Light Comedy for a Rainy Day

There is nothing in this drama that hasn’t been done before, but it has its charm with absurd humor, likeable characters, and almost no plot to speak of. This drama’s strength lies in good comedic timing and very expressive main leads, from whom you can’t look away.

Characters: From the minute the main leads are introduced, there’s never a dull moment with them. Su Xiaohe is cheerful and quick-witted. She doesn’t fall for the usual romance clichés and her having fun with situations that are usually full of drama is immensely satisfying. Mo Xiuran, unlike her, is not the brightest bulb, but he makes up for it with his unwavering self-confidence and a good heart buried beneath layers of narcissism. The other characters are also all very likeable. They’re not developed much, but they all left an impression on me and I’m going to miss them.

Comedy: Mo Xiuran is a cat prince who suddenly finds himself in the body of a young general. This leads to various ridiculous situations, which sometimes leaves you choking for breath from laughing too hard and at other times wanting to hide under the table from second-hand embarrassment.

Plot: Forget it exists. Just take things as they go and don’t think about anything. At first, the story seems reasonable and the drama avoids or parodies many clichés, but near the end, it drops the ball. The established rules of magic contradict themselves, the most awful romance clichés are brought into place, and some character choices are really questionable. The ending is really adorable and sweet, though, so the drama does leave a good memory in the end.

All in all, I enjoyed Be My Cat a lot. It was drama-free, humorous, and a pleasure to watch. I didn’t expect much due to all actors being newcomers, but it surprised me in a good way. I’m glad to have given it a chance.

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Simple Life in the Village

This drama is short and simple. It does not elicit any strong emotions, but serves a bit of humor along with warm emotions, which makes it great for those who do not have a lot of time for drama-watching, but want their fix.

Story: The main lead is omnipotent, but that is part of the drama’s charm. It’s a feel-good story about making the best of your circumstances, helping those in need, and having fun along the way. Each episode is its own mini event that is usually solved within the next seven minutes. This makes for a fast-moving series that does not linger on any one event or emotion. Blink and you miss it.

Characters: Chi Yue is an actress, who transmigrated into an old village. She believes she’s going back some time soon, so she doesn’t get attached to anything or anyone, but she can’t just watch her step children being abused or her friend suffer. She uses her knowledge of the modern world and her acting abilities to change the fate of herself, the children, and those she cares about.

Romance: Present, but also not. Ji Hong may be the Male Lead, but he has all the characteristics of a Second Male Lead. He's kind, compassionate, and always ready to help. He also has no chance whatsoever to win the Female Lead's heart. Chi Yue sees him as a friend she can rely on and that is all.

Overall, the drama was a good way to kill a couple hours. It’s a story about a woman solving her problems and taking care of her stepkids. Very cute.

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All Chinese Romcom Clichés in a Single Package

This drama is a few hours of story stretched into fifteen episodes that end on a cliffhanger. Its characters are okay and could be interesting, but there's no story at all. Things just happen one after another in an orderly fashion.

Characters: The two main leads are the highlight of the show. They have good chemistry and seem to be having fun with the terrible script that’s been given to them. Lord Qian Sui is an outwardly cold man with a heart of gold, while Chen Youyou is a quite silly, but energetic and quick-witted street girl. This leads to a generic, but cute romance in a very unrealistic ancient China setting. The supporting characters don’t get much screen time, and while they’re not bad, there are no stand outs, either. They’re all pretty much one note.

Comedy: Lord Qian Sui is a fake eunuch, who doesn’t want to be found out, while Chen Youyou is a girl, who marries him and is ordered to learn everything about him. Him trying to hide and her trying to catch him unawares is where most of the comedy comes from. It’s quite ridiculous and involves the two characters falling on top of each other more than once, but it’s all harmless fun and will delight anyone who’s a fan of Chinese absurd romance comedy style. However, the drama takes a hard left halfway through and starts using second-hand embarrassment and extremely awkward situations as comedy. It doesn’t really work and is almost unbearable to watch from time to time.

Story: It’s quite amazing how the scriptwriter of Oh My Lord! managed to run out of material within five or so episodes. The premise of the story is ridiculous, but it works fine enough at the start if one knows what they’re getting into (an absurd yet hilarious romcom), but it doesn’t last long. The story begins to meander before even reaching the halfway point, and it doesn’t get better. It gets worse, instead. A lot worse. The last couple episodes are one cliché followed by another without any break until someone who’s seen at least a few Chinese romcoms could say the characters’ lines for them. It’s a total snooze fest.

Overall, I enjoyed the start of the drama, but finished it only for the characters to see their happy ever after (which I didn't get because it was a cliffhanger ending that promises a second season). I would not recommend this unless someone wants to waste some time with a light-hearted, mindless comedy that lives and then dies on clichés that have been done to death in many much better dramas.

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Good Actors, Boring Story

This drama is only for those who come here for the actors - Zhao Liying or Wang Yibo. The story is a snooze fest, the martial arts are non-existent, and characters get upgrades or downgrades instead of character development.

Characters: Zhou Fei and Xie Yun work great as the main leads. Zhou Fei is strong-willed and determined, while Xie Yun is smart and crafty. Their interactions are fun and they make a cute couple. However, the only other characters of note are Yang Jin, Li Yan, and Ying Hecong. Their comedic trio helps through the worst parts of the story. All the other characters either start and end as extremely boring and stupid ones, start good and then fall into the abyss of craziness, or become slaves to the plot (their abilities and intelligence rise and fall depending on what the story needs).

Story: Contrived and dull. It feels like a ten volume epic, but without interesting characters, engaging plot, or any mystery. There were a lot of flashbacks that led to nowhere, people that added nothing to the whole story, schemes that would work only on children, and characters that were or turned dumb just so certain situations would happen.

Martial Arts: The fighting was extremely slow and over the top in a non-fun way. The drama took itself very seriously, but the martial arts looked unrealistic and were not exciting. The fact that the camerawork was atrocious did not help, either. In almost every fight, the camera zoomed in on a blade, a foot, or someone’s face instead of showing the duel in full view. This made for an awful viewing experience.

The drama became a chore after the middle, and the only reason I managed to finish it is because of the main leads and the few fun side characters. However, I would not rewatch it even under duress.

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A Dark Story that Doesn’t Deliver on Its Promise

Bloody Romance is a fascinating amalgamation of an extremely dark setting and a main character that remains alive by more and more contrived reasons as the story progresses.

Story: This drama has a really strong start with a hidden female assassin village. Its surprisingly realistic concept gives it a chilliness and darkness that is absent from mainstream C-dramas. Most of the characters are mad, twisted by revenge or ambition, or lost in their own world. It’s quite interesting to see how they act, scheme, and fight for their obsessions, even if the script is not always the best. However, after the first ten or so episodes, it becomes clear that the female lead can do no wrong. Her hands have to be forever clean. This takes away the driving force from the story because it becomes clear how each event will end. It’s always the same. Despite that, there’s still a few strong scenes in the middle of the drama, but after that… the story fizzles away. The side characters sometimes attempt to breathe some life into it, but they never succeed. The ending, while dramatic, doesn’t make up for the bad second half. It felt undeserved and even somewhat random.

Romance: If all you want is two characters who are extremely loyal to each other to the point of obsession, then this story will work perfectly fine. But if you want characters with a working brain and some personal agency, then the main characters in Bloody Romance will frustrate you to death. The female lead is just present to experience the story. She either does nothing or obsesses over her love. And when she does make some decisions, it feels more like plot dictating her to do that than anything she would choose for herself. As for the two male leads… One of them is extremely indecisive and causes lots of damage as well as thousands of deaths of uninvolved people while the other falls for the female lead because she’s the female lead. His IQ drops by half the moment she’s involved, and that’s before he even starts to like her. It’s painful to watch how his plans become laughable the moment they involve the female lead.

Overall, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this drama at all. It had fascinating and chilling ideas, but sadly didn’t deliver on most of them because they needed to keep the female lead as white and pure as the day she was born. By the end, I skipped all scenes with her and her chosen guy. If both of them were exchanged for characters with interesting personalities and agency, this drama might have become one of my favorites. Now, however, it’s nothing more than wasted potential.

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Watch it for Characters, not the Story

The Taoism Grandmaster focuses on the themes of friendship, found family, and fate. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys them because this drama has some of the best developed characters I've seen.

Heroes: The main leads of this story are all beyond reproach. Zhang Ling is smart and funny, Tie Lang is simple but not stupid, Feifei is strong and kind, while Liuli is dedicated and passionate. All of them work wonderfully as the main characters, and you can't get enough of them. Their friendship is what drives the story. The side characters are no slouches, either. This story has many of them, and each one gets a developed personality and an actual storyline. There were so many good ones that instead of writing them one by one, it would be easier to just copy-paste the entire list of characters. Everyone was that good.

Villains: Since the good guys get so much effort put into them, the villains ended up suffering for it. The main enemy is... random. Her scenes are often confusing, and by the end, you just learn to accept that she can do whatever the plot wants her to do while her actions and motivations are pretty random. However, the story has a few secondary villains that are pretty cool. They don't last long, but that's a minor problem.

Story: If you can turn off your brain and listen to the logic presented in the drama, then you're gonna enjoy it. The story is cohesive and well-developed within its own universe. All episodes are good and necessary. There were a few times I thought something was a little pointless, but later, it showed up that it was actually very important. It was all necessary to make the story work.

Overall, I enjoyed this drama a lot. It focused on friendship in all its forms, and while the story was often light-hearted, it did not shy away from showing the results of distrust or putting others too far before yourself.

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Great Start, Terrible End

No Boundary is a drama that forgets itself halfway through the runtime. From an easy-going and light-hearted drama, it makes a sharp turn into heavy drama land and loses all its charm. It doesn’t have the ability nor the material to make the second half engaging or even watchable, so it becomes a boring drag.

(There are slight spoilers in the review)

Characters: The main leads of this story are both phenomenal. If you’re looking for a sweet romance with lots of funny coincidences and charming moments, then you’ll fall in love with the main couple. Duanmu Cui is proud, but also quite childish and loyal, while Zhan Yan is steady, positive, and very supportive. The two of them make a cute pair. However, the main supporting characters pull the story down. A lot. Wengu is extremely obsessive and has no personality besides his obsession, while Hong Luan is crazy about him and also has no other concerns but him. The rest of the support cast is pretty good and likable.

Story: It should be separated into two parts. The first half (up to ep.20) is great for its genre. It’s light, fluffy, and cute. In other words, all that you can ask for. However, right after, the story becomes heavy on drama and all sense of logic is lost. People die, then come back to life without any explanation. Main leads make decisions that even a 5-year-old child would tell you are stupid. Hundreds of people are killed, yet everyone says that the murderer should be forgiven because the guy was once a friend. And there’s just no end to it. Every new episode brings another batch of illogical events that throw you out of the story.

CGI: The drama itself is done with a lot of love and care, so it only makes the terrible CGI stand out more. There’s a lot of magical effects due to the nature of the story, and many of them are cringe-worthy. They’re so bad that even someone with an untrained eye would wonder if they were done by a student still in the process of learning the ins and outs of making CGI.

I don’t really know how to judge this story, if being honest. I loved and binged the first half, but barely finished the second half on 1.5x speed with constant skipping of scenes. On top of that, there’s no satisfying end. The season ends in the middle of the story and just expects that you would continue onto the next season.

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Overly Ambitious and Unnecessarily Long

Love and Destiny has too many characters, too many plot lines, and too little of the story. If many of the unnecessary scenes were dropped and the script tightened in general, this could have been a great 40 episode drama. Alas, that is not the case.

Romance: This drama is filled to the brim with couples. There’s a total of five of them and many more characters with unrequited love, but most of what we see is either comedic or tragic. The comedy helps to lighten the overall gloomy nature of the drama, but it also makes it so that romantic and heart-warming moments are far and few in-between. The main leads are also no different. Their romance often takes backstage before the story, and there’s a huge power imbalance between them on top of that, which the male lead abuses. He withholds information, lies, and even knocks out the female lead when he does not wish to answer her questions.

Villains: For the most part, instead of villains, this drama has antagonists. They’re not evil, but have different worldviews compared to the main characters, which results in clashes. This makes them much more interesting and keeps the viewer on their toes. Which ones will become evil? Which ones will become friends? Or will they all remain enemies till the end? Of course, there’s also a main villain in the story, but he’s a common mad guy, so he’s not that interesting.

Story: Slow and overcrowded. Since there are three main couples, two minor ones, four well-developed antagonists, and a few other important characters, the story moves at a snail’s pace. You can watch two-three episodes and then describe them in a single sentence because for every event, you get a number of scenes with how different characters react to it. This is fine at first, but after the thirtieth episode or such, it gets tiresome and boring. Not every single storyline is great, and the drama has a tendency to indulge in slice-of-life scenes. They would be fine in any other drama, but in this one, where the plot already barely moves, it just makes you want to tear your hair out.

Overall, the drama’s start was strong and there were some scenes that hit hard, but they were in the minority. Most of the second half of the drama was draggy and I skipped through whole episodes without missing anything major. I would not recommend it to anyone unless they have too much time on their hands.

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Great Leads, Average Story

Cry Me a River of Stars starts as a sweet and easy-on-the-eyes romantic comedy, but then tries to become an epic tale of start-crossed lovers to middling results.

Characters: The two leads look great together and have good on-screen chemistry, but their characters feel like they come from two different dramas. Tao Junran is a strong and capable magistrate who has to make tough choices, face the darkness of humanity, and risk losing himself in the process, while A Fan is a ditzy and careless fisher girl. She would sell her soul for a few coins and couldn’t hold a serious conversation if her life depended on it. This sometimes leads to jarring moments where one scene is of deep tragedy and loss, while the next has slapstick comedy. The rest of the cast is more in line with Tao Junran, though there are some whose whole personality is obsession with one person or another, and it gets old really quickly.

Story: At first, it seems down to earth and pretty simple, but it quickly becomes obvious that it’s better to not examine it too closely. Some scenes don’t follow the internal logic of the drama just to serve a cool or dramatic scene, some challenge one’s suspension of disbelief to a high degree, like when people start going in and out of a highly secured place like it’s their own backyard, and at other times things are kicked into motion solely by A Fan doing something extremely stupid. Yet somehow, despite all of these problems, the underlying story is not unwatchable. It moves quickly, and there’s always something happening. There’s also quite a few twists and turns that aren’t obvious from a mile away.

Overall, I enjoyed this drama. I have some gripes with it, especially with A Fan who couldn’t stop repeating the same mistakes again and again, but her actress did a good job making her likable, so it didn’t detract too much from the viewing experience. I don’t think I’ll ever be rewatching this drama, but it was fun while it lasted.

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