WM

Not much enmity left between leads - well, I would also be quickly falling in love with such a good-looking, thoughtful and competent FL :).
Even if I don't necessarily think she is as beautiful as described in the drama.
The word "Beautiful" is like "10" in MDL's users voting - it's used way too often.

Tropes continue to run wild, but so far the positives easily outweigh the negatives. For example, the ML's advisor is absolutely phenomenal.

At this moment, I didn't like only one thing - after we saw the FL's family debating and rejecting the FL's plea for help, we should also get a scene with them getting the news (and getting shocked?) about the Qiao's flag planted in Boya territory, following the FL's brilliant arrangements.
Also, I'm a little surprised by how much the ML is letting his uncle run his mouth and nitpick. For a guy who obviously does great things for his clan and leads their impressive comeback, I would expect his position to be looking much stronger.

Episodes 6-10 report.

Tropes are already running wild (ML's sidekicks aka "generals" are made to be dumb, so he can save the FL), but I am loving it much more than I expected.
The female lead should IMO react and act differently in a few situations (like asking "are you joking", when a family member came to tell her about the grandfather's death), but overall she is absolutely fantastic with her forward-thinking and scheming.

Episodes 1-5 report.

Episodes 26/27.

Because, overall, Douban voters are much more sober in judging the quality of the dramas.

Also, 6.8 there means something like "pretty good", which IMO is a matching rating to the quality of "Zhu Yu".

Personally, I very much do,

Trusting MDL would be much easier in theory, due to lack of cultural differences, but the ratings here are highly inflated, and Idol Dramas are having way too easy a time to buy "10s" from the voting crowd.

Of course not.

But it's entertaining, has a good looking leads, and it's a relatively fun ride.

Also, some could say 9.2 is well deserved, if tra... mediocrity like "Legend of the Female General" is ranked at 8.6.

People always scream "character development", so here we are :).

Well, thanks, but it helps that I have a million Micro Dramas to watch, plus I am trying Prisoner of Beauty in the meantime, as the female lead there seems to be fantastic.

I stopped last night at Episode 30 and plan to watch it 5 together in packs.
I am rather patient. At least by 2026 standards :).

I'm picking that with 45 episodes, they probably would spend 5 more in the village - cheap to film, and Romance-fanatics would eat it up.

They broadcast so much filler that it would be easy to do the whole 30 episodes (where I am personally) in 25/26 episodes. It's just a director/writer decision not to do it and pay for it by having to rush things in the last 10.

In episode 29 (30?) they spent the whole 6 minutes on crazy Sui heir drinking and killing some insignificant family.
I'm pretty sure that with 5 episodes more, we would be getting more filler like that.
The guy already killed the whole village. We know he's evil; there's no reason to add fillers to show his evilness even more, if it's not against the main characters.

Thank you.

What is TRON? You made it sound interesting :).

"Princess Agents" had a million episodes, and still pacing was awful, the director chose some secondary character nonsense to fill extra time, and it also had the worst ending ever.

And there are many other examples of it.

I feel your pain in some way.

That's exactly what I felt during "Journey to Lowe" - with the director there having a legendary female assassin to build drama around, and instead of making her shine, they made her a pregnancy-obsessed woman who constantly needs to be saved by the ML and makes many wrong decisions.

However, in the Zhu Yu defence - in other posts, it was mentioned that the novel was also rather fem-centric, albeit with the better ML presentation.

I am taking my first, real shot at watching this, and I'm quite hooked by Episode 1.

I expect it to go downhill from here. I will probably hate Romance (as I typically do), I will be bored with over-supply of supporting actors and their stories, disgusted with too much comedic relief, and I'm not a fan of LYN acting (but he can be okayish in a military role, so there's some hope).

But I'm already in love with the smart and resourceful FL put in an impossible situation, who calculates perfectly other people's hearts, and is able to make them take decisions the way she wants.

Maybe Lu Songli will have an adequate rival.

Yeah, this made no sense - she was trained by her father mostly to use a spear, then she kind of mastered using butcher tools, also is presented as super strong... and she gets a pair of lean double swords.

So my 6.3 expectation was quite in range - obviously better than Legend of the Female General, but not good enough to cross the 7.0 mark.

@flowermoon9
How could she be considered a Mary Sue if she needs to be constantly watched/rescued over?

The ML is more of Mark Sue (lol) - early 20-s Marquis with models look, who is supposedly a war legend, genius on the battlefield, etc...