The son of a spirit hunter forges a bond with a shape-shifting huli jing.The son of a spirit hunter forges a bond with a shape-shifting huli jing.The son of a spirit hunter forges a bond with a shape-shifting huli jing.
Elaine Tan
- Adult Yan
- (voice)
Matthew Yang King
- Adult Liang
- (voice)
- (as Matt Yang King)
- …
Gwendoline Yeo
- Tsiao Jung
- (voice)
Maddox Henry
- Young Liang
- (voice)
Sumalee Montano
- Young Yan
- (voice)
- …
JB Blanc
- Supervisor
- (voice)
- …
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis story was originally written by best selling Chinese author Ken Liu and is featured in his book of short stories "The Paper Menagerie."
- GoofsIt makes absolutely no sense for a Chinese to be using a typical Japanese katana instead of a Chinese sword. Nothing about the character or the setting could justify that choice. It's entirely unlikely to happen, especially for a character with a yin/yang pendant, symbolizing Taoism, around his neck.
Featured review
A genuine short feature
There's a huge amount of story content crammed into the 17 minute runtime, credit for that. This really does feel like a fully conceived feature film condensed down to its basics.
The art and animation style are perfect for the tale being told, and have a lovely gaslight fantasy look to them - I'd love to see Girl Genius being animated in this style.
I do have to ding it on some details though. First, the presence of a katana in a Chinese tale is more baffling than any of the steampunk technology. The insistence on having cocks and boobs flopping around is tedious, although it's less adolescent here than in most of the other shorts in this series - clearly the message went out that this would be adult-only, and so every episode HAD to be adult.
Having Hollywood-Oriental voice actors speaking in heaviry accrented Engrish is daft. Just have them speak in Mandarin or Cantonese (if they can) and subtitle it.
And finally, the premise that English colonialism is worse than Mandarin despotism is pretty hard to swallow. In terms of sheer numbers, the Mandarin Empire has oppressed and slaughtered far more than the English ever did.
For all that, it's a fine piece of art and storytelling: just don't over-think it.
The art and animation style are perfect for the tale being told, and have a lovely gaslight fantasy look to them - I'd love to see Girl Genius being animated in this style.
I do have to ding it on some details though. First, the presence of a katana in a Chinese tale is more baffling than any of the steampunk technology. The insistence on having cocks and boobs flopping around is tedious, although it's less adolescent here than in most of the other shorts in this series - clearly the message went out that this would be adult-only, and so every episode HAD to be adult.
Having Hollywood-Oriental voice actors speaking in heaviry accrented Engrish is daft. Just have them speak in Mandarin or Cantonese (if they can) and subtitle it.
And finally, the premise that English colonialism is worse than Mandarin despotism is pretty hard to swallow. In terms of sheer numbers, the Mandarin Empire has oppressed and slaughtered far more than the English ever did.
For all that, it's a fine piece of art and storytelling: just don't over-think it.
helpful•20
- RogerBorg
- May 30, 2022
Details
- Runtime17 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
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