The Romance of Three Kingdoms

[metoo90]

Does anyone have any info on this serie, anyone dare to discuss about this old serie...

[Thai guy]

I dare NOT to discuss this series. It is extremely long. I cannot remember the whole stories and I also missed some part of them. Thanks for your invitation.

[Lady Zhuge]

Sure, I'm always up for a discussion about my favorite series.
What info do you want on it?

[Yo Kang]

Well for one thing, I have this series. I'm up to episode 7or 8 and I've completely lost interest

One question. When does it start to pick up. It's so slow. And the games I played are so interesting (Dyansty Warriors series) ARGH!!!

[Lady Zhuge]

Originally posted by Yo Kang
Well for one thing, I have this series. I'm up to episode 7or 8 and I've completely lost interest

One question. When does it start to pick up. It's so slow. And the games I played are so interesting (Dyansty Warriors series) ARGH!!!

Yeah, the beginning can be dull if eunuchs don't enthrall you. For me, the show picks up when Zhuge Liang enters the story. Be patient and definitely don't give up!

[Meh]

In a sense, ROTK never does pick up. It's not really a story, but comes out more like a history book. The joy comes from seeing how people manipulate and plot against one another. To see the military and diplomatic strategies being used. There's not much of a plot, in a traditional sense.

I don't remember much about the story, because I saw it quite a while back, and my Chinese weren't as proficient as it is now. For the parts I understood, I found it very entertaining. But there are long stretches when I had no clue what people are talking about.

Out of the four great ancient classics of China, ROTK is the only book I have trouble with basic comprehension. Which kind of sucks, since I really like war stuff.

[Lady Zhuge]

Go back and rewatch it if you have the time and/or interest, Meh. I remember that the first time I caught some of it on TV, I understood close to nothing. I don't think I even knew who the main characters were exactly.
However, I've rewatched it many times since then and now basically understand every single part. It follows the novel pretty closely, so if you ever get lost, it wouldn't hurt to read up at www.threekingdoms.com.

[Omniflame]

Really good series.

However, the cantonese dubbing is pretty bad though. A lot of people sound the same and most of them sound half dead or something.

[Meh]

Go back and rewatch it if you have the time and/or interest, Meh. I remember that the first time I caught some of it on TV, I understood close to nothing. I don't think I even knew who the main characters were exactly.
However, I've rewatched it many times since then and now basically understand every single part. It follows the novel pretty closely, so if you ever get lost, it wouldn't hurt to read up at www.threekingdoms.com.

I saw that translation. But it's really annoying to read. Made things pretty uninteresting. What I wanted to do, of course, is to read the original Chinese version. But unfortunately, my Chinese isn't good enough. Somewhat strange, since I didn't have much problem with the Water Margin, Dream of the Red Mansion, and Journey to the West.

I thought about watching the serial again. But I'll probably wait til summer. This is the type of serial I'll actually need to concentrate to understand. I just don't have the energy to do that while in school.

[Lady Zhuge]

Originally posted by Meh
I saw that translation. But it's really annoying to read. Made things pretty uninteresting. What I wanted to do, of course, is to read the original Chinese version. But unfortunately, my Chinese isn't good enough. Somewhat strange, since I didn't have much problem with the Water Margin, Dream of the Red Mansion, and Journey to the West.

I thought about watching the serial again. But I'll probably wait til summer. This is the type of serial I'll actually need to concentrate to understand. I just don't have the energy to do that while in school.

Yeah, it's definitely a complex and winding tale, as there are so many characters, plots, and references to keep up with. That's one of the reasons why I love it, though.

Do you have the version with the English subs? Even though they suck quality-wise(see the attachment), they might help to decrease the amount of concentration you'd be interested in expending while watching this series.

[Yo Kang]

What the! Heh. Glad I have the Indo subbed version.

[Lady Zhuge]

Originally posted by Yo Kang
What the! Heh. Glad I have the Indo subbed version.

Yeah, and that's just one of many examples I could give you. Another that I remember vividly is when they encoded "lard" instead of "lord", so one of the soldiers responded "Yes, my lard." to Cao Cao.

In the attachment at the bottom, Guan Xing somehow lost his beard and became Guan Yu.


This is actually really sad how they ruin an almost perfect masterpiece with such poor English subtitles. I know a bunch of people(myself included) who love RTK and would have voluntarily edited or helped to translate the dialogue. I mean, they could have at least attempted to do a decent job. Plus, this series is not exactly cheap(especially with the subs) and people who buy it have the right to expect much better quality, so hopefully they will redo these subs one day.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the good people who actually provide accurate and grammatically correct encoding to Chinese television series. From one who has seen the ends of both spectrums, it is much appreciated.

[metoo90]

See teh thing is I remember watching this serie LONG time ago nad not really knowing it and dynasty warriors came out making me more curious about the serie and its history, u know. That's why I wanted to just discuss about this serie, so i can remember about it. I mean does anyone have the pictures of all the characters in the serie.....

[Lady Zhuge]

Originally posted by metoo90
See teh thing is I remember watching this serie LONG time ago nad not really knowing it and dynasty warriors came out making me more curious about the serie and its history, u know. That's why I wanted to just discuss about this serie, so i can remember about it. I mean does anyone have the pictures of all the characters in the serie.....

I have great interest in this era as well!

This isn't everyone in the series, but it's a decent amount: http://www.3kingdoms.net/rtkportrait...aportraits.htm. Of course some characters were played by more than one actor...

[Zhuge Liang]

To be sure this series is not the usual type of drama series. In fact, love forms a very small part of it and there are not many females in the series at all.

The language used is quite difficult at times when they speak in prose. I'll be the first to admit the first bulk of the episodes are pretty boring. When i rewatch i usually start at Liu Bei in Jingzhou, just before he meets Zhuge Liang.

Fans of Dynasty Warriors will be quite disappointed since this is not some highly stylised video game adaption and by western standards it is quite rough around the edges. However, there are many scenes which actually do look like real battles as there are so many soldiers - a far cry from a TVB battlefield of 20 soldiers!

[metoo90]

Wow thanxs for the info guys ...anyways I just hope that they could make some sort of 2004 ROTK,but *hheheeeh* I doubt that will happen

Anyways, what are some of ure favorite scenes?

[Lady Zhuge]

Originally posted by metoo90
Anyways, what are some of ure favorite scenes?

I have a lot of favorite scenes/parts, most of which involve my favorite character(guess who?).

- Liu Bei's three visits to Zhuge Liang's hut
- Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei reunite after their separation
- Kongming gains 100,000 arrows from Wei by trickery
- Zhuge Liang debating with the Wu scholars
- Zhuge Liang captures Meng Huo seven times
- Zhuge Liang employing the empty city strategem against Sima Zhongda
- Deng Ai controlling his son's temper as they are being goaded by the enemy about their poor past

[Yo Kang]

I just picked up the series 2 weeks ago. It's better if u watch and read the novel at the same time (exactly what I'm doing right now ) It'll be easier to understand it. I'm now on episode 27 (Yuan Te meets Kongming) hehe. The pace is picking up!

[LiYuanZhi]

Wow thanxs for the info guys ...anyways I just hope that they could make some sort of 2004 ROTK,but *hheheeeh* I doubt that will happen

Actaully, they're making another version of RoTK. It's going to be normal everyday langauge instead of all the ancient terms, which according to me, would suck because the story would lose one of the best elements, but I suppose that it would make the story more understandable for non-mandarin speaking people.

The old version (or should I say only version for the moment ) is extremely long and to watch it, you really have to be interested in history. If you usually watch TVB stuff, just be warned that it's very different. But it is DEFINITELY NOT boring. Maybe complex and sometimes slow, but not boring.

[Candide]

I saw that translation. But it's really annoying to read. Made things pretty uninteresting. What I wanted to do, of course, is to read the original Chinese version. But unfortunately, my Chinese isn't good enough. Somewhat strange, since I didn't have much problem with the Water Margin, Dream of the Red Mansion, and Journey to the West.

I find it strange too, Meh. One of the best things about ROTK is the amazing character depictions with very simple sentences (this is said about the original Chinese version). I find it very easy to read. I actually read the Viet translation but it's very similar to the Chinese version anyway. I found Dream of the Red Mansion hardest to understand when I was younger, but it was mostly because it bored me to tears (romantic bullshit and crybaby metrosexual pretty boys do that to me).