SIFU: It Takes A Life – Episode 2 begins with Young MC (Parry Shen) at a restaurant in Chinatown Town where he plays Circle with Li (Lydia Look) while she makes him something to eat. Just as Li delivers his food, she also delivers the winning move.  He sarcastically calls her lucky but just as she offers an equally sarcastic response, their attention is drawn to a nearby disturbance caused by 3 rambunctious men. Thanks to a distinctive tattoo, MC remembers one of the men as his father’s killer. Although Sean (Nelson Lee) isn’t with the three men, MC also remembers being attacked and left for dead that same night by him. Li tells them that they will kill him when he gets up to follow them as they pass. MC replies in a soft voice, you get used to it.

MC follows the three rambunctious men to what appears to be a nightclub where they are now harassing the female bartender. All it takes for things to get out of hand is MC walking u to them and asking, where is he? A fight ensues and MC makes quick work of two of the men. One of the thugs (Fedor Chin) gets a lucky slash with his knife that slices MC’s throat. By this time, the patrons have noticed the disturbance, and MC clutching at his gushing throat doesn’t help calm matter. For all intents and purposes, it appears that MC dies, but this is revealed to not be the case at all when the thug makes a call to alert someone that MC was asking about the boss.

As MC recovers, he not only steals the thug’s knife, but he ends up throwing it into his back and killing him after he attempts to flee. MC chases the thug to what appears to be a catwalk before lacing the knife expertly in the thug’s back. As soon as MC steps out onto the catwalk, he locks eyes with Sean below. MC doesn’t get the opportunity to pursue him immediately thanks to the group of men that come out of the door at the opposite end of the catwalk.

MC does a good job of handling most of the men on the catwalk but just like before one of them gets a lucky shot and stabs him in the back of the neck. Sean briefly watches from the street as the men jump on MC like a pack of hyenas. This time, MC’s death is shown. It appears as if he goes to an underworld where he first meets an older version of himself (Ping Wu) before fighting multiple spirits. Although MC puts up a good fight, he is eventually overrun just like in the previous fights. He proceeds to die multiple times before he falls to the ground and one of the tokens hanging from his belt lights up and breaks. With just three tokens left, an older MC is sent back to the catwalk just as the men are getting ready to leave.

After MC kills all the men on the catwalk, he tracks Sean down to what appears to be a dojo or monastery. Sean mockingly calls him an old man and tells him that he will fight him if his life means that little to him. Although they are shown engaging, the fight is never shown thanks to the footage abruptly cutting to Li. Despite being even older now, Li recognizes MC but she mistakes him as the younger MC’s grandfather. MC plays along and orders the same dish as he did before.

The episode ends by suggesting that Li realizes the older MC is actually the younger MC. It was the way he prepared his chopsticks that led to Li making this discovery.

 

Secret Level Review

Like Dungeons & Dragons, I was completely unfamiliar with this game, which made things extremely confusing. The game might have been the same way, I don’t know. That said, I did start catching on as the story played out. I have always been fascinated with reincarnation, making deals with the devil, and the afterlife, so I found this story especially interesting. Combine that with all the action-packed martial arts fight scenes, and episode 2 is a winner.

Although I would have loved to learn more about the backstory behind MC’s reincarnation, I would give this episode an easy 5.5 out of 10. Get more Secret Level recaps here. Learn more about our advertising packages by clicking the link. See what others are saying about the series here. Support our platform and the Reel Mockery team here.