ARG, I hate when those pesky cliffs just show up out of nowhere! It’s probably related to that cliff from Jurassic Park that magically appears in the same spot where the T-Rex busted through the fence. WHERE DID YOU COME FROM, CLIFF?? To be fair to Genchu, visibility was not great, and they’re clearly up in a mountainous region where there’s always snow and such; plenty of opportunities to fall large distances.
Published on by Alex Kolesar
There. Look at this. See? See? I’m right again. Nobody could’ve predicted that Genchu would suddenly, ah suddenly jump off of a cliff. See, there is Ryoushi, uh, er, talking to himself. That’s, ah, that’s chaos theory.
Cliffs find a way.
If there is one thing the history of cliffs has taught us it’s that edges of mountains will not be contained. Sheer falls break free, expanding to new territories and crashing through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh… well, there it is.
“Oh, yeah. ‘CLIFF!’,’WAT?’, that’s how it always starts. Then later there’s falling and screaming…”
I mean, you have cliffs on this mountain that are dangerous, but you picked them because they look good! But these are aggressive living things that have no idea what century they’re in and they’ll defend themselves, violently, if necessary.
Genchu. Is. Falling! Ryoushi, will you please fall down the cliff. (Ryoushi: “Okay. Hold on to your butts!”)
I’m starting to (actually, been wondering for a while; haven’t been reading the comments, so if this has been mentioned before… oops) think this is a flashback about how Genchu got from where we last saw him with Ken to where he was conveniently available to “translate” for Mr. Clueless European Gun-Merchant.
I dare not confirm your suspicions at this time, David! I DARE NOT!!
Cliffhanger!
I was gonna say it, but I didn’t want to steal the opportunity from you!
In NN4B:
Genchu no fall down cliff
Cliff climb up Genchu
Gravity better just get outta Genchu’s way if it doesn’t wanna get hurt!
Too bad Ryoushi, Genchu has invulnerability. Flashback armor = OP.
Hey, this could be happening in the current timeline! Maybe! Probably not!
*Suddenly Genchu steps out the back door of Lord Imagawa’s Mansion, onto the icy mountain in his backyard, then changes clothes and applies make-up to cover his scars!* “Let’s do this.”
NO ACTUALLY DON’T KILL HIM YOU BAD MAN
And cliff. Dude. You’re evil.
Hey now, it’s not entirely the cliff’s fault that Genchu just blundered into it! Admittedly, though, the cliff better get out of there before it gets hurt.
Seems to me the cliff decided to throw Genchu a surprise party at the worst moment possible. In which case, I totally lay the blame on the cliff. WORST SURPRISE PARTY EVUH.
A mere mortal would step in on Ryoushi’s backswing and catch his arm.
A badass would step in on Ryoushi’s backswing, catch his arm, and flip him over the cliff.
Genchu will step in on Ryoushi’s backswing, catch his arm, and flip them BOTH over the cliff, arranging it so that Ryoushi cushions his fall. Just so that he can get his sword back.
…and his hair will be perfect, all the way down.
He’ll probably have time to do his nails on the way down. He’ll look FABULOUS!
Ah, momentum. Why ya always gotta be such a downer?
Miles Vorkosigan would use it to his advantage. Forward momentum!
Maybe, but Miles would (hopefully) be sneaky enough to have a nerve disruptor handy. He’s a spy, not a samurai, y’know.
Will our intrepid hero be able to escape this dastardly dilemma? What will happen to his trusty sidekick Kid Katana? Who are these mysterious swordsmen bent on taking his life? Find out all this and more on the next No Need For Bushido Radio Tour! Same time! Same channel!
What cool it would be to do an NN4B radio drama! We’ve considered the idea, but it would be a massive technical undertaking to get the right recording equipment and schedule our voice actors! Still, would be a ton of fun, I suspect. Assuming the end product weren’t so embarrassingly cringe inducing that no one would want to listen to it, mind you.
Challenge accepted? Please?
This is how legendary swords get stuck in small inaccessible crevices in some remote mountainside, only to be found later by a kid so they can become legendary heroes. Sometimes this kind of story even manages to happen outside video game plots.
It was just THE legendary sword of legend. It’s not like it’s worth a little trek down a crevice to recover it.
So, I don’t want to hurt the cliff’s feelings, but it’s really more of a stream gully than a canyon style cliff. Maybe 4 to 8 meters high? Of course, if the cliff is a master Fall-fu it could be deadly at just 2 meters tall or so. It’s a bit hard to tell with foreshortening and all, but it looks like the surrounding trees are probably taller than it is.
Not respecting those little cliffs can be dangerous. The lack of respect they get can make them a bit unsympathetic at times.
To quote:
“Oh, boo-hoo, so you broke your hip falling two meters onto a boulder. Well don’t expect to be washed downstream to the house of a kindly farmer mister. It’s a five day crawl to get out, and it’s icy water and jumbled boulders the whole way. Teach you to play around at ‘swords’ on my edge young man. Hmph.”
– Small Japanese cliff that refused to give its name.
You bring up a good point that it’s hard to tell how tall the cliff is. Let’s say it’s twenty feet, a nice fatal fall distance, I think.
And backwards over the cliff into the river and down to the ocean to become a fisherman.
Nooooo, not the second best weapon in the comic!
Well dam. Guess he’s gotta go after it now.
T-Rex emerged behind the second car; the first car was pushed out in front of it. THEY ARE DIFFERENT SEGMENTS OF FENCE AND ROAD.
I mean, maybe?? But the car is pushed through the broken part of the fence, where the T-Rex emerged from, and the movie doesn’t seem to show a natural cliff edge intersecting with the stonefaced cliff just next to where they scale down, so I don’t see any place where the T-rex could’ve both broken through the fence, and then knocked a car just to the side that was a sudden drop!
Lego Jurassic World (first movie hub) shows what I speculated when watching the movie proper: that the cliff and T-Rex enclosure are divided by a second wall perpendicular to the first.
Better yet, concept art for Jurassic World shows brontosaurs scaling a steep hill between these spots (because the goat is displayed at an elevation where passers-by can witness the carnage and the T-Rex has minimal temptation to grab the electric fence by having that be the only spot where it’s a risk) AND there are two gaps in the fence. I have no idea where the second gap came from unless there’s cutting-room footage of T-Rex wrecking it for some reason and I guess they just couldn’t finish the CGI for that shot. (Each frame notoriously took several hours to render.)
You’re right, the steep hill is the official canonical answer, it just doesn’t visually make sense in the movie. It’d have to be a SUPER STEEP slope, which should be visible. The T-Rex doesn’t move the car very far, and, like you say, the second fence hole is a mystery and confuses the continuity of the editing. It’s just a little messy, which is why I poke fun at it! It does not detract from my extraordinary reverence for JP.
No kidding, for a movie so rightly praised to the heavens, Jurassic Park is bursting at the seams with film and editing errors. Stage-hands can be seen shaking leaves in the raptor enclosure and adjusting a raptor’s posture in the kitchen, off-the-set props are at the edge of several shots, Sam Jackson’s prop-arm is way too big and an obviously a different pigment, and the girl’s stunt-double has the honor of being the first face ever digitally inserted onto another body (when escaping through the ceiling) but lighting was so bad she was suddenly purple. And I’ll be a bearded gnome if it all wasn’t worth it.
Also, I paused the movie to point out to my parents that the second wall theory actually fits, it was just never on-screen; seriously, when Alan is swinging on the cable, the camera never looks too far to the left.
In the book, the ‘cliff’ is not a hill so much as it is a drainage ditch between the outer fence and the inner enclosure. The ditch in the film is meant to keep the t-rex from getting out, I’d guess, but that’s… still a bit of a plot hole. Er, ditch.