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the-mononoke-facade · 8 months ago

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Alright, so there's been some talk about whether Shusu is actually a different medicine vendor from Ri Kusu (show Kusu), and at first that was my assumption (or my preference since I found the characterization in the book went all in on the detached, stoic side of things than any of the other things that make Kusu an interesting character). But the more I think about it, the more I'm like "is he though?"

And my wondering about it comes from two places, first being that the theme of disentangling harmful attachments is what the book is named after, and the other is the descriptions of the taima sword both sheathed and released, as well as the descriptions of Hyper/Shingi thoughout the book

(spoilers for Shu, since I've seen more people asking about it lately, as well as including suppositions based on recent lore drops and some minor spoilers for Karakasa based on trailers and the like)

Starting with the descriptions of the sword and Hyper, despite the sword being depicted on the cover being a now seemingly defunct design from older promotional material for Karakasa, the sword is described in the first story, Kama Itachi, as having the kinds of colored stones that are characteristic of the Ri taima sword when sheathed.

When released, it's described in multiple stories with some variation of being "an enormous, glimmering blade," which is also what we've seen throughout the show for the Ri sword. The Shingi of Shu is described with gold, serpentine patterns snaking all along his exposed skin (also tanned but given Shingi also has darker skin, that specific detail might just go with being a spirit of the sword), Kama Itachi mentions gold brocade (it's unclear from what I was ever able to translate of it if it was referring to the robe or the markings, so take that with a grain of salt), Toutetsu mentions the kumadori markings on Kusu's face becoming more elaborate from how they started (compared, again, to Kon Shingi and Kusu where their respective face markings don't seem to have a whole lot in common except maybe the eyebrow area), and then Tamamo no Mae outlines the crimson eyes and silver hair. All of that sounds an awful lot like Hyper and the Ri taima sword (and you know, I kinda figured Fuguruma Youbi would have a better description to pull on as well given how like half a page was Tamenaga just contemplating Kusu's beauty and like, me too man, me too, but ah well)

Could it be a matter of these characteristics being in line with how swords associated with any of the hexagrams with fire as a component seem to show up? It's definitely not impossible, and I certainly don't know enough about how I Ching works to make any certain statements on that, but if I were to speculate on a little bit I noticed poking around a hexagram lookup table, with the hexagrams that are composed of two different elements, it seems to be less about one element being dominant over the other so much as two elements meeting in a certain arrangement to create a new result (and even with two hexagrams composed of the same elements, which of the two elements is on top of the hexagram can drastically change the meaning). So then if each permutation creates a unique end result, wouldn't it also follow that the respective swords would all be pretty unique from each other? How would you even determine that "yes, this is the trigram element this sword is associated with"? By the top of the hexagram? The bottom? The yin/yang alignment of the sword? To my mind, it makes more sense for all the swords (and therefore the spirits attached to them) to be unique to their own hexagram (again, not an expert by any means, I'm open to other takes on how that could work, this is just my working idea of how it works)

So if the swords ARE all meant to be unique, then it's a safe assumption that the sword in Shu is the Ri sword. Does that necessarily mean it's the same medicine vendor wielding the sword? Not necessarily, we don't have any information on what happens to a sword should a medicine vendor fall trying to slay a mononoke; does it disappear? Does the sword spirit die alongside that medicine vendor (especially if it happens after the sword's been released)? And what happens to a medicine vendor if a particular sword doesn't need to be in play at that particular moment, given that it seems from the lore drop that the number of swords in play can go up or down? Does he disappear? Does he get stripped of the qualities that made him a medicine vendor and continue living on as a human? Some kind of unaffiliated ayakashi waiting in reserve for when the sword needs to come back into play? Enter the collective unconscious? Is it possible for this sword to show up the same as it is for a different wielder? All of that is the realm of theories and headcanons for now, but it's not impossible that it's a different hand wielding the same sword (and if it's a different entity, is it a reincarnation of the same soul or is a new one selected?)

With my second sticking point being the theming of letting go of harmful attachments that is the book's namesake, which is a common theme that also runs throughout the arcs of the show (Tamaki and the cat being stuck to haunt the Sakai manor without having gotten any justice for the atrocities commited by the family, the zashiki warashi letting go of being ripped away from the women they chose to be their mothers in this life as well as Shino's letting go of the exercise in futility that would have been using her body and sacrificing the baby she already has to try to right that wrong, Genkei's fixation on his guilt over Oyou's sacrifice, Ochou's futile attempts to meet her mother's selfish expectations, the todaiji feeding the greed and obsession of the suitors and its own obsession with being desired, Ishikawa's drive and tenacity to find the truth persisting even after her death)

From that angle, the various stories in Shu are pretty much in line with that theme as well: Tokuemon's deep-seated grudge against his abusive father, especially when that abuse was suffered in service to an ancient obsession of his family for riches and honors; Hori Mondo's obsession with his late master and the honor that should be able to be assumed with the ruling samurai class which is disproven by his master's successor, who himself is obsessed with proving himself capable of filling his father's massive shoes, Ishiuemon's obsession with increasing his own power at the expense of Zen, who becomes obsessed with becoming Ishiuemon's wife even as she was nothing more to him than a pawn; Kei's attachment to the notion that she's owed something going right for her after a life that's been filled with hardships, Hagino's obsession with her husband's all-but-confirmed infidelity even at the cost of her daughter, Takaharu's not being able to keep it in his pants for the sake of the family he already has, Koharu's obsession with gaining her mother's affection; Shunsui's obsession with being a popular author and narrator and tainting Ofumi with that obsession when he betrays her trust to help get her love letters over to a more accomplished author that Shunsui both reveres and is jealous of; Jinjirou's obsession with getting his family's sacrifice properly honored when everyone around him seems keen to shrug it off; Tadayoshi's obsession with getting his daughter Kaede safe behind the walls of the Ooku and Kaede's drive to meet his expectations even as they bear down on her

I had mused a while ago that the feminist theming, in contrast, seems to be missing, putting more focus on the woes of the men in the story often at the expense of the women around them, but in hindsight I almost wonder if that's actually the point (and I think I'll find a more solid answer to this in Oni, from what I've gleaned so far, so this might be another "put a pin in it" thought as well...but that pin's going to be in for a very long time at the pace I'm going through this book lol). Another common thread with Shu is the letting go of how things used to be with a lot of the expectations chaining these characters coming from the Sengoku era, which just don't work going into the "peaceful" Edo era. While women's rights prior to Edo weren't exactly robust, they were stripped down over the course of the Edo era.

It could be taken, then, that this comparatively larger focus on men at the expense of the women around them is another reflection of moving into and accepting Edo-era paradigms, and also giving a peek into the unintended (or maybe "unintended") consequences of putting safety and control over freedom. From that angle, a medicine vendor meant to embody not just a woman's desire but also what a woman wants to be would also then become gradually less considered over time (and while he never had the kind of involvement in Shu that he does in the show, there is a general trend over the course of the stories of his engagement falling off a little more with each story). Ending the book with Nuppera-hofu, with Kaede losing her face as her father lost sight of why he was fighting so hard to get her into the Ooku ("she'll be safe there and won't disappear like my wife and eldest daughter did"), where it's not even clear which sister is the one being sent to the Ooku by the end of the story but what does that matter when the goal of getting to the Ooku was achieved, then leads in very nicely to Karakasa, where so many women have lost their individuality in service to "the greater good" until it hits a tipping point, the karakasa becomes active and starts upending everything that the Ooku was built on, and possibly even projecting that outward to reflect what's happening in the rest of the country as well

So then to bring it back to whether Shu Kusu is Ri Kusu or not, if being more passive, or more "feminine" starts to fall in line with the increase of systemic oppression women face in this new era, then in order to reclaim some of his own power and agency, Kusu would need to start to be more active, not a spectator but an actor, and then that leads into Ayakashi Bakeneko, where he's at his most emotive, his most active, and pushing the hardest to be in control of the situation, before gradually over the course of the show relinquishing more control to start to shift back into more of a passive spectator role as women start to chafe under the abuses they're suffering in this restrictive period and fighting to get some of their power back, having the second Bakeneko arc happening somewhere in the 1920s (still obviously a lot of problems, both the old deep-rooted ones and the new ones coming from the reactionaries that don't care much for these seeds of more equality between men and women starting to grow, Moriya being the poster boy for that group and their trying to act like they're the victims in all this while they start running out of justifications for "putting women in their place"), but with more power being reclaimed, he then wouldn't need to be quite as active or "masculine" to be able to have the power or influence needed to get the truths from the humans he needs to perform his duty, so then the differences in characterization could be reflective of what is needed for the era in question. It could also be a matter of the Ri sword and the need to cut away attachments becoming less and less necessary over this general period of human emotion, to where the sword is taken out of play by the end of Shu and the wielder of Ri we see in the show is either a new medicine vendor, or the same one but with a mandatory vacation thrown in there to discombobulate him on how human emotion sphere looks by the time he gets back

Anyway, that's a lot of rambling to say there's a case for it being at least the same sword if not also the same medicine vendor as the show, and it's a matter of the framing and themes of Shu not doing any favors to him for highlighting the things that make him a cool character

#mononoke #mononoke shu #mononoke 2007 #mononoke karakasa #mononoke kusuriuri #rin rambles #and of course i write all of this with the assumption that hideyuki had access to the lore book for the series when writing the book #which i havent found any kind of information on one way or another so who knows #although ending on nuppera-hofu really does seem just a little too perfect to lead into karakasa to be an accident #and a few more things than what i mention here make more sense in the context of the lore drop anyway #so going forward im going to engage with the books on the assumption that they were intended to fit into broader series #instead of just being one person's interpretation of the basic premise who may or may not know much about the show #(which was probably an unfair assumption born out of my own disappointment that it wasn't really what i was expecting)#anyway

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ananke-xiii · 2 months ago

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Can’t Heaven Wait?!

After “Beat the Devil” and “Form and Void” it’s time for a new movie in SPN, eheheh.

I’ve only watched one of the two movies titled “Heaven Can Wait” so I shouldn’t say what I’m about to say but, if it’s correct, I think it was very cool to use “Heaven Can Wait (1943) for the Crowley’s storyline in “Heaven Can’t Wait” (s9e9, I think) AND the other “Heaven Can Wait” (1978) for Cas’.

From what Wikipedia tells me the first movie is about a man who needs to prove to be “worthy” of entering Hell after his death and I think it could be a match with Crowley being placed on “hold” (literally) by Hell when he tries to connect with “his” dimension as its King. By the end of the episode we also see that his addiction to “humanity” is still going on strong so the question seems legit: does Crowley still belong with Hell or… does he belong with humanity?

The same question is valid for Cas but, of course, it’s about Heaven and humanity. Ephraim, the Rit Zien angel, even explicitly says so during his confrontation with “Castiel, the legend”. After watching the 1978 movie (they’re not two different versions of the same movie, they’re two different movies with the same title) I must admit that this specific take on angels, i.e. angels making mistakes because they’re unaccustomed to how humans deal with pain, was quite inventive.

To be honest, I watched this movie first and not the other (but I plan to!) because I’ve been thinking quite a lot about how the entrenched and ancient idea that body and soul are separated is portrayed in media. Even movies that I’ve profoundly, profoundly enjoyed like “Soul”(2020) resort to the same concept: a different soul can “inhabit” a dead body and give it “life” or it can even inhabit a living cat (thus implying that cats don’t have souls)! I’m not going to bore you now with my private speculations about the subject, but you can’t deny that this theme is veeeery prominent in Supernatural. So of course I thought about it in relation to the show as well.

After watching the movie I had some thoughts and I want to share them with you. They’re going to be about three main topics so here’s a little bullet point for you. If you’re interested more is under the cut!

(a)Angels/Heaven making mistakes vs fairness, probability and responsibility;

(b)How to choose a body: some problems;

(c)Good stories are ultimately interesting because… it’s always about Love, folks. And this time? Yeah, it’s romantic love, baby, buckle up.

(a) In “Heaven Can Wait” (1978) Joe is a football athlete who’s just recovered from a knee injury. He’s a quarterback for the LA RAMS and he’s “looking awful good”: his coach thinks he’s ready to play for the Super Bowl match. It’s his birthday when he finally receives the good news: he’s back in the game! Unfortunately, right after that he dies while riding his bicycle. Life sucks.

Joe finds himself in a “way station”, a sort of limbo before his “final destination”. Funnily enough, this ultra-dimensional space is the same as his “inward” dimension: he’s a man who feels stuck, like he’ll never get his chance in life “to do something”. So he does what everyone would do: he doesn’t accept to go to his “final destination” and wants OUT. The angel who’s accompanying him, a character named “The Escort”, tells him that those are the rules and any violation is impossible. And yet, Joe is still rebelling. So here comes The Escort’s superior, Mr Jordan, who tries to solve the little problem they find themselves in.

The Escort tells Joe that he’s not being “a good sport” and that it’s not fair for the other souls to get stuck there because he doesn't want to go. Joe doesn’t fall for the extortion and says the following:

“I’m not supposed to be fair. If this is really Heaven, Heaven is supposed to be fair. I didn’t make a mistake”.

As it turns out, Joe IS right. The Escort has made a huge tiny mistake: since it was his first time on this assignment he thought to “spare” Joe a painful death and so he took him to the “way station” a few instants before his death. Mr Jordan then reminds the angel that he cannot do that because everything is based on “probability and outcome”: life cannot be taken before the moment of death because things can change at the very last millisecond.

So if you’ve watched the SPN episode you have already guessed who’s who: Joe is clearly Castiel and the Escort is Ephraim the Rit Zien. Now, of course this isn’t a 1:1 thing but we can still see some very, very close similarities and the different interpretations of the same theme. On the one hand we have Cas who’s working in a gas station which, like Joe’s way station, is a temporary place for him because he doesn’t belong there (or does he?); Cas is the legend, the quarterback who keeps standing up after each… Fall; but, like Joe, Cas is also someone who feels stuck, who feels like he still has to “do something” with his life, outwardly people see Cas as a RAM ready for battle, ready to prove himself but inwardly he’s also hurt, afraid and lost.

On the other hand we have The Escort and Ephraim: like the first, the Rit Zien wanted to spare Joe/humans the pain that he knew would come; both, however, make a mistake in assessing what constitutes pain for humans, how humans deal with pain and even whether humans have the right to feel (emotional) pain or not. Unlike The Escort, Ephraim doesn’t (want to) realize that he’s been making mistake after mistake: what he’s doing is unfair. As a matter of fact, Heaven is being unfair killing and scamming people to get into their bodies.

If Joe didn’t make a mistake but Heaven did, then it means that Cas, too, didn’t make a mistake but Heaven sure did. Or not? The episode is titled “Heaven Can’t Wait” so I have to assume that Berens wanted to say something similar in themes but different in its… outcome.

You see, Cas is called “responsible” by Nora, his employer, in this episode but in the positive sense of the word. He calls himself “responsible” for the his job-related tasks. But he’s also responsible for the angels falling on Earth. He IS responsible for those angels who are unable to reach their “final destination”. Unlike Joe, he did make a mistake. Unlike Joe, it’s fair for him to stay in his “way/gas station”. Or… perhaps… not?

Right before seeing Dean Cas is giving a lotto ticket to a customer. Lottery is based on probability and outcome… just like the Heaven in “Heaven Can Wait”. The theme of responsibility gets rather difficult to navigate now: yes, Cas is responsible or, perhaps, accountable for the Fall fiasco but where does it end? Is he responsible for Ephraim? For Gadreel/Ezekiel? For Metatron? I think these questions are very pertinent to Dean as well: yes, he called the angels in the first place but is he responsible for Kevin’s death? What I’m trying to say here is that Cas and Dean share a similar story about mistakes&responsibility that seems… unending. They set off a chain of events and now everything is their responsibility and… is it fair? Or is it probability and outcome? When does one’s responsibility end, especially if one has been scammed and preyed upon?

I think the episode ends on a bitter note: perhaps Cas is not responsible for Ephraim’s killing spree but he feels responsible and this changes everything because, under this light, responsibility confuses itself with sense of guilt. In the movie Joe doesn’t feel guilty that he doesn’t act like “a good sport” because he doesn’t feel responsible for the other souls’ fate. The mistake is not on him, he wants OUT.

(b) So Joe, Mr Jordan and The Escort go back to Earth but.. Joe’s body has been cremated. Adieu. What to do? Well, Joe wants to “get back” into his body, he wants his body back but this is not possible anymore. Mind you, Joe is an athlete who’s worked hard to get back in shape so the body dilemma has another layer to it. The problem is that the ONLY way to get back to Life is via the body of… another man.

So we see Joe and the angels looking for the “appropriate” body and Joe is never happy with that he’s presented with to the point that Mr Jordan tells him to “broaden” his standards. Eventually they land on the body of an old, extra-wealthy man who’s been just murdered by his wife and her lover. Why did Joe choose this body? The reason has to do with his sense of justice and with… Love so I’ll talk about it in my third point.

The “choice of body” problem is relevant to SPN as well because S9 is very much about angels coercing their way into finding vessels that are “strong” enough to hold them in. Ephraim’s vessel was a “Bobby Boylist”, one of those people who were lured by that fraud who, in turn, was used by Bartholomew and his crew. However, as we know, even if these people consent to possession not all bodies are good for angels. Castiel himself was hunted down by some angels who wanted to get their hands on his powerful vessel. So, you see, this “recherche du corps perdu”, this search for a body that’s able, for lack of a better word, to contain an angel raises quite a few ethical questions.

Related to those questions are the other ethical questions that actions like those of Ephraim raise. In angel’s morality it is deemed compassionate to be smitten to particles when an angel is in great distress. The Escort from the movie would agree: he did “kill” Joe before his time to spare him a painful death. But angels don’t actually have bodies anyway so what these Rit Zien do is also reducing to ultra-ashes the angels’ vessels. Or does grace feel pain as well? I don’t know and the episode doesn’t really go there. It also doesn’t really go into exploring euthanasia because human morality is not so black and white, clear-cut when it comes to this theme. But the episode doesn’t go to this extreme because we clearly see that the people that Ephraim target don’t actually want to die or they changed their mind at the very last… millisecond. The stress here is not so much on physical pain but on emotional, internal suffering. A distinction that angels fail to comprehend because, perhaps, they don’t have a body and a soul? Like Cas says, it takes time for angels to understand humans because the two do not live according to the same “rules”.

While the movie treats the “let’s choose a body to inhabit” theme lightly in accordance with its comedic genre, it also makes a very specific choice: we the viewers don’t see Joe into his “new” body because we still see the same actor, Warren Beatty, playing the same role. The thing is that, while inwardly Joe hasn’t changed, outwardly he looks like another person. However, the other characters see this other person but the viewers don’t, we see the same actor. In other words, what the viewers see is not the in-universe reality because we see Joe in his “inward” side rather than the outward one.

While the responsibility/probability dilemma draws Cas close to Dean, the inward/outward dilemma draws Cas close to Sam because they are both coveted vessels (Dean has a different storyline re: being the recipient of a bigger power that shares similarities with Cas and Sam’s but it’s nevertheless different because it’s not about angels). While Cas manages to escape the angels that want to use him as vessel, he eventually becomes the new vessel for one of his brothers' grace which he cannibalizes. On the other hand, Sam gets possessed by Gadreel via quite an elaborate ploy. When Dean prays the angels to help him, Gadreel/Ezekiel comes to help him for sure but he has his own agenda as well: the Winchesters are renowned powerful vessels, perhaps the most powerful ones. Specifically Sam Winchester is the one, true, perfect, “consenting” vessel whose body is, sadly, being predestined to be used as such. Sam’s body is therefore able to contain any angel. The show also plays with this dichotomy using different techniques: the same actor plays two different roles, two actors play two different roles, we see Sam’s “inward” life when Crowley possesses him to tell him about Gadreel/Ezekiel or when Dean/Ezekiel/Gadreel “convinces” him to hold onto Life.

Sam, however, is also connected to the second set of ethical questions that I’ve talked about and that are very related to the Rit Zien too. Did Sam really want Dean to “pull the plug”? If yes, was Dean “right” to go against his wishes? If not, was it still fair for Ezekiel/Gadreel to scam both brothers even if it meant that Sam got to live? I could go on because these are VERY big questions and everybody has their own answers to them. But let me point out to you that we’re back to the probability vs outcome theme: if Ephraim had felt Dean’s pain and had showed up at Sam’s hospital the show would’ve been over, lol. One thing is sure, though, not all angels seem to be as obtuse as Ephraim when it comes to pain because there are quite a few of them that understand the centrality of Love in humans’ life. Some of these angels abuse their knowledge for their own personal gain.

(c) Love, let’s talk about love. One thing that I’ve purposefully omitted is that “Heaven Can Wait” is a romantic comedy which is a remake of a movie titled “Here Comes Mr Jordan” which is ALSO a romantic comedy. There is no escape folks, whether you like it or not the romance is not in the eye of the beholders but it’s in the script. It’s ingrained in the writer’s original idea, it’s in the movie the episode is inspired to. To paraphrase Chappell Roan: it’s in the source material’s source material. So I gotta talk about Love.

Earlier I said that Joe chooses Mr Farnsworth’s body for two reasons: his sense of justice and romantic interest. I’ve also said that Joe didn’t think he should be fair because Heaven should, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have an internal sense of justice. When Joe and Mr Jordan arrive at Mr Farnsworth’s house and Joe learns that the man is about to die, he does all he can to save him but unfortunately nobody can see him. At the same time, he virtually (because she can’t see him yet) meets Betty Logan, an environmental activist who happened to be in the mansion to seek a visit with Mr Farnsworth and ask him to stop building a refinery in England. Joe decides to inhabit the old man’s body because he wants to put an end to the man’s environmentally disastrous choices and because… well, he falls a little bit in love with Betty.

As the movie goes on the two grow fonder and fonder of each other until they even go on a little date and fall in love there. It’s a car scene and I’m gonna leave these screenshots for you and then I ask you to tell me if they’re familiar:

Eventually Joe asks Betty to marry him but it’s important to remember that Betty doesn’t fall for the young, handsome man that we see, not even for the old, rich man but for the “inward” man that we also see behind the body: she sees right through him, she encourages him to pursue his passion, she tells him that he can do anything he wants to because he’s not afraid of anything. To which Joe tells her that he’s only afraid of losing her, afraid of being unable to be with her.

The movie ends a bit weirdly in my opinion but it does have a happy ending, love-wise: Betty and Joe get together for a cup of coffee. Now you can already guess that, as I’ve said, since the episode is titled “Heaven Can’t Wait” our story won’t end well. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no love, heheh.

Who could Betty possibly be in “Heaven Can’t Wait” I ask myself. Who, who, who? Well, of course it’s Dean. Since Berens played with opposites, it’s Cas/Joe who calls Dean/Betty rather than Dean/Betty going to Cas/Joe. While in the movie it’s Cas/Joe who takes Dean/Betty to places, in this episode it’s the opposite since Cas depends on Dean to move around. If, in the movie, Joe is a humble man (athletes are not portrayed as superstars in this movie) who’s “playing the part” of a super wealthy man, Cas is a former powerful entity who’s “playing the part” of a human worker. Both Dean and Betty, however, can see “inward” Cas and Joe and while the first sadly leaves him the second goes get her coffee with him.

Again, it’s not a perfect 1:1 scenario (and, I mean, of course it’s not and couldn’t actually be so) but the romance aspect is still there. Like Betty is proud of Joe and thinks he can do whatever he puts his mind to, Dean shows a similar attitude towards Cas as he believes he can be a hunter, that he can and should lead a human life, go on dates, go to work etc. Like Betty Dean also sees the “inward” Cas, the Cas who’s not the ram ready for battle but someone who’s scared. Unlike Betty, he cannot do anything to help him BUT take his burden and try to solve the angels debacle alone with Sam.

In conclusion, say what you want about this episode (some things are a bit weird frankly, like Nora, lol) but I personally can’t deny that, once you watch the movie it’s based from, it’s a pretty cool episode!

#“heaven can wait” seems to be a very popular movie #the original movie also has a sequel and this one has one too #i don't know if i would recommend it because it's not a life changing movie but some of the actors are very fun #the movie is light and funny although it's a bit problematic re: body and soul and the ending feels a bit weird to me #but it's a “Love conquers all” type of ending so it's definitely something to watch to spend a fun. care-free evening #spn #supernatural #heaven can't wait #heaven can wait #spn s9 #spn s9 is complicated #castiel #spn angels #destiel #movies in spn

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