EVERYTHING CULTURALLY RIGHT AND WRONG WITH MULAN 1998

Have you ever impulsively made a video criticizing a movie and it

blows up so much you're basically obligated to become a legit YouTuber?

That's me.

That happened with my review of Mulan 2020.

And since sooo many of you asked for my thoughts on

Mulan 1998, the original cartoon,

HERE IT IS!

To start off, full disclaimer, I love the cartoon

it's one of my favorite movies.

Also it never marketed itself on authenticity

So, this video is not meant to diminish the value of the cartoon

I know it's important to many of us.

I'm just pointing stuff out for purely educational purposes.

ALSO, I first livetweeted this on Twitter, and two artists who

actually worked on Mulan 1998 showed up to add their commentary.

So I'll be including those on the screen.

All right, let's start!

So this movie opens with an ink drawing on a landscape to let you

know how Asian it is right away.

This is the Asian Disney princess, you guys!

This is a reference to the most prominent style of

painting in Chinese art,

inkbrush painting.

Classic Chinese painting isn't like in Europe where

they tried to go for realism,

and they used realism as the golden standard to judge how good art is.

Though I KNOW they didn't do that during all periods, so

don't come for me art nerds!

In Classical Chinese art, the goal is to capture abstract VIBES

in as little strokes as possible.

Mostly because it was black ink on pale paper, so if

you mess up one stroke,

you messed the whole thing up.

So like, classical Chinese artists, I assume that they

were basically painting like

So it was very minimalist and all about the viiiiiibe.

The energy.

And the artists REALLY liked to paint mountain landscapes and plants.

Maybe the occasional bird.