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This review may contain spoilers
Stunning chemistry and a well thought-out plot
I tuned into this one about halfway and it quickly became something I looked forward to every morning.
Individually, the leads perfectly embodied their roles, but together, the chemistry simply jumped off the screen. They were just so good together in every single scene they were in, whether it was a steamy one, an action one, or a funny one.
I really liked how much of the world we got to see as the characters journeyed from place to place, starting from Lin'an Village, to the military, and then to the royal court and all the politics that came with it.
This is a minor gripe but I do think the pacing was a little off at times. I really liked the slower, slice-of-life feeling in Lin'an, but after we left and went to the military camp, there were just so many close calls and fake-outs with the identity reveal that it got quite frustrating. The final arc where the backstory is revealed also felt a little rushed to me? While I think it got a lot of screentime (and our leads got less), I'm not sure the way everything played out had quite the climax I was expecting, especially with some of the antagonists scheming for 30+ episodes just to fall in less than 15 minutes.
I'm also pretty mixed on the "second pairing" — in quotes because the show seemed to contradict itself about how they wanted to portray them. It was definitely not a romance and was toxic and abusive, but they also had a lot of those slow motion steamy scenes, and a sort of(?) redemption. kind of Other than that, there are hints of family and friendship that are nice to see but it's really not significant — which was kind of a double-edged sword because it meant that I didn't care that much for the side characters. But on the other hand, the main leads were what I really cared about and I was happy to get as much as I could of them.
Individually, the leads perfectly embodied their roles, but together, the chemistry simply jumped off the screen. They were just so good together in every single scene they were in, whether it was a steamy one, an action one, or a funny one.
I really liked how much of the world we got to see as the characters journeyed from place to place, starting from Lin'an Village, to the military, and then to the royal court and all the politics that came with it.
This is a minor gripe but I do think the pacing was a little off at times. I really liked the slower, slice-of-life feeling in Lin'an, but after we left and went to the military camp, there were just so many close calls and fake-outs with the identity reveal that it got quite frustrating. The final arc where the backstory is revealed also felt a little rushed to me? While I think it got a lot of screentime (and our leads got less), I'm not sure the way everything played out had quite the climax I was expecting, especially with some of the antagonists scheming for 30+ episodes just to fall in less than 15 minutes.
I'm also pretty mixed on the "second pairing" — in quotes because the show seemed to contradict itself about how they wanted to portray them. It was definitely not a romance and was toxic and abusive, but they also had a lot of those slow motion steamy scenes, and a sort of(?) redemption. kind of Other than that, there are hints of family and friendship that are nice to see but it's really not significant — which was kind of a double-edged sword because it meant that I didn't care that much for the side characters. But on the other hand, the main leads were what I really cared about and I was happy to get as much as I could of them.
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