Good production, cinematography, costumes, etc., but story felt a bit repetitive
The story, at the start was refreshing and interesting. With main casts that despite not being the direct "main character", play a big role into the story and have their characters built well throughout the whole 29 episodes. Though personally, I think it became a bit too repetitive at some points. But this could just be my personal opinion as the plot twists felt a bit lacking for some plot points. Regardless, it was well written out and I think 29 episodes is the right amount of episodes for the story to fully play out without boring people too much.The production design is splendid, from the set to the costumes, a lot of details were put into them. Especially if you watch an interview with the costume designer herself, you'll know that she and her team put in a lot of effort to make sure the costumes were immaculate. Down to the smallest of details. Which you can see from details like Wu Wangyan (Chen Duling) and Lu Wuyi (Ju Jingyi) (as well as the other nine-tailed foxes)'s hairstyles would oftentimes have nine-tailed details (e.g., hairpins and little tail-like beads). The costume designer also worked on My Journey To You, Fangs of Fortune, Till The End of the Moon, A Dream Within a Dream, Love Beyond the Grave and more. Hence, you know she's really skilled in costumes, which pulls the viewers into the story even more due to the elements that tie everything together regardless of whether or not the viewer realises this consciously or unconsciously.
Something I'd like to say is that to be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of Ju Jingyi's acting, which was why I was kind of aversed towards watching this. Though I'd say her acting was really good in this drama! Not sure if it's because of Lu Wuyi's character but she did a splendid job in portraying the cunning yet cute and caring fox.
Chen Duling and Zheng Shunxi's chemistry is amazing, I never thought CDL would look that well as a fox demon but she fits the part immaculately. I think many people were worried that Tian Jiarui's character is this might come off a bit too repetitive in reference to his previously bigger roles like in My Journey to You and Fangs of Fortune, though to me, this perfectly showed his acting skills. A bit awkward in some instances but despite that, didn't make it hard to watch through his scenes. As he's still a rather new actor, I think he's actually doing an amazing job as it is now. Definitely seeing him getting better and better as he films more dramas or even movies.
Scene stealer and "MVP" would be Yan An! I've never actually watched much of his works as I dropped Fangs of Fortune before he came on screen (as far as I can remember). But him as Li Jie and Yuan Wuhuo was amazing! Though the two didn't share much difference in personality, you could still clearly tell who's who if you pay attention into certain details (which comes into play as a rather important point, so no, it's not a bad thing). And I think it felt interesting to me to watch Yan An act as such stoic and evil characters since I knew him from Pentagon and their more "refreshing" songs rather than darker concepts like this.
All in all, splendid story to watch through which good visual effects and storyline. Though I myself wouldn't really go out of my way to rewatch it, I wouldn't mind doing so if a friend invited me to do so.
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