Post by ajk on Aug 6, 2022 16:29:41 GMT -5
Announcement: In tonight’s episode, the role of Prince Shin-geum will be played by Emperor Wang Guhn.
(click for full size)
Post-episode review: He totally nailed it. The awesome dumbass-ness, the complete inability to see your own mistake…bravo, a masterful performance.
With one exception, this was a wonderful episode. In some ways it reminded me of the episode that built up to the Myeongryang battle in IYSS. In fact it might have been wiser to make this episode all buildup and have the battle in the next one, but we can’t really judge that just yet.
The opening was terrific, sucked you into the story immediately. At first it was so odd, you had no idea what was going on, but what made it work was the music. How about that, they did a terrific job of scoring something that totally worked just for the scene. The music sure has come a long way from the early episodes.
“I speculate it is a setup to make us believe they are already here.” Really? Then why isn’t anybody in the camps? That whole thing was weird…it certainly indicated that someone was there…and that the army had thought hard about that particular location. Surprised that Bok Jikyum was the only suspicious one.
WG: “The moonlight is very bright tonight.” Give them some credit, the whole business that followed had some of the usual issues about being over-lit for nighttime scenes, but at least they addressed it explicitly and tried to give us a premise for it. And it wasn’t as much of a problem as it’s been in other episodes so it wasn’t too distracting.
But that being said, there were images and sequences that worked well and showed that you can do a night battle without overlighting it. The cavalry charge in particular was almost perfect. You knew what was happening—couldn’t see everything clearly but you knew.
Kyun-hwon: “I’m told that Wang Guhn’s sworn brother Shin Seungkyum’s bravery has been compared to that of Guan Yu.” Sent me Googling; Guan Yu was a general during the Lui Bei/Cao Slumgum’s part of the Three Kingdoms era in China. Nothing particularly important to our story; he simply was a general who made a big name for himself in the third century AD and would have been well-known on the peninsula at this time. If anyone’s curious:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guan_Yu
“Panzer unit! Where is the Panzer unit?” Umm….what? The subtitling has been consistently good but that may be the weirdest one of the series.
The initial attack was very well done; yes there were too many flaming arrows but considering you’d like to set the enemy camp on fire if you’re the attacker, we can let them have some flaming arrows this time. The only part of it that didn’t really work was that there were just too many Koryo soldiers running around aimlessly in the camp once the attack started. Even as the enemy swept in, still a whole bunch of Koryo soldiers just carrying flags or spears or whatever and scurrying back and forth for no apparent reason. Yes you do need visuals for TV but it was a little too much.
(click for full size)
How could this be? Apparently the dumbass-ness is contagious. You were the suspicious one, remember? Yikes.
KH about WG: “I had only heard about his amazing fighting skills…Impressive indeed. Yaesul is running from him.” Aaaaaand there it is. No no no. This only came up once before, way back in Episode 58 when Koryo was invading the Geumsung region. They got to Geumsung Fortress, and we had one of those silly sequences where the higher-ups have one-on-one duels and the rest of the armies just stand there in front of each other and watch. WG came charging in for a horseback duel with Sudal (who had just defeated Park Sulhee), and knocked his sword away. Maybe the biggest WTH moment of the series, because there had never been a shred of anything before that moment to suggest that WG had ever acquired any sort of sword skills or horseback stills of any kind for single combat. We didn’t get anything else like that for 101 episodes, but here it is again. And it doesn’t make any more sense now than it did then. Maybe in real history he actually did lead that charge, but even if he did, he’d have been surrounded by elite warriors who never would have let him just get tossed into the fray like he was here. And expecting us to believe he could defeat a career elite warrior like Yaesul, good grief no.
And it’s too bad because there was some terrific other stuff in that sequence. In particular the sideways camera angle of the two cavalry units charging into each other, that was fantastic. I couldn’t even get a good screenshot of it because the movement was so fast. Somebody did an amazing job of choreographing that to get it to look so good.
Nice cliffhanger ending with the logs, the logs looked good.
So here we are at episode 159 at WG is still making major errors as a leader. The way they tried to sell him as a “hero” very early on, I sure never expected this. But no complaints, in fact it’s a big positive when a series isn’t falling back on clichés. Continues to be a fascinating story.
Can we call this episode The Gong Show?
(click for full size)
Post-episode review: He totally nailed it. The awesome dumbass-ness, the complete inability to see your own mistake…bravo, a masterful performance.
With one exception, this was a wonderful episode. In some ways it reminded me of the episode that built up to the Myeongryang battle in IYSS. In fact it might have been wiser to make this episode all buildup and have the battle in the next one, but we can’t really judge that just yet.
The opening was terrific, sucked you into the story immediately. At first it was so odd, you had no idea what was going on, but what made it work was the music. How about that, they did a terrific job of scoring something that totally worked just for the scene. The music sure has come a long way from the early episodes.
“I speculate it is a setup to make us believe they are already here.” Really? Then why isn’t anybody in the camps? That whole thing was weird…it certainly indicated that someone was there…and that the army had thought hard about that particular location. Surprised that Bok Jikyum was the only suspicious one.
WG: “The moonlight is very bright tonight.” Give them some credit, the whole business that followed had some of the usual issues about being over-lit for nighttime scenes, but at least they addressed it explicitly and tried to give us a premise for it. And it wasn’t as much of a problem as it’s been in other episodes so it wasn’t too distracting.
But that being said, there were images and sequences that worked well and showed that you can do a night battle without overlighting it. The cavalry charge in particular was almost perfect. You knew what was happening—couldn’t see everything clearly but you knew.
Kyun-hwon: “I’m told that Wang Guhn’s sworn brother Shin Seungkyum’s bravery has been compared to that of Guan Yu.” Sent me Googling; Guan Yu was a general during the Lui Bei/Cao Slumgum’s part of the Three Kingdoms era in China. Nothing particularly important to our story; he simply was a general who made a big name for himself in the third century AD and would have been well-known on the peninsula at this time. If anyone’s curious:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guan_Yu
“Panzer unit! Where is the Panzer unit?” Umm….what? The subtitling has been consistently good but that may be the weirdest one of the series.
The initial attack was very well done; yes there were too many flaming arrows but considering you’d like to set the enemy camp on fire if you’re the attacker, we can let them have some flaming arrows this time. The only part of it that didn’t really work was that there were just too many Koryo soldiers running around aimlessly in the camp once the attack started. Even as the enemy swept in, still a whole bunch of Koryo soldiers just carrying flags or spears or whatever and scurrying back and forth for no apparent reason. Yes you do need visuals for TV but it was a little too much.
(click for full size)
How could this be? Apparently the dumbass-ness is contagious. You were the suspicious one, remember? Yikes.
KH about WG: “I had only heard about his amazing fighting skills…Impressive indeed. Yaesul is running from him.” Aaaaaand there it is. No no no. This only came up once before, way back in Episode 58 when Koryo was invading the Geumsung region. They got to Geumsung Fortress, and we had one of those silly sequences where the higher-ups have one-on-one duels and the rest of the armies just stand there in front of each other and watch. WG came charging in for a horseback duel with Sudal (who had just defeated Park Sulhee), and knocked his sword away. Maybe the biggest WTH moment of the series, because there had never been a shred of anything before that moment to suggest that WG had ever acquired any sort of sword skills or horseback stills of any kind for single combat. We didn’t get anything else like that for 101 episodes, but here it is again. And it doesn’t make any more sense now than it did then. Maybe in real history he actually did lead that charge, but even if he did, he’d have been surrounded by elite warriors who never would have let him just get tossed into the fray like he was here. And expecting us to believe he could defeat a career elite warrior like Yaesul, good grief no.
And it’s too bad because there was some terrific other stuff in that sequence. In particular the sideways camera angle of the two cavalry units charging into each other, that was fantastic. I couldn’t even get a good screenshot of it because the movement was so fast. Somebody did an amazing job of choreographing that to get it to look so good.
Nice cliffhanger ending with the logs, the logs looked good.
So here we are at episode 159 at WG is still making major errors as a leader. The way they tried to sell him as a “hero” very early on, I sure never expected this. But no complaints, in fact it’s a big positive when a series isn’t falling back on clichés. Continues to be a fascinating story.
Can we call this episode The Gong Show?
