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Out of the comfy chair, you!
Holy Moley the action is about to start. Also, WHoohoo Jinjur is awake~ Man, I’ll be on the edge of my seat until Saturday. *Stares at clock to make time go faster*
Though, I wonder is there a reason Renge arm is covered or is it just a coincidence. B|a
The fact that she’s sitting in a comfy chair surrounding by freaking poppy vines EVERYWHERE is just… creepy. Like… she really doesn’t care much that she’s basically infected everyone in the Emerald City with poppies, does she? If she’s not bothered by being surrounded in vines then she can’t care all that much.
I can’t wait until saturday. Each update has me thrilled about the new one >_<
If Renge is hiding anything on her arm it'd have to be more towards her shoulder. In the first panel we can see her right hand and part of her arm.
MOAR!!!!!!!!!!!! *O*
Tonight we dine in Nichts!
Question: Why is it that ALL the soldiers we’ve seen so far are women? Were all the men already infected with poppies or something? I do realize that L. Frank Baum had stories which featured women soldiers. In fact, Jinjur is featured in Marvelous Land of Oz (and other stories) as the head of an army of ladies that overthrows the Emerald City in a bid to become the ruler of Oz. (As I recall, the women were fed up with how they were being treated and taken for granted.) But the complete lack of men (aside from Warrick and Scarecrow) willing to fight to restore the land and rescue Oz has me confused. So far, it seems women have all the positions of power and authority in Namesake, from the Queen of the Field Mice, to Agha as appointed leader of the Munchkins, to Alice as the head of the Namesake organization, to princess Oz and “The Wizard” Renge herself… and everyone in between. I don’t mind: I think it’s refreshing. But, it practically comes across as a statement on gender equality taken to an extreme. One can only conclude that the Land of Oz is clearly a Matriarchal society.
Well, the thing is… The only male army really existing was the Emerald city one (and it wasn’t very large) and in this context, it would be infected. We saw some pretty important guy (the gate keeper) and he was infected. There was also a male army of villains. The land of Oz is pretty Matriarchal, some of the adventures feature no men at all, if you don’t consider the scarecrow and Tin man as having a gender. And a lot of the magic users happen to be ladies. You still see a lot of men in the series, but they feature more as “objects” (like the scarecrow).
More male characters were introduced later in the series and by other authors as well, including a guy who got to smooch Ozma, which always seemed odd to me. Frank Baum (the original author) seemed to like strong ladies, since he had a lot of them. Baum was married to the daughter of one of the first Suffragettes, which might also explain his inclination. Look up Ervic. He is often considered one of Baum’s strongest male characters (as the author’s male characters often tend to be ineffectual). But he has no place in Namesake, so no Ervic.
It does feel like a good change of pace. I didn’t even notice I was drawing so many ladies, actually.
But the most known army of Oz are ladies. In Oz, girls do the fighting it seems. But, according to the Oz books, when they aren’t fighting, ladies also do the cooking and cleaning. So i’m guessing guys do the whole taking care of politics, food, day-to-day management, etc.
Agha wasn’t much in a position of power though. As she said, she was mainly elected so that she’d be the first turned into clothing at the first sign of trouble.
As you mention, the “soldier with green whiskers” is the only person in the official OZ army. He also had to ask Jinjur to wait while he searched for his ammunition during her first visit, so hardly effectual.
There were other armies, the Nome king had a huge army for example and at one time a minor ruler tried to take over with an army of all 13 men in her kingdom, only one of which was a private. However there are several effective male character in the stories too. The Cowardly Lion, TikTok the clockwork man, even Ruth Plumly Thompson introduced the Tin Soldier as counterpart to the Tin Woodman. She was the second “Official Chronicler” of the OZ tales and grand-daughter to L. Frank Baum so her stories might be canon as well.
I love Ruth Thompson!
However, we only use the first 6 Baum books as “canon” in the Namesake universe. In Baum’s universe, most of the awesome male characters also happened to be non-human…
Plus the Tin Soldier is a BAUM creation, not Thompson.
(P.s there are more male characters in the Namesake cast, they just haven’t showed up yet)
And to tack on to what Isa said, Alice is actually not the head of Calliope. She’s the head of her specific team. The overall head of Calliope is a man. As we move away from Oz, the cast is actually going to expand more, and there are both men and women in positions of great power in the Namesake world.
I was actually under the impression that, at minimum, Wendy was over both Alice and Jack.
She’s their superior in the sense that she has more experience. She’s been working on another team for a lot longer.
Also, she’s Wendy and therefore wins at everything.
Wendy has more experience or Alice does? Not sure which you mean in that first part.
Wendy is a fabulous lady. I love Alice, but she seems to have some hotheaded tendencies which don’t always work well for a leader.
Interesting how these inquiries don’t pop up where most of the characters and soldiers are male. Also, Gensokyo, ’nuff said.
I suppose it’s because traditionally, men are trained and sent to war. They are expected to be soldiers.
There’s still a lot of women soldiers in history, but they would usually protect their homes. Men when off to fight and conquer elsewhere. Women kept their territory guarded. An example of this are the onna-bugeisha, a type of female warrior belonging to the Japanese upper class. I guess it’s the good old “protect vs nurture”. One conquers, the other keeps.
Glinda’s guard usually are more of the protective type, but since Glinda is missing, they started questing.
That makes sense. Sure, Oz has it’s problems. But my impression is that it’s never had the kind of wars and stuff like our history. Compared to our reality, it seems like a paradise – what with never having to grow old, lunch pails that grow on trees, etc, etc. (In one book, Dorthy’s ma and pa came to live in Oz and they taught the locals how they farm.) In fact, the whole “nobody ever dies” thing kinda makes fighting pointless. So they’d only have a need for protectors, anyway… (and not much of that) at least until Ozma disappeared and immortality faded away. But I guess a Matriarchal society would tend to be protectors, anyway. Especially while Ozma ruled.
Yeah, I agree. Where are all the men????
See comment above for reply.
So many awesome ladies, doing awesome stuff!
I’ve got another question. Have they cut their way out with their needles? Needles are for piercing, not for cutting. You can’t jab your way out through vines, right?
Naw, they have knives too. But they fight with needles.
Ah, got it!
I must wonder why Renge is doing all this. It seems so… out there. What goal is she attempting to accomplish by infecting all of the Emerald city? She seems too calm to be the egotistical ‘I shall rule the world’ type. I can see her sacrificing her friend in the ‘I’ve gone too far to step down now’, but the entire city seems to have gone first. Such a path and distance to go!
I suspect it has to do with whatever happened to Ozma. Before she disappeared, Ozma was becoming increasingly depressed with each Dorthy that died. I think Renge loved Ozma as much as Warrick and was willing to do ANYTHING to prevent further heartbreak. She feels she must prevent Ozma from falling apart due to befriending yet another Dorthy… even if it means hurting the people she cares for – including Analise. Indeed, once you’ve taken that first step, it’s a slippery slope downhill. The road paved with good intentions… Besides, I think the land of Oz itself is connected to Ozma. She’s an immortal fairy princess with godlike magic. I seem to recall that Ozma’s mother created Oz for her youngest daughter, or something. One could argue that what’s good for Ozma is good for Oz.
I don’t recall ANYTHING about Ozma’s “mother” creating Oz “for her youngest daughter”.
It’s never been consistent, but it agreed that the Fairy Queen Lurline made Oz into a fairyland as she passed over it. While the details aren’t one and the same, eventually Ozma was put as its ruler but there’s the matter with her father Pastoria and etc. . . .
I can believe the ‘wants to help Ozma’ angle, but I don’t see how its connecting to infecting all of the Emerald City. It doesn’t stop Dorothies from showing up, it just gives them something to do when they show up… and killing them once they get there wouldn’t help the depression by dead Dorothy issue.
Is that Renge at the top? If so, she looks really… different.
Looks like Renge has her hair up in a thin/high ponytail.
Yeah, but wasn’t her hair colour different earlier?
Hard to tell since it’s been a long time since her last appearance and the use of the toned coloring style, but not significantly so I think. Her hair’s officially been a darker brown in colored images (see the cover to chapter 5), so looks about right here to me.
True. We haven’t seen her for a while. Maybe it’s just me.
isn’t the speech bubble at the 2nd panel a bit large?
Jinjur LET herself get caught?! Who’s the brains behind this army? She/he is SMART.
Crazy note:
In the second panal, could you maybe put ‘outer’ on one line? When I read the bubble, Renge stammers.
It’s suppose to be on one line. I bumped the bubble by accident when doing an output. I had to work a day shift today, so I wasn’t able to fix it yet.
I have this nagging feeling this is going to end badly… Or that it’s heading for a Your Princess is in Another Castle moment.
I love Renge’s outfit. In fact meany of the ozites have pretty awesome clothes…..
*chuckles* Is it just me or is that a Labyrinth reference up there?
How come Jinjur doesn’t need a mask?