Of Swords and Parasols

Parents' keyboard=EVIL.  I have to literally pound on the keys to get anything out of them(yet, I'm still updating)

Does anyone find it weird to visit their parents and sleep in a different bed in what used to be their room?  Maybe it's because the bed there(mine went to the apt. with me) used to be my grandparent's guest bed(and used to be covered in inhuman amounts of lace)  Granted, I've been told I can sleep in my parents' bed, but...it's my parents' bed.

Also, why is it that I can spend 22 years out in the country and insect night sounds don't even register, but thjen I live in town for a year and they're the loudest things ever?(OTOH, cars at any time of night no longer bother me)

Another thing of import:  some of my manga has FINALLY shown up at Waldenbooks(the ones people on my flist would care about are Vampire Knight, Death Note and possibly Skip-Beat)

Also, after  dangermousie's post earlier, I saw the HK movie Legend of Speed at Hastings for $7 and got it on a whim...they also had the first(of 4) volumes of the cdrama Laughing in the Wind.  Sounds promising, we'll see.  i've also decided that Nicholas Tse fighting blindfolded in the rain after angsting at a grave is likely one of the top 5 hottest things in a dorama *says possibly because there vould be hotter things she's hasn't seen yet*  Not that I've all but memorized the opening credits or anything(angsty guy w/ swords winning against what should be absolutely impossible odds=major kink)  I don't like the grave part though, mostly because I rather like the 2 people who are the prime options for being in the grave...

My Handsome Siblings DVDs also have a trailer for Return of the Conder Hero and...uhm...yeah, glad it was in the order I placed this week.

Also, since Seven Swordsmen and Chinese Paladin have both come up in several places lately(I guess all my dorama loving friends view me as their main resource...not that I mind, though I really have seen comparatively fewer than people seem to think) I've been poking around youtube for vids.  Now, Seven Swordsmen...well, the only thing I love with fewer vids there is Musashi(which has none, which depresses me to no end) even Trick has(slightly) more.  Chinese Paladin, however, has TONS.  I watched one video that was almost 6 minutes long and completely avoided angst until the last minute, yet I was blubbering 10 seconds into it when I recognized the scene it was, even though there were no subs.  The scene is the 6 leads making a friendship promise that no matter what, they'll all return to that spot in 10 years, even if their lives take them on wildly different paths.  The rest, up until the last minute, is bits of their friendship and almost completely angstless, and then the last minute is the events that kept them from keeping the promise(with one exception, it's non-explicit enough that you won't be spoiled as to their various fates...there'll likely be a Chinese Paladin vid spam soon) and it made me realize that, while Seven Swordsmen is my favorite cdrama, I'm actually more emotionally invested in the characters in Chinese Paladin(and really, my preference for one over the over is marginal...make Xiao Yao less bratty the first half and Ling'er less whiny and self-centered in the middle chunk, and they'd likely be reversed)  The same is true of my two favorite doramas, Musashi and Damo, where I'm more invested in Chae-Ohk, Hwangbo Yoon and Jang Sung-Baek than I am in Takezo, Otsu and Kojiro.  In both cases, I think the difference is that I'm more invested in the story as a whole in Musashi and Seven Swordsmen than in Damo and Chinese Paladin(though all investment for Damo outweighs Seven Swordsmen) and in the end, the overall investment(plot, setting-in these cases, historical context-etc.) outweighs the character investment for me.

Ok I THINK I started out with more to say on the matter when I sat down to do this, but I left midway through to do something and it's after 3 am and I'm too tired to be bothered to try to remember.  Maybe tomorrow, maybe it's gone forever.  NIGHT!

sigh.  So, I'm well aware that I have an extremely onbsessive/addictive personality(comes with the ADD) but I thought I'd be taking a longer break from doramas than this...

Ah well, I DID get in 2 movies and a disc of anime, so it's not like I plunged straight into this after Musashi...

Anyway, this show is, thankfully, about as far from Musashi as you can get.  I say thankfully because I'm not prepared to dive into that level of obsessiveness again for a bit(when I do, it will will not involve subs...Damo is the longest dorama I plan to get involved in anytime soon, and it's 14 eps.)

This one is a comedy with a little bit of romance thrown in...the kind where it's obvious to everyone but the characters themselves, who are oblivious.

It's about a professor named Ueda Jiro(Abe Hiroshi) who is extremely intelligent and booksmart(and became a black belt in karate through a correspondence course...) but not very life smart.  As a result, try as he might to be otherwise, he's rather gullible when it comes to tricks...he knows they can't be real, he just doesn't know HOW, and he always gets sucked in.  The daughter of a colleague got involved in a cult led by a spiritualistic who claims to have powers, and when he went to try to get the girl back, the spiritualist placed a curse on him and said he would die in ten days.  He doesn't believe it, of course....until he gets to his office and sees her floating 2 feet off the ground.  His logical mind doesn't cope well with the illogical, so he puts an ad out for someone to convince him that the supernatural exists.

Yamada Naoko(Nakama Yukie) is a stage magician who's father was a famous magician who exposed the tricks of other magicians.  She just lost her job and is two months behind on rent, so she answers the ad for the promised reward, and fools him with a simple stage trick.  She reveals what she did later, of course, and how, and he has her try a lot of other tricks on him, each of which he falls for.  While he's booksmart, she's people smart, as is a master at detecting tricks and reading people.  But she also has interpersonal interaction problems, and never knows how to act with people.

The first 3 episodes are one story, where they go to the cult and she exposes all their tricks, only to have the spiritualist use another trick to get the same result.  It's rather clever and very funny, more wit than slapstick(though there is some of that)  There's only 10-11 episodes, do if I reach the "can't stop" stage, I'm not in TOO much trouble...on the flipside, it's apparently very popular in Japan and has 3 series, a TV movie, and possibly a theatrical movie...I'm not sure.  From what I can tell poking around online, they' stopped making them by choice, not because it wasn't profitable to keep going indefinately.  Plus, given what I understand about doramas, the actors were probably ready to move on to new roles.

Now a bit on the OTP...

First of all, Abe Hiroshi is TALL!  Nakama Yukie always looks small when placed close to other actors.  Normally, though, it's more a case of her being rather slight than being really short.  However, the top of her head just barely reaches his shoulders.  Maybe it's because I'm 5'1", but I'm a sucker for tall/short pairings.  Anyway, while they're equally smart, they're smart in different ways, and they always bicker.  A large part of it is because he always falls for her tricks, while he's always able to logic/maneuver her into doing whatever he wants.  They're the kind odf pairing who'll be together for years and date people but be clueless as to why they can't ever get serious about someone else, and any time someone tries to tell them why, they'll go "Huh?"

There's also a lot of touching...not affectionate/cuddly touching, more like, he forgets she's a girl when he gets caught up in things(for example, he takes a shower in her room and gets so caught up in the case that he doesn't make it past putting on his underwear before wandering around, talking about the case, and is clueless about why she's very pointedly not looking at him, and when she points out that he should go because it's her room and not his, he leaves, having completely forgotten that all he's wearing is his underwear) and ends up clapping her on the shoulder or hovering...he's so tall and so easily distracted/caught up in things, I keep expecting him to use the top of her head as an armrest or something.  Though, he's already carried her on his back once, and tucked her into bed(they were sequential...they had to walk back to town and she passed out from exhaustion, so he carried her on his back, all the way to her apartment...he has great endurance)

I already knew Nakama Yukie could be very funny and adorable because of Gokusen(and she made a great sad beauty in Musashi)  but it was nice to see that Abe Hiroshi is also good at comedy(Ueda is nothing like Gion Toji, who Abe Hiroshi played in Musashi...heck, if I didn't know, I almost wouldn't have recognized him...it would have bugged me and I would have investigated)

Ok, I think I have time for 2 more eps before sleepy hits.

So long...so very very long.  This'll be my last Musashi post, barring requests or comparisons or anything.

After the last 10 minutes of ep 39(reunion, settle down to a peaceful life, closure) I largely view this as a sequel where Evil Politics interfere and make the poor guy get involved in the war between the Toyotomi(likely misspelled) and Tokugawa factions.  It's largely about the politics and social conditions that led to the war at this point, with Musashi playing one of the central figures as a swordsman the politicians won't let live in peace, as opposed to it actually being his story.  Still, I think these were some of the best episodes of the series.  The fact that the "Musashi and Otsu can't be together" part is done away with in ep 39 helps, as that really couldn't go on much longer without the audience just giving up on them.  And yeah, that's the hopeless shipper in me talking.

Anyway, excellent series over all, with only a few weak parts(most in the early eps, though the subtitlers got some of the time passages wrong, I think...can't blame that on the show, though) but not enough to detract from my enjoyment.

...I have finished Musashi.

My eyes rejoice from the brief break from subtitles(not too long, though...my Damo DVDs came today)

There shall be a post about the final eps, likely tomorrow afternoon.

I shall now go showered and then check some DVDs to make sure they work before sleepytime

So, you just recreated and televised the most famous duel in Japanese history...what will you do for the next 11 episodes?

Apparently, focus on the politics of the time while Musashi tries and fails to live in peace away from all that...which he's actually been trying to do for a while now.  Can't you politicians just leave the man alone for a while?  Ok, no, because then the show would be over...

Actually, I'm not quite sure WHY it's not over now...the Musashi/Kojiro duel is basically the climax of the series...not matter how good it is, the rest of the series will be downhill...heck, they were advertising the duel as THE event of the series, pretty much, in the "next episode" previews fore about 5 eps before it.  About the only other thing of near equal import is the "does Musashi get to stay with Otsu?" question, which really only needed about 1 more minute to answer...

This isn't to say that I'm not looking forward to the rest...the bulk of the last ten episodes(aside from the death of Yagyu Sekisushai...*sniffle*) has been divided between maneuvering and building towards the duel, and the politics.  The parts with the politics are more than enough to keep me watching(I've tried, but it seems I'm literally incapable of breaking from this show before it's finished at this point...there are worse fates)

One interesting thing to note is that, while in the movies and book the series is based on, Kojiro falling for Otsu was one of the reasons for the duel.  Here, however, the only role Otsu plays is as an incentive for Musashi to survive...she and Kojiro have only met once(well, technically twice, but it was encountering each other briefly while going to the same place, so I count it as once) and he certainly wasn't in love with her.  At best, he vaguely recalls a pretty girl travelling with her brother whom he met on the way to Edo.  Instead, the main reason for the duel(aside from the whole "we'd be great friends, but we have to try to kill each other or we'll go nuts wondering which of us is better" mindset so popular with samurai) is politics, which I understand is in closer keeping with history(I think the show went about half and half in the book-history department)

I think I prefer it that way, as it wouldn't have suited Kojiro as portrayed here at all.  He never hesitates to defend a woman, but he'd never try to stand between a woman and the man she loved, unless she was unhappy because of him(then the other man would die, but Kojiro wouldn't bother with an official duel...waste of time, that.)  There was a brief point around eps 15-23(forget exactly where) where they seemed to be indicating similarities between Koto and Otsu in preparation of that, but it was brief.  Instead, I like how they played it with Otsu waiting for Musashi in Mimasaka and Oshino waiting for Kojiro in Himasaka(I think I got that wrong...)  Poor Oshino...her men keep dying on her...I imagine there will be suicide on that end before long...but then, I'm half surprised she's still alive.

The fight itself, of course, was excellent, and worth the wait and buildup.  I'm not sure I'd say it's better than the fight with Shishido Baiken...I'm partial to that one, if only for the extreme dichotomy in fighting styles.

I tried finding pictures of the duel, but no go(though the production pictures I posted last night were for the scenes...)  I'd recommend anyone interested in the samurai genre download and watch ep 38, just for the duel.

Now to see if they can keep up steam for 11 episodes...

Random thought...for me, this is only a couple more days, but if I lived in Japan in '03, it would have been "Hey!  we just showed you the climax of the series, the biggest event of the whole thing...the reason half of you are watching...go ahead and stick around another three months, ok?"

For I am bored and cannot focus on reading.








The icon-making bug is flitting around close, but it hasn't QUITE bitten me yet...the whole "16 more eps" thing is a serious impediment.

My eyes...my eyes...are crying...they are telling me to take a break from subs or they will pop out of my head and roll away to find a less abusive master.  But...it's so hard to stop.  At least the 4th disc ended at a decent point, as opposed to an evil point like the other discs(I WAS going to take a break after ep 21, but it ended with Musashi arriving and Shishido Baiken's house, and no way was I waiting with THAT fight right around the corner)  But, the main OTP has paid off, even if they're being separated to caused angst and melodrama, and, except for Kojiro(cries a bit over Koto, even though she's known it was coming since it was established that Koto would be hanging around for a bit), all the important characters are at happy points in their lives(though Matahachi needs to beg Akemi to come back.)  This pretty much means that all their lives are about to be ripped apart and start sucking and it'll become angst central until it's time for the next big fight.

Moving on...

The Musashi/Shishido fight was the best fight in Vagabond(so far)  so I had VERY high expectations for it here, and fortunately it paid off.

Side trip to say who the HELL knocks on someone's door and asks to borrow the phone at TWO AM when the person is on the SECOND FLOOR and then gets upset when they're told it, hey, it's two am, and you expect me to do something to allow you into my apartment!!!  Excuse?  "I'm looking for someone who lives in this complex and my cell is dead and I saw your light is on...do you have a cell phone charger I can use?"  As in "will you please open the door all the way and let me into your apartment?"

*seethe fume rage*

Anyway...

Ok, mad, more after shower.

Somewhat better now.  Hopefully I'll be able to sleep in a few(I'm consoled by the fact that it IS entirely in the realm of possibility that some college kid forgot to recharge his phone and forgot his friend's apt # and didn't use his brain when seeing lights on...I figure 50-50 chance of freak and dumb college kid currently mistaking self-preservation for rudeness)

Anyway...Musashi...much pleasanter thing.

Except that I was going to talk about the Musashi/Shishido fight, which has a very sad ending...ending in Vagabond was sad too, but not AS sad.

Then I was going to talk about Kojiro/Koto, which is flatout tragic, so we'll just leave it at "I'm in mourning, even though I was expecting it"

Happier things would be that, despite my sadness at Jotaro apparently being permantently written out, he was written out in a good, closure way and gets to be happy.  Also Musashi/Otsu happiness, despite the quickly approaching angst.

On the flipside, I'm surprised at how much I'm liking Matahachi and his storyline with Akemi.  They are the cute OTP.  Not that Matahachi is remotely worthy of Akemi(much less Otsu) but he's the only person who seems to have ever actually concerned himself with her needs, or tried to take care of her or consider her feelings.  She, meanwhile, seems to be able to mostly rein in his...well...stupidity, which he needs.  Now if he'd just grow a fraction of a brain and try to get her back, I might have some cuteness to sustain me through the quickly approaching angst and drama.

Incidentally, with other actors, I doubt I'd care for either Koto or Matahachi(in fact, he's easily my least favorite character of Vagabond, despite his occassinal plot usefulness)  But Nakama Yukie is great, and the actor playing Matahachi(not looking up his name at 2:45 am) manages to make him come across as well intentioned, just a stupid(but funny) screw up.

Now lets see how that sleep thing works for me.

And time to rest my eyes from subtitles.

Still going strong.  I'm actually starting to care about Matahachi's storyline, which rather surprises me.  He's worthless and pathetic, but at least he knows it, and is generally well intentioned.  Akemi, at least, seems well suited towards handling him(in a purely platonic manner so far...I think she sees him as something of a cross between a hopeless elder brother and a bedraggled puppy that can't keep out of trouble and always begs for scraps from the wrong people, while he thinks she's a girl with a crush on the big strong man-namely, him.  It should be fun)  And, quite frankly, their mother's could rival each other for wretchedness.

Initially I was liking Oko better here than in Vagabond, but she's actually an infinitely more horrid person, though her scenes with Gion Toji are interesting.

Kojiro's storyline has eased up ome, largely because Oshina has left the canva(hopefully only temporarily, as her story is far from complete)  Oshina leaving is leaving more room for Koto to grow a bit, which is nice.  I pretty much dismissed her completely at first, but she's growing, but she's still pretty helpless...Otsu's upbringing was pretty much the same, but I can't see Koto enduring anything that Otsu has, or even lasting 5 minutes without Kojiro.  Which is ofdd for me, as Koto is played by Nakama Yukie, who played Yankumi in Gokusen...

Very much enjoying the surrogate father/son relationship with Musashi and Jotaro.  Though...Musashi seriously needs to keep in mind that he's dealing with a kid with even worse abandonment issues than he has, not to mention being knocked around at least as much as a kid.  I mean, if he's going to give a speech to the kid that goes "when I was your age, my father beat me...blah blah....learned something important...blah blah...makes you stronger...blah blah..." he REALLY needs to include "I don't plan to ever hit or beat you" fairly early in there.  And then going "wait for me here" then taking off for a few days...NOT the thing to do with abandonment issues boy(though the sheer guilt on his face when he got back to the temple and went "oh...yeah..." and actually letting the kid hug him wins him back a FEW points...)  And I love how, as soon as Musashi tells him about Otsu, Jotaro decides the two are soulmates and circles and examines every woman they come across andthen tells them his master already has a woman named Otsu so she should give up...it's just too cute(esp. when he does it to Otsu, before he knows who she is.

Musashi and Otsu also FINALLY meet and get to talk...very good scenes, though, despite his needing a good whack upside the head(ok, so he needs that regularly here AND in Vagabond...though less so here...)

Last time my "watch in groups of 7 eps" thing was kinda hard, but it's actually a good thing, here.  A break is definately needed after episode 14.  Some harsh, if important, things there.  So it's back to Orphen: Revenge for a disc...maybe two, probably just one.  And again, Lycoris=Nails. On. Chalkboard.

Finished the second disc of Orphen's Revenge and decided to get an ep of Musashi watched.  This was a mistake, as it is now 2:30 am and bedtime, and I really really need to know what happens to Oshina after that last scene with her.

However, the main reason for this post is to say that I MUST stop expecting Musashi to have the same scenes as Vagabond.  I was really expecting Takezo and Otsu to see each other at Yagyu castle because their encounter in Vagabond is likely my favorite non-fight-involved character scenes, and very sweet.  But then, as written in Musashi, he probably would have just stayed with her if they had met, so it's likely for the best.

But I wish to kick old man Yagyu for sending Otsu away on an "errand" because he knew Takezo was there.  It was half "I adore this girl and sshe's just perfect for my grandson" matchmaking and half "lets see if this guy is good enough for her"(naturally, the conclusion was "not yet, but someday" which is right)  It was best for the story(and resulted in my favorite fight so far in the series) but bad for the shipper in me.

Still getting more and more interested in Kojiro and Oshina's storyline...it's a bit of a dark parallel to Takezo and Otsu's.  Course, even though I like her more and more, I have her pegged for death before long(but hopefully not just yet...I shall know in the morning) but I expected wrath and vengeance as a result.

And finally, I loved the look on Takezo's face when Jotaro made his speech to the girl at the inn about how she should wait for him until he becomes strong enough to protect her "Uhm...yeah...I've given that speech, and...ah...kid, I'm trying to think of a good way to ditch you that won't make you mad or put you in danger, stop making me want to keep you."  The look tops the "poor kid I know how you feel and if anyone sees this I'll kill them" hug after Jotaro's speech about being used to being abandoned.  I'd declare them woobies for those 3 minutes it took to have those 2 scenes, but I'd get perforated by the characters for it.

Sigh...this was going to be a 2-3 sentence post about having to stop expecting Musashi to have the same scenes ans Vagabond...

Off to bed I go.

Sat back down with some more of Musashi.  The first episode was good, but I would have come back more for the subject matter than for the show itself.  That, however, changed with episodes 2-7, which were quite excellent.   My only real exposure to Miyamoto Musashi besides this(aside from him being mentioned a lot and some appearances as someone to match/try to beat) is the Vagabond manga.  I'll get the novel one day, just let me finish recovering from Shogun.

Anyway, definately glad I committed myself to this, despite 49 hour long episodes....that's so scary...It's following the same general plotline as Vagabond(as they're based on the same book about the same real person...) but aside from the central characters and important plot points, they aren't alike, so I don't get any sort of "been there, done that" feeling from it.  I particularly like Sasaki Kojiro's stoeyline...this character is a polar opposite from his Vagabond plotline.  Even though I pretty much know how his story will end, I think it's the storyline that I'm the most interested in, so far.

I'm also enjoying Otsu getting to do a lot more...she doesn't really do much of anything after Takezo leaves them village until they meet at the Yagyu estate(they're about to meet...ep 7 ends with his hearing her playing the flute as he's sneaking in) but we see hewr throughout it all, here.

This is also a very pretty show.  Not bright lights and airbrushing pretty...it looks like you might actually find places like this(well, if you lived 400 years ago)  But...as it's pre-public transportation and running water, it's also rather dirty(grabs a brush and bar of soap and hauls Jotaro and Takazo off to the nearest river) but not in a bad or overwhelming way.  It also has very pretty "historical epic" music, but not pretentiously so like so many others.  The music is somewhat flute-centric, which suits it very well, not only because it creates the right mood, but because Otsu plays the flute.  Also, at the very end, instead of end credits(they have all thhat at the beginning) they have a bare-bones single credits page that looks like an ink painting, then the bird on the branch in the painting flies away...I can't explain it well, but it's very pretty and very much suits the show.

One other thing I really like is that it does that multi-camera double take thing when some people encounter each other, such as when Kojiro and Oshina first see each other, or when Takezo and Otsu almost meet(that dolt--would it kill him to be like normal 18 year olds and notice when he rushes by a pretty girl?  sheesh.)  Those shots are normally a little too artsy, but like the rest of the show, it doesn't try to be flashy, so it works.

My only complaint is the fight scenes.  While they're good, you can usually tell that the swords aren't actually connecting(but not always, and that's getting better)

I'm thinking "Shinsengumi" another Taiga(year long historical, by the same company) will be added to the backlog before long.

Anyway, my poor eyes can only handle so many subtitles, so it was necessary to break for something else, so I started "Orphen's Revenge" and I juat finished the first disc(will watch the second then get back to Musashi for another 7 eps)  It's funny and enjoyable, but not nearly as good(so far) as the first series.  There's no real plot yet(though a couple hints of the eventual plot, but it stands out as the plot started out strong in Orphen) and the music isn't as good.  I wouldn't mind that much, but they added a new character, Lycorice, to the party, and she's like nails on a chalkboard to me so far.  Still, it's fun enough so far.