This review may contain spoilers
what a journey!!
The humour: it worked for me, it’s hard for me to pinpoint what makes the humour work for me and what not, but it just feels like the characters are having fun and not that the humour is written for the audience. It did fade a bit as the story got heavier, but it din’t disappear.
The cast density: soooo many characters, and I love most of them, they all matter! (Let’s also mention the amount of good looking characters). I loved the eight disciples, they have different principles, different temperaments, different ways of standing upright in the world. Master Li collected different people with conviction not power. But besides the eight disciples, there were still so many interesting characters, Dongjun’s family for one, so fun - and explains his interesting character.
Of course, baili Dong Jun - the emotional spine. The joy of watching him grow over more than a decade without rushing it. I usually dislike time jumps, they break the immersion for me, but it worked well in this story about youth.
The friendship triangle, I loved their loyalty without conditions. Neither of them abandoned their friends. There is this one line “he didn’t blame you. but I do” - I loved his honesty and the pain that this was. Ah honestly the friendships baili Dong Jun had and the things that happened made me cry quite a bit of times.
Now the romance: at first I was bothered by the lack of chemistry but I stopped caring. For me, this drama shows that love is just part of life, I didn’t need to see the chemistry of reasons why they fell in love, however saying that, love is not just a part of life, this show cleary shows also how love moves the world… there was this part where Yue Yao and Wen Jun where complementing each other on how beautiful they were and Ji ruofeng said “the kind that… brings disaster to the country”.
I loved this journey. I loved the failures. This story doesn’t always compensate you with a victory for the protagonist, but that was just a part of their youth and how they get shaped into their protagonist roles haha.
The cast density: soooo many characters, and I love most of them, they all matter! (Let’s also mention the amount of good looking characters). I loved the eight disciples, they have different principles, different temperaments, different ways of standing upright in the world. Master Li collected different people with conviction not power. But besides the eight disciples, there were still so many interesting characters, Dongjun’s family for one, so fun - and explains his interesting character.
Of course, baili Dong Jun - the emotional spine. The joy of watching him grow over more than a decade without rushing it. I usually dislike time jumps, they break the immersion for me, but it worked well in this story about youth.
The friendship triangle, I loved their loyalty without conditions. Neither of them abandoned their friends. There is this one line “he didn’t blame you. but I do” - I loved his honesty and the pain that this was. Ah honestly the friendships baili Dong Jun had and the things that happened made me cry quite a bit of times.
Now the romance: at first I was bothered by the lack of chemistry but I stopped caring. For me, this drama shows that love is just part of life, I didn’t need to see the chemistry of reasons why they fell in love, however saying that, love is not just a part of life, this show cleary shows also how love moves the world… there was this part where Yue Yao and Wen Jun where complementing each other on how beautiful they were and Ji ruofeng said “the kind that… brings disaster to the country”.
I loved this journey. I loved the failures. This story doesn’t always compensate you with a victory for the protagonist, but that was just a part of their youth and how they get shaped into their protagonist roles haha.
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