Reviews

Did not establish plot, nor characters...

How the making of the episodes probably happened? Everyone suggest the ideas and concepts they like, they all get approved because they are all good individually. No one cares if it makes sense as a whole though. The whole 2nd episode was either fighting in dark places or exposition served in unnatural dialogues. First thing that came to my mind when the episode start was: what is this music? Was the song a bop? Yes. Did it fit the scene and the show? Definitely not. They truly just need to chill with how fancy high tech special effects over the top they want it to look like. You know how it actually looks like? Let me tell you - the team bought new editing software and they just wanted to test all the possible functions in it. Not to mention - they focused so much on the visuals, the sound effects sound like some free stock ones, real bad quality. 1/4th of episode one was watching a fight that was too long, and watching other characters watch said fight. Episode two is the same if not worse. How can you not deliver interesting plot and characters with cast like that? Not even Xu Kai's pretty face can save this one for me. I'm getting myself out before I waste more time.

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Chinese Republican Era - Wuxia edition

When I see people dressed like a mix of Indiana jones and wuxia cultivators, doing wuxia moves... how I should feel about it? So what the first episode presents? Typical exposition with some questionable production quality.The plot seems interesting. It's going to be a full adventure if they will mix the tomb riding and wuxia elements correctly. It will be a whole mess if they won't. Still, messy plot can be saved by interesting characters and great chemistry from the cast so I'm hoping for that. As of now they introduced 3 distinctive groups - Ding Yun Qi, the Penta sect and the police, al having the same goal, finding male lead's father. Random thought, but I can't stop myself from thinking how similar Wu Shuang's styling is to The Untamed's Wuxian. So, how is the action? The fighting scenes were fun - you now - over the top unnecessarily complicated fancy moves and borderline flying. We all love them. As for the production quality, I will never understand trying to add so many special effects when you know you can't make them good. Some motion and lighting was just painfully bad. The green screen bothered me a lot. And the way they filmed some sequences felt like it was meant to be a 3D show, and we are all watching it without the 3D glasses. At the same time, episode one had a lot of beautiful and amazing scenery shots - I took quite a few screenshots! So, what's the verdict? The whole first episode felt rather silly, but Xu Kai does look fine, so they get points for that.

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