Rampie

No relation other than sharing most of the casts and having the same theme of fighting corruption and organized crime.

This thing is really good. The rating doesn't do it justice at all.

Well, the most obvious differentiator is from who's pov the story is told. Male oriented ones are obviously told from the perspective of the male lead. Sometimes even the synopsis is easy tell, if it mention the FML story first then it's a female oriented drama.

But yes, the more romance the higher chance it is female-oriented, there's a correlation there. This is because romance plot in fictional works designed for men is mostly simplistic, "ML fancy a girl, and she submits to him" basically, that's their ideal romance. So if you see all these convoluted romance plots such as "breakups" and "misunderstandings" etc these are all written for women. So I wouldn't say male oriented is not romantic but rather their preferred type of romance is different from what females want it to be. One of the reason why "palace dramas" is always written for women, because if it's written for men it will be a totally unrealistic fantasy, where all the women of the harem get perfectly well with each other like sisters and happily share the emperor instead of plotting against each other and trying to get their son crown prince (like what actually happens historically).

If you care about "story/plot" the most, I would add like at least 0.5 point for a slight or no romance drama to normalize the ratings here with romance drama. Apply the same with stuffs that get review bombed like no kisses, bad kisses, ugly/old male lead or "poor chemistry."

Just because something has romance that doesn't mean it is female oriented. There are some decently popular dramas that are actually adapted from "male audience" source material, such as Joy of Life and Guardians of Dafeng, and also a bunch of lower budget ones. There are also original story drama that is for male audience, for example would be "Be Yourself" and similar pseudo-harem (censored harem story) dramas, inspired by harem novel/manhua for male audience.

Dramas where mostly everything is shown from the male lead POV like Reset would qualify as male audience I think.

Some are more complicated. Take "My Heroic Husband" for example. The source material is harem novel for male audience. But the adaptation, I watched both the anime and the drama it really doesn't feel like it's for male audience anymore. The "english title" doesn't help.

> I don’t know but maybe even 5 years ago a drama like this, that centers around government corruption

This is so not true. Chinese govt funds anticorruption dramas since long time ago. The most famous one is probably that one made in 2017. The feat Xi most proud of during his reign is anti-corruption crackdown. His reign is marked by arrests of high rank party members that was always taboo before his era, so portrayal of elite party member and high ranking govt official being corrupt and getting arrested is actually seen as a tribute for the great leader's achievements like literally.

Could be because all her other dramas have lower than 8 rating here (other than 1 where she was only guest role).

Wei Qingyu is so stupid and deserves to die. She's the real villain, and listening to her makes the mc stupid. The emperor is also totally blind for loving her when she's a total red flag.

At the beginning I was like damn the Zhuangs are evil, then Murong Yao is evil, then by ep 24 I'm like you know what, I think it's mc and her mom who's brain has a problem.

I thought the emperor was silly for tolerating the Zhuang family but then I realized that he needed them to train mc and their purpose is to be used as a stepping stone for the mc to grow up, but turns out the mc is such a huge massive coward, he's the one who's supposed to kill those even since early episode once he discovered they were trying to kill mc. Also the emperor is definitely correct when he said the mc had to seize power and I can totally relate his disappointment at having such a loser as his son. The whole thing is just shit writing when mc goes low iq tirade of "why don't you make xiyang empress" lmao when xiyang is an obsessed fool that is under the control of his nemesis.

Also mc and his dad are written to be stupid and not understand the phrase "tie loose ends" means. Both deserve to die and should die really for being dumb. Though it really is just bad writing creating unrealistically stupid characters because the "villains" either then Zhuangs or the Murongs totally understand the concept about "kill everyone related to mc in order to prevent future troubles" but they just don't have the plot armor. Emperor does really stupid uncharasteristic thing like sparing Zhuang Shen's family even keeping the empress after you get rid of all her family members is so stupid. anyone reading history books will know that 9 familial extermination or 3 generation extermination is the standard practice for obvious logical reason. I feel really bad for those Suige's underlings that die because their master is stupid af. Then again anyone stupid enough to be willing to serve someone who is literally a first born crown prince who insist on not taking the throne... what do you expect, there really is just one ending for this kind of stupidity.

Best couple is Qin Chen and Caihe. That whole arc is really good.

Tianji, Fuyue, and Zhang Tai are all prettier than FMC lol.

I don't think that's true at all. Many such mainstream cdramas like "the knockout" is full of morally grey characters too, many corrupt cops, ccp officials, and "villains" that aren't even evil and easy to sympathize with. Then you have "anticorruption" dramas (eg. in the name of the people) that just use fictional province in mainland and such place is literally full of corruption, so you don't really need a "hongkong" if a writer wants to portray a corrupt chinese city they totally can if they want to by just making up a fictional "mandarin" only city because this has been allowed for a long time and there are many precedents for this.

The reason why HK is chosen for this is because the crime would be too unrealistic if it's set in mainland China. Like that first crime with ak47 robbers... it's totally unrealistic, such thing will never happen in China, it's basically impossible for them to procure those weapons and be undetected given Chinese mass surveillance. Only in a "more free" place such as say, a messy british colonized shithole it might happen. Mafia dramas are set in HK because it was realistic, it was crime ridden, if it's set in China it's just unrealistic because China already driven out all of those organized crime to neighboring countries.

If it's a full length series it would be draggy, padded out, and full of fillers to fit in the episode count and duration. In fact I would say many "bad" full length series would actually good if it's turned into short length series with tighter plot and remove all the boring parts.

last episode fun fact:
So the main villain is hei shi group which is literally "blackrock" in chinese.
The mc also say they can commit all kinds of evil deeds outside China but inside China there will be a price to pay (punishment) if they dare commit such evil deeds.

If you know, you know...

That's because 9 out of 10 drama watchers are women and they don't watch these lol.

wtf this is so good, is there other stuffs like this?

Yes, very underrated.

That one is much better than this one in every aspect basically.

Only watch if you like crime cdrama, in particular the topic of cover ups and police corruption. It's not the best of that genre ("The Knockout" and "In The Name of The People" are the best), but it's still very good nonetheless if you like this specific genre. The scope of this is much narrower and feels less epic due to low episode count.

Wan Peng doesn't have a lot of screentime either, I think many people watch just for her and is disappointed because they don't like the genre.

Sheng Liya worked for Chuansheng for 13 years already, I guess she started working when she was a teen lmao. Literally the perfect waifu; competent, loyal and obedient, but unfortunately for her, the wrong man bought her.

😭😭😭