Ancient Love Poetry (2021)

Loud Music ruined the whole drama experience

The story is typical of xianxia drama, humanized gods that has all the flaws and emotions of humans. ML (Xu Kai) had a tough role with so many sad scenes to shoot, and did an excellent job carrying the audience through the whole story. FL was also a great actor. CGI were a bit cheap looking but sufficient. Ending took its time in the last 3 episodes to close the major storylines - this saved the story.

Here comes the Cons :
1. Music - horrendous and ruins the whole thing - at least half the show has some kind of loud singing music going on, overpowering actor's voices and ruins the scene. I had to mute through all the loud music to get through the show, and resort to watching the closed caption dialogue because it's honestly torture. I'd rate the music at -10 if I could.
2. Main Villain - was known early on the show and continued to do bad deeds, with the all knowing gods either too dumb to notice, or unable to find out, or did nothing - till the very end.
3. Pacing - the middle 1/3 of the series got slow and boring

Overall, the loud singing music throughout the show ruined my watching experience. Without the music, I'd rate it 8.0. With the music, rate it at 5.0 - and it's for all the good acting and hard work of the actors alone. No rewatch value.

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I hate it when you put a female as the main lead and give her little significance

I hate it that the chief God is a female and she is given less importance in terms of what she does other than just being a receiver of benefits just because it’s a she …let’s write or direct the storyline to really give her the equality

Kind of happy when I saw the first few episodes when she dies for the people but then after that it’s all about her man who is continuously sacrificing till the end with absolutely nothing for her….also it becomes awful when she being a chief God making statements and puts a sword on him just because he irritates her while she would continuously pardon the villains but not think even a bit before piercing a sword in her husband or ex lover or whatever…. It just does not fit the chief God profile. It’s more awkward when it’s a women as I definitely don’t want to see a female being powerful but only in the name and title and no real action from her….the weightage for bai jue is too high as he somehow miraculously does not bother about the people and want to die for her … especially when they have a kid…true god position is not a joke ….as even a regular man will think about the kid before sacrificing or insulting kid for the women ….child comes first before any of the parents ..somehow this smart author misses the boat

Most of the other parts of the story is very good as it kept me watching till the end when I was wondering why it’s 49 episodes…I wish the director could have done more for her part instead of bai Jue sacrificing forever….
Also when they brought most of the gods back alive, they could have brought yuemi back and make demon god happy as well at the end…

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Muy buena historia

Me encanto como se llevó acabó la historia y como presentaron los personajes, ahora creo que los primeros tres capítulos se sintieron un poco mal por qué desde el inicio se forzó el amor entre Shan Gu y Bai Jue, creo que se epudo llevar mejor en el inicio ya que a mitad de la serie ese amor se olvida por mucho tiempo, también me hubiese gustado que mostrarán algunos recuerdos de Wu Han cuando se cerró el palacio de las deidades ya fuera de eso cuando la serie pasa esa etapa de Hou chi la serie agarra mucha consistencia y lógica por todo lo que se venía contando y como punto final me pareció algo malévolo que el final feliz se hiciera esperar hasta el último minuto de la serie ?, pero en general me encantó todo la trama y desarrollo de personaje.

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The OST was so good, I'm still listening to it and it still makes me sad. The story was really great. I don't normally watch historical and I don't normally finish a drama that has 49 episodes, but this one I finished in days! It didn't drag at all, and kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next. The acting was great too, the main leads were really able to pull off playing different characters throughout their reincarnations.

The ending is happy, but it left me wanting a bit more. Regardless, this is one of those few that I would add to my rewatch list!

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Entertaining, well packaged series to spend your time on.

There was this background musical theme occasionally used that was almost - but not wholly - a copy of a musical theme used heavily in Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (aka Eternal Love). I was thinking of scoring the music 7.5-ish, but because of that TMoPB rip off track I'm ruthlessly hacking off two whole points. Of course I don't actually know who it was who created the tracks, so if it turns out to be the same person who did the TMoPB tracks, well I'll add the points back on coz you can't really blame someone for falling back on their own work. But, as it stands, 5.5 for music.

Because they dared to compare themselves (if only in a background musical theme) to TMoPB, I've been trying to figure out why this series just doesn't do it for me like TMoPB did (putting aside the plagiarism controversy for a minute). I mean, the themes were similar (gods and realms, multiple lives, memory loss), and they even had one of the actors from TMoPB, plus the production was overall top notch as an end package, and for what it's worth the acting here was solid.

I think what it was, is the main characters seemed to lacking in passion.

Not specially passion in a sexual chemistry sense, more passion in a general sense.

Comparatively in TMoPB while Ye Hua was fairly stoic character, when the character was dealing with shit I still got caught up in it, plus Yang Mi's successive characters were all delivered with great whole body feeling.

I don't know that I can blame this series for having less passionate main characters in comparison because I think maybe it's due to how the characters are written ...? I dunno. It's not that the acting as a whole was in any way flawed (because it wasn't) so I'd be looking at scoring it a 10 usually but with this issue of being somewhat lacking in 'passion' (for want of a better way to describe what I'm feeling), I'm gonna knock 2 points off the acting. I'll also do the same for the story score since, as I said above, it might simply be the way the characters are written. 8 points.

Special mention for Leon Lai for his Gu Jun (especially the latter dad/sect leader portrayal), and I particularly liked Liu Xue Yi's Tianqi, to the point where I'm going to make an effort to look into Liu Xue Yi's previous work.

Story - cohesive, entertaining, loooooong (well, there's the multiple lives lived thing so that will drag it out), but as mentioned above, I'll knock off 2 points just because, comparatively to TMoPB, I wasn't as engaged with the characters. 8 points.

Rewatch value - hmmm. Well, it is re-watchable, but would you? When you have other rewatch options available? 1 point is too low though. So, 1.5 points.

Add on 1 point for a well packaged final product.

(5.5+8+8+1.5)/4 + 1 = 6.75
= ~7.0

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Underrated

Story:
Honestly, the story may be the only shortcoming (barely) and since I haven't read the original novel, I wouldn't know if it's because the original writer made it so or if it was an issue of production. The story does follow the trope of the three lives three worlds however I don't think it holds back the story at all. The extension of lives really enables the audience to see the extent to which these characters grow and broadens the world-building capacities of the scriptwriters even if the worlds do follow the standard set up of god-human-demon. Even though the drama follows xianxia tropes, I also think that the drama uses them to their fullest aka although some of the content isn't original, it isn't to say that it was badly done. In fact, I would argue that they did a really great job maximizing them to develop tension, conflict (and romance haha).

A note on romance in the story. I think they did a really good job broadening love in this drama which I didn't see in many others. Love isn't infinite in this drama, it has to constantly be worked for to maintain and in some cases, we see it fail. Because romance isn't the singular plot driver, we are consequently able to see the power of platonic dynamics e.g. friendships, parent-child relationships and how these all have a part in building the characters that we engage with which I think is a far more complicated storyline to complete and it was done very well in this drama.

One thing I will say is that like others have mentioned, Ep 12-16 is where the actions really begin but you should all really savour the "boring" first episodes because those are really the happiest moments in the show. Once you finish the entire drama, I guarantee you will wish you appreciated those first couple of episodes more because this drama is ANGSTY.

Acting/Cast:
Likely my favourite part of the drama. I don't know if it's just me but I genuinely loved the cast. I know a lot of people have criticized Zhou Dongyu in the show but I honestly think the Shang Gu that Zhou Dongyu created is a beautiful character. She did a great job building a FL that was beautiful and powerful but imperfect as well. The imperfection comes not from her physical features (Zhou Dongyu is gorgeous I will fight anyone who says otherwise) but in Shang Gu's shortsightedness and gullibility (to being taken advantage of by a certain individual) which Zhou Dongyu does a great job of naturalizing as opposed to hiding them or normalizing them. I think this is a great contrast to some other xianxia romances we have been exposed to (and have been rated higher -_-) where the weaknesses of the FL are either used to encourage romance or ignored. I suppose it's part of Zhou Dongyu's experience as a movie actor but regardless her character is lovable because it is imperfect; although Shang Gu is spoiled and immature, she has a good heart and a strong sense of responsibility that we later see forces her to address her own issues. I don't think this type of complexity could've been expressed by any other popular xianxia actress and Zhou Dongyu honestly deserves more credit for being able to incorporate these ideas so well into a story already underpinned with tropes that limit any challenge to narrative norms.

Of course, we also have Xu Kai. This is the second drama I've seen with him and I've been told he normally plays playful characters as opposed to the colder characters like Bai Jue which surprised me as he seemed to do it very well in this drama. As Bai Jue he was cold and (over)confident while as Qingmu he was soft and playful. When Bai Jue first disappeared and Qingmu was introduced, I remember wishing for Bai Jue to come back however when Qingmu disappeared and Bai Jue returned, I wanted Qingmu to reappear. This strong response and differentiation between the characters, for me at least, indicates that Xu Kai did a really good job in delineating between the characters he has to act even though they were technically one person so kudos to him for that.

Notes:
One pet peeve I have had with the people on the internet criticizing this drama is that some people think it's too tropey for following the three lives/worlds storyline while other people are angry that it's not tropey enough e.g. casting Zhou Dongyu who is considered "ugly" to be a beautiful person as opposed to someone like Dilreba or Yang Mi who are conventionally attractive. Honestly, I don't know what to say about that as it appears a lose-lose situation but I do hope that anyone who does read this remembers that just because this story isn't realistic doesn't mean that realism can't be incorporated into it. I think this drama is wonderful not because it is a fantasy but that it challenges the boundaries of fantasy so that we can find a little bit of the happiness from these fantastical characters and their stories reflected in our own reality.

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I'm lost in 'time'

I should start by saying that Xianxia is not my thing. However, I read the reviews and they were pretty positive; plus, the cast of actors was appealing too. So, for the most part, I have no regrets. It was difficult to follow the timelines sometimes, but that was not really a deterrent.

I like Xu Kai, love Liu Xue Yi, and Leon Lai. The FL was ok in her role - but looked a little young for a 'Chief God' - and I really wasn't convinced of her development from carefree, silly girl to bad-ass God. The supporting actors were pretty good too - the evil ones really did a good job, especially the Heavenly Queen and her bitchy, overindulged daughter. Liked the romances along the way and wished that everybody could have had a happy resolution, but I guess that's how it goes - you win some and you lose some. The fate of alter ego lovers Qing Mu and Hou Chi was heart wrenchingly sad but so beautifully done, and acted out by the ML & FL. The OST was hauntingly beautiful too.

Overall, it was a good watch, but I don't think I would rewatch simply because of the genre, and I found myself fast-forwarding through a lot of the war scenes and 'cultivating' scenes. I did have a hard time following the time lapses and figuring out how the lifespans play out: who live forever, who reincarnate, who die, and how those processes work in that world.

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BEAUTIFUL xian xia & #emotional roller coster. Recommended !!

I definitely think it deserves high rating not 10/10 but close 99.5% . It is close to TMOP ,dream pillow standard with different insights of xian xia aka fantasy world.. instantly caught my attn right frm 1st episode , the interactions make me laughed , baique character is mysterious as he was the coldest of all. Female lead draws question mark of her being the youngest, most pampered , most highly ranked yet most incapacitated , with her mischievous character & strong sense of justice.

The drama sees her grow into a capable, strong leader that put her people needs ahead of her.
The story plot gets me fun moments, touched, sad , teared. I couldn't have cried more for even the side characters in other drama
Many of the characters got some screen time n development whether for good or worse.. and strong character shines like feng ran, the good yue mi. The scenes are very beautiful, actors great acting esp when look at they play multiple character/ personality .. HC serious , SG playful, kinda little girl but both kind, amazingly loyal , brave, tough

The stand out about this drama is the #Contrast. Life is never easy for any1, tests and choices come at certain point of time or a number of times. Some people will destroy everything for their desire/ unrequited love/ greed/ power while others will give everything to protect & stands for justice, peace & love <3 It really bring a lot of emotional coaster.
Love strong Feng Ran , loving jing jian , adorable Qing Mu, icy Bai Que but melted by FL, super daddy GJ !

Ohyea saw a lot critisism on FL, with "Ugly" really she is not the MOST beautiful even in the drama, i think is intentional . Maybe the novel/script FL wasnt that beautiful but ugly is too judging.
The beautiful WH yes beautiful but does she have a beautiful heart?? Capable ppl ?-many but giving or taking? powerful ? are u doing right things with yr power n responsibility.
I think these are the strong messages behind this series.

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Worth to watch

I love this drama. It made me cry and fell in love. Especially, with the characters portrayed by Xu Kai, who was the main reason why i watched the drama. Anyway, watching this drama will made you fall in love the characters of Xu Kai. The story have lots of twisted part which i found very interesting. From the songs that have been played in the background which i kept on singing everyday because, it made me cry of some parts. Overall, i want to recommend this drama, it is totally worth to watch. Great actors and actresses, intimidating characters and story. Definitely, one of my favorite c-dramas. ???

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Life of Gods

This drama basically is focused on the four true gods assisted by other gods in their duty if protecting the world,even at the expense of their life.
Zhou Dongyu,the chief goddess Shang Gu,gets trained under true god Bai Jue,and transforms herself from mischievous goddess to a responsible god who even self sacrifices for the well being of the world.Dongyu's acting was good.Especially I liked her part as the responsible chief goddess and how she commands the gods .Though major part of the drama is laced around Hou Chi,another life of Shang Gu when she sacrifices herself,I liked her role lifetime as Shang Gu more.
Xu Kai played the role of Bai Jue,another true god ,who is very dedicated and focused on protecting the world.His acting is also good.
A special mention to Jenny Zhang who played Wu Huan,the main antagonist of the this drama.She is the perfect epitome of betraying her master,scheming against the gods and even putting the whole world in danger.Her acting was on point and perfect.
All the other actors were good.
This drama shows us that being a god may bestow us with invincible power but also comes with many duties and responsibilities which sometimes puts ones'life and interests in danger.
Finally,good always triumphs over evil!!
A decent watch.

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