Legend of the Female General

Before watching the drama, I had hoped that the FL was truly powerful and on par with the ML. I had hoped that they didn’t make her an annoying, whiny character out of nowhere, and, in my opinion, that didn’t happen. He Yan was powerful and strong when she needed to be, and she acted cute and endearing in front of the ML in private – which for me was the most perfect outcome/illustration of her character. Writers have a habit of making a strong FL but as soon as a man is involved (usually the ML) they make the FL weak, but I, personally, didn’t feel like that was the case in this drama. She truly was both a beauty and a brain (and she had amazing fighting skills). I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t include the full scene where she had to prove her worth by fighting 1v10, but I felt like her power and her skills still got shown throughout the drama, so it didn’t bother me that much.

I think the directors wanted to show a female lead, who was strong, but not only physically. Yes, I am also annoyed that they didn't show her iconic moment, where she had to fight 10 soldiers to prove that she is capable of being a female general. But I feel like her character would've fallen even more flat, if they had focused on showing her physical strength more, and therefore had shown less of her smartness and her knowledge regarding war and battle tactics.

I have seen criticism regarding the very last battle that they fought. Some people think that it was too short. Yet, I am over here thankful that it didn't last any longer than it did. Around half of the last episode was about war and their last battle, but I had hoped that they would've added the last battle into the plot for episode 35 or something, because, personally, I like when the last episode is just filled with happiness and romantic scenes. However, I felt like we saw enough of their dating era, and the drama had a happy ending, so overall I am still very content!

I truly felt so sad for He Yan and her story, because from a very young age she had to pretend to be someone else, and she just never experienced any peace since childhood, so it was so relieving and satisfying to watch her take it all back and get proper revenge in the end <3. I will say, that the story is pretty fast paced in the drama, so if you haven’t read the novel it might be a bit hard to follow along, BUT I didn’t read the novel (I did get some information from watching tiktoks and reading some comments about the plot in the novel), but I wasn’t confused. Also, since it was a bit fast paced I never felt like it was boring. For me, not a single episode was boring – but of course everyone has different opinions, so some people might not like that it’s fast paced.

When watching the drama, I actually felt like she became stronger when she was fighting together with Xiao Jue, if anything. They were the perfect power-couple every time they were on the battlefield or in the courtroom. I was actually so happy that Xiao Jue figured out that she’s a woman so early on, because I would have hated if they had dragged it out for no reason.

Let’s talk about He Rufei now: I was so mad when he said that it was crazy for a woman to gain military merits WHEN SHE ALREADY DID. The only reason why the brother felt the right to be so arrogant was because she had done it all in his name, so he became delusional and wanted to take back “his” achievements, but in reality, it was all her doing. Every time he appeared on the screen, I physically felt the need to sigh out loud, that’s how much I disliked his character. I will note: that it didn’t stop me from enjoying the main couple, the side couple, and the drama’s overall plot!! I couldn’t bring myself to hate him that much, since I absolutely LOVED Bai Shu’s character in Youthful Glory. I will say, that from what I have heard, the writers changed He Rufei’s character a bit from the original novel. In the novel, he never wanted to become a general. He genuinely hated war, but this aspect of his character was never shown in the drama. This was, for me, one of the drama’s biggest flaws. It wasn’t only He Rufei, it was all of the enemies, all of their characters felt so flat that it ruined the plot a bit. I watched this drama with almost zero expectations – I had been waiting for its release for around a year, but I didn't really have any expectations regarding the plot. I watched this drama purely for the romance, and did they deliver that perfectly? Yes. I loved the slow burn, I liked the angst and the yearning. I also liked that Xiao Jue found out the truth about her past, before they got in a committed relationship.

Overall, I really loved this drama, and it lived up to MY expectations (though other people might be a bit disappointed, I didn't have major expectations). The romance, the slow burn, and the tension between He Yand and Xiao Jue was beyond perfect. If you want to watch this for the romance - I would totally recommend!! If you want to watch an amazing drama with many fighting scenes and a really detailed plot - then this might not be for you (yet again, it might be idk). I, personally, felt like this drama delivered everything I was looking for perfectly.

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Worthy of all the wait!!

A Beautiful Love Story with Brilliant Action
Ever since I heard about this drama i had been waiting for it to release such a good drama with amazing actors. I loved every part of it.
Cheng lei and Zhou ye did a very good job in portraying their characters Xioa jue and He Yan. Story is mostly about He yan but ever since i have watched my journey to you i have been waiting for Cheng lei beacuse he just takes all the attention and I have loved Zhou ye in Back from the brick so a drama of my faves is what i needed and it didnt diappoint me and yeah the action scenes of both the leads are marvelous. And the Chemistry between the leads is soooo good i just loved the drama and i would rate it a solid 10 on 10
and yeah for the people who want to watch a nice women empowermen drama with a nice fluffy cute relationship main leads dont think twice because good shows are rare and this is one and i have forgot to talk about the ost the ost in this drama is also really good

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Not bad but poor directorial choices

Pluses in my book
✅️ 2 generals
✅️ Some memorable scenes
✅️ Well choreographed fighting scenes
✅️ Star studded cameos n supporting cast
✅️Women empowerment theme
Major issues
❌️ Unbelievable FL as general
❌️ Plot holes for convenience
❌️ Poor adaptation of novel
❌️ Poor acting of 2ML (Chu Zao)
❌️ FL too cutesy at times
❌️ Unnecessary drama

The world building was actually good and those who enjoyed Mulan like I do, couldnt wait to dive into this drama.

Yet, from the first scene of ZY as General He, I felt the casting director made a poor judgement and whoever dresses her up needs to be sacked. Theres no effort in trying to buff her up, or moderate her tone of voice. To make her believable not just as a soldier but as a general and supposedly an amazing one. We are suppose to eat that up?

2nd suspension of disbelief. How does one not see the difference between her and her step brother. From physique and stature to voice, they are so different. Again I have an issue with the director. Can i pass this off as lazy? We are suppose to roll with it?

Then comes the 3rd one. How does ML who is wise, observant and even shrewd, not notice? When he is the one who paid close attention to her back in their academy days. Her eyes and her brother's are different. Surely that mask doesnt cause a blur effect.

If one can brush off these 3 major issues, at heart it did have a good story to tell. A female not able to live as one from young. Assuming a male identity, learn to fight and became a strong general. Fell to betrayal. Rise again to seek retribution and regain her honour.

I also love some of the lines. The moon references that followed thruout the story. The brothers in arms that became her friends (though imo underutilised in the 3rd arc). And there's an actual current between CL and ZY's character.

So despite my many grumblings, I made it to the end and do think there were good bits, memorable bits. Albeit poor directorial choices that makes this a missed chance for what could have been a great drama.

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I've finally finished another drama. I've been busy with new dramas airing simultaneously these past few days, and they're all great!

This drama really impressed me! From the story, the female characters, to the moral advice. It's amazing! I'm at a loss, because there are so many great dramas this year!🔥🔥

I want to give a huge, huge shoutout to all the actors and crew of Legend of the Female General. Your drama is so amazing! Especially with the incredible chemistry between the two main leads, they truly look like a real couple. I'm amazed by their emotional acting. Not only that, they also worked very hard on physical training and martial arts to finally deliver an incredible performance, worthy of action actors! They both truly excelled in their roles as Xiao Jue and He Yan 💘🥺

I absolutely love all the OSTs for this drama! I sing and listen to them almost every hour. This will be added to my favorite playlist!❤️✨

Thank you so much for all your hard work, all the actors and crew of Legend of the Female General!👏🏼👏🏼💘❤️🔥

Good bye, Moon Couple! And I will miss you both!🥺🌕❤️

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Great, But rushed final episodes..

This is excellent!! Absolutely perfect , I don't know about the novel but guys please stop comparing novels and dramas,bcz you will end up in disappointment. Off your brains close your novels just enjoy the series.

OMG, I love Cheng Acting wowww what a such beautiful Eyes ,,amazing man he don't want any scripts dialogues his eyes speaks a lot.. I can see all the expressions in his eyes damn,I can't accept FL is acting bcz its too realistic.

I can't see baishu in serious character my heart doesn't accept him as a bad guy bcz i always wants his funny looks and jokes.

Okay about final episodes,,,I know chu zhao will turn evil which is predictable but why the rush??The happy ending for only 10-15 mins why can't they have war in 35 th episode and ends in 36tg starting?? Final episode have 75% plot war why they want to rush the marriage in 10mins?? This is such a perfect drama you can watch without bored.
Happy watching..

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Great start, disappointing finish.

Up to episode 20, I was totally hooked. Action, emotion,, humor, characters – everything was spot on. The tension between FL&ML drove the story forward.
But after that… the story lost its spark. It was like someone flipped a switch and put the drama on "coma" mode. The plot slowed to a crawl, replaced by tedious formulas and an overabundance of imperial intrigue – like 3-day-old bread: technically edible, but utterly joyless. A once-likable third character devolved into an obsessive, almost psychotic figure. This tired, overused subplot not only felt unnecessary but also drained the energy that had made the series so compelling.
What started as a fresh, vibrant take on the genre gradually devolved into "Legend of Tedium." Classic c-drama syndrome – stretching the story for more episodes at the expense of sharpness and momentum. Unnecessary subplots diluted the main story, leaving the series bloated and dull by the end.
A textbook example of "great premise, poor execution" after the halfway point.

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Enjoyable with some suspension of disbelief

There are so many things that don’t make sense in this show, I won’t bother calling them all out. Enjoying this show for sure requires some suspension of disbelief. But why not just take it easy, give up on logic, and try to enjoy it?

The main thing I had to get over was the FL’s characterization, which honestly gave me some cognitive dissonance. With her background, you’d expect He Yan to be dark and angry. But NOPE! She is somehow bubbly, bright, and down-to-earth, constantly babbling her way out of trouble. For a moment I wondered if it was just Zhou Ye doing what she does best, but I don’t think the actress has that much agency.

He Yan really has no business being so spunky and cheerful, even as an act or pretense. And yet, despite my confusion, I still very much enjoyed watching her. I really like a down-to-earth FL. Just some of her expressions alone made me laugh out loud. And there were many situations that seemed about to get dramatic and sappy, but she defused it with some ridiculous comment. It’s great.

At the same time, she’s also smart, quick-witted, brave, morally upright, and after some hard work, incredibly skilled at combat (NB: do not try at home, overtraining is counterproductive IRL).

It’s not realistic, and the badass and endearing parts of her character aren’t blended well. But it happens to be a combination I really like, so after mentally compartmentalizing my confusion and setting it aside, I found her very enjoyable to watch.

The ML is Xiao Jue, a slowly melting ice cube with whom the FL shares a touching history. He starts out so angry, I enjoyed watching him get softer as He Yan rubs off on him. Their interactions are cute, and their relationship develops well- assisted by drama tropes, it's still not too sudden or too easy, and has some good banter along the way. I liked the romance in this one.

And then there is Chu Zhao. For a while I was wondering where they were going with him, since he seems to have streaks of both darkness and light. He is an interesting character for sure, but I was pretty much worried about/for him the entire show, and not sure I liked that.

There are some pretty great supporting characters, like the FL’s band of army friends, and the two doctors. It’s nice to see other strong female characters, rather than the FL just being an anomaly. These lovable support characters get a lot of screentime earlier in but fall away afterwards, almost to cameo level. It’s really too bad- I wish they’d continued to develop them.

As for the villains, there are some easy-to-hate antagonists that let us root for our leads without complication, at least for most of the show.

Plot-wise, there is a good amount of fluff as He Yan is climbing her career ladder in the army. Again, not what I expected, but solidly enjoyable.

At a certain point, it gets more serious. The fun part of He Yan’s character fades away, and only the badass remains. She’s finally acting like a general. Even though this is finally the character I expected, I still found it less fun to watch.

As the leads tackle their main conflict, there is a lot less challenge than I expected. The cartoon villains are no match for them. I still liked watching them succeed, but I didn’t quite enjoy it as much as the earlier fluff.

And then. I was wondering why everything was resolved with still 4 episodes remaining. Surely they wouldn’t throw some random, rushed, and poorly conceived last-minute drama at us, right?

…of course they did. There are a number of pieces to this last story arc and I found almost all of it stupid. Sometimes if I find a show’s ending dumb enough, I’ll just pretend it didn’t happen, but in this case I think it would have been too easy for the leads otherwise. So I guess, all I can say is: weak ending.

As an aside, this show also has a weird streak of female empowerment. Now, I love female empowerment, I agree with everything she says, and it’s so great- and all too rare in these shows- that a woman who’s broken through, thinks to look back and try to lift up others.

But it just doesn’t quite fit. Not just because it’s an anachronism, but also because it isn’t properly developed as a theme. It almost feels like they’re just missing a few lines here or there tying it all together and explaining why this is a meaningful topic for our FL.

Acting-wise, Zhou Ye excels at outgoing and down-to-earth characters. Cognitive dissonance aside, I very much liked her cute and lovable He Yan. Her badass and authoritative He Yan was a little less convincing to me. Cheng Lei did a pretty good job as a melting ice cube and I thought side actors were fine, even the AI face (Cheng Lisu). Zhang Kangle did a good job as Chu Zhao, showing both darkness and light, but… sometimes talked a little too slowly for my patience.

The fight choreography is really flashy. It’s more spins than solid blows, but very creative, lots of interesting moves. Technique seems fine, though it’s hard to tell between all those spins. I haven’t seen Zhou Ye fight before, and trying not to be biased (because I like her, and also don’t think of her as a fighter), I thought she did a good job. They went a little bit overboard at times, though… especially the very last battle, now wtf was that? This is a battleground, not a dance hall.

Finally, I know there are a lot of complaints and hate for this show out there. I think it suffered from too much hype and too high expectations, as well as comparisons with the novel. From what I read, I can very much believe that the show doesn’t quite do the novel justice. Having a real rebirth would already smooth out the plot and remove one subset of nonsense. Unfortunately, rebirth is banned for dramas, so they had to fudge around it.

However, judging the show for what it is rather than what it isn’t, I still liked it. Weak ending aside, massive and constant plot holes aside, not being what I expected aside, I still very much enjoyed its soft, fluffy interior, and had fun watching it.

ENDING – READ AHEAD ONLY IF YOU WANT TO KNOW, CONTAINS SPOILERS





It’s a happy ending, but one of the worse I’ve seen. The leads get married and their careers remain intact, but we don’t find out what happens to anyone afterwards.

I was afraid they would kill off some of the lovable side characters, but the emotional impact sacrificial deaths are pretty much limited to Yingxiang (Chu Zhao’s underappreciated maid) and Yan He (their general friend). Both of these deaths are lame, unconvincing, very abrupt (or was that my 1.5X speed?), and also things people wouldn’t normally die from.

I honestly think the last three episodes are really dumb. Chu Zhao, no matter how much the actor tried to sell his mental breakdown, is still way too smart to think that what he did was a good idea. Xiao Jue, despite being so supportive of the FL, doesn’t even consult her about their future together. The emperor, who has been dumb the entire show- nice one minute and horrible the next- once again shows that he’s all too easily manipulated. These three idiots decide to make the FL’s decisions for her.

But it’s so poorly conceived, the entire plot just yoyos back and forth, backtracking on itself and hopping around.

And then the final climactic battle is just too cheesy and over-the-top… she literally rides in on a white horse to perform a choreographed battle dance with him.

I was particularly unsatisfied by how Chu Zhao’s story resolved. They don’t really show him at the end- we get no insight into what happened, whether he turned himself in, how he felt about his fate, etc. For somebody whose mental state has played a decent role in the story, it’s really anticlimactic.

I mean, I know this entire show is fueled on plot holes, so there’s no point picking at a few towards the end. I’m just doing it because I didn’t like the ending. The plot holes in this show really just provide too easy fodder when you want to criticize it.

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Wants to be about female empowerment, but misses the mark

With a talented cast and highly stylized but still engaging battle scenes, the "Legend of the Female General" is very watchable, but gets bogged down by some of its script and character choices.

Zhou Ye mostly pulls off the title character, though the playful and tough-as-nails sides of He Yan’s personality didn’t always add up for me. And it does require some suspension of disbelief to buy into her being able to pass as a man while unmasked. It doesn't help that the character is written in an inconsistent way — there are times when she has the presence and poise of a military leader and other times where she definitely doesn't.

While it’s refreshing to see a female lead with fighting and strategic skills on par with the men, male characters frequently come to her rescue at key moments and the borderline ridiculous level of plot armor that she has makes her capabilities less impressive.

Add to that a few too many lectures and monologues, and the messages about women’s worth and equality start to get a little heavy-handed.

Ryan Cheng is certainly leading man material and convincingly plays the brooding but anguished General Fengyun, He Yan’s current commanding officer and former schoolmate. Unfortunately, his character doesn’t have a whole lot to do other than look dashing and speculate about the FL’s secrets.

Overall, despite good performances and mostly good production values, it feels like something’s missing. It could be due to the meandering plot towards the middle, character development that could’ve gone further, or the romantic storyline that falls a little flat despite decent chemistry between the leads (although there is a particularly memorable and poetic profession of love in ep. 30 *).

* “I respect her, value her, and won’t let anyone slander her. She graces my view, occupies my mind, and claims my heart.” (swoon!)

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A balanced blend of romance and exciting battle scenes.

Legend of Female General is a solid and enjoyable historical drama that kept me entertained.
What stood out the most for me is the strong chemistry between the leads, the romance blends in well with the military and political themes, giving the drama a good balance of action and emotional moments.
The production quality is also impressive with beautiful costumes, well-choreographed battle scenes and settings.
Some of the middle episodes drag a little, there are noticeable plot holes that make certain story turns feel less convincing and some side characters or villains could have been written with more depth.
The female lead’s acting isn’t always the strongest but the engaging storyline and the great lead chemistry make up for it and the ending was very satisfying.
Overall, this is a drama I’d happily recommend.

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