Tanky Toon

I went into this drama fully aware of the adopted sibling-romance-trope, so my concern isn’t with the set-up. The first few episodes moved fast enough that I was willing to roll with it. The pacing had momentum, the reunion hook worked, and surprisingly, I found myself invested despite raising an eyebrow every time the drama acted as though introducing Jiang Mu as a sister to Jin Zhao’s racing world would cause irreparable harm. But that’s another story for another day.

The bigger issue for me wasn't the premise. It was Jiang Mu herself. I never managed to get fully on board with how she was written. She spends years searching for Jin Zhao, yet seems oddly determined to hold him hostage to a childhood version of himself that no longer exists. This is a man who grew up with a drunk, absent father while she had a far more stable life, but she repeatedly acts shocked that hardship might have changed him. I find this naivete of hers a tad (okay, so more than a tad) frustrating.

Then she swings between princess, martyr, wannabe detective, and emotional prosecutor depending on what the scene requires. One moment she is chasing Jin Zhao across the country, the next she is upset because she did not receive exactly the confession she wanted from him. At some point I stopped wondering what Jin Zhao was hiding and started wondering what game Jiang Mu was playing. Not to fault Esther Yu, who is playing this character, but after a third way through, I was honestly tired of her childish antics.

Ironically, Jin Zhao ended up carrying the drama for me. Yes, he is apparently a boxer, a racer, an artist, a genius student, and possibly three other professions the script forgot to mention. The man collects talents like Pokémon cards. Yet the actor sells it well enough that I kept watching. I was genuinely shocked to learn he was the same supporting actor who annoyed me in The Legend of Shen Li. Talk about night and day performance.

As for the romance, there is only so much slo-mo, cringe-y scenes and jealous misunderstandings that I can tolerate before my finger starts itching for the FFWD button. By the second half, large chunks felt like they were flirting in circles while the plot waited outside. I finished this drama, not because I was swept away by their love story, but more because Jin Zhao remained the most interesting person in it. Even though, he miraculously survived a fiery crash, and in spite of broken legs, he was able to leave the hospital just to see Jiang Mu before she heads off to Canada to visit her ailing mother.

And here my growing frustration with the story starts to culminate in a hot-boiling bubble. The self-imposed noble idiocy by Jin Zhao, was part understandable, while the other half left me scratching my head. If he was so determined to ghost Jiang Mu till his death, why even bother meeting her in the first place (after years, and years of avoidance)?

Another thing that I noticed is that the secondary characters who were part of the driving force of the drama, somehow “disappeared” in the back half. With the exception of probably San Lai, the rest of them vanished into thin air, only to be brought back in the end to close out the story. I would have liked to see the support that Jin Zhao received during the times when he was busy Jiang Mu away from his life.

I get it. Romance dramas are supposed to end happily ever after, with a neat bow tied at the end, so I will cut this drama some slack and acknowledge that, despite some loopholes, it wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be.