When good CGI meets questionable loveline

Having watched the trailer months ago I highly anticipated this drama. Especially with the amazing costumes, high profile actors/actresses and beautiful CGI effects. However my excitement got quickly met with disappointment upon watching the first few episodes and onwards. Not only did the plot fell flat, I also still can't wrap my head around the mainleads loveline.

Let me explain: The story starts out with a child (ML) crossing the border of Tushan in an attempt to survive an attack. After this he gets taken in by a seemingly older lady (FL) who could've passed as his aunt. The difference in age, appearance and demeanor had immediately set the tone for me as to what their relationship was: either aunt-cousin or teacher-student. Even though ML grew into a full fletched adult as the story progressed, his personality remained more or less the same to me: playful (even childlike I might say) and expressive whereas FL remained stoic and authorative (haven't seen any expression from her other than the go to pokerface). The lack of character development made it nearly impossible for me to break free from the initial aunt-cousin perception that I had formed at the beginning of the story (I mean hell, she basically raised him, saw him grow up into an adult and from time to time still mentions this throughout the drama). Their love therefore, just felt downright wrong and out of place to me.

I honestly wished that they casted a more younger looking actress for the role of FL. I mean don't get me wrong Yang Mi looks absolutely beautiful for her age but when put next to ML, the age gap can be seen and felt, making it much more difficult for viewers like me to break free from the initial "protective/stern aunt - rebelious cousin" image. That being said, I'll still continue to watch the rest of the story as we're only halfway through. I wanna give it a fair chance though I don't have much hope for it.

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Hated every minute of it but couldn't stop watching.

Didn't have high hopes upon seeing the make-up and costumes to begin with but what got me the most was the way in which the story kept getting dragged out. About 2/3 of the drama has gone by and miss Qi Pa has yet to discover the truth about Kui Mulang. The character development was close to nothing and god knows what is up with this evil scorpion man? Like the lack of backstory made him finding his daugther (which we didn't even know he had or missed) suddenly feel so random and out of nowhere? Just like all the dance scenes btw which made me cringe to death.

FL could've been more expressive with her facial expressions as well imo, all I could remember was her looking like this: 👁️👄👁️ half of the time. Another thing to point out is the scenery. Rather than showing the actual world all we got was this repeated cut scene of the realm from afar getting inserted and mostly the palace making immersion kinda difficult.

All in all not one for the rewatch list, though I can't stop watching this trainwreck. Like it's bad but I can't look away.

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Hard to keep watching

I had a hard time getting through this one but I did well. The story in itself sounded interesting yet the chemistry between the FL and ML felt kinda lacking. This could be blamed on the way in which the story was progressing though, which felt imo kinda rushed. Like one day he was her teacher and the next he was her lover? One day Mu Nan was deeply in love with Wei Zhi and the next he was team kitchen god? Did I miss something? Same with Lan su's death as well as the death of this peacock lady...there was no build up really, one strike was all it took leaving barely any time to process it afterwards.

In the end the story took the most ridiculous turn, like this glowing egg for example which was suppose to be their child. We never got to see it being born. After being protected for over 30+ years I would've expected to see at least that. In the end after zooming through the sky fighting eachother for a few minutes they went back in time like nothing ever happened. Kinda disappointing.

The most memorable thing worth mentioning might've been this test that the students had to go through during their time in the academy. That was pretty cool.

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