One of the best you're gonna come across this year,
how cute she is,
everyone is so clever.
Hi,
you're watching AvenueX
where a junkie on good story telling shares her thoughts
knowledge and occasional weird ideas on stories and how they're told.
Yu Ci Xiao Wu Zuo, The Imperial Coroner is a 36 episodes web drama
that's been aired on Tencent,
led by Ssu Xiaotong,
Wang Ziqi, Yang Yandong, Zhao Yaoke.
This drama is produced by Ling He Wen Hua
which is a company that has actually up to today produced
some quite interesting projects such as Lao Jiu Men
Sha Hai, Jia Ru Mei You Yu Jian Ni (imagine me without you)
that drama, I have highly recommended to my channel viewers
a long time ago if you still haven't watched it.
When you find time it's a short drama,
it's really worth checking out very good drama
then closes to the
current drama airing that has impressed a lot of people including me,
would be Zhong Ji Bi Ji, The Ultimate Note
This drama is also an ip drama based on an existing novel.
So far as I'm making this video,
it has air 12 episodes.
I've watched the first ten,
i'll give it that one gold mind rating,
but it's a high one gold mine.
I still need a little bit convincing to give it a two gold mine at this point,
because we have more than 2/3 of the way to go.
And we all know chinese dramas have repeatedly
taugt us do not set up our expectation too high.
So if the drama holds up to its narrative quality till the end,
it's gonna get a two gold mine.
Now let's talk about the details.
As the title suggests,
pretty straightforward.
It is about a coroner who is a female character
in this drama played by Su xiaotong
the leading role chu chu,
it's set in late tang dynasty and she is from guizhou province
and she goes to the capital city in chang'an,
which is today is xi'an because she heard that
they're actually looking for coroners.
And anyone who can get through the test can become one
when she got to the capital.
Obviously, she would eventually meet our
male character whose mother is the princess of the
imperial family.
So he holds both the aristocratic title plus his an important
official and kind of working for the nation's highest,
legal criminal cases,
criminal justice department.
And as you can expect with that kind of setup,
they will go on solving cases,
building up friendship,
and then eventually turn into romance.
And blah blah blah
and that will be the surface plot line where as both leads identity.
And what has happened to their previous generation people is the underlying plot
that leads to a big conspiracy that will be reviewed at the end,
a very common and typical setup of a period setting detective drama.
I am gonna talk about the things that are not ideal first and
then talk about things that I appreciate about this drama.
The first very obvious shortcoming of this drama is,
it's another very,
very budget limited production.
They don't have a lot of money.
So that would restrict a lot of the things that go
into the camera, the quality, the props, the costumes,
particularly the costumes.
Some of the details of things are so rough.
I'm like,
I saw,
and this actually doesn't really affect the narrative quality,
but it does affect the visual and the possibilities
of having really, for example, cool shots
cool sequences,
exciting stuff that definitely takes a lot of money to make.
So this drama will not have that
plus this one character who had
one costume that's like 90% copied from Xiao pingjing's costume,
from the Nirvana in Fire 2
Unfortunately, i'm a master of the Nirvana series and I
compared the two costumes from two dramas.
And the funny thing is it's actually not taken from their warehouse or
anything because these two costumes are made with different textile.
You can tell the fabric is different,
but the design is like 90% the same,
but then I couldn't really pinpoint any other piece of costumes for
any of the other characters in this drama that is clearly copying
any other characters from any other dramas.
Maybe the costume designer of this drama is a huge fan of NIF2
particularly xiao pingjing.
And this person has like some kind of obsession
with that particular look that xiao pingjing has,
therefore they copied that 1 piece of costume.
Unfortunately, they ran into my net,
the spider of chinese drama,
the second shortcoming that may put you off
they are all dubbed
I can bear with that as a period drama
but there are so many scenes in this drama where
the dubbing doesn't match the mouth movement.
Sometimes they're literally speaking totally different lines,
so I don't know what's the original line.
Sometimes the dubbing actors are actually speaking the same line from the actors
but they haven't synced it up with the lips
and it happened too many times in this drama.
I didn't expect for a proper detective drama that really
doesn't have any problem with stepping on the censorship line.
It's not word of honor you know.
You don't have to do lip reading for the "actual lines"
It's very annoying for this drama.
And it happens to almost every character.
Are they rushing in the post production?
Are they stopping it without actually looking at the image?
I can't tell, but it's very annoying.
If I have to be really strict about this drama,
I can still pick out a couple of other things that are not ideal,
but I don't want to do that because the things that actually
surprised me and made me really happy about watching this drama
arel the things that i'm gonna talk about now
and i'm gonna talk about them in the sequences of ascending importance.
First thing is this drama is very cute.
At places, they use a lot of cartoon drawings
and kind of diagrams to show, for example,
examine a dead body,
what she's looking for.
And there's quite a lot of effort that went into the animation,
went into the drawing,
went into showing you that kind of information in this particular style.
And in the first 6 episodes,
they also picked the particular type of opening, which is,
there's no opening titles song
it is from the female lead's character's perspective
recapping what has happened in the previous episode.
From the first person narrative.
It is only until episode seven that they start to put in the title of music.
Before that it's all talking about plot.
and this girl's journey from that you can tell
there's definitely a lot of thinking
a lot of design intentionally.
The second thing I really appreciate about this drama is
because it doesn't have traffic actors.
It has the leads that are literally unknown
who are so probably cheap to hire
and so lacking of fandom in any way
that there is no fan service in this drama.
Usually when a drama cast somebody with a little bit fame
or sort of the fandom in any size,
often you will see there's definitely designed sequences
to do fan services making the leads looking super pretty
like slow motion showingup
and very beautiful costumes and like turning in circles with
circles with our petals falling down and they come down from the heaven,
go and cut this and screen shot this and use it for your desktop.
That type of thing happens for dramas that cast
high profile actors or even like a medium level profile actors,
whereas this drama because pretty much all the leads are like,
who is this person?
Every actor is literally only meant to be playing their roles.
And the roles come first 100% overstepping
the importance of the actors themselves.
And for this type of detective drama where
the selling point should be the plot itself.
The mystery solving,
the process,
exciting adventure.
This is really a great decision that they've made,
or probably just because they don't have
the budget to hire really expensive people.
Then the third thing,
the most important thing,
the thing that made me want to recommend this drama to my viewers if you love.
Detective stories is so far.
It's a really good detective story.
The plot is good.
The logic works.
And as you watch the later episodes, everything,
every tiny little thing that has happened a long time ago in
previous episodes actually gets called back and everything.
Every clue they've thrown out
every moment that's on camera is
meant for something that will link to something that happens later.
This is a script where people have sat down properly,
figuring out all the clues
all the things when we put in what to then be brought up
at what point later so that the whole thing is a
jigsaw puzzle that the audiences can gradually put together
as the characters also gradually figure out what's going on.
I haven't seen a script like this for a period setting detective drama
From chinese dramaland
I don't know for how long and if you watch last year's
Xia Tan Jian Bu Zhi, Ancient Detective, which i've given
it a very high rating and I really liked
in comparison,
so far in the first 10 episodes,
i'd say the detective plot of this drama is better than that one.
So that gives your a reference frame about where the
narrative quality of this drama sits, if you like,
detective stories,
this definitely
probably
ikely to be
one of the best you're gonna come across this year
And then within the quite solid detective plot,
while they also give a little bit space for
romantic development for the leading roles
the male lead, the female lead, the male second, female second.
They really don't over do it.
And sometimes I even feel they should give a little bit more time
for these people to develop that romantic and relationship line.
Everybody is just so proper in their roles
Plus like emperor doing emperor's job
job officials doing official's job
Enuch doing their plotting and their job
assasins doing assasins' job.
There's no other things they're doing at all.
Maybe i'm just being too tortured by the unnecessary romantic
interactions of most of the chinese dramas i've seen.
And I feel like I can't almost get used to this kind of fast pacing
not wasting any time get to the point detective drama.
I would definitely say that's a good thing,
but occasionally I would wish actually adding a little bit more
romantic touch here wouldn't be a problem.
And to add on top of that,
something that is brilliant about this drama is everyone is so clever,
Our male lead, female second, second male lead, second female lead
emailed the princess, the emperor, the eunuch, the good, the bad
everybody you freaking come across
even if it's an extra,
they are at a very good intelligence level
where they can play the game they play.
If you're supposed to be a plotting genius,
you are actually acting as a plotting genius.
If you're supposed to be somebody who's in the high power play for years, right?
As an aristocrat, as an imperial family member,
as a servant to an imperial family member, they are,
as you expect,
would be that intelligent,
that observant,
that careful with what they say,
and then thinking steps ahead against each other,
there is zero dumbness
In this drama, everyone is at the level that you expect they should be at.
Otherwise they wouldn't be able to do what they do.
And this is so rare.
If you watch a lot of crappy chinese period dramas you know
what i'm talking about
this is so rare that everyone is literally clever.
I think you probably already know knowing yourself as what
type of viewers of dramas and what type of drama this is,
whether you should go in watching it.
My sincere wish for the drama is.
The plot holds up to the last episode.
36 is still quite a long way to go and we've just had a
really successful 36 episodes count drama
i'm still in it,
I haven't gotten off the mountain yet,
still that drama right in the later parts wobbled quite a bit.
I hope this drama holds up till the end.
Personally.
I haven't read the original novel
I don't know for the original novel how it ends or
whether the story is as good all the way through.
I hope the drama would do that.
Also if you've watched Young Blood, Da Song Shao Nian Zhi
everybody is still waiting for the season 2
our family character is
xiao jing from the drama and I know she is one of the most adored
character from that drama and she's also very adorable in this drama too.
So it's definitely worth your time watching
how cute she is.
And then i keep mentioning things that I should end this video,
but this drama has a lot of very interesting CPs
The two leads definitely works.
The chemistry, the male second and the female second also works,
but then the male lead and second male lead.
They have great chemistry and they're such good friends,
and they literally can talk with each other with eyes like they
don't even have to say things and they understand each other.
And it's been played very well.
And then the female and female second,
Ju Shi Da Hao! this is definitely like you can ship it on the
GL angle and there's no problem because they also are so cute together.
So within the four leading roles,
you already have four CPs that you can play with.
So the shipologist out there this drama ma has a feast for you.
Then finally I would mention the male lead actor Wang Ziqi
I have no idea who he is.
He's definitely not the first moment looking at his face.
You'd be impressed by how go looking he is type of actor
and he playing a period role at times.
I still feel he needs a bit training,
particularly in his posture about how he holds himself.
But apart from that, he's acting is actually quite good.
He's playing a role who is very intelligent,
but who is also very calm, observant, quiet,
who doesn't really show his emotions and show his reactions very directly.
but I really enjoy his performance,
the little eyebrow movement and the timing
and the eyeing of his character shows this.
This actor actually knows what he's doing
and he's not trying to act
more or over the limit where it makes sense
for his character to show to the world, to the public.
It's a very interesting,
subtle level of control.
I am intrigued.
I can't wait for the further development of all
the characters, the good people, the bad people,
the people who i'm not sure yet,
whether they are good or bad,
can't wait for the further development of all of them.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
i'll see you in my next video
meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.