SPOILERS - Shenmue The Animation Episode 12 "Guidepost" thread

Besides Baihu (sigh), this was a great episode imo. Chills heading up those final stairs and opening the door to the rooftop and I loved Wong's spiel about Ryo early on. They also did the Yuan stuff justice as well which is nice.

Again Baihu was a pretty big disappointment, but it's one of those things that has been seemingly sacrificed for more time to develop Ryo's friends backstories and interaction with each other etc, which does make for more engaging viewing for a new viewer I imagine. Some things will just remain perfect in their game form for us which is fine by me.

Overall I loved this week's ep and can't wait to see what we get from Disk 4. Oh also, I agree XPOINTED way too many flashbacks that seemed a bit low effort editing wise.
 
The positives:

-More story for Wong and Joy.
-The animation was really good here.
-Yuan (watched the dub) shined the most in this episode.
-The escaping scenes in the Yellow Head Building were good.

The negatives:

-The Baihu fight only lasted about 20 seconds and was a complete joke of Ryo making Baihu his jabroni.
-While comedy is fine to have, there were too many comedy bits for what was supposed to be a serious episode.
-Ryo and Ren should've fought more Yellow Head members instead of only 2 where for some reason they did a synchronized kick.


The games I believe did the Yellow Head building better than the anime hands down.
 
This was my least favorite episode of the series so far. It's not bad but I had a number of issues with it. Baihu got nerfed, the journey in the yellow head building was staged in an uncompelling manner, flashbacks were handled clumsily.

Another thing is I don't think the show has handled Ren as well as they've done with Xiuying. There's something missing about his adaptation and I think a lot of it has to do with a lot of the playful banter missing from his dynamic with Ryo. He's absolutely still a fun character, but he lacks that intangible in the anime which made gave him his charm in the game.

Baihu was a complete letdown. Unless he has a bigger part to play in the future, I almost feel like he shouldn't have been included if he was going to lack any impact.

That said it was animated well and it's still a good show. Hoping next week closes out the season strong.
 
sayuhhm said:
Besides Baihu (sigh), this was a great episode imo. Chills heading up those final stairs and opening the door to the rooftop and I loved Wong's spiel about Ryo early on. They also did the Yuan stuff justice as well which is nice.

Again Baihu was a pretty big disappointment, but it's one of those things that has been seemingly sacrificed for more time to develop Ryo's friends backstories and interaction with each other etc, which does make for more engaging viewing for a new viewer I imagine. Some things will just remain perfect in their game form for us which is fine by me.

Overall I loved this week's ep and can't wait to see what we get from Disk 4. Oh also, I agree XPOINTED way too many flashbacks that seemed a bit low effort editing wise.
Click to expand...
The most disappointing is the spoiler of Ziming
If Ziming and Baihu are the same person, it makes me a little disappointed.
The side story manga makes ZiMing so cool, but the spoiler destroy it
 
The more...time that goes on, the more I am convinced that while Baihu may still have a part to play in future story, he is not Ziming.
 
24Nathan said:
The more...time that goes on, the more I am convinced that while Baihu may still have a part to play in future story, he is not Ziming.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I know that Baihu being Ziming has been a theory for a long time for some parts of the fandom, and in fairness while nothing has disproved it, I still kind of hope it's not true. In the short comic isn't he associated with Niao Sun?
 
I Got Sriracha In My DNA said:
Yeah. I know that Baihu being Ziming has been a theory for a long time for some parts of the fandom, and in fairness nothing has disproved it, I still kind of hope it's not true. In the short comic isn't he associated with Niao Sun?
Click to expand...
Yeah shes questions him about his half of the ying yang stone, but he wants xiuying to be stronger than him.
 
Last edited:
I didn't mind the comedic bits in this episode that a few of you had issue with, and I liked the switch up of how the Yellow Head building transpired as well as the bits of story that explained how Joy and Wong got into the building.

However, I 100% agree with the Baihu fight being disappointing. If the episode ended with the Rooftop fight, then maybe I can understand it, but since it ends on a cliffhanger it could've been the set-piece fight of the episode. And with more characters getting fleshed out in the anime, I kind of wish there was something new we could've learned about the character since it's hinted that he'll return at some point in the series. And if someone is new to the series through the anime, how would they think that Baihu was significant in any way? (I mean, tbf maybe it turns out that he's not in the grand scheme, but he was the toughest fight in the games).

I still really liked the episode overall and thought it was structured pretty well, but yeah the Baihu fight was the main thing that stuck out as a negative.
 
Yeah I liked almost everything in the episode but there's no denying Baihu was basically skipped over -- defeated by a wudu flashback instead of a real fight. A time/budget thing, most likely. For those who haven't played the game, they'll be wondering why this dude was wearing a fancy outfit and acting all tough, just to get destroyed in a single exchange.

I think it would've been hard to truly capture the badass nature of that fight -- some things are simply better suited to a video game -- but they didn't even try, likely due to time, money, or both. A shame...but bring on the next ep! Can't wait.
 
Great episode and people getting to caught up on the Baihu being defeated easily. Ryo had to learn the Wude for 3 episodes so plenty of backing going into this.

They could have added him getting hit a few times first before his wude flashback but still it was fine

I enjoyed the comedy and thought episode was fantastic, it even had a plank scene from the ghost building
 
Weakest episode in the entire anime. I really disliked the ‘rat scene’ with Yuan and also felt the comedic elements gave me bad Shenmue 3 Old Castle vibes, instead of the mean and dangerous nature of Yellowhead Building in the games.

I also felt the budget being stretched thin here. Wasn’t the opening from the previous episode? The series has liberally used flashbacks but here it felt even more pronounced during Baihu fight which felt totally underwhelming.

I also feel Ren’s characterization is lacking something. Those little moments, with double sided coin, using elevator in Ghost Hall building are omitted. I remember the moment he and Ren high 5 one another after escaping Yellowheads provided this incredible rush and you finally have this strong affinity to the character. Instead here it just didn’t quite have same depth.

While this might sound really negative, I think it speaks to how good the anime has been to date.
 
Last edited:
Everything with Wong, Joy and Zhu was really good. When the anime does these little character moments fleshing them out and showing their motivations it really shines.

That Baihu fight was a straight up joke and the fight scenes get less interesting and complex as the weeks go on. I was worried things would go this way from the first episode when he one shots the guy in the tournament, but they quickly nixxed that as he was small fry, but now we've gone backwards and everyone is seemingly no threat (except the iron pipe from the rear of course which seems to be final boss tier). There should have been a few decent scuffles in the yellow head building or at the very least a fight with the suits in the top office but all that was cut completely. It was great to see Yuan with the Chainsaw, but it was completely wasted, no reason we couldn't have had the epic chainsaw vs pipe scene from the game here. The top floor of the building being the oppulent office was so cool in the game and a stark contrance to the slums of the lower levels so skipping that room and the fights with the suits was another waste.

It feels rushed, and the quality of the animation seems to be getting worse. Remember those early episodes when Ryo would hit someone and they would really sell the move, like Ryo hitting Chai's gut then the follow up kick, the guy with the pipe getting his ribs rearranged in the 70 man battle, the guy who gets iron palmed in the shopping mall? as just a few examples... What happened to those kind of cool flourishes?

shenmue-shenmue-the-animation.gif


Hopefully it can end on a high note next week but i'm pretty lukewarm on the Kowloon arc, moreso with how good all the Yokosuka and Aberdeen stuff was.
 
Last edited:
I loved it, especially the Joy/Wong/Ren stuff.

I kiiiind of understand why the Baihu fight was played down, considering what we get next episode. This will further show the gap between Ryo and Lan-Di.

It was still too quick though. At the end of the SH1 arc we were promised that Ryo would be fighting a new level of baddies and except for Dou Niu (and Ryo's teachers) Ryo kind of breezed his way through the villains.

The opening literally repeated a good one and half minute of the previous episode, this should've gone to the Baihu fight...
 
I'm interested to see how episode 13 wraps it up. Super stoked that they changed it a little to Lan Di coming down. I remember years ago on these forums fans always asked "why didn't Lan Di come down?"
 
Though I did enjoy it on the whole, this was probably my least favorite episode so far. There was far too much comic relief splashed throughout the episode for any sense of tension to ever really land. The Baihu fight being like ten seconds long was the icing on the turd. I liked Joy’s arc in the anime a lot more than the one in the game though.
 
That was fun, but I agree it lacked the gravity of the Yellow Head Building setpieces in the games. They mixed up the finale in a similar way to what they did with the S1 arc, but I enjoyed this one a little more. Shame about the Baihu fight of course – his aura was so formidable that even newcomers may be confused that the fight was over so soon. I see what they were trying to do with the Wude but I think it all comes down to budget. The Lan Di encounter at the end was every bit as menacing as in the games though and I'm curious to see what they'll do with it next week. Disc 4 is my favourite piece of gaming of all time, so I also can't wait to see how that plays out in the final episode. Overall we're just so lucky to have this anime – it's a real tribute to the games and far better than anyone could have predicted! Here's hoping it builds the fanbase for an eventual S4 🙂
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top