EPISODE 1 RECAP
A young girl’s home is raided and her entire family is executed due to a crime her father may or may not have committed.
The girl would have been killed too if it weren’t for the crown prince pleading for her on the ground that they are engaged to be married. But she proudly refuses and accepts her fate, which is exile. I’ve gotta tell you, though, that for a kid who’s just seen her whole family slaughtered, she looks way too calm.
By the way, is this the exile place?
One ticket for me, please.
Years later, the prince — Hanye (Gong Jun) — grows up. Quite a gentleman he turns out to be. And I mean he’s an angelic, timid, soft and sensitive baby, okay? One day, while he’s chilling in a restaurant, it suddenly rains. And this man is so good that he offers his umbrella to a mother and her children who are passing by.
At this time, a girl in red (Dilmurat) walks past him. The way she holds the umbrella reminds him of his fiancee.
By the way, it seems the drama industry has decided that Dilmurat looks best in red, so they refuse to put her in any other color no matter the role she plays. Well, lucky for them, she really does look great.
A bit later, he finds her sleeping under one of the street stalls; and after some intensive brainstorming, he takes off his cloak and puts it on her. Look, boy, you have a good heart, we get it, but let’s examine the situation closely: a beautiful girl dressed in all red walks down a street where everyone is in drab clothing at best, she smirks at you and two minutes later she’s “sleeping” in a beautiful pose, where everyone can see her. When you see something like this, the first thing that crosses your adult-prince’s mind shouldn’t be: oh she must be cold, let me give her my coat.
Anyway, the girl jumps up and makes fun of him for what he was about to do. She’s pretty mischievous.
Then, as a group of men appear out of nowhere, shouting and searching for someone, she drags Prince Hanye to the port and down a small boat.
The drama isn’t doing a very good job of telling you why this is such an urgent situation that two strangers have to hide together like this, but… whatever gets them in a snuggling position, I guess.
And that’s not even enough, the girl decides to row the boat away from shore to be “safe”. Prince Hanye doesn’t like it but he lets her do what she wants anyway. The next thing we know, they are in the middle of the OCEAN. How did that even happen! You have reservations about this strange girl but you let her row you out that far in the open sea without saying anything?
They have a few more conversations, the girl backs Hanye into a corner at one point and makes him blush even more than he’s been blushing all along. Basically, this girl does all the things swaggering men usually do in these dramas.
This prince Hanye, though… whoever brought him up really taught him nothing about boundaries. Lucky for him the girl is just playing around and not really trying to take advantage of him. Not yet, that is.
Suddenly they run into some military ships. Well, let’s hide again! The girl pushes Hanye into the water and somehow manages to FLIP the boat so that it hovers above them and encases them in an air bubble. Like Jack and Will…
But note that this is not a tiny little boat like in PotC. It’s a PASSENGER boat.
Yep, she flipped that thing over with just one kick.
From the opposite direction, another bunch of ships are approaching.
Big reveal coming up. The girl flies up and swings onto one of those newly-arriving ships like a pirate as the crews hail her as their chief — Ren Anle. It’s definitely the little girl whose family was executed and you know what? I would love to know how she achieved all this in exile.
The prince helps Anle fight off the other side, whoever they are. But this too, makes him into a blushing public spectacle.
When the prince’s servants arrive to pick him up in a ship, Anle’s crew starts shouting about how she and the prince should get married cause… I don’t know, she’s already seen his bare shoulder?
Anle doesn’t exactly make things easy for him, she encourages her crew and declares that this would be a suitable marriage.
Anyway, the prince goes back home.
A few days later, the palace holds an archery event. Guess who comes to show off her skills? Anle.
She rides her horse into the archery ground like it’s her own shopping mall, and the guards must either be snoozing or staring at her beauty, because none of them attempts to stop her or make her pay the proper respect to their prince. Armed men, how hard is it for a group of you to jump in front of a horse and scare its rider into stopping?
COMMENTS
The screen filter in this drama is intense, the action sequences are somewhat superficial, and at no point does Anle look believable as an experienced woman who leads military fleets. The same goes for everything else that concerns the court politics and warfare featured so far in Legend of Anle. So I wouldn’t say I’ll be watching this drama for plot or writing quality.
On the bright side, Anle and Hanye do have chemistry and their dynamic is an interesting one. Dilmurat and her snow-white skin + perfectly drawn eyebrows may not look suitable for a seawoman but she definitely nails the mischievous-girl part in a likable way. So, as long as Dilmurat and Gong Jun can keep up what they’re doing now, I’d say it wouldn’t be a bad watch, not for me at least.
But — big “but” — having seen a fair few of these dramas, my fear is it will quickly turn into a harem story with bad politics and petty scheming. Not that I’m keen on seeing more boat-flipping or fake robe-swinging, but if this is to be a drama that features a female lead who treads the sea, it would be great to see her character reflect that.
So, hope for the best, I guess?