Six people are set on a collision course when Jan Wen (Joseph Huang, 黃聖球) shoots a man in a night market on his 18th birthday. The teenager, who spends his time playing the online game King’s World (王者世界) and creating a popular Web comic with his pal Xing (Devin Pan, 潘綱大), is being forced by his strict father to study abroad after scoring poorly on his college exams. As he reaches a breaking point, he orders a gun online.
While society is often quick to condemn such perpetrators (and their parents), the social and psychological reasons leading up to the shooting remain a mystery, especially since this sort of violence rarely happens in Taiwan.
This is not the first production examining the topic after Cheng Chieh (鄭捷) in 2014 shocked the nation with his Taipei MRT knife rampage; notable productions include the 2019 drama series The World Between Us (我們與惡的距離) and last year’s Terrorizers (青春弒戀).
Photo courtesy of Hope Marketing Entertainment
Director Lou Yi-an (樓一安) gets quite ambitious with Goddamned Asura (該死的阿修羅), shifting from virtual gaming and reality, Jan Wen’s Web comic to an alternate “what if” timeline to weave a stylish, fast-paced, yet somewhat overloaded tale from the six seemingly random lives that are affected.
Of course, they’re all somewhat troubled and connected somehow, mostly through King’s World.
Mold (Mo Tzu-yi, 莫子儀) is an investigative reporter writing a story on urban renewal of a low-income housing complex (how many times has that Nanjichang Residences (南機場) courtyard appeared on the big screen?), juvenile delinquent Zero (Wang Yu-xuan, 王渝萱) is a gamer who lives in the complex with her alcoholic mother, Vita (Huang Pei-jia, 黃姵嘉) is a stressed out advertising executive trying to promote the game and her fiance Sheng (Lai Hao-che, 賴澔哲) is a popular King’s World livestreamer who works as an urban renewal officer for the city.
Photo courtesy of Hope Marketing Entertainment
The links between them definitely run deeper than that, but revealing more would spoil the plot. In response to society judging people and their transgressions in too simplistic a manner, this film goes all out to show that nothing is that straightforward.
The theme of being trapped is often seen in the imagery; Jan Wen and Xing repeatedly try to free a dog locked in a small cage, and the Roomba vacuum cleaner in Xing’s apartment is stuck in a small area, going round and round in circles. The acting is solid across the board, and production value high except for the soundtrack, which is rather generic and monotonous.
The viewer needs to focus on each character and their actions to completely follow the events and make sense of the different aspects of reality presented, and it’s definitely an entertaining watch that also works the brain.
Although some have bigger roles than others, the six characters are complex and multi-dimensional, each showing their positive and negative sides. Lou has obviously given them much thought and there are surprisingly no glaring plot holes in such a tangled web. There’s still a lot to keep track of, however, and the dizzying narrative makes the film less impactful and memorable by the end.
Things get a bit preachy in the last part as Lou searches for a resolution; the message is clear enough that a tiny shift of events could result in completely different decisions and outcomes, and that people shouldn’t be so quick to pass judgment on those who commit horrific acts. Anyone could possibly become a killer depending on what goes wrong that day — Mold, for example, almost beats Jan Wen to death in anger after witnessing the shooting.
However, how much does this idea abscond the responsibilities of the perpetrators? Life is not a video game that can just be reset, just like how Jan Wen’s father couldn’t, in his words, “reset” his son’s life by sending him out of the country.
Fortunately, the film doesn’t take the idealistic, sentimental route; tragedy is not prevented this easily even if you have a reset button. It’s easy to condemn murderers and harass their families, but how do we change society into a less repressed place where these highly stressed-out characters can have some support and respite?
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and the country’s other political groups dare not offend religious groups, says Chen Lih-ming (陳立民), founder of the Taiwan Anti-Religion Alliance (台灣反宗教者聯盟). “It’s the same in other democracies, of course, but because political struggles in Taiwan are extraordinarily fierce, you’ll see candidates visiting several temples each day ahead of elections. That adds impetus to religion here,” says the retired college lecturer. In Japan’s most recent election, the Liberal Democratic Party lost many votes because of its ties to the Unification Church (“the Moonies”). Chen contrasts the progress made by anti-religion movements in
Taiwan doesn’t have a lot of railways, but its network has plenty of history. The government-owned entity that last year became the Taiwan Railway Corp (TRC) has been operating trains since 1891. During the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule, the colonial government made huge investments in rail infrastructure. The northern port city of Keelung was connected to Kaohsiung in the south. New lines appeared in Pingtung, Yilan and the Hualien-Taitung region. Railway enthusiasts exploring Taiwan will find plenty to amuse themselves. Taipei will soon gain its second rail-themed museum. Elsewhere there’s a number of endearing branch lines and rolling-stock collections, some
Could Taiwan’s democracy be at risk? There is a lot of apocalyptic commentary right now suggesting that this is the case, but it is always a conspiracy by the other guys — our side is firmly on the side of protecting democracy and always has been, unlike them! The situation is nowhere near that bleak — yet. The concern is that the power struggle between the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and their now effectively pan-blue allies the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) intensifies to the point where democratic functions start to break down. Both
This was not supposed to be an election year. The local media is billing it as the “2025 great recall era” (2025大罷免時代) or the “2025 great recall wave” (2025大罷免潮), with many now just shortening it to “great recall.” As of this writing the number of campaigns that have submitted the requisite one percent of eligible voters signatures in legislative districts is 51 — 35 targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus lawmakers and 16 targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The pan-green side has more as they started earlier. Many recall campaigns are billing themselves as “Winter Bluebirds” after the “Bluebird Action”
RSS