Hime

This drama is the perfect example of how bad writing can ruin a drama no matter how many things it has going for it.

This has great cast, romance, comedy, some fighting scenes for a bit of action and more serious stuff for those who like to cry. It also has soccer to lure in the male audience, fantasy and powers for those who like that and it is on Netflix so it is widely available...yet it was not good. For a kdrama to have a rating below 8 that keeps dropping more and more as more episodes air, that is a red flag.

Kdramas get the highest average ratings here on MDL compared to dramas from other Asian countries. Although MDL ratings are not the best way to judge a drama (mostly because of haters who rate a drama 1 and fans who rate it 10 on the day it airs), it still tells us something.

I mean, if you have nothing else to watch and really like the cast go ahead but keep your expectations low.

I watched the trailer to see if it was my kind of drama...and I think it might be BUT who chose the ML's hairstyle? It is not flattering at all. I have seen worse but I think with his hair a bit shorther on the back of his head he would look a lot better.

I left a long comment similar to yours. I also had to force myself to finish this one, mostly because of the cases. I agree with most of what you said.

I think if they had chosen another actress to play Pei Yi I might have just skipped to the last episode to know how it ends and get it over with. Bai Lu was one of the reasons why I pushed myself to finish it, specially since this is supposed to be the last character she plays that is good at martial arts because this kind of role is starting to get too taxing.

Most of the cases bored me and were full of technical mistakes and the romance did not do it for me. Not a bad drama but not something I fully enjoyed, would re-watch or even remember watching in a few years.

I finally found the time and willingness to finish this one. What can I say about it...it is not bad...but it is no masterpiece. I honestly believe if it was not for Bai Lu and her amazing portrayal of Pei Yi, as expected from her, I might have dropped it or just skipped most stuff to get to the end fast.

There is some good writing here - the FL is smart, kind, strong but also flawed...she is reckless (she almost got herself killed Idk how many times) and she is emotional and compassionate but at the same time lacks some social skills (I blame her master for that ^^'). The ML is also smart and kind but does not know martial arts like 90% of the male leads do and although he seems to have higher eq and social skills than the FL, he is also insecure, a bit too emotionally attached to the FL and chooses to hide things and make decisions for her instead of communicating.

There were some other characters I liked, writing about them all would take some time.

The emperor....I have so much to say about him but I will refrain from talking. Probably the most insecure character in the whole drama.

So, what did I not like? Most of the cases, the pace...

I grew up watching criminal investigation shows, I watch true crime more often than I should, I have watched several investigation dramas, including historical ones. But most of the cases here were boring, full of technical mistakes and mostly based on superstitions and people just being dumb.

Some cases were solved in less than 1 episode, others took 5 or more episodes. I never knew at what episode I could stop as a lot of them would be concluded in the first half of the next episode and in that same episode another one would start. If they wanted to pack so many cases in one drama, they should have made them episodic or at least closed them at the end of an episode, not in the first few minutes or first half of another episode.

I could write about so many things that I liked and did not like and go down the rabit hole of exposing all the technical mistakes with the cases but to sum it up...this was a decent drama, another great performance by Bai Lu BUT I would not re-watch it as I did not fully enjoy it and had to force myself to pick it back up several times along the way.

I did not hate it, but I also did not love it.

lol, you got a laugh out of me with that one.

Yeah, I also have days I feel like watching depressing and tragic stuff and then go on to stare into space questioning the meaning of life. Thankfully, it does not happen everyday...not anymore.

I have only watched 8 episodes but I cannot shake the feeling that Cai Zhao is Qi Yunke's daughter and who she thinks was her aunt might have been her mother.

Ikr? So many characters, so many uncles, so many old friends of her aunt. Do they think we all have a notebook where we are writting down all these names and relationships? And I have a pretty good memory but even I am having trouble knowing who they are talking about after watching 8 episodes and being introduced to dozens of characters. ^^'

The actor playing the ML might be able to easily carry the FL or anyone really, but unfortunately he was not able to carry this drama.

Maybe if I had watched it while it was airing I would be more forgiving but trying to binge-watch was definitely not a good decision. I was just bored. The plot, the romance, nothing was able to grab my attention. It was just another kdrama that I added to my completed list. One I will probably forget watching because it was not that memorable.

They divorce amicably in the last episode, she is doing well with work and I think it is hinted that she might get into a relationship with the second male lead in the future, but their scenes together were not many throughout the drama and most were not even in a romantic light which is why I do not think this should even have the romance genre.

Yup. And from overworking too. The FL's husband suffered little to no consequences from his actions while that poor girl died miserably. This drama feels like it was written by men and approved by men. I had a really hard time finishing it.

You are too 8 or 80. Not everything is black and white. DK was not THAT bad. I already made it pretty clear in my first comment what my problems with this drama were (I also had my own issues with DK) and it was never about skinship or the lack of it. I already wasted too much time trying to answer your questions when I did not have to.

P.S. - you seem to be the one who needs a diagnosis. And I am not trying to be rude or anything. You really need to talk to someone, not people on comment sections, but a professional. I can tell you are dealing with a lot and letting it all out here. This is not the place for that.

They do not show anything explicit during those scenes but they show more than I have seen in other dramas. I was also surprised some of these scenes were approved while in other dramas the main leads having a more steamy kiss is sometimes enough to remove that scene.

If you end up dropping the drama and want me to spoil what happens to that poor girl, let me know. I think it will only make your decision even easier.

Yup. And he will keep treating her like crap even while having s^x with her. They even show scenes of him pushing her head down for her to get on her knees and do you know what to him. Sometimes they do not even have full on intercourse, it is just her satisfying his needs, he zips up his pants and leaves. I mean, she is just a tool to satisfy his desires, he has no respect for her...or women, his wife included.

That girl has no self-respect, I swear. If you think she is a poor girl now, wait until the drama ends. I hated her character, not as much as the ML tho, but by the end of the drama I felt bad for her.

It was the same episode or the episode after the male lead confesses. I cannot bother to try and find that scene. I would rather be getting some work done in the time I would waste doing that. ^^'

The thing is I have been watching kdramas for over 15 years so I kind of got tired of some of cringy scenes that maybe 5 years ago I would ok with. I am just not as forgiving as I used to be. And when I compare this drama with other Korean dramas airing, this one felt more cringy and the writing more lazy.

I liked Dynamite Kiss a lot more. It was nostalgic, felt like a kdrama from 2010 but I did not find it as cringy as this one. Maybe because the actors are a bit younger, there was no baby involved and they acted more mature than the characters here.

Her husband. I could tell from the start he would cheat from his personality but I think we get the confirmation at the same time the FL finds out. Episode 9 if my memory does not fail me.

I kind of already answered that to the comment you left a few minutes ago. Yeah, I was definitely not talking about how they were not having physical contact like kissing or making out. It was the way they spoke and acted. Some of the supporting characters were also like that sometimes like her superior and his secretary.

Maybe the characters were written this way because they wanted this to be a comedy but I did not find it funny, it just felt theatrical like you mentioned in another comment.

It is in the way the characters were writen, it is not just them. It is the way they speak and act in certain situations that feels silly or not mature. There were several scenes, I could not mention all of them. One would be how they were hiding from each other and looking back to see if the other was looking while the SML was standing there looking at them. I understand the akwardness but the way the FL was acting that entire episode was too much, it was just to drag things for longer.

Based on how the drama ends they want to feed into our delusions. I was watching mostly for the drug case and wanting to know the leads past and what would be of their future and felt like a clown by the end of the drama. I got no answers, just guesses because they did not bother to show or explain anything. Sigh

I knew she was undercover, but I wanted to see the bad guys getting arrested, her being a badass at fighting (we only got a glimpse of her skills in the episode they infiltrated into Monkey's office) and see the ML's face when he found out she was his colleague and did not become the "bad guy" like he was afraid she did. His struggles with drugs were also not properly addressed.

It felt like the whole drug case was just an afterthought to increase episode count.

As someone who grew up watching criminal investigation series and true crime documentaries...I did not find most cases interesting. There is something about the way Chinese dramas portray investigations that just is not appealing to me. I love a lot of the other genres but criminal investigations is not what they do best.

I kept watching because I wanted to know more about what happened in the past and because I was pretty sure I knew what kind of role Dan Qing was playing and wanted to find out if I was right and how they would wrap up the drug case. Yet they never showed much of their past (like, I get that she was raped but by who, what exactly happened that day...never shown) and the drug case was also brushed over while they used the last few episodes to focus on a completely new case that I did not care about. Dan Qing was supposed to be an important character but she was out of the picture just like that without much explanation as to what exactly happened...and I do not like open endings so I was not happy with how they decided to finish the drama.

I wish they had focused more on the drug case and we got a decent wrap up, some action scenes, arrests being made, ... But we got nothing. It felt like a person with ADHD wrote the script, they just kept moving to something new and did not finish what they started.

For a short drama this had good production value, good music and decent script with a very strong start. If I did not know it was a short drama, the way it started with the backstory with the kids and everything was on the same level of some regular length dramas.

If anything the dancing, although cute when they were kids, felt a bit cringy once they were adults, specially in some scenes like when the ministers were begging him to get consorts.

Still, I think this deserves a better rating when there are vertical dramas that have ridiculous plots and bad acting with higher ratings. It just doesn't seem fair.