The Untamed Special Edition (2019)

Most Beautiful Drama of All Time

I’ve done a review for the full version of this drama Chenqing Ling (The Untamed) - it’s long with details (my review). In this review, I don’t want to reiterate what I’ve written before. I just want to do a "short" one for the new viewers.

Many viewers who have not watched the drama wonder if they should watch the special version or the full version. Many viewers are also uncertain why this drama has such high rating and if they are missing out anything, and if they should start watching it themselves. Some viewers also say they are disappointed and the drama doesn’t live up to their expectation.

I have read both extreme ends of the comments. Some viewers have watched this drama for umpteen times, read the novel, watched the donghua (anime), read the manhua (manga), watched all the BTS’s, read all the fanfics, fanvids, etc. (I must admit I’ve done likewise.) On the other extreme, many viewers cannot even get passed the first few episodes and cannot understand what the hype is all about. When they come to this platform (MyDramaList) to question, instead of getting answers, they get clobbered.

This drama is based on a very popular BL novel. To pass censorship in China, the BL part is suppressed if not totally eliminated. But, the production team has cleverly disguised the BL elements into thousands of little moments inserted throughout the series, including within the music, and these little moments are open to interpretation: BL fans see romance right away whereas others see only platonic friendship (that was my first impression in my first viewing). Either way, the story portrays chivalry, selflessness, and magnanimity. It provides many life lessons for all viewers.

This special edition is basically a shorter version of the drama. The original series has a slow start. Many viewers who have not read the novel get pretty confused, myself included. Many even drop the series because of it. In this special edition, the beginning 2 episodes of the original version are cut off; it goes straight to the very beginning of the timeline – 16 years ago. It also includes some scenes (very few) that are not in the original version. It cuts off many peripheral characters and scenes, and focuses more on the two main leads and their relationship. Like it or not, it is this relationship (among others) that has created the largest deluge for viewers who have watched and love this drama. It is also one of the main reasons that propels Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, the two main leads, into stardom. Currently the duo are the most popular actors in China, receiving countless awards.

For viewers who just want to test the water, the special edition may be a good start. However, the original full version provides better explanation and overall plot of the story. A lot of the questions of this drama have been addressed here: https://mydramalist.com/discussions/the-untamed.

This drama means very different things to different people. For many fans, this is the best drama of ALL TIME. For me, this is true also because it touches certain parts of my heart. It stirs up all kinds of emotions in me which I’ve never experienced before in other dramas – happiness, sadness, light-heartedness, agony, hopefulness, hopelessness, among others. It brings me through a lot of painful experiences, and yet gives me a lot of sweetness in between and in the end.

Yes, I’d say this is a MUST-WATCH drama. It really doesn’t matter which gender and what sexual orientation you are. It doesn’t matter which culture you’ve come from. After all, we all live on the same planet, go through similar injustices in life, and most of all, can relate to the characters one way or another.

Two thumbs up!

Lire davantage

I saw the original and now this edition. I love all of the extended scenes between the male leads. No wonder they are getting spin-offs. All of the actors are extremely good even though they are quite young. I am obsessed with the theme song between the male leads. Wish more dramas can be like this and not edited to death so that the story makes no sense. Wish that there will be a season 2. If they ever do a remake, it will be really hard to replace the 2 male leads. Their chemistry is extraordinary with just the looks and smiles. Great job to everyone involved in this project!

Lire davantage

Feelings rehashed

And just like the original 50 episode version, I was left saddened and unmotivated after this viewing. It's like certain dramas, when they're done, just leave this gaping hole in your life because they went on and had this huge impact on you- this drama did that to me.
This was nice to watch after completing the OG a couple months ago and still feeling a little empty inside. Of course with this story being as popular as it is, there are many ways to continue to get my LWJ and WWX fix but still, the live action was just so... *le sigh* There are just no words.
I get that they had to cut a lot of the story because this was more about the mains but unless you're seen the OG then this version is obviously really incomplete. The bright side though is a lot of added scenes that weren't in the drama can be seen here.
Obviously I highly recommend this but watch the original first.

Lire davantage

Honest review…

the long bad reviews, what a waste of your time and energy! Wei wuxian really would laugh about this. The overall score really does speak for itself. I will give those people the benefit of the doubt though for 2 reasons. 1. Most only watched 3-4 episodes and gave up! How can you rate anything on less than 10% viewing? 2. I almost gave up (sad to admit), but my kids encouraged me not to. …… so I’m a middle aged woman straight. My oldest child, 17 is bi and gender fluid. My daughter 13 is pan. Between us we’ve watched so so many bl and straight Asian dramas. We love kpop and all have different ults and have different biases in so many different groups. We’ve seen BTS live in uk twice. In summary, The untamed remains all our TOP favourite. You literally have to stick with it. Don’t review without watching it all because you’re wasting your time and just angry because you don’t get it yet! I don’t think I’ve seen a bad review from anybody who has watched every episode ? what would Wei Wuxian say? He would ????

Lire davantage

My all time fave Cdrama - Love so much

I love The Untamed, Cdrama I watched it twice in complete series (1 to 50) and still watching my favorite episodes like Episode 2, 24, 25, Episode 33, 43 , 46 and 50 until now in Netflix. The storyline was really amazing, the character development of each characters were really superb! The OST was really stunning and my morning music.

I was so impressed with Lan Zhan/Wanji and Wui Xian characters , that's why I followed them in real life hehehe Wang Yibo and Sean Zhao thru Instagram. The costumes was really fantastic! It represents the good and the evil. But at the end of the story the truth will reveal. And that's why I am so in-loved with this drama.

I hope I can still find a story like this in the future. Censorship is not an issue to me. I will still continue to watch this over an over again.

Lire davantage

Indulge this masterpiece - read the novel and manhua, re/watch the animation and live adaptation

I already enjoyed the 50 episode no-cut version of The Untamed even before watching it without reading the novel first. I was so addicted to the story and romance of Wei Ying and Lan Zhan that urged me to start reading the Mo Dao Zu Shi novel. YES! The original flow of story from the novel was the thing that I needed the most, a true definition of masterpiece. Censorship ruins the romance yet the crew behind the live adaptation was awesome and I can still feel that they obviously made the main characters romance showy despite the China’s government forbidding film makers to explicit homosexual love stories.

After finishing the novel version, every scene keeps getting more and more understandable. Yet, some scenes disappoints me because it was different and some major scenes weren’t included but I clearly accepted it since they’re trying to limit the flow of the story because of the censorship. The actors were perfectly casted and played their role naturally. I visualized their faces when reading the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation -official english translation of the novel.

This special edition is the great show to binge-watch when rewatching The Untamed. Since the 50 long episodes were narrowed to 20 episodes that mainly focus on Lan Zhan and Wei Wuxian’s story. Their roller coaster journey was so lovely. This is the best historical-fantasy story I’ve ever seen! No one can beat how majestic it is.

The audio, OSTs, background music and all other execution of musical plays was once again a perfect score. I listen to The Untamed playlist every now and then, this makes me feel like I also belonged to their cultivation world. The costumes, props, design, and venue of events was accurately carried out. The Computer Graphics and editing of their cultivation powers was fine as well.

To put it simple, everything about The Untamed was perfectly done. If you want to know more about the story, I recommend you to read the novel version since you can see how different it is from other versions of the story.

Let’s all live like Lan Zhan and Wei Ying, existing with a purpose. Always be kind since kindness is the root of human nature, treat others how they treat you, keep your loved ones by your side, and the most important thing is as we live, don’t forget to live your life being true to yourself as long as it makes you happy and secure.

Thank you to everyone who makes the characters come alive.

Lire davantage

I loved the The Untamed so, of course, I had to watch the Special Edition as well. The Special Edition is really for fans of the drama. If this is your first exposure to the Untamed and you're looking to understand the plot, this version may only confuse you as things are left out to focus on the two main characters WWX and LWJ. A few scenes between WWX and LWJ are extended in the special edition and the ending is simplified. This version also gives more depth to the character of LWJ. The novel and drama are from the perspective if WWX so it's sometimes hard to get a feel for the character of LWJ. A must watch for fans of the Untamed

Lire davantage

Has its pros and cons

This “special edition” is the condensed version of the original, 50 episodes long series, and was compiled for fans of MDZS, not for the average watcher.

If you haven't read the novel or watched The Untamed, then go back and do at least one before you watch this version, otherwise it will be nigh impossible to follow.

The by far biggest positive aspect is, that the main characters, namely Wang Yibo as Lan Zhan, have done a pretty decent, sometimes even splendid, acting job - he shines during emotional moments.
It's much less visible in the original version because it's overshadowed by horrendously acted scenes, of which many have been cut out here.

While the music is nice overall, using so many flute tunes when flute music has a specific meaning in the series, is a very unfortunate move that leads to nothing but confusion.
Generally, they have gone overboard with the incidental music, it's especially obvious in this shortened version when overly dragged out scenes blast the same few tunes over and over.
Dramatic mood evaporates when you try to extend it endlessly, all the music on this planet isn't going to change that, even more so with such a low sound quality and poor variety.

Due to most of the fillers being cut out and with it some of the worst acting, it's somewhat cleaner and crisper, action sequences are mildly entertaining if you can overlook the flaws like bad choreography, people fighting with air, swords obviously being made of rubber and bending when they hit someone/something, characters that weren't present suddenly popping up in the next shot...

One of the bigger crimes they committed was, to turn a novel for adults into a series suitable for children.
War, revenge, raising the dead, thousands of deaths, I don't understand how anyone could read this and think “I can totally make this PG 12 without losing anything”.

Wounds look like cheap school-theatre make-up, people get their ankles graced by a sword and die, are heavily wounded but bleed like they suffered a paper-cut at most.
At some points, especially when no close-ups were made, the “blood” didn't even have the right colour or thickness, it looked like dyed water.
In some battles there were spots in which someone obviously died, but they forgot to put a corpse in, so only a heavily diluted, gigantic “blood” puddle was shown.

It's hilarious, but not in a good way.

Funny thing, other scenes are so explicitly brutal that most of what they left out would have paled in comparison, there's no rhyme or reason to why some thing were too violent but those weren't; I can only assume that China's censoring brigade has its own rules for that.

Without all the fillers, it became very obvious that they forgot the changes they made at the start, which leads to massive inconsistencies in the middle of the series when things were mentioned in the way they happened in the novel, not in this series.

Considering that this special edition was made mainly for fans, I will give a quick rundown of the changes compared to the novel, for readers who want to experience this amazing book visually – you won't.

No real spoilers, of course.

1. Characters have been changed.
Blatantly obvious, Wei Ying. The founder of demonic cultivation is no longer a demonic cultivator with grey morals, but a goody-two-shoes who never did anything wrong, much less raise the dead. Everything grey he did, all of his flaws and wrongs, have been attributed to other people – he's a pure white knight maliciously slandered and defamed by evil forces.
Some of the most notable things he did, the saddest tragedies he caused, either didn't happen at all or were done by others, his playful personality is so exaggerated that he seems borderline insane or mentally disadvantaged; there really isn't much left of his character.
Others were relatively well preserved, sadly that won't save anything when the MC was so heavily altered that he's a completely different person.

2. Story was changed.
They made up completely new story elements that serve absolutely no purpose but used some of the ideas from the novel to fill in the gaps, and that's basically what this is, not an adaptation but “inspired by”.
All the iconic moments from the novel weren't included, and most of what did make it into this, got badly mutilated.
It has nothing to do with this version, the original is the same.
If you came for epic zombie battles (or zombies at all), there are none. Demonic cultivation? None. If you wanted proper revenge-deaths... none. The ending? Changed, of course.
I even dare say if you came for cultivation, there is none, nearly all battles are fought with swords, probably to save money on CGI, not to mention that the big-scale fights have maybe 15 or so actors in it and we are expected to believe hundreds more are just not in the shot.
As an added bonus, the sound effects used when spiritual weapons are summoned are just comical - they fit old American cartoons very well.

3. No romance.
It was to be expected, thanks to censorship. They did their best to hint at it but it's still far from clear, if you aren't prepared to see it or above the age that makes you believe only true lovers can be so close, then you'll see sworn brothers, not a couple.
4 out of the 5 people (32-47 years) who watched it with me didn't pick up on any romantic feelings, only one was suspicious – who happens to be a BL fangirl. You need a strong eye for gay-coded characters and the conviction that everyone could be gay until proven otherwise.

To summarise it, it's a mess, just a slightly smaller one compared to the original series, with more yet still shallow Wangxian content.

If you really want to watch The Untamed after reading the novel, I would recommend this version, it spares you most of the worst acting and fillers, and gives our favourite cultivation couple some well deserved time together.

Lire davantage

For better or for worse, my first Cdrama

Everything in this drama is stunning: world-building, costumes, setting, characters, actors, LZ's/WW's waist O_O

My 2 favorite things, which is hard because everything is precious: 1) Lan Zhan ('s: posture, face and loyalty), and 2) WangXian song (lives in my mind rent-free 24/7)

Reason why objectively is a 9.5 (but let's be honest, it is a 100/10 drama nonetheless): 1) I still find Chinese (Mandarin?) a bit hard to listen to, no idea if because of that it seems that it was dubbed because sometimes the voice + the mouth didn't connect; and 2) the structure of this "summary" is very disjointed, since this is my 1st time watching TU many things didn't make any sense, one moment LZ is telling WW his Clan was burned down and then WW is joking, what. Or there were many names mentioned I've never heard/saw before. Or in ep18 or something a couple of which seems to be important people get their story (a blind guy + a guy in black robes who was using him) but since I've never seen them before, their story wasn't impactful for me.

Starting TU now, still have 50 episodes ahead but I am already missing them ^_^

Lire davantage