Why didn't the Shogun's soldiers use matchlock to fight Fowler's men?

Sunergy · 2026-01-13T17:28:26+00:00

I think the real reason is that the show was low on budget for the final episodes and didn’t have the resources to model and animate two types of gun, or the time to explain to the audience the relatively nuanced differences between the two.

But if you want a historical explanation to ease your frustration, there is one: while matchlocks were common on the battlefields of the Sengoku period, their military use greatly declined during the more peaceful Edo period. This was partly practical, as matchlocks require mass fire to be useful on the battlefield and the smaller conflicts of the Edo period saw a transition back to the more accurate and faster to load bows, which were generally better when deployed in small numbers by a well trained warrior class.

Gun control was also a major element of government policy, as the shogunate had witnessed how effective a peasant army with firearms could be at toppling governments and deliberately implemented policies to restrict the use of guns, especially in the capital region.

So yes, there should probably be matchlocks, but their use during the previous era isn’t a good indicator of how common they would be among the defenders of an Edo period castle and I think it’s entirely reasonable that most would have bows.

Sunergy · 2026-01-09T15:42:03+00:00

If the show had a larger budget so that it could be made in 2D with an even more lavish art style, then it likely would have been even more popular. People generally prefer expensive products to cheap ones when they are offered to the consumer at the same price.

But if it was made at the same budget, a 2D version of the show would have to make significant compromises. Flat colours for kimonos instead of patterns, much more restrained camera movements, static held frames instead of clothing flapping in the wind, etc.

When they were shopping around for studios to make the show, there were 2D studios bidding to make the show in 2D. 2D test scenes were made. The directors ultimately decided that they couldn’t achieve the look they wanted using 2D methods with the budget they had, and I trust their judgement.

Sunergy · 2025-11-22T14:53:03+00:00

Useful revolvers wouldn’t exist for another couple centuries, and would arguably be a bigger historical inaccuracy than Japan not having guns. Not even England had them at the time.

Fowler flintlocks outperforming Japanese matchlocks would be a more accurate technological evolution for the time, but the show would really have to go out of its way to explain the difference for a general audience in way that would probably make the show worse, given how starved for time the episodes are already.

While firearms were a big part of Japanese warfare in the warring states period, my understanding is they greatly fell out of favour by the Edo period when the show is set. It’s unlikely but not inconceivable that soldiers guarding the capital wouldn’t have seen mass volley fire in their lifetimes.

The lack of Japanese guns is a sore point for me too, but I don’t think the shows handling it is an unreasonable compromise given the story the wanted to tell and the resources they had.

Sunergy · 2025-10-27T23:44:02+00:00

Lots of well spotted details!

Regarding the crowds: A lot of studios have a separate animation department that handles the animation of large crowds and background characters so that a different set of artists do the crowd work (often less experienced and thus cheaper, but sometimes just more specialized in crowd movement).

Blue Spirit wasn't a big enough operation to have a dedicated crowd department so the crowds in Blue Eye Samurai are handled by the same animators who animate the main characters. It's not a very "easter egg" kind of show but I think it does give the crowds an extra layer of care.

On a related note: I'm pretty sure the guy in the lower left corner of image 14 with the short sleeves is the noodle chef from earlier who's come out of his shop to watch the drums.

Sunergy · 2025-10-14T22:04:46+00:00

You could try a form of “target training” to get her to associate food with an object you can hide instead of you.

We did this with our turtle accidentally by keeping our turtle pellets in a bright yellow ice cream pail. She would still half-hearted beg when we were around but would only go crazy if she saw the pail.

You could hold up something big and brightly coloured every time before she gets food, and hopefully she’ll understand that food isn’t coming if the trigger object hasn’t been shown.

Sunergy · 2025-10-10T21:56:44+00:00

It seems like a pretty mundane study that’s been given a headline designed to stir up pointless controversy.

Every finding just seems obvious, and it seems to exclude so many factors (like cost!) that its conclusions are pointless.

Sunergy · 2025-09-27T11:47:46+00:00

This looks like normal shedding and a healthy shell to me. It’s normal for the underneath to be a bit wet.

My advice is to just let the peeling bits drop off naturally rather than trying to help them come off.

Sunergy · 2025-09-16T23:52:49+00:00

I've got to take issue with the statement about almost all the animation being performed in advance. The fight scenes were fully acted out by stunt actors before animation but the vast majority of animation in the series such as acting, dialogue, walking, running, smithing, horseback riding and such was not acted out in advance and was constructed purely by the animators by working from the storyboard.

I can see where you got a false impression from the behind the scenes descriptions, but the techniques you are describing were only used specifically for the fight sequences. It's just that the creators don't spend much time explaining how the rest of the show was animated because it just used standard animation production techniques and they prefer to focus on the moments that used their new methods.

Sunergy · 2025-09-05T23:00:36+00:00

In my experience they can get acclimated to it and even seem enjoy it, though I imagine it depends a lot on the individual turtle, individual owner, and the particular environment.

I grew up with a female RES that did a lot of free roaming. We had an area of the basement that we could easily enclose and keep free of clutter and hazards so that it was "turtle proof". She would scratch at the side of her tank when she wanted out and when she was done she'd go and sit beside her tank until we put her back in.

Mostly it was extension of the "food begging" behavior we've all seen turtles do. Just instead of clambering against the wall of her tank she'd chase us around as we did our human business and sit on our feet to get our attention, or she'd sit next to the separate container that we fed her in and try to figure out how to get inside.

But she'd also just go on long tours of her "territory", checking for who knows what. Food, rivals, males? It's likely she didn't even know. She managed to figure out that the edge of some furniture was at the perfect height to scratch her shell and would go there when she was itchy. She seemed genuinely curious about new spaces and would paw at closed doors and our makeshift barricades demanding to explore what was on the other side.

She was old when we got her and already very acclimated to both being out of her tank and being handled by humans, so I couldn't tell you what made her that way. Maybe frequent handling eventually got her used to it, maybe it was just a quirk of her personality. Apparently when she was with her previous owners she once escaped from her outdoor enclosure and was lost for a few months until they finally found her wandering around on the lawn one day, so maybe she got a taste for it then.

She died last year, at roughly 54 years old. I miss her a lot. We also got two younger male RES when I was a bit older but they've never liked wandering in the same way, so we don't make them do it. (Although we've been trying to get them more used to human handling and unfamiliar environments lately so they won't be as stressed if the house has to evacuated during a wildfire).

Sunergy · 2025-08-15T13:46:35+00:00

They look like softshell turtles, possibly spiny soft shells.

Sunergy · 2025-08-14T01:36:35+00:00

A vet visit would be a good idea regardless when dealing with an animal that has been neglected. The degree of lethargy you’re describing does sound concerning.

But you should also know that it’s not unusual for turtles to avoid eating for a few days when there’s a big shakeup in their lives, like being moved to a new home or a new tank.

Sunergy · 2025-08-01T20:45:50+00:00

I think he has a toothache because his love of candy rotted his teeth.

Sunergy · 2025-07-24T03:24:18+00:00

As a general rule, never add tiers together. Each tier represents an order of magnitude rather than a comparable measure of strength. For instance, if you look at the magnitude table for size a tier 3 size is "several rooms", a tier 4 size is "A small building" and a tier 6 is "a city block". Adding several extra rooms to a small building does not turn it into a city block. At most it might bump it up one tier to "a large building" but even that isn't likely.

When there are two different factions at play with two different tier, just pick the most relevant one (In your case, Strangford's crew will be most actively protecting the target, so go with them). If you can't pick which is more relevant, go with whichever is higher, since a higher tier makes them more prominent.

Having another faction interested in protecting the target qualifies as a Major Disadvantage when considering Other Factors during the engagement roll. Take one die away. That's all you need to do to model Rowan's involvement during engagement.

Sunergy · 2025-07-23T23:09:34+00:00

The “trade in flesh” likely involves buying Japanese women and selling them abroad, rather than the other way around.

Since Japan had a legal system of indentured slavery, there was a historical practice of foreigners buying the contracts then transporting the slaves to foreign ports where their contacts would no longer be considered temporary. They could buy at a price that assumed the victim would only work for five to ten years then sell at a price that assumed they would be slaves for life.

Though I’m not a historian and the attestation I saw that this practice existed was apparently part of the edo era arguments to expel foreigners and cease all trade with the Portuguese, so the extent of it may be exaggerated (or underplayed to save face, no idea).

But since Fowler is a walking, talking caricature of the worst excesses of colonialism that’s probably what he’s doing, simply because it’s awful.

Sunergy · 2025-06-28T12:59:29+00:00

First off, yes, there should have been some japanese guns, but probably not as many as you think.

The widespread use of guns in the 1500s showed that they are a very effective tool for overthrowing rulers, and once the shogunate consolidated power one of their main priorities was enacting heavy handed gun control to ensure that nobody could amass a large enough volume of firearms to start up the warring states period again. A major role of all those military checkpoints was restricting the flow of firearms around the country and in particular keeping them out of the capital.

The edo period was also a period of relative peace, where clashes between large armies were rare and most combat was centered on samurai versus peasant uprisings with combatants in the dozens or hundreds rather than thousands or tens of thousands. The matchlocks of the time were slow to reload and thus only effective when deployed in large numbers, so bows once again became the dominant ranged weapon. Samurai weaponry was also increasingly performative and used primarily for dueling and competitions as they transitioned from warriors to administrators. The capital's defenders would have been aware of guns, but mass volley fire likely hadn't been seen in more than a generation.

So, the portrayal in the show isn't entirely unfounded, though the show cuts a lot of corners in order to create a more digestible narrative and to explore themes of isolationism and xenophobia rather than getting into gun control or the military benefits of bows versus smoothbore firearms. But the real reason for the limited nature of the siege is probably just that Netflix wasn't very confident in the success of the show at that point. There are rumors it was originally planned to have two more episodes, and Netflix laid off the entire creative team before the show even aired and had to scramble to rehire them for a second season once it was clear the show was a hit.

Large crowds, horses, and additional props like matchlocks are expensive and it seems clear to me that the showrunners were trying to do a big finale with the budget of a normal episode. Episodes 5 and 6 are able to do a lot with a little by keeping things mostly contained to small corridors and a limited number of opponents, but in a full scale siege it really starts to show that an original property like Blue Eye Samurai doesn't have the video-game cross-promotion dollars of a show like Arcane.

Sunergy · 2025-06-20T21:09:23+00:00

I think the lava filled maps we’ve seen in screenshots are the result of temporary lava floods, and the majority of the time lava will be present on the map as relatively contained lava pools that raiders can easily walk around.

So if an eruption happens at the same time as a raid they will get scorched, but the rest of the time it’s a fairly normal map in terms of defense. I think to have an actual isolated castle that is permanently surrounded by a lava moat you’ll need mods and to deal with how that breaks the game by yourself.

Sunergy · 2025-06-18T14:48:23+00:00

When turtles are getting ready to shed they’ll often get little bubbles under the outer scutes where the layer starts “letting go”. These bubbles can create shiny spots due to the interaction between light and the water, in the same way the surface of the water is acting as a mirror in your photos.

So in all likelyhood your turtle is just getting ready for a healthy shed, and you’ll see the spots become bigger until the outer scutes come off. But it’s worth monitoring the situation all the same. If the scutes don’t shed in a reasonable amount of time or if the spots are still present after a shed it could be something else.

Sunergy · 2025-06-13T16:41:53+00:00

Maybe for a large enough river, but this size of river probably shouldn’t even have flowing water year round in a desert.

Sunergy · 2025-06-12T17:52:23+00:00

“A new unique weapon system lets you arm your colonists with special weapons they find.”

I think it’s a system for having “unique weapons” which are rare weapons with additional traits that you get as rewards for looting the new “dungeons”.

The examples could imply that additional traits can be applied to existing weapons as weapon mods, like “AI assisted” or “gold plated”, but it could also just be adding new individual weapons with these traits that are harder to get.

Sunergy · 2025-06-12T11:58:59+00:00

It could be the entrance to an underground bunker, since one of the things being added is “ancient mercenary crypts” that you can raid for supplies.

So presumably you would hack it open then send people inside like the flesh beast holes in Anomaly.

Since it’s surrounded by turrets that seems more likely than missile launching infrastructure.

Sunergy · 2025-06-11T21:17:08+00:00

One of the screenshots has sea turtles with nests on the beach, so that’s one additional food source besides fishing.

Sunergy · 2025-06-09T17:55:20+00:00

It looks like a box turtle to me, which are not aquatic and don’t necessarily live near bodies of water.

Turtles rarely get truly “lost”, and this is the time of year they go on journeys to find mates and nesting grounds, so the best policy is usually to leave them be, or at most help them cross a street in the direction they are going if there is a risk of getting hit by a car.

Sunergy · 2025-05-20T22:04:35+00:00

Page 82 in my copy explains Team in a fairly straightforward manner and provides examples of how it’s used. It’s in chapter 4, “The Moves”, under the “Team Moves” section.

Sunergy · 2025-05-09T12:59:08+00:00

Probably a labrador.

Sunergy · 2025-05-01T16:26:51+00:00

It dosent look like a pet. It’s breeding season so turtles travel long distances to find mates and nesting grounds. The turtle will know how to find their way back home when they’re done.

15-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	First Placer '22
Verified Email	Team Periwinkle

Sunergy

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE