During their first lunch together, Jin Wang (Ben Wang), the shy teen protagonist of Disney+’s American Born Chinese, notices something unusual about his new friend. Although Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu) is new not just to the school but the country, he seems to have no qualms about calling out the bullies mocking them, and no worries about making a scene doing so. “You don’t ever really doubt yourself,” Jin observes, with a mixture of awe and embarrassment.
But Wei-Chen — the son of a deity, and secretly new to human life — is nonplussed. “Why would I ever doubt myself?” he asks. That push-pull between insecurity and confidence will remain at the heart of American Born Chinese, through all manner of drama, action and fantasy, with wildly entertaining and occasionally touching results.
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Creator Kelvin Yu treats Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel less as a template for his series than a springboard. The key ingredients of the source material remain intact with a narrative that braids together Jin’s earthly teenage woes, a Journey to the West-inspired fantasy epic and scenes of a classic sitcom featuring an offensive Asian stereotype (Ke Huy Quan). But its core elements have been updated, remixed and expanded. In this version, Wei-Chen has enlisted Jin on a quest to help his father, Wukong the Monkey King (Daniel Wu), foil a plot by the Bull Demon (Leonard Wu) against their heavenly empire — all while Jin struggles to balance schoolwork, soccer, a tense home life and a hopeless crush, each of which seems to leave him feeling inadequate in some way.
The new material turns what once felt like a personal story with potent metaphorical flourishes into something more like a superhero saga, all the better to fill up eight half-hour episodes that’ll sit alongside She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Ms. Marvel on the streamer’s home screen. (And if the open-ended season finale is any indication, American Born Chinese is hoping to return…
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