(Asian) Dramas Watched In 2025

The reality is this is the way to go for now: gritty "Light On"-like series, high effort historicals where romance is not the primary drive, limited romance in general. There is just generally so much more to the broad historical stakes of a sageuk like Six Flying Dragons or Jumong or in dramas that do justice to many characters, which don't so heavily rely on the hackneyed formula of focusing too much on two leads and making the rest of the cast accessories, accoutrements or even expendable plot devises. Ensemble cast writing is difficult to handle and requires a depth and level of thought not many writers can be bothered with or can execute.

Exercises in love and hate are often rather narrowminded efforts — for example: most dedicated romance dramas for love, or something like The Legend of Zang Hai for hate. Also preferably the drama should have minimal dubbing or for the most part be dubbed by the actor themself. Examples of synergistic dubbing are extremely rare.

Maybe I've been harsh on The Knockout. it's pretty much as good but it's harder to maintain a standard over ~40 episodes than 16 - which is why I'm far more liable to giving a movie a 9+ score than a tv show. Lost In the Shadows never suddenly dropped its production standard like The Knockout did, and that did taint the drama in ways not merely superficial.

I've overlooked a couple of illogical morsels here because  it doesn't disturb the quality and general sense of the storytelling.

Granted, her strengths and weaknesses of her characters over her last three projects are similar, but their characters have marked differences and Liu Yifei pulls them off without just self-defaulting, always convincing even in challenging scenes, of which there were definitely a few in The Tale of Rose which were noteworthy and beyond anything she had to pull off in Meet Yourself or A Dream of Splendor.

The common notion that Liu Yifei is a talentless actress is absolute nonsense. Was her performance in Chinese Paladin rather wooden and underwhelming? — Yes. But it's now 2025, not 2005. Now in her prime, Liu Yifei only knows how to land herself in some seriously good shows with layered roles, displaying some pretty fine acting chops. There was a stark difference in watching her performance here after watching Bai Lu's in Northward, which I had watched immediately prior.

...

Very stark.

Great writing, great dialogue — on a level with The Story of Minglan in that department. A shame that production seemed to nosedive in the final episodes.

The performances from both Zhang Yi and Zhang Songwen were outstanding. The best I've seen this year.

It kills me that they don't make sageuks like this anymore.

Great story, great concepts, pacing, world building, aesthetics, theming, unusually evocative OST.

Mediocre cast of characters. Too many love lines.

How to dub a character: Zhuang Lyuin

And how NOT to dub a character: Xiang Antu.

As for Xiao Zhan, this is by far his best performance. I've only seen three of them but he showed promise in The Untamed, was flat and uninspired in The Longest Promise - competent but held back by the script and character, not requiring much range or well... much of anything really! But here, Xiao Zhan shows range and an almost surprising ability to convey the sheer complexity and torn yet upright qualities of Zhinu in subtle and convincing ways. It feels like he took great efforts to truly understand and get inside his character... his horribly flawed, desperately sad and imprisoned character.

The direction is another standout element here, but I feel this drama would have benefitted from a longer runtime to round out and more satisfyingly rationalise the humanity (or lack thereof) in this myopic vision of revenge.

Bai Lu's limitations are exposed the moment she has to act as anything other than herself.

The drama succeeds in spite of her (or maybe it's fairer to say the drama is unaffected by her) and does a great job of bringing importance and meaning to multiple families.

I like Bai Lu to a degree (Love is Sweet, TTEOTM) but you can't ask too much of her.

Mmm delicious justice. An eye for an eye; savagery for savagery. If only the final episode really went the full 9 yards.

Love the first 4 episodes.

Absolute cringefest, but it is interesting. ML makes me want to tear my hair out, but he's a good guy.

It's a somewhat refreshing take on the chronically explored theme of time travel, I suppose. It's no Dark for smarts, but that show is insane.

The plot is simply unbelievable and the ML is too creepy and controlling. There's a lot to like about this but the writing is simply too incredulous and, quite frankly, cheap and lazy.

(Oh and the women in this show are absolutely and utterly dreadful. It's borderline misogyny, I'd say — that and it has the most golden dad of all-time.)

The last couple of episodes are farcical and an absolute trainwreck.

And (spoiler) I never did buy into Seun's love for Yuk Ying. I could just never quite make sense of it.

Solid plots — unusually bad dubbing. And that does matter. Not syncing audio and video is a problem, especially when it causes incongruences in the acting. It's pure uncanny valley — but isn't it the case for so many Cdramas........

I already can't remember it.  Was very watchable tho.

It falls apart after the first 12 episodes. It's been savaged and excised into oblivion.

wot

It's a big "Meh..." from me.

((REWATCH))  — second viewing