Prism

Mysterious Lotus Casebook is my unbeaten Cdrama favourite and Cheng Yi my cdrama King. So my interest in this was a little selfish as I wanted to see more of Shunxi. Watching this, within the first 3 episodes, I was already in love with his acting. He's the type of character that speaks with his eyes, something that Cheng Yi does really well, for me at least.

Xianxia and I have a bit of a yin and yang relationship ourselves, and I know these sorts of stoic, never speak their feelings ML's are abundant, but within the first episode, I was hooked on Bai's character.

It was like an immediate, "ohhhhhhhh, oh noooo," he's going to hurt my feelings. And I was right, he did. It was the classic, seems like an asshole character, but is in fact, baring all the pain and trouble. Simping, I believe some might call it.
But he had me. Just like Cheng Yi with every show I have watched him. Tortured prince lazer gaze and I couldn't look away.
He went up my 'must watch' list very quick.

By the ending of episode two, I knew I was going to binge this.

With that said.

What really took me out throughout this whole damn show, was how everything was preplanned. Literally every arc but the last, was just one plan after enough and after a while, I kind of rolled my eyes. It felt like one giant troll for the audience.
The illusion arc, ok, that one makes sense.
But the first one, didn't really sit well with me, because why would everyone act like they're on stage for each other. That to me, genuinely did not make sense. Bai wasn't there so why? I would have preferred an 'awakening' style approach but maybe the writer just didn't want something that is so common with Xianxia.
The character switch just didn't make sense to me if it was all such a pretend. I did feel some scenes were too long too. It's like they gave some scenes some extra minutes to stretch the episode but minor criticism.

I did genuinely enjoy the show. The saving of the first Meng did make me a little queasy and on two separate occasions, my eyes filled with tears. So far, only Cheng Yi has managed to do that for.

Bai Lu has been around for a while, I have watched and enjoyed her before. Her voice actress knocked it out of the park with 'that' scene. You will know when you watch it because damn, between the voice actress cries and Bai Lu's devasted face, it's an emotional scene to watch.

Bai Lu and Zeng Shunxi, did well together. Their chemistry seemed a lot more subtle but I think that went with deep yearning that the character of Bai felt. Not knowing what he done to deserve the love of his life's wrath. It was meant to be a deep will I or won't I kind of feeling, rather than a passionate blaze. The confliction between the characters was the main point.
I did feel like the show slowed a little after the reveal, which it takes to episode 23 to happen. Odd, since that's the final arc lol But I may have felt that way because we see a lot more of the side characters afterwards, to develop them in order to have their ending.

It's a bit of a roller coaster ride of guess what, and who's who, with glorious sets and hairstyles, but it has a classic xianxia style ending. Thankfully they at least save time to wrap up everyone's story, instead of rushing to a finish. That's something that really annoys me so I appreciated that.

Overall, it is a classic Xianxia style plot but with obvious twists in an effort to make it different and considering the genre's ending standards, it was a fairly happy ending.