Usagi Yojimbo

Going to kill a guy for being rude
Seriously? Does this seem out of character for Usagi, or is it just me?

Usually Stan writes contemptuously about Samurai who demand everyone be polite.

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For all their code of honor, samurai were no better than European knights with their chivalry. They would still murder a fucker of lower social standing for looking at them wrong.

i dont know or remember the context of his threat

But i assume Usagi just wanted to scare the guy straight cause he was being an uber asshole

he probably wouldn't have acted on it, he's done scare tactics on other people before that needed a life lesson

From what I've been reading lately, it's almost an understatement to say that samurai were no better than European knights.

tofugu.com/japan/bushido/

The linked article is entitled "Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit," and details how (according to the author) bushido wasn't codified until about 1900, by which time it was long since obsolete. In fact, the author's premise is that bushido was very nearly created whole cloth by the author Inazo Nitobe as a Japanese version of medieval European chivalry, in order to make Japan culture seem more sympathetic to westerners.

Please read the article if you're interested. The author seems to make some good points and has numerous references to back up his thesis. But I like to keep an open mind.

That's basically all pseudohistory.

Bushido as a code existed, but it was more like Confucianism with some warrior traditions mixed in. The Bushido of the 1920s onward is something that was based on the old code, especially the warrior aspects of it, but distorted to suit the purpose of the militarists.

Saying Bushido didn't exist until the 1900s is like saying Judaism is a fiction concocted in the 1860s by Zionist Jews trying to come up with a justification for colonizing Palestine.

Japan has always had a knack for erasing its own atrocities.
When even your nazi allies think you may be overdoing it, it's time to reconsider things.

gonna need more context

Hey man, the Chinese father asked them do it. It was a girl so he needed to get rid of it.

There was a German business man and Nazi Party member doing his own Schindler's List in Nanjing trying to save the Chinese from the Japanese

From what I understand, Bushido as a concept existed for centuries and goes back quite a ways. However, there was no real consensus on the particulars for most of its history. As such, a "proper" adherence to Bushido was subjective and probably depended on where in Japan you were specifically and when you were there.

TL;DR Bushido existed but no one could agree on what it meant.

The militarist ultra-nationalists who ran the country in the Early-Mid 20th Century had a more organized messaging machine. As such, their (somewhat ahistorical) interpretation of Bushido was nationally recognized and had generally understood particulars. Therefore, between that and its relative recentness, people tend to assume that their version of Bushido was the "True Bushido" that was always recognized across the entire country during Japan's Feudal period. When in reality, while the idea of Bushido was old, the version they were pushing was somewhat more recent and would have been unfamiliar to most samurai in history.

>Does this seem out of character for Usagi, or is it just me?

That shit happens to Usagi enough his perception has been skewed to kill samurai more than not kill samurai.

Kind of like MGSR, really.

Yeah, even Stan admits that Usagi's behavior as a samurai is unusually kind. Every other samurai in the comic treats everyone else like shit for one reason or another.

See, I look at that panel and think "Man, that guy must've been a HUGE asshole to piss off Usagi like that", because that guy is usually super-mild about most things.

there's a joke about a truckload of bowling balls in there somewhere

Usagi is a killing machine.

Erasing atrocities is the normal state of mankind user.

What the fuck? hellboy and the Goon combined?

Dude guarding the monastery (because of a death/investigation going on, but Usagi had no way of knowing that) tells Usagi he can't take shelter there and starts to threaten him with a spear to keep moving. Usagi starts to take out his sword, and the spear guard backs off after a short round of chicken

It's not surprising. Hellboy has issues where no one dies. There are issues showing Usagi killing like ten people in two pages. I know there's some of that in Hellboy, but Usagi has to do it like every other issue.

Also, Usagi's got like nine years on him, and is still going.

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It's really no different than how the Victorians codified chivalry to mean super-honorable super-warriors.

When a nation starts to civilize past a war-like state they tend to look back favorably on their warriors of old. Its just how it is.

And there was a Japanese diplomat that rescued Jews and other undesirables from the Nazis.

He's now a Greek Orthodox Saint.

Funny world we live in.

This makes me go back to different comics and manga and keep a killcount of the characters.

Truth is that there's good and evil people in all sides.

well as long as no one died i'd say its fine... maybe usagi really needed shelter and/or never intended to take it all the way. maybe sakai just slipped, he makes mistakes sometimes

Usagi showed steel and stared the guy down. And the guy was just a mook so even if he'd escalated he'd likely just gotten a sheath to the face.
It says something about the world Usagi lives in when he genuinely tries to avoid killing and still has a GRADUATED TOP OF MY CLASS [1] AND HAVE OVER 3500 CONFIRMED KILLS YOU LITTLE TOKAGE.

[1] Yes I know.

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the world has always had a knack for that

remember all the atrocities preformed in the colonial era ?

yeah neither did i

Shit, I need to read Conan.

Roy Thomas' stuff from the the 70's and 80's is the best place to start.

Do you have the one with Sanshobo saying "I don't believe you"?

>What the fuck? hellboy and the Goon combined?
Its kind of what happens when your character has a tendency to get into fights where he's outnumbered ten to one and has been getting into these fights since the eighties.

I heard Senso got pretty fucking dark... how bad was it?