In the same vain, I can also recommend "The Good, The Bad and The Weird" from S. Korea which mixes Sergio Leone Western, Martial Arts, Slapstick Comedy and Pulp Adventure ala Indiana Jones.
One thing a lot of comparisons between cowboys and samurai miss is that the Meiji Restoration was in 1868. At the exact same time as disaffected ex-soldiers were wandering America's West as cowboys, disaffected ex-samurai were wandering Japan as ronin.
You might add the series "Yellowstone" as one of those "last gasp" of the Western tropes, with the gunfights taking place largely in meeting-rooms and boardrooms, not the dusty streets or the saloons.
Excellent video, sir. I love samurai, gunslingers, and samurai gunslingers; and Trigun and Cowboy Bebop are two of my favorite anime, so this was right up my dusty, tumbleweed-infested alley. The closing US-Japan story was so good. And, man, 7:52-8:35 hits hard.
I agree. If I had to sum up the last twelve and a half years of being a pharmacist, I don't think I could do a better job. And replaying it and thinking about this section more and more, it just hits even harder.
The reactions I've seen to _Stampede_ were mixed at best, although it was only five or six episodes deep at the time. Not anything as simple as one version being good and the other bad or any consistency about which one was better, although at the time (and with that audience) the OG had the lead, but there were people who agreed on what the differences were while disagreeing (with reasons!) on whether those changes were good.
@boobah5643 Never sat down to watch Stampede, the new designs I couldn't get behind. Especially with Vash, considering how him having a prosthetic is a lot more obvious in the new one. It's supposed to be this big reveal after a certain point.
I recommend it. It's definitely a new take on the original with Season 1 being a prequel/reimagining of sorts. The animation is great especially during fights, and it expands upon many characters to add to the grittiness and tragedy of the setting. Not gonna spoil it but Stampede's version of Monev the Gale will hurt you inside.
it's true though.... until space is opened up to us and made simple we're all out of frontier.... yeah not in our lifetime, it'll be just one more thing the super rich elite hold above us....honestly if it means all the hedghe funders and morons ruining business just up a go we may juist be able to fox the world....but it'd then mean eliminating the military industrial complex eh we're funked!
That's thing that is really hard to understand from european standpoint. When you have furniture or tableware older than a country on the other side of the atlantic and live in the same place as your family did for hundreds of years. The thinking is reversed.. the soil is not for you.. you are there for the soil, for a few heartbeats.
@@phh2400I’d say that’s part of the reason for such massive strides and interest in space exploration in American culture historically and even in modern day. Of course every society has a culture interested in space exploration and what’s out there, but America, along with the Soviet’s, were some of the first people to do it and still some one of the major players in expanding our knowledge and grasp of space. Adding that to the massive culture media output of space, such as Star Trek, Star Wars, multiple stories of “little green men” and so on. People love it
An old Peanuts comic kept running through my head when you started talking about the frontier as a means of escape: Charlie Brown: “Sometimes I think about going away, starting over somewhere else.” Lucy: “Why? No matter where you go, you’ll still be Charlie Brown.” Just as a side note: my dad was stationed in Japan during the Korean War, starting just after the occupation ended. He was there for the whole war. He didn’t observe much of the “Condescending prick” nature in us gunslingers as you imply. I know there were problems during the occupation, but given what the Japanese *expected* us to do, the fact that we didn’t really do anything bad was very welcome. And they were overjoyed that we’d saved them from Soviet occupation, which *certainly* would have been much worse. He said some people even apologized to him for the war, after a fashion. Which is not to blow sunshine up anyone’s ass and say nothing bad ever happened. It’s simply to say that the (mythical) cowboy code insists that if you have to knock a man down, you’ve got to help him back up again.
Great video. I'd like to hear your take on Roger Zelazny's work clearly "Damnation Alley" but also "A Night in the Lonesome October " viz-a-vy who's a villain and not.
Haven't thought about Damnation Alley in a terrible long count of years, but now that you mention it . . . I haven't read Lonesome October, but I'll add to the ever-growing reading list.
If you're interested in more Space Western animes, Outlaw Star is an interesting twist on it. It came out concurrent to Bebop and the original Trigun, so it tends to get passed over for bigger classics but I think it's worth looking at.
"History and cultural memory don't talk much these days." Was there a time in history when they _did_ talk? I'd be curious to hear about it, because as far as I can tell, humans have been romanticizing the past for as long as we've had words for the passage of time, mixing history with religion and culture, and populating both with heroes, gods, and monsters. If anything, I would guess (not having studied the question) we're more aware of this tendency in ourselves now than we have been in the past - though all too often this leads to nihilism as our cultural idols' feet of clay are pointed out.
Before the Printing Press, everything was very different. When you look at the ancient Roman stories as an example, there is purpose behind the stories. Fusing history and cultural memory together into one. Dr. Gregory S. Aldrete has some amazing stuff on "Wondrium" (previously "Great Courses Plus") where he goes through the ancient Roman stories. From the one Roman who held his hand in a fire to prove to the enemy how tough they were. Or how Rome overthrew the monarchy and created a Republic because of a prince forcing himself on good and honest wife, who ended her own life to prove what was done to her, and as no woman should ever blame force in the case of adultery.
Id say its less they talked and more in the past cultural memory WAS history. Theres even past writings from around the 1700s saying how history overly obsessed with exactness serves no real purpose and in fact is actively harmful Archeology and other forms of solidly proving history are very recent@@Hugebull
Frankly, the old westerns didn’t shy away from the harsh realities. Even McClintock showed how much of the expansion was funded by unscrupulous bankers and the soldiers were unreasonably trigger happy. Hollywood in general is to blame for dumb movies. They never represented a broader culture.
The soldiers were not "unreasonably trigger happy" That's a crock of shit invented in the modern age with absolutely zero evidence to back it up because it was invented by communists in Hollywood to shit on our heritage
The OG Battlestar Galactica was pitched as Wagon Train in space, with famous and beloved western actor Lorne Greene cast as Adama to really sell the concept.
As I watched the new story part it made me picture the two men at the bar after their epic duel, the old man finally saying "Sitting in muddy water isn't such a bad life, if it ends after the first time." As I thought about it a little more, I actually wrote out some of the scene just now: The two men sat in the corner silently, ignoring the commotion in the rest of the saloon. The young man sat gripping the handle on his mug, watching his companion anxiously. The old man leaned against the bar slightly, his left hand wrapped around the square glass filled with amber liquid. The only movement he made was the index finger delicately tracing the same circle over and over on the side of the glass. His right hand rested against his knee as it almost always did, just over an inch away from the pistol buried under the fabric of his clothing. He sat there silently, his steely gaze reminiscent of a hawk observing distant prey. The young man found himself looking in the same direction involuntarily only to see the same column over and over. In never varied and in the ten minutes since they had sat down, the old man hadn’t so much as blinked. He licked his lips, he was thirsty and the beer in his hand would taste even better than usual. But he was memorized by his companion. He found himself turning back to look at the column ahead of them, he couldn’t remember if it was the fifth or sixth time he had done this. “You know,” the old man said. The young man gave a start as he snapped his head back to his companion. The old man gently brought the glass to his lips, taking a casual sip. He gave a weary sigh after swallowing brought on by more than just the fiery sensation in his mouth from the recently departed fluid. “Sitting in muddy water isn’t such a bad life.” “Huh?” The old man set the glass down. Other than the level in the glass being slightly lower, it was as if he hadn’t taken the drink just a second ago. The young man looked confused. For the first time in a while, the old man glanced to the side at his companion. The man who had so recently been his bitter enemy bent on killing him just stared at him his eyes wide. He gave an amused chuckle and a smirk slowly formed on his lips. “If it ends after the first time.” “What does that mean?” The old man chuckled again and brought the glass to his lips. “That, my young friend, is something you’ll learn, sooner or later.” The young man just sat there, his jaw dropped a little for a few seconds. He leaned back and thought about it as the seconds slowly ticked by. He shrugged and raised his glass, giving a slight nod towards the old man in salute. “I’ll drink to that,” he said before bringing the mug to his lips. The old man smiled again. I have my own space western series I'm working on, a variation on this might work well for the ending of the story where my bounty hunter main character meets a rival. They clash a little bit, but eventually become friends after falling into the hands of their erstwhile quarry and having to work together to get out of the situation and not wind up catching a rather sudden case of dead.
Even John Wayne pointed out that Star Wars was basically a Western. Does anyone remember the Rifleman episode with the Samurai teaching some town bullies a lesson?
Defiance was a short lived ( only had 3 seasons ) tv show set-up like a western frontier town and even had the hero be a sheriff ( hey,every body has to eat ) I enjoyed it for what it was tho.
I've been rewatching Defiance lately, mixed in with a bunch of other stuff. Only halfway through the first season but I remember it having some really interesting elements, though not always executed well.
@@feralhistorian I'd like to find out some behind the scenes stuff from the actors as why the show went off the air. Tho that problably won't happen as I'm presuming not many people even remember Defiance or very many watched this show.
2 things: 1) Recently, due to playing Like A Dragon: Ishin, I've been studying the Bakumatsu era of Japanese history, AKA the fall of the Samurai at the turning point of the Meiji Restoration. A fascinating historical parallel between the Samurai and the Cowboy is that they were essentially literally handing one era from the former to the latter chronologically in real life. If the Boshin War is considered the period at the end of their sentence, then the Samurai were extinguished as a class in Japan in 1868-69. Generally speaking, this puts their timeline ending RIGHT at the beginning of the "Wild West" period of American history since most consider that starts around 1865 and runs up until either the 1880s or even the early 1900s depending on which historian you talk to. So the idea of a Ronin Samurai ending up in the wild west with a bunch of gunslingers isn't even really unfeasible. They WERE contemporaries, even if only briefly and on opposites sides of a vast ocean, both linguistically, culturally, and physically. 2) The talk of synthesis regarding Cowboy Bebop specifically is VERY apropos. The creators of Cowboy Bebop considered synthesis to be a core element of the show itself, especially musically. Yoko Kanno, the lead composer and coordinator of the music on the show was given free reign to do whatever she could to combine as many genres as she could into the musical stylings of the show, and she was such a musical genius that basically Shinichiro Watanabe (the director of the show and the whole project) knew to just let her cook and then use whatever she came up with when she was ready. Synthesis of ideas goes beyond just the music of the show of course, and you point to some of the various stylings the show mixed cinematically. But it even became part of the show's tagline at release, which was: "A New Genre unto itself - Cowboy Bebop" and was otherwise called by marketeers as "Space Jazz." Because the core directive on that show was ultimately about improvisation and mixing of style, something Watanabe has kept as a personal stylistic theme of his with other anthology shows he's produced like Samurai Champloo and Space Dandy (both of which are also great, and recommended).
That ending actually made me feel some feels as the young peeps say. Great analysis. I still don't think we've fully processed the impact of the samurai and cowboy's fighting a changing world.
I was always a fan of Stephen King's gunslingers that melded that cowboy myth with the knight myth. Granted the Dark Tower series later books weren't as good but the idea and some of the other stuff in Midworld was pretty cool.
I remember when Outland was in theaters, and reviewers of that time not only described it as a western in space, but also compared it to one western in particular, High Noon. As for the blending of samurai movies and westerns, Roger Corman may have been the first one to take that idea and move it into space. Battle Beyond the Stars borrowed very heavily from The Magnificent Seven. It even borrowed one of the stars of the movie, Robert Vaughn, plus we got a cowboy hatted George Peppard. I hear that sort of thing is still going on. Although I have never seen Rebel Moon, reviews I have read also mention its similarity to The Magnificent Seven. Avatar plays on the idea of displacing the natives for access to resources. That movie might be worth a show all to itself. If you ever decide to do that, you might want to check out a story by Ursula K. LeGuin entitled The Word for World is Tree. I haven't read it, but I was struck by the similarities with Avatar when I read a synopsis of the story. And speaking of Outland, Giovanni Ribisi's character in Avatar owes a lot to Peter Boyle's character in Outland. A corporate exec who prides himself on his ability to get the maximum profits out of the off-world mining operation he oversees. James Cameron seems to have lifted the character from Outland wholesale, right down to Giovanni Ribisi's habit of practicing his golf swing while in business meetings.
This is your best video yet, imo. I immediately thought "Han Solo". Vampire Hunter D (1985) was also VERY heavy on the Western/Frontier, and of course it's Japanese (back in the 80s called "Japanimation"). I've known a long time that The Magnificent Seven was based on a samurai story. I really enjoyed this. 😊 Maybe you can cover Vampire Hunter D sometime.
@@feralhistorian You've got your choice of two movies (adapted from light novels 1 and, IIRC, 3) and English translations of the light novels themselves (at least nine volumes.) The light novels include Yoshitaka Amano's artwork and his illustrations are, naturally, the basis for the anime designs.
Vampire Hunter D novels is def something you should check out, the vampire nobility took over humanity and are in decline after 10k years of rule the past and future overlap in tons of amazing ways.
You could have mentioned 'Battle Beyond The Stars' which was a remake of 'The Magnificent Seven' which was a remake of 'Seven Samurai'. Maybe that would have been too obvious; too easy. Instead I'm gonna sulk and pout because you left out 'Galaxina' (1980) which is totally a Space Western that manages to poke fun at Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, and the Western genre. It also includes the descendants of human colonists who worship a deity called "Harley, Son of David" (yes, it's a motorcycle).
I’m sorry to tell you, but you’re wrong about The Expanse’s Texas accents, which are definitely not affects. It may be true that Martians embrace the “New West”, but that honky tonk that Alex meets Bobby in? It exist because that portion of Mars was directly settled by a big group of Texans. Alex grew up among their descendants, and most people from that part of Mars speak like that. It’s not an affect. Oh, and as an afterthought: I’m thinking that somehow you’re suggesting that The Expanse is a space western. On the chance that’s true… It is not. It is a space opera that at times borrows tropes from westerns, but it’s definitely space opera.
Now this is interesting. I flipped through Leviathan Wakes and you're right, it's the result of Texan settlers in the Mariner Valley and all the other locals picked it up. But the book also refers to it as an "old west affectation" which is probably why I used that word to describe it. (The relevant section, from Chapter 3.) “Howdy, XO,” he drawled. The old west affectation common to everyone from the Mariner Valley annoyed Holden. There hadn’t been a cowboy on Earth in a hundred years, and Mars didn’t have a blade of grass that wasn’t under a dome, or a horse that wasn’t in a zoo. Mariner Valley had been settled by East Indians, Chinese, and a small contingent of Texans. Apparently, the drawl was viral. They all had it now.
@@feralhistorian yes, I remembered it in a more general sense, that I had read it in that book, but I can chalk this up to one of two things: This is the first book, and the writers were actually pretty new at writing. Could be a mistake. Or, more likely: This passage is written from Holden’s POV, and from his POV, it’s an affectation, but from the residents of Mariner Valley’s point of view, it’s just how they talk.
One note, Cowboy Bebop isn't a western set in space. It's a NEO Western set in space. Westerns deal with frontiers that in essence are a confluence exploration, trade, industry and even conquest that all represent growth. Neo Westerns are about a time when frontiers have ceased to exist and instead of new growth and new discovery the heroes are fighting for a chance to survive in an utterly decaying world. So in a classic western there's always the notes of adventure, growth and hope. Cowboy Bebop being about surviving decay is marked with characters struggling with their past, and all the main story beats are about dealing with sorrow and a heartless world. This is in fact where the show gets it's name, Bebop. A form of music created in the midst of oppression as a form of anti oppression. When Jazz was created the oppressors would rather pay white musicians to imitate it rather than pay a black musician merely out of hatred and spite. So came Bebop a musical movement with the goal of being so open, so freeing that no person without the the essence of that music in their heart could ever actually imitate it. Bebop, defiance against a merciless, pitiless dystopia by making the choice to free one's own heart, the exact themes of the anime.
@@jmgonzales7701 A good example of that is Hell or Highwater. A Neo Western. or do you mean a present day film that covers the classic themes of "frontier" conquest, exploration ect? That's not hard, but it would likely be seen as propaganda by modern audiences which is tbh why westerns fell out of vogue like... 40-50 years ago. I can't think of a good example. Star Trek was sold to the producers as a "wagon train to the stars." But what it *actually* was in most of the shows... well it actually was the Twilight zone in space. "Imagine a world where there are no adults at all..." ect. Basically nobody has done a modern western be it set now or in the future.
@@jmgonzales7701 Well you could take modern to mean a film made now, OR set now. set now? the only way you could do a western set now is if you just dive face first into alternate realities. There are no open frontiers to colonize in the minds of the public.
Another back and forth that has happened with western and Japanese stuff influencing each other over the years is animation itself. (To say nothing about blatant copying at times)
I think of Kung Fu as a special case, blending in Chinese influences instead of being part of the America/Japan cross pollination. But definitely worth mentioning.
Cowboy Bebop: I couldn't get into the cartoon. Sorry, Anime. I haven't tried the Netflix yet but of course, I have more diminished hopes for that. I loved Firefly. They did themselves no favour in deliberately having a slow burn. This further sabotaged by the studio in scrambled run order and broadcast time.
Seems to me that Han Solo is quite happy to blast _anyone_ who threatens him, whether non-human (biologically or figuratively) or otherwise. Actually, in point of fact, Greedo the bounty hunter is the _only_ non-human amongst the many people that Han actually kills in the Original Trilogy...🤔
I mean... most of the casualties of the various indigenous tribes had nothing to do with the white man's bullet and much more to do with several thousand years of viruses that that natives had missed out on being isolated on the continent. That and plenty of in fighting. I'm afraid you've also fallen victim to a myth yourself, the myth of the conquering super effective military that bulldozed over thousands of Indians with a few cavalry charges and some wagons used defensively. The major battles that took place between the US government and the native tribes were at a point when the west had already basically been colonized.
I still have a VCR, just for these circumstances. My wife thinks it's a waste of space, but one day dozens will beg me to let them see their 80s wedding videos! **laughs maniacally**
@@feralhistorian I I recall, Han Shot. Greedo died. So if he shot first, he also shot last. Of course Greedo basically told Han "There is a bounty on your head, and dead is just as good as far as Jabba is concerned"
Isn't your epilogue to a video, a bit romanticized allegory for what happened to Japan after the war, given the CIA machinations and the destruction and degradation of Japanese culture? 🤔
Red Sun is a western with Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune where an outlaw joins forces with a samurai. Highly recommend.
In the same vain, I can also recommend "The Good, The Bad and The Weird" from S. Korea which mixes Sergio Leone Western, Martial Arts, Slapstick Comedy and Pulp Adventure ala Indiana Jones.
Didn't he show a clip from that? Or was that a different show with Bronson on horseback beside a samurai?
@@boobah5643 Yep, that was Red Sun.
One thing a lot of comparisons between cowboys and samurai miss is that the Meiji Restoration was in 1868. At the exact same time as disaffected ex-soldiers were wandering America's West as cowboys, disaffected ex-samurai were wandering Japan as ronin.
C.f. The Last Samurai. Starring Tom Cruise.
@blshouse Also note: the Last Samurai is Ken Watanabes character, not Tom Cruises.
See you around space cowboy your gonna carry that weight
That line still gets to me.
Time to go Mushroom Hunting!
The original trigun is far superior than the trigun stampede, it came out around the same time as the original anime of cowboy bebop
I would listen to your ramblings on a live stream, not gonna lie.
You might add the series "Yellowstone" as one of those "last gasp" of the Western tropes, with the gunfights taking place largely in meeting-rooms and boardrooms, not the dusty streets or the saloons.
Excellent video, sir. I love samurai, gunslingers, and samurai gunslingers; and Trigun and Cowboy Bebop are two of my favorite anime, so this was right up my dusty, tumbleweed-infested alley. The closing US-Japan story was so good. And, man, 7:52-8:35 hits hard.
I agree. If I had to sum up the last twelve and a half years of being a pharmacist, I don't think I could do a better job. And replaying it and thinking about this section more and more, it just hits even harder.
A video focusing on Cowboy Bebop would be awesome. Hopefully, one on the original Trigun as well, Lord knows that's also a whole can of worms.
The reactions I've seen to _Stampede_ were mixed at best, although it was only five or six episodes deep at the time. Not anything as simple as one version being good and the other bad or any consistency about which one was better, although at the time (and with that audience) the OG had the lead, but there were people who agreed on what the differences were while disagreeing (with reasons!) on whether those changes were good.
@boobah5643 Never sat down to watch Stampede, the new designs I couldn't get behind. Especially with Vash, considering how him having a prosthetic is a lot more obvious in the new one. It's supposed to be this big reveal after a certain point.
@@joecrazy9896 It's not a reveal that he's Vash, either.
I recommend it. It's definitely a new take on the original with Season 1 being a prequel/reimagining of sorts. The animation is great especially during fights, and it expands upon many characters to add to the grittiness and tragedy of the setting. Not gonna spoil it but Stampede's version of Monev the Gale will hurt you inside.
"We're frontier people, and we're all out of frontier." - That hurts
it's true though....
until space is opened up to us and made simple we're all out of frontier....
yeah not in our lifetime, it'll be just one more thing the super rich elite hold above us....honestly if it means all the hedghe funders and morons ruining business just up a go we may juist be able to fox the world....but it'd then mean eliminating the military industrial complex eh we're funked!
That's thing that is really hard to understand from european standpoint. When you have furniture or tableware older than a country on the other side of the atlantic and live in the same place as your family did for hundreds of years. The thinking is reversed.. the soil is not for you.. you are there for the soil, for a few heartbeats.
@@phh2400I’d say that’s part of the reason for such massive strides and interest in space exploration in American culture historically and even in modern day. Of course every society has a culture interested in space exploration and what’s out there, but America, along with the Soviet’s, were some of the first people to do it and still some one of the major players in expanding our knowledge and grasp of space. Adding that to the massive culture media output of space, such as Star Trek, Star Wars, multiple stories of “little green men” and so on. People love it
The sequence at the end was the best retelling of WW2 i have ever seen.
From the perspectives of only two characters in an ensemble cast, of course. :P
George Peppard played as the ultimate 'Space Cowboy' in Battle Beyond The Stars; there I've said it.
Battle Beyond the Stars is of course, yet another 7 Samurai /Magnificent 7 remake.
Outland was an under-rated movie.
An old Peanuts comic kept running through my head when you started talking about the frontier as a means of escape:
Charlie Brown: “Sometimes I think about going away, starting over somewhere else.”
Lucy: “Why? No matter where you go, you’ll still be Charlie Brown.”
Just as a side note: my dad was stationed in Japan during the Korean War, starting just after the occupation ended. He was there for the whole war. He didn’t observe much of the “Condescending prick” nature in us gunslingers as you imply. I know there were problems during the occupation, but given what the Japanese *expected* us to do, the fact that we didn’t really do anything bad was very welcome. And they were overjoyed that we’d saved them from Soviet occupation, which *certainly* would have been much worse. He said some people even apologized to him for the war, after a fashion.
Which is not to blow sunshine up anyone’s ass and say nothing bad ever happened. It’s simply to say that the (mythical) cowboy code insists that if you have to knock a man down, you’ve got to help him back up again.
Great video. I'd like to hear your take on Roger Zelazny's work clearly "Damnation Alley" but also "A Night in the Lonesome October " viz-a-vy who's a villain and not.
Haven't thought about Damnation Alley in a terrible long count of years, but now that you mention it . . . I haven't read Lonesome October, but I'll add to the ever-growing reading list.
Lonesome October is an omage to Victorian literature and early horror movies. It was RZ's last work.
Hell yeah. I'm so here for this episode.
Ironically, I started plotting an SF Western short story this week. Good timing.
If you're interested in more Space Western animes, Outlaw Star is an interesting twist on it. It came out concurrent to Bebop and the original Trigun, so it tends to get passed over for bigger classics but I think it's worth looking at.
Okay, damn it. SUBSCRIBED. Well done, Buckaroo.
Same
"History and cultural memory don't talk much these days."
Was there a time in history when they _did_ talk? I'd be curious to hear about it, because as far as I can tell, humans have been romanticizing the past for as long as we've had words for the passage of time, mixing history with religion and culture, and populating both with heroes, gods, and monsters. If anything, I would guess (not having studied the question) we're more aware of this tendency in ourselves now than we have been in the past - though all too often this leads to nihilism as our cultural idols' feet of clay are pointed out.
Before the Printing Press, everything was very different. When you look at the ancient Roman stories as an example, there is purpose behind the stories. Fusing history and cultural memory together into one.
Dr. Gregory S. Aldrete has some amazing stuff on "Wondrium" (previously "Great Courses Plus") where he goes through the ancient Roman stories. From the one Roman who held his hand in a fire to prove to the enemy how tough they were.
Or how Rome overthrew the monarchy and created a Republic because of a prince forcing himself on good and honest wife, who ended her own life to prove what was done to her, and as no woman should ever blame force in the case of adultery.
Id say its less they talked and more in the past cultural memory WAS history. Theres even past writings from around the 1700s saying how history overly obsessed with exactness serves no real purpose and in fact is actively harmful
Archeology and other forms of solidly proving history are very recent@@Hugebull
Galaxy Rangers is one of my all time favorite animated shows.
The example you used at the end... I'd watch that movie like it was a religious requirement
Same here
This is far and away my favorite of your essays. More, please!
"When it comes to the West, in a choice between the Truth and the Myth--print the Myth" _The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence_
Frankly, the old westerns didn’t shy away from the harsh realities. Even McClintock showed how much of the expansion was funded by unscrupulous bankers and the soldiers were unreasonably trigger happy.
Hollywood in general is to blame for dumb movies. They never represented a broader culture.
The soldiers were not "unreasonably trigger happy"
That's a crock of shit invented in the modern age with absolutely zero evidence to back it up because it was invented by communists in Hollywood to shit on our heritage
My favorite one so far! Love this channel!
KILLJOYS fits very well in this scenario, too!
Catching up with your recent releases, and man, these vids just keep getting better. Some great analysis in this one.
9:28
Good sir.
Shut up and take my money.
The OG Battlestar Galactica was pitched as Wagon Train in space, with famous and beloved western actor Lorne Greene cast as Adama to really sell the concept.
Also Vampire Hunter D has some western vibes , kinda like a regression after the nuclear wars.
Your ending movie idea is really good. Perhaps an old Boshin War veteran turned shootist vs a young kid from back East who grew up on dime novels.
As I watched the new story part it made me picture the two men at the bar after their epic duel, the old man finally saying "Sitting in muddy water isn't such a bad life, if it ends after the first time." As I thought about it a little more, I actually wrote out some of the scene just now:
The two men sat in the corner silently, ignoring the commotion in the rest of the saloon. The young man sat gripping the handle on his mug, watching his companion anxiously. The old man leaned against the bar slightly, his left hand wrapped around the square glass filled with amber liquid. The only movement he made was the index finger delicately tracing the same circle over and over on the side of the glass. His right hand rested against his knee as it almost always did, just over an inch away from the pistol buried under the fabric of his clothing.
He sat there silently, his steely gaze reminiscent of a hawk observing distant prey. The young man found himself looking in the same direction involuntarily only to see the same column over and over. In never varied and in the ten minutes since they had sat down, the old man hadn’t so much as blinked. He licked his lips, he was thirsty and the beer in his hand would taste even better than usual. But he was memorized by his companion. He found himself turning back to look at the column ahead of them, he couldn’t remember if it was the fifth or sixth time he had done this.
“You know,” the old man said. The young man gave a start as he snapped his head back to his companion. The old man gently brought the glass to his lips, taking a casual sip. He gave a weary sigh after swallowing brought on by more than just the fiery sensation in his mouth from the recently departed fluid. “Sitting in muddy water isn’t such a bad life.”
“Huh?”
The old man set the glass down. Other than the level in the glass being slightly lower, it was as if he hadn’t taken the drink just a second ago. The young man looked confused. For the first time in a while, the old man glanced to the side at his companion. The man who had so recently been his bitter enemy bent on killing him just stared at him his eyes wide. He gave an amused chuckle and a smirk slowly formed on his lips. “If it ends after the first time.”
“What does that mean?”
The old man chuckled again and brought the glass to his lips. “That, my young friend, is something you’ll learn, sooner or later.”
The young man just sat there, his jaw dropped a little for a few seconds. He leaned back and thought about it as the seconds slowly ticked by. He shrugged and raised his glass, giving a slight nod towards the old man in salute. “I’ll drink to that,” he said before bringing the mug to his lips.
The old man smiled again.
I have my own space western series I'm working on, a variation on this might work well for the ending of the story where my bounty hunter main character meets a rival. They clash a little bit, but eventually become friends after falling into the hands of their erstwhile quarry and having to work together to get out of the situation and not wind up catching a rather sudden case of dead.
Yep. All this. Nice video.
Even John Wayne pointed out that Star Wars was basically a Western. Does anyone remember the Rifleman episode with the Samurai teaching some town bullies a lesson?
Defiance was a short lived ( only had 3 seasons ) tv show set-up like a western frontier town and even had the hero be a sheriff ( hey,every body has to eat ) I enjoyed it for what it was tho.
I've been rewatching Defiance lately, mixed in with a bunch of other stuff. Only halfway through the first season but I remember it having some really interesting elements, though not always executed well.
@@feralhistorian I'd like to find out some behind the scenes stuff from the actors as why the show went off the air. Tho that problably won't happen as I'm presuming not many people even remember Defiance or very many watched this show.
The series Deadwood was kino af
Saber Rider and the Star Sherriffs.
9:29 makes me happy
dangerously wholesome
Amazing as always.
2 things:
1) Recently, due to playing Like A Dragon: Ishin, I've been studying the Bakumatsu era of Japanese history, AKA the fall of the Samurai at the turning point of the Meiji Restoration. A fascinating historical parallel between the Samurai and the Cowboy is that they were essentially literally handing one era from the former to the latter chronologically in real life. If the Boshin War is considered the period at the end of their sentence, then the Samurai were extinguished as a class in Japan in 1868-69. Generally speaking, this puts their timeline ending RIGHT at the beginning of the "Wild West" period of American history since most consider that starts around 1865 and runs up until either the 1880s or even the early 1900s depending on which historian you talk to.
So the idea of a Ronin Samurai ending up in the wild west with a bunch of gunslingers isn't even really unfeasible. They WERE contemporaries, even if only briefly and on opposites sides of a vast ocean, both linguistically, culturally, and physically.
2) The talk of synthesis regarding Cowboy Bebop specifically is VERY apropos. The creators of Cowboy Bebop considered synthesis to be a core element of the show itself, especially musically. Yoko Kanno, the lead composer and coordinator of the music on the show was given free reign to do whatever she could to combine as many genres as she could into the musical stylings of the show, and she was such a musical genius that basically Shinichiro Watanabe (the director of the show and the whole project) knew to just let her cook and then use whatever she came up with when she was ready.
Synthesis of ideas goes beyond just the music of the show of course, and you point to some of the various stylings the show mixed cinematically. But it even became part of the show's tagline at release, which was: "A New Genre unto itself - Cowboy Bebop" and was otherwise called by marketeers as "Space Jazz." Because the core directive on that show was ultimately about improvisation and mixing of style, something Watanabe has kept as a personal stylistic theme of his with other anthology shows he's produced like Samurai Champloo and Space Dandy (both of which are also great, and recommended).
That ending actually made me feel some feels as the young peeps say. Great analysis. I still don't think we've fully processed the impact of the samurai and cowboy's fighting a changing world.
I was always a fan of Stephen King's gunslingers that melded that cowboy myth with the knight myth. Granted the Dark Tower series later books weren't as good but the idea and some of the other stuff in Midworld was pretty cool.
hey, the man's familiar with the term "greeble"... and probably "nurnie" too. nice.
I remember when Outland was in theaters, and reviewers of that time not only described it as a western in space, but also compared it to one western in particular, High Noon. As for the blending of samurai movies and westerns, Roger Corman may have been the first one to take that idea and move it into space. Battle Beyond the Stars borrowed very heavily from The Magnificent Seven. It even borrowed one of the stars of the movie, Robert Vaughn, plus we got a cowboy hatted George Peppard. I hear that sort of thing is still going on. Although I have never seen Rebel Moon, reviews I have read also mention its similarity to The Magnificent Seven. Avatar plays on the idea of displacing the natives for access to resources. That movie might be worth a show all to itself. If you ever decide to do that, you might want to check out a story by Ursula K. LeGuin entitled The Word for World is Tree. I haven't read it, but I was struck by the similarities with Avatar when I read a synopsis of the story. And speaking of Outland, Giovanni Ribisi's character in Avatar owes a lot to Peter Boyle's character in Outland. A corporate exec who prides himself on his ability to get the maximum profits out of the off-world mining operation he oversees. James Cameron seems to have lifted the character from Outland wholesale, right down to Giovanni Ribisi's habit of practicing his golf swing while in business meetings.
This is your best video yet, imo. I immediately thought "Han Solo". Vampire Hunter D (1985) was also VERY heavy on the Western/Frontier, and of course it's Japanese (back in the 80s called "Japanimation"). I've known a long time that The Magnificent Seven was based on a samurai story. I really enjoyed this. 😊 Maybe you can cover Vampire Hunter D sometime.
There have been a couple recommendations for Vampire Hunter D. I have not seen it, but I'm going to give it a look.
@@feralhistorian I'd be surprised if you don't like it. Lots of occult in it, I mean aside from "vampire".
@@feralhistorian You've got your choice of two movies (adapted from light novels 1 and, IIRC, 3) and English translations of the light novels themselves (at least nine volumes.) The light novels include Yoshitaka Amano's artwork and his illustrations are, naturally, the basis for the anime designs.
Overlooked the character arc of the frontier archetype.
They are tragic.
Now we need a sequel where your American and Japanese look towards the Asian mainland and worry about how to deal with the big Chinese guy.
9:27 Dayum, bro 😔
Daily reminder to _"Be the American that Japan thinks you are."_
This made me remember the Terran confederacy in Starcraft.
Massive starships blasting country music with Confederate flags on the side.
Vampire Hunter D novels is def something you should check out, the vampire nobility took over humanity and are in decline after 10k years of rule the past and future overlap in tons of amazing ways.
D is very much a wandering gunslinger. Didn't really enjoy it beyond the first movie (itself an adaptation of the first book.)
You could have mentioned 'Battle Beyond The Stars' which was a remake of 'The Magnificent Seven' which was a remake of 'Seven Samurai'. Maybe that would have been too obvious; too easy.
Instead I'm gonna sulk and pout because you left out 'Galaxina' (1980) which is totally a Space Western that manages to poke fun at Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, and the Western genre. It also includes the descendants of human colonists who worship a deity called "Harley, Son of David" (yes, it's a motorcycle).
And don't forget the classic Western-Oriental fusion Kung Fu.
I’m sorry to tell you, but you’re wrong about The Expanse’s Texas accents, which are definitely not affects. It may be true that Martians embrace the “New West”, but that honky tonk that Alex meets Bobby in? It exist because that portion of Mars was directly settled by a big group of Texans. Alex grew up among their descendants, and most people from that part of Mars speak like that. It’s not an affect.
Oh, and as an afterthought: I’m thinking that somehow you’re suggesting that The Expanse is a space western. On the chance that’s true… It is not. It is a space opera that at times borrows tropes from westerns, but it’s definitely space opera.
Now this is interesting. I flipped through Leviathan Wakes and you're right, it's the result of Texan settlers in the Mariner Valley and all the other locals picked it up. But the book also refers to it as an "old west affectation" which is probably why I used that word to describe it.
(The relevant section, from Chapter 3.)
“Howdy, XO,” he drawled. The old west affectation common to everyone from the Mariner Valley annoyed Holden. There hadn’t been a cowboy on Earth in a hundred years, and Mars didn’t have a blade of grass that wasn’t under a dome, or a horse that wasn’t in a zoo. Mariner Valley had been settled by East Indians, Chinese, and a small contingent of Texans. Apparently, the drawl was viral. They all had it now.
@@feralhistorian yes, I remembered it in a more general sense, that I had read it in that book, but I can chalk this up to one of two things:
This is the first book, and the writers were actually pretty new at writing. Could be a mistake.
Or, more likely:
This passage is written from Holden’s POV, and from his POV, it’s an affectation, but from the residents of Mariner Valley’s point of view, it’s just how they talk.
I think you would enjoy Kino no Tabi, and I would love to hear what you have to say about it.
In a strange way, this reminds me of the Torchship Trilogy by Karl K. Gallagher
One note, Cowboy Bebop isn't a western set in space. It's a NEO Western set in space. Westerns deal with frontiers that in essence are a confluence exploration, trade, industry and even conquest that all represent growth. Neo Westerns are about a time when frontiers have ceased to exist and instead of new growth and new discovery the heroes are fighting for a chance to survive in an utterly decaying world. So in a classic western there's always the notes of adventure, growth and hope. Cowboy Bebop being about surviving decay is marked with characters struggling with their past, and all the main story beats are about dealing with sorrow and a heartless world. This is in fact where the show gets it's name, Bebop. A form of music created in the midst of oppression as a form of anti oppression. When Jazz was created the oppressors would rather pay white musicians to imitate it rather than pay a black musician merely out of hatred and spite. So came Bebop a musical movement with the goal of being so open, so freeing that no person without the the essence of that music in their heart could ever actually imitate it. Bebop, defiance against a merciless, pitiless dystopia by making the choice to free one's own heart, the exact themes of the anime.
So how do we make a present day western
@@jmgonzales7701 A good example of that is Hell or Highwater. A Neo Western.
or do you mean a present day film that covers the classic themes of "frontier" conquest, exploration ect? That's not hard, but it would likely be seen as propaganda by modern audiences which is tbh why westerns fell out of vogue like... 40-50 years ago.
I can't think of a good example. Star Trek was sold to the producers as a "wagon train to the stars." But what it *actually* was in most of the shows... well it actually was the Twilight zone in space. "Imagine a world where there are no adults at all..." ect. Basically nobody has done a modern western be it set now or in the future.
@colonel__klink7548 modern meaning set in the present time.
@@jmgonzales7701 Well you could take modern to mean a film made now, OR set now.
set now? the only way you could do a western set now is if you just dive face first into alternate realities. There are no open frontiers to colonize in the minds of the public.
I don't feel a thing and I stopped remembering
Days are just like moments turned to hours
I feel Samurai Champloo has abit of that blending of the two genres; tho it’s not as obvious
Hmm 10:40 reminds me of Andy vs Spike from Bebop.
Nice
Another back and forth that has happened with western and Japanese stuff influencing each other over the years is animation itself. (To say nothing about blatant copying at times)
Keanu Reeves Cinematic Universe, when?
TV show called Kung Fu?
I think of Kung Fu as a special case, blending in Chinese influences instead of being part of the America/Japan cross pollination. But definitely worth mentioning.
I remember BraveStar fondly....no intrest in seeing it again, as an adult I probably wouldn't be able to stand it.
Great video, but how can you talk about scifi Westerns and not even mention Gene Autry's 1935 Phantom Empire?
It precedes the "western to sci-fi shift" period by a bit, but if I were doing this one now I'd work in a mention at least.
Cowboy Bebop: I couldn't get into the cartoon. Sorry, Anime. I haven't tried the Netflix yet but of course, I have more diminished hopes for that. I loved Firefly. They did themselves no favour in deliberately having a slow burn. This further sabotaged by the studio in scrambled run order and broadcast time.
Seems to me that Han Solo is quite happy to blast _anyone_ who threatens him, whether non-human (biologically or figuratively) or otherwise. Actually, in point of fact, Greedo the bounty hunter is the _only_ non-human amongst the many people that Han actually kills in the Original Trilogy...🤔
This is Galaxy Rangers erasure.
Han shot first
9:00, african influences too, can't forget those
'Cultural memory' you mean propaganda right?
I mean... most of the casualties of the various indigenous tribes had nothing to do with the white man's bullet and much more to do with several thousand years of viruses that that natives had missed out on being isolated on the continent. That and plenty of in fighting. I'm afraid you've also fallen victim to a myth yourself, the myth of the conquering super effective military that bulldozed over thousands of Indians with a few cavalry charges and some wagons used defensively.
The major battles that took place between the US government and the native tribes were at a point when the west had already basically been colonized.
>mentioning trigun stampede instead of the original trigun anime
disliked. unsubscribed. reported for tourism.
I couldn't get into either Trigun, abandoned both. But that shot from Stampede was a perfect fit here.
@@feralhistorian k
To be fair Greedo shot first.... an missed.
Back in my day, Han shot first.
Revisionist 😂
Everyone knows Han shot first. I've got the video evidence to prove it. Now I just need to find a VCR...
I still have a VCR, just for these circumstances. My wife thinks it's a waste of space, but one day dozens will beg me to let them see their 80s wedding videos! **laughs maniacally**
@@feralhistorian I I recall, Han Shot. Greedo died. So if he shot first, he also shot last. Of course Greedo basically told Han "There is a bounty on your head, and dead is just as good as far as Jabba is concerned"
Isn't your epilogue to a video, a bit romanticized allegory for what happened to Japan after the war, given the CIA machinations and the destruction and degradation of Japanese culture? 🤔