Fantastic start but fizzles into silly romance tropes to a boring end
Zhou Ye has become fun to watch in period dramas & is quite a kick-ass action star. She can handle strong female roles with ease, as she did in the delightful Back From The Brink, which is why I will try to ignore the painfully brain dead character she had to portray in Love Me Love My Voice. But seeing that she's in a new historical action drama was exciting news.
Legend of the Female General follows He Yan, a Mulan-like daughter of a noble military family who does not volunteer, but is forced in early childhood by her family, as tribute into military service. She takes the name of her invalid brother, He RuFei, who is hidden in a temple to convalesce in her name. As she grows into adulthood, & with her identity always hidden behind a mask, she carves an exceptionally successful career to become an awarded general until an infamous incident results in the death of her mentor, & makes her an enemy of her mentor's son, Xiao Jue. It is at this time that her brother recovers from his childhood illness & returns to society to reclaim not only his name but also the credit for his sister's merits, while he & their father seek to erase her existence.
He Yan survives the assassination attempt & goes on to seek vengeance & to exact justice for her former mentor, right alongside his unsuspecting son Xiao Jue. Together they rebuild the wrongfully disgraced Xiao army &, of course, grow a romance. In the process, He Yan seeks to rediscover herself in her true identity.
After such a gutsy beginning, the middle of the drama pauses the action while the heroes go through a series of romantic tropes which left me wondering just how He Yan would uncover the parts of herself outside of being a natural born soldier. Would she actually answer her own question of who exactly is she? Can she answer this when she's apparently too busy being infatuated with Xiao Jue? She tries to explore the more feminine functions of cooking & sewing but fails, & unfortunately there are too many scenes where she lectures others about how women are just as capable as men. Why do we still need these speeches when there are now so many dramas with strong female leads?
Luckily, by Ep22 this silliness ends & we return to He Yan's continuing battle toward finally confronting her family who tried to eliminate her. Although in the home stretch, as she finally gets justice, the dialogue once again gets very preachy, with one episode composed almost entirely of speeches on loyalty & virtue. This show could've ended at 30 episodes.
A well executed female-in-male-disguise story never seems to get tiring, although I sometimes wish a show would cast an actress who is more realistically boyish looking (Western dramas are much better at doing that). That aside, the fight scenes are very good, with enough just intelligent intrigue to keep the story moving along & keep us rooting for the main characters, at least for the first 2/3 of the show. The final third dragged on too long, being puffed up with more romance tropes, & an inexplicably bizarre scene in which a highly skilled martial artist can't defend against a weak girl with a short blade. I initially had a high rating for this show but by the second half my opinion went into freefall. If you fast forward through the end it will be an entertaining watch.
Legend of the Female General follows He Yan, a Mulan-like daughter of a noble military family who does not volunteer, but is forced in early childhood by her family, as tribute into military service. She takes the name of her invalid brother, He RuFei, who is hidden in a temple to convalesce in her name. As she grows into adulthood, & with her identity always hidden behind a mask, she carves an exceptionally successful career to become an awarded general until an infamous incident results in the death of her mentor, & makes her an enemy of her mentor's son, Xiao Jue. It is at this time that her brother recovers from his childhood illness & returns to society to reclaim not only his name but also the credit for his sister's merits, while he & their father seek to erase her existence.
He Yan survives the assassination attempt & goes on to seek vengeance & to exact justice for her former mentor, right alongside his unsuspecting son Xiao Jue. Together they rebuild the wrongfully disgraced Xiao army &, of course, grow a romance. In the process, He Yan seeks to rediscover herself in her true identity.
After such a gutsy beginning, the middle of the drama pauses the action while the heroes go through a series of romantic tropes which left me wondering just how He Yan would uncover the parts of herself outside of being a natural born soldier. Would she actually answer her own question of who exactly is she? Can she answer this when she's apparently too busy being infatuated with Xiao Jue? She tries to explore the more feminine functions of cooking & sewing but fails, & unfortunately there are too many scenes where she lectures others about how women are just as capable as men. Why do we still need these speeches when there are now so many dramas with strong female leads?
Luckily, by Ep22 this silliness ends & we return to He Yan's continuing battle toward finally confronting her family who tried to eliminate her. Although in the home stretch, as she finally gets justice, the dialogue once again gets very preachy, with one episode composed almost entirely of speeches on loyalty & virtue. This show could've ended at 30 episodes.
A well executed female-in-male-disguise story never seems to get tiring, although I sometimes wish a show would cast an actress who is more realistically boyish looking (Western dramas are much better at doing that). That aside, the fight scenes are very good, with enough just intelligent intrigue to keep the story moving along & keep us rooting for the main characters, at least for the first 2/3 of the show. The final third dragged on too long, being puffed up with more romance tropes, & an inexplicably bizarre scene in which a highly skilled martial artist can't defend against a weak girl with a short blade. I initially had a high rating for this show but by the second half my opinion went into freefall. If you fast forward through the end it will be an entertaining watch.
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