Hu Zhu Fu Ren, Pearl Eclipse is a 48 episode web
drama that's being aired on the web platform,
Tencent in china right now,
the drama is led by Yang Mi, Chen Weiting, Xu Kaicheng, Chen Xiaoyun
And it's based on the same title web novel
that was first published back in 2006
written by the author Xiao Ruse as one of many many stories
that takes place in this imaginary land called jiu zhou.
This concept of jiu zhou is rather unusual
and unique thing in the history of chinese novels
Some of the stories coming out of this group of writers have
already been made into dramas such as Tribes and Empires, Eagle Flag.
Both are very hard core period setting fantasy drama
in the concept of Jiu Zhou
It's made up by different dynasties,
different species and clans of beings,
including human,
including other forms of beings.
And one of them is jiao zu,
which has been a long existing mythological creature in chinese culture.
That is a type of water based creature whose tears can turn into pearls.
And the novel Fu Zhu Fu Ren
is mostly focused on jiao zu and their story with the
humans and its dynasties
at the moment I'm making this video.
I've watched the first 12 episodes just about 1/4 of
the entire length of the drama
based on what I've seen
I will give it a one goldmine rating at this point.
As usual I'll first tell you more about the story itself.
And then i'm gonna go into talk about the
good and bad and why I gave it such a rating.
Pearl Eclipse is focused on our female lead character.
Hai Shi played by Yang Mi.
She comes from a fishing village.
The entire village is taxed very heavily by the emperor
Due to emperor's demand for pearls
when she was young
on the brink of getting slaughtered by corrupted officials.
She was rescued by a masked man,
played by Chen Weiting
who later becomes her teacher.
The guy gave her a choice.
If she wants the life of a woman,
she's gonna get comfort,
but nothing else.
If she decided to become a man,
then she will have everything apart from comfort.
And she picked the latter.
Therefore she's taken in as his disciple and in
front of everyone else is being presented as a man.
She's brought to the capital and getting trained under this teacher.
As she grows older,
our story starts officially entangled with the imperial power,
the crazy emperor at the time.
And his long history with our male lead character.
Also our female lead's teacher character.
yeah That's basically what Hu Zhu Fu Ren is roughly about.
I wanna poin out a few things spoiler alert
if you don't want to hear about it.
Come back at this poin
in the original story.
Our male character is actually a eunuch.
And he wasn't before he was an aristocrat
but because of some of the
very sad things that happened between him and the emperor,
he made a decision to castrate himself so that he would never
have any descendants
by the point that our female lead and
male lead character meet in the book,
he's already an eunuch and much much older than her
in the book our male lead character adopted our female lead character
as his son.
Whereas in the drama,
it becomes a student and teacher relationship.
I guess if you make it son and father relationship,
then it's impossible for them to fall in love
Then in the original book eventually because of this and that our
male lead character kind of gave our female lead character to the emperor.
And the big spoiler at the end of the whole
story is our male lead and male second.
So CWT's character and XKC's character both died.
Only our female character was left alive and
she's the emperess and plus she's pregnant,
so she kind of becomes the future heir and
kid becomes the future heir of the dynasty.
We do not know if that's gonna be also the drama.
Since at this point,
we've already seen quite a few essential changes made by the drama adaptation
I'm guessing later for the rest of the story,
they're also gonna do a lot of changes.
And since now these days they stopped vvip nobody can
jump forward to watch what's later than everybody else.
We were just all sit here and wait till the 48 episodes
finished airing to know how they're gonna wrap up.
This story.
Now,
let's get to the personal opinion part of
avenuex the good and bad
on the positive end.
First, this drama has an overall very acceptable production quality.
This is not the best highest,
most expensive period drama production.
We've seen
right at the beginning of this year, we've had Shang Yang Fu
which is not a good drama,
in my opinion,
but it's expensive.
So if you compare this drama to that,
it doesn't have that extensive amount of detailed props,
costumes, sets,
but compared to many many other period dramas,
we've seen this year and definitely among all the other
period dramas that are airing right now or started airing,
say back in september, october.
This is the highest production quality period drama among those.
Second,
this drama did have some of the actors and actresses using their own voice.
Clearly Chen Weiting cannot use his own voice
due to his super strong cantonese accent.
They dunned him with the dubbing actor Che Hao who dubbed
Zhe Yan, Zhang Zhiyao's character in 10 miles of peach blossoms.
I like this dubbing actor's voice,
but because of how familiar I am with his voice and zhe yan,
I had difficulties trying to believe
that voice came out of Chen Weiting's face
Yang Mi, on the other hand,
used her own voice,
not so often happening for her period dramas,
which I appreciate because everybody knows what she sounds like.
Then Xu Kaicheng, I would say,
I appreciate him using his own voice and parts of it is okay,
but his line delivery needs working,
leave that to the later points to talk about most specifically.
Still though I appreciate at least some of the actors use their own voice.
The third positive thing about this drama is up to ep 12
There hasn't been any super stupid plot happening
failing logic that happens.
Say in a lot of Ju JIngyi (led) dramas.
For this drama, it hasn't really happened,
although you do have to believe in a couple of
set up such as Yang Mi is dressed up as a man.
And most of the people think she is he
apart from very close people
who knows her previous story
that will certainly not happen in reality
the moment she shows up in front of you,
there's no way you're gonna mistake her as a guy.
So you have to accept that type of thing.
Those points sounds very boring, I would say,
but those are the positive end of things that I can see from this drama
Now let's move on to things that are not so ideal,
which is why you can see that I have a rather lukewarm response to this drama.
First, not really in the,
order of any kind of importance is the drama is rather
bland
There's hardly any hooks throughout the first 12
episodes to make you wanna say
oh what happens next?
The reason that I was able to watch through it is because
I was doing a lot of other things like craft and stuff.
So I can sit down for hours and have the drama running episode after episodes.
If I have to sort of have like hundred% dedicate time staring at the screen,
I probably would have 2x speeded through certain part of it.
There's very little energy that's running through it.
It's just all through extremely flat.
So this is not necessarily a kind of drama that
requires your full attention while you're watching it.
If you understand chinese.
If you don't, then you probably have to stare the screen and look at subtitles.
The second thing is,
I think this drama still has a level of miscast going on.
If Yang Mi is the female lead actress of this drama.
I don't quite understand why chen wei ting ends up being the male lead.
After 12 episodes.
I see little chemistry between their roles and I don't
quite understand why she falls for him or he kind of
has a particular
um preference towards her.
It's almost like because they're the male lead and female leader of the story.
I know that's the script,
but while you're acting,
the real humans are playing those roles, right?
It has to make it convincing for the audiences.
However you do it
at this point 12 episode,
I don't see that
chen wei ting's acting is very chen wei ting,
if you've ever seen him acting in previous dramas,
he pretty much always looks like that.
First, you can't hear his real voice.
It's already been dubbed over.
Then he has this styling that don't look really,
very good on him.
And then he has this role,
which is a very typical teacher's role who is very
restrained and controlled and having a lot of sad histories
and just not showing that and shouldering the whole world
on him and wooden faced
like the typical teacher role in period drama
So with all that,
his end of things just doesn't work.
it's like a statue just stands there to serve a purpose
of you need that role,
but there's no interaction,
there's no chemistry,
there's no energy moving between him.
and Yang Mi's role
somehow the second lead,
Xu Kaicheng and Chen Xiaoyun story feels much more energetic and interesting,
because it's a more
sexy set up about a crazy emperor
who's gone mad due to losing his love of his life,
and then getting a second doppleganger married to him
who looks exactly like his previous lover,
but is not the same person.
And he's kind of insane about the whole thing.
But then when it comes to this couple,
the problem is xu kaicheng's line delivery
constantly brings me out of the story.
He literally sounds like this.
When he talks in Chinese
he chops everything into pieces.
It's very annoying plus the psycho emperor kind of role.
The tyrant role is such an interesting role.
If you're a good actor immediately I remember
ssEmpress Ki from korea and our male lead's brilliant acting.
This is an old drama.
It's been around for years now and now when I
close my eyes and think of a mad king or a mad crzay emperor
who's destroyed in a way
but then is still fragile and pretty.
Immediately,
this is the actor who comes to my mind and his portrayal of the
crazy emperor in the later part of Empress Ki was like
ah so good
and xu kaicheng's acting is just unfortunately too too far away from that.
So although with the rather interesting setup of the second lead,
still there's a level of miss casting and asking too much for
actors who cannot deliver what should be delivered for the role
And then the last thing is,
this drama is based on a 15 year old web novel
back then it was a popular thing to write such type of character set up and stories.
And also it's heavily dependent upon how well it's written by the author,
how the language is used.
Once you adapt that to screen,
you visualize,
you cannot really just ride on the beauty of language anymore.
You have to submit to some of the hard
physical kind of laws of visual storytelling.
And this type of story,
i'd say in 2021 is a little bit out dated and not well accepted by people.
These days
just think about the two male leads,
and they have this weird torturing relationship.
And the male lead eventually married the woman who
loves him to his friend slash enemy like fri-enemy
It's weird
how the woman is used in this entire game of politics and power
let's say,
is no longer that appreciated today.
And obviously we haven't seen the later episodes of how the story is gonna go.
They probably are gonna change a lot of those things.
Don't think there's a way of running away from Yang Mi's
character eventually marries Xu Kaicheng's character.
and ~~~
I just like ~~~
you know
by the 1/4 mark of this drama,
I'd say I haven't fallen in love with any of the characters I haven't become
interested in any of their future fate
probably only Chen Xiaoyun's role
I'm a little bit curious about how she's gonna survive
because she's married to this insane emperor and how.
She's gonna tread water carefully and get what
she wants at the end of the whole story.
Probably that's the only character I find.
A little bit interesting,
intriguing everyone else is just so uh yeah okay
fine like I don't quite care what happens to you
And also considering how many things have happened up to episode 12,
there really haven't been many
if you compare that to 10 miles,
which is a 4 years old drama now.
And also led by Yang Mi
by episode 12.
Think about how many things have happened.
Her first life with Mo yuan has already finished,
her sort of like second life is at the end or just finished because she
loses her memory and she becomes a human and then she's gonna meet ye hua,
right?
Like it's already moved to that point and that drama okay it's
a little bit longer than this is like 50 or so episodes still.
Things just progress is too slowly in Pearl Eclipse.
I don't know I just feel this drama is watchable,
but then you probably need other prompts to watch
it other than the story is self being interesting.
So if I have to sum up this drama in one sentence in my opinion,
what it feels like it is the chicken rib
*notes on screen
That would be the end of this first impression video on pearl eclipse.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
I'll see you in my next video
meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.