Hime

So, about half of the drama (the first half) was nice and all. We had our two main couples: Yun Ye and the Princess and the Crown Prince with Xinyue (I think that’s her name, I will just call her X).

Except suddenly X is in a situation of near execution and the only way both male lead’s can think of saving her from death is for Yun Ye to ask the Emperor for her hand in marriage. Just a few days before he had asked the Princess to marry him so when she heard he had come to the Palace to ask for a marriage, she thought he came to ask the Emperor to give him the Princess. Imagine how hurt she felt when she found out he was actually marrying her brother’s (the Crown Prince) lover.

Until the last moment I was hopping something would happen to stop that marriage, like the Crown Prince kidnapping her and eloping with her or something. But no, the marriage happened, making 4 people that were initially happy with their love interests now feel all miserable.

To make matters worse, the Crown Prince gets drunk on the night of Yun Ye and X’s wedding and gets caught in a trap and ends up sleeping with the daughter of a man that will later bring even more trouble because he thought it was X. (alcohol is not the solution, just another way to bring yourself even more problems)

Later on he ends up marrying another woman that he had never even met, because you know, he is the Crown Prince. Meanwhile we find out that the lady he slept with by mistake is pregnant.

Anyway, as you can see, things started going down before it even reached half of the drama. Yun Ye and the Princess kinda get together later but it cannot even be revealed to others since he is a married man, also the Princess was never able to marry him because of this. All this trouble to save a woman than in the last episode kills herself so they cant trade her for the Crown Prince.

If that was not enough, Yun Ye, the main lead, dies and wakes up in the tomb we see in the first episode before he travels to Tang Dynasty. He finds out that the tomb was originally his (something we all had already guessed in the first few episodes). The end shows him getting locked in his tomb and in the past we see the Princess is now part of his family.

So, I am not sure if there will be a second season or not (probably not). But even if there was one, they would only be able to fix the mess of him being locked in his tomb. They could start the second season by having people finding him and getting him out of there, since there should be people looking for him. But even that would not erase the bitter-sweet feeling of having both of the main couples that we were forced to watch being all lovey dovey in the beginning ending up miserably with the Princess and Crown Prince being alive but their lovers dead. And in the present day, if the main lead gets rescued, then he is alive, but the Princess has long been dead.

Conclusion: Everything took a turn for the worse before it even reached half way and I am sure the ending was not what we all wanted. So be prepared for some heartache. Also, I felt the story itself had a lot of potential but they did not use it to the fullest. So in ended up being an ok drama, but nothing special. If memorable, it might be for the way it ended (and it is not for a good a reason).

Like someone already said, it was smart of the channel to air all 36 episodes in the same week. People would probably be very angry had they waited several weeks to get this ending. I will explain the rest in the spoiler below.

True. I thought so too at the time. And surprisingly the 4 episodes that focus on Ming Lan’s childhood were some of the ones I enjoyed the most.

True. That is why I said this was my view. I can see from the comments and reviews that a lot of people really liked it. I really like historical dramas too and have watched some that focused a lot in the family and politics that I liked. I think what made me feel more conflicted was the pace really, especially those 20 episodes or so after their childhood. I also had some high expectations and imagined the drama would be very different from what it actually was because of the previous summary. For sure, and I want to make this clear, this is a great drama. But I cannot ignore the fact I did not get as much enjoyment from it as I did from other dramas I have watched in the past. One thing I will remember is Ming Lan. She was one of the most interesting female leads I have seen. She was nowhere near the typical naive female lead but was still kind and used her intelligence not only for her own advantage but for others too and that made her easy to like.

It was the last episode I think. Both MDL and Viki have updated it and show 73 episodes. Also, the way the episode ends seems like the ending to me.

It is a good drama but very slow paced, which is expected since it is 73 episodes long. If you don’t want to feel like you’re losing something by not watching it, then my advice as someone who watched it is that you watch only a few episodes a day. Don’t try to binge-watch it or you might feel like you are forcing yourself to watch it and end up dropping it before it gets to the better episodes. And keep in mind that the first 20 episodes or so after their childhood (which is the first 4 episodes) are probably the hardest to watch. You need to watch them to get to know all the characters and understand what is going on but they are extremely slow paced and it is easy to feel bored while watching them. After that it gets better.

I feel conflicted. If I add up the episodes that I liked and the episodes that made me feel extremely bored because nothing was happening, and then compare them, it is about 50-50. I liked the first few episodes where they showed their childhood, then the next 20 episodes or so I had to almost force myself to keep watching as they were extremely slow paced. Then around the middle I had about 5-10 episodes I enjoyed.

I think I liked the second half better but I was still yawning way too often. The story is good, the characters and actors chosen to play them too, but there was almost nothing exciting happening that would make me want to watch the next episode. The drama as a whole was very slow-paced and some episodes made me feel like nothing was really happening.

It is a shame since I had some expectations when I started it and had it in my plan to watch list for years before I even knew when it was going to air. I really liked Ming Lan’s character and the male lead’s character too (most of the time) but that alone did not make it interesting enough for me.

There is no doubt that the story is good, although I personally felt bored way too often, but I have to say that the rating might be biased at the moment. I am not sure if it is because of the actors, because they are married in real life and are the main leads in this drama or because people rated it without even finishing it (yeah some people even go to the point of giving 9s and 10s to dramas when they have aired 1 episode and they haven’t even watched it yet, lol), but I think that we should not rate a drama just based on the actors or story, but also the enjoyment we have while watching it.

I liked the actors, liked the characters (especially Ming Lan) and felt the story was good but it was extremely slow paced, so my overall enjoyment was not that high as to give this a 9, much less a 10.

Of course these are my personal feelings. I believe a person who watches only 1 or 2 episodes a day will be able to enjoy it more. This is definitely not the kind of drama you feel like binge-watching. It is way too long and slow paced to keep you motivated and excited for the next episode.

At first I was really into it. I especially liked the relationship between the main leads. The female lead was so kind and caring that you could completely understand why and how he falls in love with her. And I can also understand why the female lead would act that way when the male lead had those puppy eyes that seemed to yell: I need your full attention and love.

The whole face "surgery" thing looked kinda cool in a weird way but it seemed like that was not important later on in the story. I also started to lose interest in the drama as a whole around episode 10 or so. From then on I kept skipping scenes and also felt the interactions between the main leads were not only less frequent but also less interesting. At some point I just gave up and skipped to the last episode to know the ending.

It is a shame that so many cdramas have this problem. They have way too many episodes with way too many characters, flashbacks, fights, and boring plotlines just to drag the story. If you want to make a drama 54 episodes long, make sure you have enough content and know how to give it a natural pace so things do not look rushed nor draggy.

I watched the short version. I understand that means a lot of things were missing from the story but I was still able to understand most things and get the big picture. I am actually glad this short version was made since I have watched way too many palace dramas and I don’t think I would have been able to sit through 76 episodes of this.

I am not saying the original version is not good. I could not judge that without watching it. But personally, the short version was just what I needed or I would have either not given this a try or would have dropped it midway.

What do you meant when you said "That's such a pity for the subs !"?
Is it because you were not able to find it subbed or is it because they were bad?

Where did you watch it? I have watched this drama way before you wrote this comment and all the episodes were subbed.

Ok. Give me a few minutes. I will send you a message with some recommendations based on what you told me.

I am watching in a facebook group too. I will send you the link in a pm. You just need to answer the questions and the owner usually accepts the requests pretty fast. If you are interested, she is also currently subbing the dramas Unexpected (this one has not been updated for a month because of some issues) and Time Teaches Me To Love. She has also finished subbing several other chinese dramas. She has a weekly posting schedule and she usually uploads around 2 episodes per week for each drama, sometimes more, even though she does all this by her self.

I have watched all of the dramas you mentioned and they are some of my favourites.I also like strong and smart female leads. Innocent and kind female leads are good but I have seen so many that it got tiring. Do you only watch Chinese dramas or do you also watch other asian dramas?

There are no subs. I tried watching ep1 and it was raw. Have you actually watched this drama with subs there or you just thought it was subbed?

Thank you. I have made a request to join the group. Hopefully they will approve it soon.

I am currently watching a lot of dramas and have watched almost 1000 dramas in total, although only about 800 since I joined MDL 2 years ago. So you have to be more specific in what kind of drama you feel like watching for me to be able to give you recommendations.

About Ming Lan, I have also though about dropping it more than once, from the super slow pace to the male lead already having a "wife" and 2 kids before he met Ming Lan as adults, ...
I honestly am only going to finish it because I like both main actors and skipping a lot of scenes has helped me to keep going. But yeah, it definitely did not live to my expectations.

Oh ok. I guess it depends on the drama. There are some dramas on Viki that are subbed pretty fast and others that have the raw episodes added but the subs take a while. I usually only go to Viki when its hard to find the drama somewhere else or when they have subbed episodes faster.

I am also watching Ming Lan, I stopped at episode 44 since I am waiting for the rest of the episodes so I can binge-watch it. What is the name of the group that is subbing it? You can send me a pm if you don’t want to reveal it here.

Viki is not airing it yet and I am not sure if they will at all. The status has been like that for months. Someone has subbed some of the episodes but there are no recent updates. I guess we just have to wait.

Where are you watching it? This is still airing so it is impossible for it to be fully subbed like other dramas. Viki has over half of the episodes subbed (29/50 when I wrote this comment).