Why yellow is the color of originality in the Karate Kid Universe
This is the part III of a post called "Color Theory in the Karate Kid Universe"
Alright, I really didn't expect to be doing a third part of this color thing, in fact, it was all supposed to be one post, but the more I write the more ideas come to my mind, and the more I watch, the more I realise new things, so I'll be analysing the color yellow and its meaning in Karate Kid and Cobra Kai.
The first time that we see yellow with a certain signifance is in a shirt Daniel is wearing under a blue flannel, in that same day he washes Mr. Miyagi's cars for the first time, and later in the movie he gets the first car he washed as a birthday gift, so it might not seem so important, after all the first apperance of the color is only the 50th minute of the movie.
But when we look at Cobra Kai, we see it appear way more. Starting by the oppening title.
As the red and blue, I think it's another way to shows teams, and who is with whom. On episode two of season one, we have the oppening title yellow, with a red background, and when Miguel goes to school he's wearing a "shy" red, which is basically a dark red, with a grey shirt under it, meaning he's unconfortable and wants to blend in. When he sits with Demitri and Eli (binary brothers... Sorry couldn't contain myself) they are dressed in yellow tones, espeacially Demitri, which I think means they're both in the same side. Yasmine is also wearing yellow, and it's almost the same yellow that Demetri is, which I think could be a clue for the fact that they would be together later. Samantha is wearing blue though, and so is Kyler, who is wearing white too, but he has a black hat, which could be refrence to him being a bad person in the mind, or just a refrence to Johnny as I metioned in the first part.
When I first started thinking about this, I thought that yellow was Miguel's color, here's why:
He wears it A LOT, definetly more than the other characters, but when I was looking for these images, I realised that from S2E3 to S3E4, he didn't wear yellow at all, he mostly wore red (which shows the influence that Johnny has on him), sometimes blue (which shows that he's not completly Johnny) and he also wore a lot of black (which shows Kreese's influence, even though he was the student that bought Kreese's act the least, he still listened to him.)
Not to mention the fact that in season 1 episode 7, he takes Johnny's advice and acts like him, while Johnny takes Miguel's advice and does things his way, which is shown in their clothes (last picture above), and at first it seemed to me that yellow is Miguel's way of doing things, since red is Johnny's.
Untill that moment I was really confused, 'cause I saw some other characters such as Hawk, Tory, Robby and even Armand waering it, but not Miguel, I couldn't see a pattern at that point, but there were two scenes that made it very clear.
On the episode five of the third season, right after Johnny's trials of making Miguel walk again fails, he's wearing yellow, but after the concert where he moves his foot, he's back with red and black, until eight episode of the same season, Miguel wears yellow again, right after fighting with Johnny, and that was the thing that caught my attention. Whenever Miguel wasn't quite on Johnny's side, or anyone else's he wore yellow, but still I thought that that was his color.
The thing that really made me see it, was with Hawk. In the episode nine of season three he wears yellow, they go to the zoo to steal the snake, and he ends up seen as "not so cool" since Robby was the one that got it, after that he goes to Daniel's house to beggin what would be the big fight of the season, and he's wearing a red jacket, to show strength, but inside he's still wearing yellow, which means he still has some Eli inside, and that makes yellow the color of orginality, it's when you're being truly yourself.
As you can see in Tory's example, she's at home, so she's totally "comfortable", or at least she's not trying to show anyone anything, and Armand is completly comfortable, after all he doesn't have any manners when eating. But what about Sam and Robby?
Here's when I noticed that things weren't that simple, in Sam's case, she wears yellow right after seeing Kyler being a bully, so she's confused. Robby is clearly confused, after all he starts the scene not wanting anything to do with his father, then accepts his help, but soon gets mad at him. Hawk doesn't wear it because he's confident enough, that was right after he started realising what he was becoming, we see that throughout the whole season, but he's still resisting, he still wants to stay in that "cool" position, we see that as he tries to hide the "Eli he has inside" by wearing a red jacket.
I think that yellow is only the color of originality for characters who haven't found who they truly are yet. If we look back at the Red vs. Blue thing, we'll see that not only red means more ofense, and blue means more defense, but blue is Daniel's true self, and red is Johnny's true self, of course that they wear different colors some times to show the things I said, but not only things usually doesn't go that well, but they act differently then the usual, so Johnny's originality is red, and Daniel's is blue, but these other character don't know yet.
That's why I think that Cobra Kai chose yellow to be the title color, this show is telling us, that this rivality is makes no sense, and the new characters are trying to find their own identities, even if they use the help of pre-existing concepts, they still gotta search for themselves.
Now, you may say that this is all bullshit, and the only reason for the show to have the title yellow is because the Cobra Kai original logo is yellow, but I disagree, because at the end of every episode we see a dark silver Cobra Kai logo instead of the yellow, black and red one, which I think means the new perspective Johnny is about to discover: Cobra Kai is very dark, and bad in general.
As I've said before, this is all just theories and I would love to hear the opinion of people who disagree.
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