luckz

A "medicinal slave"? Oh, it's basically the same as a "blood slave" in https://mydramalist.com/758211-hua-xin-wei-lao ^_^

It's not really open, more not fleshed out. The leads are together and have a kid, but *how* they are together and whether she becomes the empress or stays with her people and so on is unexplored.

It's like "why are there suddenly zombies" or "why are there suddenly remote controlled puppets". It just happens.

I'm also not sure what the point is for FL shooting ML twice at the end, when SML or any of the girls could have pushed ML out of the way. Villain dies from just one shot anyway.

The age of their child does not make a lot of sense either, given the 4 years time skip, as it's say 90% implied to be the leads' and not a random adopted orphan.

The production was pretty good, with some creative camera work, artistic flair, and decent enough fight scenes. The music does the job as well.
The colours are a bit off though, sometimes, due to too intense illumination in dark conditions.

💯!

FH did the 'enemies' part much more seriously than most long-form dramas I've watched.

But ok, maybe I did not mind it because I lack the patience for slow burn / time-wasting "get together at 80%" stuff.

Watched https://mydramalist.com/758211-hua-xin-wei-lao and https://mydramalist.com/763175-the-antidote-to-love back to back because they sounded quite similar, and:
- FL (Zhu Li Lan) is the young mistress / princess / saint of a group of people, and hates the ML for leading their massacre (and betraying the love they shared).
- after this massacre, FL becomes some sort of slave of lowest social status in the land where ML is the army-leading prince.
- right at the start, FL joins ML's household, somewhat against her will of course, but is bent on revenge against him.
- (drinking) the FL's blood helps the ML.

In both shows, I liked the first bunch of episodes, and then the writers do something that reduces my interest.
Both shows do a bunch of meandering (one earlier, the other later).
Both drip-feed the youthful love & such flashback explanation, but TPoL's backstory/setting is more complex and more poorly explained (I can't say for sure if the subtitles are bad or the writers just don't communicate anything). By the end of TAtL, you definitely understand the past events and the story's setting itself.
Neither show has an expressive ML.

This show goes full Rugal with first suddenly having zombies and later remote controlled puppets. Both are short interludes, so it doesn't disrupt things too much.


A big portion of the finale is a pity party for some drama-µ-Hitler:
Genocide and human experiments are okay if you do them out of "love" for a family member.

Watched https://mydramalist.com/758211-hua-xin-wei-lao and https://mydramalist.com/763175-the-antidote-to-love back to back because they sounded quite similar, and:
- FL (Zhu Li Lan) is the young mistress / princess / saint of a group of people, and hates the ML for leading their massacre (and betraying the love they shared).
- after this massacre, FL becomes some sort of slave of lowest social status in the land where ML is the army-leading prince.
- right at the start, FL joins ML's household, somewhat against her will of course, but is bent on revenge against him.
- (drinking) the FL's blood helps the ML.

In both shows, I liked the first bunch of episodes, and then the writers do something that reduces my interest.
Both shows do a bunch of meandering (one earlier, the other later).
Both drip-feed the youthful love & such flashback explanation, but TPoL's backstory/setting is more complex and more poorly explained (I can't say for sure if the subtitles are bad or the writers just don't communicate anything). By the end of TAtL, you definitely understand the past events and the story's setting itself.
Neither show has an expressive ML.

In this show, the SML provides some (not particularly much) comedic relief, while in The Prisoner of Love I suppose the doctor character does.

The start is surprisingly good, with nice sets for a budget show.
After a few episodes it just becomes random stuff happening for the sake of it.
Youth flashbacks are thrown in haphazardly in the middle of the show, however they don't properly explain what happened in the past and don't provide a helpful timeline. (There's a more understandable explanation close to the end, which still doesn't satisfy.)

Later on, idiotic tropes make the show difficult to watch for a bit.
The (few) fight scenes are super bad.

The leads' chemistry & confession are underwhelming.
The physician character puts in a lot of work to keep the show watchable.
The ending/resolution is a bit off too.


(Two scenes are very immersion-breaking due to production mistakes and complete lack of any logic.)

I liked the start and that -for once- a xianxia/xuanhuan is not annoyingly dubbed.

Dragging the identity thing ruined it for me though, and all villains were meh.

Makes no sense to give a besties-sismance redemption arc to a murderer.
The oh-ackshually way it's wrapped up meant the ML was off-screen a lot.


Chunmei was long *dead* in timeline 1 and thus had to still be dead in timeline 3. Writers seemingly forgot about it and resurrected her.

Enjoyed it until the very last arc, where the FL wasn't as much in the driver seat and the plot crumbled a bit.

In the middle, the Jiang Yu Er + Lu Liang duo got too much screentime.

is it useful to watch this with (after) Blood Of Youth, like do the actors have similar roles or are there little references to the other?

They're never enemies, he "just pretends to be"

For me the idiotic way the writing goes about doing this cost the show at least two points, so you're definitely not alone.
(There were parts of the later plot years that I also found quite weak and unconvincing, but that wasn't as disruptive.)

And yes, for the overall plot trajectory and some of the motifs used it's definitely *necessary* to have that element in the plot, but as you said, the "how" of it is totally unconvincing.

Well, the angsty part one could argue is required to get the point across.
You can try https://mydramalist.com/50395-forever-love , it cuts out and tones down most of the angsty stuff. But from production, cast, chemistry, to OST, it's of course notably weaker.

With that said, depending on your personality, either watch L&P first and use the other as a post-angst recovery pill, or start with the easier watch (dip in toes first) and only fully submerge later.

In the scene at 11 minutes in EP 14, did they forget Bu Xiu's blue-silverish eyes (actor Lu Qi)?
They're just brown :c