Okay, I've been avoiding the Untamed and I need to ask you questions. 1. Is it finished? 2. Is it terribly depressing??? (I can't tell, it looks adorable af but then there are moments when I wonder.) 3. Is it all subtext? (I'm mostly just curious.) I avoided it because it looked like it had a terribly sad, heart wrenching ending but now I don't see anything like that and is that just tumblr being tumblr or do I have to worry? Save me GSW, you're my only hope.
1) It is finished! All 50 episodes are available on Netflix and Viki. Opinions on the subtitle quality varies but most agree the latter is better.
2) See here’s the thing. The beginning (let’s just assume you watch it in chronological order, I did a post breaking that down) is fun, cute, some action, a little drama, a little romance. Fun! Then around episode ... I wanna say 13-14, bad things start to happen and it becomes enormously angsty. The angst comes and goes for a little while and then ramps up and goes straight into angst with a capital “holy hell show you need to chill because I have been crying for half an hour straight” territory. And then around episode 33 it’s like “okay, that was an experience, let’s ease back and let our boys solve some mysteries and sass their elders now” pretty much until the end (with some angst sprinkled in here and there).
Is it worth it? Absolutely, in my opinion. Do characters die? Yes. Will you cry? Almost definitely. Does it have a happy ending? For the main couple, yes. (It does this weird fake out where it makes you think it’s going to end ambiguously but then is like psych! just kidding! they’re gonna live happily ever after.) (I say ‘for the main couple’ because there are some characters it does not end as well for, and these are characters you probably will like, and it might be a little sad, but overall it ends happily. I’m very sensitive about such things and I was fine with the way it ended.)
3) That depends on how you define it. In the book, it’s 100% canon. They be fuckin’. In the show, it’s .... subtexty, because of Chinese censorship. There’s a good breakdown on that here. Do they kiss or come right out and say ‘I love you’? No, but they absolutely do not need to. It’s very clear that they’re in love, there’s a public declaration of devotion, they basically went right up to the line that the censors would allow and played chicken with it.
In short, highly recommend, would not be a bad idea to check out the brief guide I wrote which goes over the chronology thing and has a character guide to help you remember who’s who because it’s a big, interwoven cast.
