Why Japan Loves this Chinese Tactician
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- čas přidán 4. 07. 2024
- VidIQ SEO title: Ya Boy Kongming: The Controversial Alleged Chinese Superstar, or, Who is Kongming, and why is he so damn popular in Japan?
#paripikoumei #koumei #anitubers
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Captions are available!
All sources and commentary can be found here:
www.pauseandselect.com/2022/y...
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:41 AMQ
01:15 Ya Boy Kongming Context
03:09 Thesis
05:22 Romance of the Three Kingdoms
09:45 Fixing My Script Problems in Post
14:26 fka Ghost collab
19:23 Eiji Yoshikawa
24:57 The Genbun Itchi Movement
27:07 Why Yoshikawa?
31:38 Why Zhuge Liang?
36:27 The Meiji Explosion
39:19 Kongming and Anime
This video is a collaboration with both fka Ghost and The Gentlemen of the Han subgroup, please check out their respective works!
@aka-ghost :
/ @aka-ghost
The Gentlemen of the Han:
gentlemenofthehan.wordpress.com/
Huge thanks to Stanton Feng for permission to use their image of the Battle of Red Cliffs, please check out their work at their ArtStation:
www.artstation.com/kd428
Thanks to the voice work of all the folks in the video!
@KaiAfterKai :
/ kaiafterkai
@Stevem :
/ stevem
@GilLiesHere :
/ gillieshere
@TheCynicClinic :
/ thecynicclinic - Krátké a kreslené filmy
This is my pinned comment in case I need to mention anything I did wrong, but am willing to admit it.
Also, who's your favourite ROTK character? Mine's Xiahou Dun, the guy who ate his own eye. He's pretty much the LA Beast of ancient China.
***
Correction 1: Footage Misleading, noticed by @Mister'Gremm
21:46 Actually that's the original romance of Three kingdoms (Sangokushi) turn based strategy game while Dynasty warriors (Shin Sangoku Musou) is the modern hack n slash action game by the same company which was released 2 decades later
30:18 Why technically true for the early Dynasty warriors games, the Modern entries like (soft-reboot 7 onward) have Shu Dynasty campaign/Story mode end in wu zhang plains, but they do actually include Jin dynasty campaign which covers last 16 chapters, I know you technically said "many not all", but screencaps of playthroughs still somewhat gives perhaps wrong impression for those not familiar
It's not something wrong, just going one step further on the origin of the OP. The original song is called "Ecuador" and made by the german DJ Sash!
@@pokker21 Oh snap, what a rabbit hole. Thanks for letting me know!
Going even further back we find "La Notte Vola" by Lorella Cuccarini
@@Turtle76rus Oh my god...
Mine is Zhang Fei, who terrified someone so much said someone's internal organ exploded and fell of his horse and died on the spot
It reminds me that Hayao Miyazaki's Lupin III The Castle of Cagliostro is based on A Woman in Grey, but it's not A. M. Williamson's original version. Miyazaki read Ranpo Edogawa's remake version called Ghost Tower, but even Edogawa's source material is not the original. It's based on Ruiko Kuroiwa's remake.
The interesting thing is that it happened in the Lupin III franchise. The Arsène Lupin series became popular through Tatsuo Hoshino's translation, but a writer called Yoichiro Minami remade it into a children book series later. Minami changed some parts so that Lupin looks more virtuous. That children book version of Arsène Lupin was so popular that many people remember Lupin for those books, me included. Monkey Punch wrote a commentary for a reprint of that Yoichiro Minami version.
It also reminds me that Nihon Kisshi, messengers from anti-Qing dynasty groups, influenced Mitogaku and Japanese nationalism. Those people thought Japan could be a successor of Ming's ideals. Such a mindset can be seen even in Showa era of Japan.
Like the Little China ideology, cultural import in East Asia sometimes takes the form of pseudo-Sinocentrism.
Wow what a rabbit hole lol
I swear to god you're the best creator on YT right now, man. The topics you cover are always immensely interesting and your visual style is simply a treat. You deserve at least 10 times the amount of subs/views you got and the fact you don't have that right now is a goddamn travesty. Kudos!
I think there are many content creators out there better than I, but I hugely appreciate your kind words Daniel!
I live for viddocs like this, because I guarantee that I would have watched Ya Boy Kongming and just been pleased with the idea of it, largely due to my childhood playing the first few Dynasty Warriors games. The breakdown of this from "Oh cool, a reverse-isekai using Zhuge Liang" to the reasons why Zhuge Liang is the subject, and how that reflects on Japan as a whole is really thought-provoking, and I enjoyed every minute of it. The discussion of the historiography of sorts regarding the translations and rewrites of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms texts was very interesting, as I had never considered that "my" RotTK was not the "actual" RotTK.
Thanks for watching it Ryan!
Great vid. Praise Hox for scanlating Sangokushi all those years ago.
Zhuge Liang as a character that becomes the inheritor of a dream also has historical relevance to the time period the story was being popularized. Japan saw itself at the time as the inheritor of the mantle of classical China and looked with disdain at the Qing for their political failures and also held no respect for the later Republican/Beiyang China. In fact several revolutionaries studied in Japan, including Sun Yat Sen, and many felt that they learned more about what China should be in Japan than in China itself.
Yeah Hox's work really did the heavy lifting for this video haha.
Mesmerizing video Mr Pause! I can finally understand all the Three Kingdom references in Japanimation!
Yeah you think that but Party People Kongming has a lot of Three Kingdoms references!! Try to find them all!
This was a really good watch. I watched Kongming in its season and it was my favourite thing that aired that season, but I'm not a Three Kingdoms buff and lack a lot of the context that you explore in this video, so you really helped appreciate things that I had no frame of reference for. Thanks for that!
Thanks for watching it Tanaka!
Incredible video❤ so underrated
That was a great video! The importance and influence of the Four Classic Chinese Novels is such a fascinating topic, and the way you approached it was very inspiring.
Also, as always, thank you so much for the closed captions!
Thanks for watching it and using the closed captions Eldu!
👏Can't wait for the next saga of videos
I hope you like the dog.
@@PauseandSelect I'm finally gonna find out what the dog doin
Damn fantastic video, Joe. What a banger of a video, as usual.
I'm kinda of a very big Three Kingdoms enthusiast myself, so when Paripi Koumei showed up I couldn't help but be baited by its ridiculously specific premise that caters to a very specific hobby of mine. Kongming also happened to be my favorite RoTK character, by a wide margin, so I had a lot of fun watching it and spotting all of the nods the the story of the book.
Oddly enough my first major contacts with Three Kingdoms content was throught its japanese versions, mainly Capcom's games adapted from Motomiya Hiroshi's "Tenchi wo Kurau" manga, and later on Dynasty Warriors, but it wasn't until I've started reading Yokoyama Mitsuteru's manga adaptation that I've truly began to grasp the importance of this story for asian pop culture. Damn, Legend of the Galactic Heroes is one of my favorite stories ever, so seeing the RoTK in kinda felt like examining LoGH's blueprint. Since then and when I've read Houshin Engi as a teenager I've got really interested in learning more about chinese history and literature.
Having Yoshikawa to modernize the story was a very important move because the way he decided to start it helps a lot to new readers having a less rough time with it, so that's why when people ask me how to get into RoTK stuff I usually recommend Yokoyama's manga instead of the original novel.
I already thought the background of Paripi Koumei was easily its more interesting aspect but thinking deeper about the whole genealogy behind it was very amusing and probably the thing I needed to cheer up in the saturday morning I'm watching this. Awesome video, bro!
Thanks for watching it Nintakun. Funny enough, I grew up completely drowned in Three Kingdoms stuff (since my dad is Chinese), but I didn't really know much about it until only recently when Total War: Three Kingdoms came out. Then I got hooked haha.
It's really crazy just so ubiquitous this story is.
You’re the best
Waiting for your vids is totally worth it
Keep up the quality!!! :)
Thanks for watching it Gesundheitspakxt (oh my god that name)
WOW I cant wait for this Ya Boy Kongming video that only talks about Kongming for 45 mins, I watched the whole show exactly for this purpose!!!
👀
Another excellent video, Joe.
Thanks for the comment Gustavo!
Excellent video!
Thank you very much for your feedback Hanzhonlang!
Wow. Wow wow wow. You have expanded my appreciation for the anime and given me a lot of context for Romance. I'm kinda blown away here.
Thank you very much for watching it Marty!
I love this damn channel and for a while stopped watching. Then 4 years later I get reccomended again, break, then reccomended again
I love how I keep coming back
Thanks for checking in on me every now and then, I appreciate it!
21:46 Actually that's the original romance of Three kingdoms (Sangokushi) turn based strategy game while Dynasty warriors (Shin Sangoku Musou) is the modern hack n slash action game by the same company which was released 2 decades later
30:18 Why technically true for the early Dynasty warriors games, the Modern entries like (soft-reboot 7 onward) have Shu Dynasty campaign/Story mode end in wu zhang plains, but they do actually include Jin dynasty campaign which covers last 16 chapters, I know you technically said "many not all", but screencaps of playthroughs still somewhat gives perhaps wrong impression for those not familiar
anyway this is been fantastic watch, static for more already
Thanks for the correction Mister'Gremm! Admittedly I'm not a big musou guy so I don't know too much about the Koei games, so my apologies on the footage mishmash.
Good video. I enjoyed it.
Thanks for watching EggMath!
2:05 - 2:22
Your production never ceases to amaze
Thanks for the kind words Hemang!
Just incredible work as always! I hadn't even considered it before, but now I can't *not* think of Ya Boy Kongming as the perfect example of transcultural flow in anime.
This does make me think of a comment screenwriter Dai Sato made in an interview at Animefest 2007, on how he realized "that anime
has the power to erase racial awareness". That probably plays a huge part in supercharging the whole process of the flow.
I mean, I know Kongming is Chinese, but the thought never comes to mind while watching the anime. And the characters in the story also never really consider him as such, or even if he's Japanese or not. He's already just another dude in the Shibuya night club scene and part of the subculture.
Thanks for your kind words raseaces!
wow great video
Thanks for your kind words Fthan!
Watched this video today now that I'm in the middle of the RoTK book myself (inspired by watching Kongming last year lol) and dang this is just an excellent and enthralling video.
Sorry it took so long to get back to you crown - how's the book treating you so far?
@@PauseandSelect Oh I'm enjoying it a lot, though it is taking me while to actually get through it. Only recently got to the part where Kongming himself shows up and starts laying out strategies but he makes a strong first impression.
Now we just need a cross-over where ya' boy, Kongming, meets Hakufu Sonsaku of the Ikki Tousen series and spiral down the rabbit hole of the 'Three Kingdoms Universe'... or TKU!
Come to think of it, there's another "Kongming" in Ikki Tousen... I don't remember her name, but if those two were to meet, now we've really got some multiverse shenanigans happening!
lol
banger video
Thanks Daquan!
Love you joe
Love ya too Felipiux!
Really interesting video. I always had something of a lowkey interest in the subject matter of the Three Kingdoms but never really gave it a go. As someone who does not speak japanese or chinese, which books would you recommend for someone to learn about the Three Kingdoms or The Warring States periods? I looked into your sources list, but they were more for specific analysis and not a general overview and retelling of this.
It depends on what you want out of it. If you want to just know what happens in the Three Kingdoms, then Cool History Bros made a video that I think you'd find helpful:
czcams.com/video/SFKMJmnYUTc/video.html
The Warring States period is a separate era, I don't really have anything to recommend since I'm not too familiar with it outside of popular culture depictions of it. I think if you want to start, given that we're on an anime channel, the Mitsuteru Yokoyama Sangokushi is a great starting point. It has quite a few differences between the original ROTK, but the big beating plot beats are still there, and it's very thematically true to its origins.
ZAMN!
👀
The little collabs always look fun and a great break. It's too dense I need occasional "influencer" breaks.
Thanks for checking it out Moon!
Thank you for bringing spotlight to this, the best show of 2022. I don't give a damn about Spies or Summer Horror or a man with a chainsaw as a head. Hell even cosplay waifu can BTFO.
Ya Boy was King.... he IS KING.
Yeah it's a great show!
Ramen example is on point!
thanks ke1oc!
14:29 Hey,hey people sseth here.
Part of the Merchants' Guild
wow ya boi kongming!
Yep! Now DANCE!
So is Koumei just the Japanese reading of the kajnji of Kongming's name?
lol
It's not just that the opening is a cover of a Hungarian summer hit from a decade ago, the original itself was heavily influenced by and sampled an earlier, nineties hit by the German EDM group Sash, Ecuador: czcams.com/video/9cQlVww0zKo/video.html
Oh wow, that's interesting, this goes way back!
I really like the 23rd Stratagem, where Kongming used Samyang Hot Chicken Flavor Ramen (3x Spicy) Korean Instant Noodles to get over COVID-19 symptoms.
The riskiest Strategem!!
Far too large and broad a topic for just me to grapple with, but the "memetic" framing of how just a heavily dramatized historical account also becomes it's own lens (or mirror) to portray a very real political ideologies and debates for national influence really REALLY intrigues me as much as the media analysis in the west either comes and goes with a consumer choosing whether or not kill the author's intent.
But it's also just nice to treat Kongming/ Zhuge Lang as much as Japan's case study in using a cultural icon and reforming it into it's own cultural construction, possibly with less stakes than, y'know, defining Aristocracy vs Meritocracy as a political policy, vs what seems to spread more broadly as "Idealism vs Pragmatism" which is also an idea I find myself increasingly stumbling over in more and more works, mostly HERO OF JUSTICE type stuff: see Fate/Stay Night, Kamen Rider [especially Gen Urobuchi's KR Gaim], and hell even Metal Gear Rising as itself a memetic ancestor to the idealized image of a noble Samurai vs the ruthless mercenary class that gets privileged for its adeptness of violence (shout out to Study of SwordsDad on Bushido history).
It's just fascinating then to take an icon of grand standing and highly political/ideology battlefields (quite literally) and then throw him into a VERY soft-power type of land scape i.e. show business and commerce and I wonder just as much with the New/Cool Japan idea that forgoing the highly (perhaps TOO) legitimized battles of militancy and even political ambassadorship to instead focus through culture IS as interesting ideology in itself.
Probably perfectly encapsulated with a series like Macross that somehow STILL SHOWCASES A FUTILE EARTH FIGHT THAT ENDS IN ANNIHILATION OF HUMANITY VS A LARGER POWER that only becomes winnable via a shared (de)culture...of Pop Idols...which now that I also think about it, might well parallel Kpop's uptick trend in the states after China started sanctioning Korean Cultural imports due to an relatively recent anti-aerial defense system complicated relations.
As follow through line, I'd personally propose that as Kongming/Zhuge Llang is as perfect an epitome of an "ever transforming media vessel for cultural exploration and definition" that then placing him in varying storied contexts far FAR outliving his initial history not only proves his legacy as legitimacy (as altered and edited as it was), but also him moving as a pillar of culture into new stories is itself a legitimization of a trend such that Kongming himself makes PraPri Kongming popular by premise alone and by corollary, might legitimize, say, the commercial success and struggles of Idol Show Business to culture...tho personally with how quaint the execution was, Idol-dom itself only really got popularized in the West via absurd parodies like Zombie Land Saga, a topic for ANOTHER day.
Yeah, that's true, the Idol angle is really interesting, I hadn't considered that.
Missed the opportunity to call Liu Bei, Cao Cao and The Boys The Good, The Bad and The Ugly smh my head.
sad emoji
Did I seriously hear the amogus song whilst this man explains thousand year old Chinese politics.
👀
The own origin of the manga is a reflection of translated or remade comics in the pre-war period. Read: Comics and the Origins of Manga - A Revisionist History.
Ah, interesting stuff!
liking the transmedia thought (may leave larger comment later)
Thanks for watching is EliahNebb!
Do you have an email? Or other way to contact you?
Hi molar, sorry it took so long to get back to you, I've got a "business" email on the about page if you really need to get in touch with me.
Wait, so Kongming expresses autheticity through aproppiation? That still sounds like an strech even though I watched the whole video.
I only see appropiation thoughtout the history of this character inside Japan. I understand there's another, very different, Kongming in what I guess is mainland China (whatever their concept of the Three Kingdoms and its characters might be), but I don't get how by pretending to have their own Kongming they actually end up having one.
Anybody may feel free to respond if any of this makes sense, thanks for the video.
Hi Angel,
I wouldn't say he expresses authenticity but moreso that it's really appropriate that its Kongming in Paripi Koumei given how popular he was, for a variety of reasons which do stem back to questions of cultural authenticity. I wouldn't even say Chinese Kongming is different from Japanese Kongming, I think it's just that the Japanese stories treat him differently in the sense of how much it focuses on him.
@@PauseandSelect Oh right, that was where you were coming from the whole time. I was kinda thrown off by the end of the video lol
@@VashdaCrash Ah gotcha haha. Sorry about that, I wanted to end it off sounding profound and whatnot cause that's the video essay style but I guess I flew too close to the sun lol
Cao Cao did nothing wrong.
or did he?
How you aren't at Gigguk levels of popularity is beyond me. You make high-quality, academic video essays that are as informative as they are entertaining. So many millions of people are missing out on some of the best content on youtube flat out because this idiotic algorithm privileges "WHAT'S UP CZcams" over a genuinely funny person.
Thanks for the kind words Lenin's Cat!