Media Round Up: Mostly Chinese Media
Jun. 8th, 2021 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestofgloryThe Moon Brightens for You episodes 25- 33— My brain spent a bit of time refusing to watch TV without anyone else to watch with so it took me a long time to watch these last three episodes. I'm hesitant to critique the pacing of non western media, since often it's based in different story structure traditions. However the pacing didn't work for me here. I thought the penultimate arch was drawn out too much which compressed the final confrontation. And that meant that the end didn't have good narrative tension. I was a bit disappointed in how everyone ended up afterward too.
spoilerly content note: **** Death in childbirth
Snapdragon by Kat Leth— This middle grade graphic novel was fantastic! It’s about Snapdragon, a girl who is new in town and decides to investigate the town witch, and is surprised by what she finds. It featured queer people, found family, creepy bones, mentorship, colorful and expressive art, I just loved it!
Word of Honor episodes 5-15 — I got a bit sucked into this and watched ahead of the group watch. Given all the content notes below I’m surprised that I’m finding this so compelling, but I want to keep watching! The pace really picked up around episode 10. I’m not sure that I’m following everything because there are many schemes afoot, but it's fun to try and figure things out.
Watching ahead made it easier to chat during the group watch, which was nice. I thought it might be confusing rewatching when I haven’t reached the end yet, but so far it's been fine, and even a bit helpful.
Like a lot of Chinese media I watch this is based on a danmei novel but censored so that there is no explicit romance between the two leads. At the moment I don’t really ship them, but I think I might be able to ship the people they become. Meanwhile I’m really enjoying several mentorships in the show.
Content notes: Forced Battle Royale Situation, corporal punishment, bullying, child murder, torture, suicide, ableist language, more mass murder
Thousand Autumns episodes 1-4 — This is my group watch’s current animated watch. This show sure introduces a lot of characters right away! It is a bit hard to keep track. Luckily for me someone in the group made a character guide and is updating it as we go. (We also have one of these in for Word of Honor) It’s another adaptation of an m/m novel with explicit romance removed. It’s Xianxia so there’s lots of exciting powers, and cool robes. The fights in this are somewhat swooshy but not as swooshy as the ones in The Untamed.
Silk & Steel ed Janine A. Southard— The theme of this f/f anthology was Warrior Woman/ Princess. I started reading this months ago, and read it in fits and starts. But that means that I don’t really have a good sense of the anthology as a whole. I liked some stories and didn’t like others *shrug*
Cuisine Chinoise: Five Tales of Food and Life by Zao Dao, Trans Brandon Kander & Diana Schutz — This collection of comics by a Chinese artist, all thematically related to food. For reasons that are a bit unclear this version is translated from the French edition instead of the original Chinese. The art is inspired by traditional Chinese painting and there's a lot of architectural detail and richly textured fabrics. The stories themselves were a little hard to follow, which might be a translation issue.
spoilerly content note: **** Death in childbirth
Snapdragon by Kat Leth— This middle grade graphic novel was fantastic! It’s about Snapdragon, a girl who is new in town and decides to investigate the town witch, and is surprised by what she finds. It featured queer people, found family, creepy bones, mentorship, colorful and expressive art, I just loved it!
Word of Honor episodes 5-15 — I got a bit sucked into this and watched ahead of the group watch. Given all the content notes below I’m surprised that I’m finding this so compelling, but I want to keep watching! The pace really picked up around episode 10. I’m not sure that I’m following everything because there are many schemes afoot, but it's fun to try and figure things out.
Watching ahead made it easier to chat during the group watch, which was nice. I thought it might be confusing rewatching when I haven’t reached the end yet, but so far it's been fine, and even a bit helpful.
Like a lot of Chinese media I watch this is based on a danmei novel but censored so that there is no explicit romance between the two leads. At the moment I don’t really ship them, but I think I might be able to ship the people they become. Meanwhile I’m really enjoying several mentorships in the show.
Content notes: Forced Battle Royale Situation, corporal punishment, bullying, child murder, torture, suicide, ableist language, more mass murder
Thousand Autumns episodes 1-4 — This is my group watch’s current animated watch. This show sure introduces a lot of characters right away! It is a bit hard to keep track. Luckily for me someone in the group made a character guide and is updating it as we go. (We also have one of these in for Word of Honor) It’s another adaptation of an m/m novel with explicit romance removed. It’s Xianxia so there’s lots of exciting powers, and cool robes. The fights in this are somewhat swooshy but not as swooshy as the ones in The Untamed.
Silk & Steel ed Janine A. Southard— The theme of this f/f anthology was Warrior Woman/ Princess. I started reading this months ago, and read it in fits and starts. But that means that I don’t really have a good sense of the anthology as a whole. I liked some stories and didn’t like others *shrug*
Cuisine Chinoise: Five Tales of Food and Life by Zao Dao, Trans Brandon Kander & Diana Schutz — This collection of comics by a Chinese artist, all thematically related to food. For reasons that are a bit unclear this version is translated from the French edition instead of the original Chinese. The art is inspired by traditional Chinese painting and there's a lot of architectural detail and richly textured fabrics. The stories themselves were a little hard to follow, which might be a translation issue.
