Alright, get ready. This is going to be a long review. Let me start with a bit of a preface. I LOVE historical Chinese period dramas. I became hooked after watching Ashes of Love and ever since then, I’ve enjoyed this genre significantly.

This drama started out incredible. I started watching it while it was airing and at the point that I had picked it up, there were 17 or 18 episodes out and subbed. I binged those and waited anxiously every week for new episodes. The plot was great, the cast was great, the music was great, and the lead actors’ chemistry was great.

However, somewhere in the middle of this 51-episode long show, I slowly began to lose interest. The show was dragging on, the lead pair was getting less and less screen time, and several characters who seemed key to the plot (Mo Ruo Fei and Yun Lang) would just disappear for like 10 episodes. On top of this, the second lead wasn’t even introduced to us until around episode 24-26. But after he WAS introduced, it felt like him and Hua Buqi got more screen time together than the actual leads. Apart from this, things that seemed so crucial to the plot like the house of Zhu, Buqi’s mother’s story, more information about her uncle and the whole beggar plot, and who exactly the twins were just did not get the attention that it deserved. Instead, the entire plot was tied up with Builotian which wasn’t even explained that clearly (besides the prophecy that got repeated like 20 times).

Now let’s get to episode 51 and how the show ended. I just don’t understand what exactly the writers were thinking when they wrote that episode. Up until this episode, though there were a few bumps along the road, the show was overall good. But this ending dropped the overall quality of the show by at least a few points. First of all, everyone died. And I mean EVERYONE. Name a character. They probably died. There were also SO many unanswered questions. What happened to the Zhu house grandpa? What happened to the other twin who hid according to the emperor consort’s request? What happened to Bai Jinfai? And the most important question…..HOW TF DID BIN BIN COME BACK TO LIFE? Because unless I was mistaken, he fell off of the same cliff that the old builotian obsessed man fell off of? So, he just magically reappeared out of nowhere and Buqi doesn’t even question it? I mean I’m not complaining that he came back, I’m actually glad. But there are just way too many plot holes.

Despite all of this, the drama did have some good aspects to it. The cast was the main one. Ariel Lin, Vin Zhang, and Austin Lin all did an incredible job as the main leads and portrayed their characters well. The support role actors, especially Xing En (not an easy job portraying the opposite gender), did a fantastic job as well. The music was cute and didn’t distract from the show. The comedy was great. Especially within the house of Zhu, between Shrimpy and Chen Yue’s (Bin bin) friend, and at times between Dong Fang Shi and Hua Buqi. I actually really liked the character progression and development of Dong Fang Shi and Hua Buqi’s relationship. He truly loved her in his own way, and she understood that at the end when he essentially sacrifices himself for her.

So, would I recommend it? Maybe. Would I rewatch it? Probably not.