Legend of Chu and Han (2012)

An Epic Historical Drama

KING'S WAR (Legend of Chu and Han// Chu Han Chuan Qi) was a fantastic C-drama series from the makers of the "Three Kingdoms". Like it's predecessor, it was epic, brutal, historical, romantic and full of complicated story lines and an amazing cast of characters. If you are unfamiliar with the era or with Chinese historical dramas, you might be a bit confused going into this series, so I'd recommend freshening up on Chinese history beforehand.

King's War was inspired by the historical events in the Chu-Han Contention, an interregnum between the fall of the Qin Dynasty and the founding of the Han Dynasty. This series is very interesting because of its usage of the word "legend" in its title "Legend of Chu and Han", which belies some of the events are part of ancient legend and folklore rather than only the facts. I found it to be really well made drama regardless.

This series had a huge budget and it really shows in its realistic sets and landscapes, in the costumes, acting and story. The series spans an amazing length of 80 episodes and all are so well done. After binge watching this series I now feel compelled to rewatch Three Kingdoms.

This was an amazing watch and full of drama, adventure, intrigue, battle, and a little romance. The cast was extraordinary, especially Lui Bang (Chen Daoming) who played his role fantastically. Everything was beautiful. Just an amazingly well made production. Loved it.

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Great for people who really love history

Its a shame to see this so lowly rated and it doesn't look very popular on here. It definitely isn't like most of your average dramas currently as it is most definitely more of a historical drama. I wish it was rated as high as Three Kingdoms.

I think it did a great job trying to portray the ending of the Qin and the struggle before the Han Dynasty was established. It seems like it mostly tries to follow history so it can be somewhat boring when they introduce many different people and are "chatting/talking/planning about things".

It is amazing that this piece on a historical event can be so interesting, which really is just a testament to how China's history could be written into many dramas just based off of what happend in history.

Likes:
- It was the same director (and uses a lot of the same cast as Three Kingdoms) but it does a great job showing what occurred before the Han Dynasty was established. I think if you liked Three Kingdoms, this will be great for you.
- I honestly think anyone who enjoys the historical aspects of Chinese history with all the values such as like: Righteousness, pride, honor above all, and so forth will really enjoy this show as it does a great job highlighting all those qualities back then. You have people who would die for their pride or for their brothers and so on.
- I think the Character for Liu Bang did really good as well. He really played the role well trying to depict a more Hill-billy country bumpkin (from his beginnings) kind of person.

Dislikes:
- This is where I rate the rewatch value a bit low. I think it did a great job of playing out this piece of history, but it is 80 episodes and quite long. There are many scenes that would get boring when people are discussing politics and plans and it doesn't really make sense to rewatch it all, but I could see myself looking for specific scenes to be like Damn, that's truly a powerful moment in history.
- The ending (80th episode) is a bit off putting as it feels like they're rushing parts of history? It feels like there could be a lot more that have gone on and been shown before events took place as they did here in this episode. It feels like they want to be historically accurate, but ran out of time and kind of just pushed it all together to fit the max episode count or something.

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