"Sword of Storms" vs. actual Japanese folklore

[dreadblueavenger]

I recently had an opportunity to watch the Hellboy animation "Sword of Storms". I am an avid fan of the Hellboy comics (though I didn't care for the movie for various reasons), and was hoping to greatly enjoy the cartoon, as I am also an enthusiast of traditional Japanese culture and folklore. I've spent the past couple of years researching these subjects in my spare time. I was greatly disappointed to find out that Mike Mignola and the writers of "Sword of Storms" did not do much research themselves. In fact, the amount of actual Japanese folklore they included in the cartoon is no more than a casually interested person could find just by going to one or two websites online. This is an even greater disappointment to me because it seems that Mike Mignola has always done great research in the stories of the Hellboy comics. This folkloric aspect is probably my favorite element of Mignola's works.

Here are among the worst inaccuracies to be found in the animated film:

-"Thunder" and "Lightning" were obviously based on the Japanese figures Raijin and Fujin. Together they are associated with storms, yes; however, Raijin is associated with thunder and lightning, and Fujin with winds. More importantly, these two figures are kami, or deities. They are vengeful sometimes, when their righteous anger arises, but they are not demonic nor evil in any way.

-The same is true with the statues in the "Heads" segment. These are clearly based on Buddhist statues of figures that are essentially guardians of Buddhist doctrine, not demons. Just because something in Japanese folklore is grotesque doesn't mean it's evil; it only means it's influenced by the aesthetics of the art of India.

-The ghost woman at the shrine was constantly depicted with her hair bound up in what is meant to be a traditional style. Ghosts always have long, flowing, unbound hair. It is one of the main indicators that a person is a ghost; that and white clothing, and the absence of feet.

-One of the guests in the "Heads" segment is named Lu. There is no "L" sound in Japanese, so unless this guest is from China, this is an obvious mistake.

-Foxes are associated with floating wisps of flame (called "kitsune-bi" in this context), but they breathe them, not turn into them. If anyone in this film should have turned into wisps of flame, it should have been the ghosts (in this context the flames would be called "hitodama", or human souls).

-Kappa should be about the size of a small child, not a Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle. The size he was when he shriveled up is about right. And I've never heard anything about defeated kappa being required to answer questions, or do anything else for that matter.

-Tsukumogami aren't created by supernatural fallout; though this I think is one of the minor and most forgiveable mistakes.

-Modern day Japanese aren't usually impressed by Westerners using the "-san" suffix. They think it's a bit pretentious.

-I can't ever remember any story of anyone being turned to stone in Japanese folklore or mythology. Neither can I understand why the kami (gods) would want to do this, since the samurai seemed like a nice enough guy.

Now, as for good things about this film:

-The floating heads, originally from the short comic story "Heads". These are called nuke-kubi and are actually from Japanese folklore.

-Tengu, the flying bird-men.

-The giant skeleton, which is a reference to a piece of ukiyo-e art (by Yoshitoshi, unless I'm mistaken, which I might be here).

-The tsukumogami (the animated objects) themselves were great. I knew as soon as the psychic mentioned an umbrella that he was really talking about a karakasa-obake.

[dogboy443]

Amazing...thank you very much for the folklore lesson and for the great link. Please don't be so hard on Mssrs. Stone and Mignola, they are after-all story-tellers and story-tellers do have imaginations and the eagerness to create.

Mk

[dreadblueavenger]

You're right. They are storytellers, and of course they cannot be expected to adhere to existing folklore and/or history or whatever the subject is 100%. I understand artistic license. But to me it seemed pretty obvious that the errors in this film weren't artistic license, but simply failure to do very deep research.

Like I said, this saddens me because in most of Mignola's other folklore-based works his research seems to have gone pretty deep. I'm not trying to be too hard on him or the other creators. In fact, it's only an expression of the extremely high respect and regard I have for them that I hold them to such high standards.

I don't remember giving a link in that post, but if you do want one, a great one on Japanese monsters and ghosts is The Obakemono Project (http://www.obakemono.com/).

Edit: Here is a link to a great image of Raijin and Fujin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fujinraijin-tawaraya.jpg).

[Tad]

dreadblueavenger,

You are correct about the level of research we did which frankly was mostly a matter of time, as in "lack of." But I did use the The Obakemono Project. However, I found that many of the resources I did use often had different descriptions of the creatures we used. I chalk that up to the legends being developed over a couple of hundred years and over a wide geographical area. There is no one definitive version of any of these characters. It depends on the era and locale you research.

However, that's not meant to be an excuse, only the lack of time was. I made a decision early on to take the same liberties with the myth and legends as are taken with Graeco-Roman or Norse mythology. Watch Hercules on TV, read "The Mighty Thor" or rent "Clash of the Titans." The portrayal of gods and legends is all over the place. We weren't out to write a folklore treatise just make an entertaining cartoon. But if you were on the team early on I'm sure we would've ended up several more interesting depictions of folklore. As it is, I wish we had added the tengu as a separate sequence instead of just being in the mob scene.

But here's a few comments on some of your specifics:
>-"Thunder" and "Lightning" were obviously based on the Japanese figures Raijin and Fujin.
Actually, no. They're based on Mike's sketches in the back of "The Right Hand of Doom" TPB. I specifically avoided making them Raijin and Fujin because we didn't want to deal with deities.

"Heads" of course was directly taken from the comic. I saw no need to change anything to be more accurate (not that I knew any of the stuff you've posted).

The daughter in the temple has no feet but it would've been clearer if we faded out her bottom half. She did wear the triangular forehead piece as a ghost that is associated with the dead. Her hands were also covered. As to the hair, I based her on a Yoshitoshi print of the Japanese Ghost Story of Okiku (http://www.artelino.com/articles/ghost_story_okiku.asp) whose hair was mostly up.

The fox exploding into fire was just a cheap effect meant to add a little pizzaz. It probably confused things since we already had the Hitodama but Hitodama are sometimes used by kitsune as an extension of their abilities.
(But I learned that after the fact.)

You are absolutely right about the kappa, of course. But they are silly looking creatures and I needed a formidable adversary, although we avoided the more accurate portrayal of them reaching up a person's rear to pull out their intestines. But many people pick this one as their favorite sequence so I feel no guilt over the liberties taken.

>Tsukumogami aren't created by supernatural fallout.
Yes, I am aware of that but in the comic book world Hellboy exists in, just what "magical fallout" is capable of is debatable.

-The giant skeleton, which is a reference to a piece of ukiyo-e art (by Yoshitoshi, unless I'm mistaken, which I might be here).
It's from a print by Kuniyoshi (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Mitsukuni_defying_the_skeleton_spectre_invok ed_by_princess_Takiyasha.jpg) although I remember the art as being slightly different than this. I'm sorry the design style of the show couldn't capture the haunting details of the print.

Anyway, I take no offense at the comments so no one need rise to my defense but I hope the above shows that we were a little more aware of the source material than you might have thought. As far as liberties, remember we were connecting Thunder and Lightning to "dragons" which were similar to the Ogdru Jahad lore that Mike has established in his comic - not something we could do in a more accurate telling.

I think I stated in the commentary that my daughter was constantly taking me to task for not being more accurate with the folklore. She was surprised when most of the online reaction was to praise our use of the various myths.

Your post will make her feel vindicated.

Of course, I'm not going to tell her about it. ;)

[Sparky]

-The ghost woman at the shrine was constantly depicted with her hair bound up in what is meant to be a traditional style. Ghosts always have long, flowing, unbound hair. It is one of the main indicators that a person is a ghost; that and white clothing, and the absence of feet.


Man, I can't believe you didn't notice the real oopsie in this scene: the OBVIOUS BOOM MIKE in the top right corner:

http://www.phobe.com/boom.jpg

Geez, Tad - be a little more careful next time!

[Kelly Tindall]

Tad/Dreadblue... Consider that, regardless of the accuracy of the film, I made me go and do some research on Japanese folklore. I knew about the heads and the kappa, but a lot was new to me and I appreciate all of it.

Hellboy is like a gateway drug to mythology.

P.S. Good one, Sparky. I thought I was the only one that noticed!

[Catlin]

Hellboy is like a gateway drug to mythology.

*g* For some of us it was the opposite: being a mythology freak as a child was the gateway drug to my Hellboy obsession.

[Tad]

Damn you, Sparky!!! No one had noticed that!! Curse your infernal attention to detail!!

[Lilitu]

ha ha ha!:D

[Vakanai]

For the record, the movie was my gateway drug to Hellboy. King Arthur was the gateway drug to mythology.
But the Japanese folklore is interesting.

[dreadblueavenger]

Ah, okay, I see by your comments, Tad, that you did indeed a bit more research than I had thought.

Yeah, foxes are associated with floating wisps of flame, but as I said before, they breathe them (or create them with horse skulls) not turn into them. But that's a pretty happy accident, that you linked the fox and the flames (kitsune-bi is the right term when they're in relation to foxes) without even knowing it.

However, I found that many of the resources I did use often had different descriptions of the creatures we used. I chalk that up to the legends being developed over a couple of hundred years and over a wide geographical area. There is no one definitive version of any of these characters. It depends on the era and locale you research.

Well, that's true...and it's also not true. It's absolutely true that in folklore you almost always run up against alternate versions. It's one of the hallmarks that something is genuine folklore as opposed to newer additions. BUT: the difficult part about this is that in the research materials widely available in the West, most of the conflicting information comes from lack of understanding on the part of Westerners. I've had to revise my understanding on several points through the course of my research, for exactly that reason.

Which I guess only excuses the creators even more. It's completely understandable that you guys would have made these mistakes. And like I said before, I'm not trying to be antagonistic at all. I reiterate my absolute love for the Hellboy comics and for Mike Mignola's creative imagination.

But I have to say...I consider Hellboy just a little bit above the Hercules show on tv in terms of folkloric accuracy. And a great deal above "The Mighty Thor".

Ah, you're right Tad, it was Kuniyoshi. I knew I probably had that wrong. In fairness, Kuniyoshi and Yoshitoshi were both known for their potrayals of the ghostly and supernatural, and the latter was reportedly influenced by the former.

As for the lack of hands, I thought that was because she was of the higher classes; in some early periods in Japanese history women's dress had long sleeves that occluded the hands from view. As far as I know ghosts in Japanese lore show their hands.