Details

  • Last Online: 9 hours ago
  • Gender: Female
  • Location:
  • Contribution Points: 82 LV2
  • Roles:
  • Join Date: July 2, 2019
Mirror: A Tale of Twin Cities chinese drama review
Completed
Mirror: A Tale of Twin Cities
2 people found this review helpful
by hanjingyi
Feb 18, 2022
43 of 43 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 5.0
Story 6.0
Acting/Cast 5.0
Music 7.0
Rewatch Value 2.0
This review may contain spoilers

Lack of pathos, lack of engagement, poor editing

I didn't set my expectations too high before watching this, but I can't help feeling somewhat disappointed.
The story has its attractiveness but loses much in execution and delivery. I would have appreciated more details about the tribes, a smarter distribution of the plot points; instead, everything comes out as badly assembled, iterative, and just slightly catchy, bordering with boring and annoying.

The delivery of the story mostly fails to convey its depth, so we continuously assist to repetitive and sometimes incoherent dialogues, repetitive scenes, cheap dangers with no concrete consequence if not what is needed to keep the plot going. The editing is probably the worst part - the way scenes were cut, assembled, and linked together ruins most of the best scenes, and the excess of zoom makes me still wonder whether I am exaggerating or if it is truly this bad.
The actors didn't do a bad job, but many moments seem so fake that they prevented me from really feeling it; there is too much self-pity, little depth in communication, rushed explanations and the characters are strongly unable to plan, observe and act based on the circumstances. They circle around the same sequence of events, and when I felt like it was time for them to finally develop out of their repetitiveness, they kept falling into the same hole. Yu Huan was always in prison; Zhen Lan had no significant development after he awakened; Bai Ying sacrificed and lucked out, sacrificed and lucked out; Su Mo is ambiguous enough to attract a bit of interest but remains a victim of the events surrounding him, indecisive when it matters and determinate always about the same things, to the point that he becomes a bit useless.

Dubious leadership, confusing character development or total lack of it, boring, quick missions, unengaging fights. Some scenes and the OSTs save the score, otherwise, it would have been lower.
Was this review helpful to you?