An action video for a Chinese drama super powers character - "I'm Not Going" by 3 Doors Down

YouTube ^ | 16 June 2020 | MVD

[mairdie]

Guardian is a Chinese drama that can be seen on YouTube with English captioning. This is an action video for an action superhero, Chu Shuzhi, a member of the Special Investigations Unit. First instinct of the series - a mix of buddy cop show, Harry Potter's Deathly Hallows, and Buffy. I'm hooked.

[mairdie]

The video's main character, Chu Shuzhi, is a member of the alien race that lives below ground. He's a puppet master that got into trouble there and now lives on the surface as a member of the Special Investigations Unit. Having lost a young brother below, he "adopts" and trains the youngest member of the team.

[ClearCase_guy]

bfl

[mairdie]

action character music video PING

[dp0622]

I always liked 3 doors down but didnt one guy get into a lot of trouble for hitting somebody while drunk?

[mairdie]

I don’t follow musicians all that much. Most I can remember about any of them is Bob Dylan’s wandering search for philosophical underpinning.

Tend to separate the creators from the creation.

[Zhang Fei]

If subtitled Oriental drama appeals to you, there’s a Harry Potter-esque series called Ever Night, available on Viki (either through the Roku app, one of the other smart TV apps or on viki.com) that is mildly entertaining. The subs are a little stilted, and presumably created by non-native English speakers, and I have no idea if they bear any resemblance to what is actually being said. However, the visuals are very pretty and the script is serviceable. What pulled me in were the picturesque vignettes at the beginning, incorporating snippets from future episodes, as well as a very well-done intro theme that could have been composed by John Williams or James Horner.

[mairdie]

Many thanks for that. I’m absolutely thrilled by this drama and do plan to look around for more Chinese dramas. The similarities of Guardian to the Judge Dee mysteries continues to astound me. I am absolutely LOVING this series. I had friends who studied Chinese in college for Art History, but I took French, when they wouldn’t let me use the Russian I’d studied for physics. I am absolutely dreadful at languages, but the traditional Chinese is such an art form that I tend to think of it more as visual art than communication. So I don’t mind watching with the Chinese subtitles. I’m enjoying the attempts at English translation. If I had any language ability, I’d do so much worse than these volunteers are doing.

[Zhang Fei]

The similarities of Guardian to the Judge Dee mysteries continues to astound me.

I read the van Gulik novels decades ago. I thought they were great. I have no idea if the Chinese tales on which the characters were based are any good, but van Gulik was a master at creating interesting characters with an exotic slant, as it were. Sometimes, the chinoiserie is better than the original. Obviously he was a sinologist, and writing the novels was more a hobby than anything else, but I think he could have segued into regular detective novels or police procedurals that would have reached a wider audience. Nonetheless, the Judge Dee works were an interesting departure from Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Joseph Wambaugh.

Van Gulik died in his 50's. Here's a pic of him decked out in what I'm guessing is a facsimile of Qing dynasty leather armor:

[mairdie]

van Gulik was a professor at U of Chicago, where both mother and I went to school, at different times than when he was there. But the connection made it more fun for us.

I still own all the books and reread them occasionally. Every now and then I get a sense that the application of justice is similar in Guardian. I still remember the chests for the various seasons of clothes, and the weather proofed umbrella. I bought the movie and it was awful. They lost the cultural descriptions that made it of high moral character and turned it into a kungfu fighting movie. Guardian keeps the character.

[Hot Tabasco]

Couldn’t understand a word of those subtitles......

[mairdie]

I can’t either.

I keep an open window with the English captions going so I know what the story is about, then I keep a source window open in the editor that doesn’t have captions. I learned from the fan community that there’s a whole set of episodes without ANY subtitles, but husband only got the subtitled ones for me so far.

It’s really worse in the middle of the series. The YouTube versions have about 4 or 5 episodes where the captions (done enthusiastically by fan volunteers) are out of synch by as much as five minutes from what you see on the screen. So you follow those by REMEMBERING the past action as you read the current captions. GAK. I’m hoping when husband gets to that part of the series, we’ll also get the corrected caption versions.