Kochase
This review may contain spoilers
For those of you concerned about the injected 'romance' overshadowing the bromance - don't. A lot of you probably know, the original novel story is a male/male storyline. To make dramas pass China's censorship test, many such adaptations get converted to bromance, or worse, swapped out entirely for a male/female storyline.
Even though there are signs of romance in some early eps, it doesn't go anywhere at all. The 'love interest' becomes mostly a background character. The bromance game (and honestly, they do start to hint at romantic or at least domestic undertones) comes in pretty satisfyingly in the latter half.
The relationship between Tang Fan and Sui Zhou does progress quite gradually and rather realistically (not our usual schtick of cdramas writing milestone relationship developments like 'ML saved FL once; checkpoint in relationship reached! Now their attitudes are suddenly different towards each other'.
Pros:
- Production value is pretty great. No super fake cherry blossoms or blatant CGIs always flashing in front of you. Certainly helps to have money.
- Storyline is pretty good; the cases are fun
- All the characters were well-written and likeable and / or interesting. No one felt one-dimensional.
- Action scenes are great of course, given Jackie Chan's guidance. For once, cdramas have somewhat physics-bound and believable action scenes
- Acting was pretty decent. I was initially a bit jarred by Sui Zhou's accent (actor has a Taiwanese accent, which is entirely outside of historical context), but grew accustomed to it. He's got such a nice voice.
- Plenty of bromance drama to be had, but kept within realistic boundaries. Tang Fan did not suddenly turn into a typical cdrama female lead and have predictable collapsing fits or anything silly like that.
- Dong 'er! That little girl is too smart for her own good. As expected of Tang Fan and Sui Zhou's daughter.
Cons:
- Pacing of scenes and camera angles are a bit weird sometimes, but it also got better later on I think.
- Injection of random female character(s) for censorship's sake, but it's a loss I'll take I guess.
Even though there are signs of romance in some early eps, it doesn't go anywhere at all. The 'love interest' becomes mostly a background character. The bromance game (and honestly, they do start to hint at romantic or at least domestic undertones) comes in pretty satisfyingly in the latter half.
The relationship between Tang Fan and Sui Zhou does progress quite gradually and rather realistically (not our usual schtick of cdramas writing milestone relationship developments like 'ML saved FL once; checkpoint in relationship reached! Now their attitudes are suddenly different towards each other'.
Pros:
- Production value is pretty great. No super fake cherry blossoms or blatant CGIs always flashing in front of you. Certainly helps to have money.
- Storyline is pretty good; the cases are fun
- All the characters were well-written and likeable and / or interesting. No one felt one-dimensional.
- Action scenes are great of course, given Jackie Chan's guidance. For once, cdramas have somewhat physics-bound and believable action scenes
- Acting was pretty decent. I was initially a bit jarred by Sui Zhou's accent (actor has a Taiwanese accent, which is entirely outside of historical context), but grew accustomed to it. He's got such a nice voice.
- Plenty of bromance drama to be had, but kept within realistic boundaries. Tang Fan did not suddenly turn into a typical cdrama female lead and have predictable collapsing fits or anything silly like that.
- Dong 'er! That little girl is too smart for her own good. As expected of Tang Fan and Sui Zhou's daughter.
Cons:
- Pacing of scenes and camera angles are a bit weird sometimes, but it also got better later on I think.
- Injection of random female character(s) for censorship's sake, but it's a loss I'll take I guess.
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