Let’s Play Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Episode 35 - Atsumori and Ghosts of the Past
Update!
I apologize for going on hiatus. I’m not sure if people were really watching or reading this thread. Simply a mixture of life events, anxiety getting to me, feelings of worry over the quality of my work and whether anything I created mattered or was liked, and burnout with Sekiro and it’s community, led to me going on hiatus from the LP. I’m going to try to practice again and get back to this LP and finishing it, Elden Ring also just heavily impacted the community and kind of destroyed it for Sekiro which made playing it a bit harder since I had fewer people to talk to while playing. These videos were actually completed before the hiatus and were uploaded, I just had not gotten to posting them in the thread.
Let’s Play Sekiro Historical Lorethrough is back! After taking a break I have come back to finish the game, this episode focuses mainly on the Great Colored Carp and the quests surrounding it, the Nobles, and the Pot Nobles. We learn a good deal more about it and it’s effect on people as well as carp transformation and ascension.
I get to talk a little bit about Kintaro a Japanese Folk Hero, the Golden Boy with a giant axe. He was known for his incredible strength and for fighting with mythical creatures such as a giant carp. Might do a side episode where I go into the history of the Carp in China and Japan.
We start off by jumping off the large Sakura tree found in the waters central to Fountainhead Palace. From there we enter the lair of the Great Colored Carp. This creature was likely once a person given it’s somewhat human face and the humanoid skeletons of the other giant carps found in the depths of the water. This section is easy to get through but you’ll probably have to use a revive as the Carp will most likely notice you and kill you in a single charge. But once you revive you should have enough time to swim to the back. Otherwise it’s a simple underwater stealth section with vegetation and ruins to hide in that don’t make too much of a different. At the back of the lair is a large sunken building you can swim in the window of, past it is sort of outlet leading up to the Palace Grounds.
The Palace Grounds is the name for the Idol here, it is beside a building that is dark inside. Within are many Palac Nobles feasting on dead Okami Warriors. When you bother them or open the front doors leading back to the central area they will aggro. These are not the flute playing Nobles and as such are incredibly easy to kill. You’d have to try to die to them. From here there are two option areas and a main area. From the door we opened on either side we are at the top of small waterfalls. Past either one is a path. The way to the Feeding Grounds requires jumping onto the roof from the other side of the building then grappling to a tree. Another path is available that you can reach by jumping from the top of the other waterfall towards the cliff-side and grappling to a spot, here leads to the Pot Noble of the Fountainhead Palace.
Pot Noble Koremori. I’ll talk a bit about him first. Pot Noble Koremori is a bit more social than Pot Noble Harunaga. He is softer sounding and more pleasant but like Harunaga there is something off about him and his long creepy hand. He offers some new items in exchange for Treasure Carp Scales. He offers Lapis Lazuli, Divine Grass, and the final Dragon Dance Mask fragment. With all three parts of the mask you can spend five skill points to gain an attack power, it’s not very useful until NG+. For now buying skills is much more important. After talking to him he will eventually give you Truly Precious Bait and ask that you feed it to the Great Colored Carp. After coming to Fountainhead and buying things from Harunaga he will do the same. Both will tell you not to give the other’s to the carp and to give only theirs. You are only able to give one, it’s description details how it contains their hair and is very clearly some form of black magic.
Now if you go back to the room with the cannibal nobles if you’ve opened the door letting light in you’ll find them all dead. One of the twin daughters who asked you to save their father is here. She will talk about how they tricked her father and is stabbing a corpse of a Noble. After crying about how evil the people here are she will collapse and die.
Heading to the Feeding Grounds we can find a few enemies that are simple enough to defeat. There are some sugars and items here and an Idol that is next to a bell and a giant Noble.
He is the Carp Attendant, or Carp Servant, this is the father of the twins. He asks that you feed the Great Colored Carp the Precious Baits. These are not the same as that of the Pot Nobles. If you feed it one he’ll gift you a single scale, feed it more and he’ll give three more. After that he’ll say his master can’t have any more for now or he will grow fat. He speaks in a very simple way and is totally devoted to the carp. After getting those scales there’s not much more to do other than feed one of the Truly Precious Baits.
It doesn’t make much of a difference which you choose, it will simply determine the location you buy things with scales from. Hirata, or Fountainhead. You will be prompted after selecting the option between which Pot Noble’s bait you wish to feed to the Great Colored Carp. After doing so it will swim away, if you ring the bell again the fish won’t come and Sekiro will stagger back realizing what he did. After resting the Carp Attendant will be looking over the waters. He’ll be confused as to why his master won’t appear and will begin groaning in anguish.
You can find the Great Colored Carp where the waters of Fountainhead flow to and pool, the Guardian Ape Drinking Hole. There it is dead with the waters turned dark. This really makes no sense since if you look up it’s more like the water is arriving through cracks and small openings but whatever. Here you can take it’s white whiskers and offer a prayer. When you return to end the quest you need to give them to the Attendant. He thanks you and realizes his duty is done and gives you a Divine Grass. If you rest he’ll be there with his remaining daughter.
He is dead, she will thank you for freeing her father then lay her head upon him an die. That is it, that’s the end of that quest. A whole family and a giant mythical creature died. If we return to the Pot Noble whose bait we didn’t feed they are also dead. If we check the other they’ll be alive however.
Whichever is alive will be a simple minded red eyed treasure carp. These carps are said to not have the right number of scales to become the immortal Great Colored Carps. They’ll gain the inventory of the other Pot Noble and continue to sell to you. No matter what you’ll not be able to give them enough scales and they’ll always demand more.
From there we then go to tie up a loose end with the Mibu Head Priest. We bring him the Waters of the Palace he demanded, upon drinking it he will turn into a Palace Noble and we can kill him for some scales and Dragonspring Sake. This is essentially everything carp related done, after this it is time to go and face what is resting in the Sanctuary of the Fountainhead Palace in the Divine Realm.
Ryûhô Killing a Dragon, c 1789-1868, by Totoya Hokkei
Finally we have arrived in the Sanctuary atop Fountainhead Palace where the Spiral Cloud Passage forms in the skies. This is to be the entrance to the Divine Realm, where we will have to get the Dragon Tears from the Sakura Dragon. With those we can fulfill Lord Kuro’s wishes to sever him from the Divine Heritage, and end the line of Divine Heirs and the Dragon Blood.
After a bit of a trek and getting past some Okami warrior women we reach the peak and find a mysterious cave with a sort of shrine maiden in hibernation within.
She is a mysterious figure in Sekiro, and is never explained. Supposedly in the released Japanese art book there is concept art of her labelled Miku. This would mean she is a shrine maiden or priestess of Shinto. Her left eye is covered in some strange markings, her hair is white like those around the Dragon Heritage. She is embracing some strange sort of stone object in the cave. This cave is the origin of the water in Ashina, it flows out from here and into the waterfalls and the rivers. It is from here the Waters of the Palace comes, it is from hre the waters of immortality flows. There is an option here to pray, and we do.
Praying here teleports Sekiro to the Divine Realm. In various religions such as Buddhism there is a concept of otherworldly realms that can be entered at the peaks of mountains. In some versions the mountains are the realms, in others the mountains are gateways to other planes of existence. In Sekiro the Divine Realm is seemingly a different plane of existence, this appears to be in the sky atop a mountain with a sakura tree. This mountain however is not visible, sanctuary is the peak of Fountainhead meaning this is another plane, a Divine Realm we have ended up in. A concept in modern media to compare this to would be planes in tabletops like the Astral Plane.
From the clouds rises this figure. It resembles a sort of old sick man made of trees with a figure similar to that of the Palace Nobles. His head is actually used for grappling points around Fountainhead. In English this boss is called Old Dragons of the Tree. In Japanese the name is closer to Elders of Whitewood/Plainwood - 白木の翁たち (Translation courtesy of Miyabi). They appear more like Yokai and don’t resemble dragons at all. They are holding flutes and a sort of flute was something I talked about in the Atsumori episode and is highly relevant to the Minamoto and is used by the Palace Nobles. This is barely a fight, multiple will appear and vomit and limply try to attack. Every now and then they will chant and summon tree branches you need to run from. You can grapple to the top of the first, then jump and deathblow one below. This will cause you to use them as a weapon in a circle killing all nearby. Black elders of the plainwood will appear and killing them doesn’t move the health bar, you only need to kill white ones. When you’ve killed enough another cinematic will start as they pray to the tree. Lightning and wind will overwhelm Sekiro until he faces the true challenge.
This image is probably one of the most shared ones in all of Sekiro so I’d be surprised if everyone hasn’t already seen it. Say hello to the Divine Dragon. In Japanese it is called the Sakura Dragon - 桜竜 (Translation courtesy of Miyabi). We must defeat the Sakura Dragon to gain its tears so they may be used to sever Kuro from the Dragon Heritage. This is basically a bit set piece and more of a cinematic battle not a very hard one. The Divine Dragon will do overhead sword swings which send out waves of wind blades, will do sweeps along the ground you need to jump, and can do diagonal upwards swings to hit you in the air. The non-sweep swings can be deflect, dodged, or run from. At times the Dragon will dive down into the clouds and rise up firing lightning at the ground.
Lightning will appear on branches that can be grappled to, with them you can lightning reversal to shoot lightning at the Dragon. It’s body is severely damaged, it is missing it’s left arm like many characters in game and has a damaged left eye, markings over its heart, and more. The main arm is a part of a sort of torso from which sprouts a more traditional Tianlong of Chinese legend’s body. This serpent-like body has small arms and legs as wells, seemingly the torso leads into the roots of the Sakura Dragon.
You can hit the Dragon with Dragonflash if you have it, you can hit it’s neck but that’s very hard and mostly only useful to speedrunners. Lightning is how you want to posture break the Sakura Dragon. The weapon it holds in hand is the Seven Branched Sword, a sword of great power and importance in Japan and Korea.
Every now and then it will create a wave of wind that will throw you back if you are too close. When it is at posture break the Dragon will send Sekiro flying back. Afterwards it will go berserk with a long combo of attacks that need to be deflected and sweeps that need to be jumped. If you die you can actually just wait then revive after the onslaught. Afterwards a wind coated lightning bolt will appear at a branch. When touched it will catapult Sekiro into the sky with wind and lightning. The Dragon will snake its way after him during which he can lightning reversal into its face defeating the Dragon.
The Dragon cannot actually be killed it is truly immortal. Sekiro has no desire to kill it either. Instead he walks up the sword. Likely the sword is also a reference to Seath the Scaleless. The blade is transluscent green, and fires projectiles, and is wielded by a white Dragon. Scales and claws are hugely important in Eastern Dragons, it determines a lot about them and the Sakura Dragon only has a few on its head but the body mostly is veiny. Sekiro takes the blade and thrusts it into the tear ducts of the Dragon and draws out tears. This is the purpose of the Red Mortal Blade, it’s true name being Gracious Gift of Tears. After this Sekiro is suddenly transported.
We end up in Ashina Castle. The Interior Ministry has invaded with a full force, and Emma informs us that Ashina Isshin is dead. He has seemingly died of old age, sword in hand. He is laying on the ground with blood on his hands and hilt but not his body or blade. If you have not gotten the Mushin text from Isshin, you can get it here from Emma. Kuro has fled towards the Secret Passage to the old Battlefield. We are given the key and are to head back to where we fought Ashina Genichiro in the prologue. We are nearing the end of Sekiro, it is time to go and see the final bosses of the game.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-asia/chinese-dragons-0011969 Warning for this Source, has good information but is rather othering towards Chinese people and at times Orientalist. Good sources are used but I would not phrase some of these thins the way the author does and they make some generalizations.
Original Tsukioka Kogyo (1869 - 1927) Japanese Woodblock Print Tamura (The Spirit of Saanoue no Tamuramaro) Series Pictures of Noh Plays (Nogaku Zue) 1897 to 1902
With the Tears of the Divine Dragon, the Sakura Dragon, Sekiro has returned to Ashina Castle. However he finds it aflame and Ashina Isshin the Daimyo of Ashina dead. Emma gives him the Hidden Passage key and informs him he must head to where he fought Genichiro in the Reservoir at the old Battlefield. Rather than rush there in this episode we tie up some loose ends and explore.
The Interior Ministry is invading Ashina with their red armored troops, which as I discussed months ago resemble the armored troops of the Takeda, and the Sanada. We deal with the Ashina Elite Ujinari Mizuo and listen to the dying soldiers of Ashina make their last stand. The Ashigaru are mainly leading with the Samurai fighting mostly in the Dojo. Lone Shadows run rampant across the castle. In this episode I go into the play Tamura, a Shura Mono, or Warrior Play, about the first Shogun Sakanoue no Tamuramaru. The play has some similarities to parts of the story of Sekiro, along with the General at the start being Tamura. Tamuramaro conquered the North Eastern regions of Japan and quelled a rebellion there.
Tamura is one of many dream plays of various Noh Theaters. I’m trying a shorter writeup in case maybe things were too long form for a lot of people and they wanted to watch only video. But I might post a longer write-up below this after I have things set up properly regarding this episode.
This episode begins in Phase 3 of Sekiro so again warning for end game spoilers. And for spoilers to the end game of Sekiro. Bazinga, but seriously I will not talk about the MCU during this LP because why would I.
We begin in the Old Graves of Ashina Castle where after stumbling through the many corpses we find a familiar tiny figure in a large black hat. No it is no Jinzaemon he is very dead nor is it Emma we’ve never witnessed her wearing any form of headware.
It is Blackhat Badger, he is slumped next to a tree with a brazier. We can clearly see he is heavily wounded with a lot of blood spurting from his abdomen and covering the ground around him. Blackhat as a reminder in Japanese is called Mujina which was directly translated to mean Badger but more accurately in this context means Tanuki. He is grim with a smile as he explains his own confusion over a poor choice. A group of bad dudes were chasing a children ready to slay the child when Blackhat jumped into the fray and fought them all off while sustaining mortal wounds. There is a bit of regret in his words but mostly he appears to have a dark sense of pride, likely this is because he went against his logical survivalist mentality to instead save a child. Blackhat lost a son a time ago when the boy was still very young, I imagine in that moment Blackhat saw a child he had the opportunity to save and felt he owed it to his son’s memory to fight off the evil present and save the kid. It’s possible that Blackhat’s child died in relation to the children used to create the Divine Child of the Rejuvenating Waters, but there are many other possibilities and we have few context clues other than proximity to Senpou, the statues present, and the history of Senpou. On his corpse he leaves for Sekiro the Mibu Pilgrimage Balloon, the only one in game.
Ashina’s Outskirts have been taken over by the forces of the Interior Ministry, much of it now burns as red armored soldiers patrol and continue to spread the conflagration. During this time since it was mostly retreading an area while fighting enemies we have already seen I decided to talk a bit about Ashina Isshin. There’s a lot more that can be said so I might do side videos on each topic but the focus was mostly on Oda Nobunaga and Isshin’s similarities. I discuss as well the concept of Gekokujo which translates roughly to Low Conquers High, it is a concept heavily associated with Sengoku Japan. The idea is that those with power grew lazy and complacent while those at the lower parts of society had to develop great cunning and skills so that they could overthrow their masters.
I do mention again like I did months ago the armor the Interior Ministry soldiers are wearing. They appear to be wearing Tosei dou (dō) gusoku that resembles that which was worn by the Sanada Clan at the end of the Sengoku Jidai and during early Edo such as during the Osaka Campaign in 1615.
Here is an example of such armor. This is a form of more modern armor that helps solidify when Sekiro takes places and shows that the Interior Ministry boasts the latest in armor while those of Ashina use slightly older forms that were used too during the Sengoku era.
The Okami then in turn use old Great armor. Known as O-yoroi it was much looser with larger sections and is not too hard to spot and tell it apart from others.
Heroes of the Great Peace by Utagawa Kuniyoshi c 1848-1850 Edo
The Ozutsu hand cannon which was a larger bulkier gun, it came in multiple forms and the ones we see in Sekiro like the above are more fantasized versions though these versions appear in some Edo woodblock prints such as above.
The Bo-hiya a form of fire arrow that was fired from a gun, sometimes the Ozutsu in fact. We see the Interior Ministry deploying them and using them to aid in burning Ashina, though as far as I know they actually had to be lit on fire at the tip.
During this Sekiro ends up crossing paths with Shigekichi of the Red Guard, Shigekichi is another Juzou clone and is fought in nearly the exact same way except for three major changes. The first is that instead of poison he breaths fire and coast his weapon in fire so without the Suzaku Umbrella you’ll take fire chip damage even if you deflect. Second is that there are explosives around the area in red boxes with Ministry markings on them.
If hit with fire they will be engulfed in flames then eventually explode dealing major posture damage. With this you can easily posture break him and knock him around, I show off killing him using them mainly in the video. Third he is wearing body armor that is loose fitting. As such with two spear pulls you can rip it off making him take normal damage. There is next to nothing known about Shigekich.
Past the Stairway and behind his storefront which is aflame we find Anayama the Peddler and Kotaro. Kotaro is dead, as Anayama explains the Ministry kept making demands of them and when Anayama refused things went South quick, and by that I don’t meant to the literal South of Japan. Kotaro managed to fight them off and protect Anayama long enough for him to barely survive with mortal wounds while Kotaro died. As his last move he sells a promissory note to Sekiro for 1 sen, with it in this playthrough and others all merchants will have discounted selling prices for everything making this a great path to follow for a first playthrough. This only happens if one sends Kotaro to Anayama.
Shortly after this Anayama expires. If one is here on NG+ and already has the note instead he offers to sell a Dragonblood Droplet, though he gives you a Divine Grass instead. In the next episode we will be reaching the end of Ashina Outskirts and it will be time to fight off the flames of hatred that plague Ashina.
