This review may contain spoilers
An Enjoyable Show That Lost Itself in the End
I guess I preferred the illusion of the rainbow to the reality of the storm.I liked this show for what it was. Nothing groundbreaking, no big political shenanigans. Rootable, compelling secondary characters. I was enjoying the ride. I thought the chemistry with the leads was decent. Not earth scorching, but pleasant. I fell in love with several of the supporting characters. I liked the second couple. I liked the plot of the FL trying to prove her worth as a scholar. I liked that the ML was supportive of her without folding into a paper towel like so many modern ML tend to do these days. I enjoyed all of this.
But apparently, I was only looking at the rainbow.
The show in its last run of episodes proceeds to tell me that everything that happened before it was just a lie. All of a sudden political machinations are the name of the game. But they are rushed and not given any of the nuance they deserve. I didn't like how unbothered FL was by her own people. I know she lost her memories, but it felt kind of sad seeing these people willing to die to honor her and she just shrugs and says whatever. I'm glad Yin Qing redeemed himself kind of in the end. But if he was just going to die by her hand and tell her to go back, why not just let her kill you in the hall the first time and spare all of the other unecessary nonesense? Why did she return with her people if she never even cared about their plight? Why did Nian have to die? Seemed needlessly grim. The whole ending left a bad taste in my mouth.
But I still enjoyed looking at the rainbow, even if the result was that I was left standing cold in the rain. I liked this show. It didn't stick the landing. That's where I'll leave it.
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Cute...But Nothing Special
I'll be honest, it took me a LONG time to get throught this drama. I found the main character so aggrivating and childish and I just got intense second hand embarrassment from everything he did. I also found the acting a bit stilted in the beginning, and the weird sound effects drove me nuts. But literally everyone was raving about how amazing this show is. So I pushed through to finish. Obviously there must be something I was missing.And honestly? No. Not really, in my opinion. The show is exactly what it tells you it is. There's nothing unique about it. It's not rewriting the BL landscape. It's a perfectly fine, perfectly cute, perfectly serviceable standard university BL. I do think the acting and character dynamics got a little bit better later into the story. But I never stopped finding Duang cringe.
I enjoyed it but the inflated rating is undeserved, in my opinion. It's fun, it's fine. It's pretty mid, if I'm honest.
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A Stunning Spectacle That Became Less Stunning and More Spectacle
Let me start off by saying I enjoyed the show. I thought the leads had good chemistry. I liked the female protagonist. I feel like they didn't give the ML much to do, which has become an unfortunate trend these days, but he did well with what he was given. The cinematography was stunning. The music was great. All of the actors were excellent. I enjoyed some of the side characters, and others didn't work for me.The first half of the show, I really enjoyed. I thought it was building up nicely. The back half of the show fell apart for me. I thought the military training arc in the middle went on for a bit too long. I was not charmed or engaged by the villain brothers, and their arc completely swallowed the show in the end, in my opinion. The actors were great, but the compulsion of the internet to turn this grotesque man into some doomed, tragic romantic anti-hero just didn't work for me. The plot kind of collapsed under the weight of all of the nonsense political shenanigans. The main leads somehow got lost in the shuffle of their own story.
I still think this show was well made, well-acted and it started with promise. It just didn't quite stick the landing for me.
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