Reviews

Short dramas have their appeal — low commitment, high emotions, a fast-moving story. “A Tale of Love and Loyalty” adds an attractive cast (with a male lead that’s arguably even prettier than his female partner) and some unexpectedly gripping performances, but also has its weak points (more on that later).

The story revolves around a love triangle and power struggle between two men, a Crown Prince (Quan Pei Lun) and his warlord cousin (Richard Li), the Prince of Nanchuan.

Richard Li’s charisma is undeniable. His Yuwen Yuan is an antihero type of character that’s somehow unlikable, infuriating, sexy, and sympathetic all at once — a testament to his acting skills. When he’s reunited with his one-time fiancee, Su Yan, he’s bitter and intent on hurting and humiliating the woman who betrayed him, but in the end finds that he can’t let go of his feelings for her.

Quan Pei Lun also delivers an intense performance as Yuwen Yingren, the Crown Prince (and later Emperor) who married Su Yan and appointed her Empress. His calm demeanor hides a cruel and calculating character and it’s interesting watching his facade crack when things don’t go his way.

The two of them carry the majority of the drama with their compelling portrayals of characters with complex motivations and varying levels of unhinged behavior — their performances are much better than the messy script. Meanwhile, the female lead doesn’t have much of a personality or purpose other than to be caught between the two male leads, although Su Yan has some impactful moments of anger and despair towards the end.

I tend to avoid unhappy endings, but sometimes they work in a Shakespearean tragedy sort of way — as the inevitable outcome of characters’ choices. Rather than “A Tale of Love and Loyalty,” this drama is more like “A Tale of Obsession and Bad Decisions.” The conclusion is tragic, but reflects a quote from the male lead: “The only choice we have is how to die and for whom.”

Overall, this drama is hard to rate. Aside from the unsatisfying ending, it suffers from choppy editing and mixed production values (some decent music, weird filtering on actors’ faces, sets and some costumes look low-budget). But it’s a quick watch (about 5 hours for the whole series), so if you need a dose of angst alongside handsome men with long hair, this might fix your craving.

Note: If you’re watching on Viki, which formats the drama into 10 episodes, make sure to watch ep. 10 first — it’s a prologue.

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Heart Wrenching Drama

I started this back in 2024 and stopped after a few episodes. I could just not get into it. I was taking a break from watching Cdramas, so after watching Bon Appetit, Your Majesty, I continued watching it. Not going to lie, but I did cry a lot. It covers suicide, abuse, and bullying. I just didn’t get the part when Do-Hee’s parents were killed from a car accident, why did Madam Ju take her in? It didn’t made any sense, because where are her relatives? Especially grandparents?? You don’t see her interacting with her own extended family members. It was only the Ju family, that’s it. Watching this was also like watching a fashion show. Anyway, I’m glad some characters redeemed themselves, and the ending was perfect the way it is. It showed what happened to all the remaining supporting characters. It made me laugh and it made me cry. The music was really good, too.

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Not What I Am Looking For

Prior reviewers are singing the praises of a show whose first episode I found dull and boring. I really liked My Mister, but this show doesn't have any characters that I liked. I get it People watch shows for different reasons. Nothing in the first episode presented any reason for me to watch any more episodes. As I think about it, the cinematography bothered me. Something about the lighting made the actors look bad. Perhaps that was on purpose. As there seems to a limited number of actors that work in these series I have seen most of these actors before. Here they look old, tired, and bored. Candidly, the main reason I watched episode 1 was due to Go Youn-jung being in the cast. I enjoyed her performances in Resident Playbook and Can This Love Be Translated, and perhaps she does a great job in this series, too. I'm not sticking around to find out.

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This Is How You End a Trilogy ?

Finally watched Yumi’s Cells 3, and honestly… this is one of the best trilogy finales I’ve ever seen💛

This season feels much more mature, both in terms of storytelling, character development, and the conflicts it explores. We really get to see Yumi grow, no longer just following her feelings, but starting to prioritize logic in making life decisions.

And honestly, Sunrok instantly became my favorite character.
He’s rational, calm, and very grounded in the way he thinks. Even though he’s 6 years younger than Yumi, he actually feels more emotionally mature. Plus… the visuals? Definitely a win😄

What I love about their dynamic is that: this is no longer an impulsive kind of love, but a more realistic relationship, about timing, choices, and how two adults align their lives together.

Other things IMO that make this season stand out:
The storytelling is deeper and very relatable to adult life (I'm adult and I love the way this drama gives me)
The inner “cells” remain iconic, but feel more meaningful (Yumi and Sunrok cells are the best)
The closure feels complete and satisfying (yes, actually I hope it has at least 12 eps, but I got 8-solid,perfect eps)

Happily ever after, our lovely couple Yumi-Sunrok!!!!

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the best

this season was the best! also, this is the best romcom so far this year. i completely love how they showed the meaning of love. we did not see someone changing for someone else, but we saw them accept each other with their different flaws and slowly give their all. they did a great job portraying this with the cells and the tower falling down. their chemistry was out of this world. this season needed 12-16 episodes 😭. i can't let go. although they were together during the last two episodes only, it did not feel rushed, at least that is how i see it. they showed yumi experiencing love in a different way and the true personality of soonrok was absolutely adorable. it was so precious to see how comfortable they got with one another and how yumi also slowly let her guard down because of him. overall, 10+/10. i wish i could watch it for the first time again.

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Acceptable but not exceptional

So I watched this 2024 short drama in 2026 and man have we come a long way. This is a prime example of what these dramas were like back then and it really helps you appreciate how much some of them have improved since then. This one is pretty simple still with not too much fluff but nothing particularly spectacular about it. This is one of the earliest if not the earliest dramas that this CP has done together and they've done a good amount together since then. They're cute together but this early one lacked chemistry between and they've definitely done more exciting projects together since. Overall acceptable watch but easily forgettable too.

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Thee Exception to the Rule

This season was short, sweet, and full of broken rules. It beautifully showed that love doesn’t follow society’s expectations. When the right person enters your life, the rules no longer matter; what matters is embracing every moment with them, even when it goes against what others think relationships should look like.

Though it was the shortest season, it felt entirely complete. Yumi became someone’s exception, and he realized from the very beginning that she was the one for him. I admired how he let love guide him without reservation, setting himself apart from the men in her past. He was bold, fearless, and unwavering; truly her Superman.

I also have to give credit to all of the emotional cells throughout Yumi’s journey of love and self-discovery. The humor, teamwork, adventures, and even the little moments of chaos made the series so entertaining and relatable. It honestly makes you imagine your own little world of cells working behind the scenes in everyday life. Such a creative and well-produced drama.

Thank you to the writers and production team for delivering another K-drama banger.

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An Engaging (even though long) Show

This show was good, and I was thoroughly entertained even though it ran pretty long. I thought I would drop it because most of the synopsis had already happened by episode 15, and I still had more than double that number of episodes left to watch, but I had 0 idea what the plot would be. I am shocked that I made it all the way through, but I don't regret committing.

I liked the creativity around the show. That said, because it was so long, even though it was creative, it also occasionally felt tedious and repetitive. They insisted on killing a lot of characters, which plot-wise made sense, but of course, I never like it when they kill characters that are good. I'm still not over the fact that they killed the little boy sidekick Dou. He was so cute, and he deserved so much better, but I mean, he got to be a general in the end, I guess.

It was doubly ridiculous that an unprecedented number of characters committed suicide by knife to the throat, as if they didn't have poison or something they could use. I don't know why everyone had to take a knife to their throat, including her mother, which was a decent plot twist except for the fact that, once again, someone had taken a knife to their throat to kill themselves as opposed to something different.

I did enjoy that the Great Khan's wife was the real villain, but I hated that her story was pretty similar to every evil empress in that she wanted her son to become a ruler. Honestly, if she had just left Ashile She Er be, he probably would have been the ruler regardless. She actually just wanted power like every other person who is evil, and I'm not convinced about the reason why she did what she did. The Great Khan did suck, and he wasn't a great husband. It sounded like she literally had a better husband before him, and she still killed him, too. To say that her villain origin story started with this guy isn't true because she literally killed the original husband (the father of her son) she had. So, I don't know. It's like I low-key get her point of view, but they made her so black and white that it was a bit ridiculous.

I will say that the uncle killed Li Chang Ge’s dad, and I was trying to figure out how we would come back from that. Of course, they made it so that Li Shi Min literally killed Li Jian Cheng, not to become the crown prince, but because Li Jian Cheng was gonna kill Li Shi Min first, and so to survive, Li Shi Min killed Li Jian Cheng instead. Then it's crazy to know that low-key Li Shi Min was gonna be with Lady Jin if he hadn't come back from war to find out that Li Jian Cheng, the late crown prince, basically raped her???? I feel like they glossed over that a little too much because I'm like, wait, I don't understand how this was allowed and how this even happened. It was insane, but it did work to the plot's advantage. It was one of those points that was, for lack of a better word, “creative”, because normally in these shows where the character needs to get revenge, she succeeds, and it's literally the peak climax – she got her revenge, her parents are satisfied in their graves, and she feels like she's committed proper retribution – but in this show, they kind of turn that on its head and really push that idea of not everything is as it seems. Sometimes you have to think of the greater good as opposed to just revenge, which was this show's strongest point.

The romance was more of a slow burn secondary part of the plot, but I loved:
- Ashile Sun’s three reasons and letter of proposal 😭🥹
- omg omg she found Falcon’s letter of proposal ahhhh so cute i will die
- Their ride or die attitude for each other

Other parts of the show I liked:
- The godfather to father scene between Du Ru Hui and Hao Du was super cute
- Hao Du and Li Le Yan’s romance was nice and pretty decent overall
- Li Le Yan’s “side quest” as a princess learning about the people
- I actually enjoyed Ashile She Er’s character arc and how they explored his brotherhood with Ashile Sun

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Too Young to Communicate

This show was had a strong start for what it was as a light-hearted, youth, slice-of-life type show. It reminded me of Exclusive Fairytale and a little bit of When I Fly Towards You. However, the biggest issue with the show was the last four episodes. Up until then, it was actually very engaging in terms of complex characters. Instead of having a one-all, be-all antagonist, they had characters with depth. Each character had their flaws or moments of attitude/stubbornness that was more realistic than if there were just two characters that were point blank evil for the sake of plot.

That said, the ending was actually so disappointing. I only had 4 episodes left, but I genuinely contemplated not finishing it because of how badly they set up the ending.

SPOILERS BELOW
For the first 20 episodes, the main leads are excellent communicators. They have loved and trusted each other as friends since childhood, and it only strengthened as time went on. So it made no sense for us to just time jump and be told that they took a break because they needed to go their own way, and that led to a breakup basically…and then work backwards from there to show us flashbacks of her missing her recital, him being MIA, and then them not talking for over 12 months properly because both of them felt slighted by the other. Both felt the other had broken up with them, rather than the reality of the situation. It was just absolutely chaotic, and it made no sense for their characters at all for them to have fallen apart the way that they did. It definitely felt forced for the sake of the plot.

The show would have been better off with us actively watching them during the breakup time. Instead of it lasting for a year and a half, it should have only lasted a month or two. We should see them breaking up and figuring themselves out, figuring out how to communicate, rather than them just going silent with each other for over 12 months. That's just so unrealistic, and it made no sense because literally they're just a phone call away. I don't believe that they could not have communicated better.

Similarly, Ning was a solid character, and I understood she didn’t want to rely on her boyfriend but after everything, she ditched Chen Fan only to rely HEAVILY on a man that didn’t give two sh*** about her and almost helped her get assaulted??? Like, make that make sense?

I also want to note they succeeded in casting actors who passed as high schoolers, then college students, then adults. But I really don’t understand why they cast 30-year-olds for these kinds of shows…

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Enjoyed, but wasn't as pulled in

I liked the show, I really did, but I also hated, *like really hated*, the age gap set up, especially when the “secondary lead” was the male lead’s *nephew*. Lord Ding looks older than Zhuo Hua and kept being presented as “a sickly old man about to die” and I just was not a fan of it at all. It was the *main* thing that held this show back. Every time I “forgot” about it or accepted it, they would make some comment or other about his age and how he’s at death’s door or her age and how she has so much life to live. They are both *grown* so it wasn’t creepy, but the gap just served no more purpose than him being sickly.

I also loathed the empress dowager. I can respect the use of a straight-forward antagonist but every time her face was on screen I wanted to throw my phone. The complexity of the first princess really made up for the pain of listening to the empress dowager.

Lastly, I originally kind of liked the monotone baseline personality they gave to both Lord Ding and the first princess. However, since the show was on the longer side, it did start to get frustrating as they did the same ish over and over again. I guess they were solid foils with tragic childhoods that shaped their defensive/offensive personalities.

While Zhuo Hua and Lord Ding’s romance was very slow and *subtle*, I thoroughly enjoyed Zhi Mo & Ju Li’s romance. Just two sweet cuties that deserve nothing but good things. I also enjoyed how Zhi Jian interacted with them.

I wouldn’t rewatch this show just because it is on the longer end and most of the plot is more political than romantic. The show was just barely entertaining to me at first (the FML was an actress I liked and her character as Zhuo Hua was fun) *but* it ramped up once we get the “reveal” *but then* gets a tad repetitive near the end.

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A tad disappointed but was entertianed

This show was *not* bad. In fact, production and acting wise it was pretty solid. However, the plot? Not for me. The slivers of romance and my enjoyment of all the actors faces (esp. Jospeh’s) is really what kept me, and my own burning curiosity to see the ending. Being able to foster said curiosity out of me is credit to the show because I usually just don’t care enough.

Let me break down what I enjoyed:

- **The actors**. Literally everyone was impeccable and felt truly like the character(s) they were playing.
- **The sliver of romance.** It truly is not a lot of romance as I would say this is more a fantasy action than romantasy by any means. But the two main pairs that have a romance do not hold back. You get some fated mates, some “enemies to lovers” to close proximity to “fake dating”. A nice range of tropes with a questionable but classifiable “happy ending” for both. I actually get it a 9 for *both* the pairings because they were equally the main characters. It was a 9 and not a ten bc of the said questionable happy endings.
- The general pace of the plot. I think the reason I was able to finish the show was that it maintained a solid tempo. Anytime I was getting sick of a storyline, the storyline changed to something new.

Time to highlight what didn’t work:
- The synopsis does not set the viewer up for what is to come. It only covers Xiao Wei and the Dragon Deity's power but it should have focused on trying to defeat Jiu Ying. I don’t think saying it up frount would have been a spoiler as the show has so many twists its hard enough to keep up. I genuinely started the show thinking we would spend 29 episodes in Wei Manor and was getting a bit confused by the shows tempo as we got closer to finding Xiao Wei.
- I have to say the synopsis doesn’t lean into romance but the trailer and tone of the show seem, not light hearted but not so serious either so I did expect more romance and levity overall. As such, the show was doomed to be a hit for me. I am not a fan of being given a show I wasn’t expecting lol
- The show overdoes red herrings. In an effort to impress the viewer with plot creativity, the show actually just achieved frustrating me and also becoming a bit redundant in its “plot twists”.
- 9.9x out of 10 I am not a fan of time travel because the show usually just ignores its own plot holes and causes more of a headache than less. While the show did a decent job with the time travel for the whole Lu Wu Yi & Ji Ling’s stuffed fox, it also just felt overwhelming and unnecessary. It was romantic enough but we’re told she *cannot* change the future, but then to prevent him from committing suicide she conveniently could by cutting her tail which was conveniently “fixed” by Ji Ling STILL “committing suicide” by giving her his dragon scale which is conveniently resolved by the DEAD Chi Wen’s last power giving energy to a special rock which is conveniently fast tracked by the ALSO *supposedly* DEAD star stone and idk what else.
- See how conveniently everything unfolded? I am a happily ever after girl so I don’t mind convenient plot solutions but with all those conveniences, why the heck did the show end with 3 out of 4 of the main lead forgetting EVERYTHING that happened in the show? Two of whom randomly land in a different timeline.
- Also circling back to the time travel, the secondary time travel makes less sense because if Jiu Ying was killed back in time before Lu Wu Yi is part of the nine-tailed fox clan, then how does Wu Shi Guang still end up as the 10th dragon deity–everything we watched has been undone and we have 0 real knowledge of the “actual” timeline that happened in the show. We see You Chi
alive again and more serious, but that’s it. Does that mean You Chi’s father isn’t dead because that whole situation didn’t happen? Does that mean Wu Shi Guang never had the sliver of Jiu Ying’s essence in him? If so, why does he remember everything that technically didn’t happen?

See what I mean? The show tried so hard to *be* and instead it was just a snake eating it’s own tail (pun intended bc Jiu Ying is a snake). I enjoyed it at face value but with all the twists and turns that led to dead ends, it’s clear this show wanted to appear intellectual to some degree. If you like fantasy, and don’t mind the headache involved in keeping up with everything, I would recommend, otherwise, eh.

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