Entity13 posted...
Four books, or two seasons of anime, tell us why people don't typically stand up against the heads of house, clan, or empire. This goes even more so for the common man, woman, and child who is raised to stay in their place and keep their head down; something that is beaten over our heads through the series.
That's just too much for me to suspend my belief. These people are not devoid of brains or reasoning capability. And if they are that far gone, how am I supposed to care about them? We've seen multiple attempts at poisonings, common men trying to gun down prominent figures, convoluted 50 step plans to drop a piece of wood on a man of higher station. Nothing about this world so far has shown me the common man lacks audacity or the will to defy his "superiors", especially when the motivation is "everyone you know and care about will be publicly executed if you do nothing".
Entity13 posted...
Do you think this would be quiet if the people didn't choose to take this to the emperor?
Considering the emperor still hasn't done anything despite 2 attempts on
Jinshi's
life, yeah probably. Frame her death as an accident if you have to, or illness, or just talk one of the countless people whose lives she's ruined into being a sacrifice. Or just hide her death. Like, no plan could possibly be riskier or harder to pull off then the one they went with. If they do nothing, the stakes are everyone they know and care about dying. How could you possibly frame this any other way? Cattle waiting to be slaughtered, marching themselves into the slaughter house with years of time to think about it.
Additionally, I would really think that if the entire clan, besides one person, killed that person, and then explained the plans they had, they'd probably be fine. If not, there wouldn't be any prominent houses left at this point. The show focuses on
shisui and suirei's
role in this, but neglects that dozens if not hundreds of people are also involved in this plan, carrying it out to their certain doom for no reward. The fact they were able to keep such a large plan secret for so long seems a little odd as well but I suppose it doesn't matter.
Even ignoring the faulty logic, which could probably be fixed by making changes to the setup, isn't it just a lot less interesting? On one hand we have a clever mastermind, with knowledge of who
Jinshi
is, able to make a fake death medicine, and escape the palace. We don't even get a hint at who is pulling the strings or what their aims are. Then we find out that it's just some bitter incompetent jilted women carrying out a plan that has zero chance of working out of blind misdirected malice? It's just so, boring. Her aims are downright pathetic. I could accept it as a one off episode, but as the central underlying narrative, that had such excellent setup? Not to mention
mao mao's
role in this is entirely passive. She discerns nothing of value and is just brought around everywhere for several episodes as a glorified mcguffin to get
Jinshi
to act.