#i hope this can help cosplayers or artists who are trying to figure out wtf is going on with his clothes

[thecrowsart]

I'm back with more Mononoke movie obi analysis! The movie team has been putting out a lot of clips on their various accounts, so I've managed to get a more full look at the back of Kusuriuri's obi! This is my proposal for the structure of the knot, but if anyone has any other ideas, I'd love to see them.

I had to make a little paper mockup to figure this out lol:

However, because it's small and paper, it probably is behaving differently than a large, fabric obi. So I'm not sure how well this knot would work with a real obi, but if someone has the means to try it out, please let me know! Something that was interesting and made this a little frustrating was that both ends of Kusuriuri's obi are free, whereas it seems like for most established types of obi musubi, one end will be tucked into a loop shape or otherwise hidden away, and the other will have a free end (Even many examples of the men's obi knot I included a picture of above. I purposely found one that looks more like the knot I did, but in many cases you will fold one tail into a loop so there's only one free tail). This is also a feature of TV Kusuriuri's obi:

It's a little hard to tell because of the low resolution, but I'm sure you've seen enough of him by now lol; his obi is tied into a bow with both ends hanging loose. I've seen his knot compared to a tateya musubi, and they are visually similar, but from what I can tell, a tateya musubi is structured like I described, where one tail is folded into a long, rectangle shaped loop, and the other is wrapped around the center of it to squeeze it into a bow.

See how there are no hanging tails? It's because both tails are making the whole bow. Contrast that with Kusuriuri's, where the tails are dangling because the loops of the bow are made by the upper sections of the tails. His obi is tied like you'd tie a shoelace, basically, whereas a tateya musubi is like a bow you'd see on very nice gift wrapping.

Anyway, I also was able to glean more about the pseudo-obijime:

Previously, I thought maybe both white cords were connected to each other and looped through the knot, as shown on the top left. However, these two shots (and others not included) seem to disprove that. The left shoulder cord starts from underneath the obi, loops around the back, under the right arm, and ends in between the two layers of the obi. The waist cord starts and ends under the ohashori (waist fold). What it's attached to, I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it's anchored to the smaller obi/sash that's worn under the actual one.