Okay, I have been charmed by this show. It's definitely not completely cutesy and is much more in the vein of the original Hans Christian Andersen version of The Little Mermaid than the Disney one. This illustrated by the very first thing Lara does upon being born is graphically bite a fish's head off. But this does feel like it's own tale.
I appreciate Lara being whacked with the catastrophic consequences of her disobedience early on, and that she has accepted that responsibility. Her naivety in the human world feels natural and her weird choices make sense within the context of what she does and doesn't understand. It's also engaging to have so many of the characters we've met so far be realistically flawed and therefore relatable.
While I do expect there to be one - or maybe two - prince tangents, I already feel like Lara's true love may be the girl already in front of her. They just don't know it yet.
I'm surprised by how much I liked this and I'm looking forward to the rest.
After four episodes, this has kind of slipped into the repetitiveness I feared but maybe this will be a turnaround episode due to some key events;
Kuroe and Minami becoming official was starting to feel inevitable with how how lovely they have been together. Of course that will cause more opportunities for Kuroe's condition to act up, but them being more open should prevent feelings becoming pent-up.
Then Koutarou being involved with the government. He's now going to be torn between his job and protecting Kuroe.
The idea of Kyōka and Lucy becoming friends is absolutely lovely and I fully support it. They're both so awkward but also understand that about each other and I'm happy seeing them enjoy a cute, girly time together.
Honestly, completely fair reaction from Poe upon walking into that room. I'd probably turn tail and run if I saw those three waiting for me too. Saigiku being there too would not have helped.
Hey just a heads up, I will be removing a lot of older prints to re-curate my Inprnt shop. Mostly the one off illustrations on a blank background. If you want to get some prints before they go, now is your chance. I will be removing most of them this weekend.
>> Inprnt Link <<
"He has a habit of having one shoulder exposed whenever the "Shape" is revealed. He is quite aloof and loquacious before the events unfold, but suddenly changes demeanour to a more serious/sharp one when the Mononoke appears.
"The sword features a vulture motif, possessing a great ability of foreseeing and seeing through things.
"His existence serves, honours and purifies human sentiments, and shouts '葬斬' ('souzan'; chinese character meaning 'funeral strike') when he slays the Mononoke."
Well you tried. Honestly, I feel like Ildoa approached this whole thing with ulterior motives and expectations of what they were going to find. This then made them easy to mislead. I was suspicious from the start that the unit of choice for someone to observe was Tanya's. You've all met her, right?
Mononoke series' new Medicine Seller! Hello there Qian/Ken!
First of all: I love him already.
Second: we HAVE to talk about this outfit.
Let's go through this bit by bit, shall we?
(For simplicity's sake, I'll be referring to the sellers by their Japanese sword names, Ken, Kon, and Ri, and to the trigrams by their Chinese names, Qian, Kun, and Li.)
Firstly and most strikingly: the colours. We're leaning heavily on a yellow-gold colour scheme, with highlights of orange and a minty green and contrasting purple. Historically, in China the colour of heaven was yellow/gold, and in some eras only the emperor was allowed to wear this specific rich shade. Very fitting for the sword of Qian, representing heaven.
Secondly: the kimono and how he's wearing it. Ohhhh boy. So just like Ri and Kon, Ken is wearing a woman's kimono, though it's folded up slightly shorter than normal, presumably to make moving around easier when fighting, and to allow us to see those beautiful hakama, which we will come back to in a moment.
This kimono has furisode sleeves, and possibly some of the longest furisode we've seen outside of Ooku characters. These are typically reserved for unmarried women - interesting, because Qian is a deeply masculine trigram, arguably the MOST masculine, as it is three unbroken yang lines. Fittingly, Ken is wearing the kimono with one sleeve off, a style typically associated with samurai, ronin, and other physical fighters to allow for more movement.
His obi belt is also quite slim compared to how Kon and Ri wear theirs, and most notably, it seems to not have the massive bow knot at the back that the other two do. Hard to say more on it while we don't have a full turn around, but smaller and more subtle knots are, once again, a much more masculine way of tying an obi than we're used to seeing on sellers. The feminine vibe is still there with the himo (oh, and look, that's where he's keeping his mirror), but with it positioned further down and being a plain black, it's definitely more masc.
Hakama are a split-skirt type outfit similar to trousers, and perform a similar function - they were invented for horse riding, which makes sense, as the animal associated with the Qian trigram is the horse. While both genders wear them, they're much more common for men, especially if this is again set in a pre-Showa era time. Over all, the whole outfit is much more masculine than any we've seen before on a medicine seller, which is very interesting, and carries some implications for the Shingi of Qian too, as they tend to contrast with their sellers (just look at Kon's excessively loud and colourful outfit vs his shingi's very understated pure white kimono).
(Ri and Kon also wear trousers under their kimono, but they wear momohiki, or something close to it, cut close to the ankle and drawn up to allow for movement, much more common for working class people than hakama.)
This tight sleeve that ends in a ring on the finger is called a tekkou (or rather, the long version is a nagatekkou), and was typically worn by archers to protect the arms and chest from the bowstring, as they would typically disrobe one shoulder to fire in some instances. They can extend to the forearm, or all the way up to the chest. I don't have much to say about this one, but he is the first seller we've seen with one! I love how we can see some of his kumadori makeup peeking out, and speaking of which.
Interestingly, almost all of Ken's kumadori body paint is black, unlike Ri or Kon's which is predominantly red. We can also see a lot more of it. All the medicine sellers wear kumadori markings that echo those from kabuki theatre. They serve as a visual shorthand for what kind of character is being played. Red on white is explicitly youthful and heroic, with a sense of justice - very fitting for Kon's high energy character. Black paint, by contrast, is typically applied to villains and demons, particularly around the face and mouth.
(Oh my god look at his little fang while he's fixing his earring i LOVE him)
For his face, we see something quite interesting - unlike Ri or Kon, he has barely any lip paint, but what he DOES have is a little bit of green on the bottom lip and an extremely thin purple line on the top. Around the eyes we see another little highlight of green on the eyelid, and thick black around the lower lid. Green is often a marker of the supernatural or the undead in kabuki theatre, which fits well enough here. He's still got that red stripe on the nose that marks him as heroic, but the incorporation of black into more of his makeup would give any kabuki-knowledgeable people a cause to be wary - this guy's just as likely to hinder as help you.
The sword. This is one scary looking sword if I'm completely honest. Maybe it's the bulging eyes or the way the teeth are rendered, it upsettingly resembles a bird with teeth to me. Let's consider the others for a moment.
Compare and contrast, Kun and Li. The sword of Qian has a narrow but MUCH longer hilt. The blade looks proportionally longer too, or at least the sheath is. As a result I'm not entirely sure how Ken fits it in his travelling pack - though we haven't seen what his looks like yet, so perhaps he uses something different to Ri and Kon.
Heroine? Saint? No, I'm an All-Works Maid (and Proud of It)! episode 5
Just goes to show how one change can have such huge knock on effects. That the Dark One being the big looming threat of the show may have accidentally been quelled at such an early stage of the game's plot is very funny. I assume that other issues will arise instead as the world twists around Melody's influence.
I enjoyed that the others did all step up to face the Dark One in the absence of the Saint instead of giving up because they knew for certain that they shouldn't be powerful enough.
The Oblivious Saint Can't Contain Her Power episode 4
Carolina looked utterly stunning this episode, especially so in her wedding dress and the lovely looks continued while on honeymoon. I did expect there to be more intimacy between the couple on their honeymoon, but it seems that we'll have to wait a little longer for that. Though I am happy to see that they both have genuine care and a lot of respect for each other at this stage. My respect for Carolina certainly leapt this episode with her standing up for Marisa against her obnoxious sister. Even before that, the two ladies were forming a real friendship.
There were some very deliberate and clear lighting choices this episode that intentionally pulled focus to certain areas. The biggest moment was a sweet one with Jeffrey and Victoria getting lost within themselves while dancing together and it feeling as if they were the only ones in the whole room. Otherwise the lighting added atmosphere to the more serious conversations taking place.
After a couple of episodes of sweetness and ease, the darker side of things is already starting to catch up with our lead characters. Jeffrey's past is desperately heartbreaking and he's taking so much of the responsibly upon himself when none of it was his fault at all. With Victoria's previous identity, I was expecting some heaviness to surface but was lulled into complacency by the cosiness of the first two episodes; so I can understand if such topics were a shock to some. Victoria's situation is less complicated and she really took some risks with her actions at the ball. That moment of her contemplating why she did it and how she perhaps actually enjoyed her old job were enlightening. Unfortunately it means that she's already under the scrutiny that she was trying to avoid. I'm surprised that this is happening so soon in the narrative, so I'm curious about how she's going to handle it.
I'm still struggling to tolerate a lot of the decision making in this show, but I do appreciate that Yuri is taking responsibility for what happened to Tito and is making this event a turning point as I'd hoped. Prince Kail making Yuri a symbol for their war efforts was also a clever way for him to get what he wants out of this situation. I expect that Tito's sisters will eventually learn the truth and join Yuri to avenge their brother.
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