Ashes of Love

TBH I didn't want to watch this drama when I came across it in Jan 19 when I was searching for a good drama to watch. Ashes of love was one of the top 10 recommended drama of 2018 but at first I somehow didn't fancy it after reading the synopsis and seeing the promotion posters. I thought it was going to be one of those fluffy and sickening romantic drama which I really don't like. However, after watching most of the recommended drama such as Legend of Fuyao, TMOPB, King's Woman, The Flame Daughter, Secret of the Three Kingdom and I was running out of drama to watch so I gave AOL a try. At the start I couldn't really get into the story and \i dropped it couple of times but I kept on seeing AOL on the top 10, top 15 lists of a MUST WATCH series so I gave it one last try and to my surprise it is now my favourite Chinese Drama of all time even exceed my previous fav - Nirvana in Fire. Also when I first saw the promotional posters I really don't like the look of Deng Lun but after just first few episodes in I was in awe of his presence and performance. He is truly a God of Fire! I really love this series and I kept re-watched it so many times. The aspect I love the most is the beautiful love story between Jinmi and Xufeng. Truly amazing!

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This drama has been a long journey.
It was an amazing drama with spectacular actors who did so much justice to their roles,be it the crazy act or anything else it was always on point

I love the fact that they have portrayed the characters as people who became the way the became as a victim of circumstances and not in the "I'm a born devil kinda way"

Overall I would have enjoyed it even more if it had not become excessively draggy. It was a drama that could have told this story is a much shorter way probably 40 episodes or so.

But nevertheless I really enjoyed the drama for what it is.

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Want a long drama that gives you a rollercoaster of emotions? Watch this

Not going to lie, I first saw a clip of Ashes of love on tiktok and for some reason the tiktok made it seem like a poor quality unrealistic looking drama that uses a lot for green screens. But that isnt the case at all. The editing, CGI, costumes and everything were very nice quality and realistic. I dont usually write reviews but I've read many poor reviews of this drama so I decided to write one in my perspective. Even though this drama was pretty long (63 eps), I was never bored and I wanted it to be much longer.

I'm not sure why but whenever I watch a fantasy/eternal love drama, I always hated the the idea of them going down to the mortal realm to spend a lifetime as a mortal. In this, I wasn't really looking forward to them heading down but what happened down there was actually very interesting. The first time I sobbed uncontrollably in this drama was when Jinmi was dying and coughing up A LOT of blood when Xufeng was out at fighting a battle. It was devastating when Jinmi died in the mortal realm and very touching when xufeng accompanied her in her coffin.

The character Runyu to me was just a man who seeked to be loved. Whether that was his mom or Jinmi. He was obsessed with Jinmi as she was the first to make his heart fluttered and he loved her deeply. But later on into the drama, I kind of feel like his love for Jinmi slightly turned into a need of possession.

The seen where Jinmi and Xufeng "accidentally" got married while Xufeng was the Demon King was definitely my favourite scene. I watched that episode at least 5 times it was incredible to see Jinmi get back all the credit of what she did for Xufeng that was stolen by Suihe.

ACTING
The acting was very realistic and defiently sucks the audience into the drama as if they were part of it. The actors, especially the main ones were very professional.

STORY
The story to me was also incrediable and new as it was my first Fantasy/eternal love drama. It made me want to explore more into it.

MUSIC
The music made the drama even more touching. I added one of the songs played into my spotify playlist and whenever i listen to it, it brings back so many memories, both sad and happy.

REWATCH VALUE
This drama was my favourite and I will definitely be re watching it. I struggled to not rewatch it just a month after finishing it and it was really hard. I rewatch some of my favourite scenes to ease my patience.

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food for the soul

This is my first 10 in reviews.

I truly enjoyed it and had my heart broken during the series.I'm constantly re watching my favorite scenes and listening to the songs.Why ? because although is fantasy drama, it just easy to relate to some personal experiences.

The series depicts some of the real situation that we are all facing- when in a relations one will love more than the other, the anguish , the excitement, you can get it here.
Most of us will relate to Allen Deng character, which I loved, but the "main prize" should go to Yang Zi, character as she was able to make us frustrated due to her lack of feelings and love understanding.

What I didn't like about it, is how the stories for some support characters is depicted as well as some of the special FX, like the dream best, really unprofessional work.

OST links, part of my list:
favorite, the lyrics are great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpan9yLmsgI&list=PL1LdzvvpQJSBeq6_I_NP7e_YgRElTdlwp&index=4&t=0s
The other great songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SID9AIGTVso&list=PL1LdzvvpQJSBeq6_I_NP7e_YgRElTdlwp&index=4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeUTvSFhKFk&list=PL1LdzvvpQJSBeq6_I_NP7e_YgRElTdlwp&index=3&t=0s

Definitely a must watch
Enjoy it !

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BEST CDRAMA EVER!

The chemistry between the mf and the ml is so good!!
story is amazing!
The MF is cute and funny!! She also acted amazing with lines in all of the episodoes!
There is villians that are very evil their acting is so amazing!
I probably watch it 10 times already!!
Amazing STORY! Their is so many thing you would love about this drama!
Watch this if you liked a heartfelting, fantasy drama with great main characters!
RECOMMENDED AS A BEGINNING DRAMA!!
I watch this as my first drama and I was hooked to the whole drama and it got me into watch so many other cdrama that I would have missed out!

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Great Story bogged down by a VERY DRAGGY AND IRRITATING MIDDLE ( from ep 12/13 to 37/38)

I DID IT!
I swore to myself I would finish this show before the end of the month and I did.

As written in the title, this series would have been way better without that veryyyyyyyyyyyyy draggy middle which ruined the experience in my opinion. I struggled not to drop the show for more than a third of its run and that's saying something.

The last 20 episodes were way better especially the last 10/15 episodes which were fast paced in particular when you compare them to the rest of the series.

The end was pretty lackluster, a stapple of Chinese wuxia, and as much as I though both the FL and ML depicted pain and longing well, I honestly though they had little chemistry together. But since they weren't together for most of drama except when the FL was a brainless idiot, that didn't bother me that much.

Anyway, final personal rating 7. I can't get past the draggy pace. If they had kept the quality of the first 10 episodes and the last 20... That would have been a 9 ( 1 point for the lack of chemistry of the main pair + blood pressure running high) but they had to drag down the story with too much episodes that served nothing and the emperor and empress that were just hateful from start to finish. 30 to 40 episodes at most would have done wonders.

Visually... the CGIs were uneven. The budget just wasn't there. It was particularly obvious for all the backgrounds that were mostly matt painted. Matt painting ( the process of using real pictures joined together and then painting on top to blend these pictures together into a single coherent image) is something I've seen a lot in C dramas and when done well can really create enchanting universe... But here, it was cheap, often several images were not blended well especially in terms of saturation and tones... colors not matching together etc. I could even tell when the resolution of the images they used in the background was just too small and they had to resize them big and didn't bother to add some detail to hide the process.

Sometimes the atmospheric perspective was put on the wrong elements i.e when you superpose elements on top of a background, the farthest these element are from the front, the more their colors are closer to the desaturated background. Most of the time, the farther the object is from the front, the more its color is light and desaturated ( that depends obviously of the background and light but you get the drift)... They were many times when characters were placed in front of a background, but they put some atmospheric perspective on them ( i.e a desaturated filter or whatever) when in fact they shouldn't have had any additional filters. That gave an uncanny look in some scenes. Anyway that's pretty technical talk, and English is not my first language, but the bottom line is... as an artist myself who does use that process on a daily basis... My eyes BLED quite often watching that messed up artistic work.... A little bit more time given to the artists to do their work properly would have done wonders.

Still the main story was brilliant. I'll never forget the confrontation scene between Jin Mi and Run Yu at the end of episode 55... That was painful to watch and hurt in all the right places.

Run Yu had the best arc and in a better world, would have been the main character. I'm sorry for how we was pushed to become the way he turned out.... but he's not completely innocent in his demise.

Getting rid of the Heavenly Empress and Emperor ?
I’m glad he did, they were both scum anyway. As a Heavenly Emperor, he’s way more fair than both and is certainly way better than Xu Feng. The latter was too soft-hearted and straight forward. You need a cunning mind to deal with scheming people and Xu Feng just isn’t that man.
That doesn’t mean Run Yu was a bad man, just that he understood how the game is played and acted accordingly unlike Xu Feng whose mindset was too rigid for his own good.

BUT

Where Run Yu turned evil was regarding his obsession with Jin Mi. I was never convinced he loved her. But when I saw that despite how much she outwardly showed how much she loved Xu Feng, and still he wouldn’t let her go, it confirmed my opinion. He was obsessed with the idea of possessing Jin Mi. He didn’t truly love her. I’m sure there was some affection mixed in at some point… but at the end of the day, if he’d truly loved her he would have let her go… just like Xu Feng did when Jin Mi told him he brought her pain.

Regarding what he did to Jin Mi, he’s 100 % in the wrong and he knew it… which is why he kept making these huge sacrifices to inwardly justify that he deserved her love and she was being unfair to him. But love is not something you can buy with grand gestures and no amount of rights can correct the wrongs you've done if you don't resolve the problem at its root. He knew her heart never belonged to him and still, obsessed with being able to possess the only thing Xu Feng ever cared about, he hurt the person he supposedly loved the most.

Knowing that what he did to his half-brother was unforgivable.

Still unlike the former Empress and Emperor… As much as I hated his behavior regarding Xu Feng and Jin Mi… I couldn’t 100 % dislike him.
He was pushed to the edge by his father and adoptive mother who only dotted on his younger sibling. He was initially a kind soul. In a way, he made Xu Feng pay for the crimes of his parents.

Xu Feng didn’t deserve anything that happenned to him… But Xu Feng had it easy from birth. Who knows how he would have turned out faced with the same challenges as Run Yu ? Even Jin Mi ended up making a huge mistake when she thought Xu Feng had killed her father… And she didn’t suffer even a 3rd of what Run Yu had to go through.

Ultimately, he turned out pretty ok given the circumstances.
He deserved what he got... and I feel a bit sorry for him... probably because Jin Mi and Xu Feng got their happy ending in spite of his meddling, I'd have felt very differently otherwise... still in my imagination, after a couple of years, he'll be able to see that he's not that alone. He's just blind.

Anyway, that's one classic checked off my list. I'll never rewatch this one again due to its terrible pace but I can understand why people were raving about it. If I only rated this on all the feelings and the deep impression it left me during the last 10 episodes... I'd probably would have rated this a 10.

Suggested Rating: 6.5
Personal ratings: 7

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Okay, so this is one of the best drama so far. It's worth watching it. And this is my first time watching Yang Zi and Deng Lun together. But since this drama starts I could scent it that this is gonna be so good.

Story: this was an unexpected storyline/plot. To be honest, I was expecting everyone would do the investigation of Jin Mi longer. And I know Deng Lun from Princess Agents. He was cute in there. This was my first time watching him as the main lead in this drama. I really love his role. Xu Feng is a Phoenix and also the second of Heavenly Emperor and Empress. He's brave, he fights for Jin Mi. But I also don't blame him for stabbing him in the back. And I get the reason why Xu Feng didn't forgive Jin Mi. Once she stabbed in the back, he lost all his trust in her already.

Acting/Cast: All the actors/casts in this drama have done such as an amazing job. They made all the audiences impressed with their acting skills. Especially, Yang Zi and Deng Lun. The scene that Jin Mi stabbed Xu Feng in the back. I also like that scene but it's really heartbreaking watching it. My heart ached for seconds. I laughed, cried, got mad and it's really heart-felted. That moment, when Jin Mi threw up that fucking damn pill, she realized how much she loves Xu Feng. She screamed calling his name. Since she threw that shit up, she's uncomfortable every single of her breath in and out.

Music: Sa Ding Ding, You have done an amazing job. I love the songs so much.

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I started to watch this during dark times with someone close to me passing away and got very emotional in a lot of the scenes. I loved the story, very beautiful slight tragic but with a slight hope that it will go alright. The villains were okay, main leads were lovely with nice chemistry. I watched every episode without skipping, the world building was so magical and left me inspired. The OST is so beautiful that I still listen from time to time. Its a must watch chinese drama! One of the best fantasy dramas I have seen and the quality of it is amazing that I would happily go through all those episodes all over again.

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The Xianxia I felt part of it

This was my first C-Drama I still like to go back and rewatch some scenes of it. 9,5/10
I watched multiple Xianxia dramas since then, but this one still special and my top 1
Beside the fact that the FL and ML had such a great chemistery, what I find it special about this drama is: 1- the visual sceneries, they are just SO mesmerising, it was my first Xianxia and I felt like I was traveling to a new world everytime I start an episode.
2- The thing that I still couldn't find it in any other c-drama is: the character developement, this drama gave so much attention to building the characters, especially Run Yu was wonderfuly made, he didn't just turn to evil out of the blue, everything had a reason and was built step by step which made me hate what he did yet I could pity him in the same time.
Jing Mi developement was well built as well, she was a simple innocent naive yet, a happy girl, and all that was gone after what she went through.
I wasn't very satisfied with the ending, but it was okay, at least not the type of ending I avoid.

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this is what I call a rollercoaster

so this show makes you enter into a story that seemingly looks fluffy and lighthearted with no other heavier themes WRONG THIS IS A MFING TRICK. istg im pretty sure it has almost everything a Chinese historical fantasy drama would have. in my experience w/ watching this 63 episodes is toooo much for & I was right bc most of the episodes and side stories seemed pointless to me.

dislikes:
there was so much miscommunication, obsessive behavior, side stories that might be good if I was invested but I wasn't so I basically skipped most of those, what the fl's character was like in the middle of the story (in the beginning it was understandable, in the end it was so much more better), the emperor and empress (especially this lady), bruh I also had a love hate relationship with the second male lead

likes:
the male lead bc he was quite consistent, the fl's parents, the fl's friends/side kicks, the mortal story (if y'all actually watch this I suggest you pay attention to this portion of the show it was real good), the beginning of the show because I love fluff, less dramatic dramas (and this drama was hella heavy with the drama), the ending because everything tied together pretty well and there are really some heartwretching moments (yk when ur heart squeezes and it kinda hurts yeah that), the CHARACTER GROWTH thank god for this one, there are some characters in this drama that actually have some sense in them, the CGI damn it was realllyyyy goooddddd, acting was also pretty good but id have to question the moon god for his performance in the crying department

I was really tired of this drama bc of how draggy and slow everything was, so many filler scenes and episodes imo, I also really wasn't into the amount of side stories and backstories bc it was so predictable to me (the demon princess even tho it was still cute it was predictable, the sml's mom was a shocking revelation but then it became predictable, the fl's mom's story was all mysterious at first but once it was revealed it was brought up so many times, etc I cant recall any more but u get the point. however there were a lot of other moments that weren't predictable and were actually like WTF! kinda thing.

my favorite was the cute moments between the fl and ml, especially when they have those monologues about their emotions OMFG I SWEARRRR

"You also know that a glance or a word cant remove your sorrow. Even ten thousand glances and even ten thousand words will not satisfy you." --- this quote hit me so hard

throughout this drama, I didn't enjoy most of it, but there were those parts that were really good which is why my overall score is 7.5. if not for those, I would've given this a 4. this is rewatch worthy but only the specific parts I like. I would recommend but only with lots of warnings of a dragging plot, pointless side stories, an irritating mother in law, & a stupid but will have character growth female lead etc

definitely going to rewatch the mortal era with more interest so I can have its full emotional impact bc everybody loves a reason to cry :D

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beautiful fantasy

this is beautiful fantasy and the most important ( at least for me ) have happy ending
have beautiful visual fx and beautiful view
must see this fantasy

MUSIC:
The music is gorgeous. No other word for it. It's one of the only dramas where I always watched the opening and end credits. Epic. The only problem is that although what music we do have is superb, we don't have a lot of it. So the same songs and background music are played over and over again. Luckily for us, they're so good that you don't really mind.
9.5/10 (Took 0.5 away because I would have loved a few more songs)

OVERALL:
Watch it. You won't be disappointed. It has everything: a great story, great acting, great music, splendid cinematography and great CGI. You will be totally immersed in the world of Ashes of Love.
9.5/10 Perfection.

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