This show really needs more episodes.

Watching all 20 episodes in 1 sitting was a breeze. There’s not a lot of thought provoking because everything is said thoroughly out loud. All of the cases showcase typical criminal mindset. Even though there’s a lot of cliches, it’s not tiring but refreshing. It’d be great if there were more episodes, like 200. There’s a lot of material that can easily generate more episodes. In regards to the actors, though they’re all children, their acting is all fluidly superb, equaling the capabilities of adults. Except one thing I notice is zhan zhao’s actor was looking sleepy or bored and kept slowly blinking in one scene that I believe is not intentional. And in all 20 episodes, I believe I haven’t seen the beheading execution in the courtroom scene? So there should be more episodes, shouldn’t there? There’s very few shows that I wish for more episodes: this is one of them. And there weren’t any slow parts that made me want to skip forward either. Overall an excellent depiction of justice bao.

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This season concerns one long continuous case.

As the synopsis says, this is one long difficult intertwined case between the theft of $500k government silver and an unknown skeleton washed out by the recent flooding that bears the heir apparent’s distinctive 9 dragon jade pendant around its neck. There is a forebearing that eventual further investigation has the potential to disrupt the entire late southern Song Dynasty. 28 years prior to the start of this season, the current emperor zhao Hong was brought into the palace to be one of several of the then emperor’s “sons” as he had not one biological son. The heir apparent of the time, zhao yang, was in a furious embroil with the then treacherous king-maker prime minister shi kaiyuan who single handedly controlled the emperor as his puppet. Of course the heir apparent was nullified and demoted to king of ji, and banished to hu prefecture. As the king-maker, he made the current emperor listed as heir apparent by altering the will of heaven. But because this prime minister wasn’t satisfied with his legacy as everyone at court deeply despised him, he purposely enacted a terrible fire that engulfed the king’s residence to force him to go into hiding at the Buddhist temple in the sky pavilion mountain. He also stole away the will to prevent anyone from taking a close look after the ascension ceremony. Soon after the pm died and everyone at court thought his tyranny had ended as he had no publicly acknowledge relatives. He then had his carefully hidden from public eyes nephew also create a fire to destroy his identity trail as shi tianlai and establish his new identity as wu de. Wu de took ahold of this will and used it to blackmail the current emperor to become a first rank official. But all of these secrets are soon to be imminently revealed one by one by none other than song ci, a most upright 4th rank official who was recalled back to his position.

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Magnificent storytelling

This series’ murder stories’ progression likens to that of the Japanese detective manga and anime show kindaichi youthful detective. But the depicted political dynamics rising from a small town and county interactions up to the central imperial court relationships, are nonetheless very thorough and quite accurate. After all, This show tells of a Song Dynasty judge song ci who rose from a county in hunan up to his promotion to the capital as a 4th rank judge of the supreme court of justice and his inevitable resignation after promoting to 2nd rank as he became despaired of all of the decadent and corrupt officials of the imperial capital and the emperor’s wish for “peace and stability”.

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Last case very rushed and ending on an open cliffhanger

After the first case I felt like taking a break, but from the second case forward, the storytelling becomes more enthralling and I felt like binging directly to the end without stopping. This Song Ci’s brainstorming and case-solving is so very similar to the mindset of the infamous 1990s manga and anime series Detective Hajime Kindaichi. If you watched that series you’ll get this feeling starting from the second episode. One criticism is after around episode 5, the chosen quotes from the historical forensic handbook are just tacked on and start to have nothing to do with the contents of the respective episode. There doesn’t seem to be news of a second season yet but there’s very strong hints of a season 2 coming up concerning the medicine fairy’s biological father and song ci’s eminent ascension into courtly politics.

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Good show

First episode is a whirlwind with too much stuff happening and it’s all over the place, once you get to episode 2 everything starts to slow down and make sense. The story is refreshing. The costumes are a bit cheap-looking, with a lot of characters in ming instead of tang attire. The goryeo Prince and entourage are wearing obvious Joseon fashion. Not to mention geshu Minglang’s edo period robes and wen tianer’s geisha style soon becomes Meiji era fashion. However ridiculous the historical fashion inaccuracies are, these choices are not very cringey and don’t really distract the viewer. There’s only one instance of modern pop music and that’s only in the ending song. For the most part the music and sound effects are played on traditional instruments. One criticism is the last 8 episodes are way too rushed and everything that has happened since the tang football team lost to the goryeo team is retold in one person’s memory. This show starts out strong and the middle still is actually fascinating but the ending is as if many scenes were cut out and the bare bones were stitched together to quickly rush the story to an open ending. In the last few episodes the actors are starting to behave more and more robotic and wooden, though that’s the directors’ fault for trimming so much detail out. I almost dropped the entire show at episode 32 as nothing made sense toward the end and had to endure to 35 to be abreast of all of the current events after tangchi’s amnesia.

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This show follows wuzetian’s life albeit with several fictional touches

The warehouse administrator of the Tianhai Museum, Dagang, is honest and honest, with a plain appearance. He has always had a crush on Li Binghe, a beautiful and charming beauty and museum researcher in the same museum. Despite the strong backing of Li Binghe's twin brother Li Yufan, the various ways of confession prepared by Dagang in advance were still useless. But the real identity of this rich and handsome noble man is actually a thief who specializes in stealing antiques. The purpose of his approach to Binghe is to steal the precious Tang Dynasty cultural relics Tang figurines! Yuan and Binghe were involved in a car accident in the process of robbing Tang figurines, and both passed out...
In his sleep, Yuan saw the thrilling scene that Wu Zetian was about to be convicted by Emperor Taizong Li Shimin.
After waking up, he saw that although his sister was still awake, she had obvious signs of perception. After searching the books and asking the doctor, Yufan decided to sneak into the dream again, weaving stories and awakening his sister, so a bloody, shocking journey in the palace began quietly...

Here the historical antagonist prime minister zhangsun wuji has been substituted by famed alchemist yuantiangang (who bears resemblance to the antique thief); Empress wang (shuxiao) is no longer the prime minister’s niece but madam Wei’s adopted daughter; the title madam Wei is no longer held by wumeiniang’s sister but by the wang family; her sister in this version is a kind individual that does not want favor with the emperor (is killed by xiaoshu consort instead of wuchen consort) and her children never come to the palace to take wrongful revenge against their aunt; the significant role of king of nanchang; the appearance of the empress’ half sister (biological daughter of the wang family wangshuxian) who she pushed off a cliff but has resurfaced at court with a new face, and much more.

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Cringe

First off, all of the costumes, especially the women’s are distractingly Han dynasty attire. The music and sound effects are all western orchestral music. And the lines spoken are almost all in modern positive speech pep talk style. And the main female protagonist voices are annoying as well. This show is better played in the background while doing other things as barely anything monumental happens other than in the beginning and end since anything outrageous xishi and zhengdan does gets forgiven by fuchai and guojian and his party are nearly always prostrating themselves. At the end, the pregnant xishi jumps off the battlement of the tower where fuchai battled to the death.

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cases have blatantly copied criminal tricks from young detective kindaichi.

What the title says........................................................... If you watched the earlier episodes of the original Kindaichi’s anime tv series, you will immediately recognize the exact same tricks murders use that are recited in here.................... The storytelling style of serial murderers and suspense is also just like kindaichi. ............................ If you know you, you know........ This is overall a nice tv show but it’s be better if the credits responsibly tell the audience this draws heavy inspiration from kindaichi shounen no jikenbo.

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