Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on November 12, 2010, 06:49:49 PM
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EP 266: Kachikachi Yama (http://escapepod.org/2010/11/11/ep-265-kachikachi-yama/)
By Michael Underwood (http://geektheory.wordpress.com/)
Read by Lauren Harris of Pendragon Variety (http://escapepod.org/www.pendragonvariety.com) Literary Magazine Podcast
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The howl of the northbound train builds in crescendo as I stand on the ledge of the platform and hold the man above the tracks. He flails at me.
The Shikoku station is far from empty. Groaning bodies dot the otherwise hospital-clean platform. A group of fleshmodded Gothic Lolita girls watch us. They look on with inhumanly white faces and void-black eyes. Twig-thin arms down to their knees wave in the wind. He begs.
My _denkigami’s_ polite but insistent voice chirps in my head. _“Yamagata-sama orders the target to be eliminated.”_ Spirit of the fleshware machine in my brain, my _denkigami_ is a constant companion, and keeper of my leash.
The roar of the train grows louder, and bells ring in the station. The man pleads for his life. The train’s lights appear from around the around the corner.
Rated R For sexual situations and violence
Show Notes:
- Feedback for Episode 258: Raising Jenny.
- Next week…We leave earth for a new planet!
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/266_EP266__Kachikachi_Yama.mp3)
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"Ban-Kai"
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haha.
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Interesting story, a fun return to the classic cyberpunk mode (which I think has finally been gone long enough that it's fun nostalgia rather than tried overdone trope). I would have liked it but for one huge wallbanger.
The main character starts identifying with Tanuki when she finds out that all he'd done to deserve his punishment was to embarass her employer; this seems to create the moral standard for the rest of the story.
Except, he didn't just embarass the guy. The mode of embarassment was arguably double rape -- definitely rape of the wife, who he uses essentially as a puppet, forcing at least her body (no clear answer to where her mind was at the moment) into sex she doesn't consent to, and in my book rape of the husband, who, while he consents to sex with his wife, does not consent to what is essentially sex with Tanuki, if by proxy.
I recognize that for the characters the embarassment/shame would be by far the notable part, given the culture (though that calls into question the main character's "Well he only embarassed the guy" response), but the story seemed to be trying to use it to set Tanuki up as the wronged victim. With the above in mind, I don't see anyone in the right here, and combined with the minimal characterization beyond "she's stuck by tradition into a life she didn't choose, he's a plucky hacker that happened to annoy the wrong guy, and he's an evil petty tyrant," it all ends up with the kind of grey/grey situation that leaves me wondering why I should feel anything for any of them.
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It was a fun listen. Those modded gothic lolitas gave me the creeps, as I think was the point.
One thing that made me giggle. When Tanuki was trying to get into the Zaibatsu and failing, all I could think was "Magikarp used Splash! But Nothing Happened!" and giggled a little. Was I the only one who made that connection?
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Interesting story, a fun return to the classic cyberpunk mode (which I think has finally been gone long enough that it's fun nostalgia rather than tried overdone trope). I would have liked it but for one huge wallbanger.
The main character starts identifying with Tanuki when she finds out that all he'd done to deserve his punishment was to embarass her employer; this seems to create the moral standard for the rest of the story.
Except, he didn't just embarass the guy. The mode of embarassment was arguably double rape -- definitely rape of the wife, who he uses essentially as a puppet, forcing at least her body (no clear answer to where her mind was at the moment) into sex she doesn't consent to, and in my book rape of the husband, who, while he consents to sex with his wife, does not consent to what is essentially sex with Tanuki, if by proxy.
I recognize that for the characters the embarassment/shame would be by far the notable part, given the culture (though that calls into question the main character's "Well he only embarassed the guy" response), but the story seemed to be trying to use it to set Tanuki up as the wronged victim. With the above in mind, I don't see anyone in the right here, and combined with the minimal characterization beyond "she's stuck by tradition into a life she didn't choose, he's a plucky hacker that happened to annoy the wrong guy, and he's an evil petty tyrant," it all ends up with the kind of grey/grey situation that leaves me wondering why I should feel anything for any of them.
I didn't see it that way at all. It wasn't about Tanuki being the "wronged victim", it was about Yamagata ordering his samurai to prostitute herself in the service of his revenge. And she didn't start to identify with Tanuki then; on the contrary, she hated him more than ever when she found out.
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Then what about all the "he might deserve it less than anyone else I'd killed" and what not? Note that the line was "I hate Tanuki for the way I have to act," not for anything he did, and after finding out the slight she "hate(s) Yamigata-sama more."
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Then what about all the "he might deserve it less than anyone else I'd killed" and what not? Note that the line was "I hate Tanuki for the way I have to act," not for anything he did, and after finding out the slight she "hate(s) Yamigata-sama more."
Still didn't make her sympathetic to Tanuki; she continued to play him like a vintage Stradivarius fiddle.
[edit]
and "he might deserve it less" != "he doesn't deserve it".
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It might have been nice to see Tanaki come to an unpleasant end, but part of the narrator's victory is that she doesn't have to kill him.
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While I really enjoyed the reading, the story itself, with the perfect female killer who is beautiful, deadly, great in the sack and totally bound by notions of 'duty' and 'honour' that I can't understand, bored me. None of the characters have any real depth to them, we never even see Yamagata's wife but then it's clear that her defilement only matters so much as it reflects on his honour.
I just happened to be listening to this story on Remembrance Day and, as I walked home, happened to pass a small church procession to the local monument. While I loathe war that's a sense of honour and duty, though equally misguided, that I can at least understand.
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[an old blueeyeddevil strolls through the digital world, his rhuemy eyes rolling in their sockets like overboiled eggs, a bored youth walks beside him, clearly along to play Athenian chorus. The hunched devil glances sideways as something catches his eye. His turkey-jowled face wobbles in surprise as his palsied, liver-spotted hand plucks up an item.]
"Great googaly-moogaly!"
"What is it, Uncle Devil?"
"It's a cyber-punk story! I hain't seen one of these since I was but a young lad." says the floppy-faced old coot.
"What's siper punk?" asks the youth.
"Cyber-punk, ya rascal! It's what people twenty years ago thought the digital world would look like five years from now." says the old man. His hands, shaking either from excitement or nerve damage, turn the object over. The old man takes a long sniff of the thing, like a man savoring a cuban cigar.
"Do ya smell that? That's reeeeal fake-bushido, that is. And look here" the old man says, pointing and squinting "A monofilament sword! Haven't seen one of those since, since...[he shudders] Johnny Mnemonic."
"What's a Johnny Noo-mon-ick?" asks the boy.
"Pray you never find out, boy." The man's wobbly face takes on a pensive look. "Thing is," he continues, "this one doesn't seem to do anything new. Ohh, look there, it's kind of a wronged-woman revenge story. Ohh, she even has a cortex-bomb. It's hard to pick out at first, but see there. Woweee, that's classic.
"So the woman's being forced to do things against her will?" the boy inquires.
"Weeell, not really. Ya see, if this woman really believes so much in bushido, she kills herself before she does anything dishonorable. So her being held hostage by the bomb in her head deosn't really work."
"Oh."
"Yep," the old man says, carefully replacing the item.
"Aren't you going to buy it?"
"Nah, I'll just dig out my William Gibson books."
"What's a book?"
"It's the thing we had before podcasts."
--Forgive me, I had to do this.
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Sending a minion to exact revenge is the same as sending an expert gunslinger to take your place in duel that you instigated. But life is complicated and people aren't perfect. That was what I understood to be the author's intent.
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Could not get myself interested in the story no matter how hard I tried. I found the characters very obvious and almost cartoonish.
I love the cyberpunk genre but you also have to have a good story and a good character setup to make the story interesting.
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I did enjoy listening to the story, though I do agree with DadOfTwins that the characters were not particularly interesting, nor did they have any interesting decisions to make. Everything pretty much played out like you would expect. The more I thought about it, the more little holes opened up for me.
-I had the same response as bolddeceiver that the MC didn't think Tanuki's crime was worthy of humiliating herself and killing him, while I thought it was absolutely horrible.
-Seemed odd that someone who summon get a gang of yakuza to his defense wouldn't be more suspicious of hot women seducing him. Why didn't he hack her denkigami? Why wouldn't he do it just for fun? It could have been an interesting scene if he asked her to let him hack her for kinks and she had to deny him without arousing suspicion. Why didn't he at the end when he knew who she was?
-I'm uneasy with the idea that she killed her master. Based on my understanding of bushido (which is poor) it's all about loyalty. She has now stained her family's reputation more than whoring herself out to Tanuki did. I think she would have gotten bonus honor points by being able to debase herself in the service of her master. As it is she is treacherous and disloyal.
-I've lived in Japan for about 8 years now, and my wife is Japanese. I asked her opinion about a samurai killing his master, but then I had to explain the whole story to put the killing in context. She could not get around the samurai being a woman. I told her that it's the future, and the story dealt with that, but I could not convince her. This was a total deal-breaker. I never did get a straight answer regarding in what situation a samurai could kill his master.
I like the idea of samurai culture returning to Japan (as an idea for fiction. I wouldn't want to experience it). It would be interesting to compare a traditional samurai who was the product of generations of bushido, and a modern one who was new to the game. It would be interesting to compare a samurai of old who was loyal because of societal pressures to a future one who was loyal because his master could blow up his head at any moment. This story brought these questions up, but went for the bad-ass action rather than exploring them. But like I said, I did like the bad-ass action.
Found this reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kachi-kachi_Yama
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Maybe I answered my own question. Maybe there is no bushido is this story, and she is simply a slave assassin who has been deceived into thinking she's part of something bigger to make it easier to stomach the killing. Did she kill Yamagata at this point because she thought his revenge against Tanuki was unreasonable, or was this the first time she had disabled the denkigami?
A Japanese friend had once told me that all the bushido/loyalty business was invented by the Shogun in order to control the samurai. Previously samurai switched sides all the time depending on who was winning. Maybe this story is the latest iteration of the Japanese using bushido as propaganda. I don't have any evidence that this is the author's intent, but it's a possible reading unless I'm missing something.
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[an old blueeyeddevil strolls through the digital world, his rhuemy eyes rolling in their sockets like overboiled eggs, a bored youth walks beside him, clearly along to play Athenian chorus. The hunched devil glances sideways as something catches his eye. His turkey-jowled face wobbles in surprise as his palsied, liver-spotted hand plucks up an item.]
"Great googaly-moogaly!"
"What is it, Uncle Devil?"
"It's a cyber-punk story! I hain't seen one of these since I was but a young lad." says the floppy-faced old coot.
"What's siper punk?" asks the youth.
"Cyber-punk, ya rascal! It's what people twenty years ago thought the digital world would look like five years from now." says the old man. His hands, shaking either from excitement or nerve damage, turn the object over. The old man takes a long sniff of the thing, like a man savoring a cuban cigar.
"Do ya smell that? That's reeeeal fake-bushido, that is. And look here" the old man says, pointing and squinting "A monofilament sword! Haven't seen one of those since, since...[he shudders] Johnny Mnemonic."
"What's a Johnny Noo-mon-ick?" asks the boy.
"Pray you never find out, boy." The man's wobbly face takes on a pensive look. "Thing is," he continues, "this one doesn't seem to do anything new. Ohh, look there, it's kind of a wronged-woman revenge story. Ohh, she even has a cortex-bomb. It's hard to pick out at first, but see there. Woweee, that's classic.
"So the woman's being forced to do things against her will?" the boy inquires.
"Weeell, not really. Ya see, if this woman really believes so much in bushido, she kills herself before she does anything dishonorable. So her being held hostage by the bomb in her head deosn't really work."
"Oh."
"Yep," the old man says, carefully replacing the item.
"Aren't you going to buy it?"
"Nah, I'll just dig out my William Gibson books."
"What's a book?"
"It's the thing we had before podcasts."
--Forgive me, I had to do this.
This. Simply this.
I laughed out loud at the Johnny Mnemonic reference. And yes, that's what I thought when listening to the podcast, "I wonder if it pulls out of their thumbs...".
But cynicism and sarcasm aside, I do enjoy a good cyberpunk story every now and then, and this one was pretty good.
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Never try to break into Renraku Arcology. It is just not worth it.
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This one was pretty good, not what I'd call groundbreaking, but decent. The part that I liked best was the synesthesia fleshmod, and how it was tuned to be meaningful in the physical world, but random and distracting in the virtual world, a handicap rather than an advantage. The rest was okay. I don't claim to know much about Japanese culture, but I was surprised that she allowed herself to be used the way she was instead of an alternate route like suicide--and murdering her master at the end clashed with the entire honor system she claimed to uphold. She claims her honor would be sullied by disobeying him, but murdering him, oh that's totally okay?
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She claims her honor would be sullied by disobeying him, but murdering him, oh that's totally okay?
I don't recall that claim myself. My take was that the main reason she obeyed him throughout the story was because of the denkigami and in fact it was obeying him that sullied her honour, but she could do no other (except suicide by disobedience) because of the threat of it blowing up her head, mirroring her father's fate.
It wasn't until she learned how to hack the implant that she could restore her honour by killing the man who took it (and her father's).
That seemed to me to be the meat of the story. In traditional Japanese culture, the Samurai would serve with honour and could refuse to carry out a dishonourable command. It's possible, though I've reached the limit of my meagre knowledge and can't be certain, that the code of the Samurai required (ritual?) suicide if they did so. Or perhaps not, if refusing a dishonourable command let them retain their honour.
Anyway, in the culture of the story, the Samurai's obedience is enforced, via the denkigami implant. So the Samurai's master doesn't have to consider whether or not their commands are honourable, and so his use of the Samurai devolves from defending his honour (whatever that entails) to plain revenge or worse. The Samurai doesn't like it, but can only opt out by dying, which might be honourable but not useful.
I like to think that she is going to go on and help other Samurai in the same situation so that they can regain their autonomy.
On a technical/website note (which I would save for a comment on the blog if I could), there's a problem with the story link on the main website. There was an error when the story was posted and it was posted as episode 265 rather than 266. (I'm not criticizing the error; stuff happens.)
Subsequently, the story title got fixed but because - as is standard in blog software - the link is based on the original title, it's still "ep-265-kachikachi-yama". I guess this is fine (if a bit confusing), except that the "Keep reading" link just above the 'fold' (or 'jump', if you prefer) links to "ep-266-kachikachi-yama", which is incorrect and broken.
If this issue gets fixed (or even if it doesn't, I suppose :) ), eytanz/Heradel, please feel free to remove these paragraphs from this post, as they don't add anything to the actual story discussion.
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Interesting story. I think the main thing that kept my interest was the setting. I thought the mixing of the old samurai traditions and more modern Japanese culture was really interesting. This synthesis was especially well created in the hacking element of the story.
That being said I found the plot to be somewhat predictable. I thought it was obvious that the protagonist would go and kill her former master at the end and that she would have very little trouble shaming her target. Perhaps the problem here was that the story lacked any real conflict; the protagonist never met with any real difficulty in her task.
Likewise her character was somewhat flat. A good character creates problems for themselves through their weaknesses and solve them by overcoming those weaknesses. The protagonist here has the main problem she has to overcome thrust upon her by no fault of her own, so she never has to do any introspection or self-discovery in order to overcome it - all she needs are the right tools, which she gains during the story. It seemed that the character was essentially the same at the end as she was at the beginning.
Others have mentioned the jarring way in which the protagonist doesn't react appropriately to the revelation of what exactly her victim did. It seemed like knowing it would make her hate him more given how despicable the act was.
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I like the idea of non-European Science Fiction and Fantasy, so thumbs up for that, but I think if you are going to do it, do it well. And I felt that this wasn't done well enough. It felt a little plastic, like the story hit the "Ethnic" wall and didn't want to surpass it. This is to remind authors who attempt this, that books aren't enough for research to pass those ethnic walls. You need to know real people too, so you know what walls you can crawl over.
I think I might have bought this story better if it were ninjitsu... but then I still need more from the characters beyond the honor code, which was a little dicey--I'm with the crowd on this one, the Japanese culture understanding and the character development seem weak. I needed more from the story and characters to feel attached.
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I don't recall that claim myself. My take was that the main reason she obeyed him throughout the story was because of the denkigami and in fact it was obeying him that sullied her honour, but she could do no other (except suicide by disobedience) because of the threat of it blowing up her head, mirroring her father's fate.
It wasn't until she learned how to hack the implant that she could restore her honour by killing the man who took it (and her father's).
If that's the case then I REALLY don't get the story. She claims to live by the code, this is evident because she complains about him whoring out his samurai. But she violates the code herself everyday by following dishonorable commands, so I'm less sure why I should be sympathetic about it. Yes, he has done wrong by putting her in this position, but she has control of her own actions if not her own fate. She murders her master at the first opportunity, but not because it is honorable, but because it is convenient. The code is irrelevant to her behavior, so can she even really be called a samurai?
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I looked up Kachikachi Yama, to see what it was from, apparently it is an old tale:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kachi-kachi_Yama (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kachi-kachi_Yama)
Interesting ideas there, especially the details of the tanuki's original crime. I can see the connection here with the story about revenge against a tanuki.
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Hey guys! I've been listening to Escape Pod for about a year now, and the inclusion of the feedback got me to start haunting the boards a couple months ago, but I've never posted before. I must say, I've always been enlightened, challenged, and amused by the discussions that go on here!
I actually really liked this story, I think mostly because at the moment I'm right in the middle of reading Shogun (by James Clavell). It's set in feudal Japan, circa 1600 A.D. and has been a fascinating look into that tradition. To address a couple concerns that were raised already, assuming that Shogun gives a reasonable representation of samurai culture, I thought that it was perfectly reasonable that the main character A) was a female samurai and B) was plotting against her master.
I do agree that the characters were all fairly cookie cutter, and it would have been nice to see more complexity of feeling boiling behind the veneer of her self control. On the whole though, I was really caught up in the idea of combining this feudal culture that I've been immersed in with the cyberpunk aspects of the story and so was sad when it ended.
:)
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Hey guys! I've been listening to Escape Pod for about a year now, and the inclusion of the feedback got me to start haunting the boards a couple months ago, but I've never posted before. I must say, I've always been enlightened, challenged, and amused by the discussions that go on here!
I actually really liked this story, I think mostly because at the moment I'm right in the middle of reading Shogun (by James Clavell). It's set in feudal Japan, circa 1600 A.D. and has been a fascinating look into that tradition. To address a couple concerns that were raised already, assuming that Shogun gives a reasonable representation of samurai culture, I thought that it was perfectly reasonable that the main character A) was a female samurai and B) was plotting against her master.
I do agree that the characters were all fairly cookie cutter, and it would have been nice to see more complexity of feeling boiling behind the veneer of her self control. On the whole though, I was really caught up in the idea of combining this feudal culture that I've been immersed in with the cyberpunk aspects of the story and so was sad when it ended.
:)
Have you listened to Escape Pod 192: "Sumo21"? You might get a kick out of that one, infinite parallel Japan's sumos dueling in a shared virtual world.
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Like quite a few of the posters before me, I wasn't sold on the story's premises of honor and duty; not because of an inherent prejudice of mine, but because the story itself sent rather mixed messages.
Partially this felt intentional. I think the narrator was supposed to be unreliable - believing in a fantasy of honor when she's really nothing more than a slave, with a bomb in her head ensuring her obedience. The problem is, as was also pointed out before, if she really believed in the honor system she should have taken her own life (just like her father did) before debasing herself. And the ending seems to indicate that the only thing that kept her obeying her own rules was that she was forced to.
So, is this a story trying to create a deliberate irony, about a slave who entertains an illusion of honor until it no longer suits her? If so, it did so in a confused way, introducing the huge red herring of her gender into the fray. I guess the fact that she was a woman gave her a crutch - when she says early on "he treats me as a woman first, samurai second" (or something to this effect), she is denying the reality that her would treat any samurai with equal disdain. Perhaps. But the story doesn't really give us the information we need.
Similarly, the action bit at the end felt like a distraction. Cool fighting moves, an underestimated single heroine who manages to fight a bunch of Yakuza (but spare the life of the one who's a schoolkid)? That belongs in the land of pulpy action movies (in fact, it felt like an abridged version of the last part of Kill Bill volume 1). Now, Kill Bill itself is a brilliant film that uses the conventions of pulp action to actually say something profound about violence. Is this story aiming at the same? That makes no sense, as most of the first half is devoted almost exclusively to her complaints at her treatment, and the action scene comes late and, as I said, feels out of place.
So, at the end, this story was simply deeply unsatisfying to me. I'm not sure what it was trying to do, but unless it was trying to make me confused and unhappy about it, I don't think it succeeded.
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This was a satisfying story, made more enjoyable by Lauren Harris's excellent reading. I loved her vocal characterizations. The highlight of Kachikachi Yama was the description of the virtual hacker battlefield, filled with Oni demons and paper, scissor, rock tactics. If this short story were to be reinterpreted into a novel, I'd like the narrative to spend more time with the hackers.
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Have you listened to Escape Pod 192: "Sumo21"? You might get a kick out of that one, infinite parallel Japan's sumos dueling in a shared virtual world.
I actually haven't listened to that one, it looks like I started listening just a few episodes later. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll definitely check it out! :)
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Hey guys! I've been listening to Escape Pod for about a year now, and the inclusion of the feedback got me to start haunting the boards a couple months ago, but I've never posted before. I must say, I've always been enlightened, challenged, and amused by the discussions that go on here!
... and this is why having feedback in the episodes is a good idea.
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Hey guys! I've been listening to Escape Pod for about a year now, and the inclusion of the feedback got me to start haunting the boards a couple months ago, but I've never posted before. I must say, I've always been enlightened, challenged, and amused by the discussions that go on here!
... and this is why having feedback in the episodes is a good idea.
Agreed! :)
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Have you listened to Escape Pod 192: "Sumo21"? You might get a kick out of that one, infinite parallel Japan's sumos dueling in a shared virtual world.
I actually haven't listened to that one, it looks like I started listening just a few episodes later. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll definitely check it out! :)
No problem! And when you get a chance to listen to that one, don't be shy about posting in that comment thread too. :)
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One thing that made me giggle. When Tanuki was trying to get into the Zaibatsu and failing, all I could think was "Magikarp used Splash! But Nothing Happened!" and giggled a little. Was I the only one who made that connection?
Yes! I honestly thought it was a Magikarp at first!
As a former student of Japanese, I was definitely sucked into this story and I really appreciated the narrator's correct pronunciation of the Japanese words. I really liked the idea of a female Samurai in this steampunk setting... I wish the story had gone into just a little more detail about the body mods and the virtual world, but overall I liked the weave and pacing of the story.
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One thing that made me giggle. When Tanuki was trying to get into the Zaibatsu and failing, all I could think was "Magikarp used Splash! But Nothing Happened!" and giggled a little. Was I the only one who made that connection?
Yes! I honestly thought it was a Magikarp at first!
As a former student of Japanese, I was definitely sucked into this story and I really appreciated the narrator's correct pronunciation of the Japanese words. I really liked the idea of a female Samurai in this steampunk setting... I wish the story had gone into just a little more detail about the body mods and the virtual world, but overall I liked the weave and pacing of the story.
Ha, I looked up Magikarp and realized I'd seen it before in Super Smash Bros. You can throw pokeballs to summon random pokemon, and most of them are badass in some way or another, except for magikarp which flops around ineffectually for a while and then disappears. :D
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I really appreciated the narrator's correct pronunciation of the Japanese words.
wait, tanuki is pronounced ta-NOOK-ee not ta-NA-kee. right?
that was bugging me through the whole story.
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I really appreciated the narrator's correct pronunciation of the Japanese words.
wait, tanuki is pronounced ta-NOOK-ee not ta-NA-kee. right?
that was bugging me through the whole story.
As I understand it, the first syllable is the stressed one. TA-nu-ki.
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tanuki (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2jAIKnTIB4)
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This was the first episode I listened to since I discovered Escape Pod
I am not going to get into much detail - suffice to say I found it a good listen.
I will say the reader was very good and made it interesting - I have found other readers of other episodes since, more difficult to follow and have at time had to rewind a few times to get in to the story.
I am now starting at EP250 onwards and then when caught up will start to hit the back catalogue
Thanks for a great resource
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This was the first episode I listened to since I discovered Escape Pod
I am not going to get into much detail - suffice to say I found it a good listen.
I will say the reader was very good and made it interesting - I have found other readers of other episodes since, more difficult to follow and have at time had to rewind a few times to get in to the story.
I am now starting at EP250 onwards and then when caught up will start to hit the back catalogue
Thanks for a great resource
Hi neltek! Welcome to the podcast and the forums. I'm glad you're enjoying what you're hearing. Looking forward to hearing what you think of other episodes :)
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I enjoyed this one because it wasn't really about Tanuki or Yamagata, it was about one woman's journey discovering her own freedom, self worth, and humanity in a really bad ass way. I would have liked a little more description of this world, mainly cause I was interested in how this world functioned, but it worked for the story. Two thumbs up.
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I didn't really love this one. At first I thought it was because I'm not a big Japanophile - I like anime and Exalted as much as the next guy, but it's not my favorite set of cultural and aesthetic themes - but then I remembered that I really loved Sumo 21, so that's clearly not it. I think what it was, as some people have already pointed out, that the characters just weren't very sympathetic. I don't need to like all the characters - I'm a fan of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and nobody likes him (wait, is that series still a forbidden topic? Or was that RPGnet? I don't remember...) - but I do find that I need to like someone in the story.
- I didn't like Tanuki; he was a jerk and borderline rapist, or at least some kind of sexual predator that we don't have a word for because we don't have the technology to go into an innocent woman's heads and make her screw for our amusement.
- I didn't like Yamagata, as I generally don't have a lot of respect or affection for rich, arrogant assholes.
- I didn't like what's-her-bucket the samurai. The fact that it was wounded pride and "honor" that made her finally decide to take her fate into her own hands, not the fifty-odd people she'd murdered for the sake of her egomaniac boss's dignity, made her about as execrable a person as Yamagata.
If Tanuki had been more likable, I could have enjoyed his rise and fall - as it was, I was just happy to see him leave the stage. If the samurai had been more likable, I would have really enjoyed this story. I can't imagine how the story would have worked if Yamagata were likable, so I'll leave that possibility aside.
In short, I think I would have more enjoyed a story about the samurai's father, who (if I recall correctly) died for refusing an unjust, rather than merely undignified, order.
That said, I did enjoy the cyberpunk world that the author presented us with. It was an interesting version of an old world, one that I greatly enjoyed getting to see. The Dokigama (or however I'm supposed to spell that) and its various avatars and representations was fun. I even more enjoyed the images of he various weirdly flesh-modded inhabitants of the real world, from the anime-style flesh artists with huge eyes to the creepy, skinny, long-limbed gothic lolitas. Very weird and evocative.
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...doppel-posts vill be bred und schlautered.... ;D
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Have you listened to Escape Pod 192: "Sumo21"? You might get a kick out of that one, infinite parallel Japan's sumos dueling in a shared virtual world.
I actually haven't listened to that one, it looks like I started listening just a few episodes later. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll definitely check it out! :)
Do! Sumo 21 really stands out in my memory as an awesome story. Wonderful stuff.
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I enjoyed this one, like I enjoy a comfy old recliner. Yeah, there are cracks in the leather, a few busted springs, there's that one stain that just won't come out, but gosh darn, is it comfy, and good for a satisfying nap.
There were flaws to this story, but I just don't care. Cyberpunk is one of my favorite genres, and this fit in the mold quite nicely.
I may need to go back and listen again, but I think I like this one better than Sumo21. I'm a HUGE sumo fan, so I was expecting a little more out of that story than I got, if I remember right.
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I'm a HUGE sumo fan...
Pun?
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I'm a HUGE sumo fan...
Pun?
Argh, no, just poor word choice. :P ;D
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This has some nostalgic appeal, no doubt, for an old lover of cyberpunk there are many pleasant images flashing over my retina implants. I agree that it was also very well read. But just as it was a pleasure to get that 80s cyberpunk kick the japanese setting felt a bit like a rehash of a certain set of cultural prejudices towards Japan (honor, samurai, geishas etc.) picked up from the same era, and the plot run through just as expected except perhaps that 'happy end'. As a summary, it worked, but won't linger in my hard drive very long.
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I found this story really enjoyable. I've always liked the old-school Gibsonian cyberpunk, and this was a very pleasant revisit to the genre. I didn't really have a problem with any of the characters, and to be honest I respected that the protagonist was a hardcore practitioner of bushido rather than some toned-down pokemon version of it. I know a lot of people have chimed in on the immorality of her (and other characters) but to me it seems to be an invalid comparison, as we are judging the feudal bushido code of ethics by our modern moral standards. To her, a lot of us would probably seem like free-loading parasites that don't stand for any cause, waste our lives away with frivolity, and contribute nothing of value to society.
I do have a tiny complaint about the twist at the end, as it falls into the hackneyed convention of treating hackers and hacking like a deus ex machina. It's gotten to a point where "hacking" has become synonymous in science fiction with "magic". Got a brain-implant that's hair-triggered with enough explosive to turn your head into a Jackson Pollock painting? Solve it with "hacking"!!! Never mind that any real world military-grade tech of that caliber would most definitely have some hard-wired anti-tampering device to prevent such removal... because y'know implanting your army of cyber-enhanced ninja assassins with remote kill-switches that can be hacked by anyone that just took a 3 week crash-course makes complete sense.
Personally, I think it would have made a better ending (more bad-ass bushido-esque) if the protagonist had just cut off Yamagata's head with the full knowledge that her own death would follow microseconds afterwards.
Oh and on the subject of Japanese Goth Lolitas:
http://www.google.com/images?q=japanese+goth+lolita&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1366&bih=679 (http://www.google.com/images?q=japanese+goth+lolita&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1366&bih=679)
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I do have a tiny complaint about the twist at the end, as it falls into the hackneyed convention of treating hackers and hacking like a deus ex machina. It's gotten to a point where "hacking" has become synonymous in science fiction with "magic". Got a brain-implant that's hair-triggered with enough explosive to turn your head into a Jackson Pollock painting? Solve it with "hacking"!!! Never mind that any real world military-grade tech of that caliber would most definitely have some hard-wired anti-tampering device to prevent such removal... because y'know implanting your army of cyber-enhanced ninja assassins with remote kill-switches that can be hacked by anyone that just took a 3 week crash-course makes complete sense.
Personally, I think it would have made a better ending (more bad-ass bushido-esque) if the protagonist had just cut off Yamagata's head with the full knowledge that her own death would follow microseconds afterwards.
I totally agree with that complaint about hacking as magic. Used way way too often that way. And I would've liked the story way better if it had ended as you describe.
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I'm not sure if anyone's posted it, but I found this on wikipedia that provides some additional insight on the title of the story.
The trouble-making tanuki
As the story goes, a man caught a troublesome tanuki in his fields, and tied it to a tree to kill and cook it later. When the man left for town, the tanuki cried and begged the man's wife to set him free, promising never to bother the fields again. The wife freed the animal, only to have it turn on her and kill her. The tanuki then planned a foul trick.
Using its shapeshifting abilities, the tanuki disguised itself as the wife and cooked a soup, using the dead woman's flesh. When the man came home, the tanuki served him the soup. After the meal, the tanuki reverted to its original appearance and revealed its treachery before running off and leaving the poor man in shock and grief.
Enter the rabbit
The couple had been good friends with a rabbit that lived nearby. The rabbit approached the man and told him that it would avenge his wife's death. Pretending to befriend the tanuki, the rabbit instead tortured it through various means, from dropping a bee's nest on it to 'treating' the stings with a peppery poultice that burned.
The title of the story comes from the especially painful trick that the rabbit played. While the tanuki was carrying a heavy load of kindling on his back to make a campfire for the night, he was so burdened that he did not immediately notice when the rabbit set fire to the kindling. Soon, the crackling sound reached its ears and it asked the rabbit what the sound was. "It is Kachi-Kachi Yama" the rabbit replied. "We are not far from it, so it is no surprise that you can hear it!". Eventually, the fire reached the tanuki's back, burning it badly, but without killing it.
Boat of mud
The tanuki challenged the rabbit to a life or death contest to prove who was the better creature. They were each to build a boat and race across a lake in them. The rabbit carved its boat out of a fallen tree trunk, but the foolish tanuki made a boat of mud.
The two competitors were evenly matched at first, but the tanuki's mud boat began dissolving in the middle of the lake. As the tanuki was failing in its struggle to stay afloat, the rabbit proclaimed its friendship with the human couple, and that this was the tanuki's punishment for its horrible deeds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kachi-kachi_Yama
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Sheesh... the tanuki in Pom Poko weren't so nasty.
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Bushido/Samurai code may not have been as homogenous as a lot of us think:
] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushido)[/url]The first person to popularize the term bushidō in the west was Japanese author Nitobe Inazō (a converted Quaker living in Philadelphia who married an American) in his 1899 book Bushidō: The Soul of Japan, which was originally written and published in English and only later translated into Japanese.
Codes they had to adhere to varied wildly between different times and eras anyway, and I believe (if I remember my Japanese history class) they were sort of a house thing. One lord might have a set of rules for his samurai, unique to him.
] (http://thegoldeneggs.wordpress.com/)[/url]The results of any research into the subject reveal limited evidence of honour (by Western standards) in samurai culture. Prior to the Tokugawa era, the only notable attempt to corral a strict set of samurai values can be attributed to Hojo Soun (1432? – 1519) who wrote “Lord Soun’s Twenty-One Articles”, a number of lessons directed at regulating the behaviour of samurai retainers. Hojo Soun’s work was before its time, though, and a prevalent structure of samurai values would not be solidified for many years to come.
Yet even when samurai ideals became most rigid, it seems likely that more so than any written code, it was a new brand of Confucianism which gained popularity in the Tokugawa era that inspired much of the samurai ethics as we know them today. Neo-Confucianism put loyalty at the very core of its ideology and promoted rationalism, social harmony, and learning.
With regard to the more open-ended matter of honour itself, ... it became exceedingly important in the late stages of samurai history, ironically in a time of peace; the Tokugawa era, wherein it prominently factored into political and social conduct. However, our Western conception of ‘honour’ did not mean very much to the samurai at any point in time as far as the conduct of battle was concerned. The samurai valued practicality above all else. In war they would frequently break truces, ambush opponents, attack in the middle of the night, and make use of any deception that would give them the edge. The concept of honour, as we see it in the relatively honest conduct of warfare in medieval Europe did not have an equivalent in Japanese culture.
Basically, honor codes and whatnot became more important the more Samurai became a bureaucratic noble class and the less they had to do with being warriors.
Anyway, my thoughts on the story: Hated it. It did nothing for me. It wasn't exciting, it didn't inspire any deep thoughts, suspense, surprise, or emotion at all. I could forget the setting by tomorrow, and it should have been an interesting one. I took Japanese, I'm interested in these things, so how did it lose me? Maybe because I've read cyberpunk before, reducing the novelty value to zero here. OMG he had a computer interface in his neck!!1!
I have the same problems with the overtly rape-y crime being trivial, the hacking-as-magic, and the nonsensical code of honor, but my main problem is with the central character:
Yuriko does an amazingly small amount of thinking about honor for how much she claims to be bound by it. Maybe that is the point, that it is fear of death keeping her in line rather than any devotion or honor, and she takes her first escape when she has the chance, but why kill Tanuki then? Especially given how haunted she's supposed to be by previous kills. She shows none of the personal growth it's implied she should be showing, she neither finally understands honor (would probably require her dying at the end, a better story) or finally renounces the whole thing, tells tradition to go to hell, and does what she thinks is right (also a better story). Committing to either resolution would be fine, but the author, like Yuriko, can't seem to figure out which way to go. There is no emotional resolution besides a touch of revenge, and it seems like we're expected to see her growing, but she is still stuck in limbo.
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Bushido/Samurai code may not have been as homogenous as a lot of us think:
I'm not a Japanese History scholar, but I think this is a case of a philosophy elevated to that of an ideal (especially by later-comers during the industrialization/modernization of Meiji Japan as a way of clinging onto beliefs). I believe a similar thing is true of European Chivalry.
Maybe that is the point, that it is fear of death keeping her in line rather than any devotion or honor, and she takes her first escape when she has the chance, but why kill Tanuki then?
I seemed to remember that she spared the Tanuki's life. And yes, I do agree: by the standards of Bushido, what she did at the end was ludicrously dishonorable.
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I guess this one didn't really stick to me. As I listened, I couldn't help thinking "Oh, look, another Japanese story about a female assassin made to seduce a guy and then killing her boss and setting herself free." I didn't really get anything new out of this.
Although I may check out Sumo21. That sounds interesting.
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Maybe that is the point, that it is fear of death keeping her in line rather than any devotion or honor, and she takes her first escape when she has the chance, but why kill Tanuki then?
I seemed to remember that she spared the Tanuki's life. And yes, I do agree: by the standards of Bushido, what she did at the end was ludicrously dishonorable.
She may as well have killed him. She rendered him forever incapable of hacking or doing anything in virtual, which seemed to be what he lived for.
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Having lived in Japan, and knowing Japanese pretty well, this story was painful to listen to.