#karate

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #168: Logan’s Fighting Style in The Thirteenth Hour

Episode #168: Logan’s Fighting Style in The Thirteenth Hour

https://archive.org/download/Podcast168_201810/Podcast%20168.mp3

My brother recently bought the game Soul Caliber 6 and was playing around with the character creator, which is quite robust. He ended up creating a number of characters from The Thirteenth Hour (the main protagonists Logan and Aurora as well as one of the antagonists, a wizard swordsman in black armor named Klax – their battle from the book is re-enacted below).

I was pretty blown away seeing the screenshots – just like The Thirteenth Hour had been turned into a game. Jeremy also created characters for Lester and Claudia, the protagonists of our current Dungeons and Dragons campaigns and recorded some CPU controlled mock battles of the characters squaring off against each other to show case each one’s unique fighting style.

The timing couldn’t have been better, since this week’s episode is on the unarmed fighting style Logan learns and uses in The Thirteenth Hour. It’s never really described in great detail in the book, but I intended it to be a system utilizing the naturally hard parts of the body (e.g. knees, elbows, heels of the foot), like you see in muay thai combined with a relatively low center of gravity and an emphasis on economy of movement and stability while still allowing for agility (kind of like what you see in ninjutsu). I spent some time in the book describing the acrobatic exercises the Rangers had to learn, though the emphasis really was on improving body awareness, learning how to fall, roll, and recover from a loss of balance as well as conquer fear. Although Logan uses a wall flip at one point to save himself from turning into a mess smeared on a castle wall, I didn’t anticipate these would be techniques the Rangers would employ in combat (unlike what martial arts movies usually portray). Same with the higher and jumping kicking techniques of martial arts legend … again, although Logan does a spinning hook kick at one point to good effect, it was more because the opening was there and ripe for the taking than anything. It goes along with the philosophy that what you learn should always be more than what you actually might need to use, since (in life and) in fighting, we rarely rise to the occasion – we fall back on something much rougher than what we learned (which will hopefully still be enough).

I envisioned he probably would have done more techniques along the lines of these less flashy strikes, like screenshots from Jeremy’s video showing a lead side punch and a scooping kick to block or intercept an incoming leg:

You can watching the whole narrated video here:

Jeremy’s YouTube channel also has links to all of our D and D videos for your listening/watching pleasure.

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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #164: Readings from Zen in the Martial Arts, Ninjutsu History and Tradition, and The Thirteenth Hour – the Kiai

Episode #164: Readings from Zen in the Martial Arts, Ninjutsu History and Tradition, and The Thirteenth Hour – the Kiai  

https://archive.org/download/Podcast164_201809/Podcast%20164.mp3

Today, we’re taking a short break from 80s movies to talk about something found in many martial arts – the shout.  In Japanese, it’s called a kiai (kihap in Korean). The character making up the term make the most sense in traditional Chinese characters (qi4 he2 – although I’m not sure if that term is actually used in Chinese martial arts or in Chinese at all):

氣合

On the left, the topmost radical is used for “steam” or “gas” usually.  The star shaped character underneath is the character for rice.  So the steam coming off cooking rice is essentially “energy” or “spirit” and a whole host of other more esoteric things, though in the practical sense, if one thinks of rice being the lifeblood of an agrarian region like ancient China, it makes sense that food = energy.  The character on the right means “together.”  The roof like part of the character is very similar to the character for person.  The one below is “one” and the box on the bottom is the character for “mouth.”  Though I’m not sure it’s explained this way, I think of it as “person or people with one mouth” – i.e. “people expressing one voice” (Chinese doesn’t necessarily have to distinguish between 1 person and many).   Notice there isn’t actually anything about shouting, though that’s how it’s often used practically.

So there are two readings from two martial arts books that discuss this idea of tapping into the universal energy that binds living things: Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams and Ninjutsu: History and Tradition by Masaaki Hatsumi.  We end with a section from The Thirteenth Hour where the main character uses this idea in two separate ways, one defensively, one offensively.

In a way, this episode may be prep for next week’s (likely) episode on Big Trouble in Little China.  The podcast now has a page on Facebook, so head over there and to Instagram to check out some scenes from the film over the next few weeks.

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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hourplaylist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #153: Reflections on Watching The Karate Kid 2

Episode #153: Reflections on Watching The Karate Kid Part 2

https://archive.org/download/Podcast153_201807/Podcast%20153.mp3

After rewatching the original 1984 Karate Kid, I decided to give the sequel a try. I distinctly remembered not liking it as a kid (since it had the audacity of having not just one but two love stories), but since that was 30 years ago, I figured what the hell – perhaps my tastes had changed in the interim.

To be honest, this time around, I liked it better than the first movie. Don’t get me wrong, the first film has a certain teen movie charm, but I thought this one was a better movie overall. In the first film, you pretty much know (as with most sports movies), what’s going to happen. Lots of pain until the end when the hero goes out, gives it 110% for the Gipper (so to speak), and wins the game, match, race, etc. (Sure, sportsmanship dictates that learning how to lose well is just as important as winning. Any grade school kid can tell you that – even if they don’t believe it – since they’ve heard it from countless adults who know the truth – no one wins all the time. That all goes out the door with your typical sports movie). We know that despite seemingly being unprepared for the kind of fighting in the All Valley Karate Tournament, Daniel-San is going to win. He’s the hero, after all, but it wouldn’t be much of a story if he were kicking ass right from the get go. Speaking of which, we guess he’s going to use that crane kick (really just a stylized jumping front kick) in the clutch when all the chips are down. Every hero needs an ace up his sleeve, even if said ace has a suicidal opening stance that exposes just about everything and probably wouldn’t work 99% of the time.

Not surprisingly, the crane kick makes a reappearance in the sequel but is blocked. The sequel basically rehashes almost everything from the first film but raises the stakes … and with that, casts doubt as to the outcome. No longer in it just Daniel fighting, it’s Mr. Miyagi, too. It’s not a game of three points until the match is done, then bow and shake hands. The match is done when the loser is dead. With odds like that, the sequel manages to keep things up in the air and uncertain until the end.

One thing that surprised me (since I have vague memories Daniel in Karate Kid 3) was that Daniel was qnite a bit more centered and chilled out in this one. I found him more likable as a result. I figured the writers wanted to show some growth and highlight the effect the relationship he’d developed with his mentor and teacher, Mr. Miyagi, had had on his hotheaded nature.

Whereas the first film was really a sports, teen, and father-son/student-teacher film that happened to be about karate, this one felt more like a traditional martial arts movie. I liked the Okinawan setting and the touches of “old Japan” the film had (while quaint and probably a bit stereotypical), which added to the overall mystique of the film. It was also easy to root for Daniel and Mr. Miyagi since the enemies in this film, Sato, Mr. Miyagi’s childhood friend turned corrupt businessman, and Chozen, one of Sato’s henchmen who takes an immediate dislike to Daniel, do a good job being villains. It was a little harder to feel that way about his nemesis from the first film, Johnny Lawrence, since you got the sense he was an inherently decent, if immature, guy who might have behaved better if his circumstances and role models had been different.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised. This film was more Mr. Miyagi’s story than Daniel’s, in a way, and since you can never really go wrong with Mr. Miyagi, I’d say give it a rewatch if you found it a snoozefest as a kid. There are a number of nice touches than make it worth giving it a second shot.

Case in point: in the Miyagi family dojo, there are two scrolls. Although I don’t read Japanese, they use Chinese characters for some words, and usually, the meaning is about the same. On the right, 空手無先手 literally means “karate (’empty hand’) is not for offense,” and on the left, 先正其 心 I think translates into something like “first, fix your own heart,” which is a little different from how Mr. Miyagi translated it in the film but fits with the way he lives his life and what he tries to instill in Daniel.

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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hourplaylist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #152: Reflections on Watching The Karate Kid Part 1

Episode #152: Reflections on Watching The Karate Kid Part 1

https://archive.org/download/Podcast152_201807/Podcast%20152.mp3

My town recently had a showing of the 1984 film, The Karate Kid. Having not seen the movie in about 20 years, I was curious how it would hold up. There is a great Sports Illustrated article that gets many of the original cast and crew members together to talk about their experiences making a movie and reflections decades later. It encapsulates a lot of what is referenced in this particular podcast episode – mainly that there were many things included in the film that never occurred to me as an eight-year-old first watching the film. There’s less black-and-white duality in the characters, for example. Daniel seems a little less good, Johnny seems a little less bad, Mr. Miyagi seems a less less all-knowing. Everyone, in other words, feels a bit more human. And perhaps that’s the way it should be, since it isn’t really a movie about martial arts at its core. Next week, on to Karate Kid 2 (which, in some ways, I liked more than the first one. Though that, too, was an adult development).

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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Away is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube.   This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hourplaylist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #40: Martial Arts in The Thirteenth Hour

Episode #40: Martial Arts

https://archive.org/download/13thHrEps16On/Podcast%2040.mp3

Last week’s episode on the influence of gymnastics on the writing of The Thirteenth Hour leads to today’s episode which focuses more on martial arts.  Although I’ve alluded to other martial activities on this blog and in the podcast before (like archery and knife throwing), I figured it was time to devote more time to martial arts itself.  My experience since I was about 13 was with Eastern martial arts, so I borrowed elements of those arts in the style of unarmed martial arts Logan and his Imperial Rangers comrades learn and practice in the novel.

Here, he talks about how sparring sessions would typically go for him:

“… at this fledgling state in my career, things would progress something like this. In a somewhat paradoxical concern for safety, the instructors had us tie cloth pads around our shins, feet, hands, and head in an attempt to prevent injuries and simulate body armor but said that donning groin protection was “unrealistic” because no one walked around wearing it in daily life. Well, I’ve never seen anyone walking around boxing gloves or pads on their arms and legs either, but hey, that’s just me.

At any rate, then we’d each take a stance and start beating the living shit out of each other. Our trainers strictly informed us “don’t kill each other” since this was just supposed to be practice. “You have to help each other,” they said. Well, that was a load of bullshit if I ever did step in a pile.

Inevitably, the matches would revert to the following: your opponent, in an effort to impress the instructors, would throw a really hard shot, and if it connected, you would show your manliness by getting pissed and creaming him. Unless, of course, you happened to be me. I generally didn’t stand an ice cube’s chance in hell against those older guys.

Maybe the instructors noticed my incompetence and felt I needed more practice, or maybe it was just a punishment, but it always seemed that I had to spend twice as much time on fighting drills as anyone else, part of which involved more time with the practice dummy …”

Logan may have just been more honest about his shortcomings, but actually his isn’t an uncommon experience for folks.  Of course, consistent practice takes care of a lot.  Eventually, though, Logan learns enough to defend himself quite well.

logan profileWM  logan hook kick2 rm

Logan kicks!  He wouldn’t be doing these kicks prior to his training – guess it paid off.  These high kicks make for flashy pictures, but I mostly envisioned he and the other Rangers spending most of their time practicing more utilitarian low and mid range strikes as well as those that utilize the body’s naturally hard spots (like knees and elbows – which he uses in the final fight).  

output_MEMyey

Pixelart animation of Logan doing a sliding side kick.  This was from The Thirteenth Hour game that didn’t get finished.

As always, thanks for listening!

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