《少年歌行》 - episodes 15 to 18

Seems like I'm going to try to stick it through with this series. I'm not sure this is necessarily the best idea...but hey, at least it's taking my mind off HSR, which was the whole point of this exercise, so there's that.

Thoughts:

• The side character romance is honestly super boring. Like...I know only about two episodes were actually spent on it, but man was it a draggy two episodes.

• Main character continues to earn happy points from me. Girl saving guy is always nice to see.

• Sadly, the imperial siblings ultimately were kind of a let down. Story should've stuck to the pointless spiny fighting and less trying to do this imperial conspiracy stuff because wow, it's really not equipped to handle something this complicated. The show simply does not have the maturity to handle actual political backstabbing types of plots.

• One thing I do appreciate is that at least in the main cast everyone is doing a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to emotional labor. There's a decent amount of give and take happening.

• Honestly, the show is at its best when focusing on interpersonal relationships and at its worst when dealing with political machinations. Unsurprising, because usually these types of 架空 style worlds typically is the result of the author not understanding how power politics work. Or how organization works. Or how social contracts work. Or really showing any respect for the social sciences at all, so like...it basically falls super flat. I've literally seen workplaces with more complicated politics than what's going on in the show.

• Can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I think the show can benefit from more fighting. The writing just isn't mature enough to support the kind of complicated sociological storytelling its trying to achieve. Just have the good guys and bad guys fight, because the political schemes are embarrassingly elementary.