Deirdre19

Yeah, they changed a lot of the characters. The brother is still there, though. I saw his name in the cast list, but they seem to have reduced/changed his role. It's a bit sad, because I quite liked their brother-sister relationship, they share a love of food! As she pretends to be sickly without any appetite (while in reality she is hungry) he keeps finding excuses to "force" her to have food so that her cover stays intact.
Later the Crown Prince takes over the job of permanently feeding her snacks because in the beginning he considers her a younger sister. I guess with only 24 episodes they didn't have time for this, so in the drama it's a romantic relationship from the start...
The double life of the Crown Prince, especially his intelligence gathering reminds me a bit of Who Wants to Rule the World.

Watched the first 6 episodes now and I really like it.

The acting is pretty good - JT's comedic timing is absolutely perfect! And the eye rolls!!!

Both leads have decent chemistry and the costumes are beautiful. I particularly appreciate the fact that the costume dept resisted the urge to dress everyone in these boring pastel colours.

The story so far is quite funny, sometimes a bit too silly for my taste. The ML's obsession with his cat (and cat-related accessories) is a nice touch. It almost feels like he's auditioning to be the next Bond villain...

What I'm missing so far is the ML's poison tongue, right now the poisonousness is at diarrhea pill level at best. I've read a few chapters of the novel so was expecting a few more vicious comments.

I also don't understand why the writers made the FL's sickness pretense so transparent (she keeps slipping up all the time...). Were they afraid that otherwise viewers don't get it or couldn't they accept the concept of a really cunning FL who manages to fool everyone, including her love interest?

Not only that, but it makes her whole "I'm so feeble and sick" pretense rather unbelievable. Right now I'm not sure whether the writers are blowing all these holes into her cover intentionally and why. The Hua Luili in the novel sure was a lot smarter than that, but apparently C-drama still cannot deal with this type of FL.

I would join...

I guess acting-wise JT is more a man of action, all he got to do in ChongZi was looking pretty and waving his hands in the air for some spells. Also actors usually act off against one another, so it's much easier with someone like the FL in RR. The ChongZi FL was a bit like a shapeless cottonball, so nothing would ever bounce back.

Some people just don't get the irony of the "acting within the acting".

Well, I was more thinking about making it to 84k by the end of the month 😂
The 100k will probably only be reached once this "falls from the sky" because I don't think we're going to get an announcement with an airing date...

Hello there, I see that we need a few more comments to achieve the "end-of-March" goal.
So here's one 😎

Same here. I will not hesitate to give a low rating to ChongZi though. It will make my heart bleed, because I had been looking forward to it for a long time, but I will so AFTER finishing it.

I would like to add:
Dreadful, clown-like make-up that lead some people to wrongly assume that JT had plastic surgery ...

Some malicious trolls are already rating this after a mere 4 episodes and I have some serious doubts that they even watched this far.
I mean, it's ok to drop a drama after one episode if you realise it's not for you, but in that case I would never dream of giving a rating.

I see. Maybe being far away I don't notice this so much... I kind of have become used to the fact that most C-dramas just seem to fall from the sky without any warning 🤣 (after you waited for them for several years).

The recent train-crash The Journey of Chong Zi was Tencent and look at the result:
- Bad writing
- Bad directing/editing
- A lead actress who couldn't lead
- Clownish make-up

I guess the end result depends on the individual teams, rather than the network. Personally, I'd rather have them lacking on the promotional/scheduling side than on writing, directing and acting.

If it's slow paced in the beginning, I hope there won't be one of those dreaded rushed endings. It's quite a long novel after all and they only have 24 episodes to cover it all...

Even if there are... they won't stand a chance against this FL! Unlike CZ she is cunning and doesn't take prisoners. In other words, my kind of woman!!!

Everyone keeps praising the Autumn Ballad, but for me he was even better in Be My Princess. It's a modern comedy but with some historical elements and in a way he gets to play multiple characters. He most definitely has a talent for comedy.

No double, he can actually ride.
There have been similar scenes in Legend of the Phoenix and Be My Princess (watch the start of the 3rd ep). You can clearly see his face as he rides holding the reins in one hand and a massive spear in the other! As a horse rider I can tell you that this is not as easy as it looks, so he has my full admiration for that!

And he's galloping on a horse again.🏇🏻🏇🏻🏇🏻.. so I'm in heaven, too.

It's one of the benefits of growing up without internet or smartphones 😂😂😂

I hope they keep the crown prince as sassy as he is in the novel. That poison tongue of his is absolutely delicious!