The Qin Empire (2009)

Great!

It needs to be noted beforehand, I watched the dubbed version on Youtube.

I had huge expectations going into this series, and was not at all disappointed. The battles were well done, it has political intrigue aplenty, and the acting seemed like it was well done overall (even though it can be hard to tell when watching in a different language). Special mention also needs to be made about the costume and set pieces, which were very well done and not at all overdone. It is all very befitting of the time period, and the primitive technology can be felt at each turn. I did feel there were some slower episodes, but I also felt they were necessary to build upon the law intensive plotlines. There are definitely a few surprises along the way as well, despite the fact that this is historically based.

A word of warning, the dub can be a little rough to get into at first. You get used to it after a while, and I did think the voice actors did a pretty good job. The major issue is that there were not a lot of voice actors, so they could only disguise their voices so much between characters. Another thing is due to copyright, some scenes had the audio completely taken out, and there were 3 or 4 episodes that had the audio out of sync (fixable if you have two windows open to sync it yourself). It was kind of a pain to deal with all these issues, but if you're as keen on seeing this series as I was, it's still worth it.

I do have a few complaints about the story, however. It doesn't stick 100% to historical accuracy, for one. And it can sometimes be hard to wrap your head around some of the logic behind character actions. I also was completely baffled by the deaths of two major characters at the end and the way it was conveyed. It made absolutely no sense, was intentionally vague (almost to the point of ambiguity), and just left me feeling cheated. A show that tries to portray itself as serious and realistic shouldn't all of a sudden leap into the fantastical for one scene, as it completely pulls you out of it and leaves you scratching your head.

It's hard not to get into the positives of the story without getting into spoiler territory, so all I'll say is that if you like these sorts of costume dramas, it's absolutely worth giving this a watch.

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