10bit: Torrent | DDL

My internet’s been terrible these days.

Read on for some possibly helpful notes regarding this episode.

There’s a lot of Japanese mythology stuff in this episode, so here is a summary of some relevant stories, mostly from the Kojiki. Take note that the details of the story can vary significantly among different versions of the stories.

:: Background: Izanagi and Izanami create Japan. Izanami dies.

Izanagi and Izanami came down from heaven, created Japan, and gave birth to a bunch of gods to get things rolling. However, Izanami died after giving birth to the fire god (her vagina burned, etc.). Izanagi buried Izanami and killed the fire child. Then Izanagi wanted to go to the underworld and see his wife.

:: Izanagi fails to bring Izanami back from the underworld.

Izanagi went to the underworld to see Izanami, but she had already eaten food of the underworld and thus couldn’t just leave. Izanami asked Izanagi to wait outside the gate so she could ask the master of the underworld, but Izanagi couldn’t wait and went inside. There he saw the rotting corpse of Izanami and freaked out. Ashamed, Izanami ordered a bunch of underlings to capture him. After they all failed, Izanami went herself, but Izanagi blocked the pass between the two worlds with a boulder, so she couldn’t reach him. Izanagi broke up with Izanami.

:: Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, and Susanoo are siblings.

They were born when Izanagi was taking a bath to purify himself after visiting the underworld. There are many other versions of the story, of course. Amaterasu is the sun deity, Tsukuyomi is the moon deity, and Susanoo is the storm deity. Each of them was given a part of the world to govern.

:: Susanoo can be a real troublemaker.

Susanoo didn’t rule the oceans as he was supposed to. Saying he wanted to see his mom in the underworld, he was crying all day. It’d be appropriate to call him a mama’s boy. Before he left for the underworld, he thought he’d say goodbye to Amaterasu, so he went to the heavens, but the two couldn’t get along (read more here) and Susanoo ended up being banished from there.

In his journey, he slayed the Great Eight-forked Serpent (Yamata no Orochi) with the sword called the Slash of Heavenly Wings (Ame no Habakiri, which is also the same sword Izanagi used to kill the fire child) to help out a family. From one of the serpent’s tails, he found a fine sword called the Gathering Clouds of Heaven (Ame no Murakumo), which he presented to Amaterasu.

The meaning of a line got messed up during editing. At 17:53, it should say something like “So you’re bad at fighting just as the myths say, eh, Sun Goddess?”