 So today I want to talk about the truth of Cobra Kai and for those of you who know me, you know I'm a huge fan of the films of the Karate Kid films and of the Cobra Kai TV series. If you have not watched them yet, I highly, highly recommend it. But you also know that we have broken down the series and films from a martial arts perspective and we've uncovered a lot of fun details. And today we're going to continue that with a couple of updates. And then I want to talk about season five that just dropped. So if you have not seen that yet, I'm going to give you a warning right now. When we get to that section, I will give a spoiler alert, but there will be some season five spoilers because there's a lot of truth that this seasonland covers about the martial arts community as a whole. And I want to talk about that. And if by any chance any of the screenwriters or producers or anyone involved with the show happens to be watching this episode today, I've got a special message for you at the end of the video, along with a name suggestion I want to throw in for consideration. But let's get into it. Alright, so last week we released an episode looking at just a little bit of a fun exercise, trying to determine the belt-breaking system of Cobra Kai. And you can find that link down in the description where we kind of looked at the different evidence of what we saw in the films and what we saw in the TV show about the belt ranks. And we tried to piece together somewhat of rudimentary belt-ranking system just for fun, but we did have a couple of comments that pointed some stuff out and I wanted to address and give a quick update on that. The first thing, so basically what we came up with, if you want to see how we came up with the breakdown, click on the video below in the description. But ultimately we decided that the belt-ranking system was something along the lines of white, yellow, green, brown, and black. But a small detail was brought to my attention that I missed, and I'm actually ashamed I missed it being the super fan that I am, but it was mentioned in season four in a flashback, John Crease asking John if he felt he's special now because he got his blue belt. Ah, okay that's right, so we have blue belt in the mix. As to where it goes in the order, I'm going to guess it goes before green, even though traditionally you know between Karate and Taekwondo and Hangsudo, green and blue tend to swap places a lot depending on the school and system, but I'm going to say it makes more sense that it comes before green because as we saw in the Karate Kid there were green belts and brown belts in the class, and a month and a half later in the tournament the green belt had graduated to brown, so I doubt he went from green to blue to brown in the course of a month and a half, so I think it's logical that in the Cobra Kai world that blue was before green, so that actually amends our list to white, yellow, blue, green, brown and black. And another viewer pointed out another small detail, he said that in the scene where Crease actually takes down the brown belt that is distracted, that he's got a white stripe on his belt, perhaps suggesting that like most traditional systems, brown belt is split into multiple levels. Going back at a closer look it's not actually a stripe, it is the Sentry logo. Sentry is on every uniform and every belt pretty much in the films and TV series, so that's what that is, but it does bring up a good question or a great point in that most systems of the brown belt, it is extremely, extremely common that brown belt is split into multiple levels, usually three, sometimes two, sometimes more, depends on the school. So I think just to amend that video, I think we can kind of look at the list and say Cobra Kai is roughly white, yellow, blue, green, brown, possibly second, third degree brown and then black belt, so that was just kind of a fun exercise. And I also want to bring this up, this whole series started like when we started our channel one of our first videos was analyzing the karate styles of Cobra Kai and Miyagi Do, and it was a fun debate, we had a lot of back and forth to people agreeing with our analysis and disagreeing with our analysis, but I think that argument can be put to bed right now. In both the first two episodes that we released, we determined that Cobra Kai was some form of Tanksudo, based on the evidence that the show and the film gave us, and that Miyagi Do was a variant of Gojiru Karate, based on its history and what the films had told us. And this show is time and time again, it has leaned into both styles very, very hard to kind of cement that. So we have now confirmed that Cobra Kai is a version of Tanksudo, but even brutalized. So it's a more unique, dirty version of Tanksudo, and Miyagi Do is definitely some sort of form of Gojiru, because we see, as we saw in the films, in the flashback of this season, there is a logo, there's no story, there's no spoilers for this, but we do see the emblem of the Goju Kai fist, which suggests the Gojiru organization. So I think that's a fun update that over the course of the series that we have had repeated evidence of these determinations. So I think it is safe to agree on now that Tanksudo, or a version of Tanksudo is Cobra Kai, and a version of Miyagi Do is, or a version of Gojiru is Miyagi Do. And now to talk about season five, and there's going to be some spoilers here. If you guys have not watched season five yet, if you have not watched this show yet, what are you doing? Pit pause, go watch them all, binge them, and then come on back. And if you haven't watched season five yet, I am going to be getting into some spoilers now. So this is a spoiler warning, just very clear spoiler warning. We're going to talk about season five because I think it hits on some certain themes and trends, and it holds up a mirror to us, masterfully in my opinion, that shows us the truth of the martial arts, politics, the world, community, and personal influence. But I have to say, I think my favorite thing about the season is this show has done nothing but draw lines. It's drawn sides, you know, this is my way, this is my school, this is my family, this is my life, and every character has had these lines drawn in the sands. To the point we're in season four, it almost got too much. Like it was almost like Danny was too hardcore, too hard headed, Johnny was too blinded, like everybody was so set in their ways. I really appreciate how season five blurred those lines. There really wasn't any focus on one style being better than the other. If anything, they showed the strength of mixing. Like the whole idea of cross training has come full circle. Each character now, each main character now uses a blend of styles, whether it's Cobra Kai, or Miyagi Do, or Tong Sudo, or Eagle Fang, or whatever, they're mixing together and they are choosing what's appropriate to use when. So there's a lot of growth there, and I think that is such an accurate thing in the martial arts. There is no such thing as a single art that is better than all other arts. And everyone is, I think, strongest when you find a couple that work for you, and you can combine them and take the best of those arts and make it your own thing. That, I think, is a very powerful message, and I think they finally really drove that home in a very effective way. And there's also a big theme on balance of mind, because martial arts isn't just about what you can do to fight or how well you can fight. It is a whole life balance. And while balance has always been the theme in the Karate Kid series as a whole, I think it really came to a head here, and I've got a good friend. I've heard other people mention that. Well, why was Daniel able to beat Terry Silver so easily when he got his butt kicked the first time? Well, quite simple. Let's look at the context around that. Yeah, Terry Silver was much more dangerous to Daniel, and handed Daniel his own ass quite easily. But then all of a sudden later, he couldn't touch him. Why? Well, let's look at the scenario. The first encounter, Daniel was completely off balance. He had lost his family. They had, they had left him at that point in time. He was completely endowed of himself. He had no self-esteem. He was down and dumps. He was defeated. He didn't have that inner strength, whereas Terry Silver was totally on top. He was completely off balance. Whereas later, it's flipped where when they had their second confrontation, Silver one has just lost the support of his own students. Like they're no longer following him. But let's not forget too, he's not walking in fresh. He just came in from a massive battle in his home, and he had a battle to the death with chosen. So he's not exactly starting from square one. He is exhausted when he shows up and he is off balance. He is angry. He is fighting from just pure anger at this point in time and hatred. Whereas Daniel now has the balance. He's got all his friends and family there in full support. He has found his message. He has found his purpose to fight for it. He is much more focused. And I do think that is a lesson in life that, you know, just because somebody might be better than someone else doesn't mean they win every single time. Contextual scenarios and whatever what's going on in their life and their mind plays a huge role in that. And I think Cobra Kai has nailed that aspect. This show has done wonders with character development. Now they don't just have a couple of characters to develop. I mean, their season one already starts off with a lot of characters and each season just adds. They don't get rid of characters. They just keep adding. The roster of season five is tremendous. It is a huge, huge cast of characters. And yet somehow in 10 short episodes, they still find a way to develop virtually all of them and keep advancing their stories in a natural and believable way. Like these characters are so three-dimensional and even the guest stars they bring back from previous films, they find a way to flush them out. They've redeemed Chosen. I mean Chosen was so cookie cutter. Johnny was so cookie cutter. Mike Barnes was so cookie cutter. These are just bad boys of the 80s, but they have given them so much depth now. And I'm actually ashamed that I fell for the Mike Barnes thing. I was so into having Mike Barnes come onto the show. I was so excited to have Mike Barnes come onto the show because I really wanted to see Daniel fired up and I wanted another big showdown with him. And they even teased it. They talked about how Daniel was still, he had the fear of that. And Terry Silver was like, oh, I still got some friends I could bring in. They still painted him as a threat. And they even released the photo, the promotional photo of Mike Barnes assumes he is angry and mad. So I just assumed, oh, Mike Barnes, he was the bad guy. He's going to be the bad guy now. Now I fell for the 180 they turned and I shouldn't have seen it coming, especially since they took Chosen and Johnny and flipped them around and made them real humans. I shouldn't have expected that with Mike Barnes, but I love that they did that. I wish we saw more of him in the show, but we had all three of his bullies together on scene on the same side. Never in my mind as a cry to keep fans that I ever think we would see that. So I love how the show has broken stereotypes. It shows us the truth. People are not two dimensional creatures. We are not black and white. We are all gray. We all, even if the ones who are bad, there is a reason. Like even with Crease and Silver, they're still evil. They're still bad, but we at least saw what took them from here to there, why they are making decisions that they made. And the show is just gold when it comes to character development, especially with so many characters. Cobra Kai shows us a real scenario of how influential the martial arts can be. And that's why I consider it the ultimate martial arts show, not because of the choreography, not because of the bad asteries or just even just the characters, but the truths involved. The influence that the martial arts, regardless of what style you train in, can have on your life. We saw characters grow from it. We saw characters be destroyed by it. We saw Mike Barnes talk about that was his life. That's all he knew. And it was taken away. He had nothing. And he was down in dumps. Like people, you know, the martial arts infiltrate our lives to a mental, to our core. And sometimes it becomes a part of our identity. And when that identity is challenged, it could be a hard thing to face. And I think that we've seen that over the course of real life with real people, real martial artists in real life. And we see this on the show that the martial arts is such a huge influence on our life and our world. And this show perfectly encapsulates what it means. It's always about balance. The ultimate, ultimate lesson is balance and how hard it is to achieve, but how important it is because without it, you're a broken person really. So for all of you guys who work on the show, the screenwriters, the producers, the cast, everyone, I just want to give a very heartfelt thank you for what you've created. The Karate Kid trilogy has been my favorite series of movies in my entire life growing up. I love the first one. I love the second one. I know the third one gets some shame. People don't like it as much, but I love that one too. And I think together they make a solid trilogy. And as the basis of the show, the show was wealthy because of the series, a movie series, but you guys did something better. You guys took this trilogy that I loved so much and you created a show that makes the movies better. And not just that, like, thank you for being the fans that you are because this show can be easily loved by someone who's never seen the films. So the brand new viewers, new generation can love it. Then there's the generation who's familiar with the films. You can appreciate it. Then there's the fans who know the films pretty well can appreciate it. But then like the super fans, you guys find a way to throw in so many deep cuts that the references are so fun. I can't even count them all, there's so many. We've got Weber Industries. Weber was Daniel's original last name in the script. We've got Fernandez Meats referring to Freddie Fernandez in his t-shirt, making bacon from the first film. We have The Shrine from the Karate Kid cartoon makes it a little appearance just as a quick little easter egg in the background. And we've got Daniel talking about just a throwaway line how his mom even used to date his history teacher, Mr. Harris. We saw Mr. Harris in the first film, such a deep cut. And even this season, when we see Jessica again, nice surprise, wasn't expecting to see her. But then they had to bring in the woman at the bar fight, Elizabeth Ann Rooney, who she mentioned in Karate Kid 3 as a girl who broke up her relationship. And all the way down to the visual cues, such as Daniel putting on the glasses over his shiner, it's just every level of the show, every layer has such depth. There's something for everyone. So my heart felt thanks to all of you guys who created the show. You have done a tremendous job. You have took something that meant so much to me and you have enriched it. And I cannot thank you enough and tell you how much I've appreciated it. And if I may, I would like to throw in a name into consideration. I know where the season ended. Well, we're still supposed to get a name for the Sekai Tekai Tournament. You know, they're probably not going to call it Miyagi-Do or Eagle Fang, but they were told they had to choose a name. So I'm assuming it's going to be a combination of something Daniel and Johnny will come up with. If you guys haven't done it already or come up with something already, I would like to throw in as a nominated name, East West Karate. And I've got three reasons for it. First, both, you're going to have to find common ground between something that represents both Daniel and Johnny. Well, I think both of their styles are, you know, Eastern styles with Western influences. So it's East West. It's a perfect blend of both Daniel and Johnny's martial arts. Two, the original script of the karate kid was actually called East meets West in West. So it's kind of a fun nod to that. And three, the first school I ever went to was actually a franchise called East West Karate. So if you're still looking for suggestions, I am nominating the All Valley East West Karate School or Dojo or something along those lines as a potential name for the show. That would just, I just think that would be funny. That would tickle the hell out of me. But anyway guys, I just wanted to thank you so much. I cannot wait to see what you guys do with this. You have my heart. You have my whole termination. I'm going where you follow me. So thank you so much for creating the show. And for all of you who've watched our episodes and watched my rants on the show, you know how much I love it. And I know a lot of you love it equally as well. Please, if you leave any comments down below in the description or in the comment section, please keep them spoiler free because not no one, not everyone has seen it yet. The show is still pretty brand new. So try not to spoil it for anyone. If I do catch any spoilers in the comments, I'm probably going to delete them for now or at least put a spoiler alert warning in, you know, bump it down a bit. So just, just try not to spoil the fun for anyone. Now you're going to want to click this right here. This is the video where we started our whole analysis. Actually, this is a follow up. It's a more detailed analysis of Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do and what their styles are and how he came to the conclusion that Cobra Kai was Tanksido and Miyagi-Do was Gojiru. So enjoy that.