I mean, he was reworked before the burning tides, then got a VU after the burning tides, so is it REALLY a Rework progressing a lore or just a VU?

The first VU just made him older, so i think it counts as progress

I was going to say the same

Well, that's definitely part of it though I think you could equally point to something like the Opium Wars beginning the end of the Imperial system in China as a point of inspiration - or, heck, just any act of violent colonialism towards a native population.

Not just Japan tho

It being Japan or China for me would honestly depend on how the story progresses. If Ionia just suffers some stretch marks along the way I'd put it down as Japan. If it's something where everything starts falling apart due to the sudden change from tradition, then I'd go with China.

To be honest, a huge imperialist and elitist kingdom invading a pacifist kingdom where spirituality is highly regarded sounds to me more like China invading the Tibet (which is also the same way I see the Fire Nation invading and kiling the Air Nomads in Avatar the Last Airbender), but I guess there's many ways of seeing it.

Yeah, I can see that reading, but I think it's a very mixed metaphor at best. i.e. the characterization of Weh'le is centered around being a nautical mysterious port city that sinks ships by drawing them into arcane fog, etc. and Akali's.... isn't any of that. Leaving aside the fact that Akali canonically does not have any magical abilities, we've got a series of nautical metaphors where the city is a passive actor causing the doom of its enemies by allure, ("Most approach from the sea, dreaming of riches, discovery or maybe just a new start, only to have their hopes dashed in an instant") drawing them into causing their own destruction through greed, overconfidence, hubris, etc. Which.... isn't what happens in the story. In the story, Akali murders four people in a crowded tavern with no provocation whatsoever, they aren't lured to her, she waits in ambush. She is active, not passive; she hunts them, she initiates the conflict, and none of them are brought down by their own flaws and faults, they die because Akali murders them with extreme efficiency. When the metaphor is that mixed, you need to do some work to cement the connection between the two things. A segment where Akali moves through the city with some The Spirit style monologue about "how right it feels to be in this town, protecting it" or how at home she feels there or any kind of implied kinship with the town would do a lot to create a metaphorical connection between the two, because as it stands, Akali's only interaction with the town itself is she happens to be getting a tattoo in a backroom while waiting for some murder victims to show up. We learn about the tattoo tools, but not the tattoo. We learn about the mystical properties of the town, but not how Akali relates to it. Oh, and the fight at the end doesn't follow the flow of the process by which the town kills its interlopers either, which further weakens the connection. Re: the story: "First, the shoreline that once called to them vanishes behind a dense wall of cobalt fog crackling with arcane power. The sea rises and falls violently before unleashing torrents of crushing waves. As the survivors cling to their splintered vessel, the fog pulls back for the briefest of moments, allowing them one look at the flickering lanterns of Weh’le cruelly saying goodbye just before the water pulls them down to the bottom of the Breathless Bay." But in the fight Akali has it's step 1) smoke, step 2) surgical kills, step 3) oh god everyone is dead. There isn't a period of buildup, or any action particularly comparable to "torrents of crushing waves." Akali hits them with some knives and punctures them to death - precise, deadly - and the whole thing about "allowing them one look at the lanterns" or taunting them with hope isn't... really a thing? Like she takes some time to kill the one wounded dude slightly more intimately but that's about it. And again, she didn't lure them into the conflict, she just waited for them. Which is the problem of mixing metaphors: Akali doesn't kill like the roiling oceans of the sea, she kills like a wasp. Anyway, I see where you're coming from but if that was the intended metaphor it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny for me :/

Sure, sure, it was still pretty sketchy at best if it was the intent. But if it had been done better, it could've made for an interesting story device.

Alas. Maybe next time.

That last part made me laugh so much.😂

Well if you think that your master is stupid.... maybe it is not so neutral. He may accept it like some fatherly figure but she leaves out of spite. Sure that does not come through in the "ingame " trailer but I think that is based on the limitations in it, not the intend. Also they have different artist working on different parts of the Rework so that may come through there, just like in the voiceline of Aatrox.

In-game voicelines aren't canon though. Even Braum is an asshole in-game. LoL likes to make characters toxic. She does respect Shen in all other media.

No, sadly, they've changed it around to "Mayym et son compagnon Tahno" Do you happen to have a screenshot of the old version?

seriously? now i'm sad... and I didn't do a screenshot!

@@supernewbie694 As i am watching the video i check and yes it is now "son compagnon" . But if i check it s because i have memory of "sa compagne" and i was suprise (in a positive way) to see that. So sad they change their mind...

I have got one for that "YOU GOT PYKE WHY DO YOU DO *THIS* TO US?!"

I'm going to resist the temptation to be Support Akali.

Remus matchmaking never found true balance

Remus Wait, I saw this sentence before.

He will surely appreciate it.

Eeeeh, this is where we get into a bit of trouble regarding the concept of "shinobi" in Japanese history. i.e. whether it makes sense to categorize everyone engaged in underhanded activity as "shinobi" (or worse, as ninja). What is absolutely true is that in the race for power and position in feudal Japan, prostitutes and honeypots were used to gain information or incriminate people - but this happened pretty much everywhere in the world. So does it make sense to look at the assembly of courtesans, entertainers, prostitutes, thieves, streetears, information brokers, killers, saboteurs and all the rest of them and say "aah, they were shinobi!" as though they were all part of a unified class of professional actors? Or were they, as in other nations, a rough assembly of people willing to do dirty deeds for money when the opportunity came knocking, but not otherwise a unified class? That's a difficult question to answer, but my understanding of the scholarship is that GENERALLY we should be very careful about broadly generalizing about what "Shinobi" are and how they acted, because they weren't a distinct social class with behavioural and professional norms the same way Samurai were.

T B Skyen I highly recommend checking out Gaijin Goomba. His video on Senran Kagura, here; kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g66crbx22pm5dH0.html is the one that’s relevant to this discussion,, however he talks a good amount about the shinobi in his series “Which Ninja.” He’s been to Japan and been to the real museums on the subject. Another video to look into is the one on the Shiekah and the Yiga clan from Breath of the Wild, and their heavy inspiration from the Iga clan, one of the few real-world ninja clans that actually existed in feudal Japan, without whom, Tokugawa wouldn’t have risen to power. While of course we can’t just say that these same techniques were spread all across feudal Japan somehow, we can say that the modern ninja, while not completely historically accurate, takes a ton of inspiration from the variety of spies, assassins, and saboteurs, doing everything from common classic ninja techniques of stealth to prostitution in order to get the job done. His latest video on Spy from TF2 is a good example of this. Spy players often use techniques straight out of the literal ninja handbook, which he puts on screen several times to quote, in order to get their assassinations done.

Barely.

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