Don't know why 'family' is a tag for this. More like epic soap opera of awesome. They used I think every single plot device for a soap opera and pulled it off.

This is strange, but I liked that they had a female lead with darker skin--it was refreshing. I also kind of like the sadistic nature of the male lead--I know a lot of people object to this. But I like what I like.

I thought the two had such amazing chemistry that I actually checked to see if they were dating in real life. And I was utterly shocked (pleasantly) to see an actual bed scene--it blew me away because asian dramas are sooo strict about this.

And my god was that kid adorable. I did sometimes find her passive role to be annoying, but it worked with his extremely...emo and angry personality. He was very mad at the world, and his treatment of her in the second half, was so interesting to watch because he wanted to punish her but it was clearly a ploy to keep her near him and finding reasons to keep her around.

I think he steals the show because her role was so passive. But I liked that the show made an effort to address sexual harassment/rape but it was interesting too given the male leads own questionable treatment of the female lead. I can't say if it was grounded in reality or merely expoitive or appealing to fantasy but it got me, hook line and sinker.

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Sigh....where to begin. I won't lie, if you don't cry during this show then I would be surprised. Every character was interesting. I adore Ariel, who is able to play these kinds of innocent, bubbly and ditzy but smart characters without being annoying. And the Prince of Lanling is not just a pretty face, he is an excellent actor.

It is rare to find a drama that is so funny it will make you roll on the floor in laughter, and at the same time have such tragedy that you are bawling (Perfect Couple is an excellent example if you want a comparison of how this formula fails). The ending blew my mind. I was stunned, and did not expect it. Mind.Blown. I frantically recounted to my bf what happened and the conversation ended with him asking 'Are you going to be okay?' I think it caught me off guard because in spite of the drama it could be so light so I just didn't see it coming.

So much tragedy that could have been avoided were it not for obsession...and so many unpredictable moments that had me staring at the television and yelling 'what?' and 'don't do that girl!'

This show has some of the most memorable on screen kisses, and the opening song and ending song mark the first time I added a foreign song to my ipod list. And the love triangle was not annoying because the third guy loves the girl enough to respect her wishes. He was very interesting as well.

I am extremely excited about the sequel, and cannot wait for it to come out.

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Not often do my dramas get such a perfect score. This was my first historical, so it may be biased. So. that said.
My Likes:
1.Character Development. No character was perfect. No one. Even the villianess was painted in such an empathetic way, down to her tragic end, that you couldn't hate her, and I even admired her for all that she had achieved (albeit using awful tactics) but she was still human, and a mother.

2. Dong Yi while sometimes seemed perfect, she wasn't. She was still flawed. She deceived others. She lied. For a good reason, but she still lied, and damn was she smart and strong! It was nice to see her development from scared little girl to naive but smart woman to a formidable opponent of Consort Jang--reaching a point where she was finally like I Am going to Take You Down

3.Every single supporting character was well written, down to a T. Chun Soo is my man!

4. The romance between the emperor and her developed nicely, but I would have liked more skinship scenes.

5.The comedy scenes were wicked funny

6.The brother of Consort Jang was arguably the most obnoxious detestable person around

7.So many FOILS in this show, pay attention, and every thing has a meaning, down to the end--no plot holes. Nothing is not eventually addressed. And don;t get me started on Babagee (I would randomly yell that at the t.v. because her father's storyline was so friggin tragic and over the top but I loved it)

My Dislikes:
1.The final episodes--i was kind of scratching my head at her decision after the epic climaxes (no spoilers) and then she kind of becomes a mother theresa and I was like whaaat?

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I watched Mary Stayed Out all Night and picked this for a shallow reason: the male lead is beautiful. I found I really liked the first ten or so episodes because how interesting it was to see someone so desired/high and mighty male lead fall in love first and how it was the female lead whose reaction--you are a jerk/you mistreat people/so I will not like you--was more realistic.

I thought the story of the parents was sad...but i just did not like her mom. She was so passive it was annoying and oh my god it seemed like some bad thing was always happening to her.

I enjoyed the themes, the colors, and the symbolism.

I pitied the boy's mom.

I did not like the comedic relief/found it to be a drag.

Sometimes it dragged.

My biggest frustration: the writer's obsession with 'purity' in women. The male lead was a player, the female lead could not have sexual bone in her body which felt totally unrealistic of reality. I mean it was like she didn't even entertain a single sexual thought about this man. You can be chaste but still have desires, yeesh. This is why I give it an 8.5--it was delivering a very mature story but at the same time would not acknowledge adult themes that made it realistic. I'm not saying that their needed to be sex/kissing/hugging, but it felt like the female leads were all on pedastals, and the most realistic female of them all was probably the boy's mom who was also the villian.

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My first foreign drama, so naturally this is biased. I have rewatched this many times. I think this one is at the top not because of the story, but the extreme attention to detail. These actors actually act like they are in high school, and the supporting cast is amazing, making it perfect. I found it to be very entertaining, laugh out loud funny, and moving. I especially enjoyed the interactions between Ariel and Joe, who had great on screen dating.

I liked how smart Zhi Shu was but how utterly awkward he was in relationships, but because of his beauty, he hides behind a cool and distant demeanor. I think he likes Ariel because of her fearlessness.

I do think that this show is interesting in that we have a female stalker, essentially, but because she is a woman no one is bothered by it//were it reversed everyone would be like oh my god stalker guy!

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I liked the prequel much more, and I think that may make me biased towards this. Also, the multiple love lines seemed to be a bit too much. I would have instead preferred 50 episodes of Su Huan Er and our lovely male lead in the first half. They could have created an epic love story but instead kept it short at 25 episodes (sigh....). Again, it could have been the length of Prince of Lan Ling, which it sometimes reminded me of.

I will be honest, I fast forwarded through a lot of these episodes to watch the scenes with the leads in the previous season. I did like that there were some unconventional relationships, such as a prostitute and a wealthy man, and a noble woman with a non-noble/servant (doctor) but it was just not enough to capture my heart....or my interest.

Because I fast forwarded, please treat this review with a grain of salt--some of you may watch this and love it. This is just my opinion.

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I just finished Journey of Flower and was looking for something new to watch. This is not like journey of flower, but still good. I certainly think the actress reminds me of Ariel Lin at times. Not too campy. A bonus is that there is really no love triangle with the leads (yay!).

1. It drags a little around episode 16, which felt kind of like a filler episode. I also disliked the opening song and thought the youngest brother was kind of annoying/campy.

2.On the left, we have Shi Wu Ji who is brutal, cold, and wears the same black robes as if to communicate he is someone whom one does not f*** with. He is 29. Revenge is his game, as his entire family minus siblings were murdered during a fire. What makes him a bit more human are the little things, like the fact that he has no sense of direction and easily gets lost and won't admit it, but remains silently serious while others tease him--

3.On the right, we have Su Huan Er/Lang Yiu, who is 18, and is the ignored and unrecognized daughter of a very conniving, money hungry man. She is described as 'servant' but is more like a lady's companion to her sister Huan Er whose place she takes to marry Shu Wi Ji. She is both unconventional, incredibly cute, impudent, and yet not annoying (rare, to play this role and not be annoying). She is not perfect, and has an agenda of her own, and wants to protect her family because her father now recognizes her. She firmly believes he is innocent.

4.Shu Wi Ji suspects that the Su family is responsible for his parents deaths. This is revealed in the first episode. Hence his marriage is more about revenge, i.e. finding a way to spy more easily on the family.

5.The romance builds nicely, and at a refreshingly quick pace but given the first half is 25 episodes, it makes sense. It is nice to see Shu Wi Ji go all god of war when his beloved Su Huan Er is in danger.

6.I watched this for the romance--there was a lot of on screen hugging, kissing, make-out scenes and references to love making and then the screen would of course go dark and not show us what they were doing...but we knew *grins* at one point he actually says that he has to show her how he feels with his body and then he carries her to the bed xoxoxo AND the female lead is a little aggressive in her kissing/not submissive :D

To sum up, I adored the male leads icy bad assness and the female leads bubbly personality and to watch them both change and and grow together. At last, a male lead who is not afraid to talk about feelings! He clearly struggles to express himself....I have been following this actress ever since I watched Journey of Flower and thus far have not been disappointed//when she called Shu Wi Ji it sometimes sounded like Shifu to me lolz

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I really, really wanted to like this. I think this drama is sort of you like it or don't, based on the reviews. I found the female lead's acting to be so flat and dull that I wondered if it was part of her character or if I was missing something. This actress has done well in other dramas, so I dunno what happened here.

I enjoyed the idea of a complicated romance, where things don't exactly turn out the way you want. I thought it was filmed beautifully, and the emphasis on a woman in a non-traditional field was somewhat realistic.

The pacing was slow, but usually slow pacing means a lot of clever dialogue and character development....I kept waiting and waiting...and no. I had to force myself to finish.

They heavily referred to the confuscius rules that made life hellish for women, which I liked because sometimes I think dramas ignore this bit of reality, but after a while it became redundant.

I liked the inclusion of tribal peoples. I found the ending to be weak, and her utter lack of expression was not satisfying. It did not seem to fit her character well. I think a lot of people will disagree with me, which is fine. I don't think that they should have picked Wallace for the lead because I think the short amount of time available to him to film may have impacted the story. Or not and I am just wrong.

To sum up, I think the best thing was the lovely scenes/costumes but this is so normal in dramas that it seems hardly worth commenting on.

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I thought this drama was below average. I liked the idea/plot but I did not think that the actors executed it well. I especially did not like the second half. It felt very campy-- when I think they were going for something more lighthearted--and trust me, I know campy as I watch a lot of wuxia. I would like to see a sequel but not in the modern era/instead I would like to see something about the father--and his fate.

In addition to the plot, I found the plot devices to be poorly executed. Yes, kdramas recycle plots a lot but that doesn't bother me. It just felt very forced and not very genuine. But I think a lot of people disagree with me and that is perfectly fine. Not everyone likes the same stuff.

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This is a drama that deeply explores themes of obsession. It is a 'forbidden love' story between Bones, a girl who was born with an unlucky fate, and her shifu (her blood also causes flowers to die, probably a metaphor). Incidentally, she is Bai Zhu Hua's fated calamity. A calamity is a trial that one can only survive by killing without hesitation (all this you learn in episode 1). Failure to do so inevitably results in tragedy. It seems they are fated to be foes. Because Bai Zhu Hua falls in love with Bones, he tries to find a way to save her (it is my opinion it is love at first site, because his episodes of jealousy occur very early on in the series) by teaching her to cultivate and be more like himself. Bai Zhu Hua is rather emotionless, so he is able to conceal these feelings very well, even he does not realize that his actions are motivated by love until much later. Alas, she is also falls in love with him and struggles with hiding these forbidden feelings. This wuxia tells their story and their struggles (she suffers the most, in my opinion). In addition to the love story, there are several important subplots all related to the overall theme of obsession, like revenge, and jealousy.

What I Liked:
1. As my first 'wuxia' this series opened up a whole new world for me. I loved the costumes, the fantasy, and I enjoyed learning about things like cultivation. It wasn't until later, watching other series, that I learned these are common themes and essentially define a wuxia. Prior to this, I almost exclusively watched Kdramas. Not so much anymore.

2.The subplots were all entertaining; I enjoyed that the Holy Ruler was not the actual villain of the show. I also enjoyed his shameless narcissism. In many ways he is a foil to Bai Zhu Hua. I liked the sets, the costumes.

3.This drama is able to achieve a nice balance between comedy and melodrama, I think because they left most of the comedy for early on in the show and then steadily built in plots that increasingly made the show more serious. Once things became serious we saw hardly any comedy.

What I Loved
4. The transformation of Bones from a sweet, adorable, at times extremely dense girl into an extremely resilient woman, overcoming some of the most awful trials, all because of her ill-fated love. I mean people really have it in for her. This transformation continues as she also turns into a very direct, at times ruthless woman, something that she didn't necessarily wish to be but was forced to become in order to survive. She finally reaches a point where she eschews the rules and values of everyone else in order to protect herself.

5.The steady deterioration of Bai Zhu Hua's image. He is the leader of a sect dedicated to protecting the world. Words like pure, perfect, god-like, and selfless are constantly used to describe his person. But as the series progresses we see that there is an extremely dark side to his personality (very subtly presented): his selfishness and greed can be compared to no one. He does everything in his power to keep Bones at his side, even if it means placing her in painful situations, insisting he is doing it for her, but truthfully he is doing it for himself. He can't let her go, he can't allow anyone else to have her, and so he traps her in this hell all the while presenting himself as her respected Shifu. Very devious. Even more so because he believes his own lies. I mean it isn't like he is two-faced, pretending to be nice and then behind the scenes the mask comes off. He really believes his own b.s.

6.The final confrontation produced feelings that I have not felt from any other dram. It was extremely satisfying because I think it showcased who Bones was, and where she was coming from, and it also completely showed Bai Zhu Hua's true colors.

What I hated
7.This series has the annoying trope of 'every man loves the female lead'. Those who don't fall in love with her (with the exception of maybe two people) are either in love with someone else or despise her for reasons that are never really explained.

8.The women in the show (with the exception of one or two) all detest the female lead. If they don't in the beginning they wind up hating her. And with the exception of 1, it is never really explained. It seems to be a case of stereotypical female jealousy. I would be exhausted hating someone for that long.

Final Notes
This may be the only drama that I have seen where I would have been okay with the leads never getting together because Bai Zu Hua was such a great villain. He was meticulously created and I think designed to make the viewer at first like him but by the end you hover between feelings of revulsion and outright hate. He is just unforgivable and the best part is he is so subtly evil! This isn't a guy who is violent or disrespectful to our leading lady. He has hardly any lines. But he is just...awful. If you watch 3 Lives 3 worlds 10 mile peach blossom you might see parallels between Fengjiu and Bones and Mo Yuan/Shifu (in terms of personality; these characters have no romantic links).
This show is based off of a popular novel. I am still looking for a full translation, but here is a link to what I have found so far: https://dorayakiz.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/the-journey-of-flower-author-fresh-guo-guo/

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