Ning Que and Sangsang as they were meant to be

The change in the male lead helped me delineate the younger Ning Que from the more mature one. To me, Arthur Chen's Ning Que was the teenage version and Dylan Wang's Ning Que was the grown up version. In terms of acting, they are both up there and were excellent choices. I cannot say that one is better than the other as I believed them both to be Ning Ques just at different ages. Dylan Wang did not drop the ball either in fight scenes. He indeed worked hard to keep the pace that Arthur Chen set in Season 1. In fact, I felt more of a romantic chemistry with Dylan and Ireine Song (the actor playing SangSang on both Seasons). It could have been because they were closer in age than Ireine and Arthur.

Whatever it was, had there not been a change in the face of the male lead, I doubt I would be able to accept that a brother and sister love as pure as Ning Que's and SangSang's in Season 1 would develop into a romantic love as it did in Season 2. Since this love weighs heavily on the story line, it had to be believable to propel the story forward. With all the adversities that Ning Que had to go through because of his love for SangSang as well as the reason why SangSang could fight Hao Tian to stay on earth albeit with some assistance from the Sage, to me, the love component had to be believable. And with Dylan Wang's performance, I truly was in the thick of it 100%.

Should you want to read more about my opinion on the two ning ques, please see link: https://thislifehappened.me/the-two-ning-ques/

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Watch this show with an open mind

As the story progresses, we see the intelligence and the compassion of Mo Xin. Her natural wit just shines through. The actress who plays her portrays her to a tee. This is one of the reasons why I love the story so much. The female lead is a strong female who does not take things lying down. She is in love with an alpha male, a God of war no less but she herself is not to be taken lightly.

Chen Zhe Yuan is completely believable as a devastated man in love who puts the needs of his people first. As a prince, he knows his duty. As a general, he knows his military strength. As a God of War, he knows that his strike could be lethal.

Also in the last episode, we finally get to see Jun Qing and Mo Xin be lovey-dovey. Except that their kisses had absolutely zero chemistry. They were better off just looking at each other longingly from afar. I could feel the awkwardness from both of them and it was clear to me, at least, that neither one of them took the initiative to make the kiss look passionate enough. Aside from that, there was a tendency from a couple of the actors to overact. Maybe the director wanted them to be a little over the top. Where Jun Qing and Mo Xin/Mo Wan showed tranquility and calm, these ones that I am talking about were the exact opposite.

Link to the full review here: https://thislifehappened.me/renascence/

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GOT-esque

The opening credits for this C-drama, the opening song and the graphics were just… wow! They were so out of this world. It felt like what was about to unfold was something straight out of Game of Thrones. It almost felt like Daenarys and her dragons would fly across the screen. Instead, we are shown other beasts and well, a wolf. A Frostwolf to be exact.

Another GOT moment was that the World of Fantasy started off in a land of ice and from there, the viewers are slowly invited into the Chilan continent. Then the two main characters take the stage.

We have a young thunder wielding hero who is searching for his grandfather as well as chasing his dream to get to the upper echelons of the cultivators. Next to him is his love interest, a water wielding daughter of the chieftain.

Throughout the series, one gets the sense that the hero does have some affection for the lady. However, it is clear that his desire to chase his dream is something he is more passionate about. I believe that this is a good message. Love is very important in our lives. But depending on one’s values, there really is nothing wrong or less noble about chasing your dreams and wanting to fill that void inside you.

To help our hero on his journey are his four good friends. The term friends is used loosely here.

The focus on this friendship was quite a good strategy. Simply because there was zero chemistry between the leads. The young hero, played by Fan ChengCheng (Adam Fan), was portrayed beautifully. This seems to be his first foray into acting but he did pretty well. The weak link was the heroine. As beautiful as she is, her eyes are just dead. There is absolutely no expression in them. If she insists on going down this acting path, perhaps her management team needs to send her off to training. This time, there is no beating around the bush as she is no longer a newbie in acting.

A little bit of research brought to light the fact that the lead actress was the lead actor’s mentor on Idol Producer. This led me to believe that maybe that’s where the disconnect was? That maybe the lead actor just continued to see her as a mentor instead of as a lover? However, this quickly went to the back of the excuse list as FCC was a great actor in this series. As mentioned above, he was not the weak link here.

The story line is simple and is straight to the point. It is not so complicated to watch and is accompanied by really amazing graphics. The producers and crew did so well on that front. Extra claps as well for FCC.

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Arthur Chen is a rockstar!

As Ever Night Season 1 began, my first impression was that the visuals were stunning. The cinematography, scenery and costumes were obviously screaming a huge production budget. With the number of cast members in this drama, one can only imagine the sky high figures that it took to get this show on the road.

The fight scenes were some of the best that I have seen anywhere. My favorite is that of Ning Que and Chao Xiaoshu going up against a number of opponents. In the over ten minute scene, Chao Xiaoshu enlists the help of the young Woodcutter of Shubi Lake.

I skipped a lot of political scenes. I felt that I would still be able to understand the gist of the drama without quite a number of dragging scenes. I would focus more on Ning Que, SangSang and the Academy. By the end of Season 1, after Ning Que defeats Xia Hou, I felt that my actions were justified. Perhaps I would not be able to explain the smallest details in the show but I still am able to understand that Ning Que finally got his revenge with the help of Sangsang.

Please see some more of my comments here: https://thislifehappened.me/the-two-ning-ques/

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I do not wish to go into the details of what happens because the story’s twists really add to its appeal. Suffice it to say that I truly love the kind of friendship that Su Yuan and Lin Wo have. They are both loyal and have good souls. Gao Shan and Nana, too, seem to be people cut from the same cloth. This is the reason why Gao Shan feels like he and Nana are not meant to be. Gao Shan does fall in love, though. He falls hard for Lin Wo. But the viewer sees that he is conflicted. He has always had one goal in his life and Lin Wo’s romantic presence in his life threatens that. Yu Hitian, the actor playing Gao Shan, is his usual cool, calm, collected self in this drama. To be honest, it does not even feel like he is acting anymore because its almost always the kind of characters I see him play (except maybe in MRIAD). He does show some emotion here and there when the scene calls for it like when his emotions got the better of him when he found out something he had not calculated. Which is quite unusual since Gao Shan’s character is labeled a genius and he can clearly hold his own in the world of espionage. However, I agree with the timing of the revelation. I liked that it was made known early on as it shows us the depths of Gao Shan’s internal conflict.

for the full review, please see links: https://thislifehappened.me/you-complete-me-part-1/
https://thislifehappened.me/you-complete-me-2/

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Meteor Garden the remake

Most of the lead actors, including the supporting cast, were chosen quite well. But I believe we can mostly agree that DiDi stole the show on this one. Darren Chen, real name Guan Hong, or the actor portraying Hua ZeLei actually gave him a run for his money. Where Didi was the spoiled bad boy who initially bullied the girl he fell in love with, Darren was the angelic good boy who was introspective and someone who knew how to value a long-standing friendship. Where Si was the one who threw food in ShanCai’s face, Lei was the one who helped her wipe it off.

For the full review, please link to this: https://thislifehappened.me/daoming-si-and-hua-zelei/

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Caesar Wu does it again

The show is called The General’s Lady. It starts with a young lady, the daughter of a Duke, being betrothed to a general who has been assigned to the border for ten years. This general is known to everyone as a savage on the battlefield. He had three previous wives who all died. This young lady did not want to marry this kind of husband. However, the order came from the Emperor himself and could not be disobeyed. And so, she manipulated the situation so that her other sister was sent to the border to marry this general.

Caesar Wu plays the general. Tang Min plays his wife.

Please read my full review here: https://thislifehappened.me/generals-lady/

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Too much sleuthing for me

Tang Fan’s features and movements make him seem almost effeminate in a way. I later found out that this was possibly intentional since the source material for this drama seems to be a BL novel. But make no mistake, Darren Chen is definitely still a cutie.

Playing his uh… best friend, is Feng MengPo as Shi Zhou. Opposite Tang Fan, this guy is clearly a man’s man. He has that silent type, brooding and thoughtful character that I have come to expect from children born to high class families. He has a strong sense of justice and is very sympathetic to the common people.

Let me be extremely honest. I am a simple person who does not like to complicate things. By episode 12, I got tired of all the sleuthing and the secrets and the conspiracies.

For the full review, here is the link:

https://thislifehappened.me/the-sleuth-of-ming-dynasty/

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Nice interactions between Arthur Chen and Dylan Xiong

About Arthur Chen:
Without divulging anything else about the story, I can say that Lu Ping's journey was definitely a fun one to watch. As mentioned above, I absolutely adored his interactions and the friends he made along the way of his journey into awakening. With all the challenges he had to go through to break the chains that bind him literally as well as to find out the secrets of his birth or his real identity, one can understand his propensity for being a lone wolf.

About ChengXiao:
I applaud the fact that she has her own Chinese drama and is given the opportunity to spread her own wings. Considering that this is her first drama, one can actually see on screen that she does not have acting in the bag yet. Her beautiful round eyes still need a little bit more of an expression. Also, her costumes in the entire drama seemed ill-fitting. It looked to me like she was given one size too small. But then everyone else in the cast had the right size. In a lot of the scenes that involve her, I fast forwarded the episodes. The only ones that I could stand to watch were the scenes with Arthur Chen in it. To his credit, I did get the feels from him as a Lu Ping in love with this Qin Sang. Her acting does improve towards the end, though.

As a whole, I am satisfied with this show. I am also very satisfied with the way the ending was written. As powerful as Lu Ping was made out to be, he is still years behind all the people he took his revenge out on. His enemies had over two decades to cultivate and that is why I believe the ending made so much sense.

Please click this link for the full review: https://thislifehappened.me/the-road-to-awakening/

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My review of the Blessed Girl

Before I begin, I just want to say that as of the time of this writing, this drama is currently still airing so this commentary will not be complete as of yet. However, there are enough things going on in this fantasy drama that I just cannot wait to put my thoughts into words and share it with you.

Second point, I have to say that the rewatch value of this show is quite high. As I am writing, I am watching the fantasy drama again from start to the available episode at this time.

The full review is on my website:

https://thislifehappened.me/linglong-is-the-blessed-girl/

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