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asian wuxia fantasy genre (if u have nothing left to watch)

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DarkProphet

Lieutenant
Red Shirt
If some of you are running out of Sci-fi/Fantasy series to watch (a "drought"), you can check out some of the wuxia fantasy and samurai series from asia. It'll definitely cure your boredom.

I've watched tons of sci-fi/fantasy series (b5, angel, buffy, stargate sg1, stargate atlantis, firefly, star trek, tng, ds9, etc.) and when I finished watching them I had nothing else left to watch. But the asian wuxia fantasy genre has resurrected my interest in television.

It's almost an endless pool of series to watch as there are hundreds of asian fantasy serials to explore. The wuxia fantasy TV series are usually around 30-50 episodes long that is told with a beginning, middle and end. It's truly a novel for television in the same way Babylon 5 is for sci-fi TV (but much more so). Except that wuxia TV series has no stand-alone episodes and is completely serialized like the series 24.

If you are interested in experimenting in the asian fantasy genre, it will definitely be worth your time especially if you are running out of things to watch. These series are produced by HK, Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan and quite a few of them have DVD releases with english subtitles.

Some of my recommendations - Legend of Condor Heroes, Return of Condor Heroes, Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, Musashi, Yoshitsune, Xiao Au Jiang Hu, Spirit of the Sword, Patriotic Knights.

So if you are willing to give the genre a shot, you almost have an endless pool of series to cure your boredom.
 
Any suggestions other than DVD? I don't like to cold-buy something that I might not like. Any cable networks showing this stuff or anything like that? Legal downloads? Netflix got any?
 
^^ They used to show some on the International Channel which I no longer get and am not sure if it's still around. At least I think they were "wuxia", some historical/fantasy stuff, kind of so-so if you aren't really into the stuff.

I got way too much crap on my plate as it is to add this to my already overloaded viewing schedule.
 
JNG said:
Any suggestions other than DVD? I don't like to cold-buy something that I might not like. Any cable networks showing this stuff or anything like that? Legal downloads? Netflix got any?
Click to expand...

Regarding TV series, you can always go to youtube.com or veoh.com to see some clips. sometimes they post the entire series with english subs but its rare. They have the complete samurai series Shinsengumi with english subs at veoh.com. Just do a search for "Shinsengumi Episode".

The easiest way is to check out the wuxia movies like Kung-Fu Cult Master (Evil Cult), Heaven Chronicles and Swordsman II.

The wuxia genre is a lot like Star Wars. Instead of The Force, there is Chi. And instead of light sabres, there are swords. So it's kind of like a magical universe but set in ancient China.
 
I never like the Taiwan productions. The slow pace, dramatics, bad costume and hairstyles made me bored and sleepy. Can be very funny at times. Like the one instance the swordswoman "flies" away, the camera was vertical down on her so she was looking up and her posture was exactly like Superman's. "Up, up and away!"

My preference tend to be Hong Kong <-- I don't know how the English translations would work out but their dialogues tend to be witty and hilarious when humour comes up.

China <-- excellent for historical dramas and a famous fantasy series called Journey To The West

Korea <-- another good one for historical dramas. I found their modern dramas sometimes to be just as bad as Taiwan's. They have a very fond habit of focusing the camera too long on the actors. Example from a detective series. Gasp! The entire unit of 7 detectives found the bodies of 2 victims. Camera pan to major char : expression of horror, etc. Camera pan to 2nd actor : expression of horror, etc... and so on with the rest. I went away to pour myself a drink and came back to the camera still panning their faces.

Japan <-- samurai, samurai .. what else can I say? :lol: Modern dramas just as overdramatic like the Koreans. :p
 
Well, I'm a huge fan of Condor Hero (2006). It's an amazingly gorgeous series produced in China. I'd definitely suggest that one if only for the equally gorgeous Liu Yi Fei who co-stars in it as The Dragonlady. The action is great, the story is entertaining and full of lots of twists and turns, and there's even a good romance. The only drawbacks are that the (official) subtitles are really poor and some of the CG animals are really hokey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jssz_n7fRgM

It's available from Tai Seng in Region 1 and can be found here.
 
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Watch John Woo's "Red Cliff". Part 2 just came out a while ago.

As for TV... I haven't watched one of those in a long time. Part of it is that I have no idea where to even sample the stuff without getting the Canadian version of CCTV. :lol:
 
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