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JOHIRA wrote:

bravelybravesirrobin wrote:Ethereals have costumes that are similar to Japanese nobility dress.

You think that, huh?

Here is a picture of the Tau model I was thinking of http://www.ironhalo.net/Images/40k/GTau07.JPG

Here is a picture of a Shotoku Taishi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filerince_Shotoku.jpg

Please note the flowing layered robes, wide shoulder pads, partial top knots, use of ceremonial staffs and details around the belt. I can certainly see similarities there.

I'll concede that the more recent models (which I only just saw) have moved away from this design quite a lot.

JOHIRA wrote:

The caste system maps onto the 5 buddhist elements (fire, water, earth, air, heaven)

Which are oh so different from the classical Greek and Hindu elements, eh?

Greek didn't include heaven/ethereal and the Hindu/Buddhist elements obviously influenced each other.

JOHIRA wrote:

The very notion of castes is reflective of modern Chinese communist society.

Have you by chance been to China? I can guarantee you that despite whatever faults China may have, their society is structured in no way even remotely resembling the Tau.

Just Hong Kong.

Okay fair enough Tau society doesn't really reflect modern Chinese society but Tau society is clearly intended to reflect communism which China at least professes to adhere to. Communism was defined quite nicely by Marx as "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" which models nicely onto the tau system of expertise in different areas working harmoniously. Their desire to incorporate other races and the philosophy of the greater good also reflect communist philosophy. In practise Tau society is an exagerrated parody of communist ideology but you can't deny that theyw ere trying for space commies can you.

JOHIRA wrote:

For anyone saying that the suits don't look like anime I advise you to watch appleseed which features man-sized bunny eared suits with weapon arms and jetpacks that bare an uncanny resemblance to the crisis suits.

So two aerials on the head and a jetpack are all it takes to make something anime now?

Here is a tau crisis suit. http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/acatalog/XV89p4store.jpg

Here are some appleseed suits. http://www.raymondlo.info/blog/uploaded_images/appleseed-707553.jpg

http://images.google.co.jp/imgres?imgurl=http://www.hjo3.net/appleseed_bsuit.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.hjo3.net/sep8-oct30-04.htm&usg=__7kvtqe-w_uBQ_f2fWlrtL_Ymm_I=&h=360&w=295&sz=38&hl=ja&start=25&um=1&tbnid=uQ5UxpMpui7FzM:&tbnh=121&tbnw=99&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dappleseed%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Dja%26rlz%3D1T4GGLL_jaJP301JP309%26sa%3DN%26start%3D18%26um%3D1

http://anime.nx-studio.net/media/images/appleseed_1988/appleseed_1988_img08.jpg

Now admittedly the Crisis Suit looks different but can you honestly see no similarities?

Or do a thought experiment. Contrast the appearance of crisis suits with dreadnoughts, wraithlords, deff dreadz or sentinels. Dreads have a corpse inside, are boxy, covered in skulls eagles and other gothic touches. Deff dreadz are giant trashcans with lots of exposed wiring. Sentinels have prominent servos, are boxy and are covered in gothic touches. Wraithlords are ornate, spindly and piloted by a ghost.

In contrast crisis suits have clean lines, a living pilot in the centre, roughly accurate proportions and little ornamentation. Which of these seems the most mecha like to you?

And that's not counting the similarities you didn't address i.e. here is a samurai

http://imagecache.allposters.com/images/pic/BRGPOD/176427-CT~Samurai-with-Raised-Sword-circa-1860-Posters.jpg

here are some ashigaru http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Ieyasu_Parade_by_sachakun_3.jpg

here is a fire warrior i57.photobucket.com

note the shape and position of the armour plates

note the sword he is carrying, note the shape of the hilt and the pattern on the binding. Is that not similar to a Japanese sword? And for all those decrying that the sword isn't a katana well you're right. It is a wakizashi. Samurai swords come in a pair, a long sword and a short. The tau ceremonial sword is the short sword, the long sword is the pulse rifle that they carry. This is even acknowledged in the tau codex when they talk about long knife as the name of a tau tactic.

Tau are clearly in part Japanese and Chinese inspired. We can debate how good a job GW did of demonstrating this inspiration on the models but I cannot believe that anyone would deny that it is there.


Interestingly eldar also display a lot of inspiration from Japan, most notably in the concept of "paths" and how eldar are supposed to practise a variety of paths throughout their lives until perfection. This appears to me to be a parrallel of the concept of do, or "way of" i.e. a certain way of doing something which applies to nearly everything in Japanese culture from swordfighting (kendo けｎどう) to calligraphy (shodo　しょどう) to drinking tea (chado　茶どう)。

IMO, Crisis suits are much more likened to E-Frames and Marauders then Appleseed/Gundam.

A few things was in my mind when i read the thread.

1) we talked about how Tau 's elemental cast was influenced by Buddhism / Hinduism / Legend of the 5 rings etc etc. But er....
why is everyone forgetting about Taoism ( omg Tauism )? after all it even goes as much as been related to asian week days. ( 7 elements for 7 days for both china and japan )

2) Just because GW fails at sculpting / copying anime mecha ( apple seed was mentioned buy i think Patlabor resembles more ) doesnt mean anything.
i mean just look at the art work itself , atleast FW did a proper job.

And no , GW 100% copied a manga 's battle suit . It was brought up in 4chan before ( with actual source / pics etc etc ) Ya you guys wont believe me until i find that pic so....

Interestingly eldar also display a lot of inspiration from Japan, most notably in the concept of "paths" and how eldar are supposed to practise a variety of paths throughout their lives until perfection. This appears to me to be a parrallel of the concept of do, or "way of" i.e. a certain way of doing something which applies to nearly everything in Japanese culture from swordfighting (kendo けｎどう) to calligraphy (shodo　しょどう) to drinking tea (chado　茶どう)。

The original eldar were basically space elves witht the ships and tanks of the alien race from robotech. The craftworlds STILL look like it.

1) we talked about how Tau 's elemental cast was influenced by Buddhism / Hinduism / Legend of the 5 rings etc etc. But er....
why is everyone forgetting about Taoism ( omg Tauism )? after all it even goes as much as been related to asian week days. ( 7 elements for 7 days for both china and japan )

I think you're missing the big thing. The tau weren't so much inspired by actual historical traditions, but instead by japanese/korean/chinese popular culture that has arisen from those traditions. Asian popular culture is the singular inspiration for almost every facet of the tau (also HALO).

And no , GW 100% copied a manga 's battle suit

I'm pretty sure they didn't. And I know a thing about 4chan, I've seen all the same comparison pics as you.

The tau symbol though is just a colorless pokeball.

no shuma... i think you are missing my point.

Im saying most people either forgot , or just isnt aware of the actual Taoism . which is way closer than the other listed influence.

And no , the pic im talking about isnt the tau marking.
Its an actual art book / or manga, either way a scanned black and white page , with battle suit identical to Tau crisis suit.

If you dont know what im talking about, then obviousely you missed it. Its that RARE.

Actually, I believe that the Tau symbol is from the old PC game Marathon by Bungie. It's seen a lot in their Halo series as well.

LunaHound wrote:
no shuma... i think you are missing my point.

Im saying most people either forgot , or just isnt aware of the actual Taoism . which is way closer than the other listed influence.

And no , the pic im talking about isnt the tau marking.
Its an actual art book / or manga, either way a scanned black and white page , with battle suit identical to Tau crisis suit.

If you dont know what im talking about, then obviousely you missed it. Its that RARE.

I believe you're talking about all of the direct correlations of the Tau mech designs from the mechs in RIFTS. The Broadside design and concept is particularly guilty imho. One could easily say that the Vespids were stolen from the Xiticix too.

Though admittedly not many people know this stuff because, well, they'd have to be familiar with RIFTS and that takes a hardcore RPG geek ;-) Sadly I don't have the Tau design collage, but for anyone who's interested just poke around Google for a bit, it's pretty far from being hidden knowledge, just unknown.

EDIT: Found the image (or at least one of them).

Those two mechs look nothing alike. The pose and proportion is similar, the similarities end there. Should have stuck with Heavy Gear, where parallels are pretty strong.



Also did that image just imply that the devilfish looks like a book cover?

Cyporiean wrote:IMO, Crisis suits are much more likened to E-Frames and Marauders then Appleseed/Gundam.

I sort of agree with you , but thats only because their sculptors cant sculpt anything like the art works.
For example compare crisis suits / broad sides to Tau codex.

I agree that the attempt to link RIFTS and Tau designs is pretty weak.

In the first row the middle design's only really common point with the battlesuit is the bulky chest, which is one of those things that tends to go with the territory in a piloted walker, especially if the pilot isn't a near-corpse and wants to be able to move around a bit. If anything, if I didn't know the two designs I'd say the middle piece is GW's due to the large shoulder pads and armored knee protectors.

The rightmost piece looks even less familiar, other than the weak ankles. It's been a long time since I looked at my Palladium Books stuff, but does this guy look like his 'feet' are attached to other feet?

In the 2nd row we again have the think ankles, but if the intent was that shoulder-mounted weapons can somehow be copyrighted I think this is a horrible example. It's a very different system for doing so: The Tau example is essentially a backpack, the RIFTS weapon sits on the unit's shoulders. The Tau one looks a lot better in my opinion.

On the third row, the fire warrior helmet and the RIFTS helmet do look slightly similar, but again I'm not sure if the swept-back head is legally actionable. Don't some bike helmets do this? I'm not sure what the images to the right of this mean... THe armor or robot on the far right looks nothing like the tau (is that fanart?) next to him.

On the last row we compare a Devilfish to a RIFTS mecha. Again, the only similarity I can see here is the use of curves and the way both designs stick out a bit.

I don't think these are very similar at all.

Its the essence guys, the essence that defines the designs.
Not the silly little extra armor plate with or without or that differs from design to design, not the silly little technical mechanical mumble jumble. But then again , thats able to convince some people right? *GW "chaos marines? add more spikes"

I guess its one of those you either see it or you dont kind of things.

ShumaGorath wrote:Those two mechs look nothing alike. The pose and proportion is similar, the similarities end there. Should have stuck with Heavy Gear, where parallels are pretty strong.

I don't really see this, even. (Although please Heavy Gear dates to the mid 90s, so it predates the Tau. ) Both designs are a bit chunky, but the Heavy gears tend to be a bit chunkier as they're usually ground-pounders with in-line skates instead of jump-jetting martial-artists. Although the new Black Talon Claw series designs kind of go against this...

bravelybravesirrobin wrote:Here is a picture of the Tau model I was thinking of http://www.ironhalo.net/Images/40k/GTau07.JPG

Here is a picture of a Shotoku Taishi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filerince_Shotoku.jpg

So anyone wearing layered robes (pretty much the only kind of robe, apart from bath robes) with any kind of funny hairdo and a stick is a Samurai?

I honestly can't be bothered with all the silly arguments coming out here now. Seriously, Tau copied Rifts = anime? Come on! All the arguments boil down to this-

I can certainly see similarities there.

Yeah. Similarity. The Tau have design elements similar to some things from Asia. That does not make them Japanese. That does not make them anime. That does not make them a one-army sales ploy.

Warhammer isn't real. It's all fantasy. I'm ethnically German, basically. Do you think that means the first thing I did was rush out and buy a bunch of Empire models? No, I bought the models that appealed to my sense of imagination. I bought the models that I thought were quality. Japanese customers did the same thing. Chinese customers will do the same. Don't you all think it's a tad insulting to just presume everyone apart from you is so tied to their ethnicity that GW has to make an army represent them as people in order to sell well?

As for the eternal debate about PC versus ethnic representation- it all boils down to one and only one point: Are the minis cool? Or are the minis silly? If the minis look cool, the overwhelming majority of people who come from an ethnic group that the minis superficially represent won't mind. If they're silly, then you'll start to hear complaints.

I don't remember any Fantasy army releases that were nothing but silly. There are some silly options out there, but there's also GRIMDARK to be had if you want to push it that way. So I have a lot of confidence that if GW releases a Cathay army, it won't be silly. But if it is, then don't buy the minis, and GW will learn their lesson.

We don't need a bunch of baseless speculation from well-meaning people who don't know much about the imaginary army or the real-world people they share a few similarities with. We need pics of minis or lists of rules.

I could have swore we were at least kind of talking about WHFB like... a page and a half ago...

LunaHound wrote:Its the essence guys, the essence that defines the designs.
Not the silly little extra armor plate with or without or that differs from design to design, not the silly little technical mechanical mumble jumble. But then again , thats able to convince some people right? *GW "chaos marines? add more spikes"

I guess its one of those you either see it or you dont kind of things.

I think we don't see it because it's really not there.

I won't defend GW against the argument that they are easily influenced by pop trends. This is the company that did some special promotions for Orks when the Ang Lee Hulk movie came out, after all! They're pretty blatant about such things, and I've no doubt a high-level briefing on the Tau project said something like "draw inspiration from Japanese mecha designs" which is pretty much what Palladium Books did in a lot of places as well (RIFTS is kind of their 40k in that it tends to be a setting where every random idea gets thrown into a mixing bowl). There's nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from another source... I think most product designs and even msot art do it to some extent.

GW draws inspiration from real life and other works of art. Frankly, the Tau are a lot less plagarized than some of the WFB armies. How different can you make a mecha suit look? It's gonna have 2 arms, 2 legs, a torso, a head, some antennas and fins, and big guns. Maybe it's got a smooth, curved look or an angular look, but that's about it. If you made it radically different (say 4 arms and no legs), then it doesn't look enough like a mecha suit for people to get the visual connection.

Personally, I hope the 'new army' is Lost and the Damned for 40k.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Alpharius wrote:

Disjointed Entity wrote:

And, no. I don't see the point of monkey men in fantasy. Just re-work the gakking Chaos Dwarves!

Finally, a ray of light! A shining beacon of wisdom!

(And a thread rapidly reaching its expiration date?)

The day the chaos dwarves come back are the day they bring back the zoats and the squats and every other awful and stupid race that was removed for a good reason.

So what you're saying is that we should look for Zoats and Squats to return by, say, 2011 at the latest?

Now there's a rumor!

Typeline wrote:I could have swore we were at least kind of talking about WHFB like... a page and a half ago...

QFT

I'll start a NEW thread that compares/contrast Tau, Tao, and Anime - now could we get back on topic of the Monkey Men!

I swear I'll get my Hanzo Sword out and start chopping bits where the don't grow back. . . .

Well this normality train appears to have derailed somewhere near buggery central.

Sorry for that, not that I'm the only one but I'm sure that I didn't help. Anyway, a Chinese inspired fantasy army would be neat, though I'd want to see people as I'm not a big fan of anthropomorphic animals. That being said, an elite unit of ninja monkeys, well they're monkeys damn it. How can you not be a fan of a monkey swarm? =)

Do we have any speculation as to a release date for this new fantasy army whatever it may be?

I've always found monkeys to be boring, really. I don't understand the appeal. Now, I can appreciate a sort of menagerie of creatures, but I hope that the army is human based with Beasts of Not Chaos support units.

If there were to be a monkey army in WFB I would personally prefer to see it represented in the Kingdoms of Ind, or Warhammer India.

I'm no Hindu expert but I know the Ramayana includes a monkey army, and many Hindus believe that people with animalistic, or another feature that resembles one of their Gods has been blessed by that God.

Yeah. Similarity. The Tau have design elements similar to some things from Asia. That does not make them Japanese. That does not make them anime. That does not make them a one-army sales ploy.

Direct quotes from the armies designer and GW corporates kind of disagree with you there.



Gentlemen. I give you the broadside.

ShumaGorath wrote:Gentlemen. I give you the broadside.

That may be the most ridiculous comparison I've ever seen.

JOHIRA wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:Gentlemen. I give you the broadside.

That may be the most ridiculous comparison I've ever seen.

Yes, that was the point. If you've read any of my posts I've repeatedly stated that similarities don't equate to stolen designs. All of the tau designs are heavily inspired by historical chinese foot soldiers and modern anime mecha. This is out of the mouth of the man that designed the model range. He has been quoted in this thread a few times now. If you want to argue how well he succeeded go ahead, but that is what they were designed to visually adhere to.

Hate to do it, but gotta agree with Shummy here. It was an intentional design feature to draw stylistically from mecha, and they even came out and said that the firewarriors were modeled after ashigaru footsoldiers. There isn't any arguing it, anymore than there is arguing Jes Goodwin is working on the Dark Eldar range.

JOHIRA wrote:

bravelybravesirrobin wrote:Here is a picture of the Tau model I was thinking of http://www.ironhalo.net/Images/40k/GTau07.JPG

Here is a picture of a Shotoku Taishi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filerince_Shotoku.jpg

So anyone wearing layered robes (pretty much the only kind of robe, apart from bath robes) with any kind of funny hairdo and a stick is a Samurai?

I honestly can't be bothered with all the silly arguments coming out here now. Seriously, Tau copied Rifts = anime? Come on! All the arguments boil down to this-

I can certainly see similarities there.

Yeah. Similarity. The Tau have design elements similar to some things from Asia. That does not make them Japanese. That does not make them anime. That does not make them a one-army sales ploy.

So you agree that they have design elements that are drawn from Asia? Because that is basically all I was arguing. Their models, fluff and suit designs have elements drawn from either historical Asian culture or modern asian pop culture. If you agree with this what on earth are you arguing?

JOHIRA wrote: Warhammer isn't real. It's all fantasy. I'm ethnically German, basically. Do you think that means the first thing I did was rush out and buy a bunch of Empire models? No, I bought the models that appealed to my sense of imagination. I bought the models that I thought were quality. Japanese customers did the same thing. Chinese customers will do the same. Don't you all think it's a tad insulting to just presume everyone apart from you is so tied to their ethnicity that GW has to make an army represent them as people in order to sell well?

I entirely agree with you. It is ludicrous to think that someone will buy an army just because it shares superficial elements with their own culture. It doesn't mean that GW didn't think that though but imho GW the genesis of the Tau is more likely either an attempt by GW to tap into the growing interest in asian culture in the west or just the fact that lots of people in the design team have an interest in asian culture and they wanted to put that into 40K.


Incidentally I just twigged that we are both 40k players living in Japan. Where do you live? Maybe we could get together for a game some time.

LunaHound wrote:@two_heads_talking

Read my post , i made a perfect explanation for Fire Warrior's knife , i even include a pic!
bottom of page !

/shakes head.. I'm not buying it.. lol

JohnHwangDD wrote:

LunaHound wrote: Besides we have Dogs of War.

If DoW are the new army, I'll be very happy.

Except Gw explicitly said they are not going to bring back the Dogs of War..

As time goes on I believe less and less that Cathay or Nippon are going to get any love in this next army book. If Chaos Dwarves didn't have a real army book (just a WD write up) I think GW has pulled the wool over our eyes by claiming it to be a 'new' army.

I officially shift my vote to Chaos Dwarves. It just seems so obvious at this point.