wildtiger393
London, United Kingdom
My favorite C-Drama to date
For this show, the most important thing to me is the story. It has everything from high-stakes business, to romance, to complex family situations. The business storylines are particularly notable - I haven't seen any other show do such a good job of showing office politics and strategizing between two rival companies.
The drama can also be touching at times, and genuinely brought tears to my eyes on multiple occasions, especially around two thirds of the way through.
Character development is really strong - in general, characters have two sides to them and nobody is "completely good" (with possible exception of Yang Mi's character) or "completely bad". There are multiple character arcs, and some characters who are villains at the start turn out to be very good by the end and vice-versa. These arcs are believable in the sense that you can see the motivations and causes of why people change over time.
The music is something that annoyed me in general, as the score can sometimes be too cheesy and ruin the mood of some scenes. (Although it's better than some other dramas I watched which had almost no music at all. There has to be a balance.) But the music is redeemed by the excellent OST. There are 5 songs - 4 of them are recorded by each of the 4 lead actors, and the last one is by the main male and female lead as a duet. They are great songs, each with its own mood which fits that character quite well (for example, the song recorded by the actor who plays Ling Tian is all about whisking a girl off her feet and taking her to fly away - kind of a show of male dominance, while the song recorded by the actress who plays Lai Xue is all about trying to determine if a romance was really true or just superficial.)
The ending of the show was good, but could have been a lot better in my opinion. It wasn't as emotionally moving as some of the earlier episodes.
One of my biggest problems with the show was that certain events happened off screen, which would be really nice to have seen. I won't mention what they were here to avoid spoilers, but I'll put a separate comment about that with spoiler tags.
Overall, I really loved the show, although it still has some minor flaws. I don't often watch shows twice, but for this one I probably would, as so much happens and I'll enjoy reliving the ups and downs.
The drama can also be touching at times, and genuinely brought tears to my eyes on multiple occasions, especially around two thirds of the way through.
Character development is really strong - in general, characters have two sides to them and nobody is "completely good" (with possible exception of Yang Mi's character) or "completely bad". There are multiple character arcs, and some characters who are villains at the start turn out to be very good by the end and vice-versa. These arcs are believable in the sense that you can see the motivations and causes of why people change over time.
The music is something that annoyed me in general, as the score can sometimes be too cheesy and ruin the mood of some scenes. (Although it's better than some other dramas I watched which had almost no music at all. There has to be a balance.) But the music is redeemed by the excellent OST. There are 5 songs - 4 of them are recorded by each of the 4 lead actors, and the last one is by the main male and female lead as a duet. They are great songs, each with its own mood which fits that character quite well (for example, the song recorded by the actor who plays Ling Tian is all about whisking a girl off her feet and taking her to fly away - kind of a show of male dominance, while the song recorded by the actress who plays Lai Xue is all about trying to determine if a romance was really true or just superficial.)
The ending of the show was good, but could have been a lot better in my opinion. It wasn't as emotionally moving as some of the earlier episodes.
One of my biggest problems with the show was that certain events happened off screen, which would be really nice to have seen. I won't mention what they were here to avoid spoilers, but I'll put a separate comment about that with spoiler tags.
Overall, I really loved the show, although it still has some minor flaws. I don't often watch shows twice, but for this one I probably would, as so much happens and I'll enjoy reliving the ups and downs.
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