Belated wishes!
HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, VENAELI!
I hope you got plenty of cake, ice cream, and presents all around! Any belated wishes? If so, please post here ;)!
Oy, I'm so behind, again, as usual --;. I really wish I had more internet access at home X(! It would make life so much easier!
Mom and I went to see Sword of the Stranger last night via those Fathom one-time-only-showing events. I was surprised Mom actually liked this anime movie, but then again, the story was along the lines of those kung-fu movies they dragged me to as a kid, unwillingly. After the movie, Mom told me the story is somewhat historically based. There WAS actually a group of Chinese soldiers who went looking for some ingredient for immortality in Japan during the CHING dynasty and NOT the Ming dynasty as the movie was set, so it's off by a few hundred years. My guess is that they wanted the setting in the movie to match with some specific era in Japanese history, so they moved the story ahead a few dynasties. According to Mom, those soldiers never found that ingredient for immortality, so they were ashamed to go back home to China and stayed in Japan. I won't spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it, but I guess you can say something 'similar' happened to those Chinese soldiers too.
Mom had a couple of complaints though, naturally. One was that the Chinese characters used in the title did NOT match up with the story. The characters used in the title had something along the lines of a king or emperor. If they had switched out one character, it would have been more along the lines of the movie's main character, a swordsman with no name (called No Name). I don't know if that mistake was intentional or not. The second complaint was that one of the Chinese voice actors apparently couldn't speak Chinese very well ;P! The movie kept the Chinese voice actors lines in areas where the Japanese were speaking English to show they were speaking a different language than the Japanese. Most of the Chinese voice actors spoke well enough for me to understand them except for one guy who did the voice of the Westerner under employ of the Chinese. I'm not sure if that was intentional that his Chinese was bad because he was a foreigner, but Mom also complained that the little kid's Chinese was bad too ;P! I couldn't understand a thing he was saying by ear alone, but then again, he said things that I'm not used to hearing. I thought it was just me not being able to understand those words, but Mom said she had trouble understanding him too!
Mom said Dad would probably have enjoyed this movie too IF we could drag him there in the first place. I guess we'll see next time, depending on what's showing that is!