Cryptic Clays

Firstly and most strikingly: the colours. We're leaning heavily on a yellow-gold colour scheme, with highlights of orange and a minty green and contrasting purple. Historically, in China the colour of heaven was yellow/gold, and in some eras only the emperor was allowed to wear this specific rich shade. Very fitting for the sword of Qian, representing heaven.

Secondly: the kimono and how he's wearing it. Ohhhh boy. So just like Ri and Kon, Ken is wearing a woman's kimono, though it's folded up slightly shorter than normal, presumably to make moving around easier when fighting, and to allow us to see those beautiful hakama, which we will come back to in a moment.

This kimono has furisode sleeves, and possibly some of the longest furisode we've seen outside of Ooku characters. These are typically reserved for unmarried women - interesting, because Qian is a deeply masculine trigram, arguably the MOST masculine, as it is three unbroken yang lines. Fittingly, Ken is wearing the kimono with one sleeve off, a style typically associated with samurai, ronin, and other physical fighters to allow for more movement.

His obi belt is also quite slim compared to how Kon and Ri wear theirs, and most notably, it seems to not have the massive bow knot at the back that the other two do. Hard to say more on it while we don't have a full turn around, but smaller and more subtle knots are, once again, a much more masculine way of tying an obi than we're used to seeing on sellers. The feminine vibe is still there with the himo (oh, and look, that's where he's keeping his mirror), but with it positioned further down and being a plain black, it's definitely more masc.

Hakama are a split-skirt type outfit similar to trousers, and perform a similar function - they were invented for horse riding, which makes sense, as the animal associated with the Qian trigram is the horse. While both genders wear them, they're much more common for men, especially if this is again set in a pre-Showa era time. Over all, the whole outfit is much more masculine than any we've seen before on a medicine seller, which is very interesting, and carries some implications for the Shingi of Qian too, as they tend to contrast with their sellers (just look at Kon's excessively loud and colourful outfit vs his shingi's very understated pure white kimono).

(Ri and Kon also wear trousers under their kimono, but they wear momohiki, or something close to it, cut close to the ankle and drawn up to allow for movement, much more common for working class people than hakama.)

This tight sleeve that ends in a ring on the finger is called a tekkou, and was typically worn by archers to protect the arms and chest from the bowstring, as they would typically disrobe one shoulder to fire in some instances. They can extend to the forearm, or all the way up to the chest. I don't have much to say about this one, but he is the first seller we've seen with one! I love how we can see some of his kumadori makeup peeking out, and speaking of which.

Interestingly, almost all of Ken's kumadori body paint is black, unlike Ri or Kon's which is predominantly red. We can also see a lot more of it. All the medicine sellers wear kumadori markings that echo those from kabuki theatre. They serve as a visual shorthand for what kind of character is being played. Red on white is explicitly youthful and heroic, with a sense of justice - very fitting for Kon's high energy character. Black paint, by contrast, is typically applied to villains and demons, particularly around the face and mouth.

(Oh my god look at his little fang while he's fixing his earring i LOVE him)

For his face, we see something quite interesting - unlike Ri or Kon, he has barely any lip paint, but what he DOES have is a little bit of green on the bottom lip and an extremely thin purple line on the top. Around the eyes we see another little highlight of green on the eyelid, and thick black around the lower lid. Green is often a marker of the supernatural or the undead in kabuki theatre, which fits well enough here. He's still got that red stripe on the nose that marks him as heroic, but the incorporation of black into more of his makeup would give any kabuki-knowledgeable people a cause to be wary - this guy's just as likely to hinder as help you.

The sword. This is one scary looking sword if I'm completely honest. Maybe it's the bulging eyes or the way the teeth are rendered, it upsettingly resembles a bird with teeth to me. Let's consider the others for a moment.

Compare and contrast, Kun and Li. The sword of Qian has a narrow but MUCH longer hilt. The blade looks proportionally longer too, or at least the sheath is. As a result I'm not entirely sure how Ken fits it in his travelling pack - though we haven't seen what his looks like yet, so perhaps he uses something different to Ri and Kon.

In conclusion