Reflections on 2020 - Dramas, Dramas, Dramas

[Celebrianna]

On 1/2/2021 at 11:32 PM, 40somethingahjumma said:

 

I wonder why. 

I love the male leads -- all three of them -- but the cases were fairly straightforward, ordinary. Nothing I hadn't seen before. It was an easy watch with decent fight scenes. The bromance was probably the best part. 

 

Ancient Detective was actually trying to do something quite different within the wuxia genre. In fact, it turns a number of wuxia tropes on its head. A male lead who has lost his memories, doesn't know martial arts and relies on his wits to get out of various  predicaments in his travels around jiang hu. There's no protracted  push and pull with his female love interest and she's the one who is actually skilled in martial arts. The individual cases are quite sophisticated paying homage to golden age detective fiction but with an ancient Chinese flavour. There's also some nice twists in the third act.  What's also impressive is the kid who took on the lead role. He turned out to be a great fit and comported himself with elegance. The structure and plotting was very well thought out. To me it's one of the best C dramas of 2020.

I think if it didn't suffer from some of usual editing problems associated with C dramas, it would be even better.

Oh my! I love your post. You probably describe exactly why I love Ancient Detective. I didn’t know the male lead but I also think he was a good fit for the role. I also liked the way he unraveled the cases. The ending five minutes was interesting and even though it opens a surprising mystery, I was still satisfied with the ending.

[40somethingahjumma]

6 hours ago, Celebrianna said:

Oh my! I love your post. You probably describe exactly why I love Ancient Detective. I didn’t know the male lead but I also think he was a good fit for the role. I also liked the way he unraveled the cases. The ending five minutes was interesting and even though it opens a surprising mystery, I was still satisfied with the ending.

 

If you're interested, I've written more about Ancient Detective here.

Spoiler

https://lilyroots4love.blogspot.com/2020/07/ancient-detective-2020-puppet-motif.html

 

 

I was fine with the ending as well.