BASED on the critically-acclaimed graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese is the story of Jin Wang, a Chinese-American teenager that is profoundly embarrassed in his ethnicity.
As he attempts to navigate the complexity of fitting in and budding teenage romance, Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu) crashes into his life.
Son of the legendary Sun Wukong (Daniel Wu), known in Heaven as the Monkey King, Wei-Chen steals his father’s magical staff and arrives on earth in search of the “Fourth Scroll”, a magical MacGuffin that will help thwart a war against his father’s rule in Heaven by the Bull Demon, Niu Mowang (Leonard Wu).
Accompanied by the Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin (Michelle Yeoh), Wei-Chen believes Jin is the key to the scroll.
Tackling internal issues
The source material by Yang is lauded by many, so as someone that has not read it, it will be hard to juxtapose the contents of the Disney+ show with the novel.
But what can be done is, judging the show on the merits of what it achieves through its format, and whether Yang’s ideas are translated successfully from paper to television for viewers unaware of the source material.
This idea, that branches out from its central figure – Jin, played by Ben Wang – and overarching theme of the series, is one of racial identity in the face of environmental suppression of that identity.
The Disney+ show does this commendably, from Jin, to supporting characters who are going through their own set personal battles that are also rooted in the same thing.
Jin’s parents, Simon (Chin Han) and Christine (Yeo Yann Yann), are Chinese immigrants who are suffering from mid-life crisis compounded by other problems, such as Simon’s dead-end job that has seen no promotion for several years and when an offer turns up, it goes to a white co-worker.
Christine’s mocking of him being timid further feeds into that, while also making her an unwitting perpetrator of Asian emasculation.
The emasculation of Chinese – or Asian – men is also shown through Jamie Yao (Ke Huy Quan), an actor “famous” for playing Freddy Wong in the in-universe sitcom called Beyond Repair.
You see, Freddy is the perfect cocktail of every racist stereotype Western media has exerted on Chinese men since the “yellow peril” infiltrated the West.
These clips, where Jamie is depicted as a bumbling buffoon with a thick Asian accent and dorky clothes opposite a “hunkier” white co-star, often interject Jin’s own life as the proverbial act of dousing fire with gasoline, as these clips of Freddy causes a further crisis in Jin’s own racial identity.
Uneven at times
On these merits, American Born Chinese does decently, but bear in mind this is still a Disney production; wilder ideas that Yang presents in his graphic novel are not present in the series, at least not in this season.
One of it is Jin’s ethnic self-destruction, where he transforms into a white guy due to his crush on a white girl.
In essence, the Disney+ show works, even if it’s sometimes surface level and the storytelling being relatively bogged down by the slow pacing; each episode takes forever in getting the story moving from one point to the next. The show’s target audience of young adults might not vibe with the pacing.
Due to how Yang adapts Chinese folk tales from “Journey to the West”, an important piece of Chinese literature, kung-fu and the mystical is a given, and on the Disney+ show, it’s both a hit and a miss.
Being an almost complete Everything Everywhere All at Once cast reunion, American Born Chinese also borrows the film’s whacky kung-fu action choreography.
The impressive wire work really sells each unique fight in the show, but the prosthetics are distractingly obvious in how its used to obfuscate that the actor on-screen is actually a stunt double.
This is very obvious during the fight between Wei-Chen and Ji Gong (played by Ronnie Chieng in a terrible grey wig under a beanie).
The fight, reminiscent of Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master films, impressively pits Wei-Chen against the drunk Ji Gong, who slips and slides all over the place while chugging swigs of alcohol.
But for 95% of the fight, it’s painfully obvious Ji Gong is Chieng’s stunt double.
Apart from this minor issue, American Born Chinese still works due to the overall sum of its part, but whether viewers of the series on Disney+ takes anything valuable from it is entirely subjective to the individual.
More so when the alternate option – reading Yang’s original graphic novel – is also on the table.