Jaden

If you like Kurosagi then you definitely want to watch "Time Between Dog and Wolf", the stories are not that similar but the main leads and their relationship feel similar.

To answer your question, City Hunter does not have any ridiculous plot twist, in fact I can't remember any significant plot twist. However, it does share other bad similarities with Cruel City, for example in regards to the main character.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend this drama unless you've already seen the other revenge drama I've mentioned.

It's unfortunate that your action/revenge kdrama experience had to begin with Cruel City and Healer, both of which are highly rated but mediocre especially in terms of plot. Please don't let that prevent you from trying other kdrama.

As for why ppl actually like Cruel City, because most people are able to turn off their brain and enjoy all the ridiculous plot twists where everyone is undercover cop, triple agents. bad guys are hilariously weak and you wonder why the good guys had to go undercover in the first place, the main character is too resilient and can't die, too many random events are introduced to justify what's happening, etc. If you don't turn off your brain, it'll be hard to enjoy it. At the end of the day, I still found it entertaining.

I won't comment on Healer since I didn't watch it.

I just finished watching this and as someone who couldn't get into Healer and found Cruel City to be a mess, this was a step in the right direction but still contains the same elements that made those drama mediocre, so overall I'd call this above average.

I don't know what you believe to be a good revenge drama, but if what you're thinking of is something along the lines of Time Between Dog and Wolf, Remember: War of the Son, Bridal Mask, (from Japan) Kurosagi, (from China) Nirvana In Fire, then we might be on the same page.

The definition of refreshing. Wouldn't compare to 1 Litre of Tears, the journey here is very different.

I wish there was a different female lead, would rather they not include any romance at all.

Seeing as this is a top 3 drama now, how does it compare to the other 2?

I think this drama does great in terms of pure entertainment but many were probably expecting more substance.

As you said, everyone has different tastes, but I think a more precise way to say it is that people have different and watch drama for different reasons. For example, while most people agree Nirvana in Fire is one of the best drama, it lacks romance, which some people, myself included, value a lot, so to some people, it may be one of the worst drama, if judged on that aspect alone.

Same rating, both of them are considered among the best drama that are also popular and appeal to a wide range of audience.

Disclaimer: my data comes from 1 site, albeit a popular and supposedly reliable one.

Even though it's pointless to compare to NIF because they're different, I'm sure I'm not the only one who believes it didn't reach its full potential, so rather than criticizing the drama, let's turn it around and imagine what could have been:
- An antagonist Mei Changsu, but he turned out to be a cartoon villain, I know many real historical "villains" were simply crazy but would have preferred someone more down to earth here, someone who could be evil version of MCS, or maybe isn't evil, good and evil don't need to be black and white.
- A less predictable/awkward death for PZ

Despite my problems with parts of the plot, still a drama that deserves its praise, it seems to combine elements of both NIF1 and Battle of Changsha (with the family bond and all), 2 of the greatest dramas. Instead of choosing to be a worse NIF1 (because frankly NIF1 is incredibly hard to beat), it chose to be its own unique thing, that's something that exceeded my expectations.

I'm sure we can all accept that logically he had to die, but the story certainly made it seem like he wanted to die, it's like:

PZ:
"omg we can both be cured? that's great! oh shit, it just so happens our city is being attacked because of something that happened earlier? Oh no I'm the only one with the ability to command the army and change this outcome because my father and the emperor are away? Oh no I have to be there in the war to ensure a victory. Welp, tough luck, guess I still need to sacrifice myself."

They really didn't need to kill him off this way, it could have been a much less awkward process. I would argue this is poor writing.

I understand his death is important to the development of this story, especially shifting the responsibility to the young, immature PJ. Because of this, I can ignore how he did and move on with the story.

never good to judge drama by first ep but you're not wrong in this case.

I didn't like the movie much either but you should know it was going for the realism, showing what usually happens in real life. I can't think of many drama/movies like this but you'll definitely want to avoid Makoto Shinkai animated movies as well. Ironically, japanese people might be more receptive of this type of plot.

golden age

Once again someone has responded to me without thinking from a higher level of abstraction which I explained in some of my other replies.

At this point, the root post is completely meaningless, it's definitely an overreaction on my part and doesn't include some of the more detailed observations/analysis that came up later on. I can assure you I'm not trying to get everyone to agree with me, but rather to get everyone to try to think from a different perspective.


In regards to 3 (the coincidence), order and timing matters. The coincidence can be justified but the timing makes it seem like an excuse for PZ to sacrifice himself when he didn't have to. This is the feeling that one might get from this.

The bone chill poison has such special properties that it seems like it was specifically designed to create this scenario. Throughout my comments I always talk about inversion of control. A poison should be used creatively, but here it seems like the poison itself is creative and therefore conveniently fits into the plot. Similarly, a story's plot should be used to derive themes, or a better to describe this, the themes are a consequence of the plot. Once again, in this drama, it feels a bit inverted, the themes govern the plot, the plot conveniently fits with the predetermined themes.

Ever heard of the term "over-engineering"? If you didn't know, overengineering is a bad engineering practice, it's lack of conciseness/efficiency, doing extra work that, while it isn't wrong, it isn't necessary to reach the goal. The death of PZ and PYY's plan both seem to be overengineered.

It's not an easy concept to grasp, but maybe stop and think about for a bit and it will more sense, even if you don't agree with me.

I wish I was better at writing and articulating my thoughts, unfortunately my major doesn't require me to write very often.

Artificial is the perfect word to describe how I feel about much of that part of the drama.

While everything might make sense, everything feels artificial/too orchestrated. Dramas are inherently orchestrated but they should still give the feeling to the audience that things are flowing freely/naturally, the audience should never feel that what they're watching is actually scripted precisely.

We all know these stories are fake even if partially based on real stories, but that doesn't mean we won't buy into what it has to offer, philosophically or emotionally, if it's convincing enough.

Yes, I explained this concern as well in one of my comments below.

To add to what you said, I also think the clan/cult is basically a cartoon cult, they oversimplify things, in reality, it's insanely hard to get a huge group of people to follow you and sacrifice their lives for you, no matter how intelligent you are. He also STOLE the identity of the supreme master so clearly he isn't following the same ideology as the clan. It makes little sense why the remaining clan members follow him.

That kindof brainwashing plot isn't something I expected to see in a drama of NIF's caliber, I wouldn't have a problem with it if it just for entertainment but this drama clearly was meant to do much more than that.

There is such a thing as being too orchestrated, everything does make sense but it almost felt like the writers were bandaging loopholes as they were writing the story instead of reiterating or starting from scratch when something didn't feel right. Let's say you're writing an essay to prove an idea, but along the way you find out that your conclusion is entirely wrong. Usually, the best approach is to start from scratch because the old essay was writing with a different conclusion in mind. However, let's say you're lazy or short on time, what do you do? Instead of rewriting, you just remove all irrelevant points and skew the current information to fit the new conclusion.

In any case, the end product is that there are 0 loopholes, it's a "perfect plot" in a sense, the drama gives all the details you need to figure out why such and such happened, but it feels cheap, it feels fabricated.

You'll obviously argue that "planning" is expected from any drama like this, but there is such a thing as letting a story flow. This is really hard to explain, maybe I'm just too critical. I did find 1 person so far that shares similar opinion so not all hope is lost for me I guess.

Even if believable, those reasons all feel cheap, I think a bigger reason, and something that other people here have mentioned is, is that he wanted to recreate a scenario that he had to experience in his life, such as when his mother sacrificed him for his brother, which is is crazy.

I won't say that craziness is a weak motive for a villain but it definitely isn't as meaningful as the villains from NIF1.

That's not what I meant by design - for the last time, I have nothing against PZ's death and understand it's important part of the story, the problem is HOW it happened, what led up to his death felt incoherent, even if the plot had no loopholes.

So I definitely don't think the plot is inconsistent, that was poor choice of words on my part. I'm well aware that it was planned and carefully executed.

However, I do think the plot is incoherent.

After the whole dilemma and plague shenanigans, it leaves you thinking:
1. He did ALL that just to recreate this dilemma? The dilemma that he recreated isn't even that similar to his own.
2. Naturally, he also did it for revenge, but this also an anomaly, why would a huge group of people blindly follow him just because he holds an item? I'm sure they had strong faith but this is crossing into the realm of stupidity.
3. There is simply not enough justification for such hardcore revenge (supreme leader and followers alike). You would have to assume the villain and their group were in fact crazy. This is not to mention the the villain STOLE the identity of the supreme leader successor, so clearly he's not even following the same ideologies as the old cut.
4. What a coincidence! It just so happens when they figured out the perfect plan to save both Ping Zhang and Ping Jing. Something else requires Ping Zhang's attention. It just so happens that the emperor is away at the time. A bunch of other things needed to occur in a certain sequence to lead to this situation.
You see how many things needed to happen to force his death? It feels too planned like there was literally a divine power (the writers) trying to force something to happen. It's like they threw together a bunch of events, each contributing to Ping Zhang's death.

It would've been better if Ping Zhang just died at the enemy's hands instead of what seemed like "fate" and the gods set out to do whatever it takes to make him die.

5. The whole bone chill poison thing is just some magic the writers created to facilitate this plot.

It feels like the writers are explicitly trying to teach us something rather than letting the story flow and let the philosophy/themes come naturally.

NIF's story led to deep themes, story -> themes, here it's in the opposite direction, the themes govern the story, it's like they planned the themes so much that the story will go out of its way to prove a theme, even if it means making the story worse.

I don't agree with this approach, why wouldn't I just watch a documentary if I wanted to learn this aspect of philosophy?