ROCH 2006: Ballet with Swords and Flowers!

"Gugu!"

"Guo-er!"

"Gugu!"

"Guo-er!"

[cue sappy luuuuv music]

And there's what, thirty-plus more episodes of this to go? Damn.

Still, it's picked up a bit now that the "adult" Yang Guo has been introduced (in the middle of a "training montage" at the end of episode 3.) My impression? The actor is a bit too old to play the "teen" Yang Guo, so he makes it up by acting especially silly and idiotic. Yeah. Guess it won't be much of a difference when he pretends ("pretends"?) to be an idiot later. This is an inherent limitation of live action, though, when the story spans many many years. The actor has to "age" somehow.

Speaking of "training": what's with all the flowers? Sheesh. Next time I'm in a fight, /I'll/ swoosh a bunch of colorful petals in the air into sword shapes. I'm sure that will be very helpful. And aren't they supposed to be buck naked or something? Cheats... and those puny little flowers aren't hiding anything anyway...

So we have more with the two evil Taoists: the obsessed/stalker one seems rather sad and almost sympathetic in this version (I could forgive him!). We have the return of Li Mochou and her Fly-whisk o'Doom. We have the first onscreen appearance of West Poison Ouyang Feng. He doesn't walk around upside down in this version, more's the pity. (I actually thought that was rather cool in the other versions when he did that.) The Hama Gong (toad stance) looks ridiculous. Way too literal with the croaking and the computer-enhanced toad hopping.

At least they're out of the Ancient Tomb now. It bugged me that all the characters had perfect darkvision (as they call it in Dungeons and Dragons): no visible source of light, yet everything is lit and they can see fine. I found all the training (sparrow catching! Wall carvings! Goofing off in the water! Flowers!) scenes a bit dull.

So now we're on the road with Yang Guo the flirt (with Lu Wushuang), on the run from Li Mochou. (Lu Wushuang's stolen LMC's poison manual --- the one that has the formulae for the antidotes!) This part is fun to watch, except when they slow everything down for a little music video of Yang Guo remembering his Gugu. All right, all right, we understand! Some more fight scenes... hmm. I miss the old days, when fight scenes bore a vague (if stylized and unrealistic) resemblance to fighting. Oh well, it could be worse.

All this makes me want to reread the book. Yang Guo isn't nearly so irritating in text as he is on screen (much of the time). I didn't need to see all those urination gags, no I sure didn't...