TBH, I might just not like the FL (or the character). But I liked the heroic parts (even when they were kind of silly) and didn't like the romance.
The best chara - for me - is the brother. He seems to grow the most (while not changing all that much). The way the switchback happened kind of muted my enjoyment of the whole drama, also. But I was entertained, and that matters, a bit.
There’s one thing I don’t understand....Their ancestor is Pei Fei, but what about Ms. Shen? is it shen jing…
Pei Fei married into the Shen clan (I think the Princess too was part of it). I guess Pei Fei was a lot more pragmatic and married for kids instead of love, LOL so probably not to the princess.
Lin Yan's wife is Lady Shen (but that's ambiguous since there's no first name), and the grandad liked talking about Lin Yan instead of Pei Fei so those details didn't matter in the end.
I only had ten minutes to spare, LOL, Tantai Jin is SO back! Up to and including hairdo, AND that building off which the first crow attack happened (this time it was wine fishes).
If only they had given him some music lessons on the way back, LOL.
This will definitely go on the watch list as soon as I can get more than a few minutes at a time to use...
I thought it was kind of silly that the president of a cybersecurity and technology company would have "close2u"…
Yeah, I also think the Chinese opera eps were the best part of the police cases, the guest cast were amazing and totally convinced me (I felt so bad about both main guest charas, neither deserved what happened), and the actual parallels were chilling - when Shen Yi was painting his face I was kind of certain he had gone off the rails to see what's on the unhinged side of his consciousness. (Not to mention it seemed to me he was a bit too interested into looking into the abyss, even in the first season - always taking chances, always making it a bit dangerous... because he wanted to SEE. I love those teaching moments where he explains the tableaus - it's an insight to the way his mind works.)
I don't think Shen Yi ever was on Fang's side, I totally think he was pretending from the very beginning, because he saw something of himself in Fang and "invented" an almost transparent mask of himself to play along with Fang. That's why the seducing/luring him to the other side seemed possible throughout the series, because he was pretending but at the same time sincere about it.
WHY would he had told Du Cheng earlier? Have you seen Du Cheng's poker face yet? Neither have I, LOL. Fang was too smart (and kind of powerful) for Du Cheng to deal with, and so Shen Yi needed to have him SEE Shen Yi going over to the enemy's side and REACT honestly to it. I promise you Fang was always aware of Du Cheng's reactions every time Shen Yi was around, and Shen Yi used that to mislead and distract him.
Shen Yi is quite smart, though he got paired with Du Cheng who's a lot more of a hands-on kind of type, so this second season used a lot of its time to show Shen Yi's possible roads not taken, LOL. Pretty anxiety-giving for me throughout the series.
And then they slap that ending on it!!!! I STILL think it's all in Shen Yi's imagination, that dark road's SY compared to the nice road's SY but not in actual reality. Or so I hope. Or we're going to see a third season. (Not that I'd say no to that, LOL).
It comes to me I haven't yet watched him in a costume drama either, LOL (mostly because I either don't like the FL, or that he's main cast but not the ML and I don't like the ML either, or something. Or too many good costume dramas, too little time.)
This is so cute! I already quite like Hatano, and finally a BL character reacts normally to a sudden strange proposal, LOL - go, Saku! But my favourite is Hotaru :)
I thought it was kind of silly that the president of a cybersecurity and technology company would have "close2u"…
Tan JianCi (Shen Yi) is appreciated in costume dramas LOL. He's good in modern dramas too, anyway, so it doesn't matter. I'll be a bit of a fangirl here and admit I like how small he is, LOL. Whenever he comes up against taller or bigger guys, he has to pull the focus on himself, I guess he does it in dramas, too, when needed.
Jin ShiJia, on the other hand, IS way taller and bigger. He doesn't really fit the esthetics of nowadays' costume dramas (maybe he was too young for NiF-like casting, 'cause those guys knew how to pick'em.) So probably that's why he gets to play big, tall guys - police officers a lot of times, too.
If your crime thriller itch isn't completely scratched after UtS2, maybe have a look at Be Reborn or The Embers - those are good, IMHO. And pretty thrilling, too, LOL.
I thought it was kind of silly that the president of a cybersecurity and technology company would have "close2u"…
That's why I said it's a bit Nietzschean, LOL - you are probably uncomfortable with the way Shen Yi seems to let himself be... seduced toward the dark side. A lot of watchers commented on the colder relationship between Du Cheng and Shen Yi in the second season - it's mostly Shen Yi's story (despite the collaboration on different police cases). It's a lot more introspective (because in the first season we all focused on how cute Shen Yi was in his oversized t-shirts and helpless around Du Cheng's badass antics and we all forgot he's actually a pretty smart guy... and smart guys make bad choices when they overthink things.)
Don't worry, though, and trust the process. Myself, I like more cool-cut psychological stories (unless they turn bad at the end, as some do), and I watched S2 as a story of quiet dread ('cause I obviously watched it as it aired and didn't know the ending, which I won't even tell you how it's like LOL. Suffer like we all did :D)
BTW, don't you think the gene-editing rich guy has a lot in common with the guy in Mobius? The characters struck me as pretty similar.
I thought it was kind of silly that the president of a cybersecurity and technology company would have "close2u"…
I have dozens of accounts and never bothered to remember all the DIFFERENT passwords I set. I have a recovery account and that one's password I do remember, LOL. But you'll be surprised that way too many people write very simple passwords and worse... they use THE SAME password on all their accounts - banking included.
Will you go watch the second season? You might have noted the deep bromance (there's no slip-over into BL, but there are some undertones - and YES they took some pretty courageous turns in some of the cases) and the second season is more Nietzschean, so to speak - Shen Yi will have his integrity tried, and Du Cheng can't seem to find the way to do anything about it.
PS If you want to see police being a grayer shade, maybe try The Embers (though the city where things happen isn't "actually" in China, plot-wise, LOL.
I'm about to start ep 5 and i just realized this drama had invented a genre back then.It's neither a pure xianxia…
It's not the drama though. This IS danmei (very watered-down re: the romance aspect) but danmei nevertheless. The novel it's based on is unapologetical about it (though the romance is still just subtly in the focus). Even with the censored approach, it comes through beautifully.
And people (mostly women, LOL, or at least mostly the women admit to it) like danmei.
Sadly, with TU's success and later with WoH's success, the censorship woke up and inflicted more rules so we've been robbed from more danmei dramas (that had already been filmed...)
If you like The Untamed and would like to try some more of the genre - Word of Honor, The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty, The Spirealm, Guardian are also available :)
Which reset is this? The Thai BL? Or is there another Reset? Maybe I can watch it.
The Chinese Reset in which Bai JingTing is ML, LOL. It's another time-loop drama, but IMHO, better than this one (not that this one isn't pretty good too).
Still just on episode 5 because life - but omo! OMO! Omo-omo-omo! That's developing fast, didn't expect it.
I like it LOL, though I can't stand sound effects that tell me something's funny. I can recognise it myself if it is funny for me, thankyouverymuch.
Anyway, the censor guy went from "don't get close to a merchant wife" to "you're SUCH a lucky man" in about three seconds flat - as long as it took him to inhale that skewer, LOL.
Apropos of nothing, just wanted to let you all know that when I work, I usually put on some background music and this time I'm stuck on FoF's OST - Heroes Are Upright is great but IMHO... Heaven and Earth are Unrivalled is the very best. I have no idea what I'm humming to but that refrain - oh yeah you probably could hear me singing along with them.
they didn't and won't give any real explanation for that. the gist of it is that she simply wasnt queenly enough
His mother attacked and scratched her husband's (the king at the time) face. He tried to hide it but it was found (some history sources say it left scars on his face). She was jealous. She had already killed one of his concubines using poison. She wasn't executed for nothing. This king, his family and most of the history around it are infamous, so there's no true need to give SK people extra explanations about them.
The people at the time hated him because 1. he had already enacted a revenge sweep by killing off a huge number of scholars (literati) linked to his mother's removal and then, years later, did another (even targeting people who hadn't been involved, with the accusation they didn't intervene and let it happen), 2. the chaehong actually happened (they would pick the best looking girls for the king to "enjoy", way too many of them, most unwilling), and 3. he closed the Sungkyunkwan and made it into his own joy garden (basically his own private place to get entertained). (And in case it doesn't come through why that matters - the Sungkyunkwan is one of the oldest extant universities, having been around since before 1400). And then there's the whole forbidding freaking writing because people were using it to mock him.
This guy is one of the best-known in his infamity, from the kings of Joseon. The drama didn't need to spell it out to its original audience, so that maybe left some lacks to the international watchers to wonder about.
But in short, there were VERY good reasons for him to be feared and hated by everyone around him.
Historically, his mom was a jealous freak. She scratched the king's face in a fit of jealousy and got deposed…
TBH, even if "settled" history might seem to be the authoritative word about him, the drama DOES present an alternative explanation to (parts) of his reign and it does so pretty convincingly.
I mean, he COULD be just a so-so king with a very bad rep (because the victors write the "truth" and it's been long enough nobody could ever possibly tell what's fact and what's not).
Myself, I think he was a tyrant (because the purges, and because everything else - the girls, closing the royal academy to turn it into a brothel for himself, basically) etc - but if I were to play the devil's advocate, I'd say it could be that he was pretty powerless in his first half of the reign and his relatives used him to get revenge or remove their own adversaries (pitting him as the culprit) and then that he was removed because he had outlived his usefulness and his younger half-brother was more malleable or his faction had promised more power to the nobles supporting him.
Obviously, accepted historical narration is the norm, but the drama does present an acceptable plot of how it could all be explained differently.
I've written a longer comment than these above, when I finished the drama - there are two almost separate (in gravity and tone) plots, barely linked through the romance angle (that didn't really convince me). One plot deals with the cooking and could have stood on itself, and the other is the alt-history of YeonSan's fall and could also had been a separate drama of its own (and a good one, IMHO).
Myself, I prefer The King and the Clown as a retelling of his period (as a piece of fiction, obviously), but if you keep watching this for a story of a Yeonsan-like king figure, it might prove good to you too. (Just ignore the romance, LOL).
PS As for why pick Yeonsan precisely as a MC - one, he's one of the best known (infamous) kings, so there's no need for extra explanations and YET retelling his story in a different way might get the interest of readers/watchers, two, I guess he's - like Prince Sado - one of those things that remind you of a broken tooth - you know you should stop touching it and yet you can't help yourself LOL. Koreans even tried to touch on Taejong, IIRC, with that vampire/zombie drama, and that got cancelled after airing two eps. I guess they're kind of interested in seeing how far can they play around with known historical figures.
Historically, his mom was a jealous freak. She scratched the king's face in a fit of jealousy and got deposed…
It wasn't just the scratch - which, BTW, the king tried to cover up for, maybe he really loved her. She was also accused of poisoning another concubine because of jealousy, and she often seems to have had fits of anger.
The king-father had three official wives (in succession, Yeonsan thought he was the third queen's own son, he was around 5 when his bio mom died) and some 10 or more concubines. There were lots of royal children, Yeonsan himself had two full brothers who died in infancy or early childhood.
I think the king maybe truly loved his second wife and was feeling guilty over her death and so he picked him as a Crown Prince and heir. He was also the elder official son (by a queen), the next one up was 7 when their father died, Yeonsan was 19. I think the succession needed some form of stability and he was also raised as the third queen's son anyway, there was no problem with appointing him as CP.
He's infamous, one of the foremost tyrants in Joseon. I think the drama producers didn't need to spell it out for Koreans - as for the int'l audience... well, there's always wiki, LOL.
3 
The best chara - for me - is the brother. He seems to grow the most (while not changing all that much). The way the switchback happened kind of muted my enjoyment of the whole drama, also. But I was entertained, and that matters, a bit.
Lin Yan's wife is Lady Shen (but that's ambiguous since there's no first name), and the grandad liked talking about Lin Yan instead of Pei Fei so those details didn't matter in the end.
If only they had given him some music lessons on the way back, LOL.
This will definitely go on the watch list as soon as I can get more than a few minutes at a time to use...
I don't think Shen Yi ever was on Fang's side, I totally think he was pretending from the very beginning, because he saw something of himself in Fang and "invented" an almost transparent mask of himself to play along with Fang. That's why the seducing/luring him to the other side seemed possible throughout the series, because he was pretending but at the same time sincere about it.
WHY would he had told Du Cheng earlier? Have you seen Du Cheng's poker face yet? Neither have I, LOL. Fang was too smart (and kind of powerful) for Du Cheng to deal with, and so Shen Yi needed to have him SEE Shen Yi going over to the enemy's side and REACT honestly to it. I promise you Fang was always aware of Du Cheng's reactions every time Shen Yi was around, and Shen Yi used that to mislead and distract him.
Shen Yi is quite smart, though he got paired with Du Cheng who's a lot more of a hands-on kind of type, so this second season used a lot of its time to show Shen Yi's possible roads not taken, LOL. Pretty anxiety-giving for me throughout the series.
And then they slap that ending on it!!!! I STILL think it's all in Shen Yi's imagination, that dark road's SY compared to the nice road's SY but not in actual reality. Or so I hope. Or we're going to see a third season. (Not that I'd say no to that, LOL).
It comes to me I haven't yet watched him in a costume drama either, LOL (mostly because I either don't like the FL, or that he's main cast but not the ML and I don't like the ML either, or something. Or too many good costume dramas, too little time.)
There'll come a day, though :D
Is your thriller itch scratched, then? :D
Jin ShiJia, on the other hand, IS way taller and bigger. He doesn't really fit the esthetics of nowadays' costume dramas (maybe he was too young for NiF-like casting, 'cause those guys knew how to pick'em.) So probably that's why he gets to play big, tall guys - police officers a lot of times, too.
If your crime thriller itch isn't completely scratched after UtS2, maybe have a look at Be Reborn or The Embers - those are good, IMHO. And pretty thrilling, too, LOL.
Don't worry, though, and trust the process. Myself, I like more cool-cut psychological stories (unless they turn bad at the end, as some do), and I watched S2 as a story of quiet dread ('cause I obviously watched it as it aired and didn't know the ending, which I won't even tell you how it's like LOL. Suffer like we all did :D)
BTW, don't you think the gene-editing rich guy has a lot in common with the guy in Mobius? The characters struck me as pretty similar.
Will you go watch the second season? You might have noted the deep bromance (there's no slip-over into BL, but there are some undertones - and YES they took some pretty courageous turns in some of the cases) and the second season is more Nietzschean, so to speak - Shen Yi will have his integrity tried, and Du Cheng can't seem to find the way to do anything about it.
PS If you want to see police being a grayer shade, maybe try The Embers (though the city where things happen isn't "actually" in China, plot-wise, LOL.
And people (mostly women, LOL, or at least mostly the women admit to it) like danmei.
Sadly, with TU's success and later with WoH's success, the censorship woke up and inflicted more rules so we've been robbed from more danmei dramas (that had already been filmed...)
If you like The Untamed and would like to try some more of the genre - Word of Honor, The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty, The Spirealm, Guardian are also available :)
I guess it could be good. We'll see. (Though TBH what I actually liked in Fabricated City was precisely how powerless the ML was).
I like it LOL, though I can't stand sound effects that tell me something's funny. I can recognise it myself if it is funny for me, thankyouverymuch.
Anyway, the censor guy went from "don't get close to a merchant wife" to "you're SUCH a lucky man" in about three seconds flat - as long as it took him to inhale that skewer, LOL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWc_KND-fLs
Also, Li Lun still had the best redemption arc in xianxia lately. I'm gonna get drunk in his honor when I have the time. Now back to work.
Oh well.
The people at the time hated him because 1. he had already enacted a revenge sweep by killing off a huge number of scholars (literati) linked to his mother's removal and then, years later, did another (even targeting people who hadn't been involved, with the accusation they didn't intervene and let it happen), 2. the chaehong actually happened (they would pick the best looking girls for the king to "enjoy", way too many of them, most unwilling), and 3. he closed the Sungkyunkwan and made it into his own joy garden (basically his own private place to get entertained). (And in case it doesn't come through why that matters - the Sungkyunkwan is one of the oldest extant universities, having been around since before 1400). And then there's the whole forbidding freaking writing because people were using it to mock him.
This guy is one of the best-known in his infamity, from the kings of Joseon. The drama didn't need to spell it out to its original audience, so that maybe left some lacks to the international watchers to wonder about.
But in short, there were VERY good reasons for him to be feared and hated by everyone around him.
I mean, he COULD be just a so-so king with a very bad rep (because the victors write the "truth" and it's been long enough nobody could ever possibly tell what's fact and what's not).
Myself, I think he was a tyrant (because the purges, and because everything else - the girls, closing the royal academy to turn it into a brothel for himself, basically) etc - but if I were to play the devil's advocate, I'd say it could be that he was pretty powerless in his first half of the reign and his relatives used him to get revenge or remove their own adversaries (pitting him as the culprit) and then that he was removed because he had outlived his usefulness and his younger half-brother was more malleable or his faction had promised more power to the nobles supporting him.
Obviously, accepted historical narration is the norm, but the drama does present an acceptable plot of how it could all be explained differently.
I've written a longer comment than these above, when I finished the drama - there are two almost separate (in gravity and tone) plots, barely linked through the romance angle (that didn't really convince me). One plot deals with the cooking and could have stood on itself, and the other is the alt-history of YeonSan's fall and could also had been a separate drama of its own (and a good one, IMHO).
Myself, I prefer The King and the Clown as a retelling of his period (as a piece of fiction, obviously), but if you keep watching this for a story of a Yeonsan-like king figure, it might prove good to you too. (Just ignore the romance, LOL).
PS As for why pick Yeonsan precisely as a MC - one, he's one of the best known (infamous) kings, so there's no need for extra explanations and YET retelling his story in a different way might get the interest of readers/watchers, two, I guess he's - like Prince Sado - one of those things that remind you of a broken tooth - you know you should stop touching it and yet you can't help yourself LOL. Koreans even tried to touch on Taejong, IIRC, with that vampire/zombie drama, and that got cancelled after airing two eps. I guess they're kind of interested in seeing how far can they play around with known historical figures.
The king-father had three official wives (in succession, Yeonsan thought he was the third queen's own son, he was around 5 when his bio mom died) and some 10 or more concubines. There were lots of royal children, Yeonsan himself had two full brothers who died in infancy or early childhood.
I think the king maybe truly loved his second wife and was feeling guilty over her death and so he picked him as a Crown Prince and heir. He was also the elder official son (by a queen), the next one up was 7 when their father died, Yeonsan was 19. I think the succession needed some form of stability and he was also raised as the third queen's son anyway, there was no problem with appointing him as CP.
He's infamous, one of the foremost tyrants in Joseon. I think the drama producers didn't need to spell it out for Koreans - as for the int'l audience... well, there's always wiki, LOL.