YOU GUYS.
Alright I had SUCH high hopes for this going into it and it’s still worthy of a solid 9/10 rating.
Staring Xu Kai and Jeng Tian as the main leads with a duration of 40 episodes and roughly 40 to 45 minutes of show time per episode.
Here is the description from the streaming platform I watch on.

“Li Ni (Xu Kai) is the Emperor’s grandson and a keen warrior. Despite his illustrious family background, he does not seek power – although his jealous father holds him in contempt. He wants to spend his life in the army, so must hide his true identity from his fellow soldiers as he rises to the rank of general. Li Ni is assigned to patrol a dangerous border territory where violence erupts on a regular basis. He is happy in his role as a frontier fighter and has no intention of trying to take the throne.

While on the border, he meets Cui Lin (Jing Tian), the only daughter of a well-known military leader. Like Li Ni, however, she is also a fighter with a secret identity – dressing up as a military officer so she can fight on the front lines. As they meet on the battlefield again and again, they begin to form a rivalry. But could this competitive spirit one day give way to love?”

________

This C-drama started off SO strong, it immediately drew me into the storyline and the battle of wits between the main leads. Both were intelligent with a sense of humor and whitty, especially to each other with a dash of dramaticness, because what drama doesn’t have that fun special ingrediant in it?

Of course it doesn’t hurt both of them are pretty to look at. (Especially Xu Kai, if ya know ya know!!)

For nearly 17 episodes I was hotly captured and watched with devouring eyes wondering what would happen next.
Some details were already beginning to pop up in the series that annoyed me but they were small enough to ignore.
But then we got past episode 17 and that’s where things started to go haywire.
Wonky.
Over the top.
But alas… here is a small rant written while I was watching the next several episodes.

The direction they are taking the show is making me go “what the heck, why would they do that? why is this happening? this doesn’t even make much sense. Oh they are making her act like that? what the heck? ” and so on.

But I kept at it and struggled through like 8 episodes that really shouldn’t have been done the way it was, I feel like they put it in just for strife. (Pfft right?)
I confess, I also fast forwarded the meetings with the brothers as same ole story (brother conspiring against brother), and it finally got good again.
I am not really happy with how this story is unfolding and feel like they could have done it so much better. Also I’m really annoyed with some of their details, every time the dude goes to war or fight (which we don’t get many scenes of) he’s always clean!! Even when he is seriously injured, he’s up and walking around like nothing happened! With perfect hair! So annoying. Make it realistic! It’s WAR people, War!! The few times he did get splashed on… well the spots were so strategically placed you could see how hard they were trying to keep the costumes clean.

I’m just so annoyed with the direction of things, for the love of all that is holy!
Of course we have the extra side female lead who wants the main guy blah blah blah, she never had a chance, at all, whatsoever and her entire character is useless. They could take her out and it would Improve the story…..

OH My word, it got worse.
IT GOT WORSE.
The fluffing fluff did they do this for?!
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.
IM SOOO MAAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.
……..
That being all said, I finished the whole series!
I give it a solid nine out of ten for ranking. Had they done a few things differently this would have been a solid ten for me!
There was several details that really annoyed me by not being in the series and most of them were all centered around the fighting scenes. The dude is a GENERAL for moon land sake! He is not suppose to be pristine in almost every fighting scene, also why didn’t we have MORE of him fighting?
And the weird direction the story took for about those eight episodes threw me off and it was a struggle to watch, but you need drama ya know? I guess…
I really did not appreciate them making the main female lead “push push push” and push the main guy lead into his ‘destiny’ and then has the audacity to be all angry and hurt over it and him when he’s forced to accept his fate and he is still doing what he can to save her. I got SOOOOOOOOOOOO mad about that and I AM STILL mad about that!!!
Anyway! That aside, what made me feel better about everything is that despite it all, the main male lead still held true to his character and his values the entire time.

The storyline besides those eight-ish episodes was pretty good, all the acting was phenomenal and the production was gorgeous and well done, only a few obvious fake scenes when they went to the magical place but that is to be expected.

This is definitely worth a watch with popcorn and your favorite drink!!


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