Letter #91: Song of the Bandits

Good morning, Erin.

I’ve never really been much for cowboys. 

Well, apart from a stint enjoying the short-lived TV series adaptation of The Magnificent Seven, which was schlocky and fun. And Red Dead Revolver, the eminently enjoyable PS2 game, which I frikkin’ loved. (Yes, I’m talking about the original game, not the stupid (and infinitely more popular) GTA-like ones that followed in its wake.) Oo, and that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Worf and his son get stuck on the holodeck, and all the characters in the western they’re playing through turn into Data. I liked that one, too. Heh, Data with a big evil mustache. So good.

But other than that…kinda meh on cowboys. 

…wait, wasn’t Marshall Bravestar a cowbo—y’know what, the point is I didn’t jump into Song of the Bandits excited to try out another western, because it’s just not a genre I typically enjoy. 

But, as sometimes happens, I was suckered by the slick as f*** Netflix trailer. And now we’re here. Just you, me, and three pages of notes. Which probably means this letter will only be about 19 pages long. Practically nothing. 

So, I dunno if you’ve given this one a shot or shrugged it off as totally uninteresting, but I’ll try not to be spoiler-y. I mean, we’ll see how well I do when it comes to a couple of my complaints, but I will try. Promise. 

We ready for Song of the Bandits?

1. This show is okay. Sometimes good, sometimes meh. There’s a lot of time spent on backgrounds for what we’re seeing that (to me) would have been better spent on character development and/or thematic focus. But it’s entertaining enough. Like, I didn’t spend any of the runtime shouting at the TV and questioning my life choices. Which ain’t nothin’. 

2. The first episode starts out with some on-screen text that gives you an idea of the context of the story—but it absolutely zips by. I had to go back and pause it to get the whole thing. I mean, I’m a slow reader, but this was ridiculous. And it’s not the first Korean movie or show to do this. I know people don’t want to spend a lot of time reading, but…this is just silly. What gives?

3. Interestingly, whatever context the show works to give us seems mostly extraneous when one of the characters in the first episode has the perfect line to describe the setting: “Chinese land, Japanese money, and Joseon people.” That’s all I needed to know about the situation. Anything beyond that was just details. I knew exactly what kind of situation they were in, even without knowing anything about 1920s Korea. 

4. To that point: it is fundamentally important to the story to understand which character is speaking Korean/Japanese/Chinese—and, further, when it is being spoken. Did the subtitles differentiate for us? No. Not even once. And the differentiation is crucial, given the situation and tensions between the three cultures at the time. 

4A. I mean, there’s a character who speaks all three languages and, ostensibly, has no allegiance to any group at all, which is expressly underlined by the freedom by which he or she will jump from one language to the next. It’s not necessary, in this case, to indicate what’s being spoken, in terms of character, because there are a thousand other things that give us the same information, but…still.

4B. Or what about the main antagonist? He’s a Korean who has sided with the Japanese in the occupation and become a Japanese citizen (taking a Japanese name and everything). I think it would be important to his state of mind at any given moment to know which language he was using, no? Might be significant, don’t you think?

4C. I mean, there are several moments where one character says to another that he doesn’t understand what’s being said, but we have no indication that any of them is speaking a different language. It’s all just English subtitles. Like, unless you’re like me and can hear the difference in the languages. 

4D. Except for whoever the evil bandits are. I have no idea what their leader was speaking. Mongolian? I just know that no one understands him. Like, explicitly. It comes up repeatedly. 

4E. I’m just saying: The Handmaiden did it. And it was awesome. 

5. Relatedly: it amused me to hear minor Japanese characters played by Korean actors speak Japanese in a really stilted way. Like, it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t have to sound authentic as long as the Korean audience gets that it’s not Korean, but it’s still funny to hear at least the cadence be wrong when they do it. Like when they speak in English and clearly aren’t sure exactly what they’re saying. (Again, I don’t speak Japanese, but I’ve heard it often enough to know how it should sound.)

6. I really like the villain (antagonist?). I think he’s a well-written, well-performed, and well-conceived character. There’s a lot of nuance to his particular shade of realism (and all that it entails), and I think he’s the one bad guy/”bad guy” who is given room to be more than a two-dimensional avatar for the Japanese occupation. he gets plenty of screen time, but I wish they had done more with him. He was probably the juiciest character in the show. 

7. Oo, let’s do the list of people I recognized:

• (#BestGirl) Sol from Nevertheless as the Gunslinger Girl

• the gossipy Chinese restaurant owner from Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha as the Gun Dealer Friend 

• Ju-ri from Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha as Young Gunslinger Girl (min-reunion! woo!)

7A. Gun Dealer Friend is awesome. Such a fun, funny. energetic performance. I love when this actress shows up in things, and this was just one more reason why.

7B. The adorable Min-seo (that is, Ju-ri from Cha-Cha-Cha) continues to be adorable. And I vote she’s allowed to be in everything I watch. Literally. News reports, sports commentary—like, I want her hosting Jeopardy, Erin. Literally everything. 

7C. But, yes, unsurprisingly, Gunslinger Girl is absolutely, unequivocally #BestGirl. Her character is great, her performance is great, and I was thrilled to see her even before I got to know the character. I don’t know that there should have been more of her—or, rather, that the show would have been better if she’d been in it more, but I can promise you that it was only ever at its best when she was on screen. 

8. Kinda dug the soundtrack, all in all.

9. The action scenes are a little try-hard. Well, a lot try-hard, actually. For example, Gunslinger Girl’s first big one is almost entirely composed of “ISN’T THIS RAD?!” moments, to the point where it sacrifices physics and logic for aesthetics—and in so blatant a way that it isn’t easily excused. (She’s dual-wielding Mausers, for heaven’s sake. It just screams teenage fan fiction.)

10. On the other hand, there is a BRILLIANT sequence on a train that is probably the best thing in the show: a variety of factions turn up at the same time and at cross-purposes—only to discover that the people they have come to fight are not people they want to hurt. It’s tense, it’s compelling, it’s perfectly (and believably) set up. Easily the best moment in the series. 

11. …which is followed up by another brilliant sequence involving a chaotic weather event. Brutal and terrifying. And looks pretty good on screen.

12. …which unfortunately kind of sucks because the latter undercuts the former by becoming essentially a deus ex machina for the unavoidable clash between main characters in the train confrontation. In isolation, both segments are fantastic—but they’re a major let-down when combined. 

12A. And there are A LOT of these kinds of “in isolation…” moments in the show. Which sucks. The script so clearly wants to be (in part) a story of shifting loyalties and conflicting goals, but it won’t let itself do the hard things that make that possible, hiding behind “plot” as a reason to avoid the consequences from the much more exciting and interesting narrative decisions it sets up. 

13. But there’s also this great writing/editing segment in the second episode where two different sets of characters are having parallel conversations—but they’re not one-for-one duplicates of each other, and it’s so satisfying to watch. The show keeps cutting back and forth from one to the other, with both scenes having a similar purpose, tone, and subject, but no one character is exactly parallel to another. Which…I don’t know how to explain it better without going step-by-step through what’s said, but suffice it to say that it’s executed very, very well. Promise. 

14. Someone involved in this production is madly in love with turn-of-the-century firearms. And there are lengthy chunks of dialogue that are needlessly nerdy about it. At weird moments when you’d think a much shorter statement (such as, “It has a six-round capacity!”) would have been much more helpful. And believable. Like, it’s one thing to have a character marvel at a rifle, but it’s another to have him marvel at a rifle when his enemy is in the midst of aiming it at him. 

15. I’m not sure why Gunslinger Girl’s makeup artist can’t decide if she’s supposed to have freckles or not. She looks great either way, sure, but it seems odd that they’d vacillate between the two. (Unless they were going for some kind of very, very realistic aesthetic where her freckles become more pronounced the more she’s in the sun. Which seems a little…extra. (Also, I don’t think she’s any more or less out in the sun between these scenes, but whatever.))

16. …sorry, I was just watching some Sol x Ji-wan clip compilations from Nevertheless on YouTube. For the last, um, 30 minutes. What were we talking about? 

17. Ah, Gunslinger Girl! So…are we supposed to think she’s dressed like a dude or, like, is it unsurprising that she’d be dressed like any other cowboy? I ask because no other women in the entire show are dressed anything like she is…but also no one brings it up.

18. Speaking of clothes: the singer at the (Japanese?) club in Episode 1 dressed in a green kimono and looked almost exactly like Tsukihi from Bakemonogatari, which I’d like to think was a deliberate nod just for me. Love me some Tsukihi. 

19. A lot of the Japanese characters are either idiots or thugs, but the Constable, the head of the police force in the main town, is not one of them. He’s a relatively minor character, but I think he’s written very well. He’s not a nice guy, but they also give him more than just a “‘cus he’s Japanese” reason for it that…I don’t want to say it makes him sympathetic, but it certainly makes him feel real. I quite liked him.

20. I don’t quite understand the timeline, insofar as I don’t understand how old the main characters are supposed to be. Like, part of the story starts literally 16 years prior to the main events of the story, which is set in 1920. So, unless the main characters were officers in the military at 16, everyone is treating a bunch of unmarried 40-year-olds as normal. And that’s got to be anachronistic, right? 

21. The main villain (antagonist?) is a Korean who has sided with the Japanese and become a Japanese citizen. As such, he takes a Japanese name. His lieutenant is also a Korean. But he doesn’t get a Japanese name. Is this because he’s not a citizen? Can non-citizens (particularly those from conquered peoples) serve in the Japanese military? Is it a character thing, a deliberate differentiation between the two men to show that one is that much more committed to his convictions (or is that much more of a traitor, depending on your perspective) than the other? I’m not criticizing, exactly, just curious. Like, is this an obvious thing to a Korean audience member? 

And…y’know what, let’s stop there. It’s fitting that I ended on a question, with this show, because I was left with A LOT of them—not strictly about the plot (though I have one veeeeeeeeery big question about the ending), but about the purpose of the series. I just don’t know that it’s, like, about. Or what it means. I can list a bunch of things it could be about, but there isn’t enough to support an argument for any one of them. Or even all of them collectively. Which is a shame. 

…but it’s still entertaining. Don’t get me wrong.

Another round of why-did-you-watch-this up next, but then it’ll be on to something I know for a fact you’d want me to watch. 

And, yes, I woke up early to watch the debut of Single’s Inferno 3. You know I wouldn’t dare disappoint you by waiting until after work to start the show like an absolute pleb. 

I mean, I disappoint you in so many other ways. It would be cruel to do it with that, too. 

More soon.

—Daryl