[Weekly Update] More Three Kingdoms Adaptations

After completing part 2 of our dynasties series, I'm in a bit of a Three Kingdoms mood. So, I bought a game called Reigns: Three Kingdoms. And I have to say, it's pretty great for a 3 dollar game! It's the perfect headache-day game, where you just sit back, relax, and enjoy the absurdity of dressing up as a woman, sneaking into Wang Yun's estate, and subtly or not so subtly tell him to kill Dong Zhuo with a love triangle.

CHANNEL UPDATE

Yes, I'm having a headache again. Haven't feel too well after watching Ah Girl Go Army. When I say a movie makes me sick, I never meant that literally, until now.

My head is spinning and I'm in no condition to write any critical reviews. So, unfortunately, I'll have to swap things around a bit. Since everyone seems to also be in a bit of a Three Kingdoms mood, I'll quickly whip up a review of different Three Kingdoms adaptations. It'll mainly about which adaptation is best for a new comer to learn about the story.

The video after that will be dynasties part 3, in which we cover the Tang-Song period. Unlike prior dynasties where nearly all movies are adaptations of classics, the Tang dynasty and the periods that follow have a lot more original films. It'll be interesting to see how each film interprets the dynasties.

MEDIA TALK

Let's talk about some of the weirder Three Kingdoms adaptation that I can't fit into any of our videos. These are adaptations so weird, any time I bring it up more than a sentence, I'll have to explain it for like 5 minutes, derailing the entire video.

If you are in our discord server, or if you saw our last video, you'll remember that brief cameo of Ikki Tousen, a Japanese ecchi-action-anime featuring high school students, mostly girls, with names and weapons from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The series started back in 2003, which was, depressingly, 20 years ago. But the series has incredible longevity, as it ran a total of 5 seasons, and still have mobile games with a strong fan base. A good part of it is because the characters are genuinely well designed. They are instantly memorable, even if they don't have much to do with the source material.

Less iconic Is the SD Gundam Sangokuden, this mechanism series loosely retells the plot of the Three Kingdoms, but strangely with a mythological twist, depicting the three leaders as reincarnations of heavenly beings, if I recalled correctly. This is actually a setting borrowed from Water Margin, another Chinese classic that's popular in Japan. It also has Zhang Liang, the Chu-Han War period general.

Funnily enough that's not even the only mecha anime that mix and match Chinese stories. Giant Robot: The Day the Earth Stood Still is an anime that completely mashes up Water Margin, Pre-Xia Dynasty Mythology, and folk religion all into one. Zhuge Liang is the final boss. Don't ask me how I know about this anime.

The SD Gundam series would get a reboot towards the end of the 2010s. I didn't watch this one because I can only take so many abuse in my life.

K.O.3an Guo is a Taiwanese TV series featuring young idol boys playing high schoolers with a plot that's loosely based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel. This is actually a spiritual successor to KO One series, which started the whole "Anime idol boy" trend, in which super power high schoolers talk more than characters in Dragon Ball Z does, and throws a punch maybe once every 10 episodes or so... I watched it because I was a dumb teenager. I can't say I enjoyed it, but the constant cliffhanger did kept me interested.

Finally, the Advisors Alliance is a 2017 Chinese adaptation of the story, centered around Sima Yi, a side character in the original story, but the ultimate victor of the war. The two part series sports a really pulp-y title, literally translated to "The Great Strategist SImu Yi: The Alliance of Strategist". The stupid title sounds like some web-series featuring a time travelling Three Kingdoms character, who'd go to a McDonald's and use his deduction reasoning to figure out how to order a burger. It turned me off for more than two years, until I watched it during Covid. Man, it's a freaking good series, and I highly recommend giving it a watch. It doesn't follow the Three Kingdoms that closely, but the liberty it takes doesn't detract from experience.

So, these are the weird Three Kingdoms adaptations that I know of. Do you know any other weird ones? Share it with us! I'll finish the new script soon, and hopefully I can get the video out on Friday!