There is interesting interplay between the dynamic of the world and story. the setting focusing on the concubine system or the red light district, built for male pleasure .yet, its able to keep a light tone and share a wide variety of emotion-stirring perspectives from the women in this setting. From the crushing and debilitating reality of needing to sell your body in order to live , to the high concubine perspective of competence and power .yet, jealousy at another person who can freely choose their love. To a courtesan who genuinely enjoys her work waiting for her prince charming and the prince charming loving her despite what she does for work. There is some cool shit in here
super +respect for Historical based fiction .even if its loosely based on a period. It takes so much more research effort to actually write
same gripes: how forced the theme of "dont conclude based on conjecture" most of the time its fine but it blunders with lakan. Within the story lakan talks about his thoughts about "forcing himself" onto fengxian followed by the audience learning about pregnancy being a way to lower a courtesan's value. Its obvious what the story wants to make the audience believe. Which doesn't make sense later why Lakan would say that if he genuinely has love for fengxian. The theme felt forced here and blunders a bit of lakan's character
Some of the mystery parts of the story felt a bit uncompelling: it didn't make you care enough. We go from figuring out what's going on with the blacksmith, to the random dude the got poisoned from the seaweed, the warehouse explosion, to the guy with the rashes on the hand. Into Jinshi's life being endangered. These are the weak mysteries often solved with like handholding , things shown to the audience in a very obvious way to tell you that it is the clue. I wish there was more done to feel like it was all connected , only near the end of that conflict did they ever do that.
all that being said i still absolutely love the show, the character dynamics are refreshing. The dramatic mysteries with the other characters are super compelling. The personalities are fun to watch bounce around and that alone makes this show worth watching.
don't get it twisted, Lakan's whole conflict near the end absolutely broke me and i loved how quickly they can turn a character like that in your mind.
+bonuses for how fun maomao is as a character, she feels relatable but is different in ways that make her unique from other characters in the genre.
