LoveShownMovies

I'll start with the fact that I love bromance dramas I like them sometimes more than the sexualized bls. You can see and feel the love and care there through the actors eyes and micro facial expressions and it's more beautiful in my eyes.

I don't think this show is perfect but I do think it's one beautiful show.

Wigs were beautiful. Actors are beautiful.

Now let me start with what impressed me the most.

Fight choreography: Chef kiss 🤌 I did not expect it to be as good as it was. Loved it, loved it, loved it!

The rest:

Acting: Was good as well. The moment Jiang Hu smiles when saying A Yu and slowly the smile turned into grief was so heartbreaking. Amazing chemistry between the male leads. So well done, so beautiful. You see the care, the worry for one another and the pain when knowing they'll end up losing the other.
I thought that the little girl could've been better at the first scene where she cried, cuz there were no tears but later on she did cry and did really well.
Yu's shifu was too exaggerated for my taste. If the rest of the normal characters were as animated as him I wouldn't have a problem but it was too out of the blue and the wrong choice for the role imo. Even if the villain was exaggerated it doesn't make sense for him to be that extra imho.

The directing and camera work: Mostly good. There were some moments that I thought a different angle could've worked better but no much to complain about considering that it's made by a pretty new director that only done short dramas.

Now... For the problems I have with the show...

Editing: The colour correction was horrible. There were moments that I felt like I was looking into the sun (especially at the market). Colour grading... also horrible. The entire thing was just a mess.

Plot:
As soon as I started the show, Yan ZiXian, the reason why I came to watch this show (because I've seen him on The Spirealm) was dying which was just great. A really good Mysterious Lotus Casebook dejavu and many more chinese shows. But I was still hopeful cuz I've seen some happy(/open) endings even when all hope was lost. At the end I really thought we were gonna get something good but no... I mean they really couldn't make the poison in the needles be powerful enough to kill the worms and basically not kill Ye Yu? I mean... Really? Is it that hard to give a happy ending? Also Yu's shifu storyline was just so random. I get that it's to show it wasn't the child's fault but it was such a waste of time.
Also we never got to really see the reason why Lu Qin was such a terrifying leader. She didn't seem more powerful than the people working for her. She was just more emotionally unstable which doesn't make her more powerful. I guess you can say that she is unpredictable but we didn't see that either so...
I will give them a point for Ji Niang worrying about her broken fingers simply for the fact that she can't sew anymore clothes for Jiang Hu. That was really well done. Just a shame to see her suffer just to die instead of keeping her alive and having a cp with the medicine man and making a good family for Rong Er while Jiang Hu travels the world in order to deal with his grief, which again could've been avoided but 🤷‍♀️