This review may contain spoilers
Soooooo Underwhelming~!!!!
I watched this as the 2nd installment of CITT and it destroyed my palate and expectation of this whole series.I'm the type of person who loves to seek through people's review before watching any dramas cause I don't wanna waste time yet still gave this one a chance since it's part of the series and I believe that thriller-action dramas can never go wrong; but TWG proved me wrong. This drama made me so furious and disappointed countless of times and almost let me drop it halfway.
Story is too JUMPY for no reason and is somewhat confusing. Female leads are useless but was able to survive nonetheless even the 2nd male lead is a liability. Terrible.
Story - 6.5, I'm honestly still being too kind for giving this a 6.5. IF i happen to drop it halfway It would've been 5. The action and fighting scenes somehow save it for me. Even when they're mostly average as well.
Actors - 8, The actors did deliver. It's just that their characters lack purposes and is heavily shouldered by the Main Lead.
Music - 6.5, I'm too infuriated to even notice and appreciate. Music could've easily pass the mark but this drama failed to do so.
Rewatch - 5, I wanted to give it a lower rating cause i definitely won't watch it again but i'm keeping it at 5 since I was able to get through the story while bearing so much. But I WILL NEVER EVERR~!!
Overall - 6.5, I supposedly wanna give it a 7 but I felt like it's way too high so I reduced a "0.5" points. It's horrendous but is bearable.
Please let me know IF you find my review helpful.
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Turned out pretty great in the end!
I gave it a few months after watching the original Candle in the Tomb series before jumping into this prequel. I wasn't at all disappointed by the end.I was a little taken aback at first, as this show has a bit more of the slaptick comedy antics that I'm not so fond of. However, the show quickly does a 180 on that front, and we can finally settle into a more serious tomb raiding adventure. I actually liked seeing the backwards time jump as my second round in the universe. We get a taste of the main two characters in the first CitT, but now we get to delve into their backstories a bit more. The other characters were serviceable, but don't hold a candle (see what I di there?) to Shirley. The last 5 episodes are where things really get crazy, and I'm actually convinced the highs are even higher than the previous show's.
The CG isn't great in the first few episodes. The director seems to use it sparingly in the beginning, but more than makes up for it later on. Once again, the sets are amazing, and I was left wanting more upon completion.
I can't say much else without getting into spoilers, but this more than lived up to my initial impressions of this franchise. I'll be watching the even further back prequel, The Wrath of Time, in the coming months.
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Ethan is the best Hu Ba Yi ever!
This is actually a great show, not just because of gorgeous and cute and funny Ethan Ruan, but also because of the unexpectedly beautiful production considering the time period and circumstances of the story (a cold snowy winter in rural China of 1950-60s). I remember these cotton padded rural coats worn by my grandparents but only Ethan can make it such a sexy outfit. I don't expect much of a tomb raiding genre. It all mostly gets down to wandering around in underground labyrinths and a fair dose of screamers, which you have plenty of in this show as well. But there are also so many funny moments here that made me puzzled and thinking if they were intentional (because they didn't look like a regular Chinese comedy scenes with appropriate music etc.) or it is just my own cultural background of a Soviet childhood that made them so damn funny. A great set-up and camerawork! I owe most of my laughs to it. Too bad the only song sung was The Internationale, but it added a funny flavor and made me remember the lyrics in my own language and sing it on with the characters. This is a charming small tomb raiding show, after which it is difficult for me to see any other actor as Hu Ba Yi but adorable Ethan Ruan.Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Roast Review - Weasel Grave - too much propaganda & completely useless females
Watching Candle In The Tomb (CIIT) in chronological order, Weasel Grave is the second series following the very excellent Wrath of Time, which I loved. It started super slow, we are introduced to Hu Bayi (Ethan Juan), "Fatty" Wang KaiXuan (Ryan Liu), the lovestruck Yan Zi (Daisy Li) and cold Hua Mei (Lulu Xu) early. The are various levels of annoying as they start investigating a weasel grave near their village.The constant "revolutionary" propaganda is SERIOUSLY off putting because we know that real communists would have executed or work camp indoctrinated the smart ones like ML and SL instead of bringing them to a village. Despite how distasteful this was I gamely plowed through till episode 10 when things started to move (plot wise) in Mongolia, and we were treated to some spectacular landscapes and a real Tomb, except WW2 Japanese built a base next to it so their Scientists could conduct Nazi type experiments on human/animal subjects in order to get weapons superiority and win the war. Evil!
The good news is the introduced monsters and undead ramped up the action and excitement since the series becoming a SURVIVAL HORROR video game. The CGI monster graphics are pretty well done so action wise this was satisfying.
The bad news is lazy script writing leads to entire episodes where all 3 girls do no acting besides screaming "HU BA YI!" over and over every time he's in danger, as if it does anything productive? Like pick up a weapon of opportunity and help him instead of being useless!! Screaming his name doesn't help. Literally this is all they do from episode 10 to 20. By the 100th plus scream, I was done. All 3 of them are so annoyingly useless collectively they are not even worth 1 fingernail of Miss Hong Gu Niang from Wrath of Time.
The story doesn't even feel like it concluded properly from a human relationships point of view. What the hell happened here? The only thing I'm not surprised at is Hu Ba Yi was smart enough not to end up with any of the 3 (although Ding SiTian was less bad than the other 2). This is sad as it might be the first series I watched where I actually disliked every single character. Poor Weasels. Here's to hoping the rest of the CIIT series has a better story, portrays the MLs better and has stronger female characters.
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But with 20 episodes, there isn’t as much character development as you normally see in a series. There are some bits here and there, but not a lot. The inevitable relationships are pretty predictable, but not totally satisfying.
So it’s a popcorn adventure with some interesting twists, but not very involving.
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