I just wanna see how much more Wang Hedi can do
Hello, you're watching AvenueX
where a junkie on good storytelling,
shares her thought knowledge and occasional weird ideas
on stories and how they're told
Cang Lan Jue
Love Between Faiury and Devil is a 36 episodes web drama
that's being aired on the platform iqiyi right now
The drama is directed by the director of a couple of years ago
a very popular drama and i'm still waiting for the second season.
Da Song Shao Nian Zhi, Young blood,
the drama is based on a novel written by Jiu Lu Fei Xiang
who is the same author of another ip Yu Feng Xing
that is being made right now
with Zhao Liying and Li Gengxin leading it
Legend of Shen Li
it was first published as a book back in 2015
as for the drama itself,
it is produced by iqiyi plus a company called (Stellar)
its previous better known productions include We Are All Alone
and (Once upon the time there's a spirit sword mountain)
this project was green lighted quite a long time agao
at the end of 2020
and they didn't go into production until valentine's day last year
and wrapped around June.
And then it take them more than a year to deal with all the post production.
And if you've watched the drama,
it's actually very reasonable that it takes that much time,
because this drama has some of the best
special effects of Xian Xia Genre I've seen
this drama is led by Yu Shuxin and Wang Hedi
also featuring Zhang Linghe, Xu Haiqiao, Guo Xiaoting
at the point of making this video, I've watched the first 18 episodes
based on what i've seen so far.
I'll give it a two gold mine straight.
Honestly, this is the only Xian Xia i've seen in 2022
that made me feel this genre
Maybe it's not fully completely hundred percent dead.
Let me first talk about things.
I don't think it's ideal for this drama.
And as a warning,
if you haven't tested it out and you're worried about
if certain things are gonna put you off,
well i'll tell you first.
Number one is this is still a very old fashioned Xian Xia story
in terms of pretty much all the character setup
all the in important plot, essential story
You've seen it somewhere else,
if we've been living on this planet for more than, let's say, 10 years.
Number two is if you're looking for some
groundbreaking aesthetics and design concepts,
although I will also put design concept of this drama on the positive end,
I would also say it still hasn't jumped out of the kind
of standard, almost worked into a system aesthetics
of how you portray fantasy world in chinese dramas.
The third thing that may put some people off,
but wouldn't affect everybody.
And most people probably don't care about is our male lead
And a couple of other important characters are still dubbed
cause Wang Hedi his own mandarin
isn't gonna work for a proper drama.
his full-on chongqing accent.
I feel very familiar okay cause I come from that place,
but it's just gonna destroy a drama if he opens his mouth.
so these are a couple of things that I would consider
still a minus thing and
see if that's gonna stop you from watching the drama.
Now let me tell you why I would actually recommend you check out this drama
if you're only gonna watch one xian xia of 2022 from chinese dramaland
pick this one
number one.
It has many small points,
but I would categorize all I wanna say as
it has very carefully thought and planned and then
executed design of things,
which includes color palette, set design, conceptual art,
and then get visualize through special effects.
Different style of different tribes, races in this story
what color they pick, what kind of texture goes into that
their architecture, lighting,
and then plus special effects of how people people do their magic
and how you can visually represent some very complicated, conceptual,
magical power.
Even though when I said it hasn't jumped out of the standard of
using lighter color to represent good and then darker color bad
flowinfg hair,
you know long hair, like what I have right now,
particularly for the heavenly realm,
all those light fabric, over exposure,
a lot of the gentle, almost hazy look of things.
It hasn't jumped out of that yet,
but comparing it to other dramas you've seen
in this genre in recent 4 or 5 years,
it has the strongest individuality.
and I highly appreciate that.
Because I like design things you know I'm kind of a designer,
I would like to think of myself as
so when I see certain things
that clearly has been well planned and coherently worked out,
I highly highly highly appreciate that
also, it has a very interesting mixture of chinese
aesthetics with very strong western fantasy.
If you've seen any productions from the worst that regard,
elf, fairies, medieval look
you'll see those element in design in everything in this drama.
So you can really tell they've put a lot of effort into designing the look.
The visual, also in the special effect department,
i've looked at the end credits.
They actually hired 13 different special effect companies.
Other than the post production company they use
They picked that many different special effects studios
to do their different stuff.
So what you end up with the best special effects
of any xian xia drama you've seen in recent years,
pretty much since I started this channel,
it goes into first is how refined and beautiful
and layered and textured rendering looks like.
The other thing is they really thought carefully
about how I could visually represent a quite,
verbally fantastical,
but you don't really know what it should look like magic.
There are two characters in this drama for one scene
They entered a painting on a boat,
traveling and drinking wine, having a good time,
but they all look like the two dimensional brush painting
which is really pretty to look at
and haven't seen that really done this well
in any other fantasy drama,
you would also have our male lead character in one scene
pretty early on in the drama
who comes to the rescue of our female character.
And he is the gi-normous version of himself.
She ends up like a tiny doll on his palm
and that almost buddha and monkey king
visual of the giant person and the tiny person is so well done.
And I haven't seen that really being so well articulated visually
textually and also conceptually in other fantasy dramas.
So this drama in its design department beats
the other fantasy dramas quite a few miles.
Money okay, you can smell money and you know they've
put the budget in the right place for the story.
Thankfully
The second positive point is unlike
some other dramas i've ranted about in this genre
even though its story is quite simple,
it doesn't have very complicated high concept.
Its world view is coherent,
all the characters,
whether they're very important or very marginal
whichever side they're and whatever the personal motives are,
they all fit into this world view,
things link and make sense
and you don't know how difficult it is
to have that in fantaasy dramas these days.
I'm more than thankful to the logically coherent world view
and character motivations
that I can watch drama without feeling I'm being insulted.
Intellectually,
third point definitely have to emphasize
and probably is the most important reason.
And I think for a lot of people who have as I observed
fallen in love with this drama is
great casting choice and actually very good performance.
Let's talk about a couple of important roles and
their actors and actress
Yu Shuxin, female lead.
I always liked her
if you've been with my channel for more than 2 years
you know that
she's not like the greatest actress out there.
and she definitely has a limited range.
You cannot expect her to play everything well,
but this is her comfort zone.
This character is just so in her zone
and she has that naturally very positive bubbly energy,
making her super adorable on screen,
even though she's not the prettiest out there in the acting world.
While I was watching this drama,
I just absolutely adored her.
I feel like i'm her auntie.
and I just wanna dote on her,
although I know she's super rich and there's nothing that I can
actually provide her that she couldn't get herself
in reality.
so for her to play the little orchid flower fairy,
no problem at all,
enjoyed it very much,
then moving onto a couple of other supporting roles.
I didn't know actually before I watch this drama
that Xu Haiqiao is also in it,
because he was in Meng Hua Lu not so long ago.
Now he's in this one
as a complicated double sided character.
He looks great in this drama.
I think the styling of his in this drama
beats pretty much every other thing he's been in.
And then he also has quite a feel, very emotional, intense,
extreme close up close up scenes and he did it so well, very impressive.
Zhang linghe
He is the Hua Cheng actor of the drama version
of (Heaven Officials' Blessing) that we do not know
if we are ever gonna get to see and
he's being in a couple of other period dramas previously.
I've watched some of it.
I have to confess I haven't really been
very impressed by his acting previously.
I just know he's a really good looking guy.
okay I have eyes, I can tell
in this drama his styling
his character
is just very, very good.
And he's actually a very lovely male second character,
although in contrast to the male lead he's the weaker one,
everything considered.
He's not the typically soft mushy guy who with
all those responsibilities and his rankings
in his way, cannot pursue the female lead bravely.
The classic Ye Hua
almost like a male lead in a lot of fantasy dramas.
He has the better version written for him which is
when it comes to the final question of
are you gonna pursue the woman you love?
are you gonna protect her at all cost?
Or are you gonna sacrifice whatever
you Know because you have all the responsibilities?
He' like, No, i'm gonna pick the woman I like
I don't care how much I have to pay for that.
And i'm like, that's a qualified male second
to compete with the male lead.
if he's not like that there's no point of having that character there.
oh, and also he and Xu Haiqiao's roles
they're actually a really good friend Couple
in a way I think they should be a cp
Xu Haiqiao's role should give up on his Shi Fu
and then Zhang Linghe's role should give up on the orchid.
And these two are gonna be great
because they are already a pair.
And they've lived with each other for tens of thousands of years
and in love with each other for real
like they would sacrifice a lot of things for each other.
So ~~~
might as well just~~
you're heavenly,
I guess you don't care about sexual orientation.
Up there?
Then we have to talk about the most important thing.
And I think the single thing that made me wanna
continue watching this drama is
I just wanna see how much more Wang Hedi can do.
You guys all know how much I ranted about Miss the Dragon
and i will still stand by that
oh wang hedi in this drama
looks like a different person
apart from the much better styling of his role in this drama,
the good wig
the good look, the black color
the beautiful robe that just makes him 10 times better looking
than what he looks like in MTD
He also learned how to move his face naturally
in the right moment for the right expression.
and he plays some very complicated and unusual scenarios
of emotion, Extremely well.
He has changed from minus, from negative points,
from third level down in the basement,
on my sort of scale of actors being qualified to be actors to
~~~ he's on the positive end,
quantum leap of acting.
He plays this almost classical Ba Dao Zong Cai (overbearing ceo)bad guy male lead,
who is literally the strongest person in existence.
So he can go out and do whatever he likes and nobody can stop him.
But the story would have it that he gets this weird
body swapping and then tie with the female lead.
And then the female lead can order him to do things
that he cannot refuse because of a magic spell.
They also had the spell of shared experience and feelings,
whatever the female lead feels,
he can feel the same thing.
You can see this setup is so typical for xian xia drama male lead,
where he's made to be the super strong person
who can just do anything he likes,
but only the female lead is his weakness
because he literally cannot destroy her,
but it just happens to suit Wang Hedi so well.
And he manages to play some of the key moments of this drama,
just as audiences would want
for a male lead of this setup
TO DO
so that's like the point 4, is the story itself,
although it's very old fashioned,
everything considered,
they just play it so well.
They're like okay we get this really basic story setup.
How can we Wan Chu Hua
How can we have this limit of this setup and a very normal story
and create some unexpected, delicious,
super satisfying and entertaining moments?
and I think from the script level to the direction level
and then to the actors.
They all worked together to create some of the most funny and
ridiculous and super entertaining scenes I've seen in fancy dramas.
For example, the female lead unknowingly has the ability
to order the male lead to do anything she wants.
If she doesn't retract that statement or the order,
he would have to carry it out, no matter what.
So the scene happened where he is forced to
count all the flowers she had in her garden.
There's also this super funny scene later in this drama
where he had this ring that can stop him from
feeling the female lead's feeling if he wants to,
but he took it off for something he did the night before
and he forgot to put the ring back on the next day.
He's working properly as the ruler of his realm having very serious
conversation with his subjects about big political issues
and the female lead somewhere else is just being very happy,
laughing and smiling like an idiot.
and he feels it, he couldn't stop,
he starts to laugh,
but he tries to control his laughter and smile
while he's talking serious business.
and Everybody is confused,
but only he knows what's going on.
And that scene
I didn't expect Wang Hedi can pull that off,
but he did it so well that
as an audience, it's just100% entertainment,
the drama at this point has already gotten into this really
comfortable running mode
well oiled, it's all running.
It just feels so smooth.
And every new episode comes in and it's just a little bit more excitement,
a little bit more extra surprise, a little bit more.
ah~~~~That's what I want.
And it gave me
from the first release of 6 episodes
on the first day and gradually leading up to this point
pretty much my watching experience is a steady climb,
slowly fall in love with the acting, with the characters.
The story, I just cannot wait to see what happens later.
I know there's highly torturing moment and I
Just can't wait~~~
I'm so excited
and it reminds me of the steady climb of another drama last year.
you know which one it is
Hey,
and I have no doubt I'm gonna stick to the end of this drama.
It is my most eager to watch drama every day now
that should be the end of this video.
My first impression, kind of, of the drama Cang Lan Jue
Love between fairy and devil and it's definitely a surprise.
I'm not yet at the point where I would want to make an edit on it.
But it may happen
in about 10 episodes time.
It's gonna be an epic torturing moment of this story,
at least that's what I was told okay with the rough outline
of the future plot that I heard from here and there.
If that moment delivers,
okay, if that emotional impact is like big enough,
that probably will prompt me to make an edit on it.
Who knows?
Happy AvenueX will conclude this video here.
Thank you for watching,
and please take care.
I'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.