A Nice Drama about Growing From Teen Years To Adulthood

I had wanted to give up on this show so many times many times throughout watching it but I made it to the end. I chose this show being a Tan Song Yun fan. She was still the same lovely and talented actress but this may not have been her best performance. But I can say that about all of the major characters in this story. The show is not only long with 37 episodes but it covers many years in time, about half the lives of the major characters and even more if you count flashback scenes from times before this story began. I don't know if it was the script, the actors, or the director but if you are working with a story that covers such a large timespan, there should be some progression in the characters. It may have been tough on the actors to today playing a 16-year-old, then a few episodes later someone in their mid-twenties and by the end a thirtysomething. But aside from some hairstyle and makeup changes, many of the characters acted the same from beginning to the end. So, in the beginning, you have a group of very mature teenagers and at the end you see a group of very immature adults. And that went for the adult characters too. The parents didn't age from day one to the end of the story. But none of this detracts from my appreciation for the quality of the acting throughout the story.
The ending which for me makes or breaks a show was a letdown. Despite the writers giving away the ending in the middle of the next to the last episode, I still kept hoping for the hero to prevail. The very last scene seemed out of place too. It was somewhere between an epilogue and an afterthought. It was nice that they gave us closure to the character but the scene came out of nowhere with no explanation of what actually happened, although the result was obvious.
I will likely watch the show again at some time in the future but it is not at the top of my rewatch list.

Read More

A fun show to watch

This show has the right amount of drama and excitement. It features martial arts so the gravity-defying stunt work is very entertaining. It is a nice story with a fine cast of young actors. Sun Qian shines with her talent and loveliness as the spunky Feng Piao Piao. I am curious as to how many of the stunts that she did herself. If it wasn't her, the stunt double was very convincing. (The spinning flying full body throw in the last scene is one to remember.)
The story moves along nicely and only seems to get bogged down on a few occasions. The only puzzling part was near the end. The last episode was about twice as long as the others and after what seemed to be a good place to end the story, the show continued with a series of scenes that didn't seem to connect to the main story. At the end of the show there is a comment from the crew stating their appreciation to those who work to continue and promote traditional Chinese culture. I couldn't agree more. Some of the final scenes may have been intended to further nightlight that point rather than the relationship between the two main characters.

Thanks to the translators for their hard work.

Read More