Back to Bending-Willow's Profile Bending-Willow's Profile

Genre: Romance, Shoujo, Action and Historical (possibly tragedy?? The main ship survives, don't worry)

Background information:
Gu Fang Bu Zi Shang was an manga adaptation off a Chinese internet novel and as all adaptations go, it is nowhere as good as the actual story. If anyone happens to be Chinese, I would recommend reading the novel first before reading the manga, because names written in English can be very confusing.

Story background information:
There are four countries in total, let us call them A, B, C and D.
The main character Pingting is the military strategist of country A (Guile) and is very loyal to her master named He Xia, ... a very talented general of military forces of Guile. He Xia's arch nemesis is the young general of country B (Donglin) Chu Beijie.

The story starts with Pingting getting separated from her master and abducted by slave sellers during a siege. To protect herself, she lies about her identity and ends up sold to a rich family in Guile. Pingting, who was anxious to return to her master's side, was eager to escape from the rich family. Fortunately or should I say unfortunately, the family's young lady befriends her and made Pingting dress as her so she would be able to meet her secret lover. As Pingting was pretending to be the young lady, she meets Chu Beijie who becomes very romantically interested in her. By a strange turn of events, Pingting becomes Beijie's maid at his mansion while hiding her true identity.

(Then a lot of things happen, this is pretty much where the manga is updating from but a lot of things happen afterwards. I feel bad leaving it here because it doesn't sound that interesting but I will promise you, when the manga updates, hell it is going to be A LOT of stuff)

The story was quite interesting as a shoujo manga, however, there were a few existent plot holes. As someone who read the novel, I noticed quite a bit of interesting bits that were neglected in the manga as well as new characters introduced who were never mentioned before. No matter what, it was still a very good attempt of adaptation.

Character wise, Pingting's character is a combination of intelligent, dark and cheery. She is very loyal to her master, to the point she neglects herself and it was very interesting to see the things in her eyes. She isn't annoying and is quite an interesting character. Gu Fang Bu Zi Shang's characters all have their individual personalities that make them stand out, not a single person is neglected, I would say the characters were done quite well.

Art, okay, the art IS FANTASTIC. No more comments about it.

Overall, I would give it around 8-9, the plot and the characters were good, it is just not as good as the novel adaptation. I would strongly recommend this story to any romance or shoujo fan. As someone who loves long-haired guys and historical romance, this manga for me was amazing. So read! ^^