Return of the Condor Heroes 2006 - Episode 01 Recap
So... ages and ages ago I did a poll and asked whether people wanted this recapped and people did. Unfortunately due to me not having a laptop for a term at university that didn't happen. But now, I have finally got my act together and am posting the first recap for Episode 1.
The first thing that comes to mind when I watch this is the opening song. It's so beautiful and so often I am bored by the music and credits that open the episode. The music is gorgeous.
The episode with starts with ominous red hands printed on to a wall to which the inhabitants of the house cry out in alarm, fearing for their lives. Apparently, a certain Li Mo Chou, who we find out is the evil serpent lady, demonness and all-around bad woman, has come. The mother of the house, terrified for her children (two girls), prepares for them to run away, wishing them her best. However, the father puts a handkerchief on Chen Ying. After arguing with his wife for not putting the hankerchief around his daughter's neck he tears it into two and puts each piece around his daughter's and Chen Ying's neck. The children are then sent away as the parents resign themselves to their fate.
Thunder. Winds howling. Then the candles all go out. Suddenly one by one, they are lit all again and we see a great shot of Li Mo Chou here.
Before you can blink, we are in the middle of an action scene. The parents simultaneously attack Li Mo Chou, however she evades their attacks while simultaneously harming them with her poisonous palms. While on their knees, she asks them to beg the husband's brother for their life, however the husband staunchly refuse and as they continue to fight the couples suffering increases.
I just thought that I should put this pic in. I absolutely love this shot. Look at how mean she is, doesn't even allow the couple's hands to touch each other before they die. Just shows the total hopelessness the couple feel and this gives us a foreboding feeling about the children's escape.
As hinted from before, Li Mo Chou catches up pretty quickly with the children and stops them. The servant that is running away with them tries to attack her, but is stopped before anything serious can happen. Just as she makes her move on the children, she sees the torn pieces of the handkerchief on their necks and shes pauses. The handkerchief was one that she made for a loved one in the past and we see some happy moments between the two. On account of this, she decides to let the children go. But then she reconsiders,
"Lu Zhuan Yuen, you want to save two lives with one handkerchief. You're too greedy. I won't let anyone go!"
And she resumes her chase, but is suddenly halted by an old man and a boy who come to the rescue of the two young girls. The boy takes care of the girls while the old man deals with Li Mo Chou.
A fight ensues, and as she is defeated, Li Mo Chou learns from his moves that he is Huang You Cheng of Peach Blossom Island. As they continue fighting she launches a sneak attack, and due to him being chivalrous and upright, while trying to protect some of the kids, she kidnaps one of the girls and runs away.
"Guo-er! Guo-er!" A cry echoes in the woods and the old man recognises the owner of the voice, not wanting to see him, runs off.
The next day, we get to know more about the owner of the voice and the boy who helps the two young girls. Yang Guo, is being sent by his aunt and Uncle Guo (Guo Jing), the owner of the voice we hear in the woods, to Chong Yang Palace. Yang Guo disagrees with this decision and doesn't understand why he is going there. Uncle Guo explains that he is to be taught by Priest Zhu, Yang Guo's father's teacher.
Yang Guo, still upset with this move, lashes out.
YG: "Is Aunty Guo not on good terms with my father?"
GJ: "Guo-er, there's a lot of history behind this. It's not like I
can explain it with just a few sentences. You're still young.
When you grow up, I'll tell you."
YG: "What kind of person was my father? Why does everyone dislike him?
My father was killed by Aunt Guo and you! Right?!"
GJ: "Shut up!"
In his anger (or perhaps surprise), Uncle Guo slams his palm unto the tombstone.
Which results in these cracks. ( I want to talk about everything later and what I think that means but I'll do that at the end of the summary). Guo Jing asks Yang Guo who told him this and Yang Guo replies, "I was just guessing." All the attention Guo Jing pays to this when Yang Guo is just guessing suggests there might be truth in Yang Guo's suggestion, but as I said we'll talk about that later. The two continue up the mountain and come across the priests of Quen Zhen sect. The priests mistake Guo Jing for a pervert while Yang Guo hides away from all the danger as the priest and Uncle Guo fight.
Just thought I should add some of these caps:
I'm sorry the caps aren't so good. But literally more than 20 priests attack Guo Jing and in good wuxia fashion they are totally decimated by his awesome fighting skills. Finally Guo Jing gets all the way up the mountain and finds that his teachers are being held hostage, he saves them and confronts the bandits (I'll call them that for now). The leader of the bandits challenges Guo Jing to a fight, and after a few minutes loses.
Guo Jing later learns that these bandits are Prince Huo Du of Mongolia and his men who come up the mountain each year to come and get Miss Long as his wife. As the Mongolians leave the temple where they were previously fighting they head to Miss Long's cave and the Prince stands outside it imploring Miss Long to come out and marry him, since he has heard how beautiful she is.
In response, Miss Long sends out a wave of attacking bees and the Mongolians retreat quickly. However, hiding in the trees are two women. Li Mo Chou and another girl that we learn is her disciple (YD - stands for LMC's disciple).
YD: "Master, I didn't expect that she would have this kind of trick."
LMC: "Your biased Grand Teacher taught her more than this.
The highest skill of our sect, 'Art of the Jade Maiden', was
taught to her, but not me."
YD: "At her level, she is no match for you at all. Master, why don't
you snatch the 'Art of Jade Maiden' back?"
LMC: "Your Grand Teacher may be biased, but I am, after all, her
Senior. I can't possibly use my position to bully her."
Back at the temple, Yang Guo swears to obey the priests of the Quan Zhen sect and is sworn in as a disciple. The episode ends with Yang Guo finding it difficult to stick to the rules of the Temple and messing around instead of doing work.
Thoughts
We first open with red handprints on the wall. I love this! It's so funny. It's meant to be scary but all I think of is nursery school where you got to do this all the time. I think that perhaps having so many was a bit much and OTT. I also love it when we see LMC about to come to kill the couple at the house. You hear thunder and all the lights go out then eerily come back on. It's like a horror film, you know she's coming to kill them. We're just waiting.
Another thing I found interesting is Li Mo Chou's sudden morality. At the beginning we see her killing mercilessly, then we see her past of her being a young girl embroidering an handkerchief for her lover and then we see the respect she and duty she seems to hold as a Senior in her sect. Looking back, already we can tell that she is not going to be the stock baddie, instead as the episode continues, we see more and more good things about her.
I said I would talk about Guo JIng's reaction to Yang Guo's suppostions. I don't know whether I'm reading far too much into it since I've already watched all of this series but now watching it again, I think this episode explains a lot and sets ups quite a lot. As an episode I think that this definitely was not one of the most interesting episodes, in fact one of the boring ones but I suppose it is necessary to set up the background for the story.
The first thing that comes to mind when I watch this is the opening song. It's so beautiful and so often I am bored by the music and credits that open the episode. The music is gorgeous.
Click to viewThe episode with starts with ominous red hands printed on to a wall to which the inhabitants of the house cry out in alarm, fearing for their lives. Apparently, a certain Li Mo Chou, who we find out is the evil serpent lady, demonness and all-around bad woman, has come. The mother of the house, terrified for her children (two girls), prepares for them to run away, wishing them her best. However, the father puts a handkerchief on Chen Ying. After arguing with his wife for not putting the hankerchief around his daughter's neck he tears it into two and puts each piece around his daughter's and Chen Ying's neck. The children are then sent away as the parents resign themselves to their fate.
Thunder. Winds howling. Then the candles all go out. Suddenly one by one, they are lit all again and we see a great shot of Li Mo Chou here.
Before you can blink, we are in the middle of an action scene. The parents simultaneously attack Li Mo Chou, however she evades their attacks while simultaneously harming them with her poisonous palms. While on their knees, she asks them to beg the husband's brother for their life, however the husband staunchly refuse and as they continue to fight the couples suffering increases.
I just thought that I should put this pic in. I absolutely love this shot. Look at how mean she is, doesn't even allow the couple's hands to touch each other before they die. Just shows the total hopelessness the couple feel and this gives us a foreboding feeling about the children's escape.
As hinted from before, Li Mo Chou catches up pretty quickly with the children and stops them. The servant that is running away with them tries to attack her, but is stopped before anything serious can happen. Just as she makes her move on the children, she sees the torn pieces of the handkerchief on their necks and shes pauses. The handkerchief was one that she made for a loved one in the past and we see some happy moments between the two. On account of this, she decides to let the children go. But then she reconsiders,
"Lu Zhuan Yuen, you want to save two lives with one handkerchief. You're too greedy. I won't let anyone go!"
And she resumes her chase, but is suddenly halted by an old man and a boy who come to the rescue of the two young girls. The boy takes care of the girls while the old man deals with Li Mo Chou.
A fight ensues, and as she is defeated, Li Mo Chou learns from his moves that he is Huang You Cheng of Peach Blossom Island. As they continue fighting she launches a sneak attack, and due to him being chivalrous and upright, while trying to protect some of the kids, she kidnaps one of the girls and runs away.
"Guo-er! Guo-er!" A cry echoes in the woods and the old man recognises the owner of the voice, not wanting to see him, runs off.
The next day, we get to know more about the owner of the voice and the boy who helps the two young girls. Yang Guo, is being sent by his aunt and Uncle Guo (Guo Jing), the owner of the voice we hear in the woods, to Chong Yang Palace. Yang Guo disagrees with this decision and doesn't understand why he is going there. Uncle Guo explains that he is to be taught by Priest Zhu, Yang Guo's father's teacher.
Yang Guo, still upset with this move, lashes out.
YG: "Is Aunty Guo not on good terms with my father?"
GJ: "Guo-er, there's a lot of history behind this. It's not like I
can explain it with just a few sentences. You're still young.
When you grow up, I'll tell you."
YG: "What kind of person was my father? Why does everyone dislike him?
My father was killed by Aunt Guo and you! Right?!"
GJ: "Shut up!"
In his anger (or perhaps surprise), Uncle Guo slams his palm unto the tombstone.
Which results in these cracks. ( I want to talk about everything later and what I think that means but I'll do that at the end of the summary). Guo Jing asks Yang Guo who told him this and Yang Guo replies, "I was just guessing." All the attention Guo Jing pays to this when Yang Guo is just guessing suggests there might be truth in Yang Guo's suggestion, but as I said we'll talk about that later. The two continue up the mountain and come across the priests of Quen Zhen sect. The priests mistake Guo Jing for a pervert while Yang Guo hides away from all the danger as the priest and Uncle Guo fight.
Just thought I should add some of these caps:
I'm sorry the caps aren't so good. But literally more than 20 priests attack Guo Jing and in good wuxia fashion they are totally decimated by his awesome fighting skills. Finally Guo Jing gets all the way up the mountain and finds that his teachers are being held hostage, he saves them and confronts the bandits (I'll call them that for now). The leader of the bandits challenges Guo Jing to a fight, and after a few minutes loses.
Guo Jing later learns that these bandits are Prince Huo Du of Mongolia and his men who come up the mountain each year to come and get Miss Long as his wife. As the Mongolians leave the temple where they were previously fighting they head to Miss Long's cave and the Prince stands outside it imploring Miss Long to come out and marry him, since he has heard how beautiful she is.
In response, Miss Long sends out a wave of attacking bees and the Mongolians retreat quickly. However, hiding in the trees are two women. Li Mo Chou and another girl that we learn is her disciple (YD - stands for LMC's disciple).
YD: "Master, I didn't expect that she would have this kind of trick."
LMC: "Your biased Grand Teacher taught her more than this.
The highest skill of our sect, 'Art of the Jade Maiden', was
taught to her, but not me."
YD: "At her level, she is no match for you at all. Master, why don't
you snatch the 'Art of Jade Maiden' back?"
LMC: "Your Grand Teacher may be biased, but I am, after all, her
Senior. I can't possibly use my position to bully her."
Back at the temple, Yang Guo swears to obey the priests of the Quan Zhen sect and is sworn in as a disciple. The episode ends with Yang Guo finding it difficult to stick to the rules of the Temple and messing around instead of doing work.
Thoughts
We first open with red handprints on the wall. I love this! It's so funny. It's meant to be scary but all I think of is nursery school where you got to do this all the time. I think that perhaps having so many was a bit much and OTT. I also love it when we see LMC about to come to kill the couple at the house. You hear thunder and all the lights go out then eerily come back on. It's like a horror film, you know she's coming to kill them. We're just waiting.
Another thing I found interesting is Li Mo Chou's sudden morality. At the beginning we see her killing mercilessly, then we see her past of her being a young girl embroidering an handkerchief for her lover and then we see the respect she and duty she seems to hold as a Senior in her sect. Looking back, already we can tell that she is not going to be the stock baddie, instead as the episode continues, we see more and more good things about her.
I said I would talk about Guo JIng's reaction to Yang Guo's suppostions. I don't know whether I'm reading far too much into it since I've already watched all of this series but now watching it again, I think this episode explains a lot and sets ups quite a lot. As an episode I think that this definitely was not one of the most interesting episodes, in fact one of the boring ones but I suppose it is necessary to set up the background for the story.