This review may contain spoilers
Appetizing beggining, delightfull peak, hard to digest finale
Someone said in there reviews that this story has lost its rom-com tag. It did not. In fact it was a complex story that incorporated time travel, a comedic family, a tragic almost impossible love story, some palace political issues and load of delightfull food from old chinese quisine. The romance tag was there all alone. Contrary to others I do not think it was dragged to much but it was indeed solved stupidly quickley. And besides the romantic love between the leads the story also explored filial love amoung different generations. Human imperfections personified the the family itself. And yeah...the ending....made me shead tears after having my heart fluttering for 31 episodes straight.
There were some inconsistencies but I'll pass on them since the story was so intricated and so well executed by the actors. From children to adults everybody was stunning. The child brought some joy and purity to the plot. The two disfunctional parrent brought some comedia del arte that actually kind of shows some realistic family issues that cannot be solved without comunication. The side characters like Pei Fei, The Princess, Lady Chen Yixing , the evil prince and the servents brought to the table diffrent kinds of trouble. From romantic, to life issues to politics....everything was perfectly personified. And HUGE praise for the leads for one of the most amazing carefully BUILDED chemestry dureing the show. The were amazing portaing suffering and longing for eachoter through gestures, body language and eyes. Ah those eyes....I believe I cryed with them all along. 2 leads with puppy eyes. Lovable.
Contrary to others I also liked the music. Especially since the talented cast praised above also took part in it. Which makes them even more amazing. Plus one of the songs that contaied rap reminded me of a Punch song in the KDrama Moon Lovers. Good times.
And speaking of which....I have my own interpretation over the ending. The time travel did happened and all characters were left with something after all. Even though their memories were gone. And the ones that were left with the memories were the leads so that they can find eachoter eventually. It was most defenetly not all a dream but it might have happened precisley because they met again and they needed to see with thier own eyes the past life. Li Yan/Che/Anran's ending was extreamlly sad and made me cry rivers. It might have seemed unfair that he had to suffer his entire life and die alone as the only one that remember the Shen family and his love. But I believe his wish to keep their memorie alive was exactely what gave him a change to meet them again in the future. The payback for a life full of loneliness was a bright future life. The writers could have simply left the Shen's in the past to leave a happy life but they wanted to point out that all this multidimensional love stories were strong and real enough to resist through all kinds of times. In their case the journey had to end because they all got what they came for. Gongcai overcame his failures in life and learned how to believe in himself. Yang Yang started to love school and to love to be smarter then anyone. The parents learned how to accept eachothers flows and how to overcome them togheter as a family. Jicai learned how to believe in love and how love always makes you stronger. And Anran learned the joy of a family. As somebody said....the colective amnesia might have something to do with the low of phisics. For the family it was needed so they won't leave forever into the past. For the ones in the past it was because during those times there was no other way to explain the dissapearence of an entire family that did so much good. BUT...with it comes the biggest inconsistency of the show. The story was supposedly passed down during generations and the grand grand father knew that the Shens died in the fire. Now the past should have changed since everybody there behaved like they never even came back. The only one that preserved the paintings and the story was Anran that rebuilded the diner , wrote the story down and waited patiently until he died. They genuinely wanted to leave a strong message behind. Food tastes better with a sip of love in it. Life makes more sense filled with love. Love is not perfect but is strong enough to sometimes last multiple lifetimes. And of course....loves goes through the stomach first.
There were some inconsistencies but I'll pass on them since the story was so intricated and so well executed by the actors. From children to adults everybody was stunning. The child brought some joy and purity to the plot. The two disfunctional parrent brought some comedia del arte that actually kind of shows some realistic family issues that cannot be solved without comunication. The side characters like Pei Fei, The Princess, Lady Chen Yixing , the evil prince and the servents brought to the table diffrent kinds of trouble. From romantic, to life issues to politics....everything was perfectly personified. And HUGE praise for the leads for one of the most amazing carefully BUILDED chemestry dureing the show. The were amazing portaing suffering and longing for eachoter through gestures, body language and eyes. Ah those eyes....I believe I cryed with them all along. 2 leads with puppy eyes. Lovable.
Contrary to others I also liked the music. Especially since the talented cast praised above also took part in it. Which makes them even more amazing. Plus one of the songs that contaied rap reminded me of a Punch song in the KDrama Moon Lovers. Good times.
And speaking of which....I have my own interpretation over the ending. The time travel did happened and all characters were left with something after all. Even though their memories were gone. And the ones that were left with the memories were the leads so that they can find eachoter eventually. It was most defenetly not all a dream but it might have happened precisley because they met again and they needed to see with thier own eyes the past life. Li Yan/Che/Anran's ending was extreamlly sad and made me cry rivers. It might have seemed unfair that he had to suffer his entire life and die alone as the only one that remember the Shen family and his love. But I believe his wish to keep their memorie alive was exactely what gave him a change to meet them again in the future. The payback for a life full of loneliness was a bright future life. The writers could have simply left the Shen's in the past to leave a happy life but they wanted to point out that all this multidimensional love stories were strong and real enough to resist through all kinds of times. In their case the journey had to end because they all got what they came for. Gongcai overcame his failures in life and learned how to believe in himself. Yang Yang started to love school and to love to be smarter then anyone. The parents learned how to accept eachothers flows and how to overcome them togheter as a family. Jicai learned how to believe in love and how love always makes you stronger. And Anran learned the joy of a family. As somebody said....the colective amnesia might have something to do with the low of phisics. For the family it was needed so they won't leave forever into the past. For the ones in the past it was because during those times there was no other way to explain the dissapearence of an entire family that did so much good. BUT...with it comes the biggest inconsistency of the show. The story was supposedly passed down during generations and the grand grand father knew that the Shens died in the fire. Now the past should have changed since everybody there behaved like they never even came back. The only one that preserved the paintings and the story was Anran that rebuilded the diner , wrote the story down and waited patiently until he died. They genuinely wanted to leave a strong message behind. Food tastes better with a sip of love in it. Life makes more sense filled with love. Love is not perfect but is strong enough to sometimes last multiple lifetimes. And of course....loves goes through the stomach first.
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