Dear Herbal Lord (2020)

sweet fun romance

I initially started this one on a whim since I was looking for fluffy romance dramas to indulge in and decided to give this one a try, and thank goodness I did. Dear Herbal Lord is a fun little drama (24 half hour episodes split into 2 seasons, 12 eps per season) following herb fairy Song Lan as she tries to woo the king of medicine Chu Zhimo into marrying her, fulfilling the wish of Jiang Qingyun, the host of the body that she now resides in.

Like I said before, this drama is fairly short compared to other normal dramas (25+ eps with each episode averaging an hour) so the story is very fast paced, which is a good thing since there's no room for filler and unnecessary drama. There will be scenes that are a little confusing at first but they're quickly explained afterwards. Again, it's a short drama focused on romance so I'm not too critical of the story's logic.

The crux of the drama, the romance, is tooth rottingly sweet. Song Lan has an innocent air to her (mostly because as an herb fairy, she's never interacted with humans before inhabiting Jiang Qingyun's body), so she is very blunt and bold about showing Chu Zhimo her affections. Pair the unintentionally flirty Song Lan with cold-faced Chu Zhimo who is terrible with women, this is a hilarious pair and I have squealed at (and replayed) their scenes too many times to count. Special mention to Yan Xi for showing us that a cold and standoffish male lead doesn't mean being expressionless and being angry all the time!

To move the story forward, there will be angst, just to warn anybody who only wanted the fluff. To be precise, it's more of a dash of angst, a splash of noble stupidity but a truckload of dramatic irony (the audience knows everything but the characters do not). You will want to grab your screen and scream at characters that they're making a mistake, but you can't even hate them because from their perspective... they actually have a point. It does end happily, I can guarantee you that, so just trust the process ;)

Leaving a small blurb about my favourite character, Xiao Ziming. Add him to the ever-growing list of Second Leads That Deserve Better because he is so sweet and devoted to our female lead. Even though Song Lan/Jiang Qingyun is infatuated with Chu Zhimo, he still stays by her side and cheers her up when she's sad. Where can I find my Xiao Ziming in real life??

To end this off, I definitely recommend Dear Herbal Lord if you're looking for a light and sweet romance drama. Nothing convoluted, just Fluff (also the kiss scenes called me single in 520 different languages ;_; ).

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Herbal root to the rescue

I personally really like this type of genre, where a living thing/creature suddenly turns into a human. The female lead is an herbal root called ban lan geng. She practices for a 1000 year to be a plant deity. She basically has powers. The male lead is the herbal lord and he has been poisoned. The female lead as a plant gets eaten by a doctor's daughter, and now she shares the body with the daughter. The doctor's daughter really wants to marry the herbal lord, so she ask ban lan geng to help court the herbal lord. At the same time ban lan geng is attracted to the herbal lord for his herbal air If she gets hurt and takes a whiff of that she becomes better. lol of course for her to best take in the herbal air is to kiss. there is quite a few times the female lead and male lead kiss. Initially the male lead is turned off by her because she keeps asking for him to marry her. He slowly falls for her.

Female lead is a super cute , and silly character. The actress who played her is vey suited for ancient fairy/deity drama Wouldn't say the male lead is super handsome but he's not that bad looking. I would give their chemistry and romantic part of the story a 9/10. They are super cute and have a lot chemistry when they kiss. Some are pretty passionate, they make it believable. It's also just really cute when they are together.

However story wise, i felt it wasn't a smooth development. They basic storyline involves an evil witch/priest who is against the herbal lord/trying to take him down. The evil witch uses the doctor family's enemy and try to scheme them. The female lead often times protects the herbal lord. The beginning was more light i guess... getting to know the female lead, then falling in love with her, finding her true identity. The witch however tricks the female lead into believing she will cause him to die if she takes too much of the herbal air from the herbal lord. Then later she finds out about how she isnt just a ordinary herbal plant and that her past life had relations to the herbal lord.... and some other things happen which pushes the story in a weird way, in which the female lead deja vu / said the same lines before in her past life. ( hopefully that makes sense without spoiling too much) i would rate the story 7/10

Overall not a bad watch, it was interesting, except i skipped some of the annoying storyline >_< . definitely love the romance part of it:)

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