Rainless Love in a Godless Land (2021)

Breath of Fresh Air

Rainless Love in a Godless Land is an urban fantasy drama which main premise revolves around kakarayan (him), kawas (gods), humans and nature.

The narrative of the drama is straightforward and uncomplicated, enabling the audience to know the background and past incidents that shape the present. At the beginning of each episode, there is a short folktale regarding kakarayan, kawas and more, enabling audience to grasp the background story more easily. With its relatively little number of episodes, the plot unfolds at a fast pace. In the first episode, the drama was already telling us that there is the creator of the world (kakarayan) and gods (kawas) in this world. However, kakarayan will stop giving blessings to the world because of human’s ignorance and negligence.

The main storyline and characters build up are taken from Amis People culture, one of Taiwanese indigenous culture. The concept of kakarayan, kawas and everything originated from the Amis People. And the drama has also portrayed their culture in correctly, such as their chest covers, skirt, the colour scheme (red, black, green, white). They definitely did justice in portraying the Sikawasay (medium for communicating to Kawas and Kakarayan) through the vivid and bright coloured clothes.

Rainless Love in a Godless Land has a captivating and refreshing storyline, with a progressively and engaging pace. The drama storytelling is executed near to perfection, there is not a single dull moment or cliched plot devices. In addition, the drama also uses a lot of different plot devices and themes that work harmoniously well together. The drama manages to blend comedy, romance, fantasy, tradition seamlessly. With it, it makes you entertained and engaged.

Rainless Love in a Godless Land also has a wide variety of complex and realistic characters with strong and fleshed out performances from the casts. The female lead of the drama, Xie Tianti is acted by Joanne Tseng. She has acted in many remarkable dramas and you definitely do not need to worry about her performance. Meanwhile, the male lead, Orad (the rain god) is acted by Fu Mengbo which has also delivered a stellar performance. But Alice Ke as Toem (Cloud god) definitely steals the show. How she portrays her role is definitely *chef kisses*!!

The drama also has a beautiful and mesmerizing production and cinematography. You can just see how the big budget is allocated into impeccable cinematography, exquisite set, beautifully shot landscape, and more. Every shot of the drama is of high quality, there is also some breathtaking panorama scenery. This drama also uses minimal CGI, mostly relying on a real set. Such as, the void space (on xie tienti's dream and more), it is all made from real sets and props. The use of vibrant and bright colour palette also makes the drama a pleasant viewing experience. In addition, I also love how the drama does not use any airbrush or skin smoothing filter on their faces. It has also a really pretty yet simple outfit, the outfit is what one would wear every single day, but its outfit mix and matched very well done.

Another commendable aspect of Rainless Love in a Godless Land is its music scoring and OST. The OST is made up of different songs with different genres, yet everything is so compatible with the drama. My personal favourites are 最後一秒鐘 (the last second) by九澤cp and 想對你說 (Too Much to Say) by 原子邦妮 Astro Bunny. But still, every single of the OST are enjoyable and good to hear.

All in all, Rainless Love in a Godless Land is an excellent produced drama that definitely deserves more attention. The urban fantasy genre drama makes the drama a refreshing drama in the current market.

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An epic fantasy immersed in island lore and mystery

I am basking in the afterglow of this drama as I write this review but I shall try to be impartial or as impartial as I can be considering I have given it a perfect score.

So with no further ado, here are the reasons why I loved RLIAGL:
1. It has a mix of genres: fantasy, mystery and romance seeped in mythology.
2. The leads are working adults. (I am old and if you are too you know why this point is a good thing)
3. Great script writing and intriguing story board. Every episode brings a new meaning to the overarching storyline and keeps you hooked. The format of the episode also lends well to the mystery and keeps it interesting.
4. Good acting by everyone involved. Also, leads are cute eye candy.
5. Amazing score! The OST for this show is really really good.
6. Production quality is high and the visuals are also good. I loved the cinematography of this show.

The reasons why you may not like RLIAGL:
1. The romance is a slow burn. Its slower than a sloth climbing a tree. Its so slow that you might think there is no romance. And that would be because the romance is not the main part of this show, it's the mystery of why it ain't gonna rain in this land no more.
2. The story also starts of slow. It takes the first few episodes for this show to grow on you and while it does it might bore the socks out of impatient people.
3. The female lead could have done certain things better (a lot) . But that is no fault of her own it's because of the script writer.
4. The audience as well as secondary characters get the drift way quicker than the main leads. A few times I wished people asked the right questions instead of going about in a tangent, but that was the fun of the show and I didn't mind it as much.
5. It's quite melodramatic. Everything has an epic consequence like the world ending or people dying.
6. I was dissatisfied with how they resolved the environmental degradation issue. (You'll know what I'm talking about only if you watch it. :P )
7. It is not a Kdrama. It is from Taiwan and a lot of people don't watch shows from here. On the other hand, I have no idea what you are doing reading this review in that case.

Story/Acting Overview:
A woman believes in the stories her grandmother taught her when she was young and before she was abandoned by said grandmother. This is her journey as she navigates through life, meets & parts with people and begins to question her beliefs.

With a great cast, production and unbelievable scriptwriting, this show has all the right elements to be a blockbuster in my book. I enjoyed the acting by the entire crew. Toem was my favourite actor with Fali coming a close second. Loved the layers in their character.

As mentioned earlier, the story is infused with island lore and mythology with small folk tales at the beginning of each episode which portend some major events which might occur in each episode. The format was great and lends to watching it one episode a time as it feels like each episode is a chapter in the RLIAGL book.

While the romance is a slow burn, I enjoyed it as I never thought of this story as a romance but as a fantasy mystery. I was more interested in understanding the characters and Kawas than I was in Tian-Di & Orad's love story. As we move further into the story line, we also come to understand why their romance is such a slow burn. Past events and future situations play a vital role in their romance.

Overall:
Overall, I enjoyed this show way more than I expected to at the start and by the end it had grown on me. As the story reaches towards its climax the pace also picks up leading to an amazing ending. There are plot twists that I wasn't expecting and therefore, was quite blown over with the revelations.

A perfect 10 from me (9.5 ~ 10 all the same) as I know I will end up rewatching this and it's perfect OST.

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