Hello, you're watching AvenueX and today let's talk about the recently finished airing
chinese period drama Shan He Zhi Ying, Pledge of Allegiance.
This is a 24 episode web drama that has just finished airing on the platform iqiyi
It is directed by Li Yi, Cao Hua, written by one of the directors Li Yi
as the main script writer plus five other credited script writers.
The drama is led by Zhang Yunlong, Chen Ruoxuan, Sun Yi, Ma Yujie, Ci Sha
and it was shot from end of June 2021 to end of September the same year.
If you go back in time and check all the reports you can read on this drama.
It always emphasizes that the executive producer of this project is the director Lu Yang
who is known to be the film director of Brotherhood of Blades,
which I've made videos about, those two films are focused on characters
who are ming dynasty Jin Yi Wei
Although now when you go and look up the information on this drama,
whether it's on Douban, Baidu, or even in the credits rolling
as the title and ending songs are going, Lu Yang's name is not anywhere to be seen.
I couldn't find any other information about why this is happening.
If you've watched the Brotherhood of Blades films and then watch this drama,
you'll see a lot of similarities.
It does look like it comes out of the same main creators,
the style, the look,the way the story is told
So my guess is something must have happened, but I have no proof.
I've already finished watching all 24 episode.
It's almost impossible for me to give it a rating.
Certain aspects of this drama really deserves very high rating
close to three gold mine in my opinion,
then certain aspects of this drama is so confusingly bafflingly bad
that I probably would rate it on a two land mine.
We have yet another impossible to mix and average out the ratings for different aspects drama.
I'll tell you what I love about it and then what I just cannot understand about it.
You can make up your mind and also decide whether you should go into this drama.
The story is set in early Ming dynasty, after the death of the founding emperor
before the usurp emperor coming into power, so at this point,
it is the grandson on the throne, but he is very soon to be overthrown by his uncle
and our geo location where most of the story happens is Nanjing today,
which at the time was the capital of the grandson emperor until he loses power
and his uncle comes in and then moved the capital to current. Beijing
our two main male lead characters played by Zhang Yunlong and Chen Ruoxuan
are two Jin Yi Wei, Embroidered Uniform Guards,
a very particular type of special agents for the throne,
although technically speaking around the actual time that the drama depicts,
was a low point of Jin Yi Wei's power.
Because at the end of the first emperors ruling,
he realized that this whole spy agency is actually creating more trouble than good for him.
So he kind of dismantled it and limited its power to very minimum.
It wasn't until Zhu Di, which is the usurp emperor,
came in later that he redesigned the system and gave them power again.
So this is actually a JYW's low power point in actual history.
But if you watch the drama, you'll see drama is a drama.
It doesn't really care about the exact timing of things.
Our two mail leads although they're both Jin Yi Wei
they are actually not really as they are,
they both have multiple layers of complicated identities and past history.
And we're gonna spend the whole 24 episodes figuring out all that entanglement.
They will be mostly associated with each other,
and then two women played by Sun Yi and Ma Yujie
Clearly, one is paired up with one person,
the other is paired up with the other person,
but both of their love relationship is kind of weird.
They all have hidden agenda and motives,
and it gets entangled into the bigger picture of things
between the on throne young emperor and his about to take his throne uncle's political struggle.
Now let's get into the good and bad part and help you make up your mind
about whether you should invest your time
on the positive end, I think the most appealing aspect to a general drama watcher
is the overall high quality of production of this period drama
i'd say first tier production quality,period drama coming from the platform iqiyi
including the visual and the sound, on the visual side
camera work, lighting, color, props, costumes, the texture,
and quality of things look really refined and beautiful.
Then on the sound side, it is mostly original recording
you can hear very realistic environmental sound
and the actor in the moment performance.
Also the music is quite interesting in this drama,
they've written a couple of songs that are
very unusual to happen in a period drama, but somehow really fitting this drama style.
Personally i'm really interested in period dramas' costume design.
I would just quickly remind people that although this drama does costumes really well
suiting each character, their colors, their texture,
certain parts is based on history, but it's not a very accurate.
sort of the recreation of the actual time that the drama is setting,
the female costumes are mostly based on late Ming Dynasty like on what i'm wearing,
whereas the time is actually very early Ming Dynasty, there's a 300 years gap.
I understand these type of details probably wouldn't mean anything to 99% of the drama audiences out there,
whether you're international or domestic but I just want to point that out.
Then to do with the embroidered guard'ss uniform,
it is also an interpretation from the drama makers based on historical things,
but completely different, so if you actually travel back in time
and look at what people were wearing then as Jin Yi Wei
it wouldn't be what you see in this drama.
Still though it makes everybody looks really good.
I really highly appreciate that the styling team of this drama made every actor
look the best among all the period dramas they've ever been in.
The second point in my opinion worth watching about this drama is,
I think most of the actors featured in this drama did their better kind kind of performance
including the main leads and the supporting roles
Zhang Yunlong, Chen Ruoxuan, clearly this is one of their best period dramas,
in terms of their roles and their acting.
Previously I have very little faith and also good opinion about CRX's acting.
Honestly speaking, I think in this drama he has greatly improved,
whereas Zhang Yunlong, signing up with the agency Jiang Xing
may be a good and bad thing for his career
because he hasn't really been given a role that deserves him.
He is an actor given the right roles and directions, is actually really really good.
But most of the time in his career in the past, he plays supporting roles.
And then when the drama actually let him be the lead, it's usually really crappy dramas
This is his first definitive first male lead period drama that's actually high quality.
And role is also interestingly written,
and his acting is really, really, really good, and then he also looks dashing
them for actress, such as Sun Yi
I always feel she's just quite pleasurable to look at,
but there's nothing outstanding about her being an actress
In this drama I think she provides some of her most relaxed, natural and interesting acting in a period drama.
If you look at supporting actors, I'll just pick out two very well known actors,
if you watch a lot of chinese dramas, most recently, for example,
the actor Zhou Tie, who played the despicable heavenly emperor
in the fantasy drama Starry Love, very flat two dimensional character.
And in that drama, you can't even see whether the actor can act
because the role is so ridiculous.
Whereas in this drama it shows he's a proper actor.
The other actor Yin Zhusehng who is also a frequent of most of the pira dramas out there
often playing the bad guy or the semi bad guy.
The closest role I can remember is his role in Ming Under Microscope,
the Zhang Ruoyun drama or last year's Feng Qi Long Xi,
and his rose in those dramas are written as very set roles
the moment he shows up you already know what type of person he is,
what's his narrative function and ow it's gonna end for him.
Whereas in this drama he's a much more interesting role
and he performs really really beautifully in a couple of very emotional scenes.
If you like any of those main actors and supporting actors
watch this drama will not make you feel you've wasted your time,
at least in the department of looking at good performances.
The third point i'll add is if you like the period dramas where it has a little bit spy element in it,
this drama is not entirely without merits,
quite a lot of fighting scenes, pretty nicely choreographed
and with quite a strong and interesting style.
So these are the great things about this drama
seems like it's pretty nice, so why do I have such a difficult time rating this drama?
well It's really just one point,
which is the story is written without a structure.
It's all over the place, in the most shattered, scattered,
unlinked, impossible to piece together way imaginable.
If you are an international audiences.
And you're not fluent in mandarin,
it's gonna be a pain for you to follow anything in this drama, staring on the subtitles
and you need to sit down and jog down notes about who is whom and what is what.
But I still cannot guarantee you that by the end of episode 24,
you actually can follow what is going on in this story.
Even with my full attention on the story, by the end,
I am 99% of the time confused and not sure what is going to happen between characters.
This is like looking at the person who is all otherwise perfect,
pretty face, beautiful limbs, apart from all the connective tissues in this person is missing.
There's no tendon , there's nothing that joins the bones together.
You will constantly encounter, scene and scene and in between, maybe a lot has happened,
but you never see it being presented.
They're dressed in the same costume, it's still daylight.
So you think oh it happened immediately after.
It's not until you've watched a few minutes you realize
oh the second scene actually happened a couple of days later,
but they just didn't bother to tell you at all what happened in between.
You are constantly missing huge chunks of time and space to the point where
you cannot fill it up with your imagination.
If I use a recent example of one of the most popular dramas that has happened
end of last year, this year which would be the Netflix korean drama series Glory
if you watch that drama, regardless if you speak Korean or not,
if you can read subtitles, there will be no difficulty of you following the story at any given moment,
even when certain characters were first introduced with only a little bit information,
you don't know everything about them.
By the time the story decides you should know more,
you immediately can connect all the clues they've thrown out earlier.
And you realize oh okay so initially I thought this person is only this,
but then he's definitely more complicated than I first thought,
but then there's already enough clues and it all links together.
In 1 second, the audiences will follow. okay, this is what you're doing.
It doesn't require extra brain work, and that's what a good story should be
Glory's male lead character. His background story as an example is
you can hide information from audiences at the beginning.
A good storyteller would know exactly when to leak certain information to make
it connects easily for the audience,
just make the cost of understanding as low as possible.
In this drama, Pledge of allegiance, the polar opposite,
the creators do not bother for 1 second to help the audiences follow the story.
They even kind of intentionally made it impossible for you to follow.
i've heard rumors about the original script of the story is not like this.
While they were filming, they started to cut a lot of connective scenes for whatever reason.
And then once they got into the post production room,
they cut down further things.
That's the rumor I heard. I cannot confirm that
if one day in the future I ever find that out, I'll make a video and tell you guys.
But now I have no idea and it's utterly bewildering and disappointing.
So if you've spent time watching this drama and you couldn't understand what's going on,
and you're doubting about yourself, DON'T
i've asked enough people watching this drama, they all have the same response.
Unfortunately by the last second of this drama, it still is like that.
This drama took 3 months to film, for chinese standard drama period drama.
3 month shooting time is at least 40 episodes,
at least, it's impossible to shoot 3 months and only 24 episodes
and trying to make money on it, so if initially it's a 40 episode story,
the why did it ended up being a 24 and no longer making sense?
I'm just so frustrated, I had such high hopes
and also I really want Zhang Yunlong to be leading a high quality drama
as the definitive male lead that actually the drama is successful,
I think it's long overdue for him, so
very disappointed AvenueX bothered to dress up and making this video,
talking about a drama that I cannot rate
I feel like the main creatives of this drama probably when they look upon this finished work
will be more disappointed than I am.
So I have told you what this drama is like and the land mine parts and the gold mine parts of it.
You now have my opinion as reference for you to decide whether you should invest
your own precious time checking out Shan He Zhi Ying, Pledge of Allegiance.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
I'll see you in my next video, meanwhile,
live long and happy drama watching.