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- 01/20/2007 8:59 am
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A tough street fighter, Mugen is as straightforward as they come, a smartass bundle of attitude and appetite. Orphaned at a young age, he raised himself in rough-and-tumble Ryukyu--modern-day Okinawa--a wide-open seaport/prison camp where toughs, pirates and sailors from everywhere were only too eager to show off a wide range of brawling tactics. Mugen early on began developing the free-for-all fighting style he calls 田hampuru kendo・(at least, the writers say he does...), swiping bits and pieces from everything thrown at him and making up the rest as he went along. He痴 done jail time for an unknown offense as well (the blue bands on his wrists and ankles are probably convict tattoos), which doubtless taught him even more tricks as well as providing a chance for him to use and hone his skills. His lazy, sloppy exterior covers a feral temper that can flare into violence in an instant, but he痴 equally capable of forming quick loyalties and defending girls in peril when it suits him. He痴 shrewd, suspicious, perceptive, but basically relaxed and happy-go-lucky; utterly practical and pragmatic (his name literally means 渡o illusions・or 電reamless・***), trusts nothing but his own abilities and instincts, and has zero compunctions about kicking your lights out for lunch money, or any other reason that amuses him. His distrust and dislike of authority figures is deeply ingrained, and he'll basically do anything he's told not to, just because. By the time we meet him, he痴 about 19 and barely civilized, well set in a course of devoting his life to nothing but his favorite pursuits: eating, sleeping, chasing women and swordfighting, in no particular order. A rough case with great charm, satisfied with his life and his freedom, willing to handle whatever fate throws his way as long as he need follow no rules and serve no master--and yet, every day he says, ready to die.Except when he's not. In the remarkable first half of episode #14, we see him have a near-death experience he's apparently had before; he sinks down into the sea and comes out on the other side, as if through a mirror, falls up through the water surface into a strange,luminous, inverted world. [I think this must be Nirai-Kanai, the Okinawan traditional other-world, where spirits go when they're ready to seek peace. It's represented as an island that can be reached only underwater; if you try to sail there it will always be on the horizon ahead, no matter how far you go. I think that Mugen leaves it because his spirit isn't ready to seek peace, even if he's died.] He's surrounded there by mysterious, tall figures, warrior-spirits or gods bearing spears and wrapped in shaggy cloaks, and what does he say to them? "What, you again?..." and then "Hey, wait, I don't want to go yet..." at which they vanish and he falls back into the water to begin his return to the surface and his unfinished life. This is a charmed life, unassuming as it seems on the surface, one that' s been nearly lost at least twice and saved both times. Definitely someone ready for a greater destiny to step up and take his hand...
oppression that used to be just a punk dislike of cops and soldiers has steadily developed into something much deeper and stronger. His clear-cut sense of right and wrong plays into this, as well. By the time of episode 17 we see him taking out a bank of Matsumae-Han militia just because he's angry at the way they've treated an Ainu villager, which is so far from the casual brawler we met back in Edo. There's a huge destiny looming for this pirate kid, I can just feel it.
[**--footnote: There are many possible translations of Mugen's name. One writer suggested that the stress in the meaning should not be "no illusions", but rather "not an illusion": hence something more like "genuine, the real thing, no bullshit". Another reassembled all the elements and rendered it as "nothing but a dream". --More recently, Episode 18 offered yet another interpretation--"infinite/limitless"--though this is not a translation of the exact kanji used to spell his name on the show's official website. In this case we have a clever pun: the kanji "mu" read (in this case) as "no/none/without", but paired with two alternate kanji for "gen", one of which means "dream/illusion/fantasy" --the one used on the website--and one of which means "limit/boundary". So "Mugen" means both "no illusions/dreamless" and "no limits/infinite", depending on the characters used to spell it.]
mugen06 !coming soon!
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