This review may contain spoilers
Started for the mystery, stayed for Shen Du
Real rating is 11 for the music & 10 for romance so 8.9/10
I have a crush on Ding YuXi. He’s so *hawt* in this role and I wish the show was faster to get better *hits* of hotness seretonin. That said it takes about 10 episodes for us to get more of that the serious/stoic Shen Du.
I think the plot overall could have been a bit tighter. There’s a lot of moving variables and characters that make sense and connect well, but at the same time don’t really affect the plot. We spend so much time on the prince and princess but they don’t really actually add to the plot and their storylines dragged the overall experience. I know it was to cause intrigue and make us think maybe one of them is evil but that line of thought doesn’t even sustain itself with what we are given so I feel like the show would have been much stronger if it was closer to 35 episodes instead and removed some of the extra noise.
Also did they really have to kill Marshall Xu and Yun Que 😭 I know they were the “least important couple” but they were still so cute and their death was so sad. Always gotta kill a couple or something for the tears and stakes but I feel like coma and they wake up would have sufficed. Whatever. I saw it coming that a secondary couple would end with tragedy and once he had that cute moment about the wedding it was game over.
I would definitely rewatch it but skip the parts that were more espionage than general mystery or romance. The antagonist is just an actual crazy man that needed a better mother and therapy so he was pretty one dimensional and boring in that way. I’m still not sure I understand his mother’s motives for traumatizing her child but sure let’s go with that.
Last but not least THIS OST was amazing. I have been pretty generous to music of shows giving 10 if they fit the overall show, but even when I took a break from this show I was listing to the OST so I had to give it an 11 bc it was THAT good. I wish Ryan Ding had more songs!
### Original Thoughts & Ideas
- Good vs evil is pretty black and white in this show unlike something like The Prisoner of Beauty. We have some “gray” characters but even they are mostly good or mostly bad. The Empress Dowager seemed to have in fact not wanted the consort’s child be the emperor but it’s not clear how much of a role she *actually* played in the consort’s suicide. But the Black Fiend was truly just a man who saw his mom die and made a cult about reincarnation to kinda, not really deal with the trauma. I almost want to label him a victim and in a way he is because his whole life was built off this narrative his mother fed him. But he’s still a “black” character. He isn’t nice to his adoptive sisters, he attacks the woman he claims to love, and throws any blame of his actions on the Empress Dowager for believing what was pretty solid evidence against innocent but framed people. We could label Shen Du as “gray” because he’s a “dark horse” type guy but I would more call him “good” with a wall as protection due to his own childhood trauma.
- It is interesting that both men witnessed extreme wrong doing to their parent(s) but one chose the path of righteousness and the other of sinister obsession.
I have a crush on Ding YuXi. He’s so *hawt* in this role and I wish the show was faster to get better *hits* of hotness seretonin. That said it takes about 10 episodes for us to get more of that the serious/stoic Shen Du.
I think the plot overall could have been a bit tighter. There’s a lot of moving variables and characters that make sense and connect well, but at the same time don’t really affect the plot. We spend so much time on the prince and princess but they don’t really actually add to the plot and their storylines dragged the overall experience. I know it was to cause intrigue and make us think maybe one of them is evil but that line of thought doesn’t even sustain itself with what we are given so I feel like the show would have been much stronger if it was closer to 35 episodes instead and removed some of the extra noise.
Also did they really have to kill Marshall Xu and Yun Que 😭 I know they were the “least important couple” but they were still so cute and their death was so sad. Always gotta kill a couple or something for the tears and stakes but I feel like coma and they wake up would have sufficed. Whatever. I saw it coming that a secondary couple would end with tragedy and once he had that cute moment about the wedding it was game over.
I would definitely rewatch it but skip the parts that were more espionage than general mystery or romance. The antagonist is just an actual crazy man that needed a better mother and therapy so he was pretty one dimensional and boring in that way. I’m still not sure I understand his mother’s motives for traumatizing her child but sure let’s go with that.
Last but not least THIS OST was amazing. I have been pretty generous to music of shows giving 10 if they fit the overall show, but even when I took a break from this show I was listing to the OST so I had to give it an 11 bc it was THAT good. I wish Ryan Ding had more songs!
### Original Thoughts & Ideas
- Good vs evil is pretty black and white in this show unlike something like The Prisoner of Beauty. We have some “gray” characters but even they are mostly good or mostly bad. The Empress Dowager seemed to have in fact not wanted the consort’s child be the emperor but it’s not clear how much of a role she *actually* played in the consort’s suicide. But the Black Fiend was truly just a man who saw his mom die and made a cult about reincarnation to kinda, not really deal with the trauma. I almost want to label him a victim and in a way he is because his whole life was built off this narrative his mother fed him. But he’s still a “black” character. He isn’t nice to his adoptive sisters, he attacks the woman he claims to love, and throws any blame of his actions on the Empress Dowager for believing what was pretty solid evidence against innocent but framed people. We could label Shen Du as “gray” because he’s a “dark horse” type guy but I would more call him “good” with a wall as protection due to his own childhood trauma.
- It is interesting that both men witnessed extreme wrong doing to their parent(s) but one chose the path of righteousness and the other of sinister obsession.
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