Baiken's Bizarre Adventure: Rurouni Kenshin is Back Baby!

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > VEGETA > Baiken's Bizarre Adventure: Rurouni Kenshin is Back Baby!

Who is the best one?
	This one?
	This one.
	This one!
	Swords are tools for killing Ms Kaoru

Rody One Half: Feb 18, 2011

Can I get the chapter link, I'm not seeing it.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2017 21:40

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 05:34

Rody One Half: Feb 18, 2011

OH you have to buy an issue, nevermind then.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2017 22:10

Rody One Half: Feb 18, 2011

GimmickMan posted:

Basically, the incident that kicked off the Meiji Restoration was the arrival of Perry's Black Ships, all but demanding that isolationist Japan open itself up to the rest of the world. Japan, being terribly underindustrialized, uneducated and frankly politically medieval compared to the western world, begrudgingly agreed. The cultural, political and economic backlash was part of what led to the war in Ruroken's backstory, with Kenshin on the side of the revolutionaries. Saito and Aoshi sided with the Tokugawa, the emperor that the revolutionaries fought against. Sano was a member of a peasant army that fought alongside the revolution but then were betrayed. One of the biggest things the Restoration did was the removal of the social caste-like system, in which samurai were nobility with hereditary civil administration roles. This, obviously, pissed a lot of them off and led to many of Ruroken's antagonists being bitter samurai.

Someone please correct me if I'm loving up something in my gross oversimplification of historical events.

The "Imperial" forces were not necessarily overly interested in the Emperor's position or expelling the Westerners as such, these were merely casus belli and inciting incidents. The main polities that led the Meiji forces were the leadership of... Choshu and Satsuma I believe. These commanded the largest directly controlled forces outside of Tokugawa's own, and at this point the shogunate had enjoyed 200 years of being the most centrally powerful governing forces Japan had ever had through a series of systemic pressures that, among other things, would regularly cause Japan to go through economic depressions by declaring the debts the high nobility constantly accrued to be void en masse and which kept all families who didn't submit to Tokugawa PRIOR to Sekigahara permanently on the outs (the leading clans were set into 3 categories I can't remember the names of but which basically broke down to Tokugawa relatives, pre-sekigahara supporters, and post-submissives). These policies were incredibly successful at stabilizing Japan and creating a system that prevented the constant internal conflict that had existed up to this point, but they created a lot of economic instability and political resentment over the course of shogunate rule. Choshu and Satsuma's ruling families fell into this category of those forced to bend by Sekigahara, and the demonstrable weakness/instability that had developed in the shogunate over time combined with them getting rolled by the US showed them there was an opportunity to go for the jugular.

Getting back to the caste system: so yes there is this element of samurai as administrators, but much of that is CAUSED by the Meiji, not abolished by it. Lower class samurai families who had slowly been bled out by Tokugawa tax policies and the lack of actual wars for them to fight and make money in hopped on board the bandwagon and would become Meiji functionaries after the war, joining the nascent middle class in dominance. Much like in many of the 19th century European revolutions, the ones who lose out here are much of the old landed nobility, who are shoved from their cushy positions by their would-be vassals and (what would become) the capitalist class. The sorts of ronin burnouts you see in Kenshin tend to be less people who are SYSTEMICALLY locked out by the new system per-se and more ideological die hards and loyalists (and giants, corpse puppeteers, and would-be assassins turned dictators of course).

# ¿ Oct 12, 2017 19:48

Rody One Half: Feb 18, 2011

There's about a million mangaka I'd have expected for this to happen too before the guy who drew no titties and instead delivered just nice, wholesome violence and traced Venom.

Perhaps it was the lack of titty that should have tipped us off...

(this fuckin sucks, enjoy prison you Jeffery Jones pos)

# ¿ Nov 21, 2017 18:00

Rody One Half: Feb 18, 2011

DisDisDis posted:

Yeah I'd give my money to the guy drawing lots of big titty adult ladies 'cuz he's probably not a pedophile

all those who have never drawn a single 2d boob are now suspect

you just can't trust an artist that doesn't draw The Sex from time to time

# ¿ Nov 22, 2017 19:33

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > VEGETA > Baiken's Bizarre Adventure: Rurouni Kenshin is Back Baby!