Reblogging the universe with horse power

As I'm sure you all know, I adore the peculiarities of Soul Society speech, particularly early in the series. The first place my brain went was @littleeyesofpallas 's post about how the four gates of the Seireitei correspond to the Four Auspicious Beasts. In this case, "the direction of the tiger" would be west, which is...not left, although I suppose if you were being a little dumb about it, you could say from the POV of the view, north is up, west is to the left? Feels like a stretch.

After a little googling, I found out that the "direction of the tiger" could mean a number of things. In kung fu, tigers are associated with forward movement. While I could certainly see the shinigami combat styles including that kind of terminology (not that we've seen any evidence of it), it does not seem like a particularly good way of telling someone how to aim. (Also, all the websites I found on this topic were mildly shady western kung fu schools, so please take that with the appropriate grain of salt)

I also saw a few astrology references, which at first didn't seem right, but what meant was using the animals of the Chinese zodiac as clock directions. This system was used in Edo era timekeeping, and I half-joking posited before that they use this system in Soul Society. In this case, the hour of the tiger is 3:00-5:00 a.m.. Keep in mind that this system segments the day into 24 segments, not 12, so 3-5am is roughly where 8 o'clock would be on a western clock (there's a diagram in that time-keeping post), which could reasonably be interpreted as "left", I think, if you consider "noon" to be "forward", although it seems like it would be a lot further left than the animation indicates. (Edit: I guess this is still west, if you were to line it up with a compass, which obviously makes sense, but I think it's more common to use clock directions for relative direction where as compass directions are by definitely absolute directions)

I didn't mention it, but the first thing I actually did after watching the episode was to dig out the manga panel.

It doesn't mention the direction of the tiger thing at all, so I assumed that there was some localization going on in one or the translations, although I have no way of knowing which. It does use clock directions, though (although 1 o'clock is neither 3-5am, nor is it left).

Anyway, my best working theory at the moment is that Rukia is giving directions in zodiac animal-based clock time, which the anime subs and Viz have chosen to localize in slightly different ways.

Rukia and Chad’s first two lines from the clip are from the manga panel verbatim, and there is VERY MUCH mention of this fabled Direction of the Tiger, though their exchange is extended in the clip. The manga version reads:

RUKIA: Let’s go!! The Direction of the Tiger!

CHAD: Tiger is... which way?

RUKIA: YEAH THAT WAY!! Just like that, elevation angle 40 degrees! Tch--too high, you fool! Am I fireworks?? ...Okay! There!! Stop!!

(Spoken like a true friend of the Shiba clan.)

NB: Rukia refers to the Direction of the Tiger in kanji, whereas Chad’s response is in katakana, which is fairly common when talking about rando animals. But in this context it does make me feel like Rukia is saying Direction of the Tiger to reference some Actual Formal Direction that exists to her and Chad is just like, “Hmm. Tiger... 🐯...?” XDD Wow I love them!!

Last night, I was watching an episode of Hell's Paradise, and one of the characters was trying to tell another where the big monster's vulnerable spot was and he shouted something like "Lower right! Direction of the dog!" and I was like:

For some reason (maybe that Hell's Paradise has a lot of Chinese elements in its worldbuilding), I thought to search "direction of the dog chinese" which was apparently the magical search term I was missing last time, because it led me to this website that explains the whole thing. It is a directional system that originated in China called the "24 mountains" system. These are considered the "lucky directions" for each of the signs of the zodiac, and are used in feng shui.

This is the same clock-face system I linked to earlier, but this is confirmation that it was used directionally. This website confirms that system was used as a direction system in Edo Japan (it's near the bottom, the section labeled "The Twelve Zodiac Signs Also Represent Time and Direction"), which nicely cements the joke as "Rukia is using an old-timey notation that Chad isn't familiar with". Hell's Paradise also takes place in the Edo era.

Some interesting bits: - This system uses a north = down convention, so Direction of the Tiger is north-east, but also lower left - This system is used in feng shui, but appears to be entirely unrelated to the Four Auspicious beasts - The "1 o'clock" translation was roughly the right concept and entirely the wrong direction thanks a lot Viz - I am used to using clock-based navigation that places the viewer at the center of the clock as though they were standing on the clock face flat on the ground, so that twelve o'clock is forward, three o' clock is to their right, etc. Based on the way it was used in Hell's Paradise, it seems like the clock face is in front of and facing the viewer, so horse is up, rat is down, etc. If you follow Rukia's directions, "to the left" (Chad moves straight left) and then "that's too high," (Chad moves down) you do end up at the direction of the tiger. - In terms of trajectories, if you consider an elevation angle of 45 deg to be aimed at the center of the clock face, an angle of 40 would be slightly lower, which again, checks out. This feels a little shady to me, because trajectories don't exactly work like that, but I don't put much faith in either Rukia or Kubo's calculus chops, so I am choosing not to put much weight on that number. - Edit: I just now noticed that it says "yin" (寅) on the wheel next to the tiger, which relates to what vehrec's friend suggested. After looking into it, though, I think this is not the same yin as in yin and yang, which is 陰(traditional) or 阴(simplified). 寅 means tiger, and according to wikipedia, tiger is actually considered to be a yang sign in this context.