HE is a "Tiger General", and his nickname was "Beautiful Beard". Guan Yu is easily one of the greatest warrior-scholars in the original novels, although their actual historical accuracy is, of course, highly suspect and obviously biased.
And incidentally, the proportions he has here are the way he appears in Dynasty Warriors (3 or 4, at least...) so it's accurate to the subject matter (although I remember him a little more chubby), whether it is realistically accurate or not.
Izkael said: I think it's okay since people of 1000s were shorter than we are. Although his shoulders seem to be too wide, that may be the armor.
I have always wondered about that theory. People back in the day were believed to be shorter but records've shown that the Blue Dragon Blade is at least over 2 meters and for something that heavy, it is not possible for, say a 1.6 meters man to carry. Plus, the old image of Guan Yu with the Red Hare shows that he at least as big as a westerner because that horse is enormous in compare to an Asian.
I am not going to claim past people were bigger but in Guan Yu case, it is possibly he coul've been an easily over 1.8 meters height man.
zeroasd said: I am not going to claim past people were bigger but in Guan Yu case, it is possibly he coul've been an easily over 1.8 meters height man.
Records cited as 'accurate' by China and S. Korea claim that Guan Yu was 'one and a half men' in height (and girth), so you might not be that far off. Although, let me point out that they've found Human remains that were 16ft (roughly 4.5m... extremely rough) in height, so...
HE is a "Tiger General", and his nickname was "Beautiful Beard". Guan Yu is easily one of the greatest warrior-scholars in the original novels, although their actual historical accuracy is, of course, highly suspect and obviously biased.
And incidentally, the proportions he has here are the way he appears in Dynasty Warriors (3 or 4, at least...) so it's accurate to the subject matter (although I remember him a little more chubby), whether it is realistically accurate or not.
Anonymous9000 said:
The "Blue" probably is a mistranslation since "aoi" can mean either "green" or "blue".
Nine years late (was working on the guan dao wiki and looking up examples), but...
The specific word used (青) historically can refer to any shade between green and blue ("grue", basically). The same word is also used in Guan Yu's weapon.
In modern times 青 is used for "greener" shades in Chinese (outright "green" for people from the southern parts of China, including most Chinese-speaking descendants of Chinese immigrants in other countries), while Japanese uses it for "blue" most of the time (but the "green" traffic light is also called 青). So, 青 in Chinese text tends to be translated as "green" in English, while 青 in Japanese text often gets translated into "blue".
Since Guan Yu is Chinese, his weapon (靑龍偃月刀/青龙偃月刀) is usually translated as "Green Dragon Crescent Blade". But some translations from Japanese sources (games in particular, like for the Koei series) may instead translate it as "Blue Dragon Crescent Blade".
TL;DR: Not a mistranslation. Just that East Asian cultures have different concept-boundaries for blue-green versus that of English.
