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In Episode 6 of Bakuon!!, the Bike Club girls play some sort of strange game to decide who's going to organize the race they're holding for the school festival.

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Hane: We're deciding by the popular vote system that Onsa-chan came up with. We each write a character on the palms of our hands, and whoever has the most wins.

Raimu and Hijiri both write 金 (gold) on their hands, which somehow means that Hijiri wins and that her idea has to involve "gold" somehow, which leads her to create a betting pool for the winner of the race.

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Hijiri: I win with the most, which means...I'll be in charge of this matter.
Onsa: But how do you make the race more exciting with gold?

How is this game supposed to work? According to Hane, "whoever has the most wins". The most what? It looks like "the most people writing the same character". But then why does Hijiri win, and not Raimu, who wrote the same character? (Aside from the reason that it's hard to organize a race when you can only communicate by writing on a notebook and no one officially recognizes your existence.)

Also, if you're allowed to pick any character, the odds of any of the 50,000 kanji in the Dai Kan-wa Jiten, or even any of the 2,136 Jouyou kanji, getting a majority among five people are quite low. Initially I thought the characters were limited to days of the week, but Rin picked 銀 (silver), which isn't a day of the week.

Since Hane mentions that Onsa invented this game, I assume it isn't a real game, but maybe it's based on something, or was explained more fully in the manga.

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Torisuda
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  • Out of curiosity, How did they choose those symbols anyway. I have not watched the series, but Obviously if you are going to vote on something, you have to establish what you can vote on. Was Gold something Hijiri suggested earlier in some way, or are their names associated with those symbols? – Ryan Jul 22 '16 at 16:36
  • @Ryan It wasn't shown how they chose the symbols. My screenshots show almost the entire sequence. I had thought maybe it was based on some real Japanese game or tradition. Perhaps the manga explained more thoroughly; if Raimu came up with it, it would be hard to have her explain through signs in the anime, but much easier in the manga. – Torisuda Jul 22 '16 at 16:43

2 Answers2

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It was indeed explained more fully in the manga in volume 3, chapter 18.

Origin of the "game"

Origin of game

Yes, the most people writing the same character win, and yes, you can theoretically write any kanji character there is, as long as you explain how you could make the race more exciting with the idea represented by that kanji.

Hijiri and Raimu both won, but Hijiri was especially excited because in the manga,

it took the girls 15 minutes to play the game to decide on what to do at the school festival, and Hijiri was the only one who wrote a different kanji character in that first round of vote so she felt kind of a loner.

And in the Battle of the Red Cliff, only Zhou Yu was in charge of carrying out the fire attacks because Wu had more military power and was more hard-pressed for survival, just like Hijiri is compared to Raimu.

Lastly, I believe it to be an error on the part of the sub group to translate what Rin wrote as "silver" (銀) when in fact she wrote "bells" (鈴).

What everyone wrote

Gao
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  • That turned out to be way deeper than I was expecting. They probably should have just cut the whole sequence instead of giving us the weird, choppy, half-assed version we got in the anime, because that really needs explanation. – Torisuda Sep 20 '16 at 05:22
  • @Torisuda Yea I've read in some forum that even the Japanese found it hard to comprehend what was going on without any mention of the name or origin of the game. I know the legend, too, but I didn't realize that's what they were playing. – Gao Sep 20 '16 at 05:37
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I have a few guesses, I will offer 2 of them. The 1st would be line weight, but 2 people are also tied there. Furthermore, between those who wrote "gold", the winner had more line weight, but that does not explain the win, anyway.

My 2nd guess is money, of which the winner had more "gold" than the other had "silver". In regards to being able to choose from 50000 Kanji used by chinese or up to 6000 used by Japanese, all stolen from the Chinese language itself, they had to choose from what they materialistically had, of which the answers were basic. While "fire" and "water" do not fit well into this theory because it could mean either in total or nearby, having more money than just silver coins would work well. Furthermore, between the 2 who chose money, the winner also must have had more.

...Now, why am I referring to "gold" as "money"? It appears in a word used this way in Japanese. お金 (おかね Okane) means "money". The お makes it honorable, but that is barely on point, only beside it. If everyone had chosen "money" in this point-of-view and manner, they who had the most, between all of the above, would win. It could have been someone completely different. If everyone had chosen completely different answers, they who had the most, materialistically speaking, would have won.

Of course, this is just a theory, I could be wrong.

  • "Stolen" more like absorbed – Tanya von Degurechaff Jul 22 '16 at 02:25
  • Thanks for your answer, but I don't find either theory very likely. – Torisuda Jul 22 '16 at 03:11
  • And I also have to agree with @NamikazeSheena that "stolen" is a very strange word to use in this context. Japanese "stole" characters from Chinese only in the same sense that English "stole" its alphabet from Latin, or Latin "stole" its alphabet from Etruscan, or Farsi and Urdu "stole" their alphabet from Arabic. – Torisuda Jul 22 '16 at 04:01