The Red (2014)

This is a republican drama, I expected mystery thriller (what the first episode looked like) or espionage (common drama genre for the era), but in reality it's a slow burn romance heavily featuring slice of life moments about regular people in the relatively peaceful French Concession area in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Our protagonist Xu Tian is a smart observational guy and the show's resident Sherlock, whose sole goal is living a mundane peaceful everyday life, but constantly gets dragged into various plots for variety of reasons. He's unlike most protagonists we see, he's not traditionally heroic, tends to run away from trouble until he can't, mild mannered but little surly with his mum, stingy but have no issues buying the best for the woman he loves, entirely head over heels for a girl but struggled for a long time to confess. Zhang Luyi did a phenomenal job as Xu Tian, especially if you consider his personality is nothing like the character he plays, he talks and walks entirely different.

Tian Dan is a smart cookie who can match Xu Tian in terms of meticulous planning and logic. She's very straightforward and a doer, but also rather sheltered and innocent, which contrasts her killer abilities. Tao Hong played the sweet courageous young woman so well that I'm in love with her, her smile is the sweetest and she's so adorable that I want to hug her. It's unbelievable that she's 40 when she filmed this! Xu Tian's mum is notably refreshingly understanding and helpful, it's so nice to have drama full of female characters that doesn't play into toxic tropes. The prime antagonist is Japanese spy (?) Yin Zuo played by Takashima Shinichi who did an amazing job playing an intelligent and cruel maniac that's intent on converting Xu Tian to his side. It's a shame that the focus of the drama is more chill slice of life, as the cat and mouse game between Xu Tian and Yin Zuo were quite a lot of fun.

Xu Tian meets a variety of other interesting characters, like Tie Lin, played by Zhou Yiwei, who's a hot blooded and righteous police officer, became fast friends with Xu Tian and think the world of him. Jin Ge/Jin Ye played by veteran Li Tianzhu, who's a greedy conman that later successfully climb up the ladder and end up being an influential businessman. Liu Rusi, played by Liu Min, a gorgeous singer who gets caught between the two men and tries to stay true to herself. Tian Dan's friends that housed her temporarily and later employed her, are agents that went on missions even if they seemed impossible because that's what they swore to do, showed us what your average agent really might have been back then, they get anxious and they might hesitate and might not plan well. Xu Tian's neighbourhood also have a trio of regular folks, a book seller, a tailor, a barber that tends to argue over smallest things, that make the drama much more relateable and real. They all have their own motivations and dreams, and they are all trying to carve a place in the world in times of turmoil.

I really need to applaud the drama for having all the major characters speaking Shanghai accented mandarin with sprinkles of Shanghainese every now and then. It's just so rare in world of cdrama where most of them are dubbed in perfect standard mandarin, the language definitely made it more immersive. Chang Gu, the Japanese lackey that followed Yin Zuo was actually played by a Chinese actor Zhao Jian, there's a slight accent to his Japanese but he spoke it with such confidence that it's not noticeable unless you specifically listened for it. Zhang Luyi's Japanese and Takeshima's Mandarin were fantastic as well, it's just so nice to have a drama that pay attention to these details.

It's a little unfortunate that first episode was edited to cut out an actor that had a drug problem (common practice in cdramas to cut out problematic actors), which made the drama flow less well, as it was a thrilling start. They also filmed I believed 60 episodes, and the aired version was 48, with some additional cut scenes later uploaded by the directors that rounds up to about 52? 53 episodes? (full first case span over two episode, later scenes were mostly slice of life scenes, as well as a case around ep 20 that was edited differently that reduced the level of suspense and wowness). That said, I actually found some of the drama fairly slow, likely because slice of life isn't quite my thing, but considering how unusual this angle of republican drama is and how delightful the characters are, please give this drama a try!

Read More