Hello, do you have any recommendation of a good wuxia drama? I really love wire work in word of honor and would like to see more of nice action scenes in dramas. Thank you!
Hello~ Thanks for trusting in my judgement, and also my apologies that I've taken so long to get back to you. I don't know whether or not you can speak Chinese, so I'll try and give you ones that have Eng subs, and also try to cover all bases. Disclaimer: I love wuxia, but mostly old wuxia. I gave up wuxia after a certain someone butchered wuxia dramas year after year. So WOH was an absolute surprise to me. Therefore, I haven’t watched most of the recent productions I am recommending and I’m relying on other people’s judgement.
If it's purely the wire work that you like from WOH and want something similar, then I recommend checking out the other works the WOH martial arts director has done. In particular, "Ultimate Note 终极笔记" has the best reputation among fellow WOH viewers. I've heard a lot of VERY good things about this show even though it's not wuxia.
Most of the best wuxia is old, but not everyone is used to the old wuxia aesthetic. So I'll start with the recent production recommendations.
When I first began watching WOH I was SO drawn to the wuxia. I then started bemoaning the lack of good wuxia all over c-social media, and then was promptly reprimanded by some wuxia fanatics who told me there is good wuxia, just that people don’t know about it. The shows that were again and again recommended to me are: “Ancient Detective 侠探简不知" and “Love in Between 少年游之一寸相思”. I’ve only just begun watching these two myself, and I don’t want my experience to colour yours too much (though so far I'm liking "Ancient Detective" more as a successor to wuxia). Each have their pros and cons, and I reckon give them both a try and see which ones floats your boat more. They’re both relatively smaller productions, but I can tell good effort has been put into both and they aren’t just cash grabs by studios.
Ok. Now onto a recent production of a canonical wuxia story. We are entering into Louis Cha or Jin Yong territory, the godfather of wuxia, the author to wuxia stories that get readapted every 5-10 years.
THE classic wuxia story is "The Legend of the Condor Heroes". Just how canonical is this text? It's the only Louis Cha novel to be translated into English. The recent 2017 production has a solid reputation as being faithful to the text, as opposed to some of the butchered adaptions of recent years. So it received good reviews. I haven't found any official eng subs, but a quick youtube search gave me the following fan sub:
Annnddddd now I'm going to recommend two of my absolute favourite wuxia stories, both by Louis Cha. There are many adaptions of these and I have spent way too many years of my youth (fiercely) debating which one is better and why. So without getting into that, I'm just going to tell you what I like.
The first is "Laughing in the Wind 笑傲江湖". It is both a layered look at the nature of good and evil as well as functioning as a political allegory. You will see WOH being influenced by ideas in this text re jianghu. This is the 2003 version I like. The music and cinematography and costumes. *Chefs kiss* Fan subbed version I found:
The ending theme song deserves its own spot in this post:
The second is "Demi-gods and Semi-devils 天龙八部". My absolute favourite. I spent years obsessing over the character of Qiao Feng. He remains my favourite wuxia character. I have also read and watched this story... too many times. Again, lots of philosophical and religious allegory in this story, lots of commentary on the nature of ambition and desire.
The 2003 version I have watched way too many times: fan subbed version I found:
Once you've got these names feel free to find the best fan subbed versions for yourself.
Needless to say, any Louis Cha story is guaranteed complex plot, complex characters, endless intrigue. Goes without saying.
The other biggest contenders to best Louis Cha adaptions are the even earlier ones from Hong Kong. However I was not able to find any eng subbed versions.
I've only mentioned one of the three titans of wuxia writing. So you can go crazy by looking into the works of Gu Long and Liang Yusheng too.
Happy viewing and do let me know how you go. 🙂
