cryswash
USA
A little disappointed in this drama but decent enough
I started this drama in 2022 not knowing anything about it or not knowing any of the cast as I was new to CDramas in 2022. I finally finished this drama in July of 2023 after having watched a lot of CDramas and several other shows by the 2 leads. Why did it take me so long to finish? I initially stopped watching this drama after about 6 or 7 episodes in the beginning because it wasn’t keeping my attention but decided to revisit it for the 2 leads.
The Story:
Despite the odd English Title for the drama, I was originally intrigued by the plot and thought this would be a great Wuxia and hopefully without a lot of the CDrama tropes we see in romance Wuxias with the strange falls leading to random kisses and the predictable love triangles. It was nice to see that they didn’t focus so much on those aspects in this drama although we may have seen 1 or 2 instances of the long stares and the awkward contact between MLs and FLs. It’s still not a romance heavy drama and focused the main story on the self discovery journey of the 2 leads.
One downfall to this drama is there were a lot of throw away episodes that made this drama longer than it needed to be. It could have been cut down to 24 to 30 episodes max. There were some side plots that dragged out too long and could have been summed up in 1 or 2 episodes but dragged out over 5 to 6 at times. Also episodes 29-34 were filler episodes as they seem to try to play more on the unnecessary romantic stories they forced on the MLs, leading to drawn out boring conversations. I enjoy a good romance, just was done poorly in this one. I did not like the ending of the final episode, it just sort left things hanging.
The characters
This is a loaded topic because you have some good with some bad. I’ll start with the female characters… none were that interesting.
Tie Xinlan was sort of just there. She was in the way most of the time and didn’t add any real value to the overall plot. Not much character growth from her as she didn’t add much in the beginning either. Her acting was also subpar…not much in the way of facial expressions.
Su Ying… I don’t even know why they added her character at the end of the show. Though she was supposed to be the match of Jiang Xiaoyu, their “love” story was very forced and the 2 actors had 0 love chemistry. Their back and forth banter was okay but still unconvincing. I adore Liang Jie in The Eternal Love series as the connection she had with the ML in there is worth a watch.
For the male characters…
Jiang Xiaoyu carried this story as his character was fun and charismatic. So much character growth from him while still staying true to himself. Chen Zheyuan did an amazing acting job here. He embodied the character well with his troubles expressions and lightheartedness throughout the show.
Hua Wuque only showed slight character growth and Hu Yitian seems to take on a lot of emotionless character roles. I thought he could have done better than hat was betrayed because he didn’t portray many emotions here. I can compare his character to Wang Yibo’s character, Lan Zhan in the untamed but although dull and tough, he expressed so many emotions without having many spoken lines.
Production/OST
Overall production value was average. Some camera shots were grainy and blurry at times but had decent fight scenes and CGI. The OST did not stand out.
The Story:
Despite the odd English Title for the drama, I was originally intrigued by the plot and thought this would be a great Wuxia and hopefully without a lot of the CDrama tropes we see in romance Wuxias with the strange falls leading to random kisses and the predictable love triangles. It was nice to see that they didn’t focus so much on those aspects in this drama although we may have seen 1 or 2 instances of the long stares and the awkward contact between MLs and FLs. It’s still not a romance heavy drama and focused the main story on the self discovery journey of the 2 leads.
One downfall to this drama is there were a lot of throw away episodes that made this drama longer than it needed to be. It could have been cut down to 24 to 30 episodes max. There were some side plots that dragged out too long and could have been summed up in 1 or 2 episodes but dragged out over 5 to 6 at times. Also episodes 29-34 were filler episodes as they seem to try to play more on the unnecessary romantic stories they forced on the MLs, leading to drawn out boring conversations. I enjoy a good romance, just was done poorly in this one. I did not like the ending of the final episode, it just sort left things hanging.
The characters
This is a loaded topic because you have some good with some bad. I’ll start with the female characters… none were that interesting.
Tie Xinlan was sort of just there. She was in the way most of the time and didn’t add any real value to the overall plot. Not much character growth from her as she didn’t add much in the beginning either. Her acting was also subpar…not much in the way of facial expressions.
Su Ying… I don’t even know why they added her character at the end of the show. Though she was supposed to be the match of Jiang Xiaoyu, their “love” story was very forced and the 2 actors had 0 love chemistry. Their back and forth banter was okay but still unconvincing. I adore Liang Jie in The Eternal Love series as the connection she had with the ML in there is worth a watch.
For the male characters…
Jiang Xiaoyu carried this story as his character was fun and charismatic. So much character growth from him while still staying true to himself. Chen Zheyuan did an amazing acting job here. He embodied the character well with his troubles expressions and lightheartedness throughout the show.
Hua Wuque only showed slight character growth and Hu Yitian seems to take on a lot of emotionless character roles. I thought he could have done better than hat was betrayed because he didn’t portray many emotions here. I can compare his character to Wang Yibo’s character, Lan Zhan in the untamed but although dull and tough, he expressed so many emotions without having many spoken lines.
Production/OST
Overall production value was average. Some camera shots were grainy and blurry at times but had decent fight scenes and CGI. The OST did not stand out.
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