Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Eccentric Family 2
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AholePony
 Posts: 330 Location: Arizona |
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I agree, I feel like he sees her as this unobtainable dream, and wants to keep it that way. If he solves the vexing illusion that is Benten, it would ruin the allure. The rub with shipping him with kaisei is that his brother is in love with her... it seems in character for yasaburo to maintain a distance for his brother's sake because he certainly isn't in love with her, at least not yet. |
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One-Eye
 Posts: 2261 |
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Doesn't the ED sort of suggest this. The lyrics and imagery go something about chasing her even when she's hurt, but she's always flying away and therefore beyond him or unattainable? The last image is of her staring at the moon sitting atop a tower far above and away from Yasaburo who is rowing a boat. Rowing takes a lot of physical work and she is sitting at the summit of a very high point. She is definitely his moon (she's connected to it in the image after all), but like the moon physically unattainable. It definitely feels at this point like unrequited love to me.
So, I think her feelings toward Akadama might be complicated and doesn't lend itself to necessarily wanting to do him a good turn. It also might take away her claim as heir to Akadama, right? |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23761 |
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Okay, good, people have picked up on Yasaburo's "love from afar" for Benten. I do think it's obvious but the comments I was reading before didn't seem to indicate that level of awareness.
I had forgotten that the Frog Brother (I assume?) was in love with Kaisei. I haven't seen the first season since it was broadcast. I guess I should have rewatched in prep for this season. However, I don't think it matters. Kaisei is in love with Yasaburo. Of course, in true anime fashion I doubt any relationship will ever be resolved onscreen but I feel if they ever did, Kaisei and Yasaburo would end up together, eventually. Yasaburo does have a role to play in the presumptive attempt by Benten to reconcile the Master and his son, but I would be wary of dismissing Benten's own involvement in the attempt. As I say, I think that at least one of the purposes of her trip was to draw Nidaime back to Kyoto and I think it is to help resolve the issue with the Master before he dies. Benten is capricious but she's hauled Yasaburo's chestnuts out of the fire twice now this season, so her willingness to help those close to her shouldn't be underestimated. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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At this point I really have to ask, what is the friday club anyway? Soun was desperate to get into it...for some reason... why? Sometime they seem like normal human with little connection to the spiritual world, and the next they just have car that have outside hot spring in them. Is asking for a coherent plot too much and I'm just supposed to ignore basic logic?
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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The point of the Friday club is to eat tanuki hot pot. Soun wanted his revenge against tanuki society for banishing him essentially, and what better way than join a club where the point is to eat his own kind? When it comes to interiors being much larger than would be expected from their exteriors among other things, one must ignore basic logic in this show. The motivations of the characters is not one of them. At this point I really have to ask, how did you miss those two points? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11340 |
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Jurōjin didn't shoot him, Tenmaya did. And I'm pretty sure that rifle belongs to Nidaime, not Jurōjin, who 99.99% certainly got it from Tenmaya. As I said before, it's a Chekov's rifle that would just keep on being fired, though I never imagined it would be used like this. I think 3 stacked double-deckers would be a sextuple-decker.  And I am now more convinced than ever that Jurōjin is a tengu.
Well. I didn't think I would shed a tear over Soun's death of all characters, but damn if EC didn't manage to wring a couple out of me. Those little dragon stones were really pretty, though coming from Soun I kept expecting them to be nefarious in some way. This series never ceases to leave me stunned in one way or another. |
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Merida
 Posts: 1945 |
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A lesser show would have milked that scene for drama and i don't think that would have worked for me. But the sad yet calm mood made it a lot more poignant. In the end, heroes and villains alike are all just furballs and all furballs go to Heaven. |
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One-Eye
Posts: 2261 |
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I wasn't expecting Soun to bite it and I wasn't expecting his being thwarted from joining the Friday Club so soon. I was surprised and the tone was decidedly different from the mischievous quality the show often has. I maybe recalling wrong, but this season feels more wide ranging and even with the emotions it doles out as compared to the first season. This episode was more somber and it was played very well. Soun's end was pitiful which made it sad. His one last grasping attempt at power without realizing that he was a small time thug in comparison to the evil that is Jyurojin. All these characters that are struggling with their natures in this show. Soun was maybe too ambitious, too greedy and too serious for a Tanuki.
And Benten! What is she doing hanging out with Jyurojin? What game is she playing at? Roping Yasaburo into the club has to be more than a mischievous prank on her part. Someone said that maybe Jyurojin is also a Tengu, which has some interesting possibilities. Maybe the Nidaime's return wasn't wholly on a whim? I am intrigued and wondering if the show will actually play with the power conflicts or if it will keep it peripheral and stick to interpersonal stuff. An excellent episode. 
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23761 |
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No doubt this show is drenched in a Bhuddist/Shinto ethos which, if I understood it, would no doubt help me make sense of things. Sadly, as an atheist who nonetheless has absorbed the Judeo-Christian tenets by osmosis, Yasaburo's attitude towards Benten and the Friday Night Club that exists purely to eat his kind mystifies me. These people ate his father and yet he doesn't appear particularly chuffed about it. I guess that's refective of a certain kind of Bhuddist que sera sera mentality?
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鳳凰の王
 Posts: 28 |
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I think this has less to do with religious ethos than a natural understanding of the insurmountable hierarchy existing between different organisms. As people, even lower ones can imagine becoming higher ones by hard work, or by whatever the socioeconomic system manage to persuade them to do. As a low hierarchy animal that can not hope to ascend to a higher one, tanukis have no trouble in accepting that higher hierarchy species have the natural right to consume them. The closest equivalent would be the relation between man and god, I suppose, albeit one of the party may be considered as a construction of the other, depending on one's propensity. The point is that the beliefs of a higher being cannot be understood by the lower, and as such no immorality can be assigned to them by the lower organism. So I think the miscomprehension here is rooted in considering tanukis from the perspective of them being humans. |
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SnowyLightning44
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After watching episode 8 and thinking back on it, I realized just how much info is packed into this episode alone, also without feeling rushed or skipping over anything and still having an emotional impact; I feel that very little shows manage to do that so well so it was quite impressive.
To be honest I thought a lot about what would be the reason Kaisei doesn't go in front of Yasaburo but the possibility of it being for the reason given never actually crossed my mind but now it makes most sense as it really cements the notion of them being connected by "the red fur of fate". |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23761 |
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@ 鳳凰の王 - I can buy what you have written, but I wonder if that attitude is itself a manifestation of some Bhuddhist/Shinto tenet. Due to my ignorance of both religions, I have no way of knowing. It's also not a construction that I find particularly satisfying. Tanukis, power-wise, are definitely on the bottom of the tengu-human-tanuki pyramid, but they are sentient creatures capable of human emotions. The sort of effacement that you postulate doesn't resonate with me pyschologically even as I can believe the show is consciously dramatizing it.
I really enjoyed Episode 8. The family feud has been wrapped up, Yajiro was able to join the family with Gyokuran in attendance, we saw Yashiro in his lab, saw an exchange between Benten and Nidaime, found out that Yajiro is going off on a journey and most significantly and poignantly of all, we found out Kaisei's secret. A jam-packed episode, indeed. |
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鳳凰の王
Posts: 28 |
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Obviously various religious and moral ideologies have been mixed to the point of mutual interdependence in the Far East, but I think you will have more luck looking at Confucianism rather than Buddhism and Shinto for any influence to character behavior. Two of the relevant tenets of Confucianism are, that there is a prescribed order in the universe, and that one's social superior should be respected. Accepting that tengus are superior beings to tanukis, and therefore they must be respected and cannot be held to the morality of tanukis, are a consequences of such beliefs. Filial piety and loyalty to one's natural superiors, are also parts of the Confucian morality. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23761 |
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Interesting point. I hadn't even thought of Confucianism, to be honest. I would love to see a well-researched article on what the philosophic/religious underpinnings of The Eccentric Family may be.
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15457 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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I have been shipping Yasaburo with Kaisei for ages, and more specifically as against Benten because she is horrible and horrible for Yasaburo. Their fighting seems among the fun parts of the show in terms of relationships. And I am not sure what the discovery of Yasaburo's transformation weakness may mean for that.
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