Bloody Romance

Bloody Romance's set design and costume design are very impressive, this series is a feast for eyes! The costumes are very beautiful, but not realistic (obviously not made with the technology available in that time), but this is a fantasy series, so it doesn't matter that much. The leading actors are exceptionally good looking as well - Especially Duo Wang, he's absolutely stunning! I'd like to see him as a good guy in some future film.

Unfortunately the storytelling and the acting gets a bit too soapy for my taste, after the interesting start the tragic love story takes more and more screen time with repetitive flashbacks and all that jazz. I can still recommend this to friends of costume dramas who don't mind the violence.

For a European it was sometimes hard to follow the plot with all the political maneuvers and all the different characters, as Chinese names where hard to remember, and characters' motivations were sometimes hard to understand.

I was really disappointed by the ending.

I watched Bloody Romance a few months ago and forgot to leave a review, however, I remember much of the series which means it left an indelible mark especially given the number of C-Dramas I've watched since then. It's got two exceptionally good looking male leads and a FL who you'll be rooting for until the very end.

(Synopsis: In the turbulent interregnum following the collapse of the Tang dynasty, a young daughter of an herbalist is tricked and sold to a brothel. After a harrowing escape from death, she finds herself in a city of female assassins. Assuming the name Wan Mei, she begins to learn the ropes of being an assassin from Chang An, a young man who acts as her guide and warden.

Over time, Wan Mei and Chang An begin to develop genuine affection for each other. But Cha Luo, the leader of the assassins takes a dislike to Wan Mei and plots against the couple with her cohorts. Wan Mei's personality and gifts cause Gong Zi, the hidden owner of Gui Hua City to take an interest in her. Burdened by his hidden identity, Chang An begins to distance himself from Wan Mei. The protagonists find themselves embroiled in escalating conspiracies involving deadly betrayals and struggles for power.)

Female assassins, high stakes, well written and evenly paced - From start to finish this drama is really captivating. All of the female characters are strong and not reduced to naive, helpless, crying characters as often happens in many dramas.

Each of the Actors performs excellently and Li Yi Tong as Wan Mai is absolutely stunning. The more I have watched dramas with her as main character, the more I have begun to appreciate her rare talent to make role characters to feel incredibly real.

Thanks for leaving a review. I would have turned a blind eye and missed this hidden gem. Watched 10 straight episodes. Great acting, fighting, and story. People are missing out on this one. Very surprise it doesn't have more reviews. Clear 10/10.

Female assassins! A whole city of them! And, boy, are they terrifying. Don't Let the word "Romance" misguide you. Sure, there's a love story in there, amongst the blood, guts, and cannibalism. The secondary romance is between the torture chamber master and the savage, megalomanical City Master. It ain't no feel good love story. It isn't the romance that's going to stick with you later, anyway; it's the horror. This show is every bit as macabre as Sin City. Judge whether you want to watch it through that lens. If romance is your thing, and you don't like frightening situations or gore, skip this one. BR is mostly a drama about power.

For those of you continuing on, the show is worth watching. While it is quite painful at times, it had the effect of making me feel better about the horrible circumstances I was in at the time. BR is gruesome, sad, ROUGH and, well, bloody. It isn't for the faint of heart, and it isn't for most romance fans unless you're one, like me, who also loves action and sum killin, every now and then. If you've been wanting to get a dude in your life to watch a Cdrama, maybe this is the one. (I would recommend Heavenly Sword and Dragon Slaying Saber-9 or Douluo continent-9.1 for that, btw).

BR has its slow moments, but somewhere between eps8&10 BR becomes captivating. The characters inhabit a secret world within our real world. It gets deeper and more layered as the episodes roll by. The best thing is that there are some road trips, or quests, rather. They never get old. There are consistent quality elements tossed into the hotpot by the director including lovely segues, connections, and ironies. One small example is in ep33. Prince Ning comes to the palace. Knowing that around 90% of his goals have been reached, he's decked in emerald instead of the shadowy greys he had been wearing. The 🇨🇳 know how to film flowing silk - it's resplendent.

The soundtrack is exceptionally good & Spotifiable. The musical theme for the primary duo is sad but downright sultry. Tia Ray's rich voice is a perfect romantic backdrop. Gary Chaw has a couple of excellent songs on the soundtrack as well. The fight scenes are clever with thrilling acrobatics. The animation in the opening credits is gorgeous. Recollections, flashbacks, and dreams are done in the same style throughout the show. It's edgy, it's dark, and it's thoroughly bewitching. BR is almost mesmerizing at times.

Chinese villains are fun. One has to remind oneself that these are assassins. Nobody cares if their targets deserve it or not. It's just their job. They're also under threat of death if they don't carry out their missions, preceded by torture. Prolonged, horrendous torture. Once people are desperate enough to take the vow and become assassins, they don't look back. Even among assassins, there's the regular bad guys and then the /really/ bad guys. Of course we want the really bad guys to be defeated, but we should feel conflicted about rooting for cold blooded killers... shouldn't we? Some of the bad guys are more complex than what seems at first glance. We learn that some of them have justifiable hate; their actions & attitudes aren't entirely unrelatable. One of the tragedies of human existence is that it's so rare for someone to break the cycle of evil. One character is definitely /not/ a cold blooded assassin. This character is trapped.

If the show is about nothing else, it's about our duty to get unpleasant jobs done, so let's get the bad news about BR out of the way. This isn't a cult classic like Sin City. Scenes are often too drawn out. There's plot holes, plot flops, and dead-ends in which forecasted actions were halted prior to completion - they didn't finish everything they started, just like a couple characters in the show. BR feels a bit hollow. The ending accentuates that emptiness, so we are left with that aftertaste. The torture chamber master is inconsistent. At times, he sympathizes with others and tries to stop the senseless killing and torture, yet he, himself, continues to perform torture and perpetuate cruelty. The ending is forecasted and the viewer should be cognizant of that. It reinforces the bleakness. The weirdest thing is how they set up some awesome possibilities and then just left them out there hanging, opting for a direction that compares poorly to what was possible.

Forget the above, the biggest issue with this show is that it's dark. It's different from the dark things that Hollywood puts out, which appears to be an effort to titillate with violence and cruelty. There's a clear line between acts that are right and wrong in BR. Every character has legitimate motivations; they just act on them wrongly. The dark elements are meant to shock and horrify us, but not to come through the back door and titillate us. Kudos to the writer, who authentically shows bad guys with complex motivations. In fact, many bad guys weren't born that way. They were tortured into being that way. Conversely, the writer displays good people that do dark things. The complexity is admirable. BR flies around 10,000 feet in the air. It focuses on broad strokes issues as much or more than the individual characters and their arcs. The creators allow only limited emotional investment in these people. That's a positive: Otherwise, the plot turns would HURT. At least the cat gets a happy ending!

The FL is irritating. The suffering saint(ess). She suffers. She doesn't want to kill, which means she wants her shadow (aid) dead. Even given the dire circumstances, it's overly dramatic. Fine, it's understandable that she doesn't want to kill. Was it okay, in the show's beginning, for that assassin to kill the man that was about to kill her? If not, the world would be missing one person with a good conscience and keeping someone destructive. Wait. I should check myself for a moment. Maybe I have too much bloodlust. Her struggle with taking lives is appropriate, but the way she's willing to risk her Shadow's life is not. Overall, they failed to sell all of their wares, when it comes to her character, so she's only partially completed. In a way, once again, that made watching the show a little easier. I didn't get emotionally invested to the point where their pain hurt me as much as some other shows have. It's nice to get a break from kind of upheaval, or it would be too much. For one example, Love and Redemption, which I consider a 10 among the 10's despite its clunky special effects, caused me sufficient emotional distress that I popped a Xanax (yet I still kept watching). I couldn't handle a constant stream of that wreckage.

Speaking of the characters, Li Yi Tong is FL, Wan Mei. She becomes more relatable as the episodes go on, but they fail to fully form her. This is no fault of the actress - it's the writing and directing. It's obvious that she, the actor and the character, has done what they required her to. Tragically, her part is the least interesting one of the show. Qu Chu Xiao is ML Chang An. His voice is soothing. So many Asian actors barely look Asian to me. His looks aren't far removed from that of Eastern Europeans. It seems like the burden to make a romance work is always on the ML in a heterosexual love story. Perhaps that's because our perception is that men don't love as easily as women, so it's a greater change if a man falls in love? This particularly applies in a world of tough guys... powerful guys... dare I say /masculine/ guys? More likely, it's in my eye, the eye of the viewer, that the male lead is pulling extra weight in selling the love story, because I'm attracted to men(?). I'm honestly not sure... Attraction is an ephemeral mystery inside a conundrum, indeed. All I know is that my favorite romances are usually favs because of the performances of the male leads. Anyway, Mr. Li is particularly good. Wang Duo plays Gong Zi / Prince Ning. He is the most memorable character of the show, and perhaps the best reason to watch it. His story is riveting. He is as sincere as he had the ability to be. As with many characters, he's been pushed hard in many directions.

Everyone has their own agenda. Usually, it's revenge, and it's always futile. All these wants and appetites... The Pride, the revenge, the hostility, the cruelty & the striving - it's all futile in the end. Revenge is explored apart from society, laws, and justice. Otherwise decent people in BR kill wantonly for revenge. It isn't about the person that they're avenging. It's about oneself and satisfying one's own anger and assuaging pain. To kill an innocent person while on a revenge quest is to be a murderer. To do it a second time is to be a serial killer. To give in to anger and its outflow of unforgiveness, vengeance and bitterness, is always most hurtful to oneself more than anyone else. It's best to not let such dark indulgences and appetites, that can never be satisfied, consume us.

BR's final words: One glance decides your life. One stroke breaks the wine vessel. One man, one god. A broken scar. A dream intoxicating Heaven and Earth. To respect and pour. When you awake, there are 3 months of spring.

Spring brings baby mice, and our kitty will have to survive on something...

QUOTES🗣

Sometimes, fathoming our own heart is more difficult than understanding another person's heart.

The only logic in this world is that there is no logic.

When we experience more things in life, our horizons will widen more.

〰🖍 IMHO

🎬 7.4🖊〰 6.8 🎭 7 💓6.5 🦋7 🌞3 🎨7 ⚡7.3 🎵/🔊8.8 😅1 😭 6 😱6 🤢5.8 🤔5 💤3 🔚4

Age 16+ Scary images not suitable for kids under 13;Ep1 a father sells his daughter to a brothel. Violence against women depicted & worse is referred to. Cannibalism; Torture; Rape; Sex slaves; Stealing blood from virgins

Re-📺? I don't think so, but if I'm in a dark, nihilistic and masochistic mood, mehbee?

For light-hearted fare, check out love between Fairy & Devil-9.