noodles

Archives: The Nanyang Mystery is one of the Daomu Biji/ Grave Robbers stories which follows the usual characteristics of bromance, action and fantasy of the author. But what does it bring to the table as drama?

The drama starts of with fast pace and quick story progression. However the pace slows down significantly after a few episodes. Since then the pacing keeps wavering into slow and fast pace sections.
The character of Hai Lou starts of as carefree, reckless and hot-headed. He does whatever he pleases without repercussion since his brother Hai Xia - the calm, smart and logical one - always cleans up his mess. His master Hai Qi sends him off to a place where no agent has returned from alive. Hai Xia goes against their masters wishes and follows him to once again be his shield. After seemingly loosing his brother Hai Lous character development begins and he has to learn to take responsiblity for his actions by himself. After Hai Xia is revived from the death he slowing turns evil against his will. The struggle of Hai Xia fighting against himself and Hai Lou having to learn to work alone while worrying about Hai Xia gets harder each episode until Hai Xia can't fight against himself anymore and Hai Lou has to kill him which ends his character arc and their brotherhood after a long struggle.
While Hai Qi shows that she cares for Hai Xia countless times she seems to lacks the same level of feelings for Hai Lou as we saw her sending him off to his possible dead with no hesistation, not helping him on the ship until Hai Xia was involved and in more scenes. However she still supports him and lays down all the things she had hidden from him all these years to keep the archives running. Hai Lou should not rely on anyone but himself and she makes that clear.

While having a good storyline to follow something went wrong. We got a glimpse into Hai Xias and Hai Lous relationship at the start of the drama however we didn't get to see nearly as much as we needed to until things fell apart. Also the villains all were comically but depending on the person watching this could either be good or bad. Whatever floats your boat.
The MLs played their parts good but the overuse of face shots got repetitive after a while. Ding Yuxis facial expressions went viral a time ago and it seemed like they are trying to get these viral moments again. The FLs acting was lacking in a lot of scenes but was good enough. The story fell a bit flat especially at the end and made no sense at times which had me wondering if they wanted to go to a diffent storyline but changed it post filming.
They really wanted to make a sad drama and they did.

Overall a good DML drama which shines in action, fighting scenes and atmosphere.