Okay, this was the drama that got me to 司藤 Rattan, which then took me down the rabbit hole of cdramas. It definitely lived up to its hype. But funnily I have never finished watching this drama! Instead, I went off and watched the 18 episode foreign country cut edition.
- Age: 15+, middle school and up
- Romance: non-existent or all there, depending on your take
- Genre: historical, BL (boy love)
- Episodes: 50x45min (36 episodes), 20x60min (20 episodes)
- Actors: 肖戰 (Sean Xiao), 王一博 (Wang Yibo)
- Wiki: Chinese, English
- Released: June 2019
- Where to Watch: WeTV, Netflix
TLDR for Friends
Even if you’re not into BL, this is like a classic if you get into cdramas, kind of like needing to watch Goblin or DOTS for recent kdramas. But only if you dig the wuxia genre. Be patient and wade through the drama till the 3rd episode, when things start to make sense.
I did the first 6, and then jumped to 33-50, then back to episode 3-32, cuz those are the flashback episodes.
Even though it’s not perfect, still totally watch! If you don’t want to do 36 episodes, you can do the 20 episode one. Goblin ran as long as 1.5 hours sometimes and was really like 20 episodes, so this is the same! Watch so I have someone to gush with!
Plot
The male lead, 肖戰 (Sean Xiao), is your playful, super bright but gets into trouble due to his principals, kind of hero. He meets 王一博 (Wang Yibo) at a wuxia seminar. Wang Yibo is your other male lead who is rigid, plays by the rule, and stern with no expression. Super classic adventure-romance drama set up, because guess what happens next between them?
The drama follows 肖戰 (Sean Xiao)’s hero’s journey. There are some rocks with powers which every sect wants (hmmmm! sounds familiar?), and of course 肖戰 (Sean Xiao) gets sucked into the drama cuz he’s the hero who likes to 打抱不平, e.g., fight for the little guys and goes against establishment.
It’s no spoiler to say that 2/3s of the drama in, he actually dies, because the drama starts with his resurrection in the first episode. Sadly, even though he becomes best buds with 王一博 (Wang Yibo). 王一博 (Wang Yibo), with his principled ways, could not support what he was doing. So he dies alone.
Ha, yes, as you can see, I just went through How to Read Literature Like a Professor for Kids so I’m writing my summary like that.
Anyways, the rest of the drama after he is revived is yet another adventure journey, this time with 王一博 (Wang Yibo) as his unfailingly supportive companion, as they uncover the secret mastermind that lead to 肖戰 (Sean Xiao)’s death during the me-against-the-world battle that first time around.
Review
Sounds bleargh? Adventure stories are so typical of the wuxia genre, what’s the draw?
Have you ever read 金庸 Jin Yong’s novels? The drama totally reminds me of his novels. There is a huge world building, in this case, 5 different sects, much like how many of Jin Yong’s novels have different wuxia sects. The sects always have very distinct personalities. There’s the Lan sect, which Wang Yibo belongs to, and they’re highly disciplined and has a lot of rules. There’s Wen sect, which is ambitious and evil. Then there’s the Jiang sect, which Sean Xiao belongs to, a warm and loving sect.
Lest I forget, Sean Xiao is also an orphan like many of Jin Yong’s main leads.
Usually the hero goes on a journey and meets people from these various sects, and either battles with them or helps them. Often the hero is misunderstood or, due to circumstances, gets into situations that forces him to align with an unpopular faction due to his principles.
In the Untamed, that is Sean Xiao to a T. An example is how 肖戰 (Sean Xiao) saved relatives of a branch in the evil Wen sect, when everyone else wanted to eliminate all the Wen people after the evil Wen leader was killed.
Of course the ML’s idea of This is the Right Thing to Do, we can’t kill innocent people! goes against the majority. Then he acts the noble hero and sacrifices his powers to save his not-related-by-blood brother. This in turn leads to him needing to re-cultivate his powers by methods frowned upon by these sects. Essentially every decision he makes leads him to becoming a big bad in other people’s eyes.
Oops, I didn’t mean to write so much. Anyways, the drama has super detailed world building, and well developed good and bad characters; plus the various nuanced relationships between the characters, be it between family, teacher-student, or brotherhood. It’s basically an epic story and not many wuxia related books or dramas do these world building well.
So this is why you watch it. It’s like a good JIn Yong novel. It’s a good way to introduce the kids to these types of epic stories outside of Jin Yong dramas.
But Execution Wise……
Sean Xiao is a really good actor. And Wang Yibo, once he got used to his super tight head piece, was able to emote more with just his eyes. Everyone fell in love with the drama because the two characters are so classic. And because their real life personalities were similar to their characters, you could totally keep ship them even more after watching the drama. Look up some of their interviews while filming the drama to see what I mean!
The editing was meah. Some scenes went on and on. Whole swaths of episodes were seemingly redundant. I mean that’s why they were able to cut down 16 episodes and still have it mostly make sense right? That’s a whole 40% of the drama! The last two episodes of big show down was mostly talk talk talk, fast forward fast forward for me. And some scenes and stories often jumped without much set up. This is partly why the first 2-3 episodes were so so confusing.
Music is a big part of the drama; both leads play instruments. But the actors’ miming were super horrible and took me out everytime they played! I kept thinking about Two Set Violin’s review of drama violin playing.
The CG was sometimes funny. However, the scenery, many of which were all CG’ed and some on location, were really beautiful.
So would I let the kids watch it? Mostly yeah, if they were interested. Because it is so so hard to find a good wuxia drama. I have tried 3 separate times with 金庸’s dramas, and we always give up due to the gore. One kid laughs at it and the other runs away.
And this isn’t even a super duper good one in terms of execution. I foresee having to explain a lot if I were to watch it with them.
What Parents Need to Know
仙俠劇
Apparently there is a name for these type of dramas, called 仙俠劇 (Xian XIa). According to Wiki, it is “genre of Chinese fantasy influenced by Chinese mythology, Taoism, Buddhism, Chinese martial arts…….”.
I’m guessing this is slightly different from your typical wuxia dramas, which are more martial arts based? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyway, what this does mean is that the men are super duper skinny, cuz they’re supposed to be like a 仙, a celestial being….a bit between people and God?
I don’t know why they have to be skinny, but my understanding of this idea of 仙 is always they have less worldly desires, a bit more immortal, wearing flowery robes and walking on water. (You know, like 八仙過海).
So the martial arts (wuxia) in this drama veers more toward the pretty side and is not as gory as some of the other wuxia dramas I’ve seen.
Romance?
As for the BL, it is definitely super subtle. Nothing is ever shown or said unless you want to hear or see it. Everything is only hinted at and you can see it more if you go in knowing it’s a BL drama. Otherwise you can read it much like the brotherhood (結拜兄弟) that is always there in wuxia dramas.
Except, of course, there is no female lead, which I don’t mind, because honestly I have never liked most female characters in wuxia novels. So don’t be turned off if you’re not interested in Boy Love (BL). Though I totally understand! I was 2 years late in watching the drama.
Still, because of the gore factor, I wouldn’t show it till the kids are a bit older.
Chinese Aspects or Things to Talk to Kids About?
Speaking of BL, I learned what it’s called in Chinese, 耽美劇. It comes from Japanese (danbi) and means most beautiful (唯美的). Somehow it got to be associated with BL type of manga and drama.
Music and Lyrics
The OST for the drama is super fantastic. 肖戰 (Sean Xiao)’s character uses flute music as his weapon. And 王一博 (Wang Yibo) uses a 古箏 like thing. Each character has a theme melody assigned to them. If the kids ever get into the drama, you can definitely follow up by listening to the Chinese instrument based OST. Or maybe they’ll want to try and learn a Chinese instrument!
Then of course, there are the lyrics. It’s written very poetically and takes a little bit of studying to unpack the meaning.
What is good? What is evil?
In this drama, it is the idea of 仙 and what it is they’re cultivating, which is slightly different again from typical wuxia. 仙 is such a hard concept for me to explain to the kids. It would be much easier if they just watch a few dramas with those characters.
In the drama, the cultivators (or I guess people who want to become 仙？）are basically ghost busters, defeating evil beings. But what/who is evil? 肖戰 (Sean Xiao) uses a special object he invented (Stygian Tiger Amulet 陰虎符) to help everyone defeat the big bad Wen sect. But the sects then wanted to kill all the innocent women and children in the Wen sect.
Since the sect leaders covet the all powerful amulet, when 肖戰 (Sean Xiao) tries to help these people, the leaders and sects conveniently turned on him. He becomes the lone person fighting establishment.
Who is really the bad person in this situation? Should one stick up for what one feels is wrong, or do you follow what you were taught as “right” much like 王一博 (Wang Yibo)’s character?
