Hello, you're watching AvenueX, and today let's talk about the recently aired chinese period fantasy drama,
Xing Luo Ning Cheng Tang, The Starry Love
This is a 40 episode period fantasy drama that has recently started airing on the platform youku
plus two different satellite televisions. It is directed by Zhu Ruibin
who has been in recent years directing quite a couple high profile fantasy period drama
such as the 2017's Xiang Mi Chen Chen Jin Ru Shuang, Ashes of Love,
or last year's Blue Whisper. The adaptive scriptwriter is Ma Jia,
and the story of Starry Love comes from a novel with the same title
written by the author Yi Du Jun Hua
The drama is led by Li Landi, Chen Xingxu, Chen Muchi, He Xuanlin
It was shot from september 2021 to January last year.
I've just finished watching the first 12 episodes of this 40 episodes drama.
I will give this drama surprisingly surprisingly,
a 2 goldmine rating on my seven level scale for now
let me first introduce you as usual to the story.
This is in the easiest way of understanding it.
The fantasy version of Shang Cuo Hua Jiao Jia Dui Lang
If you remember the old IP from chinese dramaland 2 decades ago,
we have a pair of twin sisters who are princesses of the human realm.
They are arranged to marry two different realms heir
one is the heavily realm and one is the lower kind of devilish hell whatever you name it.
But on the day, when they are supposed to marry together,
~ something happens and they got switched in their carriage,
they ended up with the wrong groom, but actually who are destined to be the right match of their life.
Long time viewers of my channel would know that I said multiple times,
I have grown out of this genre as a whole.
I wouldn't voluntarily go look for stories in this genre per se.
But you know as a drama reviewer, when something comes up,
I will always just check it for a bit and then decide whether I wanna
continue investing my time. So Xing Luo Ning Cheng Tang, The Starry Love
is my first 2023 period fantasy drama that i'm willing to invest time in
since I have a significant amount of more more positive things I wanna say about this drama
than the negative, therefore, i'm gonna put the negative points first,
so what are not ideal about this drama and may be potential that might for you as a viewer?
were well, number one, it has a very old tropey aesthetics in chinese fantasy period dramaland
given if that's your thing, you like the look of Xiang Mi Chen Chen or many other dramas of such nature,
then this actually may be a good thing for you.
But to me I have grown very very very tired of this style.
The heavenly realm is, as you would expect,
everybody is dressed in pale color and those light fabrics,
semi translucent, hair flying everywhere, dangling bits x3
So to me, this is definitely a huge minus.
The second thing is not necessarily something that would obviously put people off.
But say, if you have high expectation of this been a fantasy period, idol drama,
but still having a little bit ambition of building a very epic world view,
having its own value system, having the heavy big message behind the facade of things,
like you see in last year's Cang Lan Jue, so far,
I haven't detected much of of that.
All of its conflict is pretty much on the surface, although it's well written on the surface level,
it doesn't go any deeper than what meets the eye.
If you're looking for meaning, this probably is not the drama to go to.
The last thing that may put certain people off is for this drama,
they have a mixture for the leading roles of using their own voice and dubbing.
I'm gonna go into the positive point and talk about it in more detail,
but certain actor's real voice may not sound so much like
what you expect the type of roles they play and compared to the previous works
that got completely dubbed, you may find it hard to
ease into it, that's how I would put it.
But once you get over the initial climatization, it actually becomes a very positive thing
so these are the only significant shortcomings I can see from this drama.
Now let's talk about what makes it a two gold mine worth drama
at this point only a little bit more than 1/4 of the whole drama.
Taken staright from the last point of my negative points.
I really appreciate that the female lead, male lead, I think also female second
use their own voice in this drama, other main characters mostly got dubbed,
but for Chen Xingxu, Li Landi and He Xuanlin
I think they use their own voice which is
and actually worked out really, really well.
A lot of people complained about Cheng Xingxu's natural voice when they first heard him
utter his lines, extremely deep, also very stuffy voice.
Some male actors have low voice as well, but it has a lot of metallic quality so that you don't necessarily
feel it's very stuffed in, Chen Xingxu has a super low and stuffed voice.
So he sounds like this talking.
It's very far away from usually how people would picture Xian Xia drama's male lead
the heavenly prince, the Xia Ke, the super power flying in the sky
with white clothing robes, and flying swords, you need that crispy, sharp,
metallic quality in their voice to somehow qualify them to be the lead role
very different from your expectation, Chen Xingxu has this voice.
And I admit I also complained about it during the trailer release of this drama.
But once I start to watch this drama, actually it very quickly vanishes and no longer is a problem
because first his line delivery has no problem.
It's just the natural quality of his voices like that.
The second thing is it actually weirdly enough fits his character so much,
it's like an added element of surprise that somehow worked out really magically well
The second thing I want to quickly mention, which is also on the more technical part of this drama.
Although I hate its color palette, I also don't like its lighting,
very unprofessional lighting, all on flat, no definition, no contrast,no texture lighting,
although I say I don't like that, there's one thing I would say they did really well,
which is cg special effect, with all the magic and all the glowing lights
and crazy stuff that people throw out with their hands.
You can see that actually in the last couple of years, for most of the Xian Xia dramas,
even when it's not a high budget drama, if it's reasonable budget,
they tend to do really good cg, I think it's because overall the companies
who get out sourced to do these are just that many companies
and they have built up their library, their resources, all their files.
They're all using the same type of render engine.
Once you do one well, you just do another drama with the same set of stuff,
just tweak things a bit.
As long as you have enough time to render you will have a good result
Moving on to the more important things, number three,
and one of the essential reasons why this drama worked so well on me,
if you think this is just a fantasy drama, you're wrong.
This is a comedy hidden behind the facade, in the disguise of being a fantasy idol drama,
the comedy of this drama is so self aware of it being a comedy
that as soon as the plot start to get into the tear jerking part,
the sad part .usually will be heavily heavily milked in traditional fantasy drama
immediately, they're gonna do a crazy comedy scene, right after that
that just makes the ridiculous level of the plot go up another notch.
I'm just highly appreciative of how self aware that this drama is
intentionally cancels out high romance drama nature of the fantasyland of
lifetimes of love and heaven, and the earth,and you know like whatever
they're just like, so not giving a shit and just go straight towards the direction.
where, how can we make it more ridiculous in the next scene?
At least you're doing something very different from others, and that makes you stand out.
I don't wanna ruin and spoil it for you, so i'm not gonna talk about any specific jokes,
which I have to hold back in this review, trying not to share it with you
so that you can have the full fresh 100% experience yourself.
But basically if you want a comedy go and watch this drama,
this is probably the best fantasy drama that has comedy
or is like is actually a comedy drama among every other drama of this genre in chinese dramaland
The 4th great thing about this drama coming from the previous point of the plot and comedy is
also the characters worked out so well, first is on paper,
these characters are written as very interesting leading characters.
Male lead, female lead, male second, female second,
they are each so distinctive, they come together as two couples also magically well
this is a rare one where you really cannot tell sometimes who is a stronger part.
Sometimes in one scene you feel the lead couple is the best
and then the next thing cuts to the second lead couple and what they're doing.
And you're like oh my god this is even better
and you wouldn't feel basically any moment is wasted.
I won't here spend too much time talking about each character
because that will make this video super long
and you should go and discover that yourself.
But I guarantee you you will not be disappointed by either of those couples,
the leading couple in the heavenly realm, you can easily say it is
between a guy who is social anxiety disorder sufferer and a girl who is just way too sociable.
And for the devilish realm,you have the girl who is the classic perfect lady
running into Ban Zhu Chi Lao Hu, pretends to be weak and stupid,
but who is actually the most ambitious prince of that realm.
If you know about BL adaptation history you know that the these two male leads
before they filmed this drama and they were actually on another crew
filming a different drama where it's a BL adaptation, they were a couple.
And then in this period fantasy drama, they become brother in law.
And talk about universe's idea of being ironic and funny
as if that's not enough, when you have two strong couple leading the drama,
you also have the rare occasion where the male (lead) character will
be split into multiple roles for one plot in the drama which just happened
after today's airing of the episode 12,
which would cause the female lead to have multiple love stories
with multiple different versions of himself, simultaneously,
not lifetime after lifetime. no no no, that's too old and old fashion.
We're gonna do it at the same time.
Her objective is to make them all fall in love with herself
so that they can all come together and become the male lead.
So technically speaking for the lead couple, their love story are five love stories,
the initial version, the split version with three different people so that's the 4
And then finally, when the guy comes back as one, you have the 5th version.
So you get basically six lead couples in this drama with four people.
I cannot wait to venture into the next, I don't know 20 or so episodes where
they're gonna have to deal with three guys, all played by the same actor,
but totally different characters and the same female lead at the same time.
And I think also these three guys are going to meet, if I haven't heard it wrong.
I haven't read the novel because I control myself not to get spoiled,
but I think there will be a moment where this guy's different versions are gonna meet themselves.
This drama has so many little things that you don't ever imagined
is gonna exist in the fantasy period idol drama and its looks is very, very deceiving
because it looks like just another Xiang Mi Chen Chen,
just another whatever drama you've seen million times from chinese dramalnd
it doesn't even look pretty enough or high end enough.
and It does vibe with the type of, we know we can't make it you know different
from others in those departments and aspects.
So we just give up, we just give up and we're just gonna put all our energy into making it funny
so far I am so entertained by every moment of this drama.
I haven't watched a fantasy period drama and laughed this much
ever
if it stays this ridiculous and funny till the end.
This is gonna be my three gold mine drama in fantasy land.
I'm gonna ignore all the ugliness, the aesthetics that really doesn't sit right with me,
the terrible, pinkish,bluish color palette that is not my thing,
the terrible dangling bits that I hate,
the white costumes of all the heavenly people,
or the dark costumes of all the devilish people, come on!That is so old fashioned.
you know I complain about that again.
But i'm just saying if this drama can stay with current
pacing, quality, acting, comedy all the way through to the end,
it will stay on my list as the best surprise drama in chinese dramaland for a long time to come,
that's it, hope that's helpful for you to decide.
If you haven't yet jumped into this drama whether you should
and then again again if you're a comedy lover, don't hesitate.
Thank you for watching AvenueX, I'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.