Sister assassins in masks (Samurai Jack and Kubo). Origin?

[DSeid]

So both the recent SJ season and Kubo and the Two Strings feature sister assassins wearing similar sorts of masks (apparently Noh inspired).

I’m not finding much about anything specific in Japanese mythology being referenced. What am I missing?

[Sherrerd]

Star Trek? (Duras sisters). Not Japanese and not in masks, but: crowd-pleasing.

[thelurkinghorror]

I haven’t seen either of these but if I’m googling the Kubo characters correctly, they appear avian and their names are basically “crow” and “eagle.”

Both animals are a variant of the tengu.

[DSeid]

@thelurkinghorror

I haven’t seen either of these but if I’m googling the Kubo characters correctly, they appear avian and their names are basically “crow” and “eagle.”

Both animals are a variant of the tengu.

While the characters might owe some to the Tengu myth the masks are clearly not Tengu. No beak or long nose. White not red. They are explicitly Noh masks.

I can find similar imagery used in other animation, like the Kabuki Twins in Batman.

But again I suspect it alludes to some older mythology or at least some more classic anime. Maybe it’s just the White Mask of Doom trope?

[thelurkinghorror]

The karasu tengu I mentioned specifically does not have a nose.

[bmoak]

Definitely Noh masks. I can’t think of another example of a masked female pair other than The Batman, but using a Noh mask to indicate a creepy, villainous character is an old anime trope. I’ve seen it in Vampire Princess Miyu, Nadia of the Mysterious Ocean, Inuyasha, and Spirited Away. Maybe combining the noh mask trope with the creepy female twins trope, a la The Shining?

[DSeid]

Not karasu tengu masks.

It was more the sisters assassin (wearing the Noh masks bit) in both that I was keying in on, rather than the female pair, given that the Daughters of Aku are septuplets.

Maybe just coincidental that both did the similar theme, maybe one had been inspired by a preview of the other. I had just assumed it was a reference to something I was ignorant of.

I just found this interview with Travis Knight, director of “Kubo” with his explanation of the sisters’ masks:

… The masks the sisters wear are meant to be evocative of Noh masks. There’s a tradition of Noh theater about supernatural creatures that come down from the heavens and take human form. They wear these masks, and then they communicate. Because you can’t see their faces or their expressions, they have to communicate everything through their body. They have to communicate all their emotions through physical gestures and with movement. That’s effectively what we do as animators: we bring these characters to life, emotionally through physical movement. There’s something balletic about it, something beautiful and graceful about it.

Even though these characters are terrifying, there is a beauty to them, an incredible grace to how they move. In the big fight sequence between Monkey and one of the sisters, I describe it like a ballet of death. At any given moment one of these characters could die. There’s a beauty about it, something that’s just incredibly graceful and exquisite about the way these creatures move.

That’s something that was inspired by Noh theater. There’s also an aspect of these creatures, and you see it particularly in their capes, that was inspired by predatory birds. In fact, the capes are meant to evoke feathers. …

So apparently not alluding to any specific myth. And specific to sisters who are assassins.

[Sherrerd]

Interesting. (Certainly the use of the Noh mask in Spirited Away was tremendously effective.)

My comment about the possibility of the Star Trek reference wasn’t intended to be flippant, by the way. When a trope–‘dangerous sisters’ in this case–is popular enough, it can bleed into the creative processes of other storytellers. I’m not claiming that’s what happened here, but on the other hand it probably can’t be entirely ruled out.