Sangokushi Dai San Bu Harukanaru Taichi (HD)

The third movie of the Sangokushi trilogy is Sangokushi Dai San Bu Harukanaru Taichi (Sangokushi: The Distant Land). With this release, Orphan completes its work on the HD version of the three Sangokushi movies.

The third movie covers the longest time span, from Liu Bei's expedition to Shu in 211 CE to the death of Kongming in 234 CE. It is also the most melancholy and despairing. All of the main characters die, and the ultimate winner of the battle to reunite China is None of the Above - not Liu Bei or his descendants, not Cao Cao or his descendents, not Sun Quan or his descendants. Eventually, sheer exhaustion of all opponents allows a descendant of the Cao Wei general Sima Yi to reunite the country and create a new dynasty... for a while. True unity would not be achieved for centuries.

In my view, The Distant Land seriously undermines Sangokushi's glorification of Liu Bei's nobility and Kongming's strategic genius. Liu Bei ultimately achieves no more than the other competing warlords. Kongming's "Land Divided in Three Stratagem" fails spectacularly, producing not a peaceful balance of power but a perpetual war for supremacy among the three states, like the three superstates in 1984. (To quote Frank Herbert's dictum from Dune, "In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures.") The results were disastrous: the population of China was cut more than in half between the outbreak of the Yellow Turban revolt in 184 CE and the establishment of the Jin dynasty in 280 CE. The movie tries to claim a retrospective victory for Liu Bei's ideals, but the state of modern China belies that. It's closing scene gives a truer perspective, showing Fengji, bereft of everyone she has loved, riding back across a deserted landscape to her village to become a teacher, as the melancholy ending song plays.

Because it has so much time to cover, The Distant Land moves at a breakneck pace from conflict to violent incident to battle and back again. With the exception of Guan Yu's foster daughter Fengji (played by the wonderful Tsuru Hiromi), characters are introduced, act out their part in history, and vanish in minutes. There is little time for character development or domestic concerns, just for plotting, ambition, betrayals, and executions. It all feels rather depressing - or perhaps I'm just tired of the Three Kingdoms era after so many hours working on the TV specials and the movies. The Distant Land had a ton of signs to set, and because of image jitter, almost all of them needed to be motion tracked.

Despite the massive size of the undertaking, Orphan's work on the Sangokushi movies and their HD counterparts was done by a small and remarkably dedicated crew. Iri translated all three movies, diligently researching names, translating signs, and labeling the numerous map locations. Yogicat timed, I edited and typeset, BeeBee and Topper3000 QCed the original versions, and TougeWolf RCed the HD versions. M74 encoded the original DVDs, and an anonymous contributor encoded the HD version from a 1080p webrip to correct the frame rate. They have my heartfelt thanks for sticking with the project until it was completed. You can get Sangokushi Dai San Bu Harukanaru Taichi from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net,

Is this the end of Orphan's involvement with Sangokushi? Well, it's the end of mine. If real Blu-rays surface, some other team can put these subs onto new raws. (Good luck with the typesetting.) There are other fish to fry.