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Shenmue the Animation Episode 6 - "Dignified" discussion thread


Jman

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Ah, Hong Kong. A place I've heard a lot about, but maybe not for good reasons. The show has done a good job as portraying it as a smoggy metropolis filled with unknown assailants, with the occasional scenic getaway. The temple Ryo went to is quite beautiful, and I can almost smell the incense. Too bad he's stuck trying to knock the leaves off this tree, in what I figure was a lengthy quest in the video game.

As a side note, that was quite a while before the break, which threw me off in starting this post.

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Well, the show does get a minus for not introducing Joy with an ass shot and hair metal song, but on the other hand, they did make her boobs bigger!

By the way, the devs definitely knew what they were doing giving her that model of motorcycle!

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And now, a few more observations:

  • I figured Joy looking like Nanami would be the obvious joke, but I was waiting to see if she was really voiced by Luci Christian to lock it down. Sure enough, she is. On the other hand, the young orphan boy not being voiced by Greg Ayres threw me off.
  • The traditional Chinese lady shows up again and gets two words of dialogue. Nice. At least she didn't repeat that stupid poem again.
  • Interesting how Ryo is now putting his fingers up to the bandage on his face. The first time, I thought he was going to take it off as an act of symbolism to mark reaching Hong Kong, but then he keeps gesturing to it. Maybe he's always done this and I never noticed?
  • Nice action, which is to be expected. Turns out the best kind of pacifism is the one where you make your enemies beat each other.
  • And the lady who runs the temple turns out to be wearing a China dress. Ooh la la. My preferences are traditional Japanese clothes, but I get the appeal of the cheongsam. Heck, the current Deresute gacha has a character wearing one, complete with double bun accessories.

This show continues to be surprisingly delightful, even if it now feels odd to see the Crunchyroll logo on anything given that they're being dragged through the mud for wanting to pay translators less. At least Sentai's the one working on this show. Next week, the fighting continues.

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Random thoughts -

Welcome to Hong Kong Ryo.  Watch out for pickpockets and wandering supporting characters.

Yeah, he got his shit boosted at the start of the second game as well.  You had to pawn off your gatcha toys and get a part time job to get money, everything from lifting stuff at a store to good old underground fight rings.

Ah, the days before online booking and AirBNB.

You got out kung-fued by an old dude at the park.  Do you really think you can beat Lan Di?

Suzuki's pacing for this series really works better for a passive medium like an anime than it did for a game.  Look, your average Yakuza game has long cutscenes too, but they are also stuffed to the absolute freaking brim with gameplay, interactive elements, and other things that make the experience feel far more rewarding than Shenmue did.  Which is part of why I'm so amazed with how the anime has taken the games' writing and refined it.

Some of the dialogue remains stilted, which I think is trying to convey that Ryo is still learning Cantonese.  It works when he's talking to people for whom Japanese isn't their first language.

Joy is a pretty fun character so far, but the visual similarities to Nami are going to be rather...distracting.

Honestly the old guy's Tai Chi speech just makes me want to watch Man of Tai Chi again.

"The only way this backpack is worth any money is if a $3,000 hooker is wearing it!"

Ok, jujutsu is the name for practically dozens of fighting arts, and considering that Yu Suzuki put in a lot of the moves Akira used in Virtua Fighter into it, it incorporates a fair amount of kung fu influence as well.  So the name passes the smell test.  Not to mention, this was before the popularity of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was a thing.

And the master was the woman the whole time.  Also there seems to be a recurring theme of people telling Ryo that pursuing revenge is pointless, but he charges forward anyway.

The show continues to be pretty good even as we go into the Shenmue games I admittedly never played.  Given the length of the series, I doubt we hit Shenmue III, but considering Shenmue III was a gigantic waste of time for everyone involved, maybe if this gets another season the writers can work their magic on that too, as well as the scripts for any hypothetical sequels, since no one is funding another Yu Suzuki Kickstarter.  Or maybe Suzuki just makes that OutRun anime he said he wanted to do during the NYCC panel for Shenmue. (He said the idea was for couples to be in a Cannonball Run style race).

Edited by Jman
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10 hours ago, DangerMouse said:

Probably not Luci Christian (Nami) but actually kinda sound like her too? Is it her?

 

10 hours ago, CorbeauKarasu said:

i'm pretty sure it was her. pretty unmistakeable inflection

 

10 hours ago, ben0119 said:

That would be hilarious it it was her.  Voice sounds deeper, though.  So either Luci is lowering her voice to a level I've never heard before, or it's someone else.

I know these are all honest questions and that they were asked during periods that weren't commercial breaks where a quick search could confirm it, but... Luci Christian was announced as Joy's VA as far back as when the anime first premiered, and the credit is right there on the show's ANN page. It's like everyone here is allergic to that site for some reason when it comes to looking up who voiced what character.

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On 3/13/2022 at 12:02 PM, PokeNirvash said:

 

 

I know these are all honest questions and that they were asked during periods that weren't commercial breaks where a quick search could confirm it, but... Luci Christian was announced as Joy's VA as far back as when the anime first premiered, and the credit is right there on the show's ANN page. It's like everyone here is allergic to that site for some reason when it comes to looking up who voiced what character.

Like you said, we were asking it right after hearing her voice in realtime, I know I missed the original announcement of who was voicing her, literally used ANN and wiki to look it up during the commercial break xD

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