Higanbana Bookclub Podcast 3

07th News Blog Discussion
#1

Presenting the latest and greatest addition to the Higanbana Bookclub Podcast! In this episode we’ll be discussing the first half of The Second Night: Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4. I Aspirety am joined once again by MagusVerborum, VyseGolbez and for the very first time amenenee! Seems that we all agree that chapters 2 and 4 were fantastic, with Chapter 2 earning a perfect 5 in our poll! Suffice to say, these chapters spoke to us, and I think you’ll enjoy some of the analysis and introspection we dig up from them.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://rokkenjima.org/higanbana-bookclub-podcast-3/
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#2

It was a pleasure to speak with you all again, and thank you very much for joking us! It must have taken great strength :joyful: @amenenee

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#3

:crying: I was so terribly nervous, but you and @VyseGolbez really made me feel better during the chat before the podcast and I’ve considered you my friends since, sorry if that’s too weird.
And then there’s that achievement, I won’t forget it

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#4

These podcasts are genuinely pretty amazing. I love the way you guys get personal and reflective about Higanbana, I definitely feel like it helps me appreciate these stories more. Like I hadn’t really taken the time to think about and deliberate what the fourth story means to me, but now I feel like I’ve been introduced to whole new perspectives, haha. Great job, all of you, really. I hope Higurashi Kai and Umineko Chiru will inspire this kind of more reflective talk in the podcasts as well.

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#5

@amenenee I was really happy to have that warmup chat, I think it helped all of us to be a bit more cohesive when we moved in to talk about the themes of the chapters, we weren’t jumping all over each other and everything flowed a little better I think.

@Karifean I’m glad you’re enjoying the personal touch, this is what I most enjoy about discussing any media, talking about how I personally relate to it is the most important thing to me. All the analysis in the world is worthless if others don’t understand why I focus on the things that I do, I really hope I’m able to communicate that effectively :wahaha:

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#6

I listened to the first few minutes of this yesterday and to a few random moments when I clicked on random spots on the line of the duration, or whatever it’s called. The podcast itself is good, and I may not be in a position to say this, having listened to very little of it and not in full, but I felt like some people didn’t… contribute much to it. I mean, I do understand if they were shy or something but the most important thing is that they didn’t seem much opinionated nor did they take initiative to start discussing something in depth. They would just add a few comments here and there and maybe speak when Aspirety or somebody more active during the podcast encouraged them to. The ones I’m talking about, well, the ones in this podcast rather, are Vyse and amenenee. It felt like Aspirety and Magus did most of the work and were opinionated and were able to take their opinion and fully unravel it and discuss it in detail. Now, Aspirety is the host, but he can’t be doing all the work. So, I suggest that, I don’t know, that people come more prepared into a podcast or that you add more qualifications for people who’d like to be in it, like see how active they’ve been on the discussions of the work about which you’re talking on the podcast in the forums or something like that, not just let them do it just because they’d like to. Well anyways, I didn’t listen to the whole podcast, just to very little of it and I may be wrong, but this is what I think.

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#7

Come now Sapphire, don’t you think I screen my cast before having them on the podcast? I don’t just let anybody on because they’d like to, I do screen everyone before applying and take their forum contributions into account! But that said, I’m not about to deny people the opportunity to try being on Podcasts just because they’re a little shy or passive. Just because they don’t have a comment to make about everything, doesn’t mean they weren’t qualified to be on the podcast! I quite valued the contributions Vyse and amenenee did make.

Making assumptions about how the podcast is organised and then calling out my participants for apparently not contributing enough is very rude. If you have a critique to make, I ask that you consider your words a bit more carefully next time. You could also be a bit more considerate of amenenee, this is his first time doing anything like this, and comments like that could disuade him from ever doing it again. We ought to encourage people willing to make the effort to get involved in our podcasts, not shame them for not being ‘good enough’. (amenenee did a great job by the way, so I don’t know what your standards are based on.)

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#8

Just speaking my mind here, Aspirety, if I did come across as rude, well, there’s nothing I can do about it. I think you’re settling for complacency here, but well, I think you’re not going to take this well either and will again think I’m rude, but oh well. I’m sorry if I’m not too feelings-oriented like you, to be more considerate about these things, I almost always use logic, but I guess you don’t want to hear that either. Anyways, ultimately, you’re in charge of the podcasts and it’s not like my words will influence any of your decisions on how to organise them or who to pick to participate in them. I was just saying what I was thinking, if you want to disagree with that, well, that’s that and that’s the end of it. As for, uh, the so-called harsh words I said to Vyse and amenenee, I didn’t mean to make them feel bad about it, I was just pointing out some facts and saying they should’ve been more prepared, and besides, I don’t think they’d be much hurt about it, I’m just some stranger on some forum on the internet, after all.

#9

Sapphire, you mentioned that you felt as though others didn’t contribute much to the podcast. To you, they didn’t seem much opinionated nor took the initiative to start discussing something in depth. If anything, you’re comparing Vyse and amenenee ‘not so depth’ inputs to those of Aspirety and Magus, am I right? If you asked me, everyone on the podcast, had an opinion and gave their perspective on certain things that occurred in the visual novel, things and symbolisms that I would’ve never thought to look at a certain way. Then again, you probably missed those instances when you clicked on random spots on the playback bar. Which leads me to this, you do know that not everyone possesses the same knowledge on subjects. This is virtually impossible; hence, everyone has something they excel in- an area of expertise. Something they know more about when compared to the knowledge of others (e.g. when Magus made a comparison between Greek mythology and Marie drinking the juice from the tree of the underworld.). Perhaps this is what you meant when you said certain people didn’t take the initiative to discuss things in depth. That they should come more prepared into a podcast. This, too, also got a chuckle out of me. Wasn’t it in the community guidelines to be kind to fellow community members? You claimed that you were only pointing out what you perceived to be facts by saying they should’ve been more prepared to a bookclub podcast where they expressed their opinions and gave their perspectives-which is exactly what people usually do at any other book club. In other words, I see you’re logic but I don’t see its validity.
Asperity said it correctly with said quote,

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#10

Oh yeah, regarding the persephone analogy, apparently there’s a Japanese myth that fits the mould even closer. @Bernkastelle could you repeat it for me?

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#11

Yes! Its the myth of the two kami, Izanagi Okami-sama and Izanami Okami-sama,
In summary, after Izanami Okami-sama died after giving birth to the kami of fire, Kagutsuchi no Mikoto-sama, her energy passed on to the realm known as Yomi. Kind of like an Underworld / Inner Earth realm but not a true “place where all dead people go” like Hades, Jigoku, Hell, Hel, etc.

In Yomi however, the rules are just like Hades. Once you eat or drink in Yomi, you cannot leave. And Izanami no Mikoto-sama did just that. Izanagi no Mikoto-sama tried to retrieve her from Yomi to be with him again, but she said she could no longer leave because she had drank and ate the food of Yomi.

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#12

Very interesting, it makes me wonder which story came first and if the two had any influence on each other. The main difference that sticks out to me is that’s Persephone’s tale is used to explain the change of the seasons and to caution against temptation, whereas Izanami no Mikoto-sama seems to embody the finality of death and how once one is deceased there is no coming back, perhaps the moral is that the living need to let go and move on? I’d love to hear your thoughts, I’m not particularly well-versed in Japanese spiritual beliefs.

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#13

Speaking in terms of written history, the Kojiki (a book with a collection of oral legends, and history) which contains the earliest written form of this myth was written late, in 712 AD. So technically speaking in terms of recorded/written history, the Greek myth/Persephone’s legend came first.

The story of Izanagi Okami-sama and Izanami Okami-sama also has parallels to Orpheus and Eurydice.

We know there was contact with Greece and China (and thus Buddhism) and indeed some now-
Japanese deities (not native Japanese deities though) like Fuujin-sama, a kami of wind, is actually Boreas. His worship came along with Buddhism and thus Greek influence. Its said the connection between Sanzu river in Buddhist Hell (Jigoku) and River Styx in Hades could be from this connection.

However for Kojiki it was based on myths before the importing of Buddhism and there are many differences in the myth as well (where even one can make comparisons to Izanami Okami-sama and Hel of Norse Mythology by their half-dead appearance ). But this myth itself and any connections are more coincidental/based on the original culture of the time (the Yayoi). Especially because the entrance to Yomi in Shimane prefecture predates the writing of the Yomi myth and Buddhist/foreign influence in that era of 712 AD

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#14

Yes, yes, think whatever you will, my thoughts are solid to me and that’s all that matters. Continue to paint me as a bad person. Whatever you say, I won’t be made to think like you do.