Romantic Heroes of the Tang Dynasty (2013)

Good show

First episode is a whirlwind with too much stuff happening and it’s all over the place, once you get to episode 2 everything starts to slow down and make sense. The story is refreshing. The costumes are a bit cheap-looking, with a lot of characters in ming instead of tang attire. The goryeo Prince and entourage are wearing obvious Joseon fashion. Not to mention geshu Minglang’s edo period robes and wen tianer’s geisha style soon becomes Meiji era fashion. However ridiculous the historical fashion inaccuracies are, these choices are not very cringey and don’t really distract the viewer. There’s only one instance of modern pop music and that’s only in the ending song. For the most part the music and sound effects are played on traditional instruments. One criticism is the last 8 episodes are way too rushed and everything that has happened since the tang football team lost to the goryeo team is retold in one person’s memory. This show starts out strong and the middle still is actually fascinating but the ending is as if many scenes were cut out and the bare bones were stitched together to quickly rush the story to an open ending. In the last few episodes the actors are starting to behave more and more robotic and wooden, though that’s the directors’ fault for trimming so much detail out. I almost dropped the entire show at episode 32 as nothing made sense toward the end and had to endure to 35 to be abreast of all of the current events after tangchi’s amnesia.

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