Back from my longer-than-intended break and
ready to really focus on Sangokushi for the rest of the year, to the detriment of my plans for other projects. Expect pretty much a chapter every day unless they're really long as in 50 pages or more, in which case, every other day.
*VOLUME 42 NOW COMPLETE!
Downloads:
Sangokushi c287: Sendspace
Sangokushi v42: Mega; Mediafire; Sendspace
For all previous Sangokushi volumes: Mega; Mediafire
Ugh, the double whammy volume... Always a painful reminder back to my childhood when I first read the story and had to see my beloved heroes die one by one. Liu Feng might be trying to be sensible, but I still think he made the wrong call here.
As Sun Tzu says, always leave your enemy an escape path.
Poor Lu Meng. Rises to glory and is immediately struck down.
Liu Bei makes a good point. Did Sun Quan or Zhang Zhao seriously think that handing the head over to Wei would magically make Liu Bei forget about Wu? He's not a fucking goldfish.
There really are trees with saps that look like blood. It's no wonder you find all sorts of myths and tree worship across cultures.
Hua Tuo's fate in RotK is a little different from his historical end as recorded in Sanguozhi (Records of the Three Kingdoms). You can read that for yourself in his
wikipedia page if you're interested. Also, a curious note to mention is that both the Moss Roberts and Brewitt-Taylor translations seems to have translated Qing Nang Shu (
青囊書) as the "Book of the Black Bag." I'm quite baffled why this is so, since the Chinese character Qing refers to any number of shades in the blue-green spectrum, depending on the context, but never black. Maybe I'm missing some super-obscure Chinese cultural reference where Qing can also be black, but I've translated it as "Book of the Green Satchel" for this manga.
RIP. It really would've been only too easy for him to proclaim a new dynasty had he really wanted. He really did pride himself as a second King Wen of Zhou.
Every time I think about how much of a pain it was to deal with all those era names, especially if you lived during the reign of a fickle monarch, I realize that Japan still uses the imperial era system...
Talk about an overreaction. You'd think his father would've taught him to be a little more like his old man.
Hua Xin does not fuck around. Meanwhile, I have to deal with a huge opinion hit every time I try to kill my brothers in CK2.
Dun dun dun. That completes the volume!
Individual Chapters:
Sangokushi c276: Sendspace
Sangokushi c277: Sendpace
Sangokushi c278: Sendspace
Sangokushi c279: Sendspace
Sangokushi c280: Sendspace
Sangokushi c281: Sendspace
Sangokushi c282: Sendspace
Sangokushi c283: Sendspace
Sangokushi c284: Sendspace
Sangokushi c285: Sendspace
Sangokushi c286: Sendspace
Sangokushi c287: Sendspace
"...ready to really focus on Sangokushi for the rest of the year, to the detriment of my plans for other projects. Expect pretty much a chapter every day unless they're really long as in 50 pages or more, in which case, every other day."
ReplyDeleteWait, am I reading this right? You mean you're keeping that pace for the rest of the year?! So then this is like with Tomorrow's Joe - you're gonna focus on it till it's done...
Well, good luck!
Yeah, pretty much. Might take a few short breaks here and there, but I really do want to wrap this project up. This is already my 6th year since starting it, and I'd like to finish either in 2015 or early 2016.
DeleteDamned, You are good!
ReplyDeleteYou can do it Hox! Maybe 2016 will finally be the year I'll marathon Sangokushi!
ReplyDeleteHow many chapters are there in total?
ReplyDeleteDon't know, since the chapter numbers aren't listed. But estimating 8 chapters of ~20 page lengths per ~200 page-long volume, that would be... 144 more chapters to go after I finish volume 42.
DeleteSangokushi is 60 volumes in case you weren't aware.
I'm pretty behind on this, but I'm really excited to get current again!! Good luck with finishing! Just wanted to say that you are very cool, and I really like your taste in manga, and your thoughts posts are always interesting. Do you have personal blog or anything that focuses more on stuff you read that you feel comfortable sharing? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteNo, this is the only blog I keep. If I ever feel like talking about stuff I've read or watched, I'll do it here, like I recently did with the Many Thoughts on Actual Books post.
DeleteIf there's something you specifically want me to address, you can suggest the topic and I'll see if I feel like doing so.
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who's kinda baffled by the manga treatment of supernatural and folklore additions?
ReplyDeleteOn one hand you have the complete untouched inclusion of stuff like Zuo Ci's crazy Tao magic, on the other there's the attempt to give some sense of historicity to other weird later myths with no actual historical base of whatsoever.
I'm ok with not having Guan Yu's vengeful spirit wreaking havoc for years after his death (although I would have liked the original deification myth even better), but Yokoyama's gimmicks still seem pretty cheesy to me and plain wrong from the educational standpoint they seem to take on
Also, what's with Kongming calling Liu Bei effeminate for excessively mourning his brother? Leaving aside how the adaption is trying to further downplay Guan Yu's faults in the fall of Jingzhou, there's a pretty horrible wording there (due cultural differences between ancient China and Japan maybe?).
Good question, and it's one that I've wondered myself as well. I think that if there is a logic to Yokoyama's inclusion of what should be left as magic, and what should be more "historicized," it'd be the element of Taoism. It was often thought by many Chinese that Taoists were more in tune with the supernatural, and this is reflected by many myths and legends of Taoist masters using magic. It's possible that Yokoyama wanted to preserve Taoism as this "mystic religion" by keeping all magical-Taoist references in, hence why we get Zuo Ci or Gan Ji, but the event regarding the Buddhist monk and Guan Yu's spirit is heavily curtailed. That Zhuge Liang is never really emphasized as being a Taoist and his "magical winds" feat during the Red Cliffs was toned down may in part be explained by this theory. I'll probably write a little more about this on my inevitable Some Thoughts on Sangokushi post once I finish the series.
DeleteAs for the effeminate criticism, I'm a little confused as to why you think the wording is bad. It's true that in the original novel, the characters openly mourning and weeping is in no way a sign of femininity, and Yokoyama isn't afraid to show his characters weeping either. But while mourning and weeping after one's death is proper, uncontrolled mourning is not. Liu Bei was almost in a state of depressive self-destruction by not eating anything at all for 3 days, hence in the Brewitt-Taylor translation, Kongming tells Liu Bei to "control your grief." I'm no expert in gender identities of late Han-china, but I don't think it's presumptuous to say that inability to control grief is considered more feminine than is masculine in most cultures. On an interesting side note, it's also why a huge list of psychological disorders just got lumped as female hysteria, until relatively recently.
Well, I mostly just found the "effeminate" part somewhat humorous considering how westerner are usually surprised by the amount of tears shed by the three brothers and I wondered if it was the same for Japanese readers.
DeleteThen again, I'm definitely no expert in Late-Han gender identity either, but this remark still seems way too heavy and tactless to me.
I mean, the actual guy had sentenced a man to death just for pointing out his lack of beard, striking his pride as a man when he has just lost the only thing he valued higher than his filial duty to the Han doesn't look like something that can be casually ignored.