Back From The Brink is a Little ( BIG !!!! ) Xianxia Revolution

You are tired of dumb and illgical female leads ? Of the usual kind of toxic male lead ? Of never ending misunderstanding and characters who can't communicate with each others ? Then Back From The Brink is made for you and will reconcile you with the Xianxia genre like it did with me.

I started without any expectations but what can I say it was unexpected in the same way that we fall in love, and I fell deeply in love with this drama, I found myself counting the hours that will get me to a new episode each time one ended.

I've been watching Xianxia for a long time and this is the first time I watch something like this one, It keeps the charm factor of the xianxias genre while breaking all its codes, BFTB is just so original, so refreshing from the story to the characters to the world building, I can guarantee you this is nothing like what you have seen before.
There is no heavenly realm, no demon realm, no overly powerful ( evil or good ) Gods. There is two clans at wars ( spirits and taoists), the taoist having the upper hand in this war and discriminating the spirits.

Destiny will unite the female lead Yan Hui, a feisty taoist with a very high EQ to Tian Yao a millenium Dragon with dating PTSD ( he was betrayed and dismembered by his taoist ex ) and force them to work together. Yan Hui with her beautiful kind heart and her noble temperament will break down the walls that the Dragon King built around ( his missing) heart. And who wouldn't fall in love with her ? Us spectators fell first : a rare kind of female lead who speaks her mind and the spectators minds, a female lead that will end up overpowering everyone for the sake of love ( yes yes you heard it right no damsel in distress in BFTB). And to fit this amazing female lead, of course we got to have non less awseome male lead : You will have to fall in love with every facet of Tian Yao... he will go through the best character developement from a cunning dragon to a truly caring and protective husband. I would even dare to say the most gentle and dreamy husband in c-dramaland.
The building of their relationship is beautiful , they go through hardships due to evident circumstances and given the characters characteristics I feel like the writers were able to do write in a realistical way, to the point that even with only few kisses thourought the 40 episodes we still are able to feel their strong bond and love for each other.

One of the most agreable surpise here are also the secondary characters, a writer once told me that you shouldn't write secondary characters just to write secondary characters , they have to have a purpose in your story otherwise everything will just crumble. I'm used to skip scenes that involve secondary characters in c-drama and sometimes feel like they are a waste of screentime but for this drama it wasn't the case at all, I loved them so much, felt attached to them. All the secondary characters have strong personalities, their own stories, when it comes to battles and facing hardships every character has his own ability and is no less important than the other for example :Xian Ge and her husband FQS who are mortals are still useful by being incredible strategists. Overall team work is an important theme of the drama from the beginnig to the end, every life is important and even "low" spirits support can become the strongest weapon.
The villainswere as charismatic as the other characters especially Su Yin and Chang Lan, we end up understanding why they became what they are without condoning their actions .

The smartly built relationships and the characters excellent writing are not the only thing that deserve praise in this story. I'm thankful for the world buildind and can you believe that for once magic is correctly used in a FANTASY world, I mean how much dramas were able to grasp that yes humans would have made use of magic as a technology in every ways possible if it existed : here we got the Huawei / Ai Feng hilarious moment, the smartwatch moment, the video news journal moment, the small purse that could hide a whole house ( because yes did you ever wondered how characters in dramas travel so lightly and yet are able to change clothes a hundred times ) . There were also moments were the writers just wittily made fun via characters of usual dramas tropes that they also used in the drama, I'm thinking of when Yan Hui became the Lady Of The Dark Aura and HXY points that YH make and outfits have changed, knowing the jokes about chracters wearing heavier eyeliner and darker outfits when they become demons/ evil etc it was a definitely a funny input made by the writers.

I'd say that Hu Xin was never meant to be a heartwrenching story in a caricatural shakespearian way l
, it is a heartwarmimg and hearttouching story. It proved that a drama does not need only heavy scenes to have depth but you can rather find depth in a well rounded story, the depth is in characters that are so well written that you'll end up getting strongly attached to and that will make you share and relate to their joy, their pain, whatever they are feeling. The depth is in the fact that this drama didn't take its viewers for fools and that every actions the characters initiate is later explained in a logical and smart way. Back From The Brink proved that you don't need to get stuck a certain narratif stucture to write a xianxia and that as viewers we can and we should expect more originality from writers from now on.
I'll be forever thankful to thankful to the cast, the writers and whole team for giving us a a fairytale that was able to bring us back to the magic we believed in when we were children mixed with the perfect depiciton of human complexity that made us believe in this fairytale as adults.

I'd finish by saying that I didn't follow any of the actors nor did I read the novel before watching this drama so this review couldn't be more fair. However the cast did conquered me overtime, The incredible chemistry between the two lead was more than convincing, I couldn't ask more from the acting ( couldn't believe this was the same HMH that played the majestic dragon king and the milky dragon at the same time, Zhou Ye was absolutely versatile and made cry along her character many times). The whole cast was also so deeply involved and sincere with the viewers, spending hours answering fans questions on weibo and making lives. They deserve the whole world, they deserve to be praised for their performance and for their hard work.

Read More

If I could recommend only one Chinese drama it would be this one

If you love slow burn, smart female lead and morally grey male lead this drama is made for you.

This is not only a love story, this is a female centric kind of story. And what a female lead we have here ! Chen Shaoshang is one of the smartest and most relatable character even written in a Chinese drama. We follow her
path to adulthood and through her we also witness the growth of the characters she met through her journey. Not everything is black and white If you love slow burn, smart female lead and morally grey male lead this drama is made for you.

This is not only a love story, this is a female centric kind of story. And what a female lead we have here : Chen Shaoshang is one of the smartest and most relatable character ever written . She has a military lineage and being unwilling abandoned by her parents who have to fight for the nation, she is bullied by her aunt and her grandmother who promised her parents to take of her in their absence, as she grows up in a hostile environment, she is forced to count only on herself to survive hence why she is a very independent lady.

When her parents come back, it doesn’t go as smoothly for her as we could imagine. We follow her path into adulthood and through her we witness her growth but also the development of the characters she met during her journey. We also witness the solace she gains from the relationships she builds along her way in the search of the love she lacked during childhood. Not everything is black and white and Niaoniao even end up feeling empathy without completely forgiving some of the characters who treated her badly.

Her and Ling Buyi’s love story isn’t an easy one, he falls for her at the first hand side but her love for him is slowly built stone after stone, trials after trials and eventually this love becomes passionate and unshakable. Speaking of Ling Buyi, no one could have make us love this perfectly flawed general more than Wu Lei. What an amazing actor he is ! Probably one of the best of his gen. Just like Shaoshang, Ling Buyi’s childhood was full of traumatizing event we can’t help but slowly fall under the spell of this strong but mysterious general while undiscovering his secrets.

Don’t walk run to watch this you won’t regret it.

Read More

If you ask me for classics I'll tell you about this one

Ah nostalgia ... this is the first drama I've ever watched. Is this drama cliché ? the answer is no, yes you may have watched those thropes a hundred times but it is simply because it is the blueprint, this little jewel was broadcast in the early 2000 it is not cliché it is what invented the clichés, simple.
The craze around this one was so strong as well because of the wonderful cast, the multitalented Rainie who sings a lot of this drama's OST and the most handsome face you will ever cross Mike, the chemistry of those two was so strong that everyone thought for years that they were dating, everyone wanted to see them together again and that led them to film another drama called Why Why Love starring the amazing Kingone Wang ( we don't change a winning team ).

Conclusion : it would be unfair to to judge this one by today's standard, for the early 2000's standard this is undoubtly a 10.

Read More