Who Rules the World (2022)

The main couple is definitely the best thing about WRTW

Indulging in this drama proved to be an emotional rollercoaster, leaving me torn between conflicting opinions throughout its 40 episodes (which I watched at an astonishing pace) and made writing a review quite irresistible.

I love long dramas, but for me to stick to it, it has to have something that really catches my attention. In this case, it was the exceptional chemistry between the lead characters, Hei Fengxi and Bai Fengxi. Their individual personalities immediately drew me in, and their synergy as a couple was nothing short of mesmerizing. The compelling dynamics made me drown into them and want to devour the entire drama in one week just to get more and more.

While the leads undoubtedly stood out as the highlight of this drama and kept me invested throughout, even this remarkable couple couldn't shield me from my numerous grievances with the narrative, particularly from episode 20 onwards. One aspect that immediately caught my attention in a negative light was the disregard for several plot threads that I had expected to unfold continuously. I'm going to give three examples of this (spoiler alert! Not major ones but I thought I should give a heads up):

1. Han Puo, a character I anticipated having a family dynamic with the leads, mysteriously faded into the background after the "avenging" of his family, resurfacing sporadically as a seemingly inconsequential figure until the middle episodes and finally regaining importance in the last two episodes.

2. The birds, although understandable in their limited relevance to the storyline, left me wishing they had been mentioned again instead of appearing randomly in the background of scenes.

3. The portrayal of Feng Lanxi and Feng Chang's brotherly bond emphasized their deep love for one another and their status as each other's sole family. However, this important relationship was only briefly explored before Feng Chang's sudden disappearance, mirroring Han Puo's storyline. Although he did reemerge in the final episodes with some significance, it lacked the lasting impact one would expect.

Additionally, the recurring pattern of schemes and their swift resolution by the leads left me somewhat disillusioned. The court dramas were a never ending cycle of: Villain plots against Feng Lanxi → Feng Lanxi takes action → Villain triumphantly reveals it was all part of their trap → Feng Lanxi counters, it was his plan all along.

I also struggled to form attachments to any of the side characters, as the drama overwhelmingly focused on the leads, particularly Feng Lanxi for the initial 30 episodes. The lack of development and investment in the supporting cast diminished their impact.

Moreover, there was an imbalance in the storytelling, with the narrative heavily weighted toward Feng Lanxi, relegating Feng Xiyun to a secondary character status during the middle portion of the drama.

The final five episodes were just insufferable to me. The emphasis on war became overbearing, saturating the storyline with an excess of battle scenes that grew monotonous. The resolution felt too conveniently simplistic after enduring six years of tedious warfare and Yu Wuyuan's plotting during the entire drama, only to have his demise happen in a brief five-minute battle.

To exacerbate matters, the bittersweet ending felt gratuitous and unnecessary.

Upon reflecting on both the positives and negatives, I acknowledge that the overall rating should likely be lower. Nonetheless, the drama, at least during its initial 30 episodes, provided a really enjoyable experience, which ultimately holds significance to me.

I don’t think I would rewatch WRTW (maybe the very beginning), but I would definitely recommend it to someone who just wants to feel warmth from a main couple that loves and would do anything for eachother.

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Great Start, lagging middle, lame finish

LIKES:
Great costumes for the most part.
Strong female lead for the first part of the drama; beautiful, smart, skilled in martial arts and sword fighting, kind.
Scenery was fitting and beautiful. Cinematography was well done, including colour pallet.
FX: the flying scenes and some of the graphics were really good, see dislikes for parts that weren't.
ML chasing after FL for once.
Potential for ML & FL romance.
Step-mother as a villain, although cliche, she was hateable.

DISLIKES:
No solid foundation for the ML & FL to show their chemistry for romance.
Issues with PACING; too much plot twisting that didn't help the end. The political stuff started to get boring, especially the step-mother's schemes. When over done looses it's impact.
WRITING: got lost with it's concepts. First part FL is strong, independent and smart, second part she is just about the ML and constantly needs rescuing. Also in the later parts FL is often deferring her ideas to the ML's ideas. They lost what little chemistry they had in the second half of the show.
The male villain was lame and way too obvious.
Another bad writing section is the step-mother scheming was too much and got boring. Then we have the male villain who's hate for ML & FL is ridiculous and groundless.
The ENDING was very rushed and made no sense, but it was probably due to pacing issues.
Bad EDITING. Choppy PRODUCTION & terrible FX for the waring states (really bad graphics to the point of very smelly cheese, when the two sides clashed. The areal view was so lame, or the running horses were as good as a super old school video game).

OVERALL:
I would rewatch the first half of the drama and even recommend that part. Some would like the ending too. I don't understand why Netflix keeps screwing up/rushing the endings of their dramas. Is it their fault or the writers or both?





SPOILER ALERT DISLIKES:
The costumes for the wedding of ML & FL were so UGLY! And their kissing was not convincing as lovers.
Also the eldest brother should've been made the King at the end, because making ML the king and then he throws it away is just dumb. IF eldest brother was King, then the two main leads could have their alone time together, maybe even showing FL with a son. Or even kill off the ML completely, would have had more impact.

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The most boring romantic historical drama ever

I was so bored most of the time ,, I struggled to finish it for Yang Yang's acting but the plot was so slow and so boring most of the time,, the ending was ridiculous in every way it defeated the purpose of the whole drama
apparently who rules the world is none of the leads so what was the point exactly ?
Other than good visuals of the actors ,,, there were nothing interesting at all
the wuxia fights were more like Xienxia's fantasy fights ,,,, over the top and laughable compared to actual wuxia dramas
the court politics were predictable and boring
the romance wasn't good , the chemistry between the leads was off and their characters was more like partners at work not love
overall it wasn't good for me and i didn't like it at all

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The anticipation of greatness ended with a bafflingly horrendous sequence of episodes at the end.

*MAJOR SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW*

I'm not even sure where to begin with this one. I just finished the show and felt the need to write down my thoughts, especially considering the very high MDL rating of 8.7 this show has.

Who rules the world certainly had potential to be a fantastic show. It gradually builds up the story untill around the 30th episode mark where everything starts going downhill. Really, really fast. It's a sequence of episodes where everything happens super fast. People are dying left and right and sometimes even within minutes of eachother despite being in entirely different situations. Timetables that aren't kept to whatsoever, promises that aren't kept for no real reason. Imagine being the king of whatever the hell ML's place is called ( I'm sorry I'm horrendous with the names of everything in this show it all kinda blurred together ). You watch your sons and even your wife fighting for the throne. You order your wife to forcibly commit suicide and one of your sons goes proper insane. You finally abdicate the throne to a trustworthy son who promises you to take great care of his nation..... Only for him to ditch that entirely two days later because love conquers all. Now mind you I didn't actually dislike the ending. I'm talking about the final 10 minutes of the last episode that is. It's fitting for both of them to bow out of the world of royalty and politics and live as they always wanted to live, freely. Not only that but entrusting their once enemy to be the emperor because they have a shared worldview was great. This worked very well, the road to get there not so much but hey, atleast the ending was alright.

Speaking about living freely, why the hell did the female lead have to be a princess? How in the living hell was she ever allowed to just roam the lands as a commoner? this was never explained. This kind of inconsistency happens all throughout the show. The rules of the royalty were used at the whim of the writer, whenever it was necessary to be flexible or not.
The entire character of the female lead is about being free and adventurous. Yet she didn't bat so much as an eye when she was forced by circumstances to rule her nation. Her brother dies, a minute later her father dies to illness despite having been projected to still have a month left to live by the court physician. The father somehow knew the brother died despite the female lead being the only person to have received that news and soon after the female lead ends up leading the nation instead. Perfectly of course, despite having zero court experience and knowledge of ruling. Which gets me to another issue of the show.

The leads were way too perfect. They had absolutely zero flaws. They were kind, smart, calculative, gorgeous, witty, you name it and it's probably one of their character traits. We follow them because they're the leads but why we actually should root for them is beyond me. There's never a single doubt that they're going to end up victorious or excell in their respective fields.

Lastly, to reference the title of this review; ''greatness ended with a bafflingly horrendous sequence of episodes at the end''.

This war that started happening around the 32nd episode mark was horrendously displayed. The following sequence of events happened nearly 10 times in a row with only the ever so slightest of deviation to the point it might aswell not be relevant.

- Forces stare eachother down on a fat barren wasteland.
- A tiny percent of the forces end up fighting while the rest looks on.
- Random comments from either side about some impenetrable famous formation
- Retreat
- Cue the night time encampment talks
- Back to the first point.

This was actually just horrific writing. I've never quite witnessed a sequence of events in any show that was this bad.
To go from an okay show in the first 30 episodes to the last 10 episodes being so disproportionally bad shows that the writers had no clue how to end this story. Baffling, really.

Some minor points about the show that didn't sit well with me;

- Female lead dies twice but not really because of some random shit that can revive her, okay why not I guess.
- Antagonist thinks he's won when hes being confronted 1v3 by the world's strongest fighters while having no basis for that confidence whatsoever.
- Tianshung Sect's Lanhua stabbing female lead for suspicion of having killed her father despite them having a very close relationship and her obviously not being that kind of person. Doesn't think it through whatsoever just stabs the sword through. her heart.Just lmao... And all is forgiven because she was revived by a deux ex machina flower. Why not.
- Oldest prince becomes injured to the point where he isn't in contention for the throne anymore and male lead just completely forgets about him. After this happens there isn't a single scene of them together anymore. I thought they were so close? I guess not.
- Non existant OST.
- The same static pictures to transition between city states for the entirety of the show. Trees don't move, birds don't fly. It's literally just a picture. How boring and immersion breaking.
- Why did we need a childhood connection between male and female lead? Nothing was even done with it.

For the sake of having SOMETHING positive to say about the show here's the things I DID like;

- Female lead up untill episode 30 ish. Her character was well acted out and very charming.
- Female lead and Qi Wu's relationship. I was dreading the love triangle but this never happened and they pretty much became best friends. Some of the show's best scenes are them just interacting while male lead is a sidekick.
- The early episodes of Hei Fengxi and Bei Fengxi running into eachother while adventuring and slowly falling in love.

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COSTUME Drama

After a great start, the drama feels dragged with the sense of showing the main leads in different costumes and romance.
In Public who love the couple may be able to handle the whole show.
Those people who prefer strong plots this drama is not for you. This drama lacks a solid plot.
I personally prefer a strong plot as I have seen on JOY OF LIFE. JOY OF LIFE IS MY FAVOURITE Chinese drama.
Before proceeding to watch this drama let me make it easy for you. Just ask questions to yourself?
Is the main lead your favorite actor? if yes
Do I Like drama that is entirely focused on the main leads with a dragged plot? if yes
Do I like drama that doesn't have any solid storyline? If yes
Do I like drama that doesn't deliver anything except romance? if yes
If you can answer all the above questions yes so you can watch the drama and you surely like it.
Now, if you really want to see it and wondering what this drama delivers to you?
The answer is lots of costume and romance. After the first 10 episodes which are so good, this drama falls apart.
Thanks.

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Xianxia show that tried to be Wuxia and Historical Drama and was not anything

Story---terrible. The story plays out to taking forty episodes to stall around and up to one scene. The first episode was the context establishment and the last episode was the plot point---which is a situation that needs to be solved and not the ending but it's the last episode. Basically the writers told themselves, "we know we want to have a powerful prince and another powerful princess who disguises themselves to go out into the world. Then after years of bonding, their identities are eventually revealed and they lead their respective kingdoms to ally and fight another power." Sounds intriguing.

Now ideally, the reputation of the established characters would be introduced in the beginning, check. And they would show their journey and how they walked to this day, sorta-not-really check in that they've known each other for years as they walked Jianghu (which is just told to the audience and never really shown or seen through their character development as the throughout the show they're bonding so basically they never bonded before). The rising action and climax is they need to use their real identities to solve problems while maintaining their aliases to deal with each other. The fight between kingdoms would take place before the climax, after which the third power is revealed, and the falling action would be an acceptance of each other, and the end would be dealing with combining and bringing peace to their kingdoms and their two identities.

Then how they executed this is they introduced the characters in episode one and the fight doesn't take place till the last episode. The in-between was I-don't-know an investigation show? A historical political show? A wuxia show? All of those. Oh and a 'tianmi' romance. No. It was not.

This leads me to discuss production.
Production---TERRIBLE. They took a scriptwriter for a Xianxia show, and placed the characters from those shows into a Wuxia show, except the execution of the long fighting scenes and rival clans was non-existent. They tried to have a historical political setting, except none of the characters carried the attitudes of royals. What kind of prince (first prince) is not interested in the throne? What kind of prince (third prince) is so ineffective and shallow? He would have died long ago by the schemes of the court members and not even needing the main character to take him down. As for the main character, what kind of prince can extract themselves from the fight for the throne so cleanly? The only way you are not part of the game is if you die. What kind of king doesn't care about his sons? He needs a successor! What is the point of being king if your kingdom cannot last past you? But he is somehow against the main character because...why? The scriptwriter could not come up with a reason! And the main character had some existential crisis that his father the king hated him or something. Have some respect for the authority of a king and the law. It IS a crime to lie to the king, and you lied about being sick and you feel like he doesn't care about you when he wants to find out the truth?? As a person with a right to the throne, the scheming WILL risk your life AND the lives of your supporters. Why are you so people ARE against you?? In conclusion, the writer tried to be deep and combine aspects of wuxia and period dramas into what is really a xianxia drama and did not achieve the authenticity of either, making it a disgrace to both genres.

Acting---I had a good impression of Yang Yang after watching him in the Once Upon A Time movie with Liu Yifei (the movie version of Ten Miles Peach Blossom) which gave me the impression he was a top-rated actor because of his looks, his casting partner, as well as being chosen for the role however this show has completely reversed that perspective. His acting in the show is terrible because he doesn't hold the gravity of a prince, nor the gentleness of a love interest and he gives the impression he's constantly mocking, which lessens the dimension of his character---because that's just himself and not the character written in the script. Zhao Lusi created some character development in the first episode with her attitude, but that was quickly doused away after episodes of intensive dialogue lines where she quickly fell into a role of recitation.

Music---All the music in the show sounds copyrighted, namely the ost from Ten Miles Peach Blossom and Pirates of the Caribbean for the adventure and sea scenes.

The only thing watchable about this show is from the visual effects. This is due to the well-known actors of Zhao Lusi and Yang Yang being the face of the show, and the editing which makes appealing effects that don't appear too fake.

Out of the 34/40 episodes I watched, the best scene was in episode 34 (?) when the third prince failed at executing a coup and grab for power. Just before he was brought away, when he confronted his father about the way he treats his sons, those were the most logical lines ever said in the whole show. Except, funnily, it comes out as ironic---because it's so logical it seems out of character. It makes him seems omnipotent and not present in his character and the situation. (You'd have to be a god to say facts so true in this cringe of a situation the writer forced the characters into).

Truthfully, in the beginning I thought the third prince would become king because he was being manipulated by his mother and his advisors but he had good character. I stand by this statement by the fact he spoke such truth (as I mentioned above), but sadly he was written into insanity by the writers. RIP

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Must watch Chinese drama

Zhao Lusi and YangYang were amazing. Both the Male and Female leads did a fantastic job. Eaxh episode made me want to keep watching for more. They have an excellent chemistry and they look great together. Their acting was superb. Even though Zhao Lusi is young, she was able to deliver her great acting skills.

This drama ha a great storyline.

One of the things I love in this drama is the martial arts; it was well orchestrated, great effects and sounds.
All supoorting actorand actresses were amazing too. I re-watched this drama several times. Highly recommended 👌 👍

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It has an absolutely awful, disrespectful ending!

Endings are important to me, when the writer completely gives up common sense in the final episode flipping the proverbial table, then I tend to just lose it & from then on I won't be able to write an objectively fair review.
Twenty-Five Twenty-One's ending made me change my rating from 9+ to 3.5. Trying to look at this objectively I think Who Rules the World's ending is even worse, perhaps the worse ending I have ever reached. The only reason I'm not THAT harsh in my scoring today is because at least the romance has not been ruined, but everything else is, what happens in the final episode is so egregious that I can not easily put it into words.

I'm so angry that I'm really not in the mood to talk about the good things. Just to sum it up real quick, the romance is really really good in this one, which is about 40% of the drama. Chemistry, bickering, cuteness, fluff etc it's all there, it's as good as it gets from a semi-historical show. The palace politics genre is something I generally hate watching, but in this drama up to maybe episode 25-ish it was really really well done. (there is only one evil queen, so the usual cold palace concubine garbage is mostly not there) At that point I still thought a 10/10 final score would be possible. In the later half though the plot deteriorated quite a bit, however after watching episode 38 I thought this would still be at least a 8/10, but then the ending came..

The Wuxia part of the drama is good and bad at the same time. There are many Relatively well done fight scenes & we go through various Wuxia classics, it even has a saint's trial. However the whole thing in the later episodes about armies clashing & whatever else is pointless to me.
In an acceptable Wuxia-world (no pun intended) strong cultivators decide the outcome of all battles & a weak king without the permanent support of a strong cultivator can never amount to anything ever, no matter how big his army is. Since if he offends a cultivator, they can literally just enter the palace & kill him effortlessly. I think the argument that this is not the case in this specific fantasy world is a bad one, since something similar happened not once, but twice in this show.
Also there were two plots related to cultivation that I thought were incredibly bad. The first one is about the theft of that certain technique, that's something absolutely insane, so much so that no self respecting wuxia writer would ever write that, because it's like fan fiction. The other one is the potion that supposedly disperses all inner force, though my dislike of that is more of a personal preference, it's not completely unreasonable.
Oh I almost forgot FL's sect is supposed to be one of the top righteous sects in Jianghu, however they are repeatedly the useless pig teammate throughout the entire show (useless+weak+stupid the whole lot).

If by some random chance someone who has not watched this drama yet chanced upon this review, my suggestion to you fellow MDLer is to maybe watch up to episode 38 & then just pretend the show only has 38 episodes & call it a day. The romance gets proper closure by that point-ish.

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One of the best drama of 2022

The drama about the battle of the 6 countries. The story is smooth and welly plot between the 6 countries. The pace of this drama and the overall story is just surprisingly smooth and there are a lot of court battles of how to calculate and strategize in this drama, which are perfectly presented!
The actors of this drama have been nicely played and expressed, especially the male and female lead of this drama. I love the chemistry of the male and female lead, it is such a perfect match and feel of super natural, the acting of both are just amazing and irresistible!
The music and songs selected were absolutely right. I gave it a 10/10. Well done!

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Definitely a worthy watch

My two favorite actor and actress together.

Definitely met my expectations.

Both FL and ML were awesome. The storyline kept me engaged and didn’t drag. I think the writers did a really good job with the character development.

As for the FL and ML, great combination. Great chemistry between them. She’s a strong and mature woman but also not over bearing. She portrayed very well by Zhao Lusi that she strong, compassionate and no nonsense lady. ML also did great and well portrayed by Yang Yang. He’s arrogant but is not afraid to be tamed by FL.

For me, it’s a semi-sad ending because they only had 10 year together.

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