Grace

c-trauma. emotional pain. too many tears.

Just gotta say something: first off, wHy tF was this so tRAgiC. Like I don't cry a lot in daily life and this shit got me bawling. Eps 1-35, some trauma, most of it is ok. If you want your sanity intact I will advise you to stop watching here. Eps 36-38? Pure emotional pain. It was all going well and them authors just had to insert some mentally brain damaged content to ruin the ending. Also, since when did elopement mean suicide??? WTF. And so it is implied that they both died tgt at the end. Help. Benjamin (Wang Tianchen) died. Jiang Lin (Wang Zhuochen) died. Rina (Florence Tan) died. Li Zan (Chen Zheyuan) died. Song Ran (Liang Jie) died. LIKE HELLO WHY IS HALF THE MAIN CAST SIX FEET UNDER? (I mean in Fangs of Fortune a bunch of them died but thats understandable since it's a wuxia.) But here?? The White Olive Tree? Pure c-trauma. Thats what this is. Not a cdrama, ctrauma. Like Li Zan actually needed psychological help in the end. Not even Song Ran could help him. They chose to die tgt instead. Like whY would you dO tHAt to them?? Went through so much together just to call it quits in the end and not live a good life tgt. I understand it's supposed to reflect real life circumstances, but this drama literally gave me mental disease too. With that aside, Chen Zheyuan is fantastic at conveying emotions. You can see the difference in him after eps 36. You can see the pain in his eyes, and also the love he has for Song Ran as well. They both of them (Chen Zheyuan and Liang Jie) were compatible and they both conveyed emotion really well. Too well in fact. I literally wept in the end. Advise you to clear out if you can't handle emotional pain.

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True Beauty is one of those really good kdramas where there is a love triangle that ends well. I'm personally not a fan of a main love triangle, but this time it did not disappoint. Moon Ga-young, Cha Eun-woo and Hwang In-youp were all perfect in their roles. I liked how despite Lim Ju-gyung's looks, Lee Su-ho still liked her from the start. As the only one who had seen her real face, he was the only one who liked her as a real person from the beginning. Han Seo-jun liked Ju-gyung at first mainly because Su-ho liked her, she was pretty and popular. I feel like in the beginning Seo-jun didn't really like her, it just developed into real feelings along the way of mocking Su-ho. Although when Ju-gyung's face was revealed he didn't stop liking her which was a shock to me. This shows he genuinely liked her and made me feel a little bad when she ended up with Su-ho instead. However, what made this really good, is that the ending did't upset me at all. Seo-jun accepted losing her as a love and having her as a friend instead, and all the loose ends were tied up as well. Ju-gyung and Su-ho were together, Seo-jun made peace with that, and even Kang Soo-jin was forgiven. I thought I would never forgive her for what she did, but somehow when the time came, I did. Well that's how this drama shaped me. 100% recommend. Go watch it. (ignore my rating for music...I haven't listened to the OST for this)

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The moment I watched this I was literally in shock. It has a wonderful balance of both a little romance along with the main plot of Zang Hai (Xiao Zhan)'s revenge for his family. The twists are intriguing, the way the story develops is very commendable as well. All in all, Xiao Zhan and Zhang Jingyi did a wonderful job together making such a memorable and wonderful show. It is a rarity to find a female lead with more martial arts power than the male. This drama showed me how one can succeed by wit alone, something that I didn't expect at all. The romance between Xiang Antu and Zang Hai is just simply amazing even though it wasn't fully focussed on. One of the best not-wholly romance oriented chinese dramas.

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You most probably won't get bored

STOP the OST IS SO PEAK WHAT
I really like this drama, its so...unexpectedly expectable if you know what I mean...it has the perfect blend of comedy and emotion
Plus some eye candy is not a bad thing either; the second leads are sooo shippable as well. Did not get the Riley Wang hype during Back From the Brink maybe because I intensely disliked watching it but after this, he's going up there on the list lmao
I think this is my first Li Yitong proper romance drama where I haven't died halfway. She's so good yet some of them scripts are so crap that she barely has any well rated dramas on MDL. Glory of Special Forces was really good but it wasn't really romance oriented. Warm on a Cold Night? Eye candy. Good cast. Dropped/on-holded because I couldn't do it anymore. And don't get me started on whatever that mess of Sword and Beloved was because that was the most disastrous of them all. Credit to A Dream within a Dream now then for presenting my first successful watch of a Li Yitong romance drama *cue the applause*
Liu Yuning doesn't disappoint in his acting, and all the side characters were so necessary, not that type of random-ahh 'just stuck you in there because the space next to the ML and FL is really empty' type thing. There were a lot of misunderstandings, and the FL sticking to the storybook plot like glue and being the opposite of 'open mindeu' when it came to Nan Hong, and that Emperor who to me got off too easy in my opinion but OH WELL. Promise you won't get bored by watching it tho, as I said in the beginning. Happy ending was also a very good decision :)

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When I saw that this was rated a 9 on MDL I was shooketh. The only other chinese drama that I've watched that has a 9 is When I Fly Towards You, my all-time favourite (you should 1000% check it out if u havent already), but I was like I must watch this right? This is a rarity! And after seeing it was only 15 episodes I was even more shookethed. This is a rarity x2 when it comes to chinese dramas. Anyways, after spending some time on my Plan to Watch list I decided to give it a go. My mind was blown. alThOUgh I am not giving this a 10, if I could give it a 9.7 I would. This was so unorthodox as a typical chinese drama, it was clear and concise, no unnecessary drama involved, the loose ends were all tied up, Li Shiqing (Zhao Jinmai) and Xiao Heyun (Bai Jingting) got the happy ending they deserved (after going through all that complicated ahh shit). Overall, this drama is not overhyped at all, I did not feel a wisp of boredom while watching it and just binged this all in one go. Amazing.

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ok the main thing abt back from the brink are the visual ahh leads. Like sometimes when the plot was getting awfully draggy their faces saved it. Zhou Ye and Hou Minghao are literally a match made in heaven lookswise. Back from the Brink is an in part tradgedy and with parts of humour too. However I feel like 40 episodes was a little long as the interest in watching kind of fell off and on. The main bonus from this was Neo playing baby Tianyao: why was he so good at it?!? Like he could go from solemn Millenium Spirit Dragon from baby Tianyao looking innocent and wide-eyed. Props to him for playing it so well. I almost couldn't believe it. About Zhou Ye, I feel like her style in every drama is about the same. Funny, cutsey and just "her". Anyways, all in all, an 8 from me, not bad but not amazing. (p.s. the only reason I watched this was bc I've watched Zhou Ye before and wanted to figure out why Hou Minghao is so loved on MDL. Like ???)

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Right. Down to business then. This was my first drama to watch while it was airing, giving me a new experience I guess to have to keep waiting for new episodes. However, through this, I realized that this drama started out really amazing, having me not being able to wait in between episode releases rating it a 9.5 at first encounter. Sadly after a while it went to a 9 and gradually at the end to 8.5 when the excitement faded and the yearning for new episodes decreased too. However, this does not mean Legend of the Female General wasn't an amazing watch. Zhou Ye and Cheng Lei (Ryan) are a really visual couple and they look great together. Although lacking in the romance between Cheng Lisu (Li Qing) and Song Taotao (Zhang Miaoyi (my queen)) it wasn't an undesireable match either. What could've had a lot more potential as a drama though, faded as time passed. Idk, it felt like there was something missing. The ending was really rushed and there was no concentration on any specific theme, it was just a bunch of random moments put together. I read another review and would like to quote it exactly here: "Me during the first few episodes: Why are these episodes so short? Why aren't they 45 minutes long? Me during the last few episodes: Why are these episodes so long? Why aren't they 30 minutes long?" This here is exactly what I thought while watching. Overall, this wasn't terrible but lowk let down my expectations a little after seeing the beginning and the cast. Solid 8.5.

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