But he looks really good on screen
Get out of my face
pretty much single handedly destroyed my experience of watching this drama
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shares her thoughts,
knowledge and occasional,
weird ideas on stories and how they're told
Humans
Ni Hao An Yi
is a 30 episodes web drama.
It is led by Ma Tian Yu and Qi Wei
and it's the chinese adaptation version of the uk drama series
Humans,
if you've watched the original uk series,
you know it is a story about ai robot.
Gaining consciousness
for chinese dramaland
sci-fi is a very very very rare breed.
They got the copyright they actually collaborated,
I think with some of the foreign writers to do this drama,
if you go on wikipedia to find this drama,
you will still find a foreign writer attached to it saying that
he has worked on the script that's for the chinese version.
But if you go on the chinese website,
you can't quite find this person.
So I don't know what actually went through the process
whether it's written originally by a foreign writer
and then got translated or whether it got then changed.
And then it's a complete chinese story
from what I can tell
from chinese websites and information source.
It's a chinese script writer project
based on the first 16 episodes.
I've watched.
I'm going to give it a gold mine/landmine rating
I was really arguing with myself about whether I should put it as a one goldmine
or gold mine slash
eventually decide for the lower
first, Let me talk about the things I think are satisfactory.
and then I will talk about the things that
just kind of keeps pulling it down for me.
First the good thing,
it's a very good standard drama.
It will take you very short time when you get into the
story to realize it's a very well planned drama.
The overall look of it,
cinematography, color palette,
visual language,
style and production design.
It has very consistent look
they're setting the story in future 2035 in China
where you can buy very mature robot ai to serve
all kinds of different purposes and use of those robots
at different places has already been well integrated into the society.
You can detect a quite mature production style for this whole thing,
although not as pronounced as as what you would
usually see in the us or uk drama series,
having very distinctive style of how they pace things,
how they figure out the commercial break
and how to stop and start at those points,
although not like that,
you can still feel it is slightly more stylistic
than most of the chinese dramas.
So you do feel it's a mixed breed between
very chinese drama and us drama or uk drama.
So the overall production standard is quite acceptable.
And for a future setting sci fi drama,
I don't think it has failed at that point
it has done a lot of detail work that really
sells the concept of having a very like human ai robot
working at a household scenario.
The second thing I appreciate about this drama is I do like Qi Wei's performance
of her role An Yi, the robot that actually has human consciousness but got reformatted
and then try to figure out who she is.
She's done a really good job doing that robot.
Although I have to say I haven't watched the original uk series,
I restrained really myself from watching that and compare
with this drama because I just want to go into the drama.
as a story i've never come across and see what my response is.
So I haven't watched the original seriers, can't compare
I do like her performance.
I think she's done a good enough job selling her role
and she uses her own voice in this drama
which doesn't happen to all the main characters.
And then I actually do you enjoy Ma Tianyu's presence
I have never been a fan of his acting and I don't think
he's done a brilliant job at acting in this drama either,
but he looks really good on screen
being frank and honest to my audience.
I like to look at a pretty face on screen and
I can forgive a pretty face probably more than ...
but ... not saying I am very impressed
by either his character or his performance.
I just enjoying watching those two people.
So they are probably the reason why I am
still watching this drama at this point.
Beyond those things.
I find it's very hard to find other reason to introduce this drama
to a friend of mine and try to make them go and watch it.
So let's talk about the things that did bother me.
while I watch this drama
which resulted in me after a little bit argument with
myself decided to give it absolute middle rating of my entire scale.
First, very jarring thing about this drama
for me to watch it as a chinese person
is it feels very much NOT like a chinese story.
I know it's based on uk drama,
but when you adapt a foreign drama into your domestic environment,
one very important thing is you have to domesticate the story.
You have to domesticate how people talk the particular language,
vocabulary that works.
The particular style of social interactions.
Story is set in the future 2035,
which is not so far.
They kind of taking out so much detail that you can't really tell.
This is a chinese family.
If you look at the decor like it can just be
any average modern style, european family.
And the landscape is almost not there.
In this drama.
It feels like a very floaty story.
Nothing is grounded.
You don't see the details of their work.
You don't see the details of their relationship
with other people where they're socializing,
see the city-scape and it really happens in a very detached imaginary land.
And i'm pretty sure 15 years down the line,
whatever kind of development that has happened is still will be very china.
It still will be filled with street corners with street food
and that detachment doesn't only happen with the visual style or the set design.
It also happens heavily with people's language.
Many of the vocabulary and the lines spoken between
characters literally wouldn't really be used like that.
In a daily chinese person conversation,
I have been poked by the lines so many times throughout this drama that makes me
clearly feel like the original thing is written probably in english.
And then they translated it into chinese,
but they didn't domesticate the particular way that people
speak into how chinese people would deliver the same meaning.
But with different type of words,
it's almost like i'm watching an imported foreign film
or television and then got dubbed with chinese,
but just happened to have all the people with chinese face
very weird experience,
small example for one of the leading roles in the drama,
the middle aged man who is the head of a household
who is inviting his boss to his home,
having this meal that's been cooked by this
robot and very impressive to the guests.
And they're talking about his wife and he would refer to his wife
as Wo De QI ZI,
for a chinese social kind of occasion like that.
You are talking to your boss at home and for a middle aged man
The most common word they would actually use
would be wo de ai ren or wo de nei ren
Nei Ren is even an older word.
So maybe most likely will be wo de ai ren, literally means the person I love.
It's a small thing,
but it's rarely you hear people say wo de qi zi
And in a less formal more colloquial conversation,
they probably will use the word lao po
wo (de) lao po, but I think because he's talking to a boss,
he really respects, he probably wouldn't use lao po
he would use ai ren
And that's more standard for achinese middle age person.
I'm pretty sure 15 years down the line,
the chinese middle age man probably will still use that word.
yet he uses qi zi, which is not a colloquial word you'd use in conversation like this
like these little things keeps popping up everywhere
and it just keep dragging me out of the story.
I get constantly reminded.
I'm not watching a chinese drama,
although everybody looks chinese and speak chinese.
and that's strengthened by the fact that they used
a lot of dubbing actors for a lot of the roles.
So some people use their own voice such as Qi Wei
Some people had dubbed voice such as Ma Tianyu
and the dubbing style is a little weird.
It sounds a little bit like foreign translated film imported into china,
then dubbed with mandarin that also pulls me out the story constantly.
Then the third thing that really made my watching experience
quite painful is the bad guy,
the big anti hero is so annoying.
And so over acting,
if that's the director trying to make the actor acting like that,
what's the purpose of making that character
So freaking annoying?
It's the bad guy who's chasing after the technology of creating
the code that creates the consciousness and then
his secretary and his watchdog person,
these two bad people are so annoying.
I prefer interesting in depth bad guy that
actually are enjoyable for you to watch,
like you don't have to sympathize with them.
you kno they're bad guy, but they're interesting people.
And you actually wanna watch their story line, whereas when they show up
I just wanna...
Get out of my face.
You two are so disgusting and annoying,
and particularly the big boss, bad guy,
this guy just overacts all the time.
He screams, he's constantly angry 24/7
And when he screams his facial expression,
his voice is so over the top.
You know what he reminds me of?
of that character from Legend of Fei,
the bad guy who shows up and who would do this thing with his gesture.
That's ridiculous.
He's kind of the modern version of that
super animated,
absolutely annoying.
Doesn't feel like a real person.
Like if you've watched Guardian, Zhen Hun
the white haired professor who is a crazy scientist in that drama,
he's very overacting in that drama.
Some of his scenes are plainly laughable,
but he's also in this drama
and in this drama, he's so normal compared to that crazy bad
boss guy and that acting pretty much single handedly
destroyed my experience of watching this drama
very unsuccessful,
bad guy writing and also portraying and whatever
the final thing is,
I think it has missed a big opportunity.
The reason that makes me jumping between one gold mine, gold /landmine rating
and couldn't quite decide is I wanted to rate it higher
because I wanna kind of encourage the sci fi genre,
which is so rare in chinese dramaland, you hardly ever see any work in that,
it deserves a little bit more attention and support.
But then when I think about what the drama has actually done,
which is taking the original work,
that at the core is the discussion about what makes us human.
If you have consciousness, you have self-generated thought
you have feelings, all kinds of human emotions.
Does that make you human?
If you're a robot you can do that
Should we treat you as a human?
And how should biologically human human react to that
how should weplace our position in that relationship?
It's a very interesting topic,
very big potential,
lot of juicy discussion about humanity and
all that can happen from this premise.
And the drama kind of only takes the shell of couple of robots have
managed to figure out consciousness thing and then it becomes a
thriller drama of somebody trying to get that technology chasing after them.
They're trying to hide
They just take the superficial level and the superficial content of that story.
And they didn't bother to go into the bigger, juicy
philosophical discussion
at this point.
Episode 16, they really haven't gone into any deep
discussion about the big things, the bigger theme,
the elephant in the room,
the thing that I am really looking forward to.
So missed opportunity probably is the biggest problem with this drama.
And then the non chinese-ness of a chinese story that constantly
pulls the audience out of its setting is also a big problem.
Maybe I will go back to this drama when it
finishes airing just to see how they end it
I just happened to have watched it,
so I don't wanna waste what i've spent, the hours
that i've spent on it and share my opinion about it.
Have you watched this drama?
Do you have similar reactions as I do?
this drama is not a bad production
it just feels very chicken rib.
If you throw it away,
feels a little bit of a waste.
But then if you eat it,
there's really nothing to chew off on it.
It's totally fine.
If you are a fan of any of the main actors,
just watching them makes you happy, then it's totally watchable
that will conclude my opinion and this video.
Thank you for watching AvenueX,
i'll see you in my next video
meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.