Wang Zhi needs to be pawed over quite a bit more. His hair all disarrayed, oh yes.
Ding Rong showed some impressive fighting skills when they were in the "Save the Abundant Waves" bit. Unlike Wang Zhi, whose fighting move is "hide behind others, pull out pistol" (which is pretty damn badass a move, in 1478!!)
THE LAST FEW EPS!!!!!!!!!!!
OK. My first thought is I am in fucking AWE of how EVERY loose end got tied together, even ones that had been long since lost and didn't seem all that loose. Like, right from Episode 1 loose ends! That big old multi-ethnic battle was incredible (so: Han Chinese, Oirat Mongolian, Japanese - any others?) and I loved Noble Consort Wan's all-woman brigade getting in there.
I also loved how every lucky event or reversal of fortune was actually EARNED by actions way back in previous episodes. Wang Zhi commits treason? Yep, we've actually been told all along that he's following Consort Wan's orders, and if she says "Drug and kidnap the emperor" he'll fucking do it. WANG ZHI DID THAT. And he did it in part because whily he reveres the emperor, I think he likes the MAN rather than the position. So when Princess Guan laid her "I've lost more than you" line on him, he definitely shifts from loyalty to the family to loyalty to at most two members of the family. (Fuck you, Guan! That was a hell of thing to say to someone mutilated as a child for their father's actions. He certainly didn't rush to stop her committing suicide, even though ordered to take her alive). The missing emperor needs a bolt hole - good job that Sui Zhou has a monk who owes him big time! And that the monk's sister is officially in the family's country estate and therefore can move around Beijing undetected in her mourning garb!
And the bad luck too: for ages it seemed like Dong'er's mistake wasn't going to bite them in the ass, until it did. And Ding Rong's betrayal - we SAW him tempted before and he stayed loyal, but Wang Zhi steadily treated him worse and worse. It didn't come out of nowhere.
I also loved any number of the other characters: Dr Pei and his horrific medical ethics, Tang Yu and his big sisterliness, Duo'erla and Wuyun - all fantastic. And the fact that Jackie Chan might have had to make it a bromance, but there are no actual love interests shoe-horned in for Sui Zhou and Tang Fan is incredible. (I did come across one review which moaned how obvious it was that Duo'erla and Sui Zhou's incipient fiancee were as love interests and just thought, hahaha, just you wait). I even loved the mini!monk, who surely would give even Genjo Sanzo a run for "Most Obnoxious Buddhist Child."
Phew.
And what I want NOW, given the very end of the last episode, is a crossover with the Korean drama Kingdom, if you know that ;-)
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Date: 2020-08-19 05:30 pm (UTC)Wang Zhi needs to be pawed over quite a bit more. His hair all disarrayed, oh yes.
Ding Rong showed some impressive fighting skills when they were in the "Save the Abundant Waves" bit. Unlike Wang Zhi, whose fighting move is "hide behind others, pull out pistol" (which is pretty damn badass a move, in 1478!!)
THE LAST FEW EPS!!!!!!!!!!!
OK. My first thought is I am in fucking AWE of how EVERY loose end got tied together, even ones that had been long since lost and didn't seem all that loose. Like, right from Episode 1 loose ends! That big old multi-ethnic battle was incredible (so: Han Chinese, Oirat Mongolian, Japanese - any others?) and I loved Noble Consort Wan's all-woman brigade getting in there.
I also loved how every lucky event or reversal of fortune was actually EARNED by actions way back in previous episodes. Wang Zhi commits treason? Yep, we've actually been told all along that he's following Consort Wan's orders, and if she says "Drug and kidnap the emperor" he'll fucking do it. WANG ZHI DID THAT. And he did it in part because whily he reveres the emperor, I think he likes the MAN rather than the position. So when Princess Guan laid her "I've lost more than you" line on him, he definitely shifts from loyalty to the family to loyalty to at most two members of the family. (Fuck you, Guan! That was a hell of thing to say to someone mutilated as a child for their father's actions. He certainly didn't rush to stop her committing suicide, even though ordered to take her alive). The missing emperor needs a bolt hole - good job that Sui Zhou has a monk who owes him big time! And that the monk's sister is officially in the family's country estate and therefore can move around Beijing undetected in her mourning garb!
And the bad luck too: for ages it seemed like Dong'er's mistake wasn't going to bite them in the ass, until it did. And Ding Rong's betrayal - we SAW him tempted before and he stayed loyal, but Wang Zhi steadily treated him worse and worse. It didn't come out of nowhere.
I also loved any number of the other characters: Dr Pei and his horrific medical ethics, Tang Yu and his big sisterliness, Duo'erla and Wuyun - all fantastic. And the fact that Jackie Chan might have had to make it a bromance, but there are no actual love interests shoe-horned in for Sui Zhou and Tang Fan is incredible. (I did come across one review which moaned how obvious it was that Duo'erla and Sui Zhou's incipient fiancee were as love interests and just thought, hahaha, just you wait). I even loved the mini!monk, who surely would give even Genjo Sanzo a run for "Most Obnoxious Buddhist Child."
Phew.
And what I want NOW, given the very end of the last episode, is a crossover with the Korean drama Kingdom, if you know that ;-)