olivia0827

True, maybe other romance costume dramas have better production quality, but the chemistry never topped this one.

Well, they have many RPS shippers, but I honestly think that they are just quite good friends. It's professional virtue of the actors to differentiate acting and real life, lol.

Ironically for this incidence, many viewers accused the FL of being too naive or playing innocent. When I was watching, I see a lot of bullet comment cursing the FL, some of them even want her dead for blaming the ML for forcing her hand. I was utterly amazed by how ignorant some of the audience were. I can understand where the ML came from and in that scene he showed no respect for FL even if he's trying to protect her.

The original novel is a popular fantasy novel. "The ML Qi Xia and 9 strangers wake in the “Land of the End,” a parallel realm where they must survive deadly games over 10 days—or be erased. Failure resets the cycle, but only those with the “Echo” ability retain memories; others start blank. The games, run by the enigmatic “Twelve Zodiacs,” blend logic puzzles, escape rooms, and moral dilemmas. As they awaken supernatural powers, they uncover the realm’s true purpose: a “god-making project” to forge a being that can rewrite reality." This is a short premise I looked up. It's about infinite loop , maybe have similar traits with Alice in Borderland or Squid Game. It's promising, but at the same time very challenging especially under such strict censorship in China.

Exactly how I felt about this drama, as the drama moving forward, I feel the characters and chemistry moving backwards.

Xiaozhan's movie Dexian is coming to theater, and Spying looks promising. A good time for XFX :) I'm not a fan of the medical genre Cdrama like XCLF. But his rumored next project Ten day endgame seems interesting to me.

I know you were referring to the screen time. We can see ML and FL together most of the time on screen, but in terms of writing the plot, it did not stick to the novel where the ML and FL spent several years living happily together and the FL never died in the human realm. The novel has better arrangement and pacing, the drama is too obsessed with all the amnesia, misunderstanding, lover killing, life and death separation, the third wheel sabotage cliche, it made some of the audience feel underwhelmed.

Well, you are talking about the intimacy and intensity of their relationship. I am saying, out of the whole timeline, they are only together for like what, one year? then apart for 37 years. LTY said in the human realm that "the saddest thing is not separation, but the fleeting encounter".

There are indeed a lot of controversies concerning the plot of this drama. FYI, there are six writers working on the script, so the quality was inconsistent. Many said that the immortal realm part was rewritten to mend a lot of plot holes, so it turns out to be the best. Actually if they stuck to the original novel and focused on the ML and FL instead of adding unnecessary subplot to the SML and SFL and cliche misunderstanding, the outcome would be much better. In the drama, the ML and FL spent little time together, they are apart for too long, then rushed to die in turns, and the whole death scenes were also rushed, the director did not give enough screen time for them to express the strong feelings, and the FL and ML's acting in these scenes are just flat. I think a lot of Cdramas have the same frustrations of being messed up by bad writers and strict censorship...

It's because they don't use heavy lighting and filter for this one. Both leads are post-2000s generation, quite young and you can even see their skin texture on the screen, which is rare.

That had to be most anticlimactic scene in the drama, maybe it's the editing, I think it's a disaster to mess up with such an important scene, it should be quite powerful and impactful. I saw a tiktok comment "it was as if he had lost a shoe" lol. My biggest critique for the show is this scene. I really think it's should be handled much better than that.

Yes, Douban is really losing credibility, you can see clearly as the rating demographic is rising, yet the rating remains the same. Well, I don't rely too much on the ratings when I decide whether or not to see the tv drama.

Douban is a relatively small online community oriented to limited users, it was established intially for book reviews, then extended to music, tv dramas and movies. Despite the controversy of manipulating the rating, it is still a valid review website that many showbiz data professionals would refer for quality of works. Weibo and douyin users have large demographic, the sample is larger, I see a lot of users wrote posts about WDBTD, mostly similar reviews with here, the best chemistry display and bad writing. They say you either not watch this drama at all, or once you watched this show, you are never getting out.

I get what you were saying, this drama was rated only 5.5 on douban, many would say it's just haters rating, but audience in mainland China have similar feeling towards this drama: great chemistry between leads and romance atmosphere is top notch, while the plot, pacing and supporting characters are lacking. The writers don't know how to write an original character such as Ruling, she did nothing else other than talking about her stupid scheme everytime she appeared on screen (kill Sima Jiao and kidnap LTY) the FL just conveniently trusted her and spat out every little secret with her, which made the FL seem dumb. Those villain are pretty two dimensional, too. People here (including me) are just giving high ratings for the performance of the ML and FL, because despite tons of xianxia dramas airing every year, we've barely see a xianxia that have this kind of emotional intensity. Hard to explain, we are mostly biased, lol.

Well, it's not HBO, lol... the kissing scenes are sensual, and some audience can't even tell if they really did the physical act, so...

“You are the only one who makes me yield without a fight, that makes you strongest of all “

Same here, once get in, nobody gets out, it's literally the therapy to my depression.

Yes, as you mentioned, the editing is too rushed in that scene, it could be handled better. For the ML losing the FL when he loved her the most, there should be more screen time focusing on expressing his grief and pain.

Very true, there are always people asking why this drama cannot be a bigger hit, surely the director and sreen writers are lacking competency. Although I love both leads, I have to say in those climax scenes their acting just fell flat, which is a major disappointment, because in a xianxia story, the life and death scenes are the major attractions to the audience, as we should feel their pain and impact. I guess both lead actor/actress are too young to deliver such pain through acting. As for Arthur, he is a smart kid with capabilities, I think his voice acting is top-notch, his just need to add more layers and tension to his emotions. (Just my two cents, no offense to him and his fans)

I agree with you about the sometimes anticlimactic acting from both leads, they are great at portraiting their characters in daily scenes and romance scenes, and fight scenes are ok. But when it comes to the major emotional twists like ML losing FL in episode 19 (lack of reaction from ML), ML sacrifice for FL in episode 28 (flat acting from FL), FL dying in the finale (flat acting from ML). Somehow I feel that this drama can be more resonating and influential if the directing, editing and acting in these major scenes are improved.