Today’s deck is the Quantum Tarot.
I was SO wary of this one, “Quantum Tarot” sounds like a fancy name for some GenAI nonsense, but this one wasn’t. I only gave it a chance because I figured Lo Scarabeo wouldn’t make AI decks (not YET at least, who knows what way the turn tables). I’ve said it plenty of times: It SUCKS that I’ve developed that specific paranoia.
Deck’s cool, though. If a bit too… abstract for my liking.
Today’s reading is advising to be patient with the blockages on the way, that they’re a work in progress that will lead to better things.
And you’ll quickly see what the cards are referring to with that.
Guess what sisters, the nonsense with the bank is baaaaaaaaaaack~! And it’s wooooooooooooorse~!!!
How much worse you ask? Well they basically told us we have three months to move all our shit elsewhere because of new policies or whatever.
You might be wondering “Fer, how do you keep yourself sane when that shit keeps happening?” to which I say “What part of All This makes you think I’m sane?”.
The funniest part of it is that we saw the messages indicating that and we weren’t even mad. The protracted bullshit with the bank has been so everpresent that we were already considering the idea of moving all our shit elsewhere if nothing else for easier logistics. This just turned a 5 year idea into a 5 week one.
Moreover, it officially means I’ve dedicated my whole YEAR to that bullshit. The year of the Snake couldn’t have been more appropiate.
By the way, up there I said “we” because it’s our company account. I do have crowds inside of me but the crowd is in sync so no need to refer to myself like that.
Anyway, after making some inquiries and sending some emails, I decided to sort some things in my apartment. The current goal is to free up two bookshelves I’ve been meaning to free up for a while, assemble a new one (the tension kind I’ve shown in the past), and after filling it use that space for some containers with stuff still being sorted.
I did that and admittedly I could’ve probably gone faster but I got distracted perusing some of the manga I was storing. Giving a cursory glance to Jojo and then to Hokuto no Ken really put into sheer perspective how big of a breakthrough Lisa Lisa was as a character for the whole medium of manga, specifically in Shonen. Like, Hokuto no Ken tried with Mamiya but she’s still treated very much as a girl out of her league to the point her “victory” is “not being a warrior and becoming just a woman again”, so compared to her having Lisa Lisa be THE Hamon authority is shocking.
The saddest part is that depending on what you’re reading, shonen still fails to meet up the expectations set by Lisa Lisa to this day.
ALSO I FINALLY REMEMBERED WHAT THE AURA BATTLE IN FRIEREN REMINDED ME OF.
There’s this chapter in Hokuto no Ken right after the Shin arc where there’s a village held by some soldiers and one of them beheads a guy in front of her daughter, so when Kenshiro comes in he presses the LTG pressure points and forces the guy to behead himself NOW.
The elements are a bit out of order but the whole chapter has the same cadence and karmic retribution factor as that one part of Frieren.
Also, this readthrough made me think of how Tokusatsu-coded Kenshiro is. The whole manga really carries the same flow of “bad thing happens then savior comes in, but there was a bigger threat so savior has the bigger battle” that showa toku carried.
ALSO also, this readthrough reminded me of how cool Raoh is as a character. When he comes in you get this sense that he’d get along with everyone if he wasn’t fundamentally cruel, and the emphasis is in “fundamentally” because he’s the kind that’s otherwise reasonable.
The whole thing where Ken basically learns the Fuck You I Win Technique (AKA the Musou Tensei) because He’s So Sad is cool because then Raoh also wants to learn the Fuck You I Win Sadboi Technique but because he’s so fundamentally cruel he just lacks the thing that would allow him to care about others enough to be sad enough.
Sadly Raoh fight is also the series’ high point. You know how basically every Shonen Jump series has that high point everyone agrees was cool and everything afterwards is a blur of inconsistent quality and dubious plot where all but dedicated fans stopped reading? Bleach after the Soul Society, Yuyu Hakusho after the Dark Tournament, Naruto after the first fight between Nart and Sasuke, YGO after Marik, Slam Dunk after Mitsui… The second half of Hokuto no Ken is basically that stage.
I wouldn’t call it bad or even uneventful, in fact, Rock Howard is basically Ryu, Raoh’s son from the end of the manga, which makes you think about how Raoh-coded Geese Howard is, he even dies the way every named prettyboy in the manga dies, by the manga equivalent of the Dusty Finish where Kenshiro leaves them at death’s door but they die on their own instead of being killed by Ken.
Which is the problem I do have from a critical standpoint. The formula of “unnaturally big guy kicks a puppy once, then twice, and then by the third time Kenshiro stops the leg, breaks it in half and kills the kicker before a pretty lady tells him he was just a mook from the puppy kicker gang and then Ken has to go and go ATATATATATATATA on a dude with a big boot” can only be used so many times before it becomes tiring.
THAT SAID and speaking of pretty ladies, for as bad as they’re treated, this style of bishoujo the series uses is a lost art that it feels like it basically stopped with Tetsuo Hara.
Back to the repetition thing, though. The second part of the manga has Ken chasing an ominous figure in a dark armor while his own biological brother rather than his adoptive brothers come into the fray, there’s even Shachi as the not-Rei, and Rin fits the role of Yuria down to the secretly royalty part. Then the villain is Raoh’s biological brother and also Jagi and Toki’s sister is in there somewhere and instead of exploring new stuff it rethreads on old stuff that leaves you wondering where all of this was before.
And the most fascinating part is that it’s a problem I could repeat for so many other Shonen Jump things, Hokuto no Ken is archetypal even in that.
The ending in particular is very emotional but also makes you go “then what was the point????” after emotions cools off.
So first Ken defeats Raoh and goes off with Yuria into the sunset, this is a perfectly fine ending that’s ruined when you learn in the last arc that Ken left in Kokuoh when Yuria was almost dead. Then Ken goes to the land of Shura and defeats Raoh’s long lost brother with the help of his own long lost brother, after which he erases his memories of himself from Rin so that Bat and Rin can live happily ever after after Ken rides into the sunset, this is another good stopping point.
But then there’s an arc where we see Kenshiro is raising Raoh’s long lost son, you wonder where things are going and then turns out that’s set aside and Mamiya of all people shows up (probably because all the men KEEP DYING so she’s the only one still alive that could be used in the role) so Ken leaves Ryu behind while riding Kokuoh.
Turns out during their wedding Bat insists Rin isn’t in love with him because she just forgot Kenshiro so he gives her amnesia AGAIN and they revisit the place where the first chapter took place in. On the side Kenshiro gets hit by fucking lighting while riding a dying Kokuoh (Raoh’s horse by the way, basically Red Hare from Three Kingdoms by another name) after his scars light up For Some Reason and also gets amnesia, then Bat pairs the amnesiac Kenshiro with the amnesiac Rin and dresses himself as Ken in hopes that a thug out to get revenge against Kenshiro leaves them alone until Bat screaming for help triggers Ken’s memories.
So Bat is dying, Rin explains to him that she always loved him, Rin parts ways with Kenshiro only to discover he healed Bat and now they’re together while Ken rides into the sunset again again AGAIN.
It’s emotional, I choked up when Ken goes and calls Bat his little brother… but after the tears dry you wonder why the fuck the manga wasted your time like this.
The manga by this point has taken like 4 very protracted laps to end up at the same end point but with everyone being worse off after every lap but you’re supposed to feel like they ended up better. And that’s the point where all the emotional manipulation, all the cheap things like “hate this guy because he literally killed a puppy no I’m not joking Raoh’s brother literally does that” only for it to go “oh but he’s so sad so tragic feel bad for him while he dies on his own terms after Ken beat the shit outta him”.
The problem is not that the drama is “illogical”, and the problem isn’t the “emotional manipulation” unto itself. It’s the fact that your emotions are played with in a way where you feel dumb for feeling that way when the signals sent become so contradicting.
Sakigake Otokojuku might be an even bigger tonal mess but By God if it didn’t nail right on the head how internally inconsistent this sort of plot can get.
Did any of you know or remember any of THAT by the way? There’s a good reason why even things like HnK Paradise Lost take things up to Raoh, because everything after that point is either redundant or not as memorable. You’d swear they’d reveal Raoh had an identical twin instead of a brother…
…wait not, THEY ALREADY DID THAT WITH RIN BEING THE TWIN OF SOME PRINCESS WHICH ITSELF IS A RETHREAD OF YURIA BEING BASICALLY ROYALTY ALSO.
By the way, I love that the volumes I have are some old originals so they have some fan letters in the back of kids inspired by Kenshiro to get into martial arts and such.
Despite the distraction, I did clear up the stuff I wanted to clear up so I just gotta take the furniture out for collection. I’ll do that when I wake up at night, though.