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This review may contain spoilers
Great Story bogged down by a VERY DRAGGY AND IRRITATING MIDDLE ( from ep 12/13 to 37/38)
I DID IT!
I swore to myself I would finish this show before the end of the month and I did.
As written in the title, this series would have been way better without that veryyyyyyyyyyyyy draggy middle which ruined the experience in my opinion. I struggled not to drop the show for more than a third of its run and that's saying something.
The last 20 episodes were way better especially the last 10/15 episodes which were fast paced in particular when you compare them to the rest of the series.
The end was pretty lackluster, a stapple of Chinese wuxia, and as much as I though both the FL and ML depicted pain and longing well, I honestly though they had little chemistry together. But since they weren't together for most of drama except when the FL was a brainless idiot, that didn't bother me that much.
Anyway, final personal rating 7. I can't get past the draggy pace. If they had kept the quality of the first 10 episodes and the last 20... That would have been a 9 ( 1 point for the lack of chemistry of the main pair + blood pressure running high) but they had to drag down the story with too much episodes that served nothing and the emperor and empress that were just hateful from start to finish. 30 to 40 episodes at most would have done wonders.
Visually... the CGIs were uneven. The budget just wasn't there. It was particularly obvious for all the backgrounds that were mostly matt painted. Matt painting ( the process of using real pictures joined together and then painting on top to blend these pictures together into a single coherent image) is something I've seen a lot in C dramas and when done well can really create enchanting universe... But here, it was cheap, often several images were not blended well especially in terms of saturation and tones... colors not matching together etc. I could even tell when the resolution of the images they used in the background was just too small and they had to resize them big and didn't bother to add some detail to hide the process.
Sometimes the atmospheric perspective was put on the wrong elements i.e when you superpose elements on top of a background, the farthest these element are from the front, the more their colors are closer to the desaturated background. Most of the time, the farther the object is from the front, the more its color is light and desaturated ( that depends obviously of the background and light but you get the drift)... They were many times when characters were placed in front of a background, but they put some atmospheric perspective on them ( i.e a desaturated filter or whatever) when in fact they shouldn't have had any additional filters. That gave an uncanny look in some scenes. Anyway that's pretty technical talk, and English is not my first language, but the bottom line is... as an artist myself who does use that process on a daily basis... My eyes BLED quite often watching that messed up artistic work.... A little bit more time given to the artists to do their work properly would have done wonders.
Still the main story was brilliant. I'll never forget the confrontation scene between Jin Mi and Run Yu at the end of episode 55... That was painful to watch and hurt in all the right places.
Run Yu had the best arc and in a better world, would have been the main character. I'm sorry for how we was pushed to become the way he turned out.... but he's not completely innocent in his demise.
Getting rid of the Heavenly Empress and Emperor ?
I’m glad he did, they were both scum anyway. As a Heavenly Emperor, he’s way more fair than both and is certainly way better than Xu Feng. The latter was too soft-hearted and straight forward. You need a cunning mind to deal with scheming people and Xu Feng just isn’t that man.
That doesn’t mean Run Yu was a bad man, just that he understood how the game is played and acted accordingly unlike Xu Feng whose mindset was too rigid for his own good.
BUT
Where Run Yu turned evil was regarding his obsession with Jin Mi. I was never convinced he loved her. But when I saw that despite how much she outwardly showed how much she loved Xu Feng, and still he wouldn’t let her go, it confirmed my opinion. He was obsessed with the idea of possessing Jin Mi. He didn’t truly love her. I’m sure there was some affection mixed in at some point… but at the end of the day, if he’d truly loved her he would have let her go… just like Xu Feng did when Jin Mi told him he brought her pain.
Regarding what he did to Jin Mi, he’s 100 % in the wrong and he knew it… which is why he kept making these huge sacrifices to inwardly justify that he deserved her love and she was being unfair to him. But love is not something you can buy with grand gestures and no amount of rights can correct the wrongs you've done if you don't resolve the problem at its root. He knew her heart never belonged to him and still, obsessed with being able to possess the only thing Xu Feng ever cared about, he hurt the person he supposedly loved the most.
Knowing that what he did to his half-brother was unforgivable.
Still unlike the former Empress and Emperor… As much as I hated his behavior regarding Xu Feng and Jin Mi… I couldn’t 100 % dislike him.
He was pushed to the edge by his father and adoptive mother who only dotted on his younger sibling. He was initially a kind soul. In a way, he made Xu Feng pay for the crimes of his parents.
Xu Feng didn’t deserve anything that happenned to him… But Xu Feng had it easy from birth. Who knows how he would have turned out faced with the same challenges as Run Yu ? Even Jin Mi ended up making a huge mistake when she thought Xu Feng had killed her father… And she didn’t suffer even a 3rd of what Run Yu had to go through.
Ultimately, he turned out pretty ok given the circumstances.
He deserved what he got... and I feel a bit sorry for him... probably because Jin Mi and Xu Feng got their happy ending in spite of his meddling, I'd have felt very differently otherwise... still in my imagination, after a couple of years, he'll be able to see that he's not that alone. He's just blind.
Anyway, that's one classic checked off my list. I'll never rewatch this one again due to its terrible pace but I can understand why people were raving about it. If I only rated this on all the feelings and the deep impression it left me during the last 10 episodes... I'd probably would have rated this a 10.
Suggested Rating: 6.5
Personal ratings: 7
I swore to myself I would finish this show before the end of the month and I did.
As written in the title, this series would have been way better without that veryyyyyyyyyyyyy draggy middle which ruined the experience in my opinion. I struggled not to drop the show for more than a third of its run and that's saying something.
The last 20 episodes were way better especially the last 10/15 episodes which were fast paced in particular when you compare them to the rest of the series.
The end was pretty lackluster, a stapple of Chinese wuxia, and as much as I though both the FL and ML depicted pain and longing well, I honestly though they had little chemistry together. But since they weren't together for most of drama except when the FL was a brainless idiot, that didn't bother me that much.
Anyway, final personal rating 7. I can't get past the draggy pace. If they had kept the quality of the first 10 episodes and the last 20... That would have been a 9 ( 1 point for the lack of chemistry of the main pair + blood pressure running high) but they had to drag down the story with too much episodes that served nothing and the emperor and empress that were just hateful from start to finish. 30 to 40 episodes at most would have done wonders.
Visually... the CGIs were uneven. The budget just wasn't there. It was particularly obvious for all the backgrounds that were mostly matt painted. Matt painting ( the process of using real pictures joined together and then painting on top to blend these pictures together into a single coherent image) is something I've seen a lot in C dramas and when done well can really create enchanting universe... But here, it was cheap, often several images were not blended well especially in terms of saturation and tones... colors not matching together etc. I could even tell when the resolution of the images they used in the background was just too small and they had to resize them big and didn't bother to add some detail to hide the process.
Sometimes the atmospheric perspective was put on the wrong elements i.e when you superpose elements on top of a background, the farthest these element are from the front, the more their colors are closer to the desaturated background. Most of the time, the farther the object is from the front, the more its color is light and desaturated ( that depends obviously of the background and light but you get the drift)... They were many times when characters were placed in front of a background, but they put some atmospheric perspective on them ( i.e a desaturated filter or whatever) when in fact they shouldn't have had any additional filters. That gave an uncanny look in some scenes. Anyway that's pretty technical talk, and English is not my first language, but the bottom line is... as an artist myself who does use that process on a daily basis... My eyes BLED quite often watching that messed up artistic work.... A little bit more time given to the artists to do their work properly would have done wonders.
Still the main story was brilliant. I'll never forget the confrontation scene between Jin Mi and Run Yu at the end of episode 55... That was painful to watch and hurt in all the right places.
Run Yu had the best arc and in a better world, would have been the main character. I'm sorry for how we was pushed to become the way he turned out.... but he's not completely innocent in his demise.
Getting rid of the Heavenly Empress and Emperor ?
I’m glad he did, they were both scum anyway. As a Heavenly Emperor, he’s way more fair than both and is certainly way better than Xu Feng. The latter was too soft-hearted and straight forward. You need a cunning mind to deal with scheming people and Xu Feng just isn’t that man.
That doesn’t mean Run Yu was a bad man, just that he understood how the game is played and acted accordingly unlike Xu Feng whose mindset was too rigid for his own good.
BUT
Where Run Yu turned evil was regarding his obsession with Jin Mi. I was never convinced he loved her. But when I saw that despite how much she outwardly showed how much she loved Xu Feng, and still he wouldn’t let her go, it confirmed my opinion. He was obsessed with the idea of possessing Jin Mi. He didn’t truly love her. I’m sure there was some affection mixed in at some point… but at the end of the day, if he’d truly loved her he would have let her go… just like Xu Feng did when Jin Mi told him he brought her pain.
Regarding what he did to Jin Mi, he’s 100 % in the wrong and he knew it… which is why he kept making these huge sacrifices to inwardly justify that he deserved her love and she was being unfair to him. But love is not something you can buy with grand gestures and no amount of rights can correct the wrongs you've done if you don't resolve the problem at its root. He knew her heart never belonged to him and still, obsessed with being able to possess the only thing Xu Feng ever cared about, he hurt the person he supposedly loved the most.
Knowing that what he did to his half-brother was unforgivable.
Still unlike the former Empress and Emperor… As much as I hated his behavior regarding Xu Feng and Jin Mi… I couldn’t 100 % dislike him.
He was pushed to the edge by his father and adoptive mother who only dotted on his younger sibling. He was initially a kind soul. In a way, he made Xu Feng pay for the crimes of his parents.
Xu Feng didn’t deserve anything that happenned to him… But Xu Feng had it easy from birth. Who knows how he would have turned out faced with the same challenges as Run Yu ? Even Jin Mi ended up making a huge mistake when she thought Xu Feng had killed her father… And she didn’t suffer even a 3rd of what Run Yu had to go through.
Ultimately, he turned out pretty ok given the circumstances.
He deserved what he got... and I feel a bit sorry for him... probably because Jin Mi and Xu Feng got their happy ending in spite of his meddling, I'd have felt very differently otherwise... still in my imagination, after a couple of years, he'll be able to see that he's not that alone. He's just blind.
Anyway, that's one classic checked off my list. I'll never rewatch this one again due to its terrible pace but I can understand why people were raving about it. If I only rated this on all the feelings and the deep impression it left me during the last 10 episodes... I'd probably would have rated this a 10.
Suggested Rating: 6.5
Personal ratings: 7
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