Glove puppetry "Budaixi" is one of the Taiwanese traditional performing arts. And Pili Budaixi, which is a new/modernized version of traditional Budaixi, became very popular.
The puppets used in the Pili are very well crafted and big. This series has been broadcasted on TV and continues to do so for well over a dozen years. It's still running and will be for who-knows-how-long.
As you can understand easily from the fact that it continues for such a long time, the series is well received and loved by Taiwanese but it didn't go over its boundary because there was only a Taiwanese version.
But In the year 1999, a Taiwanese puppet cinematic movie (martial fantasy) "Legend of the Sacred Stone" has hit the screen of US and Japan. The movie is a spin-off of above-mentioned Taiwanese successful TV series "Pili" (thunder force)
The first impression of the movie was "surprise!"
Puppets overblown, blasted off, jump, fly and so on. (You wouldn't want to handle your favorite figure this way… never) The action and puppetry is visually stunning.
The puppets are well characterized and have their own emotions to display. The body movements are incredibly supple. Adding a dynamic SFX and interesting movement of these puppets, despite of its rather simple plot, this movie became a dramatic performance. You'd be just amazed at the dynamic movements of these hand-operated puppets. This Pili series hooked me. The first thing I did is to check Internet for information on this puppet series. Found out there are many other series and even DVDs exist.
There are also books and CDs of Pili series. The only problem is, I don't understand Chinese (or Taiwanese, that is)
Fortunately, I can understand Kanji character and Taiwanese language also uses Kanji character. I can "manage" to understand the meaning of the sentences by captions (the DVD has Kanji captions). So are the books. When you can understand Kanji character, you'd be able to grasp a vague meaning (Wish I can really understand Chinese or Taiwanese! It would be more fun.)
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2010年3月7日（日） 今頃咲いた女郎花？！
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