#king's war

1. Monarch Industry 

Favourite drama of the year and possibly my favourite drama ever! It’s so good! Xiao Qi owns my entire heart! Warmly recommended 🖤

2. Black Sails 

A most excellent show. Highly recommended. 

3. Love Like the Galaxy

I loved this drama so much! Shaoshang is the best female lead of the year, hands down! I adore her! Plus, this is the drama that turned me into a Wu Lei fan, I’ve watched ep. 48 so many times! 

4. Gold Panning 

I was very antagonistic towards this drama when I first started watching it but luckily, I stuck with it and it turned out to be SO GOOD. It’s very grimy and dark, but it was such a good watch! Highly recommended. It is the type of drama that you can admit to watching and recommend in any company without feeling embarrassed. I want more roles like this for Chen Feiyu.

5. The Great Shaolin 

This one started out SO GOOD, I was certain it would top all the dramas I ever watched, but then it devolved in the second half and did not live up to its promise. I’m still mad, but Zhou Yiwei is perfection and the good parts of this drama were amazing, so it still made it pretty high up on this list. 

6. Kevin Can F*** Himself

I am normally not a fan of comedies, but this one was excellent. Highly recommended! 

7. Kingdom 

I’m just not a fan of zombies, so unfortunately, this one cannot go higher, but it is so well done! I very much recommend this drama if you like horror and have high tolerance for gore. 

8. Love Between Fairy and Devil 

This was such a cute and hilarious watch, I loved it so much! It does not quite reach the level of the best drama of the year for me the way it did for some people, but it was still a good time! Highly recommended! 

9. King’s War 

I still can’t believe I made it through this entire drama without skipping! I loved it, but I’m cautious about recommending it because it is very long and very grim. It is just perfect for history lovers but maybe less so for people just looking for some entertainment. 

10. Kinnporsche 

This one would have made it way higher on the list if it had been a few episodes shorter. I completely lost interest when the whole Tawan subplot took over and I never really recovered it. 

11. The Longest Day in Chang’an 

I fully admit I watched this only for Zhou Yiwei. His performance alone would put this drama right at the top, but unfortunately, the rest of it just dragged and was full of plot holes and unlikeable characters. Lots of people sing praises for this drama but other than Zhou Yiwei’s part in it, I did not enjoy it at all. 

12. Light Chaser Rescue 

This is definitely not the worst thing I ever watched but I only recommend it if you are a Luo Yunxi fan, lol. 

13. Killer and Healer

On one hand, Legend of Chu and Han is a grim, serious, grimy, and politics-heavy war epic that I can feel fancy-smart for watching.

Virgin:

Mama’s boy:

Brony:

Average every day dentist:

This is a 2012 drama when both rules and narrative preferences were different and you know what strikes me? How much darker it is than any of the dramas made nowadays. Not just in our protagonists who are allowed to be a hell of a lot more negative than they are likely to be today. Here is Liu Bang watching a man get tortured:

But also just darker in that it shows life as nasty and brutish and short life is - things are just dirty and dingy and desperate and a lot of these people would kill you for a bag of vegetables and there is constant sense of danger and desperation because soldiers can ride through your village and just kill you all for kicks. It’s a horrible world. Leaving aside whether today’s censors would be happy with this as a narrative choice (because I honestly have no idea), modern dramas with their beautiful filters and sweepingly aesthetic cinematography (cinematography here is gorgeous - look at the battles - but in a very different way) would not make something so grim (even tragedy has got to look beautiful and be Truly Tragic, not every day shabbiness. KW has plenty of epic tragedy - Xiang Yu’s last stand is amazing - but it never forgets that most moments are just grimness without grandeur.)

Oh, and the other thing we establish right away about Liu Bang. He’s morally flexible (to put it mildly) and puts survival above honor or any other principle. Here he’s telling his woman to pretend to sleep with imperial scout (he went from beating the man to that all thanks to one badge and if doesn’t sum up everyone’s life, I don’t know what does.)

Also yeah, not in today’s drama, no how:

Anyway, this moral flexibility (to put it kindly) is completely opposite to Xiang Yu, our other protagonist. Xiang Yu is the type of man who’d give up his head rather than sacrifice 1/10th of what he sees as his pride or honor. There is a reason that the latter will end the Qin Dynasty but it’s the former who will found the new one.

I swear, Xiang Yu is a total brony.  Also, after all of that vivid imagery of the horse, all we get from his friend is “yes, that’s a black horse.”  LMAO.

But then Xiang Yu goes and does stuff like this:

What is that I see? Is that Xiang Yu stopping two rampaging horses (who are also lugging a heavy as hell carriage so the momentum must be insane) with his bare hands?

The ladies in the crowd appreciate the sight of the buff, hot man using his enormous hands to wield his enormous strength to gentle down heaving...horses. Seriously, look at the peasant ladies. They know where it’s at! Either that or they are thinking what savings they could get with this man around since they won’t need to bother with any plow or draft animals either. (OMG I know why I like big strong brutes now - it’s the generations of my peasant ancestors thinking thrifty thoughts!)

Hi there, famous warlord, destroyer of the Qin Dynasty, Hegemon-King, and utter snack!

Said snack is NOT a party snack. I want to enshrine his face at this merry gathering on a t-shirt - by his expression the only way he’d enjoy this gathering is if he was allowed to use these people’s heads as party favors.

He’s hot, he’s strong, he’s good at murder (an indispensable skill in those times!), AND he loathes parties? Methinks I’ve found my dream man.