This is for sure the best quality drama I have seen

<3 Actors
The main cast is brilliant. The 4 mains characters were all cast perfectly, the main girl Xie and the main guy Gu have a great chemistry and both played their roles with brio.
2nd set of main characters Shen and Qu are both excellent as well. Qu's character could have been annoying but her facial expressions and changes of mood were delicately done and she managed to make her character quite endearing.
All side characters including the main villain are also great, you get attached to so many of them and don’t get disappointed at any point by their performance

<3 Story
The story is not always simple, like most dramas it’s always problem after problems after problems! Sometimes maybe a little bit too intense especially towards the end where many side villains are introduced.
But overall it’s very interesting, I actually made a lot of researches regarding this era while watching as I thought it was really captivating (pre-World War I).
The main love story is also really endearing, and the actors and writers made a great effort at adding a lot of humour around the cheesiness of some lines which made it very believable (a lot of times I related to side characters reacting to Public Display of Affection)
There are obviously some “short cuts” but these were much less problematic than any other dramas I watched before

<3 Fa Mulan
The “Fa Mulan” classic girl/guy story was more believable than in some dramas I have watched before, though sometimes I was like: “come on”
However the main character is strong independant woman which was really refreshing. I liked that they had to save her a few times, but she also saved her friends by using both strength and intelligence (not only intelligence).
She’s got a strong will power, like a lot of main actresses in dramas but this time she doesn’t hid behind men for help, she’s solving things by herself or using her team and this is soooo good to watch

<3 Open minded show!
Even though, there is no real homosexuality happening in the drama, there are actually a lot of reference to it. The drama is quite "open minded" about it and I thought brought a pretty fresh eye by promoting a “and so what” attitude towards men couples instead of other characters just making fun or being weird about it! I thought this was also really refreshing.

<3 Costumes/set/Visual effects
Great great effort! The set is amazing, such a perfect location, the houses, the dorms, canteen, bar, houses all are really well chosen.
Costumes were really good, only thing I thought could be better was the choice of some shoes/boots. Maybe very similar to historic costumes I didn’t not look closer to this.
Visual effects were average ok, better than any drama I have seen so far.

<3 Music
Was good overall.
Towards the end when it get patriotic though it gets a bit too cheesy.

< / 3 Patrio tism
You don’t feel it too much in the first 2 third of the movie but last 5/6 episodes it gets really intense and too cheesy. This has been my only real issue with the drama. An equivalent of Avengers Captain America if you want, about saving your country, being proud to kill people, hating on some political views well intended to please the government in place in 2022… It was too much, and you feel it which takes you out of the drama story a bit as you can feel it’s been edited to please “some” people