so I'm super pleased by the fact that the rebel
is a proper spy drama,
enjoyment, pure enjoyment.
Pan Ni Zhe, The rebel is a 43 episodes drama that's been
aired in china right now on both the web platform Iqiyi
and the satellite television station cctv eight,
the drama is directed by Zhu Yilong, Tong Yao
and led by zhu long, tong, yao
Wang Zhiwen,Wang Yang, Zhang Zixian
and many x 3 other people.
It is based on a medium length novel written by the author
Bi Yu, it's been updated two episodes per day.
So as it went live on the 7th,
it will literally finish airing within this month.
At the moment i'm shooting this video,
I have watched the first 16
as this video goes out.
It would have aired into the 20 number episodes.
Hopefully nothing weird happened to this drama by that point
i'm gonna give this drama.
A two gold mine rating.
If the drama continues with its narrative quality,
its storytelling quality,
as what i've seen in the first 16 episodes,
it's gonna be at least a two gold mine.
If it does something exceeding my expectation,
not saying it cannot get a three gold mine.
And I would be very happy if that happens.
So as usual, i'll tell you the good things and bad things about this drama
And i'll reverse order because most of the
things like 90% of the things about this drama,
is on the positive side.
Before that, though some general introduction to the story itself,
like I said at the beginning,
this is based on a medium form novel that only has 50,000 chinese characters.
If you translate that into english,
it would be around 30,000 english words.
It's really short novel.
It gets translated into 43 episodes drama.
The first thing you'll think about is, is it
gonna be really draggy and watered down?
No.
The script writers did a lot of extension and enrichment of the original text.
The story starts in the year 1936
and it will run
If it's exactly like the book over a decade long,
it will cover the entirety of japanese sino war and after
the war leading into people's republic of china's founding.
So that's quite a big span of time.
We will come across many different political parties.
So it does require a little bit knowledge on the audience's side,
particularly international audiences.
If you wanna go into this drama to know who is who
and who is forwhat
the most obvious would be, japanese vs chinese
so all the chinese people against the japanese,
but then there will also be traitors on china's side.
And then within china,
there are power struggles between the communist party and guo ming dang
GMD or the KMT or KMD depending on how you translate that into english.
And within the guo ming dang,
there's also divisions between different sides,
like it gets complicated,
particularly after in the story when shanghai is occupied by japanese,
then it gets more more complicated.
If you've watched the drama,
The Disguiser back in 2015 that's produced by
Zheng Wu Yang Guang and led by Hu Ge and Wang Kai
And Jin Dong, it's pretty much the same kind of set up in terms
of what are the power parties in this drama and
why they're fighting against each other
And we will come into the drama following our main character played by Zhu Yilong
Lin Nansheng in the drama,
he starts as somebody who is just a trainee at a spy school
and then he gets selected because he's very good, to work
in shanghai's division and he will go through many challenges and many things.
And he will also experience the turbulent time and
it will push him to different sides of things.
And obviously eventually he will end up on the RED side.
Now.
Let me talk about first,
the tiny bit of things, that are not ideal.
To be honest, this drama really doesn't have significant shortcomings.
In my opinion, it is something personally that I prefer to see,
and this drama doesn't offer,
which is the overall style,
which would include its visual language,
how it gets edited together,
camera language, color palette
that side of things,
I feel it is too standard.
It is a very "drama" drama
It doesn't have any flare of individual,
design of things.
Think about last year's Fearleass Whispers
It has strong,
stylistic look,
the color palette the way it's told it has that cinematic look of it.
I'm not saying it as video-y as say the early 2000 dramas,
but with today's technology, camera,
the possibilities that you can play in post production,
it really is not that hard.
If you wanna give it a very memorable distinctive look
but this drama doesn't have it.
It's super drama standard look
I'd prefer personally to have a little bit more on the aesthetic side.
Then let's talk about the good things.
And within that I will mention a little bit of things that's again very
personal that I feel it could do better
first and foremost and most important.
This is a proper traditional spy drama.
When I say that it's not like chinese dramaland
hasn't produced many republic of china settings spy dramas in recent years,
but none of them really,
really can be considered as an exciting,
traditional, plot heavy, the mouse and cat game that type of, spy drama
None of them can really be called that even
last year's quite successful, Fealeass Whispers
it's a very different angles spy drama where
spy plot is not really the major chunk of the drama.
The other ones are pretty embarrassing in quality storytelling.
Sniper, led by Huang Xuan, wasn't happy about that even earlier
with Wan Qian and Chen Ken, Tuo Shen
that drama also doesn't quite work.
Jing Zhe, Awakening of the Insects with Zhang Ruoyun and Wang Ou
that drama... it fails halfway
even that drama with
Qin Junjie and Xu Lu, can't even remember its name
also just it's like the spy....
not exciting
logic sometimes just fails completely and people do things
that just does not fit into its time, all of that.
So for a really exciting well written logic all works out.
Characters are all intelligent.
This is the first one
that I can actually sit down and watch and not double speed
through it and actually have to pay attention to what shows upon screen.
And sometimes you even need to stop and think
about what they've just done to realize.
So this person is laying a trap for that person that will be pulled up later.
I haven't had that experience for a long time.
So i'm super pleased by the fact that
The Rebel is a proper spy drama.
And particularly I like the fact that our
leading character played by Zhu Yilong
Lin Nansheng is not a god sent superman.
Often you come across this type of the lead characters in spy drama
who are just overtly lucky and carrying a huge heroe's halo with them.
It's like everywhere they go, plot armor, they don't get hurt,
they don't get into trouble.
I like the fact that our male lead character by this point really still
hasn't achieved anything significantly prominent in the plot
He's not given any special treatment for no good reason from his superiors.
He's not a person who miraculously saves the day.
I haven't seen that really in this type of drama again,
for a long time that respects the reality of things,
the laws of physics,
and respect audience's intelligence,
and as story writing,
it's also correct that you wanna set up a main lead character as
somebody the audiences will identify with
all his enemies,
all the things against him and all the challenges.
He faces are hard
kind of entails great sacrifice and prices on his side
like that makes the story more interesting.
And the bad guys are cruel so that our main
character's struggle becomes worthwhile.
The second point that I love about this drama is
such good acting,
although this drama when it's promoted,
you know, it's led by ZYL and TY
once you start watching the drama,
particularly the early episodes,
they really are not dominant at all
ZYL's role Lin Nansheng is definitely the main lead actor,
but even if that's the case,
he's not significantly predominantly the person holding the screen time.
This is between an ensemble drama and a definitive lead drama drama
You see how good the entire cast is
Wang Zhiwen
One of the most veteran actors working today in china.
And honestly speaking,
he would be one actor in this entire crew who is probably
qualified to teach other actors acting
one of the best line delivery person
in the entirety of chinese film and dramaland
when I first saw that he is one of the main cast last year
I was like this drama is probably gonna be good.
Then the other actor Wang Yang
who also at this point has just exited
the narrative for a while and he will come back later in the drama.
I also have been noticing him for over a decade.
He is not high profile,
he really hardly ever leads a drama
He is so good.
The two Wangs of this drama,
the actors are just like blessing to this drama.
He plays this very cocky, very confident,
super intelligent and super good at doing
his work leader of the shanghai division.
And there's not even 1 second or one moment when he's on screen that,
he didn't do a good job.
Everything he does oozing was dramatic tension.
Then the other actor supporting role that I
highly appreciate is the actor Zhang Zixian.
If you've watched Bureau of Transformers,
the animal turning into human drama that was pretty wild.
You probably have noticed him
this is one of the golden supporting roles (actor) because
he doesn't stand out, look wise, as one of the most good looking at her out there.
But when he is in any drama,
he's just like give you the feeling he's the perfect person for it.
He just fitted like it's tailored for him
for all the scenes this actor has,
which mostly happens between him and Wang Zhiwen or Wang Yang
He never drops the ball when he's facing off those actors.
He's as good, perfect acting,
and particularly because between these 3 roles
they are the higher ups.
So there are so much happening underneath the surface.
There's so much bureaucracy,
but also clever thinking and planning and people trying to figure
out what's the other person about
going on every line between
them back and forth is delicious to watch.
And then there are many other roles who would
just show up for a bit and then disappear.
This drama just covers so many,
so many different characters and each and
every one of them is individually interesting,
great acting and great writing at the same time happening on screen and,
just enjoyment,
pure enjoyment
now about the not so ideal part in the ideal part of the points,
which is because the supporting roles are all very
well written and so well played by all the actors,
it actually made the two leads looking or less.
Good,
so for the leading actor Zhu Yilong leading actress Tong Yao,
i'm not saying they're not doing a good job and they
don't affect my enjoyment of the drama at all.
They don't pull me out of the story at all and
i am really looking forward to their development.
But so far within the first 16 episodes,
I really have to say in comparison to the much
older more experienced actors in this drama,
their performance kind of shows that they still have a
distance to go
for my dear long time audiences of my channel
2018 Guardian Zhu Yilong,
what it means to me and how much stuff i've done.
I have a filter I cannot ignore it.
So I put extra attention on say Bai Yu or Zhu Yilong or even other
supporting role actor actresses who are part of the production.
I watch pretty much everything that these leading actors have done,
although Reboot I haven't managed to watch through it
it can't continue because it boring,
but pretty much everything else i've seen ZYL done since then
and then his older stuff i've dug out and watch most of it.
I am so familiar with this actor that I have noticed multiple times recent years
that he has kind of fallen into a very habitual way of acting.
He has a standard procedure of doing certain scenes certain emotion,
certain reactions that is so
anticipat-able
I don't know if that's a word.
I can pretty much 99% predict how he's gonna act in a particular scene.
I'm like he's gonna flatter his eyelashes,
he's gonna look down.
He's gonna bite his teeth and he does that.
I don't know if that's a good thing for an actor or not so good,
or maybe it's just me who's watched too much of this actor.
So i'm too familiar.
So in this drama,
i'd say he's doing an okay job,
but nothing of his acting has in any way delivered me any level of surprised.
I always look forward to familiar actors and actresses breaking through,
stepping out of the comfort zone,
give me something I totally didn't expect,
but we're not at the end of the drama yet.
Original novel does write this character as a quite
gone through a lot of changes and a lot of different stages
character
at this point still pretty much in his initial stage of
character development,
but later there's gonna be significant changes happening to this
character if the script is generally following the original text.
So there's still possibility of me being surprised by
his acting later
as for the leading actress Tong Yao
she's also doing an okay job particularly around
the episode10 to 14 when she encounters
her biggest challenge yet in this drama
I do see a level of acting that I am happy with,
but for the other parts that are so not plot-wise exciting.
It's just okay.
And unfortunately,
the by Bai Yu Lan
the White Magnolia award just happened in china
She is the person who won the best actress.
And honestly internet opinion are 99% that I can see everywhere is like.
It shouldn't be her and I agree.
I think the actress should getting the leading actress award
this year should be Re Yi Zha from Shan Hai Qing
I think most people agree with that
and a lot of people think
that actress got robbed and for a lot of complicated reasons,
like many awards
it has spaces to maneuver because
of all kinds of power and money and behind it.
So Unfortunately that just happened and then she got
the award and she's the leading actress of this drama.
So I don't know like it's just coincidental.
I never thought of her as one of the best actress out there, but she's not bad either
so I still need the later episodes of her acting
to 100% form my opinion about her acting in this drama,
but so far I would just give her a satisfactory rating.
So for the two leading actor actress by no means saying
they're not good
just in comparison to great supporting roles,
they appear to be less good
honest opinion.
Don't know if that's gonna get me murdered.
But like I said, I'm always gonna be honest in my reviews
that should conclude my first impression of the drama,
The Rebel, Pan Ni Zhe
It is the best spy drama.
I've seen this year and probably in the last 2 or 3 years
of this particular genre as a standard traditional,
exciting, plot heavy,
no wasted moments,
no dragginess,
everybody is intelligent.
as they are supposed to be drama
and I'm very happy, very very happy
that this drama exists and i'll definitely stick till the end.
And I wish the later episodes are gonna be even better.
I don't know if they're gonna adapt it to the point
that they significantly change many characters' fate.
If not, if they stick to it pretty much,
my warning to you would be
get ready.
Many of them will go out
maybe in a bang
but they will go out
in China.
There's a saying about Min Guo, Republic of China setting
setting films and dramas,
which is
*notes on screnn
which is if there are ten stories that's set in min guo,
Nine of them will end in tradegy
the one left over got burned into ashes,
get prepared for ashes and burning and knives
and tears and death and bullets and explosions.
I'm just happy that I live in 21st century.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
i'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy.
Drama watching.