Director Li's aesthetics value is praiseworthy, but the storyline had gone haywire

Just my 2 cents, each for their own thoughts....

Pros:
-Beautiful colour grading which emphasizes a lot on red, suitable for the jiang hu atmosphere
-The world setting was very good, costumes are well thought of for different characters where different people have their own colours based on their personality, weapons are also uniquely created for each individuals, overall setting successfully depicted a wuxia world
-Beautiful cold location in the grassland during winter, as expected of Director Li who is famous for his beautiful sceneries
-Actresses are all beautiful, my favourite in terms of looks are Meng Ziyi who played Lei Chun and the actress who played Lei Mei
-Acting is fine across the board, with one or two exceptions, Meng Ziyi excels as Lei Chun, I haven't noticed her before
-OST is very well done
-Some nicely crafted characters such as Di Feijing and Su Meng Zhen, Di Feijing is my MVP
-Di Feijing's true brotherly love for Lei Chun, I feel it!

Cons:
-The story was interesting in the beginning and shouts 'wuxia!', but it went haywire soon
-This is a wuxia drama adapted from a wuxia novel, while the fighting is commendable for not having excessive slow-mo effect, the choreography is also not good enough. It's fine for typical action, but feels flat for a 'classical' wuxia action, besides why are some important fights skipped? I'm talking about DFJ's final fight against FYK, did Director Li forgot to bring his action choreographer to the field?
-Many things feel forced without development making it only on the surface and not deep enough, the main trio's friendship feel sudden and it feels like WR is always on the sideline, her affection with WXS also feels forced to be there instead of smoothly brewing, the three brothers brotherhood was said to be the main force for the novel but something is lacking about their bromance in this drama - it makes their ending not as impactful to me, other than that BCF turning bad feels forced too just for the sake of it
- Yang Chaoyue's acting is still weak and it didn't help that her character has the least importance in the main plot too among the main cast, she's always forgotten on the sidelines
-The romantic lines are not naturally written, as mentioned before, I feel forced

Overall, this is not a bad drama, it's still watchable especially for fans of the actors and if you miss wuxia, just keep your standards low for the plot and the wuxia choreography and it will be enjoyed better, the production values and picture quality are among the better ones in Cdrama these days, however I still feel the storyline is a bit out of control and this is coming from someone who haven't read the novel.

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Bland Crime-Suspense Drama but Engaging Master-Apprentice Drama

Pros:
-Master(Team Leader Xu) and Apprentice(Dayu) have great and endearing chemistry.
-Good ending - love the hug and team picture and there is also a heartwarming extra after the credit rolls that give a closure to Master Xu's personal knot
-Loveable crews from the police station - Qi Ran, Xu Dong, Yi Fei, Xing, Yuan Ju
-Good soundtrack team. The montage background song for Master-Apprentice pair especially fits well with them.
-Comedy is ok especially on the earlier parts.
-No complains on the actors, i think both MLs did well and engaged in their roles nicely. Although both are not visually pretty men, I found LYS attractive in a fitter bod and 'cold outside-warm inside' persona here and LYT is cute in a boyish way, both can be likened to a cat and a big puppy eyed dog.

Cons:
-Crime detection parts are too plain and mediocre! Most of the time the perpetrators confessed willingly by themselves in the interrogation room! and most of the crimes happen to someone related or who have met ML#2 Dayu lol
-Da Yu and Tang girl love line. They took a lot of screentime but feel so cliche and redundant and don't
contribute to their chemistry.

Honestly it's a bad crime suspense drama with cringeworthy plots but passable as light hearted comical cop drama. However the Master-Apprentice part did shine well with nice bromance chemistry which at times nearly crossed the BL line but didn't. (Both ML have girlfriends in the drama and their relationship is purely master/apprentice/colleagues/partners).

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A Jin Yong Adaptation with Strong Advantages and Disadvantages

Positives:
-Choreography is excellent. There are some dizzying camera movements at times but it should be among the best in chinese drama of the last decade. Among recommended fighting episodes are 4, 9, 17, 18, 21, 22, 37, 38, 39 and many more. The choreographer deserves recognition, I only know that the action group is led by Director Cao Hua.
-Nice cinematography and clever use of light and shadows at certain scenes to produce a beautiful picture.
-Thoughtful costumes and art direction. It does look like Qing dynasty(except some anti Qing characters)
-Carefully applied BGM, the music are nicely done. OST are decent.
-All actors can act, and credit goes to where its due it's so hard to film an martial arts action drama in the hot Hengdian summer
-Most of the main actors are using their original voice

Negatives:
-Script. The main line is nicely written and follow the basis of novel but it is flat to me and did not arouse much emotion. The sub lines are either too modified to be irritating or too extended and boring.
-Too many characters and sub lines making the story moves slowly and disjointed, some sub lines such as Nan Lan and Tian Gui Nong and Fu Kangan and Ma Chunhua could be made more compact without those slow flirting scenes or too much emphasis on those palace characters.
-This drama has no promotion, all the budget are said to be spend on production that they can't hire a good marketing team. What a waste for a rare recent wuxia with proper fighting sequence.

Others:
Despite my complains about their script, other than the wuxia, I especially enjoyed characters such Miao Renfeng and Cheng Lingsu that is brought to life by Lin Yushen and Xing Fei.
-Miao Renfeng - This Miao Renfeng is a bit different from the novel and has been met with some criticisms from novel fans because of this, but he stands out in every scene despite having limited air time. Lin Yushen should make more wuxia, all his fighting scenes look neat and agile, and he excels at subtle emotional scenes. He can be charismatic in a modern character such as Dating in The Kitchen, but when he's in a wuxia drama as a tragic hero with a sword, the charisma is multiplied by 10.
-Cheng Lingsu - Xing Fei managed to grab a very good character this time and she executes it in a lovely way. I can't find anything to dislike about Cheng Lingsu, and her crying and emotional scenes are effortlessly natural. That's it, she's playing Cheng Lingsu very naturally. She's growing on me as an actress for sure.

All in all, it's a rare decently produced wuxia drama in the past decade, but its not without obvious disadvantages.

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Mediocre. Nothing stands out.

My insignificant 2 cents

Pros: beautiful landscapes, quite faithful to novel contents, acceptable use of CGI

Cons: Xu Zhu and fight with MRF appear too early, uncompelling plot, bad casting, mediocre choreography, lack chemistry between the casts, unflattering film texture(esp the filter), bad costume designs and some that I might missed.

In short, it is a mediocre adaptation that nothing stands out except getting attention for it's abysmal casting and depiction of the characters. Certain characters are tainted with unnecessary rendition(i.e.*cough*Duan Yu's urine.... *cough*). Although I don't enjoy this as much, in my POV it's not that flopped to get 3.5/10 in douban rating, but it's also not a good enough adaptation to stand up to such a big, big IP. If I were to recommend classic wuxia in the past 5 years, there are better works from Jin Yong IPs such as LOCH2017, HSDS2019 and for Gu Long IP HS2020.

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A feel good innocent romance and coming of age drama made full of heart and care

PROS:
-Effective cinematography and shooting styles, I also love how the changing four seasons is shown throughout. The accompanying OST are wonderful too.
-Beautiful lines and quotes, among my top favourites:
Ep1: The rainy day that disappeared, I really want to get sprinkled again
Ep 5: If time can be suspended, I hope they will always be my good friends, the kind that never leave
-Green flag characters; the main characters in this show have positive outlooks and actions in their life
-Female lead Su Zaizai is one of the female lead with most positive attributes in Cdramaland - bold, cute, kind, chivalrous, brave, able to stand up for her rights and help others in need, and more mature than what her energetic personality suggests. Her sunny disposition rubs others in a heartwarming way(including the viewers such as me).
-Male lead Zhang Lurang is an introvert but unlike negative introvert characters in the past, he's reactive to Su Zaizai's advancements, it's a two way arrow. His little smiles which keep growing by the finale is adorable to watch.
-The 'squad' of 5 is adorable, their friendship gives off a special feel to adults like me, something that I may once feel back then in my schoolyears but get lost in time as time goes by and adulthood takes over. One of the most effective friendship scene where I shed my tears is when Su Zaizai found the rest rummaging the trash to help her. Great shots, great emotions felt without much dialogues or exaggerated emotional outputs.
-There are not much about the family members, but they are nicely depicted to show how Su Zaizai and Zhang Lurang grow into their sunny vs introvert characters. Other than that, Guan Fang's grandma has some of the subtly emotional scenes of the drama, and I also feel for Zhang Luli. His talk with Su Zaizai tugs at my heart.
-There is no prolonged third parties or major incidents in the storyline, most issues got resolved within 1 or 2 episodes.
-24 episodes at 30-min runtime is just nice, the pacing is comfortable for a leisure binge or daily watch

CONS:
-The female lead might feel too shamelessly into the male lead in the first few episodes (it gets better as male leads reaction gets more obvious and more of female lead's positive personality shown from episode 5+)
-Storyline is generic and lack of dramatic twists and turns in the plot, it's a flat slice of life drama about some kids growing up into adults, full of youth romance tropes
-The romance is innocent, even their kisses at the end feel innocent though sweet, there are no steamy romance and intense sexual pleasure
-There is not much details towards some other characters and sub lines in the end, such as Zhang Lurang's parents
-Their daily school-college-work life feel too idealistic and gave off a dreamy vibe, lack of touch with realism

OVERALL:

It's a story of a little sun and a sunflower finding and 'flying' towards each other. Must watch if you like coming of age genre with an innocent, pure young romance done exceptionally well. One of the best in this genre. Stay far far away if you want intense romance, dramatic issues, dark characters, tragic events, harsh reality...

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Overall it is a well produced drama, it is evident that there is careful thoughts and abundance of money given to make this.

Cinematography is quite excellent, there might be some disturbances with the dark tone, but it actually fits with the heavy theme.

Storyline is quite hard to enjoy if you are not familiar with the three kingdoms background, but for those who gets it, it is indeed an enjoyable watch to be immersed in the "spy wars" of the era.

The casting and acting are overall well done, this is one of the most star-studded drama in recent years, even Angelababy did not disappoint.

In short, it is one of Cdramas with decent quality in recent years. Well done to director Lu Yang and team.

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A satisfying drama overall. Well done!

To sum up, there is not much to nitpick about this drama.

-The plot is nicely written - the characters are believable people, the events are not far fetched, there are no bloody drama for the sake of drama.

-Casting is done well. Reba and YY are made for their roles. They might not be the best among their peers but they did well enough and keep improving. I love them in this drama.

-Production values are great. The drama has good film texture and you can tell Tencent is not stingy with their budget. If only most dramas are filmed like this.

In short, a well made drama 👍

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Breathtaking Cinematography!

The best thing that caught my eyes in this movie is the beautiful cinematography and colors, my eyes love them!

Overall I found the movie quite fast paced and entertaining, I'm fine with the cast and action, and the CGI is quite good too considering this was released 5 years ago from when I write this. I have no problem understanding the plot but it could be because I still remember the plot of the anime well.

There were some difference from the anime's plot and some characters from the first version anime that I watched were excluded, but the movie was still able to retain the main premise and major characters were intact.

I'm glad Nina and Hughes' parts were included, and I still shed tears for Nina, but somehow Hughes' demise did not affect me as greatly as the anime version.

In conclusion the movie was quite enjoyable for me.

.

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A Surprising Gem from a Dark Horse Low Budget Drama

Hats off to the scriptwriters! This is such a gem. Despite the lack of budget they manage to make it one of the best this year so far with the superb script which was also executed well by the director, production team and actors. Every character was written carefully, especially Prince An. Every character is understandable and likeable (maybe other than the FL brother which I think is there for dramatic purpose and to balance the overly intelligent leagues of characters haha)

The unknown/newbie casts may not be the most powerhouse in term of acting, but they are fresh in the eyes and are easily likeable. The FL has enough presence despite sometimes she does look a bit underwhelmed in her acting. The romance is sweet enough and ML/FL has nice chemistry, and nicely written so as not to overwhelm the main plot in hand.

Overall, a brilliant drama. Thumbs up!

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