I needed a place to sort out my thoughts, and it would be interesting to see what everyone else thinks.
As for me, after the first ep, I have a lot of mixed feelings.
To be honest, I've been following the casts and the production for a few weeks now and have come to accept them and love them. But I don't think my brain had actually merged the actors with the characters that had already formed into my head. The actors are great (especially the main guy's expression when he smiles), but it's still weird and jarring to scrutinise them when I was so used to my own imagination.
The effects weren't outstanding, the blood was a bit fake and things like that awkward passing of the ring back and forth was almost laughable, but I guess with the music the mood it created was still quite nice.
But to be honest, I don't actually understand what's going on? :') I had this problem with the daomu books as well: I knew what was immediately happening, but I can't grasp the big picture. (I think it might have something to do with my noob chinese vocab. but whatever, I get the gist of it.)
Okay but there were lots of things I really enjoyed as well. That line when Er-Ye hesitates as he says he doesn't touch things from 'under the ground' anymore kills me every single time. Because of its origins, (spoilers, so i won't go into detail. but knowing its origins and knowing where that thought eventually leads to breaks my heart).
And I totally didn't squeal when the guys outside were like Fuo-Ye is Er-Ye's best friend. Like yessssss. The whole scene during the opera was so good, the way Fuo-Ye smiled at Er-Ye and he smiled back and they communicated so subtly and I'm just such a sucker for friendships (or potential ships? idk, I don't really ship them yet, but I'm open to new ideas).
And can we talk about the ending song, just thinking of it makes me grin so widely it hurts. As a fangirl to the fandom, I was raised in the fandom by that singer's songs. The first daomu song I listened to (and downloaded) was his. And the majority of my chinese songs collection are his daomu fan covers. But all of them were just fanworks, so to see that he's now hired to sing an OFFICIAL song makes me so happy and proud. I don't think there can be any deep fan in the Chinese daomu fandom who doesn't know him, and for him to now be part of something related to daomu is so satisfying.
So yeah. I'm very very very excited for this. Can't wait 'til I have the time to keep watching. Unlike The Lost Tomb, I came here with no expectations and no idea of what this series is about (I'm not fond of incomplete works, and I'm too behind with Sanshu's latest materials to have read it). So my liking for it will only get higher, I believe.
I'm curious as to what everyone else thinks of this? :)
