Rants and Weekly Raves (RAWR) #361

Anne: The first week of school is over and I have come to a realization... 5 year old conversations...if they were spoken by a group of adults, everyone would think they were insane, or at least mentally unstable. My son came home one day and this was the stream of words that came out of his mouth, in all seriousness, "Phoebe says that she's going to teach me magic. She says she knows magic and can do all sorts of stuff. But I think she's fooling me. Because I don't think she knows magic. Angel knows magic. He says that he can turn his dad into a penny. That's pretty cool, I think." What do I follow this up with? All I did was nod and went, "Oh, I see..." Now I want to know what other "discussions" have been happening with no adult supervision. The other thing I wonder... maybe this is how some of the drama writers have been getting their inspirations. It would make a LOT of sense. This week I started a few new shows, and not all of them are costume. Shock!

The Ferryman: Legends of Nanyang

I started this because the guy who played Xia Dong Qing seems awfully familiar. (He turned out to be the funny silly ML in "Girlfriend", Lawrence Wong.) Xia Dong Qing is a young man who is always the outsider because he can see dead spirits. He hasn't been successful in finding a job, until he gets an offer out of the blue from Convenience Store 444 (In case no one knows, the pronouncing of 4 in mandarin is very similar to death/dying). What he didn't realize was that the store was owned by one of the Ferryman. What I found interesting is that each episode is one complete story, usually. For some reason, I really like the opening song. It fits the tone of the show very well. Episode 3 was one of my favorite stories, about a pair of shoes and their owner. (They are quite pretty.)

Episode 4 was harder to grasp because the title was "You are My Medicine", which would probably be more accurately translated as "You are My Cure." I don't quite understand why this other dimensional parasite is a medicine for the Ferryman, but otherwise, the entire story is pretty much about human greed. What we would do to live in a moment as our perfect self.

Each episode has a story introduction that reminds me a LOT of The Outer Limits, which remains one of my favorite shows of all time (the series ending was a bit...eh...). Not all the episodes is a good story, but the good ones are pretty good. I finished all available 12 episodes in 2 days, and given my schedule, this was a feat! Episode 12 tells us how Xia Dong Qing got his ability to see ghosts, and we meet the Hell King who was very lonely and fell in love with a mortal. These stories are the ghosts stories that I grew up with, built on the Asian mythologies that I know so well, that are both familiar and yet different compared to western mythologies of the same genre. Looking forward to this week's episodes. Now I just wish that I can find the other Ferryman dramas.

Good and Evil

Yes, no one is surprised that I started this one. It's fantasy and has one of my favorite young actor, Fiction Guo. For some reason, despite being around the same age as Dylan Wang, he is very believable as an old/serious/stone faced deity. Connie Kang, I saw in Wolf Princess, and I liked her in that too. It's a win-win for me. The story isn't new, but the way it's told brings a bit of freshness to an old formula. Chun Yao was deity who guarded the heavenly "memory wipe" spring (he is the god of spring), which is filled with souls of demons. He was lonely and created a "form" to speak to and play chess with. One of the fallen gods at the bottom of his spring made a deal with Chun Yao, and gave this "form" a body, and Chun Yao gave half of his own spring water soul to her, and she was called Goddess Hantan. In return, the fallen god wanted to "borrow" the spirits/souls of 108 fallen deities within the spring. Of course, the fallen god grew in power and broke out of the Spring, letting out a bunch of demons, and during the battle kills the Goddess (who used her life to save Chun Yao). Chun Yao is casted out of Heaven as a half god half demon. The Goddess was spare death and let into the reincarnation cycle of mortals. Chun Yao wiped his own memory. The spring water that fell from heaven formed Bai Ling Tan (which is the actual title of the drama), and Chun Yao guarded it by keeping the demons bound within it's borders. 

When one of his servants, White Fan, escapes, and Princess Han Sheng accidently enters Bai Ling Tan. Thus, Chun Yao finds a mortal who is not really a mortal because she has a demon's "book of life". Han Sheng is a "bad luck" princess, who was born from her dead mother. Because of how she was born, she was raised in the cold palace, suffering abuse from pretty much everyone. From the first story arc, it does appear that they will encounter varies love stories and from them they will slowly remember who they once were. 

The first story was of course about White Fan and her husband. She escaped out of Bai Ling Tan because she wanted to bring her husband back to life. The defeated fallen god convinced her that she can accomplish the feat by taking mortal life years. And along the way, she causes a demon slayer to feel "love" which broke his cultivation stride. And also caused a mortal courtesan, who changed her face to look exactly like White Fan because she wanted the demon slayer to love her. Yes, tragic stories all around and involving a whole lot more than just White Fan and her husband. 

Pandora's Box

I liked the synopsis, and those stupid "rabbits" reminds me of Donnie Darko. The introduction of this "new" energy and the odd beginning with his mom walking straight onto the train tracks of an oncoming train was very intriguing. But then it got down to his "experiment"...am I the ONLY one who thought that it made NO sense? At least Li Tian spoke English and we didn't have that odd two language conversations that must have been conducted through a Google translate app. I do have to admit that I didn't go beyond the scene of the execution. What do they think we do here in the states? I'm fairly certain there is at least one federal law that prohibits these type of experiments on prisoners. And what exactly is this "new" energy? They keep calling it human consciousness...but is this even correct? If getting a whole room of people to will something to happen with their minds because they "think" it works, isn't this just prayer by a large group in a house of worship? And we know how China sees religion. Yes, in the execution scene, the inmate willed himself to die...but this isn't then same as wiling something to happen outside of your body. If anyone else has watched this let me know if I should continue (I can ignore these ridiculous logic).

My Queen

I finished this mostly cute and light hearted romantic comedy. There were some odd and very rushed editing that didn't make any sense, and if I noticed it, you have to know that the mistakes are very glaring. Even after the happy ending, when MengMeng returned back into the real world, where she re-encountered her in-game love interest and the other characters, nothing seems resolved. The scene in the last 5 minutes eluded to a retained memory of each of the characters, but their "memory" is very superficial. It does seem like that they are trying to leave the door ajar for season 2, a modern romance drama. 

Everyone was paired up. The ML and FL's personal servants, Xian Ai and Chang Kong.

The writers even gave the cutest blockhead 2nd ML, Song Che, a girlfriend, Zhe Xiang, whom he cannot beat at martial arts.

 At the end of the game, MengMeng and Murong Chen went traveling and fighting crime.

And this is for this week. I am a little overloaded with work these days, and haven't continued my "When I fell in love..." postings, but I haven't given up on it! 

Hope everyone has a great rest of the week. I just got word that my son's last birthday present just cleared customs! WooHoo! And it only took like 3 weeks... The thing cost all of <$10.