Japanese animes look great but have really horrible storyline (Naruto, Pokemon, Bleach, One Piece, Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha, etc.) They can never compare to the works of Jin Yong. And it's incredible that Jin wrote much of the story in a serialized fashion just like Japanese manga. It shows his genius for crafting a story that moves coherently from one plot point to the next and builds upon the previous plot point with no story element wasted. This is one area that China excels over Japan, the crafting of a masterpiece story in a serialized manner. Whereas something like Naruto just has the author veering from one subplot to the next in an incoherent manner that doesn't lead to a true nor satisfying ending.
Sometimes, I wonder if Jin is actually the reincarnation of Shakespeare. To me the two best stories ever written in modern times are ROCH (or LOCH according to this anime) and The Hobbit (I despise Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter).
It quite saddens me that the animation quality suffers in seasons 2+3. To be honest, I haven't been satisfied with any version of ROCH to date. The only version that came close to doing it for me was the Lau Tak Wa/Idy Chan version. The cinematography is very dated on that one, but there is just something about adding a Cantonese touch to a Chinese literature masterpiece. I really hated the 2006 version. It started out great with very beautiful CGI, but quality took a turn for the worse towards the end (YG and Dragon girl flying out of a very steep valley like Superman/girl made absolutely no sense to me. I can accept that martial artists can leap as tall as trees, but jumping out of a 40-story steep valley or cave with one leap just like Superman/girl seemed ludicrous and non-sensical to me). And in no way can Liu Yi Fei compare to the beauty of Idy Chan. Why would Lau Tak Wa still pine for Idy Chan after all these years if not for her eternal beauty?
I can only hope that I live to see live action adaptions of ROCH and The Hobbit (the current live action Hobbit movies are just as over-the-top, non-sensical to me as ROCH 2006) done properly with modern cinematography and a truly very beautiful Dragon Girl/cast... one that would make the YG actor fall in love with her in real life for decades to come just like in Lau Tak Wa's case.
Also, I wonder if centuries from now, people will hail Jin Yong's work as on par with the Three Great Chinese Literature Classics (Journey to the West, Water Margin, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms)! |