I'm on ep 5 and the dynamic between the leads Li Lan hua and Fang Duo bing remind me so much of the dynamic of…
Just two episodes in I also feel like I'm literally watching Blood of Youth, with Xiao Se having no martial arts (anymore) and making his newfound sidekick do the fighting for him. Doesn't help to see some of the same filming locations. And CY looks like LHY (or vice versa) 80% of the time, not just sometimes.
Additionally, 小子 (~"brat") is an expression that's used non-stop in the Blood of Youth / Dashing Youth / Blood River universe, and it's out in full force here too.
Doesn't mean I'm a fan of either show though, or being American, or a card-carrying member of any fandom, or... You know ^_^
Just curious what about the plot didn't you like? Just want to see your perspective
Feel free to let me know if my complaint catalogue https://kisskh.at/profile/luckz/review/306679 is missing anything (have to admit I don't remember the FL's artistic aspirations anymore)
( I've combined this spoiler-free post and the spoiler-filled post under it into a full-spoilers review: https://kisskh.at/profile/luckz/review/555008…
One repeating story loop is that a character commits a crime to attract the attention of the FL's Palace FBI to point at a bigger crime. They initially are an antagonist, maybe attack the leads, only to become a misunderstood new best friend for the FL. Repeat for the next case.
Some comments below had claimed that "all the cases are connected!!!" and such, but I heavily disagree. They're mostly free-floating with no lasting relevance, and the middle has some straight up filler content that changes nothing.
Writing-wise there's zero-logic elements that were either never supposed to make sense or any explanation was cut. For example, early on, there's a human excrement transporter who has top tier martial arts skills on the level of the FL as well as Batman-level combat tools, even an army of combat bats hidden in his coat. Yet his back story is... that he spent his life working in the palace shoveling poop.
There's the usual stuff that writers forget about, like in the first episode the FL has a highly trained special owl sidekick. Never appears again. (Maybe the CGI department couldn't get the owl vs bats fight scenes to look good. Sorry.) After a breakup the ML got super deadly sick, coughs blood, is only barely alive due to absurdly expensive treatments snuck to him by the FL's underlings... and then the writers forgot about it. His illness? Never mentioned again. If FL knew about him coughing blood or not? Who cares. A few scenes later he's fit as a fiddle and back to being ultra smart. The (very bad) last episode in general boils down a lot of plot resolution to some ultra compressed cliff notes format as if an hour or two of runtime had to be cut and it's almost time to turn the lights off.
One thing I'm not sure I should praise or criticize is the utterly absurd amount of deaths and especially suicides shown. -- -- -- Extra spoiler warning from here -- -- -- The "misunderstood new best friend for the FL" character especially almost always kill themselves once the case that spawned them out of thin air ends.
Problematic morality elements you get from the very beginning, where the FL's actual official best friend is another princess who kills between somewhat innocent and entirely innocent other girls just because she can, and yet we are supposed to commiserate with her. This turns into a repeating pattern of the FL and her sidekicks being partial to some more pitiable offenders and repeatedly overlooking their crimes.
A few episodes from the end, when the FL can stab the (quite weak and insufficiently explored) primary villain to a justified death, the ML stops her with a grandiose speech about how killing the villain herself results in her 15+ years of nightmares getting replaced with new nightmares. Some episodes later, witnessing something makes her realize the ML was right. In the last episode, she kills said villain just like she could have done in that first-mentioned ep, or maybe more brutally, and then we are told her nightmares have now ended. Seriously?
( I've combined this spoiler-free post and the spoiler-filled post under it into a full-spoilers review: https://kisskh.at/profile/luckz/review/555008 « only read this if you have finished the show )
This show has a huge lot of actors that I know are good actors, but something is off with them here, like they are miscast (given unfitting roles) or are misdirected. It's fair to say that Bai Lu carries the show and even the ML is more like a supporting character for her, yet the role of being a trained warrior never seems to fit her like a glove and her action scenes frequently have awkward elements. If you've seen Wang Xing Yue in The Double you know what he can do, but here he doesn't get to do nearly as much. Zhao Yi Qin and Min Xing Han feel like they more or less had their wings clipped. None the less it was pleasant to keep recognizing faces even in very minor roles. Maybe I'm a bit biased because I also recently watched all of Blood of Youth / Dashing Youth / Blood River, but to me this show is in the top 10% of cast depth.
The writing is not only not good, but also already gets repetitive within the first few episodes. There's certain formulaic elements that keep being used and re-used. (I don't want to get into spoilery details here.) The overall morality and deeper plot conclusions are also somewhere between chaotically random and contradictory. As a whodunnit type investigation, it's not a suitable watch. The audience doesn't get hints to solve some sort of riddle themselves. Instead, a supporting character waltzes into a scene to declare that they now have the next hint, and this happens almost all the time.
The production-wise it's ok but not particularly good (some uneven audio, some weird cuts, fight scenes between decent and boring). The OSTs are fairly meh too, just the opening song is one of the best I've heard in years. Sadly the show doesn't have a clue what to do with it during actual scenes.
Don't watch it for the romance. The romantic chemistry is barely there, and many comments below express they would have preferred the show without that. I'd say the second couple was better than the first, and even that pairing was totally optional (their scenes together felt like they were filmed to be flexibly deleteable on a whim).
Im on ep 13 and i feel so bored no motivation to watch this at all especially with the episode being an hour long…
If you don't enjoy it, there's no particularly strong reason to stick with it. The last 20% are weaker than what came before, right before that (between middle and end) there's a lot of filler-like stuff, etc.
Then according to you, the villain only shows up sometimes but never does his evil schemes by itself and just…
To make it worse, the villain does the most boring thing a villain can do: Try to storm the palace with (essentially) a private army.
And then the whole thing also is entrapment, i.e. the villain only commits this crime because CP/FL/ML make him. This works for FL "using his own scheme against him" but makes him feel unthreatening or insufficiently evil as a primary villain.
Then according to you, the villain only shows up sometimes but never does his evil schemes by itself and just…
The villain barely does villaining in the present, and ultimately doesn't exist as a character in the show or "perceived history" until pulled out of a hat when needed.
Ok what an absolute waste of a strong cast for a drama! This was terrible and boring all the way... got sleepy…
IDK how the cast can be so deep (so many tiny side characters played by people who I've seen doing well in much bigger roles elsewhere) and yet most of them seem somewhat miscast or misdirected.
And CY looks like LHY (or vice versa) 80% of the time, not just sometimes.
Additionally, 小子 (~"brat") is an expression that's used non-stop in the Blood of Youth / Dashing Youth / Blood River universe, and it's out in full force here too.
Doesn't mean I'm a fan of either show though, or being American, or a card-carrying member of any fandom, or...
You know ^_^
Some comments below had claimed that "all the cases are connected!!!" and such, but I heavily disagree. They're mostly free-floating with no lasting relevance, and the middle has some straight up filler content that changes nothing.
Writing-wise there's zero-logic elements that were either never supposed to make sense or any explanation was cut. For example, early on, there's a human excrement transporter who has top tier martial arts skills on the level of the FL as well as Batman-level combat tools, even an army of combat bats hidden in his coat. Yet his back story is... that he spent his life working in the palace shoveling poop.
There's the usual stuff that writers forget about, like in the first episode the FL has a highly trained special owl sidekick. Never appears again. (Maybe the CGI department couldn't get the owl vs bats fight scenes to look good. Sorry.)
After a breakup the ML got super deadly sick, coughs blood, is only barely alive due to absurdly expensive treatments snuck to him by the FL's underlings... and then the writers forgot about it. His illness? Never mentioned again. If FL knew about him coughing blood or not? Who cares. A few scenes later he's fit as a fiddle and back to being ultra smart.
The (very bad) last episode in general boils down a lot of plot resolution to some ultra compressed cliff notes format as if an hour or two of runtime had to be cut and it's almost time to turn the lights off.
One thing I'm not sure I should praise or criticize is the utterly absurd amount of deaths and especially suicides shown.
-- -- -- Extra spoiler warning from here -- -- --
The "misunderstood new best friend for the FL" character especially almost always kill themselves once the case that spawned them out of thin air ends.
Problematic morality elements you get from the very beginning, where the FL's actual official best friend is another princess who kills between somewhat innocent and entirely innocent other girls just because she can, and yet we are supposed to commiserate with her. This turns into a repeating pattern of the FL and her sidekicks being partial to some more pitiable offenders and repeatedly overlooking their crimes.
A few episodes from the end, when the FL can stab the (quite weak and insufficiently explored) primary villain to a justified death, the ML stops her with a grandiose speech about how killing the villain herself results in her 15+ years of nightmares getting replaced with new nightmares. Some episodes later, witnessing something makes her realize the ML was right. In the last episode, she kills said villain just like she could have done in that first-mentioned ep, or maybe more brutally, and then we are told her nightmares have now ended. Seriously?
This show has a huge lot of actors that I know are good actors, but something is off with them here, like they are miscast (given unfitting roles) or are misdirected. It's fair to say that Bai Lu carries the show and even the ML is more like a supporting character for her, yet the role of being a trained warrior never seems to fit her like a glove and her action scenes frequently have awkward elements. If you've seen Wang Xing Yue in The Double you know what he can do, but here he doesn't get to do nearly as much. Zhao Yi Qin and Min Xing Han feel like they more or less had their wings clipped.
None the less it was pleasant to keep recognizing faces even in very minor roles. Maybe I'm a bit biased because I also recently watched all of Blood of Youth / Dashing Youth / Blood River, but to me this show is in the top 10% of cast depth.
The writing is not only not good, but also already gets repetitive within the first few episodes. There's certain formulaic elements that keep being used and re-used. (I don't want to get into spoilery details here.)
The overall morality and deeper plot conclusions are also somewhere between chaotically random and contradictory.
As a whodunnit type investigation, it's not a suitable watch. The audience doesn't get hints to solve some sort of riddle themselves. Instead, a supporting character waltzes into a scene to declare that they now have the next hint, and this happens almost all the time.
The production-wise it's ok but not particularly good (some uneven audio, some weird cuts, fight scenes between decent and boring). The OSTs are fairly meh too, just the opening song is one of the best I've heard in years. Sadly the show doesn't have a clue what to do with it during actual scenes.
Don't watch it for the romance. The romantic chemistry is barely there, and many comments below express they would have preferred the show without that. I'd say the second couple was better than the first, and even that pairing was totally optional (their scenes together felt like they were filmed to be flexibly deleteable on a whim).
Likely: Not that much, but you of course never know
(And how is Zang Hai by comparison?)
Try to storm the palace with (essentially) a private army.
And then the whole thing also is entrapment, i.e. the villain only commits this crime because CP/FL/ML make him. This works for FL "using his own scheme against him" but makes him feel unthreatening or insufficiently evil as a primary villain.
There's a show that coincidentally shares a good lot of the cast where the ML has a whole freaking dragon, I mean house-sized snake, for an episode.
(Agree with your sentiment. Knew this would be a very average drama and got a very average drama.)
I'd say I'm 85% confident there won't be a Season 2 to this.
The romance is very optional.