General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Oh My General (将军在上)

Oh My General (将军在上) is a 2017 Chinese costume romantic-comedy web series of 60 episodes, produced by Xingge Media and streamed exclusively on Youku, adapted from the novel Jiangjun Zai Shang Wo Zai Xia (《将军在上我在下》) by Juhua Sanli (橘花散里).¹^•²^•³ Set in the Song dynasty, it pairs a battle-hardened female general with a pampered, handsome prince in a deliberately reversed "strong wife, weak husband" romance, and it became one of the most-watched Chinese web series of 2017 while drawing sharply divided reviews.⁴^•⁵

Key fact	Detail
Original title / broadcast	将军在上; 60 episodes of about 45 minutes, premiered on Youku on October 25, 2017, finale December 2017¹^•⁶
Source material	Novel 《将军在上我在下》 by 橘花散里, a Jinjiang original-network IP that once led the site's annual click ranking²
Lead cast	Ma Sichun (马思纯) as general Ye Zhao; Sheng Yilun (盛一伦) as prince Zhao Yu Jin; Ding Chuan as Hu Qing; Wang Churan as Liu Xi Yin¹
Production	Directed by Wen Jie and Huo Yaoliang; screenwriter Shichen Gongzi; artistic director Lü Haojiji; costumes by Oscar-winning designer Emi Wada (和田惠美)⁴^•⁷
Budget	Reported at 300 million yuan, with much of the spending placed in production rather than star salaries⁴^•⁸
Viewership	Passed 1.8 billion views on Youku by November 18, 2017; around 66.5 billion cumulative views at the December 23 regular-member finale, with one trade account putting the closing figure at 70 billion⁴^•⁵^•³
Critical reception	Douban 5.4 from more than 7,400 users in mid-November 2017, later steady around 5.3, with about 75% of reviews at three stars or below⁴^•⁹

Spoilers

Premise and plot

The story is set during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song. Ye Zhao, daughter of general Ye Zhong, has grown up disguised as a man, distinguishes herself in battle from age 16, and is appointed Grand General of the Empire's Armies after a victory in the northern desert. She then petitions the emperor to reveal that she is a woman, shocking the court.¹^•¹⁰ The Empress Dowager Liu, who governs from behind the curtain and has long feared that Ye Zhao's command of troops threatens the throne, uses the disclosure to order Ye Zhao's marriage to the emperor's nephew, the idle and beautiful Prince of Nanping, Zhao Yu Jin.¹

The drama's engine is this gender-role inversion: one spouse is a battlefield killer nicknamed the "living King of Hell", the other a coddled salon figure who repeatedly tries to escape the arranged marriage.¹⁰^•¹¹ Supporting characters include Hu Qing, the general's strategist who has suppressed his feelings believing his commander is a man; Liu Xi Yin, Ye Zhao's cousin who took a childhood marriage joke seriously; the scheming Prince Qi; and the loyal bodyguards Qiu Shui and Qiu Hua.¹¹ The finale resolves the war with Western Xia and leaves the couple together, with the prince transformed into a man of state.¹²

Adaptation and production

Screenwriter Shichen Gongzi (奭辰公子), a Hangzhou-based writer who keeps her real name private, said she began adapting the novel during an emotional low point, writing for pleasure, and spent three years producing an 800,000-character script.⁴ She praised the source novel for shedding conventional costume-drama settings for women, saying the heroine's spirit matched the independence of contemporary women.⁴ Because television audiences are mostly women, she deliberately fleshed out the male lead, who has less page time in the novel; the original author reviewed and endorsed the script before filming began.⁴

Song-dynasty texture. The production researched period detail: the opening shows Empress Dowager Liu and Emperor Renzong playing chuiwan, an ancestor of golf, and episodes include women's sumo venues and a street-peddled "Dongjing tabloid" the writer said had documentary grounding.⁴

Design. Emi Wada, the Japanese costume designer who won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for Kurosawa's Ran, took on her first television series as the show's costume director. She personally designed costumes for all 85 characters, 1,588 garments in total, a process lasting more than three months, and had drawn some 200 design sketches before shooting began.⁷^•¹³ The crew also included action director Wu Gang, a member of Jackie Chan's stunt team and a Golden Horse winner for Detective Chinatown.¹⁴ Lü Haojiji, director of the 2015 hit Go Princess Go, served as artistic director; Ma Sichun, who had won the Golden Horse Award for Best Actress, led the cast in her first television leading role.³^•⁵

Reception

Commercially the series performed strongly. It passed 100 million views within 21 hours of its October 25 premiere, exceeded 1.8 billion by November 18, and reached 66.5 billion cumulative views by the December 23 regular-member finale, spending nearly half its run at number one on the Guduo daily web-drama chart.¹⁵^•⁴^•⁵ Two trade accounts give slightly different closing totals, 68 billion and 70 billion views; the Guduo data report places the figure at over 66.5 billion as of December 23.⁹^•³^•⁵

Critical reception was split from the start. In mid-November 2017 the Douban score stood at 5.4 from more than 7,400 raters, and positive reviews were about 28% in the first week; the later settled score was 5.3, with roughly 75% of reviews awarding three stars or fewer.⁴^•¹⁵^•⁹ Reviewers mocked the saturated color palette and exaggerated dance sequences as a recycled "upgraded Go Princess Go", and the People's Daily-affiliated press noted complaints about padded plotting in a 60-episode run.¹⁶^•⁸ The screenwriter defended the dances as deliberately surrealistic visual art and denied any direct connection between the two productions.⁴

Audience data told a different story from the score. Seventy percent of viewers were aged 19 to 34, concentrated in Beijing, Guangdong, and the Yangtze delta; Ma Sichun's performance drew an 83.5% positive rating, overall praise for the leads' acting exceeded 80%, and discussion of actors and characters outpaced discussion of plot.⁵ Main Weibo topics accumulated more than 2.6 billion reads, and fan-made derivative works spread across Bilibili, Lofter, and other platforms.⁵

Spin-off films

Following the finale, Youku and Xingge Media released three spin-off web films centered on supporting characters, an early Chinese example of "series-film linkage" after The Mystic Nine had tried the format with four films in 2016.⁹^•³ The three were the costume comedy Oh My General: Paradise of Ultimate Bliss (极乐净土), starring the guard Qiu Hua; the modern romance Oh My General: Time-Space Lovers (时空恋人), centered on the popular cousin Liu Xi Yin; and the costume mystery comedy Oh My General: The Furong Mystery (芙蓉密案).⁹^•³ Time-Space Lovers drew close to ten million discussion posts, the top topic among the three.³

International release and similar titles

Overseas the series streams as Oh My General on Rakuten Viki, Tubi, AsianCrush, and other services, with subtitles in English and more than a dozen other languages; on Viki it holds a 9.2 rating from over 18,000 users.¹⁷^•¹⁸ In Japan it is listed as Hana to Shōgun ~Oh My General~ (花と将軍～Oh My General～).¹⁹ The title is distinct from the 2023 Chinese short drama Jiangjun Zai Shang: Furen Qieyao Kuangchong, an unrelated 100-episode micro-series starring Chen Wai and Zou Jiajia.²⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles My to So

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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