Once upon a Dream (2025)

Inescapable love and hate! A Chinese historical "slap/kiss" drama

Note: If you're not a fan of this kind of romance story, then please don't watch. This kind of drama is not for you. This drama is for those who are entertained from the absolute chaos, messiness, and sheer ridiculousness from a dark twisted toxic relationship. This is for fans of the "slap/kiss" genre, which has a lot of physical forcefulness from male lead toward the female lead, angst, and twists!

We've got a beautiful and cunning female lead who is trying to survive and be free.
We've got a pushy, overbearing male lead who gets jealous and crosses boundaries and is trying to trap the female lead.

The story follows Shen Qingtang's attempts to escape while Pei Congzhi tries to ruin her plans and keep her by his side. Meanwhile, there's a sweet second male lead who is loving to Shen Qingtang and a scheming and jealous second female lead engaged to Pei Congzhi.

There are several interesting plot points throughout, especially in the first 2/3 of the drama. It's especially well done at showing how Shen Qingtang is not some innocent and naive girl, but uses her image to her advantage. She's honestly the most interesting character in this drama because she's self-aware of her situation and how the male lead's kind of love is suffocating. You really root for her, especially with how many wrongs she endures from others and the male lead.

The male lead is consistently overbearing for most of the drama. He has a few rare soft moments. He has moments that he's actually truly misunderstood by the female lead. But, for the most part, he just does a lot of wrong things to trap female lead. His growth comes quite late in the story, unfortunately.

The last 1/3 of this drama is especially shaky toward the end. The scriptwriters seemed to have rushed the last few episodes by leaning into cliche tropes and confusing storylines that don't get tied up well.

So, this drama started pretty strong in terms of being intense and setting up the stakes. But the ending doesn't match the tone it set in the beginning. Ultimately, I couldn't give this drama a higher score due to the male lead's lack of growth and the rushed final episodes.

But, I think you may still enjoy this drama if you like this kind of genre, if you like the actors, and if you like the cinematography! It's a visually pretty drama.

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YeeeY give us NOTHING

I don’t have any beef with the actors , they did their jobs but hell no, don’t ever give us this plot again.
I was expecting something a little spicy and logical, but instead they handed us a giant red flag wrapped in severe obsession.
I love Hu Yi Yao and her dominant, rich-lady energy, but this helpless damsel character? Meh. She’s gorgeous, so I tolerated it, but obsessed? Yeah, no.
The real issue? The story straight up tanked it. Sure, thank god they’re not actually siblings, but the way the ML acted made me wanna throw up. He’s not the reddest red flag I’ve ever seen, but he’s definitely not making it onto my "Delulu Hot ML Characters of 2025" list.
And don’t even get me started on 2ML, looked like a boy, acted like a boy. Zero appeal.
The ending? Those last two episodes? Even the director looked like they were sprinting to finish and slapped whatever they could together.
That random amnesia plot twist? Cringe to the heavens.

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