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Okay. I keep seeing you talking about Tientsin Mystic. Can you give me a breakdown pretty please? What's it about? What do you love most about it? Should I watch it?

Pretty please with Foye on top?

the way i saw this ask and immediately SCREAMED caitlin my love how did you know i want to talk about tientsin mystic forever and ever???

OKAY THE BREAKDOWN:

Tientsin Mystic is about a corpse retriever named Guo Deyou, who is nicknamed 小河神, or the little river god, because he's so fucking good at finding corpses under the water. One night he finds a body under there but SURPRISE it's not a corpse but DING MAO the son of the president of the chamber of commerce in their town. why was ding mao in the water no one fucking knows but the next day Guo Deyou retrieves an Actual Dead Body from the water but it's DING MAO'S DAD :( ding mao is upsetti spaghetti about this understandably, and since he's just come back from Germany where he majored in forensic science, he decides he's gonna solve this murder case, and moves in to guo deyou's house so that he can annoy him into helping him.

they are joined by Gu Ying, a religious sorceress and guo deyou's best friend, and xiao lanlan, a newspaper reporter who keeps getting discriminated against because she's a woman. Eventually, they discover that there's a CULT HAPPENING and they have to stop the cult from kidnapping a baby that will make them immortal or something??? idk honestly after episode five you can really just skip to Season Two bc while Season One is fun, season two FUCKS

(non-specific spoilers for seasons one and two of tientsin mystic below the cut)

BASICALLY season one ends with them all in mortal peril and ur like :O what's gonna happen?????? and then season two starts and just explains everything that happened in season one in like two minutes and then says "yeah shit happened they solved it and now they're in MORE SHIT here we go!" guo deyou is in prison, gu ying is in the hospital having gone crazy from zombie juice, ding mao is now like the head of the city, and xiao lanlan is trying to start up her own newspaper. they end up having to solve MORE MURDERS bc the police force in town is just a Mustache Man and his harem so they're basically useless.

now i may be biased, but i am in love with season two because of what they chose to do with ding mao's character, and that may just be bc of my Personal Aesthetic Tastes, but they went OFF with that shit. basically at the end of season one (we never see this actually we just get Trauma Flashbacks) shit explodes and ding mao gets trapped in a cave in or something???? it is unclear but ANYWAY he permanently injures his leg so throughout season two he's like, finding new ways to work around his injury and how to keep up with his former lifestyle and his friends, and he has a cane with a SWORD IN IT and also guo deyou has a bunch of angst about this bc he couldn't save ding mao and it's just!!!!!!! really good for me personally. hit like all of my buttons (ding mao is also stressed as hell about EVERYTHING so there's a lot of him Not Sleeping and people worrying about him and I??? want to cry about it i love him). there's also mysticism and magic and all sorts of fun stuff! the plot moves along pretty well and the villain isn't nearly as batshit as in season one so i liked that more too. I also surprisingly really liked gu ying/guo deyou's arc in s2 as well.

i think a lot of people are turned off from season two bc the original guo deyou actor, li xian, was replaced by jin shijia (from Under the Skin), but i actually really like his portrayal of guo deyou. he's a lot more gritty and rough and like, down-to-earth, whereas li xian's guo deyou was more lofty and aloof, but season two really emphasizes the class differences between gu ying/guo deyou and ding mao/xiao lanlan, which was something that i enjoyed. i love both guo deyous, but i went into season two expecting to just tolerate him, but i ended up liking him the most.

OF COURSE THE HIGHLIGHT tho is ding mao, my baby mad scientist. he's extremely silly and just wants to do a good job but also does not want to do business ever!! he likes looking at things through his magnifying glass and cutting open corpses and he's just a giant Nerd!! zhang mingen is STELLAR in this role, especially in season two; the thing with injuries and actors is that sometimes they forget that they're supposed to be In Pain or inhibited in some way, but zhang mingen never forgets. this could be bc they costumed him with this giant clunky metal brace, but just the way he moves his entire body, even without the brace, is so different from season one, and he does a really good job of embodying that into his character. I also have a soft spot for characters who have disabilities but are still allowed to be badass, and ding mao is one of them. he kicks SO MUCH ASS but also he has to adjust for this new part of his life and hhnngngnghgghghgh it's so well-done it's just some really great details.

is it a good show? objectively i don't know. the villains are kind of cheesy and the stakes never seem to be that high, but the four main characters wrap you up in the show so well that you fall in love with all of them and their world anyway. i highly recommend if you want some silly hijinks and murder mystery solving, but be prepared that season two ends very abruptly and with no explanation as to the ending, and there doesn't seem to be a season three in the works unfortunately. i still think you should watch it bc if you're anything like me it will live in your head rent free for days and bring you endless joy :)

look at him in his lil outfit!!!