WK1

The English speaking market must be bigger than the Thai market. So, very likely we will get Eng subs before the Thai sub.

I also agree that the subs will be out soon. Youku has so many dramas in the pipeline. If the subs are not out soon, the other dramas will also be held up in their international release.

I do not think the rating dropped because of the lack of subs. One or two maybe have rated it down due to that reason. I still feel that the biggest suspects are people who deliberately rate it down for other reasons.

They do. It has been about a year, but I still recall the snow walk scene in TLB. With the snow falling, they started to play the opening OST sung by Zhang Bichen even as Li Changge walked out the gate to surrender the city. That was such a powerful song for that scene.

Here in TBW, they keep playing either 'As you wish' or 'Leaping fish' for all the sad scenes.

No concrete answer, but we do suspect sometime toward the end of April.

Although Dilraba cried many times in TLB, I hardly shed a tear. Not because her acting was bad, but because Li Changge's life was never in danger. She cried from sadness of losing her parents, her pal, Gongsun couple, etc. But her own life was never in danger. I saw her as a brave warrior.

Here in TBW, she died. Even though we all know that she will be reborn, still the very act of her sacrificing her own life for the sake of others was very powerful. And then to see all those people who missed her, from Changyi to Luoluo, to Sanyue, and all the people at Wanhua Valley, and Baiyuan. All those scences are very emotional, definitely tearjerkers.

The Long Ballad and The Blue Whisper are slightly different dramas. Different emphasis, I mean.

The Long Ballad has war between two nations as the backdrop. And Li Changge was a warrior. So that opening OST was really appropriate. And many of the BGMs too, was highly appropriate, for what the drama was trying to do, to create suspense.

In TBW, I think they focus slightly more on romance. So arousing romantic feelings, and also emotion of sadness become the key goals of the OSTs and BGM. To this end, they have done extremely well.

So, I think in the music department, both TLB and TBW teams did really well.

We do not know the number of views, as Youku does not use view count to track popularity. They use what is called heat index, which is a composite of view count, discussion generated in Weibo, etc.

Using this heat index, we can see that it has done extremely well in China. Last two nights, it hit the maximum of 10,000. I think no Youku drama has hit this level.

Even Part 1 did very well.

So, as a whole, this drama is doing extremely well in China. No question about that.

I think after tonight's episodes, she knows where she stands in Changyi's life. She's no competition for Ji Yunhe.

I understand how you feel. Even though I can understand Mandarin, and can watch this raw, I can feel what a lot of you are feeling.

My pain comes from not being able to share the enjoyment of watching this drama with so many of you.

And so, I will join with all of you and wait patiently for the subs, and hope that they will arrive quickly. I will then re-watch every second of every episode, as if it is freshly aired, and join the many hundreds here in discussing this wonderful drama.

So I do feel that they may have taken away some of the scenes that might disappoint novel readers. But they also added stuff in the drama, to increase more sadness in drama viewers. Maybe the scriptwriter and director feel that this will leave a more lasting memory of Ji Yunhe (as well as Changyi) in our minds? The two episodes tonight could be epic.

I did not cry one single bit in TLB. She was a brave girl there. Not even in YAMG, as her pain was too brief. Here, it is prolonged and sustained. Physical pain, emotional pain. Just watching those preview scenes for tonight's episodes was enough to bring tears to my eyes. Tonight, it could be flooding.

I read in Twitter. They changed the way she died, compared to the novel. And this is an even more painful death, sure to make those boxes of tissue useful.

Hopefully not. Millions of her overseas fans must be totally disappointed by what is happening now, knowing TBW is a great drama, but they can't watch it because there are no subs.

I think that is her main role in this drama, to show that Changyi loves only Ji Yunhe, no matter what Qing Yao does. He sticks to his merman culture: one woman his entire life.

In the China market, I do believe all the hardcare fans of Reba and Allen would have already given their full support to this drama. And will continue to give their full support till the very end. We do not have specific numbers, but we have indications that this drama has already made quite good money for all the producers.

They will still need passersby to make even more money, because, there is no such thing as making more money is a bad thing. $ X plus $ Y is always better than $ X, even if $ Y isn't very big.

For China, since this is already shown, word of mouth will get around and fans of Reba and Allen would have asked their friends to watch TBW. We still see Youku doing very heavey promo of this drama in China.

But, the overseas market could be very different. With this delay, overseas fans of Reba and Allen would have a hard time asking their friends to watch, because there are no subs available. So, yah, while it is possible that Reba and Allen fans will wait, others may not. But, I suspect Croton is not worried about those passersby who decide to watch other dramas (because they do not want to wait). Croton may just sell the rights to Neflix, so, in the end, even if it is just core international fans of Reba and Allen supporting TBW, they will still be happy.

And, if you are talking about people coming to this page to discuss, for sure we merely need all the hardcore fans of Reba and Allen. Most passersby will watch some of the other dramas will be airing soon, and they may not even watch TBW after that.

So, if it is a late broadcast with Eng subs, Croton may not do much promo at all.

If for investors, all the more they should give an indication of international broadcast. Investors already know that domestically, the drama is doing great. But, they will want to know how Croton is marketing this to international markets or what kind of issues or challenges they are facing, in relation to foreign broadcasting authorities, and what Croton is doing about those issues.

Is this an open event where the press will be there? If it is a closed door meeting, just for investors, we might never know what Huace told investors.

Now, we know that Huace is also an investor in this drama. By investors, you must be referring to other people who put money into this drama? I presume that would include product advertisers?? I saw a lot of company names mentioned in the ending credits. If those advertisers have international presense, they will want this drama to be shown ASAP on Croton's YouTube channel, rather than having a long delay.

It was a rather violent way of giving his energy back to Qing Yao too. She could suffer a whiplash.

You are talking about the 2 episodes tonight? It seems she will die tonight, but will be reborn. I think the ending will be a happy one.

That's good. Maybe at the Thursday event, they will reveal more details about what is actually going on, and, most importantly, let us know when international viewers can watch TBW.