Cai
The story was decent. However it felt like the writers didn’t want to commit to a more political drama so they made the character’s motivations more personal. This ended up limiting the drama as those motivations were not always convincing. The script felt very rushed towards the end in contrast to the fullness of the character exploration in earlier episodes. It was also repetitive at times, rather than exploring new territory with the characters the same events ended up happening each time. The major issue with this drama is that while some characters progressed immensely, others remained two dimensional.
The cast was a mixed bag. Lee Joon Gi as Wang So was phenomenal. He did an amazing job portraying the emotion of his character and was persuasive. Unfortunately towards the end he was let down by the script that didn’t leave him enough room to show the change in Wang So’s motivations. IU was not convincing as Hae Soo. It felt like she could have been replaced by any other pretty face and the drama would have been fine if not better. Part of this is that Hae Soo was written as a character who has things done to her, as opposed to being a character that makes decisions for herself. This could have been made up for by a skilled actress who could have shown the depth of feelings outside the spoken dialog, instead however the viewer was given a blank slate. The rest of the cast was great but the script only allowed them to be two dimensional (e.g. angry ambitious character, bungling character who has all the power and connections, funny cute character forever changed by tragedy, and so on).
The music was on point but nothing remarkable.
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The pacing of the story was quite good, there were some slow bits in the middle but generally only persisted for a few episodes before picking up again. I felt like there were things that could have been explained - for example while we do find out some what about why Hua Qian Gu is special, it's never explained exactly why her blood kills flowers (although this could be a cultural/historical thing that I missed). I did feel like a lot of character motivations (e.g. why character's were in love, why certain characters hated others to the bone, general lack of nuance) went unexplained but that is in keeping with the "simplistic" feel. The end of the series kind of jumped off a cliff with the story and the series as a whole really suffered for that. The pacing went from slow to way too fast and the sweetness of the earlier story was canned for a brutal approach that didn't fit. It was like they had a story and at the end they realized they had to shoehorn it into a particular genre, leaving it feeling like a separate story.
The casting didn't wow me, the main cast didn't stand out as exceptional although part of that may be due to the constraints of the story. I thought Sha Qian Mo was well played, as well as Yun Yi and Shuo Feng. The music was alright but again didn't wow me.
I felt like the magical elements were well done and not terrible all things considered.
I'd recommend this series as something to give a try but I wouldn't put it at the top of the list as a "must watch".
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Overrated, pretty design but a flat dead world.
TLDR: I really wanted to love this one but it let me down in the second half. Plot hits all the points it should, the actors are alright but the cinematography, lighting, lack of lived in feel and direction to overact drag this drama down to a 7 for me. It's alright but I won't be rewatching.Ratings: So there's a lot of hype for this show especially coming off the success of Til the End of the Moon. Bai Lu is a beloved actress and there was much disappointment when this show's release was delayed. I feel like the eventual score for this show will settle down somewhere in the 7s but in the meantime most reviews are either going to be extremely positive or extremely negative.
Plot:
I found the first half of the show enjoyable and fairly interesting although there was the occasional tedious bit. Personally I love rebirth revenge stories so I felt like this was going to be the show for me. The build up was good, I was enjoying it and then although there were plot points happening the desire to watch and see what happened next disappeared. It really began to drag once they left the capital.
If you read out the main story the plot would be solid. There's a lot happening, you've got a palace intrigue part, a mystery, battles, festivals - truly a little bit of everything and the heroine is involved in all of the above (no pining away at home while the love interest is off to fight!) However the problem is that however dark and edgy they want to make the story they just never follow through. It's obvious from the start that the two main villians of the show aren't going to be on par with the lead couple. The tone is set that no matter how bad the stakes get the leads will find a way to make it through without major pain.
I think there's more to it than that but for me there was so much happening but there was no emotion to it, the story felt dead towards the end.
Acting:
The acting was fine, nothing outstanding, nothing obviously terrible. I don't know whether it was post production, the writing, or the direction that the killed the story so badly.
I think that the actor who plays the male lead has a fair bit of room to improve his acting. He's also fairly young and did a good job in a role that would probably normally be given to an older actor. He potrays a fairly dark character and does a good job of showing the crazy/calculating side he is lacking in being able to bring all his character's traits together into someone who feels like a real person. I felt this a bit with the Bai Lu's character too - she can act fairly well but for some reason it just felt like she was doing what was required rather than putting in an outstanding performance. I felt like it was standard across the whole drama that the actors overacted which makes me think that this was a direction problem more than an acting problem.
Production:
The sets, the clothing, the world were gorgeous. Absolutely stunning. Then they served a shit sandwitch when it came to lighting and cinematography. The lighting is horrendous - characters in bright daylight but they're using a white light instead of a warm sunlight light. It being noon but the shadows are all wrong. If the sets and the clothing were low budget I think it would have been less of a problem, but when the sets are so gorgeous the drama would have been on a whole different level if they did things like use real candle light, real sunlight etc. This exacerbated the issues with the plot - if the world doesn't feel alive and lived in then it's only going to provide a pretty backdrop and not give the actors a lot to work with. The other issue was that the sets, although gorgeous, were too perfect and didn't give the vibe that they were lived in. The character's clothes are always clean, there's not a hair out of place etc. No dirt, no dust, if a character gets whipped then they add in most of the blood on the clothes afterwards etc.
Music:
Nothing memorable, nothing jarring but nothing particularily good.
Some people might say that I'm expecting too much from this kind of drama. I would have agreed, especially as I'm cocurrently watching Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace again. However, I have enjoyed shows like Romance of Tiger and Rose and Love like the Galaxy (LLTG). I wouldn't normally make a comparison between two different shows but the difference for me is glaring. In LLTG I cared what happened to the characters, the world and people felt like they could exist somewhere, although I felt like the main couple would make it through it felt like there were real stakes, it was emotional. It had dimension where this show is pretty but completely flat for me. I'm sad because this show had the potential to be everything that I've been looking for in a show but instead I'm struggling to finish.
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This review may contain spoilers
I finally finished this after like 2 years and I have to say WTF did I watch?So the story is split into two parts. 1-17 and then 17-54. In 1-17 we follow the story of the princess in her home country in the latter her life in a diplomatic marriage to the neighbouring Wei. The story didn't make sense. This was based on a time travel novel so that part was changed and censored. It seemed like the adaption team didn't know what to do or that they went for something complex that got chopped on the editing floor. There were parts where the writing was great - the story of the second female lead was excellent, the last episodes were pretty good as were the first 17. So it's not that the writers were bad writers.
What they failed to do was to link the two stories together. Until the second last episode I was under the impression that the second segment was a "what if these two characters met in an alternate timeline". I'm actually still not sure that it wasn't the case. For me there's no way to link the Chuyu and the Rong Zhi of the first story to the later one. Basic stuff like if he's the regent or even just the brother in law of the Emperor of Wei there's no way he's going to hang out in the Princess' mansion in Liu Song just in the hopes of influencing the government there (esepcially not as a "concubine" lol). As for Chuyu - she went through a lot of shit in the first section there's no way she can be so clueless in the second. Anyway not linking those two or explaining it made it confusing and left the viewer spending a lot of their time trying to work out if the previous episodes had happened or not in the "new" environment. This made it difficult to focus on what was actually going on.
Pacing wise the story was fine for the first 17 and the last 4-5 episodes but everything else inbetween was filler and not very interesting (mainly because it was so confusing).
The second part of the problem was the acting. Rong Zhi is supposed to be this genius level schemer. Some people say the whole blank face that the male lead had for most of the drama was an example of his great acting skills and that it was in character. I say that's a load of ****. If you watch political/intrigue dramas you'll see that there can be cunning political operators who have the blank face. However always the viewer will be given an insight into them when nobody else is around (for example you'll see micro-expressions of them being worried/happy/etc). Sometimes this will carry over when they're with other characters they'll turn to pour the tea and they'll have some expression. The ML had nothing. Right until the very end nothing. At one point he cried and still had a blank face. They could have put a cardboard cutout there and it would have been the same. What makes it worse is that the actor can act, even back then. I don't want to get into spoilers but there's a part where he isn't Mr Blank so he does have skills. That said for me he failed to carry the role well enough (I think part of it too is age - he's the Prince Regent and he looks likes he's about 16 years old for most of it).
That was the other issue I had - casting. Especially for the second half. The cast is great don't get me wrong, however this drama suffered from a case of everyone should be young and good looking. The Prince Regent looks 16. The empress dowager looks like she's in her 20s tops. The emperor looks like he's in his early teens except his favourite consort looks like she's older than the empress dowager. They didn't try to add some grey or some fine lines or anything so it made things very confusing, especially when it came down to the interactions. If the emperor is just a teenager that's fine (obviously because he has a regent and that kind of thing happened historically) but why does his favourite consort look the same age as his mother? Why does he still have a regent if he's making most of the decisions and getting people pregnant? (At least there should be talk of - oh the regent will hand over at this time or when you reach your majority blah blah) Esepcially because there is tension in that area there should be some discussion of removing the regent from his post? (I wouldn't consider this a spoiler every regent/emperor is going to have some tension so don't read into it too much)
Now that I have the negatives out of the way...
Wow the props and costumes. Chuyu's clothes and accessories were gorgeous as was the open minimalist throne rooms/props. Not historically accurate but it was restful on the eyes and it was nice for a change. Kind of like they shot everything in a really fancy IKEA (those pale floorboards lol). I really love historical accuracy but it was clear that this drama wasn't going for that, so I liked that they changed things up and tried a minimalist aesthetic and made good use of the lighting crew.
The music was good, nothing jarring or out of place. Although personally there was nothing that drew me to listening to the OST again.
I would not like to rewatch again because it was confusing and mangled but at the same time I kind of want to rewatch again so I can try and work out what the hell was going on and if the stories were supposed to be connected or if they were a "if the two characters met in an alternate universe" thing. Luckily I don't have to rewatch as apparently there is a novel. Hopefully I'll understand what they were trying to do by reading that lol.
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The plot was OK. They did a big build up to who the mystery woman was but it was quickly resolved. It almost felt like that part of the show wasn't really connected to the rest of it. I also found the stuff with Yoo Chan to be very deus ex machina (like pop suddenly he solves all the company's woes). I really enjoyed the vibe of the company but I felt like the show got bogged down in love triangle drama. I disliked Min Tae Ra, I just found her boring (I think this came down to the writing rather than the actor, she did great). I liked the side story with the room-mate, and the other with the artist. I think if they had spent a little bit more time on the story with the artist, it could have given them a better chance at writing a well developed Min Tae Ra. In terms of pacing it really felt like it could have been cut down to 10 or 11 episodes. I had to force myself to watch the last three episodes because there was nothing left to resolve.
Acting/Castwise. Everything but the two main characters was good and even they weren't so bad except when they were together it was like they were siblings. There was zero sense that they actually wanted each other at the end (one scene at the airport he's actually leaning away from her lol). I felt like Suho became a lot better as the show went on but at the same time it just didn't gel completely.
The music was alright. Nothing stood out and I wouldn't seek out any of the songs.
Rewatching wise - I normally have a hug of death when it comes to dramas. Even though I'm running out of space I want to have them all just in case I want to watch them in the future. Sadly that was not the case for this one.
Overall I'd give it a 6/10. It's not that the show is terrible (there are shows that are much worse for sure), it's just so bland. If I watch a drama I'm supposed to feel something or anticipate something, instead it felt like a chore. I'd suggest skipping this one and trying out something else.
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