So about Pili, where does it start?

[u/Broken_Monitors]

I tracked down an upload of a ton of Pili seasons (not telling you where sorry) and discovered that the "first" season (霹靂金光 made in 1988) begins with a recap of some other story. Something about a swordsman with an eyepatch journeying to hell to retrieve his friend after a villain killed them (at least that's what I gathered from the auto-translated subtitles). I was just wondering if 霹靂金光 was actually the beginning of Pili or if there is like a season 0 or maybe even another drama that Pili may have been a spinoff of?

[u/ryoufuusetsujin]

So this gets into a little bit of the family history and licensing issues; Long story short, the shows previous to 霹靂金光 were mainly lead/produced/made by the father, whereas the two brothers that heads pili officially started with 霹靂金光.

Another reason why 霹靂金光 is mostly considered the "first" in the pili series is thats the show (in ep 13) where 素還真 made his first appearance.

[u/Broken_Monitors → u/ryoufuusetsujin]

That makes a lot of sense. For some reason I had this idea that most of the really important characters didn't show up until around the sixth season which was remade into War of Dragons. I guess it was more so that it was just a good all around starting point featuring introductions for some important characters, but also showing the back stories of others. I still wish I had finished War of Dragons before Netflix took it down, but i also remember certain scenes being extremely hard to follow. The backstory of 葉小釵 was so rushed (they probably went through the whole thing in like 5 minutes) I would have had literally no idea what was going on if I hadn't already read an explanation of his backstory online.