mare780

[mare780]

Okay so I watched both the 2007 Ayakashi and Mononoke anime, AND the 2024 Karakasa movie, exactly because the movie managed to get me hyperfixated. And since I didn't find any information about what I had picked on, I thought I could share it.

The specific Mudras Kon Kusuriuri uses :

Since I am Buddhist, I could recognize the Mudras and knew it had to be done voluntarily, and I had to rewatch the movie to realize that Shingi also used the same Mudras.

The first one is called "Surya Mudra", or the Sun Mudra.

I thought it could be interesting given the way Shingi's hair turns a fierce red, or the fact that Kon's Trigram is for Earth, and Kusu never presses his thumb against the ring finger to regulate the Earth element.

But the second Mudra is what caught my attention the most.

The Shunya Mudra.

I believe it can be very telling to associate the Sun Mudra, that represents vitality to the Mudra of Emptiness in the way he exorcizes Mononoke, because it shows how it is a lot more than bringing a Mononoke back to a state of emptiness (flowers are even used upon the Mononoke's "death", or each time it sustained an attack from the sword).

Mononoke are born from negative emotions and regret, and as Ri Kusuriuri said in the last Bakeneko arc, "Memories are tied to a single place". Mononoke must be exorcized, so the soul can finally move on and grow into something else, instead of being stuck in negativity and torment for eternity.

Anyhoo, I hope some will find that random bit interesting !

[mare780]

Mononoke Theory: the hexagrams= the types of Mononoke each medicine seller is tasked with exorcising.

I was doing some looking into Bagua, specifically the meanings of the Ri and Kon trigrams, for obvious reasons. And I found something quite interesting concerning the Attributes each trigram holds.

At first, I was hoping that they’d relate in some way to the personality or symbolism surrounding the medicine sellers themselves. But that didn’t seem to entirely be the case. Ri has the attributes “light-giving, humane, dependence”. The first two make sense, as he DOES bring metaphorical light (truth and understanding) by exorcising Mononoke, and he has been shown to express kindness towards the spirits that end up in these pitiable situations. But dependence? That makes…less sense.

Until I realized that Dependence is (in one way or another) a factor in the stories of all the Mononoke he’s exorcised.

Children aborted against the wishes of their mothers, the aftermath of a codependent incestuous affair, a battered woman who’s too afraid to leave the family she despises, an evil spirit desperate for the love of others, and a dead woman trying in any way she can to get the truth of her death brought to light….all of these Mononoke are spirits who were dependent on others, whether that’s their victims or the ones who wronged them. And all of them were exorcised by the wielder of the Ri sword—the sword of the dependence attribute.

Conversely, Kon’s attributes are “devoted/yielding.” Though we’ve only seen him exorcise one Mononoke so far, it was the spirit of a woman who was so devoted to her work it destroyed everything else inside of her. And since the other two movies in his trilogy also seem to be taking place in the Ooku, it seems like they will also deal with the consequences of letting your devotion to a cause destroy your personhood.

TL;DR: both Ri and Kon seem to specialize in spirits that have attributes of their respective trigram. Also, both their trigrams have associations with women: Ri is associated with the second daughter and Kon is associated with the mother.

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this scene makes me giggle so much– shingi was shaking from PURE joy at being pet😭

how to make your god-like being and coworker perform an excellent exorcism: pet pet pet

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Is there any sight more beautiful than that of a stunned Medicine Seller?

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My fav

Yoruichi Shihouin | Bleach TYBW Ep. 39 and 40

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Preview of New Lore Document (And my own extrapolations on it!)👀

To be discussed at length in yet another Youtube interview Director Nakamura and producer Shoji to be released this Saturday!

Transcript and Google auto translations of the doc, as well as my thoughts are below the cut. @sarahwatchesthings This might be an interesting one for you to sink your teeth into!

📜Transcript

-怪 続編アイデアメモー 3) 蒐我の峰(しゅうがのみね) 【全ての物が、産まれてくる座、全てのものが還るべき座 古代よりさまざまな宗教によって、「神」とあらわされる根源の座 全知がそこにはあり、あまたの聖人たちが「瞑想」などによって「写し世」にいながらにして触れよう、近 づこうとした物、そのもの。 「 心理学者のユングが言うところの「集合的無意識」であり、預言者たちがアクセスする「アカシックレコー ド」であり、仏教でいう彼岸の知恵 「般若」(はんにゃ)ともいわれています。 時間」もたたみ込まれているため、宇宙の始まりから終焉まで、全てがそこにはあります。 「蒐我」を知るということが、人間にとっての「悟り」であり、仏教でいう「明心見性」(みょうしんけん しょう)と同じ意味を成します。 そこには、写し世との距離(実際には距離というものは存在しないが、便宜上わかりやすくそう言われてい )をはかる深さの概念があり、一業目、二業目(いちごうめ、にごうめ)と数えられます。 数が増えるほど、深く業に沈んでいる事となり、人間でいえば、深く死んでいる、より偏在化している状態 となります(正常な状態)。 人は、死を迎えると、ゆっくりと蒐我へと沈んでいく旅にでるのです。

📝Translation

Kai Sequel Idea Memo 3) The Peak of the Collected Self [The seat from which all things are born, the seat to which all things return. The seat of the origin, which has been expressed as "God" by various religions since ancient times. Omniscience resides there, and it is the very thing that many saints have tried to touch and approach while living in the "duplicate world" through "meditation" and other practices. It is what psychologist Jung calls the "collective unconscious," the "Akashic Records" that prophets access, and is also called "Hannya," the wisdom of the other shore in Buddhism. Time is also folded in, so everything from the beginning to the end of the universe is there. Knowing "the self" is "enlightenment" for humans, and has the same meaning as "clearing one's mind and seeing one's true nature" in Buddhism. There is a concept of depth that measures the distance from the world of reflection (in reality there is no such thing as distance, but it is referred to as such for convenience and clarity), and it is counted as the first karma, the second karma (ichigoume, nigoume). The more the number, the deeper one is sunk into karma, which would be like being deeply dead and in a more decentralized state in human terms (the normal state). When a person approaches death, they embark on a journey that slowly sinks them into the self.

🧠My Thoughts

So we finally get some much-needed context as what this realm of Shuuga (蒐我) is like. As a refresher, the previously published lore document says that the medicine seller's headquarters, called the Jyu-Yoku (じゅうよく) resides unevenly between the human world and this Shuuga in a state of perpetual non-existence and existence– Schrödinger's cat is a rather apt metaphor for it.

Based on my (rather sleep deprived) ramblings about the Asian philosophy of the universe which the hexagram paradigm resides in, I believe that Shuuga is part of the broader realm of Mukyoku (無極) which is the primordial zero which all of existence originates from.

From here, I form another hypothesis. Kusuriuri stated in the Umibozu arc that he fears is (according to fan subtitles) "the knowledge that the edge of this world exists without Form, Truth, or Regret." Whether that describes the Shuuga or Mukyoku, I believe this may be a reason why he may be reluctant to make trips to the Jyu-Yoku headquarters.

His journeys in the human world are always driven by the pursuit of knowledge to purify Mononoke from that realm. In a place like Shuuga, where all of existence and non existence and time coalesce into pure omniscience, his purpose for existing, and thus his physical form, would be utterly eradicated.

So he is very human in that he wants to keep his individuality and not become just one small drop in the collective unconsciousness and/or hivemind that I'm beginning to think the Jyu-Yoku "headquarters" is a manifestation of.

There are probably hundreds of other entities similar to medicine sellers residing there, but only the ones who earn the right to wield one of the 64 exorcism swords have the privilege of getting personhood and freedom to roam the mortal realm.

But even then, only a handful of these swords are "on duty" at a time depending on the state of the world. I bet becoming a wielder of one of the 8 the powerful trigram swords is a much coveted position, because they are the most likely weapons to be deployed into the human world, and thus the key to freedom from the Jyu-Yoku.

In the transformation sequences, we see Hyper and Kusu exist in a strange pocket dimension between the grounded human world and fantastical mononoke domain. Thus, I believe the key to entering and exiting the Jyu-Yoku's liminal space is the exorcism sword (though I imagine clever entities that know what to look for can become a stowaways/hitchhikers in the brief window of time when that gateway's opened).

Thus, the existence of all medicine sellers is rather contradictory. While they seek knowledge to eradicate mononoke from the world, their existence in the human realm simultaneously confirms that they are actively running away from an enlightenment which they can easily access should they return to Jyu-Yoku.

This level of enlightenment is embodied by the exorcism sword - how else can it know when to clank its teeth when a medicine seller correctly deduces a Form, Truth, or Regret?

Medicine sellers are the walking embodiments of the individual valuing their sense of self over the more efficient collective. Why else would you do something as impractical as picking off one mononoke at a time, when you can effectively exorcise the lot of them from Jyu-Yoku?

Let's consider this from a different perspective. In the Jyu-Yoku, I imagine it is all-too-easy to fall into the trap of looking at the "bigger picture" and let the "lesser" issues of insignificant individuals fall on the wayside.

Those who become medicine sellers feel compassion for the entities that fall below the notice of the Jyu-Yoku. Although there are much bigger forces at play in the universe, these "trivial" pockets of suffering, left unchecked, can grow into something much more dangerous: mononoke.

If the entire universe is represented by the human body, the Jyu-Yoku could be considered the immune system. It works with the intricate internal workings of the body which goes through the endless cycle of cell death and regeneration. In theory, it should be self-sustaining.

The medicine sellers, by comparison, are quite literally that: the peddlers of medicine that the body consumes or uses to expedite the healing of superficial injuries or illnesses that with time, the Jyu-Yoku could have eventually taken care of.

Or perhaps a better metaphor for the Medicine Seller is vaccines - they collect knowledge of the pathogens (the mononoke) which are rendered mostly inert (purification via exorcism sword) to train the body (Jyu-Yoku) how to better combat it. And like vaccination development in the real world, it's a never ending task ensuring that it is capable combating the evolving sicknesses of the world.

Anyways, thank you for attending yet another one of my Mononoke TED talks!

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I watched the new Mononoke movie and it was really good. I’m excited that there will be a “Part 2”. The only thing I didn’t like ( besides the horrible subtitle placement ) was I felt like Kusuriuri was much more passive in the series and felt a bit different in the movie.

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I just love these two idiots.I was waiting for an interaction

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You know what? I can die happy now that they have animated the “it-looks-like-he-is-getting-a-blow-job” panel. OMG.

Aizen Sosuke, Bleach: Thousand Years Blood War, part. 3

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Mononoke (2007) Nue arc

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JJK Finale - All the questions and still no answers

As the JJK finale is nearing and the last two chapters were so ass a total random dump, many questions I had about the story piled up. Here they are:

What about the merger?

What was the point of it at all?

Kenjaku's backstory and objective??!!

What about society's reaction to the existance of curses?

What will USA and other countries do about Japan?

Why are totally random and unrelevant characters alive and suddenly relevant??!!

Why isn't Mei Mei in jail?

What is going to happen to the jujutsu society after the Big Three Families fall to ruin?

Would't the balance of jujutsu world collapse after Gojo died? Or did he?

Who's going to be the mediator between jujutsu society and the government now that the higher ups are dead?

What the hell happened to Yuji's parents?

So did the "cycle of curses" end with Sukuna's death? I don't think so

What was the point of mentioning it then?

Why hasn't anyone come after the sorcerers and demand some explanation?

Why is everyone so chill after what happened???

What is Kurusu's role in any of the aftermath and why Megumi needs to be her henchman?

I just don't get it. There is just one chapter left and honestly I have no hope those questions will ever be answered. And somehow it doesn't feel to me like the "Happy announcement" at the end of chapter 271 is going to be jjk part 2 what everone wants it to be.

Gege just puzzles me.

At this point I'm just curious...

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https://x.com/Go_Jover/status/1837893427192910130?t=7BFIwtGF8drGdAlrZq19hQ&s=19

what do you think of this? omg all these dream theories are actually terrifying me what kind of ending are we getting.....

Link to Tweet and the image from it.

If OP's tweet isn't clear enough...

Dream's End is 夢の終わり(Yume no Owari) where 夢 (Yume) means Dream, の (no) means Of, and 終わり(Owari) means End.

The kanji 夢 (Yume) in hiragana is ゆ(Yu)め(Me). That's how you get ゆめの (YuMeNo).

Gege loves using wordplay and puns so this is not a stretch I think, anon.

...I also got this really interesting reply on this post by @frfx61. (I included @arikozumi's comment because that was my initial reaction too.)

For no particular reason here is a source on Buddha's 5 Dreams from my extremely surface level research. Someone who actually knows Buddhism please fudging look into this. But for now here is a quote from that source:

"He dreamed that hordes of maggots, with white bodies and black heads, slowly crept up his legs covering them from the tip of the toe-nail right up to the knee-cap. This third dream presaged that a great many people (with black heads) who wear pure white clothes would adore the Buddha and take Great Refuge (Mahāsaranagamaṇa) in him."

Sukuna refers to all the people Yuji values as maggots at the start of the manga. And this entire sequence has been a peaceful refuge for everyone...

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Honestly this is so funny because it doesnt matter if its geto or kenjaku because has he just decided to be a comedian after everything??? "I wanted to kill people but this guy is funny so I'll follow him ig"

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I love the anime Mononoke so much I decided to make one of the talisman forms seen in the show.

I wanted it to be about show accurate in size, so it took about three days of solid cross stitching, but I'm pretty proud of how it turned out! I then just interfaced it and turned it into a charm.

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Canon dialogue

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Naruto Shippuden