ASmith

The writing should indeed be.

I'm gonna purge it from my system with a rewatch of Mysterious Lotus Casebook, lol.

Chang Hua Sen enters around Ep23 and lives through to the end, along with his general love interest. He is a cute and pure fox puppy who just wants to marry his girl and live with her happily while being devoted to his friends and teachers.

In terms of hate/disappointed viewers, it's as the trouble is that you basically go from focusing on a high-fantasy high-stakes romance in which there's overt racism against demons, people are being tortured and taking swords for their loved ones, and being forced to leave the sects if they want to even hang out with them and not murder them....

To fluffy filler arcs where the plot slows to a crawl, we see all 101 "Marry me?" "Not interested." "Please?" *female punts suitor into the sky with a spear* "I'll be back tomorrow." < romance attempts, plus "My dad murdered your mum torturously slowly and in agony, I've brought him here so you can finally kill him and get justice." "...I actually feel too bad to do that b/c he fed me an unconvincing sob story about how bad he feels." "...Cool. How about a cute date then, you did promise me you'd always make snowflakes for my birthday." arcs plus < "I think that the lady boss whose base we're infiltrating might be planning on pressing unwanted advances against us, hmm. Hey lady, my friend would be so much better at bedtime duties than me." "No no, I'm totally incapable, you should definitely choose him." Meanwhile, the female lead has dialog like "I'll forever be by your side, Fugui, because you gave 10 years of your life." (without me even asking you to, and which you have already told me you would have done for anyone.) << then, come ep18 she is kidnapped by her little bro who'd like to marry her, but who she continues to think only sees her as a sister despite dialogues like "Do you only love him? Can't you spare a little love for me?" She spends 3 episodes saying "I'd like to go back to the ML, but I can't because I'm trapped." Then she spends 2 episodes saying, "I now have enough power to beat Bro and I'd like to go back to the ML, but my bro has told me he's dead and some other people did too so I guess I'll accept it rather than, say, asking Rumu where he lives and going to visit." Then she takes another 3 episodes saying "I do know the ML is alive, but I won't rejoin him because I might put him in danger by doing that because I have an evil seed I'm refining in me." And a final 2 episodes saying, "All right, we're literally working together, but I'll hide it and pretend not to know you because I wouldn't want to hurt my brother's feelings when he's so sensitive about me being with you." << After which her bro finally FINALLY after these 12 episodes and some mass murder and attempted world annihilation dies, after which she spends approx. 1.5 eps mourning him, and then sends misty eyes at Fugui again and says "Just like we promised back in Ep13, I'll always stay by your side and support you." (And by the way, all racism against demons is magically gone now. We're now chill and friendly with them.)

^so basically the actors do well with what they are given, the hate is that for 18.5-30 what they are given is inconsistent or not a lot. By the end only Fugui is spared character OOC-ness, in that his actions are at least consistent with his beliefs and goals through to the end, and he's efficient enough that he manages to achieve them. Everyone else has episodes or moments of "Cute, but pls writers, whyyyy am I watching this instead actual plot? Couldn't this have been 1 ep not 4?" or else "MANNNN you are going to spare that villain AGAINNN so he can get out AGAIN and kill people AGAIN???? Come onnnnnnn." (Compounded by the fact that the ML, the Soldier, does by default go for killing his enemies if they're evil, so they actively /stop/ him from dealing with the villains who then go out and re-offend.)

(Despite the ranting, it wasn't a bad show by the way. It's just it promised to be SO MUCH more after ep12 and just.... never delivered.)

Fox Prince isn't guilty of that and gets no hate though. He's cute and fluffy for his whole arc, just sometimes sacrifices his in-character points for laughs and some scenes are filler.

Hehe my problem was I started with the anime LBFAD and went to the live action version because I wanted to see the story continue and missed the leads.

But they chopped off all meaningful relationships with the female lead so that she only had the male lead, no attachment to her master for example, added an obsessive SML who wasn't in the anime, and removed the plucky determination with which the FL viewed life and her perpetual positive outlook in favor of angst.

Was all right till ep14, then I dropped ;-;

But it probably wasn't the show's fault, mine for watching the anime first so different expectations.

I dropped that one, so yeah that producer is out for me. May he never work with CY again. 🙏

I’m not sure he did? I thought the point was to lure the black fox into thinking he had succumbed to hate so she would try to possess him at which point he would dual suicide with her, as once she possesses you she also dies with you if she can’t get out of you before you die (was my reading?)

They should have kept the Chinese title “FSMM: Wangquan Arc”.

😂 Shame it’s on Youku, I only have an iQIYI subscription. May need to subscribe for a month when that one drops 😂

He’s beautiful at fighting himself 😂🥰

👏💯 Love him.

It was like the “tick of the cultural promotion box to get that Heartbeat Theatre qualification outta the way” for me, lol. One giant add thrust into the middle of the show. Beautiful costuming though, QT and FG were gorgeous. 😂

It’s good up till ep12, then up to 17 it’s probably more meaningful if you’ve seen LiP as it’s about Fei and HY and YA power games, mainly, and post 18 it jumps the shark and never recovers. CY more or less is a support role only from 19-30. He becomes a main character again from 31-36 but by then the only thing keeping me invested was the aesthetic, music, and CY’s fight scenes.

Definitely worth watching up to the end of ep12 in my book!

You could just watch to ep12 and tell yourself it ended there 😂

well said 👏

It was a mess.

His dad had only 1 of the 4 necessary MgGuffins.
(aka good grief the story was not it is so right.)

All I can say is wow, what a trainwreck.

With XYX, sounds like who needs enemies when you got friends like him?

Hoping for a strong ending and a happy conclusion for Fugui! \o/

I will buy that wyx sabotaged CY, but I think he sabotaged both FL and ML here. There's no way LYT or anyone genuinely liking her can have ever read that script and thought she would in any way be enhanced by that arc. It ruins her character in every single way while denying her any chance to add even one single thing to the plot at all. She makes no meaningful contributions. She makes no decisions. Everything she does is a passive reaction to some event she had no control over, typically one showing poor judgement that achieves nothing, and at the end she oscillates like someone with selective amnesia between "I will build a happy city" and "I will never leave your side Fugui" while never being allowed to independently do anything except talk about how she would like to do either. Her actions are totally out of alignment with her words. I can't believe anyone would shoot themselves in the foot like this by choice. 100% respect CY if he indeed had any hand in Fugui not being butchered in the arc he's largely absent for, but I don't think the FL team could possibly have come up with an arc to make her character so totally unlikable and useless.

One thing's for sure though, and that's that I'm never watching anything by the crew who did this one again.

as far as I know, it's basically like instead of you paying for VIP access to the show yourself, some sponsor (eg. fans, brands, the channel) pays for a "seat" so that a casual viewer can watch VIP-restricted content without paying.

I could misunderstand tho.