Jina
United States
This review may contain spoilers
beautiful faces, designs, props, potential plots but boggled and ruined by terribly storytelling
I tried so hard to finish this--for wang zhuo cheng and meng ziyi--but I just couldn't. There are two kinds of bad dramas: 1) ones that are so ridiculous that it becomes endearingly funny and enjoyable, and then 2) the ones that are so ridiculous that it's just frustrating and angering. Legend of Two Sisters in the Chaos is the 2nd one, sadly.
There are several things that I couldn't deal with this show.
1) The characters had ONE defining trait and that was pretty much it: it was like the story writers just needed to fill a trope or character type and then just did that instead of fleshing them into real and logical characters. This was most obviously frustrating when it came to someone like Fu Jinzhan who is possibly one of the worst FLs I've ever come across. The writers wrote her SO bad. She is ~good at fighting~ and short temper and literally nothing else. Almost everything about her decisions are SO bad. The writers tried to make her come across as "someone with a code--helping whoever in need; not killing needlessly" but even THAT doesn't come across organically. In the end, Jinzhan becomes one of the most confusing and frustrating characters as she, at one point, SET FIRE TO THE PALACE AND PRETENDED TO BE DEAD FROM THE FIRE so that she can escape her current union to the King. What the fuck? It was so thoughtless, so stupid, so emotionally damaging to everyone else just because she couldn't wait. Sure, you can argue that it's in line with her personality, but at what cost? Her character makes such illogical decisions that it's so hard to care about her. (Many other characters are like this too, so. I just chose Jinzhan because it's what I remember.)
2) Inorganic sudden love and feelings: I'm truly not a fan of main couples falling in love with each other right away because it's usually done badly. When it doesn't feel organic, it feels very forced, and that's how I feel about the two main lead couples. (Maybe it's also due to a chemistry thing too; they are pretty faces, but they don't feel in love...)
There are shows that makes 'suddenly in love' interesting:
"Love in Lost Times" - The main couple falls in love fairly fast in the beginning, but due to a plot point, it is only the FL who remembers their love and not the ML, allowing them in a way to re-learn to love each other.
Or, for example, I started (and didn't finish yet) the drama "Legend of the Phoenix" where the FL falls for the ML first and the ML seems resistant at first but actually likes the FL too, and they decide to be together early in the series to go through trials together--no back-and-forth, pointless angst. (They also had really good chemistry.)
In this drama, I disliked so much how Fu Yuzhan apparently liked Xue Rong already by like ep2?? (And some of their scenes were very illogical. I believe in ep2, when assassins were coming after Fu Yuzhan, Xue Rong told her to run away while he fought them, but then she just STOOD THERE WATCHING IN FULL VIEW OF THE ASSASSINS--putting herself at risk STILL and so he had to do some super move to save her (and got injured). I couldn't believe it because she's supposed to be intelligent! And yet??? She couldn't, I don't know, hide??)
Or how Jinzhan and Jiang Shao already had feelings for each other by like ep10??? When they barely knew each other for like 2 weeks?
The romance just feels so forced.
3) So many characters that you grow to not care about: this goes back to how the characters are written badly, and so, when supporting characters are introduced and given a tragic motive to turn into villains and whatnot--like Huaijin--I didn't care.
4) The Princess lady--Huaijin's mother--the big villain is killed and shown through a flashback: I couldn't believe they did her dirty like that. She was literally the main, conniving villain of the first half of the show and then they just killed her off like that. What was the point of having a Big Bad Villain like that when you don't even give her the storyline and screen time she deserves?????
Ultimately, this drama had some high potential, but the execution and story in general was just to wonky and frustrating.
Maybe one day when I'm bored, I'll return back to finish this drama for wang zhuo cheng and meng ziyi, but, at this point I have no desire to finish it.
There are several things that I couldn't deal with this show.
1) The characters had ONE defining trait and that was pretty much it: it was like the story writers just needed to fill a trope or character type and then just did that instead of fleshing them into real and logical characters. This was most obviously frustrating when it came to someone like Fu Jinzhan who is possibly one of the worst FLs I've ever come across. The writers wrote her SO bad. She is ~good at fighting~ and short temper and literally nothing else. Almost everything about her decisions are SO bad. The writers tried to make her come across as "someone with a code--helping whoever in need; not killing needlessly" but even THAT doesn't come across organically. In the end, Jinzhan becomes one of the most confusing and frustrating characters as she, at one point, SET FIRE TO THE PALACE AND PRETENDED TO BE DEAD FROM THE FIRE so that she can escape her current union to the King. What the fuck? It was so thoughtless, so stupid, so emotionally damaging to everyone else just because she couldn't wait. Sure, you can argue that it's in line with her personality, but at what cost? Her character makes such illogical decisions that it's so hard to care about her. (Many other characters are like this too, so. I just chose Jinzhan because it's what I remember.)
2) Inorganic sudden love and feelings: I'm truly not a fan of main couples falling in love with each other right away because it's usually done badly. When it doesn't feel organic, it feels very forced, and that's how I feel about the two main lead couples. (Maybe it's also due to a chemistry thing too; they are pretty faces, but they don't feel in love...)
There are shows that makes 'suddenly in love' interesting:
"Love in Lost Times" - The main couple falls in love fairly fast in the beginning, but due to a plot point, it is only the FL who remembers their love and not the ML, allowing them in a way to re-learn to love each other.
Or, for example, I started (and didn't finish yet) the drama "Legend of the Phoenix" where the FL falls for the ML first and the ML seems resistant at first but actually likes the FL too, and they decide to be together early in the series to go through trials together--no back-and-forth, pointless angst. (They also had really good chemistry.)
In this drama, I disliked so much how Fu Yuzhan apparently liked Xue Rong already by like ep2?? (And some of their scenes were very illogical. I believe in ep2, when assassins were coming after Fu Yuzhan, Xue Rong told her to run away while he fought them, but then she just STOOD THERE WATCHING IN FULL VIEW OF THE ASSASSINS--putting herself at risk STILL and so he had to do some super move to save her (and got injured). I couldn't believe it because she's supposed to be intelligent! And yet??? She couldn't, I don't know, hide??)
Or how Jinzhan and Jiang Shao already had feelings for each other by like ep10??? When they barely knew each other for like 2 weeks?
The romance just feels so forced.
3) So many characters that you grow to not care about: this goes back to how the characters are written badly, and so, when supporting characters are introduced and given a tragic motive to turn into villains and whatnot--like Huaijin--I didn't care.
4) The Princess lady--Huaijin's mother--the big villain is killed and shown through a flashback: I couldn't believe they did her dirty like that. She was literally the main, conniving villain of the first half of the show and then they just killed her off like that. What was the point of having a Big Bad Villain like that when you don't even give her the storyline and screen time she deserves?????
Ultimately, this drama had some high potential, but the execution and story in general was just to wonky and frustrating.
Maybe one day when I'm bored, I'll return back to finish this drama for wang zhuo cheng and meng ziyi, but, at this point I have no desire to finish it.
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