As a manga reader, when i heard they were going to make this drama, my first thought was that the story would be 80% changed because there’s no way they could adapt all the stuffs in this manga into a TV drama.
And oh boy, I was wrong.
They took me by surprise by actually adapting as much as they could from this manga, every trigger warning contents from Haoren’s backstory and their relationship, they kept as much as a TV rating would let them in a short 8 episodes.

Many people thought they went too far by being this bold with this story especially for a TV drama instead of Movie but I ended up loving it even though some parts were genuinely difficult to stomach even for a manga reader like me.

The screen writing was good and showed they actually paid attention to the source material, due to small amount of episodes to cover entire 3 vols of the manga, they modified and summarized some part and in my opinion in a good way too.

The actors are good enough, even though this is their first leading role, they both worked hard and managed to nailed it until the end. The chemistry was strong as well between Haoren and Chihiro.

In contrast to what most people expected from this kind of story, especially for Haoren who went through hell unimaginable, they expected a tragic ending but just like the title “Happy Of The End”, the main message from this story was about not giving up, never stop clinging to the smallest hope of being happy one day, Haoren who lost hope found Chihiro, Chihiro who never give up on desperately find love, found Haoren who loves him unconditionally. They had the very last happy ending they both long deserve.

Because of how dark the story was, their love, their intimacy and small moments together become more important to viewers to see and I think that’s just beautiful.