My relationship with this drama can be described as "it's complicated". I watched it all, because I liked it that much, but my friends who have seen me posting about it on the feeds (I have to thank them for their patience, this was 50 episodes after all!) probably thought I hated it sometimes. Yes, I complained about it that much.

This drama is highly rated, so I guess I have some explaining to do. That's one reason why I am writing this review - seeing that so many people absolutely adored this drama, I want to offer a somewhat different point of view. The other reason is that I feel like I want to sort out my thoughts about it.

So, did I like it at all? Yes, I did. Not because I thought it was very beautiful or extraordinary or anything, and not because I was swept away by the romance. No, on the contrary I found this drama to be very, very silly with too many plotholes, and even though I generally enjoy teacher/student romances I didn't feel a lot of "chemistry" in this drama. Part of it can be explained by the fact that the man lives in "The Hall of Emotionless", above everything else. But even so… At first I was disappointed with this drama and thought to myself: "What ever is this?!" but I learned to take it for what it was and enjoy iy as such. I saw this drama as light and fun, not a comedy but definitely impossible to take seriously, some things annoying and some things delightfully enjoyable.

The thing is, many things in this drama don't make a lot of sense, especially not the details. Things happen without reason or explanation all of a sudden and the characters are saying and doing irrational things sometimes. At Chang Liu they honour vitures like being "emotionless" and without desire and ambition. Yet all of the characters - except the male lead, sometimes - display all kinds of very human emotions all the time - like distrust and suspicion, jealousy, and a lot of importance is placed on the times when the disciples have to compete agains each other. They have to do their best to win, because there can only be one winner of course. I fail to understand how it is possible to fight for the spot as the sect leader's disciple without having any feelings about it. Also, it is against the rule to fall in love, but some people break the rule with no consequences.

The writing is definitely lacking, it does a terrible job at explaining the details and even the greater lines that would make the context - the setting, the basics of this fantasy world - come to life. We know that there are some "demons" and some "immortals" and some "humans". And there is some great, dark danger that is threathening the existence of the whole world. How and why I have no idea, but the "deity devices" that are spread out among the various sects (what is the purpose of these sects and what are they doing there?) can keep things in check. Of course, the bad guys are trying to steal these devices. All of this is sketchy at best. It seems like someone wanted to write a teacher/student story in a fantasy world, but didn't have enough imagination, and decided to roughly copy the manual of "Fantasy Story 1A". There they are "cultivating", which in some way or another means that they learn magic skills that mostly consist of being able to fly on the edge of a sword, push people away with a flash of light or create a shield around them, and make all those wuxia moves. The good guys live in golden halls, the bad guys live in dark, cave-like places, and their soldiers seem to be retired orchs who are sometimes very, very useless fighters. I really hated how boring and pointless the whole fantasy setting was. There is not even any real feeling of Good v/s Evil.

I liked, no, I adored many of the "bad guys" in this drama. I don't often fall for the characters that belong to or turn to "the dark side", but if it's done the right way, there is something about it that appeals to me. I liked Sha Quian Mo, aka Sha Jie Jie, from the start. I like the way he's so powerful and has almost complete control over his subordinates - he has quite a bit of that awesome great power that makes some people kind of hot - and yet he's so emotional and soft on the inside. Or at least a part of his inside... He was my favourite and with a better story, he could have been a wonderful character! Purple Fairy, too, is a character who is strong and proud and elegant, sharp and powerful. Too bad this is mostly ruined by her foolishness, her obsession with love that makes her kind of stupid, and weak. Even so, I always adored her and stayed a little bit on her side even when she did bad things. (As for the bad guys, Ni Man Tian was one I did not like at all. She was just a spoiled brat who was mean for no reason. No fun at all.) Dongfang was also an interesting character and one that I liked more and more, once I got past the first few annoying episodes. I also liked some of the supporting characters. (Yes, I'm saying that I like the supporting characters more than the main couple, but… I find that to be pretty okay. It's too bad the supposedly great romance didn't sweep me off my feet this time, but looking at the rating and the other reviews, I guess that's just me…)

It reverses good and bad, in a way. The people in the golden and pastel coloured castle are the good guys, but often they are colder and more cruel than the villains. Well, this is at least true about some of them. There are some lovable cliché good guys (minor characters who are sweet and give the leads support in the right moments) and some cliché bad guys whom you love to hate. Because of this "reversal" in the characters attitudes and actions (or should I say that some characters are actually rather multi-layered) it is sad that the setting is still so cliché. I dislike how they use colours so stereotypically, especially knowing that some c-dramas can be really beautiful. (I've heard that this is actually pretty good for its genre, but seeing as this is my first Chinese fantasy drama I can't compare it. It does have a few pretty sceneries but nothing special, in my opinion.)

This drama is like a big bowl of candy. Not premium quality, stuff, but sweet and colourful. Too much, but it kind of looks good. Even though you know it when you bite into it, that there's really not point in eating it, you just can't resist it. You just take another piece. And another, and another, until you're full and had enough. You shouldn't have started eating to begin with. But another day, you come back for more!

That's what this drama was like for me. I dislike a lot of things about it. I wouldn't recommend it for the romance - as much as I have a soft spot for teacher/student relationships, this couple did not move me. Even though I have to admit there were a few sweet moments, overall I find this romance utterly unromantic with no chemistry to speak of. Bai Zi Hua is a very stupid man whose decisions don’t make sense a lot if the time.

Well, there's one thing about it - this drama, I found it amusing! I was disappointed at first, because I had expected something grand and beautiful and exquisite (well, who can blame me, the second c-drama I ever watched was Nirvana in Fire and it kind of set the bar and made me have unreasonable expectations). I found this to be ridicilously silly. It really is. But once I accepted the silliness, embraced the comedy (although I'm not sure if all the things that made me laugh were meant to be funny) and tried to ignore the stupidness of a lot of the plot, The Journey of Flower quickly became my guilty pleasure. If I hadn’t had that feeling about it, I would have dropped it after four or five episodes… but I did watch the whole thing and didn’t skip anything except a few figthing scenes in the last half of the drama.

Tonight I also watched a few of the cut scenes on YouTube. They are... interesting, but including them (the ones I watched) would not have made the drama better in my opinion, only more frustrating.