Eatup's Guide to China & The Far East - Part II

From a user review of Warrior's Dawn prequel on IMDB, exactly how I felt:

Every character is unique and you can watch it with your kid. You will love liya and lambart and their love story better than twilight. its not very famous because its an Asian movie not backed by any big media houses like Pixar or Disney. but its on par even better than some.
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Another IMDB user review that echoes my sentiment. The country that really invented STAR WARS (China) sure makes a lot of other fun things for ppl to watch:

Too many over critical people not appreciating it for what it is. Honestly, there are not enough animations like this! So much fun to watch. It is not completely original in it's genre but this does not make the beautiful animation, fun action combat scenes, silliness, drama, adorable characters any less good.

Looking forward to the sequel in the summer of 2016!
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Yet another IMDB review I absolutely agree with. Reviewer is 45 y/o illustrator, says it was the best CGI movie he'd seen in 10 years. I'm not that old and not that young, but I quite agree:

All characters felt important and we cared for every little bit of action where each of one was involved, which was something that I loved, because it's been years since I had seen animated characters that made such an impression on me. I'm still trying to understand how the makers of this movie achieved this with a plot that is nothing more than 80 minutes of action sequences. Any other movie would be extremely boring to watch, with a structure like this. Not this one. The guys who made this, know how to tell a story !! Dragon Nest is another good example of how oriental cinema is much more charismatic than most of what comes out of Hollywood this days. Oriental cinema knows how to create human characters that we care for, even if they are dragons or have just a few lines to say.

Overall I think this is a great fantasy action movie. Not that original in plot, but extremely well done in action and character development. A real case study.

The only thing I didn't liked was the abrupt ending...I was having fun waiting for a final epilogue segment and then GONE. Is this the first episode of a television series or what ?!...

Also visually Dragon Nest feels a bit limited when it comes to fantasy environments. The fantasy world looks beautiful, but I felt we've just seen small glimpses of it instead of getting that open world feel. It was probably a budget thing.

And although the English dubbing is very good, I need to see this in Mandarin now, as I'm not a supporter of dubbing movies as I prefer subtitles. Nevertheless this Dragon Nest movie is a surprise. Also it's definitely the best Chinese animation movie I've seen so far as most of the animation films that come out of China usually fail real bad and so I was also very surprised that this was not a Japanese project as I thought it could be. So overall, if you love fantasy movies, imaginary worlds Dragon Nest is a real hidden gem awaiting to be discovered and I hope there will be a sequel because I do want to see more of these characters please !! And I will be buying this in blu-ray if it ever comes out.

Great charming movie and this 45 year old illustrator here loved it !
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I'm gonna now try to find the Mandarin version to re-watch, since the ENG dubbed one didn't do full justice to the movie...
 
Just one more IMDB review I whole-heartedly give thumbs up. For me, when I saw that there was only 20 minutes left of the movie, I became likewise frustrated:

What I love about this movie is that it is not the story about a chosen one. Now a days, all movies, books and so on are about this one person who has the special power within him to change everything. However, this is not the kid. The main protagonist, Lambert, is just a simple teenager who happen to get into a quest. He does not hold special powers, he is not necessarily strong, he is just a normal kid with attitude. As the movie goes on he becomes stronger, but yet there is no mentioning of him being special, just a kid with a big heart. The animation in this movie was amazing. I was impressed from start to finish and the detailing of even the smallest aspect of the scene was well thought out. Also, so was the story line. The story line kept me guessing. It was not like most movies where you already know everything that is going to happen, it kept me guessing. When I started watching this movie my first thought were "Oh, he's the chosen one" or "Oh, this will totally happen next" But it didn't for most of the time. Which is pretty rare now a days if you ask me. All the characters are well thought out and original and have a personality which I would love to get to know a backstory to. The characters had however the natural traits of for example a mage, a warrior and so forth, however as I mentioned the personalities were really interesting. Furthermore, the fight scenes were amazing. The precision of every blow and every strike was fantastic and I am so glad that I chose to watch this movie tonight. I definitely will recommend all my friends who love this type of genre to see this movie. Why I gave it 10/10? Because it kept me guessing, it kept me wanting more, I was sitting on the end of my seat and when I saw it was only 10 minutes left I got so frustrated because I wanted to see more. Which I hopefully if they do a second one. Once again, a great movie.
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Ah, yes, it seems I've left out an important point, the dragons seen in the above movie are full 4-legged ones, unlike the retarded Smaug the 2-legged Wyvern in the Hollywood movies...
 
A Western attempt at a half human-dragon (Goro from Mortal Kombat):

Goro_950.jpg



The half-human dragon (incomplete metamorphosis stage) seen in Warrior's Dawn:

dragon.png

dragon2.png


(Girl on the left is his sister is also a "half-ling", who was unable to transform into a dragon to help her brother for most of the dragon battle... half-dragons fighting full-fledge dragon)

Need I say more?
 
Another thing I like about Warrior's Dawn is that the movie does NOT hold back, but never crossed the red line into porn and gore. Sex and gore are the lowest
denominators of visual arts, the traits often found in Japanese media. Chinese productions are more conservative in this respect.


DN: WD has it all, accidental boob-grab:

liya.png



Spirit departing from body (but returned with help of life force jewel):

liya2.png
 
Last edited:
We've come to the end of Part II


Part III can be found here



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Go to Part I



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(This guide will be split up into multi-parts to make it easy on the web server. Most of the topics come from another forum I'm actively browsing. This guide only has the purpose to allow me to fully appreciate the re-posted images in their native sizes, which the other web site tends to reformat to a small fixed size...)
 
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