Hello, you're watching AvenueX and today let's talk about the recently finished airing short web drama.
Hui Xiang, Echo
This is a 13 episodes web drama that has just finished airing on the platform iqiyi
belonging to its Light On dramas, it is directed by the very famous film director Feng Xiaogang
written by the scriptwriter Dong Xi,whose real name is Tian Dailin
and has written quite a few very highly claimed scripts.
The drama is led by Song Jia, Wang Yang,also featuring Zhu Yuchen, Wu You, Bao Beier
It was shot from the end of 2021 December to middle of February 2022
mainly in the province Hainan
based on the whole drama i've watched i'll give it a rather high rating
a 2.5 gold mine, If I have to fall it onto a whole number,
it will be a high 2 Goldmine
It happens to impress me on certain levels and certain aspects of drama making.
I will attempt to while not spoiling the story for you,
tell you why I would say this is a unique drama.
Hopefully by the end of this video, you'll get a good idea about what type of drama this is
and whether it may be something that you are interested in.
Let me first introduce you to the story, the structure the character set up.
This is a contemporary setting drama.
If you wanna be specific, it's about 2018, but time is not that essential.
Our protagonist is played by Song Jia, she is a policewoman
because she's too responsible and works too hard, it heavily impacts her private life.
She's married to Wang Yang's role,who is a professor of literature in a university.
They have a daughter, they've been married for quite some years.
Our story starts with a murder case of a young woman.
The the case becomes this police woman's responsibility
along the way of her investigation of this case, step by step very slowly,
which is really the whole span of this drama.
You'll come across a drama that is mostly focused on the personal space of our main characters.
The policewoman, the professor of literature,it influences their professional life,
how professional life also, in turn, influences their private relationship.
Mostly, it's actually to do with human relationships,romance, a man and a woman's relationship,
doubt, marriage, a very detailed anatomy of the psychological space of a person
and also of people in relationship.
The actual criminal case is just the through line, the bone on which all the meat hang
and the meat is actually not really the case.
It really cannot be made by other platforms among the four major web drama platforms these days.
This truly is only tailored to iqiyi's style and then once it made it,
it's almost impossible to put it in any existing categories of their drama categories.
It does include a crime case, I guess that's why they put it in Light On
but it's so not your typical go to the end of the earth and grab the criminal type of story.
If you are looking for a typical page turner, plot heavy,
just focused on solving a murder crime drama.
This probably is not your cup of tea
on the positive end, what I think this drama has done very well.
Point number one, a very solidly produced contemporary drama
and probably better than other average contemporary dramas you see in chinese dramaland
since it's been been done by the very well known film director Feng Xiaogang
and he has a very good cinematographer and script writer and his own experience at disposal.
So immediately it gives you the vibe of its carefully polished, clearly styled, designed
very professionally carried out production.
The drama uses mostly live recording, you can hear very loud actually
sometimes environment sound that is so recorded on set
even the title sequence of the drama and the font used for the title Echo 回响
are all very graphically well designed to reflect the theme, echo，
things that are mirroring back to each other, as you watchthis drama you'll understand why they do it.
Then the second point we have to talk about the actors
this drama is so right to cast the main couple Wang Yang, Song Jia
as the married couple who has serious problems in their marriage
if you watched last year years A Lifelong Journey where they played a couple
at some stage of that very long drama
and back then a lot of people really ship them,
they are just so perfect on screen, matching for each other.
The physical appearance, when you see these two people stand together,
just immediately get they are a pair,you can almost smell the tension,
the pheromones that's in the atmosphere when they are very strongly emotionally charged at each other.
Wife and husband showdown, detailed conversation about things that you
99% of the time don't see getting represented on screen in any chinese dramas.
Also Song Jia throughout this drama almost never wears makeup.
Even with that she's just stunningly beautiful,
the type of lady who can bend anyone,
she's one of the real Alphas of chinese drama land
when she's present and everyone is like secondary
then for the other supporting roles in casting and performance.
I really appreciate that also they find the perfect actor and actresses for those roles,
they're all very good,so I wouldn't point them out one by one here,
but I would just mention one person which I didn't expect
which is the actor Bao Beier, Bao Beier's role has a quite significant chunk of screen time
during the mid stage of the story.
If you don't know much about him, he doesn't have the best reputation
in chinese dramaland, entertainment business, public opinion.
And I would say he totally deserves that.
okay He brought that unto himself there's no argument.
If you go and search, you'll find it
a lot of people probably in china if they know this drama contains him,
they probably just wouldn't watch it. Honestly. I don't have a very good opinion about this person either.
But I have to say his performance in this drama is unexpectedly good.
He fits that role so much that you sometimes forget it's being played by that bald guy.
This is so due to the script's solid quality,
the directors understanding of how to move all the actors as chess pieces on his board.
and then obviously that the actors themselves have the actual professional skills to do the job
point number three, like I said earlier,
this drama is more like a deep psychological analysis
sitting down at your psychiatrist for long long session,
than a typical crime investigation drama,
you will hear a lot of very well written lines that are slightly, let's say,
above average and daily life language,
and they're doing it in a way almost like contemporary stage play
the apartment building that a lot of things take place of this married couple
is a completely built set, because they want to be able to move the camera easily.
So if it's a real actual apartment, you wouldn't be able to move a lot of equipment.
So it's a completely built set with movable walls.
And Feng Xiaogang designed with the cameraman
many long take that takes place in this private living space.
They'd be chatting in the kitchen and moved to the dining room
and moved to the sitting room and moved to their bedroom and getting out
and going to the study, and they're walking around the whole space.
And it's one long take over of them just getting into a conversation
and conversation starts to go crazy.
It is such a great experience on camera for the audiences to have that one-go shot,
great acting, great blocking, moving around the space
to deliver that type of dramatic impact that you rarely see in chinese dramaland
if you really like long take, long conversation, clever conversation,
deeper and sometimes more than ordinary life daily conversation happening in a drama.
This is the only one I can think of that we've seen recently
for all those reasons i've stated above.
It's worth spending a little bit time check it out
unless you know, right from the start that this is definitely not your type of stuff,
then you know don't worry about it.
Then let's talk about what is not so ideal about this drama
first is i've already mentioned right at the beginning,
the positioning of this drama, when you say it's a Mi Wu Ju Chang, Light On drama
You expect a type of drama already, although that expectation
it's not like iqiyi has ever stated, we're only gonna do this specific type of drama in here.
They're just saying broadly thriller, crime, suspense.
It only has this place to land, which is Light On, Mi Wu Ju Chang
Although it really isn't a typical one.
So it's very hard to say what else can you do?
You cannot create another category of drama that is called
psychoanalysis drama from itqiyi and only put one drama in it.
Anybody who knows Mi Wu Ju Chang Light On
because of its reputation when its first couple of dramas got really popular
when the hear it's Light On, they're gonna expect it to be something,
but it's gonna turn out to be different
depending on how people deal with that gap of expectation.
Some people will just feel oh i'm so not in for this and I feel cheated.
and a couple of other previous not doing well, MWJC dramas kind of had the same problem,
but then why I have a positive response instead of a negative for this drama is
because although it's different from my expectation,
it's well done, and it's well done in ways that I didn't expect.
Therefore, when I see something that is different and refreshing,
I usually give it an extra point, kind of encouraging and be thankful
to something that's different from others.
So that's still in the negative end in terms of this drama's erformance.
And why I could totally see when somebody goes into this drama,
they may not like it for that particular reason.
The second, not so ideal thing about this drama is
I still say if they could just make the criminal case pacing better
and then the twists and turns of the case, if they can strengthen that,
just about,let's say, 10%, 20%,
it would probably balance off this drama better.
This drama has a couple of episodes that's focused on
the marriage relationship between our two leads
where it almost completely forgets about that it has a murder case along the way
that the female leads needs to solve.
One way is to re -edit the drama,
pace it slightly differently, moving the scenes and stuff.
And then maybe on the script level just add a little bit more
at the investigation end of things to balance it off.
The third thing is this drama still contains some kind of
you can almost feel intentionally added in lines and
even voice overs to make it pass censorship
over and over again that we are policemen and we have to
you know like yeah fight for the justice and then keep the people safe.
It has some parts of the drama where it's so manually injected.
Ideally you'd want it to to not be there, but then crime dramas,
particularly concerning police work dramas, have a lot of limits in chinese dramaland
sometimes you just can't do certain things or sometimes you have to do some things.
So I understand and relating to that is also, sometimes this drama uses voiceover,
which is always something you should be using very carefully in drama and film
in this drama. I don't feel it's redundant,
but I think it's been done, not in the best way of cueing the audience that it's for this purpose.
because this drama is heavily focused on Song Jia's role
and her omental space and how she views the world.
If they set this up right from the beginning with very subjective camera, views, angles, and editing,
and just setting up the atmosphere and right from the beginning,
let you hear that there is actually a voiceover of her.
It's almost like her commenting on her own life and her mental state
Along the story's development, just set it up that there is gonna be invoice over.
Then I think it will be fine, because it actually goes very well with the particular type of drama this is
but they didn't really do that, just starts as a very normal
crime investigation drama, murder happens, she goes to investigate,
and you've already watched quite some content of this drama.
Suddenly, a voiceover pops out of nowhere, You're like
Ah? How weird!
And in a way, i'd say if they are already doing that
they might as well just turn it up,
do more voiceover, of the characters' internal monologue.
But right from the beginning, let the audiences know.
This is the type of drama that's gonna use it and use it very well.
Probably everybody would accept it and think this is actually the unique strength of the drama,
but they didn't, so it got a bit weird.
The final thing that's not so ideal about this drama is
there are a couple of things it hasn't really explained
it happened in the drama and then there's no follow up
and you don't quite know, so is that real? Did that happen in his in imagination or her imagination?
It's just like gone, there's no tying up of certain clues you see earlier.
I'm not gonna spoil that for you, but you'll see it.
If you watch through you'll know what i'm talking about.
Also the final who gets the punishment is very not detailed explained.
It resolves to end screen types,
just fonts and typing out in words, showing you who gets what sentence, who gets what sentence.
Again, I think that's a censorship thing is you have to tell the bad people who gets what
you can't just leave it open
to conclude, this drama is something I didn't expect i'd like,
but I really ended up liking very much and I cannot wait for
Wang Yang and Song Jia to work together as a couple again
in any future chinese dramas imaginable.
could be period could be contemporary, I don't care
I just wanna see these two on screen together.
This drama ends with a very interesting scene that you rarely see in chinese dramaland of a couple
with the actress Song Jia and the actor Wang Yang
and her role the policewoman and his role the lit prof
it's just a perfect way of ending the story and then also honestly speaking,
these two people, if they are a couple in the story space,
you can't imagine them not be the perfect tormentor of each other.
And it's almost unimaginable that
they'd ever be able to keep their hands off each other for too long.
That's how interesting that relationship is.
And also the actors just bring that to life so well
I hope this video is useful for you to decide whether you should
venture into this 13 episode story
that will be the end of this review from AvenueX on the drama Hui Xiang, Echo
Thank you for watching. I'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.