Long Wang Ling (2025)

Daisy Delights Again in a Charming Enough Diversion

Wuxia is my least favorite Chinese genre. I know young fans love a cute girl and a cute boy, but since that seems to be the only point of this genre, I need a lot more. I'm not amazed that they're cute. All of these shows star cute boys and cute girls, sigh.

However, while watching A DREAM OF SPLENDOR -- I absolutely fell for tiny Daisy Li . Her adorable face, her big ears, and most definitely her snark. So I'd give any show she stars in a chance, which is just what I did with FORTUNE WRITER. In that series she starred with Ye Sheng Jia. and they're both the leads here in DRAGON KING'S DECREE.

Because this is a short web series of about 15 normal length episodes of content, the first note I must share is how refreshing it is to have such a small tight cast. Normal shows like this have 40 full length episodes and... well... you can tell they add lots of extra characters to get up to 40 episodes. For this Westerner, keeping all those extra names straight is painful, and really... at the end of the day... it's just too much. Tell your story with your main characters. It's simply better.

The entire thing of magic, realms, dragons -- totally not my bag. If you're like me, know it doesn't get annoying. This fantasy world made enough sense to be acceptable. I presume there was nothing that creative going on here, but the cast enjoyed the story and gave it their all -- creating a fun world to escape into.

This was clearly a vehicle to get Daisy Li seen by more eyes. My problem is her co-star was barely used. He's cute and handsome, but not THAT cute and handsome. It's a shame because his underwritten character spent most of his time posing or walking in slow motion. Based on FORTUNE WRITER, it was a waste of talent.

Be warned the story starts slow but soon a few extra characters are either added or better developed and suddenly the story takes off. So much so it kind of ended abruptly, but hey this is a low budget little web series. There's an actress who plays a mute Doctor, and her face is so eeriely perfect you fear she's AI. I'm not kidding.

Again, nothing much to say here except that it's worth trying for Daisy Li and worth staying for the engaging enough story -- which ultimately hints at more story to tell!

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