I guess this just goes to show that, whatever Snuka can get wrong, Biff can get wronger.
In Biff’s defense, he looked pretty good up until panel six, where a normal strip would have ended – too bad for him that this one had to be overlength. He displays the perfect samurai attitude, though – calm and earnest is the bushido way to go after hacking an opponent in two. I guess you can meditate on your own mortality, or mentally review your deceasing opponent’s ancestry and career, or just fake all of it while internally going “Yaaaaay! High five!!eleven!”. His composure is very commendable,anyway, and a great opportunity for me to show off my 1337 copy & paste skills. (If you wonder why 1337 is an adjective now, I think it’s because it was the year the Hundred Year’s war ended.) Biff even got the gusty wind ruffling his hair and shirt down perfectly – that’s an absolute must for an anime character. The movement in the hair and clothes contrasts and emphasizes the unmoving posture and face, that’s why anime character have to do that when no trace of wind is evident anywhere else in the scenery. (If you don’t know how to create winds on cue, you’re not a true anime character. Why are you snickering?)
By creating that shower of cherry petals, Snuka proves that he’s at least got one of the basic anime maneuvers down. While that kind of spectacle is rather rare in reality, it tends to happen in manga and anime whenever and wherever the protagonist’s mood calls for it – even if they are standing in the middle of the Gobi desert in January. It’s also fittingly symbolic, as Snuka points out, since the cherry blossom is considered symbolic for the life of the samurai. So I guess the lives of samurai where either beautiful and short, or pink and fragrant. I hope they got to choose.
Snuka’s statement in panel ten (O_o; Did we ever even have a panel ten before?) is not quite correct, however – there *is* a higher level of nobility, I’ve just never heard anybody talk about “screwing up imperially”. Not even in reference to Waterloo.
Today’s voting incentive features news from the realm of Egyptology. More on Thursday.