Sitting through this dog-blood cdrama felt like pulling teeth
Never in my life have I ever written a review but this drama was so upsetting that I couldn't just shut up. It rings true that the greater the soundtrack the higher the chance of the drama to be terrible.The majority of Xianxia dramas suffer from terrible writing, and so I already had no hope over the years with mediocre dramas coming out one after the other. When TTEOTM was announced, I knew I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up but the trailers just looked SO GOOD. Luo Yunxi looked the most stunning I ever saw him, Bai Lu was beautiful as always, the production quality and CGI looked amazing for a xianxia series. It seems like their budget went all towards CGI, production, sets, casting, and music, and none got leftover for the scriptwriting.
Out of all the ridiculous dog blood cdrama out there, this one has got to be the worst offender. Miscommunication after miscommunication after miscommunication. At this point they're making it angsty just for the sake of angst. It's fine to write a tragic story with angsty moments, but the way it was shoveled into the audience's mouth without rhyme or reason felt incredibly insulting to the audience's intelligence and is a telltale indicator of bad writing. The amount of misunderstanding between ML and FL could fill oceans and all of it could be resolved if these two people would just COMMUNICATE. You'll struggle to find the logic behind some of these misunderstandings because they simply don't exist. It gets misunderstanding-ex-machina'd in for no other reason than to add more meaningless angst. The first few times is understandable for a dog blood xianxia. The next 20 times just becomes ridiculous, and I found myself thinking "the FL/ML can NOT be this stupid". Entire arcs of character development and trust-building get wiped out from the tiniest misunderstanding, and I'm here like, y'all just went through life and death moments together, saved each other multiple times, went through the process of understanding that you both care for each other/truly love each other, and suddenly you're now back to square one?? (This gets repeated multiple times.) It gets exhausting after so long and I found myself having to fast forward through the mindless drivel of them actively jumping to the worst conclusion possible to misunderstand each other. It makes no sense for someone who will go through a xianxia-level love trial just to reunite with or save their lover, to then so easily sacrifice or give up being with them via deception. (The classic "I'll make them hate me so they can move on after I sacrifice myself!!" and whatnot, when CLEARLY hurting them to make them hate you hurts them way more-- again, angst just for the sake of angst.)
It's a real shame because pretty much everything else, from make-up, outfits, acting, set design, cgi, music, and so on, was executed nearly flawlessly. It's definitely one of the most visually gorgeous dramas in recent years and more than one song on its ost has made it into my favourites. If you enjoy suffering, feel free to watch this cdrama. If you enjoy logic and reasoning, this is not the drama for you. If you can turn off your brain to the writing and just watch for the amazing chemistry between the leads and the stunning audiovisual, you might be able to enjoy this cdrama.
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