Yuli Ban wrote:Kunzait_83 wrote:
(Don't make me start breaking out the gifs again)
1: Aren't all the gifs in that thread broken? Whenever I view the thread, they never show up.
2: I could have sworn that shooting energy balls and flying around is more xianxia than wuxia. Wuxia is more "Dragon Ball episodes 1-30" and once energy attacks/ki control and demons and transformations start becoming more common, it becomes xianxia.
Like, if wuxia is "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" or "The Mark of Zorro", xianxia is "Jonah Hex" or "Cowboys & Aliens".
1) Yeah, most of those gifs are unfortunately broken. At some point or other, I was going to post a revised "2.0" version of the Wuxia thread with expanded upon content and a few new subsections about various related topics along with actual working links; but that's still in the works until who knows when.
2) Xianxia, to the best of my knowledge at least, is a term that's come more into prominence in much more recent years. Wuxia has generally been the catch-all term for Chinese fantasy martial arts stories (of a broad variety, including ones that today would be labeled as more Xianxia) since at least the mid-ish 1800s or so. I'm not 100% on how exactly far back the term Xianxia dates, but I know its much more recent than that, and its prominence in use within contemporary fandom is still pretty new-ish.
If we go by that distinction though, then yes, latter DB and DBZ/GT/Super are much more within the Xianxia realm, while earlier DB is more closer to straight Wuxia (though even then, we had the Kamehameha, the Kintoun, and various supernatural creatures in the mix right from almost moment one). And "classical" Wuxia is not without its fair share of outlandish displays of Ki control and paranormal entities as well.
Ultimately though, they're two sub-categories within the same general umbrella, and stories/myths that fit within both subheadings go back
many centuries before
either term was invented to describe them. The distinction between them can still be somewhat hazy at times (Jin Yong/Louis Cha's work, for example, is generally still described as Wuxia, even though much of its content is as over the top as anything found in stuff that's more classified as Xianxia), which is partly why I didn't delve into it the first go-round.
I'm probably going to go into this very topic though within the revised/expanded Wuxia thread (whenever the hell I get done with that: real life's gotten a lot more hectically busy on my end since I originally cooked up the first one). Initially creating that thread from the ground-up in the first place was a
colossal undertaking in itself: with most of the heavy lifting already done now, its a
lot simpler for me to flesh out certain areas more and add/tweak things around the edges as I see fit, and elaborate on certain things I didn't get the chance to the first time around.
Oh and by the way, I meant to respond to a couple of them in other threads awhile back, but just want to quickly point out that your posts here are awesome and some of my new favorites.
http://80s90sdragonballart.tumblr.com/
Kunzait's Wuxia Thread
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.