Missing a little something.
This was very underwhelming.
The premise is great, and the story of an immortal/deity having a special fate with one of their followers with whom they fall in love is very Heaven Official's Blessing (HOB). Sadly, this really failed to live up to the potential and promise of such a premise, and certainly does not at all reach the level of HOB.
The story overall is just not satisfying. It starts off very interesting, but over the course of the show, one comes to realise that it seems that there are no consequences for anything, and the feeling I got was that really nothing actually really happens. There is no development in what feels like any of the characters with the exception possibly of the ML, played by Liu Xue Yi, and even then that didn't feel solid to me.
What do I mean by this? There was a vow made to the gods that a character must not fall in love with another. They do, but - nothing happens? The other vows they made, which included not telling anyone who they were, had consequences - anytime they tried to tell someone their identity, they experienced pain - but for some reason, no pain or any adverse effects at all when breaking the vow of developing feelings for this other person; not when kissing or hugging or even agreeing to marry them. When finally they do tell someone else their identity, I thought it had been said that they would disappear into ashes, but apparently this didn't immediately happen either.
The ML, Yuan Zhong (YZ), is supposedly this morally grey character whom Ji Tanyin (JTY), a goddess, falls in love with. The reason is apparently that he is a "good person", who has not killed anybody, but there was a scene where he quite literally watches someone - someone who as far as I could tell was simply on the boat ML was on - get attacked and does not do anything to help them; and they do the whole slump to the ground thing while continuing to be attacked which, to me, indicated that they might have or probably died. There is later another scene - or several scenes, actually - shown where bombs were literally hitting parts of the city, which he had called down. Apparently though according to JTY, it's all fine because supposedly no one died. I found this incredibly hard to believe. Sure, we saw three separate places get bombed and people crying and running in terror, but somehow no one died? All g, then, YZ gets 10000 brownie points for being able to change his mind and not finish bombing the entire city. Hopefully no one's maimed or anything, and surely no trauma occurred because sometimes fire just falls from the heavens, you know how supernatural events are. Actually, in fact, it's two little flowers that fell spontaneously from the sky. Twice. No other flowers blowing by or anywhere to be seen at all, but suddenly there come two flowers, the exact same ones each time, falling from the sky.
No one learns anything in this drama, either, which is also what I mean about a lack of development. The second couple start with a story of having missed each other, with the 2FL nearly dying of old age without ever having even expressed herself to the 2ML. Then, after they both spend time together again after 2ML finds out about this, in the end 2FL decides to hide from 2ML while he goes around looking for her, although she somehow still receives all his letters to her (how does he know where to send them? Who knows). So much for all that talk about having missed each other - she didn't express herself the first time, and then she chooses to hide herself away in the end - so it was a choice on her part all along, which never changes despite having lived one life before.
Because of things like this, throughout the show I found myself going "What?" most of the time, because what were probably meant to be emotional beats just did not hit with any sense, including what was probably supposed to be the emotional climax of the two leads' romance. At many emotional moments, that was my main reaction. There were many emotional moments where I was moved and cried - especially when it related to the FL (played by Tang Yan)'s teacher; but I genuinely think that was more on account of the music than anything else.
This was a very annoying watch for me. The writing and execution - pacing, editing - did not live up to the possibility of the story. Characters appear and disappear, we never see them again and there's no resolution. How did one of the characters somehow get to heaven when the stairs were supposedly broken? I have no idea, actually. One moment he was on top of a mountain (why was he on top of a mountain? And why is there a single waiter there with him who has food? Where is this food from???) and then the next he rode something to heaven somehow. JTY, upon hearing and seeing him, does not ask why or how he is in heaven. He dies. There was some mention of having experienced thousands of tribulations so if they had ascended they must have been very powerful, but - he just dies. Another recurring character is trapped and then let out and we never see him again. At one point, JTY suddenly starts living with another character, and YZ was there pretty much all the time too for that while, although he was apparently living somewhere else himself. What happens to them afterwards? No idea, we never see that character again, even though they lived with both JTY and another recurrent character for that whole period. We never hear the female weapon spirit talk, pretty much. In fact, the weapon spirits completely don't appear after YZ changes his mind. The five important gods are apparently also so easy to fool; and the actor who plays Taihe literally has nothing to do but stand still apparently. Finally, I also agree with other commenters that the demon god's defeat was like a blip. Side characters are just not fleshed out, as others have pointed out in the comments.
Liu Xue Yi does his best in this, but while watching after having seen Love of the Divine Tree (LotDT) not long ago, I couldn't help comparing the two 'morally grey', angry and traumatised MLs from each; and YZ loses badly to the ML in LotDT. Tang Yan was... okay. Her character felt like a cardboard cut-out at times, she was so two-dimensional. I don't know if she was supposed to be meant to be shown as 'innocent' and 'naive', but she certainly didn't have much depth. I also found her voice a little grating. The final voiceover is just several times of the same phrase on repeat too many. Finally, as a going-towards-being a couple, YZ's distrust is understandable, but I also felt the extent of it was incredibly annoying - JTY literally dies several times and then they still keep having waves of distrusting each other.
I actually started watching this purely because of Qian Lin, after seeing a gifset of him on a social media site. I don't regret having watched this - Daniel Zhou, who plays him, was really quite good in this, and I enjoyed watching him - but I wouldn't watch it again; nor would I really recommend this to anyone unless there is a specific actor they would like to watch.
Sets, costume, and make-up: I actually thought the sets were fine. The costumes were also mostly okay - I wasn't a fan of the wedding attire, and it's not like the costumes were amazing, but they weren't awful. Make-up and style... the blue eyebrows though, yeah what was that about??? And I agree with the commenter who said YZ's hair-down wig was atrocious. Shame to make Liu Xue Yi look like that.
TLDR; -
Acting was fine.
Music was good, honestly this was what did most of the emotional lifting for me.
Story - untied ends and holes aplenty. I don't think that character needed to die either and it really just hammered the sense of nothing being satisfying in this drama.
Rewatch value - personally, I would not rewatch this.
The premise is great, and the story of an immortal/deity having a special fate with one of their followers with whom they fall in love is very Heaven Official's Blessing (HOB). Sadly, this really failed to live up to the potential and promise of such a premise, and certainly does not at all reach the level of HOB.
The story overall is just not satisfying. It starts off very interesting, but over the course of the show, one comes to realise that it seems that there are no consequences for anything, and the feeling I got was that really nothing actually really happens. There is no development in what feels like any of the characters with the exception possibly of the ML, played by Liu Xue Yi, and even then that didn't feel solid to me.
What do I mean by this? There was a vow made to the gods that a character must not fall in love with another. They do, but - nothing happens? The other vows they made, which included not telling anyone who they were, had consequences - anytime they tried to tell someone their identity, they experienced pain - but for some reason, no pain or any adverse effects at all when breaking the vow of developing feelings for this other person; not when kissing or hugging or even agreeing to marry them. When finally they do tell someone else their identity, I thought it had been said that they would disappear into ashes, but apparently this didn't immediately happen either.
The ML, Yuan Zhong (YZ), is supposedly this morally grey character whom Ji Tanyin (JTY), a goddess, falls in love with. The reason is apparently that he is a "good person", who has not killed anybody, but there was a scene where he quite literally watches someone - someone who as far as I could tell was simply on the boat ML was on - get attacked and does not do anything to help them; and they do the whole slump to the ground thing while continuing to be attacked which, to me, indicated that they might have or probably died. There is later another scene - or several scenes, actually - shown where bombs were literally hitting parts of the city, which he had called down. Apparently though according to JTY, it's all fine because supposedly no one died. I found this incredibly hard to believe. Sure, we saw three separate places get bombed and people crying and running in terror, but somehow no one died? All g, then, YZ gets 10000 brownie points for being able to change his mind and not finish bombing the entire city. Hopefully no one's maimed or anything, and surely no trauma occurred because sometimes fire just falls from the heavens, you know how supernatural events are. Actually, in fact, it's two little flowers that fell spontaneously from the sky. Twice. No other flowers blowing by or anywhere to be seen at all, but suddenly there come two flowers, the exact same ones each time, falling from the sky.
No one learns anything in this drama, either, which is also what I mean about a lack of development. The second couple start with a story of having missed each other, with the 2FL nearly dying of old age without ever having even expressed herself to the 2ML. Then, after they both spend time together again after 2ML finds out about this, in the end 2FL decides to hide from 2ML while he goes around looking for her, although she somehow still receives all his letters to her (how does he know where to send them? Who knows). So much for all that talk about having missed each other - she didn't express herself the first time, and then she chooses to hide herself away in the end - so it was a choice on her part all along, which never changes despite having lived one life before.
Because of things like this, throughout the show I found myself going "What?" most of the time, because what were probably meant to be emotional beats just did not hit with any sense, including what was probably supposed to be the emotional climax of the two leads' romance. At many emotional moments, that was my main reaction. There were many emotional moments where I was moved and cried - especially when it related to the FL (played by Tang Yan)'s teacher; but I genuinely think that was more on account of the music than anything else.
This was a very annoying watch for me. The writing and execution - pacing, editing - did not live up to the possibility of the story. Characters appear and disappear, we never see them again and there's no resolution. How did one of the characters somehow get to heaven when the stairs were supposedly broken? I have no idea, actually. One moment he was on top of a mountain (why was he on top of a mountain? And why is there a single waiter there with him who has food? Where is this food from???) and then the next he rode something to heaven somehow. JTY, upon hearing and seeing him, does not ask why or how he is in heaven. He dies. There was some mention of having experienced thousands of tribulations so if they had ascended they must have been very powerful, but - he just dies. Another recurring character is trapped and then let out and we never see him again. At one point, JTY suddenly starts living with another character, and YZ was there pretty much all the time too for that while, although he was apparently living somewhere else himself. What happens to them afterwards? No idea, we never see that character again, even though they lived with both JTY and another recurrent character for that whole period. We never hear the female weapon spirit talk, pretty much. In fact, the weapon spirits completely don't appear after YZ changes his mind. The five important gods are apparently also so easy to fool; and the actor who plays Taihe literally has nothing to do but stand still apparently. Finally, I also agree with other commenters that the demon god's defeat was like a blip. Side characters are just not fleshed out, as others have pointed out in the comments.
Liu Xue Yi does his best in this, but while watching after having seen Love of the Divine Tree (LotDT) not long ago, I couldn't help comparing the two 'morally grey', angry and traumatised MLs from each; and YZ loses badly to the ML in LotDT. Tang Yan was... okay. Her character felt like a cardboard cut-out at times, she was so two-dimensional. I don't know if she was supposed to be meant to be shown as 'innocent' and 'naive', but she certainly didn't have much depth. I also found her voice a little grating. The final voiceover is just several times of the same phrase on repeat too many. Finally, as a going-towards-being a couple, YZ's distrust is understandable, but I also felt the extent of it was incredibly annoying - JTY literally dies several times and then they still keep having waves of distrusting each other.
I actually started watching this purely because of Qian Lin, after seeing a gifset of him on a social media site. I don't regret having watched this - Daniel Zhou, who plays him, was really quite good in this, and I enjoyed watching him - but I wouldn't watch it again; nor would I really recommend this to anyone unless there is a specific actor they would like to watch.
Sets, costume, and make-up: I actually thought the sets were fine. The costumes were also mostly okay - I wasn't a fan of the wedding attire, and it's not like the costumes were amazing, but they weren't awful. Make-up and style... the blue eyebrows though, yeah what was that about??? And I agree with the commenter who said YZ's hair-down wig was atrocious. Shame to make Liu Xue Yi look like that.
TLDR; -
Acting was fine.
Music was good, honestly this was what did most of the emotional lifting for me.
Story - untied ends and holes aplenty. I don't think that character needed to die either and it really just hammered the sense of nothing being satisfying in this drama.
Rewatch value - personally, I would not rewatch this.
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