Some spoiler-free comments:

This is great fun, it’s very addictive, and once you get started, you kind of have to finish it.
Credit goes to the actors, specifically Darren Chen as Tang Fan, Fu Mengbo as Sui Zhou and Liu Yaoyuan as Wang Zhi. Tang Fan is just adorable and annoying enough to be believable, Sui Zhou seems cold and unfeeling until you realise how much of that is PTSD, and Wang Zhi is just so layered as a character it’s amazing if you think that Liu Yaoyuan is just starting out in the business.

Special mention goes to Huangyang Tiantian as Dong'er, great performance.

The set design, costumes and cinematography are also out of this world – money was spent on this and it shows. I didn’t think for a moment I was looking at some sets until I saw some behind the scenes footage, because I really believed in the city I saw on the screen.

Basically, it’s a lot of fun, and I’m definitely going to rewatch parts of it.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

The good: I’ve already mentioned the actors, and truly, the actors are everything.

You really believe the growing friendship between Tang Fan and Sui Zhou, and Wang Zhi is endlessly fascinating. Dong’er isn’t as annoying as such child roles frequently are, and there are scenes of hers which I found really moving.
I appreciated that the boys did not get love-interests to distract from the gay, with Duo’erla ending up being a friend, Sui Zhou’s arranged marriage coming to nothing, and Tang Fan, bless him, being oblivious even when he’s in a brothel being felt up by a prostitute. I would have liked more focus on their relationship, but I’ll get into that when I discuss the cons.
It’s a pretty engaging story, for the most part and I liked most of the storylines and the mysteries . . . kind of.

The bad:
I frequently mention the problem of pacing in dramas, especially when there’s hardly any. Things drag on for a while then they gallop to a finish. I remember complaining about a stretch of episodes in The Untamed which seemed to go on forever – this is even worse than that.
Then there’s episodes here which end while Wang Zhi has barely finished speaking – seriously, I had to go back and check because I was still reading the subtitle when we faded to credits!

The reason for things dragging is that we also have a lack of stakes in certain storylines. For example, Duo’erla gets shot with a poison arrow. Ok, I kind of care, but not much. Then some episodes later, I find out why this happened, but I still don’t care. In the middle of this whole “we have to find the antidote” storyline, Tang Fan poisons himself – why? Who knows. That gives me even less stakes, because I KNOW one of the two male leads isn’t going to die halfway through the series!
There’s so much stuff like this in the series, where I’m sure I missed something because I skipped over chunks of episodes. I mean, I almost missed this amazing set piece in the brothel, because I was so tired of the entire “We are dying REALLY SLOWLY” storyline which was obviously going nowhere – then later I realized it was for the Arras/Ding Man storyline, but as I barely cared about that, it was kind of a waste of time.

And then THAT storyline ended up driving Sui Zhou and Tang Fan apart for a pretty long stretch, and I was almost done. I had to spoil myself to make sure it ended with them reconciled. Also, one of the things that will hurt me upon rewatch is the number of times I will have to hear characters talk about the BULONG and where is the BULONG and who has the BULONGS, and enough already.

The Arras/Ding Man storyline is the one with the most plot holes, in my opinion. You would think that with an eunuch who spent three years really close to the Emperor, that someone would have checked if he was, you know. Really a eunuch. Also, he could have killed the Emperor at literally any time in the last three years – instead he arsed around until a villainous businessman and a needlessly complicated plot presented itself, which failed. Good job, dude.
I honestly don’t know if any of the above is in the novel, because I’ve only read up till chapter 7 (waiting on a good translation). So for now I’m gonna blame the screenwriters for the plot-holes, as well as Consort Wan’s army of teen girls and Qing Ge the building-jumping prostitute assassin (the massive explosion is not a plot-hole or something anyone made up – it really happened, albeit a century or so later, and historians still don’t agree on what caused it).

Conclusion

Look, I did ultimately enjoy it. On a shallow note, most of the men were extremely good-looking (I refuse to believe that the Chenghua Emperor was so hot in real life) and there were some badass and cool female characters. On a less shallow note, all scenes between Darren Chen and Fu Mengbo are gold – the animated bit where Tang Fan explains why he couldn’t have murdered anyone has to be seen to be believed – and when you add Liu Yaoyuan to the mix, it just gets better.

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So, spoilers will follow:

So, this came up in my youtube recommends, probably because I've been binging on C-drama ever since I ran out of Untamed episodes to watch. This is the summary:
"Jade Dynasty : After the massacre of his village, Zhang Xiaofan is taken in by the Qing Yun Sect where he begins his journey of cultivation. When he finds out the truth behind the deaths of his parents, he succumbs to his rage and demonic tendencies and becomes the enemy of Qing Yun Sect."

What it doesn't say is that this "he succumbs to his rage and demonic tendencies and becomes the enemy of Qing Yun Sect" happens in the last 5-10 minutes. No, really. NO REALLY.

Before that we have a lot of messing about which is endlessly confusing and kind or frustrating. I mean, why doesn't Zhang Xiaofan get better at cultivating over ten years? Were they just using him as a male Cinderella type or was that just a red-herring? Also, what's with "demonic tendencies"? AFAIK, he found a stick and bled near it - it was kind of an accident.

I honestly can't say anything about the acting - that was good throughout, and if at times seemed over the top, well that was the character.

Pacing was terrible - alternately nothing happening and then everything happening at once - as I've said, in the last ten minutes. That's kind of what happens when you try to compress a 50 or so episode series into a movie which isn't even 2 hours long.

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Watched it recently and was kind of underwhelmed, in general.

SPOILERS FOLLOW:

Ok, good stuff: the acting is excellent - even new characters who we never met in The Untamed. Now that we know JGY is evil, it's fun to watch him getting away with so much.

Ji Li does an amazing job as Nie Huai Sang, showing how this naive kid turned into a master manipulator.

Everyone is excellent in their parts, even the kids portraying young Huaisang and young Mingjue - that's not the problem with the movie. The problem is the sub-Indiana Jones bit in the middle, which really drags, culminating in the fight between the two blade spirits, which is terrible, I'm sorry.

I wanted to see more character stuff, instead I get the bulk in an underground burial chamber straight out of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which drags on forever until you realise, with horror, that most of the movie is going to be this.

Even worse, Huaisang finds out about JGY's villainy by literally having it spelled out to him by his brother's ghost.

I wanted to find out about what happened between Mingjue's death and WWX coming back - the last scene could have been Huaisang heading off for Mo Village, with a kind of "I'm visiting an old friend," punchline.

Just like with The Living Dead, the problem is that the producers etc want to do the same thing they did in The Untamed, but in one movie. Except in CQL they had 20+ hours to have character stuff; planning stuff; the occasional CGI monster battle, and so on. They didn't have the same kind of running time for Fatal Journey.

I enjoyed watching it, but the only parts I'm interested in rewatching are the ones featuring actual humans, rather than CGI creations. Also, it was super annoying that the last AMAZING shot of the trailer (Huaisang bowing to JGY ), the one which made me watch it, was also the last shot of the movie.

Also whoever decided (both in this and The Living Dead) that using the weaponized guqin meant releasing a million CGI dots into the atmosphere: you chose . . . poorly.

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highly misleading description

I only chose the 'spoilers' option to be safe, because I only watched the first 15 minutes.

So, what the review and the summary don't tell you is that the actual English title is "Fatty Princess loses weight for love". Yes, really. Funny how this didn't feature in any of the reviews or the summary.
If you look really closely at the poster, you can see our "Fatty Princess" as a blurry image, top left.

So, we start with one of the leads, not the fatty princess, BTW, on her wedding day, where she informs her husband that she
a) loves another
b) will never consummate, and
c) if he tries to force her, she will badmouth him to the Emperor.

Rather than making me all 'girl-power!' I just felt sorry for the guy, who had just as much choice over the marriage as she did (none) and now has to deal with the fact that, what - his family ends here? No, he can't get kids with a concubine because the wife was supposed to have kids first. Whatever, after what I'm going to describe next put me off to the extent that I dropped it early. Hope you got something out of this, guy.

And now we come to our 'fatty princess' - a fat girl stereotype portrayed by an actress in a fatsuit and wearing fat-face latex. She's fat because she's always eating, and she has her eunuch whipped when she puts on weight. The cook, who says he can't cook anything that will help her lose weight (but he can produce a magical hot soup which will cool you down in summer), tricks her into thinking she's lost weight by fiddling with the scales. Finally, a guard who's secretly in love with her tells her she'll lose weight if she chews everything 100 times.
We have a convenient time-skip of 3 months, in which fatty princess is fatty no more, having discarded her fat-suit and the latex fat-face.
Also, the guard who's always loved her, overhears the Prince she loves saying he only wants to marry her because her family will support him when he makes a bid for the throne, and punches the Prince in the face.

And I was DONE. There's comedy, and then there's this.

Look, there's some pretty images of food being prepared and served. But you can get that on Chef Hua, and not get the fat-shaming.

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loved it - as usual have some nitpicks - but loved it

Sure I have nitpicks with this, but when I watch a series and start writing fanfic in my head, it's a sign that I liked it a lot.

So glad this came out 4 years ago - it's very bingeable; in fact, took me about 4 days to get through all the episodes. I didn't skip any episodes - something rare for me - but this series does need a judicious application of the fast-forward button (icon? I guess it's an icon nowadays. Sorry, am old).

First let's start with the spoilers: no, I don't mean MY spoilers, those will come later. I mean the fact that the opening and closing credits (5 minutes in all) spoil the entirety of the ending. Like, all of it. WHY. Why do they do this?
If I see the title character wearing a fancy Empress headdress in the opening credits, I KNOW she's not gonna die in episode whatever. And if in the closing credits I see a little boy walking by her side in a tiny, tiny Emperor's outfit, complete with fancy jewel curtain crown, I KNOW that her true love isn't gonna live long (yes, some Emperors abdicated in favour of an heir, but not if that heir was a child).

For those of us who need English subtitles, I advise watching it on Viki. The subs there are miles better than the ones on youtube - I watched on YT up to episode 37/38 (I think) - in the following episode, the subs were mostly messed up and out of sync and stopped halfway.

Now, the spoilers:
Re. the show itself - I really enjoyed it. I liked the main character, even though I found her kind of annoying in the first episode. But then, through adversity, her character really shone through. Yes, her suffering bordered on torture porn in later episodes, and it was overdone. But it usually is in shows of this type, and I never stopped empathizing with her.
I liked all the main guys - I don't know if I had a favourite, though usually it would have been Touba Jun. But when I saw the closing credits and came here to spoil myself, I decided I wasn't going to get attached! Touba Yu was an interesting example of villain who was more of an antihero - towards the end he became really over-the-top, though his death was nicely understated. I liked how even at the end he didn't give ChangRu what she wanted - GOOD. Eat a dick, ChangRu.
Chiyun Nan made me lament that they choose the hottest guys to be the worst sociopathic villains - he ticks all the boxes for me, and then I realise in the first episode that he's a monster. Why, guys.

I found the whole marriage alliance plot to be really interesting, and gave me even more reasons to dislike the fathers on the show - specifically, Prime Minister Li, the Emperor, and even the Rouran Khan.

Like, at first the Emperor is like - sure, the woman we send to Song is gonna die, deffo. So, we can send your daughter, right, Minister Li?
Minister Li - Please, please take her.
Li Weyuong - My dearest love, I will love you forever. Forget about me. If I get raped on the way, I'll kill myself. BYEEEE.

I mean, WTF. And then, what she said actually happened! That was the plan all along! The Song people planned to rape and murder her before she even got to their country, and make it look like it was done by their own people, which is super-fucked up (also, makes me realise why with European royalty, they started insisting on marriages by proxy in the princess's own country - that way, she was already the Consort, and anyone who laid a hand on her would die horribly).

So, ok, fine. The Emperor knew about this likelihood, or that they'd kill Weiyoung as soon as they attacked, and so didn't want to send his own, still very babyish, daughter. But then he agrees to send Touba Di to Rouran??? To marry a man his age or older?? And maybe get raped and killed on the way??

The Khan of Rouran is another monstrous dad. He sends Anle off into the unknown, while also planning to invade. But what's even worse is what he does to Li MinDe - at first it's all: my first-born son, come back to us, yada yada. Then, when we find out what's become of him, it's clear that the intention was simply to use Li Minde to spy, steal a map etc, so they could attack. He literally didn't care about his son at all - instead of arranging a marriage for his son, he arranges one for himself! With a teenage girl whose attitude and behaviour is so childlike the thing borders on child abuse.

If I have something to complain about and agree with other complaints: yes, the ending is kind of a mess. Maybe it's based on the novel, maybe it isn't, but as a lot of things were changed anyway, why not change the Touba Jun ending ? It's a massive plot hole , to me, that all top doctors in Northern Wei, working for 5 years (or so) around the clock, could not replicate an antidote which had been put together by a power-hungry General (Chiyun Nan, you were a total smokeshow, but never struck me as the brightest bulb in the box).

The whole poison thing just bugged me. And why would you have only one antidote but two poisons. Just, whatever.

Still, its fun and enjoyable, has a host of interesting characters, and some episodes can be watched on 1.5 speed.

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I have so many mixed feelings about this! While I love Kim Hee Sun and Lee Min Ho in the main parts, there are others whose acting choices I found questionable - I know we're not meant to like Gi Chul because he's the baddie, but man, he didn't have to go all full mustache twirling evil guy. I know my bad guys (there's a reason it's Xue Yang who's my avatar, not Wen Ruohan) and he and all of his crew were just the worst (as in, not entertaining, I know they're meant to be evil), just cartoons.

Also, the production was just lacking - I guess they spent all their money on the door effects, because ugh.

Still, am so happy that it has a happy ending - I dropped another famous time-travel K-drama after finding out that it doesn't end in a similar way.

Kim Hee Sun and Lee Min Ho had such chemistry, but that was basically it - I honestly didn't really care about the other characters, so tired of the palace politics etc.

But the one thing which made me write the review is this: That bloomin' song is stuck in my head! and because I can't speak the language, I can't do what I usually do - which is sing it to the end, in my head, and get rid of it. Yesterday I was watching something else and thinking - this would have been so much better with this other song . . . what the hell is it?
When I realised I groaned, and had to find it on youtube - it's called Carry On, and here it is so all y'all can suffer with me: https://youtu.be/e5brmft_MK4

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I'm at episode 47 and I think I'm done. Something good finally happened to Ruyi and I can't watch everything go downhill from now on (no, I'm not spoiling, because this all happened in real life over 200 years ago).
I've managed to get this far only because of the amazing performance of Zhou Xun as the title character, fighting against my dislike of the Qing hair (at one point Ruyi looks like she has a hammerhead shark on her head) , the Qing clothes, the Qing interiors , and every. single. other. character. Except for two of the maids: pour one out for Suoxin and Lianxin. Ok, FINE. One eunuch (Li Yu) and one doctor (Jiang Yubin). And Ling Yunche, how could I have forgotten him.

Sigh. Maybe I'll watch a few more episodes, but as other posters have said, it does get a bit samey - 1. Ruyi's doing her own thing (love you, girl). 2. Horrible people plotting against her. 3. No one believes Ruyi. 4. Ruyi suffers (and yes, Zhou Xun suffers BEAUTIFULLY). 5. Ruyi is vindicated. And the cycle starts again.

The thing is, I watched Yanxi Palace first, and even though Yanxi Palace has some nonsense towards the end, the characters are generally much better developed. Also, Concubine Ling, the heroine of Yanxi Palace is entirely demonised here, and I'm kind of not there for that? Seeing as we know exactly two facts about the real woman, why make her evil? Yes, she has a different name here, but there was only one Concubine Ling, who, SPOILER FOR 2-CENTURY OLD EVENTS , was the mother of the next Emperor.

I mean, fine, Yanxi Palace made Ulanara / Ruyi into a villain, so idk.

Basically, it's well acted for the most part (90% of that being Zhou Xun - I'm not a fan of Wallace Huo's portrayal of Qianlong) , has some awesome exterior scenes which attest to the enormous budget this must have had, and it's massively interesting to watch. Just, you know, not if you're prone to depression.

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Yeah, not gonna finish this one

Look, I tried, really hard.
Also, when I say I've watched about 15, that doesn't mean 1-15 - I was on the verge of giving up when I came here and read that episodes 17/18 onwards rev up the momentum, and so I did my utmost.

I can honestly say that the rating of 7/10 is earned, in its entirety by the fact that:
1) they kiss
2) their friends talk about sex in a realistic way*
3) they actually have sex: note to future c-drama makers: SEE? It doesn't need to be explicit, just a lot of kissing and a tasteful cut to the fireplace/candles etc.

See, it always bugs me that in these dramas someone invariably says - "nope, even though we're married, we're not having sex" and I'm like: that is the entire purpose of your arranged marriage? You know, babies? that's what uniting families means?? We're human beings, we don't reproduce through parthenogenesis?

I mean, I'll accept it in something like Nirvana in Fire 2, in which the love story was in the background, though it was frustrating. But a romance has no excuse.

*Before I go on to my critique, I'd just like to stress how much I loved his buddies and their advice - I actually found myself agreeing VOCALLY, OUT LOUD with Song Jin Yu when he was like "Dude! She's pissed off that you didn't bang her yet! WTF is wrong with you! A woman has needs- no wait, the last bit was me. I love a drama and a character which says that sure, we love all the romantic stuff, all the riding through a blizzard to beg us to come back and then kissing in a pavilion while the snow floats down - but we also love all the other stuff. And THEY'RE MARRIED.

Anyway, back to the criticizing. I appreciate that most viewers really enjoyed the songs on the OST, but I couldn't, because I don't understand the lyrics and the subtitles were terrible. In fact, I started turning the subs off once the songs started, and I enjoyed them more. Look, the word "reschedule" should never be in a love song of any kind. NO. "We'll meet again one day" = yes. "We'll reschedule" = no.

Anyway, that wasn't the music I meant when I was giving my one star. I meant the background soundtrack - which was really really loud - so loud that it should be called the FOREground music (see what I did there?). It was all really obnoxiously loud, and added to the tonal problems, especially the jazzy trumpet stuff (weirdly reminiscent of an infamous instrumental song called "The Stripper", from 1958) which was signalling THIS IS A FUNNY SCENE - ENJOY THE HILARITY. THAT'S AN ORDER.

For something that was meant to be a comedy, I sat through most of what I watched with a stone face - except for the scenes with ML's buddies - which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I found Mingyue annoying for the most part - having recently finished The Story of Yanxi Palace, I kept flashing back to Wei Yingluo imitating all the baby-voiced concubines and making the Emperor (and me) laugh - I really hated the baby voice. I did feel bad for her because Li Qian started out as such an asshole.

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