#zankuro

[badschmitt24071994]

Zankuro Minazuki - samurai shodown

Zankuro is a huge warrior who traveled Japan relentlessly killing anyone. During a time, he traveled from village to village slaughtering people with no regard or disambiguation. Because of this, people started calling him a demon. One night, while he was slaughtering an entire village, he is unable to kill one child. Upon setting his eyes on the young girl, he can't bring himself to kill her, and realizes the error of his ways. From this night on, he retires his massacring and becomes a hermit, only drawing his blade to kill worthy opponents in duels.

It is revealed that the child was Zankuro's daughter, Shiori. Zankuro had forgotten about her due to his killing intent. Shiori eventually runs into Haohmaru and asks him to kill the "demon". Eventually, Zankuro was challenged by Shizumaru, a boy who also had a demon inside of him. Zankuro was killed by Shizumaru and Haohmaru, and his body was buried and sealed by Gaira. However, he was quickly revived by Amakusa who wanted to use his powers. He was eventually killed again by Sogetsu. It seems he somehow came back to life again since he appears in Genjuro's ending in SS64.

In Samurai Shodown VI, his ending has Shizumaru bring Shiori to him with Haohmaru encouraging the estranged family to reconcile. Feeling himself beyond redemption, he refuses until Shizumaru convinces him not to submit to his inner demon. Realizing the value of life, Zankuro decides to live on for his daughter. He abandons the way of the sword and the two embark on a journey where he hopes to repent for his sins.

[wrongydkjquotes]

Guy and cookie respectively

[redsamuraiii]

Zankuro (S2E8)

Gokenin Zankuro (Ken Watanabe) investigates nocturnal serial killings of women during the cherry blossom season.

[mirdasque]

READS!

[redeadfish]

Ken Watanabe - Gokenin Zankuro (1995) 御家人斬九郎

[wuxiaphoenix]

Worldbuilding: People Like Us

I was watching an episode of Unfettered Shogun, many of whose episodes can be found here on Archive.org. And it struck me how many tropes we think of as modern were here in 1700s guise. Traveling entertainers who are actually seeking information on the whereabouts of someone who “mysteriously disappeared”. Said lost at sea guys actually being the kidnapped experts who created the Secret Formula! (How to make expensive white sugar from local brown sugar.) A dogged investigator tracking down details that indicate Foul Play has occurred. There was even a case of “impersonate the chauffeur”; a ninja knocked out a boatman and took over poling so he could listen in on the Evil Plotting.

It had, in short, everything you might want out of a heist or detective show. Just in Tokugawa Japan, with swordfights instead of a shootout.

And that’s the way stories should be. The setting and cultures may change, but whatever your story, people are still people. Ancient Egyptians tried baldness cures. Victorians had nipple piercings. I have no doubt that colonists in the next solar system we get to will be checking the news flimsies for the latest 3D vid star gossip, border skirmishes between Mars and the Belt, and their lucky numbers.

I think this gets lost in a lot of fantasy and SF. On the one hand, fair; if you’re writing a Heroic Story you may not want to get bogged down in all the petty details of people keeping up with the Joneses. (Or the Rameses.) On the other hand....

“The Fate of the World is At Stake!” only gets you so far. You can tell one, maybe a couple Grand Stories that way. And they can be great stories! Who doesn’t love Star Wars, or ID4?

But if you want to make a long series with recurring characters, the kind readers and viewers know they can kick back with again and again... you may want more human-scale problems. Jewel thefts. A family get-together that has to go right; or at least not so wrong the fire department’s called in. Illegally imported bunnies.

(That last is how A Swift Kick to the Thorax starts. Sample looks good; plan to get the book when I can.)

People love stories larger than life. But they also love seeing people like them - maybe a little prettier, maybe a little luckier - come up against the most annoying of life’s problems and find some kind of solution. Whether that solution is getting swept off your feet by a noble alien warlord or setting the boss’ car on fire is up to you.

I personally have a taste for “rewarding good and punishing evil”, which is clearly seen in Unfettered Shogun. But I’m also good with Zankuro, another jidaigeki where the low-ranking samurai so named scrapes out an unconventional living a la Harry Dresden or Jim Rockford, never able to do more than break even when the next bill comes due. But he has friends, and at least he does manage to break even. We should all be that lucky.

Make your worlds fantastic. Make your stories awesome. But never forget your characters are people. And when you deal with people, with all their drama and weirdness... you never know what might happen next!

[gear-project]

Annon-Guy: Forgive if I already asked this before, but what was your first Guilty Gear game and what drew you into the series?

You weren't the first to ask me, but I suppose, since I have a ton of new followers lately that a refresher is in order…

It all started with a Magazine Article I read sometime back in 1999.

At the time, I was still playing games like Mortal Kombat 3 and X-Men versus Street Fighter, and Marvel Super Heroes, but most chances I had to play them was still strictly in the Arcade Scene (I wasn't a rich kid, by any means, so playing these games was few and far between). Even playing Darkstalkers was a rare occasion.

At the time, it wasn't easy to get Japanese games, let alone obscure "unpopular" fighting games that nobody heard of… Guilty Gear: The Missing Link was one of those games.

I was lucky enough to have my step-father buy me a PlayStation game console for my Birthday… but to be honest, even back then, getting decent games that ran on it wasn't easy either.

XMvSF was a disappointment on that console, so at the time I was playing stuff like Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Soul Blade (Soul Edge in Arcades, the precursor to Soul Calibur), and once in a blue moon I got my hands on demos of obscure things like Tekken 2 and the original Beastorizor (Bloody Roar), as well as demos of Battle Arena Toshinden.

Again, like I said, getting the full versions of these games wasn't easy… I was a poor kid in grade school and moving on to high school and my parents didn't like my gaming habits to begin with…

It wasn't until the summer of 2000 (roughly, my memory is a little hazy at this time), that I went with one of my old friends to visit our old local State Fair in the hot summer.

After having a little fun and eating some fair food… we left to head home, but on the way back, we came across a very rustic-looking used-record store.

The name of the place is Record Head… back in the day, they were more famous for selling old speakers, used drums, VCR parts, and guitars, but they also sold used records and… USED GAMES.

On that hot summer afternoon… Lady Luck gently put her "Golden" hand upon my shoulder.

For a measly $15 I bought not one but TWO FAMOUS FIGHTING GAMES.

Guilty Gear: The Missing Link

and

SAMURAI SHODOWN 3: BLADES OF BLOOD (better known in Japan as The Peerless Blade of Zankuro).

I was so excited… I couldn't wait to go home and play both these games… my friend at the time could probably tell how elated I was.

My early first impression of Samurai Shodown 3 was the infamous "Samurai Slowdown" moniker that the game was known for having ridiculous load times… but even back then, it was still pretty to play and fairly arcade accurate.

However… the first Guilty Gear was EVEN BETTER.

Faster combat, almost NO load times, ridiculous mechanics… not to mention being able to CHARGE UP YOUR ATTACKS AND DESTROY SOMEONE.

Outside of Alpha 3's World Tour Mode and dipswitches, I had never known such freedom in a fighting game before.

Freedom… to cancel your attacks in to anything…

Freedom… to airdash anywhere you want to go, jump where you want to go…

Freedom… to do over the top skills, and pull off ridiculous combos…

The original Guilty Gear for PlayStation (PSX as we called it back then) was also a glitchy mess… some hitboxes would shift from one end of the screen to the other… people could accidentally input instant kills just by button mashing…

I'm actually more surprised it didn't crash like later fighting games might be prone to doing!

But to me… all that chaos was just proof of the freedom I was getting, instead of the restrictive precise inputs that Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat were known for.

I still very much enjoyed games like Samurai Showdown and Soul Calibur of course… among other fighting games I could get my hands on (I still regret not getting in to the Bloody Roar Series, and Toshinden… but I was too poor to afford those games…)

Perhaps one day I will revisit them on my YouTube Channel… but I digress!

Some time later… I met a man who would become a major rival to me for many years, who also introduced me to Guilty Gear X Plus… but that's a story for another day.

If I had to say the character that left the biggest impression on me… it was Justice. Not Sol Badguy, not Ky Kiske… not even Baiken or Testament.

Justice was the character who left that huge impression on me in the very first Guilty Gear that came out in the summer of 1998.

And I've been playing this series ever since.

Nowadays I play less Justice and more Ramlethal… but the excited and fierce feelings I had back then haven't changed very much.

I still face challengers with gusto… and I take my losses with honor…

I think I've also gotten a lot stronger than I was back then.

The "me" from back then was… very immature and impulsive… I got hot under the collar more times than I care to admit.

I'd say my "old self" would throw a tantrum and rage quit if he fought against "the current me" today.

But that's part of growing. And nowadays I play a lot more than just Guilty Gear.

Perhaps one day I'll forgive Capcom for their past betrayals and even play Street Fighter 6 one last time… we'll see…

[galapagosvagrant]

Zankuro definitely one of the hardest names of all time

[searching4rinoa]

Samurai Shodown VI Pt. 13 [Amakusa/Mizuki/Zankuro Playthroughs]

[badschmitt24071994]

Hanzo hattori - samurai shodown

Hanzo Hattori is a legendary ninja and the leader of the Iga ninja clan. He has two sons, Kanzo and Shinzo, one of which has been possessed by Amakusa. When it comes to the skills in Taijutsu, it is said his skills are un-matched. Although he never shows much emotion, he cares for his family very deeply. When Amakusa took over the body of his son Shinzo, he set out to rescue his son. Although Amakusa was defeated at the hands of Haohmaru, Hanzo was not able to retake his son Shinzo. The following year, Amakusa's castle appeared again and he was ordered to destroy the castle to restore peace. There, he found the body of his soulless son. Although he was able to retrieve Shinzo's body, his soul was still lost in Makai. In order to free Shinzo's soul, he leaves his village to find and defeat the source of the evil. After Mizuki was defeated by Haohmaru, Shinzo's soul came back to its body. But because Shinzo's soul was weakened, his mother Kaede gave away her life to save him. Hanzo was good friends with Zankuro before he became a demon.

Hanzo is based on a real historical figure, Hattori Hanzo Masashige, the leader of the Iga ninja clan of Japan. Fellow SNK character, Hanzou, is also based off of the same person. The name "Hattori Hanzo" also appeared in the 1980 movie Shadow Warriors, Makai Tensei, and 2003's Kill Bill.

[redsamuraiii]

It continues till adulthood when everyone is talking career, marriage, housing, traveling and you're just trying to make it to Friday.

At this point, I'm like a Ronin, wandering through life and travel light.

Gokenin Zankuro (1997)

True isolation is when everyone else is talking about their vibrant teenage experience and you’re like. I was just trying to survive

[redsamuraiii]

Zankuro (S2E5)

“Have you heard of a cursed sword? It attracts misfortune after being unsheathed, killing one person after another. It doesn’t stop until it’s tasted blood. According to the Tsurutahachimangu Record, the cursed sword, Kumogakure, was taken from Oda Nobunaga by Akechi Mitsuhide, then from Hideyoshi to Hidenori. It belong to many important people but it was locked away due to the misfortunes it caused.”

Gokenin Zankuro investigates serial killings believed to be the work of the rumoured cursed sword that hungers for blood.

[spoilednymph]

[omercifulheaves]

Samurai Shodown 3 Art by Shiroi Eiji

[wuxiaphoenix]

Worldbuilding: Under the Umbrella of Information

One of the season 2 Gokenin Zankuro episodes has major espionage, thefts, and assassination attempts centering around... an umbrella.

Which just happens to have links to accurate maps of Japan foreign powers are trying to get their hands on. Because the year is circa 1845, a few years before Commodore Perry showed up in Edo Bay, and the British Empire, France, and Imperial Russia were all trying to grab a piece of access to Japan for a multitude of reasons. Some humanitarian, to get shipwrecked sailors repatriated. Most... not so much.

That’s the problem when you get beyond small groups. Large organizations, like nations, always have multiple goals. Many at cross-purposes to each other. And all of them - at least, the mostly sane ones - want more information than they have. Whether or not it’s ethical, or even legal, to get it.

If anyone’s drawing parallels to the growing problem of social media/companies wanting more and more of your personal information - no, that’s not an accident. Movers and shakers on a national level generally have always had money, one way or another, and looked for ways to get more of it. You’d think getting it by trade would be preferable to war... and then you read up on the Dutch East India Company, and similar efforts by the British and French, and all the shenanigans Russia pulled trying to get Sakhalin and points south. For too many centuries the operating principle of trade was often, “find a market and murder all your competitors in it”. Offer a better product? Who’d do a silly thing like that?

Ahem. Anyway. Information. People have it, and people want it. Maps are a big thing; with them you can find resources, markets, ports, and other very useful stuff. Accurate dictionaries are less noticed, but they are also extremely important. Especially when you’re trying to translate from one language to another. An English-to-Japanese dictionary (or vice-versa) is much more useful when you can also look at how the foreign language itself defines its own words. That may let you tease out nuances otherwise missed, or even wrong meanings due to someone misspelling when they scribble something down. Which can be pretty darn likely, if someone’s penning a hidden message in a hurry to be smuggled out!

All of which means you can have a crime, mystery, or adventure plot centered on what seem to be fairly innocuous items. And people. Who’d want to murder an astronomer in Edo Japan? Turns out a bunch of people, who wanted access to his accurate maps....

[mlafarge]

Inktober Day 14, Z.S.S. (Zankuro, Samurai Shodown, Samurai Spirit),Ink and Watercolor on Paper.