bottled bluebells
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The martial arts are cool. The three leads especially are SO COOL. THE MOST COOL. They are all cool the whole damn time. Fan Duobing is the youngest and least experienced, but like both the others he is literally introduced kicking ass and taking names. Li Lianhua spends 99.9% of the drama at 10% of his strength and is essentially still untouchable. If he decides a fight is worth getting serious he never fails and it is AWESOME. Die Feisheng's default setting appears to be Badass Motherfucker.the friendship is touching. The three leads especially but as you go through the series you slowly learn that there are other characters around who are deeply deeply loyal to the leads. Blind Liu is my favorite, he deserved more screen time.
The mysteries are fun. They may not make up a huge part of the series, but the process of who solves them and how gives you a lot of insight to various characters strengths, values, and methods. Plus it's really fun to watch the trio work together.
Li Xiangyi/Lianhua is the hero we don't deserve. Seriously, if someone needs saving the man saves them. If someone needs support he's right there when they need him. If he makes a promise he keeps it, even years and betrayals down the line. He talks a lot about his own flaws but he never acts on them. He cares so deeply about people and at every turn he does what he can to protect who he can.
I am in awe.
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A fun comedy, but that's about it for me
The characters are fun to watch, and the cases are generally interesting. It's light enough to be a good palate cleanser after more emotionally heavy dramas and it's plotted out very episodically too, so it's good for if you don't have time or energy for binge watching.The supernatural element felt weird to me though, especially since they started out by saying there were no such thing as yao. I think the story would have been a lot stronger and more engaging if the supernatural elements had really all been trickery and powerful people believing in impossible things out of greed.
Also, while the supernatural abilities one of the characters exhibits are useful and even cool sometimes, I just could NOT take the weird cgi anthro-transformation seriously. Every time it happened it completely zeroed out all my investment and tension, which is not great considering they insisted on using it in really tense high-stakes scenes. Seriously you'll be watching along, having a great time, and then suddenly Ryan Ding's cool martial art scene will be replaced by a poorly cgi-ed furry flailing around and meowing incessantly.
Overall for me it was something light and funny to have on in the background, but I couldn't really get at all invested in it.
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Sweet and playful without the heavy angst (extremely high rewatch value oh my god)
It's very fast paced, sometimes to the point of the various incarnation arcs feeling a bit rushed. I think it probably needed a few more episodes but as is it means you don't linger too long in angst or heartbreak which keeps the tone up.There is also a slapstick comedy aspect to it that I found it a little hard to get past at first. However, that slapstick element is mostly confined to the first third to half of each arc. As you move into the climax and later half of each one it transitions from cartoonish comedy to just the leads being playful and silly with each other.
The actors also have good chemistry.
I've heard some people say that the female lead wasn't as good as the male lead, and I'll concede that her acting in her tragic or melancholy scenes wasn't as impactful. But on the other hand she's really good at the playful, vivacious scenes and those are a lot more common in this drama. When the two leads are being silly and in love together they are a pure joy to watch.
Finally I thought their villain was very solid. Well written, with consistent motivations, a steady escalation pattern that convinces you he's a serious threat to more than just the leads, and a touch of humanity that made you sympathize with the characters who cared about him without ever making you feel bad for the villain himself.
Overall I didn't expect to like it as much as I did, but I really want to rewatch it again.
Edit: OH MY GOD REWATCH IT, YOU MUST REWATCH IT, IT REFRAMES THE WHOLE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS, IT'S SO SUBTLE BUT SO GOOD?!?!
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This review may contain spoilers
Excellent couple, weak world
The main couple is really good. Their arcs are good, their relationship is touching, and the actors are excellent.It's very easy to get immersed in the actors performance. When they're sweet together they're adorable and when they're suffering you really feel both their pain. They're both able to do both micro-expressions and explosive emotion very well. The female lead in particular does a great job with the heart-wrenching scenes and doesn't hold back in the name of looking pretty.
If you're mainly looking for a touching romance with a good couple, this is your drama.
And since it is a romance drama, if you're feeling interested from the synopsis you probably WILL enjoy it. The romance is very good.
The following are just my feelings about supporting factors that I felt weakened it overall and may not bother you at all. Also contains vague spoilers, though I've tried to avoid giving details.
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The background plot turns out pretty weak. In the first season it was actually a lot better. You could follow along pretty well, and while things were still pretty vague and shadowy at that point you could get a good sense of who the primary villain was, what they were probably up to, and why.
Except no you couldn't because the second season throws in a twist that retroactively blows all that to hell and leaves you wondering why the villain even did half of that.
You can sort of understand the goal in the general sense of 'villains be power-hungry, amiright?' , but beyond that it's just confusing.
Why did he focus on the things he was focused on? Why did quietly kill off this character but leave that one alive? Why did he focus so hard on certain things? Even if the goal seems to have stayed the same as you assumed it was before the methods suddenly make a lot less sense. the methods and mannerisms that have been driving the story become muddled. The true villain displays a hyper focus on certain things that in retrospect I can't figure out why he would have ever cared about, not to mention spending a lot of the first season making allusions to a secret he doesn't actually know and is surprised to learn in the second season. He's retroactively revealed to have done things that aren't mentioned at all in the first season and just seem to come out of nowhere in the final stretch. Overall the twist seemed to weaken the background plot quite a bit.
Finally most of the supporting cast didn't get much in the way of finishing out character arcs. If they were struggling with love, they ended up alone. Most of the platonic support characters just got killed off. And the minor female villain, despite having spent the drama ruining lives and weaseling out of death two or three times essentially gets a mook death. It felt like it would have been better to let the petrification death have been her true end, since that at least involved her being held accountable by some of the people she'd wronged before the end and then suffering a fate she'd inflicted on someone else.
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