Condor Heroes

So I'm still watching the series. I am now on Episode 16. It's an irritating tendency for me to be so absorbed into something as to forget other stuff I need to do, so this will probably be the last episode for the day; I need to go and train and study some stuff.

It's definitely a different way of thinking. I mean, one character has an internal energy armor around her; it does not hinder her movement, can be worn with anything, is tough enough to repel some pretty advanced techniques, and routinely protects her from daily annoyances like snake bites. Oh, and it's a passive ability - it seems like it's always on and does not need her concentration to maintain. If I were living in this world where martial artists can have the ability to control poisonous vermin I think I would find a way to learn this skill. You would think that would be obvious, but no - because the skill was developed by a rival this martial arts hero won't even deign to think about learning it. He instead developed a skill that enables him to kill the vermin with needles. Yep, a skill that's dependent on having the right ammo, time to set up, and extreme abilities of perception, coordination, and precision. A skill whose effectiveness lowers drastically the more inebriated you are - which the inventor of said skill often is, given that he drinks wine from a seemingly-bottomless gourd. 

The concept of using snakes was pretty cool, I think. It's like using fire to attack in parallel, but more subtle. It's also a low-risk kind of attack - if you fail you can try again, and the loss of one snake isn't that disastrous. You also don't need to be anywhere close for it to work. I guess I'd learn this if it were real.

The episode had a lot of discussion about one's roots, about who one is. Ultimately it boils down to where you were born and what family your parents belong to. It's a recipe for division, and woe betide anyone who did not have power in this world. The conflict in this series was between the Song and Jin, and it's interesting that the characters were so focused on this that they neglected to reflect on whether there may be other groups waiting in the wings.