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.
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This review may contain spoilers
It's an entertaining drama, as long as you don't think about it too much. If you do, it falls apart.
In short:It's very entertaining to watch, just make sure to turn off your brain while you watch it. If you like superheroes, vampires, fantasy, men who act like puppies or Cheng Lei being shirtless, this is the drama for you.
In long, for people who cannot turn off their brain:
I'm still not sure what the plot was intended to be.
You might want to think it's exploring the meaning of loyalty, war and peace - except nothing like that is actually expressed at any point, and nothing that happens ultimately has any deep meaning or impact.
You could say the story is exploring the concept of identity - except ML never really shows any signs of identity confusion at all, and there is no actual conclusion to the question of his identity.
What kind of person was ML when he was still Prince Annan? Why is Jin'an the way he is? Was Prince Annan secretly a puppy all along and has just been putting up a menacing front? How does Jin'an feel when he remembers being Prince Annan? Does he regret the things he did while he was Jin'an? How does Prince Annan feel when he remembers being Jin'an? Does he regret the things he did while he forgot about being Jin'an? Did being Jin'an change Prince Annan? Who does he want to be? Who is he in the end? It would've been interesting to find out but we'll never know, because we weren't told.
So why watch this then? Because even though the writing is a mess, there are many other things to like about this drama.
The acting is pretty good, the costumes are some of the best I've ever seen, the cinematography is great, there are some really wild transitions and effects, the music is fun and genre-breaking. Some more rare and unique concepts are incorporated, such as superheroes in ancient times, blood magic and powerful women.
A picky vampire superhero that looks like he walked straight out of some trashy anime with his own theme song who is a puppy by day, what more do you really need?
This drama is extremely entertaining to watch because it's flashy and crazy, which is why I have to rate this much more highly than the writing warrants.
Unfortunately there is a lot of untapped potential because the premise failed to really deliver in the end. But while this drama could've been a lot better than it actually was, it's still pretty good.
Cheng Lei's aura as Prince Annan is great. Jin'an and his superhero alter ego are pretty novel characters, and his acting brings out the difference between his identities. Prince Annan's costumes and styling are amazing; the capes, the velvet, the studded leather gloves, the beaded hair chains - he's the most fashionable prince I've ever seen. Even his raincoat and horse look stylish. The only thing I disliked is the face mask, which made him look like Ancient Chinese Hannibal Lecter (not in a good way).
Li Shuang is great as a fairly strong FL with a surprising amount of agency, in the beginning of the story at least. She gets to take control and take initiative in her love life; she's authoritative and kind at the same time. Song Yi's acting was very good. She was hilarious while taunting and rage-baiting Prince Annan. Towards the end Li Shuang unfortunately lost her agency, but that's business as usual for this type of drama. It's a shame that she wasn't even allowed the agency to take part in deciding her own outcome. In the final episodes, everything is decided for her by other people and she just goes along with whatever happens to her, seemingly depressed and apathetic and then in the very last episode, suddenly happy. This made what could've been a really great character fall flat.
Empress Dowager Qin was amazing as a villain. Her main motivation is jealousy over a man, so she should've been a terrible character. But because everything about her is completely over the top, from the extremely campy acting and the jewelled claw-like rings she wears to the way she goes full dominatrix mode on her little minion, she was actually hilarious instead of annoying. Her crazy minion was a little confusing as a villain because we never really got to find out why he was so devoted to her to begin with; I guess maybe he just really liked being whipped and couldn't find anyone else to dominate him. When he wasn't getting whipped, he went around telling anyone who would listen illogical nonsense in an attempt to manipulate them. He was terrible at making up convincing stories, but for some reason many people fell for it. It was kind of funny.
The writing was quite smooth until episode 22 or so, where things started going downhill. The last 8-10 episodes were the weakest part of the drama for me. Characters started acting increasingly strange just to drive the plot forward. Stupid things happened for no reason and with no payoff. The premise of the story fell flat because the emotional state of the characters was left entirely blank. What could've been meaningful and tragic ultimately felt a bit frustrating.
In the end, the story still managed to reach an ending that felt appropriate for what the characters were like during most of the story, but the process of getting there was questionable. Characters didn't communicate or act when they should have, or instead deliberately deceived and acted weirdly just to create or resolve any situation the script wanted.
Way too much time was spent on the rivalry of Taijin's princes, which wasn't interesting and ultimately pointless. Su Muyang's character was whatever the plot needed him to be at any given moment. He was kind and benevolent, cowardly and weak, just pretending to be weak, turned evil for contrived reasons, pathetic and selfish, corrupted by power, completely delusional, a terrifying psychopath, impulsive and destructive out of petty jealousy, and finally he got a last-second redemption arc and was pronounced "a good emperor who led the people and nation with compassion and diplomacy." If his redemption was that easy, did he really need to go crazy for so long? His craziness wasn't even fun to watch, it was just a collection of the worst and most annoying tropes.
The biggest problem was the execution of ML's memory loss and remembering his identity. I love a good amnesia plot, but here you have no idea what ML remembers and doesn't remember at any given time. During his transitional phase from starting to forget his time as Jin'an to resetting to his old self as Prince Annan, his behavior resembles neither Jin'an, Prince Annan, nor a mix of both. His actions are essentially completely random for maximum dramatic effect and trying to fabricate a false sense of tragedy and a few flashy scenes where the actors get to look cool.
The worst offender were episodes 30/31 where ML seems to have remembered many of his old memories, but doesn't tell FL anything and instead deceives her and uses her in order to secretly assassinate her dad at his birthday party. Not only that; when the killing fails he flees like a coward, leaving her behind alone to deal with the fallout. He was only in a position to attempt this because FL trusts him, so she is culpable for his actions. Therefore when he decides to betray her in that situation, he's completely destroying her reputation and future by implicating her in treason.
If at that point he couldn't remember who she is anymore, this might have been an acceptable and very tragic plot. However, he still claims to love and remember her right after the assassination, which feels jarring since at the same time he has zero intention of taking any responsibility for his actions. Hell, he doesn't even admit his identity to her; she has to find out who he is from her jealous crazy ex.
What exactly is this supposed to show us?
Tragedy due to fate? No. If he'd suddenly forgotten about her completely just before they lived happily ever after and then accidentally "betrayed" her by killing her dad, setting dramatic events in motion, that would've been a tragedy of fate. If he still remembers her, it's not fate since he still has the agency to make choices and control the outcome.
Tragedy due to him having to make a hard decision between loyalty to his wife and his country? No. If that were the case, he would need to completely remember everything in order for that choice to have any impact at all. There is no such thing as making a hard, tragic choice when you don't remember the majority of the considerations and stakes.
It seems like ML simply has brain damage at this point of the story and behaves erratically because of it, but that's not very satisfying nor meaningfully tragic.
The character setting of Prince Annan is lacking in general. ML spends most of the drama as Jin'an, and his "original personality" as Prince Annan is just an inconsequential cameo. He shows up for a few minutes in the first episode and then for a few episodes in the end. They didn't show much of him, and yet they couldn't even make the little bit that they did show consistent. Is he cunning and scheming or aboveboard? Is he ruthless or actually a really nice, upright guy? Is he warmongering or does he want peace? The writers weren't sure.
Why has he been waging war for so long? Is it for honor? For his brother? For territorial expansion? Is it because Taijin has good grapes and he really likes grapes? All of the above, apparently.
If was just for the sake of grapes that would at least be believable, because he really does seem to love grapes: If you look closely, he almost always has a plate of grapes on his table, whether he's Jin'an or Prince Annan, in his military tent or his residence, in Li Shuang's residence or his dilapidated luxury prison. The poor boy just wanted to wage some war so that he could eat better grapes, but instead in the end we had to make him pretend that he's been waging war because he's the most virtuous and righteous person who ever lived and the tiniest amount of territorial expansion will definitely fix all of Yao's issues and let the people of Yao live in prosperity forever. Wait, wasn't he just bragging about the territorial expansion that Yao has already undergone thanks to him? How come the people are still perpetually on the verge of starving then? Oh well, better go and wage war on Taijin some more; I hear they got great grapes.
The whole setting is contrived. Between Taijin and Yao, which one is stronger? Why have they been at war for decades? Taijin is supposedly prosperous with a weaker military, while Yao is barren with a strong military. Somehow Taijin only has one army with just 20K soldiers and exactly two capable generals (FL and her dad), while Yao has an infinite supply of armies of 50K soldiers each and their generals seem to grow on trees. Empress Dowager Qin slaughtered ML's entire army? No problem, there's 15 more armies in my secret underground dungeon. ML beheaded three of their generals within a few days? Who cares, there's another 234 generals where those came from. If Yao is so barren that the population is constantly on the verge of starving, where are all of these soldiers coming from?
In the end, suddenly there is peace because the script said so. All the people that have been stubbornly warmongering for who knows how long suddenly decide that they're extremely committed to righteous peace and prosperity. It came out of nowhere and felt cheap because seemingly two scenes ago, everyone was still very much committed to waging war. Either their past warmongering was a grave mistake and now that everyone has seen the folly of their ways they should at least express some genuine regret about their past actions, or this sudden peace means absolutely nothing.
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