Reviews

First impressions

Only eight episodes have been released so far, but I already want to share my first impressions of the drama. To begin with, it has everything I love: a historical costume drama, detective mysteries, and supernatural elements. The drama has completely lived up to my expectations.

What draws me in? First and foremost, the brilliant acting, especially Luo Yunxi’s, the beautiful aesthetics, and, of course, the intriguing cases. I’m especially happy to see Luo Yunxi and Fang Yilun acting together again.

I’ve always enjoyed detective stories with complicated cases where, at first glance, it’s impossible to even imagine which direction the investigation should take. Sometimes the cases contain disturbing details, but they are never overly emphasized. What the viewer sees is enough to let their imagination fill in the rest and piece together the whole picture.

I also really like how naturally the relationships between the characters develop — nothing feels forced or artificial. Overall, the drama feels very well-balanced, and the story unfolds smoothly, without any gaps or inconsistencies.

I haven’t been bored for a single second while watching Shadow Punisher. I’m eagerly looking forward to the upcoming episodes.

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Ok! The Movie

If someone just wants a simple action comedy, this is an OK film — it has plenty of humorous moments and action. The comedy isn’t actually that strong, so it’s not laugh-out-loud, but it offers enough to hold your attention while watching. The action is creative, though you shouldn’t look for realism in it. The film also throws in a few dramatic elements around the theme of family.

I didn’t fully enjoy the film because it felt too random to me, with too many elements thrown in for spectacle rather than for a coherent plot. It wanted to insert and connect too many things. And I’m not satisfied with the characters either — the characters themselves are fine, but they aren’t well used. I’d particularly single out one female villain, who was not at all convincing to me in her “badass” role. So, unfortunately, in my opinion the film went downhill and ends up as nothing more than a pale copy of the original Ok! Madam from six years ago.

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Liu xueyi carried this whole show

Princess Gambit was such a disappointment for me. Meng Ziyi seems to play the same character in every drama. She plays a beautiful woman, but I find her acting very flat, with barely any facial expression or emotional range.

Even in emotional scenes, I rarely felt anything from her character. The story also became messy and rushed, with the second half losing the momentum of the beginning.

Liu Xueyi, however, was amazing as always. He carried this drama and honestly deserved a much better script. I love him and just feel bad that he keeps getting scripts that don’t match his talent.

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An heiress who lives with the ability to see ghosts—and spends her life trying to help them cross over—frequently crosses paths with a prosecutor at the scenes where bodies are discovered.
After brushing against her hand, he too endures a terrifying month spent seeing these ghosts. She helps him, and they grow closer. When her grandmother insists she find a boyfriend, she asks him to pretend to be her partner.
He willingly agrees.
His grandmother wants them to break up because the woman’s *saju* (destiny) involves the "Black Monkey," which is believed to bring bad luck to her grandson. For his sake, she breaks up with him. Meanwhile, she tries to recall the details of the accident from twelve years ago—the moment it all began.
My kudos to Park Eun Bin for the way she acts in any role she is given (for examples Extraordinary Attorney Woo or The King's affection)

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Poor plot and lots of AI use!

Starting with the positives, there are a lot of good looking guys in this drama, the OST theme is good and there are a few moments where the drama does become interesting but overall it was quite disappointing.

When I first started the drama, there was potential and I could see myself rating it a 9. But the way it quickly became boring and disappointing was surprising to me. The leads start their relationship as a fling and both have some secrets. Soon enough these secrets become the cause of their constant fights. Also, Hui Leuk To clearly doesn't want anyone to know he's gay. So with all their problems, I don't understand why Mok Fei Foon keeps making up with him and giving him chances after chances. The repeated fights annoyed me especially since the way they make up is really quite silly. Why were you angry and avoiding each other to begin with?

There are a few moments that the show picks up pace and twists in the story perked me up only for it to turn immediately disappointing. You wonder how the problems conveniently resolved themselves without consequences. I was expecting more fights and action sequences but there is more gun violence and problems dying off.

It almost felt like the plot itself was written using AI. Almost all the flashback scenes were created with AI in manga style. The scenes could have easily used actors. It was quite frustrating to see AI being used in such a way especially since the production clearly had the budget for it and the scenes were not extraordinary to begin with,

I watched most of show in 2x because I just wanted to complete it after a certain point. The show did make me unintentionally laugh with some of the ridiculous writing, dialogues (beautiful ashtray) and scenes so there's that but I was laughing at them, not with them, so it's not a compliment.

Bottom line is that the story and execution didn't make a lot of sense which is why I landed at a 4.

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A Good Teaser, A Terrible Series

The main characters, James and Ken, are two incredibly selfish people who are so caught up in their own relationship that they barely seem to care about anything else. Their intelligence is honestly questionable, and I genuinely don’t understand how they even passed the police exam. They’re incredibly slow and careless when it comes to solving cases, as if they don’t realize that other people are literally paying with their lives for their incompetence.

As the story progresses, more and more people turn into Nur and get killed, yet these two barely seem affected by it. Instead, they’re busy making noodles for each other, crying in each other’s arms, or worrying about completely irrelevant things. At one point, it feels like their biggest concern is whether their noodles are expired or not. 😭

I watched the teaser and genuinely thought Thailand had finally made a good and exciting series, but I was completely wrong. The writing is so childish and poorly thought out that I honestly feel like a 10-year-old could have written a better story.

I also genuinely don’t understand why this series has such a high rating. I have no idea what people based their ratings on. The plot feels repetitive and heavily inspired by zombie and vampire stories, but even that concept wasn’t executed properly. For me, the writing gets 0/10.

The acting is another major problem. A lot of the performances feel extremely unnatural and forced, and the romance is especially ridiculous. James and Ken falling in love happens so suddenly that it feels like the writers simply decided, “Okay, now they’re in love,” without actually developing their relationship properly.

And then there are all the random plot holes. In one of the first episodes, James gets stabbed in the back, but in the very next scene, his lip is suddenly bloody. There’s no explanation for how that happened, and it feels like the director simply forgot to show it.

Then Ken suddenly has a bloodstain on his own lip, even though there was nothing there in the previous scene. Later, Ken smells fresh blood from James’s bloody finger on his lips and kisses James because of it. But again, none of it makes sense. James had already lost a significant amount of blood, so why didn’t Ken react to it earlier? Why would just one or two drops suddenly make him lose control?

Unfortunately, there’s no logical explanation behind any of these scenes. The biggest problem is that the story constantly introduces things without properly thinking through how they fit together. It feels like the writers wanted certain scenes to happen but didn’t bother figuring out whether they actually made sense.

Overall, I went in expecting an exciting thriller based on the teaser, but ended up extremely disappointed. The weak writing, unnatural acting, rushed romance, repetitive plot, and countless inconsistencies completely ruined it for me.

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Easily one of the greatest Xianxia's of all time

So going into this show the most interesting dynamic is having the woman being the master and the man being the disciple it will be very interesting to see how the dynamics shift when he is the master and she becomes the disciple this switching is unique and I have never seen it before.

The acting is good, the set and costumes look great. I will update this review when I watched more episodes it's too soon to complete this review. Again the characters origin stories are introduced bit by bit which is always ideal since the viewer can absorb information and retain it better.

Julia Xiang is a great actress before she looks so strong, knowledgeable and confident, after she is reborn she comes off as so innocent and naive. Same actress but it's like two completely different people such a high level of acting.

The pacing of this show is good it's not too fast and not too slow. There is enough action but doesn't rely on cool fight scenes to carry the show. The show is carried by the story telling and the dialogue this is what a good Xianxia should be like.

The male lead and female lead have investigative skills, negotiations skills, and even use trickery to fool the antagonists adds a realistic and interesting layer to their characters and the main story.

Many of the characters met when they were children and have conflicts with each other like obsession, love, betrayal and revenge. Very good to have all these elements in the drama.

I want to talk about the villain Dun tian I'm glad they didn't just make him evil they gave him a very human and understandable reason (his desire to be with his family again.)

This is the best Xianxia I have ever watched. Once again China does the best possible job of writing good and interesting feminine characters.

The scene was towards the end of the two leads getting married and living with their children was very well done. This is a show I will re-watch yearly I truly believe it is that good.

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Cute, simple and easy to love

This was such a cute and easy watch. Nothing particularly groundbreaking, but sometimes that's exactly what I want from a drama. I liked the simplicity of the story and how naturally the relationship developed without needing too much unnecessary drama around it. There were plenty of sweet and awkward little moments that made me smile, and the chemistry worked really well for this kind of story. I think I just wanted a little more from it. More time with the characters, more development for their relationship, and maybe a few more moments that could have made me truly attached to them. I enjoyed what we got, but it never reached that point where I was completely emotionally invested.
Still, it was sweet, comforting and really easy to finish.

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A visual treat that went south on the storytelling

The drama's rewatch value truly lies in the amazing CGI (for a TV production) and fight scenes with was well choreographed with a mix of elegance and power (except for the final one, which was a little to camp for me and verging on comical), the great acting by the main characters (Gu Cheon, Saeng Gang, the King, the Crown Prince and the Empress Dowager), and the musicality (i mean who doesn't love rock music with an amazing fight sequence). I liked the idea of entering a state of near death to enter the spirit world and battle. And I would watch selected episodes like the fight sequence between Gu Cheon and the Guard.

What failed for me was the dragging out of the "who dunnit" which was rather unimaginative and made the main characters look a tad dumb...That plotline survived purely on the acting chops of the actors playing main characters. And I truly wished that Saeng Gang was given a more meaty fight sequence which I thought was cut short in the final fight scene... So the last 2-3 episodes were a bit of a drag for me.

That said, this drama is still an entertaining watch and worth the time, purely for the amazing sword fight scenes and music.

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Why speak when you have little to say?

It was an alright watch, but it felt very surface-level and was obviously lacking in nuance. When the drama started, I was actually surprised that it seemed genuinely critical of the industry, but that quickly fell by the wayside, just like Fumi’s resolve and sense of self. She was such a wishy-washy character who really could have benefited from better writing — and by that, I mean having at least one woman on the writing team.
It really is one of the downsides of watching Japanese film/TV, because you just know that a female-led drama is rarely going to reach its full potential, especially when it tackles complex topics like plastic surgery and self-identity.
The worst example of this was the voice actress episode. What is it with Japan and always turning female friendships against each other in the worst possible ways? They’re constantly portrayed as jealous and scheming behind the scenes, and this time they even threw paid sugar-daddy sexual assault into the mix for good measure.

Fumi not making any distinction between corrective/reconstructive and cosmetic surgery when asking Rin to fix her face, and then going on to open her own clinic at the end of the drama, really tells you all you need to know about how uncritical this drama ultimately is towards the industry and harmful beauty standards. She even got that lovely feminine makeover that always seems to happen to this type of character in Japanese dramas.

The character Rin was probably the biggest disappointment of the series. They could have done so much more with her, and I would have loved to see more interactions between her and her girlfriend. The writers could have really teased out a side of Rin that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise, making her feel more human and giving the character some much-needed duality.
I did like the way the relationship was written, it showed that Rin genuinely had a loving, understanding girlfriend and a home to return to, which made her feel much more human. But like I said, they could have done so much more with it, especially by fleshing out the girlfriend as a character in her own right. It would have been the perfect way to give us another side of Rin and actually make the audience truly root for her.

So yeah... great premise in terms of story and characters, but unfortunately the drama slowly started to collapse under the weight of its own poor writing and its reluctance to truly delve into the societal effects of plastic surgery and beauty standards. It constantly hints at having something deeper to say, only to back away from it when things get interesting. There was so much potential here to explore identity, femininity, the pressure to conform, and the way the beauty industry shapes how women see themselves and each other, but most of it remained frustratingly surface-level because the critique was shallow and hollow.

And speaking of plastic surgery... Naka Riisa’s performance could have been so much better without all the Botox. She looked visibly strained in some of the more emotionally demanding scenes, and for the rest of the series, her facial expressions barely changed. It made the whole thing feel unintentionally on-the-nose and, frankly, a little ironic.

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WOW… this one really got me. 🥹🖤 From the beginning, I was completely hooked. The chemistry between Leo Pang and Kingston was EVERYTHING, and their story had me feeling all the emotions. 🔥❤️
There were so many moments that made me laugh, scream, stress and completely melt. 😂🥹 That’s exactly the kind of series I love — the ones that make you way too emotionally invested.
Definitely a 10/10 from me! ⭐🖤✨


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Great Cast, Poor Execution

I was genuinely curious about this drama's widespread popularity, especially since I enjoy the work of both lead actors. The series initially showed immense promise, capturing my attention with a strong opening. However, as the narrative progressed, it unfortunately devolved into a sluggish, repetitive, and ultimately implausible viewing experience.
The character development proved particularly grating. The female lead, rather than remaining sympathetic, gradually morphs into an ungrateful and abrasive figure as she pursues her objectives. Starting out as a lowly servant, she inexplicably displays the audacity to physically strike a nobleman—a glaring historical inaccuracy that completely shatters the realism of the period setting.
Simultaneously, the male lead suffers a severe regression. The formidable, privileged lord introduced in the early episodes is quickly reduced to a lovesick follower, stripping away any genuine agency or heroic presence he once possessed.
It is a true shame to witness such a squandered opportunity. Despite the strong casting and a compelling premise, the weak scriptwriting and poor pacing ultimately derailed the entire production.

Oct 6th, 2026
Am I the only one who thought this was just...OK?......... I originally dropped it at eps 28......went back and watched the drama because of all the rave reviews, but it still didn’t really blow me away. It's a watchable, middle-of-the-road experience, but definitely overhyped.

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Cute, but missing the original’s magic

Going into this, I knew comparisons with the original would be inevitable, and unfortunately this remake just couldn't live up to it. It wasn't bad, but it never captured the same charm or emotional connection that made the original so memorable.
One of the biggest issues was the runtime. There simply weren't enough episodes to properly tell the story, so many important moments felt rushed and several emotional beats didn't have the time they needed to truly land. Because of that, the characters' development and the romance never felt as convincing as they should have.
I can appreciate what the remake was trying to do, and there were a few enjoyable moments, but I couldn't stop thinking about how much stronger the original handled the same story. Sometimes less isn't more, and this is one of those cases where the drama really needed more time to let the characters and their relationship breathe.

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Enemies to lovers done right

Maybe it was the Bad Buddy vibes I got from the trailer that made me want to start Match Point in the first place, and honestly, I'm so glad I did. Enemies to lovers is already one of my favorite tropes, so this had everything to catch my attention from the beginning, but I didn't expect to enjoy it THIS much. The story is actually pretty simple, yet everything works so well that it never needed to be more complicated. The pacing is probably one of its biggest strengths because the story is spread perfectly across the 10 episodes, nothing feels unnecessarily dragged out, and thank god Bay and Sun don't take an eternity to understand what is happening between them. I absolutely loved these two together. Their little fights, the teasing, the rivalry slowly becoming affection, and all those moments where you can clearly see their feelings changing made them so much fun to watch. And BAY!!! That man is an entire green forest. I loved the way he cared for Sun and how naturally his softer side came out once their relationship started changing. Sun is such a vibe on his own, and somehow their completely different energies fit each other perfectly. Their chemistry was there from the start and only got better. The whole series is cute, funny, romantic and ridiculously easy to get attached to, while still having great production quality and a storyline that kept me invested beyond the romance.
Even the family side was so much fun, especially their fathers constantly fighting like they were the ones with the rivalry. They made me laugh every single time and added so much to the comedy of the drama.

Those Bad Buddy vibes might have been what brought me here, but Bay and Sun are definitely what made me stay. Match Point took a trope I already love and gave me exactly what I wanted from it: great chemistry, hilarious bickering, two characters who match each other so well and a romance that doesn't take forever to actually move forward. I really wasn't ready to say goodbye to them after only 10 episodes.

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I Came for the Affair, Stayed for the Thriller

I genuinely loved this drama! It’s such a good combination of thriller, romance and comedy, and I think that balance is what made it so enjoyable for me. There was enough suspense to keep me curious about what was going to happen next, but the comedy gave the drama some lighter moments and made it really fun to watch.
My only real issue was the slow beginning. It took me a while to get into the story, and there were moments where I wondered when things were actually going to pick up. But once it finally got going, IT GOT GOOD. The suspense became much more interesting, and I found myself getting completely invested in the story.
I also really loved the cast. Everyone suited their characters so well, but the chemistry between the leads was definitely one of my favourite parts. Their chemistry was TOO good! There was something about their interactions that made me want more of them.
And honestly, I wish they had explored their relationship a little more. We got the chemistry and the moments that made me want to see more, but I felt like there was so much potential there that could have been explored. I would have loved to see more of their relationship develop and get a little deeper instead of having some parts feel rushed.
The comedy was another highlight for me. It worked really well alongside the thriller elements and stopped the drama from feeling too heavy. I loved those little funny moments that came in between all the tension and made the characters even more enjoyable.
Overall, this was such a fun watch. The slow start almost lost me, but everything that came after made up for it. The thriller aspect kept me intrigued, the comedy kept me entertained, and the chemistry kept me invested. I just wish the romance had been given a little more room to breathe.

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