The Result of Overacting and Underacting Colliding
🍅 Let’s start with the acting. This is what stood out the most to me.
The Female Lead:
Her acting's way too exaggerated, even looks cartoonish at times. Whenever she’s shocked or surprised, she reacts the exact same way with wide eyes and overdone expressions. Whether it’s discovering something unexpected or when some truly tragic really happens, she acts the same way. She can't adjusts the intensity to match the situation. Apart from being shocked and surprised, expressing happiness is also her problem. When she shows happiness, it looks fake. It seems she jumps from one form of pretension to another, always portrayed on the rim of the loudest. It makes her character come across as shallow, like she doesn't know the different depth or genuine characteristics of each emotion. Her acting skills are uncrafted and feels pretentious as a result. This pretentiousness is annoying to watch.
The Male Lead:
If the FL is “too much,” the ML is the exact opposite. His face is stuck in one gear: monotone and blank, with occasional stiff, unconvincing smile. The smile's supposedly reserved for the FL, but those moments feel forced and hollow. His character would grow from fierce and closed-off to calmer and gentler toward the FL, but there’s no real change in his performance. It’s just one expression all the way through. I used to like him in Ever Night, where his style actually fit the role, but since then when I watched Lighter and Princess and now When Destiny Brings Demon, it feels like he’s recycling the same persona - trying to appear aloof and cool, but it comes off forced and ultimately unconvincing in this role.
Together, the leads are a mismatch of extremes: one overacts, the other underacts. Neither side really works, and together it just highlights the weaknesses of both even more.
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🍅 Character Design
The FL’s character is written in a way that already makes her feel stupid from time to time, but paired with the actress’s exaggerated delivery, she comes across as outright foolish. It’s half weak character design and half poor acting combined.
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🍅 Story Design
The storytelling suffers too. Way too much screen time is given to just the FL and ML together without the plot moving forward in any meaningful way. After a while, it starts to feel like filler. I don’t know if the budget went entirely into casting these two and left nothing for side characters, but if that’s the case, it was a bad move since these main leads are not capable to carry the show.
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🍅 Screenplay
Their screenplay is amateur. It's shown clearly through the vague dialogues and unnecessary scenes. This drags the pace of the whole series.
I just knew after finished watching both When Destiny Brings Demon and Moonlit Reunion (the latter one finished a couple days later) that the original novels of these two series have the same author 😳 The thing is the dialogue and screenplay for MR is a lot better than WDBD. The overall quality of MR is also a lot better. Both of them were on air at the same time and the official rating always told that MR (hovering ~14%) is above WDBD (~9%). I just don't understand how the review scores on this site for these two series are the opposite. How WDBD has a higher score than MR?? I can only think that the hardcore fans of probably Chen Feiyu likely manipulate the points with their biases. I wouldn't be surprised to find that this group of people are actually elementary/middle schoolers when considering how childish they are.
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🍅 Plot Holes ((Spoiler))
One thing that made no sense to me: why does the FL lose all her memories from the cultivation world but somehow keep everything from the modern world? The logic doesn’t add up, and it feels like the writers just wanted a convenient excuse to reset her arc without fully thinking it through.
---------------------------
The Female Lead:
Her acting's way too exaggerated, even looks cartoonish at times. Whenever she’s shocked or surprised, she reacts the exact same way with wide eyes and overdone expressions. Whether it’s discovering something unexpected or when some truly tragic really happens, she acts the same way. She can't adjusts the intensity to match the situation. Apart from being shocked and surprised, expressing happiness is also her problem. When she shows happiness, it looks fake. It seems she jumps from one form of pretension to another, always portrayed on the rim of the loudest. It makes her character come across as shallow, like she doesn't know the different depth or genuine characteristics of each emotion. Her acting skills are uncrafted and feels pretentious as a result. This pretentiousness is annoying to watch.
The Male Lead:
If the FL is “too much,” the ML is the exact opposite. His face is stuck in one gear: monotone and blank, with occasional stiff, unconvincing smile. The smile's supposedly reserved for the FL, but those moments feel forced and hollow. His character would grow from fierce and closed-off to calmer and gentler toward the FL, but there’s no real change in his performance. It’s just one expression all the way through. I used to like him in Ever Night, where his style actually fit the role, but since then when I watched Lighter and Princess and now When Destiny Brings Demon, it feels like he’s recycling the same persona - trying to appear aloof and cool, but it comes off forced and ultimately unconvincing in this role.
Together, the leads are a mismatch of extremes: one overacts, the other underacts. Neither side really works, and together it just highlights the weaknesses of both even more.
---------------------------
🍅 Character Design
The FL’s character is written in a way that already makes her feel stupid from time to time, but paired with the actress’s exaggerated delivery, she comes across as outright foolish. It’s half weak character design and half poor acting combined.
---------------------------
🍅 Story Design
The storytelling suffers too. Way too much screen time is given to just the FL and ML together without the plot moving forward in any meaningful way. After a while, it starts to feel like filler. I don’t know if the budget went entirely into casting these two and left nothing for side characters, but if that’s the case, it was a bad move since these main leads are not capable to carry the show.
---------------------------
🍅 Screenplay
Their screenplay is amateur. It's shown clearly through the vague dialogues and unnecessary scenes. This drags the pace of the whole series.
I just knew after finished watching both When Destiny Brings Demon and Moonlit Reunion (the latter one finished a couple days later) that the original novels of these two series have the same author 😳 The thing is the dialogue and screenplay for MR is a lot better than WDBD. The overall quality of MR is also a lot better. Both of them were on air at the same time and the official rating always told that MR (hovering ~14%) is above WDBD (~9%). I just don't understand how the review scores on this site for these two series are the opposite. How WDBD has a higher score than MR?? I can only think that the hardcore fans of probably Chen Feiyu likely manipulate the points with their biases. I wouldn't be surprised to find that this group of people are actually elementary/middle schoolers when considering how childish they are.
---------------------------
🍅 Plot Holes ((Spoiler))
One thing that made no sense to me: why does the FL lose all her memories from the cultivation world but somehow keep everything from the modern world? The logic doesn’t add up, and it feels like the writers just wanted a convenient excuse to reset her arc without fully thinking it through.
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