Flashy aesthetics with a healthy dose of trainwreck instead of substance
Qingtong: Are you saying that the innocent and kind little brother I always thought you were never existed at all?
Me: Could it be that the interesting drama I thought this was never existed at all?
This was really fun in the beginning. A bit tropey perhaps, but with pretty costumes, set design and CGI. The OST was good too, especially the theme song. Most importantly though, there were hints of future emotional complexity and somewhat meaningful tragedy. Or so I thought anyway. I expected that the tragic guy who had been raised to have no emotions and slaughter without asking questions would get to have some interesting emotional development.
Well, that didn't happen. This drama peaked in episode 12, because that was the only time there was any real emotional complexity and intensity. Afterwards, the drama slowly but surely descended into a complete trainwreck. It wasn't even one of those beautiful, fascinating trainwrecks that you just can't seem look away from; it was just stupid. As if a bunch of uninspired and incoherent scenes written by ChatGPT had been shoved into a blender. Eventually, I started wondering if the promising story I thought this was had always been just in my imagination.
The villains were horrible caricatures. They became black holes of idiocy that ruined the character of everyone around them, because by enabling the villains to do whatever they want over and over again for the sake of the plot, everyone else started looking like an idiot too. Side characters got disproportionate amounts of screen time, while the main characters were almost completely abandoned for half of the drama. Some of the side characters were really fun, others were terrible, but even the fun ones often felt out of place. Instead of emotional complexity, we got a bizarre little brother spider with a vaguely Freudian jiejie complex that took up astronomical amounts of screen time with no point or payoff.
The editing was struggling to make any sense of the material they had. There was zero respect for continuity or the characters. Random day-night transitions, incoherent presence of characters between scenes, scenes that were very obviously filmed without the actors being in the same room, heavy use of voiceover that felt very retconned, clumsily inserted shots of hand doubles that were really insulting to the viewer (ofc Li Yitong occasionally has gigantic hands and veiny arms). The later episodes also featured some extreme mismatch between what the drama wanted to pretend was happening on screen and what was actually happening on screen, giving emotional whiplash and uncanny valley. The drama wanted me to feel sad, but I felt nothing out of spite.
Everything about this drama gave the impression that the production process must have been a mess, which resulted in the final product being a mess. I only finished it to see how they would end it, but honestly the choices made in the last few episodes felt too bizarre for me to even comment on them.
Would definitely not watch this again.
Me: Could it be that the interesting drama I thought this was never existed at all?
This was really fun in the beginning. A bit tropey perhaps, but with pretty costumes, set design and CGI. The OST was good too, especially the theme song. Most importantly though, there were hints of future emotional complexity and somewhat meaningful tragedy. Or so I thought anyway. I expected that the tragic guy who had been raised to have no emotions and slaughter without asking questions would get to have some interesting emotional development.
Well, that didn't happen. This drama peaked in episode 12, because that was the only time there was any real emotional complexity and intensity. Afterwards, the drama slowly but surely descended into a complete trainwreck. It wasn't even one of those beautiful, fascinating trainwrecks that you just can't seem look away from; it was just stupid. As if a bunch of uninspired and incoherent scenes written by ChatGPT had been shoved into a blender. Eventually, I started wondering if the promising story I thought this was had always been just in my imagination.
The villains were horrible caricatures. They became black holes of idiocy that ruined the character of everyone around them, because by enabling the villains to do whatever they want over and over again for the sake of the plot, everyone else started looking like an idiot too. Side characters got disproportionate amounts of screen time, while the main characters were almost completely abandoned for half of the drama. Some of the side characters were really fun, others were terrible, but even the fun ones often felt out of place. Instead of emotional complexity, we got a bizarre little brother spider with a vaguely Freudian jiejie complex that took up astronomical amounts of screen time with no point or payoff.
The editing was struggling to make any sense of the material they had. There was zero respect for continuity or the characters. Random day-night transitions, incoherent presence of characters between scenes, scenes that were very obviously filmed without the actors being in the same room, heavy use of voiceover that felt very retconned, clumsily inserted shots of hand doubles that were really insulting to the viewer (ofc Li Yitong occasionally has gigantic hands and veiny arms). The later episodes also featured some extreme mismatch between what the drama wanted to pretend was happening on screen and what was actually happening on screen, giving emotional whiplash and uncanny valley. The drama wanted me to feel sad, but I felt nothing out of spite.
Everything about this drama gave the impression that the production process must have been a mess, which resulted in the final product being a mess. I only finished it to see how they would end it, but honestly the choices made in the last few episodes felt too bizarre for me to even comment on them.
Would definitely not watch this again.
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