The FL is really good here. ML is far more wooden than in https://mydramalist.com/753285-yue-shang-dong-gong (and that's unfortunate). The OST... well there's not really any OST. The production is somewhat good, but fight scenes are meh (and the intro makes it look like there'd be a lot of them).
Besides the one inventive twist I thought it was really bad. Like: acting bad, sets were "the basics", chemistry questionable, direction ehh, even the cliffhangers annoyed me.
Why would he give his master this book to destroy it?Didn't he can't do it himself?What an idiot. 🤦♀️
It's only believable if some audience or person of authority does it. But yes, IQ>100 move is to hand over a partial/already burning book or something.
The plot isn't exactly strong, and after about 70% into the show there are a lot of bad Mango subtitles that mostly miss the meaning. Also sad how the music's largely MIA on the Mango YT channel.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9t884o has completely outlandish translations of the names, but the video quality is good. Sadly 3 minutes are missing. [1:53:54 length] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9s4voi has those missing 3 minutes and has the character names, but otherwise the translation is 75% wrong/inverted. [1:56:45 length] At 6:30 switch to the second video. Then come back 3 minutes later. (If you want you could use two browser windows or Chrome split view to see both at the same time, but that's not going to nicely fullscreen so it's fairly meh.)
Their previous vertical https://mydramalist.com/798342-zong-tang#comment-26319414 has a bit of a more interesting plot (and a bad ass violent FL), but a problem that the FL looks almost noona-like and the ML looks too young by comparison. Probably to avoid a repeat of this, the ML looks much older here and virtually never takes off his glasses (his styling is a bit meh), but Desired Kisses tries for a world record in tongue involvement in those Desired Kisses, and it does a really good job in that regard...
ML's "makeup" in I bought her a real bionic robot. / Oops, I Bought Her a Real-Life Robot Husband / 给她买到真仿生机器人了 is fantastic btw; that show isn't on MDL.
It's unfortunate that the subs (of various versions) have inverted meanings like 50% of the time and you have to patch the story together from recognizing fragments of Chinese.
But as a vertical this one's mostly great.
Of course have to watch it off YouTube for the music to be intact.
ML acting is pretty good but needs a better director to keep the twins thing under control (after a notable point he kind of flipflops between the two roles too much). FL is weak here, she can do better as seen in other shows (again, with better direction or production?). Does not convince as an assassin whatsoever. The three not that old supporting actors also have potential.
Story is full of generic plot points you've seen before, BUT 90% of the time things really happen and it only gets actually boring at the end when they're desperate to have some last ditch dramatic obstacles. The overall story is an enjoyable watch. The OST is just 'copypaste in that 阿YueYue song until the end'.
I'm on ep 5 and the dynamic between the leads Li Lan hua and Fang Duo bing remind me so much of the dynamic of…
Just two episodes in I also feel like I'm literally watching Blood of Youth, with Xiao Se having no martial arts (anymore) and making his newfound sidekick do the fighting for him. Doesn't help to see some of the same filming locations. And CY looks like LHY (or vice versa) 80% of the time, not just sometimes.
Additionally, 小子 (~"brat") is an expression that's used non-stop in the Blood of Youth / Dashing Youth / Blood River universe, and it's out in full force here too.
Doesn't mean I'm a fan of either show though, or being American, or a card-carrying member of any fandom, or... You know ^_^
( I've combined this spoiler-free post and the spoiler-filled post under it into a full-spoilers review: https://mydramalist.com/profile/luckz/review/555008…
One repeating story loop is that a character commits a crime to attract the attention of the FL's Palace FBI to point at a bigger crime. They initially are an antagonist, maybe attack the leads, only to become a misunderstood new best friend for the FL. Repeat for the next case.
Some comments below had claimed that "all the cases are connected!!!" and such, but I heavily disagree. They're mostly free-floating with no lasting relevance, and the middle has some straight up filler content that changes nothing.
Writing-wise there's zero-logic elements that were either never supposed to make sense or any explanation was cut. For example, early on, there's a human excrement transporter who has top tier martial arts skills on the level of the FL as well as Batman-level combat tools, even an army of combat bats hidden in his coat. Yet his back story is... that he spent his life working in the palace shoveling poop.
There's the usual stuff that writers forget about, like in the first episode the FL has a highly trained special owl sidekick. Never appears again. (Maybe the CGI department couldn't get the owl vs bats fight scenes to look good. Sorry.) After a breakup the ML got super deadly sick, coughs blood, is only barely alive due to absurdly expensive treatments snuck to him by the FL's underlings... and then the writers forgot about it. His illness? Never mentioned again. If FL knew about him coughing blood or not? Who cares. A few scenes later he's fit as a fiddle and back to being ultra smart. The (very bad) last episode in general boils down a lot of plot resolution to some ultra compressed cliff notes format as if an hour or two of runtime had to be cut and it's almost time to turn the lights off.
One thing I'm not sure I should praise or criticize is the utterly absurd amount of deaths and especially suicides shown. -- -- -- Extra spoiler warning from here -- -- -- The "misunderstood new best friend for the FL" character especially almost always kill themselves once the case that spawned them out of thin air ends.
Problematic morality elements you get from the very beginning, where the FL's actual official best friend is another princess who kills between somewhat innocent and entirely innocent other girls just because she can, and yet we are supposed to commiserate with her. This turns into a repeating pattern of the FL and her sidekicks being partial to some more pitiable offenders and repeatedly overlooking their crimes.
A few episodes from the end, when the FL can stab the (quite weak and insufficiently explored) primary villain to a justified death, the ML stops her with a grandiose speech about how killing the villain herself results in her 15+ years of nightmares getting replaced with new nightmares. Some episodes later, witnessing something makes her realize the ML was right. In the last episode, she kills said villain just like she could have done in that first-mentioned ep, or maybe more brutally, and then we are told her nightmares have now ended. Seriously?
( I've combined this spoiler-free post and the spoiler-filled post under it into a full-spoilers review: https://mydramalist.com/profile/luckz/review/555008 « only read this if you have finished the show )
This show has a huge lot of actors that I know are good actors, but something is off with them here, like they are miscast (given unfitting roles) or are misdirected. It's fair to say that Bai Lu carries the show and even the ML is more like a supporting character for her, yet the role of being a trained warrior never seems to fit her like a glove and her action scenes frequently have awkward elements. If you've seen Wang Xing Yue in The Double you know what he can do, but here he doesn't get to do nearly as much. Zhao Yi Qin and Min Xing Han feel like they more or less had their wings clipped. None the less it was pleasant to keep recognizing faces even in very minor roles. Maybe I'm a bit biased because I also recently watched all of Blood of Youth / Dashing Youth / Blood River, but to me this show is in the top 10% of cast depth.
The writing is not only not good, but also already gets repetitive within the first few episodes. There's certain formulaic elements that keep being used and re-used. (I don't want to get into spoilery details here.) The overall morality and deeper plot conclusions are also somewhere between chaotically random and contradictory. As a whodunnit type investigation, it's not a suitable watch. The audience doesn't get hints to solve some sort of riddle themselves. Instead, a supporting character waltzes into a scene to declare that they now have the next hint, and this happens almost all the time.
The production-wise it's ok but not particularly good (some uneven audio, some weird cuts, fight scenes between decent and boring). The OSTs are fairly meh too, just the opening song is one of the best I've heard in years. Sadly the show doesn't have a clue what to do with it during actual scenes.
Don't watch it for the romance. The romantic chemistry is barely there, and many comments below express they would have preferred the show without that. I'd say the second couple was better than the first, and even that pairing was totally optional (their scenes together felt like they were filmed to be flexibly deleteable on a whim).
Im on ep 13 and i feel so bored no motivation to watch this at all especially with the episode being an hour long…
If you don't enjoy it, there's no particularly strong reason to stick with it. The last 20% are weaker than what came before, right before that (between middle and end) there's a lot of filler-like stuff, etc.
Then according to you, the villain only shows up sometimes but never does his evil schemes by itself and just…
To make it worse, the villain does the most boring thing a villain can do: Try to storm the palace with (essentially) a private army.
And then the whole thing also is entrapment, i.e. the villain only commits this crime because CP/FL/ML make him. This works for FL "using his own scheme against him" but makes him feel unthreatening or insufficiently evil as a primary villain.
ML is far more wooden than in https://mydramalist.com/753285-yue-shang-dong-gong (and that's unfortunate).
The OST... well there's not really any OST.
The production is somewhat good, but fight scenes are meh (and the intro makes it look like there'd be a lot of them).
P.S.: I watched it with https://mydramalist.com/759221-phoenix-lands-in-the-world due to plot similarities
Like: acting bad, sets were "the basics", chemistry questionable, direction ehh, even the cliffhangers annoyed me.
P.S.: I watched it with https://mydramalist.com/748905-jiao-yue-liu-huo due to plot similarities
But yes, IQ>100 move is to hand over a partial/already burning book or something.
Also sad how the music's largely MIA on the Mango YT channel.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9serv4
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9serv6
sometimes, rarely, KtAG0lSCuTc subtitles helped understand some stuff. or had subs that were missing on this one.
the ML robot styling was super good; show&plot was a bit meh overall
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa7x04y
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa7x04w
Raw:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa7x04y
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa7x04w
While Doting on you again is raw:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9xh8lc
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9xh8l6
[1:53:54 length]
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9s4voi has those missing 3 minutes and has the character names, but otherwise the translation is 75% wrong/inverted.
[1:56:45 length]
At 6:30 switch to the second video. Then come back 3 minutes later.
(If you want you could use two browser windows or Chrome split view to see both at the same time, but that's not going to nicely fullscreen so it's fairly meh.)
Their previous vertical https://mydramalist.com/798342-zong-tang#comment-26319414 has a bit of a more interesting plot (and a bad ass violent FL), but a problem that the FL looks almost noona-like and the ML looks too young by comparison.
Probably to avoid a repeat of this, the ML looks much older here and virtually never takes off his glasses (his styling is a bit meh), but Desired Kisses tries for a world record in tongue involvement in those Desired Kisses, and it does a really good job in that regard...
ML's "makeup" in I bought her a real bionic robot. / Oops, I Bought Her a Real-Life Robot Husband / 给她买到真仿生机器人了 is fantastic btw; that show isn't on MDL.
But as a vertical this one's mostly great.
Of course have to watch it off YouTube for the music to be intact.
FL is weak here, she can do better as seen in other shows (again, with better direction or production?). Does not convince as an assassin whatsoever.
The three not that old supporting actors also have potential.
Story is full of generic plot points you've seen before, BUT 90% of the time things really happen and it only gets actually boring at the end when they're desperate to have some last ditch dramatic obstacles. The overall story is an enjoyable watch.
The OST is just 'copypaste in that 阿YueYue song until the end'.
And CY looks like LHY (or vice versa) 80% of the time, not just sometimes.
Additionally, 小子 (~"brat") is an expression that's used non-stop in the Blood of Youth / Dashing Youth / Blood River universe, and it's out in full force here too.
Doesn't mean I'm a fan of either show though, or being American, or a card-carrying member of any fandom, or...
You know ^_^
Some comments below had claimed that "all the cases are connected!!!" and such, but I heavily disagree. They're mostly free-floating with no lasting relevance, and the middle has some straight up filler content that changes nothing.
Writing-wise there's zero-logic elements that were either never supposed to make sense or any explanation was cut. For example, early on, there's a human excrement transporter who has top tier martial arts skills on the level of the FL as well as Batman-level combat tools, even an army of combat bats hidden in his coat. Yet his back story is... that he spent his life working in the palace shoveling poop.
There's the usual stuff that writers forget about, like in the first episode the FL has a highly trained special owl sidekick. Never appears again. (Maybe the CGI department couldn't get the owl vs bats fight scenes to look good. Sorry.)
After a breakup the ML got super deadly sick, coughs blood, is only barely alive due to absurdly expensive treatments snuck to him by the FL's underlings... and then the writers forgot about it. His illness? Never mentioned again. If FL knew about him coughing blood or not? Who cares. A few scenes later he's fit as a fiddle and back to being ultra smart.
The (very bad) last episode in general boils down a lot of plot resolution to some ultra compressed cliff notes format as if an hour or two of runtime had to be cut and it's almost time to turn the lights off.
One thing I'm not sure I should praise or criticize is the utterly absurd amount of deaths and especially suicides shown.
-- -- -- Extra spoiler warning from here -- -- --
The "misunderstood new best friend for the FL" character especially almost always kill themselves once the case that spawned them out of thin air ends.
Problematic morality elements you get from the very beginning, where the FL's actual official best friend is another princess who kills between somewhat innocent and entirely innocent other girls just because she can, and yet we are supposed to commiserate with her. This turns into a repeating pattern of the FL and her sidekicks being partial to some more pitiable offenders and repeatedly overlooking their crimes.
A few episodes from the end, when the FL can stab the (quite weak and insufficiently explored) primary villain to a justified death, the ML stops her with a grandiose speech about how killing the villain herself results in her 15+ years of nightmares getting replaced with new nightmares. Some episodes later, witnessing something makes her realize the ML was right. In the last episode, she kills said villain just like she could have done in that first-mentioned ep, or maybe more brutally, and then we are told her nightmares have now ended. Seriously?
This show has a huge lot of actors that I know are good actors, but something is off with them here, like they are miscast (given unfitting roles) or are misdirected. It's fair to say that Bai Lu carries the show and even the ML is more like a supporting character for her, yet the role of being a trained warrior never seems to fit her like a glove and her action scenes frequently have awkward elements. If you've seen Wang Xing Yue in The Double you know what he can do, but here he doesn't get to do nearly as much. Zhao Yi Qin and Min Xing Han feel like they more or less had their wings clipped.
None the less it was pleasant to keep recognizing faces even in very minor roles. Maybe I'm a bit biased because I also recently watched all of Blood of Youth / Dashing Youth / Blood River, but to me this show is in the top 10% of cast depth.
The writing is not only not good, but also already gets repetitive within the first few episodes. There's certain formulaic elements that keep being used and re-used. (I don't want to get into spoilery details here.)
The overall morality and deeper plot conclusions are also somewhere between chaotically random and contradictory.
As a whodunnit type investigation, it's not a suitable watch. The audience doesn't get hints to solve some sort of riddle themselves. Instead, a supporting character waltzes into a scene to declare that they now have the next hint, and this happens almost all the time.
The production-wise it's ok but not particularly good (some uneven audio, some weird cuts, fight scenes between decent and boring). The OSTs are fairly meh too, just the opening song is one of the best I've heard in years. Sadly the show doesn't have a clue what to do with it during actual scenes.
Don't watch it for the romance. The romantic chemistry is barely there, and many comments below express they would have preferred the show without that. I'd say the second couple was better than the first, and even that pairing was totally optional (their scenes together felt like they were filmed to be flexibly deleteable on a whim).
Likely: Not that much, but you of course never know
(And how is Zang Hai by comparison?)
Try to storm the palace with (essentially) a private army.
And then the whole thing also is entrapment, i.e. the villain only commits this crime because CP/FL/ML make him. This works for FL "using his own scheme against him" but makes him feel unthreatening or insufficiently evil as a primary villain.