WOW LIKE REALLY WOW.
I am listening to the end theme of legend of Zang Hai while writing this. Honestly this is the only series that I watched with a proper plan, an even better plan than my future. 3 days, 60 hours, 1800 minutes and 40 marvelous episodes. I have used drama as a coping mechanism and during every worst day of my life I found refugee in xiao Zhan’s dramas or revenge dramas. So that is I am a hard core xiao Zhan fan and revenge dramas are an addiction to me. This drama left me broken. I have not been this happy in quite some times. I almost cried to the last episode that I didn’t want this drama to end.
Now personal things aside, what is legend of Zang Hai. It is in short, a revenge story. A story that deals with not characters but real people. Usually in stories we tend to have people who tend to be reflection of what we want us to be and us not to be. But LOZH has real people. Here we can’t label them as good human or bad human, everyone is just human. Like you can’t really trust anyone. No one is pure nor is anyone truly rotten to core. And that right there made this drama so special to me. Now why is it a success as a revenge drama. Because most dramas fail to bring out that most revenges stem out from hatred and that hate clouds our mind and turns us into someone whom we wouldn’t even recognize. It also did a wonderful job in exploring the true expressions of love, hate doubt, duty, filial piety, joy, sorrow and hate. Then there is the acting. Honestly the people in this drama-not just xiao Zhan’s character- were well casted and even more importantly were incredibly talented. Ming Xiang an tu, Gao min, Zhao Bingwen, Zhuang Zhi Xing and at last Zang Hai were all compelling. Especially certain seances solely performed by xiao Zhan were just right. Many tell he was over expressive and others complain they were sallow, but as far as I understood, xiao Zhan put in a lot of effort to bring out authentic and relatable expression of complicated emotions. And the credit also goes to the director. In fact, the potential of actors can only be brought to light when they work with such talented directors. They made us believe what they believed and wanted us to believe. The crew also did a good job on framing, camara, editing and Ost. The screen was filled with good quality props and beautiful organization and director’s brilliance.
Now the cons. The script. It wasn’t awful. But neither was it the best. The script failed to maintain a constant pace. The first 20 episodes were rather lagging. 20-30 were rather more compelling and paced in a very orderly manner. 30-40 were simply packed with information that could have been used to develop more of a hook to the story. In my humble opinion if 50% of the details used in last 10 episodes were equally distributed in between the first 20 episodes it would have been remarkable. But the script tried to bring out beautiful representations of familial bonds and situations in most Asian household. The dynamics between Gao ming and Zang Hai were so beautifully portrayed. Another thing is romance. They are in love but it could have been more tempting if we had more instances to support their likes and dislikes.
Overall, I really enjoyed this drama. It is one in a million. If you compare it with the glory and or the double this is far far better and sticks to its ‘revenge’ plot. But if you compare it to true gems like nirvana in fire, then it could have done way better.
Now personal things aside, what is legend of Zang Hai. It is in short, a revenge story. A story that deals with not characters but real people. Usually in stories we tend to have people who tend to be reflection of what we want us to be and us not to be. But LOZH has real people. Here we can’t label them as good human or bad human, everyone is just human. Like you can’t really trust anyone. No one is pure nor is anyone truly rotten to core. And that right there made this drama so special to me. Now why is it a success as a revenge drama. Because most dramas fail to bring out that most revenges stem out from hatred and that hate clouds our mind and turns us into someone whom we wouldn’t even recognize. It also did a wonderful job in exploring the true expressions of love, hate doubt, duty, filial piety, joy, sorrow and hate. Then there is the acting. Honestly the people in this drama-not just xiao Zhan’s character- were well casted and even more importantly were incredibly talented. Ming Xiang an tu, Gao min, Zhao Bingwen, Zhuang Zhi Xing and at last Zang Hai were all compelling. Especially certain seances solely performed by xiao Zhan were just right. Many tell he was over expressive and others complain they were sallow, but as far as I understood, xiao Zhan put in a lot of effort to bring out authentic and relatable expression of complicated emotions. And the credit also goes to the director. In fact, the potential of actors can only be brought to light when they work with such talented directors. They made us believe what they believed and wanted us to believe. The crew also did a good job on framing, camara, editing and Ost. The screen was filled with good quality props and beautiful organization and director’s brilliance.
Now the cons. The script. It wasn’t awful. But neither was it the best. The script failed to maintain a constant pace. The first 20 episodes were rather lagging. 20-30 were rather more compelling and paced in a very orderly manner. 30-40 were simply packed with information that could have been used to develop more of a hook to the story. In my humble opinion if 50% of the details used in last 10 episodes were equally distributed in between the first 20 episodes it would have been remarkable. But the script tried to bring out beautiful representations of familial bonds and situations in most Asian household. The dynamics between Gao ming and Zang Hai were so beautifully portrayed. Another thing is romance. They are in love but it could have been more tempting if we had more instances to support their likes and dislikes.
Overall, I really enjoyed this drama. It is one in a million. If you compare it with the glory and or the double this is far far better and sticks to its ‘revenge’ plot. But if you compare it to true gems like nirvana in fire, then it could have done way better.
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