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Friday, November 19, 2010

Ningyo: Chambara JLA

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Via the always inventive Project: Rooftop comes this alternate version of the JLA and Aquaman by artist Alex Mitchell. Cool stuff!

(h/t: newest F.O.A.M.er Travis Oates. Welcome Travis!)

4 comments:

r duncan said...

Love it. Especially the GL one.

Russell said...

Uh..."ningyo" means "mermaid" in Japanese. "kuri" is "chestnut." "oren" is a made up word that means "small lotus."

So this is just a tad odd for anybody who speaks Japanese; sorry.

Alex Mitchell said...

Hello!

I do speak Japanese, though I am certainly no expert. If anyone is interested, there is a bit of "back-story" for this guy in the original deviantArt post: http://genesischant.deviantart.com/art/Chambara-JLA-Aquaman-183125638

'Ningyo' means human-fish, typically a "fish with a human face". It's a nickname. My Aquaman's given name is very strange, and certainly not a real name that a person would have in Japan. The 'Oren' (referencing Orin, of course) is explained as a fanciful name given by the boy's fisherman father upon seeing the baby's lotus tattoo (the one on his shoulder.) The 'Curry'/'Kuri' reference is a reach, it's not used as a last name at all as far as I know. I figured that as a member of the so-called 'eta' untouchable class, his father might have an unusual, possibly invented last name.

This whole project is not an attempt to be historically or even 100% culturally accurate, but rather to reconcile the Justice League characters with popular Japanese 'chambara' archetypes. It's meant to be theatrical and anachronistic, if I may lean on that as an excuse?

rasseru said...

Oh, I didn't know about any of that. I was just reading what was here, and so I thought that was a name that had been given him. Obviously this is creative and interesting, just from the language point of view I thought it sounded weird. Like calling Arthur Curry "CurryPowder Fisherman" or something.

And "ningyo" means mermaid/merman, whether it's a nickname for your character or not. For example, Hans Christian Andersen's story The Little Mermaid is "Ningyo-hime" (Mermaid Princess) in Japanese. :-)