Fantazzztic!

Last  3 episode to go before freeing myself from the slavery of watching the latest adaptation of Jinyong’s literary masterpiece the Legend of the Condor Heroes (????? also known as Eagle Shooting heroes ). I am not a newbie when it comes to the series so I will be writing my thoughts now; Aside from that the novel has been adapted into numerous TV series and fortunately I managed to see one of them the 2003 TV adaptation.

The Synopsis

If a so called “righteous” Taoist priest in his own way, made an oath of brotherhood between 2 heroes what will you get? Doomsday!

“When their husbands were killed by the Song army, two pregnant women found safe haven in foreign lands. Li Ping gave birth to Guo Jing, a sturdy but blockheaded young man who roamed the Mongolian prairie with the family of Temujin. Bao Xi Ruo gave birth to Yang Kang, a smart and crafty young man who became the son of Wanyan Hong Lie, a successor of the Jin Empire. When a pact between their martial arts masters brought them together and the truth behind their fathers’ deaths was revealed, one found martial arts enlightenment and a cause greater than his own while the other descended into darkness and destroyed everything and everyone around him.”

So basically the story revolves around 2 guys Guo Jing and Yang Kang, One becomes good and one joined the dark side, a typical setting in an epic slash heroic story.

You need a little bit of understanding about the rich history of china to be able to avoid some “what the hell is this?” And some “what on earth is that?” shock that you will find in this drama, we’ll you know the Philippines rarely imports wu xia oriented drama to the local television for some reasons they rather show those cheesy Korean/Taiwanese romantic comedies than those historical/fantasy/wu xia themed series. Oh well here comes the “pang masa” factor I’m glad that I paid attention to my teacher during our Asian history class.

Time to introduce some characters:

Guo Jing – The fictional main protagonist of the series played by a Chinese super star Hu Ge, Many pinoys will notice him for potraying Li Xiao Yao in Chinese Paladin (aired locally by ABS-CBN).  Guo Jing is righteous, heroic and almost a saint character with an unparallel martial arts in Jiang Hu (a fictional place where usually a Chinese wu xia themed story takes place) the catch is his really stupid.

Speaking of stupid, every time I watched him act Guo Jing’s stupidity scene on screen I have the urge to throw something in front of my LCD monitor. In short he succeeded on portraying the character. I really love his “clueless” facial expression during those scene. Hu Ge can act stupid, stiff and cute at the same time.

At some point in the drama his stupidity stepped into the next level when he handled an army against the Jin Empire.

Huang Rong – “if you die, I’ll die too. We’ll die together“, If there’s a leading man there should be a leading lady and her name is Huang Rong portrayed by a popular actress/singer in Taiwan Ariel Lin. Pinoy will surely recognized her for portraying the lead female character in a Taiwanese drama called “It’s started with a kiss”.

Huang Rong character is spoiled, witty, mischievous yet sassy with an uber imba intelligence, Photographic Memory anyone? To the point that you can write a WHOLE BOOK just by taking a glance on each and every page of it. Ariel perfectly fits her character, her facial expressions her action, her stature! It is really Huang Rong! Although Zhou Xun portrayal gave justice to Huang Rong’s Character at the 2003 adaptation, Ariel Lin no doubt tripled it!

By twist of fate Ariel Lin looks like the actress who played the aged/mother version of Huang Rong (Kong Lin) in the 2006 TV Adaptation of the Return of the condor heroes (sequel) popularly known in our country as Love of the condor heroes.

So what can you expect about the drama?

First of all if you love to see some jaw dropping wu xia fight scene, well this drama is for you, I really love those acrobatic moves, almost dance-like swords play and those random witty babbling during their fights. Thanks to the wonders of the technology the CG in this drama is superb compared to the earlier wu xia dramas, you cannot see an overused colorless chi blasting in this drama instead the chi of the characters are colored according to their personification for example. Huang Yaoshi or the Evil heretic of peach blossom island, father of Huang Rong has a color pink chi and aura, Color Green for Ouyang Feng or Old Venom chi.

One of the things that I noticed when I watched wu xia genre drama are the “internal damage after effect”. If you know what I mean then give yourself a pat on the head. For those who don’t this is the exaggerated vomiting of the blood after an enemy hits you. I’m glad that this drama didn’t apply it too much.

On the contrary there are too much alteration in the story that almost destroyed a plot or another! Some characters who supposed to be weak becomes so powerful! There are even some characters who almost stole the limelight away from the main character because of those “too much focusing” syndrome and there is this character whose suppose to be dead before the climax but managed to become alive up to the last episode! Anyway we cant help it since an adaptation is an “adaptation”.

Isn’t it amusing that I talk about wu xia dramas now when last week I keep on talking about “nobody nobody but choo” well I have a reason why which I will reveal later on.

If you are looking for something to watch something new then why don’t you give this drama a try and be amaze?

More about this here.

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