The one hundred and sixty-sixth TV show: #196 The Water Margin
I was quite looking forward to watching The Water Margin. I had a fine experience with the book, which had its issues at the start but worked well enough. Seeing it visualized would have worked better, making for a decent drama. This failed me on several levels though.
First, we watched the dub of the show. It's the most widely available to us and while subbed shows are probably more acceptable now than they were back then, the dub has British actors using Asian accents for their portrayals, with differing amounts of subtlety, and the awkwardness of that never left me. Then there are the many characters - dubbed by only a handful of characters - that we struggled to keep separate. Some become memorable, but often it feels like we have a conversation between bureaucrats that we can't remember. Again, it doesn't help that we can't distinguish between the voices, but there's little done to help you remember then.
The translation itself doesn't help either. Apparently this was done without access to the original scripts, using only brief plot synopses. While done well enough when compared to the difficulties inherent in this, it feels like some exposition was dropped in favour of pseudo-mystic quotes. It certainly wouldn't have helped coherency.
I wonder whether a sub would have helped, but the number of characters would have stayed an issue. In the end that was not the series that was known over here, and I suspect its famous dub is part of the reason the list includes the show - it would have been an early Eastern show that would have transferred. I am more looking forward, then, to other shows like it that have a more focused story.