Continuing on their exploration of new animation style and Asian relationship dysfunction, NMA brings us the third installment of their ‘Next Files’ series, Storm Girl.

Without giving too much of the plot away, whilst the previous two installments revolved around couples, Storm Girl takes a look at the all too often prevalent ‘little emperor’ syndrome that plagues Asian (particularly Taiwanese and Chinese) children.

Enjoy!


Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5

I thoroughly enjoyed the first installment of Next Media Animation’s showcase of their new animation style, A Cursed Relationship.  It was good to see a story usually reserved for Chinese news aired out in public for the rest of us to enjoy!

Continuing the relationship focused theme, NMA have begun their second installment of the Next Files with the premier of Promiscuous Ways.

Again based on a real life court case this time NMA don’t mention which country the story is from, but it’s obviously choc-full of Asian weirdness (‘you’re so HOT!’ ‘oh how sweet!’ WTF?), Promiscuous Ways  has started off a bit flatter and seems to be a bit more awkwardly narrated.

Whereas they let the story unfold with A Cursed Relationship, Promiscuous Ways is a bit more ‘tell’ than ‘show’. Also the direction is a bit sloppy.

Anyways, hopefully they pick up the pace and storyline in episode two… I know either way I’ll keep watching – I’m a sucker for these things!

As usual I’ll update the article as new episodes are released.


Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5

In what I think originally started off as a way for Taiwanese animation studio Next Media to showcase a new animation style they’d been working on, The Next Files: A Cursed Relationship has since proved to be an interesting enough series in its own merit.

Although based on a news story originating out of Hong Kong (I’m unfamiliar with the news story so can’t comment on how accurate the series is), A Cursed Relationship perfectly showcases some of the batshit craziness that goes on in Taiwan’s relationships too.

A Cursed Relationship is inspired by court documents from a case involving a bar hostess who blackmails a rich businessman in Hong Kong.


Going by some of the crazy stories I hear, I guess Hong Kong and Taiwan’s affair scenes aren’t all that different.

A Cursed Relationship is a five part series and concluded airing on the 25th September, you can watch all five parts of the series below.

Note that unless you speak Chinese you’ll want to turn on closed captions for subtitles (the CC button at the bottom of the YouTube player).


Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5 (finale)

I don’t really know all that much about European football, but I found myself in the early hours of this morning sitting in Taipei bar ‘Barbados’ watching the UEFA Champions League final.

The Barbados venue was quite a nice choice to watch the game.

You had a massive projector screen up front and numerous smaller LCD’s streaming the match placed front and side at the bar.

Pretty much no matter where you were sitting you had a decent view of the game.

The final was between FC Barcelona and Manchester United and unlike most of the world cup matches I saw, this one was actually pretty interesting.

Supporter wise you were looking at a rough 90/10 split with an overwhelming majority going for Barcelona. Needless to say everytime Barcelona got a goal or a decision went their way, the crowd went nuts;

Match wise Barcelona definitely deserved the win. Everytime Manchester got the ball it was only usually a matter of seconds before Barcelona just went and took the ball back again.

That said the one goal Manchester scored was played well but they didn’t give themselves any other decent opportunity to score other than that.

The final score was 3:1 Barcelona’s way, but after the first 45 minutes you kinda knew Manchester probably weren’t going to win, they were just being outclassed).

Still not too interested in the Champions league but watching the final in Barbados made for something different to do this weekend. Not sure if Barbados regularly do other sports venues but it made for a pretty decent venue with roughly 100-200 people rocking up to watch.

Barbados is located at No. 101 SongRen Road in Taipei’s Sinyi District. Note that to access the bar you need to walk around the back of the building on the SongYong Road side (the green arrow on the map is Barbados, ignore the ‘A’ arrow).



View Larger Map


Access is relatively easy with a 1.5km from the nearest MRT station at Taipei City Hall or you can just taxi it there (note you might have to just tell the taxi to go to ‘Room 18′ or ‘Barcode’ and just cross the road to go to Barbados.

With my writing for the day done and nothing much else to do, I flicked on the television and began to channel surf. Nothing really caught my eye on the standard English channels so I decided to venture out my comfort zone and enter the world of crazy Taiwanese cable tv.

A few minutes later I found myself staring at channel ‘Taiwan’… or as I’ve otherwise dubbed it, ‘the girlfriend channel’.


I have absolutely no idea if there’s a deeper meaning to the show beyond feeding that insatiable desire of Taiwan’s lonely guys to spend their Sunday nights staring longingly into the eyes of a cute girl… but I suspect not.

I guess in a way despite the explosion of the internet and the porn that comes with it this could be televisions way of fighting back. More people own televisions than computers so why not give lonely guys what they want. I mean who else is going to be watching television at all hours on a Sunday night?

(myself excluded, hey it was the world freaking cup!)

Meanwhile if I’m watching a movie on Taiwanese cable tv and there’s the slightest hint of gore or violence it’s censored out… hours of footage of some school girls crotch though?

Fuck it, yeah. This is Taiwan and we’re down with that.

By no means a quantitative addict instead I get horribly attached to shows I really like and watch them religiously. I miss them when they’re on break and I count down the days before I can watch them again.

Since moving to Taiwan I’ve had to make some minor adjustments in my television viewing habits. What with everything on cable television here being subtitled and shown completely at random, I’ve found myself relying on the internet more then ever.

From time to time though I do still find myself aimlessly drifting through the one hundred or so cable television channels available from practically any television in Taiwan. Coupled with your staple movies and American tv shows is a strange assortment of Asian oriented programming that is unique to say the least.

On a recent afternoon it was this endless curiosity with Asian television that proved to be my downfall.

I’d just checked into a random hotel and had plonked my belongings on the bed. Tired from the long trip in I contemplated having a nap but decided it against it. I only had an hour till my date.

Not willing to risk sleep and not really knowing the area I was staying in I decided to call up my date and see if we might kick things off earlier. Pulling my phone out of my bag I punched in her number and waited.

No answer.

Shrugging it off I decided to plonk myself infront of the television and hope she was just in the shower or something.

Normally I’d settle for watching HBO, Star Movies, Hollywood, National Geographic, Discovery Channel or one of the other few channels broadcast in English. From time to time however none of these channels have anything of interest on. It’s then that I resort to mindless channel surfing the non english channels in the hope I find something interesting.

This was one of those times.

The upper end of the channel spectrum is usually filled with garbage shopping and finance channels so I usually start my odyssey at the lower end.

The first few channels are usually the local CTV networks followed by the news and then a few American sports feeds. With nothing grabbing me I continued on, ready to speed flick through the cartoon channels in the hope that something worthwhile had popped up on the English channels that followed.

To my surprise however as I flicked over to channel 15 I was met with an unfamiliar sight,

…as channel 15 came into focus my brain took a few seconds to process what I was looking at. As the sense of shock wore off, the gravity of what I was watching hit me.

Hardcore Asian pornography.

Now the visuals in themselves weren’t all that bad but I’m the kind of guy that likes to watch television with the volume quite loud. My penchant for totally immersing myself in whatever I’m watching has landed me in trouble with the neighbours on more then a few occasions.

With that, the realisation of where I was kicked in and I scrambled for the off button. I sat there for a few seconds on the bed wondering if anyone outside had heard. Being in a new hotel I was more then a little self conscious of giving off the impression that I’d checked in during the early hours of the afternoon to settle in for a marathon porn session.

As I sat there and pondered whether or not is was worth checking out, my phone rang. My date was ready.

Leaving my keys at the front desk, ready to bolt at any sign of a smirk I was relieved that my channel surfing adventures appeared to have gone unnoticed. In the clear I set out ready to enjoy a sunny afternoon.

The date went well, we had a late lunch and spent a lot of time chatting as we walked around enjoying the sights. The date went so good infact that after dinner we wound up back at my hotel room.

We’d brought back some food to eat and after finishing that wound up talking on the bed. I knew where things were heading and decided to enjoy the company for a while before we got down to business.

I’m not exactly sure how it happened but at some point during our conversation she instinctively reached for the television remote and flicked on the tv, presumably for some background noise.

Of course being the product of modern technological excellence the television had stored the last channel I’d watched in it’s memory, along with the volume level I’d watched it at.

I sat there in absolute horror wishing I’d thought to change the channel before turning the television off before. The minutes seem to drag into hours and I waited for her to turn it off or at the very least change the channel. But almost as if she was punishing me she kept the TV on.

Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and I reached over for the remote grabbing it from her hands. As the porn noises finally subsided from the room she turned and looked me in the eye. I looked back but I already knew no explanation was going to be good enough.

She told me it was probably best if she left. I haven’t turned on a hotel television since and I never saw her again.

In my latest channel surfing adventure I happened across what appears to be the Asian wrestling equivalent of what we know as wrestling.

Forget flashy intros, cunningly witty dialogue, themed characters and Emmy award winning plotlines, when it comes to Asian wrestling you’re pretty much looking at two women fighting it out in what appears to be someone’s basement.

You’ll have to excuse my voice in this one, I was on the tail end of a nasty headcold (did my best to not cough during recording).


I mentioned it in the video but what surprised me the most was the lack of enthusiasm by the audience. From the few western (WWF, WCW et al.) wrestling matches I’ve seen on tv here the audience is usually made up of teenagers and young twenty somethings. Like or hate wrestling it’s hard to argue that they don’t get involved and make up a decent atmosphere during the match.

With Asian wrestling the audience appears to be made up primarily of business men in suits who… well I’m not sure if they’re getting off on watching them women or what exactly they’re getting out of it.

Their eyes are glued to the ring but nobody seems terribly excited. Maybe they’re all heavy gamblers and there’s a lot of money riding on these games so there’s little time to express any kind of involvement who knows.

Meanwhile I’m kinda worrying about the health of those women. Some of those blows looked suspiciously real… and the hair pulling… ouch!

And I’m not just talking about looks either. There’s a hell of a lot of Taiwanese girls who have this mentality that it’s attractive to come across as a fifteen year old virgin who’s never spent a night away from her parents house before, even when you’re pushing your late twenties.

Over the past few months I’ve been questioning where this culture comes from. Some of the girls I’ve talked to just seem to have it inbuilt into them, I guess it was passed down by their parents or something. They just tell me that it’s normal and that they like being that way, the cuter the better. It’s like some weird competition.

The disturbing trend of increasingly female looking Asian guys making inroads to femininity probably isn’t helping either.

As a guy I can safely say I’m certainly not actively encouraging it. I can appreciate cute girls but there’s definitely an age line that some Taiwanese girls love to dance all over; sometimes it works and sometimes it’s just creepy.

I can’t comment on Taiwanese guys though as I’ve never talked to one about it. They don’t seem to fussed though to be zinging around Taiwan’s cities with girls who look like their little sisters on the back of their scooters though.

Finally, there’s the local media industry who definitely aren’t helping. I want to share with you an ad that’s been saturating Taiwan television lately.

(+10 beers to anyone who sits through the entire advertisement).


The ad is for a new car from Taiwanese car manufacturer Yulon Motor Company called the ‘tobe M’Car’. The above version is a full music clip, thankfully the ad on television is a cut version that only runs for about thirty seconds. I’m not sure if that means this is an actual official Taiwanese song or not though.

Part of me is secretly dreading walking into a bar one day and hearing the DJ crank this up

Despite the cutesy graphics and pre-school themes however, this isn’t an advertisement for little kids.

The legal age for driving in Taiwan is 18.

The only thing that marginally saves the M’Car ad is the little interlude about Facebook. I’ve got no idea what’s being sung but even this scene is shortlived before the girl (in her knickers) starts jumping around her living room in an outburst of random what-the-hell cuteness.

The tobe M’Car ad is aimed at young women, which is just disturbing. If Taiwanese girls are so easily distracted by a small flying elephant carrying a freaking giant lollipop, no wonder the driving in Taiwan is so bad.

What worries me is the success this ad campaign will have. Tobe have definitely done their research and this ad is going to have some massive appeal to a lot of young females over here. Whether that translates into sales or not I don’t know but at the very least it’ll re-enforce the stereotype.

The next time I’m walking arm in arm with a girl and she goes batshit crazy over some cute little dog she just saw I’ll know who to blame. And god help me if I ever get roped into going car shopping with a girl.

‘Yes sir this one’s got eight cylinders of sunshine, is hello kitty certified and comes with a free life sized Doraemon doll.

Optional extras include an extra 50% of dashboard space so you can display your complete collection of weird arse cutesy figurines, hundreds of star stickers and eighty three pounds of glitter sprinkled randomly over the interior.’

Thanks guys, not helping.

Flicking on the tv, you’d expect to see Chinese dubbed versions of Barney the Dinosaur, Pokemon or even the Wiggles.

…then you remember you’re in Taiwan.

It was roughly 5pm on a weekday and I’d just gotten back from a day out exploring. I was channel surfing and within seconds was glad I didn’t own a HD widescreen television.

Something about testicle implant underwear just doesn’t sit right with me. Especially when we’re talking extreme close-ups of the action and crotch thrusting into the camera.


Some kid just got home from school and is trying to do his homework and then this comes on:

‘mummy mummy I decided what I want for Christmas!’

‘oh?… What did you have in mind dear?’;

‘GIANT BALLS LIKE ON THE TV!’

Imagine the girl you’re trying to impress is that superficial that having a big crotch is a deal breaker for her. Throughout the night you impress her with your giant package and then when you get home she takes your undies off… ‘ohhhhhhh. Hey listen I have to go wash my hair’.

It’d be like if a guy saw a girl with a beautiful C cup, gets home and after removing her bra sees two little A cup insect bites. Probably not enough to go home and wash your hair over but still you’d be a little disappointed.

I was led to believe Taiwan was a conservative society. Between giant posters of bikini girls outside adult KTVs, betel nut girls wearing next to nothing sitting in goldfish bowl type stands and crotch implant underwear on television during primetime… now I’m not so sure.