Fae
London
This review may contain spoilers
A frustrating drama with nice moments.
I really thought, at the start, I would give A Romance of the Little Forest (两个人的小森林) a better rating than this, the chemistry of Vin Zhang and Esther Yu was superb, but this drama is heavily let down by bad editing and an aimless script. It is a cliche romance drama as many others have said, however, I wasn't expecting anything else and don't usually mind cliche as long as it's done well. The first few episodes are entertaining, I really warmed to Meiren and the whole cold exterior of Zhuang Yu wasn't overly done at the start (which I was a bit fearful of).However, the second lead love story is horrific, the fact that the SML uses a fake disability to get the girl he likes isn't cute, it's sick and, to be honest, very creepy. I felt nothing for them as characters and therefore found myself very bored during their scenes. If you're planning on watching, I wouldn't invest your time in them, it will only lead to disappointment. They add nothing to the overall story and make this drama unnecessarily longer with their scenes.
As well as this, the editing is not very good, you can tell they have heavily cut scenes out and tried to patch it back together. I'm not overly annoyed at the missing kiss scene from EP.20 but, rather, the anger felt by Meiren afterwards would make more sense if they had left it in. I also wasn't a fan of the undercover bird plot, it made no sense, apart from we got to see Vin Zhang is some sexy outfits. I guess you win some, you lose some. This part of the story was just super jarring from the rest of the light fluff.
In the end, I enjoyed the lightness of it overall and, as I said at the start, the chemistry between Esther Yu and Vin Zhang was the main draw for this drama. I would definitely watch them in a different drama together again, with hopefully a better storyline and less choppy editing. I couldn't give this more than a 6.5 with that story/editing no matter how well the leads did.
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It starts off well and establishes it's setting/direction within the first episode where our two main leads are introduced. I feel in the middle it trails off somewhat and gets a bit tedious before picking up near the end. That might be more to do with its rather simple story line, however stick with it! It's a really sweet, light and fluffy drama, with great music, thats not too demanding to watch.
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I also watched this as it aired.
I really had high hopes for this drama so it was with pig headed determination that I stuck with it despite it getting draggy and slow. The music was probably the best thing in it for me. I did really like the chemistry between the leads and, despite the painstakingly slow development in it, I got drawn into their love story and I adore Ha Ji Won. I really think she saved it! To anyone starting this drama I would say to try stick with it, the story does eventually develop and I really enjoyed the last few episodes that aired.
I wouldn't re-watch this however, it was such hard work to watch the first time around. Overall it's an average drama, that's enjoyable, has pretty good music and not a difficult viewing that serves fine as a simple best friends turned lovers drama.
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