Storm Riders, my favorite comic series from Hong Kong, has officially set foot across the entire spectrum of the entertainment industry by having released an animated movie – ??? (Storm Riders 2008).
I wouldn’t call it a great movie. The plot is sloppy (which is the norm for movies), and the voice actors don’t quite sound into it. However, as an animated version of a classic HK comic story, it’s excellent. It’s got a good balance between the Japanese anime techniques and the Chinese styled sceneries and action representations. It gives life to the ink-on-paper heroes that thousands of us have admired.
Storm Rider fans would love this, almost certainly more than the movie with real actors. It’s got a “new” storyline, i.e. twisted side-line plot from the original series, without losing the heart or soul. In fact, it assumes a pretty good knowledge of the characters, weapons, and locations in its audience. It might be hard to understand this movie otherwise.
Check out some previews and commentaries.
For background information, ?? = Wind Cloud (AKA Storm Riders) is an HK comic series originated in the 80’s and had been extremely popular in the first ten years. It’s likely the most well known and most read Chinese comic in history. Numerous pop culture byproducts were created in the past ten years – souveniors,novel, a movie (with seriously famous actors; sequel is in the making), two TV series, two or more computer games, and now an animated movie…