My Heroic Husband Full Review: A Transmigration Tale of Two Cities and Tones
- 6 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Title: | My Heroic Husband (2021) |
Platform: | Viki, Viki, Youtube (free), Tubi, Prime Video |
Episode Count: | 36 |
Genre: | Period Idol Comedy/ Romance, Transmigration |
MDL Rating: | |
Douban Rating (out of 10) | 7.1 |
Parental Guidance Rating: | TV-16: Violence, blood, multiple SA attempts, torture |
Staring: | Kevin Guo as Ning Yi (Male Lead/ML) (Joy of Life) Song Yias Su Tan Er (Female Lead/FL) (Joy of Life) Jian Yi Yi as Liu Xi Gua (Love of Thousand Years) Gao Shu Guang as Qin Si Yuan (Joy of Life S2) Hai Yi Tian as Fang Tian Lei (Joy of Life S2) Shang Yu Xian as Lu Hong Ti (Detective Chinatown) Wang Cheng Si as Geng Hu Yuan (Prisoner of Beauty) Yu Yang as Su Zhong Kan (Pursuit of Jade) Liu Guan Lin as Su Wen Xing (New Life Begins) |
The Cast:
From Left to Right: Kevin Guo, Song Yi, Liu Guan Lin, Dai Xiang Yu, Wang Cheng Si, Gao Shu Guang, Liu Yi Hong, Shang Yu Xian, Hai Yi Tian, Zhu Zhu, Cao Xie Yue, Smile Hu
Synopsis: (You're going to have to bear with me on this one). My Heroic Husband is a story within a story, following a contemporary book character whose author transplants him into a historical webnovel with all his previous memories intact and gives him the role of Ning Yi, a useless matrilocal husband. Determined to make the most of his new situation, Ning Yi joins forces with his new wife, Su Tan Er, and they slowly fall in love as they franchise the family business... and fight off bandits to save the nation.
Non Spoiler Thoughts:
What was this? Genuinely? I mean, points for creativity, but woah there. The first half was fun and focused on falling in love, building out the family and their business, but the second half was extremely serious and intense, with moral complexities and a hostage situation. Why did it get so dark? The tonal whiplash was too much for me. I need a massage.
The drama had unashamedly Joy of Life aspirations, with many actors overlapping, but My Heroic Husband brought a fun twist to the usual transmigration plot line by having Ning Yi be a fictional character, through and through. Throughout the drama, he sported a really bad wig and used his modern day knowledge to wow all with his contemporary solutions and innovative ideas. It was a super fun concept, but so sorry, Joy of Life did it better. What made Ning Yi special was his knowledge, not his character. I felt like the drama, in a sense, made his character Superman with advantages only granted because of the environment, but failed to realize that what made Superman really special was that at his core he was good hearted Clark Kent.
Though titled, My Heroic Husband, this is really not a romance as one party is constantly missing in action. Again, it's similar to Joy of Life where time is split between many different kinds of the ML's relationships. Su Zhong Kan and Wen Xiang (Cousin and Uncle) were the surprise highlights of the drama. They were hilarious and devious, but at the end of the day, they had good hearts.
The drama was immensely popular upon release with just under 6 billion views, and won several comedy awards. It's the fourth most popular drama on iQIYI to this day, and allegedy there will be a sequel (but so much time has passed, I doubt it). Due to the popularity, we got a spin off movie of the drama, also titled My Heroic Husband, that follows Su Wen Xing and Gao Tian as he tries to grow his own business.
I enjoyed the first half, but was left mystified by the second, so I'm not sure if I recommend. There were some good laughs and some moving moments, but everything as a whole didn't really go together. But an assassin does yeet herself into the air like superman, and that was hilarious. And that's enough for me.
____________Beware Mateys: There be Spoilers ahead!_______________
The Dissapearence of Su Tan’er
Song Yi played an elephant in the room with how much she was missing in action. She never really stood much of a chance in the role of Su Tan Er, but I liked her portrayal; she made the character gentle, capable, and sensible. When we are introduced to her, she is presented as a woman on a mission to get the family seal and become the head of their cloth business, allowing her to pursue her passions as an independent person.
Enter the Male Lead: Ning Yi came in like a wrecking ball and put a hole through everything that made Su Tan Er special. She was good at business, he was better. She had problems, he brought futuristic solutions. She outwitted her family relatives, he roasted them so hard they had to go to the burn unit. The drama was a series of scenarios designed for Ning Yi to show off his modern day solutions (and communist ideas lol), which didn’t allow for Su Tan Er to shine. She was delegated to just a redundant love interest.
The original source material had a harem set up where Su Tan Er, Liu Xi Gua, Mo Ying, Yuan Jin Er, and Nie Yun Zhe were all love interests, and you can see the faint outline of that in the drama. This means that Su Tan Er has to split her screen time with the other ladies which made her role as the Female Lead feel less substantial. I’m glad the drama didn’t lean into the harem vibe, but if you’re going to change something, just change it; she should have gotten more screen time.
Especially, in the second half. Girlfriend, straight up disappears. The drama ghosts her. She’s Gone Girl for 1/3 of the drama. My English subtitles kept saying that she was ravished, but I do believe they meant kidnapped.
But then when we do find her, it’s when she's in process of almost being assaulted. FOR THE SECOND TIME. I really hated this. I hate when stories use the assault of a woman as a chance for the Male Lead to aura farm. Ning Yi gets some old fashioned Western justice and I feel like the drama thought it was being cool and showing how dark and intense he is, but it felt gross. The whole thing was badly handled.
Throughout the drama, Ning Yi states that he is committed to Su Tan Er, but it would have meant more had the drama committed to her as well. Their romance was cute, but due to the lack of time, the chemistry wasn't there.
The Husband
Yi Ning was a weird character. In some ways, he was the ultimate Mary Sue who had an advantage on everyone, with women falling for him left and right. He also accepted his new reality immediately, and was never really at a disadvantage. It seemed like his character in his orignal world had more martial arts experience, so some of his actions in the "ancient" setting felt incongruent with that. I couldn't help but feel that what made his character special was the advantages he got, rather than his own cleverness. I wish he had lost a little more in his outwitting matches because I feel like I didn't see enough character growth. Although he did get a little Empire Strikes Back on us towards the end.
Mixed Tone/Mixed Message
I really don't know what the creators wanted the audience to take away from the drama. My Heroic Husband doesn't ultimately subvert gender role in a meaningful way as Ning Yi always saves the day, and it's not exactly comedy entertainment as the the drama was only funny in the first half. What was the goal? There are some themes about duty to the country and self sacrifice that Ning Yi comes around to, but what did that have to do with the first half? None of it ever connected. It was all very CCP.
I was surprisingly moved by one of the ending scenes, when the gang returns home and Ning Yi shows Madam Yang the portrait Geng Hu Yuan (The Gaurd) drew. She doesn't remember him, nor recognize the meaning behind the portrait. It was a good reminder that sometimes we tell ourselves stories that won't mean anything to other people. Madam Yang proved to be shallow and flighty, although she really didn't do anything wrong by not remembering him, it was just a sober reminder that the things you do won't always be appreciated.
My Heroic Conclusion
This drama confounded me to no end. I liked the first half, but the second gave me a headache. It falls just .1 point under my usual rating threshold for recommending, but if you like Joy of Life or Royal Upstart, maybe give it a try?
RBTS Overall Rating: 2.9/5 Stars | ||
Story: | 3 | Some good, ideas but just so all over the place. Everything was done to make the ML look cool. The tonal shift ruined the momentum. |
Acting: | 3 | Eh, Fine |
Production Quality: | 2.5 | those wigs chills |
Ending: | 3 | By the time I ended, I had no idea what I’d watched |
Enjoyability: | 3 | Fine. I skipped more in the second half and didn't like how dark it got for literally no reason. |
Trailer:
Director: Deng Ke (The Road to Splendor, Shadow Love, The Prisoner of Beauty, Guardians of the Dafeng, The Legend fo Sheng Li)
Screenwriter: Qin Wen (Love in Red Dust, Blossoms in Shanghai, The Rebel, Fry Me to The Moon)
*Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images used on this blog. All images belong to their respective copyright holders and are used for commentary and review purposes. All reviews, opinions, and statements expressed on this blog are my own and are intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. They reflect my personal thoughts and interpretations and should not be considered as factual.
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