Gotta give the shaman her flowers. In this crazy world, she’s the only one who takes Seo-Ri’s ‘craziness’ with quite the stride. And their bond is quite cute.
Pursue of Jade may be a lot more your style. Both Leads in the POJ are written very realistic, with no plot armor,…
Lol… love the sarcasm with POJ. You captured my thoughts on that drama. And I respect your thoughts although you got me wrong. I am well aware that Li Zhen super powers feel earned. That I respect. And I’m not here for the romance. Far be it. But as a story teller myself, I get super finicky with over-recycled plot armor, not like I expect you to understand that. Compared to POJ, please, The Heir is far better in terms of FL’s character development. I’m almost rage baited at the comparison. However I have watched Florished Peony amongst the many business dramas you mentioned, and compared to the ML/other supporting character developments in those dramas, The Heir is indeed lacking. The corrupt minister/ML in FP was a side dish, but still a well cooked one. Even his guard seems to have more character development than our ML here. I’m yet to see that here. Where did the plot with gathering funds for the army go to? Something that is a far serious matter? But yes, I respect and understand your perspective. Although you spoiled me with the tribute ink result (haven’t reached there yet.
I love this drama. At least at the beginning, I believed I loved it a lot. But now? Something seems off. And without repeating all the rants made by previous commenters, let me just say this drama has unfortunately ended up as the prime result of what happens when you push the FL to be so ‘unrealistically’ strong with enough plot armor to raise an army all at the cost of the underdevelopment of other promising characters.
Our writers gave us “The Heir” who knows so much about ink making, has a natural flair for it, can run and manage an ink shop, and now, can even run and manage an entire ancient family of ink makers—in fact, she is now the promised messiah of the LI family. In CDrama Land, that I can understand. But what happened to the ML? And the grandfather (YeYe)? And the Tian family (I was expecting some tough villainity/rivalry)? It was if the writer got to a point and forgot that they are other characters beyond Li Zhen. So she is shoved suffocatingly to our face until all we see and hear is her and honestly, that is tiring.
Especially when we were promised a buffet and now all we get is French toast. It might be made with egg and milk, but the end product is still one meal. Variety is lost unfortunately and that is what happened here. At the beginning we had the Lou family (Luo Ming Song the mad ink maker) and their theatrical demise that promised something sinister but juicy for the future episodes, the Tian Family that promised treachery and shaking up the ink industry. The ML (the Luo manchild who was supposed to go through an amazing character arc and grow up—(oh, we got the character, but the arc flew out of the window). And guess what?
All we have now is Li Zhen. And don’t get me started on the fact that she’s the FL/main character because I’m pretty I ordered a rich buffet spread, so what is this? I like French toast but where is the tea? I suppose the evil aunt drowned in it. Never have I seen so much screen time being wasted on recycled cheap plot of FL proving herself through trials and tribulations again and again while the plot remains stale. Yeah, exactly like stale French toast.
I am still watching it though. I still like it though. Doesn’t make me any less scammed than I am…Though.
the first and last time I saw FL before this drama was in the glory. I was a bit worried before starting this…
Then you might consider watching The Tale Of Lady Ok. She was absolutely amazing there, and it’s under the Historical genre (Sageuk) which is one of my favorite genre. K-Dramas hardly do the genre justice as much as Chinese dramas, but The Tale of Lady Ok was surprisingly really good and the FL carried the role with finesse.
Episode 11That “braving the fire” scene was so weak because the fire itself felt nonexistent. Hui Ju walked…
Wow. You’ve said it all. The world building wasn’t landing as well as it should have and that I could forgive. But the storyline? The supposed buildup to every situation? It fell so flat it was quite shocking considering the cast ensemble and budget. The storytelling here is quite weak. It’s like they slapped all these situations that we are supposed to ‘awwww’ at yet we’re out of place.
Why is he abolishing the monarchy? What’s the motive? The pain point? Where the hell did the foreshadowing go to? Why in the hell do the producers believe they can suddenly slap that to our face and we will just take and gobble it up like that? Lol. And the PM’s villainy? What the…? This drama was trying to do so much and yet it ended up achieving nothing. And it has nothing to do with the number of episodes, no. This is evidence of what poor writing can do even the most exciting storylines. This one had -10 depth. The depth level ended up so shallow they now owe all the audience they baited into watching this delicious mess.
At episode 10, I was prepared to finish this and call it a day despite its shortcomings. That was until episode 11 happened. The way I shut my laptop hard when they began to yap about abolishing the monarchy. Fine. I will still finish this. But it’s now a 7.5 at most. 5 goes to the cast and 2.5 to whatever will remain of this mess after E12 airs.
When ML first proposed to the FL, I could remember screaming soundlessly on my bed while kicking my feet because that direction was so unexpected and in the best way. Now that they have kissed (Or in Qinpu’s language; 👉👈) I am so speechless and I’m just swooning. Who knew we would get such an assertive, understanding ML! And the FL’s response! The finger movements that shocked both I and the ML 🫣, Then the ML’s finger movement response in kind! Just how many shot did it take?!
Such great acting of conveying the most minuscule yet profound expressions of likeness now morphed to love! I really love the maturity in this one… and then the carriage scene happened! The blushing of the FL! The ML’s eye expressions and beautiful smiles! Remember when ML said “You can now start thinking of it” doing the first proposal? In the carriage scene, from FL’s body language it was clear that she was more than thinking of it! Even if she won’t admit it! Okay, I’m so sat for this drama. I actually thought this would be one of the dramas I would skip for this year, so glad I didn’t. So far, it sits in my top 20%
Some complains about ML's screentime. That is the aspect somewhat follows the novel. He didnt appear much later.…
Ye Xian is extremely intelligent? Are we watching the same drama. I don’t know what is in the novel, but here we have a bratty boy who can’t even tell ML was saving him when the whole stuff with removing the crown prince companion happened. Lol, the audacity to even pretend he was smart and say the ML was scared of him in that situation had me rolling
Is it me or the ending of episode 4 happened a little too early ? or is it that I don't feel the chemistry yet…
I thought it was going to happen earlier at the hotel room, duh. We have 2 adults who have the hots for each other. This is no blush-me- I blush you back kdrama where the kiss is pretty timed and dragged till episode 8,9,10 because it’s industry standard. Our leads here didn’t sign up for an idol project if that’s what you are looking for.
I had to rewatch again to see that sharp glare Lu QianQiao cut A’Sheng during that last hug 😂. If that ‘little girl’ is not careful enough, that glare could have almost incinerated her at the spot.
Of course everyone is free to have their opinion, and if you don't like the drama, you can even give it a 1. But…
I’m not giving it a 1. And if it is true that there is a mass down rating movement going on, then that’s an error with MDL. I thought there is a system here where new accounts ratings of dramas are sort of filtered out (or a proof rating system of some sort)?
That still doesn’t defeat my point though. Which is that when you touch down on the comment section of this drama, hoping to enjoy some good ole rant of some reasonable person gushing over some exciting scene, or some unreasonable person bashing that one scene you really appreciated, all you get is some actors name slapped over the comment section like this is some variety show which it is not. And that takes the fun away from the drama.
For me (and most) MDL is that platform we crash on after watching an exciting episode of a drama we really love. But now I’ve been forced to learn all the names of the actors (which is a sort of win I guess 🙂)
First of all, the fan wars in this comment section is downright ridiculous. Since when did we start ignoring the fact that a drama does in fact exist entirely independent of the Actors? There is an entire world of crew that made this drama happen, and the scriptwriter and director is just one of them. Secondly, the whole "haters are downgrading this drama" has me gagging. As someone who has been in the C-Drama scene for some time and decided to watch this just for Edward Guo, you all have me tripping. I appreciate this work of Art, and I currently have half the mind to give it an 8.2 (as at episode 22) or an 8.8 depending on how this ends. And no, it has nothing to do with your fave, or the director even. It so happens that I am an individual capable of making a personal judgment on why I enjoy or do not enjoy a drama. Stop being toxic, and quit the wars in the comment section. Jeez, you're scaring the newbies away.
Just a fun observation-Jiang Ai's side kick that tortured that despicable demon (have forgotten his name), AND He Simu's ancestor played siblings to Feng Suige in Fated Hearts 😁. In btw, thoroughly enjoying this drama ♥
I've been thinking the same for the past few days mainly because I was watching Legend of Heroes and was reminded…
Like when will they make dramas like this again? 😫 I wouldn’t mind if it’s a 100 episodes as long as it passes all the historical drama vibe check like this one 😂
Our writers gave us “The Heir” who knows so much about ink making, has a natural flair for it, can run and manage an ink shop, and now, can even run and manage an entire ancient family of ink makers—in fact, she is now the promised messiah of the LI family. In CDrama Land, that I can understand. But what happened to the ML? And the grandfather (YeYe)? And the Tian family (I was expecting some tough villainity/rivalry)? It was if the writer got to a point and forgot that they are other characters beyond Li Zhen. So she is shoved suffocatingly to our face until all we see and hear is her and honestly, that is tiring.
Especially when we were promised a buffet and now all we get is French toast. It might be made with egg and milk, but the end product is still one meal. Variety is lost unfortunately and that is what happened here. At the beginning we had the Lou family (Luo Ming Song the mad ink maker) and their theatrical demise that promised something sinister but juicy for the future episodes, the Tian Family that promised treachery and shaking up the ink industry. The ML (the Luo manchild who was supposed to go through an amazing character arc and grow up—(oh, we got the character, but the arc flew out of the window). And guess what?
All we have now is Li Zhen. And don’t get me started on the fact that she’s the FL/main character because I’m pretty I ordered a rich buffet spread, so what is this? I like French toast but where is the tea? I suppose the evil aunt drowned in it. Never have I seen so much screen time being wasted on recycled cheap plot of FL proving herself through trials and tribulations again and again while the plot remains stale. Yeah, exactly like stale French toast.
I am still watching it though. I still like it though. Doesn’t make me any less scammed than I am…Though.
Why is he abolishing the monarchy? What’s the motive? The pain point? Where the hell did the foreshadowing go to? Why in the hell do the producers believe they can suddenly slap that to our face and we will just take and gobble it up like that? Lol. And the PM’s villainy? What the…? This drama was trying to do so much and yet it ended up achieving nothing. And it has nothing to do with the number of episodes, no. This is evidence of what poor writing can do even the most exciting storylines. This one had -10 depth. The depth level ended up so shallow they now owe all the audience they baited into watching this delicious mess.
At episode 10, I was prepared to finish this and call it a day despite its shortcomings. That was until episode 11 happened. The way I shut my laptop hard when they began to yap about abolishing the monarchy. Fine. I will still finish this. But it’s now a 7.5 at most. 5 goes to the cast and 2.5 to whatever will remain of this mess after E12 airs.
Such great acting of conveying the most minuscule yet profound expressions of likeness now morphed to love! I really love the maturity in this one… and then the carriage scene happened! The blushing of the FL! The ML’s eye expressions and beautiful smiles! Remember when ML said “You can now start thinking of it” doing the first proposal? In the carriage scene, from FL’s body language it was clear that she was more than thinking of it! Even if she won’t admit it! Okay, I’m so sat for this drama. I actually thought this would be one of the dramas I would skip for this year, so glad I didn’t. So far, it sits in my top 20%
That still doesn’t defeat my point though. Which is that when you touch down on the comment section of this drama, hoping to enjoy some good ole rant of some reasonable person gushing over some exciting scene, or some unreasonable person bashing that one scene you really appreciated, all you get is some actors name slapped over the comment section like this is some variety show which it is not. And that takes the fun away from the drama.
For me (and most) MDL is that platform we crash on after watching an exciting episode of a drama we really love. But now I’ve been forced to learn all the names of the actors (which is a sort of win I guess 🙂)