Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Red-Moon Pact (2024)

Le pétard mouillé de Tushan…

Et bien, c'était sacrément décevant… J'ai hésité un moment sur ma note entre le 6.5 et le 7. Idéalement, ce serait un 6.8. En fin de compte, j'ai tranché pour le 7 en décidant de donner ce mérite aux CGI qui sont magnifiques.

Je ne connais pas l'œuvre originale, pourtant, j'ai l'impression que la production s'est reposée sur les acteurs plutôt que l'histoire. Le problème, c'est que le couple principal n'est pas suffisamment convaincant et entraînant pour prendre cette direction. Notamment avec Yang Mi en tant que FL, car elle divise facilement le public en raison de son jeu stoïque.

Yang Mi n'est pas une actrice qui m'enchante, parce qu'elle est aussi expressive qu'une planche de bois. Et encore, le bois ça vit ! C'est une actrice adorée, mais toute autant boudée. Et à raison ! Au bout d'un moment, regarder Yang Mi dans un drame (historique comme moderne) fini par m'ennuyer. J'ai toujours l'espoir de voir autre chose qu'un personnage qui tire la tronche, mais ça ne fonctionne jamais. J'ai fini par simplement arrêter de regarder la plupart de ses projets. Cependant, c'était difficile d'ignorer FSM:RMP, rien que pour l'univers.
Gong Jun était sympathique, mais sans être le plus intéressant de la tanière. C'est un bon acteur, mais j'ai l'impression que depuis WOH, il n'a jamais trouvé un nouveau drame à son pied. Les sacrifices de son personnage ne sont qu'à sens unique, tandis qu'on ne comprend pas tellement cet amour qu'il ressent pour Hong Hong, à part le fait qu'elle lui ait sauvé la vie lorsqu'il était enfant.
Les drames (surtout lorsqu'il est question de romance) aiment nous servir les personnalités opposées (le personnage sombre et ténébreux VS le personnage solaire et souriant à s'en décrocher la mâchoire). C'est toujours un contraste amusant, mais la mayo n'a pas prise ici. Le couple ne fonctionne pas pour moi. Même la controverse de côté, on ne croit pas à leur romance. Plutôt ironique dans un drame où le message est simple : l'amour est plus fort que la haine.

En fait, les personnages secondaires (tant dans leur intrigue que leur arc romantique) étaient mieux intégrés et amusant à découvrir et suivre. Ça m'a rappelé Miss The Dragon ou le couple secondaire (Pan Mei Ye et Deng Wei) a littéralement volé la vedette du couple principal (Zhu Xu Dan et Dylan Wang). Et pourtant, j'adore Zhu Xu Dan !

L'intrigue est simple (le Bien contre le Mal), mais elle manque tellement de conviction. Les méchants sont stéréotypés, dont un qui est ouvertement ridicule au point de se demander s'il n'est pas une parodie.
Plus d'une fois, j'ai eu envie de m'arrêter. Mais comme d'autres drames sont prévus, j'ignore s'ils seront indépendants les uns des autres. Et comme je n'ai pas envie de me retrouver avec 108 épisodes à voir, les trois séries confondues… À titre comparatif et bien qu'ils aient des genres différents, The Double commence à devenir long maintenant, mais j'ai quand même envie de connaître la fin. Avec FSM:RMP, j'en étais au point où je ne m'en souciais plus, parce qu'il était assez facile de savoir comment les choses allaient tourner. Et surprise, ça a pris exactement le chemin qu'on imaginait tous.
Beaucoup ont mentionné qu'ils avaient commencé par le mauvais drame, qu'ils auraient dû diffuser un des deux autres avant, c'est peut-être possible. À voir sur la suite. Cela dit, je ne peux qu'espérer que le plus oubliable de tous est désormais derrière moi (aussi horrible que cela puisse être de le dire).

Quoiqu'il en soit, Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Red-Moon Pact avait quelque chose sur le papier et dans ses visuels. Malheureusement, il n'offre rien de plus qu'une énième lutte du Bien contre le Mal sans aucun artifice qui lui donne une âme, faisant de lui un xianxia visuellement magnifique, mais tristement oubliable.

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Stunning cast & visuals BUT horrible script, badly executed plot & editing

This drama is my 2024 Biggest Disappointment. I had high expectations for the first instalment in the Fox Spirit Matchmaker series since it was iQiyi most anticipated high budgeted drama for 2024. As a xianxia lover + hopeless romantic + fan of the cast, I thought for sure this would be an easy 10/10. But unfortunately, this drama felt like I was introduced to the most stunningly beautiful wedding cake, only to be told it’s inedible. I truly feel the drama had the potential to be one of the best xianxias but it was totally ruined by the script writers whose budget must have been 0.99$... oh and don’t get me started on the horrible editing.

The drama is about the female lead who is an ancient fox and Chief of Tushan, a magical land where fox spirits can live freely and humans are not allowed in. Except one human, the male lead, who, as a child, is rescued by her due to his magical blood. 16 years later, an evil fox shows up and tries to destroy Tushan and kill all humans. Also, part of the story is the Grief Tree, a place where humans and spirits can ask for love blessings. The female lead indirectly serves as a matchmaker to the three side couple whose stories are also woven into the plot.

The story that’s off well and is quite enjoyable in the early episodes although I always felt something big was missing. Up until episode 20 it was a decent watch but then the drama created a useless amnesia plot that ruined everything. The last episodes were the worst and the ending kind of made me feel like it was a waste of a watch.

Are all Fox Spirit Matchmaker dramas connected?
The world and characters are interconnected but each drama is a different story. IMPORTANT NOTE: this drama directly spoils the ending for the prequel Love in Pavilion.

THE COUPLES:
✨ Ancient Fox and her Human Disciple (Yang Mi and Gong Jun) main cp / cold woman and warm male vibes. Badly written love story. Read my negative point below.
✨ Carefree Fox and her Cheeky Prince Spirit (Cristy Guo and Miles Wei) second cp / bickering friends vibes / ep 5 love story beings. My favourite ship, I love them dearly however I hated the way they treated the male lead during the amnesia plot. All of their scenes were super adorable but at the same time they didn’t really have much of a love story.
✨ Human Princess and her Spirit Bodyguard (Bambi Zhu and Yang Shi Ze) third cp / Aladdin and Jasmine vibes / ep 7-13 love story. The best side story of them all with great political intrigue. The actor’s chemistry was fantastic. The plot had some much potential to be expanded into a full story.
✨ Human Detective and her Flirty Thousand-Faces Spirit (Sebrina Chen and Mao Zi Jun) forth cp / Beauty and the Beast vibes / ep 21-29 love story. Great chemistry, their love story had a lot of potential but not enough time to be fully explored. I loved the message of inner beauty. The only thing I hated was the massive red flag that guy displayed at their final scene.
✨ Mischievous Tree Spirit and her Dummy-cute Human (Chen Du Ling and Zhang Ling He) fifth couple / Fairytale vibes / ep 30-34 love story. The most hilarious and funny side story. Their screen time was extremely short but the actor’s chemistry made up for it.

POSITIVE:
- Good-looking and well-known cast.
- Stunning costumes.
- Beautiful scenery and a world that looks truly magical and fairy-tale like.
- Awesome side couples/stories. Hands down the best part of the drama is the side couples and their stories. Granted, they had limited screen time but were still impactful. The chemistry between the actors was sizzling and the only reason I kept watching. The stories were woven well into the main plot and it all felt connected
- Badass women. Pretty much all the women in the drama were always high ranked, independent and powerful.
- Male eye candy. All the men in the drama were feast for the eyes. I loved seeing Gong Jun as the male lead, his cheeky and youthful character was different from the unhinged and morally grey roles I had previously seen him in. Miles Wei was very charming, Zhang Ling He was super hilarious and Mao Zi Jun was wonderful to watch.
- Stunning artwork. A bit off topic but worth mentioning that the drama released more than beautiful 10 different art works with all 10 characters.
- Brainless watch. Well, it’s not exactly a positive but some days I was very tired so watching this drama was easy as it didn’t require much brain power.

NEGATIVE:
- Badly written main lead’s story. No proper foundation, no proper development and totally butchered in the second half. I feel the best love stories are those where we follow the leads, meet up for the first time, face challenges and fall in love. But in this case, the main leads have already lived in the same place for 16 years and then the male lead suddenly falls for her. Their love story doesn’t help the controversial fact that she has known him since he was a child. However she did look more like a mentor than mother figure to me. On top of all that, 98% of the time, the female lead was cold and wooden towards him which didn’t allow for any chemistry to be explored. The nail in the coffin was the amnesia plot after ep 20 that was totally useless, stalled any sort of development and in fact ruined the couple completely. In the end, I couldn’t root for the leads at all and in fact felt the male lead deserved better.

- Clown villains. Black Fox is the most one-dimensional villain I’ve ever seen. We are never given a backstory of her motives. She just wants to kill humans. Her only real superpower is boring the audience to death with her dialogue. Her scenes are useless and frankly embarrassing to watch. Her subordinate is just as useless, repeatedly failing to kill the heroes. The only worthy villain is the White Fox who unfortunately the writers never allowed to gain power and be an actual threat. He had a good backstory and unhinged personality to be a compelling villain that could have elevated the plot.

- Repetitive plot. The main plot was an absolute joke of useless and boring repetitions of heroes vs villains, tons of illogical parts and stupid things the characters said and did. Many things were happening but actually nothing significant or impactful ever happened. The worst past was the amnesia plot which lasted for 10 episodes and was beyond useless as literally nothing happened.

- Lackluster fight scenes. No martial arts ever used, just static hands up in the air and colours coming out of them to “fight”. In the rare cases of a weapon being used, the fight scenes end after 2 seconds.

- Horrible editing. All scenes are cut weirdly. This is especially noticeable when the emotional scenes end abruptly as the audience is not given enough time to process what’s happening and connect with the characters. All the key scenes end up anti-climatic. Sometimes, the characters pop up out of nowhere and you do wonder where they came from and what they were doing.

- Surface level relationships. As discussed above, the main love story was badly executed. The rest of the couples also suffered from a lack of build up and their dialogue at times felt forced and/or odd. I could argue that they didn’t have enough screen time for their love stories to be explored. But I do think the issue lies in the fact that the drama spent more time focusing on the useless plot rather than developing the characters, seeing them interact with each other and building the relationships between them. I never felt the characters were real people, I never felt I knew anything about them, who they were, what their dreams and fears were. Everything just lacked depth.

- Wooden female lead. This is my first time seeing the actress so I don’t have much data to go by. At the start of the drama her character was stoic and expressionless which suited her role as a Chief and ancient being however during the whole drama she lacked any sort of personality and portrayal of feelings. She could easily pass for wood in the forest. Towards the end though, when her character was evil, the actress did shine as the writers actually gave her a personality. Overall, I feel her character was badly written but I also wasn’t quite impressed with the actress’ micro-expressions.

- Underwhelming ending. It was boring, cheap, cliche, and lazily written. To satisfy the audience, the writers literally introduced a new random concept in the last 5 minutes of the drama.

OVERALL:
With a heavy heart, I award this drama as my 2024 Biggest Disappointment. A pretty package without any substance inside. iQiyi flopped badly with this one and I feel sad for the cast for being given such a bad script. Granted, it’s not the worst xianxia out there but due to the huge anticipation and money invested, it was a total waste of a production. The potential was definitely there but the execution was horrendous. I suppose, it’s only worth watching if you really love the cast, you are new to cdramas and/or you want a brainless watch after a tiring day. I can only hope the next two instalments don’t follow the same fate as this one.

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