Lois’s answer to “Hi! I'm a fan of your books (both Five Gods and Vorkosigan) and heard you were on a panel about The…” > Likes and Comments
9 likes · Like
We also enjoyed Extraordinary Attorney Woo around here!
Nothing is as good as the Untamed, but I would throw out Eternal Love as another high fantasy series with similarly loveable characters. I’d also love to throw in Guardian: The Lonely God which has its tragic elements but great acting and amazing chemistry between … basically everyone
'Extraordinary Attorney Woo' is a great South Korean TV series about an autistic young lawyer, streaming on Netflix ... with exceptionally good English dubbing and captioning.
Second the recommendation for Guardian: awesome show! For fantasy + humour, Mystic Pop-up Bar on Netflix is sweet.
Based on your criteria of fantasy with some sense of humor, the annoyingly titled Love Between Fairy and Devil may also be up your alley. Takes a while to get going but then quite good/complex.
“you (collective you)”—once upon a time, as you know, ‘you’ would have been sufficient here, as it was a plural-only pronoun, the singular being ‘thou’. I still regret the ambiguities caused by the loss of ‘thou’, and now the language seems likely to suffer further damage caused by people insistently using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun. Bah. (Yes, I know that people have been occasionally using singular-they for centuries. Many other misuses of English have been going on for centuries, too.)
@ Maya --
Huh. I'd dipped into Love Between Fairy and Devil, but wandered away after a couple of episodes; it might be worth another shot. "Takes a while to get going" is true of many of my favorite anime series, so I understand that. (Untamed didn't so much "take time to get going" as "take time to get understood", a different challenge, but so worth it in the end.)
Martha Wells had also mentioned Fairy & Devil on the panel, but I didn't get time to ask her why/if it paid off. Its fantasy world was pretty interesting.
L.
@ Jonathan --
Yeah, I hear you on the problems of English pronouns. I regret that the science fiction genre didn't develop and export a consensus singular gender-neutral pronoun to the world at large before "they" started getting repurposed out of its original syntactical position. I grant utterly the need for such a pronoun, but the problem seems similar to what happened to the noun "book" upon the arrival of ebooks; the need to add something to disambiguate. I am not sure what's going to evolve for "they" when one actually wants it to mean "a group of two or more persons".
Ta, L.
Thanks, Lois, I agree with you completely. I think various people in the past have coined a new neutral-singular pronoun, but unfortunately they lacked enough support for the idea to catch on.
It is possible to represent plural-you with some construction such as "all of you", "both of you", or "you all", and I suppose something similar could be done with "they", but it's an inelegant solution that just reminds us that we’re missing a pronoun.
Guardian. so far as I know at the moment no longer on Viki, in the US but still on YouTube with (bad subtitles). I keep requesting it from Viki modern/not modern sdi-Fi fantasy with a lot of humor and drama and angst and the lead performances are so good and the chemistry of the whole cast is off the charts. its hard to describe. Stars
Zhu Yi Long, Bai Yu
Wanted to recommend Land of the Lustrous though I believe it is on Amazon Prime. Very good 3D anime and amazing manga which is (I think) approaching it's conclusion.
@ Cameron --
Ah, I also have Amazon Prime, though I don't dip into it as often. So recs from there are also possible for me to check out.
I have a lot of streaming -- Crunchyroll, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Wondrium.com (nonfiction!), PBS.org -- more to hand already than I could watch in several lifetimes. But I do have input limits -- I get what I've dubbed "attachment fatigue" where I'm too tired or overwhelmed to try to be interested in yet one more new set of characters, preferring old friends. A show or story that's good enough to overcome that is gold. I suppose "jaded" is another term, tho' that seems a trifle too negative.
Ta, L.
By the way, does anyone know where to find the 3-D anime of Scum Villain's Self-saving System with English subtitles? I turned up a version on YouTube, but it only had subtitles in Chinese.
In other rumors, there's supposed to be an anime of Onmyoji later this year -- from the never-translated novel series on which the odd but delightful early 2000's Japanese movies were based, Abe no Seimei and Minomoto no Hiromasa teaming up to fight supernatural crime in Heian Kyoto.
L.
WeTV actually has the whole thing up w/ official eng subs. They can be (understandably) annoying with the ads w/out premium though. Google "
weTV china scumbag system" and it should be the first result.
And speaking of Crunchyroll, one final recommendation (which I got Crunchyroll for the sole purpose of reading more of), To Your Eternity. Great manga, reread the first half several times - 3 season anime as well. Both on Crunchyroll.
I see that other people have already listed out the ones I would have recommended! I second "Love Between Fairy and Devil" and "Guardian," which is also sometimes called "Goblin" (though I don't know why Viki changed the English name of that particular drama). I would love to know what you think of Fairy & Devil. The body-switching scenes are particularly enjoyable to watch because how how well the actors were able to act out each other's characters.
@ Vivian --
Just started watching Fairy & Devil again from the beginning, and yeah, I was better able to appreciate the acting in that bit now I have a better idea what's going on.
I also dipped into something called Legend of Nine Tails Fox on Viki, probably second-tier but who can resist nifty CGI foxes. We'll see how that ones goes.
I'd not found Guardian on my first Viki search, but it did turn up when I tried "goblin", hah.
We also dipped into The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty last week, very promising. (Produced by Jackie Chan, says somewhere.) There's also a rather recent Jackie Chan fantasy titled The Knight of Shadows, feature length so less of a commitment, quite fun to see the older Chan graduated to the mentor role.
Ta, L.
Sleuth I watched to the end but was very disappointed by it. Narratively, it kept setting things up and dropping them/not having interesting followthrough. I also found what it did with the Oirat characters extremely questionable (the Oirats being a real ethnic group). And the dynamic between the two main characters didn't develop interestingly enough for me. I kept hoping it would stick the landing by the end, but it was my least favorite cdrama so far.
Curious to see what you think re Fairy & Devil this time! Xiao Lan Jua has great character development imo and si does Dongfang Qingcan, though they both start kind of annoying.
No other recs, but I definitely second the original question’s recommendation for Nirvana in Fire. It is exquisitely beautiful, excellently plotted, and more than moderately heartbreaking. The theme similarities to the Vorkosigan books go beyond the parallels with Miles, too - complicated family relationships, the covert power that women can exert on a patriarchal society, reputation and honor and loyalty and their very complicated interrelationships…
(I’ve been pitching it very aggressively to all of my Vorkosigan-loving friends. Far too few have actually watched it - admittedly it is a commitment, and I generally warn people that they’ll want to rewatch more or less immediately to catch all of the ways that late-stage plot is seeded in very, very early.)
Alathea yes I ran out of space in the question to list all the parallels! Consort Jing's role is very interesting re women in a patriarchal society in particular. And all the different implications of honor...
Plus a dinner party gone very very wrong where various plotlines pile up...
@ Maya --
Yeah, the female lead in Fairy & Devil is that annoying perky type so common in anime, but she does have the excuse of being literally a potted plant, so I'm willing to go with it.
:-), L.
I just finished "Alchemy of Souls" on Netflix. It is quite a time investment but quite good with a happy ending. "Hwarang: The Poet Warrior Youth' is from 2018 and might be hard to find. It is a fun watch with very attractive young men:) "Be True to Your Name" on Netflix is also good, and so different from America TV. I also loved Attorney Woo.
back to top
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Kathy KS
(new)
Apr 10, 2023 08:29PM
We also enjoyed Extraordinary Attorney Woo around here!
reply
|
flag
Nothing is as good as the Untamed, but I would throw out Eternal Love as another high fantasy series with similarly loveable characters. I’d also love to throw in Guardian: The Lonely God which has its tragic elements but great acting and amazing chemistry between … basically everyone
'Extraordinary Attorney Woo' is a great South Korean TV series about an autistic young lawyer, streaming on Netflix ... with exceptionally good English dubbing and captioning.
Second the recommendation for Guardian: awesome show! For fantasy + humour, Mystic Pop-up Bar on Netflix is sweet.
Based on your criteria of fantasy with some sense of humor, the annoyingly titled Love Between Fairy and Devil may also be up your alley. Takes a while to get going but then quite good/complex.
“you (collective you)”—once upon a time, as you know, ‘you’ would have been sufficient here, as it was a plural-only pronoun, the singular being ‘thou’. I still regret the ambiguities caused by the loss of ‘thou’, and now the language seems likely to suffer further damage caused by people insistently using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun. Bah. (Yes, I know that people have been occasionally using singular-they for centuries. Many other misuses of English have been going on for centuries, too.)
@ Maya --Huh. I'd dipped into Love Between Fairy and Devil, but wandered away after a couple of episodes; it might be worth another shot. "Takes a while to get going" is true of many of my favorite anime series, so I understand that. (Untamed didn't so much "take time to get going" as "take time to get understood", a different challenge, but so worth it in the end.)
Martha Wells had also mentioned Fairy & Devil on the panel, but I didn't get time to ask her why/if it paid off. Its fantasy world was pretty interesting.
L.
@ Jonathan --Yeah, I hear you on the problems of English pronouns. I regret that the science fiction genre didn't develop and export a consensus singular gender-neutral pronoun to the world at large before "they" started getting repurposed out of its original syntactical position. I grant utterly the need for such a pronoun, but the problem seems similar to what happened to the noun "book" upon the arrival of ebooks; the need to add something to disambiguate. I am not sure what's going to evolve for "they" when one actually wants it to mean "a group of two or more persons".
Ta, L.
Thanks, Lois, I agree with you completely. I think various people in the past have coined a new neutral-singular pronoun, but unfortunately they lacked enough support for the idea to catch on.It is possible to represent plural-you with some construction such as "all of you", "both of you", or "you all", and I suppose something similar could be done with "they", but it's an inelegant solution that just reminds us that we’re missing a pronoun.
Guardian. so far as I know at the moment no longer on Viki, in the US but still on YouTube with (bad subtitles). I keep requesting it from Viki modern/not modern sdi-Fi fantasy with a lot of humor and drama and angst and the lead performances are so good and the chemistry of the whole cast is off the charts. its hard to describe. Stars Zhu Yi Long, Bai Yu
Wanted to recommend Land of the Lustrous though I believe it is on Amazon Prime. Very good 3D anime and amazing manga which is (I think) approaching it's conclusion.
@ Cameron --Ah, I also have Amazon Prime, though I don't dip into it as often. So recs from there are also possible for me to check out.
I have a lot of streaming -- Crunchyroll, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Wondrium.com (nonfiction!), PBS.org -- more to hand already than I could watch in several lifetimes. But I do have input limits -- I get what I've dubbed "attachment fatigue" where I'm too tired or overwhelmed to try to be interested in yet one more new set of characters, preferring old friends. A show or story that's good enough to overcome that is gold. I suppose "jaded" is another term, tho' that seems a trifle too negative.
Ta, L.
By the way, does anyone know where to find the 3-D anime of Scum Villain's Self-saving System with English subtitles? I turned up a version on YouTube, but it only had subtitles in Chinese.In other rumors, there's supposed to be an anime of Onmyoji later this year -- from the never-translated novel series on which the odd but delightful early 2000's Japanese movies were based, Abe no Seimei and Minomoto no Hiromasa teaming up to fight supernatural crime in Heian Kyoto.
L.
WeTV actually has the whole thing up w/ official eng subs. They can be (understandably) annoying with the ads w/out premium though. Google "weTV china scumbag system" and it should be the first result.
And speaking of Crunchyroll, one final recommendation (which I got Crunchyroll for the sole purpose of reading more of), To Your Eternity. Great manga, reread the first half several times - 3 season anime as well. Both on Crunchyroll.
I see that other people have already listed out the ones I would have recommended! I second "Love Between Fairy and Devil" and "Guardian," which is also sometimes called "Goblin" (though I don't know why Viki changed the English name of that particular drama). I would love to know what you think of Fairy & Devil. The body-switching scenes are particularly enjoyable to watch because how how well the actors were able to act out each other's characters.
@ Vivian --Just started watching Fairy & Devil again from the beginning, and yeah, I was better able to appreciate the acting in that bit now I have a better idea what's going on.
I also dipped into something called Legend of Nine Tails Fox on Viki, probably second-tier but who can resist nifty CGI foxes. We'll see how that ones goes.
I'd not found Guardian on my first Viki search, but it did turn up when I tried "goblin", hah.
We also dipped into The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty last week, very promising. (Produced by Jackie Chan, says somewhere.) There's also a rather recent Jackie Chan fantasy titled The Knight of Shadows, feature length so less of a commitment, quite fun to see the older Chan graduated to the mentor role.
Ta, L.
Sleuth I watched to the end but was very disappointed by it. Narratively, it kept setting things up and dropping them/not having interesting followthrough. I also found what it did with the Oirat characters extremely questionable (the Oirats being a real ethnic group). And the dynamic between the two main characters didn't develop interestingly enough for me. I kept hoping it would stick the landing by the end, but it was my least favorite cdrama so far.Curious to see what you think re Fairy & Devil this time! Xiao Lan Jua has great character development imo and si does Dongfang Qingcan, though they both start kind of annoying.
No other recs, but I definitely second the original question’s recommendation for Nirvana in Fire. It is exquisitely beautiful, excellently plotted, and more than moderately heartbreaking. The theme similarities to the Vorkosigan books go beyond the parallels with Miles, too - complicated family relationships, the covert power that women can exert on a patriarchal society, reputation and honor and loyalty and their very complicated interrelationships…(I’ve been pitching it very aggressively to all of my Vorkosigan-loving friends. Far too few have actually watched it - admittedly it is a commitment, and I generally warn people that they’ll want to rewatch more or less immediately to catch all of the ways that late-stage plot is seeded in very, very early.)
Alathea yes I ran out of space in the question to list all the parallels! Consort Jing's role is very interesting re women in a patriarchal society in particular. And all the different implications of honor...
Plus a dinner party gone very very wrong where various plotlines pile up...
@ Maya --Yeah, the female lead in Fairy & Devil is that annoying perky type so common in anime, but she does have the excuse of being literally a potted plant, so I'm willing to go with it.
:-), L.
I just finished "Alchemy of Souls" on Netflix. It is quite a time investment but quite good with a happy ending. "Hwarang: The Poet Warrior Youth' is from 2018 and might be hard to find. It is a fun watch with very attractive young men:) "Be True to Your Name" on Netflix is also good, and so different from America TV. I also loved Attorney Woo.
