Skibbies

They are married, they had a ceremony and everything. But yeah she went to battle half to avoid consummating the marriage, half because Helian Zheng didn't have that many Generals he could trust.

For this drama, it technically make sense (IMO anyways), but the last episodes really wasn't flesh out well, paced well or even written well.

As for sequel hook, while they are annoying, it's usually funding or casting or in China's case, different restrictions that makes sequel poof into thin air. Hollywood movies are frequently stuck in development hell, cdramas have them too, then there's also ones that never got to air for various reasons.

Because it's not even listed on her douban or baidu baike (wiki) lol. I found her in the credits, her name is Yue Xin 岳辛. Weibo is https://weibo.com/yuezhiliao?from=feed&loc=at&nick=-%E5%B2%B3%E8%BE%9B-&is_hot=1 (her douban's website link links to her weibo fanclub lol)

The eating thing is due to his...OCD, or I guess it can be speculated he's on the autistic spectrum? He's very sensitive to textures so all his clothes are finest quality, he eats in eights, not very good at communicating. Gu Nanyi's parts were severely reduced so it's a really minor point.

They are looking for Bloody Pagoda because they are remnants/supporter of previous dynasty, it's essentially to erase chance of uprising/unrest if that make sense? The emperor is the one that's looking for them, his sons are just doing the dirty work and showing they have the ability to do so.

If you are talking about the stablehand who was trying to assassinate the emperor. He couldn't be kept alive because a) he knew Zhiwei's true identity, while she was under disguise of Weizhi too. b) Zhiwei is closely linked to Ning Yi enough that information (the fact Zhiwei is under disguise, and possibly the fact she's actually a princess) would get him in trouble. c) they were technically under crown prince's control and there's no way to ensure they wouldn't just tell on him. The stablehand knew it, and purposely tried to stab the emperor so he would die.

Ning Yi is pretty blinded by revenge yes, and believes in ends > means. He believes that he needs to kill the crown princes because leaving him alive pose a threat, a potentially small one, but one nonetheless. Threat that can breed hatred and other bigger threat. The emperor let him do it too (but he probably hopes it won't come to that), he specifically only mentions "don't dirty the ChengMing Palace" and Weizhi was there to protect the princess. (although she was to save the crown prince too but I think that's bit naive)

I don't think he has reason to kill the princess yet, aside from her indirectly helping to poison one of his trusted helper. The princess is pretty cruel and careless in general and outright rude to Ning Yi, but not deserving of death. which was Weizhi's reasoning, and she was there by emperor's order. It's a clashing of ideals and that's what I like about their relationship. Although even if he wants to kill the princess, to him, it make sense because she would hate him for killing her *only* brother (she doesn't see the other princes as brothers) and could raise hell since she's adored by the emperor. However, if he did kill the princess, not only would Weizhi be in trouble, he would also lose out favour with emperor. More importantly, Weizhi was stopping him because there's no ends to revenge and it's dark path if he keeps doing this yadda yadda.

Anyways, shooting her in the leg is fine IMO, she was in the way, there's no other way to disable her. In the end, she believes in good of people and he believes in the evil of people, because of the way they grew up, I think it mostly works in the drama? Of course, you don't have to like it.

Douban is super excited by things that are fresh, and is sometimes influenced by how terrible the recent dramas have been. The mysticism/supernatural bits and other elements might have prevent it for being a "real" mystery drama, so it's not subjected to similar level of criticisms other mystery/thriller shows get. The rule that douban high score dramas/movies might not be to your taste, but its low score ones are usually trash mostly stands I think.

This drama have themes, core plot, style that's right up my alley, and the short length made the second half's plot issue less annoying for me. I can totally see why someone would be disappointed by it though.

Very different genre, Minglan is very slice of life-y, I personally would take this over that but that's just personal preference. but yeah it's pretty slow in the beginning. It does pack a lot of information even in early episodes, but I think the initial episodes can seem little flat (not much hooks)? I got into it pretty quickly and I think my first "holy shit this drama" was around ep 15. They kept coming every few ep after that.

damn, there's fair amount of variety here. I really should pick up jdramas again. Thank you for the article!

I poked around c!net and came across some nice MV. There's a blue slider at bottom of the video, slide it off so you don't get rolling comments playing through your video! For people who are uhhh about the ending. https://www.bilibili.com/video/av32261166/?p=1 Novel ending, goes directly after the drama. P2 is married life cut.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av34502125/ This goes after Minhai arc, Ning Yi ask to marry Zhiwei and they do!

friendship? yes.

Thank you! :) I hope you end up liking it as much as I did! You can stop at ep 45, since Minhai suffer most cut, but it has some of the cutest scenes and I loved the acting in the arc following it, so 50 ~ 55 would do depending on how happy you want to leave the drama.

I did suggest 50 ep cos I think there's several point around there that makes it decent ending, and the latter episodes aren't as well liked. but as a completionist I totally get you'd want to finish it by then. It's definitely a shame. Hope you find something else fun to binge though!

You could potentially stop around ep 50 and pretend the rest doesn't exist? :P

Sunny, your ship will happen. Probably in the sequel :P I got it from c!netizens who read the novel. They super heavily implied Liang Si Shen x Song Yun Hui ship in the drama. I think their age gap is closer to 8 - 10yrs.

Yes to happy ending. Romance is not the focus of the series at all, but it's cute when it pops up.

The romance is central to the story but not the focus. It's also kind of unusual in that there aren't much conventional fluff. Def no secondary couple that gets focus. Have you seen Nirvana in Fire? There's more otp scenes than that but it's also the level of romance focus you can probably expect.

The misunderstanding pile up in last few episodes was definitely goddammit. I sort of see what they were going for, if they had more episodes, it probably could have made it transition better.

The father-son relationship have been splendid throughout the drama and I loved them a lot (between Emperor and his other sons too). The supporting cast is ace.

Ethan is too sleazy for them, esp in the beginning, (it's his smirk) there are more people who like him than Yang Mi though, I think he's fine, even though his face pulls me out of the drama sometimes orz. The starting (mostly drama original) arc is bit slow + they damseled Fuyao and she comes off as a fairly tropey character. It can feel pretty predictable. The OTP casting really doesn't match the book and their characterisations are pretty different. I think the drama got better but people don't stick around dramas for 10, 20 episodes for it to get better. The way it fused characters and arcs were pretty well done but for a female lead drama, some of the female characters were pretty terribly written (my bby Ya Lanzhu! Pei Yuan also had more depth and shorter appearance in the book, ) The pacing could also be bit better.

There was a huge fuss about the initial test where Fuyao name was put into the cauldron plagiarising harry potter (it's drama original), but that was a serious stretch to me (as a harry potter fan, neutral towards actors), it was probably antis picked up by various popular ent weibo that fueled the hate.

Yang Mi have lot of antis because she tend to act in a lot of "idol" drama and doesn't necessarily improve her acting, and she gets into a lot of scandal/drama, basically overexposure and bad rep. She also was CG'ed in/use a lot of standins for scenes, which spells unprofessional sooo (I don't know if this is true or not). This is the third drama I've seen her in, I think she was decent in it? As long as you don't pull me out of the drama, it's fine. and she doesn't.

Douban is pretty harsh towards cdrama in general, esp if it features any actors that rely on a large fanbase (lots of fans and antis that skew ratings + their companies buying ratings) Anyways, I wouldn't rate the drama 4, but I wouldn't rate it 8 either, let along close to 9.

The others have more suffering or just sad endings. She likes to write realistic-ish characters and relationship, so none of it is fluffy.

Yeah it's that novel. Probably the happiest of her novels, come to think of it.