Good Hunting story
In early 20th-century China, Liang and his father track a shape-shifting huli jing named Tsiao-Jung to her den. There, Liang meets Tsiao-Jung's daughter Yan, who attempts to explain the plight of the huli jing. Tsiao-Jung urges Yan to escape before she is decapitated by Liang's father. Unbeknownst to his father, Liang lets Yan go. Five years later, Liang's father dies and he moves to Hong Kong and finds work as an engineer. One night, Liang encounters Yan, who has taken a permanent human form due to industrialization supplanting magic and now works as a courtesan. Yan informs him that she was drugged by the governor of Hong Kong, a client of hers, who surgically switched her real legs with cyborg parts before she killed him during an altercation. As Liang engages in robotics engineering as a hobby, he builds her a flexible metal alloy body which allows Yan to morph into a robotic huli jing. Parting as friends, Yan helps a woman fend off a rape by attacking her rapists. Cast: Elaine Tan as Yan, Matt Yang King as Liang, Gwendoline Yeo as Tsiao- Jung, Maddox Henry, Sumalee Montano, JB Blanc Directed by: Oliver Thomas. Story by: Ken Liu.
15 total · 2 choice · 7 major · 6 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| coping with time passing you by | choice | The two main characters lamented the loss of their traditional life that came with the modernization, and westernization, of China at the turn of the previous century. The story follows the patter of showcasing horrors of modern society contrasted with the idyllic days of yore. |
| the desire for a simpler life | choice | The two main characters lamented the loss of their traditional life that came with the modernization, and westernization, of China at the turn of the previous century. The story follows the patter of showcasing horrors of modern society contrasted with the idyllic days of yore. |
| anti-technology way of life | major | Yan lamented losing her magic powers, and blamed mechanization and modernization. |
| colonialism | major | The viewer is shown a steampunk incarnation of British colonial rule in early 20th century Hong Kong. The villain of the story is a British governor, and a sexual pervert. |
| cyborg | major | The fox spirit Yan was drugged and turned into part machine. |
| life in late imperial China | major | The story is set in an alternate version of early 20th century Hong Kong during its era of industrialization and westernization. |
| sexual assault | major | Yan was turned into a cyborg, incongruously, for the purpose of being sexually assaulted by a man who had a fetish for machines. In the end she narrowly saved another woman from being, more conventionally, sexually assaulted. |
| shapeshifter | major | The story concerns a kind of Chinese shapeshifting fox spirit known as a huli jing. |
| the desire for vengeance | major | Yan, toward the end of the story, resolved to mete out justice against the British overlords of Hong Kong, who were oppressing local women by forcibly converting them into cyborgs to use as objects for their own sexual gratification. |
| alternate points of view | minor | A point of the story was that humans and fox spirits each, with justification, saw the others as cruel and barbaric. |