BTSFT123
This drama felt like a mix of the Story of Minglan plus bits of Goodbye my Princess, which in my opinion, are the highest quality historical dramas that I've ever seen (but bear in mind I have yet to watch Nirvana in Fire and Eternal Love, which I have high hopes for). I've seen a lot of them and other then these two, I honestly wouldn't even recommend any others because they all fall to nonsensical plot and tiresome dragging. With this show I had two opinions on it, one before it started to drag, and one after completing it.
In the first half, I felt while there were some flaws to the writing (like it wasn't as neat or as clever as it could be and there were some plot holes in character's personalities and events that happened), but I could definitely brush it off because it's a drama so whatever and in comparison to a lot of others that I'd seen, its quality is really quite high. If this had been my first historical drama, I probably would've been completely satisfied.
I was impressed with the leads acting, especially as I've always heard great things about Luo Jin and he was really really good, almost to the point i didn't want him acting this tiresome plot anymore, because I feel it to be such a waste. The chemistry was also evident and very natural which is I guess why they became a real life couple XD
However, the plot revolved around WeiYoung and Prince Jun being extremely clever and using their wits to escape all kinds of situations, and yet, half the time they'd do really REALLY dumb things, which would get them into trouble and it wasn't consistent at all. Another thing to add is when they were being "clever", scheming and creating these master plans that would afterwards be praised by everyone around them, they'd honestly not even be that smart and sometimes didn't even make sense and it felt like they were treating the audience like they were dumb enough to not comprehend logic . I couldn't help but compare every scheme to the likes of MingLan's in The Story of Minglan, which follows a very similar story. Her scheming, cleverness and how far ahead she could plan was on another level and the writing was just so much more advanced that I wasn't impressed by anything Weiyoung did. To add to this further, the Prince in Goodbye My Princess, who was in a very similar position to Prince Jun, is honestly the biggest mastermind schemer I've yet to watch in any cdramaland, and the way he manipulated situations was on another level, so I could just not be impressed at all with any of the writing in this show.
But still. Most historical dramas turn into garbage when they get stretched to a million episodes, so this is still one of the better ones out there.
But just to be more difficult, once I reached about 2/3rds of the way in, I really couldn't take the dragging and consistent rehashing of the same conflicts and same obsessive evil people that just wouldn't die. Every event would turn into a mystery case that would always end up with the Emperor being involved, which honestly lowered his status a lot, because the randomest of people would just be allowed to walk in and argue with him with 0 consequences. Ranks and titles of people would get thrown around and removed all of the time, so every time someone was demoted or promoted, it just felt like whatever. Still those ranks were used to threaten people, somehow, so it felt like consequences weren't taken seriously and people could get away with anything. Also, just for drama/plot, the same evil people were trusted again and again even though everyone had already established their crimes and they should've been outcasted by the main cast a long time ago. This made everyone have 0 personality because they didn't stick to any type of morals and seemed to have a memory that couldn't last long enough to remember the people who betrayed them. All of these issues are mostly caused by poor writing and stretching the plot to a huge 54 episodes.
Finally I'd like to make a comment on its genre of "big female role" which means the entire plot and characters all focus around the leading female character. I personally, just cannot handle shows like this because in reality, the whole world does not revolve around one person, so to watch every single male character fall for her and to watch every female character despise and plot against her, is honestly, soooo tiring, especially when the writing is poor and the schemes aren't actually very "clever" and you wonder why all these people even LIKE her or are ENVIOUS of her. This is my own opinion of course and I am sure there are many who enjoy these types of shows, I just for one, cannot stand watching the almost mindless devotion that every supporting character seems to have for this one person, it is too fake for me. But I would also like to add that this show's version of it didn't really annoy me till the very end.
To sum up, while this seems like a negative review, its the 4th best historical drama I've actually seen, so anyone who's new to this genre would probably enjoy it. I am aware that the two dramas I mentioned, GBMP and Story of Minglan, came out after this one, so if anything, they have actually taken inspiration from this, but all i can say is both far surpass this one in every way so you may as well just watch those two first and then this one XD
In the first half, I felt while there were some flaws to the writing (like it wasn't as neat or as clever as it could be and there were some plot holes in character's personalities and events that happened), but I could definitely brush it off because it's a drama so whatever and in comparison to a lot of others that I'd seen, its quality is really quite high. If this had been my first historical drama, I probably would've been completely satisfied.
I was impressed with the leads acting, especially as I've always heard great things about Luo Jin and he was really really good, almost to the point i didn't want him acting this tiresome plot anymore, because I feel it to be such a waste. The chemistry was also evident and very natural which is I guess why they became a real life couple XD
However, the plot revolved around WeiYoung and Prince Jun being extremely clever and using their wits to escape all kinds of situations, and yet, half the time they'd do really REALLY dumb things, which would get them into trouble and it wasn't consistent at all. Another thing to add is when they were being "clever", scheming and creating these master plans that would afterwards be praised by everyone around them, they'd honestly not even be that smart and sometimes didn't even make sense and it felt like they were treating the audience like they were dumb enough to not comprehend logic . I couldn't help but compare every scheme to the likes of MingLan's in The Story of Minglan, which follows a very similar story. Her scheming, cleverness and how far ahead she could plan was on another level and the writing was just so much more advanced that I wasn't impressed by anything Weiyoung did. To add to this further, the Prince in Goodbye My Princess, who was in a very similar position to Prince Jun, is honestly the biggest mastermind schemer I've yet to watch in any cdramaland, and the way he manipulated situations was on another level, so I could just not be impressed at all with any of the writing in this show.
But still. Most historical dramas turn into garbage when they get stretched to a million episodes, so this is still one of the better ones out there.
But just to be more difficult, once I reached about 2/3rds of the way in, I really couldn't take the dragging and consistent rehashing of the same conflicts and same obsessive evil people that just wouldn't die. Every event would turn into a mystery case that would always end up with the Emperor being involved, which honestly lowered his status a lot, because the randomest of people would just be allowed to walk in and argue with him with 0 consequences. Ranks and titles of people would get thrown around and removed all of the time, so every time someone was demoted or promoted, it just felt like whatever. Still those ranks were used to threaten people, somehow, so it felt like consequences weren't taken seriously and people could get away with anything. Also, just for drama/plot, the same evil people were trusted again and again even though everyone had already established their crimes and they should've been outcasted by the main cast a long time ago. This made everyone have 0 personality because they didn't stick to any type of morals and seemed to have a memory that couldn't last long enough to remember the people who betrayed them. All of these issues are mostly caused by poor writing and stretching the plot to a huge 54 episodes.
Finally I'd like to make a comment on its genre of "big female role" which means the entire plot and characters all focus around the leading female character. I personally, just cannot handle shows like this because in reality, the whole world does not revolve around one person, so to watch every single male character fall for her and to watch every female character despise and plot against her, is honestly, soooo tiring, especially when the writing is poor and the schemes aren't actually very "clever" and you wonder why all these people even LIKE her or are ENVIOUS of her. This is my own opinion of course and I am sure there are many who enjoy these types of shows, I just for one, cannot stand watching the almost mindless devotion that every supporting character seems to have for this one person, it is too fake for me. But I would also like to add that this show's version of it didn't really annoy me till the very end.
To sum up, while this seems like a negative review, its the 4th best historical drama I've actually seen, so anyone who's new to this genre would probably enjoy it. I am aware that the two dramas I mentioned, GBMP and Story of Minglan, came out after this one, so if anything, they have actually taken inspiration from this, but all i can say is both far surpass this one in every way so you may as well just watch those two first and then this one XD
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