Start out good and turns to crap later on

Like many reviewers here said, the show starts out fun and promising. Definitely looking forward to both the ML and FL. I also think the series might have been too long. maybe 24 episodes or less might be better. The shows got more and more draggy as the series went on. About episode 18 onwards the story took a dive. In the last 6 or 8 episodes, it took a further dive in story telling to warrant such a low score in my review. One of the thing I personally hate is normally intelligent characters will suddenly become very dumb or overly trusting for no reason (in fact despite the contrary) just so the plot can happen and have more suffering that seems to be completely unnecessary in the overall story.

SPOILER:
Case in point is when ML was so DEAD sure her friend murders her father. Next few minutes later, she would suddenly trust her out of the blue when the friend claims to know who kill her father. So immediately believing her and sparing her life leads to her being drugged, imprisoned, tortured and the whole part has no or effect to the plot if they were taken out.

Another point that is bad for this show is a "happy" ending is sort of tag on near the end with no explanation and defy logic how the character survived just to have a "happy" ending. That's lazy writing and meanwhile the evil woman in the show is given a good (or better than she deserved) ending.
END SPOILER

This drama was such a wasted opportunity and I don't see any strong rewatch value (except maybe the FL). Stay away from it.

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A brief background: In the original novel, Dong Fang Bu Bai (DFBB) occupies only a chapter but is referred to often and instrumental to the plot and have no romance to Linghu Chong (LHC). LHC ends up with Ren YingYing (RYY) and they both retired from Jianghu. In HK movie, Swordsman II, which is a loose adaptation of the original, DFBB has some romantic relationship to LHC and is a fan favourite. Original DFBB is a man turn to woman after learning the special martial arts.

I am not a purist and as long as any adaptation is good, it would be rated highly by me. Spoiler AHEAD: In this adaptation, one of the strength is setting up DFBB as a love interest of LHC and their chemistry can be considered good. But that is also the downfall.

In here, DFBB is a woman, cross-dress as man for survivality purpose. No castration needed to learn special martial arts. Early on the series, LHC and DFBB met and develop friendship, DFBB also saved LHC a few times and he seems to return her feelings. Fan of this pairing would be happy. However halfway thru, DFBB fell off the map due to some stupid misunderstanding (which also made no sense, as DFBB have asked LHC “why didn’t you ask me why I kill those people?” and LHC who is supposed to be smart, open minded and himself accused often somehow cannot extend the same curtesy to her and listen). After DFBB “disappear” then RYY shows up and their chemistry is rather weak, lack the kind of setup of friendship/relationship DFBB and LHC has in earlier episode but she is suddenly the most important woman to him. Quite unnatural. It seems the director wanted to pair up LHC/DFBB and that involves huge modification to rest of novel but halfway thru the series decided to take the easy way out and change his mind back to RYY. Unfortunately, that resulted in poor development of the RYY character and an unnatural romance. To summarize, it sets up DFBB to be main love interest (gave some original RYY scenes to her) and then disappoint fan of that pairing and gave a different and weak pairing instead. Definitely feel cheated. Also, I personally hate the ending.

Another problem here is pacing. Every time it shows the friends made up of unorthodox group, it’s super boring and you are left wondering the purpose of those boring scenes. It does eventually answer why they are there and their functions but it sure is a long winded to finally get there. So much of those can be compressed. Even a ton of useless conversation before a simple fight. Very draggy.

Yet another problem is two of the major enemies almost killed LHC and he had to be saved by somebody else. So much for being one of the greatest swordsman alive. Couldn’t he fully disarmed his “dangerous” opponents before letting his guard down? Such careless and dumb hero. It’s a weak way to advance the plot.

The actions scene are alright with me. Overall I don’t recommend it unless to see DFBB by Joe Chen which is a delight. I did not know Joe Chen prior to this series but definitely enjoy her performance as DFBB.

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