Prince of Tennis + Chinese drama adaptation = ...this is going to take me some time to get used to.

So I wrote a couple of posts about the upcoming Prince of Tennis Chinese drama back when the news first came out. Here are the posts if you're interested, but it's really nothing more than basic information:
Prince of Tennis Chinese TV drama?!? (um, this one kinda contains a small rant about how the anime failed to follow canon, so spoilers for the Rikkai arc)
A bit more info on the Prince of Tennis Chinese TV drama

So, I was happy to wait like a year before it came out. But then I started getting impatient. XD A couple of weeks ago, I found that there was a page for it over on the DramaWiki (http://wiki.d-addicts.com/The_Prince_of_Tennis) and immediately got uber excited. However, back then, all it was was a list of cast members and roles, a picture of a couple of the regulars, and a link to a Chinese site. This was quite a problem. See, they changed the names.
So I was left with a cast list full of Chinese names, and honestly, reading about how Qin Jun Jie is playing "Long Ma" means nothing to me. XD And a trip to the official (I'm assuming) Chinese site didn't help, though I identified Tezuka, Inui, and Ryoma in the pictures. xD
But!
I have no idea what motivated me to do this, but I checked the DramaWiki site again today, and yay! A summary was added, plus someone added links to the Wikipedia pages for each of the characters- so each Chinese name linked to the Wikipedia page for the character in their Japanese name! Now I can tell who's who! xDD (The "Long Ma" guy I mentioned earlier is Ryoma, btw. I actually probably could have figured that out, with him being first in the cast list, but w/e...)

Here's the summary:

Long Ma is a tennis prodigy who garnered 4 successive victories at the American Junior Tennis Tournament. Like his father, former professional tennis player Long Zheng Nan, Long Ma possesses both top-notch skills and deep passion for the sport. Upon returning to his homeland, he attends the distinguished Qing Chun Academy and quickly secures a spot as a regular member of its famous tennis club after beating out numerous upperclassmen. With each match towards their ultimate goal of winning the nationwide Junior Tennis Championships, Long Ma and his teammates grow as players and as friends.

...
The plot sounds nice and all, but...oh this is going to take me forever to get used to. Wait, are they changing it so they're all Chinese, like within the series? Thinking about it now, it makes perfect sense, but that never really occurred to me before. Hmm. Not like it would really change much in the plot. Except the tournament set-up would have to be changed...and China's so big, wouldn't it take much longer within each tournament because there would be way more teams?
The name changes are going to kill me every time though, they don't sound at all like the Japanese names...I take a Mandarin Chinese class two times a week (I only started in January and all I know is pronunciation) and I thought that when they imported names or something they came up with a Chinese name based on the pronunciation of the original name. However, it looks like instead of doing that, they instead used the original kanji for the names (or as close as they have in Chinese) and took the pronunciation from that.

Apparently there are only going to be 20 episodes (which I guess isn't short for a drama (lots of j-dramas are 13 episodes, I think? never watched one fully) but it's shorter than I was expecting), which a) leaves me wondering how they're planning on reaching the Hyoutei arc, and b) crushes my dreams of it reaching the Rikkai arc. Oh well. I guess it's going to be like the live-action movie and end after the Hyoutei matches, though since it's far longer hopefully they're not going to be like the movie and cut out lots of canon stuff. XD Actually I didn't watch the full movie, I got annoyed when they skipped a lot of stuff in the very beginning so I turned it off. xD

I wonder if they're changing the ages of the characters, or if the badge-thing on each of their school uniforms stating "YOUTH COLLEGE" is merely a case of Engrish? xD (can the term Engrish be used when referring to a culture other than Japan? I've only seen it used related to Japanese stuff...seriously, China is like a whole new world to me, I have no idea about anything and honestly, outside of a few bands/singers, I don't plan on getting involved with it) Seishun Gakuen is the original name of the school, and it translates to "Youth Academy" or something like that, so...


Anyway, I don't see anything totally wrong with the casting or anything, which is good. But, Ryuuzaki-sensei's a young woman?? O__O I'm starting to wonder if there's something wrong with having a grandmother as a tennis coach in live-action or something- in the musicals they cut her out (they cut out all female characters), in the Japanese live-action movie they made her a young woman (played by Shimatani Hitomi!!) who was Nanjirou's classmate rather than his coach, and now this drama seems to be taking the same path.
Really, I'm happy as long as Eiji Ju Wan Eiji's actor is good.
picture
Not the best, probably not my first choice (where's the flippy red hair? and the band-aid?), but I'm satisfied. 8D
Oh, and as a bonus, Ooishi's hair isn't uber ugly! xD See, it's bad enough in the manga/anime, but in the musicals, they try to imitate it...in real life it's just even worse. X_x The flipside to this, though, is that now he doesn't immediately stand out, but I'll get over it. XD

Let's end this with a group picture! 8DD In which I can't identify Taka, Eiji, Momo, and Ooishi. They need identifying features like the others.


(Blogger cuts it off, click it for the full image)