No Wonder This Show Won 5 Awards

I wanted to watch this show back in 2018 when it first came out, but, much to my despair, never got to because it wasn't available anywhere with subtitles. A few days ago, I came across it on IQIYI, and lo and behold! There it was, with manual subtitles.

I'll make it quick: The City of Chaos is a must-watch. It's been such a long time since I've been this enraptured by a drama, but this one had it all. A captivating plot line, gorgeous bromance, complex characters, incredible plot twists (you'll know what I mean when you get to the end), beautiful music and lighting. The pacing was really good, too, with comedic bits artfully inserted in-between the more intense parts of the story. And boy, was it intense.

The one tiny downside lay with the romance subplots, but they were so minor they didn't bother me that much in the end.

Tldr; I absolutely recommend this.

TW: Blood, choking, drugs, and PTSD.

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Couldn't Even Finish Episode 4

How should I put this.

This is so bad? The synopsis was very promising, but the writing is terrible, the production is terrible, the CGI is terrible,... One of the leads says the exact same two exposition sentences to two different characters within 3 minutes of each other, all that within the first five minutes of the show.

It's also full of clichés. For example: when faced with a wild beast, ML just has to stare at it for it to cower in fear, but when it's FL's turn, the beast turns to putty in her hands and asks to be pet. Also, magic school with different factions.

The lead is the usual Gary Stu. Born powerless, considered as useless his whole life, he gets uberpowerful out of nowhere, proceeds to wow the gallery, and is asked to teach at a so-called super selective magic school even before he's fully admitted as a student. Everyone treats him like a bosom brother even though they all met like 5 minutes ago. Heck, his seniors ask for him to teach them?! What?

The second male lead was horribly miscast, imo. People keep saying that he's "too young and ignorant" to ascend to the throne, except the actor they picked was 33 when they shot the show, and he's not one of those baby-faced actors, he really isn't.

Most of the actors are terrible, too, so no solace to be found on that front.

The only thing that's somewhat worth it is the original score, but sadly it can't make up for how bad this entire thing is.

I couldn't even make it to the end of episode 4, I just have no patience for this, and I'm very disappointed because the posters were gorgeous.

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