Fully fleshed out and coherent short length costumed drama

I admit I'm really into Yang Ze which is why I sought this out and watched it without subs.

The plot is the story of an immortal close to his final cultivation accidentally helping a little flower immortal reach personhood and she instantly falls in love with him. His last steps include 3 mortal realm travails and she ends up occupying him for them.

I found the plot easy to follow and coherent. The love at first sight from her part made sense (he's beautiful and powerful and she's innocent and new) and the travails were great stories by themselves full of tragic loss and betrayals. I don't normally like tragic stories but in the context of knowing it's part of the travails, it made the little bite-sized tragedies really interesting to watch. The process of him falling for her also made sense and yes, it is eventually a happy ending and, best of all, everything is tied up.

Yang Ze is absolutely one of my favorite actors now, having seen the great job he did in The Killer is Also Romantic and Emperor or Boss. He absolutely sold me and I loved all the different characters he ends up playing and cried at the tribulations he had to go through. The FL was perfectly adequate and had some really stellar moments in the second mortal travail but I admit I was just glued to Yang Ze the whole time.

I really hope someone subs this eventually so you don't need Mandarin comprehension to watch but overall, I am very pleased I watched this.

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Perfectly watchable short form rom-com

This was not the easiest show to follow but it was a fun little watch.

Zhang Xiaohua is a rookie spy who was given her first real mission and is pretty psyched about it. She needed to assassinate a traitor to the royal spy network/association that she's a low ranking member of. There's also money forgery stuff involved.

She maybe sort of succeeds but was held up and foiled by the ML, Luo He. He's a hot shot second in command of a group of bandits. He chases her and she only gets him off her back by saying, "while you were dealing with me, my target is dead!" But was she really?

Then Xiaohua is told that she needs to go integrate herself with the bandit group because they have a super secret list of spies and it'll be a huge problem if that list gets exposed. So now she's pulling out all the tricks trying to get Luo He to take her in. She's a pretty shoddy actress and he's not getting fooled so she settles on pretending he kidnapped her to fool his assistant instead.

She tries lots of unsuccessful things to try and find the list once she's there, including a very unsuccessful seduction of the bandit boss who has a jealous wife. Luo He takes lots of chances to flirtatiously try to get her to come clean about who she is and what she's trying to do.

It honestly kind of lost me and wasn't super interesting at this point. I found the actress grating in how she overacted the comedy and I was just not getting what anyone else's motivation was.

The first big twist/turning point (SPOILER):
Oh but wait! Luo He is actually a seasoned, higher ranking royal spy! They're actually on the same side, he's actually just been undercover this whole time and he wants the list too. But how can two spies trust each other?
(END SPOILER)

There's actually a few more twists after that, but the first one was when I started being more interested in the plot. The romance was cute. The comedy was pretty bad and felt pretty forced. But the twisty plot actually got more interesting, which was nice.

Unlike many shorts, it does have a Happy Ending and is totally wrapped up at the end. I didn't think any of the actors did a stellar job, but I think it was perfectly acceptable to tell what ended up being a somewhat interesting story with a cute romance. I also enjoyed the music.



Random favorite part: her messenger bird is a chicken.

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Adorable short form, only an hour long and it's satisfying!

Sign me up for sexy merman!

This absolutely has everything I love to see and in such a nicely packaged hour long short format. It has a strong, role-reversed female lead (she's the state preceptor!). It has a male lead who is sweet and innocent (did you know merman mate for life?) but isn't dumb at all. Fu Xu is actually very smart and extremely strong to the point where if he were in a fight, he's just gonna win it. I mean, supernatural merman powers, so that makes sense. It has characters who don't pretend they are all saints. The FL gets physical and isn't shy about it. I wanted more, but it was a happy ending and the major plot is resolved at the end.

This is the male lead's only role so far, and I thought he did a great job. He is incredibly attractive but also really sold the character in terms of his faithfulness, innocence, and strong protective instincts. The merman make up on him was also surprisingly not terrible considering it's an hour long short form drama.

I've seen the female lead in The Shoufu Can Read Mind and I remember liking her in that as well so I'm excited to see what else she does in the future. I thought she could have been more expressive (feels like she spends the entire drama looking frustrated) but I'm not sure how much that was just what the script called for.

Overall, definitely a lovely short watch and I really hope to see more from the male lead actor!

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This love is Everything

I do not give a 10 lightly or easily but here we are. I don't normally rewatch things. Yet, I have already rewatched once with a friend who is not a drama-watcher and already have plans for another rewatch with my spouse. It's that good.

I'm sure everyone else has waxed poetic about every facet of this great show so I will focus my review on what blew me away the most: The Male Lead. Shaodian Youqin. Acted spectacularly by Chen Xing Xu.

SDYQ is the best male lead I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing. His strength, his resolve, and his determination are heavily intertwined with his softness, his kindness, and his tender affections. He is not afraid to forsake the world for his love. He never tries to keep Yetan in the dark. He guides and helps her and gives her the tools to be strong but also steps back when he knows it's not his place. He is open with his devotion. He has absolute faith in her.

Truly, I think we'd all be richer for it if we can have more SDYQs in the drama world. This character proves that you can have an engaging, beautiful, and heart wrenching love story without falling into toxic male lead tropes. We can have some of the best humor I've ever seen without diminishing the character growths of the main cast.

Yes, I am absolutely biased. But if you are at all tempted by the prospect of a green flag male lead who is so green that it puts Shrek to shame, give The Starry Love a try.

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Unexpected Gem

Short summary:
Qing Heng is a dead soul trying to find his love who he's been searching for for a very long time. But dead souls are required to give up all their memories, so how can he fight the rules of heavens to find his beloved?

Saw this on iQiyi and decided to give it a try and was very pleasantly surprised. I spent most of the movie wondering how on earth they were going to resolve anything and surprisingly, it did! I've watched much longer full length dramas that managed a fraction of the plot resolution that this movie did. We find out major motivations of main characters and there are surprises along the way.

You might get less out of it if you're not familiar with Chinese mythology about Meng Po and reincarnation. An important point to know is that canonically, Meng Po is the lady who cooks up the soup of forgetfulness that one must drink before getting reincarnated.

It's the length of a movie so the main points are not overly complicated but I think the execution was very well done considering the constraints of telling a fairly involved story in 90 minutes. I thought the CGI was actually very well done for what I assumed was not a movie with a big budget. I recognize the female lead from a (passable but not great) low budget costume drama I've seen before and the ML seems to have been only in support roles so far. They both did a solid job acting. Some of the support cast didn't sell their roles anywhere near as well but it hardly mattered when they had so little screentime.

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Isekai with Big Heart

The drama is upfront about the fictionalized world and characters but despite that, I ugly cried for much of the sad parts. The story, both inside the game world and the overall drama story, were that touching and well fleshed out. That said, the comedy was definitely on point as well and I never forgot that it was light with lower stakes, just that I was very invested despite the lower stakes.

This was my first drama with Liu Yi Chang and I immediately started looking for more things he was in. His voice has a hypnotic ASMR quality and I live for the way he calls the FL. His character's love is so pure and beautiful.

The supporting cast were all excellent. Once the big reveal happened, there was definitely a good "aha" moment when a lot of things that were puzzling before made a lot of sense. There's no stereotypical villain since the driving forces are more how things are not under the characters' controls and I enjoyed that as a plot device. My heart broke with the FL multiple times over characters that she and I both knew weren't "real."

My only complaint, as is usual with a lot of dramas, is that I wish the happy ending was more fleshed out.

Overall, an absolute top tier costumed rom-com.

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Fun, but shallow and requires heavier suspension of disbelief than one might think

Why I watched:
I am a big fan of Chen Fangtong, and probably have more than a bit of bias. I think she is adorable and have been consistently impressed with her acting. When I saw this show was available, I had to jump right in.

What I liked:
- As expected, Chen Fangtong was a treat. I think she sells comedy well and there were a number of good laugh out loud moments in the show. Her expressions are on point and I love her sass.
- The premise is a little different and somewhat novel because of it. Instead of transmigrating and staying in the new world, the FL transmigrates when she falls asleep and is back in the real world when she wakes up. This created an interesting duality and it was interesting to see the scenes set in the real world, with other characters who are aware of what she was going through.
- It definitely doesn't take itself too seriously and there were some great light-hearted comedy moment.
- It is an easy watch/binge. Events move at a good pace that makes sense in the context of the story. It does wrap up instead of being a cliffhanger.

What fell flat:
- The chemistry was massively disappointing. Chen Fangtong has shown in other shows that she can create amazing chemistry with her co-stars but there was so very little of it here. The kisses, though there were many, were the stoic pecks that I would not have expected from Chen Fangtong.
- I have seen the male lead in one other show and I have not been very impressed. I thought he was very wooden in this show for one of his roles and was not especially stand-out for his other one.
- The story started strong but quickly started feeling nonsensical. The villains' motives made almost no sense and the main characters' decision-making seemed lacking at best. The entire conflict feels like it could have been avoided with one call to the authorities and at no point did it feel like there was a good explanation as to why it had to unfold the way it did.
- The backstories felt forced and shallow.
- The CGI for some scenes were pretty bad. The rooftop heart-to-hearts with blossoms falling in the background looked like it was done by some amateur VFX artists.
- The costumes/hair/make-up were questionable. I give it a bit of slack because within the context of the story, it could make sense. But at the same time, it sometimes just looked bad.

In summary:
I thought this show was underrated (currently a 7.4) when I first started because I found the beginning to be very charming and hilarious. It was an easy watch, but it quickly became an exercise in suspending my disbelief because none of the characters' motivations were that deep or even made much sense. I wanted to like this more because of the lead actress, but I have to admit that overall this short form falls on the side of mediocre and around a 7.5 is where I would rate it as well.

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