Kaze no Junction

I'm Suzaku ⸜(｡ ˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡ Yoroiden Samurai Troopers / Ronin Warriors fan blog with a dash of other things. I also run tumblr.com/asksamuraitroopers.

[suzaku00]

🌸 Suzaku / lazy artist

🌸 She/her

🌸 midnightparty.bsky / @asksamuraitroopers

Elder millennial. Lighthearted sarcastic. YST/RW fan since 1995. 80s/90s animation holds a special place in my heart. I draw sometimes. Gamer. My love language is poking fun at media I enjoy.

I will use the tag #ysst-spoilers when posting about current episodes. Please mute this tag if needed.

[suzaku00]

YST to YSST and Fandom

Here to trouble your Saturday morning, it's me! Suzaku. 👋

During the summer vacation of 1995 a friend called to tell me about a cool new anime on TV, Ronin Warriors. Three decades later I'm still invested.

Back then, we didn't yet have an internet connection at home. That would happen between 1996-97. I started as a pre-teen who drew fan art in a notebook every day. Eventually I connected with a whole web (no pun intended) of other people who loved this anime as much as I did, and that was my first experience with a fandom.

Most of us were kids back then. Kids who had been handed a burlap sack filled with sugar and crack. Once we touched the internet we learned that Ronin Warriors had started out in Japan as Yoroiden Samurai Troopers. Our young minds were blown. We were eager to know more. We essentially crowd funded an effort to get our hands on as much of the Japanese material as possible, while firing emails back and forth to dissect every little lore nugget we could find. A few college-aged fans were studying Japanese and did their best to provide translations. We connected with English speakers in Japan who funneled us merchandise. We petitioned Cartoon Network to bring our boys back! We upgraded our grubby TV to VHS bootlegs to authentic DVDs! We finally had official translations of Message and still couldn't wrap our heads around it!

I have many fond memories of people and experiences from back then. These things took place during some pretty formative years of my life, and helped weather me through tough times. It's safe to say that Ronin Warriors / Yoroiden Samurai Troopers has always had a special little place in my heart.

Some years later, after navigating early adulthood and getting a foothold in life, I found myself between jobs. While reminiscing on the good old days I had the idea to start the Ask blog. Life picked up sooner than later, and my posts dwindled.

But then Sunrise / Bandai-Namco came out of left field and announced a sequel: Yoroi Shinden Samurai Troopers. Like many others, my spider senses were going haywire and I was eager to reconnect with other fans and share the excitement. So here I am. Again. Meeting new faces and reconnecting with people from way back when. It's been pretty neat.

However, this has also exposed me to the less than pleasant side of fandoms. This fandom, specifically.

I'm an individual who rarely engages with fandoms. I've heard stories, and those didn't incentivize me in any way to engage in the fandoms of other media I've enjoyed. But YST is special, and I know cool people are still out there, so I wasn't about to be deterred. If there are a few shitlords along the way, so be it.

I'm not on social media much. I don't engage through Facebook. I've recently created a Bluesky account, but most of my interactions have been through Discord. In other words, the pool of fans I've interacted with is fairly small, and there are many others out there I've never met and may never meet. And that's fine. My goal isn't to reach as many people as possible. It's to just vibe and exist in my own little corner, and have fun with those I meet along the way.

Now that I'm poking around Tumblr and limited other outlets again, I see pockets of fandom drama. Granted yes, there's a bit of it in the spaces I inhabit too, but thankfully it's very, very small and isolated. And the very few involved... are evidently well known to other people in other spaces, with embarrassing reputation.

YSST has obviously not been everyone's cup of tea. I've seen a wide, wide spectrum of opinions. And there's nothing wrong with that. People are allowed to enjoy things. People are allowed to dislike things. What's unfortunate is when we can't have good faith discussions about the things we like, or don't like, because the criticisms feel or become personal.

Speaking strictly for myself, I'm having fun with YSST. Is it perfect? Not by any means. But it's fresh, it's new, and it hasn't concluded yet. However this plays out, I'm having a great time throwing out absolutely baseless theories and some intentionally crazy ones hello aliens and seeing what sticks. I like the new characters. I'm excited to see industry veterans, both on the production side and on the acting side, attached to the project. I have a ton of trivia floating around in my head in terms of seiyuu / voice actors and creators, so I'm very excited when a familiar name pops up.

This is my first experience with writer Shogo Muto, though I have been watching some of Kamen Rider Build in parallel. I don't believe I've seen any of director Yoichi Fujita's work outside of some clips, but I'm aware of Gintama and Osomatsu-san on at least a surface level. I'm someone who enjoys levity mixed with heavy plot points, but it's obviously quite a tonal shift from YST.

I think there's something to be said for people like myself, who are ancient fans of RW / YST and have had 38 years to beat the information to death. Last year I rewatched YST with a friend who had only caught it in passing back in the Toonami days. I had a great time hearing his perspective as someone not so invested in this vintage anime, which is arguably a product of its time. It's had the unintended consequence of now referring to all four Masho as "Anubis" (or "Anubii" I suppose) but, he's also raised some good points of discussion in terms of nostalgia and how that impacts the reception of YSST by us old heads.

Ten episodes remain in Cour 2, so we have a while yet to see what happens. At some point I'll make a separate post about the current state of the Japanese animation industry, and speculations on how that may have impacted the production angle. I'll eventually chime in with thoughts on the writing and direction.

Did I convey my thoughts clearly enough, or did it sound like rambling? Anyhow, I'm going to keep poking fun at both YST and YSST so please look forward to it.

[suzaku00]

I'm waiting on my watch to charge so I can go to bed.

[suzaku00]

YSST: Where are Kayura and the Masho?

Disclaimer: the opinions herein are my own. If they sound overly serious, they’re probably not. At the end of the day I’m enjoying YSST. That said, I have every intent of projecting a bit of friendly psychic damage your way.I do my best to present correct information. Any mistakes within are my own.

The following contains mild spoilers through Episode 14.

Hello again. You thought I was done for the day? Not while there is work to be done.

Many of us carrying over from YST have the same question: where are Kayura and the Three Stooges? Masho, Warlords, whatever you'd like to call them. At the end of the TV series we see them float away on beams of sunlight, with Kayura stating they'll turn the demon realm into a nicer place.

Cue Episode 14 and we have the surviving Braves talking about the demon realm being a "garbage dump."

Yeah, this place is a garbage dump, but nobody gets to call it that but us!

After their absence for the duration of Cour 1 plus this reflection on the demon realm being a not-so-nice place to live, one has to think that Kayura-tachi didn't accomplish their goal. And if they did, something pretty significant happened between then and now.

Now, for kicks and giggles I'd like to point out that YSST has already shown the Masho on screen. Via a flashback. Using stock footage from YST.

You know what this does? It acknowledges that these guys exist in the frame of YSST.

Now, perhaps their story is over and there's no more to tell. I'm telling you guys, they'll show up at the very end to put their hands on the Moon Wand together with everyone else and help Gai vanquish Queen--oh, pardon me.

Ahem. I truly am hedging my bets on some sort of acknowledgement later in Cour 2. All commentary about the pacing and exposition aside, to this point we've had visual acknowledgements of both Kaosu / The Ancient and also these chuckleheads. We haven't acknowledged Kayura on screen yet but there's no way we get to the end without that happening. We also need to figure out where Jun's shakujo / staff came from.

Anyhow, I'm pleased to announce that I've gained insight to where Kayura and company have been all this time. Say it with me everyone...

Hear me out. HEAR ME OUT. In Episode 14, Sagume drops the very unfortunate possibility of aliens existing in universe. I personally hope that isn't the case, I'm just pointing it out.

Now, think back to the end of YST Episode 39.

We thought that Kayura and her compadres ascended on a beam of sunlight, having returned to their human hearts and sensibilities.

Behold! 38 years later with the help of digital restoration, an unsanctioned ritual and a can of cola, I've solved the mystery of their disappearance.

See you next time.

[suzaku00]

YSST: Humanity, the Gods, and You

This post contains spoilers for YSST through Episode 14.

Disclaimer: the opinions herein are my own. If they sound overly serious, they're probably not. At the end of the day I'm enjoying YSST. That said, I have every intent of projecting a bit of friendly psychic damage your way. I do my best to present correct information. Any mistakes within are my own.

At this point I likely need a rewatch of Cour 1 to organize my thoughts. From the start I've been rambling my crackpot theories off to a few unfortunate souls, now I need to jog my memory on what half of those theories even were.

First and foremost, allow me to ruin your week with one word: aliens.

You're welcome.

In Episode 14, Sagume really went and made the implication that other intelligent life may exist in the YSST universe. Now, I've watched Gundam 00. Multiple times, even. If the ELS show up I'm going to be at least mildly upset.

This perhaps ties back to a persistent question I've had: where are the original treasures from YST? And what's the difference between those treasures and the current set that originated from the Heavenly Realm (or at least, we think they originate from the Heavenly Realm)?

For most of Cour 1, Kikoutei (Ryo's white armor) felt like the elephant in the room. We were shown a new jewel, a new sword, and the mirror, but these new treasures were ambiguous. We went on to learn about the existence of another white armor, Haoutei. Meanwhile, we're receiving hints that preserve the events of the original YST TV series.

In other words, it was strange that no one talked about Kikoutei. I felt like Nasuti might have brought up its existence, at least told the new boys a little bit about the original white armor being one hell of a monkey's paw. The ultimate armor comes with terms and conditions and none of you, past or present, read the end user licensing agreement (at least not until after the fact).

The YSST boys continue their adventure and acquire Haoutei. The OG Troopers are free! And then Shu... my boy... my guy... walked up and said with his whole chest:

BAM look at that. Kikoutei is here! Kikoutei is...

It's here? But in the OVA didn't they... th.... blrt... ANYHOW.

We got Kikoutei! We got the swords! We got th--we did not get the inochi no magatama / jewel of life. We haven't seen the jewel since the end of YST TV and there's a more than fair chance the boys completely busted it while playing baseball.

Now, I'd have to perform some serious digging but there's a note in one of the YST books about the jewel of life disappearing "without revealing the proper path." I wonder why that could be. /s

To be serious for a moment, the jewel of life was something like the culmination of the prayers of humanity (as a response to threats from demons). There's also something to be said about the power of grudges, and 1,000 years of Arago v Kaosu contained a lot of juice. However a lot of power was expended by the end of the TV series, so perhaps the jewel's power was simply exhausted and it no longer had a part to play until Muto decides to pull it out of his pocket later in YSST.

But now we're finally getting around to the point I want to make, and that's about humanity.

With YSST we have full acknowledgement of the three realms: ningenkai (human world), youjakai (demon world), and tendoukai (heavenly world). By the start of Cour 2, and within its first episodes, we've established what many of us suspected: a conflict with heaven.

So with the origin of the new treasures confirmed to be from the Heavenly Realm (or at least not from the human world), and the original jewel plus Kikoutei coming from humanity, my personal feeling is that there will be some degree of "humans make their own destiny!" by the end of YSST. We spent a good part of Cour 1 exploring Gai's humanity. We know that the late half of the Braves had origins in the human world, and as of Episode 14 we're told that the remaining Braves are "human."

Sagume and her lot have been orchestrating events for quite some time. I'm fully expecting our heroes (and antiheroes) to band together and flip off the "gods", because humans aren't their playthings. Until next time. Thanks for coming to my talk.

[suzaku00]

Yoroi Shinden Samurai Troopers and Ramblings

Yes hello and welcome everyone. 👋

Have you been watching Yoroi Shinden Samurai Troopers (YSST)? What do you think so far? I haven't posted until now so please excuse my random thoughts.

I was very excited to learn that Kia Asamiya created the storyboards for Episode 14. I LOVE Silent Mobius.

I know the 3D animation isn't everyone's cup of tea, but can we talk about the 2D animation? The key frames in this series have been beautiful. Really some fantastic drawings. I would love a groundworks (collection of key frames) book for YSST. Please, Sunrise / Bandai-Namco, I will throw money at this $$$!! Eventually I would also like to go back and look at the production staff credits. There were some impressive studios named as inbetween animators. Production IG and Trigger?? *chefkiss* What else do I want to write about... I'll make another post when it comes to me.