Kannadin

It would have been a okay cute little drama if it wasn't for its length which as usual with many modern romance C dramas was too long which ultimately hurt it.

I find it ironic how many wuxia's endings are rushed like there's no tomorrow when their modern romances are always sloooooooooooooooooow as fudge with overly long epilogues lasting several episodes.

I can now definitely say I prefer rushed endings to overly long ones.

I think I'm going to avoid the genre for a while given the last one I finished had exactly the same issue... albeit way worse than this one.

Hmmm... I disagree with most of what you wrote though I do think you've got some fair points notably regarding the creepy sibling aspect. As somebody who has two brothers, I just can't for the life of me with that weird Asian fetish which I've seen in lots of Asian dramas especially Japanese. I've just learned to just "forget" the sibling aspect otherwise it's just too weird to me.

This being said, I loved her clothes throughout the whole drama except for the outfit at the airport when they're living Australia after meeting the mom.

BUT. That wedding dress was HORRENDOUS indeed 🤡 For the rest, I don't agree with the slap but I sure do for the Wedding dress. What the fudge seriously 🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️

Well the thing is, he's the one who pushed his lover to marry the King. She wasn't willing to and wanted him to stand his ground. Of course, the King was an ass*** so he could have still find a way to force the marriage anyway but that's not what happened.

Then I think it's pretty clear she only loved the Minister. The fact that you see her all smiling is all because of the child. She may have not liked the man, but she did love being a mother. I don't think it puts a shadow of doubt about her love for the Minister.

As for the Minister, if you love someone, that person's happiness should be your priority regardless of who the father was, the child is blameless and even if he didn't like him, the fact that the woman he loved went bonkers because she lost her son is a clear indicator, he should have told her the truth or at least bring him. Yet he was hell-bent on revenge. He ended up hating anything and anyone related to the Royal family which ended up hurting the woman he loved in the first place.

When the Minister was killed, I think it's pretty clear she was conflicted. There's a mix of being grateful for him saving her and her love for him but he also lied to her about her son. As much as, she doesn't necessarily know at that point, the details of what happened after she lost her mind, she does know he hid her son's survival to her and him causing her son to believe he was an orphan.

Killing the King was one thing, but separating a son from his mother, especially as young as he was back then was cruel. It's her son who prevents her from going to the Minister as he is dying but ultimately, her son is her priority, she doesn't want to betray him by going to the man who caused his father's death.

She might not have cared for the King, but he was still a good father to her son. Ultimately, she chooses to prioritize her son's feelings especially since they just reunited.

So the whole scene as heartbreaking as it was felt pretty natural to me... I do feel though that the son was cruel to hold back his mother at that point. After all, he did fall in love with his enemy's daughter who shot his own cousin. If it wasn't for Dal I, he would have fallen in love with his cousin's murderer who also happens to be the daughter of his Father's killer.

ALSO, regardless, what happened to his mother was not the Minister's fault. He should feel grateful the Minister saved his mother , if not for him, she would be dead. Yet we don't see a single scene where he directs his anger at the Grand Queen who is ultimately the main culprit for all that mess.

BUT, that's not the only thing that is unfair in this show. I was done the moment they used the baby Zhen bird to lure its mother and then burn her alive.

Such cruelty. Can't support these characters. Is it OK to kill a poor beast for the crime of being exploited for its poison? There was not one minute given to empathize over that poor bird and we didn't even get to know what happened to the baby.

RIP Zhen Bird, this show didn't deserve you. I won't forget you.

That was my long two cents.

Good Watching to you too!🫡

Actually Bionic Life was the first one I wanted to try but I need to be in the right mood for the genre.

Great drama watching to you to ^^

Honestly the Minister was stupid. I agree the late King got what he deserved. He should also have taken his revenge on the superstitious grand Queen... and it should have stopped there.

He could have taken the deposed Crown King and reunite him with his mother, flee and live happily elsewhere.

His thirst for power feels weird. The idea was that he wanted to be powerful enough to protect her, yet she was already destroyed so what the hell was this all for? Or maybe he wanted his revenge + some interests.

Should have spend more of that time trying to find a solution for the deposed Queen's illness instead of wasting his time on revenge. His story was truly tragic, but all the empathy I had left when he started to murder civilians just because.

Btw they never revealed who was the mother of his daughter. Not that it was important... But still.

Well thank you for your recommendations ^^ I'll which one I watch first 👍

So I guess 2026 is not gonna be the year I get rid of my "Watch for completion's sake" sickness.

I've been struggling since episode 6. Now on episode 12 and thinking that it would be a pity to drop this now but my God I'm bored out of mind. It feels like I've been watching the same pattern repeating itself for a while now and it's getting tedious.

But there's "only" 3 episodes to go... so I want my "Completed" drama... which is stupid because WHO CARES APART FROM ME? Is it important? Am I getting money out of this waste of time? SO WHY OH WHY Don't I drop this???????

I must be missing some brain cells. Every year, I tell myself to stop this insanity and every year I keep on doing the same thing.

I guess it's a cliché that is very difficult to get rid of... Probably because being rational and logical = being cold and emotionless in lots of people's heads.

Due to my own studies, lots of former friends actually became researchers in various fields and none of them behave like robots. Hopefully they change that at some point... Too bad she was a main character here.

SnL is the best modern Chinese romance I've seen so far ^^ so I'm glad you also loved it. ^^ Definitely gonna read the novel at some point.

For this one though, personally I've reached episode 31 so I feel obligated to finish this... That was my first drama with SWL... so I have no opinion regarding him as an actor... I really like his face though and I have already lined up a couple of dramas he acted in that I want to check out. Hopefully these will be better.

Most of the dialogues as mentioned were here to fill the minutes and were pretty flat so I'm not gonna blame any stiffness on the actors but rather on how poor most of the dialogues were.

There's nothing weird about complaining about it... I'm not gonna reread my comment but I'm pretty sure I mentioned that the issue was the amount of e-sport shown... If you watch a movie on a boxer, you wouldn't want to spend more than half the time watching him box. You're here for the story, the buildup leading to the match... otherwise it's gonna be boring as fudge. Plain and simple.

You've got to show enough so that the non-initiated knows enough to understand the struggle of your characters but not too much to avoid boring most of your audience.
YOU SHOULD show only the important parts about the match... not the whole thing.

Wuxia and Xianxia are specific to China but both are part of the Fantasy genre and each country has its own brand.

In that respect, China does it way better and more often. When it comes to SK, Netflix has produced quite a fair number of K drama Fantasies set in Modern settings such as Sweet Home or All of Us are Dead and they tend to fare pretty well but more "classical Fantasy" tend to fall short.

The only ones in recent years worth mentioning is Kingdom (Netflix), and Alchemy of Souls... Actually is there ANY other produced in the genre apart from these two?

Before that, there was the 2007 blockbuster K drama "The Legend" which cost a fortune and tanked in terms of audience. That, plus the controversy surrounding the 2021 K drama "Joseon Exorcist" really tanked the whole thing in South Korea. If it wasn't for Netflix, I doubt these type of Fantasy stories would still be produced in SK.

You do get some fusion sageuks here and there, but epic stories with huge stakes and large casts is something that SK has mostly abandoned. It's not that SK is not capable of producing it or that it doesn't exist at all, but the cost of production is higher and there's too many stories of producers or producing companies going bankrupt by taking the risk of producing one.

China does lots of Webnovel adaptations. If you read Korean, you'll find Fantasy and Romantic Fantasy is actually one, if not THE most popular genre in Korean Webnovels. It's not something unique to China. SK have also their own culture and lore, worth adapting on TV, they just have cold feet on the whole matter.

Anyway, my answer was regarding the comparison between C dramas and K dramas... The original commenter didn't say anything about J dramas or others.

I'm personally not too fond of Japanese thrillers which I find too "dry" for me... But it's more a matter of taste. I always find their stories great but the way their characters are written leaves me cold and so I honestly don't care what happens to them regardless of how well their stories are written...( of course there's some exceptions but usually that's how I feel).

One could also argue that when it comes to Horror, the Thais are on top and they're currently going through a huge boom especially in the Film industry...

But all of that jazz to say that affirming that C dramas are better than K Dramas, or vice versa or whatever is oversimplifying things. It comes more from a place of ignorance than anything. There's so many things produced, nobody can check everything... It's not because you saw a terrible C drama years ago with poor special effects, that they still look the same now.

Everybody is fighting for the Soft Power Pie, every country is upping their games, there's good things to find everywhere...


The only thing I 100% agree though, is the fact that Netflix, Disney + etc... are currently ruining the K drama industry. Most K dramas as of late feel bland, stale, rinse and repeat of the same thing albeit for a few exceptions and that's entirely on Netflix and the likes who wants to play it safe.

Depends on the genre.

When it comes to Fantasy and Historicals, C dramas are WAY better in my opinion. K dramas don't even come close.

Thrillers... I would say it really depends, but imho, K dramas are still on top notably because they're not limited by censorship.

Rom Com's are hit or miss when it comes to C dramas. I personally find them overly long and dragging most of the times but sometimes I do come across some gems... In spite of how conventional K dramas have become in that genre, I still think K dramas are better on that front.

Anyway, in terms visual quality and production, China produces way more dramas than SK so obviously the quality is pretty uneven however, top tier C Dramas have absolutely nothing to envy to K dramas, far from it.

HAHA.. Episodes 15 to 29 are basically useless fillers.

I made a whole rant about it below (see here: https://kisskh.at/757041-jiao-yang-si-wo#comment-24818856 ) so I won't say more about it...

Somebody wrote that you could skip up to episode 32... But I feel there are some very relevant scenes plot wise in episode 29.... and a very important scene in episode 30 with the SML so... ( I'm just about to finish episode 30 btw)

I won't encourage you to finish this though... given what I already mentioned in my previous comment - see link.

Honestly it's a snooze fest.... I don't know how many times I almost dropped this.

As dooh mentioned above, this should have been max 24 episodes... not 36 and you can FEEL THE LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNGTH😑😑😑

Honestly whenever I come across these Chinese Modern Romance, 2 out of 3 are always overly long...


If you haven't watched a lot of episodes, I would advise on dropping this... I mean I don't think the chemistry is that great... It's more the comfortable, warm type of love with not much spice... Also lots of dialogues are only there to fill the minutes quota. If you want spice and more well-paced drama I would recommend Speed and Love.

For once, I thought Esther Yu's voice wasn't as high pitched as usual and the drama is gorgeous to look at on top of having great sexual tension in spite of Chinese censorship.

That was my two cents.

Your whole comment is all about discrediting my character for what purpose? I don't know and I don't care to be honest. I've posted TWO comments on Queen of Tears, seems to me you don't know what "constantly" means.

Imho, you're one of those Kim Soo Hyeon's fans who is determined to try to sound rational by discrediting others who are stating that nope sorry, this show is not that good REGARDLESS of who is acting in it.

Your mention of Knock Off is particularly dishonest as this drama hasn't aired. I already mentioned that given the ML's controversy, they could just swap his face with AI and move on with it but since I'm not a fan of his, I honestly don't care if it doesn't air. I haven't made a single comment about the quality of said drama since again it hasn't aired.


You're not the first person I see who tries to discredit me or others posting negative comments about shows. If you're a fan be honest about it, don't try to hide by LYING about what I wrote knowing that most people wouldn't even bother to read long comments.

Also as usual, you're one of these COWARD who is hiding behind a fake account. You don't own up to your opinion, you just slander others through a fake account and act all nice with a proper one.

In terms of credibility, you're a joke.

I try to remain polite most of the time, but I'm honestly fed up with the likes of you.

If you don't like my "embarrassing comments", just block me and spare your eyes.

I know if you bother to answer, I won't bother to read you, I will just block you. The only reason I haven't done so yet, is that I have already too many fake accounts blocked, and I'm close to reaching the 100 persons limit.

Close to the end FINALLY!

Honestly if I wasn't using this show for language learning purposes I would have dropped this ages ago. All these useless business talk, filler scenes with characters I don't give a shit about, and the love story?

Meh.... I guess I'm among the minority that just never saw the supposed chemistry between the leads. Every crying scenes makes me roll my eyes. I'm just honestly fed up with the whole thing.

Also, there's not one single character that I like in this drama except for the carefree Ajusshi who's taking care of his demented mother.

So I checked Park Ji Eun, the screenwriter... Turns out, the only drama I enjoyed that she wrote was "My Love from the Stars"....

All the others that I either dropped or finished were a chore to get through especially the very popular "Crash Landing on You" which has basically the same issue as this one, overly long episodes for no valid reasons, lots of useless fillers and overly dramatic for no reason (it's not called Queen of TEARS for nothing for sure 😒😒😒) but all very easy on the eyes.

All looks no substance, and that's me judging regardless of all the drama surrounding the ML. I won't rant about that individual's personal matters here, but I wish people would rate this for what they think it's really worth...

Is 8.7 really what people thought of this? Or is it fans boosting the ratings due to others downrating it due to the ML's controversy?

Who knows... Ratings is totally unreliable so you have to waste your time checking it out and my God WASTE is truly the word.


Either way, as far as I'm concerned, this could have been watchable if the episodes were 1 hour long... which is already too much given how unsubstantial the core story is, but these long ass 1 hour and a half long episodes really butchered this already very unevenly paced drama.

On the bright side, I'm now very familiar with Korean vocabs regarding cancer and shares so, it's not all time wasted. I just wish I had learned these words on a more enjoyable show.

ALSO, I can definitely say that this screenwriter is not doing it for me so no matter how popular her future dramas are gonna be , I won't ever bother again.

On episode 5 and this actually turned out to be a nice surprise ( so far)...

BUT MY GOD the irritating characters are IR-RI-TA-TING. I hope Jae Hui has a good reason for being such a douchebag. The Prosecutor is an asshole without any moral compass... And I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that his father basically made up some fake proofs which led to Se Na's family being completely destroyed.

I'm expecting the drama to make sure the ass*** prosecutor gets back to his senses at some point... but now I'm worried about how exactly the truth about his father's dirty practices is gonna come out... Will 12 episodes be enough without it feeling like a rushed ending? I'm not too sure...

Anyway, I'm pretty pissed right now so cutting the episode in half, otherwise I think I'm gonna break my screen.

Personally I alternate with other shows... I think the biggest flaw is that even as a slow burn, there's not much happening from episode 15/16 onward.

The way I see it, I can't help but feel like the whole drama is an overly long advertisement for Chinese solar panel industry and tourism. The ski resort especially. There's all these dialogues about how great the accommodations are compared to Hokkaido, how you can do this and that, and go to this spot and that spot.

In Episode 23/24, Li Yu Sen travels to "clear his head" and for business... Yet again he visits completely unrelated spots to his business and you hear some tourists guide speaking off screen about interesting history bits about this temple and that temple.


In episode 24, Li Yu Sen meets Xi Guang in Wuxi... It's yet another occasion for your visit or at least verbal mention of the hottest places to see in the city.

_____________________________

EDIT: On episode 25, and now I have to go through a whole lecture about the PV industry in China. Seems like the Chinese Government wants t boost that sector and is using the drama to encourage young people to get into that field... which is great and all but 1: I'M WATCHING A ROMANCE DRAMA, I DON'T GIVE A SHIT about the state of Chinese PV industry, nor Chinese economical ambitions and prowess in that field...

2. DO YOU NEED 10 FUDGING MINUTES OF INDUSTRIAL TALK IN EACH EPISODE?

______________________________

It's all useless fillers... which at some points gets really annoying. I'd rather they did a 24 episodes romance like they do usually and we don't get all this Chinese disguised advertisement.

Love's Ambition had the same problem but at least it was only for 2/3 episodes... Here however... I'm currently on episode 24 and it feels like I've been watching fillers for almost 10 episodes now.

There's obviously interactions between the leads to sell the whole thing... But honestly for the few relevant things happening, it really doesn't deserve all that dedicated time...

And I haven't even bothered to rant about the business filler aspect of things which is annoying as fudge.

It's not a bad drama, but does it deserve 8.7 with all these fillers?

Nah sorry.

Still going to finish it though due to the amount of time invested.

This being said, it's WAY BETTER than the snooze fest that was Amist a Snowstorm of Snow or whatever was the title of that previous romance drama the FL acted in.

To be fair, I think the first half of Dynamite Kiss was great.... after that though, it went from good to bad to worse 😭😭😭😭

But yeah... I'm gonna wait until the whole series is finished before I risk my precious time... 2025 was such a bad year in K dramaland, I don't want to waste my time anymore.

I SO WANT to start that one but I've been burned to the ground by Dynamite Kiss...

May 2026 lift the 2025 disappointing drama curse PLEASE 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

I haven't watched Moon embraces the Sun yet... Sageuks used to be my favorite genre but these past few years I've fallen out of love with them... for the reasons mentioned above... Korean Historicals tend to focus too much on the politics on top of being overly long. I feel they're way better with anything modern but as you mentioned.... Their sageuks really feel recycled.