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This review may contain spoilers
When Destiny Brings the Demon: Beautifully Made, Fatally Unoriginal
I made it to episode 25 before finally giving up on When Destiny Brings the Demon. The drama started well enough, lavish visuals, solid world-building, and a promising setup, but it quickly unraveled into clichés and recycled ideas.
The female lead is disappointingly flat, offering no real depth or growth, which made it difficult to care about her journey. The predictable amnesia arc drained what little momentum the story had left.
Worse still are the overwhelming similarities to Love Between Fairy and Devil. The dragon companion becomes a cobra, the ML reads thoughts instead of emotions, he retreats into years of seclusion after her “death” much like the 500-year dream in LBFAD, and the same inner-fire power dynamics reappear. The parallels are endless and hard to ignore.
The one major difference lies in its anticlimactic ending, predictable, constrained, and ultimately hollow. It raises the question: if certain themes and resolutions are so heavily restricted under current industry restrictions, why keep producing dramas that follow this formula, knowing the conclusion will never truly satisfy? Even with an impeccable ML performance and polished visuals, When Destiny Brings the Demon ends up as little more than a beautifully wrapped disappointment.
The female lead is disappointingly flat, offering no real depth or growth, which made it difficult to care about her journey. The predictable amnesia arc drained what little momentum the story had left.
Worse still are the overwhelming similarities to Love Between Fairy and Devil. The dragon companion becomes a cobra, the ML reads thoughts instead of emotions, he retreats into years of seclusion after her “death” much like the 500-year dream in LBFAD, and the same inner-fire power dynamics reappear. The parallels are endless and hard to ignore.
The one major difference lies in its anticlimactic ending, predictable, constrained, and ultimately hollow. It raises the question: if certain themes and resolutions are so heavily restricted under current industry restrictions, why keep producing dramas that follow this formula, knowing the conclusion will never truly satisfy? Even with an impeccable ML performance and polished visuals, When Destiny Brings the Demon ends up as little more than a beautifully wrapped disappointment.
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