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Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty II To the West chinese drama review
Ongoing 14/40
Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty II To the West
9 people found this review helpful
by oceanbreeze12
Jul 22, 2024
14 of 40 episodes seen
Ongoing
Overall 9.5
Story 9.5
Acting/Cast 8.0
Music 8.5
Rewatch Value 9.0

Well written mystery drama

I'm surprised this isn't rated much higher because it is solidly written. This is one of those 'supernatural incidents turns out to have human causes' mystery dramas. Those dramas tend to have endings that seem pretty anti climatic but this drama gives its mysteries really satisfying endings. It's a nice balance between character driven and logic driven. Definitely one of the best mystery dramas I've watched in a while.

The drama's also segmented into separate mysteries with the same few main characters carrying throughout the plot. I really like this because I hated sitting through 40-eps of constant build up, but also didn't like watching short dramas. This is like the best of both worlds.

Onto the acting: this is I think some of the most natural and organic acting I've seen across the board. However some of the characters seem a bit dull. Lu Ling Feng is the serious righteous guy and Su Wu Ming the chill guy who always seems like he sees two steps ahead, so they're both kind of boring to listen to in their own way. I wish they had a bit more flair like other detective characters I've watched since we need to see them talk *a lot*. SWM especially gets long long speeches and has a much slower speaking speed than I'm used to and I sometimes feel tempted to put him at 1.5x speed. There's nothing wrong with them as characters: like..they portray realistic human beings, often much better than other shows I've seen, but I don't think they are interesting enough to carry such a dialogue heavy drama. However the comments I've seen elsewhere showed that this is a pretty unpopular opinion, and people especially loved to watch SWM.

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