I think the film POJ is so much better than the source material. The director made the ML softer and less of a red flag. In the novel, he is your regular breeding CEO kind of guy , and it's less interesting. ML also got lashed 108 times because of a more sappy reason in the novel, that is, because he want to atone his feelings for FL, whose family supposedly killed his father. In the series, he just did it to go against his uncle who adopted him.
This show confused me cos ML is such a red flag but somehow I love it a lot. Help me vote my next cdrama.. much appreciated! https://mydramalist.com/list/LZ8ob9b4
I feel like all of Zhang Wanyi's drama is always a 9/10 for me (with Sijin as an exception, the production is less polished). He's not the typical handsome guy by cdrama standard, but his acting is really good and believable. He's my fave cdrama actor!
I was wondwring he came from as well. Would you please give me a short summary of his background? Or tell me where…
I dont think I got it backward... i did write that he is an adopted Khitan in the drama... and that Ashina are eastern turkic khanagate royal clan, and thats why he is named Ashile, not Ashina, in the drama.
it's taken me over three years to get past episode 3 (of part 1) ðŸ˜
ah too bad. I would say try to finish it since you're already in anways to see what's the hype, but again, might not be a cup of your tea. Tbh I myself I'm a sucker for slowburns and delicate story telling, so I think this is the top in my cdramalist, but I can see how it might be too slow-paced for some people.
This show has soo much potential and I'm so bummed that external forces made this show into what it is now. The saving grace of this show is the veteran actors, which managed to draw me in despite the terrible CGI, issues of pacing, and terrible make up. I found out that the crew were very much behind schedule and the culprit being content censorship (they didn't clarify what didn't make the pass), and the director was forced to hack down what's originally 40 eps down to 32 eps, which resulted in terribly timeline and budget overrun.
The true quality directing quality of this show was the first 2 or 3 eps in, afterward, either they ran out of budget to edit, or ran out of time. Bailu's make up was dubbed "Guanyin hugging Nezha" because of how terrible it was (looked like a mask to me). This make up issue was fixed eps 7 and above. Either the make up artist hated her, or they simply ran out of budget to edit. I'm inclined to believe the later. It's definitely not a Bailu issue, since she looked terrific in The First Jasmine, released in the same year.
The set and CGI also looks like something produced before 2020 (it def is not), everything looks very fake. I know they've done better xinxia than that, but again, budget overrun due to censorship. I'm sad cos I really want to like this series T__T
Watching this back it kind of annoyed me how they tried to make Yuan Shen look like this noble tragically in love…
He never quite realized his own feelings because marrying for love is not what he envisioned, his parents married politically and ended up "separating". He also got too high of an ego to admit that he was interested in SS, and just realized it too late when SS was suddenly engaged to LBY.
The novel was nicer to him, the drama did him dirty, cos in the novel he actually did try his best. CSS got engaged to to LBY was YSJ's "shock therapy". So after CSS broke it off with LBY, YSJ swooped in right away and gave his best shot. YSJ broke up his own engagement at the risk of offending a powerful family, visited CSS daily persistently, and eventually got engaged to her. They were this close to getting married, that even LBY at the border sent gifts and cos he thought he'd never get another chance with CSS. But when LBY met CSS again, he realized he could not give up on her and tried to woo her back openly, to YSJ's outrage (if i remembered correctly during a banquet? so it was an open drama for all).
The rest happened similarly to the series; YSJ's family got embroiled in a case at that time, HBY helped because he cared about CSS, they broke off their engagement. There's also a tiny epilog in the end of the novel where YSJ ended up marrying politically, had wives and kids, but he never got over CSS and remembered her even in his bout of dementia. He even tried to marry off their children or grandchildren (CSS and his) at some point.
So in the novel CSS actually got 3 broken engagement, and became the talk of the town (cos they're all highly eligible too), so her family can only be shameless and ignore them, thinking of another engagement just like another banquet. When CSS reconciled with HBY, they were probably too tired to setup another engagement, so hurried off the wedding in Hua city instead of the capital, like the drama.
I went straight to the novel and was so bummed to find out it has the exact same ending. It has epilog stories about Shaogang (SS's twin) marrying the daughter of some tribe (if i remember correctly) and about Yuan SJ's old age as he was starting to forget things. He married politically, had wives and kids, became good friends with Shaogang. Sadly he never did get over SS. He tried to marry off his child with SS's I think? but SS and HBY was never mentioned other than that they moved out of town and YSJ kept on looking for her in her old house.
I don't think i can ever recover from this drama.. it's def my roman empire. But still do vote something great for the next costume drama show my watchlist: https://mydramalist.com/list/LZ8ob9b4
Anyways.. please help vote for my next drama to watch! Much appreciated:
https://mydramalist.com/list/LZ8ob9b4
https://mydramalist.com/list/LZ8ob9b4
The true quality directing quality of this show was the first 2 or 3 eps in, afterward, either they ran out of budget to edit, or ran out of time. Bailu's make up was dubbed "Guanyin hugging Nezha" because of how terrible it was (looked like a mask to me). This make up issue was fixed eps 7 and above. Either the make up artist hated her, or they simply ran out of budget to edit. I'm inclined to believe the later. It's definitely not a Bailu issue, since she looked terrific in The First Jasmine, released in the same year.
The set and CGI also looks like something produced before 2020 (it def is not), everything looks very fake. I know they've done better xinxia than that, but again, budget overrun due to censorship. I'm sad cos I really want to like this series T__T
The novel was nicer to him, the drama did him dirty, cos in the novel he actually did try his best. CSS got engaged to to LBY was YSJ's "shock therapy". So after CSS broke it off with LBY, YSJ swooped in right away and gave his best shot. YSJ broke up his own engagement at the risk of offending a powerful family, visited CSS daily persistently, and eventually got engaged to her. They were this close to getting married, that even LBY at the border sent gifts and cos he thought he'd never get another chance with CSS. But when LBY met CSS again, he realized he could not give up on her and tried to woo her back openly, to YSJ's outrage (if i remembered correctly during a banquet? so it was an open drama for all).
The rest happened similarly to the series; YSJ's family got embroiled in a case at that time, HBY helped because he cared about CSS, they broke off their engagement. There's also a tiny epilog in the end of the novel where YSJ ended up marrying politically, had wives and kids, but he never got over CSS and remembered her even in his bout of dementia. He even tried to marry off their children or grandchildren (CSS and his) at some point.
So in the novel CSS actually got 3 broken engagement, and became the talk of the town (cos they're all highly eligible too), so her family can only be shameless and ignore them, thinking of another engagement just like another banquet. When CSS reconciled with HBY, they were probably too tired to setup another engagement, so hurried off the wedding in Hua city instead of the capital, like the drama.
I don't think i can ever recover from this drama.. it's def my roman empire. But still do vote something great for the next costume drama show my watchlist: https://mydramalist.com/list/LZ8ob9b4
https://mydramalist.com/list/LZ8ob9b4
Seriously
You have no excuses
Aw.. I guess i need to up my game