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Let’s leave Hong Kong for a post to visit Singapore. A peek at this manhua was already presented in an earlier post: The Condor Trilogy in Manhua: Fighting.

Singapore’s most commercially successful manhua artist by far is Wee Tian Beng. He was the first Sigaporean manhua artist to achieve success in the Hong Kong and Taiwan markets. Wee Tian Beng is best known for The Celestial Zone and its sequels, but before Wee Tian Beng made The Celestial Zone, he adapted Shēn Diāo Xiá Lǚ, using ‘Return of the Condor Heroes’ as the official English title. In 1997 this adaptation won the “Asian Manga Prestigious Award” at the Asian Manga Summit held in Seoul, South Korea.

Art

Compared to Hong Kong manhua, Wee Tian Beng’s drawings look simple and cartoonish. I admit that at first that turned me off. However, as I read more and more, it dawned on me that the artwork is quite rich. Sure, the artwork does not have the intricate line-work characteristic of Hong Kong wuxia manhua … but there is such variety in the way Wee Tian Beng draws the story.

For example, there are many sequences showing a series of graceful motions by the characters. Indeed, I think Return of the Condor Heroes has the most graceful movement of all of the Condor Trilogy manhua – Hong Kong manhua tends to have characters move in a more BLAM! manner.

There are many panels which play with light and shadow, particularly shadow.

And of all of the Condor Trilogy manhua, Return of the Condor Heroes is the most cinematic. Often there will be a series of panels, or even pages, without dialogue or fancy composition—just simple still shots.

Speaking of cinema, Return of the Condor Heroes is the manhua which puts the most emphasis on natural scenery. Like westerns in the United States, wuxia movies and TV shows sometimes put a lot of emphasis on beautiful scenery. Something about human nature must make people enjoy watching fighters beat the living daylights out of each other in gorgeous settings. Heck, I first became interested in wuxia because it features people beating the living daylights out of each other while wearing beautiful clothes—I only came to appreciate other aspects (the story, for example) later.

NOTE: While all other manhua adaptations of the Condor Trilogy are read from right-to-left, Return of the Condor Heroes is read from left-to-right.

All of the Condor Trilogy manhua show some of the naturally beautiful settings. Even The Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre occasionally has a nice page or two showing the lovely scenery. But Wee Tian Beng’s Return of the Condor Heroes not only has many panels of lofty mountains, verdant forests, and scenic rivers, it also shows quite a bit of the wildlife too. While Tony Wong’s The Eagle Shooting Heroes is the adaptation to look to if you want luxurious palaces, Wee Tian Beng’s Return of the Condor Heroes is definitely the scenic route.

Wee Tian Beng’s drawings also renders the characters in a more subtle manner than Tony Wong and Ma Wing-shing. For example, I really like the way that Wee Tian Beng draws Guo Xiang.

His drawings capture how she is curious, clever, mischievous, and naïve at the same time—in other words, how she is just like many other teenage girls.

While at first I did not care for the way he draws Xiaolongnü, his depiction of her grew on me.

Wee Tian Beng conveys how cold Xiaolongnü is while offering glimpses of the feelings she has deep down. That’s hard to pull off, and something that I do not think Tony Wong really succeeded at. While I haven’t seen any of the TV/film adaptations of the Condor Trilogy, I think that Xiaolongnü would be the most challenging role for an actor to play in the entire trilogy.

So, in spite of a bad first impression, the art definitely won me over.

Adaptation

Wee Tian Beng botched the depiction of Yang Guo’s childhood. He shows Yang Guo as a mischievous young boy—fair enough, Yang Guo is a mischievous boy. Yang Guo’s childish exploits are shown in a humorous light—fair enough, some of them are humorous. Wee Tian Beng also shows some of the bullying … but … but the bullying is also shown in a humorous light, which is definitely not how it reads in the original novel. Wee Tian Beng also fails to show the true extent of the bullying. And no where in the manhua is it shown, or even said, that Yang Guo was wandering around China, homeless, without any relatives or friends, surviving by any means necessary … when he was just eleven years old. Plotwise, is that detail important? No, not really. Is that detail important for Yang Guo’s character development. Oh hell yes it is.

The reader needs to feel Yang Guo’s pain to have the fullest experience of the story. As Todd Brown succinctly put it in his review of the 1983 TV series, Yang Guo “has been repeatedly abandoned and abused by the adults in his life, leaving him both desperate for approval and deeply distrustful.” While I do not enjoy reading about Yang Guo being bullied, abused, and neglected, it is a necessary foundation for everything that is done with Yang Guo’s character later. I love reading about teenage Yang Guo kicking everybody’s ass because I know how much he suffered as a boy. Without that suffering …. I care a lot less about Yang Guo.

Furthermore, Wee Tian Beng also messed up the scene which made me fall in love with Shēn Diāo Xiá Lǚ. Specifically, the first fight with Li Mochou in the Tomb of Living Death. I cannot get into details without spoilers, so let’s just say that I love the scene because it feels like it was ripped straight from a fairy tale, spiked with the kind of melodrama found in classic shoujo manga. First of all, Wee Tian Beng completely takes out the buildup to the fight. That is not horrible, but it does make things seem rather sudden. But—and this is what really bothers me—he also took the most dramatic, fairy-talish moment out. That just killed the scene for me.

So, between the way Yang Guo’s childhood was (not) shown and what it did to one of my favourite scenes, I was set to hate this adaptation.

Then, about a third of the way through, this manhua started being a lot more faithful to the novel. It started to include many of the things which The Legendary Couple left out, including some of the subtle little details. Of course, the subtler details matches the subtler art. And I found myself sucked back into the story again. I relived the experience of the novel, but I think even if I had not read the novel, this manhua would have still sucked me in.

For example, I think that this adaptation did another one of my favourite scenes—the trip Guo Jing and Yang Guo make to the Mongol camp—better than The Legendary Couple. Generally, I felt that The Legendary Couple gave the relationship between Guo Jing and Yang Guo short shrift, but because it glosses over it rather than actively butchers it, it did not bother me as much as what Wee Tian Beng’s Return of the Condor Heroes did to the first fight in the Tomb of Living Death. Yet … this is one of those scenes where Yang Guo’s childhood suffering is very relevant. I love this scene because, in the novel, the suspense and the intensity made my heart leap into my throat. However, cutting back on Yang Guo’s childhood cuts the suspense and intensity of this scene, so while I appreciate Wee Tian Beng giving this scene a fuller treatment that Tony Wong, I cannot say “well done.”

Overall, this manhua is quite good at capturing the quiet melancholy of the story, as well has having the richest versions of the characters of any of the manhua reviewed thus far. And the melancholy is quite beautiful.

But.

While the story certainly has plenty of subtlety and quiet melancholy, some parts have all of the subtlely of a sword pierced through the chest (wrong novel, I know). While The Legendary Couple was not subtle, it could pierce. I don’t think Wee Tian Beng’s Return of the Condor Heroes ever manages to be sufficiently sharp during those moments. Three examples:

Example 1: There is a scene where a father threatens to cut off his daughter’s arm. In The Legendary Couple, there is a full-page panel dedicated to this moment, highlighting the father’s intent and the daughter’s terror. In Wee Tian Being’s Return of the Condor Heroes, this moment is not shown as being particularly special. I actually like the way he draws the father’s calm resolve, however the daughter does not seem to be really terrified.

Example 2: (WARNING: if discussion of sexual assault triggers you, skip to Example 3) There is a rape scene. Here is what I was thinking when I read the rape scene in Wee Tian Beng’s Return of the Condor Heroes:

“She looks so lovely and vulnerable … that’s a nice use of shadow … what a beautiful night, with the stars and the trees.”

This is what I was thinking when I read the rape scene in The Legendary Couple:

“No, not this scene again. Maybe I should skip it … [shudder] the clothes have come off … no! Stop! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! DO NOT DO IT!!!!!!!!!!”

I will let you draw your own conclusions about which manhua evoked a more appropriate response to the rape scene.

Example 3: At one point in the story, a character’s hair turns white in the course of a single night.

In The Legendary Couple, it looks like this.

This is the same moment in Wee Tian Beng’s Return of the Condor Heroes.

Some people might prefer Wee Tian Beng’s quieter interpretation, but I think that if somebody has experienced something so horrible that his hair turns white in one night, exclamation points are called for. Generally, I feel that The Legendary Couple was much better at punching out the exclamation points.

Availability

Wee Tian Beng’s Return of the Condor Heroes is the only manhua adaptation of the Condor Trilogy which has been completely published in English. The publisher claims to still have the English-language edition for sale, but I have not personally confirmed this.

To the best of my knowledge, all Chinese language editions, both simplified and traditional characters, are out of print, but I can testify that it is still fairly easy to get the Taiwanese (traditional characters) edition, at least in Taiwan.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I think this manhua has more to offer than The Legendary Couple. I must find time to read The Celestial Zone some day. Yet I find The Legendary Couple flashing in my mind far more often than Wee Tian Beng’s Return of the Condor Heroes. While it is less admirable, The Legendary Couple made a deeper impression on me.

Because of the problems with the first part of this manhua, I do not recommend making this one’s first contact with Shēn Diāo Xiá Lǚ.

What I highly recommend for lovers of Asian comics is reading the seven ComicsOne volumes of The Legendary Couple first, and then proceed to read this. That is a nearly ideal manhua experience—ComicsOne edition cuts off right around the point Wee Tian Beng’s Return of the Condor Heroes starts being better than The Legendary Couple, and readers can experience both interpretations of the story.

Of course, if you can, you really should read the novel. While both of the manhua adaptations are fine, neither can match the experience of the original.

Discussion Question:

Which do you think you would prefer, The Legendary Couple or Return of the Condor Heroes?

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Sara K. loves dancing. She has taken ballet, swing, modern, jazz, Afro-Haitian, and noh dance classes. However, the dance of her dreams is tap dance. Of course, she thinks Swan is fantastic, and she also appreciates the way the characters in Wee Tian Beng’s Return of the Condor Heroes look like they are dancing.

This is part four in a series of posts about the Condor Trilogy in Manhua. The previous posts are Introduction, Fighting, Tony Wong’s The Eagle-Shooting Heroes, and The Legendary Couple.

This manhua is by Ma Wing-shing, who is Hong Kong’s next most significant wuxia manhua artist after Tony Wong.

Whereas the other novels in the trilogy have been adapted multiple times into manhua, this is the only manhua adaptation of Yǐ Tiān Tú Lóng Jì. Poor Zhang Wuji, nobody loves him. Well, maybe my friend loves him. She kept on asking me what I thought about him as I read the novel (“Isn’t he wonderful?” “Ummm, he’s still twelve years old” “Just wait until he becomes a man!”)

Speaking of Zhang Wuji and female attention, let’s check out his wedding.

Example Scene:

The young couple is getting married. And they love each other. They really do. This must be a happy scene where nothing goes wrong…

… aside from a Mongolian princess barging in.

The Mongolian princess asks the groom to jilt the bride. The groom says that if he did that, he would be a jerk.

The Mongolian princess seems to have something in her hand. Whatever it is, it makes the Chinese groom change his tune.

Hey, Chinese people bride, it’s time to PROTECT YOUR COUNTRY MAN FROM THE MONGOL INVASION PRINCESSS!

Go Chinese people bride, go!

*sigh* Bride, you’re not going to score any points if you beat up a helpless princess who … poisoned and kidnapped a bunch of the world’s most powerful martial artists … is the best schemer in the story … can get Zhang Wuji to crack a joke (before the Mongol princess showed up, I was under the impression that Zhang Wuji didn’t have a sense a humor) … okay, bride, if you take down the princess, you score ALL the points.

Given a choice between a Mongol princess who is trying to ruin his wedding and previously tried to kill him and his companions, and a woman that he loves and wants to marry, the groom is of course siding with the Mongol princess.

You know, I think most weddings would be improved if the bride and groom decided to break out into a kung-fu match in the midst of the ceremony. Too bad that this couple seems to be fighting for real.

Apparently the wedding is now messed up beyond all repair.

Game over. Mongol empire princess: 1; Chinese people bride: 0.

Adaptation

The manhua is paced very differently from the novel. Even though this manhua is 25 volumes long (Taiwan edition), the first 75% of the novel gets covered in the first 5 volumes, though some of the early scenes in the novel appear later in the manhua as flashbacks. Considering that the first half of the novel is about as brisk as rush hour traffic, this is not exactly a bad thing. Even so, the sheer speed did make me a little dizzy. The last three chapters of the novel, however, are covered in about 6 volumes, which allows much more room for nuance. While I will not say that the last three chapters are the best three chapters, the last fourth of the novel is certainly the best part, so I cannot exactly argue with this either.

However, while the pacing of the manhua is completely different from the novel, the plot is pretty much the same. Like every other adaptation of the Condor Trilogy, some details are left out. Yes, some of the moments which are missing are my personal favorites, but that’s always going to happen and I can always re-read the novels if I so wish.

Yǐ Tiān Tú Lóng Jì has less humor than the other parts of the trilogy, but whatever humor the story has, this manhua manages to kill it. For example, the socks scene is utterly serious—and I don’t mean that it is done deadpan style. It simply is not funny in the manhua. The only humor in this manhua is unintentional—such as the wedding scene described above (to be fair, I thought the wedding scene was quite funny in the original novel too, and I do not think that was Jin Yong’s intent).

The manhua is based on the second edition of the novel and has the second-edition ending (different editions have different endings). I also happened to read the second edition of the novel. My first reaction to the ending of the novel was “what the [expletive]!” and then I chose to be amused. Ma Wing-shing has a very different take on the second-edition ending—he presents it as being creepy and scary. (Which just goes to show how open-ended the second edition ending is.) Whereas I took the most light-hearted interpretation possible, Ma Wing-shing took the darkest interpretation possible. The line between comedy and tragedy can be quite fine.

Generally, out of all of the Condor Trilogy manhua, this was the hardest one for me to get involved in the story. There were points when I got involved, but it felt like I was recalling how a given scene made me feel in the original novel rather than re-experiencing the scene anew. I think this is mainly an art issue, because aside from the pacing, timing, and some simplifications, the dialogue and the plot of the manhua are not that different from the novel.

Artwork

Ma has a more gritty-realistic style than Tony Wong. Though he can use an abundance of flourishes when he wishes, they do not have the eye-candy feel of Tony Wong’s visual flourishes. While the characters in Tony Wong’s manhua often seem to have a light spring to their steps, Ma’s characters move in a more grounded manner. Overall, where Tony Wong’s art expresses exuberance, Ma’s art expresses restraint—a restraint which sometimes bursts into an explosion of glory. And to be honest, I have trouble imagining a Tong Wong adaptation of Yǐ Tiān Tú Lóng Jì. While Tony Wong expresses excitement—whether of joy or angst—quite well, he is not so adept at expressing solemn, heavy feelings. Thus, I feel that the right artists were chosen for the right adaptations.

Because the manhua tries to cover the first three-fourths of the novel so quickly, the art is in rapid plot-exposition mode—which means there are a lot of talking heads. In the hands of an artist who is great at drawing talking heads, that would be sweet. Ma Wing-shing is not that kind of artist. Not only do the characters constantly seem to be wearing the same stoic expression, but they often look just like each other. I think that depicting the characters as constantly having a stoic expression is an interesting way to interpret Yǐ Tiān Tú Lóng Jì—but when you’re mostly seeing talking heads, it looks really monotonous.

However, while Ma is not good at expressing character through face or body, he can express the character’s inner life through composition, color, and motion.

For example, you can tell by the blues, the rain, the way the figure’s back is turned as his body fades into the storm, that this a sad, solemn moment.

But to express things through composition and color, one needs a high-page-to-plot ratio. Such a ratio does not exist in the first half in the manhua. There were flashes of Ma’s visual genius, even in the first half, but they were quickly buried in a sea of talking heads.

But when the page-to-plot ratio goes up? Ma demonstrates why he is one of Hong Kong’s most celebrated manhua artists. The last 8 or so volumes are GORGEOUS. When I say they are gorgeous, I mean they are full of pages like this (click to see them in larger size):

And this:

And this:

I am tempted to say that if Ma had expanded this story over more pages, the entire manhua could have been visually amazing. But I suspect Ma needed to be inspired to show his true capabilities, and that the first part of the story did not inspire him.

Please forgive my poor digital camera – it does not do the artwork justice.

More Thoughts on the Adaptation

This is my least favourite of the manhua adaptations of the Condor Trilogy.

The last fourth of the original novel kept my jaw fixed in a state of drop until it was over. When the manhua adaptation made my jaw drop, it was always because the art was stunning, not because the story swept me up again.

Perhaps the art and the story failed to connect because there was no focus. I would have been happy to read a manhua adaptation of Yǐ Tiān Tú Lóng Jì which threw the story to hell and focused on fantastic fight scenes—and I think Ma could have delivered such a version. I might also enjoy a manhua adaptation which focuses on the romance—as one can probably tell by my commentary on the wedding scene, I would have a lot of fun with that version.

The manhua adaptation I would really like to see is one which delved into the commentary on society and politics. Hong Kong wuxia manhua uses plenty of visual metaphors and flourishes to flesh out the battles. Why not use those visual metaphors and flourishes to flesh out the socio-political allegory? Yǐ Tiān Tú Lóng Jì would be the perfect story for this treatment. The title literally means “Relying on Heaven to Kill the Dragon Tale” and is usually interpreted to mean that when the emperor (dragon) is bad, the people who support justice (heaven) will remove him. And there are two blades—the Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre—which carry this metaphor throughout the story. Why not build on that? I think sequential art is the perfect medium for examining this side of the story. Alas, this manhua does not try to go there and mostly takes the story at face value.

And I think that might be the thing. This adaptation sticks too close to the surface. It is reasonably faithful to the letter of the story—more so than the Tony Wong adaptations. But it does not try to dig into any aspect of the story—not the battles, not the romance, not the camaraderie, not the social commentary, not the tragedy, and so forth. I already know the story, so I am not terribly interested in a shallow overview.

Availability in English

11 volumes of this manhua were published in English by ComicOne. They are out of print, and seem a little harder/more expensive to get than The Legendary Couple, but are apparently not too difficult to acquire. I do not know how the ComicOne volumes correspond to the Taiwan edition. Having only read the Taiwan edition, I also cannot comment on the translation.

To continue the story in English, Chu Yuan’s The Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre Part 1 & 2 (1978), The New Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre (1986), and The Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre (2009) are all available on DVD with English subtitles.

Conclusion

I think the only people who should read the ComicOne edition are people who really want to experience the story of Yǐ Tiān Tú Lóng Jì in a printed medium and cannot read the novel. It is actually not a terrible adaptation, and can give one a sense of the story, even though it cannot replace the experience of reading the novel.

Everyone else—Yǐ Tiān Tú Lóng Jì fans, Ma Wing-shing fans, and so forth, should go straight to one of the Chinese-language editions, regardless of one’s Chinese reading ability or lack thereof. If one wishes to invest money in this manhua, there is no reason to deny oneself the splendor of the late volumes.

Speaking of gorgeous art, the question is:

Whose art style do you prefer, Tony Wong’s or Ma Wing-shing’s?

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Sara K. has tried martial arts herself. She has taken kickboxing and Tai Chi (Chen style) classes, and has gone up to green belt in Tae Kwon Do. She is slow and her arms are weak. She is flexible, has a good sense of balance, and has powerful legs. If she found herself in hand-to-hand combat, she would use her arms mostly for defense and use her legs mostly for offense. Her bones have an unusual structure, which means that certain arm twists which work on most people do not work on her (and would offer her an excellent opportunity to send her opponent a surprise elbow jab), however her unusual bone structure also makes her more prone to injuries in general. If she were to study a new martial art, she would choose archery.