Kannadin

I won't. I'm always team ML because I don't like to break my heart... I only rooted 3 times for the SML in my very long drama journey so no stress ^^

Which is also why I dropped the drama Love Alarm after the first season.

Dunno if you've watched it but basically they introduced 2 guys in the first season. Made us beleive one was the main love interest. They go out together then in the second season, for some stupid reason they're no longer together when the ML has NEVER forgotten the FL and she ends up choosing the SML.

Some people loved it but since we spent literally the whole first season rooting for the other dude, for me the trust was broken and I never bothered with the second season. In fact I had known I wouldn't even have bothered with the first season.

I personally find that one of the appeal of Romance is that you know at the back of your head that whatever happens the main couple is going to end up together... I get enough heartbreaks in real life, I don't need that in my dramas.

Hey there! Regarding the conversation we had about "Scent of Time"!

Another member answered me here:

https://kisskh.at/705969-xi-qian-hua#comment-23300314

And actually it's not a bad ending.

Basically according to theotherayn, the drama is different from the novel.

In the drama, the ML has been changed. In the novel ML is actually the 3rd love interest of the FL in the drama.

So in the drama, after she wakes up from her hallucination, dream, whatever you wanna call it, it's hinted the FL does get married with the ML of the drama, but apparently people who read the novel didn't like it because she didn't end up with the Novel ML.

So I guess readers couldn't let go of the fact that their ML was just not the ML of the drama and complained about it... But since I didn't read the book, I really DON'T CARE.

Hence, I'll definitely watch it.

I'm so happy 🎉🎊

OH! SO she ends up with the REAL ML in the drama then! So basically even if it's a réincarnation censor BS it's still THE RIGHT ENDING for me!
Ok thanks for clearing that up! Will definitely watch it then, since she ends up with the RIGHT guy.
I haven't read the book so I don't care!

Gotta tell the person who told me that then 😊

Somebody answered me a couple of days ago to tell me that the ML in real life doesn't exist and she ends up with somebody who apparently loved her IRL but who we don't care about since we didn't follow him in the end...

Lol I'm sure the guy's nice but sorry, I honestly really don't care about celibrities' private life. Except when they did something awful, I'd rather not give them nor my time or money but apart from that, I really don't give a fudge about his real life personality, wife or whatnot.

He's entitled to do what he wants, but I sure do hope that what you wrote wasn't the case for this drama. It's really unprofessional.

Hadn't read that comment. Glad you liked it but saying that no K dramas from that period did that is wrong. Melos, including melos with legal aspects were a stapple of K dramas of the early 2000s way before Autumn's Concerto came out.

On the other side, I watched a bit over half the drama back then before dropping it since I couldn't find episodes in good quality, and I wasn't that familiar with Chinese as well. It sure is very different once your ears are used to the language. For instance, I hadn't noticed how different the Taiwanese accent differed from mainland China. It's difficult to know how he fares accent-wise compared to his co-actors though, given how terrible the sound quality is.

I thought Viki would have better image and sound quality than what I saw back then... but sadly the poor quality is the original source 😑

Finally finished it:

CONS:

1. Series feel very slow at the beginning.
2. Fake kisses with mouth moving in the emptiness, no tongue and not-so-clever use of camera angles. The KISSES SUCK. I'm sorry. I like to have good kisses when watching my ROMANCE.
3. Some very irritating characters. They get better but you do have to "suffer them" for quite a number of episodes before they turn around.
4. Shitty ending. As mentioned by everybody just skip the last 10 minutes or so if you want to forget it... Honestly I watched it and it's easily skippable. You won't be missing anything, but it's not as terrible as people have made it out to be, if you're mentally prepared.
5. Useless and unfair breakup in ep 19. FL lied as well, I still don't understand in what way exactly the ML was more at fault.
6. End of Ep 20 to beginning of episode 23. The Show is turning all dramatic for no good reason. It feels like, like in many C dramas, they don't want us to have even the slightest of slightest of second lead syndrome so they had to completely ruin Yi Tian Yu's character. SML deserved a better treatment.

PROS:

1. Adorable and easy to root for leads.
2. Lots of skinship in spite of the fake kisses.
3. Both leads bring the best out of each other, though the FL benefits more from the ML than the opposite.
4. Relaxing show. Not too much angst, but not nothing happening either.

CONCLUSION

I would say the pros count double in my book. Not extraordinary compared to other dramas in the genre... If you don't watch it you won't miss much... But if you do, it's a very relaxing show. As far as Modern drama MLs go, Lin Zhi Hua is top tier.

Best watched without binging at a leisurely pace. Watch this after a shitty day at work/school, it will bring a smile to your face.
Worth the time invested.

Removing 2 points for the CONS.

Final rating: 8

LOL Just directly check my list... But I'm not sure I'm the right person...

It's only been 3 years I've been really into C dramas and I still watch shows from other countries, so my list of C dramas is still pretty short.

I wouldn't say the story is not engaging... Just that to me it feels slow and I felt like that since the first episode so my take is if you felt it was slow at the beginning... Well you're probably going to feel the same during the whole series.

This being said as (rudely) expressed above, that might be just me. Others obviously feel differently.

You know MDL is a site where you can't make your list private, so you can just check out my list and make your own judgement.

You can disagree with my comment but whether you or the person above are both pretty agressive. There are less agressive and better ways to express your disagreement without resorting to personal comments. Just sayin'...

Honestly personally I find the pace pretty slow... I know the last arc is pretty rushed, but I'm currently in the 2nd one (episode 23) and the story still feel slow paced.
It doesn't bother me... and maybe that's just my personal opinion, but although I don't like this show as much as the majority, I like that they're taking their time to really develop the relationship between the two mains.
I'd say it's one of the appeal...

This being said at some point, the plot takes center stage but I can't remember exactly when it happened... Maybe around episode 12... Then it slows down again to focus on the main characters...

But even in the parts where it's more "angst focused" I still feel it's slow... Or maybe that's just me.

I was just about to ask the same question. Only episode 24 is available on Viki. God knows when we'll finally reach the episode you asked about.

I'm SO ANNOOOOOOOYED. I thought she would be in that state for 1 or 2 episodes but my GOD IT'S LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG.

I feel so much for the ML.

You know there are some shows where you have villains that you love to hate... But in this one, I just HATE all of them.

They're just power greedy and their downfall is of their own making and yet they keep blaming the ML for basically just giving back what he received. So it makes it very difficult to feel anything else for them but DEEP ANNOYANCE.

That's to me of the biggest flaw of the show. I wish they had other VALID motivations for being so evil in the first place... like some form of traumatic past or whatever but nope. They're just selfish b*** driven by their own selfish desire and they don't care about how many people they hurt along the way.

Every single time they appear, I want to break my screen.

Nah I came here to see the summary because I saw somebody recommending it on another drama's page... But my God, WHO IS THE STYLIST?

Worst haircut EVER. If it was just for a couple of episodes... Ok sure, but the whole drama?
Makes my eyes bleed.

I'm excited about that one as well... But still the one I'm most looking forward to is Mo Li.

There's a couple of major caveats which is they don't tell us what becomes of the original Shen Qin who is now in the body of Shi Qi's older sister.

The girl's been imprisoned literally for over 10 years, her life stolen, can't go back to being the daughter of the Prime Minister, yet the drama doesn't care to explain what happens after she got out apart from showing her throwing tantrums.

The show doesn't explain who is mummy guy either. He's the dude who swaped faces and he thanked the fake Shen Qin so there must be some form of deal there, or he's some sort of special being with some special powers, yet we only see that he's been stabbed without any explanation of who he was in the first place, how he met the fake Shen Qin and so on...

Finally, I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about the older sister. I have absolutely NO empathy for her, given what she's done yet, the show wants us to be happy about Shi Qi's final hallucination of her sister being happily with Prince Ning who NEVER gave a shit about her. Talk about a toxic couple. Can't really understand her character, can't relate, can't empathize.

I had some empathy for her at the beginning in spite of her terrible actions but I ended up having more empathy for the sleazeball of Prince Ning than her.
Must be terrible to have some saseng fan clinging to you that way...

Anyway for all these reasons, that's an 8.5 and won't be more.

I think it lacked at least 1 episode of 20 to 30 minutes ( based on Viki's 8 episodes release) to properly explain everything even in a somewhat very rushed way given the format.

I don't know how it fares compared to other WEB dramas though but personally I was pleasantly surprised.

Final rating 8.5

That's not what she's saying. There's a downhill trend there. Not all are bad, but a lot are.

Among the list you mentioned I watched a couple included Haunted Palace and Head Over Heels and both were mid imho.

Also mentioning "amazing drama" by Disney + is really interesting because it just goes to show, people who have come to K dramas later are not necessarily aware of how much the industry has changed over the past 20 years.

I haven't watched Light Shop but Moving, A Shop for Killers and Judge from Hell all featured amount of graphic violence that was just not part of K dramas before.

You'd only see that in K movies. When I started to watch them 20 years ago, there were thrillers sure, but even in a scene featuring a guy threatening another with a knife, the knife would be blurred. The only really violent one I can remember was the drama Voice, but that one actually came out on OCN , a now dead channel, absorbed by tvN if I'm not mistaken, which used to specialized in gritty thrillers, WAY later in 2017. They were literally selling the fact that they were making 19+ shows... (which also explained why they tanked on the long run, in my opinion but I digress)

Yet, now we're supposed to swallow the same amount of graphic violence that western shows have when what drove lots of us to K dramas was the fact that there was less sex, nudity and graphic violence than in Western shows.

Aema which features sex scenes is another example of the Americanization of K dramas. There used to be a time when nudity or sex were suggested, good directing and good storytelling let the viewers know what happened without resorting to graphic scenes for shock value.

Resorting to graphic violence, sex or nudity is a stapple of lazy Western slop that literally mentally attack viewers for shock value instead of creating emotions organically through proper storytelling.
And that's not talking about how people become just numb and desensitized to violence in general.

That's not to say everything is bad, but LOTS of them have become mid. It's the same slop after slop with the occasional great, just like in Western media. Sometimes you get something that is truly amazing, but then the show takes a nose dive near the end, or they choose to milk the cow until the last drop of milk with additional useless seasons: See Squid Game, Sweet Home, or Hellbound.

Multi seasons shows are increasingly being introduced... First create a great season to get people hooked and then add some additional seasons to keep your audience paying the subscription until they will inevitably drop it because they ultimately are gonna get tired of their characters going round in circles and the plot going nowhere.

Everything looks good, but their stories feel flat. It's not great, not bad, just stuck in the middle... and if the audience doesn't complain about it, well I guess that's what we all deserve. I'm personally just not gonna bother anymore.

Again, that's not to say that there's not some great shows out there, but overall K dramas are going downhill and personally I'm tired of filtering the slop from the great. We all don't have that much free time to accept to waste it on drama slop. When I FINALLY stumble upon a show that looks very interesting, for instance... Moving? WELL What do I get? A guy having his eyeball taken out.

Because OF COURSE this series needed all that violence to be good. They couldn't do without because that's the type of disgusting slop Western audience have been fed for the past 30 years and since South Korea wants to seduce that audience, instead of catering to THEIR audience, that's what they're now selling us.

I stand corrected. I know neither Liu Yi Jun nor Tong Yao.
Surprised that Cheng Lei didn't get a lead role immediately after My Journey to You, but I guess since C drama actors always have 100 upcoming dramas lined up, he must have signed for it before filming MJTY.

Just saw the trailer...

Seems to me like this one's been shelved for a while and since Cheng Lei is in it ( CHENG LEIIIIIIIIIIIIII) and he's all the rage now, they've finally decided to release it...

But he's obviously not the ML based on the trailer...

The genre is SO not my jam...

But whatever, Cheng Lei's in it. My Cheng Lei's obsessed self is going to watch it with an open mind.

Mo Li is not coming out any time soon, so gotta watch anything he stars in, waiting for him to grace my eyes with Queen Bai Lu.

So I have no time at present to start Shadow of Love and I needed my Cheng Lei dose.

First time watching a web drama. Honestly since most of them are really short, I never bothered since to me it screams "low budget" and "not worth my time".

BUT What can I do? I've been a sucker for this actor since "My Journey to You" and since everybody was saying good words about that one I started it.

Well, this is... surprisingly VERY GOOD. For such a small series the directing is sleek and the actors are great. Watched the 8 episodes Viki version.
The story is really addictive... Would have been interesting to have a longer version of it...

Cheng Lei is smiling a lot... I enjoyed this younger dorky version of him but I do prefer when he's all serious and brooding... Still, as usual he stole the show every time he was onscreen.

Yeah I'm biased but who wouldn't be?