the wombatcave

Gone back to investigating the eight kanji in the Reflector sub-block circle. Best bet so far is that they're related to the hakke trigrams, although the kanji aren't the same-- similar to the traditional zodiac kanji not matching the normal animals, the hakke seem to use a set of kanji that don't match the standard ones for those elements.( Read more... )

...then again, someone on the Okamiworld forum has suggested that the kanji are randomly chosen from the brushstroke display pool, which in some ways would be much more elegant.

Skipping the straight transcription layer in this post; this time I did the initial transcription by hand onto paper, and don't feel like retyping all of the kanji/kana. Might come back later and fill it in; then again, might not.

Usual disclaimers blah blah blah; check longer translations for more info. Current progress: only the transliteration layer is posted so far; I've got the glosses on paper, but haven't typed them in yet.

Zodiac block, p. 14: ( Read more... )


Fashion ad, p. 26:( Read more... )

Background sourcebook for the game, listing legendary/literary/historical origins. Someone else's quick outline overview here.

Some minor additions to her notes:

1.) The entry in part two which she glosses as "Orders of many restaurants(?)" should be "The Restaurant of Many Orders", according to the artbook( ... ).

2.) In part three, she points out the "hammer" pun in the moles's names: Otsuchi and Kotsuchi( ... ). This seems to be the intermediate step in a pun based on the "D.Gray-man" series( ... ).

Tablesplat, carried over from another fit of geekage on the Okami wiki. I still want to find/integrate some other info, so this may be an ongoing project. Then again, I may wander off and get distracted by something else instead.

Quick overview: the 12-year cycle of the Asian "lunar" zodiac seems to be originally based on the apparent circuit of the planet Jupiter around the solar ecliptic. The "lunar" label derives from the lunar determination of the new-year date (usually the 2nd new moon after winter solstice). The 12-critter sequence (Rat to Pig) is fused onto a different tradition of the "Twelve Earthly Branches"; the result has been applied onto several different systems in addition to the yearly calendar cycle. (Bonus randomness: Onmark has a nifty chart here syncretically assigning eight Japanese Buddhist protectors among the critters.)

It reminded me of a factoid that I can't remember if I've previously mentioned here, though it may've come up in an old discussion on RKDreams-- according to the RK chronology, Tomoe's birthdate was in a Year of the Fire Horse. In Japan, Fire Horse women are thought to be dangerous and nearly unmarriageable; if they do marry, there's a superstition that they'll kill their husbands. As recently as 1966, the last Fire Horse year, there was an uncharacteristic plunge in births in Japan because apparently/supposedly no one wanted to have Fire Horse children. NYT article here.( Read more... )

(Cut for spoilers.)

1.) Finished Okami earlier this week, though I missed several things in the game. Most of it was minor stuff like Stray Beads here and there, but apparently I managed to accidentally skip ( Read more... ) (As a future trivia reference, 大神 (ゲーム).)

2.) Finally managed to semi-confirm a theory about a minor detail in a Yamaguchirow doujinshi, specifically ( Read more... )

Meanwhile, making slow progress with the hana-kotoba book, though not in a very organized way. If I'd thought this out more clearly, I would've divided the translations into individual index cards for each entry, instead of just sequentially jotting things down into a notebook; this is especially obvious when considering the long list of flower names transcribed from the table of contents, and then the separate list of add'l info from the book proper. Oh well.

I can had brain, but Okami eated it NOM NOM NOM.

(Pic from the official art site. The wombat-consort got us a Wii for Xmas. So far, I'm ~40 hours into the game, and maybe 1/3 of the way through? my arm hurts.)