Hello, you're watching AvenueX
where a junkie on good storytelling, shares her thoughts,
knowledge and occasional weird ideas on stories
and how they're told.
This is my ranting video only recently started airing
period fantasy drama, Immortal Samsara
if you know you're gonna get offended
and you won't feel very good about it.
It may make your day in anyway,
not as happy as it could be.
Please don't watch this video.
It's not worth making your day feel
less than it could be by me talking here,
quit.
Now.
If you're still here, I am going to assume you either also have
quite a few things to rant about
or no matter how people diss at it
you're not gonna get offended
So for these targeted audiences, sit tight
let's talk about Chen Xiang Ru Xie
last year If you still remember,
Yang Zi's official fandom kind of came out publicly,
denounced this drama saying they're not gonna support it.
They think this is a project that she got forced into making,
supposedly that she wants to move on
taking more complicated roles as she grows older
instead of playing constantly the same type of character
in period fantasy drama.
But unfortunately, due to some contractual issues she has to fulfill,
she is again pulled into this production,
then the drama went into production in july and wrapped in october.
Right now this drama is being divided into two parts,
pretty much like this drama and that drama.
Currently the upper part is 38 episodes.
The lower part hasn't been officially announced,
but it's also around 40 episodes long.
So in total,
this drama is not gonna be shorter than,
let's say 75 episodes.
The drama is led by Yang Zi and Cheng Yi
It is based on a novel written by the author Su Mo
and it did get quite a bit adaptation
such as actually changing the official cp
the male character to a different male character.
At this point making this video,
i've watched the first 18 episodes and I have to
confess I did speed through quite a big section of it,
sometimes 4x the speed.
Because even though we speeding is not enough.
And since i've already told you from sentence 1 in this video,
it's a ranting video.
so
Let's talk about what's worth ranting about.
This is a boring ass fantasy period drama
of the boring asa celestial kingdom setting
that has so gone out of fashion.
I literally cannot believe in the year 2022,
some people are still playing with it.
The whole idea of immortals are not allowed to fall in love
and our leads happen to be people who just can not help
but fall in love.
And there's nothing else they care about or they do
apart from fall in love.
And the only thing that's important about the storytelling
is for them to fall in love.
The much more interesting and eyeball grabbing and definitely
gonna get you more traffic from episode one setting,
celestial world would be
making everybody who doesn't give a shit to romance
all those immortals
Don't they have bigger ambitions?
Don't they have more important things to do.
Shouldn't they be so competitive against each other that they neglect
romance to the point that it causes problem of population decreasing,
which is a thing actually going on in our world.
So I mean satirically, if you write a script like that,
it's also gonna be very funny.
China, south korea, japan,
in recent years have seen great decline of population.
You should write a celestial palace where nobody cares about romans.
Nobody wants to give birth to children.
Everybody just workaholics.
The emperor decided
No you all have to get married
within the month and then give birth to babies.
If you don't, you're gonna get punished.
That setup will be so much more interesting
forced marriage.
Everybody likes that
all the irony and and comparison you can pull
from that to our world,
the whole 24/7 working and no rest culture.
I'm just giving an example.
You can do other things, but i'm just saying that will
be so much more interesting story wise, obviously,
because this drama is based on an existing novel
and that novel isn't like that.
When you get an outdated ip on your hand
and you have to make money out of it,
but then you can't do too much about it,
but still you cannot help to change essential settings
what a pile of shitty problems you have.
I have this specific fan for this specific purpose.
Number one,
hao qiong
so poor
compared to many other very similar setup genre drama
within the last, say 5 years,
love and destiny,
ashes of love
love and redemption.
Even last year's ancient love poetry.
If you've watched any of those or all of them,
and then you watch this drama
First thing you wanna say is hao qiong
it's on the same poor,
like literally not having enough budget level as say,
pillow book, the look of it,
the roughness,
the plastic quality of the things when it goes on extreme close up
immortus all live in that environment and using
that kind of ornaments and that kind of clothing,
that's not a higher realm that I ever wanna go to.
If I have to work hard to get there,
I might as well just stay on earth forever.
As it is poor.
It is also inheriting all the boring ass.
Aesthetics of all the Xian Xia dramas,
the super pale color of the heavily realm,
and all the bad guys wear dark color,
everybody looks like the same person,
male or female from the back.
really When they stand like that,
you can't tell who's who
number two,
no matter if you are the good ones or the bad ones In this story
every immortal is so childish, so silly.
These days first and second year primary school kids
in this world will all have more complicated thoughts,
planning
ploy.
If they want to,
then all those immortals added together,
you just write
"I am a bad person" on your face in this drama,
this character,
the way she looks at people and the way she speaks
and even the dubbing actress' particular way of speaking,
they picked for her, screams
I'm the bad person of this story telling.
who's conspiring all the time to kill every other women in competition,
like literally her tone of speech.
It's just so ~~~~~i'm a bad person.
In your face, bad people don't even try to hide.
They're bad people, okay like their bad intentions
are written all over their face and voice.
It also comes from things that don't fit basic logic.
It is clearly stated right from the beginning of the story
that in this particular heavenly kingdom,
it is not allowed for any immortals to fall in love
Everybody knows that
that's the hard rule of this existence.
Yet every female little immortal that walks around in this story,
they are all fan girling our male lead
What?
don't you realize scriptwriter that like,
this is just like not making sense.
This leads to the third thing which I have to categorize
in my head in terms of like pointing them out,
but really they're just a mess,
a pool of things that relate to each other,
but kind of are all totally stupid.
There is not a coherent view on this.
Celestial palace, the world, the rules,
the logic of how things work
like what you've just heard me saying,
they're immortal, but they're stupid,
the immortal, they have superpowers,
but then they still resolve to using a broomstick to clean the space up
They eat egg fried rice.
Also,
the idea of playing pranks on each other in this immortal world
of those immortals are taking your clothes away
while you're taking a bath.
Seriously?
he has MAGIC!
He can just create things out of nowhere
also like things ar magical,
but then they can just be broken by falling down on the floor.
So basically, this whole world is a mess.
There's no coherent rules about anything.
Every scene has its individual logical rules about this world.
So after watching a couple of episodes,
you have no idea about
who is who what is what and how things work.
and Since at these things, it's already a total mess.
You cannot expect anything more
such as as the most powerful, I don't know,
ruler of this celestial realm
second in command, third in command.
What are your actual jobs?
What do you do?
They don't really do anything.
They're just hanging around,
playing go
drinking tea,
looking good.
They are continuous being reminded that the
responsibility of the whole existence is on you,
so you cannot fall in love
yet. You don't do any job.
oh I forgot to mention
there are 7 credit scriptwriters of this drama
you know where it's going hey?
There's no real reason for why female lead has
to not like the male lead in the beginning.
And then the guy, there's no reason why he should
think of her as special okay against anybody else.
She hasn't really done anything for you really significantly
and then giving hers sort of access to super textbook and material,
also for no good reason
like why?you know, you barely know her.
But hey, does not matter
because the writer says so
at the end of the story, they're gonna love each other to death.
So might as well just start it with no good reason.
And audiences will soon forget
because you've had like what 80 episodes to
talk about other crap so that
nobody really remembers how it all started.
Then the 4th thing, Meng ziyi's role
I don't have problems with her acting.
I just have problems with how the character is written
that jealousy with her twin sister,
it's just so badly written.
I feel so sorry for actresses who have to play those roles
I don't know what they're feeling.
Maybe they like playing those things.
If so, then there's nothing I can say.
But if they have any ability to think through anything,
when they hold that script in their hand,
probably they have to cringe so hard to be able to play those scenes
And I don't care what happens later in this drama.
I've heard already what's gonna happen later in this drama.
okay The couple of episodes you've seen right now with
how they portray Meng Ziyi's role
is like such bad writing
similar thing happens actually in Galaxy
next door drama of the character Yuan Shen
the way they write Yuan Shen's character to make him annoying and not likable.
In that sense to contrast and making the main leads looking better,
it's such a bad ploy so badly used in writing.
You really can make Yuan Shen and Zhi Xi as a
screen couple crossing 2 dramas as the worst
written " bad" quotation mark characters
oh and then all the other immortals,
the fuel to the fire of the situation of the twin sisters
again showing that the script writer
don't have imagination, don't understand the complexity of humanity,
every scene at the opportunity of be able to squeeze that line in.
They would do it.
In this whole drama.
In the first 18 episodes is constantly reminding Meng Zi Yi's role
that when you have a twin flower, one is strong, one is weak.
Everyone constantly says that in this drama.
I'm like, what are you trying to do?
making the whole celestial realm every character in it,
a Chang She Fu?
a long tongue woman.
That's the old chinese saying basically somebody
just can't stops gossiping and stirring up things,
trying to add fuel to a burning fire
at that level of IQ, EQ, morality
you know integrity,
everybody up there are like that.
Why is it a celestial realm?
Because I haven't seen a situation in this world where everywhere you go,
people would try to remind you like
everybody you meet in your life,
people who don't even know you.
is gonna just walk up to you and compare you to another person
say oh you're meant to be the weak one.
What kind of society is that?
people don't even try to pretend theya re nice and intelligent?
so much so for immortality and years and years of experience
of living and not even being able to teach you
the basics
that a 5 year old can understand
honesty of this is,
i'm not gonna continue watching this drama.
And even if the later,
60 episodes are gonna get really good, in my opinion, as a production,
the whole thing is a whole thing.
You cannot just say this section is good,
that section is bad and cut it cleanly and say the good part.
You can just look at it individually and not caring about the bad part,
it doesn't work like that.
If you have like cancer growing on one part of your body
and the rest are all good
can you say you're a healthy person?
No,
so the same thing with a drama.
So even if the next 60 episodes are gonna get so good,
i'm like the first 18th episodes kills it for me.
I can't continue watching this thing.
And it's so long
like what is worth telling for that many episodes?
I wouldn't say with Yang Zi and Cheng Yi
there wouldn't be any good moment.
I mean in the first 18 episodes, there are a couple of moments.
They've done okay
and this drama for those
heightened emotional moments on itself.
If you're not thinking about contextual things,
you don't know what is going on before an after
it maybe worth watching a little bit.
But as a whole, as a story,
you link it together,
it just &^&*^%&
so I've said pretty much everything I can think of that I can
rant about in the first 18 absence of Immortal Samsara
It is my very honest opinion.
And if i've offended people,
well you've asked for it,
I told you to leave and you're still here.
So it's on you.
And also even if you do get offended,
i'm just suggesting don't take it seriously.
It's just a drama, all the stars out there.
you know They've never done anything for you,
so don't just feel.
So eager to defend them.
At the end of this video, I would say this kind of project gets passed
green light, gets made for all kinds of complicated reality reasons
and don't invest your emotions so much in to this type of story
because they are made out of a very "impurely intended" reason
The reason, their initial intention of making it is very impure,
harvesting the leftover fandom's
passion, money, money, really,
it's always just about money.
They don't give a shit to good storytelling.
They don't give a shit to actor's career planning,
they don't give a shit to anything that's a
little bit beyond the materialistic world.
We live in
nothing in the conceptual world,
the emotional value,
no Zhui Qiu, no aspiration, no inspiration,
nothing higher than the basic level of satisfying
their greed for material gains
platform, the company that makes it
behind the screen or on camera.
That's the reality.
You can say that for all film and television
they get made because people want to make money,
but then some of them have other intentions added onto
that where people actually care about what they're doing.
They wanna do something meaningful.
They wanna leave something as a legacy.
It comes from the right place
where this type of production,
if you believe that the creation of this type
of production comes from a good place, one day,
you're gonna get beaten up by the society for real,
and you'll see what it means.
she hui du da is waiting for you
so that should be the end of this ranting video on
Immortal Samsara
I hope this is the last ranting video I make on
Xian Xia
and the moment I just said that sentence,
I know it's not true
wow C'est la vie
Thank you for watching AvenueX
i'll see you my next video
hope you're having a good day or good night depending
on when you're watching this
live long and happy drama watching.