Hynavian

After blogging on how uninteresting a vampire series (True Blood) can get, I’m going to share with all my all time favorite emo drama which happens to be also a vampire series. Hopefully at the end of this, I’ll get to know more emo drama so that I can catch them after my exams, so feel free to recommend!

Hong Kong Drama, My Date with a Vampire (MDWAV), has 3 seasons so far and it was years back¹ when I first caught the series. Of the 3 seasons, my favorite is MDWAV II because it has many emo moments that made me wept. Hong Kong has 2 TV stations; ATV and TVB. Though TVB’s productions generally attract more of my attention, I feel that ATV’s My Date with a Vampire II is the best Hong Kong serial so far. I’m a polyglot and I caught the Cantonese version way back when it aired. Though originally produced in Cantonese, there’s definitely the mandarin dub version found in the market.

The plot is set in the modern 20th century Hong Kong during the years before the rumored millennium bug (before year 2000). It tells a tragic tale of a beautiful vampire huntress (Ma Xiao Ling) and a powerful aged vampire (Kuang Tian You) who live in a similar building as neighbours. What’s convenient is that the big picture is made up of many small pictures where a few episodes make up a chapter. Thus, viewers can still follow though they might miss out a few episodes, or even a chapter, here and there. However, to fully appreciate the series, I recommend watching from episode 1 to end so as to get the overall picture because the later few chapters progress with such intensity that missing out on any would mean a major plot leave out.

A memorable chapter is the starting one set in England on aged vampire who lives in an awesome castle that’s in the countryside. Characters take on the third person perspective and partake as audiences in a couple’s tragic love story that ran along the Romeo and Juliet line. The front few chapters are “warm up” chapters and they introduce the MDWAV world to viewers with many individual chapters. For example the one on Meng Meng and the fat ghost is a fun filled chapter filled with jokes and supernatural occurrences. I think that the creepiest chapter would have be the one on Romeo and his mirrors where Romeo trapped kids over on the other end of the mirror with him. As for the emo scenes, the later few episodes would rein king because I was weeping all the way. I remember previously that I was feeling very emo when I was watching one of the episodes and my mum was skeptical about it. Hence, she sat down and caught 3 episodes of Wei Lai and kid and we end up being emo and wept together; a hilarious move on recollection.

As the serial is lengthy with 42 episodes, ample screen time is given to each supporting character that one will either grow to like them (or dislike them) over time. With supporting characters that are “coincidentally” from the same building, characters interact and are linked to one another. For example, Xiao Ling’s best friend, Zhen Zhen, is living a storey above her and she’s Xiao Ling’s emotional support and would help Xiao Ling in any ghost buster business time to time. As mentioned earlier that this series is a tragedy, supporting characters that have contributed to the plot in a way or another will die in the most emo and dramatic way that they’ll be “always remembered” even though they’re no longer around.

I think the series is so touchy because it effectively plays on the various themes on human relations. Due to the large cast, a magnitude of human relations (friendship, love, family, neighbours, master-disciple, mother-son, etc) could be covered and explored. The relations are simple and characters can be just anyone found on the streets but yet they are important enough to create an impact, this perhaps is what made MDWAV II so marvelous a series for me.

Because MDWAV II was so epic to me, I had high expectations for MDWAV III. MDWAV III is great in the visual and technology arena as there are more special effects and weapons glow. There’s also a larger cast with new eye candy actors/actresses introduced. Did I forget to mention that watching MDWAV III is like watching a fashion show? Be amused by the nicely dressed characters that have fanciful hairstyles and impressive eye color. I definitely give full credit to the fashion design and make-up team for a well done job. Also, I love the music found in MDWAV III and I like the many themes and classics which explains why I bought the soundtrack.

However, MDWAV III pales in the plot arena as it seems to be pushing things to fit them into the plot. It’s interesting to still see history and folk lore being integrated into the main plot with some emo and dramatic moments, but I did not tear as much as I did as compared to MDWAV II. Now what about MDWAV I? Simple, I did not catch it at all but I’ll give it a try if I ever can get my hands on the VCDs. I guess their fashion and technology will need some time to get use to considering it was made years back.

Now here’s a question to all. What’s the most emo drama that you have seen?

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1. The 1st season was aired in 1998 [↩]