Three top actors, three childhood friends, one cliche angsty romance

I came looking for an epic revenge plot since political intrigue is actually my preferred genre. Although I wasn't expecting Langya Bang level, it turns out this is not a plot driven drama, or a mystery, but above all a love triangle romance. The way that everything happens requires suspension of disbelief because the plot is clearly there to facilitate the romance and make the characters look cool. So to summarize in one sentence: this drama is very similar to 'Who Rules the World' i.e. the infamous "Double bking drama", but the leads have a bit more personality.

The setting requires patience. Pirate Ren Anle/Di Ziyuan enters the palace with 30 000 soldiers she collected in order to carry out her revenge plan, developed over ten years: to find the truth of her family's crime... using the strategy of acting like she's stupid and in love with the prince to infiltrate. And it works. The Emperor knows she has no experience but appoints her, a woman who doesn't know the basic articles of law, to vice minister of judicial review. OK, money opens doors... so the emperor basically shrugs and invites his enemy into his home.

Seems promising for Anle to now show her ability and carry out her grand revenge plot. Anle and Han Ye are meant to exchange blows, using but also competing with each other. However the big difference from revenge drama like Langya Bang is that the leads are simply put, not smart! So the plots are not clever or exciting; it's not an epic face off between Han and Di forces, but just a mid off, and a slow one. Ten hours in and we haven't made a speck of progress on figuring out why her family was killed off.

Take the first case Anle solves for the kingdom. The Prince does nothing except hang around her all day so they can make sizzling eye contact when he could have basically solved the case himself in an hour. Unfortunately she is isn't the brightest either. Her way of solving the case is basically to convince the evil sidekick not to be loyal which for some reason takes 3 full days and gets some innocent ministers flogged in the process when she could have betrayed the rich young master the very first day. By the way the Prince also takes credit for the case and gives a flowery speech about justice though he did nothing and arguably even delayed things.

Then Han Ye, who as we've mentioned is a bit slow, begins to find Anle's origins suspicious. To distract him, Anle has the incredible idea of bringing forth "fake Di Ziyuan". This makes the love triangle spicier, but how does this stop him from investigating her backstory? Well conveniently, in this drama, it just works. You get the idea-- plots are so basic that you wonder why everyone can't see through the "10 year revenge plot" from the beginning. By the way if it was this easy to come down the mountain Ziyuan could have just changed her name temporarily in order to investigate her parents' murder years ago, and avoided all this angst. Speaking of which if Han Ye really cared why didn't he look into it himself?

I do think Dilraba is very suitable for this flirty role and Gong Jun is not bad. Anle actually has a lot of chemistry with Luo Mingxi (Liu Yuning) who unfortunately doesn't do much, besides lurking charismatically in the background and occasionally popping out to remind Anle to do the revenge. So the acting is not bad, and there's plenty of flirting, fan service and pretty sword fighting, but there's little plot to speak of. Good for fans of romance I guess.

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abuse for the sake of abuse.

Although the acting and the production value of the drama is good, and Yang Zi has a really strong performance, it doesn't change the fact that this romance drama sensationalizes female abuse. We are shown in careful detail how a bunch of men who are trying to fight each other instead end up beat up the FL every time, since she's stuck in the middle trying to help everyone. And she forgives them over and over. What a dreamy scenario.

Every two episodes contain scenes of torture or violence against the FL that really aren't necessary for the plot. Two out of the 4 ML basically cause her injuries almost every time they meet. One NPC man tortured her in a dungeon for years. What's more the drama shows that she forgives the abuse and depicts her abusers as romantic, especially for one of the ML.

It says a lot about the societal values of China that so many people are into both the book and drama version of this kind of story.

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just get the rap nailed down

As a variety show, it's not bad and you can tell iQiyi spent money, However as a music show, the quality of the music is definitely a tier below Show me the Money etc. The stages are just not that rewatchable and seem to be getting worse and worse.
Maybe it reflects the developing rap scene, but is there really a reason why the rich and heavily commercialized music scene in China should fall behind Korea? Hopefully the musicians can hold themselves to a higher standard because as a foreigner, MC Jin easily stands clear above the other contestants and even the judges. Although his mandarin pronunciation is not standard but in both English and canto he is just so clear. His group cypher was the best stage of the entire show so far.
There are also many of these 'top rappers' who have problems like unclear pronunciation, heavy autotune, bad vocal technique, and repeating tired themes over and over. In fact sometimes what you really need in a rap performance is not some bling bling but just to get the rap nailed down.
That's why having gimmicks, such as bringing on a famous judge like Jay Park, is really meaningless. He is so complete as an artist compared to most of the contestants that it's hard for him to give meaningful feedback. It doesn't help that he constantly needs a translator. Instead of these fancy gimmicks please make some good songs.

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interesting concept, good execution, but strange premise

This drama is a good take on the Groundhog Day concept, which reminds me a lot of the series "The Long Night". The reason is both of these are well acted, well packaged short dramas with a tendency to glorify the police force. And both of them have the same weakness: as suspense/ plot driven dramas, the 'big reveal' is a bit of a letdown therefore making the rewatch value limited.

To the screenwriter's credit, the short number of episodes are not repetitive despite returning again and again to the scene of the crime. The first couple of times the FL Liu Qingshi and ML He Yun are just trying to figure things out and they do so in a mostly logical manner. However after that they begin to explore the backstories of the people on the bus and this brings some diversity into the story. Everyone is well acted particularly Tao Yinghong as the spot on intense asian mom and our very natural and convincing FL. Bai Jingling as the ML is fine but I think his best role is still later in Destinied.

Weaknesses: I did feel that some of the side stories drag on, such as the anime boy Lu Di and the watermelon man Ma Guoqiang. But the biggest weakness is similar to the Long Night. The whole drama works to make the cast look like noble and self sacrificing people especially the policemen. But in order to do this they make the villain's motives quite unnatural. In this case, they make the villains very mentally ill. The other obvious drawback is that a lack of shortcomings in the lead characters makes them feel underdeveloped. Combined with the fact that this is a mystery drama, this means the whole thing can become viral a la Squid Game (which it did, in China at least) but then not be worth a rewatch.

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A drama sandwiched between video game ads

First it was love O2O, then Falling into your Smile, and now this drama... Tencent gets respect from me for producing dramas over and over that basically flat out promote the games that they make and glorify the gaming industry. I say that with sincerity, it's really a brilliant advertising strategy especially to get at young people...

We are basically following the inner struggles of a top scientist who wants to do great things for humanity but is advised by everyone else that he should use his time to make money first instead. The great irony is that for someone who struggles so much with his higher purpose, he apparently spends copious amounts of time playing mobile games and is now coaching a successful, productive actress to do the same.

However none of the previous dramas seems to have been this blatant of an ad. The first five episodes of You are a Glory are basically 50% scenes from their mobile game. There's very little plot at all. When the plot kicks in a bit more around Ep 5, it's sandwiched between rather abrupt bouts of gaming, sometimes to comical effect. Scenes of the leads working hard at their job or dealing with life problems are interspersed abruptly with gaming animations and discussions of such delightful topics as 'jungle strategy'.

The acting is fine and good and I guess it could be a nice, if cliche, love story... but the artificial gaming scenes stitched on top are a bit hard to take seriously. It's almost like they threw in the propaganda-like space program story for the ML to help this drama pass censorship.

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disappointing and confusing

Since Xiao Zhan is a popular idol I thought they would put more work into this drama but it's pretty disappointing everywhere from script to acting to production. A whole 6 episodes have gone by like this and it's simply not up to standard given the budget they are working with.

Plot as always is the biggest problem and it is very confusing if you haven't read the book. We start off episode 1 in the middle of a major plot point which is given no introduction. Sometimes this can work but the necessary background to the mermaid race, the lore of the way magic works, and so on are only vaguely implied through side character monologues instead of clearly explained. Further, each successive episode keeps piling on a handful of new characters from the source material and quickly jumping between them. It's hard to remember faces let alone backstory. Thus a whole bunch of people die in opening episodes without eliciting any emotional connection, which is just poor planning. Let me add that the source material is itself full of plot holes but the adaptation does not fix them, and all sorts of crazy coincidences and illogical decisions happen in order for the story to advance.

Central to the plot is supposed to be the romance but it's extremely strange due to the age gap and bad acting. Xiao Zhan has a very mature feeling from the beginning, after all he is thirty. Meanwhile Ren Ming as Zhu Yan very clearly is meant to be a young girl and spends her first few episodes dealing with teenager level cat fights. There's nothing inherently wrong with that but it makes it very strange that she becomes his only love interest. It doesn't help that the acting of the leads is lacking. Ren Ming is ok but her character is girly so can come across as tedious. However Xiao Zhan is also very limited, he is fine when he is acting like a cool guy but no good at expressing emotion in a natural way, e.g. the tribulation scene was so awkward.

The drama also has many embarrassing production details for something of this budget. For example, a villain speaks with a darth vader sound effect; it's very clear from the dance scenes none of the actresses have meaningful dance training (one of them was visibly struggling to maintain an upright pose in episode 5) but they insist on all of these long dance scenes; and low quality CGI animals are used.

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defy the patriarchy... by breaking the law?

Qin Shi (Yang Mi) is a lawyer apparently motivated by her career above all else, because she wants to help people. However, we don't actually see much of her doing this. Instead, most of the focus in this show is on her rather cliche relationship with a stay at home stock trader Yang Hua (Xu Kai).

The show tries to portray Qin Shi as a woman who nobly defies gender stereotypes in the world of men to be a top lawyer, but this is ironic because Qin Shi has no professional ethics. Firstly, she blatantly steals Yang Hua's identity to move up in her career and makes up a huge backstory for their relationship. She gets angry when he refuses to cooperate as her 'husband'. And every single episode from then on she is lying--- to her boss, her colleagues, her best friend etc about her marital status. But not just that. She also lies in order to get into a dinner where she can become close with an important client.

Why all these lies? Is there no law firm willing to take in a single woman? No, rather, it seems to be because of her workplace and law specialty. Qin Shi has also obtained considerable personal benefit. Her lifestyle is expensive, as evidenced by her lavish clothes and belongings and the fancy dinners that she attends. She's not cozying up to clients to make the world a better place, but to help her boss win more contracts and get richer. The entire 'gender stereotypes' problem that Qin Shi faces comes off completely artificial in this context.

I can accept a machiavellian character that is well acted and who has interesting career ambitions. However outside of Qin Shi's personal drama, the show has little substance. Besides the giant lies, it basically focuses on her love triangle with Yang Hua and her ex-boyfriend, where Qin Shi acts cute and childish and Yang Hua acts possessive and sweet in turn. So much for breaking gender stereotypes. BTW, Xu Kai puts forth a pretty uninteresting performance himself, like an awkward Ken Doll.

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if mystery is all there is, then there's no substance

There was so much hype for this and for Joy of Life, but unfortunately, both of these shows Zhang Ruo Yun gives the impression of basically acting the same character in the same story-- i.e., an invincible protagonist who pretends to be weak, conquering a world where everyone is stupid and no one knows what's going on except for him. And that includes the audience, because the plot straight up doesn't make sense.

Why should a young powerful prince leave home and pretend to be a beggar without fighting skills for 3 years just to evade an arranged marriage, then come back... without really having evaded it, or indeed any of his bloodthirsty political enemies?
Why does a top martial artist who enjoys roast chicken, coincidentally the man who rescued the Prince's life a decade ago, live underwater in the middle of a lake?
Why should the prince's father, coincidentally the most powerful man in the military, pretend to be stupid and spend all of his effort trying to outplot his own son by e.g. installing martial artists in his harem?
Why should a princess, coincidentally the last of an almost extinguished noble line, put aside learning real life skills in order to alternate trying to assassinate the MC and working as a maid for him?

After asking questions like this every single episode, and never getting any answers, we start to suspect... that the answer to all of our questions is simply, 'because this way it the protagonist gives off an air of mystery as he shows his superiority during epic feats of deus ex machina'.

It's fine to have a show that builds mysteries within mysteries, enigmas within enigmas. But if mystery is all there is, then there's no substance, no core. It's like the author tried to think of the most badass character settings possible, and had some inspirational scenes in their mind, but got tired before they could actually write the story. For one, we never find out what exactly what Xu Fengnian and Xu Xiao really did wrong to motivate all these assassinations that are the core driving force of the plot -- except for holding too much military power.

The icing on the cake is 'strong women leads' like Jiang Ni and Nangong Pu She who are meant to look beautiful and cool respectively, but basically have no brains and follow the protagonist around. It doesn't help that the acting for these female leads is basically the weakest in the show.

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