ShortCircuit

What romance LOL. He's just obsessed and she's either trying to escape or an escapee from his "love". At least they didn't make her actually be in love with him.

He didn't kill them though. (Not that he's not a psycho - he very much is, never stopped. He and the other crazy brother-not-his-brother).

Well-executed plots and solid endings in the timeframe they're approved for. That's what I miss. Also, original stories (lately I've been watching live adaptations one after the other).

What I definitely didn't expect to find in an int'l site were the water armies (at work right now). I get it, it's a cutthroat business... but it just makes me stop watching (or at least just binge quietly when all the fuss is done). IDC what others think - for me it capsizes a lot of the initial interest.

This kind of "article" really should have a downvote button.

ETA At this moment, there are 46 comments on this, I can only see some 22 (one of which is mine). I guess all the regular haters on anything that other people enjoy are here, commenting LOL. Blocking them was the right choice :D

If you're referring to how XZ almost died in the snow in the first ep, it wasn't Wei Yan's doing, but Prince Changxin's.

The rest of the attempts on XZ's life were mostly Wei Yan's fault - he thought XZ found out the secret about the rebellion 17 years back and wanted to strike first and ask questions later. When it wasn't directed at XZ but ChangYu, XZ just was in the way.

I don't know what they changed. The thing is, cdramas also used to have high ratings, and then one day they started not having them any more (while kdramas remained highly rated, no matter what they were - good or just really popular).

There's a bias that's pretty easy to recognise toward kdramas and against any other kind of dramas (it's not restricted to cdramas, j-doramas are never high-rated).

I'll do you one better, two words per character:

Yan Zheng: breaks stick
ChangYu: preps knives
Qi Min: pretty evil
Sui YuanQing: just evil
QianQian: pretty EMT
Wei Yan: aimless villain
Gongsun Yin: bad player
Xie Wu: busy thirdwheeler
Mr. Jin: jealous thirdwheeler
Mr Zhao: treating donkeys
Mrs Zhao: selling husband
Lord Li: idiot villain
Li Huai'an: always late
ChangNing: future CFO
Bao'er: future CEO
Wei Sheng: also appearing
ManDi: dearly departed
Lin'an Magistrate: what law?!
Song Yan: wasted studying
Emperor: not me
Princess Royal: winning games
PLOT: total mess
Cinematography: movie level
Snow: every scene
Fighting: girls only
Music: three songs
BGM: sometimes some
Editor: on vacation

The Untamed

There are:

1. the novel (Mo Dao Zu Shi - Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation): https://sevenseasentertainment.com/series/grandmaster-of-demonic-cultivation-mo-dao-zu-shi-novel/

2. the live action (this drama)

3. the donghua (MDZS, 3 seasons, complete): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-XRj8q2QcU

4. the chibi donghua (MDZS Q): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dA7YBkk2AM

5. the audio drama (above in the links section)

6. the manhua: https://sevenseasentertainment.com/series/grandmaster-of-demonic-cultivation-mo-dao-zu-shi-the-comic-manhua/

RE: OP's question. It's the same story. The live action will have actors (LOL), the donghua has great effects (since they're animating it anyway hahaha~) Both have great (and different) soundtracks. Some of the voice actors are the same (some voicing different characters.)

I was around before they changed the system. NiF got as up as 9.5 when TU was at 9.4

After the switch, cdramas didn't get over 9.1 at most. PoJ sits at 9.2 now. I expect it'll go down in a while. And it might not be because people rate is lower.

Or the app version of DeathNote LOL. (I want an app like that, I don't care about the death part).

So it's not always going to be green screen and CGI? Thank you!

For TXW it's mostly makeup and lighting, IMHO. She had the same big eyes in GotD, but they weren't so impressive. Here, the director had the cinematographer take very close shots, in settings that show off her eyes and the colour contrast (she's like Snow White, LOL).

I can't say about Kong XuEr, but she might also look the same through makeup and choices of lighting.

I didn't read the novel. This is what I understood from watching the drama. If it's different than in the novel, I wouldn't know, LOL.

AFAIK, the drama did conflate a lot of characters (into one) or events, in order to make the plot more streamlined.

TBH, I don't know if there's an alternative or more logical explanation. This is what I got only from watching the drama. The last few eps were kind of haphazardly edited.

But if I were to make a guess, I'd say it was the other way around - the Emperor plotted to have Wei Yan return, and when he did return, that's when the Crown Princess decided to put her own plan to hide her son into action. I mean, WY didn't just teleport back. There would have been some info on when he returned. Maybe he didn't even get to enter the palace immediately, as he wasn't even supposed to be back (and even if he were, he shouldn't have been allowed near any Imperial women). The CP would have had some time to do it. Or she had already prepared and was just waiting for a moment of inattentiveness from the guards, which WY returning provided.

They repeated over and over it was the Crown Princess who did it PRECISELY to hide the fact she was sending Qi Min away for his protection.

The fire was stoked by the soldiers the Emperor did send, though (they dramatically say no water would make the flames grow, there was oil in it while they were pretending to try and stop the fire).

The Emperor didn't lure WY back because of the suspected adultery, it was to stop him from interfering with the plan to disrupt the provisions and reinforcements to the city that would have (probably) saved the CP and his faction (XZ's father was also at that party) and have recouped some of the CP's popularity, making it harder to remove and replace him.

The fake letter and the fake pregnancy covered the actual reasons for having WY removed from the battlefield.

ETA I haven't read the novel, there might be two separate fire incidents in the novel. Here, it looked like it's one big fire, only in the Eastern Palace. As to why the Consort was there - why was Sui YuanHai there, too? I guess there was some gathering the Crown Princess had on before the fire "accidentally" happened, where multiple ladies and their kids (or at least SYH) attended.

Is it me or there's something wrong with the backgrounds, like almost ALWAYS, in EVERY scene? (Particularly when it involves a long-distance view).

Is this filmed in a small set or what?! Like, in the graveyard grave-digging scene, it's like there's no depth to that set AT ALL.

Is it all CGI or something?!

I know it could be a choice, but it just rubs me very wrong here.

Does this continue in the next eps? It ended in an interesting point, and I really want to like a CFY drama again, but I don't see myself going through that kind of CGI-like background for most scenes for the rest of the drama.

I only watched the first episode, technical question (sorry if it was asked before.)

No, wait. So we're here not liking Qi Min (because he's obsessed and otherwise evil) or Sui YuanQing (because he's a sado-masochist and also otherwise pure evil) BUT THEY'RE CUTE.

And if they showed novel Xie Zheng, he'd ALSO be kind of obsessive and jealous and also not care much for casualties (that were being heavily hinted at in the beginning and excusesplained all over the place) BUT we'd have to forgive him and root for him and the FL to get together... because he's so freaking HANDSOME.

I am all for the director's choice on this - I don't want to root for some psycho, even if they're cute. I can sometimes pity them or cheer for their redemption arc if any - but these two didn't merit any kind of redemption. And if XZ would have been that gray-leaning-black from the beginning, I'd have skipped LOL.

Though I DO miss those broken sticks he always had ready (I wanted to see him use those, LOL.) It showed a lot of preparedness and that constant vigilence of the man ready to do violence. I'm okay with him being gray-ish but not too much.

It's still a web drama, LOL. I mean, what are they supposed to do, invest all that money and wait to see if it gets word of mouth? They're obviously going to promote it hard. Then again, the first 17 or so eps do a LOT of self-promo. Just LOOK at those scenes and how they make both leads appear. I was totally in love and I NEVER anticipated wanting to watch this drama, LOL.

As for illogical things, I guess people mentioning those have never seen a cdrama before either :D