Reviews

an intriguing journey

If you are looking for a perfect mix of mystery, suspense and romance, this is for you!

After finding out this drama was adapted from Ding Mo's novel, I knew I was going to enjoy this and it did not disappoint.

The story had many twists and turns which kept me guessing and for me that on edge uncertainty held me until the very end as I wondered how things would wrap up.

Besides the mystery component, the romance was really nice. I love how the main leads relationship was depicted in a mature way, both had a great understanding of each other when facing through difficult situations. In addition to that, the music is well fitted especially with scenes of the leads finding their way back to each other from the time travel. The lyrics of "find you" and "try to remember the kind of september" still lingers on my mind.

The acting of this drama was good and the characters portrayed from the actors was brilliant. I was especially impressed by the main leads amazing chemistry.

My Deepest Dream kept me engaged the whole way throughout with the intriguing plot and it is worth a watch!

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Reality is What It is

I started watching this because of FL, Zhou Ye. However after I started, I was totally drawn into the story of a FL being a villain desperately seeking redemption.

It’s my first time seeing the ML, Wang Xin Yue. I am impressed by the CP’s chemistry and ML’s mature acting skills despite his young age. And Zhou Ye is fantastic in this role.

The story…warning on spoiler.
Begins with dark setting, where the FL, Hua Qian(HQ) who was on a run but was caught by official. Her family, Hua family, had done lots of misdeed, hence her father was executed by the emperor and both her mother and elder brother were also put to death. HQ, FL was on the run but soon was caught and badly beaten up, injured and fainted.
The next scene HQ woke up on her wedding day, which was 2 years ago. So here we get a background set up on FL’s time travelling back to her past. But as we understand C regulation of censorship, this story has a twist.
FL, HQ with all her knowledge of her past, is determine to change her and her family’s fate. So she went on to plan to undo her marriage with Zhong YanLan (ZYL) which she obtained through unscrupulous ways. She tried to gather her father’s misdeed and attempt to make him change his mind and retire early to country side.
In her previous arc, she was a villain who manipulates and plot to marry ZYL. She is one track mind deeply obsessed with her love to ZYL. She lies and broke up ZYL and his childhood love with Mu Yao (MY). MY and her family were victim of Hua family(father)’s scheme to gain power. MY’s family is on exiled. MY was rescued by ZYL, so with his help in the previous arc, she found evidences, she exposes HQ and brought down Hua’s family, which we saw at the beginning of ep So HQ knowing all the likely events, she attempted to reverse her fate.
To redeem herself, in this second arc, she decided to tell ZYL the truth and her misdeed, she plots to divorce him and brought ZYL and MY together. She rescued a beggar, Hua Rong Zhou(HRZ) who became her loyal admirer and protector. Her revealing her true self caught ZYL’s attention and interest. As she lost interest and divorce ZYL, Zhong Xi Wu (ZXW) ZYL’s junior became bolder and decided to confess his long hidden love for her, which put HQ in a dilemma. As HQ would never imagine herself in Zhong’s residence and fighting with women politics. So she accepted ZXW’s mother offer to fake death.
With HQ’s changes, she made peace with ZYL and MY, knew about ZXW’s love for her. But her brother still died protecting her. And her father’s misdeed was still revealed but they weren’t executed, instead retired to a small town by ZXW’s order. ZXW realised at the end that he can’t keep HQ and make peace by letting her go.

Which we were brought to the end (last ep., major spoiler ahead): the plot twist - it’s all HQ’s dream. So after ep. 1, she has been in coma, for 2years, ZXW rescued her and have been nursing her, he manages to convince his Mom to let him manage the business and also take care of the comatose HQ. Finally she woke up but fainted back into the dream as grief stricken of the reality. Then hearing ZXW talking to her in her sleep, she decided to wake up and say goodbye to HRZ who is actually a symbol of herself in the dream state. She makes peace and woke up, calling ZXW’s name, and the story ends.

After thought:
The novel is slightly different and gave HQ a time travel arc, where she gets her redemption and gain her freedom, save her parents and she lives quietly with HRZ in that village. But in this drama, we knew in order to pass C regulation, the screenplay has to be changed to show that reality cannot be changed, and there is no possibility for time travel to reverse your wrongdoing. Hence this story has to add the dream concept and she has to wake up to face her consequences. I understand and felt overall this drama is quite well done, just felt such cruelty on HQ’s story. But with the end is a new beginning, and we knew ZXW will be there for her.

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Live up to disappointment

From the synopsis and even the trailer, you'd think this would be a drama about people going to Beijing to follow their dreams. And in retrospect, it did start off that way in the first quarter of the drama. So of course, I was intrigued. I wasn't expecting them to all to actually get their dream bby the end of the drama but I was fully content with watching their drive and the motivation the characters had to reach it. But unfortunately, the writer didn't have the same idea as me.

Throughout the drama, there was a common theme that became redundant and ridiculous after a while. One of the characters would get a chance to live out their dream, be it singing, acting, writing....and the writer would snatch it away and then repeat the same thing over a few episodes later. It's like letting the characters get a taste of success and then stripping it from them to prolong the story. It made it so the characters would do jobs outside of their ideal profession to earn money. That's understandable but after a while I started to notice that it was steering away from the core reason of them coming to Beijing in the first place and the premise of the story was diminishing from my eyes. But I don't even know why I was surprised because they jumped the shark numerous times with all the gang violence that didn't even fit the scope of the drama at all.

This next part is a spoiler and why I hate this drama and would never recommend it to anyone. So, don't read the next part if you don't care for spoilers.

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The way the screenwriter wrote Jelly Lin's character and the 2ML's characters to be miserable was infuriating. Those two were the happiest at the start of the drama and became miserable by the middle and had the worst ending possible. Jelly Lin's character out of everyone grinded the hardest to reach her dream as an actress. We watched her get her second fl taken away from her then she got the third FL role and that was taken from her as well. Then the writer had her sleep with an investor to get acting jobs, the same investor (an old disgusting guy) ended up getting her pregnant, she had to quit acting because of the disgust she was getting from her costars and special treatment she got from production, her mother disowned her; until finally she got some semblence of happiness when she married the guy who always loved her (2ML), they moved to Paris, and a couple of years passed and they were happy and in love only for the writer to give her husband a tumor and six months to live.

As one would expect. Her husband died, and she ended up alone in Paris for 20 years until coming back to China. And what makes it even crazier is that the ML actually got to become a screenwriter (He was the only one out six that got his dream) and produce movies, but somehow getting Jelly Lin's character to be an actress in one of his movies wasn't an option? Even in the drama the ML said if his scripts where able to beome movies or dramas that he'd cast her and that never happened. I'm so annoyed.

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Honestly this was one of the better dramas this year. The story was refreshing and sorta original: strong female joins politics for selfish reasons at first but then decides to take a stand and make a change, no matter how many times she falls she never gives up and stands up again. Many Kdramas right now are full of cliches,m and repeating story lines but this one wasn't.

Another thing that was refreshing was that SeRa and Go Myung, stay together since they get together. They work as a powerful team to bring down the corruption in their city and in the end they manage to beat it no matter how many hardships they face. Also the actors were so natural and comfortable together those kisses: wow!

Plus the takedown of the villain at the end is one of the best, I kinda even felt a little bad for him, just a tad lol.



YET

Aside from those positives I just listed, I really struggled with this drama. I had huge problems with the lead characters while yes the characters go on their journey of development I couldn't connect with them in the end. it was just they were so exaggerated in one end of the spectrum at first then boom change that I really didn't feel SR & MY growth.

I also felt like the story was too boring at times. It was a drag to watch the last few episodes. I noticed that I just finished it out of obligation not really because I wanted to.

It's not a bad drama, as many enjoyed it, it just wasn't for me . Like I said I guess I couldn't get past those negatives at the beginning to really enjoy it.

The soundtrack wasn't memorable imo, and neither was the supporting characters. Aside from SeRa's friends and family I found all of the other supporting characters annoying.

One thing I did enjoy though, was how the writing showed the struggle many women go thru when entering into politics not just in Korea but all over the world imo. For that reason it was important for Into the Ring to be made.

Overall I give this a 7.0 for the reasons I mentioned. I probably won't be rewatching this but for those who enjoyed it by all means do. Maybe some can see more of the positives rather than the negatives.

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This drama was a fun ride, with all the antics and schemes of the family members competing for a huge sum of money, and the one grandson who cares for his grandmother over money. His family thinks he has no ambition and is just lazy, but isn't that what everyone thinks of artists? His moments with his grandma were the best parts of the show, they were warm and touching.

Most of the family was pretty stupid in the way they thought about money, they'd blow it in one day and be on the streets the next, either b/c they were addicted to shopping, or were easily conned into believing in get rich quick schemes. and we have the adopted son of the grandma who is around the same age as her grandson that I love ^-^ He would try everything to "steal" away the inheritance - why? b/c he had such a huge debt on his shoulders from doing things he shouldn't & he has a sick mom to try & take care of. All of these reasons made me ask his one and only blood-related sister to trick the family into believing she was a lawyer (with the help of the internet, books & a couple 'real' lawyers) so she could keep track of where the money was flowing and how they could get their hands on it, as time goes by she keeps feeling more and more guilty for doing what her brother asked of her & tries to convince herself to run away more than once. She gets conflicted between helping her brother & caring for the family that treats her so kind, not to mention the grandson she finds herself drawn to <3

The grandma has gone down in my books as the best grandma in dramaland ever to exist - I loved her character! and her clothing style and hairstyle were awesome for a grandma ;) I mean how many grandmas would have pink in their hair? ;D She also has a heartbreaking reason why she left her family for America for 50yrs - if I were her I would never forgive her husband -_- He was horrible and did things to her that are disgraceful for anyone to do no matter what they thought to someone they love.

Dong Sook (the grandson) was so adorably cute on this drama, I wanted to wrap him in my arms so many times, and peck him on the cheek for being so gosh darn cute ^^ I loved his character, he was faithful, loyal and trustworthy - the way he talked with his caring sweet soft voice was like heaven to my ears. The way he cared for his grandma was like no one else in that family, he truly sincerely loved her. They were almost like 2 peas in a pod. A pair that couldn't be beat ^-^ They were the perfect team. He also slowly finds himself drawn to this mysterious lawyer who came to his home, and starts to find himself falling in love <3 When things get revealed little by little can his love for her stand the rough waters that are breaking a bit of his trust in her?

The music was perfect for this drama, my favorite song was 'Cry' by Bae Ki Sung (no it's not a sad ballad - it was the entertaining song of the show) I still sing to it & love it.

I will definitely re-watch this someday - I loved every episode and especially the grandma, Dong Sook & Joon Hee (the 'fake' lawyer) - as well as that mischievous little devil Joon Ha (the adopted son).

I personally highly recommend this drama :D

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OK WAIT!!!.......don't push the stop button just yet cause the movie will only get interesting on its half part. It was one of the slowest films I have ever seen even on a Japanese movie standard which is notorious for making slow movies. I don't know if I like the slow pace at the beginning because it is somewhat intended for building up for that awesome last part, I give the first half 5/10 but the later half part is 10/10.

As for the title "100 Yen Love", don't let this title fool you, yes it sounds like a title for a cute romantic comedy film but it is nothing like that and you won't get that feeling here. Go watch it to know why the title is like that and see the transformation of main lead's character which will may inspire you.

The acting, what can I say Sakura Ando is indeed the greatest young japanese actress right today. I'm into contact sports myself and I can say that ando sakura put hard effort to look like a real boxer, her movements don't look fake unlike other sports dramas I've watched. Only a few actress can do or even think of doing roles ando sakura takes. Aside from Hirofumi Arai, I have not idea who the other actors are, but they act well especially her sister in the movie, watched out for that epic food fight.

WARNING!!!
it has both rape and nudity so stay away if you're a minor or a person who can't watch movies like this.

CONCLUSION
Go watch it because it was one of Sakura Ando's best performance and it was Japanese representative on the upcoming Oscars foreign movie category.

Check my Blog for other reviews & other JDramas stuffs. (｡◕‿‿◕｡)
https://thatjapanesedramaguy.blogspot.com/

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Love of the Divine Tree – Vows, fate, and a role-swap romance

🔹 A role-swap xianxia brewed with tender vows and gentle romance. Cozy to follow, even when the side plots lose steam.
🔹 Would I rewatch? Yes, for the chemistry
✨ What happens when the disciple becomes the protector and old vows turn into new love?

📕 Overview 🎬
🔹 40 episodes, xianxia romance
🔹 Adapted from the web novel Xian Tai You Shu (仙台有树) by Kuang Shang Jia Kuang (狂上加狂)
🔹 Deng Wei plays Su Yi Shui, a cool exterior but deeply loyal once you look past the surface.
🔹 Xiang Hanzhi portrays Mu Qing Ge/Xue Ran Ran, who bravely faces her challenges with courage as she begins a new journey
🔹 The story begins when the once-maligned master returns with a new identity, and the roles of master and disciple are reversed.
🔹 Perfect if you are in the mood for protective romance with fantasy twists

🌸 How It Felt Watching 💙
🔹 The opening builds quickly and makes a clear promise to protect, without a heavy backstory.
🔹 Viewing feel: cozy, romantic, and lightly dramatic.
🔹 Themes: loyalty, second chances, and found family.
🔹 The leads bring warmth and believable chemistry, though some supporting roles don’t leave much of an impression.

🎭 Cast & Performances
🔹 Deng Wei as Su Yi Shui: starts distant but slowly shows his softer side.
🔹 Xiang Hanzhi as Mu Qing Ge/Xue Ran Ran: gives a performance that feels easy to connect with.
🔹 The supporting cast helps keep the story moving, though a few characters don’t get much development.

🎵 OST 🎵
🔹 One Tree One Couple (一树一双人) – Tia Ray
🔹 Like an Immortal (若仙) – Zhou Shen
🔹 Fate Circle (缘圈) – Liu Yu Ning (Modern Brothers)
🔹 Unfinished (未尽) – Victor Wong
🔹 Dedication (尽献) – Zhang Zi Ning
🔹 Heaven and Earth (天地鉴) – Zhao Pin Lin

🎞️ Production Style
🔹 Costumes and sets bring the fantasy world to life.
🔹 The special effects looked smoother than expected, especially the glowing power scenes and the wide landscapes.
🔹 Pacing starts off strong, though some side plots drag.

☕ Tea Notes
🔹 What worked: lead chemistry, the protective-romance story, and a production style that fits the mood
🔹 What did not: a few side characters that felt like tropes and some uneven pacing
🔹 Still, the main couple and the core storyline were strong enough that I really enjoyed it overall
🔹 I also enjoyed the BTS clips with the cast and production team; they showed the fun and effort behind the scenes
🔹 Would I rewatch? Yes, for the chemistry

☕ SpillTheDramaTea’s Rating: 9/10
🌿 Tea-Scale: Full of flavor, really enjoyed this one, worth another cup

✏️ As SpillTheDramaTea, I felt relaxed, like enjoying a warm cup of tea after a long day.

✨ Do you feel the pull of a promise that grows into lasting love?

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jun ji hyun and lee min ho are the best

STORY
i can’t even start to express how i feel after finishing this series, i feel empty lol. But seriously though, Gonna miss this a lot. The story was different from your basic Korean drama. it will make you laugh, happy and cry. but it will be worth it.
CAST
As obvious lee min ho is there so it’s going to hot and jun ji hyun is so beautiful i can’t even. Acting is excellent I swear. jun ji hyun's acting is so natural. she gets the character really well.
MUSIC
Songs are so addicting and mesmerising. Every song is a blessing to ears.
REWATCH
I am going to rewatch it sure as hellll

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MY COMPUTER IS ON FIRE AGAIN!!!

"Bloom in the Shadows" refers to the heroine`s return and kind of symbolic "rebirth" into a vengeance filled goddess from hellfire, having a plan to take back everything that belongs to her from her psychopathic adopted sister. I mean we have casinos here and our very cold and hot casino owner who is the husband (in name only) to her adopted sister and the schemes she fulfills to seduce him was OH MY FREAKING GOD SO SEXY!!!THE SEXUAL TENSION WAS BURNING MY COMPUTER DOWN! I love the way our Male Hero could not resist his heroine, knowing she has her own agenda...but letting himself get lured into her web of love and passion. Ah the intensity! One of the best mini-dramas i have watched!

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If you are in for a passionate love story, then this is it.

The newly transferred designer from New York office gets involved with his planner in Tokyo office. It isn't as simple as it appears to be.

Loved the narration, how the story was presented. That made the first few episodes very passionate. It is a mature themed romance story.

Sakurada dori who handles such mature roles with ease, handled his role very well. 10 episodes are just enough.

The beauty of japanese dramas are, they don't drag the story to fit to a 1 hour length or a 16 episodes one.

Just writing what I need to write. Loved the music too.

If you are into mature romance dramas, give this a try!

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Best drama in 2024

I am sad almost nobody is watching the drama even though it is available in international platform. She and Her Girls is one of the best dramas I ever watched. It is really touching and heartwarming. You'll laugh alot but cry a bit too. Magnificent casts & acting, EXCELLENT SCRIPT, lovely music, beautiful sets, truly the drama that SAVES the 2024 cdramaland.

I almost never rewatch drama but I rewatch this even when it had not finished yet. I love watching all the funny moments, which were a lot. The story never bored ne (except during some of the long singing lol) and it is always fresh in each episode.

I also applaud the way they include many issues from gender equality, economic inequality, body dysphoria, governance, bureaucracy, even dating and danger of Internet and stigma against art education, all are real life issues which makes this very relatable.

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