Fridge / Kubo and the Two Strings

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Fridge Brilliance

• Everyone's prayers appeared to be answered at the beginning... but not Kubo's. Of course Hanzo would not answer Kubo's prayer and light the lantern! He couldn't because he never actually died!
• The twist that Monkey is Kubo's mother is foreshadowed - Look at the scar on Monkey's face - the scar matches, but is mirrored to the other side of her face.
  • Also, when Sariatu pretends to speak from the monkey charm to remind Kubo the rules she gave him.
  • Small thing, but there's a part where Monkey combs Kubo's hair and he angrily straightens it back. A common mother-son banter.
• Monkey and Beetle never get an official romance, but they do hit it off pretty well. Almost too well for strangers. They banter back and forth quite a bit. ...Like a married couple. Wait a minute...
• Beetle mentions that he was cursed. Well, he's an amnesiac - must have just been that. Actually no, it wasn't.
• After the climax, take a look at The now human Moon King's eyes - one of his eyes is white, like it was before... the other is brown. Like Kubo's. And the eye that is brown is Kubo's missing eye.
  • And the eye that's blind just so happens to be the eye Kubo took.
• When the Moon King became human, the full moon turned into a crescent moon, symbolizing that he could no longer see as much as he could blind and that he lost most, if not all, of his godly powers.
• The Moon King's final fate. The movie emphasizes how memories of loved ones become favorite stories. After losing his identity and becoming human, the villagers quickly create a story of a helpful, kind man to launch his new memories.
• A bit of fridge heartwarming with Beetle's guess about what four words Hanzo said to Sariatu to make her fall in love with him. Beetle guessed "I love you, Monkey" when Hanzo really said "You are my quest". Since Beetle is really Hanzo and Monkey is Sariatu, it becomes sweet that his first guess unintentionally was telling his wife he loves her. And in a sense, he was right.
• The insect part of Beetle's curse makes sense when you realize Hanzo's crest is a stag beetle. His curse is a cruel mockery of his symbol.
  • While being a stag beetle another beetle often associated with it is the hercules beetle, or kabuto. "Kabuto" is also what you call a samurai's helmet.
• Beetle not also falling victim to the Garden of Eyes could likely be due to his amnesia preventing him from remembering anything (including being entranced) for very long.
  • That and his son was in danger. Even if he didn't know the reason why, the only desire a father would have in that situation would be to save their son.
• Earlier in the film, Monkey explains that Moon King desires his domain to be 'perfect' (by his definition). This explains why he's literally blind to the good of the mortal world: he's so obsessed with perfection he can't see anything but flaws.
• The Moon King origami figure Kubo creates while storytelling to the villagers looks nothing like the real Moon King. This explains why Kubo was so easily tricked by the Moon King as he never expected him to look like anything but an armored war lord.
• There's a clue that the helmet's location is a trap. When Kubo is telling the others about his dream he puts Hanzo, who is already pointing the way, in his bag and walks in the other direction. We don't see Hanzo again until they get to the castle.
• Beetle has a marked taste for goofy jokes. He's making dad jokes.
• Kubo's mother's name is Sariatu. when she became Monkey, her name was shortened to just Saru, Japanese for "monkey".
• The lyrics of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" fit for Monkey and Beetle. Or their true identities.
  I don't know why nobody told you
  How to unfold your love
  I don't know how someone controlled you
  They bought and sold you
  • As in, Hanzo wondering how Sariatu had never felt how warm love feels in the human world, because the Moon King treats love like a possession.
  I don't know how you were diverted
  You were perverted too
  I don't know how you were inverted
  No one alerted you
  • As in, someone like Kubo or Sariatu wondering how badly Hanzo was hurt by the Moon King when he was transformed into Beetle, and he didn't even know it until the end.
  • Also the song was originally written by George Harrison, a member of The Beatles. And who else in this movie is a beetle?
• You would think that a samurai like Beetle would be associated with an iconic Katana rather than a bow, but samurai truly were associated with the bow and arrow centuries before the first Katana was created.
• Monkeys and apes have a bad reputation in Japan, similar to serpents and vipers in European folklore. It's kind of odd that one of the main protagonists would be such an animal. We later learn that not only is the monkey Sariatu, but Sariatu herself was once a moon sister, who was initially sent to murder Hanzo. She was a villain after all, albeit one who had reformed before the movie even began.
  • Knowing this, choosing for the animal to be a monkey in particular seems to fit in with the overall moral of the story. Sariatu's sisters shame her for wasting her magic on the creation of such a base and lowly animal in the same way that they shame her for loving the mortal realm despite its flaws. But both Monkey and human beings have good in them that far outweighs the drawbacks.
• In the opening, Sariatu is having an awfully hard time struggling through raging seas and rough waves to get to safety. This is not a coincidental occurrence that just happens to make her escape more difficult — tides are controlled by the moon.
  • There is also the little fact that the entire scene happens at night with the first actual movie scene being a very long shot of the moon. It's not just water, it is literally her father trying to drown her in the ocean he controls.
• It's strange that the title mentions two strings when the shamisen has three. It's referring to Sariatu's hair and Hanzo's bowstring, which Kubo uses to restring his shamisen (along with one of his own hairs) and defeat his grandfather.
• The Sisters and the Moon King, beings of the moon, are the main enemies of this story. Kubo is thrown into a quest to find his father's magic armor, which is the only thing that can save him from these beings of the moon. Seems pretty standard until you notice that there is a sun motif on the armor.
• How would Kubo acquire the skills necessary to take care of himself and his mother if she's catatonic for most of the day? He mentions, while praying to his father, that her condition is getting worse over time. Presumably she was lucid for longer periods of time back when Kubo was younger.
• Fridge Heartwarming: Why is Kubo accepting of his mortal grandfather? For two reasons:
  • When his grandfather asks "What happened to your eye", it reminds Kubo of his mother.
  • Look at Raiden's mortal eyes. The blind eye is silvery and clouded, like Beetle's eyes. The good eye is brown and warm, like Monkey's eyes. So whenever Kubo looks into his grandfather's eyes, he'll always see his parents staring back.
• Ever notice how Kubo and Beetle are sometimes in sync? Like when Monkey tells them not to touch the skull-rock formation, and they both touch it anyway. Or when they both messily stuff their mouths when eating. Perhaps it's because they're like father, like son.
  • Another thing, both Kubo and Beetle are such bad liars. Earlier, Kubo lied to monkey that the origami birds that pecked her backside must've been the cause of mosquitoes, even though they were in the tundra. And later on, when Beetle's touching the entrance to the temple of bones causes a piece to break off in his hand, he points to Kubo and blames the boy.
• If Beetle didn't intend to harm Kubo when he snatched him away, why do the shadows show Beetle ominously poised over Kubo's cowering shadow? ...Because that wasn't Kubo's shadow: it was Little Hanzo's shadow distorted.
• Through most of the film, whenever Kubo or his mother charge magic in their hand before giving the shamisen a powerful strum, the magic appears as a silver-blue glow around their fingertips. Kind of like moonlight. But in the final battle when Kubo unleashes the magic blast that finally defeats the Moon King, his hand glows gold. Like sunlight.
  • It's only fitting, because it ultimately represents he is like both his mother (a immortal possessing magic) and his father (a mortal who lives in the sunlight).
  • Kind of makes you wonder, when facing off with Kubo's mother, why did the Sisters' magic glow gold instead of blue like the night? Because the Sisters represent stars, and what are stars? Tiny suns.
• Beetle's dream about fighting the Gashadokuro makes sense once it's revealed he is Hanzo: it wasn't just any dream about something that really happened. He dreamt about his former life as Hanzo, back when he acquired the Sword Unbreakable the first time.
• Through the movie, Kubo sets out to protect himself by finding three pieces of his father's armour - the Sword Unbreakable, Breastplate Impenetrable and Helmet Invulnerable. However, at the final showdown against the Moon King, Kubo eventually finds his strength when he ditches all three, allowing himself to be vulnerable and human.
  • What's more, it's symbolic of Kubo keeping his promise to his mother to never be like his grandfather: "cold, hard, and perfect." By defeating the Moon Beast with The Power of Love instead, he's proving to be the exact opposite of the Moon King.
• Each of Hanzo's armor pieces is named by its noun, followed by its adjective. This becomes interesting when you remember that in Japan, names are addressed first by surname, then by one's name. So when they call it the "Sword Unbreakable", they're really calling it the 'Unbreakable Sword' or the 'Invulnerable Helmet'.
• It's sobering when you realize why the amnesiac Moon King has no memories when he's made mortal: In the Heavens, the Moon King never made memories. He was too preoccupied watching others and their faults to worry about his own (immortal) life or his own family.
  • This is a Call-Back to earlier in the movie, when Kubo asked what his father was like, "when he wasn't fighting, when he was with [his family]". Sariatu had an answer for that ("Just like [Kubo], strong, and funny, and clever") because he had made memories beyond being a samurai. But what of Raiden, what's he like when he's not up there being the cruel and sadistic Moon King? The answer: nobody he can remember.
• Ever notice how Monkey uses the word "tempted" twice? And Beetle says "This is a miracle" twice? On the surface, it seems to simply reflect Monkey as a pessimist and Beetle as an optimist. But later, you learn they are respectively Kubo's mother and father, and it all makes sense. Kubo's mother, Sariatu, came from the Heavens, where humans were viewed as weak creatures who are easily "tempted". Very fitting that she also mentions she's 'tempted', as she's associating herself as "human". Whereas Kubo's father, Hanzo, is optimistic like his son and views any small good thing as "a miracle".
• During the battle for the first piece of the armor, Kubo is about to fall from a high place to his death, when Beetle uses his archery skills to pin him and save the boy. If you watch Beetle's expression, you see that even he's surprised at how he managed to catch him. What he doesn't know is he's Kubo's father, and ergo, has Dad reflexes.
• It's Played for Laughs when Beetle points out that he and Monkey are called by what they are, but not Kubo. This becomes an inside joke when you consider parents are called by their titles (mother, father), but not children.
• A Meta-Fridge Brilliance: During his recording session voicing Beetle, Matthew McConaughey sports a scruffy beard and mustache. It suits him, given his role is a giant Beetle who has been isolated and unkempt for a long time. But then, you look at Hanzo, see he has the same facial hair, and it all makes sense! He's trying to project the heroic (and amnesiac) Hanzo through Beetle at the same time.
• It's likely that the reason why Kubo can never come up with proper endings to the stories he tells is because he doesn't actually know what a good ending to a story is supposed to be like. We see that Sariatu is just as good a storyteller as Kubo, which could be where he got his skills from, but then it's shown that her memory problems kick in and she forgets important details to the point that she can't finish the story and leaves it hanging. Since Kubo learned about stories from her, it's no wonder he doesn't know how to end a story himself.
• Fridge-Heartwarming: At one point during his introduction to Kubo and Monkey, Beetle expresses that even with amnesia, he senses he was "once part of something much greater". Perhaps that greater purpose was his calling as a samurai (and that could be it), but there's also another greater purpose he's trying to remember: a husband and father.
• The entrance to Beetle's cave is in the eye of the giant statue's head. Which eye is it? Its right eye. Same as Kubo's good eye. In a sweet way, this somewhat foreshadows that Kubo's father was right before his eye.
• If one pays attention, one notices that before his adventure began, Kubo used to carry a gourd around with him, before he lost it in the snowy wasteland. It's a small detail, but in reality, it's basically a water bottle for Kubo. Which suits him, considering he speaks a lot during his stories and would need water to keep from getting hoarse.
• The two prayers Kubo says aren't just significant for being Book Ends to his journey. It's also when they're told that makes them highly symbolic. The first prayer is told some time before sunset, marking the impending end of Kubo's peaceful and idyllic life with his mother. The final prayer in the movie, by contrast, is told around dawn. Because it's the dawn of Kubo's newfound family in his now-mortal and humbly amnesiac grandfather and new step-grandmother.
• During the fight on the boat, Monkey is fighting with one of the Sisters when Beetle gets back on the boat (with the fish he and Kubo previously caught). At seeing him, the Sister almost instantly goes in to attack him. Seems like overkill, even to attack one of Kubo's companions. Whether this was intentional or not, it foreshadows Beetle's identity as Hanzo, and how the Sister probably recognized him.
• Kubo accidentally burning his mouth on Monkey's whale soup may seem like Fridge Logic when you bear in mind this is the same kid who spends his mornings blowing on his mother's rice to cool it off. Shouldn't he know by now that all piping hot foods need to cool a little before you eat it? But then a light bulb goes off: if Kubo usually feeds his mother before he feeds himself, then that would mean his food would normally cool by the time he got around to eating. His drinking the soup hot (and needing Monkey to cool it first) was born out of habit.
  • Also counts as Fridge-Heartwarming when one realizes it's the mark of how selfless this kid is if he's this accustomed to feeding his mother first.
• This movie came out in 2016, the Year of the Monkey. How fitting that a movie in that year stars a Monkey as one of the main characters.
• During his dinner conversation with Monkey and Beetle, Kubo talks about his life before his quest. One of the things he mentions is how he's good at telling stories but "not so good at ending them". If you pretend "story" is synonymous with someone's "life", it lends a certain Double Entendre when you realize he's not just talking about concluding a tale. It's the movie's way of having Kubo tell the audience he's not a killer, ergo he's not good at "ending stories". This later becomes chillingly significant when the climax has Kubo battling the Moon King with the intent to "end" his grandfather's "story". But the resolution is about Kubo showing mercy and giving his grandfather a new story.
  • It also becomes a triple entendre when Kubo ends his parents' stories alongside their spirits, in the sense of giving their lives peaceful closure.
• This one CinemaWins came up with: There's a reason Kubo seems especially offended when his grandfather calls the mortal world a "hell". If one notices, Kubo hasn't had an easy life, to put it mildly: deprived of his father, had his eye stolen as a baby, forced to live like a peasant, eventually began taking care of his mother at the expense of his childhood, and had to raise money to keep them both from starving. And yet, Kubo never complains about his past adversities. In fact, when regaling Beetle about his life before his quest, he doesn't speak one ill word about it and instead sees the good in it. Meanwhile, you have the Moon King who has lived in the Heavens, safe from the very hardships of the world he so detests. And he has the gall to openly call Kubo's world a miserable place, when in reality he caused all this misery in his grandson's life.

Fridge Horror

• Thank goodness Kubo took away all of Raiden's memories, or else he would've been absolutely pissed and the murder of our main character would've soon followed. But ironically, it's not that much of a bad thing considering he'd be reunited with Sariatu and Hanzo once more.
• It's never specified just how long it was since Kubo's hometown got destroyed - how long were the villagers sitting in the rubble?
• The Moon King's whole goal was to bring Kubo to the heavens to live with the rest of his mother's family. How do we know that family is limited to a grandfather and two aunts? If there are any other relatives up there, they might be pretty pissed over the deaths of Kubo's aunts and the Moon King's fate.... Even if they don't come after Kubo, imagine living your life and then one morning two of your cousins/sisters/nieces/aunts were dead, and the patriarch of your family was stuck in a world akin to Hell (in your mind, at least) forever changed and with no memory of his previous life.
  • And what if all it would take to restore the Moon King's memories and deity status would be to remove the eye Kubo gave him? Any relatives might try exactly that if they wanted the Moon King back.
• Whenever Sariatu, Kubo's mother, becomes lucid at night, she cries out for her son until Kubo tells her that he's there. Sariatu has very justifiable reasons for worrying about Kubo's whereabouts at night since the Moon King can find him if he's outside at night. Imagine what it must have been like for Sariatu to feel that terror of needing to know where her son is every day until the night Kubo isn't there in the cave with her.
• Those moon sisters seem a bit familiar. Where else have we seen an eerie, otherworldly woman who wishes to "save" children from a "bleak reality" by stealing their eyes? If there were more sisters than we saw in the movie, (or some other women stumbles upon their power) she may very well be destined to have a run-in with a little girl named Coraline...
• With the Moon King and his daughters gone, who is going to protect the world from creatures that can hold it "in their fingernail"?
  • Kubo. Provided they aren't dead of course.
  • Who said those creatures were even threatening the world? Given the Sisters' sadistic nature, isn't it possible those creatures may have been hunted for sport?
• It's enforced that Kubo is a master storyteller, even for his age. With these storytelling skills and his powerful magic, what if eventually telling the stories of how his parents met and his adventure accidentally breaks the Moon King's memory seal, given the memories weren't truly lost?
  • He's going to have to be very careful to never do that, especially if both of them are part-immortal now.
  • It seems more likely that if the Moon King's memories return, they will be tempered because of what he sees through his new eye. Where once he only saw the imperfection and flawed nature of the world below, he will now see the kindness, the love, the laughter and hope that dwells there as well. So even if he returned to the heavens, he would have a new perspective.
• In the Beetle Clan Castle, we see lots of armor strewn about, but no actual corpses. Odd, what ever happened to the men? Then, you learn Hanzo, their leader, was changed into a giant beetle. Now here comes the disturbing part: upon defeating Hanzo, did the Moon King change Hanzo's men into actual beetles? Did he force poor Hanzo to watch?
  • What's more is it possible the Moon King could've also changed them into monsters?
• The Guardian of the Sword Unbreakable is a giant skeleton made up of smaller, human-sized bones (officially referred to as a "Gashadokuro"). In Japanese Folklore, the Gashadokuro is a yokai constructed from the souls of those who have died from famine and starvation. It is implied in the film that the Moon King was the one that gave the sword to it to keep it out of human hands, so odds are the Moon King was the one who created it. Do you see where I'm going with this?
  • Like everything else on Earth, the Gashadokuro is yet one more thing that convinces the Moon King that Earth is a living hell. Because if they're made up of those who died from famine, what does this Gashadokuro say about our world?
• What would've become of Sariatu if Kubo hadn't been found by her sisters? How much worse could she have gotten before it became too much for Kubo? Would she have died from her head injury before long? Poor Kubo would've been left without a father and a mother.
  • Worse still, Kubo would've never gone on his adventure, and poor Beetle/Hanzo would've eventually died alone never knowing who he was or what was missing from his life.
• Monkey nearly stabbed Beetle. Once their true identities are revealed, it's ironic that Sariatu nearly killed Hanzo like she was supposed to years ago, if it hadn't been for Kubo's intervention. It would've also been tragic for Kubo's mother to kill her husband and never really know the truth then.

Fridge Logic

• It looked a lot like Kubo's instrument was lost in the lake scene.
  • Perhaps, just like Kubo's robes, Sariatu blessed the shamisen.
• How did they end up going from snow to a warm lake so quickly?
  • Look at the cave Kubo, Monkey, and Beetle are walking through when Kubo is telling Beetle his story. There's a waterfall behind them and the rocks are covered in moss, indicating they're transitioning from snow (the mountains) to where it thaws (the lake bed).
• How does origami-Hanzo know anything about where the magic items are if the real Hanzo is actually Beetle?
  • Maybe Hanzo's stolen memories drifted through the ether and somehow found their way to the origami-Hanzo?
  • Part of the magic that animates Paper Hanzo clearly causes him to function like a compass that is drawn toward the armor pieces. The way he turns back to the right direction when Kubo turns him after he first appears is very compass-like behavior.
• Is there a sun queen? What does she think of all this?
  • A ruler of the sun would be irrelevant to the story. And as far as mythological deities go, most of them don't care what goes on in the mortal realm unless it actually involves them, like a mortal committing blasphemy against them. The sun ruler probably either just doesn't exist or didn't care about the Moon family's shenanigans on Earth, because as stated before, it has nothing to do with the sun.
  • She could well be the creator of the magic armor, given it has a sun motif.
  • Also, it's possible that there is a Sun Goddess (Amaterasu, perhaps), but they're unable to act during the night, much like the Moon King is unable to act in the daylight.
• Why didn't the origami-Hanzo point to the helmet first or, in case it wanted Kubo to find his father, right after Kubo meet Beetle? The object is Hidden in Plain Sight, having no guardian monster whatsoever and right next to the place where Kubo and his mother had hidden themselves from the Moon King for years.
  • Origami-Hanzo doesn't show up until they reach the farlands. We have no idea how far away he is from that town, for all we know, the helmet may actually have been farther away than the other pieces and they were travelling that way the whole time. We don't know the geography, just that the first two pieces are in the "farlands" and Hanzo's castle is at the edge of it.
• If the Moon King was able to steal one of Kubo's eyes, what kept him from moving a few inches and getting the other?
  • It was mentioned by Kubo early in the movie when he was trying to contact Hanzo that Hanzo saved him (by some means) from having his other eye stolen, so the Moon King evidently didn't get the chance to take the other eye.
• Why didn't the Moon King try to steal Sariatu's eyes, if she was the one that betrayed the immortal family?
  • Because he wants to blind Kubo in order to bring him to the Moon Kingdom, rather than as a punishment; presumably, either Sariatu could return there if she wanted to or the Moon King wouldn't have wanted her back, due to the whole treachery thing.
    • Even so, the Moon King could have stolen Sariatu's eyes either after the betrayal in order to prevent her from associating with mortals further, or when she was born as a preemptive action.
• What cured Sariatu of memory loss after she became Monkey?
  • Presumably because she transferred her spirit/soul into a new vessel, whereas when she was in her human form, she had to make do with a grievous head injury that was the cause for her Alzheimer's-esque memory loss.