As a fan of the animation, I think Wang Chu Ran was a great casting choice! In fact all the court ladies look gorgeous - kudos to the aesthetics department. Cheng Lei looks too 正派 for Xiahou Dan that I wish they were bolder with his makeup to make him look more menacing.
The acting from both leads is not as expressive as I would have liked (I get that they don't usually do comedy), but is generally serviceable for this sort of show. Plus the cute animations make up for it.
Overall a strong start, though I'm preemptively worried that we're gonna get too draggy midway into the show - imo 32 eps are too much based on the current pacing and what I know of the source material.
The synopsis says the ML has been in the novel for a decade, but in episode one, he claims he’s only been there…
He wasn't being truthful to the FL when he said that; ML really did spend a decade in the novel but put up a pretense in front of the FL. It was quite an emotional moment when this was revealed to the audiences in the animation
Starting on another historical drama and I had to come here to say that comparatively, the action scenes for this show are on point and so much more satisfying
It's slated to be a cinema release during Chinese New Year, so might not hit intl streaming platforms (if it does) for a while. But Victoria and Dylan have good pull with overseas audiences, and the trailer looks like a lot of fun, so fingers crossed!
Round 1 was actually a bit of a drag. The artistry and entertainment picked up when they went to the subsequent rounds and had to tackle more conceptual looks
Catching up on ep 21. Bulwark Duke is a really smart translation of Bingzhu's new title. Most other dramas just put the titles in hanyu pinyin, which loses a lot of the nuance and symbolism. At this point I find Bingzhu and Pianpian more compelling characters than the two main leads
Saw a comment here yesterday that Nazha looks like Ao Ruipeng, and today I can't unsee it 😆 They could play siblings convincingly. It's the strong brow + round eyes + prominent ears
Oooo it's the eunuch from Goblin. Hot diggity it's going to be 10 years since that show. On ep 3 and so far it's still quite fun. Let's see how this crash and burns, based on the reviews
The acting from both leads is not as expressive as I would have liked (I get that they don't usually do comedy), but is generally serviceable for this sort of show. Plus the cute animations make up for it.
Overall a strong start, though I'm preemptively worried that we're gonna get too draggy midway into the show - imo 32 eps are too much based on the current pacing and what I know of the source material.