Kannadin

[NOTE: Some parts might feel disjointed, I had to remove some things]

Before I start, this drama is the adaptation of the first volume of a science-fiction trilogy I’ve yet to read, so although I’ll make some conjectures regarding said novels, this review is solely based on the drama.
I’ll try to be as concise as possible since there’s already a fair number of reviews written and MDL limits reviews to 10 000 characters (unless you’re a VIP member maybe, I don’t know).

I’ll be dividing this review in 3 parts : Spoiler Free, Thoughts with Spoiler and a a brief conclusion (spoiler free).

Now without further ado. Let’s dive in.

SPOILER FREE

The best way to watch this show is to avoid spoilers altogether and discover the story as it unravels, so I won’t talk about it, but it’s fair to say that it’s pretty confusing in the beginning. It’s intriguing, strange, you don’t know exactly where this is going but in spite of everything the story is fascinating enough that it keeps you hooked… until we get to around episode 10 and the past of one specific character is developed.

This is when, things start to get a bit more… tedious for watchers. Some viewers don’t seem to have been bothered by it, but I’ve seen a fair number of comments from people who either dropped or put this show on hold because of this draggy middle. I can’t make any comparison with the Netflix adaptation, but one comment mentioned that the Netflix version butchered the novel, while this version was a drag.

Now, I think there’s two main explanations for that draggy part one due to censorship and the other for plot-reason. BUT I can’t speak about those without spoiling so I’ll talk about this in the second part.

I can’t blame people for dropping the show at that point. It’s not that it’s not interesting, but honestly it’s such a drag that I myself had to pause with other shows on several occasions. If you’re patient enough though, by episode 18 things are back on track (though we still get some flashback for said character) and the story goes to its finale…. In a relatively good pace though leaving some inconsistencies and questions unanswered by the end.

I found the scientific explanations interesting, they tried to make them as understandable as possible for the non-initiated but let’s be honest, this is one instance where I feel books are better. I personally can’t wrap my head around complicated concepts unless I see them on paper.

Overall, it’s one of the most fascinating and intellectually challenging series I’ve seen in a while, but it needed some serious trimming in my opinion.
Censorship also removed some of the emotional impact of the story which I personally find extremely sad.

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THOUGHTS WITH SPOILERS

There’s lots of things worth discussing regarding Three Body and it’s just impossible to talk about them all, so I’ll be focusing on a couple of things here, those who marked me the most.

Ye Wen Jie’s Past, Censorship and thought on this character

There’s a fairly good chunk of the story that goes into explaining Ye Wen Jie’s past. Some of these explanations appeared pretty pointless to me until I started to wonder about some key events that are glossed over in the series. Upon looking it up online these “glossed over parts” that are talked about but never really showed in details in the story belong to a dark part of recent Chinese history. I haven’t read the novel, but it seems to be that there’s a probably a good chunk of it that talks in more details about what Wen Jie went through which explains why she ended up making the choices she made.

By not showing the full cruelty of what she and her father endured, it removed a lot of the emotional impact it should have had on the audience and made it difficult to empathize with her as a character.
All her talk and all the draggy episodes that ensued appear as needless meandering that breaks the show’s pace and play against its narration.

This being said, I do feel there’s a second reason why they’ve made that choice. We go through Wen Jie’s story as she’s telling it to our main character Wang Miao. It’s later revealed she’s a key member of a certain group she wants Wang Miao to join, hence all that storytelling felt in hindsight as a way of manipulating our main character to empathize with Wen Jie and make him understand her ideas…
The more we spend time with her past, the more it seems we were supposed to understand what she did…

But at the end of the day, that part was poorly executed and just didn’t have the desired effect on most viewers, me included.


Another small censorship comment


At the end of the drama, our good guys are supposed to get back some data on a boat. In order to get those, they cook up some complicated method to literally cut a whole boat in several slices, people onboard included. That plan of theirs came about 3 days BEFORE they had to execute it.
At some point Wang Miao who is behind the invention to slice the boat is raising concerns regarding the workers, he basically doesn’t want any harm to come to people who just don’t know who and what they’re working for. One US general ( or country Letter thing – no country is named in this drama… again for obvious censorship reasons) tells him not to worry since they’ve looked into it and all workers are the scum of the earth who have all committed atrocious crimes ( in 3 days?)…

This is blatant censorship playing again. China doesn’t want to show innocents being killed for the “greater good” and so the “enemy” has to be made “evil” for the sake of political propaganda (also no matter how shitty these people were supposed to be, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they would agree to doom humanity for money. Even the worst criminal on earth has a line they wouldn’t cross and I think dooming humanity fits the bill).

Again, this removes a strong emotional impact this could have had on the audience. Given the size of the threat, it would be understandable that if needs be, innocents are killed in the process of saving humanity from its impending doom, that would have highlighted the scale and moral dilemma of saving the world by killing the innocents… JUST LIKE the villains have doomed humanity, the guilty and the innocents alike, in the hope of saving LIFE on planet earth.

There was an interesting parallel to draw here, but the drama missed the mark due to censorship reasons. I have absolutely 0 doubt that the novel features a scene in which innocents are butchered on that boat in order to save humanity and I wish that parallel had been clearly shown here.


Ye Wen Jie and Mike Evans.

Coming back to Ye Wen Jie, her gesture of literally dooming humanity is explained by what she went through and what she saw which can be resumed as Humans lack of empathy and respect towards anything but themselves and endless greed that leads them to not only destroy their planet but also themselves. Mike Evans’ overall reasons for pursuing her agenda is the same, Humans are a lost cause…

And as much as I agree with the fact mentioned above ( and Trump’s reelection on top of the very alarming rise fascism, genocides happening in various countries without any coverage and those covered being basically “justified” by utter mass media manipulation, the fact that basically a billionaire made a nazi salute and is still able to parade everywhere without any politician or mass media saying anything and the environment going to shit without any major worldwide measure taken to save us and the upcoming generations from complete doom), I think the drama made it a point to show that these were just pretexts for them to vent their anger and resentment towards humanity as a whole.

Wen Jie can tell her story all she wants and try to pretend what she did was for LIFE, that it was for a greater cause, but at the end of day, she’s just a bitter old lady who took revenge on humanity as a whole for the wrongs she endured condemning the innocents and those who work behind the scenes to do good in spite of adversity. She’s never known warmth, neither from her mother and sister who betrayed her and her father, she went to some reeducation camp which from the few things I read were horrible places where lots of young people were sent, forced to work in poor conditions, with close to no pay, little medical care, little food and enduring physical abuse and torture, NONE of which were shown in the drama which only show people working as if it was “normal work”.

This is proven by Mike Evans who, clearly learned way more than Wen Jie, yet upon learning the aliens weren’t any better than humans, kept on going with his plan to ruin Humanity.

As far as I’m concerned they both should have their arms, legs, eyes, ears and tongue removed, put in a tiny space just tailored to their size and be fed through intravenous drip until they die. Sounds cruel? Well, when you’ve betrayed HUMANITY for your selfish reasons that pretty mild. Yet Wen Jie is having a nice walk in the park before going to prison for dooming us all.

Both Wen Jie and Mike Evans crossed a line that nobody has any right to cross. No amount of explanation can justify committing such a sin against humanity… and other species. Can they even guarantee these aliens will even respect other forms of life when their own world has always been shown as being barren in the first place?


I’m reaching the 10000 characters limit so I’ll be wrapping up things here.



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CONCLUSION:

There’s LOTS of things that are worth talking about this drama. It’s flawed and suffers from a serious pacing problem but its such an interesting story that it deserves its accolades. I initially rated it 9 but ended up giving a 8,5 though for its horrendous pacing issues.
Not bingeable though.