got blisters on mah fingers
May. 22nd, 2009 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138The RKDreams forum is glitching again; cut'n'paste storage of non-posting reply.
Original post from moeru:
IIRC, the most common interpretation is that it's a nested flashback of sorts-- Kenshin is thinking back to the early stages of his training with Hiko, when he hoped that he could eventually protect others in the future in the same way that he'd been unable to protect the three girls who tried to protect him from the bandits. Although they weren't actually his older sisters, "nee-san" or "nee-chan" is a respectful way for kids to address or refer to girls who are older than them. It's also an ironic narrative parallel to Enishi, who later became obsessed with avenging his own actual "nee-chan" (Tomoe) as a direct result of Kenshin's actions.
My own semi-crackpot addition is that this seems to be one of the first times that his face resumes bleeding by itself after the initial wound from Kiyosato, which Iizuka implied was Kenshin's first battle wound-- and so the combination of blood and adrenaline reminds Kenshin that his body hadn't inflicted that sort of semi-spontaneous injury onto itself since the very start of his training; in the flashback, young Kenshin is still building up the sword calluses on his soft hands by smacking the wooden practice sword onto the tree. And Iizuka's other comment about "hate" suggests that Kenshin really is inflicting the bleediness onto himself via self-loathing.
Also, the immediate framework around the flashback is that he's just carried out another assassination, knocking over some barrels of water in the process-- again, this is an ironic juxtaposition of his inital wish to defend and protect people and his present task of attacking and killing them-- and iirc the bleeding is first shown in his reflection on the water's surface. However, this way lies further crackpottery from me about the symbolic correspondence of Kenshin, Kiyosato, and Tomoe to the Shinto triad of sword, mirror, and jewel, as well as the middle ground between the traditional identifications that a man's soul is his sword and a woman's soul is her mirror, and blah blah mizugori waterfall purification rituals blah blah blah.
Original post from moeru:
I don't know if this has been asked before... but after watching TsuiokuHen yet again, there's this scene that really bothered me.
It's the part in the first ep between Iizuka telling Kenshin about swords inflicted out of hate and Kenshin washing his hands while Iizuka tells him about the meeting Katsura just had.
The scene is a flashback.. Young Kenshin is sort of practicing swings with a thin wooden stick.. then his hands got all blistered... he went to the river nearby to wash his "bloody" sands.. and then softly whispers "neechan".
What is this scene all about.. I don't it's in the manga. T_T
IIRC, the most common interpretation is that it's a nested flashback of sorts-- Kenshin is thinking back to the early stages of his training with Hiko, when he hoped that he could eventually protect others in the future in the same way that he'd been unable to protect the three girls who tried to protect him from the bandits. Although they weren't actually his older sisters, "nee-san" or "nee-chan" is a respectful way for kids to address or refer to girls who are older than them. It's also an ironic narrative parallel to Enishi, who later became obsessed with avenging his own actual "nee-chan" (Tomoe) as a direct result of Kenshin's actions.
My own semi-crackpot addition is that this seems to be one of the first times that his face resumes bleeding by itself after the initial wound from Kiyosato, which Iizuka implied was Kenshin's first battle wound-- and so the combination of blood and adrenaline reminds Kenshin that his body hadn't inflicted that sort of semi-spontaneous injury onto itself since the very start of his training; in the flashback, young Kenshin is still building up the sword calluses on his soft hands by smacking the wooden practice sword onto the tree. And Iizuka's other comment about "hate" suggests that Kenshin really is inflicting the bleediness onto himself via self-loathing.
Also, the immediate framework around the flashback is that he's just carried out another assassination, knocking over some barrels of water in the process-- again, this is an ironic juxtaposition of his inital wish to defend and protect people and his present task of attacking and killing them-- and iirc the bleeding is first shown in his reflection on the water's surface. However, this way lies further crackpottery from me about the symbolic correspondence of Kenshin, Kiyosato, and Tomoe to the Shinto triad of sword, mirror, and jewel, as well as the middle ground between the traditional identifications that a man's soul is his sword and a woman's soul is her mirror, and blah blah mizugori waterfall purification rituals blah blah blah.
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no subject
on 2009-05-23 05:27 am (UTC)The scene in in this clip (around 2 minutes and 30 or 40 seconds in) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8P_M-sLgaE&feature=PlayList&p=C39C116E59E833A6&index=9
Sorry this is random, but you seem to know so much as well as knowing other people who know Stuff.
no subject
on 2009-05-23 11:29 pm (UTC)WRT the outhouse setting, for a while I was thinking that the image with the candle might've shown her writing desk instead, with an open drawer from which she'd taken her knife to go outside... but I'm swinging back to the idea that it is an outhouse after all. Unfortunately we don't get any other reference images in RK to compare it to :b
I don't know if there's a consensus interpretation of this scene, though I know of several speculations among Western fans: a nightmare, a failed suicide attempt, a symbolic interpretation of her heading out to report to Tatsumi's group etc.
The chronology for a miscarriage would be a bit tricky here. If you go along with the OVA's suggestion that Tomoe and Kenshin didn't boff until the very last night, then this would have to be either Kiyosato's child, or (if you also go along with the off-color suggestions about Tomoe's interim activities) the result of her having spent some time working as a prostitute. I'm terrible at timelines, so I don't recall offhand how many months a Kiyosato pregnancy would've been by then, or whether she would've been expected to be obviously showing already.
To the extent of my pitiful comprehension of Japanese, Tomoe's original line of dialogue in the rainy field isn't quite suggestive as the subbed/dubbed "But we tried/hoped so hard (to make them grow)", though the single word "Sekkaku..." does express the futility of a specific action despite unusual effort. Jizo is the guardian spirit of travelers and dead children; cf. a NYT article about mizuko Jizo here (http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/25/world/in-japan-a-ritual-of-mourning-for-abortions.html). (Before mizuko primarily referred to abortion, it used to primarily refer to infanticide-- an unhappily common method of population control in premodern Japan.)
Although I think there is a reasonable argument for the "miscarriage" theory, personally I don't think it fits as well as either of two paradoxically bracketing options: deliberately self-induced abortion, or virgin (or at least nonpregnant) menarche.
The houzuki plant associated with the Tomoe/Kiyosato relationship is associated with a specific midsummer festival in Tokyo/Edo (presumably one of the last times they were together?), but apparently it's also been used as an abortifacient in Asian traditional medicine, which could tie in to Kenshin's cover identity as a medicine-seller. However, this would be horribly dangerous for Tomoe to attempt on her own, esp. since afaik this would've been a purely mechanical procedure with a sharp, narrow root rather than an herbal brew; it also doesn't solve the father's identity.
(If you look at the end of the previous segment in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rfyuacn1kM&feature=channel , when she's getting ready to go sell medicine with Kenshin, there's a semi-subtle flashback right after she pulls the knife out of her obi: she left her father's house in Edo during cherry-blossom season, wearing the hand-guards and straw hat that she is *not* wearing for the excursion with Kenshin; on the way out, she glances at the discarded dead houzuki which Kiyosato gave her. Some related previous posts here (http://wombat1138.livejournal.com/49153.html), here (http://wombat1138.livejournal.com/52587.html) and here (http://wombat1138.livejournal.com/90358.html).)
Although menarche isn't nearly as dramatic an option as the previous two, it might actually be the best cultural match; iirc (though I can't find a specific reference at the mo) the average age of menarche in Tokugawa-era Japan really was around 18, Tomoe's age at the time. So this might represent an involuntary sexual awakening, in the same way that she's unwillingly developing emotions for Kenshin (wrapping her jacket around him as he sleeps in the cold night air etc.)
But I've mostly resigned myself that this OVA has so many near-subliminal cultural cues that most of them will just whoosh straight past a non-Japanese audience, definitely including me :|
no subject
on 2009-05-24 02:29 am (UTC)(is it just me or is it the weirdest questions that plague you when you're trying to sleep/concentrate?)
no subject
on 2009-05-24 03:18 am (UTC)These days, I tend to try lulling myself to sleep by coming up with alphabetical lists of words, but this can lead to frustrated mental logjams of always coming up with the same fruits/vegetables/animals/whatever that start with K, Q, or X.