This review may contain spoilers
Why was everyone pampering Li Xun?!
This drama was quite contrasting... At times, it peaked with its brilliant character arcs and storytelling, and the next moment the graph would just dip and show absolute nonsense. While I really appreciate the story and the whole journey of the characters, I must say the pacing of the series was quite slow. The series opens in the present time, where we see the leads living quite miserable lives. Then it goes full flashback, to show what really happened and how did this misery come to be, and we witness Li Xun and Zhu Yun as freshly admitted college kids. Now while I loved that they took their time to build the story and show substantial character development, taking 19 episodes to show just their college days is a little too much. The episodes were meandering in the middle, with little to no plot development, and after a point, I got impatient seeing baby Zhu Yun chasing behind baby Li Xun, and baby Li Xun throwing a tantrum to anyone who dared to cross him. I really wanted to know what the "big incident" was all about. So imagine my frustrated PAIN when the big incident was finally revealed. It was so anticlimactic. Here I was thinking of the gravest of the grave crimes that the ML could commit, and it just fizzled out like a wet cracker.
Then comes the 2nd half of the story, and I prefer the 2nd part more than the first, mostly because of Zhu Yun's character development. Her transition from a sheltered princess to a boss lady was very well done, and the actress also played her part very well. However, it doesn't mean that 2nd part is flawless. While it made up for the 1st part's often meandering storytelling by having a tighter plot, it wasnt able to capture the nuances of the characters that the 1st part was able to do. This is a sign of sloppy writing, where you forget about the characters to just race the plot ahead to the finish line. The biggest gripe that I will have from the 2nd half and this drama, is how they wrote the villains. The villain's transition arc was so pathetic. This literally ruined all the character development of that guy and made him into a caricature figure who becomes a villain just because the story needs one. One minute he's crying next to Li Xun as his comrade, the next minute he's COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED to a soulless, evil character who laughs at the ML's loss, and then he even cackles evilly to reveal all the villainy things he's done. This transition does not happen overnight y'all. I need more motivation to understand why the villain became a villain. The actual villain though, is left untouched, he becomes a slick weasel, just sneaking past all retribution/punishments through plotholes, the way a rat slips through gaps and holes. Just at the end, one line is narrated by Zhu Yun to say that he deserved what he got. They should've elaborated more on his relationship with Lao Gao. But again, sloppy writing, so they decided to ignore these nuances completely. And towards the end, the villain gets a redemption arc too... Like good for you, but show me why its necessary 😖
Now when it comes to the acting, honestly Arthur Chen has THE MOST wooden face ever. But because he's playing a complicated, unfeeling character, his wooden expressions work. But he still needs to learn how to snap on camera and how to contort his face to show SOME facial expression. The female lead was also lovely to watch. Despite the lack of facial expressions, their chemistry was spot on. And Arthur Chen with a crew cut looks much hotter than the blonde or the black hair. So the wooden looks worked out really well as intense looks. The rest of the actors were also fine, except the actor playing Fang Zhijing was overacting at every frame per second.
Finally, the OST. Both the songs and the background music was good and memorable.
Honestly, this was one of the better cdramas I've watched. There's nuance, there's revenge and there's obsessive love sugarcoated by a lot of computer coding and jargon-ing!! I just wish the series was a little more edited, the watching experience would've been flawless then.
Then comes the 2nd half of the story, and I prefer the 2nd part more than the first, mostly because of Zhu Yun's character development. Her transition from a sheltered princess to a boss lady was very well done, and the actress also played her part very well. However, it doesn't mean that 2nd part is flawless. While it made up for the 1st part's often meandering storytelling by having a tighter plot, it wasnt able to capture the nuances of the characters that the 1st part was able to do. This is a sign of sloppy writing, where you forget about the characters to just race the plot ahead to the finish line. The biggest gripe that I will have from the 2nd half and this drama, is how they wrote the villains. The villain's transition arc was so pathetic. This literally ruined all the character development of that guy and made him into a caricature figure who becomes a villain just because the story needs one. One minute he's crying next to Li Xun as his comrade, the next minute he's COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED to a soulless, evil character who laughs at the ML's loss, and then he even cackles evilly to reveal all the villainy things he's done. This transition does not happen overnight y'all. I need more motivation to understand why the villain became a villain. The actual villain though, is left untouched, he becomes a slick weasel, just sneaking past all retribution/punishments through plotholes, the way a rat slips through gaps and holes. Just at the end, one line is narrated by Zhu Yun to say that he deserved what he got. They should've elaborated more on his relationship with Lao Gao. But again, sloppy writing, so they decided to ignore these nuances completely. And towards the end, the villain gets a redemption arc too... Like good for you, but show me why its necessary 😖
Now when it comes to the acting, honestly Arthur Chen has THE MOST wooden face ever. But because he's playing a complicated, unfeeling character, his wooden expressions work. But he still needs to learn how to snap on camera and how to contort his face to show SOME facial expression. The female lead was also lovely to watch. Despite the lack of facial expressions, their chemistry was spot on. And Arthur Chen with a crew cut looks much hotter than the blonde or the black hair. So the wooden looks worked out really well as intense looks. The rest of the actors were also fine, except the actor playing Fang Zhijing was overacting at every frame per second.
Finally, the OST. Both the songs and the background music was good and memorable.
Honestly, this was one of the better cdramas I've watched. There's nuance, there's revenge and there's obsessive love sugarcoated by a lot of computer coding and jargon-ing!! I just wish the series was a little more edited, the watching experience would've been flawless then.
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