Knavery

I don't care that time travel to the past is the most overused trope in Chinese dramas in a period setting. I will keep watching and I will watch this if it gets subtitles.

Well it was certainly worth the watch for me. It slowly started to run out of steam at the end and I thought it got a little corny but whatever. I really liked the performances by most of the cast. They did a good job.

Compared to Nirvana in Fire the original?
It's much more romance focused and the story isn't a pure revenge story.

I think this is about as good as you could hope for with a follow-up season with a different cast but similar time period/era.

They reference a lot of season 1 characters and their relationships with season 2 characters (who are their descendants).

So it's a little nice to know "oh wow that's the daughter/son/nephew/niece/etc... of ________" but other than that no, you do not need to have watched Season 1. The story is independent, the characters are explained. You should not need Season 1 to understand Season 2.

In terms of feel, I think NiF1 was a lot more focused on the revenge. I haven't finished quite yet but this seems more like a typical historical show. Some romance, some love moments, the bad guys get their scenes where they plot and kill off some of the good guys.

The only disclaimer is I have not watched the whole thing yet.

Too many flashbacks. The characters were OK. Wish there was more time for the secondary characters and their relationships.

The female lead is evil. She deliberately destroys the lives of innocent people and there is no moment of regret or reflection.

By far the worst lead character in Korean dramas in at least a decade if not more. One dimensional and that one dimension is "bad person". Think of any negative quality a person could have and the lead female in this show probably has it. Laziness? Yep. Corrupt? Yep. Egotistical? Yep. Violent and abusive? Yep. Hypocritical? Yep.

Bad stuff happening to her doesn't excuse her bad actions. She didn't grow on me like she obviously did with many of the commenters below.

The male lead nailed her personality by episode 2 (though the writers might disagree): She's a psychopath. An actual psychopath. She uses others to achieve her goals. It doesn't matter if they get hurt. She does not empathize with others when they do get hurt. She does not act professionally or ethically.

This show had potential. The female lead destroyed it all by being who she was. The actress is good. The role and writing is garbage.

I'm a little worried the second half is going to feel like the writers are stalling for time.

We're only halfway through and it seems the head bad guys have been discovered. Some of their top guys have been taken out.

Aside from what I thought was a poor portrayal of gay men... this show continued to build steam right up to the end. I got really invested in the characters.

The ending seemed ambiguous to me but maybe someone can explain it better.

If anyone is considering this show, give it a chance and try not to get turned off by the first few episodes where things are a bit more raunchy/sexual and there is swearing. This show improves episode after episode. The performances are good and the show has some depth to it.

What lessons is this show supposed to teach anyone? There is a whole list of actual crimes committed by several different characters but nobody seemed to face any punishment.

The last episode was laughably bad. They tried to fix all the problems built up over the show in that one single episode and it went about as poorly as you expect in the first ~22 minutes until it somehow got worse for the remaining time.

It's like a less funny Twilight series (and yes, I understand Twilight isn't a comedy) with less supernatural stuff.

Hong Kong TV is so typical with the cheesiness in its humor and innocence overall.

I was a little surprised with how the last episode ended it. Overall I enjoyed it despite all the twists and turns that felt like overkill.

I wish the sound on the videos was better. It sounds like they recorded their lines in soundrooms. And that's probably how it happened but still... it kind of makes the drama subpar for me.

The story is alright, I'm not sure how it's much better than the Wallace Huo one. It's good they avoided some of the big names but they should have invested in making sure things like sound were excellent. They did not.

Well I made a donation to CDramaBase to help out the lone person working on youtube, hopefully a few other people can contribute but regardless, I am just hoping it gets subbed.

How similar is this to NiF 1? Are the broad details exactly the same from the start to the ending? Like the sick mysterious and brilliant male lead? I don't want to spoil NiF but an ending like that too?

And she's flying back to China for what I assume is spring break (assuming she's an international student at a university somewhere in America?) so we might not see updates for a while depending on whether or not she can get access to youtube in China.

Hard to believe it's only one young woman working on it. Hopefully she keeps it up and gets some help. I'm crossing my fingers but I'm still thinking I might try that donation route via CDramabase if for personal reasons she has to stop and no one else picks it up.

I know they probably don't come here but thank you to anyone involved in subbing this.

I think I have the opposite problem where the vast majority hover around 7-7.5... sometimes I'll go back after a few weeks or months or after a re-watch and think back on what I watched and maybe rate it a bit lower or higher.

It was alright, I'm not sure why they need to reinforce the whole Communist Party/Nationalism theme at times. You get to see people's lives at around the time China moves from the rural poverty of Mao to the economic development and capitalism that has existed for the past several decades.

This wasn't a beautiful or happy drama, it was pretty dark at times, sensible at others (again aside from the nationalism to satisfy the Communist Party). I stayed to watch the interaction between one of the male leads, his career and the 2 women in his life. Bittersweet ending.

This looks like it could be a pretty good and interesting story. Hopefully it gets subtitled.

It got less funny as the plot moved along but it was alright. I don't usually have high expectations of comedies so maybe that helped me enjoy it.