The drama is underrated on Mydramalist. It is amazingly good and deserves a much better rating. Aside from the usual hygiene factors of excellent technical and artistic effects - excellent cast, beautiful costumes, cinematography and music, it brought out a lot of emotions and feelings - hilarious comical moments, romantic feelings, heart-rending moments, anger, annoyance, lamentation, regrets, nostalgia - you name it.
Let me start with the outstanding. Jeremy Xu outshone himself in Legend of Phoenix which I thought was quite an average drama. The story in this drama was more interesting and gave him the opportunity to really express himself, besides being very handsome.
The ending theme song is extremely good - the combination of the music, singing and poetic lyrics. It brought out so much emotions - nostalgia, sadness, regrets. It is rare that I got to like a piece of music listening to it for the first time but I did for this. And usually I skip the opening and ending theme songs to save on time when binge watching a drama. But I actually listen to every repeat of this song at the end of every episode!
The drama was also very well paced without the draggy moments you often see in longer dramas.
For such an excellent production, it was a pity that the audio was missing in a number of moments on the YouTube videos. Also, while the English translation for the ending theme song was good, it did not fully capture the poetic feel of the song, which was a pity - it needs an outstanding and very skillful translator to do that. Of course, these had nothing to do with the drama, so I did not take it into account in my rating.
Weaknesses of Chinese dramas are often in the story. Although this story is interesting, there are some minor flaws in it. Xue was always running away from Feng. After a while, that got boring and I wondered whether there were going to be any new development. Feng had an invisibility cloak too - seemed like a copy from Harry Porter. Yet she did not use it to the fullest to rescue herself and the servant maid from the palace. For these, I took away 0.5 points from the story.
Let me start with the outstanding. Jeremy Xu outshone himself in Legend of Phoenix which I thought was quite an average drama. The story in this drama was more interesting and gave him the opportunity to really express himself, besides being very handsome.
The ending theme song is extremely good - the combination of the music, singing and poetic lyrics. It brought out so much emotions - nostalgia, sadness, regrets. It is rare that I got to like a piece of music listening to it for the first time but I did for this. And usually I skip the opening and ending theme songs to save on time when binge watching a drama. But I actually listen to every repeat of this song at the end of every episode!
The drama was also very well paced without the draggy moments you often see in longer dramas.
For such an excellent production, it was a pity that the audio was missing in a number of moments on the YouTube videos. Also, while the English translation for the ending theme song was good, it did not fully capture the poetic feel of the song, which was a pity - it needs an outstanding and very skillful translator to do that. Of course, these had nothing to do with the drama, so I did not take it into account in my rating.
Weaknesses of Chinese dramas are often in the story. Although this story is interesting, there are some minor flaws in it. Xue was always running away from Feng. After a while, that got boring and I wondered whether there were going to be any new development. Feng had an invisibility cloak too - seemed like a copy from Harry Porter. Yet she did not use it to the fullest to rescue herself and the servant maid from the palace. For these, I took away 0.5 points from the story.
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