ShortCircuit

This would've been a masterpiece even without the BL (which the Chinese censorship diluted into just a hint anyway).

Trust that the story is NOT about school antics or even childish disputes with pompous asses (of which Wen Chao is one - Wen RuoHan has his moments, but he's more of a hermit villain, LOL). Give it time - it's around the 15th ep that the tide turns.

... After all, the story starts with a resurrection, how can it be something too silly to raise up such a fame? :D

Yes. As close to a masterpiece as it gets.

MCS will have a (very) few flashback moments in NiF2, when TingSheng is thinking of him - NiF2 is about TingSheng's family - his two sons, their families or loved ones, and war. I think that drama has the absolute BEST ever war scenes (in a drama) I've ever seen. And I still have a little crush on Huang XiaoMing, LOL, told you already.) If you decide to go into it, don't expect it to be like NiF - it's a whole different tone, and while the production values are all still there, and Hai Yan also wrote the script, it's not a true sequel other than sharing the same time-space and having Xiao TingSheng and Lin Chen as charas (Lin Chen is in only for a few moments). There's 1000% more romance LOL (not really what I expected, but it works in the end), and the music isn't as impressive as in NiF IMHO. But Hai Yan seems to like tragic characters so well. It's still tragic. (And so UNFAIR T_T)

NiF is on my rewatch list since I first binged it, LOL, expect to still have cravings for it from time to time :) (I re-watched it about three times because I accidentally opened an episode and before I knew it, I was in the middle of the series and still not skipping anything hahaha~)

All the characters are amazing - I liked Prince Yu's side of the story despite him being despicable (the most like his father, indeed!), and Huang WeiDe played him beautifully. He's just his father's son and trying so hard to make it to the top according to the only rules he knows to play by... and I actually thought he was quite the tragic character, too, until the scene where he's actually serving his older brother, JingYu, the poison in the prison. The fact he WANTED to be there in the first place, just to make sure JingYu dies... GAHHH~~~ *extreme frustration-caused yells*

Also the Crown Prince, the slimey bastard... How on Earth could the Emperor pick HIM?! For someone so cruel and shrewd, Prince Yu was the obvious choice and still he picked the CP. Lame, lame Emperor obsessed with keeping power. (Also, I've watched Ding YongDai acting as an Emperor in three more dramas LOL, though Emperor Xiao is the best of them. He's the eternal monarch in truth :D)

*sigh* Such a great, great drama :) I'm glad you enjoyed it! :)

You should try some more cdramas, a lot of them are worth the hype :D

I was obsessed with the BGM for a long while (still replaying quite a few of the themes). It works wonders when the music just completes the scene - but also, one of my favourite scenes (the one in ep 23, the confrontation with Xie Yu) is almost silent. Only that heartbeat sound goes through while Xie Yu admits the atrocity he instigated, and then that sweet and sad theme - ah, I was long gone by then anyway, but that scene is a highlight for me in the whole drama (among many others).

Obviously JingYan going to Consort Jing and telling her he's missing Xiao Shu... but also in another scene when she tells him Xiao Shu would live long in his heart and he replies he doesn't want Xiao Shu living in his heart, he wants him alive in this world - and she already knew at that time and STILL doesn't tell him! He got quite the superb tragic arc, just as much as MCS.

And obviously MCS can see where saving Wei Zheng would lead - but JingYan is blinded by the fact that this is an officer of the ChiYan army and HAS to be saved. That part where MCS goes smoothly with Xia Jiang just because otherwise he couldn't misdirect the attention - and the PERFECT way the rescue went, LOL - master strategist indeed! I loved watching him plan and have all his plans succeed - you can't game the QiLin Talent :D

JingYan eventually got suspicious - that nervous fingers thing, obviously the sword trick, knowing the secret path, being SO FIERCELY protected by both NiHuang and (the no-poker-face) Meng Zhi... JingYan is not stupid, he just couldn't imagine his best friend forever wouldn't tell him he was still alive and let him mourn in such deep despair. At the beginning of the story, JingYan is basically the penultimate on the totem pole (the last one is his younger brother who has some physical defect), a chew toy for the Crown Prince (I hated that character so much! LOL) and Prince Yu. Obviously he was cold and not really given to being friendly - except with his own men, who love him. It's kind of natural for him not to trust MCS, since he doesn't know him, and he could be swindling everyone for his own gain. But I think he started warming up to him without even realising, I guess true zhījǐ get close even if one of them pretends he's not who he is and the other one doesn't recognise him either :D

They're 知己 (he who knows me better than I know myself - usually it's TLed as soulmates, but it doesn't imply anything romantically. They just perfectly understand each other). Which places JingYan at a disadvantage for now, since only Xiao Shu knows.

But JingYan is a bit too rigid and straightforward, so he needs someone to take over the bending and smoothing out of his path in order for him to become Emperor. And MCS isn't doing it because JingYan is his friend - he's doing it because JingYan will be the best for the empire and its people.

After you finish the drama, if you're interested, let me know if you want to read the novel. There are some parts that are different and some that they didn't include (because the "actors" didn't want to cooperate, LOL - they had a scene where Xiao Shu's very old hound would recognise him and go to him every time he's in the hunting grounds, and it was all they could do to keep JingYan from noticing, hahaha, but the dog actor just didn't want to play along :D) There are a lot of more little details in the novel that make it a pretty good read :D

He had so many sons he wanted to keep them in order and not have that many names to remember LOL.

A lot of people slept on it. It only started trending when it was already in its final airing week (the ratings grew in SK as it aired). It's a pretty good mystery, and VERY annoying characters (which makes you connect and hate on them a lot, LOL), but well done, well acted and well paced. So people who wanted to see what's it about tried it, probably, and got hooked enough to binge it.

Me, I put myself through the wringer of watching as it aired, LOL, but I had read the novel so it wasn't so much the wait to see whodunnit as the wait to see how they're going to go about it. It was worth it.

So I went and re-watched that episode because why not, when it's so good :D

I still love Consort Jing's reaction to him - she's just the best of them all. She KNEW it was him the second she got the book, and then she kept letting him know she'd keep the secret. And then she went and started building a backup for JingYan with no fuss and doing everything perfectly reasonable, LOL, while the Empress and the Noble Consort Yue were still thinking the battle was just between the two of them.

And she knows medicine, so she's not wrong to cry.

Sooooo... did you get the MCS virus yet? :D

PS All hail JingYan though - by now he's suspecting the truth and will sneakily and not so sneakily try to get it out of them :D (poor Meng Zhi has got NO secrecy game hahaha~)

What do you mean by watched at once? The drama spanned 8 weeks (2 eps per week, one episode was postponed because of a national holiday). On Hulu half was released, the other half comes on Oct. 8th.

It's a good thriller, adapted from Nele Neuhaus' Snow White Must Die novel. It differs from other thrillers / mysteries and even from the original novel by focusing on the convict and his accusers and less on the police work (as per the usual police thriller). Give it a try and see for yourself.

It might be the first version of the subs (I see the titles aren't TLed, but some of the honorifics are - like they're using Senior Sister / ShiJie for YanLi instead of her name, as in the "official' TL - WWX NEVER calls her YanLi, as it would be disrespectful, he's always calling her ShiJie, and some of the idioms are there, but there are a few lines that are missing and the like, too.) Or maybe they'd adapt along the way :D (I watched it a few months after it first aired, because I slept on this drama, LOL, so when I got to it the kinks had been straightened out of the fansubs, mostly :D)

But the basis is there. I like the flow of the TL, and it's a lot closer to the meaning (comparing to the novel's TL) than it ended up in some of the scenes in the official TLs.

In SK, either the police or the prosecutors could investigate a case. Here though, the police did it, invented all the evidence, coerced him into confessing his guilt, and the prosecution only had to present their case to the judge and it was over. From a procedural POV, they did it by the book. Now that it's come out the evidence is fabricated, they threw the case out (but since both actual killers are dead, there can't be a trial placing the blame on them and punishing them for their deeds. You can't put a dead person to trial.)

So everything that they could do was to throw out GJW's sentence and expunge his record and that would be it.

TBH I never heard of any trial in SK that went against the state or its institutions for not doing their jobs correctly. It's always against actual people and if there's any civil liability it's settled by compensation of some kind in most cases.

I think they made her dump Natsu because their own personalities definitely don't match, even if they like each other a lot. She's a bit controlling (or very controlling IMHO), a bit dismissive of Natsu's own feelings on matters - I think he has a type, LOL, since Mizuki is basically the same), and pretty impatient - she wants it as she wants it and she wants it right now.

I guess they wanted to show how it would look like if Mizuki stayed with Natsu and raised their child together - she's more impulsive than Yayoi, but the selfishness is still there, and also there's that part where she's certain she knows better than him and decides for the both without informing him on anything. Both of them are pretty calous like that, treating him as if he's an appendice (the cute/handsome guy who's dependable but a bit boring, he'll be there for them if and when they need him).

So he needs time to decide on important things - WTH, don't we all?! I am pretty mad on his behalf for both women calling him irresolute or something. I too get impulsive (especially when shopping) but for important matters, I take a lot of time to consider. They put him in front of a decision they had already taken and asked him for an instant response... Neither took him as an equal partner, much.

So I'm not sad he didn't get a whole family, Yayoi isn't the one for him - and not the one for Tsuno either. Both need someone they can talk to and decide things together.

*totally serious* Definitely.

(The smallest font possible: that thing about stress... errr... might be a liiiiittle bit exaggerated.)

Sadly, I don't know if the fansubs still exist somewhere. I watched the drama initially not on NF or Viki, but that site is gone, and subscene is also gone now. But the subs were awesome (and added a lot of nuance and a certain charm to the story itself). I mean, how precisely like WWX to moan about his bad luck in such a colourful way, right? (that's why it stuck to my memory, LOL).

They might be somewhere on dailymotion or some other non-legit sites... but since NF and Viki are available (for a while yet, in NF's case), who knows if the fansubs got replaced with higher quality (and non-hardsub) versions everywhere...

Yeah, all the best fighters or renowned Jianghu people have titles and all those titles translate to something that describes them in some way. Other than Hanguang Jun, Zewu Jun, Sandu Shengshou, you also have Lianfang-Zun for Meng Yao, which means Hidden Fragrance Lord - I don't know if MXTX wanted to imply he stinks LOL - and Chifeng-Zun (Red Blade Lord) for Nie MingJue, master of Baxia. (Still my favourite blade in the whole story, even before Suibian and Bichen). Madam Yu also went by her Zi Zhizhu title (Violet Spider) but that got TLed basically the same everywhere, and also Nie HuaiSang's nickname (Head-Shaker).

It's just the little details that add a lot of subtle context and extra explanations for anyone who isn't deep in the lore yet. For me, it was kind of a big part of getting addicted to cdramas (and danmei novels, too, LOL, all hail the TLers!)

ETA BTW, Sandu (the name of his blade) means Three-Poisons or Three-Bane, so JC's title is Master of Sandu, not that he's a poisoner LOL.

Also, Yayoi: Oh you sneezed? This reminds me I need to get MYSELF some cold medicine.

Yeah, well, people like him exist (he was freaking preparing to go to med school, there's a saviour complex right there, too). As for reckless/stupid - he was already alone against the world, what did he have to lose anymore? After getting out, he had to try anything to either learn what actually happened, or learn to deal with it.

Not like the whole town was against him or anything.

The best subs were the fan-made subs (overimposed the Chinese hardsubbed eps). They knew to keep the little idioms in (things like WWX woe-is-me remarking he should've checked his horoscope before getting out the door when he runs into Jiang Cheng AND LWJ right after fleeing Mo Manor). In the NF and Viki subs, it's adapted into something like "this is so unlucky" or whatever.

Also the fansub TLed all the titles (no Chinese-sounding Hanguang-Jun that tells the int'l fans nothing, if they have no ear for Chinese and some previous knowledge - but Light Bearing Lord, which tells you WHO he is. Basically ALL their titles - Sandu Shengshou - Three-Bane Divine Hand, for Jiang Cheng, or the title of Sanren for the Wanderers, like WWX's mother, or Zewu-Jun, "Brilliance Overgrowth Lord" for LXC***, etc.) For someone who hadn't read the book before watching the drama, that added a whole layer of detail to the story.

When they tell you things are being lost in translation, they're not making a quip. This happens.

Which is why I LOVE the fan TLs of famous danmei, particularly those who take the time to explain the idioms, or suggest an adapted sense to the idiom, or include pictures to show you how things should look, and generally are enthusiastic about what they're doing. I already have quite a few of fan TLers that I appreciate a whole lot, they're making this a better world :)

ETA *** BTW, Brilliance Overgrowth doesn't imply light, but water and how it nourishes everything around it into abundant growth, LOL. For me it remained forever linked to the part of the story where they have to calm a Waterborne Abyss, and LXC just goes and plays his flute and starts on the (long) ride to contain and clean it up.

It gets extremely good by 14-15 (when the tragedy starts), but for me it got good in the opening scene, LOL. Maybe it's not your type of drama - but if you stick with it, you might be surprised.

Thanks for the article!

I've watched most of the BL dramas in the list (except for Eien no Kinou because I don't want to cry), and Liar Game and Fuujinshi were on my radar... I just haven't picked them up yet, LOL.

For longer series (as in ep length - also, not BL), BORDER is really good and also the recently ended Umi no Hajimari!

One of the girls was his FRIEND (nothing romantic) so he wasn't "hung up" on her. People do care for their friends, you know. The other one was his lover - and you're allowed passionate and illogical love at 18 (and at all ages actually).

Also, people are acting like true friends even toward persons who turn out not to be as honest in return, it happens all the time. Not to mention one-sided love happens, too.

This is based on a novel, and the adaptation is very good (I also read the novel). This is one of the pretty rare adaptations where the drama is better than the book.

NaGyeom... supported him?! He wouldn't have lost ten years of his life if it wasn't for her!

You aren't too advanced in watching the drama, maybe, or you wouldn't say that, LOL. Or do you mean he doesn't know what she did, so he HAS to fall for her because she was supportive?!

He doesn't OWE anyone anything, especially not "love". One feels what one feels, it's not forced through services rendered. That's the "gratitude" she expects from him, and he doesn't have in it him to give it to her.