There's a Japanese tale of two samurai who meet on a narrow bridge, and only one can pass. They stare at each other for a time, then both turn around and go back the way they came. You might know it as the inspiration for the Samurai Jack episode "Jack and the Scotsman." This toon, however, owes more to the fight between Robin Hood and Little John in Robin Hood: Men in Tights:
Dave Chappelle: voice of reason.
Anyway, that's Bludgeon and the Samurai Baker, of course, but they're not actually in the same photo: if we did our job right, you can't tell that they're both standing on the same half-piece of bridge. It, the water beneath it and the dirt at the edge were the diorama for the "Arrow Cutter" figure from Dusty Trail. The bridge ends at the "center" post, which is why there are two of them. We shot one side, turned the bridge around, then shot the other.
Yes, you can really read the fonts - tilt your head to the right. Bludgeon's font is "Far East," while Futaba's is "Hirosh." Both are rotated 90° clockwise. That's a trick we've been using for years. We considered typing romaji, like we did in that Figuretoon, but didn't have a reliable translation.
Vision-Impaired Transcript
Samurai 1: I think this water is shallow enough that we don't even really need the bridge. Samurai 2: That's not the point! It's the principle of the thing!
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