Random Shenmue Thoughts

For those that know Japanese. I lived in Japan for a while and studied abit of Japanese but my level is pretty poor.

山の瀬

Obviously Yama is mountain, but my question is around the "no". It seems unusual to me a placename has that hiragana no, as I thought implied ownership. Or am I wrong?

In Tokyo, there is Takadanobaba, but it has its own Kanji IIRC
 
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On my SI playthrough I managed to beat Chai in the arcade for the first time ever.

I didn't do the demon drop, I basically just kept on grabbing Chai and throwing him over Ryo's shoulder, when he would get back up, do the same, if you time it right you can just keep doing it and he blocks you only a few times.
 
For those that know Japanese. I lived in Japan for a while and studied abit of Japanese but my level is pretty poor.

山の瀬

Obviously Yama is mountain, but my question is around the "no". It seems unusual to me a placename has that hiragana no, as I thought implied ownership. Or am I wrong?

In Tokyo, there is Takadanobaba, but it has its own Kanji IIRC
The interesting thing about Takadanobaba (高田馬場), other than that I'm pretty sure it exists to make fun of a young woman with the family name of Takada--I know I made fun of her for it--is that the 'no' doesn't actually appear in the name. If you read it literally, it would be 'Takada-baba.' It also happens to be on the Yamanote line, which is written in the same way (山手線). If you read that literally, it would be 'yama-te sen.' I don't really know how to explain why this is, but it is. Functionally, it's the same thing as Yama-no-se. 'No' is possessive, but it's literally 'of.'

I don't really know how to describe 'se' (瀬) in English. I'm not sure it exactly translates, but it's sort of like a less dramatic rip tide along a river, or a strong river current. So, Yama-no-se is essentially '(that--as in the previous description of 'se') of the mountains,' or, if you wanted to make it more clearly possessive, 'the mountain's (that).'

This might sound funky, but if I were actually going to translate Yama-no-se, it would probably be as 'river-surge of mountains' (we'll pretend the first bit is something an English speaker would ever say). It's a subtle difference, and it's one of those subtleties that comes with time, but in this instance it's less about the possessive, and more about ascribing an affect to "mountains," because it's sort of an abstract name. Ultimately it's a place name, though, and most people wouldn't think that much about it anymore than an English speaker would think about the name, "Johnsonville."

Hope that helps at all.
 
The bad ending date in Shenmue 2 is July 31st, right? During the bad ending, Shenhua will speak about how the hope of meeting has been lost but has anyone ever tried to time Ryo's arrival in Langshuishan for July 30th to see what happens? Ryo will be able to meet her and thus, the bad ending wouldn't make sense anymore. This is despite the fact that Ryo will finish his journey on August 1st, because of the night he spends in the cave and the night he spends in Shenhua's house.

Will meeting Shenhua block the bad ending or will the July 31st date trigger it regardless? I'm really interested to know.

Edit: I found this really cool cover of my favorite Shenmue OST. Deserves way more views.

 
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Some thoughts/bit of a rant after playing through these games for like the 5th time I think since they came out in 2018.

I wish the thugs at the alley going into the Heartbeats Bar and inside the bar itself weren't such recurrent characters in the game. It's awesome when you take them on the first time and it makes perfect sense to fight them again in the parking lot when they try to get back at you, but that's it, they should've never kept coming back. It gets comical when you have to beat them up like another handful of times at the harbor because they seem to enjoy getting their asses handed to them repeatedly for some reason. In a journal entry Ryo mentions that he rarely sees those two bozos like what are you talking about you see them every few days it seems. The developers made a bunch of unique character models for the Mad Angels as you can clearly see during the 70-man battle, why not borrow some and use them for the various confrontations you have with the gang while working the forklift job instead of recycling the same clowns that get schooled over and over again. The guy with the blue camo pants and the other guy in green kept coming back for more too.

The old man behind the counter at Min Min Dimsum probably has the worst English voice acting in Shenmue II, and some of the worst ever. Definitely in the top 3 worst English VO performances in the game alongside your boss in Fortune's Pier and that gambler with the purple Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses. That last guy was borderline offensive in how bad he was. There was another absolutely atrocious actor that voiced one of the Lucky Hit stand owners IIRC but I don't remember exactly who or where he was. I know they basically got people off the street to read these lines but Jesus wept. Thank god for the Japanese dub. The funny thing is the Japanese voices might be a joke too if you actually speak Japanese, but I do not, so ignorance is bliss I suppose. The only decent English performances were Ren and the dojo master. Oh and the old man at Man Mo temple was alright. I remember reading an article about Shenmue II's voice actors and some guy who had a role said he pulled off a combination of Clint Eastwood and Richard Simmons, lol. I don't think I've ever bumped into that NPC.

Even Corey Marshall seemed to be phoning it in, shame. It's already cringe inducing when you buy capsule toys as soon as you get off the ship. As an aside, and this might ruffle the feathers of the more diehard fans, but I watched a clip of his VO in videogamedunkey's Shenmue III video and it came across as more of a Shenmue parody than anything. Unreal, this robotic, monotone, style of voice acting was acceptable 19-20 years ago but why anyone would want that now that is beyond me. The nostalgia boner isn't worth it. It has its charm when playing Shenmue I but this just isn't going to cut it for me in a modern game. Now, I have no interest in playing Shenmue III myself regardless of the voice acting's quality, or lack thereof, because nothing about it looks good to me despite loving the originals but it's nice that they kept the Japanese dub as an option so the people playing the game didn't have to deal with the awful English dub.
 
Have to say "pleaaase get oooout!" from the Min Min Dimsum gramps is definately way worse than Wang's brother.
Really does take the cake.

At least there are some genuinely bad dumb moment that make you chuckle, like Poor Man's Ren at the cell door with his "Shut up or I'll bust ya face" and "They're not there. They escaped!"

Also worth to point out the delivery of the feisty looking lady in red with glasses at the Mahjong stands. She starts out sounding very nice and gets progressively more angry during the sentence until she sounds really pissed at the end. In every sentence...
 
Wang's brother is definitely so bad, it's good IMO. I'm laughing just thinking about him.
 
Have to say "pleaaase get oooout!" from the Min Min Dimsum gramps is definately way worse than Wang's brother.
Really does take the cake.

I always thought Wang’s brother was the epitome of bad voice acting until I came across your video. The guy from Min Min Dimsum is ridiculous. I’ve timestamped it just in case anyone else hasn’t seen this monstrosity in acting-


Edit: For some reason it’s not working but should be at 10min 20 second mark.
 
If that's BlueMue's video about the extra day in Kowloon, look for the Sparrow Lady; also HILARIOUSLY awful! :D
 

I always thought Lan Di's robe on the first game's cover was black and I wondered why. It's only recently that I can see the green :LOL:

Speaking of box art, the dreamcast box art for Shenmue 2 is the most beautiful box art I have ever laid my eyes on. I don't think I'd part with my original copy for any price and I really mean that.
 
The bad ending date in Shenmue 2 is July 31st, right? During the bad ending, Shenhua will speak about how the hope of meeting has been lost but has anyone ever tried to time Ryo's arrival in Langshuishan for July 30th to see what happens? Ryo will be able to meet her and thus, the bad ending wouldn't make sense anymore. This is despite the fact that Ryo will finish his journey on August 1st, because of the night he spends in the cave and the night he spends in Shenhua's house.

Will meeting Shenhua block the bad ending or will the July 31st date trigger it regardless? I'm really interested to know.
If I remember correctly from @DigitalDuck 's research on this, you can no longer trigger the Bad Ending after entering the Yellow Head Building. It is actually possible to get to August and beyond if you avoid physically choosing to 'Sleep' from July 30th onwards (its possible to avoid this in Kowloon as there are many events where it advances to the next day automatically).
 
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