Cool Asian stuff

[dangermousie]

Watched more GetBackers (the episodes where Ban and Ginji are sent to recover the Arms of Venus). So gooooood.

Random notes:

Ginji is sweet but really too dense to exist. I guess he was always so powerful, he never needed to learn guile.

I adore Akabane. For someone who wears a cross between a suit and an evening dress and whose hat is a bastard offspring of a fedora and a sombrero, he is amazingly cool. He warns Ginji, but the thing that I find really interesting is that Ban is the one he fixates on, rightly. Ginji might be very powerful, but Ban is the one with the killer instinct. And Ban beat Lightning Emperor at full power, peobably because his attacks are non-corporeal. I love Akabane giving exhausted Ban cigaretted because Ban's are wet and saying he won't fight him now, all wounded but will have Ban's promise to fight when Ban is fully recovered. Now Akabane is certainly a man with incredible job satisfaction.

Oh, and Ban who lost his sunglasses and whose hair is wet so is down instead of up? Totally hot. I wish he'd get wet more often.

I've also finished Seven Swords, which was good the whole way through. I do think the first hour was better: it had all this set-up which kinda didn't get borne out later, and was more complex. I don't think it's the director's fault, as I know the initial cut was four hours and he had to hack it down to two and a half. I do wish I could have seen the long version though, because some subplots (the love quadrangle) became a bit too sudden otherwise, and some would have had more weight with more there.

But it was still excellent. The fight between Chu and the General on walls was amazing and something I am going to rewatch many a time. And I found the love story between Chu and Green Pearl totally sad and rather moving. I am a sucker for this sort of thing. It really struck me in their sex scene that this is probably the first time ever that she actually has consensual sex. How horrible is that fact? No wonder she is kinda falling apart: she is actually with someone she loves and is attracted to and of her own free will. I love the scene earlier when she tells him she wasn't afraid to die and now she is scared because now she has something to lose and she never wants to lose his trust. Yum. And the fact that while they have this conversation about trust and loss and her freaking out, they are (almost unconsciously) undressing each other? Hot.

Of course, this being a martial arts movie, we need tons of angst, so of course they get captured and the General is all "she is my spy blah blah blah" which is untrue and Chu won't believe it and he tells her he trusts her in Chinese and she is so devastated (because of course she doesn't speak anything but Korean) and she is stuttering towards him "don't you trust me?" and then he tells her in Korean "I trust you" and gleeeeee except not because the General lunges at him with a sword and Green Pearl jumps in front of the General and wrestles him to protect her lover, who actually manages unexpectedly to grab a sword and he slices at the General and it's automatic and he can't stop his stroke as it's too late, and Green Pearl is dead and he's killed her and he only sees it after the sword has hit her and I am not describing it very well, but ouch...

Comments

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

Akabane is able to pick out pretty quick that Ban is very much like himself. Ban is a killer by nature, Ginji is not. Even when backed against the wall Ginji never really wants to hurt anyone. Ban, on the other hand, while a good person at his core, does get off on the fight. It's Ginji and Himeko and his responsibility to them that really keeps Ban from becoming like Akabane.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yes, if his responsibilities weren't around, Ban could easily just turn into a killing machine: he thinks he is damned anyway. I don't think he'd ever be as blithe and happy about it. He'd do it but it would be a darker feeling, parodoxically, than with Akabane.