Hello, you're watching AvenueX and today let's talk about a recently started airing
very unusual chinese web drama, Gu Xiang Si Qu, An Ancient Love Song.
This is a 14 episode web drama that's been aired on the platform. Bilibili
it is also produced by Bilibili, directed by Zhi Zhu, who is also the director
of the two very well known short dramas, Zhang Gong Zhu Zai Shang and Dong Lan Xue
It is like by Zhang Yaqin, Guo Jianan, Zhu Linyu, Quan Yilun
The drama is credited to four different writers among which one of them is the original "author"
But this author is different from your typical ip original author, aka novel writers.
This author is an editor very much like what I do on Bilibili
And also on my second channel where I make edits
the origin of An ancient love song comes from an edit that's
done by a Bilibili content creator named San Qian Yu back in 2019,
this person made an edit that is what we call La Lang
meaning you bring different actors, actresses, characters from different dramas, films
mix cut them together, create your own story,
maybe creating your own favourite CPs
This person did a series of edits called Gu Xiang Si Qu, Ancient Love Song
and it took footages s from Zhu Yilong's previous period drama and Liu Yifei's drama and film work
in period costumes and created its own story.
This person even went as far as to finding professional dubbing actors to dub
the lines that she wrote for her edit.
Also this story has multiple versions.
It has a female lead character perspective version,
also a male character perspective version.
And it's a time travel story that's told from two different perspectives.
As far as I know, this is the first chinese drama that's made in this way
based on an ip that's created by the platform's own users.
Bilibili purchased the copyright to adapt on this edit idea
from this content creator San Qian Yu and made it into a drama.
and although i'm known as AvenueX the drama reviewer most of the time,
you also know that I do a lot of edits and i'm very passionate about it.
probably it's something I like doing more than actually reviewing dramas.
Although personally i'm not very into La Lang
which is taking different things from different dramas and mix them into my new story.
I am very picky about shots don't match, hair don't match,
they don't clearly come from the same drama,
but I highly appreciate people who love doing those things. and it's a lot of work
coming from this editor's perspective.
I would also give this drama a little bit rosy filter.
So even though it's a short drama, even though it hasn't finished airing
even though I don't think it's the greatest drama out there for sure,
I still wanna make a dedicated video talking about this drama.
It's only 14 episodes, it only has aired 8 episodes at at the moment i'm making this video.
It's gonna finish in 2 weeks time around the middle of July for the Bilibili subscribers.
But this drama obviously, is also everywhere on pirated websites.
If you really want to see it you know
so far i'll give it a 1.5 gold mine.
And unless the ending is super unexpected and well written,
and totally, at least one big element, I didn't see coming.
I'll make it to go line, but definitely, it's inflated.
Let me quickly introduce you to the story.
And then let's going to talk about what is good and bad about this drama
to help you make up your mind about whether you should
check out this unusual drama.
Original edit of this story is set in Han dynasty,
but that is a really complicated period of history, particularly regarding this emperess.
And because historical figures, if you make them into dramas,
these days can hit a lot of red tapes. So in the drama adaptation process,
they completely took out the real history background in the edit.
It puts it into a fictional dynasty that didn't really exist.
The story is very simple. Our male character is a contemporary writer who just published a book
about a historical figure, the empress as one of those "bad" empress,
then he will encounter some unusual things, get hold of a jade pendent that's been broken into 5 pieces.
And that thing becomes an instrumental prop for him to somehow be able to time travel
back into the actual dynasty and meeting this empress he is writing about
and realizing she's totally different from the pased down stories that's been recorded in history.
She's not the bad Empress, she's a really good person
and the actual politics at the time is completely different from what is recorded.
The way he travels back in time is in reverse order of her timeline.
So the first time he got back into this dynasty,
she is already 36 years old, and that's the first time he met her.
But in her timeline, that's the last time she'll ever meet him.
Then the second time he goes back, she is 26, 10 years earlier in her timeline
and it will keep happening like that. 21 year old female lead, 18 year old female lead
keeps going back in time.
and the story is about when the female lead is most in love with the guy,
the guy doesn't know her, and by the time the guy really falls in love fully
and has gone through so many different encounters.
It was her time for the first time when she was a young girl and she has no idea about who this guy is.
So that's the tragic setting of this type of time travel,
you know what you're in for and it's just gonna be very doomed but beautiful.
Since I take the encouragement position for things that are new and unusual,
I will first talk about the not so ideal things about this drama so that I
can talk more about what's good about it
First point, very,very cheap production
to the level that no matter how hard they try, they couldn't hide, how little money they have
in terms of props, costumes, sets, extras,how many people they can get for supposedly big scene
very low budget drama like at the minimum bottom,
not much better than the super short dramas.
Put that in mind, you're not gonna get beautiful visual looking things.
You're not gonna get get expensive props and extremely good choreography,
although it's actually not bad so far with all the fighting scenes that's involved in the first eight episodes.
Number two, so far among the first 8 episodes,
I would say the weakest actor would actually be the male lead actor
and that can be a problem because this story is the female lead and the male lead's story
Zhang Yaqin, she's pretty stable and trustworthy and she can do her work very well.
Whereas the guy i'd say in comparison is significantly weaker in the way
whether he's playing the contemporary version or the time traveled into ancient time version,
not super professional and occasionally hard for you to empathize with him
and go into the story with him.
Although i'd say as the 8 episodes goes on, it gets better.It's slowly improving,
but maybe still not yet to my satisfaction.
also honestly as I was watching a drama that whole
recognizing people's similarity thing in my brain's program started to work again.
Occasionally this lead actor certain angles and certain features of his face
reminds me of Tan Jianci
If you can see that you see that if you don't don't worry about that,
it's just our brain are different,
but I keep seeing like a hint of TJC's face, but then they're very different actors.
It's almost like you cannot focus like a lens is keep jumping focus on things.
It gives me that feeling when he's acting, very personal, but that may not affect any other humans.
It just affects me.
The third thing about this drama is it is a very short drama, 14 episodes.
Each episode is actually only about 20 to 30 minutes.
They get to the point because they need to get to the point.
They don't have time to waste, so they don't have any space to breathe
to build up the backgrounds, to give you details, to make you believe in the setting the time and everything
it has that in between a proper period drama and a super short,
like Dong Lan Xue and Zhang Gong Zhu Zai Shang that 1 minute drama quality.
It doesn't get the benefit of either world and it kind of suffers from shortcomings of either world in that sense,
it would require your energy and time more than those super short dramas
but then it wouldn't give you that much stuff and satisfaction as the big dramas
Those are the not ideal things, things may put you off.
Then let's talk about why i'm still you know quite happy and dressed up
and wanna recommend this drama for you to just even test it out for a bit.
Number one, i've already said that this is the one of the kind unique one that has this birth background
that you really cannot find another one that's in any way similar,
I start to use that platform since 2015 putting up my edits.
My earliest edits are about Marvels, James McAvoy, Sherlock.
you know like back in those days,
you can still find them on my Bilibili account, just because it is what it is.
It has a special place on my list of dramas.
Number two. I would say if you liked Yi Cun Xiang Si and you love the female lead actress Zhang Yaqing,
her style, the way she looks or the way she fights which is also nice and just overall enjoying her performance.
You should watch his role, she did a really good job, truly If it's not her,
it wouldn't work and it worked very well so far.
If you have to attribute that to somebody on screen holding the drama together,
it would be Zhang Yaqin
The other thing I liked is discovered a really good looking young guy who
by no means is a good actor yet who plays her brother in the drama,
the younger brother, the young youthful general, the tragic character
is like a mixture of the historical brother and nephew character,
Wei Qing and Huo Qubing, If you know the Han dynasty history,
it kind of mix these two characters together.
He gets dubbed by Ma Zhengyang, who has the most youth general voice,
I think in the whole dubbing world in china,
he was the voice of Xiao Pingjing in NIF2
I still have that little bit rosy lens about that voice and when it's placed on a general
young general character and this guy is really good looking
with the screen time he's gotten, I think he does a good enough job,
so I definitely enjoyed him showing up.
Number three is, as I said,this is an unusual project.
It's a passion project from a group of people who are
by no means super professional or have a lot of background in the industry or any of that.
They come together, they make this with the little resources they have.
You can see a lot of details put in the drama.
They actually try to work things out as much as they can.
In terms of the logic of time travel, the clues they can bury in earlier episodes
later when you go back and rewatch you see okay they did it.
So it's all been worked out very carefully and they put as much as they can
into the production with their thinking and their design.
For example, they have different actually title song animation as the story moves on,
the images will change, different episodes will have different design of that.
They would also put at the end credits, two versions of the credits.
One is in a lighter color, one is more obvious
going in reverse order on the screen also showing the two person's time travel timeline thing.
Also one is in simplified chinese, the other is in traditional chinese
which suggest a contemporary time and a past time
they treat the project with a lot of care and love.
I read from the main writer and also the editor.
You see the writer and editor is the same person.
You can understand how little this production really is.
Did the whole editing of this whole drama on his 2019 macbook pro final cut home computer
It wouldn't be so different, I guess like if it's a project that I do,
I probably would have to do that on my home computer too.
So it feels like a type of project that is so close to individual people
probably like me or like people watching this video.
If you just have enough knowledge and passion
and barely enough equipment and money to get the thing done,
it's possible to get it done now these days.
It's another small, tiny project that can get a huge audience because of internet,
because of content creation and how it's working these days.
Also new stuff gets made every day
recently i've seen like the new camera that got made by instan 360,
although I don't use go pro, but I am up to date with development.
I'm just marvelled at how many things people can get now these days
with a very reasonable price that allowed them to make content.
In ways that previous super expensive gears can't even get it done
interesting future ahead, with ai, with cheap, accessible equipment.
Who knows, ,maybe in 3 or 5 years time,
we're gonna see a lot more content and this type of content are gonna create their own niche
in the whole content market where it's sandwiched between super proper big production
and a vogger shooting themselves. It's gonna be fictional,
it is gonna be small crew and it will look good enough
because of the technology advancement with ai and everything.
And i'm so curious to see what the future is gonna bring,
how much more new creativity and forms of creativity will get expressed.
I think that's far more interesting than you know
keep seeing so called "proper" projects made by" professional"people
that are actually just crap,
particularly in Chinese dramaland.
So that should conclude my more than halfway review and recommendation
of a tiny tiny drama made by Bilibili with a very unusual background.
Gu Xiang Si QU, An Ancient Love Song.
Thank you for watching AvenueX, i'll see you in my next video,
meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.