Interesting title with lots of action and a miniscule hint of romance
I have been putting this title off for other titles for so long. Some of the reasons are that the title didnt look convincing and I didnt know any of the main actors other than Ren Min (which I fail to like her performance in The Longest Promise). Well apparently I’ve been delaying for no reason. This show turned out pretty good, definitely beyond my expectation.Tells a story of a son of an assassinated Minister of Judicial Review on a journey to find out the reason of his father’s demise and the mastermind behind it. ML had been a sickly kid as he was growing up, because of this he spends most of his time reading until he met Qiu Qingzhi, a runaway slave. They formed a strong bond and ML started building a reputation of a rising genius for solving criminal cases and dumping the perpertrators at the door of his father’s office. As they grew up, ML sent his best friend QQZ to join the army so he could build a name for himself and escape the fate of a slave. Upon QQZ’s return, ML’s father was assassinated and ML went missing while en route to return to his father’s hometown. 3 years later, QQZ has emerged as a respectable general of the Jinwu Guards, while ML made his first appearance by solving the high profile Demon Cat Case which caught the attention of the empress. She appointed ML as Vice Minister of Judicial Review Ministry, working alongside Vice Minister Shangguan Qin, an only female in the lead cast. They started to unravel mysteries and strange cases that lead to the real mastermind behind ML’s father’s assassination.
This is not the typical cdrama that I’ve watched. The casts are male dominated, Ren Min being the only prominent cast of the opposite gender, but gladly enough she was not set there as love interest for ML. Yay. But I have to say that her character is really just a decor. The story would do well even without her. It’s refreshing to see a show without romance of the leads. I like this setting very much.
The casts gave a stellar performance, although i must say the dubbing for Alibaba is overly done in trying to portray his bad mandarin accent as a foreigner.
I like how the ML looking mysterious with his facial expressions. He sometimes comes off as conniving with some ulterior motives. However i think Chen Shi sometimes overacts with his calling “Bing ye (Master Bing - the ML), Bing ye,” whenever theyre in danger. It’s really annoying.
There are filler stories as to build up the other main characters, telling their backgrounds and personalities as such.
The hand to hand combat here is pretty well done. Sword fights are excellently executed. The action choreograph team has done a great job here. i really enjoy the action.
The plot twist is rather expected, but it is good nonetheless. I enjoyed watching the show.
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Wasted almost 5 hours of my time.
This female investigator Su Ci, posing as a male, got assigned to investigate the government silver that got lost during transit, and met her idol Prince Qi, Pei Yanzhi during her little stint. Only problem is the ML was posing as a commoner to investigate those who had a hand in his downfall, so FL didn’t know it was him. During investigation, ML discovered that the small framed investigator is actually a female, and played along with her disguise.I have quite a problem with female characters posing as males, cuz most productions never cared to bind their chests! The only shows that I saw that pass the male impersonation convincingly were Fighting for Love and Legend of Female General. The rest failed miserably. With this one, at first glance I already knew it’s a girl, even before i saw her face, heck that wouldve been strike two of dead giveaway with that too feminine face, but yeah, before i saw her face i already knew it’s girl, cuz of her freakin breasts. and they were small, mind you, is it really an extra hassle to prep her chest to make the male disguise a wee bit believable? 🙄 what’s even funnier, they even drew her eyelids like a woman would do. What kind of a disguise is that? Which male court official actually draw their eyelids like a female would, cuz i havent seen any, unless that character was cross-dressing as a female.
Honestly I wouldve ignored this failed male impersonation like i did with The Long Ballad and the likes, had the show came with interesting plot to hook me on. Sadly there isnt one. Instead of focussing on the plot, they just went full on romance building between the main couples. FFS I really can’t stand those supposedly awkward proximity moments between the two mainleads, the underwater kiss to supposedly give air, the backcarry, the drunken trope, the facial close-up between the two etc. The screenwriters were trying too hard to create those moments to emphasize on the attraction. Oh lord, isn’t this supposed to be an investigation/mystery story? Why am I seeing these lousy ass scenes hinting at romance? I aint here for these. i like watching Zhang Linghe but even this is too much for me. Signing out now to save my face from getting wrinkles by cringing too much. 😒 This one can stand side by side with the super cringe-worthy Ancient Love Poetry.
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What did I Click?
I won’t even bother making a proper summary since I only watched up to Ep 3. So far all i can say to summarize the 3 episodes is that Xiao Wuyi the ML is the heir of the Duke and also a general commanding his own troops. He almost lost a battle due to bad weaponry, faked his own death to trap another prince who is responsible for the weapons forgery, whom ML suspects plotting a rebellion. The FL is the only daughter of a minister and mechanical craftman genius who is in love with another prince who turned out to be ML’s friend. ML returned to the capital and asked FL’s hand in marriage from the empress dowager who i assumed acting as regent cuz the emperor is constantly sick. Btw he only did this after he came to know that the rebel prince was eyeing to marry FL. While the ML is planning to trap the rebel prince, FL is busy planning her own escape from the marriage.First off, i only watched this for Aimee cuz I liked her performance in My Journey to You and Whispers of Fate. I have only seen Huo Minghao in I am Nobody, he was okay there but I was not really looking at him seriously. Basically I have a neutral impression of him, neither a hater nor a fan.
Anyway, the plot kinda threw me off right from the start. In any other shows, a general returning home pretending to be dead is akin to deceiving the emperor, so I failed to see how the heck ML just got away scott free without the empress dowager even questioning his reasons. He didnt look like a prominent figure with own faction in court other than being a general, so for him to get away with almost every nonsensical things he did was beyond me. The writer tried too hard to depict ML as ruthless and unhinged, and those dramatic entrances the ML did were waaaayyy too over the top complete with slow-mos and dramatic background music, every single time. The show incessantly try to shove this powerful image of the ML on the audience but instead of getting wowed, i got cringed.
I don’t know what’s wrong with the makeup department. Why does the makeup on Aimee looked foine as heck but horrible on Huo Minghao? Not only does the skintones are all over the place, it also looked cakey on ML. And was his original skintone too tanned that they had to put on pale foundation on him? I thought he’s a seasoned general, tanned skin is exactly what generals should look like, so why is he so pale here? There were many closeup shots of the ML so it is hard for me not to notice the bad makeup. He looked fine in I Am Nobody so I know he is good looking, so why does he look so weird and unappealing here?
Only episode 3 and the ML is already saving the emperor and stopped a rebellion, that was way too fast, man. Everything looks so hectic and rushed. The amount of ML’s dramatic entrances just put me off big time cuz they were too frequent and looked too exaggerated I just can’t stand to watch them for the next 25 episodes. Sorry Aimee, I can’t even stay for you or the plot.
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Cringy and stereotyped
I picked this up because of the high rating on MDL, but it was truly a torture to get through each episode, maybe because im not into romance drama. I thought it would be like Eternal Love type of show, where theres love story and there’s action. Nope. It’s all about love baybehhh. It’s a struggle (for me!) to bear the incessant proximity moments between the two leads, which most of them don’t even make sense. There’s so many of them within the 5 episodes and it grew cringier and cringier each time that i can no longer stand it after the 5th ep. The way they fall in love was also too sudden and rushed, and maybe because im not in the ‘target age group’, the stereotype beautiful, flawless skinned men for the stonecold indifferent thousands-year-old god of war falling for the bubbly naughty trying to act cute girl kinda gets old. Nope. Not my cup of tea.If youre like me who prefer action with adorable love story interlaced in between those action, then you might wanna skip this. It’s a totally cheesy cringy love story with mediocre action (yeah its one of those shows with hands waving around spitting internal powers out while hanging and rolling and spinning on wires kind of action, not the actual fight choreograph with physical contact at all) for the first 5 ep. If youre like me, then dont waste your time on this like I did.
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