Story: I've skimmed through a large majority of the book, so I know where the general plot is heading. I absolutely adore the novel so far; it's very well written and I personally feel that the drama has adapted mildly okay. I watch the episodes the day they air and as soon as they are uploaded because I'm super addicted to the story and can't wait to see what happens next. However, they started to focus a lot on the side characters especially towards the end, and then.........that ending LOL
Acting/Cast: Everyone's acting is on point!! I honestly watched this just for Zhao Liying but throughout these episodes I have started to grown fond for the other actors/actresses and their acting skills. Everyone's on point, even the minor characters!
Music: I personally feel that Chinese historical dramas have some of the best OST and music there is, however, this drama's OST pales a bit in comparison to other historical drama OSTs I have liked in the past. I personally love the opening and ending theme songs, as well as Yan Xun's theme song and some other instrumentals. Not too bad, and quite fitting.
Rewatch Value:
There are a lot of scenes that were quite memorable, such as Chu Qiao's long speech with Zhong Yu, Yan Xun's family's massacre, and a couple others. I would definitely rewatch my favorite scenes, but not the entire drama.
Overall:
A decent watch with a story that fell short. I really love Zhao Liying though, so I think it was still enjoyable.
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Well ,enough with my rants. Despite the flaws and disappointments, I still gave a very high rating because of all the feels I experienced while watching. YWY alone saved the drama. I might be biased in saying this but regardless of how tired I got from watching it dragged and dragged, I still continued watching it because of YWY and XingYue couple. Last time, I watched TMOPB, I thought Ye Hua must be the most suffering hero in all C-drama, but YWY just took the title. His love was so selfless and understanding that he does not ask for her to stay but only wants her to live happily. And of course, LGX brought YWY to life. Chu Qiao was very appealing and satisfying to watch as a female heroine who rose from slave status to a famous general in the beginning; yet, it became a subdued character in later episodes when she kept staying besides Yan Xun despite all that he has done. And the romance felt real and the two had so much chemistry that even with all the separations, every scene they are together, so much emotions felt between them.
Acting-wise, all the casts did a very great job. No one was lacking in his/her role. LGX especially stood out for me because his portrayal of YWY was majestic. ZLY, of course, did justice to her character. I didn't mention much of YX character because I wasn't a big fan of his, yet, Shawn Dou also did a great job portraying his character change.
So, to conclude, regardless of all the flaws and negative points, it was one of the great dramas this year, evidenced by the ratings and online views. I would still recommend to watch it if you are a great fan of Chinese historical/wuxia dramas and if you are a fan of either of the main leads and of course, if you can stand their pace and editing style.
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The drama is saved only by the heroes of the second plan. I fell in love with the characters played by Li Qin and Shown Dou. They were colorful and passionate personalities. Their tragic history was the only one in this drama that appealed to me. I watched the drama only for them.
It is not surprising the chaos of the plot, the lack of any development of the main characters when you consider that the drama script was based on a novel that lost the plagiarism trial. After the court verdict, I understood why watching this drama I always had a sense of deja vu.
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This review may contain spoilers
“How to Get Sidetracked: A Comprehensive Manual,” the Drama
Disclaimer: I read a few recaps and skimmed past episode 41.I was watching this when it first aired. I watched around ~25 episodes before life got distracting. Years later, I was idly scrolling through my dropped dramas and decided that if I was still curious about Chu Qiao’s fate after all this time, I might as well give it another go.
I’m not curious anymore. The entire reason I came back—to watch Chu Qiao rediscover her identity and realize her true potential—is so irrelevant it can hardly be called a side plot. They spend so much time ignoring what makes these characters interesting in favor of convoluted politics and half-baked romances and cheap conflicts. I didn’t even technically finish all 58 episodes and I still couldn’t tell you what happened in the episodes I DID watch.
The entire first half of the drama serves next to no purpose. Assuming you hadn’t read the novel, you’d never guess the trajectory of the story from the first ~30 episodes. Is it about Chu Qiao’s past? No. Is it about her toppling the system that turned her and so many others into slaves? Nope. Is it about her revenge, after that system takes the lives of her adopted family? Uh-uh. Is it about her finding a middle ground with her master/mentor/love-interest, and them teaming up to root out the corruption within the empire? Hardly.
It’s about the second-lead, Yan Xun—who you’d think is the love interest based on the sheer amount of screentime he spends with Chu Qiao—and how his soul is blackened by the assassination of his family after the Emperor’s betrayal. Which doesn’t sound half-bad, conceptually. Except it takes another 10 or so episodes (3+ years drama-time) before he can do anything interesting about it, and there’s no payoff because he brutalizes innocent people, betrays his allies, and loses Chu Qiao’s trust to make it happen. The rest of the drama, as far as I can tell, is about:
1. Everyone being in love with Chu Qiao and saving her at the critical moment
2. Yan Xun being hellbent on destroying the capital of the Empire, even if he has to forsake his homeland to do it
3. Princess Chun’er, who was formerly in love with Yan Xun, going insane and seeking vengeance against Chu Qiao because she considers Chu Qiao the catalyst to the series of events that destroyed her life, love, and virtue.
4. Chu Qiao feeling used and conflicted about where to place her loyalties
5. A montage of generally unimportant characters doing generally unimportant crap, just to stir up trouble and remind us that they exist.
And then everyone dies.
I’m kidding. A lot of people die, including (maybe), the main love interest. Chu Qiao ~almost~ dies and potentially remembers who she is, but we’ll never know, because that’s it, folks. Nothing has been resolved. We’re just left hanging alongside a landslide of loose ends, because that’s what happens when you dive into a dozen different plot lines and can’t keep track of them.
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This review may contain spoilers
I kind of have mixed feelings about 'princess agents'.It started off really good and i was sucked in into the story as i kept watching, but after about 45 or 50 episodes it kinda went downhill and became messy and didn't make sense at times.
I will start by mentioning my favorite things about this drama, firstly i adore the ost!! it's so beautiful!
Secondly i love the fact that the main female lead is a strong and independent woman and i absolutely love how badass she is!
Now the things that i didn't like, sometimes it felt like the writers didn't know what to do anymore and they just randomly made a character evil or made her make no sense nor her actions.
And the thing i hated the most was the ending
It ended on such a huge cliffhanger and left so many questions unanswered, which was really disappointing.
I still have a little bit of hope that we'll get season 2 one day and all of those questions will be answered.
If you're planning to watch this, just know that you will not get a satisfying ending, but overall i do think that this drama is worth watching, because despite it's flaws it's still enjoyable and interesting.
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Princess Agents must be one of the best chinese historical drama I've watched so far. Everything was awesome : the story was well balanced between love and the political plots.
Chu Qiao is oustanding, she is strong but at the same time weak and fragile. Yuwen Yue and Yan Xun are as convincing as her. The second leads were good as well.
Some characters were getting on my nerves, such as the princess or the king, but I couldn't hate them. She's just a poor soul lost in this cruel world and he's just afraid and scared.
I really hope they will make a second season. This drama definitely deserves a second season !
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..like a wall lol.I was bored at the end and I kept skipping. There were far too many chars who were unimportant/didnt add anything to the story but still had screen timw for no reason.
The music was fantastic though!
(Btw theres only 58 eps on viki but it says here 67?! Maybe season two? O.o)
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STORY: After rewatching, I definitely still think that the overall screenplay was lacking in a lot of places. The web novel itself definitely has a lot going on (haven't read it), but I feel like the producers didn't translate everything well on TV. There was so much going on and I was only able to understand everything better because I had already watched it through once. Overall, watching it as a whole show didn't give me as much of a dragging feeling that it gave me when I watched it while it aired - so that's definitely a bonus.
ACTING: Again, I always love Zhao Li Ying (but maybe it was from reading a few stories about her not being happy with how things progressed in the show), I felt like I really preferred her when she was still a slave. I feel like her character had much more personality and expression. Yes, the story gets much more serious in the second half, and Chu Qiao is going through a lot, but a lot of her scenes I feel seemed much more emotionless and just plain. And I LOVE ZLY and know she's a great actress, but that was one show that I feel like she didn't give it her all towards the end (again maybe it was a character progression).
Lin Geng Xin - Watching it this time through, I feel like even though YWY was cold on the exterior, I feel like LGX could have done a bit more to show emotions when the times called for it. Towards the end of the show, YWY got more sassy which I'm totally fine with, but his "romantic" scenes with CQ still felt like something was missing for me.
OVERALL: My impression of it was better than it was by the end of the first watch. Overall I still think that there were a lot of places that could be better (mostly storyline and a bit more emotion in acting) Its definitely a show I wouldn't mind watching again at a future date, but I will admit that even though there were some major aspects I didn't like, I'm PRAYING PRAYING PRAYING that they make the second season (With Zhao Li Ying of course) because I've read a few novel synopses and I need to know what happens in the rest of the story T_T.
****************
**I watched PA as it was airing over the course of a month or so, so I definitely don't remember EVERYTHING that happened, but just what I remember feeling at the end of it**
STORY:
I began watching about two weeks into the show airing, so the first 10 or so episodes I got to binge and watch all at once (my preference is to binge watch cause I don't forget what happened earlier in the show cause I would have just watched recently).
-The beginning of the story - great, fabulous, and captivating. I loved watching her learn how to be a skilled assassin (from YWY at least) and the slow relationship building between them and everyone else in her life. The bad guys were (sometimes) obnoxiously bad, but apparently that's really how things were in those times.
-By the middle of the drama (before everything with Yan Xun's family), things were still looking good. Chu Qiao/Xing Er was better trained and now actually using the skills she had learned.
-After everything that happens with Yan Xun's family (using that as the turning point), everything seemed to go downhill story wise. Suddenly everything was starting to combust and it was ridiculously hard to keep track of what was going on. (I'm honestly still not 100% sure what happened with Chu Qiao and the events before the story began (the past she forgot)). I kept watching daily to keep up with the show, but (and I'll attribute part of it to me not being able to binge it all at once) it really felt completely disorganized and it seemed to lose focus by the end of the show.
-By the middle-end half of the show, I had completely forgotten that Chu Qiao was originally Yu Wen Yue's slave and whatnot because there was just so much going on that I had forgotten the foundation of the story.
ACTING:
**I honestly don't think any of the actors were bad, but the characters lost points for me due to bad script**
-Zhao Li Ying is my favorite actress (at the moment, but at least for the next few years). Her acting is honestly always great to me. She is great at the cutesy innocent girl with a naive heart (Boss & Me). She was amazing as a hardworking and smart - though super stubborn - female (Legend of Lu Zhen). And she was great as a witty, cunning, and calculative double agent (Rookie Agent Rouge). She still excelled here for me as a trained assassin and super loyal companion in Chu Qiao Zhuan.
-Lin Geng Xin - I've only seen him in BBJX, but my friend (who I was watching the drama with) had high hopes for him, so I obviously did too. He did a decent job as Yu Wen Yue. Fairly standard "intelligent but cold" male lead. However, (and yes this is mostly due to script issues), he essentially became a background character by the second half. When he actually had screen time, it wasn't super captivating and memorable, so his character really felt lifeless to me by the second half.
-Shawn Dou - absolutely loved him in the first half as the loyal but carefree Prince, by the end he was just another character who kept abusing Chu Qiao's loyalty to him (which obviously makes me dislike him xD). Acting wise, again he did the best with what the script gave him.
**Special Shout Outs**
-Deng Lun !! - my friend was raving about him before he even made an appearance and I wasn't really sure why (hadn't seen him in anything else yet). His character was honestly great. Super awesome comedic timing and really memorable as Xiao Ce. (Loved him so much from this that I watched Because of Meeting You specifically for him).
-Niu Jun Feng (Prince Song) - Adorable in Love O2O and adorable in this too. He was great as the side character who had feelings for the main lead (but never really had a shot lol). In the later half of the series, he did a great job with the serious story lines he had to deal with.
REWATCH VALUE:
Now that the whole series is aired (and subbed) I'll honestly probably go back to rewatch it once just to a) be able to see the whole drama in entirety and maybe be able to keep up with the plot better and b) go back and see if maybe understanding the plot better will give me a better outlook on the drama and c) to listen to the soundtrack over and over (it's already downloaded onto my phone) and sing along.
I might update this once I've rewatched to see if anything changes.
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Wonder Woman meets James Bond in ancient China
I’ve this habit of rewatching drama whenever I drop new ones. When I rewatched Princess Agents I came to realize that I never wrote a review. So here we go:Even if you don't like Wuxia/Fantasy you may rethink your opinion if you'll watch Princess Agents. I was totally hooked myself though this show has all the characteristics:
actors with long hair and large robes, jumping and fighting airborne, noble sects and families aiming for power with the most depressing endings for people in love.
Story
The Wonder Woman of the story is Chu Qiao (Liying Zhao) a slave girl with amnesia and a hidden past. When she finds herself thrown into a deadly gladiator game to entertain young lords, she catches the attention of two friends: the easy going Prince of Northern Yan, Yan Xun (Shawn Dou) and the fourth master of the Yuwen Manor, Yuwen Yue (Kenny Lin) who secretly saves her from a deadly shot. He introduces her into the Yuwen household, where she finally reunites with the siblings of her foster family. They’ve become slaves now, working under strict rules and evil slave masters.
The cool and aloof Yuwen Yue, surname "The Ice Cube", is the James Bond of his family. He is the head of the spying network called The Eyes of God and intrigued by Chu Qiao. He decides to keep her close by his side as his chamber maid calling her Xing’er and training her to become a secret agent for his own family.
Meanwhile Chu Qiao/Xing'er becomes acquainted with Yan Xun, who invites her to live with him in his homeland where slavery doesn't exist. That's why Chu Qiao becomes the close companion of Yan Xun. When his family gets slaughtered and branded as traitors Yan Xun starts a war against the emperor forcing Chu Qiao and Yuwen Yue to choose sides. Question is what will happen to everybody involved and their feelings for each other.
Acting/cast
The leading characters are well written, they aren't downright good or bad, and full of inherent contradictions. It's interesting to see them change by the turn of events and the actors nailed it. I loved the chemistry between them. Also the supporting cast did a good job, I love-hated the evil brother of Yuwen Yue: Yuwen Huai, and his grandfather Yuwen Xi, a creepy pervert. There was some comic relief too between the harsh scenes.
Music/soundtrack
This series has a wonderful OST and I recently came to understand why I love the voice of Yuwen Yue so much: Kenny Lin is dubbed by the same voice actor who impersonated Lan Wangji/Wang Yibo in The Untamed, a voice so deep I can feel it in my liver like the bark of a rutting reindeer.
Rewatch Value
I can see, and hear Princess Agents anytime in spite of the bad editing that delivers an incomplete ending and the need for a sequel. Prepare yourself for that and some filming bloopers like close ups of male actors who have their sideburns visibly glued to their heads or CGI with the look and feel of a PC game in the nineties not to mention the traditional scene of a bamboo flute, played by the actor completely out of sync.
Overall
Nevertheless I love this drama, because I can relate to a heroine who wants to live her own life and fight for what she feels is right. Her story arc isn't entirely focused on court intrigue or martial arts. It's also about the admiration of individual qualities, about making lifetime choices apart from social status or family backgrounds. The fighting scenes are visually attractive, all characters are played by good(looking) actors, and the music score is great too. In short: go watch it!
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This review may contain spoilers
What an amazing story we’ve got… almost. This drama has as many beautiful characters and storylines as problems with writing and development. And by the end, it left me completely confused.Let’s start with the perfection that was the female lead. Dare I say one of the best I have ever seen in a drama? Yes. She was so strong and so amazingly flawed, it was hard not to love her, even when, at times, her decisions made my blood boil. She was fanatically loyal to people she cared about, even when faced with a moral dilemma. At times she ignored the wrongdoings of people around her, finding excuses for them and trying to justify their actions. When Yuan Song told Xing Er he cannot look at her confident and self righteous face, I couldn't agree more. At that moment I agreed with him and his reaction made perfect sense. But that’s the charm of Xing Er. She is just a human. She makes mistakes, her convictions are not always good and her decisions are not always correct.
Another character that caught my attention was Yuan Chun. The transformation she went through was amazing, yet so tragic. How she was driven into madness and self destructing. She was the true victim of the whole scenario presented to us. She was so innocent, and how these pure intentions she had were used by all the people she trusted and loved, broke her.
I must say, I quite enjoy the whole cast. Some characters deserving a bit of attention were: Xiao Ce - the charming prince with a good heart, Yuan Song - the cute prince with a bright smile, Yue Qi - the loyal bodyguard and the true MVP, He Xiao - the only one that truly deserves Yanbei.
That said, I was quite disappointed with both male lead characters. While Yu Wen Yue was painfully, boringly perfect, Yun Xun by the end of the drama was a dumb, easily manipulated villain without any true plan nor motivation behind his actions. Pushing him towards the dark side was a good idea and it worked for the most part, but the closer to the end we’ve got, the less sense I saw in anything and everything he was doing. I had no sympathy for him even though his character build up was based on the idea that we are supposed to feel empathy towards him, taking into consideration his past. For me, he could burn in hell and I couldn't care less.
And here we have the problems with the plot. For the most part it was perfect. I was truly amazed with the pacing. I was never bored, the plotlines were nicely entangled as we smoothly moved from one story to another. The problem is, at times we did not come back to some plotlines, and they were left unsolved. What happened to Xing Er’s sisters? We saw them meet when she was rescued, and then they were gone. Not even one line telling us where they are and what happened to them.
And it happened to the majority of the characters. We’ve got amazing setups, promising us more than we’ve got. The payoffs were simply weak. Xing Er’s core ability… nothing. It was mentioned here and there, the dramatic opening eyes and awaking her true potential at the end… and what next?
We know Xiao Ce is not just this dumb, playboy prince and he has so much more going on for him, why not show that? Why not show more of his duality? Cheng Yuan’s motivations were far better and deeper than we were led to believe for the majority of the run time. He wasn’t just a cruel and evil person. His decisions could have been logically explained as any other character. His ways of dealing with the problems were wrong, but it was not any worse from what we have seen from the majority of the other characters.
The romance… oh boi the romance. From day one we knew who the end game was, and I did not mind that. I wasn’t expecting some deep love triangles since the drama did not need it. Not even for a moment I thought Xing Er might romantically love Yan Xun. As much as he was obsessed with her, she was obsessed with the dream he created for her. For me it was just an unhealthy obsession she had for the better future and, later on, the need to save him from his own demons. Her heart was always with Yu Wen Yue. I loved their chemistry, their fighting scenes were beautiful and I've rewatched many of them quite a few times. I didn’t need more from it, just the longing, stolen glances, the lovers that should never happen. So why did we get that accidental kiss I am asking? Why did this happen when it was one of the most ridiculous and out of place scenes I have ever seen. The hug that followed a few episodes later had far more impact and conveyed greater emotions than any kiss they ever had. They were simply unnecessary.
The overall production value was beautiful yet questionable. The set design, costumes - perfection. The tragic CGI - painful. The scenes that made me laugh the most were the horse riding close ups when many times it did not look like people riding horses, the movement was wrong. What's more, often the sounds did not match the movement. For the OST though, I could not ask for more.
Truth to be told, I am surprised that with that ending (I don’t even want to talk about it) and the problems I had with the drama, I’m giving it 8/10 rating, but at the same time it makes perfect sense to rate it so high. The outstanding acting we’ve got probably helped a lot, so the frustrating parts of the plot were easily covered by the brilliant performance of the cast. I enjoyed it quite a lot, and watched it in 3 and half days. That's how invested in the plot I was. The ending ruined me. I needed a drink.
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