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Reviews
Wu Assassins (2019)
White Man's Idea of Asian Fusion
Created by white people for white people. No self-respecting Asian would watch this show.
Mixing up Daoism and Buddhism with no respect to either religion. The 5 elements are myths from Daoism, and bald monks are from Buddhism. This is like suggesting Christianity and Judaism are basically the same religion because they all came from the same region. What's worse is suggesting Buddhist monks endorse killing, this is the very opposite of what Bhuddism preaches.
Yellow face: The main character does not remotely look Chinese. Suggesting he is half Chinese is an insult to both Chinese and Indonesians. Can't they find an actual Chinese looking actor to play this character?
Mixing up Mandarin & Cantonese: Many of the Chinese characters have Mandarin names, but grew up speaking Cantonese to each other. This is like saying English and German are basically the same language, and it is normal for people from Britain to speak German to each other at home.
The show is a blaring B-grade interpretation of Asian culture that only goes on to feed their audience's ignorance.
I am giving 5 stars to the martial arts, and no stars to the story.
Tian sheng chang ge (2018)
Chinese version of Game of Thrones
Visually stunning, lyrically beautiful, masterfully acted. Treachery and political intrigue at its finest. Game of Thrones minus the violence, nudity, and supernatural but with an added dash of rom-com and mystery.
I liked the comedy sprinkled throughout the darkness. The funny faces, the banter, the expressive hums.
I binged 45 x 45min episodes over a 3 day weekend, and currently suffering through withdrawal symptoms until new episodes are released.
I deducted one star for the botched flash-backs in the first episode. Took me a while to work out who's who and what was going on, glad I stuck with it.
PS. If you are watching this show with non-Chinese subtitles you are massively missing out. The Chinese dialogue is written with the skill of a bard. The language is sophisticated, succinct, elegant and poetic - as beautiful as the visuals. In comparison, the English subtitles were dull and prosaic, an abominable shadow of the original dialogue, using the vocabulary of a primary school student. It's as if the varying shades of blue - cerulean, sapphire, teal, indigo were translated into "blue, blue, blue, blue". I was truly disappointed by the English subtitles and eventually switched to a different app so I could watch it with Chinese subtitles.