Wow, what a journey emperor is, experienced all sorts of emotions while watching it and overall a perfect historical drama.

For some reason, people here in MDL love shitting the drama, but for me it deserves more praises. It had a perfect balance of light moments but gets darker wheb resolving the main problems.

At first thought the drama is about one of the most famous histrocial figure Yi Sun Sin journey but apparently not and it just happened to have same name.

Basic plot is interesting, we start off with a revolution killing the king and a crown prince running for his life, while being replaced with a fake one, it doesn't get more interesting than that. Emperor gives you things to ponder about, is the freedom you will lose worth it? Who really is the perfect ruler? Is Dae Mok really our antagonist, or the cruel society?

My favourite thing about emperor is the friendships the drama built while we follow the slow burn succesion of the crown prince.

Speaking of Dae Mok, that was the best ending for him and showed us his humane side, wish we would have seen more of his origins though. Also watch out for lots of Dae Mok wordplays and metaphors, brilliant scriptwriting and execution from the actor.

Yoo Seung Ho and Kim So Hyun as expected gave an amazing performance, they were the IT couple of Joseon!! Crown Prince was well developed character, we first saw a naive and know nothing about the country and it's people prince, but overtime we saw a slow improved King of Joseon, a problem I do have is plot armor, a character should die when they should. Some writing that had my head hurt a lot, was Ga Eun. She started off great but It's seems like as the story progresses, she becomes soooo boring as well, basically a personality of a rock. And you can trust me on that, because I'm the biggest Sohyun fan saying this.

Biggest surprise for me was Yeon Seo Hee and L. First time seeing Seo Hee acting and I came in thinking, "people are overreacting there's no way the SFL is this good" and yes I was proven wrong. Hwa Gun is the only character I was emotionally invested, I expected her betraying the prince after not reciprocating her love, but no she stayed loyal loyal, and that captured my heart. She was the only character that had consistent intentions and fought for it bravely, furthermore Ep33 cemented her, at least to me as the rightful queen.

L was honestly the best actor here, he switched sides a lot and had the deepest character development which means harder acting burden, but he carried it well.

Writing was okay, besides a few character ones I mentioned and the overused naiveness of some characters in a situation, making the conflicts feel repetitive and forced. Besides a few moments, I thought the pacing was perfectly balanced and had continuous thrill and suspense, quite the cliffhangers too, both in romance and politics side.

To end on a good note, I thought all the actors performed the action seauences well, even as a man, I can admit that Gon is such a swoon worthy bodyguard. Cinematography was good, and can be easily told that this wasn't a low budget drama. There were a lot of good soundtracks, that some are in my playlist. Personal favourites are 'star and sun' and 'can you hear my heart'

Overall a light historical drama, compared to others, it was funny and romantic for half the time. Also it still doesn't forget to give proper resolutions to the conflicts, and for that good job emperor! Would highly recommend to everyone!