I'm not sure exactly what 'tsundere' means beyond the definition I googled but I don't think it matches what I watched. It says for 'tsundere' that things should improve but they really don't. She's cold and domineering to the male lead for almost the entire show except a handful of scenes at the end. And those scenes are mixed in with her typical actions/reactions where she berates the male lead, rips up his papers.
I feel like the show should have given us something like maybe a few dates where we see her warming up somewhat outside of the work setting.
Ultimately it's a comedy so it's not a deal-breaker for me and the show was pretty good. Still felt like Ichigo was the best character with by far the most growth.
Also the theme song is amazing. Kudos to the artists behind that.
I didn't really feel like it got that much better personally. It just got much faster and the plot of the male lead fighting back against the corruption in the empire provides some breaks between the same old stuff we saw for the first half of the show - where the leads hide their feelings, hide their motives and hurt each other (though the last 5-6 episodes it's a bit more one-sided).
It certainly makes those last ~6 episodes more bearable than say the first 14 episodes but I don't think it got way, way better. It just sped everything up.
Just finished the drama, the ending was great in my opinion. The one thing I don't get is why are some people…
The Chinese government approves what goes on TV and can punish something that is not authorized or acceptable to them.
Over the past few years the Chinese government has put forward guidelines and rules for the industry: You shouldn't employee actors with tattoos, you shouldn't employ actors with scandals, you definitely should not employ anyone who has ever spoken out against the Chinese Communist Party.
And it has gone further. They are worried about the 'feminization of men'. The ideal man should be a soldier or a firefighter or a soccer player. Strong, rugged, athletic, clean-cut and respectable. And they should not be a boy-band member.
The Chinese government is very concerned with masculinity.
The idea of a man being inside a woman's body and experiencing being a woman is controversial.
I do not know this for a fact but it would not surprise me if the writers chose this ending to play it safe with the government censors and government censorship.
You see a similar thing very often with time travel dramas where a character travels to the past. The Chinese government is worried about these dramas because it might be used as satire. Think about Animal Farm. Is it a book about farm animals? No. It's a book about the Soviet Union, communism and the corrupt Soviet regime.
Now when the time travelling lead of the drama criticizes the Emperor and corrupt local government of the past... is it really that simple? Or is it like Animal Farm? And the writers are using Ancient China to criticize the modern day Chinese Communist Party.
So almost all Chinese time travel dramas today are "oh it's just a dream" or something like that. And then the people making the TV show will try to explain to the government censors why their show is acceptable and should not be changed or banned completely.
In terms of the ending I guess they had to go that route to appease the government censors. All in all I think this is a modern and better version of Secret Garden which feels very dated (despite somehow being a show that aired in 2011).
There isn't that much unnecessary soap opera drama. The characters are overall relatively nice with flaws.
Legend of Hua Mulan was the firch chinese drama I've watched. It was so many years ago I cannot now remember whether…
Agree. I think because it's Mulan it deserves an 'honorable mention' even if it doesn't make the list. There are a couple good series/movies out there based on Mulan and the show was as good as any of the others I have seen.
The diverse cast is good but other than that there's not much going for this drama. It's not horrific or bad or anything but it's underwhelming.
The drama doesn't know what it wants to be. Is this an ensemble cast working together or is this all about Yoon Shi Woo?
The way Yoon Shi Woo is written I have to believe this is your typical "he's the hero" show. The problem is he's the least deserving hero you will ever meet. He was a popular boy-band singer with a bad personality. And what's the character journey for Yoon Shi Woo? Oh he magically does this, magically does that, he's just better than everyone else. Yay Yoon Shi Woo.
This isn't the fault of the actor. I said previously I enjoyed the second male lead and second female lead and would have liked them to be leads but there are alternatives:
Make Yoon Shi Woo less of a 'godlike' character and give him some actual character growth.
Make Yoon Shi Woo just another student and make the female lead the heroine or have them be heroes as a group (which is kind of how the show ends but yeah Yoon Shi Woo is just better than everyone).
It feels like the writers didn't know what to do or where to go and as a result it's a mess. The show feels like missed opportunities with the female lead, second male lead and second female lead. They were all more interesting characters with more dimensions than the male lead.
This thing is still really bad in my opinion. Writers had no idea what they were doing.
The problem was not the parallel worlds and it's funny to read people talking like they understood and others didn't because they had an open mind. If you think the problem critics had with it was the parallel worlds I'm not sure you understood this show despite watching it.
There was another sci-fi component to this drama and that was the source of most of the problems.
For anyone still on the fence: if you can use your imagination to explain away loose end after loose end then you'll have no issue with this show. If you believe it's the job of the writers to tell a compelling story and not leave dozens of loose ends then I'd recommend against it.
The basis of the story is complex. The writers and director were not up to the task of taking the themes of this show and making a compelling story. Period.
This is a tough one for me. It's going in circles by episode 12.
The male lead hasn't grown at all. He's still hot-cold and has no idea what he wants to do besides avoiding returning to the capital. The female lead has regressed. She started as a character with a clear goal in mind. Now she's like the male lead with the hot-cold. She constantly keeps secrets for reasons I don't understand. Why not tell him some of this stuff so you don't get caught in a lie?
The credits do have me slightly optimistic there will be character growth but so far I haven't seen any (and yes, that includes the ridiculous Rocky-like montage of the female lead training and learning polo with her classmates).
Can anyone explain to me why ML is forcing FL to be his concubine? I mean, the back story (political stuff involved?)
The emperor had no kids.
He adopted the male lead and his older brother as his heirs because they were his closest relatives. Older brother died.
The emperor finally had biological children after this happened. His biological kid becomes the heir (Crown Prince). The emperor sends away the male lead but keeps his mother in the palace.
The male lead's mother wants him to return and marry the Shen(?) family daughter. The Shen's are a powerful clan and that would bring them better under control of the emperor.
The male lead does not want to return because he was cast aside by the emperor as soon as the emperor had kids. Chances are when the Crown Prince becomes emperor he will try to kill off any rivals (like the male lead). He wants to avoid marrying the Shen family's daughter.
The Shen family is powerful and traditional. Tradition means a man must marry his wife first and then eventually 'marry' concubines.
The Shen family son does not like the male lead and does not want his sister or family-relative marrying the male lead. He tries to set up the male lead and female lead to be caught together. This would be a scandal that might lead to the Shen family calling off the marriage or the male lead proposing marriage to the female lead and that announcement would cause the Shen family to break off the marriage talks.
Now the male lead's friend Ziyan sees the night spent alone as an opportunity. He coerces or convinces the male lead into marrying the female lead as a concubine. The hope is that the Shen family will see this and the marriage will be cancelled. The Shen family is traditional and believes you should marry an official wife first and then marry concubines after an acceptable period of time.
The male lead marries the female lead and does not have to return to the capital city and palace. For now he has avoided being dragged into the politics, the power struggles for the throne.
Well first, I want to say that I see no problem with an old actress playing a younger role, it didn't even last…
The age thing was ridiculous in those first few episodes where she's "coming of age" but at best the actress looks like she's in her 30s. I really enjoyed the first say 20-30 episodes but the back half left a lot to be desired.
I agree, everyone was so mopey in this drama especially the female lead. In the first bit of the drama you see her coming out of her shell but then she immediately goes back into when she's in the capital. It's character regression and not development.
I wanted to discourage such association in the article but of course because my own 'detox' was around that particular…
Yeah I get what you mean. Some things can be good or bad for different people but I think labelling something as broad as an entire media of a region or even individual country is unfair. If you don't enjoy it, you don't enjoy it. If it's something that causes self consciousness or alienation that's understandable but I don't think labelling it toxic is fair. Toxic for your circumstances? Sure.
I'm not a fan of labelling things in such a binary 'toxic' and 'not toxic' frame of mind. If you can't see the damaging tropes in non-Western media and the massive corporate interests behind it more power to you but framing it as "western media bad, Asian media good" is simplistic, unhelpful and naive.
I don't really have a diet. Sometimes I'm in the mood for action, romance and I'll watch that but I guess if I had a favorite it would be historical drama/TV.
When she discovers who her master/teacher used to be... things get really dumb, really fast for the female lead.
I mean damn. At best the organization was involved in massacring innocent civilians. At best. Prince An coerced Liu Ru Yi into providing the materials to blow up the mountain. Ok fine, she was coerced. But she worked with Prince Cheng and corrupt officials for years. We're supposed to pretend nobody was hurt or killed as part of those deals? And after her 'I'm an idiot and my organization kills innocent people' moment Liu Ru Yi writes in multiple last testament letters "Fu Rong, you don't have to keep Ruyi Pavilion running".
And what's the take away for the female lead? "My husband is lying to me. The accounting books are lying to me. Everyone and everything I have seen is lying to me. My master is good. Ruyi Pavilion is good. I have to keep it running." What??
It's really too bad the male lead doesn't end up with the whiny Princess. At least she's not trying to get people killed in exchange for money like Ruyi Pavilion. Seriously. The way they gloss over this is absurd. A few Ruyi Pavilion members save Prince Su at the end of the show and all is forgiven... it's absurd. And then Prince Su becomes an idiot and decides to pressure the Emperor into forgiving Ruyi Pavilion. And I get it will be dismantled and turned into a ministry in the empire but still. What good was done at any point by them to justify not executing/jailing them all or disbanding them?
I understand the leads were in another drama together but I forget the details so I don't want to compare. I just feel like things kind of fell apart towards the end. If you can ignore Ruyi Pavilion being evil then you'll probably really like this. I just don't remember them doing anything 'good' or having a specific purpose that would make them useful to have exist. They traded secrets for money and that got people killed. That's it. That's the organization. There's a reason the female lead was kept out by her master. It's dirty work, evil work.
The female lead's character didn't match her actions with Ruyi Pavilion. She's not a ruthless achiever so I didn't understand her obsession. And Ruyi Pavilion should have been explained more. Maybe they did have some goals that weren't purely money for secrets/murder but it sure didn't seem like that. An 'innocent' female lead and a ruthless profiteering organization is not a convincing combination.
What’s wrong with casting a “half white chick”? There’s nothing wrong with that. Mai divika did a great…
We all see the point you're trying to make. You were bullied for being mixed race and now random people are terrible and supposedly hate black people for not feeling the exact same way as you.
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I feel like the show should have given us something like maybe a few dates where we see her warming up somewhat outside of the work setting.
Ultimately it's a comedy so it's not a deal-breaker for me and the show was pretty good. Still felt like Ichigo was the best character with by far the most growth.
Also the theme song is amazing. Kudos to the artists behind that.
It certainly makes those last ~6 episodes more bearable than say the first 14 episodes but I don't think it got way, way better. It just sped everything up.
Over the past few years the Chinese government has put forward guidelines and rules for the industry:
You shouldn't employee actors with tattoos, you shouldn't employ actors with scandals, you definitely should not employ anyone who has ever spoken out against the Chinese Communist Party.
And it has gone further. They are worried about the 'feminization of men'. The ideal man should be a soldier or a firefighter or a soccer player. Strong, rugged, athletic, clean-cut and respectable. And they should not be a boy-band member.
The Chinese government is very concerned with masculinity.
The idea of a man being inside a woman's body and experiencing being a woman is controversial.
I do not know this for a fact but it would not surprise me if the writers chose this ending to play it safe with the government censors and government censorship.
You see a similar thing very often with time travel dramas where a character travels to the past. The Chinese government is worried about these dramas because it might be used as satire. Think about Animal Farm. Is it a book about farm animals? No. It's a book about the Soviet Union, communism and the corrupt Soviet regime.
Now when the time travelling lead of the drama criticizes the Emperor and corrupt local government of the past... is it really that simple? Or is it like Animal Farm? And the writers are using Ancient China to criticize the modern day Chinese Communist Party.
So almost all Chinese time travel dramas today are "oh it's just a dream" or something like that. And then the people making the TV show will try to explain to the government censors why their show is acceptable and should not be changed or banned completely.
There isn't that much unnecessary soap opera drama. The characters are overall relatively nice with flaws.
The drama doesn't know what it wants to be. Is this an ensemble cast working together or is this all about Yoon Shi Woo?
The way Yoon Shi Woo is written I have to believe this is your typical "he's the hero" show. The problem is he's the least deserving hero you will ever meet. He was a popular boy-band singer with a bad personality. And what's the character journey for Yoon Shi Woo? Oh he magically does this, magically does that, he's just better than everyone else. Yay Yoon Shi Woo.
This isn't the fault of the actor. I said previously I enjoyed the second male lead and second female lead and would have liked them to be leads but there are alternatives:
Make Yoon Shi Woo less of a 'godlike' character and give him some actual character growth.
Make Yoon Shi Woo just another student and make the female lead the heroine or have them be heroes as a group (which is kind of how the show ends but yeah Yoon Shi Woo is just better than everyone).
It feels like the writers didn't know what to do or where to go and as a result it's a mess. The show feels like missed opportunities with the female lead, second male lead and second female lead. They were all more interesting characters with more dimensions than the male lead.
The problem was not the parallel worlds and it's funny to read people talking like they understood and others didn't because they had an open mind. If you think the problem critics had with it was the parallel worlds I'm not sure you understood this show despite watching it.
There was another sci-fi component to this drama and that was the source of most of the problems.
For anyone still on the fence: if you can use your imagination to explain away loose end after loose end then you'll have no issue with this show. If you believe it's the job of the writers to tell a compelling story and not leave dozens of loose ends then I'd recommend against it.
The basis of the story is complex. The writers and director were not up to the task of taking the themes of this show and making a compelling story. Period.
The male lead hasn't grown at all. He's still hot-cold and has no idea what he wants to do besides avoiding returning to the capital.
The female lead has regressed. She started as a character with a clear goal in mind. Now she's like the male lead with the hot-cold. She constantly keeps secrets for reasons I don't understand. Why not tell him some of this stuff so you don't get caught in a lie?
The credits do have me slightly optimistic there will be character growth but so far I haven't seen any (and yes, that includes the ridiculous Rocky-like montage of the female lead training and learning polo with her classmates).
He adopted the male lead and his older brother as his heirs because they were his closest relatives. Older brother died.
The emperor finally had biological children after this happened. His biological kid becomes the heir (Crown Prince). The emperor sends away the male lead but keeps his mother in the palace.
The male lead's mother wants him to return and marry the Shen(?) family daughter. The Shen's are a powerful clan and that would bring them better under control of the emperor.
The male lead does not want to return because he was cast aside by the emperor as soon as the emperor had kids. Chances are when the Crown Prince becomes emperor he will try to kill off any rivals (like the male lead). He wants to avoid marrying the Shen family's daughter.
The Shen family is powerful and traditional. Tradition means a man must marry his wife first and then eventually 'marry' concubines.
The Shen family son does not like the male lead and does not want his sister or family-relative marrying the male lead. He tries to set up the male lead and female lead to be caught together. This would be a scandal that might lead to the Shen family calling off the marriage or the male lead proposing marriage to the female lead and that announcement would cause the Shen family to break off the marriage talks.
Now the male lead's friend Ziyan sees the night spent alone as an opportunity. He coerces or convinces the male lead into marrying the female lead as a concubine. The hope is that the Shen family will see this and the marriage will be cancelled. The Shen family is traditional and believes you should marry an official wife first and then marry concubines after an acceptable period of time.
The male lead marries the female lead and does not have to return to the capital city and palace. For now he has avoided being dragged into the politics, the power struggles for the throne.
I agree, everyone was so mopey in this drama especially the female lead. In the first bit of the drama you see her coming out of her shell but then she immediately goes back into when she's in the capital. It's character regression and not development.
I ended up giving up at episode 46.
I just thought the first half was much, much better than the second half. It's a good historical show and I would recommend it.
I don't really have a diet. Sometimes I'm in the mood for action, romance and I'll watch that but I guess if I had a favorite it would be historical drama/TV.
Cast was good. First half of the show was good.
I mean damn. At best the organization was involved in massacring innocent civilians. At best. Prince An coerced Liu Ru Yi into providing the materials to blow up the mountain. Ok fine, she was coerced. But she worked with Prince Cheng and corrupt officials for years. We're supposed to pretend nobody was hurt or killed as part of those deals? And after her 'I'm an idiot and my organization kills innocent people' moment Liu Ru Yi writes in multiple last testament letters "Fu Rong, you don't have to keep Ruyi Pavilion running".
And what's the take away for the female lead? "My husband is lying to me. The accounting books are lying to me. Everyone and everything I have seen is lying to me. My master is good. Ruyi Pavilion is good. I have to keep it running." What??
It's really too bad the male lead doesn't end up with the whiny Princess. At least she's not trying to get people killed in exchange for money like Ruyi Pavilion. Seriously. The way they gloss over this is absurd. A few Ruyi Pavilion members save Prince Su at the end of the show and all is forgiven... it's absurd. And then Prince Su becomes an idiot and decides to pressure the Emperor into forgiving Ruyi Pavilion. And I get it will be dismantled and turned into a ministry in the empire but still. What good was done at any point by them to justify not executing/jailing them all or disbanding them?
I understand the leads were in another drama together but I forget the details so I don't want to compare. I just feel like things kind of fell apart towards the end. If you can ignore Ruyi Pavilion being evil then you'll probably really like this. I just don't remember them doing anything 'good' or having a specific purpose that would make them useful to have exist. They traded secrets for money and that got people killed. That's it. That's the organization. There's a reason the female lead was kept out by her master. It's dirty work, evil work.
The female lead's character didn't match her actions with Ruyi Pavilion. She's not a ruthless achiever so I didn't understand her obsession. And Ruyi Pavilion should have been explained more. Maybe they did have some goals that weren't purely money for secrets/murder but it sure didn't seem like that. An 'innocent' female lead and a ruthless profiteering organization is not a convincing combination.
Got it.