This drama is one of my favorites. It takes you on an adventure filled with hardships, losses, failures, heartbreaks and sacrifices but you still end up feeling pretty good and continuing to root for your favorite characters. I admit that it was a slow start for me, but I stuck with it and without knowing it, I couldn't stop watching.
The cast did an awesome job portraying their characters. My personal favorites were Master Yan (Yang Hao Yu), Ying Huanhuan (Zhang Tian Ai) and of course, Lin Dong (Yang Yang). I haven't seen most of these actors in other dramas but I have seen Yang Yang in Love O2O, where he plays a character that was pretty 1-dimensional, and in Whirlwind Girl, where he played a 2-dimensional character. I'd have to say he really did a wonderful job portraying Lin Dong as a 3D character-- full of childish antics and rude remarks but still generally optimistic and unwaveringly loyal and very serious about protecting his family and friends.
This drama also featured many strong female characters, which is a rarity. Whether they were good or evil, they had a strong aura and didn't fall into the stereotype of being frail and unable to defend themselves physically or mentally.
The CGI was not perfect but still pretty well done. The music was non-traditional for a period drama, so it seemed a bit strange at first but actually worked really well with the story.
(Season 1) Again this starts off pretty slow and leaves you wondering for awhile when the characters will grow up because they are all quite annoying. When Lin Dong finds the Devour Talisman, he was ridiculously unwilling to take any responsibility and even less willing to improve in any aspect of life. Lin Qingzhu (Wang Li Kun) was ridiculously arrogant and Lin Huanhuan was ridiculously willful. The hardships they experience were far from linear and more often than not, they come up empty handed and at a dead end, but they somehow persist. The last episode featured my favorite scene, and when I first fully realized some character growth eventually did happen. It was pleasantly and surprisingly amazing!
(Season 2) This was a fun-filled adventure and there was more focus on Xiao Diao's and Ling Qingzhu's storylines/characters. Some unanswered questions from season 1 were answered here, but also left more unanswered questions. I did feel that the ending was rushed quite a bit and I was disappointed that some characters were not used to their full potential and others were kept ambiguous, hence I gave a 9/10 rating due to this. I am now reading the novel in search of answers to some questions. I'm finding that even though the drama follows the main storyline as the book, it is also very different, and makes me hopeful that a Season 3 will come out and reflect some of the additional storylines from the book.
So although not all loose ends were tied well enough, the ending was still acceptable and over all, this drama is still definitely worth the watch.
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