luckz

The things the drama writers added to the novel to make the ML "prove himself" and be less of a second fiddle to the FL just aren't good/interesting, and in the latter part they don't have much time for the titular arc(s).

It's unfortunate that WoL does not have sufficient interesting plot content for its extremely long runtime, and ultimately goes in circles for a decent chunk of the second half. On the plus side, at least the final episode has enough time to wrap everything up in a bow.

The leads are neat enough, but the villains and supporting characters are almost all worse versions of something you've seen in other shows. Later on, repetitive villains take up too much screen time with their boring schemes, to the detriment of the leads' synergistic planning (one of the elements that made the earlier episodes entertaining).

So much of the show is green screen (or rather blue screen) that it really hurts scenes coming over as 'genuine'. The backgrounds of some horse riding close-ups are like car interior scenes with rear projection as seen in ancient movies.
There is a lot of CGI as well, and much of it of laughable quality: anything to do with "Wonderland", or any projectiles in combat – whether arrows or catapult-launched rocks – sticks out like an amateurish thumb. I dare you to look up close at a top-down view of the 3D animation of the leads' horses roaming the Leyou Plains without at least a giggle.

Compared to some other drama OSTs handled by the often-amazing Chen Xue Ran, this one is more 'just okay', but definitely not among his best works. Even the song with frequent collaborator Liu Yu Ning is nothing special whatsoever.

Sorry, I don't know how the subscription works, or what countries it's offered in, or what kind of devices can play it in 4K from iQIYI.

Low to moderate angst level.
Not (much) about misunderstandings, more differences in opinion.

Prime Minister Gu likely was the most evil character in the show. For all we know he talked Sun Jing into his uprising, leading to the death of most of the ML's family and nation-wide war.*

The proper and just punishment for this, as the show reminds us a few times, is "extermination of the whole clan". Anything less is getting off easy.

So yes, Miss Gu, who plotted her way into the palace and plotted to kill the FL (and was delighted when this murder supposedly succeeded) got off scot-free, other than her last episode insanity.

Of course the writer could have just paired her with Turtle, I mean ML's sidekick General Pei Yuan, to have a simple third couple. Or with the detestable Liu Cheng Feng, to have an evil psycho couple.

P.S.: Even the wife of PM Gu threatened to »sell Qiucui's entire family as slaves« to enforce drugging the ML over her daughter's head. That was only against Gu Wanniang's will because she knew it would backfire, not because she was morally opposed to it.


*: His supposed motivations are a total mess as well, but that is an entirely different topic.

Not only the villains' plot purpose is weak, but their supposed motivations are too.

The first 40-50% are better than the stuff after, so it's more like the other way around.

The "main" villain was even worse, with far out there motivations.

It was really weird how some villains were dispatched quickly and others always came back.

It's not exactly free of angsty stuff.

iQiyi 2160p exists.

It drags out humongously later on, and what was bad in say Who Rules The World is bad here too.

There are no "triangles", just obsessive psychos who want the FL or ML for themselves, and obsessive schemers who want to kill the ML or FL or both.

Yes, he is the kind of villain that reappears endlessly, but at least *some* other villains are disposed of in a more swift manner.

(I would think the show is better with fewer spoilers. Though to get back to the other thing you were asking about, yes, there is a lot of time wasted on repeated villain plots.)

Are they keeping the novel ending or making it.. more palatable?

The angsty accident wasn't necessary. It also doesn't have any actual impact or effect on the overall story.
The villain wasn't necessary.
The whole weird thing about the different cities didn't make the most sense.

The stalker endangering girls at night plot indeed just vanished.
The FL was perfectly capable of recognising other people for most of the show and it's not really convincing.

There are some production mistakes, like the year suddenly being 2016 instead of 2017, or a light in a room where electricity is out.
A number of things don't make the slightest lick of sense, such as some of the exhibition photos and why a dozen people would suddenly volunteer for the FL to organise an exhibition, or why other dozens would attend it.

Alright college-friend-couples drama on the fluffy and (mostly) harmless side.

This is my first one where none of the characters were ever seen doing anything related to their supposed college majors. Even the FL's prosopagnosia is kind of just forgotten about for the majority of the show. I wouldn't agree with other posters though that it's all a choppy mess, there's many side plots that do get resolved (but sometimes this happens with a later flashback, so if someone just skips they could miss it).
Everything is just barely good enough, but the same can be said for other shows with 5x or 10x the viewers on here.

I guess there wasn't enough hype to get advertisers onboard, or I just didn't notice any besides some silly comic figure that the SFL likes and associated merchandise for it, so that's a plus. (Maybe "sweaters with dumb plushies on the front"? IDK if that's a particular brand in China.)

It's nice that the FL sings a lot of the songs, but I don't understand why so much of the music here is about breakups and whatnot.

It feels like all the "comic panels" and CGI in this are awkwardly AI-generated. Remember the first generation of AI image generation and the creepy faces you get there? That, basically.

P.S.: For a second, there's a hilarious exam paper about the history of the boy band EXO.

Do you mean like "a patriotic Chinese soldier would not commit suicide, so to have that ending, the ML can't be a soldier"?

For a low budget drama, it's not that bad, with some sweet and funny moments here and there.

The plot writing and dubbing can be fairly horrendous. Unfortunately, they throw every bad cliché at the screen (..except for amnesia, persistent triangling, evil stepmothers, and being fated from childhood). The unnecessary anxiety is sure dialed up a lot here.

Ryan Cheng is at 25% of what he delivers in My Journey To You (maybe he's just much better at non-comedic roles, or the production values there are so much higher). His voice actor also seems to deliver the worst performance.

I downloaded it.
It was on Netflix in the past, but now it's not (and I don't know what regions had it, but it had Chinese, English, German, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese subtitles there so I guess plenty of regions).

— Plot questions: —
What is the mission of the FL? We never properly get it in black and white, and only have ominous throw-away lines like that if Ziyu is removed as Sword Wielder, her mission would be a failure.

Is the FL really a Chi? She's way too good at everything.

How would Hanyu know that Wuji's family was swordsmiths enprisoned by Wufeng, and what a weapon remarkable enough to be plausibly made by her relatives looks like?

Why does Yun Que smuggle out Herb Elixir on her "dead body"? Does she remain loyal to Wufeng to some degree? (How and by whom is she taken down? It's pretty far-fetched.)

Similarly to the FL, what actually is the formal mission of the SFL, and what makes SFL conclude that Wuji has the same task? Be Hangyu's bride? Did she make up the task of marrying Shangjue herself? Is it "get us Infinite Heat information" and that's it?
More importantly: What is the SFL trying to accomplish? Is she trying to obtain the Infinite Heat to help Wufeng? If she truly wants revenge against Wufeng/Dianzhu, then why do we see her just flower-tending? Shouldn't she still go after Dianzhu? And if so, why wouldn't she just have switched sides (earlier) instead of helping Wufeng during the attack on Gong? If she's pregnant and wants to live out her days in peace growing white flowers, she can do that within Gong.

If the SFL truly tried to assassinate Dianzhu, why was she still alive and trusted within Wufeng? Wouldn't she be killed just in case if there was a plausible chance of her being behind it?

In EP19: Why does Wuji ask SFL to kill Gong Shangjue? If this is her acting on ML's orders, it would be really bad if she somehow succeeded, and also wouldn't she then also reveal ML that Hangyu is alive? Or is she acting on Hangyu's orders, to try to make Shangguan Qian create more chaos to help him?




— Just really dumb stuff: —
Why does Ziyi not just kill ML? Or better yet, drug/poison/manipulate him to be her stooge? Hold him hostage to lure in more relevant Gong family members and kill those? She seems to have years(!) of unhindered access to him.

Why does Huanyu not just kill the father, destroy the letter that 'disowns' him, and happily become Sword Wielder himself? When he's with the father's dead body, he can easily inspect the Infinite Heat tattoo, and if he becomes SW himself, he will have it on his own body.

How can the FL just walk out of a meeting of all four Wufeng "kings", shadowed by various Wufeng guards and whatnot, and freely email the meeting minutes to her husband without this being intercepted and her being quartered?

How can the Mei SFL essentially be notably stronger than her mentor and defeat Jin Fan with ease? Jin Fan was established as on par with Gong Yuanzhi in combat prowess, or stronger!
Why does the SFL just leave without the Chuyun Chonglian after defeating Jin Fan?

"Wuji killed Elder Yue by accident.", like what?




— Major points that are not cleared up, some maybe left for a Season 2: —
How/if Feng becomes Wufeng.
Why Wufeng has nothing else to do than obsess over Gong – just because of Infinite Heat?
What's the idea of Infinite Heat anyway?
How does Hangyu's power work?

My Journey To You is a show filmed for social media replay reels. Excessive slow motion and intense excitement music are used for any random scene, to the effect of the show "crying wolf" so much that whenever something actually relevant happens, it does not stand out in any way anymore.

What you do see is very pretty to look at, so I recommend watching it in 4K if possible to take in all the details. There's one major exception though. It's pretty normal that there are a lot of shiny wet floor surfaces in historical C-dramas, but this show has so much dirty water it's like its own character with substantial screen time.

The leads and the other couples' chemistry isn't really there. The FL in particular looks displeased throughout a majority of the show.

The comedy characters fall so flat, someone must have bulldozed over them. One actress is tasked to shoulder 90% of the show's comedy, and if her endless slapstick antics don't resonate with you, prepare to spend a lot of time rolling your eyes.


A bulk of the show goes to the ML undergoing 'trials' in a way that does not establish him as a convincing character for the audience. The viewer has little reason to sympathize with the evil faction, but also isn't shown much positive about the 'good guys' for the majority of it. The major final arc makes up for it to some degree, with a lot of twists that might as well be retcons. As everyone else has already complained about, the actual ending is more of a disappointment.

Really big spoilery thing below (questions & complaints):