Hello, you're watching AvenueX and today let's talk about a recently started airing
Chinese fantasy idol period drama, Qi Shi Ji Xiang, Love You Sven Times
This is a 38 episode web drama that has started airing not so long ago on the platform iqiyi
It is produced by Heng Xing Yin Li, which did last year's sumer slot super hot fantasy idol drama.
Cang Lan Jue, Love Between Fairy and Devil.
The drama is directed by Li Nan and Du Lin, li nan is also the director of the second series of Young Blood
just finished airing, I think on Mango television, and then Dun Lin is the director of the yet to come
also produced by HXYL fantasy period drama, Hu Yao Xiao Hong Niang
Fox Demon Matchmaker
And honestly after watching parts of Qi Shi Ji Xiang
I am slightly worried about the future and fate of hu yao xiao hong yang.
This drama is based on the novel written by the author Jiu Lu Fei Xiang who has also written
Cang Lan Jue, Fairy and Devil's original novel.
And the novel that the drama hu xing is based on,
which also went live not so long ago on Youku.
And the title of the original novel is Yi Shi Chong Dong Qi Shi Bu Xiang
literally meaning for one moment of uncontrolled urge you suffer seven lifetimes.
and the drama title love you 7 times kind of also successfully spoil the whole story before you even click it open.
The drama is led by Ding Yuxi, Yang Chaoyue.
And I don't think it's necessary for you to know the rest of the cast, after watching the drama,
you probably wouldn't even remember what their story lines is anyway, the drama is 38 episodes.
It has aired up to episode 14 and i've actually watched up to that point
unless epic unusual things happen.
And just for the sake of checking out what is the spectacular thing, for this drama,
I probably will not go back watching it
\ to be polite I'll rate it at the smack middle gold slash land.
And to be honest, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who you know wants to watch a fantasy idol drama
And you do better re-watching Cang Lan Jue
Now let's get to the usual part of good and bad.
I'll try my best to force a couple of good things.
Number one is I can tell they spend money and design effort in making the styles and costumes and the look
and certain cg looks really pretty but then I don't actually like its style.
I don't really like its color.
It is a little bit too colorful and they clash color and a lot of design on the main characters,
a little bit trying too hard.
Then there's another good thing only happening by comparison,
which is the female lead actress Yang Chaoyue.
If you compare her performance in this drama, to her performance in another fantasy drama
that happened not so long ago, Chong Zi on Tencent, she's better in this one,
whether the better is enough, in my opinion, not
yes you improved from 0 to 30, it still fails.
So you know how much does it matter?
And what else, oh Ding Yuxi is ok, he is like he always is like in period idol dramas,
he can do acting and he's still good at micro expressions
and acting the stages of the thoughts going through a person.
He can do that very well. He looks good.
I mean the style compared to a couple of other style he's got,
at least it's a new look and he uses his own voice okay this time he's not dubbed.
He does sound like a 21st century person.
It's like he's in an office drama when he talks instead of in a fantasy period drama playing God of War
And what else are good about this drama? I honestly cannot think of anything.
And I believe if you're a seasoned or not so seasoned watcher of dramas,
you will have the same reaction.
I just realized that I haven't even introduced you to what the synopsis of this drama is.
But like I said, the title spoils it for you.
It is a fantansy drama about two gods. The guy is higher, the girl is lower,
and she's like barely anything like Cang Lan Jue's setting
and they go through so called seven lifetimes.
and the purpose of that basically is for the male lead character to recover,
because he suffered a big injury and he never recovered after 30,000 years of recuperating.
They found that when he goes to the human realm and goes through the trial of love and romance,
he recovers faster, so they decided to do the same lifetimes.
We will find out probably this whole thing is actually a plan within a bigger plan,
and they kind of get cheated into the whole thing.
And there was a bigger sort of conspiracy behind it,
because both leads have the type of, one person actually lost memory
for a significant chunk of their life.
So that definitely has a huge plot twist in it.
And then the female lead she just comes from nowhere. She is a cloud.
Manifested into this, clearly that wouldn't be true.
She definitely is a bigger boss who basically kind of got sealed or something.
It's just so typical in chinese dramaland and I don't think you need to hear that anyway.
So the bad things about this drama, number one, casting of this drama is very~~~
the only proper well trained and kind of can do a drama guy is the male lead actor Ding Yuxi
but he is by no means the best actor out there with his age, experience.
He is good enough when you put him in a proper production that has a solid script, good director,
good opponent, then he can bring it out,
you cannot make him shoulder a whole drama when none of the rest is in place
when the script is ~~~ and the director probably is like ~~~
and then you look at the opposite actor, lead actor, lead actress,
even male second, female second.
They're all just like the ~~~ the supporting characters.
They almost don't exist after you're watching 14 episodes in your brain map of the story.
They are so irrelevant. Their looks are mediocre at the best.
Walking on Chongqing's street,
you can easily spot people on the street looking better than these actors honestly.
And this is idol period drama, t
his genre is specifically for that type of enjoyment
and people go to watch period idol drama to look at good looking people.
Unfortunately this drama just don't have enough
think about CLJ, male second was Zhang linghe, his acting
you can argue whether it's good enough,
I mean for that drama it's good enough, he's good looking.
can't deny that, the male lead male second, the dragon like everybody is good enough looking
the girls, a lot of pretty girls in that drama
and this one is just like everybody is just so average.
Why am I in another drama looking at people who are
I can't even remember what their face look like after I turn away from the screen,
the second thing, obviously, the script, always comes down to the script.
So this drama script has two major sins in my opinion.
Number one is it completely writes against the logic of telling a story.
Traditionally in china. If you're not on the stage playing an opera,
there's another form of in enjoying story performance,
which is 说书人 a storyteller, who would just be telling the story.
Sometimes they kind of b box the sound effect themselves.
They would just be sitting in front of a table with a fan and talk.
If you're good at it, you can talk for hours,
and people will just sit there and listen to you and they pay money for that.
The classic thing is you don't spoil people from moment one.
You have to lead people in, wet their appetite, make them want to find out,
but barely let them at the the end of this episode.
So they they can watch the next episode, the hooks and then the payoff,
classic storytelling techniques.
This drama, the way it's written is basically spoiling first for you, right from the beginning,
the seven lifetimes love story of these two leads when they are as humans
becomes completely worthless and meaningless,
because it comes from the heaven perspective. It sets that up first,
it gives you a trial of them becoming animals for the first time and die very soon and go back
the overall attitude of all those immortal
when they look upon the human realm trials, lifetimes,
is just it is just means to an end.
My end is that I recover when I come back,
everything i've built up down there no longer actually has any consequences.
I mean maybe you know like the for certain types of beliefs in this world
that they do believe when you die, you go review your life.
And you know whether you have enemies or friends does not matter that much
because everybody is playing a role and they move on to other things.
Maybe that is how you know actually life happens.
But i'm just saying for storytelling sake,
you basically set up a structure of telling stories that just cancels everything you do.
No matter how hard you do it. It does not matter does not count.
I don't know who is the genius person who thought that's a good idea to write this type of story.
oh and the worst part is for the female lead, second lifetime,
and the first one that they are humans in human realm, huge chunk, 10 episodes,
she knows everything, because she cheated,
put this antidote in her memory erasing tonic,
so that she actually remembers where she comes from.
And she knows this is all a game. Who is the genius who thought that's a good idea.
When you have one of the two main characters, completely,
all the way through does not actually fall in love like for real,
because they know it doesn't count when they go back.
That's where it counts. The human realm is like whatever
and the drama tries to convince you I mean by the end of that lifetime
that she falls in love with this guy, she cares about her human parents and all that,
but she constantly has OS in her head telling her if I do this as humans,
once I go back will I get punished,
I watched the first couple of episodes and I was constantly gobsmacked and amazed
by the self defeating way of telling a love story.
Second thing is in terms of the actual reincarnation story,
when those two characters go through the seven lifetimes,
now we've only seen mainly two. The first one doesn't count.
okay It's a cg pig and tiger
as the daughter of an official and the son of a general
since childhood, we're good friends, we grow up, we wanna marry,
but something happens and it ends up in tragedy like that type of love story.
I haven't seen one that is being written and played as such,
a boring way,
a 5 year kid's diary, if they write it, would be more interesting than this.
Every scene doesn't have a narrative goal and purpose and doesn't push their relationship forward.
There's no beginning, middle end of anything.
And then when you string them together,
it doesn't arrive at any useful plot development point.
If you're gonna sell this drama or recommend this drama to people,
which episode are you gonna tell them to check out
which scene and which super funny, super wow romantic, unexpected twist.
What is the selling point of this drama?
Nothing.
If you ask me Cang Lan Jue, which happened a whole year ago,
immediately first moment will come into my mind like a string of them.
They including the shots of Wang Hedi's role gas fire blue the whole heavenly realm
that episode nine ten epic saving a female lead moment
easily you can recall the sequences and the shots of when Xiao Lanhua commits suicide and explosion scene over the desert.
Another example, earlier this year March, not so long ago,
Starry Love on Youku, the male second,
when he turned into hulk and his hands are all green
this drama after watching 14 episodes.
I mean I remember what the characters look like
their pretty dress and their hair, perfectly blown and hair gel-ed, and colorful costumes.
There was a slow mo shot because the female literally died.
So you remember how that scene is shot,
but its emotional payoff supposedly like she dies and then he cries and it should be like
the first big emotional peak time of the drama.
I don't see anybody can possibly have any genuine gut emotional reaction watching that scene
When I watched it, I was.... I was so bored
that I took out my phone and check whether my ordered from Taobao stuff have arrived at my 快递(courier service)station.
and I see this producer who is the same producer of CLJ tries very hard on internet
to promote this drama, calls for fans and people to help him.
But it's a failure story from script level to direction level, to casting level,
no matter how pretty you dress it up.
And they are now trying to promote it in a way on internet.
Actually, this story story is a crazy story.
right now, what you see is not what actually happens.
And there's like the whole sort of, like the Kai Duan story, Reset, that has loops,
and actually characters are in loops you just don't realize that,
but at a certain point of the story, you realize that,
and oh that's a huge plot setup.
okay so let's just take it as that if that's true
does not change the fact that the first 14 episodes i've watched are just
so time wasting and so boring.
I haven't seen such a boring drama for a long time.
I should be really worrying about fox demon matchmaker,
Yang Mi she's been in too many idol dramas so like she's like, she is, you know what she's like
Gong Jun he really only works when he was in BL adaptaion
Let's be honest, the two dramas he actually have done that are kind of bl works
and then towards a female actress, it just ~~~
the only thing that I think fox demon probably can do better is
It is a higher investment drama for that company.
They put more money on it, so they would have to be more responsible for the storytelling.
And hopefully they would touch up the script better
at least in that drama with all the supporting roles,
leading roles, guys, girls.They all look stunning.
They're all very, pretty people.
So in that department, I think fox demon is still more safe until we see it later this year.
Hopefully it works, but 7 times.
I don't think i'll continue watching and I highly recommend you don't waste your time on it.
So we are close to the end of summer slot for Chinese dramaland
we haven't really seen a good drama that exploded in the usual genres so far.
I mean there are dramas that exploded for funny and ridiculous reasons,
but you don't actually want that.
You don't want a crappy drama that got famous because it got criticized by everybody on internet.
That's like really embarrassing.
Chang Xiang Si kind of also a finished area in the first season and ended on a very boring and note
one of its so called epic moment around episode 30 was
just so badly filmed and then Deng Wei's acting got laughed at on China's internet so badly.
Maybe 2023 is just gonna end with this, don't have a summer drama king.
We do have a really good movie in theaters like maybe that's what we're gonna have at the end of this.
I don't know, still have technically 2 weeks to go before summer holiday ends for the students in China.
Let's see if a miracle is gonna happen before that.
But thank you for watching AvenueX, I will see you in my next video
meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.