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It's no secret that when someone messes with our culture
Chinese people can get a bit..
"What a load of bullsh#t"
...Defensive
Look, man, it was broken before
Handle with care, okay?
We may look back at them as cinematic classics today
But back when A Chinese Odyssey and Flirting Scholar came out
Stephen Chow's unorthodox take of Chinese mythology and history
Was wildly controversial
"Only you..."
Many saw them as undignified
How can you take something so full of history
And turn it into something so...
Juvenile?
While the goalpost has shifted
Similar sentiments have never left the Chinese discourse
"Sun Wokong is asexual"
This is the environment in which New Gods: Nezha Reborn was made
It has everything against it
Based on Investiture of the Gods
One of the most overused Chinese stories in recent years
This movie drastically reinterprets its source materials
Turning it into a... quote-unquote "Eastpunk" action anime
And somehow
This visual design was widely praised
Dafuk happened?
It reminds me of another semi-recent film based on the same story
No, not that one
This one
League of Gods also drastically reinterprets the story
Giving it a shiny gold paint job
Probably hoping to blind you with the shine
So you don't recognize its true color:
A piece of sh#t
You don't have to be Chinese to recognize that
This movie doesn't feel Chinese at all
So that begs the question
What makes this work
And not this?
[Nezha Reborn: A Chinese Steampunk Mythological Anime!?]
[Chapter One]
First, some background info
Investiture of the Gods is a 16th-century Chinese novel
About an epic war some 3000 years ago
Back when Queen Elizabeth was merely a middle-aged woman
The book tells the rise of a number of heroes
One of which is Nezha
A rebellious child born with immense power
And a strong sense of justice
As with most Chinese myths
Nezha's origin story varies
For this video, we'll stick to the 1979 animated classic
In the story, the East Sea Dragon King has been terrorizing
The city of Chentang Pass
Brought drought to the land
And kidnaps children to his palace to eat
What an assh#le
Being a hero
Nezha beats the living snot out of the King's henchmen
Slays the Dragon Prince who came to seek revenge
And trashes the King's underwater palace
While Nezha sees this as helping the innocents
The gods, and even his own father
See this as a violent child defying the natural order
So, in one last act of defiance
And to appease the corrupted gods
Nezha ends his own life
Thus inspiring a Bruce Lee movie many centuries later
"I didn't have much education"
"Don't try to fool me"
Don't worry, Nezha gets resurrected
Nezha's story can be understood as a criticism of the feudal system
A battle between innate morality
And the reality that the ruling class gets to make the law
It is a timeless allegory
Which is why Nezha Reborn explores the same theme
But from an updated perspective
In Nezha Reborn
Nezha is now a smuggler, living in a slum city
Where the water supply is controlled by a wealthy mafia family
"It shouldn't be like this"
"But it's always like this"
One day, while protecting his sister from the mafia
Nezha's inner power awakens
He can now use his power to fight back
But each time he does
The mafia crushes down harder
And everyone is hurt in the crossfire
In its most basic form
Nezha Reborn follows the original story plot point by plot point
But cleverly updates the criticism from about the feudal system
To wealth disparity
A hot-pressed issue around the world today
See, in the original story
The people Nezha helped, including Nezha himself Were children
The most helpless people in society
And everyone who sided with the oppressor
Are officials and nobles
That includes Nezha's father, who's a general
Whereas in Reborn
The dynamic has shifted
The victims of the conflict are, across the board, poor
Nezha is no longer a child of a noble
But a smuggler from a poor family
Cleverly, the film changes Nezha's brother into a police officer
"The bureau busted another smuggling case"
A police who deals with smugglers like Nezha
But has no power over the robberies and murders committed by the mafia
Every villain is either rich
Or greedy
The law only exists to control the poor
In other words
Even though the story looks different
Even though the angle has changed
The core of the message remains:
Is social inequality part of the natural order?
Is violence against the oppressor necessary?
Is it acceptable to fight back
If it means innocent people will get hurt?
The Chinese audience has no problem recognizing it as Chinese
Because it preserved the heart of Nezha
An influential folktale that defined what Chinese culture is
It is a Chinese story
With an anime coat of paint
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[Chapter Two]
With the spirit of the story preserved
Nezha Reborn can build its visual on top of a 500-year-old solid foundation
But not without a lot of thoughts
One common criticism I heard about League of Gods
Is its incoherent visual style
It combines styles from European high fantasy
With Mesopotamian structures
And glazes it with copious amounts of gold
No, we are not doing that
Aside from the fact that nothing looks Chinese
(Which shouldn't really matter)
(Not everything from China has to look Chinese)
How do these visual elements serve the story?
See, when Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings
He infused it with his experience as a WWI soldier
From the Battle of the Somme
To a world in decline
To Frodo's inability to return to his old life
When The Lord of the Rings references something
It doesn't just reference the visual
But also the history
The culture
And the emotion behind it
At first glance
Reborn may look like Final Fantasy VII meets Akira
But quickly
The film reveals its root visual inspiration:
Republic Era China
With its updated story
Reborn is essentially a gangster flick
Not too dissimilar to classics like Scarface
The 1932 original, not the remake
It's a genre of film most commonly associated with the 1920s
Both in America, mostly Chicago
And in China, mostly Shanghai
To Chinese people
Republic Era Shanghai is a paradox
It's often depicted with nostalgia
A place of glamourous high fashion
Yet, it is also remembered as a crime-ridden place
Where the mafia ruled the streets
Where wealth disparity went out of control
It's remembered as a place divided up by colonizers
It's remembered as a place where war looms over
None of what I said is 100% historically accurate
But that doesn't matter
Because to a general audience
Shanghai was PERCEIVED that way
And so, when Nezha Reborn takes on that aesthetic
It also takes on that perception through association
Crime
Social inequality
War
This aesthetic is reinforced at every corner
Nezha's brother looks exactly like a Republic Era cliche
The mafia is exactly how you remember it from Kung Fu Hustle
Even the text is written right to left
With era-appropriate fonts and styles
The details reinforce the sense of history and culture
This history and culture, in turn, anchor the world
Allowing the audience to relate to and feel the movie
It's only when all of that groundworks are done
That Nezha Reborn can build the rest of its visual identity
On top of this solid foundation
The steampunk technology
The fashion
The architecture
The less critical something is to the plot
The more liberty can be taken
Nezha's spirit?
Highly important
Pretty traditional looking
A character referencing the Monkey King?
The association is strengthened
Through a related reference to his iconic Water Curtain Cave
The motorcycle?
Barely a set dressing
Historical accuracy can take a backseat
This is how you reimagine an old story
Keep the core of the story
Explore it from a different angle
Build a solid foundation through cultural and historical reference
And only add a sense of style as the icing on top
While it's often the outside appearance that gets praised
Cliché as it may sound
It's always what's inside that matters
[Conclusion]
I refrained from going very in-depth in this video
Because I don't want to spoil this movie
With all the context provided
I think you can now enjoy the film to its fullest
Even if you are unfamiliar with Chinese mythology
But before we go
I'd like to take a little bit more time to just admire this movie
There is a reason I brought up the 1979 Nezha animation
Well, aside from it being what many people consider to be
The definitive adaptation
There is this one sequence
In which Nezha's father, with a sword in hand
Threatens to kill Nezha To restore order
And to appease the gods
It was a perplexing scene for a lot of children
To me, and to everyone
Nezha did the right thing
He's helping the weak
He's saving the people
But at the same time
Nezha is undeniably violent
Is pulling out his god d#mn spine really necessary?
The film manages to teach children
The moral complexity in the adult world
This shocking moment
Is one of the most remembered images in Chinese animation history
Nezha's death
Makes us feel like something is unjust about the world
A feeling that has only gotten more intense as we grow up
In Nezha Reborn
The morality behind Nezha's violence is even more ambiguous
After the mafia robbery
Nezha's little sister lost a leg in the crossfire
Seeing this Nezha's first reaction isn't to stay by her side
But to seek revenge
And so
When the villains accuse Nezha of being a violent, destructive person
Imagine my shock
When the movie shows me a scene
That directly referenced the 1979 classic
Faithfully recreated every single memorable image
Somehow
I don't really know how
The movie makes me feel like I'm watching the animation
For the first time
Again
I'm faced with the same morality question
But now, with even more complexity
And I have to answer it as an adult
Sadly, the film is not entirely successful
The pace of the plot can be pretty messy
Scene to scene transitions are sometimes jarring
It's almost like parts of the movie are cut out or unfinished
Its own answer to the question of violence and justice
Is also not entirely satisfying
The movie isn't as philosophical as everyone have hoped
While these criticisms are certainly valid
There is a silver lining
We are now at a point where merely "good" is not good enough
Chinese animation has gotten to a point
Where the audience has expectations
High expectations
In the past, I recommended Chinese animated films
With the premise that it's good for a Chinese production
But, with this one...
This might be it
Chinese or not
This is just... good
You should watch it