Interesting premise, great lead, mediocre writing
The good:- Zhao Lu Si is always a joy to watch perform. She definitely is the best thing about this show.
- The setting and concept are interesting and not very common. Combining the early 1900s with fantasy has tons of potential for a fun an interesting story
- Focusing on healing magic / skills is interesting. While there is some fighting, this is a rare chinese fantasy that isn't just focused on wuxia or xianxia themes, it develops its own fantasy ideas.
The bad:
- The writing is very bad. Plotlines don't have internal consistency. Scenes make no sense, or are clearly forced just to have a specific story beat whether they work or not.
- The characters are dumb and not very likable. With maybe the exception of the 2 leads, especially the antagonistic characters or just peripheral characters are just really annoying. It goes beyond "they are making trouble for our MCs" and more to a degree of "why is everyone letting them be clearly and overtly evil and then acting like they're not. This gets back into the above point about continuity consistency. Every bad thing someone does is immediately forgotten about for no clear reason.
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Great lead, terrible show
This show was very disappointing, especially since the female lead just outclasses everything about this production. Her performance is excellent, but everything else about this show ruined any attempt to push through just for her.The direction and the writing are both so flawed that it really became unwatchable. It was actually very odd that every episode begins with a recap "last time on this show" and ends with "next time on this show" (which would spoil the whole next episode), both of which are a level of handholding that I have never seen used since like shows from the 80s or something.
But despite the choice to coddle the viewer with these episode framings; the actual scenes just start abruptly with no explanation of what happened since the previous scene. Many times the show just starts a fight scene and we don't know how the people fighting encountered each other or why they are fighting or where the other people that were present just seconds ago went. The continuity feels completely slapped together.
Along the lines of the jarringly poor continuity, the character motivations are also handled with similar lack of care. Characters take inexplicable actions that make no sense for their character for seemingly no reason other than the writers need to move the story to some specific plot beat, usually with some contrived conflict. To some degree, many shows do this, but this show does it to a degree that feels like it has no respect for the audience's intelligence.
Ultimately, I keep wanting to push through because the main character is such a pleasure to watch, and the core concept of good and bad "heart" cultivators is really interesting, but in the end the quality level was just too low.
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Decent comedy but weird choices to make her a groomer
Maybe not bad, but not my tastes. Personally I found it too heavy on the comedy, it might even be considered slapstick. But if you like a lot of comedy and only a splash of romance then maybe you will like this, if you can overlook the next issue.People trying to reduce this to an age gap show are missing a fundamental issue. The gap isn't the issue, the problem is the grooming that is heavily emphasized and treated as romantic. She was literally his teacher and idolized by him. They emphasize how much he has put her on a pedestal because he was going through such a rough time in school at the time and was super vulnerable. This is not a background part of the plot, it is a core part of his character that dominates multiple episodes. This is actually text book grooming, so to give it the kdrama sparkle of romance is really uncomfortable.
Weirdly they also just show her desperately clinging to men, at least from what I could see, she just clings to whoever is in front of her, which made it hard to feel like the character had any dignity or the prospective romance had any value, since she's just willing to settle for anything.
Beyond those issues show was decent, the characters and acting are good, and the broader plot about the historical preservation people is really interesting.
Though I found it weird that his character is supposed to be a devoted historical reenactor type, but has a modern haircut? I am by no means an expert, and even I expected him to have his hair tied up on the top of his head, especially wearing that hat, it was jarring to have short hair under it.
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Very weird to frame as a romance
The age gap for the actors is very concerning, but also the age gap within the plot is also very uncomfortable. The basic premise that a 15 year old has been essentially living in isolation for her whole life, means that her mental age is even lower than her physical age. A full grown man swooping in and developing a relationship with such an inexperienced child is really disgusting to portray as a romance genre show.Beyond that, the actual plot starts with some interesting supernatural ideas, but it jumps away from them very fast and then it loses the thread on most of the interesting plot points.
It is really a shame that this drama made so many bad choices, because Jang Hee Jin gives a strong performance, but it is not enough to warrant giving this drama a full watch
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Only if you really want to watch fantasy
Overall I would say that this was not very good. You would have to really really just want to watch a fantasy show to watch this.The good:
Honestly there is not much. One lead female actor tries to give a good and dignified performance, and does really well. The other lead female actor gives a fun and charming performance, and does really well. They both do well but just are not enough to salvage the rest of the show being so rough.
The bad:
Personally my main issue is that the main character seems like something a 14 year old boy would think is cool. Just a lot of unearned swagger, and everything always works out for him just because.
The other main issue, and the one that probably everyone will struggle with, is the pacing. The story is indecypherable for multiple episodes. We bounce between character arcs without any real idea of who they are or why we should care. The story momentum randomly seems like its picking up and then just flounders and resets, multiple times. If you watch on Viki and turn on comments, you will just see a stream of people being frustrated and giving up on the show over the course of the first 6 episodes.
The other thing about the writing is that plot points are written exceptionally badly. Like really badly, to the point I was regularly confused how it even made sense that a character would say or do things. Do not expect any character's to behave in any consistent way, or to do things that make sense.
Beyond those main issues, there are more issues, just generally very bad and cheap looking costuming. The fights are not filmed well. These points I personally did not care about that much, and would have forgiven if the story was better, but alas failing on all fronts really has me questioning how much I have to just want to watch a fantasy show to stick with this one.
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Yucky
The writing for the plot was very poor, the situations were completely contrived and did not make sense at all. You might think with "revenge" in the title that the FL would be strong or find her strength, but she is a damsel at best, and more honestly she is just continually a victim. This show has a very weird and gross worldview where it wants to portray a man's love as inherently violent and disregarding consent, and the entire experience is really disgusting.Was this review helpful to you?
Too much misogyny
Tried to push through but dropping this because there is just way too much misogyny for my tastes. At first it's the 2nd ML and I think to myself "okay maybe this is just to illustrate that he isn't a good fit for her". But even then it KEEPS going on for way too long, and she's not even portrayed as being bothered it? And while this keeps going on, we introduce the actual ML and he's JUST AS BAD. Just constant groping against her will, and ignoring and overruling her decisions, just really unpleasant stuff to watch and especially to have it be presented as romantic. Strangely the FL is portrayed as strong and independent, but any time a man shows up that all is just forgotten.Was this review helpful to you?
