Thank You

We catch up with Shin Joo at the supermarket as he talks to Yeon over the phone. 

Shin Joo’s ‘PD-nim’ has once again become, ‘the director lady’ in the subs. *Sigh*

Subs: “Your love story is more than just famous among us.” Actually: “Just how famous is Lee Yeon-nim’s love story in our world? It’s obvious your younger brother* must have been playing tricks!” 

Shin Joo refers to Rang here as ‘donsaeng-bun’ (younger sibling + polite word for person) for the same reason he calls Rang, ‘Lee Rang-nim.’ It’s an extension of his regard for Yeon, rather than for Rang himself.

Lol Shin Joo hanging up on Yeon. His love for supermarkets and fried chicken are actually in his character profile. Apparently, they’re what convinced him living as a human was worth the existential crisis that came with it. 

Sub: “I’m too much of a human to easily fall asleep after such an event. Join me.” More literally: “I’m human, so on a day like today I can’t sleep sober. You* have a glass, too.”

The word Ji Ah uses for ‘you’ here is ‘ja’ne’ (자네), which is a polite term... except it’s only used to refer to people younger than you. So’s she’s talking down to him politely haha This is what prompts Yeon’s line that follows it:

Sub: “I never said anything since it could make seem old-fashioned, but you’re too informal with me when you don’t even know my age.”

 Yeon: I kept holding it in thinking you’d call me an old fart, but you’re [using] banmal really blatantly. Just how old do you think I am?”

Yeon’s ‘Just how old do you think I am?’ is rhetorical. It’s not that Ji Ah is necessarily unaware of his true age, but rather that she acts as if she is. 

Sub: “Those over 60 are universally considered as grandpas.” Actually: “You know everyone over 60 can be called a grandpa, right?”

Pfft Sub: “Be as informal as you like.” What Yeon literally says is, “Please lower your speech,” but he uses very respectful language to say it. I’m not sure if he’s being sarcastic, or if he just hates the thought of being considered a grandpa that much haha It’s probably a bit of both.

Aww Ji Ah promising to protect Yeon. I luff her. 

Ji Ah: "Do I perhaps have something you’re looking for?” I love that she doesn’t miss a thing.

Lol Yeon: “Who am I, Jesus? Just drink what you have.” 

The Vanishing

Subs: “Don’t ever resort to cursing people again. Karma can sting.” Quite literally: “You were lucky you kept your life, but don’t do such a thing* as cursing others ever again. They return, you know. Back on the one who casts them.” 

*Yeon uses the disparagement marker ‘ddaui’ (따위) to refer to the act of cursing someone here. You may recall it from our EP01 breakdown. 

Ji Ah chooses this moment to come running in to announce that the island has turned into a ghost town over night, which is enough to make even Yeon pause, perplexed.  

I love the way Yeon and Ji Ah exchange looks here on the dock. They don’ t know what’s up yet, but they intend to find out. 

‘Blue Moon’~~~ This worked great scored over the drone-camera pan out. I may be slightly biased, though.  

And that concludes Episode 3. Once again, thank you to everyone who commented or left feedback on the last episode! Never hesitate to send me your thoughts, even if they’re just to say what you found funny or surprising. It helps me to know what’s of interest for one thing, but I also just enjoy chatting about the show. ;)

A brief note on pronunciation/notation: for words like ‘sa’ingeom’ and ‘mi’ryeon,’ the apostrophe is there just as a pronunciation guide. So in the case of the former, to indicate that it’s pronounced ‘sah-in’ and not ‘sine’ or ‘sane.’ Similarly, for the latter, the apostrophe is just to indicate that this should be pronounced ‘mi-ryeon’ and not ‘mir-yeon.’ I could have just as easily done this with ‘Hyeon’ui’ong’ except that’s a lot of apostrophes and I set an earlier precedent of not. It’s not an aspiration or anything fancy. Hopefully that makes sense. 

Once again, I’d like to credit my sister for being the main researcher and fact-checker for these, in addition to weighing in on all the translations. I don’t always take her advice, but I do always appreciate it haha. 

Thank you also to everyone who bought us coffee! Your support is truly felt and appreciated ♡ As usual, this took an ungodly amount of time, so every coffee helps haha. For anyone just joining us (or not), if you’d like to see more of these, please consider buying us a coffee. If you follow the link, you can buy a $2 cup of virtual coffee. This helps me to gauge how much interest there is, and also how much value people place on these. If you cared enough to read all the way to the end, please at least consider it. Once I’ve established there’s enough interest, I’ll proceed with Episode 4. ;)

#tale of the nine tailed #totnt #lost in translation #구미호뎐 #kdrama #korean language #happy new year!

[popculturebuffet]

Ex-Arm: Forbidden Weapon Patreon Sponsored Review:  Dead Eyes, Brain Jars, Can’t Loose (Patreon Review for Emma Fici)

Hello all you happy people! And i’m stepping out of my usual comfort zone today for this one. See usually I cover western animation and comics. I have nothing against Anime and Manga: I grew up reading Shonen Jump and watching Dragon Ball Z, Yu Gi Oh (Whose card game I still play a LOT), Yu Yu Hakusho (Which is still one of my faviorite shows to this day), Pokemon, Tenchi Muyo, and Ultimate Muscle among MANY others. I still want to finish Hunter X Hunter and Jojo’s Bizzare adventure and watch the shaman king and eden’s zero’s animes and manga wise i’ve enjoyed the fire force manga, what i’ve read of my hero academia, and Pluto, which is one of the best comics i’ve read period. There’s good stuff I just forget it’s there sometimes and let it stack into my already large watch queue. 

So NATURALLY instead of any of the good stuff my first anime episode covered on this blog.. is one glorious clusterfuck of a bonkers premise, a clear rip-off of a much more popular property, and some of the worst animation I have ever seen. And it’s only not THE worst because this happened. 

Fun Fact: This show was written and drawn entirely by unpaid high schoolers. Prove me wrong. 

Ex-Arm WAS made by actual adults.. but ones who had no experience in animation, but were confident they could make it work. And being NEW to a medium isn’t excuse. Plenty of people make the jump and land just fine with writers such as Saladin Ahmed, Rainbow Rowell, and Ta-Nehsi Coates all making the jump from novels to comics smoothly. 

No the issue is clear arrogance: the crew was CONFIDENT they could make an anime without actually talking to anyone who had made one, let alone in CG. And suicidal overconfidence with no skill to back it up NEVER ends well when making a show. It’s how you end up with two seasons of a boy who just hit puberty’s dry erase markered abomination up there, and how we ended up with an anime that looks more like it’s own shodily made tie-in game than an actual  show that aired on television and streaming this very year. 

But it did so join me under the cut as I get into the weeds of one of the most hilariously bad things i’ve seen in my life. 

So we open in 2020 with a mass of screaming color inverted people being pulled into the sky to their doom. I gotta give it to the Manga this is based on, they predicted EXACTLY how 2020 would go. Most Sci Fi really misses the mark.  We still don’t have flying cars, actual hoverboards or super fighting robots, but we did have people floating to their doom thanks to some weird color inverted teenager so kudos. 

We get our intro.. and it is a LOT. The song, Rise Again, is honestly incredibly forgettable.. which I find inexusable for two reasons. The first is while I may not watch much actual anime I listen to anime themes and english covers of said themes all the time. I know my stuff and this theme is just.. nothing. It’s literally nothing. I mean a series this stupid at LEAST deserves a triumphuntly bad or too good for it intro. In between just dosen’t cut it. The other reason is simply that the end theme, Diamonds Shine by Dizzy Sunfist, is glorious. It’s really damn good and would work as an OP.. which begs the question why they weren’t swapped. Were they trying to reward people who actually stuck around for the credits? 

Speaking of credits while the opening theme music is unforgetable the opening itself. .is like the show itself hilaroiusly bad. Now most anime intros are utterly beautiful, long, gorgeous affairs with tons of exciting animation, sometimes hinting to the future sometimes giving a general ideas of things, really showing off waht the show is. Ex Arm is a bunch of clumsy animation interspresed with about 80 character intro cards like this. 

Just the spinning awkward CGI intro that you’d expect from 20 years ago.  It looks like the bastard child of those weird 90′s x-men animated credits

And the breif intros of Spidey and friends at the top of Spider-Man the new animated series.... not one of the recent ones nor some revamp of the original but one made by sony in 2003 to capitalize on the first of the Sam Rami trilogy and to directly serve as it’s sequel... and even then THAT intro does this sort of thing better than ex-arm only having three and with sai dintro itself being really damn good

The animation ALSO looks better than Ex-Arm.. and came out 18 years ago.  And if you think well “holy shit this show has embarrassed itself a lot with just an intro”, well strap in because this show has not yet BEGUN to embarrass itself. 

So we go back in time to 2014, a time when we were on only our second live action Spider-Man film series, a young Steven Unvierse had only just to begun to unravel the tangled mess Rose had left behind, and Gravity Falls had only just begun what would tragically be it’s final season. 

And none of that matters to our setting as we head to a Japanese High School Classroom. Because 70% of anime and manga involve a high or middle school, even when your about to rip off ghost in the shell. 

It’s here we meet Akira

... I haven’t even seen that movie, i’ts been on my to do list for years, and I know tha’ts TETSUO. 

No akira’s that kid I showed before. You’ll know him by his near constant thousand yard stare that says “my brother puts a pinch of acid in my breakfast every day” 

Akira is doing fine till his buddy tries to get him to do some sort of party related thing that involves phones, with Akira not having one because he’s technophobic. And I don’t mean someone who dosen’t LIKE phones or technology or it’ sinfluence on people and is trying to avoid screens and what not, I mean someone whose so ungodly terrified by just his friend HOLDING UP HIS SMART PHONE that he passes out with wavy lines and this look on his face. 

Yeah while the cold open and intro were hilariously bad on their own terms... this is where the series REALLY lets the drugs kick in. Now a main character having some phobia or personality flaw or quirk is actually pretty common, either a sign of supernatural things or just something to make it complicated when the person coming onto them happens to be the thing they hate. Like say a guy dosen’t like bees, well guess who just because the selected mate of the hive queennnnn.. lucky bastard. 

It’s a common anime trope, so it being present here isn’t a BAD thing it’ own. It’s not a trope that would make me WANT to watch a show, but it’s also one I haven’t seen enough in the anime and manga i’ve consumed to really judge.  Conversely I can judge having sexual harassment or embarassment as a running gag, because i’ve seen it way too often even in fantastic works and it’s just creepy every time.

So the idea isn’t terrible PERSAY.. but the problem here is it’s not just some small fear or some nerveousness or something... the kid is having full on breakdowns, passing out from simply being SHOWN one of the most common devices in the world, and having to be taken to the nurse’s office... and the show tries to play it off like “oh you just need to live live buddy”. 

That’s.. actually what happens: We cut to him and his brother talking it over , their parents having died because of course. First off i’m 100% convinced his brother is actually his dad and his brother-dad’s parents simply raised akira, because look at them

He looks old enough to be his dad. And Secondly his brother treats him having FREQUENT PANIC ATTACKS AND PASSING OUT OVER A VERY COMMON BIT OF TECHNOLOGY as “oh well your just a bit withdrawn bro you need to put one foot forward, jump in and live life to the max brosef, live it up bromigo, find your juliet bromeo”. I get people ARE that dumb about psychological issues in real life, it happens, but the SERIES ITSELF frames it like Sensei Brodad is right! If you wanted it to JUST be a self confidence issue and the techphobia tied into that then DON’T exaggerate it 98 degrees. 

So Akira goes off into the night to the convince store and is targeted by a shadowy figure... and i’m questioning less WHY the guy is targeting our hero or has his photo.. and more the photo itself. 

It’s clearly one of those little school photos you give out to your friends, which means Japan has those which is neat. But it also means they went to the trouble of STEALING some kid’s wallet sized photo of a teenage boy for the express purpose of kidnapping him to steal his brain. That will have SLIGHTLY more context in a bit but not much. 

So one transition later Akira exists the convince store when he notices a bunch of hoods harassing another teenager wanting to take her away with them despite her being no. He dickers about it , not sure he can take three guys. .but decides to take his brothers advice and just leap in and do what he can anyway.. and gets hit by a bus as he sprints forward

I’d just like to contrast this with another anime I mentioned, one that ALSO got started when it’s hero got hit by a car trying to do something noble, Yu Yu Hakuso. See that series, for those unfamiliar with it, stars high school pun Yuske Yurameshi, the biggest hood around who frequently skips school, has an alcholic negglectful mom and generally seems like he’ll be a punk and out for himself his whole life. Then one day he sees a child nearly get hit by a car, and jumps in front of it to push the kid out of the way, dying, but going out doing something noble. 

Both have the same idea: a character dies changing the way they are and their thrust into a new life because of it. The diffrence is context. Yuske finds himself in the land of the dead, guided there by the ever bubly and sarcastic botan. This ends up being a problem though: See as things were fated to go.. the kid would’ve been fine. A scrape or too but it would’ve been a one in a million freak miracle. No one EXPECTED Yuske to do what he did, nor to have such inner nobility in him. So Koenma, son of the god of dead King Enma, gives him a second chance: do some good deeds, prove he can be a better person, and he’ll let him come back. And he does, via some shenanigans. Not only that but seeing the people he lost gives Yuske a reason to WANT to come back: he sees his mom as neglectful as she was loved him, his only friend Keiko is devidsted and even his rival who he beat up all the time Kuwabara genuinely misses the guy.. it’s partly because he never got to kick Yuske’s ass but ‘tis clear he misses him. So by helping them, Yuske earns his way back, and while still a little shit, has come back a better person. The continued strangness after this is likewise linked: Koenma offers Yuske a job hunting spirits as his agent, since Yuske’s time dead means he can use “spirit” attacks, and see ghosts, which gets the boy much needed money, purpose and more friends. 

My point is i’d rather be watching or reviewing Yu Yu Hakusho right now. My other ponit is that there it’s used for thematic reasons and gives us a credible ease into the plot. Here... our hero dies, he becomes a brain in a jar weapon thing, and while it MIGHT have some pathos later, ZERO minutes are spent on im dwelling on what he’s lost or reflecting as a character. He spends the rest of the episode understandably freaking at what the hell this is. Which granted is what yuske did for an episode.. but they also added in pathos: what he’d lost, slowed down took some time before getting into shit. Here their so impatient to get to the cool sci fi bullshit we get no sense of character for akira. He was afraid of machines and kind of nervous> That’s it. His death comes off as a black comedy because we didn’t really KNOW him before he got hit by a truck. If your going to put a plot device like this in your shitty anime, maybe check to make sure that i don’t know, one of the most storied ones period hadn’t done it better!

So we jump ahead past BOTH previous timelines to our main one of 2030 where two officers are intercepting a super weapon. Mokoto Arma and Minami. Arma is as the gag probably gave away is a ripoff of Mokto Kursnagi from ghost in the shell, an anime i’ve only seen bits of but a pantsless unitard wearing robot who works for the police.. I mean I don’t have to KNOW GTS and film like it’s my own child to connect the obvious dots. I have eyes. And i’ts okay to take inspiration from something but COME ON. There’s also a grizzled officer with a weird eye thing, if a diffrent weird eye thing. They were not subtle

Anyway Arma and Mini have obtained a super weapon in a briefcase , and we get a fight scene. And while the animation has been laughably lackluster so far.. here’s where it kicks into overdrive as man oh man this is one laughably terrible fight scene. It looks like Arma is just fumbling around at the speed of sound, got places to go gotta break up this arms deal, with hits either barely connecting or looking moe like slaps or the weakest punches. Nothing has any flow or impact, it’s just all so weak. And of course infamously one shot of Arma doing a flying attack with both knees.. looks like she’s hitting the guy with her crotch. 

Yeah i’ts pretty lackluster and shows why MAYBE, just maybe making an action show when you don’t know how to animate, let alone do action is just POSSIBLY the dumbest thing to come out of this country since people started thinking “FUCK scientifically proven vaccines i’m gonna take horse dewormer!”

So our heroines end up outgunned, out manned, outnumbered and out planned so they need to make an all out stand and Mini suggests opening up the box. 

We get a cut to Police HQ where all of the police, including characters who are in the intro but don’t get enough focus for me to pick out their names from the 80 other in the intro. The point is we find out what an Ex Arm IS: a high tech device that can do super powered stuff. Basically your standard justificatoin for superpowers. We see one guy mow down an army by being able to turn intangiable who looks...

So going back a bit, our heroes open the ex arm to reveal a round computer thing.. which of course has Akira in it, specifically his brain. Yes I wasn’t exagerating or making my usual clever quips when I made refrences it to it earlier, the premise of this is that they jammed some random high school kid’s brain in a super computer at some point.

Never forget that while Ex-Arm is stupid.. it’s also GLORIOUSLY stupid and the animation isn’t the only notably messed up thing about it. 

So yeah Akira naturlaly takes this well as Mimi proves to be entirely stupid: asking him to boot up and then being obtuse when it’s VERY obvious this thing’s brain has no idea where it is, that it’s 2030 or that it’s not a WMD. His response to Mimi mentoining he’s in 2030 and the situation he’s in, being under gunfire with a sexy police android whose eye’s he’s seeing through and an idiot while his brain is in some weird machine sums up this show in a nutshell. 

Including him being naked in the weird cyber space thing.. he’s just.. naked for some reason.. 

So our heroine, her peppy useless sidekick and brain boy run into the facility and are chased by phasing guy. They try hooking The Brain That Wouldn’t Blink into the computers but he can’t do it.. it was intiutive with Ghost in the Fanservice’s brain but not this and he’s too caught in his own head. The girls end up having to take a runner and run into creepy ghost hand man leading to another awkward fight scene. 

It’s what you’d expect: the anime equilvent of this

So Akane ends up disabled forcing her to call on resting vietnam veteran face to help leading to this gem of a line

So Akira takes his brother’s words to heart, I wasn’t kidding about the framing and decides to leap into it.. this bein ga girls body. So yeah in TWENTY GODDAMN TWENTY a major plot point of this anime is “cis gendered male hops into female body and get it it’s awkward”

Let’s finish this this review is already days behind: so we do get an intresting finish as while Akira stumbles at being a lady super fighting robot, he does cleverly use his acess to the cameras and what not of the base to review the fight footage, realizing that the Phantom Meance here can’t see what’s behind him or sense what’s in front of him and thus tricks him into phasing a hand into the ocean. This is something I love about anime and why I keep coming back from time to time: the fights can be clever. Sure some are just shoutin gan dpunching, and tha’ts just as fun in the right context, but a lot are about strategy and trying to get your oponent to make the wrong move. It’s why I love jojo so much despite having only read the second and third arcs and seen part of the fourth: it’s all about clever stategy using unusual powers. This isn’t Jojo, by a long shot but it’s SOMETHING, which is more than the entire runtime of this episode has given me. 

So with that our heroes are surronded by guns and Akira finds out he might of caused an apocalypse. Oops. 

Final Thoughts: Ex Arm is really bad.. but damn was it fun.The anime is generic as hell mostly ripping off ghost in the shell but anything else it has, super powers run amok, cyperpunk, is all cliche, and it’s protagonists are all vacant arcytpes: Awkward teen hero, stoic fanservice badass, peppy girl. I’ve seen them all in other works and done better. There’s nothing to them and nothing good. 

So why was it fun? Because it’s a perfect storm of elements that make something so bad it’s good: legendarily perplexing animation, an overconfident creative team who has no idea what their doing but presses on anyway, a plot that’s both uniquely bonkers and clearly leaning on several cliches. It’s everything that makes a so bad it’s good film great in an anime package.  I don’t know WHEN i’ll get back to this.. but honestly while I went in meaning for this to be a done in one and Emma will be rolling on to something else next month for her patreon I will probably come back to this someday. 

So if you enjoyed this review follow for the possible sequel among with aton of other great stuff and considering joining my patreon

PATREON LINK RIGHT HERE

Thank you for coming, thank you for staying, thanks for reading’ 

#ex-arm #anime #crunchyroll #bad animation #hilaroiusly bad #ghost in the shell #yu yu hakusho

[horizonsworld-blog]

I tried making an English opening for the Shaman King remake!

#shaman king #shaman king 2021 #shaman king reboot #shaman king edits #my edits