Juuni Kokki notes (ep.6-13)

[petronia]

Happy Halloween. Not that, um, I haven't been entirely ignoring the holiday or anything. XD The concept is wonderful on paper; in practice I'm one of those people who hate cheesy costumes and orange plastic nearly as much as badly-taken photographs, and have neither the time nor the ability to make a nice costume - though T has an admitted knack for it. I used to like trick o' treating as a kid, but more for the festive village atmosphere than for the cheap sweets, so the idea of just buying a bag of candy and treating myself doesn't interest me.

Thus, instead of doing anything inherently Halloweeny, I went over to Erin's place and we marathoned Juuni Kokki. Up to episode 13 now. Will be watching more tomorrow in fact, as I rented the standard three tapes DVDs, forgetting that Juuni Kokki comes a generous five eps to a disc. ^^; But it covers what seems to be the Kei leg of the story, along with lengthy En digression/flashback and what my narrative radar (sensitized by all that Mirage of Blaze water torture) insists are skipped-over chunks of novel. That sinking feeling, I tell myself, is just the creaking of my overburdened bookshelves... Anyhow, I find I like the kirin because they are um essentially Taoist fatima. ^^; I'm typically uncomfortable with master-servant dynamics in stories (I had to go back and turn the slashes in this sentence into hyphens because the basis of the thing isn't sexual either way), but I do better with liege-vassal, and I like ruler-kirin or headliner-fatima. Couldn't tell you why. For all I know it's the Confucian in me raising its head: if Heaven assigns you your position it must be right, right? Or perhaps it's that kirin seem to have the same hard life as fatima do, in the sense that they're lucky if they don't, and since they're "immortal" chances are at some given time they will. It's what happens when one's happiness is entirely bound to the will and agency of another, not to say one's physical health. I've always sort of wanted a fatima, because I'd take care of her/him, and at the same time s/he would be undemanding (whereas I balk to a neurotic extent at the idea of mutual dependence in human relationships). Was told that this was an alarmingly male fantasy, but I think if you replace "fatima" with "pony" in that sentence it ceases to be one.

Or maybe it's my thing for working partnerships again. >_>

As for the Juuni Kokki universe itself, I find it disconcertingly... "girly" is the word that jumped to mind, except that sounds insulting. (Why should it sound insulting?) It bears some resemblance to the sort of fantasy universe I would've constructed when I was... younger than nine or ten, in fact, which is when I got sucked into Tolkien. XD More precisely, though, it feels like an entirely Taoist fantasy of ancient China: yin China, without its yang Confucianist half. I find that I've begun to side with Kristin on the question of uhh fruit flavours that was discussed earlier, not so much because I like it better but because her instinct was right: it suits the tenor of the alterna-world better.

Did I miss any important notes? ...Oh yes. RAKUSHUN. AHAHAHA BRILLIANT HOW CAN ANYONE SAY NO TO THAT FACE? XDXD

Part of the rationale behind marathoning Juuni Kokki, by the way, is that it helps keep my mind off Mirage of Blaze. This is how much I'm pwnz0red by Kuwabara Mizuna at the moment: I'm actively trying not to read 5.5, because I know I have to write the summary of book 5 first or I'll never get it done, and it keeps sucking me back for a few more pages. If your name is Aki, know that afterward they went back to the hotel and IT GOT EVEN WORSE.

Comments

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

I don't find it un-Confucian, actually, but that could be because I've been reading high, low, up, down and sideways Confucianisms for the past year or so. Mencius had a rather hands-off policy for government (aside from scholarship), which might seem a bit Taoist in bits... and the respect for scholars and scholarships, hooboy. That's rather Confucian, wot. (Rakushun is like the model of the Ideal Scholar-Advisor, seriously.)

Basically, it all bleeds together. I don't see too much that's uniquely Legalist, at least. XD

But what I really meant to say is.... FATIMA-PONIES! I DIE.

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

Oh, and seriously ditto on the girly, or whatever word to use. Trees that do the messy part of giving birth? Freeing women to have important roles in government or military? Not to mention the fatima-ponies kirin. (Now, if it was Kirin beer.... oh dear, will I stop trying to break my own brain? But surely some fan artist has done that already.)

[fantabulous.livejournal.com]

Interesting connection between Kirin/Taoism. As for the girliness, I thought it was a tad too dark to be considered 100% shoujo, but I guess dark can be girlie too -- if that makes any sense. *wink*

And of course ... LE SQUEE!!!! RAKUSHUN!!! :-D ** wants to pinch his cheeks **

Forgive me a bit of fangirlage ... hehe!

[fantabulous.livejournal.com]

Definitely a yeah on the girlie, especially after giving tsutenai's comments a good once-over ... women as rulers = come on! ;-P

so ... yeah ... go Rakushun! heh.

PS: As for Halloween, I always enjoyed the dressing-up part. Hmmm ... kinky, are we? *shrugs*

[absenceofmind.livejournal.com]

HOW COULD IT GET WORSE??? HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY GET WORSE?? WHAT, THEY TAKE OFF THEIR CLOTHES AND THEN STARE AT EACH OTHER FOR A BIT?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Girly if you like. First thing I thought of was the Point of Dreams world where astrology is everything and you get to be a general cause you were born under Mars, never mind what sex you are. (Course it's also a matriarchy, not that anyone ever says that out loud.)

Note also that kirin can boss their kings around something awful, and do. It's marriage more than anything else, by me.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Headliner-fatima in Five Star Stories is more marriage than anything else too. (In fact the relationship headliners i.e. knights have with their fatimas is often spelt out as (not-always-hetero)sexual, though it isn't the rule, and that doesn't look to me to be the case in 12K.) But the similarities are striking, in the way that they choose their aite without really having a choice, the inability to disobey direct orders, and the implication that a kirin could potentially outlive several kings/queens.

What is Point of Dreams? ^^;

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's not un-Confucian also in the sense that it has an extremely literalist interpretation of the Mandate of Heaven. XD Although that too is something of a blended concept... I suppose what I meant was that it's a fantasy universe, right, not actually ancient China - and everything Ono Fuyumi did to it to make it fantasy and not ancient China involved taking out stiffly patriarchal Legalist and/or Confucian practices and adding a whole lot of Taoist trappings. It has the feel to me of the Taoist fairytales I read as a kid, with Sennin wandering all over the place, all that and kirin too.

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

Well, that, and not only did Buddhism and Taoism do the syncreticism tango, but Confucianism and Taoism did it as well. (And yes, it does fit, say, Feng Shen Yen I more than The Classic of Filial Piety in general. XD) I guess you could say that Taoism was the slut of ancient Chinese philosophies... if they weren't all doing it, that is. XD

And, for all the Taoist trappings, I don't see some of the hard-core Taoist extremism in it, either. You know, like the not mourning your relatives after they're dead because you didn't mourn them before they were born, either. (Or the stuff that that aphorism about the guy sitting in the field waiting for another rabbit to break its head against a stump makes fun of, although, seriously, some of the jokes against Confucianists are just as amusing.)

But neo-Confucianist fundamentalists would likely find it absolutely appaling, yes. XD

And of course, the lack of patriarchialism is duly noted. XD

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Sequel to Point of Hopes (http://www.pointsman.net/hopes.html) and even better (http://www.sfsite.com/07a/pd107.htm) than it. (Don't read past the first few paragraphs in that last review or you'll be spoiled for both the plot and the world-building. It's a show-don't-tell book and one of its chief charms is finding out what kind of world it is.)

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

Cannot leap headfirst into this discussion as have no idea what a fatima is (dude, is this a real word or is it a 5 Star Stories thing?), nor do I have a very firm grasp on battling schools of Chinese religion/ideology. OTOH yeah, if it's a girly world in the non-perjorative sense, in which we are pleased to have unicorns, giant pet gerbils, painless reproductive functions, and instant swordfighting ability without loss of slim figure, fruit flavors are definitely par for the...what else can we add to the wish list? Sexual assault punished by immediate lightning strike? None of this is at all disconcerting to me, probably because I am still six years old.

I think Ono complicates the (Confucian? er?) "Heaven is always right" thing later, with Taiki, and starts to come down in favor of plain dumb mortal agency, but...that would be spoilers.

The ruler-kirin dynamic does strike me as being like a marriage--an arranged marriage (kirin = wife), sexual component neutralized, with maybe roughly the same chances of ending up in mutual raburabu bliss. Greater chances of ending up in a reasonably harmonious working partnership or else going unhappily wrong.

Now you've met Mighty Mouse I suppose you'll turn turncoat and ship RakuYou with all the rest, argh. At root my problem with it is a preference for ponies over hamsters.

En backstory is indeed treated in more detail in Higashi no Wadatsumi, Nishi no Soukai, but there'll be more of that starting around Ep. 40 also. ^^;

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Ah, cool. I'll look for it. :D

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Fatima are FSS-only terminology. I think the etymology of it relates to "fate", for various series-philosophical reasons. But they are eerily like kirin in function, except kirin are peaceful and fatima are mecha pilot aids. ^^; In fact there are other similiarities between the two worlds, like the fact that the governments tend to live a lot longer than the average population.

I don't think I'd ship RakuYou, actually, although I absolutely adore Rakushun, because this series hits all sorts of weird Chinese upbringing buttons I don't know I have until I encounter them. ^^; I mean, as tsutanai puts it Rakushun actually becomes one of those perfect scholar-advisor types, and I... I... you can't touch the scholar-advisor that would be Weird. It'd be like, I dunno, slashing Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Not that people don't do that all the time nowadays, but...

Frankly if I think about kirin as Perfect Advisors I also have that problem. So best to stop, or get over it. XD

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

Rakushun is the Perfect Advisor, though (which is the other reason I'm not a huge rat fan: he's so very knows-where-his-towel-is and probably-where-your-towel-is-too that I find him a bit dull: no flaws, limited interest), whereas the kirin so often are not, despite being supposedly destined to something like Advisorhood. Keiki falls so short of the archetype as to be laughable, but it makes him lovable. And Taiki isn't even remotely...I've got to stop talking about Taiki until you meet him. Which should be shortly if you're up to disc 4. XD

[fantabulous.livejournal.com]

RakuYou are sweet together. =)

HOWEVER ...

... before you pelt me with whatever happens to be on hand, let me say that YouKei actually is more likely -- and makes more sense, seeing as how Youko does have the stronger, more significant bond with Keiki, with him being her Kirin and all. ^_^

Ah well. That means that Rakushun's cheeks are free for me to pinch all I want! *devious smirk*

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Chinese girls of a certain constitution have a thing for Advisors/Strategists. XD (And also for Emperors, although I'd swear for some reason, not together. Others may disagree. I merely report my sociological(!?) findings.) But Rakushun may be the first and last character ever to trigger a reflexive "reminds me of Three Kingdoms" at the same time as a reflexive "reminds me of Beatrix Potter". I can't really wrap my mind around the idea of slashing, say, Yang Wenli out of GinEiDen either because he's mine.

I have now "met" Taiki. You are six years old. XD I do not say this like it is a bad thing, but counting Chara this is literally the third fandom I've touched because of you where I had to turn everything of myself past the age of 7-8 off in order to appreciate the canon.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Argh, don't tell me you're going to now read the 12K novels and torture yourself even more? XD

Mmm, I do also like liege-vassal much better than master-servant, although as a bred American I think I naturally am suspicious of Mandate of Heaven, which is why I was always expecting in Juuni Kokki the system to break down or to show some holes at some point. (The kirin espeically, and there is something about Hou that wasn't really resolved, but I can't recall where you are in the story so shall not spoil you. Because it seems that the kirin doesn't choose and it's divinely ordained.) The thing about the universe there is that it's just so ordered and static, etc., and it's always in flux, I suppose, but things are always staying the same. (Which is Taoist?)

And yes, there is something feminine about it, in the emancipation of women.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

So, out of curiosity, which one are you? (Am reading even more into 3K (interesting serendipity of abbreviation. One other thing that doesn't seem to show up in 12K is external war, though I suppose there sometimes are internal ones.)

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

If I were in literature, and not history, I'd actually think of doing "Chinese philosophy in Japanese fantastic literature", because I do think that the way it's adapted in 12K is interesting. (Plus, there are all those revampings of 3K too, so.) (Even so, it's been suggested that, as a hobby or something perhaps, maybe I should look at Chinese philosophy and war manuals as reproduced for the American business advice merket. XD And, you know.... XD)

I mean, you have Mandate of Heaven not only in the sense of election by Heaven, but in the sense that the country shows the physical effects of rulership: monsters when it's bad, even disease striking the palace members (the way the kirin get ill), and prosperity when it's good. In addition, functional immortality as a sign of the blessings of heaven.

On the other hand, you have the combination of class-violating fantasy (anyone can become king) with predestination (the kind's effectively foreordained by Fate, what have you). And that seems rather modern, not to mention... well. XD What was it that is said in Neil Gaiman's "A Game of You"? Boys dream of becoming heroes, and girls dream that they're really princesses, and that their parents are not their own. Predestined election, in the Calvinist sense, perhaps. Or else, all those stories about scullery maids who are really....

Plus, you know. I wonder about the presentation of sex in the series. Brothels do exist, and are a peril that Youko has to escape from... yet children are produced on trees. I wonder if there's a fear of sex element, to be honest. (Emancipation, indeed. XD)

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

Hey! I saw Yang Wenli first! XD (Or... maybe I didn't, even if I am older, but still. XD Speaking of really long Japanese novel series, eh? Oddly enough, I don't really think of any of the characters in Arslan fit the Yang Wenli or Rakushun type--I mean, since it's the same author as GinEiDen, no?)

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the most interesting element of it would be, to me, that which clashes between Japanese and Chinese philosophy and such. Not that I really know much 'bout either. (So have the Japanese done many renderings of 3K? Any manga/anime on the subject?)

Yes, the will of Heaven is not at all ambiguous in the series is it? But isn't the traditional Mandate of Heaven also class-busting, in that there are all the stories of how the old kings set aside their own sons for a worthy sage, and how a virtuous man ovethrew a corrupt monarch? Though, predestination is decidedly unmodern, IMHO, given how strongly it's rejected. But then I start injecting Western "how could a good God presdestin evil blah blah" things, so shall stop.

Sex: Agreed. What is the point of sex, if children are produced by the trees? What is the point of gender, then? If they were all produced by trees, you'd expect everyone to be asexual. I expect the cosmological issue will get resolved at some point. Out of curiosity, was the land distribution really like that in ancient China?

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

Depends on where and when, on the land distribution. (Sui started a land-distrubtion for all and sundry, and Tang continued it at least to start, but I'm a little flaky on how well it worked on the ground. Much more familiar with the variation and development that occured when it was transfered to, wait for it, Japan right before the Nara Period. XD)

Apparently, and I'm a little unsure on this, the original-original Mandate of Heaven was a little less class-busting, before we get to Warring States. But that's because I don't know what the early Zhou Dynasty said about itself vis-a-vis the Shang or Xia. Warring States, it's like, if you could only get the best advisor and were favored by Heaven, why, then! No need to listen to the decaying Zhou Dynasty, wot. (Very clever how the traveling scholar-advisors pushed this philosophy, I think. Nice way to get a paying position. After Warring States, then you start to get the philosopher in the wilderness as the way to go as a trend, if I remember right.) The Three Sage Kings, though... you're right, there. Odd that that's like the foundation myth for Chinese rulership when the Zhou Dynasty was so concerned with lineage and marriage, right? And the Shang and their asking the ancestors for advice on all and sundry. Obviously I need to study this more.

Predestination may not be "modern" (I don't believe in modernity as a cultural thing, actually, but that's a completely different argument, so XD), but it's definitely all over the place in modern fantasy fiction, isn't it? Prophecy, fate, election.... (Okay, I should cut out the Calvinist terminology, I know, but. XD The way they tried to figure out the issue of the Elect once some of them started thinking on it further is just too cute! XD) Which is what I meant, actually. XD

(Actually... Tolkein, hm. When I think of his work, I think of it less an issue of Fate than an issue of Irony. Like, how the hobbits are the ones ending up with the whole issue of recovering, destroying the One Ring. But that may just be me.)

And 3Ks, of course! I don't have a really good grasp of more than the faithful adaptations (aside from that which is Ikkitousen XD), though, so I couldn't give you a survey. A new translation of the novel (or so I'm assuming that's what it is, from the title) is prominently displayed in the bookstores here, actually. And I know that some of the characters show up in Japanese texts in terms of "oh, this was obviously like X from Y" comments, but I don't know if that's Three Kingdoms-novel or Three Kingdoms-archetypesortahistory, to be honest. (I have a much better memory of where and when onmyouji are mentioned in the tales to be honest *cough*.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

There's who knows how many manga adaptaions of 3K and at least one anime - I have it on tape. It has the loveliest ED theme, I've been looking for it in mp3 forever. ;_;

Yeah, sex/gender in 12K drives me a bit batty because it makes no sense. XD For that matter neither does the Mandate of Heaven bit - if Tentei is that hands-on about the monarchic selection, and all the classes in the land (not just the nobles/warriors etc.) are available for the choice, and the kirin is allowed to wait years and years for the right person to show up, why do so many of the kings/queens suck? o_o One concludes that Heaven is fallible, which I suppose is all right, since Heaven was plenty fallible in the real China.

That being said, as a bred Chinese I have an emotional response to the idea of Mandate of Heaven that defies my intellectual understanding of it as mythology, and politically manipulated mythology at that. XD It's like how Russians can be emotionally Tsarists even if they're technically Communist. My mother is fond of correlating our democratically elected leaders' personal misfortunes with the misfortunes they may have visited on the Canadian laobaixing in the form of high taxes and such, with the implication that these are all beating-downs delivered by Heaven; in the mainland countryside Chairman Mao is invoked as a deity.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Narsus is the closest Arslan gets, methinks (and at the beginning you do find him doing that classic Chinese scholar-unhappy-with-the-gov't thing, secluding himself in the countryside and working on his artistic pursuits). Not that Narsus is much like Yang in personality, but he's the strategist of the group.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Oh, I mean, not slashed together. XD;;; Typically if one has one of these Chinese history kinks one has them all.

It would appear that invading a neighboring country is instant cause for Heavenly smackdown. o_o They don't have any barbarian tribes to deal with, is the thing; just the youma.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. That doesn't bode well for me, doesn't it, even if I'm not a Chinese girl. >_>

Yeah, that's what I find strangely static about the series, that there aren't any barbarians from outside, and the fact that conquest is a no-no, which makes it so unlike 3K and other works. Why did the god create youma, though? To give people something to fight?

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I'm just wondering if we'll ever get cosmological backstory, as in, where did this work come from, who is this god, is it like FY? But then it doesn't seem to make much sense to me for heaven to be so emphatic, and for no one to curse the gods/fortune when rulers manifestly screw up multiple times. Also, the "no hereditary succession" does mess with the inspiration a bit. The Mandate just goes to an individual.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I would suppose in 12K the rejection of real dynastic rule would be a contemporary thing, I suppose, because no one believes in lineage.

I don't really think it's true Predestination in the Calvinist sense, because people are unable to take the idea of Calvinism seriously, because Free Will is the new religion. The idea of "choice" is central to morality, but fantasy novels really often don't wish or need to reconcile free will and predestination, so the two just sort of uneasily exist side by side. But then the modern fantasy novel is anti-tragic, so it doesn't need to, in some sense. I wonder why the theme of Destiny is so prominent at all, today, actually.

Tolkien: Is it really an issue of Fate there at all? I can't remember an emphasis on the fatedness of it.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It's a cyclical closed system. All the countries will have periods of prosperity followed by periods of decline, and prosper again with the next effective government... As you have pointed out this is another way in which the paradigm is roughly Taoist.

It's sad for the kirin, I find, though I'm probably influenced by the FSS outlook (in which fatima are "awaremono").

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Maybe they do curse the gods. Who knows? One is actually told repeatedly that the common folk are very fuzzy on how the succession works. They know there's the kirin, and that the kirin has to kneel, but... that's it.