Qin's Moon • 秦时明月
The Hundred Pace Flying Sword | 百步飞剑
Season 1, Episode 1
"If three-hundred soldiers aren't enough then we'll use three-thousand. Or thirty-thousand. Or three-hundred thousand!"
Original Air Date: 2007
Running Time: 21 minutes, 57 seconds
Language: Mandarin Chinese
The first season of The Legend of Qin, explaining about Emperor Qin's wild ambitions to bring all six nations into one. Ge Nie and Jing Tianming are attacked in the desert. After fending the enemy troops off, Ge Nie is injured and is found, along with Tianming, by the Royal Tribe of Chu. They are then attacked by an assassin sent by Wei Zhuang.
I came upon this show by complete accident while doing the stupidest thing you can do on TV Tropes - opening multiple tabs. And it was surprising, to say the least...
I am actually a big fan of wuxia movies, though for whatever reason I haven't been watching them that much recently (should probably get back to that). So when I came across this while browsing about (I don't even remember what trope page I was looking at so don't ask) I jumped on it because:
- It's a Chinese animation, and I haven't seen much non-western animation that isn't Japanese
- Related to the above, it's not written quite like a standard anime, but more like an Asian drama
- And still building on previous points, it's wuxia. I fucking love martial arts series, so hell yeah I'm going to watch wuxia.
- Praise YouTube
So yea. I watched it.
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| Oh - DID I MENTION IT'S HISTORICAL! I AM A HISTORIAN AND THIS IS MY SHTICK |
The setting is a blend of Ancient China with generally acceptable fantasy anachronisms (though Qin Shi Huang was mad alot more attractive that he probably should have been). The writing is very much set up as if this was a Chinese historical drama (like
Palace or something). It's kinda jarring actually, since part of me keeps expecting this to suddenly turn into an anime though. Actually, now that I think about it, it's less anime more video game. That's right - though it's story still flows and everything like an actual drama, and not like
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which was less movie more
glorified cutscene.
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| They love focus-shifting bokeh, btw. It's in literally every scene. |
It's actually kinda adorable - in the "
look at these shitty special effects from the 1960s that I cannot truly take seriously" way. Granted, it was made in 2007 on what I assume was a limited budget and talent pool (China isn't world famous for it's animation industry, let's be honest). Still, it feels almost nostalgic because it's got the look of in-game graphics from an early PS2 game. Even the sound effects are probably ripped out of
Soul Calibur II (same type of coloured motion blur on moving weapons and everything). I mean just look at the character designs:
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| What do you mean this ISN'T from Soul Calibur!? |
The movements aren't very fluid. It's even worse in the fights, which would probs have some pretty sweet Hong-Kong-movie-level choreography if it wasn't for the disjointed and stiff movements. Even the walking patterns bug me. Also adding to it is the disjunct between CGI and 2-D art. You know how lots of traditional animation these days (anime or no) have conspicuous CGI for budget-saving expediency? Yeah, this is the opposite. It's kinda annoying, though considering the style and illustratory qualities in these backgrounds, it makes if feel even more like a videogame (for some reason Atelier Iris 2 comes to mind, but plenty of other games do this too).
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| Think anyone will notice that the kid is literally the only thing that is 3D and moving? |
Still, for some reason - maybe the fact it is drawing on some of my video game nostalgia / is so bad it's endearing - I can look past it and get to the story. Which is wuxia. So yes, I'm fucking watching episode 2. Deal with it.
"His road of domination has just begun."
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