The Secret of the Nagas

Cover to the Secret of the Nagas

Last July, I wrote this post and this post about my fascination to Amish Tripathi’s first book of the Shiva Trilogy: Immortals of Meluha. I was so impressed by it that i showed the book to one of my best friends (before reading the whole lot, actually), and I got another Amish fan. We decided to purchase the second instalment, The Secret of the Naga off eBay or Amazon. Unfortunately, the only available copies are in India, and they don’t ship overseas. Why oh why, that is the big question here.

Anyway, after bugging and begging my Indian friend, she sent me two packs of Immortals of Meluha and The Secret of the Nagas from Flipkart.com. Two Nagas for myself, one Meluha for my friend, another one for her friend who wants to read it too. The books arrived last Monday. I delivered my friend’s share immediately that evening, and started reading that night. I finished the whole book in three nights, on Wednesday night (actually, half an hour after midnight of Thursday). 

Below is my review and spoilers for ‘The Secret of the Nagas’. It contains heavy spoilers, so you better stop reading if you plan to read the book without spoilers. By the way, Naga here refers to people with deformities, hence outcast by both the Suryavanshi (Meluha) and Chandravanshi (Swadweep). Naga here doesn’t mean ‘the dragon’, as is in the Indonesian language.

Matataki (Blink)

Poster of Matataki

a.k.a. ‘Piecing Me Back Together’ was a 2010 movie I watched this afternoon to quench my thirst of another Okada Masaki performance. The movie didn’t disappoint me, although Masaki’s screen time wasn’t a lot there. It wasn’t because he wasn’t the main actor. He was. But rather, because Matataki is telling the story of Sonoda Izumi (Kitagawa Keiko), a young woman whose boyfriend died during a traffic accident they experienced together.

Yep, Matataki is a sad story. Sad, but encouraging as well in the end. It didn’t stop me from crying like a baby, though. My eyes were wet into the first 5 minutes of the movie. I wailed – yes, wailed – during several scenes. I sobbed when I learned what truly happened to Izumi and Junichi Konou (Masaki’s character). But here I’m getting ahead of myself as usual. After the trailers below, I post the recap of Matataki. Heavy spoilers, so for those who want to see it online here (English subbed) without spoilers, you better stop reading this.  

Taira no Kiyomori ep 39: Yoshitsune vs Benkei!

Yoshitsune defeating Benkei, from Vingle

TNK ep 39 (1172 CE) opened with the legendary fight between Yoshitsune and Benkei at Gojo Bridge. Yoshitsune (Kamiki Ryonosuke) was at that time known as Sanaou; Benkei (Aoki Munetaka) was known as Onikawa. It seems that Benkei thought that Sanaou was a Heike. Because the monk was always challenging Heike samurai, Benkei attacked Sanaou. But the boy easily took over the monk’s sword and defeated the monk. Soon enough, the scary Heike girls in red came and challenged them. For some reasons unknown to me (oh, English subtitle...), the girls ran away. Yoshitsune found himself parrying Benkei’s naginata once more. But when the boy defeated the stubborn monk again, for some reasons Benkei realised that he wasn’t dealing with a Heike. He was in fact fighting one of the sons of Minamoto no Yoshitomo. Apparently, Benkei had met young Sanaou in the past (when the boy’s name was Ushiwakamaru). Surprised to see the child already grown into a boy, Benkei held Sanaou and twirled him around. Sanaou’s funny expression reminded me of Himura Kenshin’s (Sateru Satou) amused expression in Rurouni Kenshin live action (that I haven’t seen because the English sub hasn’t been distributed outside Japan yet. Arrrgghh!).

Meanwhile, back with the Heike, here’s Auberginefleur’s summary (taken from NHK, I think):

In 1172 in Fukuhara, Kiyomori with the backing of the cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa steadily advances construction work of a port, together with Usagimaru (Kiyomori's retainer) to prepare for the trading with Sung. Kiyomori orders Usagimaru to complete the construction as quickly as possible, however, Usagimaru condemns Kiyomori for acting out of self-interest, over his once held ambitions. The rift between Kiyomori and Usagimaru become irreparable.

Taira no Kiyomori opening music & Yoritomo ep 32-34

Yoritomo, Yae-hime and baby Senserumaru (NHK)

I've been listening to the opening music of Taira no Kiyomori so many times. The music is so beautiful. Alas, I can't find the opening credit in YouTube or other embed-dable sites. However, I found this video on YouTube containing just the music (without the video), but that should be enough to give you a taste of how it good it is. Click here to watch the opening credit (it's actually the first ep of TNK with English sub).



 
Also, since there isn't enough Okada Masaki these days (I'm still waiting for the English-subbed of Space Brothers and Akko-chan), I watched ep 32-34 of TNK just to know what happened to Yoritomo. Well, as I posted earlier, in ep 32 Yae-hime and Yoritomo had a son. A kawaii son called Senserumaru. From what I saw in ep 32, it seems that Yae-hime was scolded by his family for getting pregnant with Yoritomo's offspring. But Yoritomo insisted that he would protect Yae and the baby. So, when the baby was already delivered, Yae took the baby boy to see his father. Yoritomo's surprise and happiness were very apparent. For a while, he believed that he could be happy again.

Ray Tate's "The Importance Of Being Brave And Bold: Wonder Woman"

The Brave and the Bold 158

I noticed something recently: that my blog hit increases rather amazingly for a tangent, personal blog. Such that I felt the need to install ClustrMap just to let myself (and readers) know who visits here. Internal statistics of Blogger will do, but ClustrMap allows my visitors (you, my dear friends) to take a peek as well. 

Several reasons made the blog hit increased. Prior to the end of August 2012, I think the readers mostly wanted to read about Nicky Wu Qilong's 'Li Hou Zhu' series, which isn't available in English sub. But after 29 August 2012, I think the increased readership can be attributed to the sickening Superman-Wonder Woman pseudo-romance that DC has been force-feeding us.

Don't even get me started on that. I love Superman, I love Wonder Woman. But I can't see how the two are meant to be together, when (quoting a friend in the BatmanWonderWoman.com, 'their only common denominator was the colour of their costume'). So true! What, are all we high school students here that go all colour-coordinated?!

But, as I said, I won't go there. Too many sites already discussed the stupidity and utter idiocy of SMWW pairing. Doing it again here will waste my time. Instead, I will point out why Batman-Wonder Woman pairing is a much better option than SMWW!

Yes, my dearest friend! I have Batman-Wonder Woman leading the hit of my blog since last month. Get the stat: from 4 Sept to 3 Oct 2012, I have 161 hits for this entry. The same entry receives all-time highest hit of 4,108 hits (May 2008 to October 2012), 150% higher than the hit for 'Li Hou Zhu' (2,581). Another BMWW post received 1,847 hits of all time, by the way.

The all-time winning entry of my blog (The Bat, the Cat, and the Amazon) talks about the love triangle between Batman, Catwoman and Wonder Woman. Notice that I didn't bash Selina Kyle there. Nope, I still respect and love that character. Without WW's presence, I would actually choose BMCW easily as my foremost DC ship. 

Taira no Kiyomori 37-38: Enters Yoshitsune!

Arrgghh! What would I give to have the sudden ability to completely understand Japanese now? Or at least, to be able to watch the English subbed of Taira no Kiyomori from the San Francisco-based Tokyo TV? Click here, by the way, for you lucky souls who can watch TNK in San Francisco and adjacent regions. Click here to watch Ep 37 raw (without Eng sub). Click here to watch Ep 38 without English sub.

For someone like me who has very little understanding of Japanese (getting better with an excessive dosage of J-doramas these days, but still), I just have to guess what has transpired in Taira no Kiyomori eps 37 and 38. I do have Auberginefleur’s site to help my understanding, but it’s not enough, for it mostly covers what happens with the Heike.

Anyway, recapping episodes 37 (last Sunday) and 38 (this Sunday) of Taira no Kiyomori: it has been very interesting episodes for me, despite my mediocre understanding of Japanese. Now, before I summarise what happened to the Genji, I’ll give a Heike-Genji 101 about the names of Genji and Heike. Apparently, Heike is another way of reading the Kanji of ‘Taira’. Genji is another way of reading the Kanji of ‘Minamoto’. So when people say the Heike, they are referring to the clan/house that was ruled by the Taira. The Genji was then the clan that was ruled by the Minamoto.

The simplicity called ‘Halfway’

So, as you may know from my recent posts, I’ve been crazy about Okada Masaki, the cutie 23 years old Japanese actor who has such a beautiful voice and curly-bordering-to-messy perm hair. He’s a good actor and a lovely boy at the same time. After watching him in Raiou, I watched his other movies/series, up until I landed in 2009 Halfway, a movie by Kitagawa Eriko, starring Masaki (as Shinozaki Shu) and the cute Kitano Kie (as Konno Hiro). And once again, I was hooked.

Halfway is a very simple movie, such that it reaffirms my belief of the excellence that the Japanese own in making simple yet beautiful movies. Halfway has a total indie feeling all over it, it is refreshing and bringing contemplation at the same time. The premise was simple. You are a girl in the 3^rd class of high school in a small town. You are going to enter university next year. What will happen if you have just dated a cute boy (one of the cutest in school, in fact), and he wants to go to a university in the capital city instead? Are you going to let him go? Or are you going to beg him to stay, whatever it takes?

That is Halfway. Below is the English-sub trailer and this is where I watched it.

The girl is Hiro, and the boy is Shu. They lived in Hokkaido. Hiro always liked Shu, the basketball sweetheart of her school. But Shu never took notice on her, or at least, she thought so, until one day he overheard her babbling over how she liked him a lot (when she was laying on the school hospital bed after an anaemic attack). To Hiro’s surprise, Shu asked her out the next day. After a moment of hesitation (and a very cute bike accident), they began to date.

The Dream Manager: the importance of dreams for companies and employees

One of my best friends lent me a book last night, titled The Dream Manager (by Matthew Kelly). At first, I thought the book is about managing one’s dream, or to fulfil one’s dream. I wasn’t that wrong, because the book IS talking about how to fulfil one’s dream... through the eyes of a company manager.

The Dream Manager is a guide book for managers who want to keep the turnover rate of their companies low. Not only that, this is a book for managers who want to create a happy, positive environment in their companies, an atmosphere that makes people stay and do more for the company, because they are fulfilled and happy. 

I cried when I read the first 23 pages. 

Here’s what Kelly wrote in pages 3 and 4: 

Taira no Kiyomori: What happened to Minamoto no Yoritomo?

I’ve been watching the first five English-subbed episodes of NHK’s Taira no Kiyomori , until I realised that the 6^th episode had not yet been subbed. In fact, no one has subbed the 6^th episode onwards since a few months back. The sole translator had been sick (God bless him, may he recover soon), thus we – non Japanese speaker Taiga fans – are left without knowing the details of what happened to Kiyomori (Matsuyama Kenichi), the leader of the Heike clan (Heike literally means ‘the House of Taira’) and the rest of the characters.

Taira no Kiyomori seems to be having low viewing rate. My Japanese friend suggested that its Heian setting seems to be the problem for Japanese viewers, for Heian Era was about 900 – 1,000 years ago and not many understood what really happened then. But then again, wouldn’t it be the good reason to watch it? Other than watching a series of hot guys playing samurai and emperor in ancient garb? Some netizens said that the Heian Era depicted here was too gloomy and dusty, and indeed the samurai and commoners portrayed in this series were in total need of total bath! But that is much more realistic than, say, having them all flashy and neatly dressed a la the Emperor and his cronies.

Taira no Kiyomori!

I am currently watching the first episode of Taira no Kiyomori, NHK's 2012 Taiga drama. I am so excited! The cast is superb, many of whom I've seen in Japanese dramas, delivering great performances. I am a bit bias here: the first drive for me to watch it is to hear Okada Masaki's lovely voice narrating the drama as Minamoto no Yoritomo. But when I saw the trailers etc, I realise the drama's potentials. I just hope that I can discipline myself and watch it just one episode per day. That is, hopefully my online links are not broken. This drama is still airing in Japan anyway, so fan-based attempts to sub it might be seen as breaching the copyright. Which is SO not the intention of those hard working fans who have been subbing this drama!