Hyouge Mono

[Guardian Enzo]

I'll PM you next time.

[SeijiSensei]

I use the RSS feed with my torrent client, KTorrent, but the client wasn't running when I booted up this time.

[Forsaken_Infinity]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

What does it say about AS that I had to learn episode seven was subbed from ANN?

There's a reason why this thread is there

[SeijiSensei]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. There are no listings of this show on the main AS page because NHK requested they be removed. If anything this argues in favor of the declining relevance of the main page if even a show which will likely never be licensed in R1 still can't be listed on the main site.

[SeijiSensei]

OK, I'll have to watch episode eight again. I wish Kaoru Chujo was following this series so he might make one of his excellent guides to the characters and their seiyuu. As it is, I remain confused about who's who.

Hilarious scene with Sasuke and the pineapple, and no word about whether he ever told Osen about his encounter in the tower in episode six. If he did tell her, she obviously forgave him given the present she gave him. (I expected her to give him another "present" after chasing out the children, but then she disappeared?) Apparently their child inherited her eyes!

Why did the fellow with the scroll burn it?

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

OK, I'll have to watch episode eight again. I wish Kaoru Chujo was following this series so he might make one of his excellent guides to the characters and their seiyuu. As it is, I remain confused about who's who.

Hilarious scene with Sasuke and the pineapple, and no word about whether he ever told Osen about his encounter in the tower in episode six. If he did tell her, she obviously forgave him given the present she gave him. (I expected her to give him another "present" after chasing out the children, but then she disappeared?) Apparently their child inherited her eyes!

Why did the fellow with the scroll burn it?

No way Sosuke told Osen!

The fellow with the scroll was Akechi Mitsuhide, the top general who

Spoiler for Historical Spoilers:

eventually ends up killing Oda. The burning of the scroll, I assume, was to signify that he's finally committed to betraying Milord, and Hideyoshi openly speculates about Mitsuhide assassinating Oda later in the ep.

It's obvious that Sosuke is a pawn in the rebels power game, but I think Mitsuhide is too. I think Senno (the tea master) intentionally let Sosuke cater the banquet because he knew Sosuke's absurdly elaborate creations would offend Tokugawa. I get the definite sense that the rebels want to drive a wedge between Oda and Tokugawa. I also think Hideyoshi is trying to push Mitsuhide into rebelling openly, so he can sweep in afterwards and claim to have been loyal all along. Remember, it was Hideyoshi who flew back to the capital after Mitsuhide assassinated Oda, and put him to the sword before taking power himself.

[SeijiSensei]

Episode nine has appeared in the usual location!

Spoiler:

The event we all knew would happen takes place in this episode, and horrifically so at that. It certainly doesn't seem to square with the historical reports that Nobunaga committed seppaku after Akechi surrounded Honnō-ji. It's certainly more dramatic to imagine a one-on-one confrontation between the two men, but it looks like dramatic license as well.

I tried to imagine the size of the ship that would have brought that elephant to Japan. Maybe it could have been transported on one of those giant warships we saw in first episode?

Civil war ensues now, I presume?

That was Sasuke's brother sitting to the left of Akechi, yes? I'd imagine Sasuke is going to be very torn after the assassination and have a hard time choosing sides in the aftermath.

[Dop]

Crikey!

I was amused at the elephant, though.

I have to admit with the time between episodes I'm not following the plot as much as I could. I'm gathering this show as and when, in the hope that at some time the glorious day will come when all episodes are safely gathered in and I can rewatch the whole lot. That will be a glorious day indeed!

[Guardian Enzo]

Damn, that was exciting. It was interesting to see such a radical departure from the historical record - I wasn't sure just how much this story would stick to the script.

I expect Hideyoshi to pin this on Akechi, and Sasuke to eventually ally himself with him. His brother does indeed complicate that, though. I'd love to see Sasuke and Oshiro from Ben-To have a conversation - they're the two best human sound-effects machines in anime right now.

[Dop]

Episode 10 in the usual places, and it's time for the aftermath. Quite a surreal and symbolic aftermath, too, but a gripping sequence.
Looking forward to seeing where we go from here.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Dop

Episode 10 in the usual places, and it's time for the aftermath. Quite a surreal and symbolic aftermath, too, but a gripping sequence.

These last two episodes make clear why there's the "this is a work of fiction" disclaimer at the beginning!

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

These last two episodes make clear why there's the "this is a work of fiction" disclaimer at the beginning!

Yeah, but what an allegorical one.

That opening scene with Oda and Hideyoshi was a stunner. One of the most memorable scenes in anime for many a year. Was that really happening, or an expression of Hideyoshi's subconscious?

[Dop]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

Yeah, but what an allegorical one.

That opening scene with Oda and Hideyoshi was a stunner. One of the most memorable scenes in anime for many a year. Was that really happening, or an expression of Hideyoshi's subconscious?

With you on that, it was a fantastic scene.

My impression is that it was all in Hideyoshi's head, an attack of conscience perhaps for what he had just done, the cup filled with Oda's blood and tea... All very symbolic.

[Flower]

BTW - EP 11 is available.

[Dop]

Marvellous, all the players working out who to ally themselves with now Oda is out of the way.

New OP music (same visuals), not entirely sure it's an improvement but at least it doesn't remind me of Copacabana every time it starts.

When episode 12 comes along I think that'll be a good time to sit and watch a dozen episodes in one go!

[Dop]

Huzzah! A wild episode 12 appears! I'd just about given up on this one.

[Flower]

Originally Posted by Dop

Huzzah! A wild episode 12 appears! I'd just about given up on this one.

Yes indeed ... nice to see there are others following this series which deserves WAY more love than it gets imo....

[SeijiSensei]

I'm curious whether those banners are historically accurate.

I knew right away that Sasuke's brother was going to show him an image of the "Sacred Heart of Jesus." In my Catholic youth I attended a school named Sacred Heart. I'm dubious whether Hashiba will make good on his pledge to assist in proselytizing, though.

I'm still often lost trying to keep track of the enormous cast of characters in this show. I haven't had this much trouble since I first started watching Baccano!. In that case, though, we had both men and women, and the characters had pretty distinctive models. In Hyouge Mono, we just have men, and many of them have only rather subtle differences in appearance. Some day, if I have the ambition, I'll try to pull together a web page identifying the characters, rather like what Kaoru Chujo did for shows like Saiunkoku Monogatari.

I've also considered trying to edit the English in the subs. I appreciate the subbers desire to preserve the archaic styles of speech in the English versions, but some of the subtitles have glaring grammatical errors or lack clarity. Again, I don't know when I'll get to this, but if I do start this project, I could probably use some help. Someone who is fluent in both Chinese and English might be able to help by comparing Huzzah's subs to the Chinese ones in the Koei release.

The new OP seems almost a satire on what Westerners think Japanese music sounds like. I doubt that's the intention, but that's the impression I'm left with after hearing it a few times now.

[Flower]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

....Some day, if I have the ambition, I'll try to pull together a web page identifying the characters, rather like what Kaoru Chujo did for shows like Saiunkoku Monogatari.

I've also considered trying to edit the English in the subs. I appreciate the subbers desire to preserve the archaic styles of speech in the English versions, but some of the subtitles have glaring grammatical errors or lack clarity. Again, I don't know when I'll get to this, but if I do start this project, I could probably use some help. Someone who is fluent in both Chinese and English might be able to help by comparing Huzzah's subs to the Chinese ones in the Koei release.

Whoa. Both of these sound like pretty large tasks!

Best of luck to you - I know I couldn't do either of them....

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Flower

Whoa. Both of these sound like pretty large tasks!

Best of luck to you - I know I couldn't do either of them....

Well, editing the subs just requires pulling them out of the Matroska container, editing the texts, and remuxing them back in. There's a suite of programs called mkvtoolnix designed precisely for tasks like this.

Creating the page of character avatars would require rather more work -- grabbing screen shots, cropping and the like. I've made my share of avatars over the past few years so I'm pretty adept at such tasks, but it would take quite a while to identify this cast of thousands.