Skibbies

It was decent? It was bit slow for some people I think, sometimes there's multiple playback of a scene, due to different perspective. I liked it anyways, could try it when you have time!

I'm doing catchup on dramas haha, finally watched some decent suspense this year yay. Still not watching much historical dramas though.

Very late, but I liked Tong Dawei in Disappearing Child (2022? mgtv suspense). He played dad of a missing child, the role isn't as complex as this one, but it worked pretty well for the show. I felt like playing dad was in his comfort zone, but he did show bit of chops as suspense.

there's been significant changes in tencent's higher up between 2020 and 2023. Most notably Cheng Wu who was huge fan of the series and met with ZRY is now at Yuewen (copyright holder of JOL, qidian's company, it's also subsidiary of tencent). Han Zhijie is I think busy with the donghua section now?

腾讯影业 also no longer exists. It used to produce lot of the bigger dramas and will sometimes sell it to iqiyi (like my heoric husband) because they re-organised tencent in 2022.

i'm super late, but do try advisor alliance, ming dynasty 1566, and qin empire.

for qin empire, there's four series, i like the 2nd one the best (because it's more diplomacy), then 1st and 3rd and don't really care for the 4th. they are about different kings of qin kingdom, so you don't have to watch them in order. they are vastly different in style and tone due to directors/scriptwriter differences, only 2 and 3 are similar cos they were filmed back to back.

AA is retelling of three kingdoms from different pov, but pretty fun retelling. 1566 is the most dense out of everything listed (including three kingdoms) but i found it surprisingly engaging.

there's also ming dynasty (2019) but i mostly liked the first 20 episodes (family+politics bits, not romance) and dropped it at 43 to avoid an enraging emperor and historical events.

I was wondering when you'd write a review!! Excellent review as always. I really liked Lin Qiaosong and Niu Chunmiao as well. Shen Jinzhen's character was refreshing for me since republican spy drama FLs tend to be lackluster. She's fairly flawed but generally pretty competent.

Agreed on it not really being a spy drama, I feel like they tagged that on to make it more palatable for general audience/easier sell to tv channels/platforms. I like that it's mostly an economics kinda story, since it's a refreshing angle, and fairly well written at that. I don't like the last 1/3 as much, I feel like they could have smoothen something in the arc but it sticked the ending, I really loved it overall I think.

yes, he's younger than crown prince, so age wise, he's 4th.

no it was just implied that he liked elder princess, mostly the paintings and his reaction when she's mentioned.

1. younger than second, older than 3rd.
2. elder princess (emperor's sister)

the scheduling won't change, it'll air everyday, because it's broadcasting on tv.

5 raw. 1 svip, 4vip.

she's one of the four hong wei bing that caused Ye Wenjie's dad's death at the beginning, and she has a confrontation scene with Ye Wenjie in ep 2 or 3 I think? She looked too young in that later scene though, cos she's supposed to several years older or something.

she briefly cameo'ed in netflix's 3 body as well! LOL. I really like Chunmiao, it's not easy to play kinda annoying and abrasive characters and still stay likeable.

I was going to comment on this but then I totally forgot about it oops. I actually really liked this drama's starting bits, since I felt like it adapted the rather lofty/unrealistic premise from the manga/jdrama pretty well, and it set up some stuff later. I was also surprised that it touched on sexual harrassment/abuse, and those scenes were filmed very well. I came to love Ding Hei after this drama (I liked his Qin Empire 2 but his directing chops wasn't as apparent there).

The entire time, I was basically trying to track the time. The initial bits of getting them interested in subjects/fun and cool ways to have classes is fun, but also kinda drive me bonkers since it really wouldn't work for gao san/year 12. I sort of wish they went with 3 years or even minimal 2, so you get the class forming + fun stuff in first semester/term and the rest could be targetted tutoring or competitions. I honestly wish we spent more time on the competition! Those are where gifted students making leaps and bounds make sense!

I was fairly okay with their early test results, jumping from mid 300 (not getting into uni level) to mid 500 (can get into first tier university) in i think second mock exam? the last mock exam and final result tho, it's sort of WOW really? scriptwriter, did you actually attend gaokao? above 550 it's hard to make 50 points jump, and above 600, it's hard to even make 5 points jump, what even??? In comparison, I think the closest gaokao drama Ray of Light made more sense? Problematic teachers + students, it's very GTO-esque drama. It's more conventional (comparatively) than this drama in teaching style I guess. It has lot more students and it ranges from gifted student with home issues getting into dream school to kids who tried their hardest and went to vocational school, which is much more realistic.

The romance/crush episode was entirely unnecessary, I know they were making a "point" about fleeting crushes and youth but I just felt like I got randomly introduced a love polygon, no thank you? I actually like Sang Xia, but she's obviously very idealistic and it's nice to see her bounce of Lei Ming. Lei Ming's dad's arc was just NOPE. I know what they were doing, and even with all the stuff to humanise the guy, it really didn't work for me. If he was actually just strict dad who didn't know how to praise his son + absentee, I'd be fine with him, but he went beyond the line multiple times. Screw the drama for trying to make me think "oh but he's a good teacher", yeah I don't care.

We don't talk about the last episode. what even was the point of changing to all these new actors? it took me full 10mins to match them up? The young actors are all like 25 or something, they can totally play 28 year olds? What's the point of giving me new ship that had no hints before? Or giving me a ship that had hints but broke it up for no reason? This isn't even realistic??? It's just kinda dumb????

I don't think they had to be sickly to be fair, Liu Xueyi could work for example, or Gao Weiguang. I read the novel way before the drama was a thing so that was my thoughts when I saw the casting. I totally understand why they casted LGX though, extra buzz and easter egg for PA. LGX worked pretty well when he was trolling lol.

I think my favourite bit was cluck cluck and lady Jin, while I think as a novel, cluck cluck bit kinda bored me (and it was kinda cringey to watch since it's from FL's pov and she was embarrassed as hell). My favourite bit in novel might be fisherman arc? but I was somewhat underwhelmed in the drama. I found the CG pretty impressive and surprising but the pacing rather languid, I think the drama might be better at shorter length, as is, it feels too slice of life (when I didn't feel that way as novel mhm).

I wasn't really convinced with Lin Gengxin as sickly mortal tbh, and that was my worry when he was casted. I still actually get taken out of the scene even with him as ancient god. I feel like his hair without a guan (the headdress thing they normally wear as men) didn't help either, I feel like he didn't look as good as he could be, I think ZLY looks kinda blank when she does deadpan/emotionless, like her eyes look vacant so she looks like she's spacing out, but overall she works better as a character for me. I liked FL a lot to begin with though. Xin Yunlai was disappointing as Mofang IMO, I remember liking him in the novel, but he was kinda non-presence for me in the drama. I rather liked He Yu as Furong Jun though, partially cos they added more scenes for him I think (I barely remember him from novel), and partially cos they gave him a nice character development arc.

I loved parents' arc and qingye's side plot, and sorta wish we had more time with them, but I think more time with them might not give the same effect.

I'm here to give my double thumbs up for war of faith, COME WATCH :D

for the record, he's aware of who's behind the false coin case. he compromised by not chasing for the real culprit with promises that it won't happen again etc. (he was specifically told to not reveal details to the public). the kong family are kmt's wallet, i mean they put more in their own pockets than kmt, but without them, kmt would lose whole bunch of money. and kmt desperately needs money on all fronts.

you can call him overly naive or overly confident in believing he could build a proper finance system with all the things going on, but in a world without civil war and japanese invasion, he probably would have succeeded (and they have huge corruption issue still but it's still a system).

song ziwen is still head of treasury at this point, he resigns in 1933.

kong xiangzhi was named in the first ep by his courtsey name, yongzhi. his last name was also namedropped as the person behind "da jie" in one of the conversations between yu shiqing and zhang mingquan, so it's very likely to be song ailing.

because he's an actual historical person probably. he's song ziwen.

he mentioned it when he was eating with with shen jinzhen.

side note: the poem he recited is mao zedong's most famous poem. there's a drama about mao based on that first line he recited.