I just finished this show after several days of binge-watching, and I can honestly say that it is one of the most visually stunning shows I’ve ever seen. While I was watching it, I couldn’t stop thinking of how every frame looked so beautiful.

The Longest Day in Chang’an is a show I’m very happy to have watched. It is an extremely special show that has the ability to transport you to a different time. It is extremely atmospheric and pulls you in almost immediately. However, I somehow feel like it didn’t really resonate with me on such a deep level. I think this may have to do with several aspects which I’ll get to in a moment:

Characters:
Whereas the characters are rather strong and their motivations are quite clear for most part, I was unable to fully love any character. I don’t think this is necessarily a flaw in the show or anything. It’s definitely a more plot focused drama rather than a character focused one, and that’s fine. It’s just that I was personally unable to feel any strong emotion for any of the characters. Many of the kind hearted people of Chang’an (those with guest roles) died in horrific ways. That was just pretty depressing. I am not complaining about the moral ambiguity of most of the main and supporting characters, but it did distance me a bit from them, even though I could empathise with a lot of things they were feeling. Zhang Xiao Jing is presented as a heroic person, although he has done some terrible deeds too. However, what made him less relatable to me was how much of a superhero he appears to be. He is touted as the one who can save the city, and he never gets tired. Instead he is able to do pretty much everything and survive without many problems. Li Bi kind of ends up being not-so-smart, even though he’s supposed to be a prodigy. Xu Bin - I’m not sure his reasons to do what he did are clear enough, or justified. I like that he is the person no one believed would be able to pull off what he does, but in the end, his motivations are not extremely clear. Xiao Gui (Long Bo) is a compelling villain, but I still don’t understand how he was able to kill off so many poor workers at the Peacekeeper Corps so mercilessly after saying he wouldn’t hurt them. It was understandable that he was reeling from the pain he and his friends endured during the time they had been members of the eighth squad, but what good would it do killing off a bunch of helpless officials doing their jobs? It wasn’t the moral ambiguity that was the problem- it was just what felt a bit like out of character stuff. Other minor characters like such as Yuan Zai and Wang Yun Xiu were just plain annoying. Wen Ran also seemed to have very little personality. Yu Chang was just plain annoying to me. Eventually there were very few characters I actually felt something for. I wonder if feeling an emotional distance from the characters also has anything to do with the point that I’ll talk about next.

Endless action sequences:
For a show that happens over the span of one day, there’s surely far too much going on. Zhang Xiao Jing (will call him ZXJ from now on) goes through a million hurdles over the course of the day - and these are all explosive action sequences. If I clean the house for two hours, I need to sit down for another five hours, but ZXJ just seems to have boundless energy. He almost gets killed several times on the show but somehow manages to be in the best form. Even Li Bi manages to survive some near death experiences and has no problems. Tan Qi gets buried alive but shows no signs of fatigue later on. Having all these near death experiences and constant action scenes took away from the feeling that these characters might really die at some point. The action became saturated to the point where it became a spectacle rather than something that leads the story forward. At the beginning of the show, the action sequences seemed to serve some purpose, but they just became excessive at some point and seemed to have little tension to them.

Length:
This show needed to be condensed into 35 episodes at most. 48 episodes for a show uncovering a mystery in 24 hours is a bit too much. That’s why the endless action sequences also seem implausible and give you no breathers. For this reason, I actually enjoyed the mundane talking and scheming political intrigue parts more than the action sequences.

That said, this is still an excellent show. The acting is very good and the background score is beautiful. I was completely blown away by the work that went into making this show so technically breathtaking. I think that anyone reluctant to start watching a Chinese drama should start with this one. It’s an absolutely beautiful-looking drama and really requires thinking on the part of the viewer. The political intrigue is very interesting and the intensity of this show never ends.

It doesn’t touch a 9/10 for me, but an 8.8. Somehow, it didn’t touch my core, even though it was a very impressive and thought-provoking show.