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Pavlov posted:Man how'd I never hear about this show. This poo poo's pretty good. The Friday Fellows club and their traditional tanuki hotpot exist to enforce the hierarchy your alluding to here. But Tanuki also see themselves as helpless little raccoons because that is ultimately what they are, it doesn't matter that they can change into a huge tiger or a bear if they don't feel in charge of a situation they revert back to their mostly helpless form. They feel extremely vulnerable in that state and the story reinforces their helplessness in racoon form multiple ways (Tousen being frightened of storms reverts her back to a racoon, Kinkaku and Ginkaku being thrown into the river or cold bath reverting them back to raccoons, cages reverting tanuki to raccoons, raccoon form being linked to vulnerable states like illness/sleeping/choking on smoke/etc.). Asking them to put their life on the line to try and stop the Friday Fellows seems like a crazy proposition. Inertia, as well as questioning that inertia and sometimes overcoming it, is one of the main themes of the show. You see it in just about every character, Yaichirou trying to follow in his fathers footsteps, Yajirou being resigned to his life as a frog in a well, Yashirou constantly being bullied by Kinkaku & Ginkaku but never standing up for himself and continuing to work at the brandy factory. Yasaburou is the outlier (although you could argue that his idiot blood is the inertia carrying him forward) but still has plenty of inertial forces acting upon him or related to his character such as his care for Prof. Akadama and his arranged marriage to Kaisei. The Friday Fellows is the inertial concept that carries most of the story in the first season, its an old institution that has been around for ages and tanuki just learned to accept it kind of like a small town sacrificing a young girl to the gods concept that's present in many stories. Like that concept, you have people manufacturing reasonable explanations for why they do this crazy thing such as Professor Yodogawa who talks about how being eaten is actually a good way to die because it gives someone happiness instead of just having your body decompose into the earth. In the end though, emotions and love overcome traditions and logic but the series leaves you with some interesting questions. To answer your questions more directly, in this world tanuki are cowards by nature and Yasaburou is the exception to this which is why he's our main character and able to do all the incredible things he does. This also relates to why convincing the Friday Fellows members not to eat tanuki seems impossible task, as a tanuki you probably don't want to ever get near them because they could possibly capture/kill you. Many of the Friday Fellows also don't see tanuki hotpot as an issue since raccoons are just another animal like a cow or a pig to them and you would have to overcome that inertial barrier of hundreds of years of tanuki hotpot and being kicked out of the group if they refuse to eat it.
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Apr 18, 2017 19:10
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Pavlov posted:Those are all interesting reads, but the show would only have needed a few throw-away lines to make that clear. Something like the older brother talking about doing something rash after the dad gets ate, and someone quickly talking him down. Or the younger brother asking why nobody's ever tried stopping things, before the Inescapable Social Order gets explained to him. Or really anyone just lamenting how no tanuki could ever stand up to a human etc. The fact that there's no introspection about this is pretty noticable, given that it's such an obvious bit of world-building to do. I can't say I ever really questioned it or noticed it since that need for revenge never really fit my idea of the characters. I believe there is a line in the first season where Yasaburo talks about tanukis having a much more peaceful nature than Tengu/Humans, and the Shimogamo family clearly wanted to blame their idiocy of letting their dad wander off drunk and alone more than they wanted to blame Benten or the Friday Fellows. Theres some obvious differences but I guess its a little bit like Timothy Treadwell. Even though he was able to "get along" with a lot of grizzly bears he eventually got eaten by one. I don't think many people would think revenge on the bear is the correct answer to that situation or that humankind should rise up and oust the bears just because one person got eaten.
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Apr 18, 2017 23:59
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Thanks for all the work you've done to fill us in on the details Doc V! I really enjoyed this second season but I have to agree with others when I say the first season was stronger for many reasons. I look forward to a new season turning up as a surprise 4 years from now.
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Jun 29, 2017 05:43
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