mukkanna

No worries if it's not your cup of tea. I think others are enjoying :)

When they make everything obvious for the viewer it's no fun, and then the criticism is "Why do they have characters whose only role is to point out the obvious and tell you what other people are thinking or feeling?"

That's also a terrible way to make a drama. Do we need to be hand-fed the plot to make sense of it? Viewers (I hope) aren't that dumb.

Yes, he's basically a sickly, more reserved, more sit-back-and-watch, more cool-headed version of Han Ye: the traits they have in common are their intelligence, their gentlemanliness, their good looks, their ability to play a long game, their loyalty and willingness to sacrifice their own best interests, and their love and devotion for Di Ziyuan. Novel Luo Mingxi's reputation in the capitol amongst the ladies and the citizens was only second to Han Ye's. His main occupations seem to be plotting and lounging around waiting for his information network to bring him more tidbits. I don't think he ever really does anything out of passion or sheer emotion.

They make sense, but you have to be either very quick on the uptake or watch multiple times. You also have to be a good judge of emotions and notice things that may seem inconsequential to put things together. Often times in retrospect things make a lot more sense--then you watch it again and realize you missed those cues that would have allowed you to "predict the future" the first time.

I dunno, they still jump and spin in the air a lot for not being wuxia...

I was a little bit put off by drama Luo Mingxi's penchant for torture and animal abuse, to be honest. I mean, glad they displayed the whole "no animals were hurt in the filming of this drama" thing, but...poor little fish...

You crack me up :D

Curious why you don't like Di Ziyuan then since her character is similar to Anning's?

-Romance building: I think what you might be picking up on is that Ren Anle is Di Ziyuan pretending to be Ren Anle who likes Han Ye. Di Ziyuan herself doesn't flirt like that...the relationship looks unnatural because she's faking it. Han Ye, too, realizes that the flirting is fake and actually calls her out on it a few times, asking her to tell him the truth and stop using him as an excuse. But there are moments when you can tell Di Ziyuan is impressed despite herself. She's not bright/bouncy/flirty, she's more introspective and serious. This relationship starts with mutual respect and admiration, and progresses from there, including the complications and entanglements caused by their families' history. I think that's very natural and believable. Not necessarily "I want to jump his bones" chemistry, but "I care deeply about this person" chemistry.

-Gong Jun is a very good actor in my opinion, and the character of Han Ye is nearly spot on to the novel. Han Ye himself is not a flashy person; he prefers to be in the background, and actually one of his most endearing traits is that he never holds back Di Ziyuan from shining and even steps back so she can be all she wants to be. This is exactly how he is in the drama, too. In terms of complexity, Han Ye is a more complex character than Luo Mingxi. That's why his actions can be, in many instances, hard to predict. Is he going to stick by the rules today? Or behead people in the street? What I like most about Han Ye as a character is that although you'd think these two behaviors in the same person would mean they're mentally ill, they actually both make complete sense in terms of his personality and goals. That can only be accomplished with a complex, 3-dimensional character. Gong Jun managed to do that, and I think the vast majority of C-drama MLs in these kinds of dramas are unable to accomplish this degree of completion on a reserved character like Han Ye.

-Luo Mingxi's acting is very "loud" to me. Maybe because his character in the book is even more deadpan than Han Ye, I thought drama Luo Mingxi was really too easy to read. Gong Jun's eyes show emotion very well, but his facial movements are more subtle. To me, Gong Jun's Han Ye is a more realistic, true-to-life expression of emotion. I do a lot of counseling of angry, crying, etc people in my line of work, so I've seen the whole gamut from rolling on the ground to dead-eyed stares in response to bad news...

I enjoy discussions, too. Cheers!

Most of that is probably down to Gong Jun's excellent understanding of this character and his emotional lines. The scenes are not filmed in order, so basically...Gong Jun's a good actor. His character's emotions and mental state are very cohesive as the story progresses.

I really like it. I enjoy characters who have brains. If you can only watch dramas with perfect art, I agree it's not for you though :) I can overlook that for some well-designed characters and plotlines.

100% agree :)

Ah, I see!

If you watch all his scenes with the underlying assumption that the things that are important to him are:
1. His throne
2. The Han family
then everything he does makes sense.

- He allows and protects corrupt officials to check and balance his righteous prince and the right minister so that their faction doesn't become so powerful that Han Ye could just take the throne anytime (not that he ever would, but remember how paranoid HZY is)
- He zealously protects Han Ye, his meticulously groomed successor, and doesn't want him to take any risks. At the same time, he wants him to be an awesome successor, so he still lets him go into dangerous situations (usually still sending guards secretly though). Han Ye is probably the only person in his entire life that he truly loves unconditionally. The throne can only belong to Han Ye in the future, and he'll kill anyone he has to to make sure things stay that way. Novel HZY suppressed all Han Ye's siblings and essentially made them into stepping stones for Han Ye...I suspect this is why drama HZY wasn't given any other children to abuse ;p
- He protects Anning but also wants her to be happy and allows her to do dangerous things, too. Novel HZY was doing that because she was a useful chess piece (and later because he felt guilty that he'd used her as a useful chess piece, especially after Han Ye confronted him about it), but it seems drama HZY just loves her. Drama HZY is pretty whitewashed compared to Novel HZY.
- He has zero tolerance for anyone who threatens his throne. Officials murder and burn and rape? That's fine if they're loyal. Officials sent assassins to kill him? DEATH. Di family is loyal now but might not be in the future? ALSO DEATH, because he won't allow future generations to challenge the Han family's throne.
- He wants to prove he's a good emperor because Han Zian always doubted him. I don't think he actually really loves the citizens since he's fine with closing one eye to all the corruption...he just wants to show Han Zian that he's a better emperor than his brothers and Di Yongning would have been.

Looking forward to seeing how the drama will handle it!

In the novel there was some metaphysical astrology where the #1 martial artist grandmaster physician character saved him (Jingshan: old North Qin monk who works for the North Qin emperor). Jingshan did some fancy astrology and saw that Han Ye's star would fall at Yunjing, and afterwards Di Ziyuan's star became dazzling and the stars of the emperors of the three kingdoms dimmed. He interpreted this to mean that if Han Ye was no longer around, then Di Ziyuan would soon subjugate the world. Because he didn't want Di Ziyuan to subjugate his country (probably with blood and hellfire), he decided to try to save Han Ye. He was camping below the cliff in advance, saved Han Ye by sacrificing his own disciple and performing an ancient Chinese heart transplant, and took him to Mo Shuang's hideout in North Qin. Frankly, I'd be surprised if they keep it like this. I really have to suspend all belief to think that even with a super duper secret martial arts medicine technique that a heart transplant can be successful. I mean, no type and screen, no organ matching, no brain damage (because I somehow doubt you can do a whole heart transplant in under 4 minutes) and I sincerely doubt immune suppressants...I can only chalk it up to "magic wuxia stuff." I hope in the drama his injuries aren't as severe and they manage to save him with more normal measures so I won't have to suspend my entire brain while watching :D

Han Ye was raised by Han Zian and Di Shengtian for a while, and his tutor is the right minister (a very upright official...well, except for when he's helping Han Ye commit treason in the name of justice, but that part was removed from the drama). Anning was raised by the Dowager Empress, who is from a famous family of scholars and probably was able to teach her all the right things (when she wasn't secretly plotting murder).

Haha! I wouldn't say the emperor's bipolar...he's definitely ruthless, paranoid, pragmatic, narcissistic, morally gray, and has a chip on his shoulder from being "not good enough" for his father. But he's very consistent with these character traits the entire drama. His main redeeming points are his love for the country and his love for his family. But it's that underlying love that results in his attempts to clear Han Ye's way by getting rid of any and all obstacles to imperial power so he can ensure that his "masterpiece" crown prince gets on the throne to show the world (and especially his dead father) that he's raised the best emperor the Jing dynasty will ever know. He might actually be a pretty good emperor if he weren't so paranoid and Han Zian didn't have some really questionable judgment. His daddy issues are basically the reason the whole novel happened at all...

It's because she doesn't want to marry him, and she's made that abundantly clear.

1. Mo Tian, the king of North Qin who in the novel is the elder brother of Mo Shuang who engineered the war plotline and faked Mo Shuang's death in a fire to start the war. Mo Shuang was a much more warlike and fierce person in the novel, and basically resented being used and thought her brother was not too smart for trying to take on Han Ye and Di Ziyuan.
2. Lian Lanqing, a North Qin spy who was taken in by General Shi (Shi Zhengyan's father. Shi Zhengyan was Anning's love interest and marshal in the novel) after being rescued on the battlefield (sound familiar?). He was the love interest of the Di family spy network's boss lady (and Di Ziyuan's relative) Jun Xuan. He betrayed General Shi and Jun Xuan, resulting in the fall of Junxian City. He also didn't end well. Lian Lanqing is a talented North Qin general who is very much valued by Mo Tian.

Machine-translated excerpt:

Outside the city, only 20,000 to 30,000 Northern Qin soldiers were left at the city gates, and they were exhausted. When they heard the commotion inside the city, they were horrified and withdrew rapidly.
As soon as the Yuan Shu and Wen Shuo led the army out of the city gates, they saw the Northern Qin army retreating like the tide, and...An Ning's back.
She stood in the middle of a mountain of corpses, straight and tough, her head drooping slightly. The halberd in her hand pointed to the sky, its end driven into the earth. Blood dripped to the ground along the halberd.
The noisy Qingnan City was abruptly silenced by such a scene.
Wen Shuo had an uneasy feeling. He leapt off his horse and ran towards Anning. When he reached her, his breath suddenly stuttered.
An Ning was wearing armor, her face and body were covered with blood, and she didn't move a muscle. Wen Shuo reached out and lifted several times before he could remove her helmet.
Seeing her appearance, Wen Shuo staggered, covering his mouth and widening his eyes.
An Ning's face was pale. Her eyes looked forward, and a long sword passed through her abdomen. She had long since died.
But her standing figure still burned with an unyielding fighting spirit.
Even if the thousand soldiers of Northern Qin charged past, they did not dare to rush her body to the ground.
She had finally defended Qingnan City and the place where 80,000 Di family soldiers were buried, albeit at the cost of her life.
Wen Shuo approached her, his eyes red. He fell to his knees and his voice was a hoarse sob: "Your Highness, Qingnan City is secure."

In the novel,

DZY, Anning, Wen Shuo, and HY all deployed at the same time from the capitol. They rode out to Yaoshui City, which was under the command of Tang Shi. They discovered North Qin had 300,000 troops: 200,000 being dispatched to Yaoshui City; 70,000 to Qingnan; and 30,0000 to Shannan. So Anning took 30,000 troops to reinforce Qingnan's 20,000 defenders, HY took 10,000 to Shannan, and DZY and Wen Shuo remained at Yaoshui with 90,000 cavalry.

At Qingnan, Anning and Zhong Hai (he was appointed commander at Qingnan after clearing the Di family army's case) killed 40,000 invaders and lost 30,000 defenders. But the North Qin army secretly broke off an additional 50,000 troops from Yaoshui and sent them to attack Qingnan, so now there were 20,000 wounded defenders against 80,000 invaders. After a few days DZY realized the ruse, tricked the North Qin commander into thinking she was buying his trick, and secretly sent 60,000 cavalry under Wen Shuo and Yuan Shu's command to Qingnan.

Meanwhile at Qingnan, everyone was wounded and Zhong Hai asked Anning to escape the city while they remained behind to fight. Anning refused on the grounds of damaging morale, but in actuality she was badly wounded. They fought all night, and in the morning Zhong Hai asked her to lead the civilians to safety out of the city. She showed him her wound and told him he was the only one of the two of them who could lead the civilians out at this point. Anning guarded the gate while Zhong Hai evacuated the citizens. When the reinforcements arrived, they found that Anning had died defending the gate.

Serious questions, I'm curious :)
- Do you have trouble reading other people's emotions in real life?
- What is it that you like about Anning?
- Define "chemistry"
- What is your selection criteria for a romantic co-star?

I agree that Han Ye is indeed stiff. Comes with the crown prince position, I think. But I don't think he's boring. What is it that you like about Luo Mingxi? I feel that they're actually pretty similar characters, with a few important differences...but I'd like to see your character analysis, maybe you've thought of some things I missed :)