I heard the devil whisper in my ear. (uh huh)
No More Kings
He made his message clear when he said:
“Sweep the leg, Johnny!”
I saw this great street art online that shows Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, all grown up, formally dressed with a briefcase, going to office just like his father did. A thought bubble shows he is reliving one of his many rides over a slope with Hobbes by his side, both high on adrenalin and screaming at the top of their lungs. This is one of the most poignant works of art I have ever come across; it’s a pity the artist is anonymous. Interpreting Calvin and Hobbes is a separate topic (and a great one); the amazingly layered, ironic/scathing/delightful commentary on modern times in just three images is a testament to the genius of Bill Watterson. The street art also shows one of the most basic desires of the modern consumer of books, movies, and OTTs, which is : what is x doing now? X here is your favourite character or characters. This is why so many sequels and reunion shows continue to be made. Once we love a character, we want to see him/her again and again.
Cobra Kai is a sequel to the Karate Kid movies, and together they are coming to be known as Miyagi-verse. Cobra Kai has an IMDB rating of 8.5 which proves that people can’t get enough of Miyagi-verse. It’s somewhat mysterious why this fact remained undiscovered over the last 2-3 decades.
Though I never learned martial arts, some of its fundamentals have helped me a great deal – removing distractions, maintaining focus and meditating. Turns out the last one was what I needed the most. Let me explain.
Meditation is often associated with spiritual practices but the fact is that at its most basic, the process is so simple, practical and effective that it should be taught in schools. A perfect analogy is your computer. No matter how powerful the CPU, one buggy pdf viewer can bring the whole system to a crawl. Our brain consciously deals with many thoughts every minute and often this is done in a completely random and idiosyncratic manner. All the unnecessary processes that the brain is dealing with brings down its effectiveness. This results in reduced performance. Meditation is a way to reduce your CPU load. It’s like rebooting your brain – less processes, more CPU power and good performance.
How to do this? Whatever works for you. Some people climb mountains, others listen to peaceful music. Jackie Chan used to sweep the floor of his office as he awaited the results of newly released movie. This was a result of his hard training at the Drama School. Any such technique that reduces the number of processes in your brain is meditation.
I have a special brain and one of the crazy things my brain does is it looks for rhymes and rhythms in all sentences. I have tried to convert this bug into a feature. The title of this post is an example. And I read my articles again and again till they sound “right”. Do you see what I am dealing with?
The Karate Kid movies had a clear distinction between the good guys and the bad guys. Cobra Kai improves on this and the characters take many different paths. Here are the main characters and their evolution.
Johnny: Starts out as a bad guy in The Karate Kid but even then he is reluctant to go all the way and only does it when pressed by his sensei. In the series, he has realised that he was on a wrong path and tries to redeem himself and reinvent Cobra Kai.
Daniel: Under the tutelage of Mr. Miyagi, Daniel has developed a strong sense for values. He does cross the line a few times in the fifth season but they are minor digressions and the lessons learned in his formative years always help him find the right path.
Silver: Most interesting character path. Started out on the ‘no mercy’ path of Cobra Kai; his experiences in Nam led him astray even further. Yet, miraculously, he goes to rehab, reinvents himself and is living a successful life till Kreese shows up and lures him back to Cobra Kai. Even here, you can see the inner struggle of the good and the evil until he surrenders to his inner demon. Dostoyevsky would have loved to write a 600-page novel on him.
Kreese: The ultimate bad guy. He will never come to the other side. The series provides lot of background on what made him this way, mainly his experiences before going to the war and those in Vietnam. This makes him real instead of the stereotypical bad guy with no background. He would be the second protagonist in the Dostoyevsky novel mentioned earlier.
Mr. Miyagi: I have included Miyagi-san for completeness. Mr. Miyagi has been brought up with Japanese values where honour supersedes everything else. He is the source of everything that follows, hence the apt name – Miyagi-verse. Miyagi San never strikes first, Miyagi-Do Karate is for self-defence only. This is in stark contrast with the Cobra Kai technique. Dostoyevsky-san would have no interest in Miyagi-san.
Julie Pierce : When do I learn how to break boards and stuff like that?
Sergeant Kesuke Miyagi : Why break boards? What boards do to you?
The Next Karate Kid
The character graphs of the kids are kind of all over the place. But they are flexible and can go either way. This is consistent because they are trying to figure out who they are.
It seems that the main cast of the Karate Kid movies took the martial arts lessons to heart. What makes Cobra Kai unique is that the same actors are playing their respective roles. In 2018 when the series started, Ralph Macchio (Daniel) was 57, William Zubka (Johnny) was 52, Thomas Ian Griffith (Silver) was 57 and Martin Kove (Kreese) was 72. All of them were and still are, incredibly fit and doing amazing action scenes.
I have no words to praise the kids. The crux of the series depends on them and they come out with flying colours. Courtney Henggeler as Amanda LaRusso and Tanner Buchanan as Robby Keene killed in the first few seasons. Be it a normal scene or an action scene, the kids are wonderfully natural. One good thing that came out of the smartphone revolution is that the term ‘to be camera conscious’ has lost its meaning. By the time they actually face a professional camera, Gen Z kids have taken thousands of selfies and shots and the camera is their BFF. They would not understand why facing a camera was such a big deal in the old days. Good for them!
There is only one thing missing from the series. Imagine how amazing it would have been if Noriyuki “Pat” Morita was still with us to play Mr. Miyagi in the series!
We miss you Miyagi-san!
