This review may contain spoilers
I learned my lesson on judging a book by its cover...
Life can be so ironic sometimes. This was the first C-drama I had watched featuring Liu Yu Ning as the ML. Not only did I have no idea who he was at the time, I scoffed and gave up on the series around episodes 3-4 due to the extremely slow plot development. Since then, I ended up watching "The Story of Pearl Girl," "The Prisoner of Beauty," and "A Dream Within a Dream," finally getting a good, well-rounded appreciation of Liu Yu Ning not only as a great actor but as some real honest-to-goodness handsome, masculine eye candy. I finally decided to give "A Journey to Love" another chance, and it was one of the better decisions I've made this year.
By the end of episode 5, I was giggling like a schoolgirl and heavily invested in the dynamic between the ML and FL. In fact, episode 5 is still my favorite episode in the series (the scene near the end of the episode where Ning Yuan Zhou was fighting for his life not to be molested by Ren Ru Yi was peak comedy). By episode 24, not only was I heavily invested in the series, I was absolutely cheering on Liu Shi Shi for giving one of the most empowering and balanced performances as an extremely capable FL-rather than the whiny, airheaded, helpless FL characters that plague C-dramas.
The entire cast did a great job, but I really appreciated He Lan Dou's performance as Princess Yang Ying and admired her versatility and complete immersion in her role in every episode. Also, unlike most C-dramas, she really did convincingly portray herself as a prince, and her journey from a crybaby to being extremely composed and calculating was truly believable and even refreshing.
It's funny how I almost missed out on a perfectly good series simply because I didn't give it a fair chance. In my defense though, who would have thought that things would get so much better nearly five episodes in? I guess I've been spoiled by the C-dramas that get things going right away (or at least by episode 2).
Anyway, don't make the same mistake I did-give it a fair chance and you won't be disappointed.
By the end of episode 5, I was giggling like a schoolgirl and heavily invested in the dynamic between the ML and FL. In fact, episode 5 is still my favorite episode in the series (the scene near the end of the episode where Ning Yuan Zhou was fighting for his life not to be molested by Ren Ru Yi was peak comedy). By episode 24, not only was I heavily invested in the series, I was absolutely cheering on Liu Shi Shi for giving one of the most empowering and balanced performances as an extremely capable FL-rather than the whiny, airheaded, helpless FL characters that plague C-dramas.
The entire cast did a great job, but I really appreciated He Lan Dou's performance as Princess Yang Ying and admired her versatility and complete immersion in her role in every episode. Also, unlike most C-dramas, she really did convincingly portray herself as a prince, and her journey from a crybaby to being extremely composed and calculating was truly believable and even refreshing.
It's funny how I almost missed out on a perfectly good series simply because I didn't give it a fair chance. In my defense though, who would have thought that things would get so much better nearly five episodes in? I guess I've been spoiled by the C-dramas that get things going right away (or at least by episode 2).
Anyway, don't make the same mistake I did-give it a fair chance and you won't be disappointed.
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