K-Drama 
Mafia game of cat and mouse.
Everyone's a spy in this drama in that Mafia game way that makes you start suspecting everyone on screen. It's family feud on steroids. On one hand, Zi Yu is a good guy fighting for his love, not too proud to lie if needed. On the other, Shang Jue is being a spiteful lawful good out for his brother's blood and the poor thing is being gaslit left and right. It almost doesn't matter that there is a whole bunch of spies out to get them, they could easily kill each other, given the green light, and save everyone precious time and mental load. Seriously, the emotional bandwidth needed to separate all the brothers is somewhere in the nuclear region.
The plot was OK, fairly straight forward and predictable, but the acting was very good which made it more interesting to watch. As everyone has been fangirling over the brotherly relationship between Shang Jue and Yuan Shi, I too have to say that their performances (together and separately) were the standouts of the show. I usually pay attention to characters who make me want to punch them (in a good way) for some reason and Yuan Zhi achieved this very quickly. Besides, nobody does fury like Ryan Cheng, his glaring is on another level.
Very serious atmosphere most of the time, a lot of glaring, poker faces, lying, pretending and playing innocents. What little lighter notes of comic relief there are, fall into two categories - Gong Zi Yu and his very timely, boyish and quirky remarks every once in a while; and his cousin Gong Zi Shang who always has playful music in the background and is portrayed as a men-obsessed, borderline stalker and theatrically juvenile. The cooky and over the top performance just wasn't hitting the mark for me, though props to the actress for staying true to the character till the end.
Sets are beautiful, I would've liked that they are used more than 2 dimensionally, as most of the shots are parallel to the ground level, especially during fighting, which makes it a bit boring. Music was good, costumes were beautiful. The wigness of the female wigs did make me cringe occasionally. Fighting choreography is more artistic and pretty than functional, which suits fantasy settings.There are also some plot and logic holes through out the story that are quite glaring.
Exposition dump at the end was just lazy and then end it on a cliffhanger? What the hell.
The plot was OK, fairly straight forward and predictable, but the acting was very good which made it more interesting to watch. As everyone has been fangirling over the brotherly relationship between Shang Jue and Yuan Shi, I too have to say that their performances (together and separately) were the standouts of the show. I usually pay attention to characters who make me want to punch them (in a good way) for some reason and Yuan Zhi achieved this very quickly. Besides, nobody does fury like Ryan Cheng, his glaring is on another level.
Very serious atmosphere most of the time, a lot of glaring, poker faces, lying, pretending and playing innocents. What little lighter notes of comic relief there are, fall into two categories - Gong Zi Yu and his very timely, boyish and quirky remarks every once in a while; and his cousin Gong Zi Shang who always has playful music in the background and is portrayed as a men-obsessed, borderline stalker and theatrically juvenile. The cooky and over the top performance just wasn't hitting the mark for me, though props to the actress for staying true to the character till the end.
Sets are beautiful, I would've liked that they are used more than 2 dimensionally, as most of the shots are parallel to the ground level, especially during fighting, which makes it a bit boring. Music was good, costumes were beautiful. The wigness of the female wigs did make me cringe occasionally. Fighting choreography is more artistic and pretty than functional, which suits fantasy settings.There are also some plot and logic holes through out the story that are quite glaring.
Exposition dump at the end was just lazy and then end it on a cliffhanger? What the hell.
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