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(More customer reviews)What is even better is that Tai Seng has released this unedited! That means we get to watch all 39 episodes that come in at about 41 minutes a piece in their entirety. In China they run 5 new episodes a week and continue this during the weekdays until the show ends. In the past Tai Seng has released EXTREMELY shortened versions of these tv shows. Kung Fu Master and New Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon are 2 that I enyjoyed but had to find the whole show on VCD. These series run in cycles of 5 episodes and before this release we were only able to view maybe 20-30% of the show. Basically we see 40 minutes out of every 200. I think the reason they released the Seven Swordsman in it's entirety is because of it's huge popularity in China and it would be a crime to try and edit this great series.
The story starts off with the town called Martial Village gearing up for a fight with the Ching empire. The Ching's are coming to look for little King Lu, one of the last descendents of the former emporer. The Prince who is the leader of the army will certainly get who he wants. So an old master(Senior Fu) shows up willing to help these people in need. What they find out is that he was the executioner of the Ming dynasty! He has killed millions of people and now wants to do good deeds with his life. Why? He is not looking to make up for the killings he has done, he has just decided it would be better to try and help the country rather than stand aside. So he brings 2 young men from Martial Village and tries to recruit the 4 famed swordsmen from Mount Heaven. When the swordsmen's master Shadow-glow hears of this he says there is no way. Finally Senior Fu gets him to agree and even the 2 young kids become part of the Seven Swordsmen. All of them get special swords including Senior Fu who gets his old sword reforged. The story between master Shadow-Glow and Senior Fu was amazing but too short. So they leave on their journey to help the Red Spear Society get to another province where there are more of their members. The leader of the society(Leung Ka-yan, aka beardy) knows that there is a traitor in the society and does everything he can to find him. 2nd brother Yung Yangchong gets framed and is forced to leave the group and brother 1 ends up following him. He goes on a soul searching journey and finds a group called the Eagle's of the Desert who are in serious trouble and need to find water very badly. Now is when we meet Fei Hongjin. She has to be the most beautiful asian actress I have ever seen right up there with Christy Chung, Lily Li, and Brigitte Lin. She even has the acting ability of those 3 huge stars. This woman really made the show for me but the acting for everybody was as good as it can get overall.
So I really don't want to describe anymore as I already went up to episode 14 or so. The story revolves mainly around brother 1-Chu Zhaonan, played by Vincent Zhao of the Blade and Green Snake fame and brother 2-Yang Yungchong. Of course brother 3 and 4(of the original 4 master swordmen) have their stories and while I didn't like brother 3 at first, I really opened up to him and had me wishign he was in the show more. You may recognize brother 3 from the movie Tai Chi 2 and I think he is the dark skinned bald guy in Jet Li's Shaolin Temple movies. So brother 1 and 2 have some serious problems in their journeys and man do I mean serious.
The thing that I really liked about this show was the many different stories are going on and how detailed they go into them. All kinds of women problems, murders, being framed, you name it, these guys probably went through it. There is even your standard assassin who comes to kill the swordsmen and they even explore his personality.
Along with brothers 1 and 2 we get a look behind the scenes of the government. The prince-Duo Gedou has an odd relationship with the general's daughter-Menghui. And the daughter of the leader of the red spear society-Yufang, has love interests of her own. To my great liking, Fei Hongjin is the last of the major characters.
So will Yang Yungchong prove he is not the traitor? Will Chu Zhaonan ever shake his bad luck? Will Fei Hongjin ever be able to love a man? You will have to find out in this epic TV show full of love and chivalry.
Being a kung fu fan I must tell you that the martial arts are not great in this. Now the cinematography is very good and really sells all of the special effects going on so that the action does end up being very exciting. If you go into this expecting more of a drama than an action show, you will be very pleased.
This TV show has possibly the highest production value I have ever seen for China. Needless to say it has some of the best acting ever also. Tai Seng unfortunately didn't put any special features on any of these discs, not even a behind the scenes. Not a big deal though as the picture quality is PERFECT and is presented in a nice 16:9 widscreen picture format. There are chinese and luckily English subtitles. The subtitling job is very professional and has minor errors that can't really be avoided as this was most likely a Chinese person who translated this. You have to appreciate all of the time and effort that was put into it.
Now the box this comes in is really nice looking but ends up being a cheap plastic case that holds 8 discs yet looks like it should hold 1. My suggesstion is to never fully snap close the case. If you do it can all get stuck together and break your DVD's.
Also, please post on here if anyone hears about Seven Swordsmen 2.
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