Ancient Love Poetry (2021)

Okay but not Great!

Some of the settings reminded me of Ten Miles & Ashes of Love. Some of the settings, Ancient Love is better but some environment like the palace, demon realm etc i prefer Ashes of Love. Power effect, fighting skills, outfits i prefer Ashes of Love.

When i first watched it i didnt like the female lead for Shanggu. She is afterall the God of Chaos/Chief God, ideally she should look the part. Wu Huan looked more suitable to be the God of Chaos.

Bai Jue is known to be COLD, ignored all females but he developed a little feeling for Shanggu at Ep2. BORING. Too Soon and Too Easy for someone who ignored all females for a long time.

Storyline could be interesting but went off along the way.
Shanggu sacrificed herself to stop the Tribulation of Chaos but it was still on hence Bai Jue's "elaborate" plan to take over Power of Chaos in order to save Shanggu from the next tribulation.

I have a hard time looking at Shanggu romancing with Bai Jue because no offence its like looking at a brother confessing romantic love to his little sister. I feel yek.

It was also boring that a powerful being with the Power of Chaos doesn't show her power much. Finally when she managed to trained and successfully gotten stronger, i was like YESSS then she sacrificed herself and back to square one, a weak Houchi. Even after she absorb the spiritual energy of Pilgrimage Hall, she still did now show much potential. It was boring watching her character. Her acting is good but when shes with Bai Jue, shes the eager beaver smiling playfully like a child. Again to me this is not suitable for God of Chaos, maybe in the beginning but eventually needs to be developed.
She causes trouble trying to do big things but with no capability and ended up causing more harm than good and people have to save her (exp, collecting the 3 relic to help Boxuan).

Gu Jun is impressive, i wish to see more of him in action. His presence, the way he speak, the fear he instill is wow. He is more suited to be the Heaven King instead of weak Muguang.
Tianqi could be impressive but turns out quite disappointing. He could do a lot of interesting damage but hes too busy going around chasing after Shanggu who doesnt want him.
When Tianqi and Yuanqi are together, both of them bantering are so cute.

Wu Huan is pure evil, power hungry and her defeat was somewhat unsatisfying, I would say too easy. Her punishment also somewhat unsatisfying and am also wondering why Jingzhao is allowed to run around free even though she poisoned Bai Jue.

I wouldnt say nono to this series but do watch it, maybe you'll like it more than i do. As for rewatch value definitely no no for me, I cant bare to look at a brother romancing his little sister all over again.

Lire davantage

Story of sacrifice for love

one of the best Chinese drama that i have watched..
the first 15 episodes are my favourite... it tells the love story of shanguu and bai jue... really loved the character of tianqi and yuemi ..
but after 15 episodes every emotions in my heart reaches their peaks ...
this drama deserves the line ..''IT IS A COMPLETE ROLLERCOASTER OF EVERY EMOTIONS '' ....

casting and production all are top notch ...even the costumes suites every character and their weapons are looking almighty ...and after all of this this drama has best CGI , i have seen in any c -drama ...

OSTs are main reason which left audience crying ...this drama has all Heart touching OSTs ..
i really love that our couple has a happy ending...

for future viewers - DO NOT HESITATE TO START THIS MASTERPIECE .....

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Loud Music ruined the whole drama experience

The story is typical of xianxia drama, humanized gods that has all the flaws and emotions of humans. ML (Xu Kai) had a tough role with so many sad scenes to shoot, and did an excellent job carrying the audience through the whole story. FL was also a great actor. CGI were a bit cheap looking but sufficient. Ending took its time in the last 3 episodes to close the major storylines - this saved the story.

Here comes the Cons :
1. Music - horrendous and ruins the whole thing - at least half the show has some kind of loud singing music going on, overpowering actor's voices and ruins the scene. I had to mute through all the loud music to get through the show, and resort to watching the closed caption dialogue because it's honestly torture. I'd rate the music at -10 if I could.
2. Main Villain - was known early on the show and continued to do bad deeds, with the all knowing gods either too dumb to notice, or unable to find out, or did nothing - till the very end.
3. Pacing - the middle 1/3 of the series got slow and boring

Overall, the loud singing music throughout the show ruined my watching experience. Without the music, I'd rate it 8.0. With the music, rate it at 5.0 - and it's for all the good acting and hard work of the actors alone. No rewatch value.

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I hate it when you put a female as the main lead and give her little significance

I hate it that the chief God is a female and she is given less importance in terms of what she does other than just being a receiver of benefits just because it’s a she …let’s write or direct the storyline to really give her the equality

Kind of happy when I saw the first few episodes when she dies for the people but then after that it’s all about her man who is continuously sacrificing till the end with absolutely nothing for her….also it becomes awful when she being a chief God making statements and puts a sword on him just because he irritates her while she would continuously pardon the villains but not think even a bit before piercing a sword in her husband or ex lover or whatever…. It just does not fit the chief God profile. It’s more awkward when it’s a women as I definitely don’t want to see a female being powerful but only in the name and title and no real action from her….the weightage for bai jue is too high as he somehow miraculously does not bother about the people and want to die for her … especially when they have a kid…true god position is not a joke ….as even a regular man will think about the kid before sacrificing or insulting kid for the women ….child comes first before any of the parents ..somehow this smart author misses the boat

Most of the other parts of the story is very good as it kept me watching till the end when I was wondering why it’s 49 episodes…I wish the director could have done more for her part instead of bai Jue sacrificing forever….
Also when they brought most of the gods back alive, they could have brought yuemi back and make demon god happy as well at the end…

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Un drama notevole, imperdibile!

Alla seconda puntata, pensavo di lasciar perdere, gli attori non mi convincevano ma non li conoscevo. Ma memore di alcuni drama che si sono svelati con lo svilupparsi delle storie, molto belli, ho continuato ed ho fatto benissimo.
Ho visto molti altri xianxia di notevole fattura, ma nessuno è stato esaustivo come questo nel descrivere le divinità.
E' una storia molto avventurosa, che ruota attorno alla coppia principale. Piena di colpi di scena, con sviluppi inaspettati.
Mi ha colpita la grandiosità degli eventi, qui gli dei immortali, sono veramente immortali ed hanno poteri inimmaginabili. Le battaglie si svolgono tanto sul piano materiale che spirituale con abbondanza di effetti speciali ben fatti.
La storia non presenta lacune. Come tanti drama, bisogna entrarci dentro ed aspettare che si sviluppi per capire bene tutti i risvolti dei fatti. Dopo le prime puntate prende l'avvio e non ci si stacca più. Dopo la 31esima puntata, ogni puntata tira l'altra e non si vede l'ora di arrivare alla fine.
La coppia principale fin da subito dichiara di amarsi senza tanti tira e molla, è un amore grande ed immenso, fatto di sacrifici oltre la vita stessa. Geniale l'idea della scrittrice nell'inventari dei "doppi" dei protagonisti principali, sviluppando quindi una seconda storia.
Tutti i personaggi secondari sono stati ben sviluppati, alcune storie sono andate a finire bene, altre no, cosi come succede nella vita, ma per fortuna quella dei protagonisti ha avuto un bellissimo finale, per fortuna non troppo breve come è usuale nei drama cinesi.
Bellissime le locations, gradevoli le musiche, niente di che gli abiti degli immortali, ma si possono perdonare perché il drama offre ben altro.
Gli attori principali inizialmente non mi convincevano, ma pian piano li ho apprezzati in pieno.
Bravi tutti, complimenti Cina! Li avessimo anche in Italia serie tv come queste, ma qui la televisione oramai è diventata scadente.
Consiglio senz'altro questo drama, da guardare anche + volte per non perdersi ogni sfumatura.
Un grazie come sempre, ai bravi traduttori e sottotitolatori, se non ci fossero loro, non potremmo gustarci questi capolavori.
Grazie!

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Muy buena historia

Me encanto como se llevó acabó la historia y como presentaron los personajes, ahora creo que los primeros tres capítulos se sintieron un poco mal por qué desde el inicio se forzó el amor entre Shan Gu y Bai Jue, creo que se epudo llevar mejor en el inicio ya que a mitad de la serie ese amor se olvida por mucho tiempo, también me hubiese gustado que mostrarán algunos recuerdos de Wu Han cuando se cerró el palacio de las deidades ya fuera de eso cuando la serie pasa esa etapa de Hou chi la serie agarra mucha consistencia y lógica por todo lo que se venía contando y como punto final me pareció algo malévolo que el final feliz se hiciera esperar hasta el último minuto de la serie 😅, pero en general me encantó todo la trama y desarrollo de personaje.

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The OST was so good, I'm still listening to it and it still makes me sad. The story was really great. I don't normally watch historical and I don't normally finish a drama that has 49 episodes, but this one I finished in days! It didn't drag at all, and kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next. The acting was great too, the main leads were really able to pull off playing different characters throughout their reincarnations.

The ending is happy, but it left me wanting a bit more. Regardless, this is one of those few that I would add to my rewatch list!

Lire davantage

Entertaining, well packaged series to spend your time on.

There was this background musical theme occasionally used that was almost - but not wholly - a copy of a musical theme used heavily in Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (aka Eternal Love). I was thinking of scoring the music 7.5-ish, but because of that TMoPB rip off track I'm ruthlessly hacking off two whole points. Of course I don't actually know who it was who created the tracks, so if it turns out to be the same person who did the TMoPB tracks, well I'll add the points back on coz you can't really blame someone for falling back on their own work. But, as it stands, 5.5 for music.

Because they dared to compare themselves (if only in a background musical theme) to TMoPB, I've been trying to figure out why this series just doesn't do it for me like TMoPB did (putting aside the plagiarism controversy for a minute). I mean, the themes were similar (gods and realms, multiple lives, memory loss), and they even had one of the actors from TMoPB, plus the production was overall top notch as an end package, and for what it's worth the acting here was solid.

I think what it was, is the main characters seemed to lacking in passion.

Not specially passion in a sexual chemistry sense, more passion in a general sense.

Comparatively in TMoPB while Ye Hua was fairly stoic character, when the character was dealing with shit I still got caught up in it, plus Yang Mi's successive characters were all delivered with great whole body feeling.

I don't know that I can blame this series for having less passionate main characters in comparison because I think maybe it's due to how the characters are written ...? I dunno. It's not that the acting as a whole was in any way flawed (because it wasn't) so I'd be looking at scoring it a 10 usually but with this issue of being somewhat lacking in 'passion' (for want of a better way to describe what I'm feeling), I'm gonna knock 2 points off the acting. I'll also do the same for the story score since, as I said above, it might simply be the way the characters are written. 8 points.

Special mention for Leon Lai for his Gu Jun (especially the latter dad/sect leader portrayal), and I particularly liked Liu Xue Yi's Tianqi, to the point where I'm going to make an effort to look into Liu Xue Yi's previous work.

Story - cohesive, entertaining, loooooong (well, there's the multiple lives lived thing so that will drag it out), but as mentioned above, I'll knock off 2 points just because, comparatively to TMoPB, I wasn't as engaged with the characters. 8 points.

Rewatch value - hmmm. Well, it is re-watchable, but would you? When you have other rewatch options available? 1 point is too low though. So, 1.5 points.

Add on 1 point for a well packaged final product.

(5.5+8+8+1.5)/4 + 1 = 6.75
= ~7.0

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Underrated

Story:
Honestly, the story may be the only shortcoming (barely) and since I haven't read the original novel, I wouldn't know if it's because the original writer made it so or if it was an issue of production. The story does follow the trope of the three lives three worlds however I don't think it holds back the story at all. The extension of lives really enables the audience to see the extent to which these characters grow and broadens the world-building capacities of the scriptwriters even if the worlds do follow the standard set up of god-human-demon. Even though the drama follows xianxia tropes, I also think that the drama uses them to their fullest aka although some of the content isn't original, it isn't to say that it was badly done. In fact, I would argue that they did a really great job maximizing them to develop tension, conflict (and romance haha).

A note on romance in the story. I think they did a really good job broadening love in this drama which I didn't see in many others. Love isn't infinite in this drama, it has to constantly be worked for to maintain and in some cases, we see it fail. Because romance isn't the singular plot driver, we are consequently able to see the power of platonic dynamics e.g. friendships, parent-child relationships and how these all have a part in building the characters that we engage with which I think is a far more complicated storyline to complete and it was done very well in this drama.

One thing I will say is that like others have mentioned, Ep 12-16 is where the actions really begin but you should all really savour the "boring" first episodes because those are really the happiest moments in the show. Once you finish the entire drama, I guarantee you will wish you appreciated those first couple of episodes more because this drama is ANGSTY.

Acting/Cast:
Likely my favourite part of the drama. I don't know if it's just me but I genuinely loved the cast. I know a lot of people have criticized Zhou Dongyu in the show but I honestly think the Shang Gu that Zhou Dongyu created is a beautiful character. She did a great job building a FL that was beautiful and powerful but imperfect as well. The imperfection comes not from her physical features (Zhou Dongyu is gorgeous I will fight anyone who says otherwise) but in Shang Gu's shortsightedness and gullibility (to being taken advantage of by a certain individual) which Zhou Dongyu does a great job of naturalizing as opposed to hiding them or normalizing them. I think this is a great contrast to some other xianxia romances we have been exposed to (and have been rated higher -_-) where the weaknesses of the FL are either used to encourage romance or ignored. I suppose it's part of Zhou Dongyu's experience as a movie actor but regardless her character is lovable because it is imperfect; although Shang Gu is spoiled and immature, she has a good heart and a strong sense of responsibility that we later see forces her to address her own issues. I don't think this type of complexity could've been expressed by any other popular xianxia actress and Zhou Dongyu honestly deserves more credit for being able to incorporate these ideas so well into a story already underpinned with tropes that limit any challenge to narrative norms.

Of course, we also have Xu Kai. This is the second drama I've seen with him and I've been told he normally plays playful characters as opposed to the colder characters like Bai Jue which surprised me as he seemed to do it very well in this drama. As Bai Jue he was cold and (over)confident while as Qingmu he was soft and playful. When Bai Jue first disappeared and Qingmu was introduced, I remember wishing for Bai Jue to come back however when Qingmu disappeared and Bai Jue returned, I wanted Qingmu to reappear. This strong response and differentiation between the characters, for me at least, indicates that Xu Kai did a really good job in delineating between the characters he has to act even though they were technically one person so kudos to him for that.

Notes:
One pet peeve I have had with the people on the internet criticizing this drama is that some people think it's too tropey for following the three lives/worlds storyline while other people are angry that it's not tropey enough e.g. casting Zhou Dongyu who is considered "ugly" to be a beautiful person as opposed to someone like Dilreba or Yang Mi who are conventionally attractive. Honestly, I don't know what to say about that as it appears a lose-lose situation but I do hope that anyone who does read this remembers that just because this story isn't realistic doesn't mean that realism can't be incorporated into it. I think this drama is wonderful not because it is a fantasy but that it challenges the boundaries of fantasy so that we can find a little bit of the happiness from these fantastical characters and their stories reflected in our own reality.

Lire davantage

I'm lost in 'time'

I should start by saying that Xianxia is not my thing. However, I read the reviews and they were pretty positive; plus, the cast of actors was appealing too. So, for the most part, I have no regrets. It was difficult to follow the timelines sometimes, but that was not really a deterrent.

I like Xu Kai, love Liu Xue Yi, and Leon Lai. The FL was ok in her role - but looked a little young for a 'Chief God' - and I really wasn't convinced of her development from carefree, silly girl to bad-ass God. The supporting actors were pretty good too - the evil ones really did a good job, especially the Heavenly Queen and her bitchy, overindulged daughter. Liked the romances along the way and wished that everybody could have had a happy resolution, but I guess that's how it goes - you win some and you lose some. The fate of alter ego lovers Qing Mu and Hou Chi was heart wrenchingly sad but so beautifully done, and acted out by the ML & FL. The OST was hauntingly beautiful too.

Overall, it was a good watch, but I don't think I would rewatch simply because of the genre, and I found myself fast-forwarding through a lot of the war scenes and 'cultivating' scenes. I did have a hard time following the time lapses and figuring out how the lifespans play out: who live forever, who reincarnate, who die, and how those processes work in that world.

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