Wuxia

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This guy cracks me up.
I dunno why. It's just so easy to make fun of him.

The puppet's rack is significantly less extensive.

Who names their kid "Kills Everyone He Meets" anyway?

Not nearly as cool as that OTHER guy named Vicious.

...

This dude seems way to sane too hang out with the rest of the psychos in the Onyx Demon Clan.

Any character who is this fabulously dressed in a wuxia story but isn't a woman is probably evil.
Just an observation.

>Noble heroes from all social classes
>they fight evil, be it a local bully or corrupt governments
>Kung fu masters, monks, warriors, princesses, thieves, beggars, merchants, healers, craftsmen, priests, etc are all trappings of fantastic Zhongguo
>An ideal wuxia story has intricate relationships of honor, love, loyalty, and even hate between people
>Government officials will mostly be corrupt, lazy, incompetent, or unjust. Hence the need for Xia to solve problems with force, only with the code of chivalry holding them in check. They often must live as outlaws, righting wrongs wherever they go.
>There's probably gonna be an evil martial arts academy or teacher dedicated to pumping out assholes for various purposes
>Putting down very powerful enemies is tragic because the world has lost a very talented individual who made the poor choice to do evil
>Bros often become "sworn brothers" after going through deep shit together
>For some odd reason a baddie grabbing a girl by the wrist often magically turns her into a helpless crying damsel
>Edgy brooding heroes may sometimes kill an innocent in a fit of angst, cue more brooding
>Training to master highly dangerous forbidden techniques often comes at the price of using insane deadly amounts of your own qi too intensively, warping your phisiology
>Loyalty is always tested, ALWAYS. Whether it's between a parent and a lover, or a friend vs social superior. Confucianism says its okay to kill yourself to escape choosing. Great drama fuel. Think Byakuya from bleach being caught between loyalty to his parents wishes and those of his wife.
>Bad girls nearly always turn good after getting thrashed by the hero and cured with chivalrous dick
>Betraying your master nearly always makes you the BBEG, you don't fuck with social piety in magical Asia
>Evil eunuchs, no more needs to be said
>When the emperor is a good guy, his advisors keep important shit from him which could be sorted out easily otherwise

I like to think these guys question their life choices a lot.

I've heard speculations that is actually Miè Tiān Hái's former master, and basically a super-villain.

>Lots of villains seek immortality for all the wrong reasons. Anyone can become a Xia with training and such, but even though humans CAN become Immortals it's not an easy thing to accomplish and seems to by default "remove" you from mortal affairs to some degree
>Cutting your hair (or refusing to cut it) has enormous importance
>Training arcs where the hero learns the "super secret dangerous badass ultimate technique of destiny" in a week when it allegedly takes decades, working not only on the body, but on qi (breathing exercise) and mind (studying)
>Magic in wuxia tends to be the sole purview of explicitly supernatural beings such as deities and humans who ascended to immortality. It's often less immediate sorts of stuff (more ritualistic in nature) but you can do things like change people into animals, lay complex curses that last generations, change the weather, see the future, and almost all such users of magic live forever as a matter or course
-You do NOT get to extrapolate more superpowers from the ones you already learned, if you can make fire from your hands by learning social kungfu, you can't use your knowledge of heat manipulation to do other crazy stuff like make ice by absorbing heat
-To learn an entirely new application of what seems like an identical power you need to learn an entirely new type of kungfu, which you will not necessarily have any access too
>Old masters often become lonely due to their sheer level of skill. They might train the youngins to be their sparing partners. Evil masters may act out their genius loneliness by picking fights with some strong youth to train him into their "equal"
>Evil pupils are a good source of action too
>Wuxia is VERY idealistic and light hearted, the opposite of Game of Thrones's obsession with moral ambiguity, grimdark and "realism", though with convoluted plots and drama all the same

This guy was fucking rad and I wish he did more.
I've got a thing for grizzled old swordsmen badasses.

>Tsunderes are everywhere, bonus points if they use fighting a hero as an excuse to get close to him; better behaved or more "proper" heroines will only rarely ever get anywhere with the hero and frequently will instead fall in love with and marry side characters
>Monsters are pretty much the pets of the gods left to go feral
>Dragons are benevolent water gods and can play a role like LOTR eagles
>Social manipulation where characters trade words like they trade blows, testing each other to and trying to get each other to back down, reveal their weaknesses or secrets without revealing anything themselves or forcing themselves into a social corner
>Even physical nearness with the other sex is a fairly strong social taboo, you NEVER talk about sex or open relationships or approach the fairer sex until you're both married, and even then only in private and away from everyone else, including family, the Friendzone exists in Wuxia and it's nearly ALWAYS the man doing it to a girl that he thinks no sexual thoughts about because that would be impolite and not worthy of a gentleman until they're married.
>If you can prove to a guy you've just met that your Kung Fu is bigger than his Kung-Fu, (tests of impossible dexterity, or incredible feats of endurance or stamina, or even weirder shit like playing Go SUPER well or just kicking so much ass at flute playing that you cripple the other guy with your sick flute tunes) without even starting a fight, then you look like a total badass and everyone is hugely impressed by your simultaneous show of skill and restraint

>Miè Tiān Hái's former master, and basically a super-villain.
No shit.
Snow Crow basically has a rolodex filled with information on all the world's most evil people and seems to know a lot of shit about the Onyx Demon Clan's base for some guy who's never been there, and we KNOW he's a manipulative prick.

Besides that it's Gen Urobuchi and if there isn't at least one emotional betrayal happening I'll be shocked.

He's in the show for all of five seconds but he still has both art and a really elaborately designed puppet.
I'm halfway expecting him to show up in a mask denying his old existence over some convoluted debt to Miè Tiānhái or something except Bony T turned him into roadkill and left him kind of all over the place.

>implying it wasn't DESTINITY

>*DESTINY
fug

, , Woah, somebody's been paying attention in class.

,

I can't really bring myself to really give a shit about wuxia or even attempt to remember these names. I'm a fan of extremely violent puppets however

Any chance of you running a quest?

Have you thrown your phone into a dragon's jaws yet?

Actually. I got my new phone yesterday evening.
So probably, yeah.

I wasn't sold on the series (a bit weird even for me), but that first fight scene had be going, and as soon as this guy pulled this shit I was all
>"Yeah, I'm gonna keep up with this."
i.imgur.com/NgzjJLK.gif

>mfw people don't believe in DESTINY near me

It's just a coincidence.
Just finished most recent TF episode tonight.
Just a coincidence. Definitely. Absolutely.

I got some more elaborate notes here.

Are you.....wait. Hold on.
You ACTUALLY took notes on my responses and made a PDF of them? I was joking. That was a joke before.

>Thunderbolt Fantasy OST

Daym son. Best OST, best fantasy series this season.

I just copy-pasted it all in a word-file a few threads back, nothing too serious.

The soundtrack IS pretty clutch. I swear that theme song they play over and over has Engrish lyrics too, but I can't make them out.
....also, her dress looks even more ridiculous impractical when you draw it then it does on the puppet. How does she even move around in that shit?

So how strong is he actually? How many jaws are going to hit the floor when he actually pulls out a named attack and some actual special techniques?

Hell if I know.
The guy kinda tries to avoid fighting at all but every fight he's been in he basically attacks ONCE and the fight ends, and he doesn't even look particularly tired or anything when he's done.
Hell in the last episode he basically soloed two of the three problems that they've spent the last five episodes building up, though he definitely wasn't happy about doing so.

Soundtrack seems to be missing one song BTW, that vocal theme that plays when Shang Buhuan acts on his own and kicks ass, like when he first rescued Dan Hai and just last episode when he made the rest of the cast irrelevant.

>It occured to me: "where do the larger schools get their funding from?"

Most of them probably have multiple sources of income, so here's some way they used to cover their financial bases:

- being the hub of the local milita with a mix of paid membership, regular communal donations and the rights to hold certain festivities
- being communally funded because the king wants such associations in every village over a certain size and the king's inspectors actually do tour and inspect them
- being situated on the compounds of somebody who's rich, basically making them the strongarm of his interests
- offering medical and dietary treatments
- offering protection services in specific cases (wrestling clubs taking a cut in real estate deals are a thing in some parts of India, or being associated with a city quarter market with the local merchants funding them would be an option)
- being straight up criminal

youtube.com/watch?v=Q2cQXroJssk

>So how strong is he actually?
He basically walked through Fallout territory and came out no worse for wear. Even his clothes didn't suffer.

He's a cute in that illustration.

Guǐ Niǎo: "You might say that this is just a sign saying 'keep out' for strangers. More or less a harmless warning."
Juǎn Cányun: "Yeah, except this one basically says 'strangers keep out or I'll kill you'...."

>He's a cute in that illustration.
He's clearly supposed to be fairly young.

>He basically walked through Fallout territory and came out no worse for wear.
I'm actually fairly certain he did that with intent to basically commit suicide by vanishing out in the desert after committing some crime or taboo, likely to do with killing a whole lot of people in his homeland. His name kind of heavily hints at it.

>Walks into the desert to Dune yourself
>Run out of desert

Shieeet.

I'm interested in hearing his character poem, that's for sure.
Saving each one for not when they appear but when their personality and role becomes clear was a great idea for the series.

Juǎn Cányun narrating his OWN poem for example kind of told you everything you ever needed to know about him.

Guǐ Niǎo's will obviously be revealed when he betrays them and reveals his true name of course.

>I'm interested in hearing his character poem
What's with that anyway?
Why is it always in Mandarin in the subs?

It's called Niàn Bái and it's found in almost all kinds of Chinese Opera; basically when the character makes their first official appearance (a character can be unknown before then by hiding his name or identity or whatever) he recites a narrative traditional poem that describes in brief his or her motivations or personality, more or less telling you exactly what the character is all about as soon as they show up on stage.

For example, Miè Tiānhai's is;
>"All life is a prelude to death. To serve me until you are a corpse, or to be cut down and become one. You have two options at the end of my sword."
Or in shorter terms;
>"Everyone dies eventually, and I'm as good a reason as any."

>try to get kill in the desert
>there was not enough of it for you to die
>keep on walking, there's bound to be a desert VAST ENOUGH to free you from this suffering SOMEWHERE

Not sure if badass.

>Why is it always in Mandarin in the subs?
They probably don't have chinese translators.

>Not sure
user pls

When you're so badass that you can't even successfully commit suicide you're generally pretty hardcore.
I think the reason he's so lackadaisical about everything even though he kind of doesn't even want to be on this quest is because in effect he's already attempted to commit suicide and failed, so basically he had nothing better to do anymore.

No, he means why is the narration poem in Mandarin.
I actually have no idea, but I think it was a deliberate stylistic choice in the part of the Japanese dub.

How does his name hint at it?

Shāng Bù Huàn literally means "Unconcerned With Dying Young."

Think they'd subvert it and have him live to be the old man who passes the tale on?

I'm kind of having doubts on that if only because they've been hinting it so hard these past few episodes. It almost feels too obvious at this point, though maybe they have some extra curve ball in store to go along with it. "You saw that coming but you didn't see THIS!"

They're absolutely doing it on purpose.

Honestly the fact that the party is so dedicated to being dicks that they're willing to piss off the guy who solo'd two of the three trials without even using the required maguffins is pretty impressive.

>I don't know how old these corpses are, I guess'll I'll just have to shift the key and tempo around until I find the correct match.
>Oh look, they're 200 years old. That means they come from the great war between demons and humans!
>You know, the one that I was involved in, and that created this particular landscape we are now in. Whoddathunk?

Definitely on purpose.

out of curiosity what pieces of western media do you think do the best job of portraying the wuxia genre?

Ya realize that there is no genre of non-chinese fiction that espouses chinese values, right?

I mean other than Hollywood movies a few years down the line in a world where Japan has bought ALL US companies from the Papist dictators that have controlled the country since ca. 1810.

>Shang is unconcerned with dying young
>He got gray hairs

Oh dear.

Maybe it was just a misleading camera angle, but it sure looked like there was a grand total of ONE zombie left when she finally figured it out.

Snow Turkey playing orchestra conductor with his pipe was the best thing ever though.

I'm still wondering how Snow Turkey intends to deal with his murderous musician.

Especially now that the only guy who *might* be able to beat him has left the party.

>OST missing the best song
Why
Who would do that