Heavenly Sword and Dragon Slaying Sabre

Just finished my second watching of this series. I liked it even more the second time. The first half of the series is a masterpiece. The second half was great but felt a little muddled in certain parts. There are subplots that feel a bit stretched out and tedious, but the show more than makes up for it with the fact that every character is interesting and a lot more than just the main characters have amazing story arcs.

This is one of Jin Yong's (the author of the books) great strengths, inventing a fascinating array of different characters that each take their own journey throughout the story. Rather than feeling like chess pieces used to tell a story, the characters go through changes, they evolve and they fail to evolve. There's a lot of amazing changes the large cast of characters go through. This was captured well in the series.

I gave it a 10, because I thought it was underrated on here. It's really a 9 because the second half wasn't executed as well as it could have been. But it is totally worth it to watch it all the way through and to be able to really appreciate it as a whole. Amazing story and amazing storytelling.