AFO & For Honor VIII - Feb 13

With all the excitement of fictional TV shows old and new, I neglected AFO – but not really. 

Recently I have rewatched yet another one of its episodes – ‘Gorilla vs. Leopard’, and several things hit me this time.

Firstly, why did the leopard have to fight the gorilla? Whereas the tiger is found only in Asia, and lions live in Africa – and also in one tiny spot in India – the leopard is found on both of these continents; it is a more versatile cat than either of them, so why is it that the nature documentaries depict the leopard only as an African cat?

Maybe it is because the Western world views Africa and Asia in two different ways, these days. For the West, Africa remains wild and challenging in this sort of way; almost like ‘the Old West’ cliché of the American fiction (not sure about the European, though). Asia, these days, is certainly not – rather, that is where the new big business lies, the hope for the future civilization lies, etc. The leopard has no place there – pity that no one has told that to the leopards, who are actually making a living alongside people, as racoons do in North America and red foxes in Europe – but the leopard has a much bigger punch than either of them, speaking both metaphorically and literally.

Yes, the African population of leopards is probably bigger than that in Asia; yes, the African leopards have greater swathes of wild habitat to live in, but still. The last time someone talked about the Asian leopards properly and in detail was the National Geographic magazine, in December 2015, when they published an article on leopards – on all of the leopards, African and Asian. Given how humans treat the rest of the planet, including the big cats, it is about time that someone did that! (I.e. publish the article and bring the public’s attention to the big cat issue).

…Wait. This doesn’t have anything to do with AFO; you can just as well go on a tangent about how the apes have a similar situation to the big cats: gorillas and chimpanzees are found only in Africa, orangutans and gibbons, (called the lesser apes by the scientists in modern times) – only in Asia. True. One can also get back onto the proper topic by pointing out that the real reason why ‘Gorilla vs. Leopard’ episode was so problematic is because the two animals in question was so different, a fact that the show itself had to admit in passing…so why did the leopard lose?

Let us step back from AFO for a moment and return to ‘For Honor’. After making the nodachi sword for Kensai, the ‘Man at Arms’ group at ‘AWE ME’ channel made…not Warlord’s Viking sword as I expected, but the Dane axe of Raider. The process of making the axe was interesting, the ‘field testing’ even more so. Unlike the nodachi, which was a slicing weapon, the Dane axe also smashed – through bricks and the like. Thus?

Well, here lies a difference between Viking and Samurai methods of fighting in the game. The nodachi itself is not a light weapon, just as with the Dane axe, you have to use two hands to wield it, (hence why the Westerners called their version of this blade a greatsword), but still, it is thin. It is sharp, it is strong and resilient, but it is thin. The Dane axe is not – yes, its’ cutting end is thin, but everything else about it is thick. If the nodachi struck you with a flat side, it would still sting, but you would be safe. If the Dane axe hit you, you would still be knocked prone, probably with several broken bones too. The Vikings, of course, did not let such facts of life stop them, they were that bad ass, but this point still has to be made. Unlike the nodachi, in fact, unlike even the Viking sword, the Dane axe could be used not just as a weapon of war, but also as an axe, used to cut down trees or whatever. Hence, why it is different from the nodachi; also – how is it different, too.

So, how does this bring us back to AFO? Let us look at the gorilla and the leopard once again. The leopard is a killer and kills monkeys and apes, including humans and gorillas; the gorilla is not. It isn’t really a fighter either, the fights between silverbacks (mature gorilla males) tend not to end in violence; flatly, the gorilla is a much more peaceful animals than its’ cousins, humans and chimpanzees, are. So, why did the gorilla win?

Let us return to the Vikings’ Dane axe. When DW has put the Viking against the Samurai in S1, the put the Samurai katana against the Viking sword; but the Viking axe was put against the Samurai kanabo – a wooden club with iron rivets stuck on it. As DW showed in its own experiments, the Viking axe was powerful and heavy, but the kanabo was more so. (In ‘For Honor’, the kanabo is the weapon of the Shugoku, remember?) That was one of the reasons why the Viking lost in DW – but lost it fairly.

…Of course, throughout S1, DW did make a point to judge it all fairly – and it did so, (save for the ‘Shaolin Monk vs. Maori Warrior’ episode, but that is another story). Sadly, this fairness revealed that the American Green Berets were worse than the Soviet/Russian Spetznaz, so post S1 DW did its’ best to be prejudiced instead, so after S3, when George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and Lawrence of Arabia, the show got cancelled – for the lack of funds, (and maybe sponsors): the Americans aren’t that dumb to believe that sort of propaganda – and we’re talking about a nation who says that most of its’ evil immigrants come not from the South, Mexico, from the North, Canada – so the DW cancellation was just sad. Prejudice just does not deliver in the long term.

The same goes to AFO, only because it was depicting animals, rather than people, it was less obvious, but the principle was the same. That is why the gorilla won its’ face-off, and the anaconda – with the jaguar. (According to Luke Hunter, the giant otters of South America sometimes eat anacondas, and honestly, they tend to stay away from jaguars instead). Not because they were more efficient fighters/killers/etc., but because the cast of the show decided it so. DW used real actors; AFO – CGI’d animals and robot models, so AFO’s prejudice was less obvious, again, but the end result was the same: both shows got cancelled.

And ‘For Honor’? ‘For Honor’ is a computer game, not a TV show, so it is subjected to a different set of standards – and as such, it is a different story.