Just Weirdo Me
brink of insanity, USA
there are WAY better dramas to spend your time watching...
UPDATED after episode 90 -_-Yeah. This went NO where really fast except when it went into that one plot device I hated. UGH. 50+ episodes of the same scene on repeat. :( I am soooo sad this drama failed ALL expectations. Revenge? Failed. Romance? Failed. Any actual PLOT? failed. I had hope as you can see below in my original review. Complete letdown. The ONLY reason to watch this show would be to see Go Se Won suit porn. #sexyman #sexysuits Otherwise... NO.
.
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If you love a halfway decent slow burn, revenge-driven show with some great characters, some slightly ridiculous characters, and can let go of unrealistic expectations for a soap opera... this show is for you. Watch it for the fun of it and don't overthink it and you'll be just fine. This isn't something you can watch with your overanalyzing panties on. Come for the revenge and drama. Go when you want to watch a show with a bit more substance. I'm personally enjoying it and am absolutely shipping the ML+FL before this is all said and done. (pretty please?)
I may update this review once 60+ episodes have aired and then again once it's finished.
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This review may contain spoilers
*TAKES DEEP BREATH*
Final Verdict:7.5 Stars out of 10.
-1 Star for insane pacing.
-1 Star for the 1000 over-the-top villains & their ridiculously over-the-top personalities.
-1/2 Star for the time skips(not one but TWO of them), which are a personal hate factor for me.
I wanted to love this show, my complaint would be the pacing. If they put a little moderation in everything this show would be beyond brilliant. Instead everything is a wee bit over the top.
Bad Guys:
Princess is a psycho.
Queen is a psycho.
Almost-married-to-Prince is a definite psycho.
New concubine/princess/whatever? Yup. Fo Shizzle a Psycho.
The characters are too "much" to be believable. On top of that the sheer number of almost-got-murderized-but-didn't traps is dizzying.
Got caught in a trap. Prison. Almost died but didn't. Got caught in a new trap next episode. Got beat THEN sent to prison and almost died a traitor but didn't. Next episode got caught in a trap in order to trap someone else in a trap and got beat and sent to prison and released again in the nick of time.
*TAKES DEEP BREATH*
Anywho... my personal opinion is that if there was some build up & story-telling in between these 100+ traps, some more in depth character building rather than Characters 1-10 = Psychos, Character 11 & 12 = Good Guys, & Characters 13 & 14 random wishy-washy peeps, then this show would be at my top 5 of all time in C-Drama land. For now, it's enjoyable to pass the time, but too fast paced & too over the top with its characters to quite become something super special. But I'm still going to watch and enjoy this show for sure.
ETA 02/19/19:
Soooo I've been cheating and watching the raw videos in advance. I'm pretty far in and pretty sad about how things are going since I'm not a fan of "time skips" because I don't feel they're ever done well. Hao Lan has two time skips. 8 years and the next one soon after another (at least) 8+ years. I'm not a fan and from what I'm watching it's a LOT of heart ache in the show constantly without much to "look forward to" as a viewer. I'm going to watch it in its entirety, but I can tell already this will not (unfortunately) be leaving a good taste in my mouth. I hate that because it has everything that SHOULD make it amazing... but the most important thing and that is believable pacing and viewers connection/investment to & in the characters.
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Needed a bit more sunshine poking through all the storm clouds that was The Little Nyonya.
I enjoyed this, especially the first 12 episodes, but after that it was a series of "can it get any worse?" episodes where our FL is just battered and bruised along with ANYONE who was a decent person in the drama.This is a show filled with (TONS of) bad guys triumphing for wayyyyy too long and worse, some of them never received their karma to match their crimes. Some do, true, but not enough in my humble opinion. Some received karma but only along with a heaping dose of "forgiveness" and a kind of happy end all because of the FL whom they not only tortured but had also previously tortured her mother AND grandmother. Ewww. They tortured THREE generations of our Fl's family. One villain in particular got some karma, but it wasn't even close to the evil she had done through all 44 episodes.
I felt the "pay off" of the final episode did not match the heartache of 44 straight episodes of torture.
There has to be some kind of balance in a drama like this one and there wasn't any in The Little Nyonya.
At least not enough for me to appreciate everything I had to just sit through.
I guess I expected a story here where the FL had a ton of trials and torture but she not only persevered through it, but triumphed over it, carving out her own destiny in the end. And while you can see that "kind of" was tacked on at the end, in my opinion it was too little too late and not done satisfactorily. Not at all.
All that being said... I didn't hate this show. I rather liked it. Kind of. The acting was great. Chemistry between some of t he characters was well done. I enjoyed the cooking and cultural bits, though I even wish it more heavily influenced the drama, but still it was okay.
But if you're here for romance... while the romance was OK in some instances... the majority of the "love plots" were more painful and destructive than anything else in my eyes. The bad (bad characters, bad romance, bad karma) well outweighed the good.
I just wanted a wee bit more sunshine poking through all the storm clouds that The Little Nyonya was as a drama. I wanted to see some triumph at the end of the torture and in the end, I didn't feel like I got that. At least not enough to make me (personally) happy.
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HOLY HOT KISSES, JAMES BOND! ツ
I enjoyed this one... The Kiss scenes were HOT HOT HOT! Yassss!♡I really liked the ML here. He was definitely a "class clown" type but you can kind of tell it was to hide his pain. I actually found this silly friendship between the FL & ML a refreshing way to start a romance. The acting felt very natural. I liked that the ML found new artistic inspiration from our FL too!
♡The ML was nearly TOO good though and that was a little hard to watch sometimes... he was TOO self-sacrificing.
♡I Also liked the FL a lot even though I saw some people didn't like her, I never felt that way one bit. I found her smart, crazy, funny, but serious and level headed when appropriate. She felt real & human.
♡Hate, HATED the SFL from start to finish. What a biatch! Her "change of heart" in the final episode was not convincing enough, but it was expected from a Lakorn.
♡Skipped some of the side couple/side story parts--okay... ALL of them. -_- I didn't care about a single side plot. At all.
♡HOWEVER I still thoroughly enjoyed this Lakorn and would even possibly do a re-watch for the FL & ML interactions. They were too cute together!
♡I felt myself grinning stupidly a LOT while watching this one. You should give it a go for sure if your on the fence.
P.S. You can find this on DailyMotion subbed (missing 1/2 of episode 8? I think though)
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#surprised
I had this on my "not interested" list forever due to other comments/reviews I'd seen somewhere, but decided to try it anyway out of boredom. I'm actually REALLY glad I did. I feel like it would have been better at 12 episodes, but I was never bored, so there's that. CRAZY Lakorn but I truly enjoyed it.The acting was fabulous, especially from the FL and the chemistry between leads was on point as well.
The story never felt super draggy or boring or had any characters/subplots I felt I needed/wanted to skip through and THAT is a miracle (for me) when watching Lakorns... there's almost always a side character's storyline or plot that I hate and skip through. There wasn't any on this one, imho.
Sure, this might have been better at about 12 episodes instead of 16, but isn't that usually the case? Even so, I didn't FEEL like they'd overly stretched the plot or had to throw in tons of random plot devices to prolong the show either, so I'm pretty impressed.
My vote? Love a good revenge Lakorn with a lot of evil stuff going on, some great acting, and a dollop of crazy on top? This one is better than most! Give it a go. :-)
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This review may contain spoilers
If I could sum up the plot and how I feel about this show in a single sentence, I'd say, "Wow, he was a fucking manipulative bastard up until the VERY end." Like... even when he has a "change of heart" and is trying to win her, he uses dirty TRICKS and emotional blackmail. It was truly the most disgusting display of it I have ever seen written in a show in my life. If not for that happening in the final 2 episodes, this show would have skimmed into a 7-ish rating (maybe)>
I wanted to like this, but began skipping and wishing it would just end already WAY before EP 10.
The ML was wayyyy too old-looking to be paired up with the beautiful and innocent-looking FML. So much so, that it distracted from the show in a HUGE way and just piled up MORE tally marks on the reasons-why-you-should-skip-this-lakorn list!
>
huh. didn't realize I felt so strongly about what I just watched until I began typing up this review. oopsie. lol
VERDICT= EASY SKIP
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Also... the villain. A GREAT Villain is not as 2D as the Villain in UNDER THE POWER. While I liked the actor and how he looked and acted, I felt the writers could have fleshed him out to have more depth of character. A flat villain equals a flat show in general.
And... one other thing I hated about the show was the side character, Xie Xiao. His character singlehandedly nearly ruined the entire watching experience. I haven't cringed and hated a character as much as his in a loooong time. When we FIRST see him, I thought he was going to be an intriguing new character, but the 2nd time we see him (just a bit later) he's an annoying twat for the rest of the show.
WHAT I DID LOVE about the show was the acting, the ML's for sure and how WELL the FL is written. She's a FABULOUS character. Strong, Intelligent, Great with her pistol and martial arts, and multifaceted. She needed help sometimes, she needed to be saved sometimes, but a LOT of the time SHE was the one helping and doing the saving. She was a wonderfully rounded heroine, and that alone made the show worth watching!
So... if you like to be entertained with a GREAT FL & ML, and decent plot, great chemistry between leads, tons of action, etc., then you'll enjoy this show. I personally won't watch it a 2nd time, but I don't feel like I wasted my time either. It was entertaining and fun to watch. :)
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World's Worst Ending. World's Highest Number of Plot Threads Left Dangling in a Single Show. -_-
I'm not going to go into details about the ending to remain spoiler free, BUT I will say that it was RUSHED, RIDICULOUS, HORRIBLY THOUGHT OUT, and let sooooooo many unanswered questions. Not things left open for interpretation, NO... literally left things unanswered and left characters who were pretty "evil" doing a 180 from the rest of the show and suddenly being seen as "good"??? WHUT? I haven't been this let down by an ending in a very long time. I can take heartbreak. I can take a realistic, tragic ending. What I can't take is 10 minute of random tragedy for no reason whatsoever as if watching 50+ episodes meant nothing to the viewer/fan.
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The FL is adorable and such a great actress, but paired with the ML, she not only outshines him, but they are a bit weird as a couple/romantic relationship we're supposed to appreciate.
I enjoyed the little mini series for what it was, but the romance was the main point and yet it was too unbelievable for me since she seemed way more mature than the ML in the show. She was much more of an older sister rather than girlfriend material, chemistry & story-wise!
Also... when writing a short story or doing anything in short bursts like this, you have to pack a punch for every little thing you write/film/do and the writer/director of this little short didn't seem to understand that and you have 10 super short episodes of nothing cute, nothing fun, nothing dramatic, nothing memorable...just a lot of nothing that mattered and even quite a bit of redundancy.
STILL... this was a (kinda?) cute little filler in between lengthier shows.
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meh. meh. MEH.
meh.How can it be SO boring compared to S1? Alternate Universe I am all for...but the universe must be at least somewhat as compelling as the previous one.
I don't even care about/plan to watch the last two episodes. Pacing is also weird/clunky. Random "bad guy" plots stuck throughout and it feels like a big ol mess, imho. The "bad guys" are a JOKE in season #2, so the depth of storyline suffers badly as a result. That one dude say "why's it so hot" so many time made me want to throat punch him. >_<
the ONLY episode/scene I really loved and busted out laughing was when they were all hiding from each other in MuMu's apartment. Hilarious. Other than that... the drama was way too boring/repetitive.
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WARNING: filled with stomach-churning sexual crime scenes/violence
WARNING: I haven't seen anyone else say this but I will... you may want to stay away from this one if watching sexual crimes are something you can't stomach. I don't trigger easily but this lakorn takes rape scenes, violence, and even things that happen to children to an extreme (shows/insinuates/what you hear... it's a LOT!) ... this was a super super difficult watch and I would not have watched if I had been warned about certain scenes in this.Acting was great, but this lakorn is not something I can recommend due to the above. My stomach hurt after finishing this lakorn.
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This show was cute enough, but...
This show was cute enough at the beginning but there was 0 plot to be found after about ep10 or so? After that, I skipped through tons of scenes. I enjoyed it but it would have been 1000x times better if the episodes were shorter or perhaps there were only 10-12 of them at this 1hr+ length.The thing I did love about this show is that there were NO over the top evil chicks/bad guys (love interests or mothers/fathers) trying to keep any of the couples apart. However, that also was a part of the problem for me. Because there was NOTHING really keeping the ML & FL apart, the storyline of them not just getting together and the lack of conflict dragged on for no apparent reason for several hour-long episodes and watching became tedious.
STILL. It was cute and the acting was really very good, so that was a plus.
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This review may contain spoilers
A fun watch for sure!
I actually DID enjoy the show. I laughed a lot and the chemistry/skinship was NO joke. So I loved it JUST for those two reasons alone & would recommend it.However, even though I usually LOVE a cold CEO type character brought to warmth by a FL, this show portrayed the ML's character was too "I have a multiple personality disorder" and not a gradual change/thawing that I usually see/prefer in this type of show. It was like day/night light-switch fast changes back and forth that may have been my "major" gripe with this show. <3
So... this show was good and enjoyable, but it was also messy messy with SO MUCH going on in one show. Was the writer wishy washy on what type of drama he wanted to create so he just jammed it ALL into one? Possibly.
Oh and one thing I wondered about... in a spoiler comment below.
The FL had a burn scar on her, right? They made a point to show it several times and make it seem like they leads had a "forgotten past" that they would eventually remember, but never did. Since the ML had a fire in his past he couldn't remember and she had a burn scar... it just seemed like that was what the writers were hinting at, but changed their minds??? Am I the only one who thought the little girl in the forest was going to end up being the FL? *shrugs*
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I feel like the show's "synopsis" is pretty misleading. Yun Zhi and Yu Hao are not sweethearts/crushes and the search never "leads to a member of her own family". I'll do a re-write of the synopsis and post it below. :-)
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Lan Yan Zhi is a privileged banker’s daughter in Shanghai and a student activist who mistakenly comes into possession of a letter from the Japanese Army in 1937. Zhou Yu Hao, an upstanding officer in the Chinese Army, helps his superiors convince Yan Zhi to work with them as a spy in order to prove her own innocence and the innocence of her friend by infiltrating the home of her best friend, Feng Man Na, and help Yu Hao track down a mysterious traitor. But what will Yan Zhi do when the search turns friends into enemies and enemies into friends?
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And now that I'm finished with the show. WOW!
I loved it. It had amazing acting. Tons of action and drama and emotion. This is one of the few shows with this many episodes where EVERY episode meant something to the overall plot and nothing ever dragged or was a waste of time. The show was so very well executed. I'm just sorry I didn't watch it MUCH sooner.
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