Rachel

this completely rewired my brain

Literally thee best show of all time. Hou Minghao gives one of the most exquisite performances I've ever seen, and while he stands out among the rest of the cast, everyone else is also incredible in this too. The Zhao Yuanzhou/Wen Xiao romance was everything to me and the polyam vibes were off the charts as the second half of the show devotes quite a bit of time to Zhao Yuanzhou and Zhuo Yichen's dynamic. The found family story was beautifully done and you really believe that these people will risk absolutely everything to protect and/or save each other. Every song on the soundtrack is perfection and no matter how many times I hear some of the character themes (especially the themes belonging to Li Lun and Zhao Yuanzhou), I will still go bonkers insane every time.

I have some minor gripes with some writing decisions which is why I give this a 9/10 on story, but this is an absolutely must watch show for me.

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amazing romance, must watch

Honestly kind of crazy that this was released given how strict censorship can be for CDramas and this is just so unmistakably gay. I give the story 7/10 because I honestly thought the whole armory plot was kind of boring and I think the final 2 episodes turn unnecessarily tragic so I felt like the ending was fumbled, but WenZhou is EVERYTHING and I love their little family unit with Chengling, like those are his dads 🥹🥹🥹🥹. Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu have been through The Horrors™️and still remain kind and just... the way they are devoted to each other. I am so unwell if I think about them for too long. The character arcs are incredibly satisfying and moving, watching WKX and ZZS discover love and find things worth fighting for and rediscover their passion for being alive. Also Gong Jun is just so so so so so good as Wen Kexing like I am so obsessed with him, easily near the top of my favorite characters list.

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okay if you want to turn your brain off I guess

Xu Kai is really great in this and I adored Wang Lu (most of the time). Wang Wu, his shifu, is by far the most insufferable FL I've seen in a CDrama and the show likes to play her abusive behavior for laughs 🙄 Some of the humor was so good (I loved all the meta jokes and references to other popular media) and some of it was unbelievably horrendous (abuse played for laughs, contempt for fat people, contempt for people the writers deem "stupid"). And there is just sooooo much abuse apologia and attempts to retroactively defend abuse - ranging from Wang Wu's incessant mistreatment of Wang Lu and her beating him up to the point of breaking his bones being "for his own good" and to "help" him with his cultivation, a sex pest who has sexually assaulted multiple women being referred to as a good guy and befriending our heroes, and a man who murdered his children revealed to having done so to protect his citizens from a demonic entity... yeah, it's maddening.

My favorite character was Ling'er and I absolutely adored her plotline (for the most part) when she left Lingjian Mountain. Her and Boren 🫶. Also my favorite dynamic was Wang Lu and Hai Yunfan, but there is also A LOT of queerbaiting wrt their relationship and they're both shoved into awful romances with women. 😕

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the gold standard

I doubt there's anything I can say in a review that hasn't already been said but I'm a yapper and I want to leave reviews for everything I watch, so...

There's a reason why this show is the entry point to CDramas for a lot of us. Engaging mystery, fascinating lore, fun and fluctuating character dynamics, beautiful romance (even if it had to be made a bit more subtle due to censorship), fantastic soundtrack, gorgeous costumes and visuals, brilliant acting... I could go on. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are indeed iconic and are the definition of soulmates - they'll break your heart so many times in the flashback portion and make you ecstatic beyond belief in the present day. I loved that the show had the guts to discuss darker themes such as genocide and really makes you sit with the horrors that humans are capable of and, through Wuxian, we see people brave enough to stand up against such atrocities regardless of what the personal cost is to do the right thing. I also love media that discusses grief and trauma, and these themes are baked into the DNA of the show. It's just very poignant and touching and honestly relevant to real life and I love the story so much.

Incapable of giving this a full 10/10 bc the misogyny was crazy and we need to talk about it.

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absolutely must watch if you like wuxia or xianxia

I'm actually reading Legendary Siblings right now (a little over halfway through) and it's incredible how closely Handsome Siblings follows the novel and manages to expand upon it a lot as well (so far Hua Wuque honestly feels like a non-charater given the novel exclusively follows Xiaoyu'er). The first ~25% of the show is pretty slow and the first two episodes are borderline insufferable to get through as most of that time is devoted to the Ten Great Villains and the sisters of Yihua Palace, but I was immediately charmed by Xiaoyu'er when we meet him at the end of the second episode and I was even more intrigued when we meet Hua Wuque in episode three. It's a delightful journey watching the two of them change as they wander the jianghu and most of the characters they meet through their travels are very fun as well. Xiaoyu'er and Hua Wuque's dynamic is obviously the highlight of the show and there are no words to describe how psyched I was when they agreed to work together. I also loved Tie Xinlan soooooo much and her dynamics with both Xiaoyu'er and Hua Wuque were top tier. I also just think this is a really valuable watch if you like wuxia or xianxia because you will notice how Gu Long has influenced the genres.

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the only worthwhile adaptation of Beauty and the Beast

I decided to watch this because I really enjoyed Chen Zheyuan in Handsome Siblings and the idea of a werewolf romance was intriguing. I am so glad I did because it's so silly and cute and it's an interesting twist on Beauty and the Beast by throwing in the hidden identity trope (something I don't typically love, but it worked really well here). Now I'm not really a fan of the story of Beauty and the Beast now that I am an adult with critical thinking skills, given it's about a woman basically being imprisoned and teaching her captor how to be kind and gentle and then falling for him in the process, but there are a few things that make this adaptation work imo:
1) Kui Mulang kidnaps her because he needs something called the Holy Pearl to save the entirety of his clan, which Qi Pa (unknowingly) has. The point is repeatedly made that if the Holy Pearl only affected Kui Mulang and it wasn't needed for the health and safety of everyone else, he would not have kidnapped her. He understands and sympathizes with her desire to escape back home and is clearly racked with guilt about keeping her in the Beast Clan.
2) Kui Mulang acquiesces without hesitation to basically every request Qi Pa has other than him sending her home. He genuinely wants her to be comfortable and safe and enjoy her time in the Beast Clan and does so many things that are against the rules of the clan to try to make her happy.
3) Instead of Qi Pa having to teach Kui Mulang, he consults romance novels and books that give information on Daxia customs to try to win her affections.
4) Kui Mulang spends a solid half of the show endangering himself and nearly dying to protect Qi Pa.

I loved both Kui Mulang and Qi Pa pretty much immediately and by the end of the show they had both reached near the top of my list for favorite characters in CDramas. I love that the show allows Qi Pa to be angry and hurt and doesn't try to handwaive away her feelings because it wants us to prioritize Kui Mulang's feelings (something that a lot of shows do all over the world bc we live under patriarchy). I loved most of the side characters and the pairing of Liu Jun/Hongxiu was really cute too. Also I honestly liked the "beast" look, it's just unfortunately really underwhelming when you attach the word werewolf to it.

Anyway, I can't bring myself to give higher than an 8.5 bc at the start the romance is just sooooo messy and most of the background romances were super annoying and some of the plot developments are just ????????? But overall I loved this soooooo much and I can't stop thinking about Kui Mulang and Qi Pa, they really are everything once she uncovers the truth.

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hands down the best time travel romance

I am sooooo obsessed with this show you don't understand. Ye Zhen Zhen is so adorable and relatable - she's stubborn, determined, curious, kind-hearted, clumsy. Chen Che is the epitome of a softie with a hardened facade, and Ye Zhen Zhen easily tears his walls down. It's so heartwarming to watch Chen Che experience what a loving family is like and watch him soften more and more as he spends more time in 1989. The show also goes to some dark places I wasn't expecting and I think most of it is handled really well. Easily my biggest gripe with this show is that the male characters, excluding Chen Che and Li Jin Qin, are all very possessive and controlling of the women they like, which in some cases is played for laughs (yikes!) and in other cases is treated neutrally instead of them being entitled and threatening. But as frustrating as that aspect is, I still completely adored this show and definitely recommend it.

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nonsensical plot and uncomfortable age gap romances

So before anyone's like 'omg you're just a puritan for having a problem with the age gaps,' as long as the younger person is at least mid 20s, I'll accept pretty much any age gap. I have so many ships where character A is mid/late 20s and character B is immortal and has been alive for like at least a century. I am not inherently against age gaps. But it's about the execution in this case - one, I have no idea how big the age difference is between Shan and Ob-aun and there's a flashback of a 16 year old Shan and a clearly pre-pubescent Ob-aun to draw attention to this age gap; two, it feels like the audience is supposed to be into their dynamic specifically because of the age gap with Ob-aun being presented as naive, innocent, and inexperienced while Shan is clearly not these things and being the pursuer. It's very weird and uncomfortable and the constant thought of 'okay, but how big is their age gap' overshadows any moment that could be cute. Oh and there's also a side pairing of a literal teen with an adult who is somewhat of an authority figure for him so... that's pretty yikes.

As for the story... there are so many conflicts constantly being introduced and not a single one of them is truly resolved. Like the set up of the entire story is that Ob-aun is accused of plagiarizing Shan, but Shan isn't the one who makes that claim so why is legal action being threatened? And the plagiarism accusation doesn't even matter because it's basically ignored after the first episode. Also for a group of writers, these guys do not know how to write a story because they spend so much time being like "I don't know how to write this scene, can you do it for me?" like ??????????

It's really not worth the time, but if you're determined to watch it, it's at least a short show.

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insufferable ML, extremely misogynistic

I love revenge stories and a revenge story centered on a female assassin? Sign me up! Unfortunately the show prioritizes Murong Jinghe over Mei Lin in every way - he repeatedly puts Mei Lin in horrible (and deadly!) situations because he views her as expendable and only cares about how she can further his plan to clear his name and then once they start working together as partners and he starts to care about her, the show goes to great pains to be like 'oh but he's sad about treating her badly now' SHUT UP. (Murong Jinghe's character arc maybe could've worked if the narrative didn't want me to ship him with Mei Lin, but since it does, I hate that man passionately. And don't twist what I'm saying, absolutely no hate to Liu Xue Yi, he did a fantastic job with what he was given and I would love to see him play an actual villain.) The female characters are all interesting and different from each other and then they all repeatedly risk their safety for these awful men. You know that quote that's like "I will not set myself on fire to keep you warm"? Yeah, the women on this show sacrifice absolutely everything for the men they love. Also this show had no idea how to wrap things up and the final third really drags.

If you don't mind spoilers, about 6 months ago I actually made a video essay (https://youtu.be/jIexOU_As-4) where I explained how much I disliked this show

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would've been a masterpiece if not for the ableism

The set up is really good and the mystery is really compelling and then everything is ruined bc around the halfway point the show decided to be really stigmatizing about D.I.D. It sucks because the acting is phenomenal (esp Namkoong Min), I really liked most of the characters, you're constantly on your toes with clever misdirects or the show hiding a moment from you to be revealed later and then it recontextualizes another scene, the humor is great, the villains are horrifying (and so infuriating) and easy to root against... there really is so much that is great about this. But I cannot in good conscience give this a higher rating because the outright harmful depiction of D.I.D.

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abuse but frame it as an epic romance ✨

what if I were a genocidal tyrant who wanted to wipe out your clan and you were a naive and innocent girl who accidentally freed me from my prison and you endured my violence and rage bc you're a Good Woman™️and you dedicated yourself to rehabilitating me and loved and defended me and were willing to die for me and chose me over your people even though I was still planning to commit genocide on them👉🥺👈

EXCRUCIATING endurance test that I forced myself to undergo due to how popular this show is and my attempt to find the appeal. there are some kernels of interesting ideas here but the show is entirely too devoted to this abusive romance story and dongfang qingcang being rehabilitated through "the power of love" to actually explore any of them. orchid is also infantilized to an insanely uncomfortable degree - she has baby voice and behaves like a literal toddler - which is another layer of discomfort to their romance, but honestly it's very easy for that objection to fade into the background after the first ~third of the show because dfqc is just so aggressive and cruel literally all the time. and then the fact that every time I see someone complaining about the romance it's because "orchid is annoying"?????? like we didn't sit through 20-something episodes or dfqc choking her, repeatedly threatening her (and people she cares about), sexually assaulting her (most of those kisses were literally not consensual!), just being generally angry and mean and yelling at her and calling her stupid.... like sure there are some moments they have in isolation that are nice, but then as soon as you think of the context of the previous episodes any "soft" moments they have become incredibly nauseating. this is literally one of the most blatantly misogynistic pieces of media I have ever seen and the audience reaction to it boggles my mind.

other notes:
- gorgeous costumes. I loathe dfqc but I can't lie, I am obsessed with literally every outfit he wore. his whole aesthetic was just *chefs kiss*
- not enough sword fights for a xianxia :(
- acting: at the start I was pretty impressed by dylan wang's performance but dfqc is just angry and screaming so much that it got really old. like what is impressive about a dude raging out for 36 episodes? I don't think anyone in the cast was bad, but no one really stood out the way dylan did and. again. his role got old. those scenes in the first ~10 episodes or so where he was confused and/or irritated by experiencing orchid's emotions after centuries of repressing his emotions were pretty funny (and basically the only humorous scenes that got a laugh from me) and tbh I think those were the scenes that showed off his talent the best too.
- music: probably a solid third of the soundtrack irritated me to no end. that horrid discordant music that kept playing during villain scenes literally activated my flight or fight response every time I heard it. there's another third of the soundtrack that I actually really liked, but the music felt like it rarely matched the tone of the scenes and that romantic ballad from the opening credits kept being used at the worst moments
- changheng I love you I'll never stop loving you 💗💗

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