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shang-bu-huan · 2 months ago

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Thunderbolt Fantasy Final Movie Ending Easter Eggs Explained

Warning: Spoilers for the movie ahead.

If you finished watching the ending of the Thunderbolt Fantasy final movie and found yourself feeling like you were missing out on some inside jokes or references here and there, it’s probably because you were. Namely, there are a number of Easter eggs and tributes to the Pili main series featured in the movie, as well as some callbacks to TBF Season 4 that are not obvious to most viewers because of certain things that were not translated in the official subs.

Note: I’m using the pinyin spellings of the names mentioned throughout. Here’s the guide to the Japanese equivalents for anyone who is more familiar with those:

Bai Lian=Hyakuren, Shang Bu Huan=Shou Fukan, Tian Ming=Tenmei, Huo Shi Ming Huang=Kasei Meikou, Furong Hui Dao=Fuyou Kei Tou, Tian Xing Jian=Tengyouken, Yan Xi=Anki, Chao Feng=Choufuu, Lin Xue Ya=Rin Setsu A

Bai Lian’s Alter Ego

Before I dig into some of the more movie-specific plot-relevant details, it’s important to first establish that Bai Lian’s character in and of itself functions as an Easter egg. He was designed as an alternate universe version of Pili’s most iconic character, Su Huan Zhen (sometimes spelled Su Huan Jen). Su Huan Zhen’s art name is Qing Xiang Bai Lian, or the Fragrant White Lotus, and that is where Bai Lian’s name, meaning “White Lotus,” comes from. (You can read more about Bai Lian’s character design as it relates to Su Huan Zhen in this interview if you’re interested.) The Japanese voice actor who plays Bai Lian, Takehito Koyasu, also voiced the role of Su Huan Zhen in the Japanese dub of the old Pili movie Legend of the Sacred Stone.

(I was not active in the fandom when Season 3 first aired, and I don’t know how widely circulated the above information was among Anglophone fans at the time, so apologies if this is not new information to you. I am including it here just in case for anyone who doesn’t already know.)

Anyway, with this character setting in mind, I wish the official Crunchyroll subs had opted to translate the name of the final sword that Bai Lian left in the shrine instead of leaving it in romanized form as the Furong Hui Dao. (Also, quite perplexingly, the Furong Hui Dao is incorrectly referred to as the Tian Xing Jian in Crunchyroll’s subs throughout the whole final movie, I dunno what the hell was up with that.) Furong Hui Dao means “Lotus Wisdom Saber,” and it reinforces the lotus imagery associated with Bai Lian’s character that appears in his name, on his clothing, and in the crest carved into the shrine.

Bai Lian As Su Huan Zhen: The Montage

When Bai Lian emerges from the lotus that descends from the seam where the skies got broooken, there are multiple Easter eggs and tributes wrapped into this montage. The first is the background music that plays. Rather than being from the Thunderbolt Fantasy original soundtrack written by Hiroyuki Sawano and Co., it is a song, titled Qing Xiang Bai Lian, that was the character theme for Su Huan Zhen from a past OST for Pili’s main series, written by one of Pili's in-house composers, Feng Tsai-lun. (You can listen to the full version on YouTube here.)

Next, a character poem is read for Bai Lian. This is actually Su Huan Zhen’s character poem and is a touchstone for longtime Pili fans (or anyone who has watched enough of Pili’s series/seasons that feature Su Huan Zhen to become familiar with his poem), to the point that a lot of Taiwanese fans can recite it from memory. Rather than being voiced by Huang Huei-feng, who did all of the other character poem recitations in Thunderbolt Fantasy, it is read by his father, the late Huang Wen-tse, or Vincent Huang. Vincent Huang (brother to Pili’s President Chris Huang and uncle to Pili’s CEO Huang Liang-hsun) is referred to as the “Eight-Tone Genius” for his versatility and skill as the narrator and voice actor who, up until a few years ago, played all of the roles in the Pili main series spanning hundreds of characters and decades of the show. The “Eight-Tone” part of this moniker is a reference to the fact that Taiwanese Hokkien, the language that Pili’s main series uses, has eight tones (at least nominally, not going to delve into the nitty-gritty linguistic technicalities here). Sadly, Vincent Huang passed away in summer 2022, before the scripts for Season 4 and the final movie of Thunderbolt Fantasy had even been finished. They must have used an old recording of Su Huan Zhen’s poem for the recitation that appears in this movie.

Bai Lian’s Deus Ex Machina: The Foreshadowing and the Callbacks

While Bai Lian’s descent from the sky to save the day may be a Deus Ex Machina situation, it’s worth noting that this plot point was actually foreshadowed in Season 4 Episode 10. The shrine in the Wasteland of Spirits where the Lotus Wisdom Saber was stored had a stone tablet inscribed with a poem/message written by Bai Lian and addressed to Shang Bu Huan:

超越時空與君交

祠中遺物證友誼

正道之人若相禱

此刀為誓必有應

Translation:

Transcending time and space to meet with you,

The relic within the shrine serves as a testament to friendship.

If a person who walks the path of righteousness offers their prayers,

I vow by this blade, they shall be answered.

The first time I read the shrine inscription back in Season 4, I thought the first line was referring to how Shang and Bai Lian first met and how the sword was left to Shang in a different place and time from when Bai Lian first created it, and the message as a whole was about the sword being Bai Lian's gift to Shang, the “answer” to his “prayers” to help him with his battle against evil, but it turns out it was [also] foreshadowing that Bai Lian himself would cross space-time to meet Shang when he used the sword.

Just as this inscription in Season 4 foreshadows the events of the movie, there are lines in the movie that call back to this inscription in Season 4 using the same words that are in the message (well, the Japanese version/pronunciation, anyway, since the poem is in Chinese, which is used as the in-universe written language of TBF).

The first of these callbacks I noticed is when Tian Ming brings the sword to Shang and gives her little speech about power and swords, which ends with the declaration: “You need to demonstrate that to him, Bu Huan!”

The original line in Japanese: その証を今ここであの方に伝えて，不患!

Romanization: Sono akashi wo ima koko de ano kata ni tsutaete, Fukan!

Here, the word “証” (also written as “証し,” pronounced “akashi”) is the Japanese kanji that was derived from simplifying the Chinese character “證,” which appears in the second line of the shrine inscription, translated as “testament” within the context of the poem. (One could also translate that part as “a demonstration of friendship,” but I thought “testament” had more of the gravitas befitting the context.)

After hearing Tian Ming’s words, Bu Huan then repeats that same word, “証,” and seems to come to a realization, though it’s not 100% clear to me if he’s simply internalizing what Tian Ming said or if he’s also making a connection to the message from the shrine and what the message implies about the sword’s symbolism. It seems like he doesn’t fully solve that puzzle until he sees the seam in the sky made by the sword.

The far more blatant and unquestionable callback to the shrine inscription happens in Bai Lian’s lines as he takes the stage and after he uses the sword on Huo Shi Ming Huang.

The original Japanese:

過ちと悔みをするまい。

これは時を超え空を越え友誼の形。

ゆえに、私は今一度

禁断の門を跨ぎ越えましょう。

ここに誓いは果たされた。

またいつか、お目にかかりましょう、我が友。

Romanization:

Ayamachi to kuyami wo suru mai.

Kore wa toki wo koe, sora wo koe, yuugi no katachi.

Yue ni, watashi wa ima ichido

Kindan no mon wo matagikoemashou.

Koko ni chikai wa hatasareta.

Mata itsuka, o-me ni kakarimashou, waga tomo.

Translation:

There is no need for blame or regret.

This is what friendship that transcends time and space looks like.

Thus, once again,

I have crossed the forbidden gate.

Here, the vow has been fulfilled.

Let us meet again someday, my friend.

(Special thanks to Tifa @fujimusume for transcribing and translating these lines for me at my request. The transcriptions and translations are used with her permission. One exception: The first line follows Crunchyroll’s subs for the translation at her recommendation.)

If you cross-compare the kanji in the Japanese lines with the original Chinese text of the shrine inscription, you’ll see the overlap in the words, which I have bolded and underlined in both the original Japanese lines and their corresponding translations. The Crunchyroll subs are not “wrong,” by the way; the alternate translation Tifa provided for these lines is simply meant to highlight the parallels in juxtaposition with my translation of the shrine inscription. Hopefully it should be clear now that Bai Lian is explicitly referring back to the message he wrote to Shang when he left him the sword.

Unfortunately, since the shrine inscription was not translated in the official subs for Season 4, this reference to it in the movie got lost as well. I wouldn't go as far as to say that this oversight completely compromised the intelligibility of the ending, but I think having this context probably would have helped people appreciate the groundwork that was laid for this moment, regardless of whether or not they agree with the Deus Ex Machina plot device being used.

While I have a lot of issues with Crunchyroll’s handling of the subs for TBF, this is actually not just a Crunchyroll-exclusive omission. The shrine inscription is not translated for Japanese audiences either, so I would guess even Japanese viewers may not have caught on to these callbacks. And even for viewers who know Chinese, the panning shot of the stone tablet with the inscription is pretty short and the words are hard to make out, so unless you paused the video to squint at the inscription, you wouldn't even necessarily be able to figure out what it says just at a glance/in passing.

Anyway, I'm not sure whether the shrine inscription was commissioned by Urobuchi to begin with for Pili to implement or suggested by Pili and then okayed by Urobuchi (the latter happens frequently and Urobuchi has always been receptive to this kind of feedback from Pili). I also don’t know whether the production staff themselves actually considered this stuff super important. If it were, I would assume they would have either had Shang read [the Japanese equivalent of] the shrine inscription out loud, as Yan Xi does with the first three lines of the public notice about that Xi You minister at the end of the final movie, or feature Bai Lian reading it in a voiceover, similar to when Chao Feng received that message from Lin Xue Ya in the Demon Realm in S4. But either way, I thought it was at least worth bringing up as a fun fact to highlight the intentionality of the production.

The Central Plains Cameos

When Bai Lian transports Huo Shi Ming Huang to the other world, it’s revealed to be Zhongyuan (中原, pronounced “Chuugen” in Japanese), a.k.a the Central Plains, which is the principal setting for the Pili main series and Su Huan Zhen’s homeland. The two characters who give Huo Shi Ming Huang the mantou (the white steamed bun that got dubiously translated as “dumpling” in Crunchyroll’s subs), Qin Jia Xian (the guy in red) and Yin Shi Ren (the guy in blue), are also cameos of characters from Pili’s main series, with new clothing designs specially created for the movie.

Qin Jia Xian and Yin Shi Ren are recurring comic relief sidekick characters who are friends and allies to Su Huan Zhen. Qin Jia Xian’s name in Taiwanese Hokkien, Tsîn Ké-sian (秦假仙), is a pun on the Taiwanese phrase “tsin ké-sian” (真假仙). “Tsin” means “really” or “very,” while “ké-sian” refers to pretending or playing the fool. Qin Jia Xian is the quintessential representation of one of the five character archetypes of budaixi, 丑 (pinyin: chǒu), the comedic “clown” character, and is presented as the example of this archetype in the Pili budaixi exhibit on display at the Taoyuan Airport.

(Photograph courtesy of my dad)

(Side note: If you ever travel to Taiwan, I recommend checking out the exhibit, which also has Thunderbolt Fantasy puppets and figures on display. It’s in waiting room D7 in Terminal 2.)

Yin Shi Ren is Qin Jia Xian’s lackey, as well as his comedic foil. He's the more straightforward and naive of the two, so he often gets roasted and bullied by Qin Jia Xian.

By the way, Qin Jia Xian is voiced by Yuichi Nakamura and Yin Shi Ren is voiced by Mafia Kajita. For those who don't know, Yuichi Nakamura is a popular Japanese voice actor (Satoru Gojo from Jujutsu Kaisen is one of his more well-known recent roles), and Mafia Kajita is a writer, radio personality, emcee, etc. who is good friends with Nakamura. Both Nakamura and Kajita are also buddies with Tomokazu Sugita, who played Prince Yan Xi, so their appearance in the cast list here is also a cameo of sorts. I suspect one of the reasons Kajita was enlisted for this particular cameo is because of his coincidental resemblance to the character of Yin Shi Ren.

(The photo of Yin Shi Ren is his most recent design prior to the TBF cameo, for the Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons series.)

The Last Cameo

This one has nothing to do with the Pili main series, but the boatman in the final scene with Shang is voiced by Gen Urobuchi himself! Honestly the most surprising of the cameos for me personally (in a fun way). During a Q&A session following an early screening of the film, Urobuchi said that after writing 50-something episodes of scripts, he wanted to have his name appear in the credits in a different capacity than in the past, and he got his wish.

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