crimson3000

Pursue of Jade may be a lot more your style. Both Leads in the POJ are written very realistic, with no plot armor, no super-human abilities, the characters are really not silly at all, half of the story is about the Pig Butchering Art and the other half is about the ML's 'hidden identity', which everyone knew about it, except the FL, a true humanoid repository of intellectual material. The romantic relationship dynamic in POJ, are also very healthy and realistic, obviously driven by mutual respect between partners, The emperor is a masterpiece of wisdom and deep thinking and the villains are really not sociopaths escaped from a porely written xianxia novel.

This one is not like that. Li Zhen may not be able to raise e a pig with one hand, but she has a strength of character and a talent in inkmaking, She is the natural choice to take over both the business and the family's affair (since they are so connected to each other). I don't see anyone more suited than her. The Li Family doesn't love her, but they need her, so eventually they got to accept her. This is common rant, but if she want to succeed and defeat the competition (and the unseen 'player' that hasn't been reveal yet), bring back the Li Ink, she should clean up her own house first. Once she gained the trust of the Li Elders, now she could deal with the 'Evil Aunt'. It make sense.

You don't like that she knows about ink? She learned the hard way, there were 10 episodes and a 3 years time skip showing how she made a passion into usable and practical knowledge. She graduated. It was shown in the Pilot Episode that she had a nose for this since she was a child. Most dramas, don't go in this dense detail as to show why a character knows the thing it knows, or to add some substance to the manufacturing process. I've seen plenty of business / cooking drama, and learned nothing practical about those things they focused on. So what do you want to see here? She is good but she is not know-all, she lost the Tribute Ink Contest, fair and square, which means that she has a lot more to learn.

And finally, this is not a romance drama, it is a family / business drama that has some romance elements in it. Take it like this ... this is 1 or 2 c-drama / year, that is not focused on romance 50-80% of the screen time, having a kinder-garden story there, just to serve as a filler and to eliminate de repetition of main couple getting together. The ML is a normal / average dude that lost his family in the past and he want to revenge them. He is not a tactical mastermind, he is not a martial artist that can take someone down from 100 meters with just a pebble, he has no support at the imperial court. He wins some, and loses some, that's how this goes.

I've seen trailers and bookmarked this c-drama since last year, it was supposed to air in january or february. They didn't promise anything from you are talking about. It just that it change the release title several times. This was always a show about a Female Protagonist and her ink-making odyssey after a falling out. At that time i thought that this will be something more dramatic, like her family being executed and then she will go seeking revenge. Fortunately they didn't over-dramatize this, and she can focus on her trade, ink-making not revenge.

This drama follow the trend of several other business / family drama that i've watched and enjoyed at different degrees, A Dream of Splendor, The Sword and the Brocade, Blossoms in Adversity, Flourished Peony / In the Name of Blossom, Brocade Odyssey, Story of Pearl Girl. They all featured a strong-willed and outspoken female character with a good head for business, and with scarce romance. This one is more in depth than the rest. I think it could be a good match for A Dream of Splendor, overall.

It looks to me that Tian Family are simply tools and the true antagonist of the series hasn't been revealed yet. It must be someone with a lot of Influence in the capital and at the imperial court, someone that is specifically targeting the Li family. This will connect few of the dots with what happed in the past, and will explain why now is targeting directly the Li's Ink foundation. We also know nothing about the first 5 branches of the Li Family and what old grudges may exist prior.

I think this show was pretty straight with what type of show it is from the beginning, starting with the title. the FL is suppose to bring back the lost glory of the Li Family ink. This is not the type of show, where the FL is starting her new brand, but one that after some struggle and family drama she inherits the family's business. This is first and foremost a family drama, a business family drama.

As you saw, the ink business (is not like the flowers business) it is a complex process, no less than three family-branches are making particular and very necessary contributions to the end product. Li Zhen, no matter how talented and determined she is, cannot make this alone, aka the best in ink the dynasty. You need a lot of resources and work force. I think this show it trying to keep it as real as possible, in was not so easy in the ancient times to start a new brand, especially as a female. As was stated, 'Li Ink' is a century old brand, that was developed by several generations of inkmakers.

Actually i'm enjoying a lot more this drama than Flourished Peony. The writing is more in depth and focused to the business / manufacturing process of ink making. Yang Zi acting is just as good, but the Female Protagonist here it's realistic learning and struggle to the beginning process, rather than start with 'i know everything about flowers'. We see progression to the character, i like that. She also makes it through her own efforts for the most part ... the help she gets from the ML, her Grandfather is only complementary. Mudan in FP would had not accomplished anything without the ML, and accepting being a concubine. The romance is also subsidiary here. Romance is good, but only when is realistic inserted into the story and not over-take it. Also how they brought back the ML in FP, was really NOT cool. He was pretty much dead and buried. It took so much from that drama the way they brought him back.

This is a very intriguing aspect to the ancient chinese culture. But what we understand as 'family' is actually translate as 'branch'. The so-called 'family' is more of a business association of smaller families. In reality they are business associates not 'family' as we understand today. These are the precursors of today corporations.

This is a very good drama, i enjoyed every episode so far; i didn't see anything as good since The Double. I don't feel like commenting specifics until i finish the whole story. I only comment specifics only if there is something that really annoys me.

If i feel to speak about the ratings, i speak about the ratings. I also spoke about the ratings of the Pursue of Jade, which i found very unrealistic. The cinematography and the fighting scene were pretty good to excelent, the chemistry between the leads was decent if overdone (as screentime), but the story was pretty much non-existent, and the progression was running in circles, the characters were caricatures, from characters with super strength to ridiculous portrayal of puppet emperors, a romcom hybrid, with average acting, nothing above a 7-5-8.0. It felt like a parody-series.

This drama is at the opposite end of the spectrum, it is obviously downvoted. Easy to prove reading the comments so far. I didn't read anything bad about it, and the rating doesn't reflect the people's experiences with the drama, so the conclusion is simple. This is obviously a 'boot farm' attack ... different production companies are waring each-other in order to promote their products. There is no point in profiling the 'MDL users', this is beyond fanship, this is commercial war. We just have to connect the dots with what happened with the Pursue of Jade.

This drama is well above the mediocre shows i've seen this year, like Jadewind and Pursue of Jade. This is considering the story, the acting and the music / cinematic atmosphere, which are far superior. I also like characters that are evolving, and to see a realistic progression to the story and the story-arks.

I wouldn't mind the rating, the flock voting here is only evaluating the romance level, they don't care about 95% of the other stuff that makes a drama, good and memorable over the years. When i realized that i just decided to not participate in this silly rating game. The best rated here are dramas that contain 95% romance, and 5% story and other stuff, and dramas like that are boring me to death.

9.2? This is a comedy, not a serious drama. At least it tries to be funny, not really my taste. The characters are ridiculous and not well written, from the main leads, to the sadomasochist "villains" and ending with suicidal princess, the are all caricatures. I didn't find a single character that make at least a bit of sense, or that it has a relevant motivation to its actions. Even like that that they are inconsistent, and obviously nobody put any thought into writing them. Take the FL for example, even if she is uneducated, she is street smart and very perceptive, except when it came to the ML identity, where she is just clueless. This doesn't make sense. And that will not big a big thing, i always take this dramas with a lot of salt, because of the very poor writing. BUT, this is all that this show is about, about the FL not knowing about the ML identity, there is nothing else to the story, and this is keep repeating it over and over again, like 2/3 of the screen time, making it impossible to focus on anything else, and there is really nothing else. Also if you don't care about the story and you are in just for the romance (the reason 90% are watching these, anyway ... and you don't care if there is a story or not), the romance in this is just a joke, and there is no respect between the leads, both of them. So giving this 9.2? No other comment...

This is one of the strangest drama i've seen. It's like a big story is being told from the perspective of a minor character (the FL). She has very little impact to the unfolding of the main story and only function as the main love interest of one of the major character, the ML. The story would have had a lot more punch if it was told from the perspective of Su Tang Li, a much more important character in the story, and if the focus would had been on her revenge-ark, well that would had been my kind of story. But as it is, and how is being told, the story didn't manage to engage me in the least. Amnesia is also not the focus, but a plot device. The FL seem intelligent, perceptive, a mystery solver, yet completely uninterested in solving her own mystery and memory loss.

It is the romance with the ML, and the 'love triangle' (that's not not a love triangle, lol, since the FL is totally not emotionally invested in the SML not even 1%, which raise the question ... why is it there, then? Why waste so much story-telling and screen-time with something pointless?), that it is the main focus of the show and as a second focus is the female friendship and bounding around the FL. The actual story is not really the focus, don't you find this strange? It's like we have this big story about frame-up, destroyed family, daughter sold into slavery, solid revenge, which could be interesting if written well, but no, let's focus on some non-related characters and give those characters 90% of the screen time, because that would be ... better (!?)

Well, even this is better than xianxia, so why i'm complaining here? It just seem that these c-dramas really lacks decent script-writers, they have everything else, but the writing is essential. It doesn't matter that you have everything else, you cannot build anything good without an architect.