This review may contain spoilers
gorgeously atmospheric; an idol drama rewarded for taking itself seriously
experience was definitely impacted by the fact i watched s1 a year ago like truly i do not remember much of it other than the general story. consequently, this review is essentially only the second season lmfao.first of all absolutely love the cinematography in this. gorgeous vibes. composition of every single shot is so beautiful and i need all other cdramas to plagarize rn. this is a drama that isn't afraid to take itself seriously and to me that pays off so much. no cheesy flashbacks every two seconds, little to none cringy slapstick comedy, mature characters and no tropey plotlines. to an extent it even feels like they almost (almost....) trust the audience to come to their own conclusions and not have everything hand fed to them.
main issue i had was the pacing and the allocation (?) of the plot. i remember having the same gripe about the first season, where the timeline is quite blurry bc of the many timeskips, so it's hard to get a grasp on things, especially when they don't explain things that happened DURING the timeskips well (or at all). the first half of the season dragssss (but the second half is insane, and i'm always a victim of recency bias). and i feel like they skipped out on so so many opportunities of character development.
this season is mainly cang xuan-focused which i'm not opposed to! he is such an interesting character and zhang wanyi is an absolutely extraordinary actor - the drunk confession scene and the whole illusion were stunningly well done. however i wish it didn't come at the cost of neglecting other characters? we hardly get to see the dynamic between tushan jing, fangfeng yiying, tushan tian, and even tushan hou. it's such a waste of a fascinating storyline - yes, they get their screentime later into the season, but it's after like 6 episodes of essentially nothing so it feels so jarring. conversely, it feels like a'nian has the opposite problem, where she gets great character development but then is forgotten after she marries cang xuan.
chenrong xinyue is also a character i would have loved to see more of. her character arc is so good on paper, but honestly felt quite shallow to me - 2/3 scenes of her getting ignored by cang xuan is what seems to drive her whole development. more on her childhood/upbringing with fenglong would have done wonders.
other things i would have liked to explore more: jing being a fox spirit, more nuance of jing + xiao yao's relationship that isn't just fluff (although i loved the fluff after jing died i felt like i was getitng info dumped on), cang xuan's harem. how the love gu worked between xiang liu and xiao yao bc it was so inconsistent lmao. more of fenglong and jing's relationship (jing's reaction to fenglong's death??). xiao yao's parents' relationship.
this is a lot of complaining for a 8/10 rating, you might think. you're right. other things i did like: the overarching theme of "burden of power / sacrifice for the greater good / selflessness vs selfishness". even though towards the end it felt like you were being bashed over the head with The Point, it's still explored in a very interesting way through each of the male leads. cang xuan, through his journey to gain power and finally be able to protect xiaoyao, ends up slowly, ironically, irreversibly, shattering the chances of him and xiaoyao being together in the way he wants. i can’t find the exact quote, but in the last few episodes, when asked to choose between the throne and xiaoyao, he says something along the lines of, “how can i give up the throne? xiaoyao helped me get here. giving it up would be throwing away our years of effort.” his burden of power is entirely self-inflicted, and he knows this, but he also knows it’s the price he has to pay for xiaoyao’s happiness.
tushan jing has the privilege of having the choice of giving up his power and status and does so a thousand times in a heartbeat. everything that cang xuan criticizes jing for is why xiaoyao falls for him again and again. they’re so similar, having gone through so much, but one emerges jaded and cynical, while one, against all odds, keeps being soft and kind and trusting. yes, it’s also his biggest weakness (it almost costs his life, again, lol) but ultimately i think this is the essence of jing’s character. i admit i have a very biased view of jing because he’s the exact type of character i love, but he’s still a refreshing change of pace to the cold fml archetype so common in dramas. throwing away his position of power for xiaoyao can be seen as selfless, but he’s absolutely unapologetically selfish when it comes to xiaoyao - it’s his only vice, and who can blame him?
and xiang liu! xiang liu!! is so heartbreakingly tragic of a character made up of what could have beens and maybe in a different universes. he’s almost the anti-tushan jing, where he has countless opportunities to abandon the ever-doomed chengrong troop but doesn’t. and i really love how he stands by this for the whole series, how he wavers and hesitates and gives himself fangfeng bei as his one chance at reprieve, but at the end of the day he had already accepted his fate long ago, and xiaoyao would have never been able to change that. and fangfeng bei!!!! every scene of fangfeng bei and xiaoyao is brimming with nostalgia for a life they’ll never live; it’s short lived but so impactful (that archery scene… RENT FREE). when i started watching the first season ten billion years ago, my guess at the ending was actually that xiaoyao would end up with xiang liu. cang xuan could never give xiaoyao the life she truly wanted, and xiaoyao and jing would realize that they had fundamentally changed too much since their days in qingshui town, and that they couldn’t be wen xiaoliu and ye shiqi anymore. ultimately though i’m glad that they didn’t end up together - they were doomed by the narrative, and it really would have been a disservice to xiaoyao’s character considering how xiang liu (not fangfeng bei) treated her overall.
i wrote (read: worddumped) the first half of this review immediately after i watched the last episode, but then forgot about it for like a month until now. scratches head. so im probably forgetting so many points i want to make but we’re just gonna wrap it up super fast here. despite her past criticism yang zi honestly has great performances in this and it is evident that she has improved since like. fucking. ashes of love (2018). the other standout is zhang wanyi like wow i was gagged by his scenes. this is a drama that i think is genuinely pretty solid (as opposed to my usual “it’s an acquired taste/you don’t watch this for the plot”) and worth a go. s1 and s2 watch very smoothly ie. it lowkey feels like production got screwed over by the 40ep limit so they cut it in half and that was it LOL. it’s slow at times and decently serious about the political plotlines but all the relationships feel like they develop quite naturally and satisfyingly, and there are some scenes that just make everything worth it (off the top of my head: xiaoyao/jing breakup in the snow, wedding after his death, tushan hou/jing/yiying duel; xiaoyao/cang xuan drunk confession, the whole illusion thing; xiaoyao/xiang liu/fangfeng bei “you’re not the type of person to appear in girl’s dreams” or whatever, gambling den, archery scene, xiang liu death
tldr: insane cinematography. solid, mature plotline, incredibly interesting characters with a lot of potential. needed better pacing/clearer timeline, and missed opportunities for deeper/more nuanced development. surprisingly solid acting performances. overall: 8/10
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