Male lead of the year and more

I am gonna rate it 10 now, and bet, that after the series finishes airing, I am not gonna change this rating.

I would say "watch this drama for its male lead", but actually there are many, many reasons to watch this drama, so let's just start with the MALE LEAD.
This is a proof that male lead in Chinese historical drama can be not stone-faced and cold, and still radiate enormous quantity of testosterone. He is hot, strong, smart, seductive as a devil, but he doesn't hide his feelings. He is not the nicest person at first, his job demands him to be tough, but even in the first episodes you can see he has a good sense of humor. Later you will laugh like hell while watching his comic scenes with the FL. Moreover, this amazing man talks with his real voice here, and it's sooo sexy.

GOOD PACING. Drama has very good pacing and is plot driven. Characters seem to be in constant movement, one case/trouble follows another, all interactions are dynamic, sad scenes are sometimes followed by funny ones, so some episodes are a roller-coaster of emotions.

SMART FEMALE LEAD. Many dramas declare having a smart female lead, but very few manage to actually make her equal to the male lead. Here they are equally smart, he is just a bit more experienced. She escapes many troubles alone, and there is no feeling, that whatever bad is happening to FL, suddenly ML will just fall from the sky and save her. But sometimes he comes and saves, yes ;)
Some viewers called FL selfish, and it's true she cares about her own wellbeing and is not ready to sacrifice herself for the sake of the family, especially when it's her family which threw her under the train. Later on FL's relationships with her family will have a nice development, and at certain point you won't be able to call her selfish anymore.

VERY GOOD SCRIPT. Investigations are quite good, full of twists, and many of them you would never see coming. Dialogues are brilliant, and not once you will notice how creators were getting close to the trap of one or another cliche and then just avoided it with a stylish maneuver. Many times I noticed that a typical scene, which I saw many times in other dramas, here developed totally different, yet still exciting. Some misunderstandings which for sure would happen in other dramas in similar situation - here never happened.

Need more reasons? AMAZING CHEMISTRY between the main leads. All their scenes are exciting and give you butterflies, even though this is a slow burn and it will take them time to fall in love and then to confess, but for me this is one of the most believable romance developments I've seen. They even don't like each other at first and it's also believable, I would call it a rational prejudice. Although they are wrong about each other, they still talk and act very honest, and it takes a few episodes to bring their relationships to another level. Unlike other dramas with enemies-to-lovers scheme, where leads pretend to have another personality and hide their true motives and feelings, here leads always stay true to their personalities, and never act weird just to annoy another person.
Oh, btw, it does remind "Pride & Prejudice" a bit.

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Important warning: non graphic r**pe happens in episode 19 to one of the ladies of FL's family.

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The things that might scare you in the beginning:
- FL's huge family - you are gonna hate them at first, but just give them time, some of them will die, the rest will redeem themselves a bit.
- Not always perfect delivery of lines. Actors speak their own voices here, which is a rare thing, so production might have faced some troubles, but let's support them, I want to hear real voices more often! Also, we are so lucky to hear ML's fantastic voice.
- FL is manipulative, especially towards SML - that's true, at least in the beginning, but please try to understand what she was going through in those first episodes.
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So, GO AND WATCH NOW and suffer with us, while waiting for next episodes to air.

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I tried but I failed

I started this drama for Zheng Yecheng and Liu Haikuan, and had high hopes as everyone praised the novel, and I expected big budget cool looking fantasy drama... but, hell, no. I struggled through 36 episodes, and now, so close to the finale, I am gonna just drop the drama, because I really don't want to watch what they did to the few characters I liked.

The true Big Bad of this drama was its editor. I wish I could tell him/her that they can't crop two unrelated scenes in small pieces and show them in sequence. Or that they can't make the half of the episode as flashback of recent events instead of showing them in direct order. Or that they can't show the scene which seems to be complete and 10 minutes later add more lines to it in a flashback. What a ridiculous idea!
Pale coloring and effects and transitions from 90th also didn't help to enjoy this drama visually.

The second and third big criminals were director and scriptwriter.
The dialogues were dull, empty, full of repetitive thoughts. Characters seemed to not have what to talk about, so were going through the same 1) 2) 3) issues each time. Or just kept silence.
The complexity of dialogues was more or less as following:
~~
"Did you see anything?"
"No, did you see anything?"
"No, I didn't".
~~
(and all that was said s-l-o-w-l-e-y)

Creators made 5 episodes to set up affection between the leads and failed cause after 1st episode scriptwriter couldn't think any decent dialogue for them or any adventures they could have together and know each other better. Relationships between Bai Ying and crown prince also just formed from the air somewhere in between her fall and his 100 years sleep.

Director failed even action episodes, which could be better with better visuals and more realistic fight choreography. Moreover in between them there were 3-5 episodes where characters had long emotionless dialogues, while staring onto the water/forest/sky. The amount of walking around the forest was so impressive, that I thought actors had a goal of "walk 10 km a day". Or maybe they wanted to be cast to "The Walking dead".
Background music was mostly slow and with a repetitive mystic tune, as if created to help you fall asleep.

Fourth Big Bad for me was the female lead. She seemed to have the same face expression all the time, as if she woke up in the morning, something surprised her a bit, she raised her eyebrows a little and her face just got stuck in that movement, and its upper part never moved again. She also didn't have any badass vibe, although she is supposed to be one of the strongest sword fighters there. Whatever she said, I was just afraid she was gonna faint next moment. Taking into account, that each time she went to help someone, later others had to save her, I would never give her any task more serious than arranging sea shells.

I couldn't care less about the romance of main leads. They had very little chemistry, in the "past" part of the story they fell in love without any relationship building, in the "present" part they just continued being in love, and while there could have been many reasonable misunderstandings between them, scriptwriter managed to create only a few cringey ones. Usually in other dramas where I didn't fall for main leads I would fall for second couple, but here - not really. Second couple would be nice, if the girl wouldn't be so reckless and annoying, it was just a bit too much.

But some side characters I did like.
Zheng Yecheng created very likable character, funny, but not annoying at all, honest and kind. He seemed to be the most "alive" character, could smile while his eyes were sad, and I believed in his affection. I wish characters like this, selfless and just GOOD would win girls' hearts more often in dramas, because kind men deserve to be happy. Unfortunately, after promising character development which rapidly happened in first episodes, in the "present" part of the drama he didn't have opportunity to shine, and most of the time was just there without much purpose.
My second favorite character was Xi Jing, portrayed by Liu Chang. His story started with a lot of drama, but he managed to recover from that, he was a loyal person and friend. Unfortunately, in the second part of the story he had nearly no important scenes as well.
Yu Huan (Liu Haikuan) had quite promising story and interesting relationships with his buddy Fei Lian, with mermaid Xiao, with his sister and mentor. Unfortunately, it looks like scriptwriter took some facts from original novel but totally changed the ending, and those facts which were meant for Yu Huan's character development, here just create frustration about his ending.
My favorite females were mermaids Ning Liang and Xiao and guess what - bad ending for both *sigh*

Overall, this drama is a big disappointment. I expected to see a big budget production, good effects, decent acting, lot's of adventures and interesting character development... and got none of that. Visually drama looks very average, and some scenes are so bad that it is just a shame they passed post-production in year 2022. Acting was stiff from most of the cast, even those, who I know can act well - bad sсript and directing made them just stand and look around most of the time. All events from this drama could have happened in a better drama in just 10 episodes instead of 43. All twists and actions were predictable or even worse than you could predict.

Will I say "don't watch this' in conclusion? Nah, it's for you to decide how to waste your time.

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