Skibbies

ah yeah Bao Jianfeng def don't seem 25, but they never stated clearly what his age is, so I handwaved it, since the other casting issues were bigger lol.

Bai Shu's child is adopted I think? She mentioned it at some point, if adopted, why adopt her. If not (suspecting she's lying or I imagined that adopted line), yeah what's the deal with that? I would accept it if she or Ge Wenjun needed someone else to keep Ge Wenjun's attention, but GWJ seem to have pretty good relationship with the kid? It's so strange?

I can sort of buy Bai Shu's mum panicking over the video, she probably didn't know better. Similar to them panicking over them killing someone, and convinced they did and ran off. *sigh* If it was half way sensible plot, I wouldn't be so annoyed. I watched Light of Dawn earlier the year, and it also start with dead body and flashback, there were some issues with it, but that mystery part was better than this, just bit convoluted.

Totally agree that I thought they would show why Xiaoming married Liu Xiaoran, apparently they filmed some more cute/romantic scenes of the couple but cut it out, I don't need those! I was hoping it'd tell me WHY, I had suspected it was financial or pragmatic reasons (travelling abroad + marrying a professor which is a respectable career) but neither really fit tbh. also, even though I never really liked Liu Xiaoran, I enjoyed Ni Ni and Bao Jianfeng's interactions, I suspect cos he might have improv some of the funnier scenes LOL. I def enjoyed it far more than with Zhou You, I get that's culmination of relationship with He Yuqiong but the story is cliche without a twist and I didn't care for the adult actor pairing, so 5 ep was entirely unnecessary to me, 1 would be enough.

Xiaoming is frustrating to watch but I actually rather like her being very biting and bitter towards her mum, since her mum is the same way to her, they are both far nicer to other people. I def expected she would learn to appreciate her mum and hold back biting remarks or learn to be less impulsive and clueless (bub, you met Bai Shu at her grave, why were you so surprised when she told you she's not the real Bai Shu???) as she grew up, but it seems like she didn't.

I had originally suspected Bai Shu got sexually assaulted or something, but turns out no? I mean her controlling mum tend to do a number of emotional damage, but not to this extent. I think if she found out that it was her birth mum that they "killed", it would work but she didn't know. The adopted daughter thing seem like a random red herring too? I don't really get Zhang Fang's one sided crush, and his adult actor def didn't help.

The suspense plot is apparently drama original so I never expected it to be as good as the complicated coming of age part, but this was absolutely absymal omg, not just bunch of red herring and leads that went nowhere, Bai Shu have to repeatedly tell Li Meng to read the damn book, but also why last minute target switch?! I mean you could have at least foreshadowed birth mum a bit? Like random lingering shadow, strange spying angles (that could be attributed to controlling Ge Wenjun even), but no, just bam? This is huge no no in suspense???

I think you missed some bits of dialogue. It was He Yuqiong's mum on the other side of the wechat account, she has been sending money to his mum, that's when she got invited for food sometimes. I also don't think there was miracle recovery of mum, her last scene was in hospital. If she was fully recovered, she should be with brother and uncle li, but it just show two of them, so I think it's open end.

I agree the suspense is shoddily written, but it's drama original I believe. I think the drama have been weird mash of genre to begin with and not done too well, so I don't think it's an ending issue tbh.

oh no, he plays a minor support character in SSS, not a younger ver of ZRY haha. I think it's bit slow at the start too, cos it takes a while to setup. I have fair amount of beef with the pacing and directing of that show, but JOL reniuon reminded me of it (the scriptwriter are the same for the two dramas).

did you watch SSS? That also have ZRY and Han Haolin!

yeah I don't think I really like any of the 4 kids' adult cast's chemistry with each other? Ni Ni with her family and Liu Xiaoran are decent I guess, even though Ren Xiaoming is really questionable at times.

I've seen Zhou You before in other dramas and I'm actually often annoyed by his characters lol. I think it didn't help that adult He Yuqiong get the more downer and "realistic" hardship bits rather than the more optimistic and somewhat carefree bits.

Oh yes yes I forgot about Liu Xiaoran, he mostly gets away for it cos he didn't have a younger actor and it doesn't really specify his age so I assume he's at least 25 when he first appears.

I'm more or less ok with Liu Mintao's acting here I think, she's over the top but I feel that's what the production team want? Since the characterisation and camerwork sort of pose her as big bad for most of the time.

I'm honestly surprised 2/3 of the drama were child actors haha.

I honestly don't really care for zhou you even though he's decent at acting, I don't think they could get ZRY considering the limited screentime, but I'm sure they could get some other small time actor that look more like Han Haolin.

I'm sure they casted adult actors first but whose bright idea was it to cast zhou you or zhang fang's actor omg?! also liu yase and na yi (bai shu's adult and teen actress) also look nothing alike, whyyyyy??? (heard na yi is part of director yang yang's company but ahhh whyyyyy)

i think they casted the adults first, i'm actually surprised they kept the child actors for 2/3 through.

kind of I think, in the sense that they show the present as hook and the past sort of show the how and whys?

I sort of understand wanting to focus on less familiar historical figures, you have more artistic liberty with it, but yeah I really want to see everyone else, heck, I'd definitely take Guo Rong or Feng Dao as protag, it'd be far more interesting.

Wuyue's plot is fine by itself, if you threw this bit into madeup dynasty, it'd be pretty cool too. But setting it against such an interesting and chaotic period, I'm more interested in the chaos. I also get that the contrast against chaotic times with peaceful is to pop out Qian Hongchu's latter decision, but definitely still not as interested. I had this issue with Heroes (2024), I was really salty I didn't get to the late Qing chaoticness in the background.

he's been doing pretty well playing supporting roles in relatively serious historical dramas, far better than the random modern he was doing before lol. I still want to watch Canton Thirteen Hongs ahhhhh.

jinling is modern day nanjing, it became nanjing in ming dynasty when zhu di moved the capital city from nanjing (southern capital) to beijing (northern capital), where his fiefdom was located. beijing is traditionally not a capital due to it being too close to the frontlines.

it was never finished lol, it's officially serialised on qidian, looks like this was serialised 2008-2011. he mentions the novel in interviews about this drama sometimes.

i'm late but i'd call it extremely friendly cctv 1 schedule. normally if it aired like a regular cctv 1 show, it'd be mon-fri, or mon-thurs 2 ep a day. but it'll hit the chinese new years breaks in ep 40ish, which might give you 2 or 4 ep max a week for two weeks. awakening of age's 43 ep took 47 days to air, it was super headache inducing to watch. last time saw such a friendly cctv 1 schedule was 2022 chinese new years' lifelong journey.

Qin empire 1, 2, 3 are set in the warring states (about 150 to 50ish years before qin dynasty was established), 1 is vastly different in vibe from 2 and 3, my favourite is 2 cos it has more diplomatic stuff with other states.

I recently just finished King's War (netflix title?)/ Legend of Chu and Han, and it's paced pretty well (with more battle scenes than I've seen in any other drama tbh), depicts downfall of Qin dynasty to eastablish of Han.

first was 1840-42, second was 1856-1860 (destroyed yuan ming yuan/old summer palace). 1894-1895 was the first sino-japanese war (the second was the WWII one 1931-1945), 1900 was siege of international legations (that sure is a name, kinda whitewashing invasion, english), so it was legit 100 years of wars and whole pile of unequal treaties.

ming dynasty's issue was always it's adapted from a fl centric (some say mary sue) story, and the fl bits was worst part of the drama. I dropped it where you mentioned cos I knew what was coming in history and it would enrage me lol.

tRoP have similar issue, it's adapted from FL story but the production team clearly wanted to have a prince vying for throne story. It has severe pacing adaptation issue.

I'm late but the western actor is credited as 安地, his xiaohongshu/rednote acc is 安地Andy.Baidu baike says Andy Friend was apparently born and raised in Beijing, which explains the awesome Beijing accent. He played He De, and cursory search says the custom guy was totally real, a guy named Robert Hart, came to China in 1854, became Inspector General (this sounds nothing like the chinese title omg?) in Shanghai in 1861, and died in 1911.

Imperfect Victim did it really well, as did Faithful (2023), but both are bit long so they have bit of pacing issues.