Kotori
Singapore
One of the top Chinese dramas of 2019
I was looking forward to this drama as the screenwriter is Wang Juan, the same person as Joy of Life. And indeed he did not disappoint me.
It is the story about 6 young men and women from a secret espionage school of the Song Country and how they complete difficult missions to protect their family and their country.
What seems to be rather serious is actually a total comedy. Wang Juan manages to create amusing dialogs and silly set-ups in rather serious cases that made me fall from my chair.
A lot of the amusement is coming from the main highlight of this drama: the six lead characters who form faction 7 for the espionage school. All six have distinguished personalities: the witty, the dummy, the naive, the honest, the stubborn, the muscle man...
All the characters are loveable and I am sure each one of you will find your favorite character very quickly. My favorite characters are Yuan Zhong Xin and Wei Ya Nei.
The other great thing about the characters is that you can create great pairs, we call it ”ke CP” in Chinese. Yuan Zhong Xin and Zhao Jian, Wang Kuan and Xiao Jing are the natural ones. But there are also BL ones such as Yuan Zhong Xin and Wang Kuan, Zhao Jian and Xiao Jing and esp. my favorite Wei Ya Nei and Xue Ying are so damned cute together, you just cannot believe it.
All characters undergo tremendous character development of which the end product even satisfies an Otaku like me.
The young actors who played the characters all have done an outstanding job. Despite having areas where their actions can be more natural or stronger emotionally I foresee that all of them will have a bright future as actors. Extra credit goes to Bruce He who plays Ya Nei. I have not seen such a foolish but pure-hearted dummy just attracts the audients’s love like a magnet. The side story of his dad is just so well played - I teared so much and he surely deserved an award for this! In terms of acting and character design, all supporting roles were great too. They all have their own little stories that spread a few episodes long so that it helps the audience to understand the reason behind their behavior. None of them are just tools for the story development and there is also no true villain.
The key themes of the story are the cases: They appear rather unspectacular at the start but developed to complicated, deeply entangled events concerning evil plots of traitors within their own borders or spies from neighboring countries Xia and Liao. Within one episode the same incident might have several turns and nothing appears at how they are at the surface: most of the people are lying/hiding the truth or there are some back stories behind all events. That is the style of Wang Juan: it is practically impossible to predict the story that keeps the audience interested until the end. There were several occasions at which I had to wind back to re-watch to the explanation to fully understand what has happened. The only drawback from this is that sometimes in order to create a surprise effect at the reveal, the ”reality” seems to be a bit exaggerated. Perhaps to the point that it might not be very logical or realistic if one would think about it in detail. After a while, I just started questioning everything that I see at first glance.
One improvement potential I need to mention is the end credit song of the drama: though the song itself is great, it just contains too many spoilers. I am unsure of the reason why they did that, maybe because their marketing budget is too low they wanted to use the end credit to hang on to the viewership. But I would say whoever turn into the first 1-2 episodes would certainly get hooked with our without the ending song’s content.
All in all, this is a drama that makes you laugh, and cry; your heart will cringe and fill with warm emotions. It very much reminds me of Japanese anime style about true friendship, effort and victory coming to real-life form. You will not regret having watched this.
It is the story about 6 young men and women from a secret espionage school of the Song Country and how they complete difficult missions to protect their family and their country.
What seems to be rather serious is actually a total comedy. Wang Juan manages to create amusing dialogs and silly set-ups in rather serious cases that made me fall from my chair.
A lot of the amusement is coming from the main highlight of this drama: the six lead characters who form faction 7 for the espionage school. All six have distinguished personalities: the witty, the dummy, the naive, the honest, the stubborn, the muscle man...
All the characters are loveable and I am sure each one of you will find your favorite character very quickly. My favorite characters are Yuan Zhong Xin and Wei Ya Nei.
The other great thing about the characters is that you can create great pairs, we call it ”ke CP” in Chinese. Yuan Zhong Xin and Zhao Jian, Wang Kuan and Xiao Jing are the natural ones. But there are also BL ones such as Yuan Zhong Xin and Wang Kuan, Zhao Jian and Xiao Jing and esp. my favorite Wei Ya Nei and Xue Ying are so damned cute together, you just cannot believe it.
All characters undergo tremendous character development of which the end product even satisfies an Otaku like me.
The young actors who played the characters all have done an outstanding job. Despite having areas where their actions can be more natural or stronger emotionally I foresee that all of them will have a bright future as actors. Extra credit goes to Bruce He who plays Ya Nei. I have not seen such a foolish but pure-hearted dummy just attracts the audients’s love like a magnet. The side story of his dad is just so well played - I teared so much and he surely deserved an award for this! In terms of acting and character design, all supporting roles were great too. They all have their own little stories that spread a few episodes long so that it helps the audience to understand the reason behind their behavior. None of them are just tools for the story development and there is also no true villain.
The key themes of the story are the cases: They appear rather unspectacular at the start but developed to complicated, deeply entangled events concerning evil plots of traitors within their own borders or spies from neighboring countries Xia and Liao. Within one episode the same incident might have several turns and nothing appears at how they are at the surface: most of the people are lying/hiding the truth or there are some back stories behind all events. That is the style of Wang Juan: it is practically impossible to predict the story that keeps the audience interested until the end. There were several occasions at which I had to wind back to re-watch to the explanation to fully understand what has happened. The only drawback from this is that sometimes in order to create a surprise effect at the reveal, the ”reality” seems to be a bit exaggerated. Perhaps to the point that it might not be very logical or realistic if one would think about it in detail. After a while, I just started questioning everything that I see at first glance.
One improvement potential I need to mention is the end credit song of the drama: though the song itself is great, it just contains too many spoilers. I am unsure of the reason why they did that, maybe because their marketing budget is too low they wanted to use the end credit to hang on to the viewership. But I would say whoever turn into the first 1-2 episodes would certainly get hooked with our without the ending song’s content.
All in all, this is a drama that makes you laugh, and cry; your heart will cringe and fill with warm emotions. It very much reminds me of Japanese anime style about true friendship, effort and victory coming to real-life form. You will not regret having watched this.
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