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  • Join Date: October 11, 2019
Completed
The Starry Love
4 people found this review helpful
Apr 25, 2023
40 of 40 episodes seen
Completed 1
Overall 10
Story 9.5
Acting/Cast 10
Music 10
Rewatch Value 10

Romantic Comedy-Fillings, Logically Cooked & Baked to Near Perfection

Discover the first and only Xianxia drama of its kind within the genre. As we know, xianxia drama are basically mythical fantasy ties in with chinese gods, immortals and demons or multiple realms of different species and races where almost anyone can cultivate themselves to attain magic power. Writer can make anything possible happen in such a story setting and for this particular drama, they went for the most unexpected and crazy route that none before them had ever attempted - logical character interrelationships and comedy.

For longtime drama watchers, its not uncommon to expect the usual cliches like jealous siblings, backstabbing, misunderstandings, miscommunications between leads/ friends, annoying evil bitches lurking behind every corner, leads that fall prey to their own stupidity/naivety, long angsty arcs, heck or even lives of doom reincarnated romance. In fact whether you're new or old to the xianxia genre, throw those kind of expectations out the window. Those usual draggy tropes don't exist here because this drama handle those problems like a pro, cool and mature; adult-style wisdom with clarity and rationality.

There are reasons behind every characters' behaviors and motivations. Very logical character developments and morally driven interactions that doesn't make you pulled your hair out in frustration. The main circle of relationships are built on unconditional love, trust and hope. They form an unbreakable bond and used their intellect to overcome the many challenges the universe or fate throws their way. Perfect example of human quality done right even when we're talking world altering godly powers or voids devil curse magic.

While this drama is filled with comedy, that doesn't make it light-hearted. Underneath it all, this drama make fun of all the mind-boggling issues we see so often time in a typical xianxia. They turn it into child's play to draw many beautiful and inspirational life lessons from, that keep on giving long after its finale.

Above it, the actors and actresses acting skills deserve high praise with their naturally level microexpressions that are both funny and complex. Every touching, emotional and heartwrenching scenes were carry out so immersively - you can't help but to shed tears along with them. With an undeniable chemistry between not only the main leads but every support characters and casts, this drama has forge a strong and unforgettable foothold in the heart of its audience.

The OSTs are another lovable addition to this wonderful drama. Every song match breathtakingly well and every single one tugged at your heartstrings at the right moment. And when you pair western instrumentals to scenes in xianxia, it produce a surprisingly comedic masterpiece, ensuring impeccable strings of laughter.

There are no perfect dramas but whether its story, characters, music, SXFs, CGIs to costumes and props; the feeling when everything in a drama was done to near perfection, it truly felt good and exhilarating. So good that you can't get enough and had to give it another taste to fathom how truly rich it really is.

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Completed
My Sassy Princess
3 people found this review helpful
Apr 28, 2022
22 of 22 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 10
Story 5.0
Acting/Cast 10
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 10
This review may contain spoilers

Flirtatiously Sweet, Visually Pleasing & Light Hearted BUT...

I love this drama and when I usually fall head over heels for a drama it's usually because of one of 2 reasons, a unique/refreshing story/plot or the FL and ML chemistry (and very rarely a drama has both). For this drama, it is the latter that mostly captures me.

The chemistry between the leads is a 10 for me. It's full of funny and sweet moments. When they are together, I get giddy and want to scream! They both are very natural with each other. The looks, the stares, and whenever their hands touch each other! lol And the kissing scenes OMG, just hot! I fangirl so hard...

Anyway, I watched works with YBY in it before (L & R, LST, etc.) but she never gave me a strong impression character-wise like she does here. Now some people say they dislike her because her chara is annoying and that she act like a snobby rich princess throwing money around and shamelessly stalking the ML, but I beg to differ. First of all, I've seen ton of dramas whether ancient or modern where the rich ML falls for the girl and started chasing after her, pulling stunts like booking the whole restaurant, airplane, island, etc., finding info about her or wasting huge amount of money to win the girl over (you know what I mean). Just because the gender is reversed here, the FL Chara get criticized? I also wouldn't say she was stalking the ML, she was openly and straightforwardly chasing him creating opportunities for herself. I think that's cool and refreshing that she's a very forward person. In episode 3, when ShenYan finally told her off, she left on her own as she has her own pride too. Guess what? He followed her secretly then end up liking her even more. (Hm, I wonder who's stalking who here?) True, she doesn't care about wasting money but thats just how she was raised. The important thing is she waste that money on things and people that matter to her, like trading her jewelry for the chance to win that pair of earring for the child she only first met (Episode 4). She act like a wicked princess in front of others because of past trauma and the promise to her dead mother that she wouldn't be weak. She was just badly misunderstood. If people just give her character a chance and not just make judgments before dropping, I think they may enjoy this drama more.

Can I also just say, ZYC is definitely one of my favorite male actors out there. I don't know if it's just me, but when he's in a costume drama, he seems very buff like I can almost see his muscle through his clothes or he just has nice biceps... lol >_< His character is also very interesting because once he fell for her, he fell for her hard. Like totally mesmerize (can totally see it in his eye expression) in later episodes. If she were to leave him or not see him, he would be the person to go find her first (push-pull relationship? ) Slowly you see him shedding his cold stern face toward her, but he would still try to act like he don't care and often tease her. Maybe that's the thrill of flirting? What a tsundere... XD

Objectively, I can not say that I feel the same for the story of this drama. Even without reading the novel beforehand, I can tell that the story was missing a lot of plot devices and the build-ups in between scenes/relationships. I heard they cut out 2 episodes, it goes from 24 episodes to 22! Come on, thats like around 2 hours worth of details and I don't believe it was only all kiss scenes. I am sure if they had followed the original novel and included all the details, the story would've come together very well as a whole and made much more sense. While it is still very lighthearted watch and every conflict is resolved very quickly. Such a pity, this story actually has a lot of potentials and the main couple is very interesting. I think it was caused by budget constraints during production but they did their best to create a very visually pleasing drama. All in all, if you can overlook the mess up plot and some weird scene editing in this drama, it would be a very entertaining watch.

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