raruje
Should have chosen a scriptwriter that cared about the story
My first impression was pretty much "wow, they COULD NOT wait to introduce the love interest, huh?"
This was a mess from the very beginning. The pacing of the first episode was all over the place, it was like they wanted to get all the world-building and character set-up out of the way as quickly as possible so they could introduce the love interest within the first ten minutes of the first episode. It was like they took it as a personal challenge to see how quickly they could get the protagonist and the love interest to meet. Then all of a sudden, the cousin/fiance decides to leave because of a conversation he overheard. Just like that. Out of the blue. There's no substance nor build-up whatsoever that makes you care about the stuff that is going on. Xie Yun crossed the traps in the river with no problems despite the area being supposedly impenetrable and incredibly hard to enter. There's no stakes or any real feeling of danger, because you just know that he's gonna solve everything with his main character power. There's absolutely no use telling us that the fortress is well-guarded and hard to enter when it only takes minutes for Xie Yun to do it. They should have shown him putting more effort into solving the trap and figuring out how to get in. It all feels so half-assed.
The fight scenes weren't the worst I've seen, but definitely not passable for a show heavily marketed as a wuxia. Too many closeup shots on the character's faces when they should be showing the bodies actually fighting. The costumes are quite good, except for Zhou Fei's. I get that she's supposed to be dressed more masculine, but it is possible to give her better costumes that don't look so boring and cheap while still keeping the masculine vibe. They can do that for the male characters so why not for her? The acting is alright. I liked both of their performances but frankly the casting of Zhou Fei and Xie Yun is horribly mismatched. Zhao Liying and Wang Yibo are both fine by themselves, but when put together Wang Yibo obviously looks so much younger, and they just don't have enough chemistry to make up for it. That plus a terrible script just made the romance awkward for me, and because the plot writing and pacing is horrible, there's literally nothing else to look forward for.
Zhao Liying's makeup is also kind of distracting? Aside from being obviously cakey, the shiny lip-gloss and thick eyeliner is not subtle at all and looks so out of place, especially considering how her character is supposed to be tomboyish.
There's also the fake forest set that is so incredibly distracting because it's obviously the same one they use for many different scenes, and it looks even more artificial because of how bad the lighting is. They didn't even attempt to emulate the lighting texture of a dense forest which means every time they're in that fake forest, you can tell right away they're in a studio because of the stark, untextured overhead studio lighting. It looks like one of those old-timey wuxia dramas which is not what a c-drama from 2020 with a huge budget is supposed to look like. How on earth did they allocate the money?
As an adaptation of the original novel, You Fei, this show just fails even more. It's even easier to tell that the people who produced this show gave no shits about it when you've read the novel, because while they did adapt the big scenes, they did it in such a way that all complexity, nuance and buildup is lost.
This was a mess from the very beginning. The pacing of the first episode was all over the place, it was like they wanted to get all the world-building and character set-up out of the way as quickly as possible so they could introduce the love interest within the first ten minutes of the first episode. It was like they took it as a personal challenge to see how quickly they could get the protagonist and the love interest to meet. Then all of a sudden, the cousin/fiance decides to leave because of a conversation he overheard. Just like that. Out of the blue. There's no substance nor build-up whatsoever that makes you care about the stuff that is going on. Xie Yun crossed the traps in the river with no problems despite the area being supposedly impenetrable and incredibly hard to enter. There's no stakes or any real feeling of danger, because you just know that he's gonna solve everything with his main character power. There's absolutely no use telling us that the fortress is well-guarded and hard to enter when it only takes minutes for Xie Yun to do it. They should have shown him putting more effort into solving the trap and figuring out how to get in. It all feels so half-assed.
The fight scenes weren't the worst I've seen, but definitely not passable for a show heavily marketed as a wuxia. Too many closeup shots on the character's faces when they should be showing the bodies actually fighting. The costumes are quite good, except for Zhou Fei's. I get that she's supposed to be dressed more masculine, but it is possible to give her better costumes that don't look so boring and cheap while still keeping the masculine vibe. They can do that for the male characters so why not for her? The acting is alright. I liked both of their performances but frankly the casting of Zhou Fei and Xie Yun is horribly mismatched. Zhao Liying and Wang Yibo are both fine by themselves, but when put together Wang Yibo obviously looks so much younger, and they just don't have enough chemistry to make up for it. That plus a terrible script just made the romance awkward for me, and because the plot writing and pacing is horrible, there's literally nothing else to look forward for.
Zhao Liying's makeup is also kind of distracting? Aside from being obviously cakey, the shiny lip-gloss and thick eyeliner is not subtle at all and looks so out of place, especially considering how her character is supposed to be tomboyish.
There's also the fake forest set that is so incredibly distracting because it's obviously the same one they use for many different scenes, and it looks even more artificial because of how bad the lighting is. They didn't even attempt to emulate the lighting texture of a dense forest which means every time they're in that fake forest, you can tell right away they're in a studio because of the stark, untextured overhead studio lighting. It looks like one of those old-timey wuxia dramas which is not what a c-drama from 2020 with a huge budget is supposed to look like. How on earth did they allocate the money?
As an adaptation of the original novel, You Fei, this show just fails even more. It's even easier to tell that the people who produced this show gave no shits about it when you've read the novel, because while they did adapt the big scenes, they did it in such a way that all complexity, nuance and buildup is lost.
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