The First Bad One

What a disappointment!
What happened here? Was it covid? The new director? (iirc they changed this time?)

There are still glimpses of the old series - some character moments for both the main trio and the supporting cast. The goons and side characters are unusually well developed, which is what this show does. But they still mostly get killed off. :/
The two biggest problems for me are the story and the visuals.
This series of Candle in the Tomb usually has a pretty tight, well thought out structure. This time it felt like things just sort of happened, never really explained or returned to, plotlines just dropped. This is more like every other tomb robber show, ngl I was thinking a lot of the various daomu series - their stories are equally badly told.
What was the deal with the wolves? I think they were there just so the Tibetan dude's arc could be wrapped up, but it all just fizzled out. Where did the giant monitor lizards come from? We never learn.
For the first time in this series I was seriously disappointed with the visuals - not only does the CGI look abysmal and is all over the place, the creative and tight cinematography is GONE. The Wrath of Time season starts with an awesome dynamic shot, or remember that crazy brawl in Lost Caverns, with the camera flying around and looping up and down?
We get none of this.
The colours are bland and dark, everything looks fake and boring. The Yunnan adventure gave us glorious monsters in rubber suits, here we just get ugly and badly animated CG animals.
And the actors...they don't seem to wanna be there. Did they get covid? Are they just tired of the show? Pan Yueming looks bloated and tired, like he'd break a hip if he tried to do any action.
And they don't (do any fancy stuff), the action's just confused and badly edited.
I'm honestly kind of dreading the next season, if it's more of this or worse.

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Dull. (still)

EDIT:
I originally dropped this after 3 episodes. Now I've finished the whole show.
(I'm leaving my original review below the line)
What do I say about this? It's still not great.
It's definitely been overhyped and at best it's sort of slightly above average.
The story is functional - you see where it's going from the beginning and it does indeed get there pretty much as you expect. Which is not a bad thing necessarily, it's just a bit predictable.
The bits I enjoyed the most were the case investigations. Sadly, there are two issues with that:
1) The cases are of fluctuating quality, and many of them are solved in a way you cannot do yourself. Because as in other badly done mystery shows - the show witholds crucial information from you and it is only presented at the very end, when the detective is explaining how he figured it out. That's just lazy and uninteresting.
2) The show insists on being a wuxia story about Big Things, and it constantly gets in the way of the fun.
My main problem with this show and why I still rate it fairly low is the premise and the main protagonist.
I am sick, so sick and tired of these Very Special Boys With A Mysterious Past. Li Xiangyi is VERY similar to the characters in "Love in Between", "Blood of Youth" and even "Nirvana in Fire" and "Word of Honor" to some extent - a soft sickly boy with lovely long hair and flowy robe and a fur lined cloak. And he used to be a powerful martial hero, the most specialest of them all, a real genius. But now he's sickly and disabled and look at the poor bunny, so cute.
And I get that this is a trope that people (especially lady fans of these idols/actors) like. I do not. It's tired now. I've seen it.
I think the story would've worked much, much better with older characters and actors.
So yes - I still put a lot of fault with Cheng Yi. He is older than Joseph Zeng, but it doesn't feel like it. They're too close in age and vibe. And he doesn't have the acting ability to pull this kind of character off, especially in the really dramatic moments. His serious delivery feels fake and flat.
In short - the only way we know he's this super special boy is because everyone keeps talking about it. He doesn't have that kind of charisma to make me believe it.
Joseph Zeng is mostly fine, he does the same thing in most of the dramas I've seen him in. He's like an ok piece of toast. Nothing you'd sing the praises of, but fine to eat.
The villains are kinda terrible. I get that the mustache-twirling evil-laughing villain is a genre thing, but they feel a bit out of place in a modern style drama. That said, I think Rain Wang is just bad, and she wasn't helped by the weird dubbing they did for her character.
The only person whose acting I enjoyed fully was Xiao Shun Yao - his Di Feisheng doesn't change a lot, but he pulls that subtle transition off pretty well. And at all times he FEELS like someone who could seriously hurt people, I believe when he fights.
Speaking of fights - they left them all for the ending, which was odd. They're...fine I guess. The bigger mass battles were a surprise, because the show had been so stingy with fights up to that point. They're all very modern wuxia cdrama in style - lots of flowy stuff, CG energy blasts and not a lot of blood. Compared to something like Sakra, or oldschool 90s wuxia it feels super sanitized. I wasn't impressed, but it wasn't offensively bad either.
In summary - this is a very run of the mill modern wuxia with all the typical flaws, or a mostly decent detective show ruined by also being a modern wuxia drama.
Don't believe the hype, but you might still enjoy some of it.
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Original rating: 3.5*
This is dull, incredibly dull. Just boring as hell.
I have to remind myself that cdrama hype is largely caused by fangirls looking forward to watching shows with their beloved idol/s.
Some episodes in this is just incredibly forgettable, entirely derivative and uninteresting.
The actors are bland as chalk bread, except for the main guy who's straight up bad. He's a bad actor, stop giving him roles where he's supposed to speak.
The premise, the story, it's all cliches piled on cliches, nothing cool or intriguing happens, the fights are not entertaining.
Just another super mediocre/bad wuxia drama.

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What on Earth(s)?!

After 12 episodes I'm dropping this.
The two leads have decent chemistry and are doing ok acting-wise, but this drama is just meandering nonsense.
I'm not sure if it's because of censorship and that the paranormal elements were cut and written around, or if it's meant to be like this. But paranormal or scifi, this show is extremely unclear about where anything is going and why.
Characters travel to places and do things, and act like it's perfectly understandable and logical. But it really feels like one of those dreams where things seemingly happen, but when you wake up you realize it didn't really have a coherent plot or a story you could recognize behind things just...happening.
I just find it tiresome. Which is a shame, because the leads really are easy on the eyes and work well together.

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Not as good.

It's mid, in most ways.
Not amazingly good, not too boring or super terrible.
Mid.
The story's super average - you've heard it all before. I am honestly getting quite tired of protagonists with mysterious non-commoner past and I hate how so many wuxia have to steer their story into politics and courtly intrigue.
I hate courtly intrigue! The scheming princes, the power hungry eunuchs, the troubled emperors and forgotten consorts.
Good grief, shoot me now, I can't take it.
For the most part the story seems to have a clear goal and an endpoint and the pacing forward is not bad. But towards the end it slows down and almost stumbles into the ending head first, trips over its own feet and stops suddenly.
It felt quite awkward.
The characters are fine. You've seen it all before, every single character is a stereotype. But they're ok.
The acting is serviceable, with the older actors carrying the young ones quite often. Ao Rui Peng was too cartoony and weird for me, I didn't care for Lei Wu Jie.
Li Hong Yi held a single note for the entire show and it was ok? He's a pretty guy and the script didn't ask much more from him.
Liu Xue Yi seems to have had fun? Question mark? Wuxin as a character is used weirdly, mostly not being present and having his own story arc in the background. Also cartoony as a performance, but a much better actor than Ao Rui Peng.
Neither of the two female leads convinced me, or grabbed me in any way.
Tang Lian was also there.
Shout out to Cui Peng as Luo Qing Yang, who gave an incredibly strange performance and I had to laugh every time his weirdo sulky face was on screen.
Last honorable mention goes to Hu Wei, who looks like he was animated by Pixar. Very cute tho.
A good wuxia has to have cool fights.
The Blood of Youth does have fights, sure.
OK, I won't talk around it - I hate this stuff. Not just the heavy use of CG, I dislike how uninteresting it is and how low stakes it feels.
There's no tension, there's no context for anything. How strong is this character? Who the F knows, I guess I'll wait for them to tell me.
The main problem is that everyone already starts quite strong and every single character that comes later is even stronger.
But there's no difference in any of the fights, the environment doesn't matter, nothing matters.
The characters will conjure up some CG effects, point their weapon or fingers against the opponent and stand there.
That's it. Every single fight ends up as a finger contest with magical auras clashing into each other. No clever use of techniques, or the battlefield, no smart cooperation between characters. No, just point at the enemy and hope you're stronger.
This kind of power creep is a common problem in anime, compare the fights at the start of Naruto to many later ones in Shippuuden. And here it's like that from the very beginning.
Overall I didn't hate it, but it's nowhere near as good as people claim.

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boring CGI mess

What a letdown.
The main problem is that the story is a) just kinda dumb and bad, and b) too condensed.
The protagonist is entirely bland (Good grief, is Raymond Lam ever a charisma black hole!) and none of the relationships get enough space, so any character development is impossible to believe.
All the twists, betrayals etc. are meaningless, because I feel nothing about any of the characters. (except for the princess, because she's hot)
And where the old KFCM worked - the crazy fun fights - just does not work here.
The fights are bland, fake looking and worst of all - boring.
It's just forgettable.

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Ultimately forgettable

I was looking forward to this, because it'd be cool if we finally got a complete adaptation, by the same director of my favourite version no less! Alas.
There are glimpses of 90s Hong Kong here and there, sadly brought down by a very "current" mainland Chinese film look (= often indistinguishable from a TV cdrama), lack of humor and bland CGI.
The actor playing Mokei is not charismatic.
Sadly while very similar to Kung Fu Cult Master, it's nowhere nearly as fun.
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Delight of a show!

Not the greatest wuxia, not an amazing mystery show, BUT...
This is a show that's much more than a sum of its parts.
Especially after I learnt it wasn't a big production, that it's a small budget web series, I can't but marvel at how good it is.
Beautiful to look at, the fights look excellent.
And the actors are wonderful, the story well written with lots of setup and payoff.
You absolutely can guess the big twist early (ep1 for me), but it doesn't make it not satisfying.
The romances also work very well.
It seems unlikely to get a season 2, but I am still hoping for it!

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One of the best Daomu series, for what that's worth.

Eeeh? It's good-ish?

I generally care much less about the Daomu series than Candle in the Tomb, but I gotta admit this one's decent.
The story is a hot mess like always, and you don't really get any answers, as always. Gotta wait for that second season, you hope, and then it's the same thing and nothing gets answered in the next one either, probably.
This one is clearly a mystery show, and the mystery is even pretty intriguing. I do love the concept of listening to thunder for...some reason.
Not a fan of Xie constantly chasing his uncle, that's a bit old.
The plot, as usual, is broken up into randomly paced arcs. The tomb raiding is very well done for once, and we even get genuinely scary horror! Skinsuit zombies chasing the main trio through a flat cave while they're crawling was so freaky and nailbiting. Also skinsuit zombies animated by hand crabs? Very good, I approve.
There's a whole Shades arc which I couldn't give a shit about, because he's so cringey. But his gf is very cute and they have good chemistry. (so the conclusion to that is just...typical Daomu, always a disappointment)
Pacing in the first half is generally all over the place, cutting between boring south asian village militia crap and tomb raiding. It picks up in the second part and I enjoyed the whole "WuXie has adventures in Warehouse 11" bit a lot.
It's a cool concept, well done.
Onto season 2, I guess.
Random notes:
- Bai is a sweet cinnamon roll and I love her, but why is she a love interest? They even have solid chemistry with Wuxie, but he's very gay for his mute boyfriend, so we can't have none of this yucky girl-kissing. (why don't those two boys ever spend any time together though?)
- Liu Sang is also a grumpy cinnamon roll and I'd marry him. Wish he was in more of the show, as he just disappears in the second half.
- Wu Xie is kind of an asshole in this, right? Like I get it, his situation is not great, but he antagonizes absolutely everyone all the time. He's mean to Bai, he pisses off random people he meets. Including the villain.
He's usually cheeky, but also a nice guy? Even his older version in Tomb of the Sea was more brooding and pragmatic, rather than just a pissy bitch.
Mixed feelings about this version.
- Fatty is traditionally good, but I couldn't care less about his story arc, with his honestly pretty dumb girlfriend.
- I did like that Fatty and Xie had a genuine looking relationship, they had banter and seemed like real characters. (which reminded me, unsurprisingly of Hu Bayi and Fatty from the other shows, very similar) Their third boyband member is barely in the show tbh, not my fav version of him.
- A part of why I dislike Daomu over CitT is that the main characters are rich mobsters. Anything at any moment can be solved by throwing money at it. I appreciated that they wrote in conflict with uncle ErBai this time, so Wuxie was a bit less rich. But then he quickly reversed that by getting rich again.
(also - the whole PiaoPiao subplot could've been solved by a single phonecall to uncle. They're fucking rich as hell. Heck, they know miracle doctors who just a few episodes previously healed a mute friend of theirs. One of many examples of idiot-plotting in this series.)

It's ok. Cool even. I really enjoyed some bits. Two people in it are very hot and cute.

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Decent

It starts strong and finishes a bit muddled.
Still, a very decent, almost good movie. Especially considering it's a friggin' MMORPG adaptation.
Pity about some characters' deaths, and the second half is pretty rushed.
The CGI is surprisingly good, with a very few exceptions. CG animals especially tend to be crappy in Chinese films, but here they worked well.
The overall art direction is very good and everything is quite pretty.
The acting is generally solid - Peter Ho is as menacing and intense as ever, and Jiang Lu Xia is hot AF with her short hair and a badass scar.

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Does not deserve the hype.

I'll be honest upfront - Nirvana in Fire is not my cup of tea genre-wise, I just dislike palace intrigue dramas.
I was told it also had wuxia elements and it kind of does, but they do not make up for how much I disliked the PI stuff.
It's mostly well acted (by a lot of older actors, I appreciated that), mostly solidly written (though the plot does feel convoluted at times) and the rare fights are ok looking. I think overall it looks a bit dated, but not bad. Just not amazing.
For me personally it just felt long and tiresome in places. It might've started (or at least empowered) quite a few drama tropes I am not a fan of - the sickly character with incurable health problems and a mysterious past, the moral message of patriotically serving the country or a cause even if it means your death, episodes mostly consisting of characters talking in rooms.
To me this did not live up to the hype, plain and simple.

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Not for me.

I'm dropping this.
The convoluted premise is just not interesting and Song Yi is not utilized super well.
See, I find she's at her best as a strong confident character, sassiness being appreciated.
Here she just pines and cries all the time.
Like girl, you got arranged-married into a rich family, how awful for you! And your husband even wants to divorce you and give you a ton of money? The horror!
Main dude tries, he's trying so hard I'm surprised he didn't pull a funny muscle in his face. Also his ears are massive.
But yeah, it's just not what I hoped. Definitely not Dream of Splendor, nor Joy of Life/My Heroic Husband.
Pass.

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