flemmings | (no subject)

Did a fast rewatch of Samurai Champloo 2, 2 day loan from the video store that I didn't get around to viewing the last two evenings because I was- uhh, well, reading, actually. The gay westerner who decides on the basis of reading Saikaku that Japan is a paradise of manly love is, in terms of statistical probability, probably not a poke at western fangirls and their vision of Japan, though just about everything else gets poked in that episode. Ahh, shakuhachi-playing basket-wearing monks who turn out to be-- OK, no spoilers-- but when you've watched as much jidai-geki as I have you know that all basket-wearing monks are agents in disguise. (Also that when you blow the house the ninja are in to smithereens via barrels of gunpowder, the ninja always emerge unharmed, and that eating fugu can be cured by burying people up to their chins in sand.) Anyway that episode tickles me mightily, and tickles me more because the VA who gets his Japanese pitch accents in all the wrong places (like me hem-hem) also does Nii.

I'd like to buy that one, save that the other eps on it aren't quite in the same league. I'd like to buy the rest of the SC DVDs, but I'll be pissed if they turn out to be heavy on the Reloadish filler stuff.

Charlotte when she saw his body
Carried past her on a shutter
Like a well-conducted person
Went on cutting bread and butter

I've run into one of those east meets west impasses. Let us suppose Goujun's younger brother encounters Goujun in his Jiip form. I can't imagine that Gouen will be at all delighted by Goujun's present state. He's small, he's a human's pet-cum-mode of transportation, and he's a lot less aware/ intelligent/ what will you, than he was as King of the Western Ocean.

Now it seems to me that where Goukou and Goushou would be affronted and outraged in their different ways and doubtless storm off to give Kanzeon a piece of their minds-- for all the good it would do-- cool-headed Gouen would realize almost at once that there is in fact a very simple way of remedying Goujun's current migurushii uhh 'unbecoming to an officer and a dragon' state. You kill him. End current life, soul returns to Heaven as per arrangement, Kanzeon changes him back. Perfectly reasonable. We already know that Gouen doesn't cavil too much about the means if the end is important enough; and hey, bucking the natural order worked last time, didn't it?

But while I'm perfectly aware that fratricide is a good kingly pursuit east and west, somehow I just can't see Gouen actually doing it. Possibly the very thought is so unnatural that it *wouldn't* occur to him. When your reflexes are Confucianist (though I forget how my Taoist-by-nature Buddhist-by-forced-conversion dragons became Confucians) doesn't kin-murder start having the same 'too impossible to even think about' frisson that incest does with us?

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Killing one's elder relation? Heaven forfend, quite literally.

But for the most noble of possible reasons. Which strikes me as more Roman than Chinese, somehow, even if the Romans read pretty Confucianist themselves, within the family setting at least.

That episode was funny. The guy with the accent sounds like just about every Chinese-speaking westerner in Hong Kong movies too, for that matter. =) Hm. Samurai Champloo is fun, but episodic - you don't have to watch everything to follow what is going on, most of the time. You might want to avoid ep 12, it's a recap episode. Cute as these go, but all that's going on is a recap of everything that happened in the preceding episodes.

Re dragons:
Wow, it is a dilemma. I tried thinking it through... the usual way of handling a black sheep would be to sever ties, but it really isn't Goujun's fault he's in his current state. Fratricide is indeed the sport of kings, but not moral people. Yet there's also the reincarnation factor - if you know death's not permanent, is it still a big bad wrong? On the other hand, Jiip won't be permanent either, so he could very well close one eye and pretend not to see until Goujun goes another round on the wheel. Or he might think it a just punishment for whatever will go down in Gaiden. Or... I'm really just confusing myself and babbling now. ^^;

The real problem is that I've never been able to decide what Jiip's level of intelligence is. The sweet baby ep implies that he has reasoning powers and an opinion about the ikkou themselves, but mostly he strikes me as being on the level of yer average cat. Or possibly, average anthropomorphized cat (Note to me: when you have to drag up the memory of uni ancient Greek class before you can write a word, perhaps you shouldn't be using that word, hm?)

If Goujun really looks to his brother as if he's been turned into an animal, well, wouldn't Gouen feel the urge to put him out of his misery? I don't see him thinking 'He deserved this.' More like 'Kanzeon betrayed us' and being Gouen, 'I always knew se would.'

True, that. Jiip's not exactly the most impressive of dragons at the moment. But it also depends on how much of a stigma they attach to being a cute little pet dragon - the main bad oh-the-shame! creatures would be domesticated beasts of burden and dogs, everything else is open to question and as likely as not to cultivate themselves into immortality. Traditional views of reincarnation would have humans on the apex, but they're dragons, so big dragon to little dragon, would it be a big deal or the equivalent of making Goujun sit in the corner for five minutes? Karma, over with soon enough.

Though, yeah, I think, given as they don't trust Heaven and associated people, there's definitely a good chance they'll try to chew off Kanzeon's leg for the insult.

(LJ ate my comment! Bad LJ!)

I've always figured Jiip is more intelligent than he lets on. There may be a perfectly good reason for hiding behind the pet-like role and limited vocabulary--or not.

I also have plenty of other whacked-out ideas about Minekura's take on Saiyuki, most of which are the product of me being contrary, or deliberately trying to be as off-base as possible.

Thing is, this all happens within

incandescens' Gaiden with a difference settei, where Goujun did nothing to get himself killed. He was murdered in a very off-hand fashion by Litouten and Homura, mostly to make a point. That he's been reincarnated at all is a favour Kanzeon has done the dragons- or at least so they see it: grabbing his soul and putting it in a temporary body before it can disappear off to the Dark Lands where dragon souls go for good.

Thus the party line on the uses of reincarnation don't apply. My settei is that they don't apply anyway, because Buddhism is the johnny come lately that took over heaven from the Taoists and asserted its power even over the nature spirited dragons. Dragons don't do karma and reincarnation and all that, though they may have started thinking in those terms just from habit. So it's a question of how much making someone into a cute and witless dragon constitutes a Buddhist insult to the dragon kings.

My trouble is that I can't see Jiip thinking in the intellectual fashion that Goujun does. At best I'd put his intelligence on a level with Gokuu's- instinctive, emotional, not at all analytical. Nothing wrong with that except that it's completely foreign to me personally, and I don't know how to write a charcater like that. ^^;;

Well, that's the other option. ^_^ To date Gouen's been intellectually aware that him seeing what Goujun has become will doubtless, in the course of time, be mortifying to Goujun, but he's trusting that Kanzeon's 'he won't recognize you' means that Goujun doesn't know *now* who he is. All this turns out to be quite different from confronting the reality of sweet little Jiip. (Not to spoil, but in fact so far he hasn't met Jiip. He's met Hakkai, and a combination of misunderstanding and mindfuzz- because this is a vision- has made him think that Hakkai is Goujun. Which is in some ways worse.) But I'm wondering what his reaction would be to finding his idolized third brother is a sweet little pet. Is 'kill him now and get it over with' a reasonable reaction?

But yes, he will recognize who he is. Dragon eyes see more things than are present in any one time and place. This is part of the (rather dangerous because non-intuitive) possibility that past, present and future are modes of being that apply only to humans Down Here, not to kami and possibly not to dragons.

It would seem a perfectly reasonable reaction, since given that immortal creatures keep their memory from one incarnation to the other, killing them is not quite the same as killing a mortal. I don't read Saiyuki, but if this was to unfold in a traditional fashion his main worries should be that he might be commiting a crime by disrupting or circumventing the plans of Heaven for his brother, and thus making enemies of Important People would shouldn't be offended. Fratricide is small dish compared to that.

Mh. My dragons don't do reincarnation at all and wouldn't know how reincarnation works for immortal creatures. (What immortal creatures incarnate BTW? Phoenixes are all I can think of.) What's certain is that Goujun hasn't kept his memories, so he's an automatic exception anyway.

Minekura's Heaven is a far different proposition from the novel's. Much less bureaucratic and umm Chinese. Offending the guys in charge is a minor offence from all we see in the Gaiden.