okikai

now i personally dont believe a child so young can be a villain. thats prime time for rehabilitation and parental guidance/love.

now if he murders gleefully and assaults without regard, fine. i just dont think in that case it would be a good portrayal of a troubled kid. now if he is a psychopath, thats much too convienient for this story and i dont respect it as a creative choice, but its acceptable.

we can commiserate together, its very sad.

i think i could swallow that if he wasnt treated the way he was in this story. but atm, no matter how we rationalize it to protect the image we have of ML/FL etc, it paints a damning picture.

if you can isolate that aside, thats what you should do.

yeah im sure thats what Dan thought but HE KNOWS being used is detrimental and to be honest not fair or right lawfully, ethically or morally. more than anything, it proves he cared less about that child than any other being in that world.

i need to empathize, neither the ML nor FL ever for one minute consider the crown prince as anything more than an inconvenient obstacle. they dont talk about him, he is nothing.

mind you this crown prince was raised by a psycho and has been neglected by his dad all his life and and all he’s ever known as family is someone who cant love him and intends of using him and another who cant love him and pretends he doesnt exist.

im personally appalled.

i loved that too, i guess nvm i do like them most of the time.

also can we talk about how horrifically this series treats the crown prince? when ML thinks he will die he sets FL up to be another dowager that uses the prince as a puppet!! what is this?! no lessons learned? and throughout they villify this child and entirely discount him and his humanity. EVERYONE was treated with more compassion than him. EVERYONE.

and it might be understandable (yet not really the right course) for the ML, but the FL or the narrative itself has no such excuse.

stayed for the leads. at least it had good chem!

i admit maybe transmigration isnt my thing, because this was the most meh yet mildly enjoyable cdrama ive ever watched.

i did love Love Game in Eastern Fantasy though. So i guess im on Transmigration Cdrama probation for now. It may just not click with me.

ive seen the double, it was indeed his best.
his best.

i sincerely think he is one of the least vibrant and compelling popular active male leads. so even tho he can sometimes approach the realm of a good performance, its still not up to par with many active leading men who bring more to the table than good looks and “good enough” acting.

i actually dont think he is bad, per se, i just think for how good looking he is he is surprisingly dull and disappointing. when he shone the most was indeed in the double

but compared to others currently active actors… thats where the comparison becomes unflattering

i watched the double, its his best but i wouldn’t say oozing

only some back then, beautiful is the reason they have a career

we see things differently. bro

i respect your opinion

its called an opinion.

ive seen the male lead in much by now and while he is clearly good looking, he has no spark, no oomf. he is dull. he is only “good enough” as an actor to boot. even bai lu cant carry the chemistry here.

i have a question 🙋‍♀️

i read somewhere in a tiktok comment section that this show wasnt supposed to have any romance but fans made a fuss so they added some.

but before it came out i googled if the original text had the leads together romantically and it said yes.

can someone tell me how all of this played out, which parts are true?

the actor chemistry is good yea, thats why i really wanted to get over the premise. but its too yucky for me. they have to infantalize a 60yo to make this remotely kinda be tolerable, and to make him an unrealistically innocent and naive person to boot. all so we swallow the idea, but i couldnt. the least innocent person in that friend group is the 60yo in his grandson’s body and no amount of promiscuity shown by the young ones will convince me otherwise.

it set itself up for an uphill battle.

if minato wasn’t so reluctant it would be a hard premise to digest

because minato is so reluctant even after choosing to be with shin it gets increasingly annoying. yet if he showed eagerness i think id be a bit like those men who wait until female celebs turn 18.

this premise is hard to do well. feelings cant be helped but choices can. i wish shin went to tokyo for university and we had a timeskip to after his graduation. that would’ve made it significantly better in many ways.

its hard to root for this, because 18 & 28 year olds arent realistically as they are portrayed here, in fact i find these characters to absolutely not be representative of their ages, or the dynamic between those ages.

am i supposed to take this as an exeptioal case? only shin and minato could make this kinda work, because they deviate from the norm for their ages? but the show isnt adressing that. if anything its trying to make you sympathetic to such relationships but make no mistake, such relationships should not happen as a rule. if minato were truly an adult, he wouldve been been more absolute in the original rejection. but the show is constantly putting them on the same level. i feel this show wants the fantasy that there truly are 18yo who know exactly what they want and have little hesitation in shooting straight for it. the irony of being so young is that you do shoot straight for what you want but it almost always gets revealed to be the folly of that age.

idk. i have mixed feelings.

ill never skip a bai lu costume drama