Twelve Kingdoms 27-29
Feb. 23rd, 2010 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceruseeEp. 27
--Kyou's comments would seem to suggest that the Sennin age mentally, if not physically.
I can't say I like Shoukei at all, but I'll give her this: she's strong. What she's been through would destroy a weaker person, but she's survived all with her personality recognizably intact. That's impressive. I don't like her personality, but it's still impressive.
--Wowzers. Asano.
Awwww, I was wondering if that was a gun. I'm sorry that I'm right.
Ep. 28
Asano has completely fucking lost it, and I don't care. But he's threatening Mokurin/Suzu with his random handgun, and I care. A little.
It's kinda cool seeing Suzu back, sort of, with the acting troupe that she hooked up with when she first arrived, with crazy-ass Asano playing the part she played--desperate, isolated, unable to understand the language, to connect or comprehend. She's just so much more collected now, which is like 70% being able to understand what the fuck people are saying to her, 25% the trials and tribulations of a century of suffering topped with self-determination, and 5% obsession clinging to the idea that Queen Kei will make all her misery vanish forever.
--Crazy Asano's fixated on Yuka? Seriously? God, you're worthless, Asano. (Although, it is nice to see someone bouncing around in this universe who doesn't have an obsessive fixation on Yoko, even if it would make more sense if he did.)
--Suzu, briefly entertaining moronic fantasies that the acting troupe caring for Asano--same acting troupe that cared for her when she first landed on these nutty shores--is holding him against his will, meanwhile rescues a smart-mouthed red-headed child from falling to his death. He sasses her. I can't help but feel that karmically, she had that coming on account of her colossal dumbness and ingratitude.
--RAKUSHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN. And Enki. God how I've missed you. Yoko can't be the only one bringing the sane, okay? She's got enough on her plate.
Enki playing with Rakushun's whiskers=love.
--Shoukei is craaaaaaaaaazy. Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy.
--Kyou's kirin seems to be a little bit dumb.
"I wish I had a shorter Taiho like En's kirin," Kyou says, as she gestures for him to kneel so she can slap him across the face for suggesting that she was too hard on crazy, crazy Shoukei. That was inappropriate, but funny. She gives him a surprisingly resonant lecture about the dignity of work--pointing out, not necessary wrongly, that if she weren't doing her own job properly, she'd have been beheaded by now, just like Shoukei's insane, evil father--and then throws a robe at his head. I don't think Kyou and Kyouki really get on.
(It's kinda too bad that I prefer Kyou to Kyouki, since we can have Kyouki without Kyou, but not the reverse.)
Kyou dispatches the royal army to hunt down Shoukei for stealing a mount and I assume a bunch of clothes and jewels. Possibly that is overkill.
Meanwhile, Moukurin defends crazy Asano when he smuggles himself onboard a ship and then threatens to shoot the sailors, not that they have any idea what that weird metal thing he's holding is.
Great. Now Mokurin and Asano are throwing each other pity parties. Reinforcement is exactly what they needed.
Stop fondling your gun, Asano. It's creepy.
Ep. 29
Yoko tells Keikei, the little kid she saved from a youma in the last episode, that she's learning about how this world is different from her old world, but that it's mainly teaching her how little she knew about her old world. Heh. I had the same experience when I was supposed to be learning Spanish and I realized that my understanding of the actual rules of English grammar was pretty crappy. Although, thank god, understanding grammar rules has little to do with actual fluency, whereas understanding the fundamentals of a society is pretty integral to governing one.
Yoko gets a tutorial on how the society works (and so do we!) on what the weather is like, and things like units of measurement, land allocation, and social structure. It appears that Kei takes a sort of socialist to its resource management.
By the way, it is super awesome that Yoko is stopping to learn petty details about rule like what her citizens need most in the winter (e.g. food over warm shelter, because Kei, unlike Japan, is fairly temperate, and you won't freeze to death sleeping outside, even in winter). This is the sort of basic knowledge that no politician should ever be allowed to practice without knowing.
Yoko learns that the system is pretty self-sustaining--my interjection here being that this is assuming there's no population boom to throw the land/food/persons allocation out of whack and necessitate a readjustment of long-standing social expectations and customs--and that the king needs only guard against famine. Her mentor gives her all sorts of useful advice: "Your duty is limited to just a few things: you could store water for a drought, build levees in case of flood, store grain for a famine, and have soldiers trained in case of [demons]. And most of those can be handled by minor officials." ... "Just try not to make things worse." ... "Discipline yourself and live as long as you can." So that your death doesn't invite demon invasions and social chaos and invasions by neighboring nations, so on and so forth. Good advice under the circumstances, actually.
In the mean time, Mokurin argues with an orphaned child whose parents died of violence and illness over whose life sucks more. This is kind of not her finest hour. Did I mention that the orphan is question is like ten? Yeah. He acuses Mokurin of enjoying self-pity, and for all that I sympathize with her, he's absolutely right and she is long overdue for that.
Mokurin relates all this to fucking Asano, who parlays it all into more paranoid ravings, because he's not supposed to be in this damn show and all the writers can think of to do with him is make him ramble crazy-like and polish his gun. Yeah.
OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT IT'S RAKUSHUN DON'T KILL RAKUSHUN CRAZY SHOUKEI
Well thank god, she doesn't kill him, just accuses him being the thief who stole and pawned all of her loot, landing them both in prison. Much better.
Rakushun, who is a clever cookie, calls Shoukei out right away on her shit. It's one of the many reasons I love him. If you bottled good sense in a little furry mouse package, it would look like Rakushun and sell for a million bucks.
Mokurin and Asano and that red-headed kid--Seishuu?--have hijinks on the boat. Asano continues to be useless and crazy. I hate him almost as much as I hate the animators who made his ass up in the first place. Oh god oh god why can't you just trust in Ono, you horrible, horrible people? Trust in Ono's lovely brain and don't just randomly stick in stupid superfluous characters who never do anything bit sit around and be menacingly insane and point rusty guns at actual player characters! You know, I hated Yuka passionately for most of her run to date on this show, but even she was more proactive as a character than this.
As it turns out, Seishuu is going blind and he is understandably kinda emo about it. Ooh, drama. (FYI, I thought he was a girl until about five minutes ago. While I am too much of a slavish fan of various folks among the female seiyuu who voice-pre-or-barely-pubescent-male-characters to complain about the confusion it occasionally engenders to complain about this, man, sometimes I get confused. I bet Japan cackles itself to sleep over that.)
Yoko is keeping on top of Kei's goings-on via what I assume are Keiki's whatsits. Demons. Shirei. ....I had to look that up, man. Anyway, I'm glad she's on top of things, because while I'm all about the spiritual quests and becoming worthy of the divinely ordained tasks and governorship and whatnot, in the mean time, the woman's got a kingdom to run and all, y'know? She can't be incommunicado.
Ooooh, plot.
--Kyou's comments would seem to suggest that the Sennin age mentally, if not physically.
I can't say I like Shoukei at all, but I'll give her this: she's strong. What she's been through would destroy a weaker person, but she's survived all with her personality recognizably intact. That's impressive. I don't like her personality, but it's still impressive.
--Wowzers. Asano.
Awwww, I was wondering if that was a gun. I'm sorry that I'm right.
Ep. 28
Asano has completely fucking lost it, and I don't care. But he's threatening Mokurin/Suzu with his random handgun, and I care. A little.
It's kinda cool seeing Suzu back, sort of, with the acting troupe that she hooked up with when she first arrived, with crazy-ass Asano playing the part she played--desperate, isolated, unable to understand the language, to connect or comprehend. She's just so much more collected now, which is like 70% being able to understand what the fuck people are saying to her, 25% the trials and tribulations of a century of suffering topped with self-determination, and 5% obsession clinging to the idea that Queen Kei will make all her misery vanish forever.
--Crazy Asano's fixated on Yuka? Seriously? God, you're worthless, Asano. (Although, it is nice to see someone bouncing around in this universe who doesn't have an obsessive fixation on Yoko, even if it would make more sense if he did.)
--Suzu, briefly entertaining moronic fantasies that the acting troupe caring for Asano--same acting troupe that cared for her when she first landed on these nutty shores--is holding him against his will, meanwhile rescues a smart-mouthed red-headed child from falling to his death. He sasses her. I can't help but feel that karmically, she had that coming on account of her colossal dumbness and ingratitude.
--RAKUSHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN. And Enki. God how I've missed you. Yoko can't be the only one bringing the sane, okay? She's got enough on her plate.
Enki playing with Rakushun's whiskers=love.
--Shoukei is craaaaaaaaaazy. Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy.
--Kyou's kirin seems to be a little bit dumb.
"I wish I had a shorter Taiho like En's kirin," Kyou says, as she gestures for him to kneel so she can slap him across the face for suggesting that she was too hard on crazy, crazy Shoukei. That was inappropriate, but funny. She gives him a surprisingly resonant lecture about the dignity of work--pointing out, not necessary wrongly, that if she weren't doing her own job properly, she'd have been beheaded by now, just like Shoukei's insane, evil father--and then throws a robe at his head. I don't think Kyou and Kyouki really get on.
(It's kinda too bad that I prefer Kyou to Kyouki, since we can have Kyouki without Kyou, but not the reverse.)
Kyou dispatches the royal army to hunt down Shoukei for stealing a mount and I assume a bunch of clothes and jewels. Possibly that is overkill.
Meanwhile, Moukurin defends crazy Asano when he smuggles himself onboard a ship and then threatens to shoot the sailors, not that they have any idea what that weird metal thing he's holding is.
Great. Now Mokurin and Asano are throwing each other pity parties. Reinforcement is exactly what they needed.
Stop fondling your gun, Asano. It's creepy.
Ep. 29
Yoko tells Keikei, the little kid she saved from a youma in the last episode, that she's learning about how this world is different from her old world, but that it's mainly teaching her how little she knew about her old world. Heh. I had the same experience when I was supposed to be learning Spanish and I realized that my understanding of the actual rules of English grammar was pretty crappy. Although, thank god, understanding grammar rules has little to do with actual fluency, whereas understanding the fundamentals of a society is pretty integral to governing one.
Yoko gets a tutorial on how the society works (and so do we!) on what the weather is like, and things like units of measurement, land allocation, and social structure. It appears that Kei takes a sort of socialist to its resource management.
By the way, it is super awesome that Yoko is stopping to learn petty details about rule like what her citizens need most in the winter (e.g. food over warm shelter, because Kei, unlike Japan, is fairly temperate, and you won't freeze to death sleeping outside, even in winter). This is the sort of basic knowledge that no politician should ever be allowed to practice without knowing.
Yoko learns that the system is pretty self-sustaining--my interjection here being that this is assuming there's no population boom to throw the land/food/persons allocation out of whack and necessitate a readjustment of long-standing social expectations and customs--and that the king needs only guard against famine. Her mentor gives her all sorts of useful advice: "Your duty is limited to just a few things: you could store water for a drought, build levees in case of flood, store grain for a famine, and have soldiers trained in case of [demons]. And most of those can be handled by minor officials." ... "Just try not to make things worse." ... "Discipline yourself and live as long as you can." So that your death doesn't invite demon invasions and social chaos and invasions by neighboring nations, so on and so forth. Good advice under the circumstances, actually.
In the mean time, Mokurin argues with an orphaned child whose parents died of violence and illness over whose life sucks more. This is kind of not her finest hour. Did I mention that the orphan is question is like ten? Yeah. He acuses Mokurin of enjoying self-pity, and for all that I sympathize with her, he's absolutely right and she is long overdue for that.
Mokurin relates all this to fucking Asano, who parlays it all into more paranoid ravings, because he's not supposed to be in this damn show and all the writers can think of to do with him is make him ramble crazy-like and polish his gun. Yeah.
OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT IT'S RAKUSHUN DON'T KILL RAKUSHUN CRAZY SHOUKEI
Well thank god, she doesn't kill him, just accuses him being the thief who stole and pawned all of her loot, landing them both in prison. Much better.
Rakushun, who is a clever cookie, calls Shoukei out right away on her shit. It's one of the many reasons I love him. If you bottled good sense in a little furry mouse package, it would look like Rakushun and sell for a million bucks.
Mokurin and Asano and that red-headed kid--Seishuu?--have hijinks on the boat. Asano continues to be useless and crazy. I hate him almost as much as I hate the animators who made his ass up in the first place. Oh god oh god why can't you just trust in Ono, you horrible, horrible people? Trust in Ono's lovely brain and don't just randomly stick in stupid superfluous characters who never do anything bit sit around and be menacingly insane and point rusty guns at actual player characters! You know, I hated Yuka passionately for most of her run to date on this show, but even she was more proactive as a character than this.
As it turns out, Seishuu is going blind and he is understandably kinda emo about it. Ooh, drama. (FYI, I thought he was a girl until about five minutes ago. While I am too much of a slavish fan of various folks among the female seiyuu who voice-pre-or-barely-pubescent-male-characters to complain about the confusion it occasionally engenders to complain about this, man, sometimes I get confused. I bet Japan cackles itself to sleep over that.)
Yoko is keeping on top of Kei's goings-on via what I assume are Keiki's whatsits. Demons. Shirei. ....I had to look that up, man. Anyway, I'm glad she's on top of things, because while I'm all about the spiritual quests and becoming worthy of the divinely ordained tasks and governorship and whatnot, in the mean time, the woman's got a kingdom to run and all, y'know? She can't be incommunicado.
Ooooh, plot.
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no subject
on 2010-02-24 08:06 am (UTC)Suzu's attempt to one-up that little kid's angst was pretty grating, but she gets over it in short order.
And while the old man's advice is sort of sage in a general way, not only can I think of an awful lot of things that Yoko could be doing to be a good queen (even Enki and Rakushun mention a few of them, like starting hospitals or schools) but it quickly becomes apparent that the laissez-faire approach only really works when the kingdom is already in a fairly good state, which right now, it isn't.