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The Sword and the Brocade chinese drama review
Completed
The Sword and the Brocade
0 people found this review helpful
by bett_a
Oct 7, 2024
45 of 45 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 5.5
Story 4.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Music 9.0
Rewatch Value 1.0

World of drama difficult to live in and even more difficult to watch due to poor writing

I finished watching it thanks to the fast forward button and the actress playing the female lead, who gave good performance and was quite captivating.

The plot drags on unbearably, full of inconsistencies, absurdities, and worn-out clichés. On one hand, we see a society where women cannot appear in public, yet it is a woman who runs the embroidery workshop, and all the concubines and wives move around the city quite freely to carry out their schemes, without any supervision or veils to hide their identities. They even visit prisons themselves. Not to mention that the FL meets her male friend (2ML) on several occasions. In the house with such strict rules maids can interrupt and give their opinions without any consequences which is another example of non-consistent world created by writer. Xu family after their downfall has no backing in government which we can clearly see, but their second son is married with a princess. Given the logic of the Xu family's world, it's unbelievable that no one in this family has attempted to poison the FL or the matriarch (mother in law of FL), who is more scheming and cruel then those supposed as drama villains. Watching her behavior for more than 40 episodes makes her final transformation is unbelievable.

Most of the characters are either caricatures or barely sketched out, despite having 45 episodes. Some characters disappear without a trace after a particular storyline begins, only to return after several episodes. These subplots add nothing except to reinforce the positive traits of the FL. The main antagonists are completely one-dimensional, and the intelligence with which they plot their schemes makes it hard to believe that this family could effectively hide their actions for so many years. I immediately guessed who their spy in the Xu family was.

As the FL is smart, energetic and likeable, the ML is passive and simply boring – that is unfortunately mostly due to poor writing of his character. Because of that, it is really difficult to see any trace of chemistry between main couple.
Visuals are not something worth mentioning with pale coloring and visibly artificial materials of costumes. The positive aspect is music with beautiful songs.
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