De Retour du Gouffre (2023)

A millennial Dragon Loves a Taoist Girl ❤️?

Back from the Brink" is an enthralling Chinese drama that captivates viewers with its compelling storyline, well-rounded characters, and satisfying ending. This drama takes audiences on an emotional rollercoaster, blending intense moments with heartfelt connections and personal growth.

The story revolves around the lives of four individuals from different backgrounds who find themselves facing their darkest moments. As fate intertwines their paths, they are forced to confront their pasts, overcome their struggles, and ultimately find redemption. The narrative beautifully explores themes of love, friendship, forgiveness, and second chances.

The drama's character development is one of its greatest strengths. Each character is complex and multifaceted, with their own personal demons to confront. Their growth throughout the series is both realistic and inspiring, allowing viewers to connect deeply with their journeys. Whether it's the flawed yet determined protagonist or the supporting cast members, the performances are outstanding, bringing depth and authenticity to the characters.

The chemistry between the actors is remarkable, and their portrayals breathe life into the story. The romantic relationships in "Back from the Brink" are delicately woven into the plot, adding an extra layer of emotional resonance. The drama skillfully explores the power of love to heal and transform lives, providing viewers with memorable and heartwarming moments.

As the series progresses, it maintains a well-paced narrative that keeps viewers engaged. The plot twists and turns, keeping you on the edge of your seat, and the emotional beats are delivered with precision. The production values are top-notch, with stunning cinematography and a well-curated soundtrack that enhances the overall viewing experience.

While "Back from the Brink" can be emotionally intense at times, it also offers moments of lightness and humor to balance the drama. The dialogue is well-written, showcasing both poignant and witty exchanges between characters. The series strikes a remarkable balance between its dramatic elements and its ability to uplift and inspire.

With a satisfying ending that ties up loose ends and provides closure for each character's arc, "Back from the Brink" leaves viewers with a sense of fulfillment. It reminds us that no matter how dire the circumstances may seem, hope and resilience can lead us back to the light. The conclusion of the drama is both poignant and heartwarming, leaving a lasting impression.

In conclusion, "Back from the Brink" is a must-watch Chinese drama of 2023. Its engaging storyline, well-developed characters, and emotional depth make it a standout production. If you appreciate captivating narratives, strong performances, and a good balance between drama and heartwarming moments, this series should be on your watchlist. Prepare to be moved and inspired by the resilience of the human spirit as it triumphs over adversity.

In "Back from the Brink," there are several important aspects that viewers should know:

Redemption and Second Chances: The drama explores the themes of redemption and second chances. It highlights how individuals can overcome their past mistakes and find a way to rebuild their lives. The characters in the drama go through personal transformations and learn to forgive themselves and others.

Personal Struggles: Each character in the drama faces their own personal struggles and challenges. These struggles are integral to their growth and development throughout the series. The drama delves into issues such as family conflicts, career setbacks, emotional trauma, and societal pressures.

Interconnected Lives: The lives of the main characters in the drama become intertwined through a series of events. Their paths cross, and they find support, understanding, and love in unexpected places. The connections they forge with one another play a crucial role in their individual journeys.

Power of Love: Love is a powerful force in "Back from the Brink." The drama explores various forms of love, including romantic love, familial love, and friendship. Love becomes a catalyst for healing, redemption, and personal growth for the characters. It emphasizes the importance of genuine connections and the impact they can have on individuals.

Emotional Intensity: "Back from the Brink" is an emotionally intense drama. It tackles deep-rooted emotions and difficult situations faced by the characters. Be prepared for intense scenes that evoke strong emotions such as sadness, anger, and joy. The drama aims to strike a balance between intense moments and lighter, more uplifting moments.

Resilience and Hope: The drama emphasizes the resilience of the human spirit. It highlights how individuals can overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges and find hope in even the darkest moments. The characters' determination and perseverance serve as an inspiration, reminding viewers that there is always a chance for a brighter future.

By understanding these key aspects of the drama, viewers can fully appreciate the character arcs, emotional depth, and the overall message conveyed in "Back from the Brink."

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The most fun and best xianxia of 2023!

Where to even begin. This story is set in a world where humans and spirits of all kinds coexist. There is a sort of enmity between them yet some fall in love with each other. Enter our main leads, a dragon that was betrayed by his ex and had to throw his heart scale away and our fl a Taoist, that was born with a heart disease and is alive due to that heart scale. And thus ensues the most fun adventure.

The best part of this drama is definitely the characters and the humour. Our main leads have a firy chemistry since the first time they meet. There interactions and bickering is just too fun to watch.

The fl in this drama is my favorite fl ever. She is strong and smart. Yet kind and fun. What she lacks in magic, she just uses brute force to cover. I've never once seen a fl so logical and soo relatable. She holds are grudges well and I'm so glad for it. She also pays back her favors ten fold. The most adorable, smart and downright beutiful soul fl I've ever seen.

The ml is just as adorable too. Hou Ming Hao 's acting really suprised me. He just has so much emotions. He suffers quietly. The ml probably has been through the most in this drama yet he has the purest heart of all.

The second ml Bai Xiaosheng, I won't lie I liked him better when he was a matchmaker to our couple. Later when he falls in love with the fl I kinda disliked him. But don't worry it lasts only 2-3 episodes and he is back to being the best matchmaker ever.

Then comes the supporting casts. ZhuLi and Huang Xiao Yan, these two are soo soo cute. Adorable kids fall in love and try their best to protect each other. Xiangge and Feng Qing Shou probably has the hottest setup in the story. Rival business owners who actually love each other. They have a beautiful relationship too.

My favorite parts in the drama is when all the three couples gather together, helping each other or just having fun. The friendship in this drama really makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

There are so many other couples that were tragic. The snake man and monastery's QinYu. Xi Feng and Pufang. Chen Yi and Xue Lin, Lu Musheng and Fox Princess, etc. I liked their story bits too.

I really liked the wise old men Shifu and brush Sprite as well as Yan Hui's senior Zi Chen. As for the villains they are despicable but I like how none of them are one dimensional, they all have a proper reason to be how they are.

Bonus: the songs are super nice. Also this drama has a really beautiful opening ;)

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The Heart Never Dies

Starting with curiosity to watch Hou Minghao's first costume drama, I ended up falling in love with each part of this drama.


Story,
Such a new breeze for the Xianxia world. Even though it is almost like Xuanhuan with many fight scenes, this drama really one of a kind for me. This drama surprisingly is my preference for the beginning to the end. I started watching this with no expectations, but it turns out to be one of my top-list favorites drama. The second drama that makes me cannot move on after The Blood of Youth. For me, the simplicity makes this story can be enjoyed anytime,

Cast and Acting,
Shout out to the casting crew and all of the actors for their effort to make this drama so perfect. I'm glad that this is one of the dramas that have perfect actors for each character. I know Hou Minghao from his drama with Cheng Yi but not paying attention to him at that time. But this piece really opens my eyes to how amazing he is as an actor. Now I can't imagine Tian Yao if it's not Minghao. It's the same for Zhou Ye as Yanhui. Even though it's not perfect, she really has a good job to portray Yanhui. I don't have any complaints about all of the supporting actors too.

Music,
This is definitely the perfect example when I said the ost should have matched the drama perfectly if they want to succeed. Because the soundtrack is one of the important aspects of the beautifulness of the drama. I know when I heard Zhou Shen and Liu Yuning singing ost, this drama really worth full of my attention. I fell in love with Minghao's voice too.

I dare said that this drama is one of my top-list favorite Xianxia dramas. It is worth watching and of course for me to rewatch. Now if someone mentions Mighty Millenium Dragon, All that I can think of is just Tianyou and Longbaobao <3
Hou Minghao, I really looking forward to your next costume drama!

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Neo Hou's first xianxia drama!

I'm really in love with the couple in this drama. I'm re-watching this for the second time. The character development was at a good pace. There's a lot of funny banters at the first few episodes in the drama before it starts getting serious as it gets deeper into the story. There's already a few sweet scenes and there's more later throughout the episode. A good mix of romance, comedy, and drama.

I have watched Till the End of the Moon too, and I have to say... I felt much better watching Back From the Brink, mostly because even though there were misunderstandings that led to thoughts of betrayal, they overcame it and gained back each other's trust. Lots of sweet scenes, a much healthier relationship compared to the couple in TTEOTM.

I knew about Zhou Ye from Word of Honor, and fell in love with Neo Hou's acting after watching this! They're so cute together which is why I'm watching it again!

You won't be disappointed. You'll get to see the different sides of his character, Tian Yao! Both Neo Hou and Zhou Ye were great in this drama!

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Not your typical Xanxia thank goodness!

Never thought there would be a Xanxia with no heavenly realm, psychotic second lead obsession and multiple lives which explains why I loved this drama so much! I am not a fan of the typical trope of killing the one you love for the greater good on repeat. The constant misunderstandings and angst is too frustrating and draining for me. Hence BFTB has been a breath of fresh air and had all the elements in a story (romance, adventure and comedy) that kept me entertained, invested and sad when drama ended. I’ve only been able to finish 2 other Xanxia which were LBFD and TSL both of which I also enjoyed because it did not fit the typical Xanxia mould.

Drama was not perfect nor a masterpiece but the positives far outweighed the negatives.

What I loved:
• gorgeous leads who had amazing chemistry despite the lack of passionate kisses. The progression of their relationship from annoyance/bickering to friendship then lovers was beautifully done. Except for one silly incident their trust and support for each other never wavered. My favourite CP!
• FL who can fight and was intelligent, straight forward, righteous yet practical. Loved her face slapping lol My favourite FL !
• ML who overcame his past trauma to become the most loving and tender ML. Gives FL everything yet ask for nothing in return. I loved the way he says “Yan Hui “ and how he sharpens knives for FL to vent her frustration. My favourite ML!
• the quest to find ML’s body part meant CP were together for most of the drama. Lots of CP interactions, working together for a common goal. Loved the character development, consistency and pace.
• the endearing secondary cast and couples
• no delusional second lead that serve no purpose other than obsessing over main lead from
start to end.
• the dodgy cgi that somehow works with the adorable cartoonish characters

What could have been better:
• the stabbing scene in episode 16. Understand it was a plot device but was poorly executed. Please bear with this unfortunate plot device in an otherwise great script as the drama redeem itself within next few episodes.
• kept BXS character as a shipper of the CP instead of falling in love with FL. Luckily this didn’t last long.
• one passionate kiss at least? Why c drama why?
• although this was a happy ending would have appreciated more scenes of their reunion and life together. Why c drama why?

Highly recommend this drama as well as the novel.

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Beautiful Xianxia Love Story of A Dragon King and a Taoist Girl!

Back from the brink is light and fast-paced romance, xianxia!
It's a beautiful xianxia story of a dragon king, who got hurt by love but still learned to love again and found his true love in a kind-hearted Taoist girl.
If you were a fan of Love Between Fairy and Devil, I highly suggest watching this drama as the original stories are made by the same author, Jiu Lu Fei Xiang (九鹭非香)

STORY:

Dragon King Tianyao gets betrayed on his wedding day by the woman he was going to marry, a Taoist called Suying from Guanghan Sect. She dismembered him and tried to steal his heart protecting scale and inner core, which are the main sources of his powers. He combines them and tosses the heart protecting scale away.
The heart protecting scale went inside a little baby girl, who was abandoned because of her weak heart. Yanhui got to live thanks to the heart protecting scale and was picked by Master Lingxiao of Chengxing Sect.
Yanhui gets expelled from the sect and soon is kidnapped by Tianyao. Tianyao had noticed that Yanhui had the heart protecting scale inside of her. Tianyao wants to find his body parts and needs the help of Yanhui, and they start their journey of finding his body parts.
Yanhui and Tianyao slowly fall in love with each other in the midst of the chaos.

SPOILER PART OF THE STORY & MY OPINION:

Tianyao and Yanhui had a couple of misunderstandings in the drama, which were understandable. I feel like Back from the brink was a great drama, but in my opinion it was lacking just a certain spice. I feel like Yanhui and Tianyao fell in love a little bit too early, and I was a little disappointed how both of their weddings weren't because of their mutual feelings. The wedding in Qingqiu was beautiful but for me, it was a little ruined due to Yanhui's attitude, it was understandable but at the same time disappointing, knowing that she was very much in love with Tianyao but hurt by him at the same time and thus wasn't excited at all that she was going to marry Tianyao. The drama was filmed beautifully, and the outfits were cute. It was fun and light for a xianxia. Yanhui wasn't annoying or naive, and Tianyao wasn't the typical "VERY cold and stern main lead".

ACTING:

Neo Hou as Tianyao,
His acting was great! There's just something in the way he looks so naive and kind yet strong at the same time. A great pick for this role.

Zhou Ye as Yanhui
She was great as Yanhui. Her crying scenes were the best in this drama! She was very believable.

Riley Wang as Bai Xiao Sheng,
The black horse who surprised me time and time again. His acting just stood out the most to me due to his mischievous and mysterious presence. I wished for his happiness the most, since Bai Xiao Sheng had suffered the most ever since his childhood.

Overall a 8!

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Boring Male Lead

I really wanted to like this cdrama. Female lead actress is cute, fun and animated. Supporting male actor is handsome, fun and animated. Male lead is boring, stiff, same frown face the entire 15 episodes. It was a struggle for me finish ep 15. Weak plot, slow moving, boring.

So the villain, Cuying, wtf was her problem? Her mad love story is not convincing. . . .

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Brings out the emotional side of one's being!!!

The title would definitely be like of course it does bring out the emotion but what about it? Of course it did not make me cry as much as the red sleeve did or made me laugh as much as the business proposal and it didn't make me binge watch it as much like the lighter and the princess nor was it a hidden gem like fall in love but it had all of this...
It started out strong and finished strong... It's not easy to do that but it actually did.
The characters were superb I actually did not know the FL before this and now I am a fan .. Neo Hou well the last time I enjoyed his show was a girl like me and he has come a way from that show and boy I'm I glad I decided to give it a chance...
Bai xiaosheng was the one character that made me like and dislike him the whole drama and I prefer him here to song of the moon....

The OST!!! Oh my loved it not all songs are worth remembering compared to hotel de Luna or even the long ballad in my pov but it's OST is better than most this past year....

The whole drama as a whole was really nice... All I can say is that it is worth watching and the romance as a whole was not too little and not too much just enough seasoning...

What I did not like was that somewhere in the middle it kind of lost its plotline and scattered its plotline but got along its path eventually...
The millenium spirit dragon was not as strong as I hoped and imagined him to be...now that was a disappointed!!! He was saved by his woman most of the time but the upside was he would rather save her first in lieu of his life which was unexpected loved it

Would you chose to save the one person you love or the whole world????

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Disappointing

The story started out great until about episode 17. The humor gave me endless laughs, the adventures of the main characters were fun to watch, and ML and FL had a lot of chemistry. The villains were compelling and gave us plenty of reasons to hate them. Then, the story went off the rails and started introducing new plotlines and characters who didn't need to be there. I normally don't like love triangles because they usually follow the same tropes and deviate from the plot. This show was no exception. Bai Xiaosheng (BX) was a fun and neutral character who should've stayed neutral. Suddenly, we had to watch multiple episodes involving a love triangle between BX, Tianyao and Yanhui because Tianyao and Yanhui had some tension in their relationship. There were better ways to get it resolved and to get Tianyao gain back Yanhui's trust, instead of sticking BX between them for several episodes. In the second half and towards the end, BX mostly disappeared from the plot making the entire love triangle angst completely pointless.

Even the chemistry between Tianyao and Yanhui became stale in the second half. They had no physical or even romantic chemistry although they were married. They kind of regressed from being a dynamic due to an old boring couple. When Tianyao protected her from any threat, she looked at him in surprise like he wasn't supposed to do it. Ya'll are married. Why are you surprised? Thankfully, or not, they finally shared a very chaste kiss in episode 38 after being married for how long? Pretty damn long,

An endless slew of minor characters and their stories, too many flash-backs, and fillers made the story progression very slow. An entire episode was dedicated to some weird demon capturing Tianyao so she could marry him just to be defeated and never seen again. We did not need to watch short lived romances between minor characters, who all died an episode later, or flashbacks from Yanhui's childhood in the Taoist sect. It was all boring and irrelevant. We also did not need to see Suying's sad romance with the general. There was nothing redeeming about her. She was a reprehensible person, so there was no point trying to make her even a little bit sympathetic.

The end boss was incredibly boring. He was a cookier cutter villain without any motivation or personality. He did bad things because villains do bad things, not because he had a compelling reason to be bad. Taoists were much more interesting and complex.

There were problems with the acting too. Zhou Ye was really cute as Yanhui who was lively, dynamic, and funny. Neo Hou was the opposite. This is the first drama I watched with him and I was completely unimpressed with his acting. He spent a huge amount of the time standing around and staring - forlorn staring, sad staring, observant staring, romantic staring, staring, staring, and more staring. In many scenes involving multiple characters, he just stood around and stared like a place holder. It seemed like the actor either needed more lines or the dialogue needed to be sped up. After some time, the constant staring became very noticeable. Tianyao was the main character with the plot revolving around him, but he looked like Yanhui's side kick most of the time.

Overall, I enjoyed the first half of the show because it was funny and engaging. Unfortunately, the story that started out as an interesting tale of redemption, forgiveness, and new beginnings turned into a constipated mess of stale plotlines and a crusade against a cliche villain. I am actually very disappointed with the way it turned out because it had such a great start.

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YanHui is best girl!

I LOVE this show very much! It is def in my top 5 favorite C-Drama of the new era (80s & 90s will always be considered the golden era in my opinion). I needed a show to love after LBFAD & the Starry Love showed up! I needed another show to get me over the Starry Love, and Back from the Brink premiered!

I appreciated the growth of the characters individually as well as the growths shown in the different relationships. It was not love at first sight for the leads and they didn’t have an antagonistic relationship for the sake of tension or drama. The development of the relationship between the leads was gradual, organic, and mature. The choices they made made sense. The ML is great but honestly the FL in this story was what made it a top tier show. Yan Hui was such a good, well rounded female character. She was smart, strong, and kind. She was also not afraid to show emotions and let people know how she felt. Her communications skills were the best- I appreciated it so much because I hate miscommunication tropes that lead to misunderstandings. In this show, the leads, especially Yanhui, were pretty honest with each other. YanHui was always upfront with her love, her hate, and her fears. She is so far one of my favorite FL.

The supporting characters were interesting too and none of them outstayed their welcome. I was worried about the 2ML and how his story would play out but I am so glad that they didn’t do anything stupid with him. He didn’t automatically fall in love with the FL but when he did, I understood why. It made sense and I loved how their relationship also developed. And most importantly, the friendship between the women in the show was also the reason why I enjoyed this show so much. I HATE HATE HATE it when the FL have no women as friends. It doesn’t make sense to me when shows have women hating women due to jealousy or envy or whatever. I hate it even more when they’re sisters. They seldom ever do that with ML (unless it’s for the throne which I get). The storyline made sense and there was logic to the choices everyone made, even if it was on the obsessive toxic side. Adults actually acting like adults. What a concept! Anyways, this a fun show that made me laugh and cry. Highly recommend it!

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