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 notre, jonglant entre le 6.5 et le 7. Idéalement, c'est un 6.8. En fin de compte, j'ai décidé de l'augmenter pour les CGI qui sont magnifiques. Quant au reste…

Malgré la simplicité de l’histoire, il est tout à fait possible d’attirer le téléspectateur. Malheureusement, il n’y a pas grand chose qui vaille le détour. Et ça commence par les personnages. En temps normal, la romance est ce qui m’intéresse le moins dans un xianxia, car ce n’est généralement pas la thématique principale. Cependant ici, l’amour est présenté comme la raison qui peut vaincre la haine. Or, la romance n’existe pas, ou seulement sur le papier. En réalité, les romances secondaires sont bien plus palpitantes.

Yang Mi est une actrice qui sait jouer des personnages aux destins tourmentés. Pourtant, elle manque toujours de vie pour moi. Si sa froideur est plausible, passez les dix premiers épisodes, ça devient pénible. Certains mettent son impassibilité sur le compte de la direction des acteurs ou sur le portrait du personnage. Je ne suis pas d’accord. Elle tirait déjà la tronche dans Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms et ça n’a pas changé sept ans plus tard.

De l’autre côté, Gong Jun. C’est un acteur à l’aise lorsqu’il s’agit de jouer des personnages solaires et espiègles dans les drames costumés (c’était notamment le cas dans Word of Honor). Son personnage est sympathique, mais loin d’être mémorable. Malgré son amour et ses sacrifices, c’est une romance froide qui ne fonctionne tout simplement pas. Comme beaucoup, je n’avais que peu d’intérêt pour le duo principal. Les personnages secondaires ont amené du dynamisme et du contraste à l’histoire.

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 amusants à découvrir.

Les CGI sont magnifiques et d’une haute qualité. Plutôt qu’un fond vert, l’équipe de production s’est tournée vers un écran incurvé géant. Cela change complètement l’esthétique de tels paysages. Malheureusement, c’est tout ce qu’on retiendra vraiment de ce drama.

À mes yeux, la production s’est reposée sur son casting. Avec une prise de risque en raison de Yang Mi qui divise facilement le public par son jeu stoïque. Au-delà des héros, les antagonistes sont des stéréotypes du genre, au point que l’un d’eux pourrait tout aussi bien être prétendant au titre de bouffon. Plusieurs points de l’intrigue m’ont rappelé les dramas où les Immortels doivent passer par des Tribulations (des épreuves difficiles et pleines de souffrances), afin d’acquérir un savoir et se cultiver. Mais juste après, ils boivent un thé de l’oubli… Et bien, c’est exactement pareil, ici. On nous raconte l’impossible qui devient soudainement possible. L’intrigue repose sur la lutte du Bien contre le Mal, mais elle reste trop sage avec un tel univers déployé.

Bref, Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Red-Moon Pact est un xianxia riche dans ses visuels, mais pauvre dans son histoire. Le scénario est médiocre avec des facilités scénaristiques, les méchants sont ridicules tandis que les personnages principaux ne partagent pas grand chose si ce n’est un joli cachet.

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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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