Skibbies

Very different genre, Minglan is very slice of life-y, I personally would take this over that but that's just personal preference. but yeah it's pretty slow in the beginning. It does pack a lot of information even in early episodes, but I think the initial episodes can seem little flat (not much hooks)? I got into it pretty quickly and I think my first "holy shit this drama" was around ep 15. They kept coming every few ep after that.

damn, there's fair amount of variety here. I really should pick up jdramas again. Thank you for the article!

I poked around c!net and came across some nice MV. There's a blue slider at bottom of the video, slide it off so you don't get rolling comments playing through your video! For people who are uhhh about the ending. https://www.bilibili.com/video/av32261166/?p=1 Novel ending, goes directly after the drama. P2 is married life cut.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av34502125/ This goes after Minhai arc, Ning Yi ask to marry Zhiwei and they do!

friendship? yes.

Thank you! :) I hope you end up liking it as much as I did! You can stop at ep 45, since Minhai suffer most cut, but it has some of the cutest scenes and I loved the acting in the arc following it, so 50 ~ 55 would do depending on how happy you want to leave the drama.

I did suggest 50 ep cos I think there's several point around there that makes it decent ending, and the latter episodes aren't as well liked. but as a completionist I totally get you'd want to finish it by then. It's definitely a shame. Hope you find something else fun to binge though!

You could potentially stop around ep 50 and pretend the rest doesn't exist? :P

Sunny, your ship will happen. Probably in the sequel :P I got it from c!netizens who read the novel. They super heavily implied Liang Si Shen x Song Yun Hui ship in the drama. I think their age gap is closer to 8 - 10yrs.

Yes to happy ending. Romance is not the focus of the series at all, but it's cute when it pops up.

The romance is central to the story but not the focus. It's also kind of unusual in that there aren't much conventional fluff. Def no secondary couple that gets focus. Have you seen Nirvana in Fire? There's more otp scenes than that but it's also the level of romance focus you can probably expect.

The misunderstanding pile up in last few episodes was definitely goddammit. I sort of see what they were going for, if they had more episodes, it probably could have made it transition better.

The father-son relationship have been splendid throughout the drama and I loved them a lot (between Emperor and his other sons too). The supporting cast is ace.

Ethan is too sleazy for them, esp in the beginning, (it's his smirk) there are more people who like him than Yang Mi though, I think he's fine, even though his face pulls me out of the drama sometimes orz. The starting (mostly drama original) arc is bit slow + they damseled Fuyao and she comes off as a fairly tropey character. It can feel pretty predictable. The OTP casting really doesn't match the book and their characterisations are pretty different. I think the drama got better but people don't stick around dramas for 10, 20 episodes for it to get better. The way it fused characters and arcs were pretty well done but for a female lead drama, some of the female characters were pretty terribly written (my bby Ya Lanzhu! Pei Yuan also had more depth and shorter appearance in the book, ) The pacing could also be bit better.

There was a huge fuss about the initial test where Fuyao name was put into the cauldron plagiarising harry potter (it's drama original), but that was a serious stretch to me (as a harry potter fan, neutral towards actors), it was probably antis picked up by various popular ent weibo that fueled the hate.

Yang Mi have lot of antis because she tend to act in a lot of "idol" drama and doesn't necessarily improve her acting, and she gets into a lot of scandal/drama, basically overexposure and bad rep. She also was CG'ed in/use a lot of standins for scenes, which spells unprofessional sooo (I don't know if this is true or not). This is the third drama I've seen her in, I think she was decent in it? As long as you don't pull me out of the drama, it's fine. and she doesn't.

Douban is pretty harsh towards cdrama in general, esp if it features any actors that rely on a large fanbase (lots of fans and antis that skew ratings + their companies buying ratings) Anyways, I wouldn't rate the drama 4, but I wouldn't rate it 8 either, let along close to 9.

The others have more suffering or just sad endings. She likes to write realistic-ish characters and relationship, so none of it is fluffy.

Yeah it's that novel. Probably the happiest of her novels, come to think of it.

not really. I'm still stuck in this drama hell, trying to finish some previous dramas I started too. I'm generally pretty picky about cdramas and none of the ones I like are romance focused. My recent favourites are My Huckleberry Friends (realistic-ish ensemble high school drama) and Die Now (interesting games like liar games). Tienstin Mystic is interesting too though not a fav (neat crime solving drama with fair bits of chinese mysticism, plot gets messy near the end though).

I think it's absolutely marvelous, but it's a very different drama from Ashes of Love (or most cdramas you see tbh).

He was a very fun character, though at times he was little jarring because he felt like he belonged in another drama (he was in the middle of court while they were suspecting Ning Yi isn't a prince. or anytimes Ning Yi and Zhiwei are at the same place, he just can't follow along. poor kid)
RIP on the last episode, if it helps, there's some very nice acting scenes in there?

She didn't really have a choice. She HAD to be become a Tiansheng princess so that Shaoning wouldn't have to marry to a foreign country, marrying to Jinshi is like the only way she could live. Of course, that might not matter to Helian Zheng, which is why she's blunt about her refusal. She specifically went to battle when they married (the excuse was to help him stablise his position, but they just got married.) He knows about her feelings but he still feels indignant, which is fair but why does she get blamed for acting how she always have been?

I've seen her getting blamed for smiling and being nice to Helian Zheng and Ning Yi saw, she was literally doing her job as an empress and she still got hate, a girl can't win.

I think the ending make sense for her characterisation. Where it fails is she doesn't see through everyone's evil plot and schemes, it feels like she's caught in a whirlwind and couldn't get out. which IS what essentially happened, but for a better audience experience, they could use far less sudden events. I just don't think her character was the only one that suffered. Like christ, what was that Helian Zheng death, excuse me? He died to cause more last minute misunderstanding? What an insult to his character.

For Yang Mi, only RoCH is wuxia and she had a guest role. TMPoB and Chinese Paladin are both xianxia which is different. Fuyao toned down its wuxia elements significantly that it ends up being less wuxia-ish than Chinese Paladin.

I thought she was fine towards Helian Zheng, she's just very blunt about her refusal. She's pretty blunt in general. I think she was hoping that he wouldn't dwell on her. I'm not sure why you think she's a whiner? snivelling I probably agree with since she end up crying a lot (thanks scriptwriters!), self centered is debatable, she's no more self centered than any other characters in the drama., they are all pretty flawd and that's what I like about the drama. I do think the execution of the last 7 episodes pretty terrible since it needed far more build up and foreshadowing for lot of the characterisations to work.