03-25-2020, 08:20 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-18-2025, 11:32 PM by Drunk Monk.)
Nezha is the baby god, a figure out of Chinese myth like the Monkey King. In fact, he battles the Monkey King early on in Journey to the West. He is the baby god, with a magic spear, a magic scarf and flaming wind fire wheels for celestial roller skates which evolve into the Wind Fire Wheel weapons of Kung Fu, the ones I demonstrated for Man at Arms: Art of War. This animated film was a major blockbuster in PRC and I've been wanting to see it since.
It's an origin story, but I don't know much about Nezha's origins beyond JttW and research I've done on the weapons. My friend Prof. Meir Shahar did a major academic study on him but embarrassingly I've not read that yet. In this, Nezha's birth ritual is disrupted by evil forces and split into two entites. Nezha is raised in a village but he's an outcast and rightly so because he brings destruction whenever he escapes from his home. This makes him an angsty brat with untold superpowers. His parents are minor deities and he has a mentor, a fat drunken god who rides a flying pig with dumbo ears and has a magic paintbrush with which he can create holodecks in paintings and paint objects to change reality. The split entity is a born in a dragon who incarnates as a white clad warrior with deer horns. The Dragon King is chained at the bottom of the sea with the dragon clan, keeping back hellish demons from rising to the earth. It's heavy Yaoguai magic, a deep dive into Chinese myth.
At first, this felt like it stole the backgrounds from Kung Fu Panda, but it takes off when the magic battles begin. There's some great stuff in here. Sure, it's got a lot of the trappings of PRC animation, pee & fart jokes (including a fart trap escape), lots of cartoonish comic relief like dopey Monty Pythonesque guards, a burly effeminant villager, a drunk fool, a flying pig that sneezes visions, a sea demon that blows petrifying bubbles and antidote snot. It's all about the fight scenes. There are sword fights, magic chi blasts, weird spiky weapons, that magic spear, a magic flywhisk, that magic brush and shuttlecock action - total superhero choreo, very satisfying and somewhat fresh in its vision.
The funny thing is the version I watched had fan subtitiles which were clearly generated by just tossing it into some web translator, so some were right and the rest was literal, so made little sense. Nezha's parents call him "pediatric inquisition". All the explanations of the foundation myths make no sense at all. My fav was a subtitle that had no context - "heart is meat". Between my broken Mandarin, following the context and the weird subtitles, this was an exercise to understand. I'd probably have had better luck if I just ignored the subs, but they were rather amusing in their own way.
Yes, sword fights. Not a lot, but it was the fight scenes that sold this. Not DOOM recommended, except maybe for the cfs if they're into Chinese myth, or ED if he wants a dose of state-of-the-art PRC animation.
It's an origin story, but I don't know much about Nezha's origins beyond JttW and research I've done on the weapons. My friend Prof. Meir Shahar did a major academic study on him but embarrassingly I've not read that yet. In this, Nezha's birth ritual is disrupted by evil forces and split into two entites. Nezha is raised in a village but he's an outcast and rightly so because he brings destruction whenever he escapes from his home. This makes him an angsty brat with untold superpowers. His parents are minor deities and he has a mentor, a fat drunken god who rides a flying pig with dumbo ears and has a magic paintbrush with which he can create holodecks in paintings and paint objects to change reality. The split entity is a born in a dragon who incarnates as a white clad warrior with deer horns. The Dragon King is chained at the bottom of the sea with the dragon clan, keeping back hellish demons from rising to the earth. It's heavy Yaoguai magic, a deep dive into Chinese myth.
At first, this felt like it stole the backgrounds from Kung Fu Panda, but it takes off when the magic battles begin. There's some great stuff in here. Sure, it's got a lot of the trappings of PRC animation, pee & fart jokes (including a fart trap escape), lots of cartoonish comic relief like dopey Monty Pythonesque guards, a burly effeminant villager, a drunk fool, a flying pig that sneezes visions, a sea demon that blows petrifying bubbles and antidote snot. It's all about the fight scenes. There are sword fights, magic chi blasts, weird spiky weapons, that magic spear, a magic flywhisk, that magic brush and shuttlecock action - total superhero choreo, very satisfying and somewhat fresh in its vision.
The funny thing is the version I watched had fan subtitiles which were clearly generated by just tossing it into some web translator, so some were right and the rest was literal, so made little sense. Nezha's parents call him "pediatric inquisition". All the explanations of the foundation myths make no sense at all. My fav was a subtitle that had no context - "heart is meat". Between my broken Mandarin, following the context and the weird subtitles, this was an exercise to understand. I'd probably have had better luck if I just ignored the subs, but they were rather amusing in their own way.
Yes, sword fights. Not a lot, but it was the fight scenes that sold this. Not DOOM recommended, except maybe for the cfs if they're into Chinese myth, or ED if he wants a dose of state-of-the-art PRC animation.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse
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