What is worth looking forward to in The Twelve Kingdoms, which has been unfinished for eighteen years？

On October 12th, Ono Fuyumi’s novel The Twelve Kingdoms, The Mysterious Moon in the Silver Market, went on sale. For many people, The Twelve Kingdoms is a strange name. This is actually not surprising, because the novel and the cartoon were last updated in 2001-2002 …

Resume and update The Twelve Kingdoms

Extraordinary girl novels

Speaking of it, when Ono Fuyumi, who was revered by fans as "the master of Xiao Ye" after that day, began to write The Twelve Kingdoms in the early 1990s, readers might feel that it was just a girl’s novel with suspenseful reasoning. This impression is undoubtedly deepened by the fact that the novel was published by the publisher for girls, The X Library of Talk Club. Needless to say, there are even more than one heroine in the series of Twelve Kingdoms so far: Yoko, Zhu Jing, Xiang Qiong, Ling and so on. Their different experiences have produced an inspirational youth drama.

Yoko

Yoko is an ordinary high school student, who is unremarkable except for his long red hair. One day, a man who claimed to be Jing Qi came to Yoko’s school and wanted to take Yoko away. Yoko was about to refuse for unknown reasons when a group of monsters like giant birds attacked the school. In the chaos, Jing Qi summoned the beast to rescue Yoko and took him to another world-the world of the Twelve Kingdoms, which led to the story of the first novel of The Twelve Kingdoms, The Sea of the Shadow of the Moon (1992).

With the appearance of the heroine Yoko, The Twelve Kingdoms seems to be presented to readers with the face of a standard girl novel. However, when the story unfolds, people begin to find that what "Lord Xiao Ye" hopes to express through the girls in his novels is far from the "cute" and vulgar love that is full of ordinary girls’ novels. In fact, as an indispensable theme of ordinary girls’ novels, "love" has no place in the Twelve Kingdoms so far. Although the cold Jing jiaqi in The Sea of the Shadow of the Moon fell at the feet of the young girl Yoko, it was only because of the need to choose a king. Although Jing jiaqi often accompanied Yoko through thick and thin, there was no love spark between them in the secular sense. Even Xiang Qiong, a girl who was reduced from a noble princess to a common people and suffered hardships in The Dawn Sky in Wan Li (1994); Ling, a girl who drifted to Qingguo as a sea guest, didn’t have love, and even couldn’t see a sign of love. In "Wings of the South" (1996), the unruly prince Li Guang escorted the lively and brave girl Zhu Jing all the way up the mountain. It is reasonable to say that this is the most suitable plot setting for developing love in the whole "Twelve Kingdoms", but no, nothing happened … On the contrary, in "Twelve Kingdoms", which has nothing to do with romance, the faint sadness caused by worrying about the country and homesickness throughout the work is obviously better than that.

Jinglin

This kind of setting idea, of course, far exceeds ordinary girl novels. Therefore, according to the official website of the main publisher Xinchao Society "Twelve Kingdoms", the novel has sold more than 10 million copies. However, it is a pity that this fantasy novel, which is rated as worth reading even for adults, has long been trapped in the embarrassing situation of "digging a hole and not burying it". In 2001, after the eighth feature "A Dream of Hua Xu" appeared, only in 2013 did Ono Fuyumi publish a collection of short stories "Birds of Pisces". Originally, The Twelve Kingdoms officially announced that it was scheduled to be completed in 2016, but it was not completed as scheduled due to the author Ono Fuyumi’s health. It has been delayed until October 2019, when "The Mysterious Moon in the Silver Market" was published. It has been 18 years since the last long article in The Twelve Kingdoms. I really don’t know, should fans feel that they will see it in their lifetime, or regret that time flies?

Different overhead world

From the creative point of view, the most wonderful thing about The Twelve Kingdoms is that it has a complete, systematic and huge world setting. Make the world of twelve countries seem to be a complete and real existence.

Xiao Ye sets the position of 12 countries in her mind like this: Chongshan is in the center of the world, and there are four mountains in its four directions, east, west, north and south. These five mountains are surrounded by the Yellow Sea, which is also surrounded by four Mount Kumgang in the east, west, north and south. There are four inland seas around Mount Kumgang, and eight countries are surrounded by all directions. Not far from the land, there are four big islands, which are four countries. That’s twelve countries in all. They are divided into four countries: Qing (East), Zou (South), Fan (West) and Liu (North), Yan (Northeast), Gong (Northwest), Cai (Southwest) and Qiao (Southeast), and Dai (Northeast), Shun (Southeast), Fang (Northwest) and Lian (Southeast).

Map of Twelve Kingdoms

The Emperor of Heaven once destroyed the world and recreated thirteen countries. He called the middle country the Yellow Sea, with Pengshan as the center, and let the Queen Mother of the West manage it. Then he allocated kings to the other twelve countries and gave each one a branch. The snake wrapped around the branch propped up the sky. There are three fruits on the branch, one is a jade seat, the other is a country, the other is a land, and then the branch is a pen. "Land" means people, "country" means law, "pen" means history, and "jade seat" means king’s moral character. This is the creation myth of the Twelve Kingdoms.

All twelve countries in the world practice monarchy, and the supreme ruler of the country is called the king. The Emperor of Heaven also equipped every country with a mythical unicorn to convey God’s will. Kirin, on behalf of the "Heaven Emperor", elected the best person to be king, and the person who became king came to the king’s side under the guidance of Kirin. However, he must govern the country by virtue, seek the welfare for the people, and absolutely cannot exercise tyranny. If he can do this, then he can get the blessing of Kirin and ascend to heaven to become an immortal with eternal life. On the other hand, if the king is cruel and ruthless or extorts money, then he will lose the chance of eternal life and become an ordinary person. Once Kirin chooses someone to be king, it means that Kirin and the king have exchanged covenants, shouldering the fate of choice and being chosen together, and become the bondsman of life and death. Because the king’s eternal life is given by Kirin, once Kirin dies, the king will die together. As long as a country has a king, it will be blessed by Kirin, and the whole country will be in good weather, prosperous and safe. Once there is no king, demons will run wild in the countryside, the cruel drought will make the farmland useless, the rushing flood will make countless people homeless, the spreading plague will turn the city into corpses, and the turbulent society will be full of crimes and killings.

God beast Kirin

This setting is similar to the idea of "the unity of heaven and man" and "the divine right of monarchy" advocated by Dong Zhongshu, a great scholar in China’s Han Dynasty. At the same time, the king must govern the country by virtue, and must not be tyrannical, which is more in line with the idea of "benevolent governance" and "kingly way" advocated by Mencius in ancient China. It can be said that, just like the shadow of China’s history and culture can often be seen in the works of Yoshiki Tanaka, another Japanese overhead literary writer and the author of "Galaxy the legend of heroes", it is precisely from China’s ancient culture that Ono Fuyumi absorbs nutrients and applies them directly or indirectly, thus creating a completely unfamiliar but intimate "Twelve Kingdoms" world.

Hanfeng is full.

In 2002, NHK adapted The Twelve Kingdoms into a cartoon. The animated version of Twelve Kingdoms was produced by Studio Pierrot Animation Company, with Tsuneo Kobayashi as the director, Korean composer Ryo Kunihiko as the music producer, and illustrator Akihiro Yamada designing the original characters. A total of 45 words were produced in The Twelve Kingdoms animation, and with the excellent performance of Aya Hisakawa and Houko Kuwashima, The Twelve Kingdoms became the highlight of animation in 2002-2003.

Animation of Twelve Kingdoms

There are four main chapters in the cartoon of Twelve Kingdoms, which correspond to the contents of the first four volumes of the original work respectively. Focusing on the perspective of the heroine Yoko, the cartoon tells the stories of the twelve countries through her adventures, and shows the audience this magnificent and mysterious world. The original four volumes tell different stories and themes. The first volume, The Sea of Shadows of the Moon, tells the story of the protagonist’s coming to twelve countries through hardships and finally becoming king. The second volume, The Bank of the Labyrinth in the Sea of the Wind, tells the story of Dai Guo’s Kirin Taiqi. This chapter complements the world outlook of the twelve countries and successfully shapes the image of a lovely and strong Taiqi. The third volume, The Dawn Sky in Wan Li on the Wind, is the most exciting part of the whole animation, which mainly tells the story of three girls with different identity backgrounds: Yoko, who just became king, Xiangqiong, who lost the status of princess, and Damuling, a sea traveler, who finally overthrew tyranny for their own purposes after their own hardships. This chapter focuses on the growth of three girls and is divided into three lines at the same time. Many distinctive character images will be created in this chapter. The fourth volume, The Sea of the East and the Sea of the West, tells the story of Yan Guo Yan Wang Komatsu Naotaka’s rebellion against civil strife. Through this chapter, the personality characteristics of Yan Wang and Yan Qi are further described, and the national customs outside Qing Guo are also shown to the audience.

However, it is equally speechless that the animated version only corresponds to the content of one to four volumes of the novel. Because the novel is still serialized for a long time, the incomplete personality setting of the main characters makes it difficult to make animation, coupled with the problems of production funds and copyright disputes, animation has come to an abrupt end.

Although it is only an incomplete animation, its charm is likely to be better than the original. Compared with the novel, the animated version of The Twelve Kingdoms shows a stronger China ancient style. The costumes of the characters in the animation are integrated with the charm of China costumes. For example, the costume design of Yoko disguised as a man refers to the characteristics of ancient civilian costumes in China; Jing Qi’s costume is the deformation of robes and mandarin jackets in Qing Dynasty. Shanglong’s imperial costume design was inspired by Hanfu sacrificial clothing; Liutai’s clothing is an improved version of Hu Fu’s half arm; Xiang Qiong’s hairstyle in her girlhood was borrowed from the two heads of the Qing Dynasty, and the clothes she wore combined the characteristics of the vest of the Qing Dynasty and the skirt of the Han Dynasty, creating new clothes.

The music of animation is also very classical in China. The theme music is basically played by erhu, and some famous tunes, such as "Song of Thinking Fang", "Lonely Moon in the Dark Night" and "Moon Fan in the Wind", are all played by China traditional musical instruments such as bamboo flute, guzheng, chime and erhu. It can be seen that China’s classical culture has completely infiltrated into this dreamlike epic animation.

Shanglong in The Twelve Kingdoms

Back then, The Twelve Kingdoms at the beginning of the century was recognized by the audience as a classic of China-style animation works. Nowadays, the national style animation has become a spectacular sight, and the "Made in Japan" Twelve Kingdoms can still have the same attraction for more than ten years, which is undoubtedly an interesting topic.

The latest work of Twelve Kingdoms

More importantly, as an animated work with a fantasy theme, The Twelve Kingdoms has always been concerned about human beings, except for its bizarre coat. It is only a clue and an inducement for the hero Yoko to become a monarch. The monarch is just an identity, a code name and a condition; Yoko can only achieve a truly qualified monarch if he finds back the qualities he lacks as a human being. Trust, dedication, sacrifice, strength, responsibility, and escaping from the shackles of the illusion of demons make Yoko find his own home and value. How "Master Xiao Ye" will arrange the follow-up plot is probably a suspense that fans are waiting for.