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Tenchi
Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4472
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
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 Posted: Mon May 16, 2016 1:58 am
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So, I'm a week behind watching new episodes because I'm too cheap/poor to pay for a Funimation subscription, but, I guess, Natsu is the closest thing Kumade Village has to a mayor?
Is it something to do with how the Ainu venerate bears, making him kind of a village elder despite him only apparently being about the same age as Machi?
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wastrel
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Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 12:42 am
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| Tenchi wrote: | | So, I'm a week behind watching new episodes because I'm too cheap/poor to pay for a Funimation subscription, but, I guess, Natsu is the closest thing Kumade Village has to a mayor?
Is it something to do with how the Ainu venerate bears, making him kind of a village elder despite him only apparently being about the same age as Machi? |
I think it has more to do with, as he is a talking bear, which could only happen by the will of the (mountain?) gods, then he's seen as sort of a representative of the gods. That gives what he says a certain weight.
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JaggedAuthor
Joined: 27 Oct 2014
Posts: 981
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Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 1:02 am
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Given how disdainful she is of most modern technology, I'm kind of surprised Machi wants to attend high school in Tokyo.
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Hiroki not Takuya
Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Posts: 2535
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Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 2:16 am
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| wastrel wrote: |
| Tenchi wrote: | | So, I'm a week behind watching new episodes because I'm too cheap/poor to pay for a Funimation subscription, but, I guess, Natsu is the closest thing Kumade Village has to a mayor?
Is it something to do with how the Ainu venerate bears, making him kind of a village elder despite him only apparently being about the same age as Machi? |
I think it has more to do with, as he is a talking bear, which could only happen by the will of the (mountain?) gods, then he's seen as sort of a representative of the gods. That gives what he says a certain weight. |
My understanding from Wikipedia is that the Ainu believed Kim-un was god of mountains and bears so I'd suppose Natsu, a mountain-dwelling talking bear, would be considered a particularly special spokesman for Kim-un. However, veneration of bears was associated with bear-meat being a staple food of the Ainu and since they believed everything has a spirit, the Iomante ritual revolved around "selecting" a bear cub, raising it in a villager's home and generally treating it very well to adulthood as thanks to Kim-un, Said bear was then sacrificed so it's spirit would be "sent back" to Kim-un so it would report favorably on behalf of the villagers who killed other bears for food. Good thing for Natsu that Kumade village dropped that custom in the past apparently. This calls into the question the role Machi plays as a Miko, who in antiquity were supposed to become possessed of a local (ruling) spirit to make the will of the spirits known. The Ainu didn't have Miko per-se, being Shinto in origin, though they had shamen which performed some similar rituals so I guess here, as in some parts of Japan, the religious practices became combined. Also good thing for Machi is the apparent abandonment of the old practice of the Miko being impregnated by the local priest (Natsu??) to provide a baby for the local god...
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Just-another-face
Joined: 08 Feb 2014
Posts: 324
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Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 2:43 am
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| Hiroki not Takuya wrote: | | Don't you know, in situations like this, it's always the guy's fault. |
Considering Japan thinks anime women can never do wrong, even if they burn a building down or murder a famous person, it almost reeks of you-know-what. I'm not sure what planet they're living on, but it's certainly not this one.
| Quote: | | (The final segment, which includes an obnoxious "woman overreacts to a man being nice and accuses him of sexual harassment" joke, showed some signs of that.) |
Yeah, that part is just really stupid. And yet there never seems to be any instances of a man calling a woman out on sexually harassing him. Japan sure loves giving women free passes to be totally annoying in anime, yet if a man does something similar, he is either pegged as completely pathetic or he is instantly shamed by someone else for daring to accuse a woman of doing anything wrong. 
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Tenchi
Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4472
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
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Posted: Fri May 20, 2016 1:14 pm
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| JaggedAuthor wrote: | | So is there a possibility that Machi is actually older than Natsu (in human years, anyway)? I was under the impression that he was fully grown by the time she was born, but as this week's episode reveals, that clearly was not the case. |
It occurred to me that the anime isn't even that consistent with Natsu's relative size compared to Machi in flashbacks, since, in episode 3's flashback to Machi's "Johnny Pamyu Pamyu" incident, Machi is tiny while Natsu appears to be, if not his current size, almost there.
| JaggedAuthor wrote: | | Given how disdainful she is of most modern technology, I'm kind of surprised Machi wants to attend high school in Tokyo. |
I think Machi's problems with technology are secondary to her social anxiety, which is getting into Watamote territory (although played more slapstick than the relative realism of Tomoko Kuroki's pained interactions), especially when Machi is around people from outside Kumade village (which seems to only have a population of less than two dozen people and bears... well, one bear, come to think of it, where are all the other bears?).
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killjoy_the
Joined: 30 May 2015
Posts: 2460
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Posted: Fri May 20, 2016 8:49 pm
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| Quote: | | (The final segment, which includes an obnoxious "woman overreacts to a man being nice and accuses him of sexual harassment" joke, showed some signs of that.) |
To me that was one of the few times the sexual harassment gag actually felt right. The woman was clearly talking about the city, and is shown to be not comfortable with contact often - and then Yoshio just goes grabbing her hand and telling her to doll up?
| JaggedAuthor wrote: | | Given how disdainful she is of most modern technology, I'm kind of surprised Machi wants to attend high school in Tokyo. |
To me it seems more like Machi idolizes the "high-school-girl" she sees in all of the media she consumes. She's a country bumpkin so she wants to be cool like the big city folk. She seems to have a fairly big complex when it comes to that, technology non-included.
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belvadeer
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 12:26 am
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Machi thinking the store manager was a fierce red dragon and swatting her into the ground with his claws was the epic highlight of this episode. Major points on the visuals for that one! :D
I think a lot of us can relate to Machi's situation in this episode. I'm sure we've all worked retail at some point in our young lives and it can be downright uncomfortable talking to strangers as part of a job for the first time (especially if the customers you deal with are generally rude and find petty reasons to be irate at you, which can lead to cynicism). I wasn't really laughing much through her suffering...until the show started evoking imagery of The Little Match Girl and Joan of Arc to make the customers feel really bad for her, and that's when I lost it. XD
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JaggedAuthor
Joined: 27 Oct 2014
Posts: 981
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 1:51 am
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I like Yoshio less and less each week. I know it's played for laughs, but his grabbiness comes off as forceful and creepy, to say nothing of his absolute refusal to take "no" for an answer. The scene in which he bent Machi over the table and forced her to produce a signature was downright unpleasant.
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Hiroki not Takuya
Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Posts: 2535
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 10:14 am
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| Tenchi wrote: | | So, I'm a week behind watching new episodes because I'm too cheap/poor to pay for a Funimation subscription... |
I too refuse to pay for what I can get for free a week later, but dude, you jinxed it! Kumamiko Ep7 is still only "for subscribers" while Ep8 has been released "for subscribers" too. It seems everything past Ep6 is going to remain "for subscribers only". I like Kumamiko enough that I may be forced to join the collective, but so far the Funi machine refuses to let me do so (error occurs). They're onto us, run away..... 
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zrnzle500
Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 10:19 am
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| Hiroki not Takuya wrote: |
| Tenchi wrote: | | So, I'm a week behind watching new episodes because I'm too cheap/poor to pay for a Funimation subscription... |
I too refuse to pay for what I can get for free a week later, but dude, you jinxed it! Kumamiko Ep7 is still only "for subscribers" while Ep8 has been released "for subscribers" too. It seems everything past Ep6 is going to remain "for subscribers only". I like Kumamiko enough that I may be forced to join the collective, but so far the Funi machine refuses to let me do so (error occurs). They're onto us, run away..... |
I believe it was because episode 7 was delayed and therefore the free one was also delayed, but episode 8 was not. Hence the two subscriber only episodes. It would be both concerning and unusual for them to make simulcasts past a certain episode unavailable to free users though. I don't remember when the delayed episode was posted but check back later. Given when the episode review was posted, the episode was likely posted Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest, so the free one will probably be up at that time
Edit: Episode 7 is available for free users as of the time of this edit. So don't worry, episodes after 6 are and will be available to free users afaik.
Last edited by zrnzle500 on Tue May 24, 2016 3:16 pm; edited 2 times in total
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sharkjack
Joined: 24 Oct 2015
Posts: 43
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 3:10 pm
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| JaggedAuthor wrote: | | I like Yoshio less and less each week. I know it's played for laughs, but his grabbiness comes off as forceful and creepy, to say nothing of his absolute refusal to take "no" for an answer. The scene in which he bent Machi over the table and forced her to produce a signature was downright unpleasant. |
Yeah, I feel the same way. Between that and pinning her down in nothing but her underwear just because she was okay with Natsu looking and not with him doing so reeks of incredible disregard of Machi' s boundaries, decisions and is frankly just assault.
The fact that they' re in exactly the kind of power inbalanced relationship where this kind of behavior would be likely to occur in real life makes the way the show makes light of it all the creepier to me. It' d be one thing if the show and Natsu acknowledged what was happening, but Natsu almost seems to be taking Yoshio' s side this time, which is just all kinds of absurd. I' m not even saying it' s unrealistic (for a guardian, the bear part is of course), but the weight of the situation seems to completely pass Kumamiko by, and that is just gross.
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Tenchi
Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4472
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 3:15 pm
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Episode 7 is free now, although I'm going to a classic car cruise night so I won't get to see it until this evening. :-/
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Hiroki not Takuya
Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Posts: 2535
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Posted: Wed May 25, 2016 10:29 am
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Sorry dude, I kinda panic'd I didn't know Ep7 had been delayed at the Japan side and normally the delayed episode is available Sunday evening. Like zrnzle500 said, it was very unusual for them to have consecutive "for subscribers only" episodes posted at once so I thought it was the start of a trend starting with Kumamiko since it persisted for a couple of days. It's something I have been expecting Funi to do since the simuldubs are totally "for subscribers" except for short clips. They almost had me, Ha, Ha, Ha, Free Streaming Forever!!
Now, for Ep7, Yoshio is really "grabby" with women, so I can see why Machi and the office girl think he is likely a rapist or something, though he seems a nice guy in other scenes. I wish the show would stop that as it makes his character confusing and, I agree, creepy. I had a good laugh at Machi's dialog she was feeding Natsu and she looked like she was enjoying it too!
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belvadeer
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Posted: Mon May 30, 2016 4:54 pm
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Episode 9 was quite amusing. I knew exactly what was going to happen with those conditional edits. I thought the others would be mad at Yoshio, but they're such good-natured folks that they were simply content to seeing themselves on TV for half a minute.
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