Skibbies

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.

you write reviews?! omg. the lackluster second cp and love rival were tagged on by drama, which would explain why they are tired and tropey, I found them somewhat annoying since it breaks fl (and sml at times)'s characterisations. I felt like demon arc could use less time, and mortal arc bit more time, not that I super trust this drama team to not add bunch of terrible writing choices, but it might make it feel bit less lopsided.

maybe they filmed the mortal arc first so the actors didn't ease into their scene as easier mhmm. I think wang yinglu's big emotional scenes could be better in general, but I was super super surprised at her chemistry with chen feiyu, and the effortless comfortable acting around ep 13-17, I feel like thsoe are lot harder to do for most actors. I ship this cp so much that I'm almost on the rps ship omg.

It's okay, I can remind you when you actually have free time :P Feng Baobao is a very unique character, and very hard to play tbh, so I was surprised and impressed the live action pulled it off, for casting, directing and acting.

It's not!! and even for s1 it honestly was that starting bit and a minor char's ability lol. but I think the starting few ep is bit hard to get into for some anyways. if you end up liking s2, there's backstory in ep 10-11 (i think, need to double check) for feng baobao (wang yinglu's character) that I think is worth watching.

If you can speed or skip watch all the zzz bits for you, that works too. It's still bit better than Princess Gambit lulzy second half that wasn't salvageable for me. it's rare for me to really love a cp in drama for both the chemistry and the writing, so I stuck out.

Wang Yinglu could do better with some emotional scenes but she worked pretty well for me in the early over the top comedy bits and the comfy domestic romance bits that you are stuck on, I think those are harder to do. Oh oh, you could check out I am Nobody s2 when you are out of dramas too, I know you dropped s1, but this has different vibe (more mysterious-ish) that might work for you, and it's an arc by itself. Wen Qi was also fabulous in it!

LOL yeah this one isn't meant to be then, I mostly like this drama for the cp dynamic and surprising chemistry. The novel was very slice of life and mostly just about the otp, I think they could have kept the drama original chars/setup but the scriptwriting was just way too subpar, and got worse in second half for me.