WK1

Ancient Detective was a nice watch for me too. I remember watching it right after Eternal Love of Dream. It seems there will be a Season 2, as some of the riddles or mysteries yet to be solved.

With the right makeup and hairstyle, Dilraba can easily act in a Turkish drama. Just out of curiosity, I watched one episode of My Left Side. Her visual can match the looks of those Turkish girls. They just need to dub her voice into Turkish.

The CGI for TBW is particulary challenging because of several reasons. First, it involves the fishtail of Allen's character. They need to show the tail as powerful and can be used to fight, not just swim in an aquarium. The tail portion of those mermaids in Novoland Pearl Eclipse was very well done. But, not many scenes inolved them. Here in TBW, it is a different story, as Allen's character is the ML.

Second, many viewers in China already noted, from the trailer released last Oct, Allen was wearing a fake muscle pack (to make him look stronger). They need good CGI to 'mask' it and make it look more natural, as part of Allen's body.

Third, the first trailer was also criticised for having poor CGI in some of the fight scenes. Viewers in China have very high expectations for CGI, because they have seen many many Cdramas and movies involving CGI. Even their video games have very good CGI. Do you recall YAMG? The CGI used in that drama was very good! The CGI used in TBW must reach that level or even exceeed that, if it wants to be a megahit.

TBW will be Youku's first high budget historical drama to be released in 2022. If it does exceptionally well, it will give them confidence for other Xianxia dramas to follow.

I think so. Needs a lot of time and expertise.

Computer Generated Imagery, all the special effects we usually see in fantasy dramas.

Also, I think Youku has no choice. April is already very late. If they push it any further, all of their own dramas will be badly affected.

Does not matter. I do not think Youku is afraid that it will clash with Who Rules the World. If they clash, we will find out which drama rules.

There is little doubt she had to work really hard for her success, much harder than Han-Chinese actresses. At 18, she very likely was still a student at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Her first role was Anarhan in 2013, when she was 20. She had to fight for 2 long years to get her first role. But that is good. That struggling to get roles probably helped to mould her character and turned her into the strong lady we know her to be. May even help to explain the kind of roles she picked. All the recent characters she played, from Li Changge to QJJ to Ji Yun He and Anle, faced some kind of struggles and succeeded.

In terms of popularity as an actress in China, isn't she still behind Yang Mi?

Went to check Challenges at Midlife, after what you wrote. That one finished filming in Sept 2020! Only fair that it will air first. And it does have very good FL and ML, who are both very much Reba's seniors. That one has been confirmed for 23 Feb, so Youku will definitely not want TBW to clash with that, as it is also a Youku production. Apart from fixing CGI, not wanting the two to clash may also explain why they pushed TBW to April.

We can just watch Challenges at Midlife, while we wait for TBW. One more month of waiting is no big issue, especially if Challenges at Midlife is good.

Totally agree with you. She is just a total package that makes her irresistible to everyone, including drama fans, product owners, red carpet organisers, variety show producers, etc.

I think this is particularly true for fantasy dramas that use the 3W3L formula;for instance, dramas like TMOPB, Love and Destiny and ELOD. This formula has been overused in the past few years, so it is not easy for drama producer to look for something that is really new or novel.

I think that is why Dilraba is willing to take on TBW project, because it is a fantasy drama that does not make use of the 3W3L formula.

Yes, it is true that popularity of the leads alone does not guarantee success for drama. It can still underperform, if the script or directing or editing is not good.

Slice of life dramas will be modern dramas. I think dramas go through cycles. Maybe viewers have enough of modern romance dramas, so they want slice of life type of dramas. But, once they get too much of that, they will tire of it, and look for other genres. So Chinese novel writers will have to continuously think of new themes to write about.

China does not have any distinct advantage, when it comes to modern dramas. The Koreans are really good in producing modern dramas that have worldwide appeal, and they have been doing that for years.

Cdramas' main strength is still in historical dramas, as writers can rely on centuries of rich Chinese history, to write on different themes like palace dramas involving politics and power struggle or even rom-com in historical setting.

Wow! You are watching this with English substitles?? Or with Italian substitles??

You are correct. No way anyone will know that number. I think when most people talk about popularity of actors and actresses in China, the commonly used metric is still the number of followers in Weibo. And also, what Soangel mentioned previously, the number of likes she gets, whenever Reba posts something in Weibo.

So, these 76m Weibo followers, they are not her so called Alices in China, am I right? Her Alices are her fan club members, her hardcore supporters. And we don't really know how many Alices are there in China, do we?

Thanks so much! After your previous post, I tried it. Just typed Weibo followed by her name, and it brought me to the exact page shown by that link. Shows 76.882 m followers. Countless of comments, etc. Will take way too much time me to read them all.

She has a fan club in china called Alice.

Anyway we can check how many members in that club, and see if the 76m figure is about the same number as membership of her fan club? Or, are Alices and her followers in Weibo one and the same thing?

Really? Wow! Never knew that. Thanks so much for the info. I am going to try it by today.

A message to newcomers to this page, the game that is played in the drama is called Honor of Kings. You can check the info in the link below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_My_Glory

This link gives you more information on Honor of Kings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_of_Kings

Sure. Her personality is absolutely adorable. And definitely very respectful of all her co-stars, even if they are much younger than her (like the case of Wu Lei). It must be the total package: her acting ability, visual, personality/character, that enabled her to garner so many followers, so much so that even though Yang Zi was a child actress, and Reba was already 20 in her first drama, Reba now has much more followers. She is also intelligent enough to join Jaywalk, and not some lousy agencies.

Just read an online article which said that back in Dec 2018, Reba only had 31 million followers in Weibo. If she has 75m now, it means that in 3 short years, she has garnered more than 44m new followers! Amazing!.

I suspect, the same may even apply internationally, that Reba has more fans internationally, even though we do not have any official figures to prove it. One indirect evidence will be all the MDL pages of her recent dramas. The number of fans and comments are just amazing! I also know she is very popular in Thailand and Indonesia. Very likely Malaysia and Philippines too!

Nothing much we can do, but watch other dramas, watch the Winter Games, even while we wait for official news.

When the Winter Games are over, I will try City of Streamer.

The Winter Games will be over in days. CNY is over. MTC finished airing. Right now, the only thing that can account for further delay would be the post production. That must be quite a challenge for them.