ruka

a great snapshot into toxic chinese upbringing

Revisado: 07-12-22

Parts I enjoyed - The monologue of the main character was done nicely, Just the right dash of unreliable without being completely unhinged. It presented a good snapshot into how it felt growing up in a toxic chinese household obsessed with grades. The story wasn't anything mindblowing, but i think it's more of a character-focused book anyway.

Parts I didn't enjoy - While someone who's only broadly Asian American or otherwise has no connection to the specific cultural background of the main character might not notice, as someone who is more knowledgeable about the city - the author's portrayal of a Hong Kong family and culture seemed pretty inauthentic to me. It seemed only surface-level chinese and not specifically Hong Kong. For example, nobody in Hong Kong will dress children up in red for a great-grandmother's birthday dinner - it's done in SE Asia, but in Hong Kong this would be incredibly tacky. Plus, with Ava's parents supposedly being from Hong Kong - it's highly unlikely that Ava would grow up speaking Mandarin or even expect her mother to teach her son Mandarin. If anything, her mother would have mediocre Mandarin at best.

Sure enough, when I looked it up, the author grew up in Singapore - explaining her complete lack of understanding about HK family culture and her emphasis on Mandarin. Maybe some research would've been nice? Especially if your character bases a lot of her cultural identity on the city - it seems to me that the author might be better off basing her character's family on Singapore or China instead.

The narrator was fine but not great. I found her a bit emotionless, and she over-pronounced all the Chinese words, you would think she got paid more per Chinese word. We get it, you're chinese, can we move on then? It got a bit grating after a while. And it's not like she made an effort to differentiate the different character dialogues, either. No accents or any change in tone or pitch at all.

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esto le resultó útil a 23 personas

typical japanese fiction story

Revisado: 05-11-22

The story is pretty typical of Japanese short fiction - slice of life with a twist plus some deranged unreliable narrator. Reminds me of Yoko Ogawa's works actually.

The performance was great. Jennifer Ikeda has really captured the voices of different characters and reads with tone and inflection. The acting wasn't over the top and there wasn't a monotone second in the entire 3+ hours.
However, I do wish they had coached her on the Japanese pronunciations a bit. Obviously she can enunciate the syllables one by one but (r's, d's, etc were pronounced the Japanese way) but isn't really comfortable with speaking Japanese. It made the Japanese names in the book sound over-pronounced at times. Yet when she read the Japanese greetings in a certain section of the story, her intonation was completely off. I actually cringed a bit at that part, it was so bad. But it's not something a non-Japanese speaker would catch. The acting was really good though, and I'd love to hear more of her work.

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bleargh

Revisado: 01-06-22

the whole thing is just internet style listicle format.
might've been new and refreshing to people who never went on the internet in the 2010s, but i'm 25 and this does nothing for me. narrator is bland and sounds like an uninterested high schooler.

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great cast

Revisado: 12-30-21

i really hoped it would have a proper ending but i guess it reflects the reality of people stuck in immigration limbo. does it really matter what kind of visas they're getting? the title was a jab at how dehumanizing calling immigrants "aliens" is. I'm not american and i think the dialogue did a good job at presenting what americans are like - oblivious, blinded by their definition of race, little to no knowledge about other countries - the whole package. i did think sadie was a touch too clueless on the verge of annoying though.

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only made it through 3 hours

Revisado: 12-16-21

surprised to see so many positive reviews. voices sounded grating after a while and i couldn't stand everyone talking over each other and going off tangent ALL. THE. TIME. I get that's what they're going for but it was too much. the parent characters are bumbling fools dialed way past what i could stand. main character is likeable but performances are not my cup of tea.

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more, more!

Revisado: 10-04-21

Binged all 3 series in one go. It got a little preachy this season, but i get it. still hilarious and enjoyable. Miranda's character and performance really make this show stand out.

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idiot plot where everyone is an idiot

Revisado: 09-20-21

the narrator was completely unnecessary and annoying. characters got annoying at times. saw the twist coming a mile away but it was just okay

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liked 2 of them, meh performance

Revisado: 09-13-21

the first story was interesting but it wasn't a great story. performance couldve been a bit smoother. the one with the calculations was pretty good. performance captured the tone of the story well in my opinion. the one with spanish flu flashbacks had a bad performance, overly dramatic like the narrator was running out of breath at every sentence, plus the same rise-and-fall tonal shift made me really frustrated. the others weren't memorable and it was tiring hearing the same old covid spiel. there wasn't anything really out there. just a plain and simple covid themed collection of bland stories.

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