I will color
explicit historical spoilers red so you guys know exactly when I’m spoiling and when I’m speculating.
1. The first thing to note about Shibashou is that historically,
Shibashou is not killed or defeated at all in Zhao, he is simply dismissed from service. Historically we know that
Shibashou was Riboku’s deputy in the final days of Zhao, and that he was ultimately dismissed when Riboku was [omitted for big spoilers], and literally nothing else. More on that later.
Now I am reminded of another character similar to Shibashou in Renpa who I think is being handled by Hara similarly to how Shibashou will be handled. Historically, after Renpa fled from Zhao, he never fought any more battles.
He lived in Wei for a time, then he lived in Chu, then he died peacefully of old age in his sleep.
This is far from the Renpa Hara has written who actively fought for Wei and still fights for Chu and claims that he will die on the battlefield
cough cough EOS Shin cough cough. Sorry, don’t know what came over me there. Anyway, with Renpa, Hara decided it was far more interesting to have Renpa remain an active battlefield commander after his defection from Zhao, and so he continues to write Renpa as an active battlefield commander.
So the precedent is already set for Hara to do something similar for a character who historically
does not die in Zhao. This brings us to our next point:
2.
The discrepancy between historical Shibashou and manga Shibashou.
Historcially Shibashou is almost the definition of a completely irrelevant commander. I have researched Sima Shang tirelessly and let me tell you, what I’ve posted on Shibashou is literally all I can find. This was certainly no general on par with your historical Renpa’s or Chousha’s or Rinshoujou’s, but manga Shibashou is the second most lengthily hyped general in the history of this manga behind Kou En himself.
So what gives? Why did Hara take such a relatively irrelevant general historically, and choose to make him the template for the enormously hyped Shibashou? Well, you could argue that Shibashou is simply meant to be an overwhelming opponent during the final days of Zhao’s life, but I suspect it’s more than that.
Hara’s Renpa was too great to simply die of old age in Chu, and I’ve long suspected that Hara plans more for his Shibashou than for him to simply ride off into the sunset and die in Seika without ever impacting the manga again after Zhao’s fall. Shibashou is a relatively young man, he could easily live another 30-40 years naturally before dying of old age, and if Shibashou were to continue to be an actively fighting commander in some capacity in that aspect, then by EOS he would be an older, more hardened warrior similar in age to current Bananji, ripe in experience and fully ready to be picked up by some sort of mega-commander at EOS. Which is a good Segway into our next point:
3.
Ousen’s propensity for trying to recruit powerful commanders.
There has to be a term for this manga trope, but for now I’ll just call them
the recruiter. Let’s define the recruiter as the type of manga character who is always trying to recruit powerful subordinates regardless of where their loyalties might lie. The most obvious example of this in other manga is Blackbeard from One Piece.
Blackbeard asks Ace to join his crew despite Ace hating him, and then Blackbeard asked Luffy to join his crew despite Luffy also hating him. Blackbeard was the exact type of mofo pretimeskip who simply wanted powerful subordinates under his wing that he could use for his own means, and he didn’t particularly care where he got them from.
At first Blackbeard’s attempts at recruiting people ended in hilarious failure, but eventually Oda rewarded Blackbeard with shockingly powerful subordinates like Shiryuu and Aokiji.
The mangaka must eventually reward the recruiter’s propensity for recruiting with incredibly powerful subordinates of his own.
Now let’s look at Ousen. Ousen tried to recruit Kyou En which failed hilariously, then he tried to recruit Mouten which failed hilariously, then he tried to recruit f***ing Riboku himself which also of course ended hilariously.
Ousen is currently in the “hilariously failing” stage of his recruiting journey, which should naturally precede the phase where Ousen starts to gain subordinates who almost seem
too powerful to actually serve him. With Blackbeard, this was Shiryu and Aokiji. With Ousen…well, who could possibly join him?
Shibashou is far from the only candidate who could potentially join up with EOS Ousen, but again look at everything we know about Shibashou so far: a seemingly irrelevant historical commander, perhaps no different from the likes of historical Enkan or Kotsuminhaku, who Hara took and made a Great Heaven level commander and has stressed the enormous power he possesses for five goddamn years, longer than any other commander in Kingdom but Kou En. A commander who
does not die in Zhao, but lives on for potentially the next few decades.
I would argue that Ousen recruiting hugely powerful subordinates isn’t speculation but is almost guaranteed to happen in the future, the only question remaining is the question of who will join him. This brings us to our next point:
4.
Shibashou’s loyalties.
So we have to ask ourselves, why would Shibashou even consider joining up with Ousen? And what might restrict him from joining up with Ousen? At first glance, it might appear that Shibashou cares only for Seika and nothing else but I would argue this is somewhat of a red herring. We can also gleam other aspects of Shibashou’s personality based on the details Hara has given us:
-Shibashou hates the Zhao court, probably for their incompetence, corruption, cruelty, and lack of empathy for anyone other than themselves.
-Shibashou also seems to heavily respect Riboku, undoubtedly for Riboku’s own knowledge and prowess at war.
So Shibashou hates incompetence, corruption, decadence, etc…and he really respects commanders who warrant respect through their actions and merit. There is one other thing Shibashou hates strongly enough to actually take his big gorilla ass from Seika and fight:
-Qin. Undoubtedly for their invading, innocent slaughtering, and war mongering tendencies.
So Shibashou holds no loyalty to any state in particular, only to his beloved Seika, and hates Qin enough to literally leave Seika to kill them.
So in order for Shibashou to consider joining up with someone like Ousen, Ousen would need to be someone who opposes a force like Qin. Now for those of you who actually know the trajectory Ei Sei’s story will take in the future, some giant fucking alarms should be ringing off in your mind right now about why someone like Shibashou would continue to wish to oppose Qin in the future, but I’m actually not going to spoil anything about Sei or Qin in the future. For now, let’s just continue to discuss things we know:
5.
Ousen’s own loyalties
It should be clear by this point that Ousen holds no particular loyalty to Qin so I won’t discuss that in depth. What I will say is that Ousen and Shibashou already seem to ideologically agree about both Qin and Zhao:
This cannot be far from what Shibashou believes about states like Qin and Zhao. I’ve always seen Ousen as someone who wants to unify China
before claiming the unified Kingdom for himself. If you’re Ousen, why start your own Kingdom from scratch and then have 7 other super Kingdoms to deal with, when instead you could high jack one of those super kingdoms and use it to eliminate the rest of them?
For Shibashou to even consider Ousen, Shibashou would need to first believe that Ousen is ideologically opposed to Qin and her war mongering tendencies…which Ousen absolutely seems to be, he is simply using Qin to ripen China for his own eventual rule. That’s the plan, anyway.
6.
Ousen vs Shibashou at Hango
And now we reach Hango, where Shibashou and Ousen are currently on a crash course for one another. I think Hara will use this current battle to simply introduce each man to the other. Ousen will identify Shibashou as an enormous powerhouse, undoubtedly someone he’ll want in his own service, and Shibashou will identify Ousen as an intellect on a similar level to Riboku
himself, someone Shibashou already respects. I doubt Ousen will come within speaking proximity of Shibashou at Hango because Ousen probably won’t want none of that, but this battle will at least familiarize Shibashou and Ousen with each other the way battles familiarize enemy generals and will put Shibashou and Ousen on “speaking terms” for later when Ousen can approach Shibashou first through messages and diplomats rather than face to face meetings, eventually wearing Shibashou down into his service.
All Ousen would really need to do is slowly but surely convince Shibashou that he is actually an enemy of the evil Qin and that only by joining forces under a competent King (Ousen) can the two of them hope to succeed where Riboku and Shibashou failed. And on that subject:
7.
Paralleling Ousen and Riboku
This is a more brief point but Ousen and Riboku are two characters who Hara has paralleled with each other on many occasions, and having both characters essentially have to work to obtain Shibashou as a vassal would be an extension of that Parrallel.
EDIT: It just keeps coming!
Anyway, Shibashou himself. I saw a post on Reddit that noticed some similarities between Shibashou and the mythological Qilin:
And the more that I look at this thing, the more I think this is correct. I was wondering why the Seika gang seemed to have animal themes and this appears to be the answer, Shibashou is inspired by the Qilin. Just look at Shibashou himself:
-Horse-themed breast plate
-Spiral hair and Glaive patterns
-Scaled bracers
-Pig tails semi-resembling antlers
These things even have origins dating back to the warring states era.
But what is most interesting is what I found about the Qilin on Wikipedia (research level 100), that these things “are said to appear with the arrival or passing of an illustrious sage or ruler.”
Now I’m not going to comment on any historical spoilers but…the fact that we have been introduced to the minor sub plot of Riboku just being proclaimed the Lord of the second largest city in all Zhao, with his subordinates openly proclaiming that they want to see him as the King of Zhao, and now Riboku is joined in battle by the metaphorical herald of the sage…Hara really does intend to go hard with this sub plot it seems lmfao. Man is the GOAT, quite simply.
To anyone who thinks Shibashou is nothing more than a powerful Zhao general, the more and more we learn about this guy, the more important his ultimate roll in the story appears to be. His arrival, I believe, is to signify the importance of Riboku and his advancement as a powerful sage/ruler…and perhaps eventually any other Kingly commanders Shibashou may end up joining forces with. But I wouldn’t know anything about that.
ANOTHER EDIT: THE TRAIN KEEPS ON ACOMIN!!!!
IT KEEPS ON COMING BOIS!!!
So I meant to do a post on this ever since 786, but I kept getting tied up.
So if you guys recall in my
Shibashou as Ousen’s vassal theory (I made need to just create a separate thread for this theory), one of the things I said there is that Shibashou seemed to be someone who wasn’t even open to the notion of speaking to Ousen right now, and that Ousen would have to “wear down” Shibashou into his services via messengers to Seika.
WELL, in 786, we get this:
And we find out that
Shibashou is already open to the possibility of talking things out with his enemies, believing that people only take up weapons because they are cowards. A surprisingly pacifist philosophy from a martial 3GH, Hara is already giving my man some depth.
But anyway, I’m going to count this as a W for the theory because Shibashou doesn’t really need to be persuaded to actually speak with Ousen, he might be open to that possibility already, and may remain open to it so long as Ousen doesn’t do anything particularly heinous (he won’t).
………
And that about does it for now. Obviously the Ousen as the final villain that
@God Buggy just posted bleeds into this theory a bit and I think it works extremely well.
What do you guys think?
