Mysterious Lotus Casebook 莲花楼 (2023)

[superborb]

The latest of the wuxia cdramas, structured as a series of smaller mysteries leading up to the major mystery of the story behind a jianghu battle 10 years ago. The characters mostly were reasonably interesting and though they fit tropes, they at least committed to them. (Really enjoyed the one guy whose job was basically to be Siri.) The acting was pretty good too, which helps significantly, and the costuming and actors were all very pretty. I am a sucker for the "chasing the ONE TRUE RIVAL when they're reluctant to keep competing" dynamic (Hikago hit me at a formative age!!) so obviously I loved that shit. I also did love the main character's glib tongue and the villainess at first didn't get to chew enough scenery but by the end she gets to be fully dramatic. There were a lot of little moments that were great -- when they were blackmailing secrets out of each other, the main character's very close up captured ear twitches, and the interactions between the main trio.

However, the actual plot was uh, questionable; it distinctly suffers from not enough adaptation and the pacing is very clearly unchanged from a serial novel. Except they keep skipping bits so they can go through plot faster; the recent PRC dramas really have not figured out that 36-40 episode pacing at all. Generally the overall storyline and the character motivations make sense, but individual choices for storytelling and the excessive amounts of telling were tedious. The smaller mysteries are all very contrived, over explained, and generally not best practices for detective work (questioning all the suspects together...). The women really are defined in conjunction with men; even when they get to fight, it's not as much as the men, though the fight choreo is generally not great. (In particular, the mountain red storyline was really strange about the trapped girls and the resolution was unsatisfying.)

Spoilers for the major mystery:

The distinct version of PRC nationalism combined with the typical bright-line good guy vs bad guy split got me more than I would usually expect. There's some racism around foreign blood making you untrustworthy and SO many stereotypes, all at my lowest expectation levels, but that obsession with casting those who want to resurrect bygone countries as the worst possible villains, whoof. It didn't help that the big bad had the most boring motivation and just straightforwardly fell in that trope. The attempted subversion on Nanyin blood did NOT hit when it became all about the bloodline. Finally, I personally think that saving LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE except the emperor with the flower would have made more thematic sense; I don't care that emperors are only stand-ins for their empire!

Anyway, I... felt like this wasted what would otherwise have been a promising show with fun character interactions.

PS Using the rock version of the theme song for the final battle was INSPIRED. A++ excellent choice.

Comments

[halfcactus]

The Hikago-like rivalry obsession was also what got me hooked. And his dramatic-ness afterwards. XD

Full agree about the entire last parts. It was too much, all at once, which made it hard to get me to come around and feel positive about it. I didn’t even get emotional in the end, because a lot of the bits that would have given me emotional catharsis were unfortunately inextricably tied to the Nanyin blood storyline. :(

I love that you ended up writing a full entry about this btw hehe

[superborb]

There was not enough rivals content for me. I mean, never enough, but in this case it would have been a definite improvement over more contrivances lol.

I felt like the rock theme song ended up feeling like the emotional end, which uh. it was definitely not the last episode......

TOO many annoyances to fit in one paragraph!!

[halfcactus]

I ended up liking Fang Duobing a lot, but the relationship arcs were definitely unevenly distributed. I wasn’t as sold on the wedding chamber scene as I should have been (Di Feisheng’s admiration of the mood aside) because it still felt like they didn’t finish connecting the Li Lianhua < —— > Di Feisheng dots in spite of them being the starting point.

We really should have ended on the rock version showdown… The last 2 (or 3??) eps were so long! And for what!!!

[superborb]

Yeah, the basic sketch of their relationships are there, but the filling in was not adequate!

[sophia_sol]

I appreciate you writing this up! I've seen it mentioned here and there around the internet with varying levels of enthusiasm but didn't know much of what the show was actually doing. How unfortunate about the ways it falls down that keep it from being an enjoyable watch!

[superborb]

I definitely felt more disappointed because there were aspects that were good! And of course some people might like those aspects enough that they overcome the problems...