Raymond Ardin

Looks like everyone could be wrong about the cute nerdy physicist being a spy. She likely just has a crush on JDY. Although it's not 100% certain because the spies don't necessarily know each other, so just because she got kidnapped by spies doesn't mean she can't be a spy herself. But it certainly seems less likely now.

I meant to say this back in episode 1 but this is my first time seeing PXR in a fighter type of role and I'm reasonably impressed. Her fighting is very believable, unlike coughEstherYucough.

Well the title is 一念江南 (Thinking of Jiangnan), and the Kingdom of Wu rules over Jiangnan in AJTL. Jiangnan means River South, referring to the region south of the Yangtze River, known for having the most beautiful natural landscapes in China.

It sounds like completely different characters to me. The general could be searching for his missing (existing) lord, or he could be looking for a (new) lord to serve; the wording is ambiguous.

Here's the synopsis translated:
The second part of an original series. A wandering female thief, a low-ranking official who's been demoted, a general searching for a lord, a female palace official tasked with guarding the imperial mausoleum, and the son of a rich family who repeatedly failed in starting his own business; fate caused these five people to hit rock bottom in chaotic times. A story of rebuilding oneself and homeland through healing and self-discovery.

Yeah the subs are quite bad. Thankfully I've learned enough Mandarin from watching so many dramas that I can understand 80% without subs.

Knocking out RRY and NYZ made sense because he was pretending to save the emperor in front of all the officials. He knew that both of them were injured so he prevented a fight by pretending to capture them. It's the wedding thing that made no sense.

The only thing we know is that it's by the same writer. Where did you read a synopsis?

The premise of WOL was so promising, I thought it would be really good, but I came away disappointed. Unlike AJTL, where conflicts and misunderstandings get resolved very quickly, the conflicts between the main couple are dragged out indefinitely. The writing of the FL was very disappointing. They paint her as this super smart and strong general, but at the same time the writers made her a damsel in distress over and over again (I lost track of how many times she got kidnapped) just to give the ML the chance to save her, and insisted on emphasizing how much stronger the ML was every chance they got.

There's no comparison. Cecilia was known (along with Crystal) mostly for her perfect posture and stances and forms during fighting scenes, more so than her acting per se. Meanwhile, Esther's fighting moves in MJTY looked so awkward and robotic, with no implied strength or momentum whatsoever. It was so bad that every time she fought it completely pulled me out from immersion in the story. I have nothing against Esther, and I'm sure there are things she can do very well, but she shouldn't play an action-oriented role again without some serious training first.

On that note, I'm watching Peng Xiao Ran in a fighter type role for the first time in Unshakeable Faith, and I'm reasonably impressed.

They came so close to redeeming him, but then he was like, I'm probably going to die in this war so I don't care I'm having a wedding with my master 😫

Now that I think about it, LTG and YY are like two halves of RRY, and when you put them together you get one complete almost-RRY. Which makes sense because she basically taught each of them half of her skills; combat skills to LTG and leadership/political skills (and sanity lol) to YY. So they complement each other and need each other in order to be a true force to be reckoned with.

I think in the end he was just trying to fill his childhood voids. He grew up without parents; his mother abandoned him and he had no father, so he grew overly attached to the only person who was good to him, protected him, and taught him to be strong. And everyone bullied and despised him, so he wants to be powerful and respected. There's no contradiction between those two desires.

Bai Hui's dad is such a complex character. He really cares about his adopted daughter and wants to leave behind his spy days and live a normal life, but he also has no problem doing the dirty work when pushed, possibly because he knows BH's safety would be threatened if he doesn't comply. He's really good at lying, but one day the lies will catch up with him and things will be tragic for both of them.

The propaganda is minimal because this drama focuses on practical matters rather than ideologies. They are working on a very real, hands-on project (building a submarine). The "bad guys" are realistic three-dimensional human beings, not caricatures of evil like comic book villains, and the conflict is very pragmatic. The spies are just on different sides; there's no preaching about who's good and who's evil. The only propagandistic element that bothered me is the portrayal of traditional Chinese medicine as so much more effective than modern medicine.

I don't think Chu Yue died. She's still quite young, and she was being invited to the young emperor's coming-of-age ceremony, which is very much a mortal world event.

According to the deleted scenes, it would appear that the original intention during filming was for NYZ to die but RRY to survive, but later on in editing they changed their minds and got her to essentially commit suicide during her mission to join him. But somehow, for completely unexplained reasons, it's implied that they are both still alive and have two children (same type of cop-out ending as Love in Between, where by all reasonable logic they should be dead but somehow it's implied that they're still alive). I wish the writers had the guts to fully commit to either a happy or sad ending, not this ambiguous contradiction.

RRY killing the Beipan royalty was a piece of cake and she could've easily survived her mission if she wanted to, but she didn't. NYZ's injuries were far more severe than the ones that killed QZ and SL, so it doesn't make sense that he survived while the others didn't. I know he was given a life-saving medicine a while back, but if they really had medicine that was capable of healing such serious injuries, the others wouldn't have died.

Cutting your finger with a dagger and using your own blood as makeup... that's badass lol you know what I'm talking about.

Our main gang is going to be faced with an impossible battle against an entire invading army. They only have a few people left to begin with, but now they have internal conflict, Ruyi is still badly injured, and Yuanzhou's poison acts up when he uses his strength.

But he was nowhere near the hospital room when the spy was murdered. And according to what Bai Hui overheard, it was clearly Li Guangming because they talked about the riddle that held the clue to the location of the documents (four limbs and eight heads).

She was already engaged to someone else at the beginning of the drama, and is most likely married by now, even though they never showed her again because she's just a minor side character.

He definitely knew PHM's dad. Either they were colleagues, enemies, or he killed him.