The story of Residence and Ink making brought down by predictable plot
Yang Zi is easily my favourite C-actress by a mile, and overall, I’m really enjoying this drama so far, even though it definitely has its flaws.The biggest strengths are the FL’s acting, how cute her maternal family is (mom, grandpa and brother with his wife), and the whole ink-making angle is genuinely quite interesting. Learning about how they would enforce certain rules and keep trade secrets is pretty cool, as well as just the process of creating ink. It's not something I was ever interested in, but the drama did a good job of making me interested and invested in the whole thing.
Of course, you have to suspend disbelief a little when it comes to how quickly the FL is able to recreate ancient inks that have supposedly been lost for over a century. Even with notes and hints, it still feels a bit far-fetched, but her determination and unbreakable spirit make the journey engaging enough that I can overlook it.
That said, the negatives are unfortunately pretty glaring for me. At first, the drama seemed like it was aiming for a more grounded and realistic tone, where even the villains had their own human motivations and weren't entirely evil, at least that's the vibe I was getting early on. But somewhere along the way, it slipped into the usual C-drama ragebait family drama territory, with the FL constantly being mistreated by ungrateful and cartoonishly cruel people whose motivations feel weak and repetitive (looking at the aunt, uncle, and their lackeys). What makes it even more frustrating is that the grandma, grandpa, and her aunt mostly just stand by and do nothing to defend her (at least they help her... sometimes... and then ditch her again).
The plot is moving along exactly as you would expect. There are literally no surprises along the way, none!!!. Everything is painfully obvious and full of clichés.
My other issue is that the ML and some of the side characters have no impact on the story whatsoever. I’m actually a big fan of Elvis, and some of his modern dramas are among my favourites, but he just doesn’t feel convincing in this role. He is more of a background character and doesn’t really contribute much to moving the plot along. He just kind of exists in this world without much to do, except occasionally helping FL (that seems like his only function so far). If you were to remove him entirely, there would be almost no effect on the story. The whole revenge arc that they are building up, I can already tell how it's going to go, and I'm just not interested (that whole Tian Family is just another lazy ragebait plot device). I hope I am proven wrong tho. I still like Elvis as an actor, I just don’t think this role suits him particularly well. He is neither believable as a naive scholar-to-be (in the earlier episodes), nor as a hardened travelling merchant (after the time skip)
Overall, while the drama isn’t especially original or perfect, I’m still having a good time watching it. If you love Yang Zi, then definitely watch it. If not, you can probably skip this one. So far, it’s nothing special.
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Mixed bag. Some good, some bad. Overall forgettable.
First, the positives. The cinematography, framing and camera work almost feel like an MV at some points, which is actually quite refreshing, so I want to applaud the PDnim and DPnim and the entire production team for their hard work and unique style and for actually trying something different for once.As for the plot, this series is a real mixed bag. It has a lot of dramatic elements clumped together. It seems as if every sad backstory trope you can think of, the ML and FL have experienced, yet they honestly just don't seem like people with pretty tragic pasts. Some of the performances don't land, and the drama is starting to drag towards the end. I am also just getting tired of all these reunions and second-chance romance plots. Seems like every other modern drama is following this template.
As many pointed out, SML and SFL have an interesting dynamic, but their screentime is literally like 5 mins per episode (it does increase later on, but at this point I'm checked out), yet it suffers a similar fate of becoming somewhat stagnant.
Overall, just struggling to empathize with any of the characters in this series, so this is just not for me.
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