Of Swords and Parasols

 I think I'm about to embark on a wuxia binge(sure, I only have 3 series waiting, but I could probably make that last a month)  As several people have friended me since I last watched wuxia(not that it's been that long) and some probably didn't know what I was talking about when I was posting, I have slapped together a wuxia guide-type post.

It ended up rather longer than planned, but is still much shorter than it could be. 

Here is wikipedia's entry on wuxia.



meganbmoore's much less informative but more succinct description:  Wuxia are coming of age adventure stories set in ancient and medieval China.  The heroes are (in my experience) usually young men raised in near or total seclusion, or who led simpler lives before starting on their adventures.  Most are motivated either by a need to fulfill a promise to a parent or master, or by revenge(or both.)  Though they don't always start out that way, they usually end up being one of the greatest fighter's of their time.  Romance always plays some role, but with varying importance to the plot.  Sometimes it will be a main focus, others, a more background thing.  Most heroes, though, have several girls in love with them throughout the series.  Some will love more than one girl(usually in succession, not simultaneously) and others (the good ones) will only love one girl throughout.  If a series has 2 major heroes, there will usually be at least one of each kind. Some wuxia are straight up fantasy, and others historical dramas.  Most, however, still have a touch of the fantastic, and all, even the most strictly historical, involve fantastical acrobatics, including impressive aerial feats(called "wire-fu.")

I'm not going to get into wuxia movies(except to say that Hero seems to be the most popular but, IMO, none come close to matching up to Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon) but most that have been released in the US in recent years-Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower, etc.-are of the straight historical drama with amazing acrobatics variety.

 I have finished. v There were many fights, many rescues, romantic declarations at imopportune times, random poisoning and recoveries, kidnappings, and at least 4 cases of non-fatally falling off cliffs.

Much fun was had by all.  Well...by me at least.  I am sure other wuxia fans on the f-list who watch it shall also enjoy it.

I am especially amazingly fond of all the parody/homages of wuxia throughout...I don't mean like in Handsome Siblings, where they apparently completely gutted the original story and rewrote it to cater to Dicky Cheung making fun of wuxia, but little "we love wuxia, but let's face it...it can be absurd."  I'm especially fonf of Yan Yan acting out(and failing at) virtually every "scorned other woman" storyline within five minutes, and the amazing sendup to the whole "poisoned wedding/cave" bit from Return if the Condor Heroes.  For that matter, Zhu Liu himself is kinda there to show that you can have a Yang Guo/Little Fish-like character without making him an annoying brat and prankster who needs to be punched in the face (removing the pranks and always trying to one-up and shame everyone you meet makes the character type amazingly endearing...though Chen long himself helped a lot)

I also love how virtually every hero is a former villain, related to a villain, or gets mistaken for a villain.  Plus, Hong Ying and her brother?  The Vale family in ROCH has NOTHING on these two.

Quasi related:  I have found the far more faithful(I'm told) Jimmy Lin/Alec Su Proud Twins(aka, Handsome Siblings) on crunchyroll, as well as a translation of the novel(supposedly complete, but I haven't checked yet)  As I'm very curious to see what the story should be(as I understand it, only the parent's backstory and most of Nic Tse's storyline-which would be the good parts-were really left in the Dicky Cheung/Nic Tse version.)  Do I feel like committing myself to one of those?  And if so, which?

 Up to episode30 of this, and I have come to the conclusion that Li Nan Xing(Wallace Chung) absolutely SHOULD NOT let Jin Zhu Liu(Chen Long) out of his sight for more than 5 minutes.

First of all, seeing an icon dump for Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame in an animecommunity.  No other fandoms in the dump, just Notre Dame.  Animated=anime, maybe?

Second, from the fingers of Neil Gaiman: "Oddly, though, in the morning scene in the Inn in the Stardust film, Charlie Cox is wearing a CGI shirt, because there were concerns that his naked torso could bring down America."

There are one or two on my f-list who I'm sure would have rather had America brought down.

Also, unrelated, but 26 episodes into Patriotic Knights, and I'm declaring Chen Long to be the king of wuxia heroic angst and manpain, emotional or otherwise(and after 2 1/2 episodes of imprisonment, torture, escape and tending without getting to wear a shirt, I swear he was clinging to it like there was no tomorrow once he got one back, mourning his lost modesty)  Hu Ge still holds the romantic manpain screaming award, though.

And also unrelated, I wish I had money for books.  And S3 of Numb3rs.

 

I have started watching(10 eps in) Patriotic Knights, a wuxia about Chen Long and Wallace Chung with swords.

Err...

About a young man named Jin Zhu Liu who is sent by his father(he and his parents have lived alone on an island for 20 years) to pay his respects to a woman his father used to know, and then meet a man named Li for a duel.  Because of his tattered clothes and socially inept behavior, people think he's a vagrant and an idiot(actually, I'm not sure if he's a genius good at playing the idiot, or an idiot with flashes of genius...could be both.)  Along the way he meets Sho Hong Ying, the younger sister of a villain who likes to sneak out and crossdress and thwart her brother's evil plans.  He also meets Zhong Yan Yan and Qin, disciples of heroes, and through them, starts getting involved in the good guy/bad guy things.  This also means he gets to keep running into Hong Ying, of which he highly approves.

The series is the sequel to Lofty Waters, Verdant Bow, but as I understand it, both this and the recent TVB series changed the ending of that one.  It's also in the same series of Seven Swordsmen.  So far at least, though, you don't have to know squat about either to follow along(I did, however, have a fangirl moment when I realized that Zhu Liu's sword was the 2 ended sword from Seven Swordsmen)

Sometimes, youtube MV-makers make it very, very obvious what their favorite thing about a show is.  In this case, so much so that it wasn't until about halfway through when we lightened up on the closeups that I was even sure what it was.

ETA:  Dear LJ, thank you for EATING the MV somewhere between inserting it and posting it.

*kicks*

ETA2: TWICE!  Direct link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=JY6TccCEg5s

Yes, my not-so-inner wuxia fangirl currently rules me (blame calixa, she's feeding the addiction bigtime lately)

I set up a crunchyroll account today so that I can check out as many dramas as I can  before actually buying them(esp. as more are getting mostly-affordable official releases lately) without actually DLing them.  I was going to watch the first episode of The Young Warriors, until I realized that death or bankruptcy was about all that would stop me from watching that one(a: wuxia, b: Hu Ge, c: Eddie Peng, d: same makers as Chinese Paladin, e: calixahas practically been giving me a play-by-play and I MUST see it for myself) so I watched the first episode of Patriotic Knights instead.