Uncovering Viewer Sentiment on "Dragon Tomb Cave" – A Data‑Driven Douban Analysis

Douban Rating and Audience

Analysis of Douban scores for the Chinese web drama "Dragon Tomb Cave" shows an initial 8.4 rating, now stabilising at 8.2, with 70.6% of reviewers giving five‑star scores and only 3.2% giving one star.

Web Scraping Comments

Python code was used to scrape up to 500 comments from Douban, extracting username, star rating, comment time, and comment text.

for comment in comments:
    # get username
    user = comment.xpath('.//h3/span[2]/a/text()')[0]
    # get star rating
    star = comment.xpath('.//h3/span[2]/span[2]/@class')[0][7:8]
    # get time
    date_time = comment.xpath('.//h3/span[2]/span[3]/@title')
    # get comment text
    comment = comment.xpath('.//p/span/text()')[0].strip()

The rating distribution chart confirms the dominance of five‑star reviews.

A time‑series plot reveals two spikes on April 2 and April 9, matching the weekly Wednesday release schedule.

Geographic analysis shows most commenters are from Beijing, followed by Shanghai and Guangdong.

Comparative Analysis

Using pandas merge on the user URL, comments for "Dragon Tomb Cave" were compared with those for "Jing Jue Gu Cheng" and "Huang Pizi Fen". The merged dataset highlights differing character focus and sentiment patterns.

Word‑cloud visualizations show predominantly positive terms for both series, though "Dragon Tomb Cave" emphasizes characters Hu Bayi, Zheng Gushou, and Wang Pangzi, while "Jing Jue Gu Cheng" draws more attention to Chen Qiao‑en.

Comparing "Dragon Tomb Cave" with "Huang Pizi Fen" reveals a higher mention frequency of Ran Jingtian’s Taiwanese accent in the latter.

Further comparison with the "Lost Tomb" series using Baidu Index shows a larger female fan base and younger age distribution for "Lost Tomb".

Conclusion

The drama enjoys strong audience approval, with many viewers praising the cast and production quality, though it still exhibits common shortcomings of domestic series.