Who Rules the World (2022)

A new favorite

Hello! I just finished watching this amazing show and headed straight over to join in on the conversations about it. 2022 is an exciting year for us with these new, wonderful dramas being released.
This show is definitely now a top pick for me right along with Long Ballad, Legend of Fei, Ashes of Love, Love and Redemption, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, Etc. High quality content for sure. They put the budget to good use imo.

Story: good- ending was rushed due to new rule on only 40 episodes tho. I don’t blame them too much for that. Wish they shaved some off the middle instead of the end tho.
Music: great. The flow was really nice during the show. Sound effects were good. Nothing overpowered the conversations. I only remember one part that it had a odd little cut in music. Thumbs up?
Acting: top notch as expected from these two legends. Chemistry was so cute. They fit their roles really well too. Both serious and smiley from Yang Yang. I was so happy, pleased, proud of Zhao Lu Si for stepping into this strong female role. She fit it really well and compared to her other “sweet” characters I really enjoyed seeing this change. I think she liked doing something that people wouldn't consider “sweet” as well from what she said in the interviews.
Camera work/Editing: on point imo. It had an almost animated feel to it the in beginning that was so pleasant to see. Beautiful. CGI and other effects were great! Ending was a little less “high quality” than the beginning, but still nothing to complain about too much. I loved the silk as a weapon/tool. Haven’t seen too much of that.

The story is imo relatively original in some aspects and pretty common place in others. I definitely enjoyed the first half (more of the action, martial arts, more relaxed scenes) better than the latter. It was interesting that they had two very different identities and the responsibilities that came with that. I personally think we could have done with more martial arts world scenes and less political ones as those always feel kinda draggy.
I had some questions of logic for example- How did they first meet and why are they famous when no one seems to recognize them until they use their skills. If you know you might possibly give power over to another “good” ruler maybe sit down and talk first before killing a bunch of your soldiers playing power war. Etc.

Over all though I was very pleased and hung on to every word for the majority of the 40episodes. I’m super picky, detailed, and rewind about every five seconds FYI lol.

Definitely recommend. I will continue to come back and watch bits and pieces again. Get your tissues ready for the last few episodes though. Just fair warning. Enjoy! Round of applause ? to everyone for making this wonderful show.

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Entertaining, Fun, Acting, Chemistry, Beautiful visuals

It's a fact: most story plots in C Drama have loopholes, editing issues, fillers, inconsistencies, randomness, etc ... If there is a standard or competition that the writers can compete as in the Emmys, there would be more inspiring stories. Economic factors and taste rule the C drama world. Most endings have a similar feel: ML has 10 years left to live - well that's been done in The Princess Wei Young ... If a drama's ending (or anything else) is shown to be successful, then it is replicated to another drama.

So the best that the audience can expect is that the drama is entertaining and has good acting. This drama delivers these two aspects well.

The FL is outstanding in her delivery of this dramatic and fun role. She delivers convincing acting as a queen, warrior, and fun-loving girl with a big personality. At her age, she is totally convincing as someone who can rush to block out the canons without thinking about the consequences. She is just perfect for this role. I don't think there is another person who can act better because this role fits her personality so well.

The ML is also convincing in his role ... although he is a little stiff. His back is always too straight ... which makes him look like he is acting instead of being immersive in a role. But he is decent compared to other C actors who look handsome but cannot act.

Overall, if you accept that most C dramas are not perfect, this drama is as good as it gets. Read the novel. I think it will give you a better understanding and a more satisfying ending. However, I do like that they changed the novel to have an evil person that everyone fights against. This makes more sense to me than just playing chess on the war field. Humans are always predictable so it makes sense to have an arch evil that everyone can unite and fight against.

I will recommend this drama since it does have the entertaining value, good chemistry between the leads, and good acting from almost everyone. There are scenes that could be way better; however, there is never a time that the drama is too boring that you will feel like giving up on it. I've had this happen to me in various dramas: the beginning is so good but then the rest is so bad that even good acting cannot savage it. I usually quit watching them in the middle because the stories between the MLs are just too confusing and illogical.

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More of idol drama than wuxia

Rant: Not expected from a high budget drama with good cast. Casting is the best thing here. Acting is good.
Got many pretty faces to waste my time.. I don't care if you're willing to watch this drama for your idol. All casts are pretty honestly but heck, I didn't watch this drama for that sole reason. If that's the case, then I can just follow them on IG or search their face on google.
Too much plothole especially the political plot. Can feel that they try hard to make it like NIF that they forgot it's wuxia. Some character write ups are so bad like the queen.
Fight scenes are not good especially for ML. He just sways his fan then kaching. But he looks cool though haha. I believe he could do more. He has nice physique.
All in all, it lacks so much effort on fight scenes.
Some fight scenes are also so mindblowing. I sometimes think they hired a xianxia choreographer for an wuxia drama.
The plot is tolerable from the start then it went downhill.
Very Disappointing and insulting because they say it's wuxia.

*Not everyone is like me so take this opinion as a grain of salt cause I lot of people are willing to watch a drama for eyecandy cast. If you're not really after the plot, this is going to be fine cause the cast are really pretty. Can't deny that.

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look cool and say poems

Both Zhao Lusi and Yang Yang are very good looking in their ancient costumes. The fight scenes in this drama are pretty good, the budget of the series was not lacking. But that's about it. This starts off almost like an exact copy of the story of Shan He Ling, but at least that had an OK first half. Here, two people who just happen to be the top martial artists in The World travel the jianghu both trying to sacrifice their lives for the other person, and a cast of side characters for the most part sigh over how perfect and wonderful they are. The villains are basically just straw men and the plot seems to have been sacrificed to help the leads look cool and say poems.

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Royalty politics with a dash of healthy romance

I don't pay attention to titles but I probably should because this drama is really about walking us through the journey of 'Who Rules The World' - meaning, it tells the story of Six States and who ultimately becomes the ruler of them all. The drama starts a bit slow and it takes at least 5-6 episodes to set up the setting, characters and story. After that is established, it's really fun and intriguing. If you love royalty politics with a dash of healthy romance - this drama is for you.

I'm quite a newbie of cdramas but I've never watched such an interesting political drama - there were tons of scheming and betrayal involved which I liked although at times the talking was quite a lot and it got heavy. This is not a light drama for the mind - to keep up with the storyline you really have to pay attention to what people are saying and doing. Having said that, I found the plot and characters very real and could imagine this being a real life story rather than just fiction.

What I'm most pleasantly surprised by is the healthy relationship portrayed. There were no childish and immature behaviours from the main leads - in fact it was romantic and cute. The male lead is definitely a green flag and the female lead is so badass - she is seriously an amazing character that I won't easily forget. Oh and the martial arts are super fun to watch. It’s definitely binge-worthy so overall I highly recommend the drama.

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can we have multiple seasons please? crying bc this drama ended

Firstly, I was not expecting to be this in love with this drama because when I first started it I had no expectations.

Everything about this drama was breathtaking.
A smart, beautiful, intelligent, and strong female lead.
A powerful, handsome, wise man who treats his woman as an equal.
A healthy loving relationship between the leads.
Strong chemistry between the whole cast.
OST that matched the drama.

Can we just take a moment to applaud the casting director because they were able to get Yang Yang and Zhao Lusi to act together– who knew we needed this ship in our lives?? And the rest of the cast were just as amazing.
It's astonishing to see Yang Yang and Zhao Lusi act together because they have so much good chemistry together– on screen and off screen (yes I love this drama enough to see the behind the scenes clips lol).

Honestly, I love the two actors so of course I'm biased but during this whole series I enjoyed both of their acting. They have improved so much! It’s like they were made for these characters!! Yang Yang just portrays Hei Fengxi/Feng Lanxi so well and Zhao Lusi does such an amazing job at acting as Bai Fengxi/Feng Xiyun. We can see her aloof and carefree personality as Bai Fengxi but once she’s Feng Xiyun– she gives more mature and intellectual vibes.

I am in love with Bai Fengxi/Feng Xiyun because for once we have a smart, independent, strong female lead. She doesn’t need anyone to help or rescue her because she can defend herself and the whole world literally knows it too!! I love how as the series progresses we can see more of her charms unfold. Literally everyone is impressed with her.

The love between Bai/Hei Fengxi is the dream relationship I hope everyone would strive for. They have such a healthy loving relationship and this is a rare occurrence in Chinese dramas. Even in the beginning Hei Fengxi sees Bai Fengxi as his equal and this continues on for the whole series. We don’t just have the male lead rescuing the female lead. We have the female lead who can defend and save the male lead too. A strong man and a strong woman makes the perfect power couple. We can see how much the two love and care for each other. There really needs to be a real Hei Fengxi out there because we all want a man like him in our lives. What man can share their throne with their woman? He is really willing to do anything for her and we can see that she's really the apple of his eye. They are both able to give their lives for each other.

The storyline was great but definitely could have used some improvements. We got a good amount of politics, fighting, waring, and romance. However I feel like they focused way too much on the drama with Feng Lanxi’s family and we barely got to see Feng Xiyun as Princess of Qingzhou. I’m still mad that her brother and dad were killed off because they were so supportive of her but we did get to see her become Queen so I guess that makes up for it.
The fighting scenes were really cool to see too, especially since we got to see Bai Fengxi fight (supposedly Zhao Lusi did all her stunts).

The side characters just really added to this amazing series: my poor Hanpu and Feng Xie Yue (Bai Fengxi's brother who died a tragic death), Feng Chang (he deserves more after what his horrible mother did to him), Qi Wu (another strong female character), Huang Chao (we love a man who protects the innocent but also achieves what he wants- and he really wanted Bai Fengxi as his queen. I mean who wouldn't right??), all of Bai/Hei Fengxi's supportive comrades/military leaders.

ughhhhh i have to go cry in the corner now because the series ended. about to go re-watch this 20+ times

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Great Start, lagging middle, lame finish

LIKES:
Great costumes for the most part.
Strong female lead for the first part of the drama; beautiful, smart, skilled in martial arts and sword fighting, kind.
Scenery was fitting and beautiful. Cinematography was well done, including colour pallet.
FX: the flying scenes and some of the graphics were really good, see dislikes for parts that weren't.
ML chasing after FL for once.
Potential for ML & FL romance.
Step-mother as a villain, although cliche, she was hateable.

DISLIKES:
No solid foundation for the ML & FL to show their chemistry for romance.
Issues with PACING; too much plot twisting that didn't help the end. The political stuff started to get boring, especially the step-mother's schemes. When over done looses it's impact.
WRITING: got lost with it's concepts. First part FL is strong, independent and smart, second part she is just about the ML and constantly needs rescuing. Also in the later parts FL is often deferring her ideas to the ML's ideas. They lost what little chemistry they had in the second half of the show.
The male villain was lame and way too obvious.
Another bad writing section is the step-mother scheming was too much and got boring. Then we have the male villain who's hate for ML & FL is ridiculous and groundless.
The ENDING was very rushed and made no sense, but it was probably due to pacing issues.
Bad EDITING. Choppy PRODUCTION & terrible FX for the waring states (really bad graphics to the point of very smelly cheese, when the two sides clashed. The areal view was so lame, or the running horses were as good as a super old school video game).

OVERALL:
I would rewatch the first half of the drama and even recommend that part. Some would like the ending too. I don't understand why Netflix keeps screwing up/rushing the endings of their dramas. Is it their fault or the writers or both?





SPOILER ALERT DISLIKES:
The costumes for the wedding of ML & FL were so UGLY! And their kissing was not convincing as lovers.
Also the eldest brother should've been made the King at the end, because making ML the king and then he throws it away is just dumb. IF eldest brother was King, then the two main leads could have their alone time together, maybe even showing FL with a son. Or even kill off the ML completely, would have had more impact.

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The most boring romantic historical drama ever

I was so bored most of the time ,, I struggled to finish it for Yang Yang's acting but the plot was so slow and so boring most of the time,, the ending was ridiculous in every way it defeated the purpose of the whole drama
apparently who rules the world is none of the leads so what was the point exactly ?
Other than good visuals of the actors ,,, there were nothing interesting at all
the wuxia fights were more like Xienxia's fantasy fights ,,,, over the top and laughable compared to actual wuxia dramas
the court politics were predictable and boring
the romance wasn't good , the chemistry between the leads was off and their characters was more like partners at work not love
overall it wasn't good for me and i didn't like it at all

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What Was That?

What the heck was this? It started off strong, and I was waiting for each episode, but it slowly devolved into absolute nothingness, along with all the characters.

I can't tell you exactly when things came undone, but slowly, a prince murders everyone who knows about his medical condition, but we are supposed to forget about that and pretend that never happened, even though he almost killed the FL. The ML literally melts someone's mind so they won't give him away (seriously, just puts his fingers on either side of the guy's head, at his temples, and melts his brain!!!). A character we come to know is an antagonist, is hinted at having real human feelings for the FL, but later, it turns out he is just a robot of a character (not literally) with no discernable human feelings, thereby making him a completely static and largely irrelevant character to the story. The... I guess... SML, is introduced to us as a rounded character, only to have everything that made him a rounded character taken away from him. Why?? Why take rounded characters and take away their human nature to turn them into robots? They pretty much introduced us to the most interesting characters near the beginning, then forgot about them till the end, whilst focusing on introducing more and more less interesting side characters, like the ML's evil queen step-mother, the insufferably gullible teenage daughter of the FL's shifu, the FL's shifu, and that random old shifu guy that lives inside a mountain, which they only introduced us to in order to force the FL and ML to do a ridiculous dance together (seriously). They needed to stop introducing more and more characters, and to focus on the ones they gave us in the first few episodes. The FL and ML "dating" and "bonding" scenes were so dull and drawn out, it was ridiculous.

What I really mean is that when we first met the FL, the ML, and the SML, they all had an intriguing introduction that made me excited to get to know them better, but as the story went on, they all proved to be quite empty characters with little to offer.

The FL wasn't the heroine I thought she would turn out to be, the ML just smirked the whole time, so I thought for sure he was going to be an interesting character once I got to know more about him... but no! He just got less and less interesting! Same with the SML, though at least the SML held on to a bit of mystery about him, which made him slightly more interesting than the rest of the characters.

I couldn't care less if all the characters died after the first 8 episodes, they were so bland, so utterly boring, stiff, vacuous.

Zhao Lu Si can't do anything but comedy. As a person, she isn't a serious person, and it translates to her roles, though I'm glad she toned down the cuteness for this one, because her usual level of cutesy is downright saccharine. She isn't even pretty, for an actress, not that I want one of those wooden Chinese Barbies to get cast instead *cough* Gulnazar *cough*. She is an average looking actress with average acting skills (except for comedy). I hope that the industry will stop casting her in roles that don't suit her at all as they have been doing.

An Yue Xi is a wonderful actress, who lights up the screen no matter which role she gets cast in. Even her character in this drama was quite boring, but like the SML, she did the best with what she was given. It drives me a bit crazy that An Yue Xi isn't given the roles Zhao Lu Si is, yet An is not just a much better actress, but also a very, very beautiful woman. Actually, if you took Zhao Lu Si out of all the main roles she has been given, and replaced her with An Yue Xi instead, all those dramas would have ended up way better than they did. An can do both comedy and drama exceptionally well! Do better, China, start hiring actresses by ability, not by popularity, then less costume dramas would crash and burn.

4.5 melted brains out of 10.

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To be honest the show isn't really worth it. I was really excited to watch this show hoping that it was more with the fighting side and martial arts of Jiang Hu. However I'd say that like the first 7 episodes actually met that requirement, the first few episodes actually get you hooked into watching it.

Later on you figure out who Hei Fengxi's real identity is, and from that point on it just kept bringing up court affairs and one episode took about 10 minutes to watch for me, it was more like one episode was 75% about court affairs and they rest of it was about Bai Fengxi and Hei Fengxi.

Gotta say the best thing about this drama is the costume, I think the way Yang Yang is dressed as Hei Fengxi instead of Feng Lanxi (his prince side) is way better and same thing with Bai Fengxi. The cast was also great and same with the music. I think it was really the court affairs that made the show only an 8.0 stars. I am disappointed that most of it wasn't really related to the martial arts side of Jiang Hu.

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Decent watch, but could've been better.

The MLs did a good job with this one. I enjoyed their banters and you could notice how the characters grew throughout the series.

For the plot itself, I thought it would expand further than the two states we saw most from. Seeing as it revolved around the world getting plunged into war, but it didn't quite feel like it. None the less, what they did show from it was rather well executed.

I found the start to be the best out of it all. Up until the 20th episode mark. From 20-30 it fell quite a lot quality wise. It became a bit too dull. It caught a 2nd wind for the last 10 episodes as it was getting closer to the finish line. The ending felt a bit rushed, but I've definitely seen worse.

If you need something not too heavy to watch which doesn't require your full attention, give this one a go.

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