I had only vague memory of the classic fairy tale of “Cinderella”. I certainly remembered “Dragon Ball” much better than I did for “Cinderella”. My childhood was anything but bedtime stories or fairy tales. “Cinderella” was so well-known such that I sort of knew or had heard of such story even I did not “formally” read, listen to, or watch it. When my classmates or acquaintances were closely following stars (actors, actresses, singers, etc.) and films/TV series from Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, such popular topics were simply out of my wheelhouse. During the brief stay of my cousin in my home, he introduced the popular Taiwanese drama, “Fated To Love You” （命中注定我爱你）, to me. It certainly received the highest rating in Taiwan.
As I learned more about “Interlaced Scan” and “Progressive Scan”, I can’t help but noticed the “motion artefacts” commonly found in Interlaced Videos in my “Fated To Love You” DVDs. “Fated To Love You” is a romance story but is neither “fairy tale” nor “magical”. It did mentioned quite a few times the classic story of “Cinderella”. Cinderella is known as “Lady Grey” in Chinese; the father of Xin Yi Chen (female protagonist of the series) jokingly answered her daughter’s question of what the last name of “Lady Grey” was; it was “Hui” (which means Grey in Chinese). Xin Yi Chen dreamed of meeting the “Prince Charming” of her dream, so much so that she was willingly put her heart into an unreliable playboy. Yet, as a twist of fate, the day when she realized the hard truth was the same day she met her future husband.
Despite my very intent to devote myself to my dream and career, I do learn as much as possible about other areas of knowledge; yes, that does include folk tales that help influence the mind of people and perhaps give faith to people when they are depressed by various setbacks in life. To get over difficult moments, we do need to have faith and confidence; some people relied on religions; some people found hopes from folk tales or miracles. As scientists tried their very best to learn more about the nature, they also understood that they knew very little about nature.
Before I began to watch “Fated To Love You”, I did try my fancy new toy, FFmpeg x264 to encode H.262 videos into H.264 videos. Even though H.264 does support interlaced video, interlaced videos are not suitable for frame-by-frame inspection or editing. I chose the constant frame rate of 24 FPS for the video source of 59.94 fields per second. I certainly can use tool such as Handbrake to “decomb” or “deinterlace” the video; “deinterlace” does not make the image quality better; on the contrary, it reduces the image clarity in some frames to reduce the “motion artefacts”. One of the down side of Handbrake 0.9.9 is that it drops the first frame of the video. To avoid unintended frame drop, I would have to add an extra frame at the beginning of the video. At the end, I decided to skip “decomb” or “deinterlace” altogether while maintaining the image quality.
I’m not exactly a big fan of romance story. “Fated to Love You” did remind me of the classic fairy tale of “Cinderella”, which I may have heard of it but never really read or listen to or watch it. There are many versions of “Cinderella” that exist. The Disney’s Cinderella was released back in 1950. Yet, it still looks good today. I have to admit that the “motion artefacts” are really jarring, despite the fairly-well overall image quality. A film made back in 1950 was made in film stocks. The video source is progressively-sourced. As a result, it’s really pleasant to see no “motion artefacts” in this old Disney’s classic.
“Cinderella” can’t really bring me to the level of excitement that Physics, Mathematics, or Dragon Ball brought to me. But I do enjoy magic, fantasy, miracle, and happy ending for the good guys. Disney’s adaption of classic folk tale into a film really makes the story of simple storyline more interesting. Well, people do say that a picture worth a thousand words. With good music, songs, and images, I can certainly find myself generally pleased with this film. Yes, I have to admit that it’s really a “classic”.
The stepmother, stepsisters, or even the cat are certainly vicious and wicked. Sometimes, when we faced unfortunate or unfair things in our lives, we did feel like that the end of world was in the vicinity. I certainly could not bear watching sad things in the past, especially our real lives were not exactly “happily-ever-after”. In hindsight, the feeling of “the end of the world” was a bit over-pessimistic; not that the world would not come to an end; the negative things that happened or setbacks were far from the worst-case scenarios.
In “Dragon Ball”, we saw various villains literally tried to destroy the earth; most of the times, the hero, Son Goku, was there to spoil the plans. But in one case, the final villain in the manga but not the anime, Majin Boo literally eradicated all mankind on earth and eventually destroyed the earth; he was on his path to cause more chaos and destruction across the universe. Even though Goku was brought back to life by Kaioshin, the highest deity of the universe, to stop Majin Boo. The destruction of earth and mankind actually happened. Even though Majin Boo was not the final villain in the anime, he is the only villain managed to destroy the earth and all mankind. Of course, that saga did not end with earth destruction. With the power of dragon balls, they eventually restored the earth and brought back the lives of all mankind. Goku finally killed Majin Boo in the holy realm of Kaioshin with all mankind donating most of their living energy to Goku.
Sometimes, I would ask myself, “If I can bear watching the slaughtering of mankind and the end of world, why I can’t bear watching other bad things?” Perhaps because it’s an anime; perhaps because we believed that good ending will eventually come; perhaps we believed in Goku who would manage something. Yes, our ability to withstand setbacks, unfair treatments, or unfortunate events was actually based on our beliefs in good ending or better future perhaps not for ourselves but for the next generations. No one really knew what was coming. We was frightened, scared, and tried to escape; especially when we did not know or believe that good things would eventually come.
That certainly explained why Xin Yi Chen ran away from her husband because of a misunderstanding or lack of confidence to herself. But an unbreakable bond or fate, if you will, ultimately would make such couple to realize their loves to each other; and live happily ever after, just like “Cinderella”.
Well, “Fairy Godmother” may not actually exist in our lives. But as she said, she came to Cinderella because Cinderella did not stop believing even at her lowest point. From a practical point of view, we do need calm mind, courage, and persistence to succeed. Yet, ironically, calm mind, courage, and persistence comes from our conviction and belief in something good, which we do not really know, will come.
See Also/References
1. Cinderella on English Wikipedia
2. Cinderella (1950 film) on English Wikipedia
3. Fated to Love You on English Wikipedia
4. Fated to Love You on sale on yesasia.com
5. Boo Saga, Goku, and Copyright on Jia Chie’s Space
Jia Chie's space 
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