A Humble Enthusiast of Sorts

The Soulmate - A fun murder mystery drama set in the Republican Era with an isekai twist!

2026-06-10T11:45:32Z

Drama title: The Soulmate
No. of episodes : 24
Duration of watching: 6/6/2026 - 7/6/2026 (this is a mini drama with episodes spanning around 13 to 15 minutes each)

I decided to watch this drama on a whim because my mind was so restless and I wasn't able to focus on a lot of the things I usually do in the past couple of days. Basically I was feeling bored and wanted to do something to get rid of the boredom but I also don't have the mood to do anything much hence the restlessness of my mind caused by the conflicting feelings. It was much worse on the day before I decided to watch this drama though so I'm glad that my mind was calm enough to watch and enjoy this drama.

What's the drama about?

Nan Yu and Gao Han - 2 NPCs from different games - suddenly find themselves transported to a murder mystery game set in the Republican Era. With Nan Yu's background as a matchmaking NPC in the dating sim game where she originally belongs to and Gao Han as a detective in his original game, the two must work together to solve the murder of the Grand Marshal of Rongcheng Town, believing that solving it is the key to coming back to their respective games...

Characters

— Nan Yu, played by Snow Kong :

A matchmaking NPC from a dating sim game who suddenly woke up in the body of Miss Yu Mei Ren — a coroner in a murder mystery game set in the Republican era. As a matchmaking NPC, Nan Yu's train of thought mostly consists of her evaluation of the people around her and their interpersonal relationships. This rather puts her at a disadvantage when she tries to solve the murder mystery as she usually comes up with speculations rather than basing her conclusion off on facts. Realizing her disadvantage, Nan Yu seeks the help of Gao Han and works together with him to solve the case. Despite being not very good at investigating initially, Nan Yu is street-smart and learns very quickly from Gao Han, gradually becoming capable in doing her own investigation though still not as skilled as Gao Han.

— Gao Han, played by Li Ge Yang :

Gao Han is a top detective NPC in his original game. He first meets Nan Yu when she has to do an autopsy on the Grand Marshal's body. Nan Yu seeks his help when she has no clue how to proceed with the autopsy hence letting him taking over her body during the procedure as Gao Han is initially transferred as only data in the game and has no physical body of his own. While Gao Han is skilled in investigation, he still counts on Nan Yu for her people skills, working well together. Coming from a mystery-solving game and only knowing how to solve mysteries all his life, he is surprised to see himself only thinking of Nan Yu during his almost final moments — showing just how much he cares and loves Nan Yu.

Li Ge Yang is the reason why I came across this drama as I had wanted to check his other works after seeing him as the second male lead in In Blossom. I thought he had a really good screen presence and bounced off of Liu Xueyi pretty well in that drama — hence the reason why I got interested to watch more of his works. His acting in this is decent at best though as I feel like his smile felt awkward and forced at times and his expressions don't match certain situations.

— Jiang Junsheng, played by Zhang Hao Yu :

Jiang Junsheng is an NPC of the murder mystery game that both Gao Han and Nan Yu got transferred to. He is the Marshal of Rongcheng Town as well as the Grand Marshal's adopted son and Gu Mengqiu's adopted brother. Jiang Junsheng is a righteous and stoic man who tries to uphold justice as best as he can. Beneath his stoic facade, lies a good heart for those he truly cares about — making him a good friend to both Nan Yu and Gao Han (in addition to being a good love rival to him).

I'm only writing about these 3 characters are they are the core characters and progressed the story the most.

Things that bothered me/I don't like/feel that there's room for improvement

— The acting :

The acting was overall pretty good but there are some moments when Gao Han's smile looked pretty awkward and forced while some characters just don't express their emotions well at times.

— The pacing of the mystery-solving :

I think the mystery was okay but at one point it did feel like they were going around in circles. It's probably just me though.

— The fight choreography :

Most of the fighting scenes looked decent at best but there are some fight scenes that pretty sloppy.

Things that I absolutely love!

— The bond between Nan Yu, Gao Han and Jiang Junsheng :

Jiang Junsheng actually cares and loves Miss Yu but was just too stoic to show his feelings. When Nan Yu came into the picture (read : took over Miss Yu's body after her passing), she mostly avoided him because she initially distrusts and is naturally closer to Gao Han because she likes him and they are in the same boat, which triggered Jiang Junsheng to make an effort to show his sincere feelings for her. Gao Han has always liked Nan Yu since they first met. Nan Yu, just like Gao Han, has feelings for him since earlier on but the both of them just couldn't expressed their feelings to each other at first.

Naturally, there exists a love triangle between the 3 of them with both Gao Han and Jiang Junsheng vying for Nan Yu's attention in their own way. However, Nan Yu's life, happiness and safety come first for the both of them and they would much rather work together to ensure those aspects are in a good place first rather than one upping the other for Nan Yu's love. As a result, Gao Han and Jiang Junsheng ended up as good rivals and Nan Yu becomes closer to Jiang Junsheng when she realizes that he is actually a good person.

— The ending theme

— The isekai twist :

I think the concept of both Nan Yu and Gao Han originally being NPCs from their respective games trapped in another game is interesting. I just wish we could have seen a bit more of the game which Gao Han originally belonged to.

— The costumes and the sets

Other thoughts about this drama

— Love and hatred can drive people to go through extreme lengths for their loved ones :

This thought exists because of Zhang Zhiran and Gu Mengqiu. Near the end of the series, it was properly revealed that Gu Mengqiu had been Zhang Zhiran's long-lost younger sister after all. And just like that, Zhang Zhiran's actions made sense to me, because I was initially confused as to why would he kill his own lover and later on himself even though it seemed like he had already achieved his goal. Then, it turns out that everything he did was to protect Gu Mengqiu, to erase all traces of her involvement in the murder case. It all started when Zhang Zhiran killed the Grand Marshal in order to save Gu Mengqiu from his harassment. From then on, Zhang Zhiran killed all the relevant witnesses, including his lover Feng Qianhong in order to protect Gu Mengqiu. Despite knowing that his sister framed him, Zhang Zhiran let Gu Mengqiu use himself to her advantage, and ultimately sacrificed himself in order to cover the real truth of what happened. It was because of his love for his younger sister that he is willing to sacrifice everything — even his own life.

As for Gu Mengqiu, despite using all means possible to leave town, she decided to stay after her brother's death in order to avenge him as she believes the main trio is responsible for his death. Because of her hatred for them and her love for her brother, she is willing to jeopardize her own dreams and plans that she had worked and yearned so hard for.

While one action isn't really better than the other in this case, it just goes to show how hatred and love can really drive a person to go through extreme lengths for their loved ones.

All in all, this was an enjoyable mini drama which was worth the time to watch. I had a hard time deciding between 8.5 or 9.0 for my rating of this drama but the plot reveal about Zhang Zhiran and Gu Mengqiu just made it shoot up to a solid 9/10 for me because I think that plot point ties everything up neatly that it gave a bit of an impact on me, even if the characters' actions and decisions can be a bit stupid sometimes and even when it felt like they were going around in circles trying to solve the mystery at one point.

That's all that I have to write about this drama. See you in the next entry!

Cinderella Closet - A Story That Reminds Us to Love Ourselves for Who We Are (Spoiler Alert!)

2026-06-08T11:34:58Z

Drama title : Cinderella Closet

No. of episodes : 12

Duration of watching: 24/5/2026 - 25/5/2026 (I managed to finish it in 2 days because this is a 12-episode drama with each episode lasting around 20 minutes)

This drama is just something I picked up as my next watch after the The Epoch of Miyu, and also because I had my eye on it since Netflix released it around last year. The story is simple and sweet, and the medium length format makes it easier on the brain and eyes for me after something as drama-heavy as The Epoch of Miyu. With that being said, I will try to keep this entry simple as I realized my previous entry on The Epoch of Miyu is way too lengthy that even I don't think I would read it myself.

What's the drama about?

Fukunaga Haruka is a young woman who moved from the countryside for her college life in Tokyo. She has a crush on her co-worker, Kurotaki Keisuke, at the restaurant where she works part-time. On her 20th birthday, she eagerly sets off to meet Keisuke, mistakenly assuming that he had arranged for a date with her on that day. Being a plain jane, Haruka fusses over her appearance and meets Kamiyama Hikaru — whom she accidentally bumped into while rushing to work some time before her birthday — again at a cosmetics store and asks for his help, only to realize that it had been a misunderstanding between Haruka and Keisuke as he forgets his careless promise to her and Haruka didn't confirm with him beforehand.

Seeing Haruka feeling dejected, Hikaru gives her a simple makeover so that she can face Keisuke confidently. Afterwards, Haruka goes out drinking with Hikaru and ends up having him stay the night at the apartment. When Haruka wakes up the next morning, she is surprised to discover that the beautiful Hikaru is actually a young man who likes to cross-dress! And thus begins the tale of their unlikely friendship that eventually evolves into love...

Characters

— Fukunaga Haruka, played by Osaki Ichika :

Haruka is a bubbly, kind and upfront young woman who is currently a college student working part-time at the same restaurant as her crush Kurotaki Keisuke. She hopes to fulfil her bucket list and live her dream life in Tokyo. Her life took an adventurous turn after she meets Hikaru as with Hikaru's skills (or magic, as Haruka calls it), Keisuke starts to notice her and eventually asks her out. From then on, Haruka starts to learn more about Keisuke, Miorin and later on understands her own true feelings towards Keisuke in their current relationship.

Her friendship with Hikaru feels quite entertaining and refreshing to watch as Haruka mostly sees Hikaru as a "girl friend" initially but more importantly, Haruka really likes to be his friend mainly for the fact that she feels so comfortable around him before finally realizing that she loves him romantically.

Their dynamic is interesting as Haruka's bubbly and upfront personality is often contrasted with Hikaru's cool and confident demeanour that hides his vulnerabilities. This doesn't mean that Haruka isn't without a shred of worry though, it's just that to me it seems that Haruka recognizes and sorts out through her feelings a lot quicker than Hikaru which leads to her beating Hikaru at both confessing love and proposing marriage to him.

Through Haruka's interactions with Hikaru, Keisuke and Miorin, we see her getting closer to them which leads to Haruka comparing herself to them and makes her explore and question her identity as a person further. As Haruka is still a young person, she sometimes tends to overthink about this but is very good at identifying her feelings hence she almost always manages to resolve her worries on her own account though the most important lesson of loving herself is ultimately learnt through her relationship with Hikaru.

— Kamiyama Hikaru, played by Matsumoto Leo :

A stylish young man who likes to cross-dress as a girl simply because he likes beautiful things (or at least that's what he told Haruka). He is a trade school student who studies cosmetology and fashion and is top of his class with his amazing creativity, talent and skills - all of which he utilizes to "cast a spell" on Haruka, essentially becoming Haruka's "fairy godmother".

Beneath Hikaru's bold choice of fashion and his cool and calm demeanour, lies hidden vulnerabilities. Hikaru's relationship with his father is strained as his father doesn't approve of him cross-dressing and Hikaru isn't always ready to reveal the fact that he is a man when he cross-dresses around those he is unfamiliar with — which factors into his reluctance to confess his feelings earlier on to Haruka and him putting up an effort to keep the fact that he is a guy a secret from Kurotaki just so Haruka doesn't get judged by Kurotaki for being friends with a guy who cross-dresses. So, even though Hikaru cross-dresses confidently to the people around him, sometimes his getup also acts as an armour to certain people and situation around him.

Just like how Haruka is comfortable being with Hikaru, Hikaru also feels just as comfortable when he spends time with her due to her open-mindedness and straightforward personality. He admits to liking Haruka since the first time they met and looked after her in his own way, before they eventually confessed their feelings to each other and live together. Much like Haruka, Hikaru also learns to fully love everything about himself and realizes that using make-up is all about the magic of enhancing one's appearance and charm instead of using it as an armour, through their time together.

— Kurotaki Keisuke, played by Hachimura Rintaro :

The colleague whom Haruka has a crush on and briefly dated in the series. Much like Haruka, he is friendly but perhaps a bit too approachable for Miorin's and Haruka's liking, which makes Haruka feels insecure when they dated — making Haruka hate the person that she becomes when she's with him, hence the reason why they broke up. They remained good friends after the breakup though and Kurotaki's presence gives a much needed push for Hikaru to show that he is really committed to Haruka and truly loves her.

— Suzuki "Miorin" Mio, played by Mito Yuna :

Kurotaki's ex-girlfriend from when they were freshmen in high school before she transferred schools after their break-up. Similar to Haruka, Miorin's reason for breaking up with Kurotaki is because she feels insecure when she sees Kurotaki being too approachable and nice to other girls which somehow also leads to her feeling that she isn't good enough to be with him. In the present time in the series, she becomes a beauty influencer and meets Kurotaki again when Haruka invited him to one of her offline events.

Miorin initially wanted to create a wedge in Haruka's and Kurotaki's relationship but didn't proceed when she sees that Kurotaki really likes Haruka. She later becomes Haruka's close friend and decides to rectify the faults in Kurotaki's too approachable personality so that Kurotaki can have a stable relationship with the person that he likes.

Things that bothered me/I don't like/feel that there's room for improvement

I don't think I have much to nitpick about except maybe about Hikaru's parents. I wish they had just expanded a bit on how his father finally accepts him for who he is.

Things that I absolutely love!

— The core characters' personalities :

They are pretty much unapologetically themselves, being nice and polite to each other but also don't shy away from saying their mind to each other. This makes the issues between them resolve fast and the drama can focus more on their growth (especially for Haruka and Hikaru).

— Haruka and Hikaru's dynamic

— Matsumoto Leo's performance :

This is my first drama of him and I think he acted so well in this drama. He expresses his emotions through his eyes so well. I hope to see more of his works in the future.

Other thoughts about this drama

Since this is a rather short drama, there isn't much to ponder on about except the important lesson of loving yourself.

All in all, I enjoyed watching this drama and my rating for this drama is 9/10. See you in the next entry!

P.S : Now, I've been putting off finishing this entry for quite a while because I just didn't have the mood for a lot of stuff recently. So that means that I might have forgotten, missed or overlooked some points that I wanted to put in the entry since I've left this on hold for some time. However, I'm fine with how this entry turned out — I did say I wanted to make this entry simple anyway. As of now, I have just finished watching The Soulmate (a mini C-drama), still in the process of finishing Nodame Cantabile live-action adaptation collection (I only have 2 movies left to go through), started watching JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5 and only just started watching episode 1 of Gokusen although I think I want to start watching The Princess's Gambit and finish that one first before I proceed with Gokusen, but we'll see how it goes.

The Epoch of Miyu - One woman's journey of realizing her true worth and full potential after divorce

2026-05-18T09:46:03Z

Drama title : The Epoch of Miyu

No. of episodes : 38

Duration of watching : 15/4/2026 — 23/5/2026

This drama actually falls into the genre that's not my cup of tea as well as something that I would usually avoid watching at all costs. Despite that, I've had my eye on this drama for quite a while before its release. Why is that? Well, it's because this drama has 3 of my favourite actors — Xu Haiqiao, Guo Xiaoting and Hai Lu — appearing as guest stars (listed as supporting actors on MDL after the drama's release). I contemplated on whether it would be worth it to watch this drama only for them, considering they each are just making a guest appearance. However, after watching a bit of the drama, I realized that The Epoch of Miyu boasts an experienced and outstanding cast — which ends up being one of the main reasons why I managed to watch this series until the end.

The Epoch of Miyu has 38 episodes, which is pretty lengthy for a drama of this genre for me, so this is another aspect that I dread about back when I decided to watch this drama as I wasn't confident that I will be able to power through the whole drama just for the sake of wanting to watch the supporting actors who won't have as much screen time as the leads. However, the first few episodes were actually really good and had me hooked and that momentum carried on until I reached around halfway through the series, which is when I started to get bored of it and unwilling to watch more as Miyu's development felt like it got overshadowed by the hotel's troubles. In hindsight, I think I know why I felt that way, as the hotel's troubles mainly falls under Ji Feng's storyline and at the time, I found Ji Feng to be a rather bland character and so his story, which is heavily connected to the hotel, feels very boring.

It got so boring for me at around episodes 20 — 22 that I almost wanted to drop it but I decided to put it on hold for a while and ended up watching Long Vacation and Nodame Cantabile live-action drama. After around 2 weeks of leaving The Epoch of Miyu on-hold, I'd say I'm glad that I didn't drop this drama right when I wanted to because otherwise I would have missed the turning point of Miyu's growth, which turned out to be one of the best moments in the series and which also picked up the momentum of the drama right back up for me.

What's the drama about?

On the 10th anniversary of their wedding, Xu Miyu discovers that her husband Nie Yucheng has been cheating on her with another woman. This incident caused a chain of events to have Miyu ultimately divorcing Nie Yucheng, only to find herself basically homeless and penniless. After struggling for a while to find a job, Miyu ends up working as Purong Hotel's attendant, where she once again crosses path with Ji Feng, who helped cover Nie Yucheng's affairs at the hotel where they celebrated their 10th anniversary. Hence, begins Miyu's journey of self-discovery where she realizes her own worth and finds her courage and confidence through her experience working at the hotel as well as her interactions with the people around her. Meanwhile, Ji Feng returns to Purong Hotel as its newly appointed general manager in order restore the hotel's former glory and to prevent it from being seized by Kuanli Group. Together, they face challenges at the hotel and eventually realize their feelings for each other.

Who should watch this drama?

— Fans of Wallace and/or Zhu Zhu

— Fans of workplace dramas with a hotel as its main setting

— Fans who like to watch a story that focuses on the main character's journey of self-growth

Characters

— Xu Miyu, played by Zhu Zhu :

A woman in her mid-30s who is initially subservient towards her husband and her family, giving all of her being for them as she feels grateful but also guilty for her family raising her and Nie Yucheng being the sole breadwinner for them during their married life together. Her initial personality is what made her loved ones take her for granted and trampled on her boundaries and feelings.

Xu Miyu gets an eye-opening experience after finding out about Nie Yucheng's affair with Lu Zhenzhen, which leads to their divorce that left Miyu basically homeless and penniless. She found her own freedom through this experience but also learns that she has to start over again in life. At her age and without much job experience, Miyu struggles to land a job in the beginning but finally finds an opportunity at Purong Hotel. Through her experiences and interactions with the people at the hotel, she slowly builds her confidence and courage and eventually realizes her own potential and value, learning to keep boundaries, to say no when needed and to be comfortable with expressing her feelings and thoughts.

— Ji Feng, played by Wallace Chung :

An experienced hotel general manager who worked abroad for the past 10 years. Ji Feng came back to Purong Hotel — where he first trained as a hotel attendant — to serve as its general manager, having been called back by its chairwomen Wei Wanjun and feeling rather dejected that he couldn't be the general manager of the hotel he previously served in overseas after 10 years working there.

Ji Feng's character and story feel clearly contrasted to Miyu's in the beginning in which Miyu's story is about her character trying to grow personally and discovering her value in life through her experiences working at Purong Hotel while Ji Feng's story is about one who truly recognizes his own capabilities and the values that he can bring to Purong Hotel — which is the reason why I see the plots related heavily to the hotel's issues as Ji Feng's storyline with Miyu getting involved in them either willingly or involuntarily. His main goal in the story is to fix Purong Hotel from its decay resulting from the corruption in the hotel that had been going on for years.

Honestly speaking, Ji Feng's character feels quite bland to me for the most part. He is shown as being very capable and experienced in his field of work, taking calculated risks and sometimes acting ruthless when needed, successfully clearing every obstacle that came his way time and again — leaving him with little to no challenge at all when it comes to the hotel's issues, which made this part of his storyline feel boring to me. This is actually the same problem that I had with Lu Jingming from My Destined Consort (though I appreciate and love his personality whenever he is around Shen Jiangli).

Ji Feng's character only started to pique my interest when he fell head over heels for Miyu, showcasing his inadequate experience in love and keeping a proper relationship. This challenge for him makes Ji Feng more relatable though I wish they had given him more challenges when it comes to the hotel just so he can showcase his true abilities as a general manager in difficult times (I mean, he did it a few times but I still think it's not enough.)

— Li Qiaoqi, played by Guo Xiaoting :

Miyu's childhood friend who initially works as a sous chef at Purong Hotel. She is the first friend whom Miyu meets after her divorce with Nie Yucheng. Li Qiaoqi is a bold and spunky woman who is passionate about her job as a chef at Purong Hotel. She is always ready to help Miyu out and is very upfront with her actions and feelings towards everyone — including Duan Aoxiang who is highly respected for his status as a VIP, which leads to very enjoyable scenes between them as they banter (at least to me).

Li Qiaoqi's flaw is that she could sometimes be very emotional and reckless, leading her to a downward spiral when she struggles with the Chinese Restaurant as its new head chef (although, I wished the drama hadn't gone this route with her as I would have liked to see her using her own problem-solving skills as a chef in order to save the Chinese Restaurant instead of fully being rescued by Miyu).

— Duan Aoxiang, played by Xu Haiqiao :

Xu Haiqiao is the initial reason why I wanted to watch this drama in the first place, being a fan of his. He plays Duan Aoxiang, the son to Kuali Group's president and Ji Feng's old classmate from their student days abroad. Being the president's son, Duan Aoxiang is portrayed as a rather spoiled heir who indulges in wine and videogames and is a firm believer that anything that can be solved with money is not a big deal.

Under his group's name, Duan Aoxiang made a VAM agreement with Purong Hotel in which Kuanli Group will be their main investor for 1 year and would have the right to acquire the hotel if Purong Hotel failed to meet their requirements after the period of the agreement is up. Despite the agreement made, Duan Aoxiang actually is keen to acquire the hotel. Believing that he is close buddies with Ji Feng, he initially invites Ji Feng to work with him as the general manager once Kuanli Group manages to acquire Purong Hotel but was surprised when Ji Feng later announced himself as Purong Hotel's new general manager at a press conference.

From that moment on, Duan Aoxiang made it his goal to oppose every action that Ji Feng takes in hopes that he could ruin the hotel's performance and acquire it after the agreement ends. Unfortunately though, his plans are always thwarted by Ji Feng and Miyu and their people time and again. I actually wished that he was a more formidable to Ji Feng, considering his status as the heir of Kuanli Group. I enjoyed his interactions with Li Qioaqi, though — Xu Haiqiao's chemistry with Guo Xiaoting is palpable from the first time their characters meet in this drama.

And also, I just would like to add that I enjoyed hating on Duan Aoxiang because Xu Haiqiao did such a good job at acting as an annoying rich spoiled heir in this drama. I mean, I've always liked all of his characters in his previous works that I watched, but this is the first time where I can properly hate him, finally. It kind of makes me ready to see Xu Haiqiao's performance as Ouyang Xu in A Dream of Splendour.

— Jiang Zhichun, played by Hai Lu :

A famous food and travel vlogger who used to be Ji Feng's lover 10 years ago. Jiang Zhichun and Ji Feng went their separate ways because she wanted to pursue her career further. She meets Ji Feng again just around the time after the ordeal with Chinese Restaurant was over. Jiang Zhichun often collaborates with Ji Feng to promote that hotel since then while also trying to get back together with Ji Feng, which leaves Miyu with conflicted feelings towards Ji Feng. However, she later learns that both Miyu and Ji Feng have feelings for each other and is the one who made Miyu realize that she should not be so hard on herself when it comes to her relationships with others.

— Lu Zhenzhen, played by Li Meng :

A vixen whom Nie Yucheng had an affair with, and is mainly the trigger for Miyu's decision to divorce Nie Yucheng. She is the type of woman who would do anything to rise to power and mainly cares about herself. Her personality isn't without its story though as it's revealed that she was abandoned by her mother for her new husband as a girl. Her mother's words before she was chased away left a lasting impression on her and made her swore to herself that she would do anything to be rich and rise above everyone else. It wasn't until her final confrontation with Miyu, that she realizes that her ideology was far was far too superficial and stupid and that because of it, she lost everything in her life again.

— Nie Yucheng, played by Jing Chao :

Miyu's ex-husband who took Miyu for granted. He had assumed that Miyu wouldn't go far in life after their divorce but was always surprised by her growth time and again. Over time, he gets diagnosed with stomach cancer and that is when his marriage with Lu Zhenzhen starts to fall apart. After gradually realizing Lu Zhenzhen's true colours, Nie Yucheng realizes his mistakes in regards to Miyu, but knew that they can't go back to how they used to be.

— Tan Jizhou, played by Ren Bin :

In short words, he's Miyu's second love interest. Tan Jizhou works as a curator who has been to art exhibitions around the world, and connects with Miyu through the world of art. He falls in love with Miyu for her sincere and resilient personality, often talking about how he only wants to protect her and wants her to get away from the hotel's politics. Miyu is initially conflicted about her potential relationship with both Ji Feng and Tan Jizhou but ultimately realizes that she only loves Ji Feng. However, Miyu appreciates Tan Jizhou's confession but tells him that her current self is not looking for the kind of protection that Tan Jizhou speaks about, but rather someone who would support her actions that would lead to her self-growth.

Things that bothered me/I don't like/feel that there's room for improvement

— Antagonists that are mostly are bark but no bite :

This drama showcases several antagonists for plots related to Purong Hotel. The notable ones would be Duan Aoxiang from Kuanli Group and Wei Siyuan — the hotel chairwomen's nephew — and his people. I suppose I shouldn't say that they have no bite at all but then again their plans haven't been very good as they kept getting thwarted by Ji Feng and Miyu time and again — which makes them rather poor antagonists in my eyes.

I feel like Duan Aoxiang should have been on par with Ji Feng, or at least a lot more competent than he is in the drama. I mean, for someone of his status (Kuanli Group president's son and he even studied abroad with Ji Feng to boot!), he should have more than enough knowledge, power and resources to go toe to toe with Ji Feng. Instead we get a spoiled rich heir who mostly indulges in wine and videogames (proving Li Qiaoqi's first words about him right), annoy the hell out of people and only knows to steal business ideas from his rivals (which is not uncommon in the real world though). I actually don't mind that he acts the way he is, I just wish that he was a more formidable opponent for Ji Feng so that they could bring the best business fights out of each other.

Wei Siyuan appears to be the big bad for this series as it has been established earlier on that he and his people were the pillars of Purong Hotel's management long before Ji Feng's arrival. His group of 4 is the main obstacle that Ji Feng has been trying to dismiss since his appointment as general manager of Purong Hotel. Most of the crises that happened were instigated by them, sometimes with Duan Aoxiang's cooperation, but all of their plans were successfully thwarted by Miyu and Ji Feng, leading to each of them being fired by the hotel one by one, until only Wei Siyuan was left out of the 4 people from his group. Wei Siyuan finally goes all out for his plan in the final few episodes but even then it was resolved rather quickly by Miyu and Ji Feng. In the end, Wei Siyuan is no more capable of being a better antagonist than Duan Aoxiang or even one of the people from his group. So much for being set as the big bad of the series.

— Duan Aoxiang's argument with his father in episode 28 that is stupid but justifiable :

In episode 28, Duan Aoxiang copied Miyu's ideas for the Gaokao promotion project to steal Purong Hotel's customers from them until to fail at carrying out his plan because the hotel was being used for a meeting. He then argues with his father through a phone call, saying that no one from their group told him about the conference but was scolded by his father instead. His father basically pointed out that it is Duan Aoxiang's own fault for not knowing this and that he should stop treating the group like a playground if he is not going to be useful — and I have to say, they both have a point.

What really bothered me was the fact that why didn't Kuanli Group just tell Duan Aoxing about the meeting earlier? How did his proposal even get approved if they didn't have enough rooms to carry it out? Even Miyu was getting questioned thoroughly by the directors when she presented her proposal and it was only approved after she had managed to convince them. So this argument is actually pretty stupid to me as it's both their fault with Duan Aoxiang not double-checking the facts and his father for not going through his proposal.

— Supporting characters that have great potential but ended up being quite flat for the most part :

With a cast this good, I am actually more than pleased with how they presented their respective characters, though I feel that these characters could have had more development. Duan Aoxiang, Li Qiaoqi and Jiang Zhichun, to name a few, all have interesting characterizations which could have developed into something more but they instead became nothing more than the people that both Miyu and Ji Feng meet in this chapter of their lives. As a result, I only see Duan Aoxiang as just another one of the antagonist, Li Qiaoqi as just Miyu's close friend and Jiang Zhichun as just Ji Feng's old flame. I do believe that this is done on purpose as this drama primarily focuses on Miyu's growth and personal journey in life, and is mostly shown through Miyu's POV, so just like how it is in life, sometimes you just don't see some people in life beyond your surface understanding of them.

— The crises of the hotel are often shown, but the urgency of the situation isn't felt as much (except for the final 4 episodes) :

Perhaps I overlooked some things but from what I can see, for plots related to the hotel, it always follows a pattern whereby there will be an issue in Purong Hotel, usually instigated by Wei Siyuan and his people or Duan Aoxiang himself, followed by internal conflict and strife, and is ultimately solved by Miyu's ideas or Ji Feng's actions. My gripe with this approach is that this can become repetitive, which leads to some parts of the story being boring and predictable as you can be sure that the issue will always be solved by either one of the leads. I wish that the drama had allowed Miyu and especially Ji Feng, to lose some of these battles, as I believe the struggles from their losses would make the drama and their core characters (especially Ji Feng) much more engaging.

— Both leads seem to have their way a bit too easily despite the challenges that they faced in the drama :

This is related to the point above. Both Miyu and Ji Feng went through a lot of the hotel's crises together, starting from the linen/towel incident, the Chinese Restaurant issue, the 2 stars' conflict, the Gaokao period, etc. Despite all the issues, they always get to solve it no matter what. I wish we could have seen more struggle from Ji Feng's side because his character seems to be very competent in his job and I wanted to see how would he fare when things don't go his way (though the final 4 episodes did show this, it's just that I feel like it was a bit too late to showcase his true abilities).

As for Miyu, while she is earnest and hardworking at her job, showing that she is deserving of her position each time, I still think that she got promoted way too fast and way too easily in the span of one year, which makes the anger of other staff like Luo Qingping and Lu Xiaoyan pretty much justifiable. They could have at least made Miyu go through a series of assessments and interviews against other candidates like them so that things would seem fairer (and they can showcase their own talents too), even if the position was going to Miyu in the end (since she did show more initiative compared to her colleagues in each department that she goes too, which is largely the reason why she always gets promoted).

— I wish Miyu was given more chances to grow and learn from her experiences from other people around her besides just Ji Feng :

It rather feels like Miyu gets to grow into who she is by the end of the series mostly from her own efforts with some help from Ji Feng. Now, this is actually amazing on Miyu's part and it does make her endearing to me. And I'm not saying that no one else helped her the series, I just wished they had used more of the other characters such as Miyu's other colleagues and Li Qiaoqi especially. When they introduced Li Qiaoqi in the series, I really thought that she would be Miyu's strongest emotional support as Li Qiaoqi did say that she would be Miyu's ladder (and I saw her as the light in Miyu's life just right after her divorce). Sure, Miyu did have moments with Li Qiaoqi but the emotional connection between them just wasn't emphasized enough to me.

Other thoughts about this drama

— How watching Long Vacation and Nodame Cantabile made me appreciate Miyu's story better :

Perhaps it is just a coincidence, perhaps not, but I started to feel this way when I finally picked up The Epoch of Miyu again after watching Long Vacation and Nodame Cantabile, just when I was on the verge of dropping the drama. The urge to drop it was even stronger while I watched those 2 J-dramas which were particularly fun and enjoyable for me. However, I must take into account that when I picked up this series back from where I left off, I ended up watching the best few episodes to come after such a dry arc for me, so it could have been because of those episodes that I began to feel this way. Or it could be both, but I'd like to think that watching those 2 J-dramas did play a part in me seeing Miyu's story in a new light.

Why do I think so? Well, I've been thinking about it for a while but I think it's simply because both Minami from Long Vacation and Nodame from Nodame Cantabile are just unapologetically themselves throughout their respective dramas. What's more, their respective social circles are pretty much supportive of one another despite the differences between the people involved, which made their series feel mostly warm and wholesome, features which I enjoyed very much from their dramas.

This is in contrast to The Epoch of Miyu, where Miyu spent her whole life so far in subservience, afraid of crossing her family and husband, whom she feels very much indebted to as her family (as they often like remind her) raised her and Nie Yucheng has been the sole breadwinner throughout their married life. As a result, Miyu gave all of her being into serving her family, often at the cost of her own physical and mental well-being. Even when she attained her own freedom after divorcing Nie Yucheng, Miyu is still trapped by her old habits and personality for a while, which made her an easy target when she first started working at Purong Hotel, where the work environment is about as toxic as it gets with uncooperative colleagues and selfish and scheming higher-ups. This is why it feels rather gratifying to see Miyu finally saying no to others, setting up boundaries for herself and actually expressing her feelings directly (the scene where she told Ji Feng that she doesn't want to become a person who quickly forgives just because someone apologizes to her is one of my favourites!).

Hence, after watching Long Vacation and Nodame Cantabile, where the environment and people in the drama are a lot more friendlier, I began to appreciate The Epoch of Miyu's approach where the drama is mostly based on realistic happenings, which they are not shy to show in the form of toxic people and workplaces — which is also one of the reasons why I wanted to drop the drama as I couldn't bear to watch it and be reminded of similar experiences with such people and workplace. However, this also makes me more invested to see Miyu's story as I realized that despite initially being such a subservient person, Miyu actually has the courage to change and that just makes her endearing to me in a way, as not many people could achieve what Miyu did. I also like the fact that the drama cared to show Miyu actually spending time working on herself especially after the turning point of her personal growth as this really shows the contrast between her past self where she spent all of her time and being for Nie Yucheng and her family, and her present self where she now realizes that she needs to work on herself in order to improve her personal life and work life.

— Sincerity begets sincerity :

This is something that Miyu believes strongly in life, especially when she was still married to Nie Yucheng. I see it as her strength, but this belief is also her weakness as this is one of the reasons that made Nie Yucheng take her for granted and instead trampled all over her. Nie Yucheng's actions did make Miyu feel regret for believing in this notion but I still think that this way of thinking isn't exactly wrong. I'm not sure if Miyu still held onto this principle after the divorce and when she started working at the hotel (I might have overlook this or simply forgotten about it) but through her earnestness at work, her sincerity shows and this is basically what made all her colleagues, including ones who were once openly hostile to her, eventually accept and respect her.

— The characters felt very human with their flaws :

Which is why this drama can be a bit infuriating at times because some of the characters' actions, though can be pretty deplorable at times, actually make sense when I think about it in hindsight.

— You can always start over in life, no matter your age :

This is one of the messages that they want to present through this drama and it is something that Zhu Zhu often emphasized on during the press tours. And I think this drama succeed in conveying that message, for the most part. It's just that sometimes it's easier said than done and sometimes even when we try our hardest to start over, things just don't go as planned. However, it is important to try and we should aim to have the kind of resilience that Miyu has in our journey of starting over in our lives.

— Was the romance between Miyu and Ji Feng necessary?

Yes and no. Miyu once mentioned in one of the episodes that love is not the cure for life (paraphrasing here, she might had said it a bit differently) and her main goal in the drama is to try to develop herself and reaching new heights in life. And I'd say Miyu probably didn't think about getting into a new relationship so soon considering that she had just come out of a divorce but somewhere along the way, she finds herself inadvertently falling for Ji Feng. She actually notices this earlier on and was afraid to pursue it for personal reasons, but eventually realizes that she couldn't run away from her feelings forever. So, in a way, she could have not proceed with getting into a relationship with Ji Feng and would have been able to progress with her main goal anyway seeing as how confident and independent she became as the series progresses.

However, this drama decided to make them end up together in the end. So how does this factor into Miyu's personal journey towards her self-growth? In a way, Miyu did get her confidence and independence from Ji Feng's trust in her. Through Ji Feng's eyes, Miyu came to learn that she is more than what she thought of herself and more importantly, she ultimately learns the best relationship isn't when either one of them submits themselves fully for the other for love, but it is when there is a deep trust, good communication and the ability to push the other into becoming their better selves. She learnt to love herself and to love others again. So, yes, this relationship did do something good for her growth.

— Petition for a mini spin-off of some kind for Duan Aoxiang and Li Qiaoqi?

I did say in my MDL comments that I don't really care whether they end up together in the end or not. I don't ship them at all both in the drama and in real life, and from what I can see, both Xu Haiqiao and Guo Xiaoting seem to be good friends in real life. It's just that, the chemistry between them was palpable in this drama compared to when they first collaborated in Love Between Fairy and Devil as Chidi and Ronghao, though I think their characters' setting probably played a part as well as they had to play master and disciple in that drama, which might explain the kind of familiar but somewhat detached vibes between them in their relationship.

I absolutely love their banter in the drama and it did feel like they have a potential to go in a direction that is just more than bantering. The drama teased this but ultimately did not go through with it though I find the way they end both Duan Aoxiang's and Li Qiaoqi's story as a bit unsatisfying but realistic. I mean, even if they didn't end up together, I wish that they said goodbye to each other or even have one last banter together. But the drama didn't give us that, only that both of them just went on with their lives with Duan Aoxiang hinting that he will come back to Purong Hotel because he loves the food there (read : will come back for Li Qiaoqi's cooking), showing that they are merely two people who passed by in each other's lives at the time and didn't have the chance to say goodbye though perhaps in the future they might meet each other again, if there is destiny between them.

Things that I absolutely love!

— The cast :

I initially wanted to watch this drama because they have Xu Haiqiao, Guo Xiaoting and Hai Lu, 3 of my favourite actors, as supporting characters, as well as wanting to watch another performance by Zhu Zhu after seeing her in Why Is He Still Single? Needless to say, the cast did a very good job for this drama and I'm especially pleased to see Zhu Zhu's range in this drama.

— The OSTs :

The Epoch of Miyu is another drama with an excellent collection of OSTs that feels perfectly designed for every moment of the story. I love all the songs that they have used in this drama, especially A Fleeting Dream by Ada Zhuang, The Forgotten by Kang Ziqi and Mature by none other than Zhu Zhu herself.

— Miyu's growth throughout the series :

It can get rather draggy and slow, especially when it focuses on the hotel's problems in the beginning and that kind of overshadowed her progress (because I think this is supposed to be Ji Feng's storyline at that time but Ji Feng as a character feels pretty bland to me, leading to his storyline being boring), but it feels so much worth it when you reach the turning point of Miyu's change (at around episode 23). After that, you can really see how Miyu navigates her life with her newfound courage and confidence, which makes the drama interesting again for me.

— Miyu's resilience :

One thing that I really like about Miyu is just how resilient she is. Sure, she has moments when she breaks down and almost wanted to give up but more often than not, she would face her challenges with a smile, which makes her character admirable.

This probably my longest entry yet (I thought the entry on My Destined Consort was the longest) but that's only because there is so much to dig from this drama and I think it's because this drama reflects a lot of things that happen in the real world. Hence, even if the story was predictable, the pacing was slow in some parts and the characters' behaviours and choices can be infuriating to watch, there is always something that we can relate to in this drama and I appreciate the realistic themes that the drama was going for. All in all, it was a good story though quite lengthy (would have worked better with just 28 or 32 episodes tops). My rating for this drama is 8.0/10. I had a hard time choosing between 7.5 and 8.0 and wanted to put 7.8 instead but after much consideration, I settled on 8.0/10 for the relatable story, the cast's hard work and amazing performance, as well as the OSTs.

That's all for now. See you in the next entry!

Long Vacation - two unlikely souls make their way through life, forming friendships & finding love

2026-05-07T11:58:03Z

Drama title : Long Vacation

No. of episodes : 11

Duration of watching : 1/5/2026 — 7/5/2026

I ended up watching this drama as I decided to take a break from watching The Epoch of Miyu (which I find a bit boring currently 😅). I actually have heard about this drama a few months ago, I think, and it's mainly due to its theme song, La La La Love Song by Toshinobu Kubota, which was a pretty famous song in the late 90s to early 2000s back in my country (or at least, I used to listen to it a bunch of times as a child).

I actually never knew that this song was used as Long Vacation's opening theme until a few months ago. However, it wasn't until I saw the drama's opening clip around last month that I really got interested in watching the series. I mean, how can I not be interested when the opening is like this?

When I first saw this opening, I felt intrigued by the cast because they seem like a bunch of cool adults with an interesting story to tell. However, my impression changed when I watched the drama and I began to glean the fact that they are essentially young adults (perhaps with the exception of Minami, but I still count her as a young adult), who move from one experience to another, all in the midst of figuring out their paths in life. At least, that's what I like to think when I see the main cast carry a suitcase each while walking straight ahead. I think of the suitcase as a symbol for their emotional baggage — their aspirations and also their worries — as they walk on in their respective paths in life.

I'm glad that I chose to watch this drama now because I feel like you have to be at a certain age and have to have the right mood to be able to appreciate what this drama has to offer. I feel like if I had watched it earlier, perhaps in my 20s or younger, I probably would see it as a rather boring drama, mainly because I wouldn't be able to relate to the characters as much as I did now (though some parts did have the potential to be boring for me when I watched it if I hadn't been in the right mood for it). This is because Long Vacation is a drama that leans heavily towards the slice of life genre with an emphasis on romance as we basically follow the daily life of the main cast throughout the series, with a large focus on both Sena and Minami. I usually like slice of life dramas but not usually when romance is a big part of the story (unless it's done right), which is what happened in Long Vacation. However, despite that, I quite enjoyed watching the series mainly because of the dynamic between Sena and Minami as well as the conversations that the characters have — they just feel so natural and relatable to me.

What's the drama about?

After her groom, Asakura, left her on their wedding day, struggling model Minami finds herself homeless and penniless after she gave away all her money to her ex-fiance in preparation for their now failed wedding. As a result, Minami decides to move into Asakura's now empty apartment room, much to Sena's — Asakura's housemate — confusion and surprise. Minami promises Sena that she will move out as soon as she is financially stable or marries another man — essentially becoming his housemate until she achieves either one of the two things. Hence, begin the story of Minami, a jobless and struggling model, and Sena, a pianist who often broods about his music career, as they navigate through life while slowly becoming each other's confidants and eventually realizing their love for each other.

Who should watch this drama?

— Fans of Takuya Kimura/Tomoko Yamaguchi

— Fans of the slice of life and romance genre

— Fans of 90s drama or just someone who wants to watch a nice and relaxing 90s drama

Characters

— Hidetoshi Sena, played by Kimura Takuya :

A reserved pianist in his mid-20s who is currently teaching music to children at a music school. A skillful and talented pianist, Sena is often encouraged by his professor to pursue his career further and realize his full potential as a pianist. However, true to his reserved character, Sena often broods and overthinks about his career as a musician. While not explicitly shown, it does seem that Sena is cautious about his future, afraid to mess up whatever opportunity that he gets which is why he initially prefers to continue teaching at the music school, explaining that he is not quite ready to grab those opportunities and would like to gain more experience from his job when in fact he is afraid to take that step forward, leading him to lead a mundane life. It wasn't until his encounter with Minami and the experience that he gets from his interactions with the other characters that Sena realizes that he actually wants to move forward in life and be a better version of himself.

Sena's arc is about a reserved person being too comfortable in his shell, afraid to take another step forward but eventually feels stuck in a mundane life. His relationship with Minami and the others change him for the better as he learns how to break the wall between him and the world around him, which later help him become a better version of himself.

— Hayama Minami, played by Yamaguchi Tomoko :

A woman in her early 30s with a sunny personality and often wears her heart on her sleeve. After her ex-fiance left her on their wedding day, Minami ends up living as Sena's housemate in order to rebuild her life. Early in the series, Minami becomes a struggling model with little to no job offers, mainly due to her age (31 isn't that old, though). She later gets fired from her agency as she got into a violent argument with a junior model that she was managing. Since then, Minami did her utmost best to a get job, going to more than 20 job interviews but failing every single one of them. Despite that, Minami always remains optimistic though she still has moments where she is sad, considering that she is still healing from the heartbreak of her ex-fiance leaving her for someone else. In the times when she lives with Sena, she learns a lot by Sena's insights on life as well as becoming sort of a confidant for him.

Minami's arc is about how an optimistic person with a sunny disposition like her still has her own worries and sadness. In Minami's case, she has to deal with and heal from her heartbreak and realize that she doesn't need to rely on anyone else first to be happy.

— Hayama Shinji, played by Takenouchi Yutaka :

Minami's younger brother who is the same age as Sena. His personality is almost similar to Minami in that he is rather friendly and outgoing. Shinji's part in this series is mostly to give Sena somewhat a love rival and the push that Sena needed to approach Ryoko. Ryoko ultimately falls in love with Shinji though it did not last long as Shinji has his own issue that he must overcome — he is unable to fully commit himself to her as he realizes that despite his feelings for Ryoko, he is still unable to fully let go of Rumiko. His issue with commitment is also reflected in the important moments of his life which he mentioned in the series, whereby he always fails during those moments (eg: he failed his college music entrance exam because he had to backed out, blaming his upset stomach). Deep down, Shinji realizes that he is a coward who is not brave enough to see something through to the end.

— Okusawa Ryoko, played by Matsu Takako :

Sena's junior in music college, possibly in her early 20s. An up and coming aspiring pianist, Ryoko's skills and talents seem to surpass Sena's for the most part (or at least, that's how they show it in the drama). Ryoko is pure-hearted, likely due to her young age, which is probably the reason why Sena had feelings for her in the first place. While Ryoko is shown to reciprocate (or at least tried to) Sena's feelings for her, she eventually finds herself falling in love with Shinji, which created quite the drama between the main cast. All in all, Ryoko's part in this drama is similar to Shinji's, where she is there initially as Sena's love interest, only for her to disappoint him (which helped him learn and understand more about his own feelings) and eventually going through a heartbreak herself as she calls off her relationship with Shinji for good because she realizes that their relationship will never work out. Those experiences help mature her a bit though.

— Oishikawa Momoko, played by Inamori Izumi :

Minami's junior colleague from her modeling days. She is probably around Sena's and Shinji's age. Momoko is a ditzy woman who is surprisingly pretty attuned with her friends' feelings, particularly when it involves troubles between a man and a woman. However, she can be rather tactless when approaching the subject, which sometimes lead to tense moments or an outright argument between the friends.

I have seen Inamori Izumi in Keiji Yugami and Mada Kekkon Dekinai Otoko where she is much older in those dramas, so it's a pleasant surprise to see her in one of her earlier works! (it doesn't seem like she aged much though)

— Himuro Rumiko, played by Ryo :

Shinji's girlfriend. Her role is pretty small compared to the other supporting roles so there isn't much to write about her other than the fact that she is mostly there to add a bit of drama between Shinji and Ryoko. I wish the drama had fleshed her out just a little bit more.

Things that bothered me/I don't like/feel that there's room for improvement

— Momoko's belief that a man and a woman can't simply be close friends :

I disagree with Momoko's views on this matter, though I guess even the situation that Minami and Sena found themselves in is quite uncommon (at least for me), which is the main factor that they had some kind of situationship for the most part.

— Sena and Minami ending up together in the end :

I don't hate them ending up together — in fact, I kind of ship them. It's just that I think I like their dynamic better as friends and I think it would make for a fresh ending if they just remain close friends in a platonic relationship, because not all friendships between a man and woman has to end up becoming a romantic relationship. But in the end, the drama decided to stick with Momoko's views while I wish they had challenged that notion.

— The supporting cast getting little to no character development :

The main cast is actually interesting for the most part, because every one of them has their own distinctive personalities. However, due to the limited number of episodes, a lot of the character development is given to both Sena and Minami, who are the core characters of this drama. This is something that I often see happen in J-dramas where they usually focus a lot of development for the lead roles by sacrificing the side characters' growth and it usually pays off for the most part because the lead roles became very well developed and because they are basically the face of the drama, I can easily accept this kind of shortcoming more often than not because I ended up enjoying the leads' growth by the end of the series.

On another note, this is perhaps one of the reasons why I enjoy C-dramas a lot because with so many episodes, they have room to explore and develop the supporting characters.

Things that this drama made me think about

— The feeling of feeling stuck in a mundane life, wanting to achieve more in life but doubting that we are capable or qualified enough to take that next step — which is exactly what Sena is going through the most part of the drama

— Long vacation :

When I first saw the opening clip, I really thought that this drama is about a group of young adults meeting each other while they are on an island trip or something and eventually forming friendships along the way. I mean, with a title like Long Vacation and an opening clip like that, someone would bound to think something like I did. However, the drama subvert my expectations as it brings me through the daily life of mainly Sena and Minami, which is mostly mundane but very relatable.

More importantly, the drama is title Long Vacation because it is just like one of Sena's views on life. I'm mostly paraphrasing here but at one point in the drama, Sena told Minami that sometimes there are times in life that we just end up failing or not getting the result that we wanted no matter how hard we tried, so when things do turn up that way in life, we just have to think of it as god giving us a long vacation — a time when we don't have to panic, don't have to rush and don't have to try harder, and to just take your own time and let things take their course — which is essentially what happens in this drama as a whole for both Sena and Minami, two unlikely souls who have their own challenges and struggles to overcome and eventually getting things in their lives in order after numerous attempts and failures.

Things that I absolutely love!

— The dynamic between Sena and Minami

— The OSTs :

I absolutely love the opening theme song, the BGMs and I especially love the song titled Little by Little! The OSTs evoke this nostalgic feeling as well as setting the perfect atmosphere for the drama.

— The conversation between the characters :

They all feel so natural and relatable.

— The series ending in full circle :

The drama starts with Minami running across town in her traditional Japanese wedding attire and ends with her running across town in her wedding gown with Sena. And of course, the fact that Minami stated that she's not into younger men but ended up marrying Sena in the end anyway.

All in all, I enjoyed this series for its relatable leads and the conversations that feel natural. I'm giving this a score of 8.5/10. I'm currently watching Nodame Cantabile and am really enjoying so far that I'm watching it at a pretty fast rate, so I'll probably be writing an entry on it pretty soon. Until then, see you in the next entry!

Currently watching Long Vacation, I Am Nobody + my progress on The Epoch of Miyu

2026-05-04T09:41:08Z

It's been a while, I think. Just want to write a quick update. I've watched The Epoch of Miyu up to episode 22 but man each episode feels like a chore to finish nowadays. I had already expected this to happen as the genre of that drama is not my cup of tea. However, the first 10 episodes or so were pretty good and engaging which is why I thought that I might not drop it after all. But lately, I keep getting bored when I watch it and I suppose it's mainly due to the pacing?

When I look at it objectively, though the drama is predictable, its execution is pretty well done as all the events that happened so far in the story fall in a coherent and neat way but the presentation itself leaves much to be desired at times. This is quite disappointing for me as the earlier episodes laid a path for the series to be good. Unfortunately, halfway through the drama, it became quite dull at times and against the backdrop of a large hotel, Miyu's growth feels painfully slow (though I understand this is how she is written).

Anyway, my brain clearly wanted a change so I decided to check out Long Vacation, starring Takuya Kimura and Tomoko Yamaguchi, just for fun. This series is also in the slice of life genre so far (which is what The Epoch of Miyu also is currently, in a way) but wow it felt refreshing to watch it. The heroine, Minami, is such a fresh change from Miyu (although, I understand that these 2 characters are very different in their personalities and goals in life, but still) and I suddenly find myself interested in the lives of the main cast. I'm currently on episode 2 of this drama at the time of writing.

I Am Nobody is another drama that is on my watchlist for quite a while, and I finally watched the first episode just to see if it interests me and boy it had such a strong first episode that leaves me wanting more. So now, I ended with 3 dramas currently in progress....I may or may not drop The Epoch of Miyu for good. I really want to watch it until the end though because I love the cast, so I'll probably take some time to finish it. As of now, I'm more keen on watching Long Vacation and I Am Nobody, so I'm sure that I will finish either one or both of them before I finished The Epoch of Miyu.

On another note, I have just finished watching Cells at Work live-action movie today. I don't think I'm going to make a review about it but I'm just going to say that it is an OK movie with touching scenes and ending. I'm gonna give it a rating of 8/10.

So, that's all from me for now. See you in the next entry

The Epoch of Miyu EP 3 — Facing the bitter reality, Miyu longs for the carefree days of her past

2026-04-18T11:18:50Z

It's not exactly my plan to write an entry each time I finish an episode of The Epoch of Miyu — I'm just doing it to pad out my time between episodes so that I don't binge-watch all the currently available episodes and end up having to wait for the remaining episodes to drop. Other than that, I just want to write something on episode 3, just because.

The episode starts off with Miyu convincing herself that the bond between her and Nie Yucheng can't be broken easily, considering their marriage of 10 years. She tries to see the whole love affair of Nie Yucheng and Lu Zhenzhen as just a small hurdle in their marriage — something that they can go through together. We then see her going on about with her daily life, probably the same as she might have been before knowing about Nie Yucheng's affair. Miyu goes to a gynaecology check-up and is apparently concerned about trying to get pregnant as it hasn't been going so well for her in the last few years. The doctor assures her that there is nothing to worry about.

Afterwards, Miyu spends the day with the wives of Nie Yucheng's boss and colleagues at an antiques store, showcasing her abilities and talent for appraising art as well as speaking highly of their husbands, thanking them for all the help and guidance that they gave Nie Yucheng — maintaining an image of a perfect and understanding wife to Yucheng. She was well on her way to the restroom when she heard the wives gossiping about her, unaware that Miyu was still within earshot. It was then that Miyu found out that everyone already knew about Nie Yucheng's affair with Lu Zhenzhen. This scene also shows Miyu's self-worth being challenged as the wives assumed that Miyu must have turned a blind eye towards the situation considering the fact she is just a housewife with no job and that Nie Yucheng is the one who provides for the family.

Miyu later finds out that Lu Zhenzhen is pregnant with Nie Yucheng's child and that is when the bitter truth finally sunk in — which leads to Miyu finally deciding to take action and stand up for herself. The scene where Miyu slowly called out Nie Yucheng's lies during the celebration banquet is pretty satisfying to watch — it started out so subtle but direct on Miyu's part, with Nie Yucheng slowly getting flustered. Miyu then asks for divorce in front Nie Yucheng's business partners, before splashing his face with red wine. Nie Yucheng chases her outside the building, enraged by her actions at the banquet and saying that she's nothing but a parasite and that she won't have a good life if she divorces him. Miyu simply leaves him without a word.

And that's pretty much what happened in this episode. I actually want to write about the 2 scenes of Xu Miyu crossing the road in this episode. Now, I may be reaching here, but I'd like to think that there is some symbolism in those 2 scenes, whether it is intentional or not.

The first scene of Miyu crossing the road is after she finds out that Lu Zhenzhen is pregnant.

In this scene, she is utterly devastated after witnessing for herself that Nie Yucheng has brought Lu Zhenzhen for a prenatal check-up in secret. As the bitter truth sunk in that her life is never going to be the same again, Xu Miyu contemplates on her life choices while she crosses the road, tears in her eyes but her heart resolute to finally arrange for a divorce. Despite appearing distressed and possibly distracted with the thoughts in her head, she managed to cross the road completely — indicating her resoluteness.

Which brings us to the second scene of her crossing the road.

In this scene, she had just left Nie Yucheng who was enraged at her for ruining his reputation in front of all of his business partners at the celebration banquet where she asked for a divorce. Miyu expressed a kind of melancholic relief after she stood up for herself against Nie Yucheng and finally divorcing for good. Despite the relief and satisfaction she felt, her mind still drifted to Nie Yucheng's words just a few moments ago, making her distracted despite her relatively calm exterior — hinting at her wavering spirit as she thinks about Nie Yucheng's terrible words and the uncertain future that comes now that she has asked for a divorce.

I'd like to think that the scene around her then reflects her concern about her future moving forward from the divorce. This time, because she was initially distracted, she started crossing the road late and finds herself stuck in the middle of the road when the vehicles start to move with no way back to safety or rather, she finds herself unable to move either side — parallel to her life at that point in time where she can't go back to her old life, but the uncertainty of her new reality made her unable to fully step forward with ease.

Miyu was still literally and figuratively stuck in that chaotic moment when her childhood friend, Li Qiaoqi, recognizes her in the middle of that road (which is a mysterious to me as to how this is actually possible). Li Qiaoqi's timely appearance provides a sort of spiritual anchor for Miyu as she offers Miyu a ride — giving Miyu a choice to move on from that moment, even if just for a little bit.

The motorcycle ride with Li Qiaoqi makes Miyu reminisce their carefree life as childhood friends together in the past — of the days when she could dream about anything, when the possibilities were limitless. Unfortunately, those days were long gone the moment she gave herself up for Nie Yucheng. However, with the upcoming divorce, Miyu now has a chance at living a new life, and it's good that she meets Li Qiaoqi again at this point of time in her life, because she now at least has a good old friend that she can rely on in this new chapter of her life.

Those are my thoughts on this episode. I may have been overthinking about the whole crossing the road scenes but I still think they are kind of nice symbolisms (also because it's a bit weird for me how the second scene of Miyu crossing the road just feels a bit more prolonged for some reason). I'm off to watch episode 4 now. So, that's all for this time, see you in the next entry.

It's official, I have a new earworm now (plus some things on episode 2 of The Epoch of Miyu)

2026-04-17T08:49:38Z

And it's none other than Kang Zi Qi's "The Forgotten", which is the ending theme song for The Epoch of Miyu. The opening theme song comes at a close second though. I knew the ending theme is going to be an earworm for me sooner or later because I can see that it's a beautiful song the first time I heard it. My mind just kept on playing the chorus on repeat. And the song just gets more beautiful and profound after I read the translation. Here's where you can listen to the song and read the lyrics : - https://michelletopham.com/what-is-that-gorgeous-the-epoch-of-miyu-ending-theme-song-and-who-performs-it/

On another note, I finished watching episode 2 of the Epoch of Miyu yesterday. This episode was a bit hard to go through for me because of Miyu's insufferable husband and her family. The way Miyu's family simply gave her advice without knowing the full story and the way Nie Yucheng just kept on trying to twist the truth and squirm his way out of this mess really infuriates me at times. And it's expected that with Miyu's current personality, she ends up just tolerating everything, giving up on explaining the truth way too soon. Zhu Zhu's performance in this episode was superb though.

The rest of the episode is pretty much the same old thing, starting with Miyu finding out about her husband's secret affair, understandably got angry about it while Nie Yucheng tries to make it like it's not his fault. Miyu then confronts Lu Zhenzhen regarding her husband's secret love affair with her and I think in this scene, it feels like Miyu probably thinks that she's a bit out of Lu Zhenzhen's league, especially when Lu Zhenzhen pointed out how Miyu, as a full-time housewife, has no income, no social status in the family and no social circle and how she would be at a disadvantage if her marriage with Nie Yucheng ever came to a divorce. Miyu does counter with a solid statement, essentially winning the argument in the end though it really didn't matter to her as the damage had already been done.

Another thing that I would like to write about is the final scene in this episode because it kind of resonated with me. Or at least, I understand Miyu's view on living a lie. After Nie Yucheng shamelessly begged and convinced Miyu that he will never leave her and that he wants her to remain by his side as his wife, Miyu did not give her answer. Instead, we see her ruminating about the current situation quietly by herself in the kitchen.

She takes a piece of candy from the kitchen cabinet and thought the following while she ate the candy :

"Some people say lies make life better. They're like candy wrapped in cellophane. They let you live in false sweetness, so you don't have to face the bitter truth. I know I'm lying to myself. But sometimes, living in a world of lies is the only way to feel happy."

Miyu's personality now is what one might call a doormat, especially with her family. Therefore, she tolerates her insufferable husband and her family so much at her own expense. As a result, she naturally prefers to avoid conflict with them more than anything hence the reason why she thinks about living on with her cheating husband and pretends like nothing ever happen. While she knows that she's basically lying to herself, it is a choice that she would rather choose because I believe that it gives her the illusion of control over the situation and belief that the married life she had built and known for the past 10 years won't just spiral downwards — by pretending that everything is normal.

There's also the possibility that Miyu is affected by Lu Zhenzhen's words during their meeting. As Lu Zhenzhen said, Miyu is a housewife with no income, no status in the family and no social circle of her own. She lived her life for the past 10 years possibly only focusing on her husband, their home and her family. If her marriage with Nie Yucheng ever came to a divorce, she will most likely be stripped of the life she knows and I think that's a tremendous change for just about anyone. Hence, this could also be one of the reasons why she would choose to live a lie for fear of change and the uncertainty that it brings with it.

Change isn't necessarily a bad thing though, however negative it could be as it is just one point of many in our lives. What matters most is that we keep on moving forward, and that is something Miyu will have to learn soon because living a lie is just not the way to go. In fact, a lie will just lead to more lies and once too many lies have stacked on the original one, the whole thing will eventually collapse, leaving only the bitter truth — and that too, is something that Miyu will have to face in the end.

All in all, this episode is a bit infuriating for me to watch that I practically had to pause a few times to take deep breaths in order to calm myself 😂😂😂. Otherwise, I think it delves a bit more into Miyu's currently submissive personality. As of now, I'm still interested to see Miyu's journey, so I'll still be watching this drama.

That's all from me for now. See you in the next entry.

Just a little something I wrote for the birthday of one of my favourite C-drama actors, Xu Haiqiao

2026-04-16T16:00:09Z

I first laid eyes on him when he played Ronghao in Love Between Fairy and Devil. At the time, the only thing that struck an impression on me was how unique his face looked. I say unique because looking in hindsight, my brain probably already see him as a pretty face albeit in a more woman-like way (instead of the more common girly-looking pretty-faced men), which is why it took me a couple of years to finally process that thought. Apart from that, he didn't made an impression on me after his first introduction as Ronghao and so I wasn't interested in his character.

That is until episode 6 of LBFAD where it was revealed that he is also the mysterious masked Lord of Haishi City and I remember just feeling mind-blown after that because I hadn't really seen it coming and didn't expect Ronghao to be a complex antagonist. Following that reveal, his performance just captivated me as he strikes a balance between being the carefree and amiable Ronghao and the obsessive and hell-bent on reviving his master Ronghao.

After I finished watching LBFAD, I find myself being his fangirl for a while and tried to search more dramas and videos of him, which was how I eventually got to watch Kun Lun Que, Revive and last but not least, Detective Samoyeds. His performance in Kun Lun Que and Revive is nothing short of good but the jump from complex and obsessive Ronghao to cheerful and mischievous foodie Samo Duoluo was really what made me noticed his versatility as an actor.

His on-screen persona is wonderfully charming too. While I was looking for more dramas and videos of him back then, I stumbled upon a lot of clips from interviews and variety shows that he was involved in. He seems like an amiable and cheerful person who gets along with his castmates pretty well, which is largely the reason why I find him cute, despite his age (and honestly, I rarely call any guy cute). The people around him seem to be fond of him due to his personality. His cognizance and dedication to the performing arts are very evident to me based on how he readily taught some techniques and shared his experiences on acting to his fellow members in Call Me By Fire Season 4 and willing to learn from them in return, how he guided fellow actor Guo Xiaoting in Memories Beyond Horizon and his well thought out answers in interviews.

I'm currently fangirling over him for the second time as I write this post. Watching him acting as the caring and supportive husband Lu Jingming in My Destined Consort obviously melted my heart which propelled into my fangirling. As a result, I ended up watching a lot of videos from the time when he was in Call Me By Fire Season 4 and in some BTS clips. I feel rather blessed to see new videos of him recently since my last fangirling days of him in 2023. My adventures through YouTube watching those videos made me appreciate his cuteness more than ever and I just can't get enough of it for now :3

On a more serious note, even if I'm not fangirling over him, I would still want to follow and see his other works that I haven't been able to watch yet just because I love his acting chops. After LBFAD, Kun Lun Que, Revive and Detective Samoyeds, I only had the chance to watch him as Zhao Qing Huan in LGIEF and Lu Jingming in My Destined Consort in recent years — both of which he gave solid performances though the characters are not as striking as Ronghao or Samo Duoluo. However, ever since I watched Detective Samoyeds, I've always been confident that he will perform well in each and every one of his performances, and I'm looking forward to his future works.

So, happy birthday to this fantastic actor! Thank you for existing in this world. I'm glad to have seen you as Ronghao that day in February 2023. I hope you will continue to live a long, good and happy life. :)

P.S : I wrote this post some time in mid-February when my fangirling phase over Xu Haiqiao was at an all time high, hence why Starlight was not mentioned in the list of his dramas that I watched. I also actually made some GIFs of him to be included in this post but I think I'm just going to post this entry as is.

I watched the first episode of The Epoch of Miyu — my first impression

2026-04-15T10:48:55Z

I decided to check out the first episode of this series after hesitating for a couple of days since its release, thinking about whether to watch it while it's still ongoing or after all the episodes have dropped. I'm leaning more towards the former for now since I don't think I can handle binge-watching a drama of this genre. I mentioned in a previous post that modern romance drama is just not my cup of tea due to how the local dramas of the same genre in my country turned out — filled with toxic family and relationships, poor character development, non-stop arguing and misunderstandings, etc. So I thought watching around 2 episodes a day is manageable for someone like me who's genuinely not a fan of this genre. Why do I even bother watching this drama though? Well, I came here for the guest actors and also to see more of Zhu Zhu's performance (she was good in Why Is He Still Single but mostly got outshined by Wallace Huo, so I hope to see her killing it in this drama.)

Honestly speaking, based on the clips that I watched so far before watching the first episode, this drama does have the makings of what we call in my country as drama pukul 7 (7pm drama). For context, drama pukul 7 are dramas that are aired during our TV3's prime time slot, and it's almost always a modern romance drama that fills this slot — hence the term drama pukul 7 being synonymous with these modern romance dramas filled with all the recycled plots and tropes — which is again I must mention, filled with toxic family and relationships, exaggerated lifestyle, poor character development, non-stop arguing, jealousy and misunderstandings, ends with someone dying, etc.

With that being said, you can see why I hesitated to start watching this drama. However, after finishing the first episode, I sort of enjoy watching it, though I'd probably enjoyed it because I was laughing at some parts which I felt were pretty soapy and tropey (something that I also did while I was watching My Destined Consort back then.) I'll probably be laughing and roasting this series as I continue watching it in the future but I guess that's just how I cope and go through this kind of genre. That's not to say that I'm mocking their work though — the cast's performance is amazing so far — it's just that I find some of the execution amusing.

But back to the matter at hand, looking at the first episode objectively, I'd say that this is a good episode as it does pretty well at setting up the main characters (mostly in regards to both Ji Feng and Xu Miyu.) Barely a few minutes into the first episode, we're already shown that Nie Yucheng ( Xu Miyu's husband) is cheating on his wife from the get-go (though the synopsis has already provided this info too, so that's not a surprise.) It's pretty much a classic set-up for this genre, but it's a clear starting line for both Nie Yucheng and his lover as characters for now.

"I closed the deal, hit the KPI, and secured the Chinese partnership. You know better than anyone that you shouldn't push me out. Some doors stay closed from the beginning, regardless of the outcome. I thought this time would be different. I thought you would recognize what I've brought to the table." — Ji Feng to Phil (his superior). — Ji Feng is an acting general manager of the Svelto Hotel Group in Ubstan. He is shown as an adaptable, efficient and perceptive person in his work, proven by his actions throughout this whole episode. Ji Feng has worked abroad in the hotel industry for 10 years, working diligently to reach greater heights in his career. He is confident that he would be promoted from acting general manager to general manager of Svelto Hotel Group, only to find out that the higher-ups has decided to nominate him for candidacy for said position yet again, despite his accomplishments, experience and hard work for the past 10 years.

Feeling dejected, he uttered the quote above to his superior. To me, this shows that Ji Feng is very assured of his own worth as a person. He knows that all his accomplishments, efforts and experience bring value to the hotel as well as make him qualified to be promoted. Ji Feng's story in this episode ends with him contemplating his career — possibly deciding whether to remain in that hotel which doesn't acknowledge his value or to find a new place where he can advance in this industry.

"I don't work. I carefully guard my family relationships and marriage. Sometimes I focus on one thing at the expense of another, but I'm trying to maintain balance. As long as I have my husband's and my family's approval, even if I feel wronged sometimes, I still feel happy. Someone asked me if it's worth it. I said, it's a fair exchange." — Xu Miyu — Honestly, I find Xu Miyu's character relatable through this quote because it's something that I did a lot as a child and well into my young adulthood. This quote alone is pretty much self-explanatory to what kind of person Xu Miyu is as a person for now. Xu Miyu is a full-time housewife, so naturally, she considers herself the homemaker, which is largely the reason why she focuses mostly on trying to keep all sides happy in order to maintain a peaceful life. This makes her character seen as pretty much a doormat, evident by how her stepsister's family took advantage of her well off life with her husband and how her husband managed to fool her about his secret love affair.

I feel like Xu Miyu acts as a direct contrast to Ji Feng's personality for now because while Ji Feng is well aware of his own worth, it seems like Xu Miyu doesn't think highly of herself and thus doesn't realize her own value. In my opinion, the quote above shows how her mindset works — the fact that she could only feel happy after all the people who she thinks mattered to her are happy shows her need to please others in order for them to truly appreciate her, to make her feel worthy as a person. This kind of thinking is dangerous because you will usually end up with disappointment after realizing that not everyone cares about you the same way you care about them. I believe that her current personality will also be used as an excuse by her husband for his cheating on her. However, I think Xu Miyu's family and the way she was raised also played a part in her current personality, though only future episodes will tell us, if they care to elaborate more about Miyu's family. But with the way she is set-up in this episode, it seems that she will have a lot of character development to go through and that actually makes me interested to see how she will progress from here on out.

Other things that I like to note about are the opening and ending theme. I love both of them! (though not to the point that they become earworms...yet).

Oh, and also Ji Feng helping out Nie Yucheng to hide his secret love affair from Xu Miyu at the hotel irks me a bit but it's also not exactly his place to do anything about it as it is a rather personal matter of theirs. As Ji Feng said to his subordinates "We're here to serve, not to judge." Which is a very valid point, so even though it makes him look like a terrible person for having done such a thing, it is ultimately not his business.

All in all, I enjoyed the first episode quite a bit and I am interested to follow Xu Miyu's story in the future. So I think I will continue watching for now, though I am still deciding between watching it while it airs or wait for all episodes to drop. That's all from me, see you in the next entry!

PS : I started writing this entry on 15/4/2026, which is when episodes 7 and 8 dropped. Took the chance to skip right to these 2 episodes to watch a bit of both because this is where Xu Haiqiao makes his appearance as Duan Aoxiang and I like his scenes in these 2 episodes and was pleased to see him already sharing a scene with Guo Xiaoting (who plays Li Qiaoqi in this). These 2 are my favourites for their acting chops and from the looks of it, it seems like the drama is setting up a possible romance side plot for them, and I'm all here for it. Looking forward to these two characters and more of their story in future episodes (so that I can feed my mind with the headcanon that these 2 are basically Ronghao and Chidi reunited in the modern world). 😂

Matori to Kyoken - A young washed up actor becomes a spy for 2 Mad Dogs (spoiler alert!)

2026-04-14T06:39:43Z

Drama title : Matori to Kyoken
No. of episodes : 9
Duration of watching: 13/4/2026 - 14/4/2026 (got pretty busy with work or I would have been able to complete the whole series on the same day)

I ended up watching this series just to pick my mood up to watch dramas again. My mood for watching dramas and gaming has been pretty low for the past week and it kind of sucks when that happens because it makes me feel rather conflicted at times because I know I really want to watch a certain drama or continue my progress in Genshin but I just feel like I don't have the energy for it. Hence, I spent the past week doing Linnea's story quest bit by bit (and only managed to complete it yesterday) and watched some movies (Inspector Zende and Mercy).

It was only yesterday that I finally had the urge to watch a drama again. I was actually contemplating on watching The Epoch of Miyu while it's ongoing (which would be a first for me as I usually wait for a drama to be completed before I start watching it) but I figured that maybe I'll wait until a good number of episodes are out. Besides, I don't think my mind is ready for a drama of that genre. Thus, I picked Matori no Kyoken for its short episode length, straightforward storyline and fast-moving plot and I'd say that this drama does a good job of sparking my interest in dramas back up again.

What's the drama about?

When Umezawa Kyonosuke, a former child star turned drug dealer, gets caught by narcotics agent Kurosaki Toru, he is suddenly offered an unexpected proposition by Kurosaki — become his spy for the Narcotics Control Department (NCD) or get arrested by the NCD for his crimes if he refuses.

Umezawa reluctantly accepts the offer to ensure his survival only to get caught by Katsuragi Akito from the MPD's Narcotics and Firearm Division while carrying out a mission for Kurosaki shortly after their first meeting. During the interrogation, Umezawa faces yet another startling offer, this time from Katsuragi — to become his spy for the police and leak all of NCD's intel to them, essentially making him a double agent, or get arrested for his crimes.

Hence, in order to increase his chances of survival in his already messed up life, Umezawa, an underling drug dealer, becomes a spy for both the Mad Dogs of the NCD (Kurosaki) and the police (Katsuragi) — both of whom want to take down a drug organization for their own personal reasons.

Who should watch this drama?

— Fans of Nishihata Daigo/Hosoda Yoshihiko/Mukai Osamu

— Fans of action-packed dramas with a fast-moving plot

— Someone who wants to watch a short drama with a good plot and morally gray characters

Characters

— Umezawa Kyonosuke, played by Nishihata Daigo :

Umezawa is a former child actor whose life spirals downwards after he got suspended from acting for causing an incident while drunk, leading him to do illegal gambling before eventually getting blackmailed to become a meth dealer in order to pay off his debts from gambling. Despite his bad choices in life which led him to the path of drug dealing and smuggling, he still has a rather decent personality as he doesn't do drugs himself and even warned off young customers about the consequences of taking drugs. In order to survive his current life that's embroiled with crimes involving mainly drugs, Umezawa is shown to be pretty adept at street-fighting, quick-witted and resourceful, though he does have his fair share of his plans failing.

When he first met Kurosaki, he is only offered to become Kurosaki's spy because Kurosaki wants to use Umezawa's connection to Matsubara, Umezawa's direct boss. Umezawa carries out every single one of Kurosaki's orders as best as he could mostly out of necessity for his survival but seems to have a closer bond with Kurosaki by the end of the series as they went through a life and death situation together as opposed to his relationship with Katsuragi, which started off a bit more friendly in the beginning but grew more distant by the end of the series as Umezawa saw him for who he really is.

This is my first drama of Nishihata Daigo. He actually looked familiar to me when I first saw his face in the poster until I found out that he's a member of the boy band Naniwa Danshi, which explains why he looks familiar to me. Now, I'm not a fan of his boy band but I do remember watching one of the recordings of their live shows, where the members performed a song, all dressed in pink. So, I was pleasantly impressed with his performance as Umezawa, whose personality is quite rough around the edges despite his somewhat petite size (he looks pretty small when standing in between Kurosaki and Katsuragi) and soft facial features.

— Kurosaki Toru, played by Hosoda Yoshihiko :

An agent of the Narcotics Control Department (NCD), Kurosaki Toru is known as the NCD's Mad Dog for his single-minded obsession on eradicating all drug and drug-related organization from his country. His fixation on his goal makes him take any means necessary to make sure that his targets are arrested by his team, causing him to often take actions on his own — all of which are risky most of the time and sometimes ignoring existing rules altogether.

His deep hatred for drugs originated from his childhood, when meth essentially laid waste to his family. His mother was fed meth by the yakuza, causing her to become an addict, and was eventually forced into prostitution by them after she got knee-deep in debt and could no longer pay for her meth supply. As a consequence, Kurosaki's parents often argued and they became a broken family. An incident happened one day when Kurosaki's mother violently stabbed one of the yakuza member's lover out of rage, where she later committed suicide because of this and Kurosaki, who was still in middle school, came back to find her corpse hanging from a noose. His father, overcome with despair, drowned himself in the sea half a year later.

His personality actually reminds me a lot of Kageyama from Haikyu! due to how single-minded both of them are and how they prefer to act alone most of the time as they believe that they have the means necessary to achieve their personal goals. They also like to deliver deadpan humour. The way Kurosaki treated Umezawa for the most part is also a lot like how Kageyama treated Hinata with their little banter and wrestling moments. However, beneath his aloof personality, Kurosaki does show that he cares for Umezawa in his own way. A lot of his actions, though risky and sometimes rule-breaking bordering on madness, are well-intentioned and righteous, which are proof that he shows a lot of heart into his work.

This is actually my second drama of Hosoda Yoshihiko. I only noticed that I saw him in The Promise : The Truth From 16 Years Ago as Fuwa Sho after checking out his list of works just now. I think his performance in here is great.

— Katsuragi Akito, played by Mukai Osamu :

Katsuragi Akito is a detective of the MPD from the Narcotics and Firearms Division. He acts as a foil to Kurosaki's character in which he cares more about the optics of the situation and achieving accomplishments from his work, unlike Kurosaki who's driven by his personal vendetta against drugs and wants to eradicate them once and for all. This stems from his single-minded obsession in upstaging his father and brother, who were both Tokyo University graduates, by bringing his career to greater heights through meritorious accomplishments. Much like Kurosaki, he would use any means necessary to achieve his goal, earning him the title of the Mad Dog of the MPD.

His personality is vastly different from Kurosaki where he seems a lot friendlier towards Umezawa (despite all the nasty stuff that he says), often sharing intel and giving orders to Umezawa over dinner at their usual okonomiyaki place, and actually utilizes his subordinates for their operation (in contrast to Kurosaki who mostly works alone). Despite his friendly facade, Katsuragi is actually a cold-hearted and ruthless person, who only uses Umezawa as a pawn to get to his goal of capturing the organization first.

Mukai Osamu is the reason why I knew about this drama in the first place. While he is listed as one of the main characters, his character feels more like an important support role since I feel like both Umezawa and Kurosaki got a lot more focus compared to him.

Things that bothered me/I don't like/feel that there's room for improvement

I don't think there's much to scrutinize since the story is pretty straightforward and the episodes are very short. The story is fine with the way it was told. I'm thinking that maybe there are some mistakes regarding the drugs part and the way the NCD and police work but I'm not familiar with them and the drama itself doesn't really focus deeply on the inner working of these two organizations. So, there's not much for me to comment here.

Things that this drama made me think about

— Drugs ruin lives :

When people rely on something as toxic as drugs, their lives will become toxic as well be it physically, mentally or emotionally. This in turn makes their lives spiral downwards until it becomes hard to go back to when things were normal. So, moral of the story, never, ever take drugs or even get involved with them unless you want your life to become a living hell.

Things that I absolutely love!

— Those funny moments between Umezawa and Kurosaki

— Everyone's acting

— The straightforward and fast-moving plot

All in all, this drama is a good drama to watch as a filler or when you just want something simple and straightforward to watch. I'm giving it a score of 8/10 since the story is just decent with nothing too remarkable that makes it stand out from other dramas. Now I'm trying to decide if I should watch Lose My Heart to You or The Epoch of Miyu after this.

That's all I want to write for this entry this time. See you in the next entry!

Why Is He Still Single? - A rather faithful remake of the original series (spoiler alert!)

2026-04-07T08:17:54Z

Drama title : Why Is He Still Single?

No. of episodes : 16

Duration of watching : 21/3/2026 — 7/4/2026

I found out about this drama through a series of coincidences (kind of) and I'm glad that I did. It all started with me looking up on The Epoch of Miyu on MDL, an upcoming drama that I have my eye on because I recognized quite a lot of the actors who will be guest roles in that series (Xu Haiqiao, Hai Lu, Guo Xiaoting — all of whom I love for their acting chops) but I realized that I'm not familiar with both the male and female leads, which makes me wonder if I'll be able to sit through another modern romance drama just for the guest roles (modern romance dramas are just not my cup of tea usually).

A lot of the comments were praising Zhu Zhu's (the female lead) performance in Why Is He Still Single? though and that's when that title just rings a bell — it somehow reminds me of Kekkon Dekinai Otoko. My thoughts at that time were basically focused on one question — is this actually a Chinese remake of Kekkon Dekinai Otoko? Hence, after confirming that it is in fact a remake of Kekkon Dekinai Otoko, I began to watch it to see what this remake is like as well as to watch Zhu Zhu's performance that garnered a lot of praise from fans.

As I said before, Why Is He Still Single? is a remake of Kekkon Dekinai Otoko (aka He Who Can't Marry), a Japanese drama that came out in 2006. It also has a Korean remake that came out in 2009, which is actually the version that I first saw in the same year back then before later finding out that it was based on the Japanese one (though I didn't watch the Korean version completely from the beginning until the end since I was in boarding school at that time). As for the original version, I didn't watch it until maybe in the late 2010s. The Japanese version also had a season 2 that came out in 2019, which I had the chance to watch the following year.

Kekkon Dekinai Otoko is one of my favourite J-dramas, even though the second season feels a bit redundant (but nevertheless still enjoyable). I'll probably be drawing a lot of comparison from the Japanese version since it's the original source material besides being one of my favourite J-dramas as well as being something that I watched much recently compared to the Korean version. With that being said, please bear in mind that all the comparisons that I will do are basically based on what I remember and managed to compare recently from the Japanese version.

What's the drama about?

Yu Yu is a brilliant interior designer with a highly eccentric personality. He strongly opposes the concept of marriage, which he thinks are unnecessary and inconvenient. Thus he remains a bachelor in his 40s, enjoying his freedom and solitary life. On top of his eccentric personality, Yu Yu's lack of social skills and blunt demeanour often make people find him a difficult person to deal with. However, beneath his difficult personality, lies a heart that is caring and kind, (though Yu Yu is terrible at expressing those traits).

This drama follows the story of Yu Yu as he navigates through life and communicates with the people and world around him with his eccentric personality, and eventually learns to be more considerate, kind and later finding love through interactions with his close friends and family.

Who should watch this drama?

— Fans of Wallace Huo and/or Zhu Zhu

— Fans of the romantic comedy or the light-hearted slice of life genre (this series is hilarious!)

— Fans of the original version who want to revisit the story with a new twist

Characters

— Yu Yu, played by Wallace Huo :

A highly established interior designer with an eccentric personality, Yu Yu is often blunt and sarcastic, making him socially awkward and difficult to deal with. He has strong, negative opinions on marriage which stems from his preference for a solitary life with the freedom to do whatever he wants. He is also very passionate about his work. Yu Yu leads a somewhat routine-based life consisting of cooking steak for himself or eating out at his usual BBQ place and listening to his collection of classical music loudly at his home (in the original version, his character is a lot more routine-based and it showed a lot in the series that you probably end up remembering his daily schedule unintentionally).

Yu Yu shares the same traits as Kuwano Shinsuke, his Japanese counterpart from the original drama, though Yu Yu is a lot more animated and expressive in his actions whereas Kuwano-san seemed a lot more awkward and reserved in his behaviour and actions. However, that doesn't make one version better than the other as both versions are equally sarcastic and charming to me.

This is my first Wallace Huo drama and I think he managed to grasp Kuwano-san's vibes very well as Yu Yu, despite his more animated and expressive approach to the character. A lot of hilarious dialogues and moments come from Yu Yu that I practically laugh every time Yu Yu makes a sarcastic and witty remark in every episode.

— Gu Yejia, played by Zhu Zhu :

I basically found out about this drama because I wanted to see her performance first and at least be a bit familiar with her before watching The Epoch of Miyu in the future. Zhu Zhu plays the role of Dr. Gu Yejia, a medical doctor working in a private hospital. She first met Yu Yu when she attended him for a case of hemorrhoids and has since been regularly involved in Yu Yu's life after a first couple of destined encounters.

Gu Yejia is a calm and collected woman, maintaining a high degree of level-headedness when dealing with Yu Yu and his eccentric personality, allowing her to be on par with him in their usually sarcastic banter, though not without her patience pushed to the limit at times. Despite this, Yu Yu actually accepts her as a friend rather early in the series and seems to display a level of trust in her as he is often faking illness as a reason to meet her and get her advice on any life issues that bothers him — which is actually a hint that Yu Yu has some feelings for her, though it is initially hard due to tell due to Yu Yu being quite the tsundere.

This is also my first Zhu Zhu drama, and she's a beautiful actress and looks quite a bit like her Japanese and Korean counterparts (who are both beautiful too). Her acting as Dr. Gu Yejia was good but did not leave a strong impression on me because I think she always gets outshined by Yu Yu whenever they share a scene together. Part of her character's charm in the original version is her ability to be just as sharp and sarcastic as Kuwano-san during their encounters, and while there are moments when Gu Yejia managed to showcase that trait when the show allows her to, it still feels a bit lacking in this version because she wasn't given much opportunities to do so.

— Xia Xiaoman, played by Eleanor Lee :

Xia Xiaoman is Yu Yu's neighbour who recently moved in next door — which happens to be her uncle's apartment — with her pug, Dao, following a breakup with her boyfriend. A woman in her 20s, her character goes through relatable struggles in her career and personal life that one usually faces at her age though she usually tries to face them as positively as possible. She becomes close friends with Dr. Gu Yejia after being under her care for alcohol poisoning and thus spends a lot of time together with Yejia by eating together, hanging out with her or simply just gossiping or confiding in each other.

Xia Xiaoman initially finds Yu Yu obnoxious and intimidating but realizes his kind-heartedness after everything that Yu Yu had done for her over the course of the series (sending her to the hospital when she overdosed on alcohol and when she had appendicitis, taking care of Dao for her when she was hospitalized and protecting her from her ex-boyfriend who was harassing her while walking alone at night). When this realization fully sets in after Yu Yu protected her, she begins to become aware of her feelings for Yu Yu and tried to confess but to no avail as she notices that both Yu Yu and Gu Yejia actually like each other.

— Shen Wu, played by Fei Qi Ming :

It took me a few minutes to recognize him as the actor who played the young Marquis in Love Game in Eastern fantasy when I first saw him in this drama. Shen Wu works as Yu Yu's assistant and is essentially his apprentice. Being one of the younger adult characters in this series, Shen Wu is often seen spending time with his girlfriend (Xiaoxiao), Xiaoman and Qing (Xiaoman's best friend), sharing weal and woe with them, as well as gossiping about Yu Yu (they actually made a WeChat group specially for this, with Gu Yejia included in the group).

Shen Wu is hard-working and loyal to Yu Yu, admiring him for his skills though sometimes finds himself clashing with Yu Yu because of his stubbornness. Shen Wu's story that stood out to me is when he decides to go solo after successfully completing a design all by himself, only to be opposed by Yu Yu as, deep down inside, he isn't ready to let Shen Wu leave (as Yu Yu's manager Lin Sa was also contemplating about leaving their studio, which was a strong blow to Yu Yu). The two had quite an argument with Yu Yu unable to accept the idea of both his precious subordinates leaving and Shen Wu frustrated of not being able to advance his career after working as an assistant designer for 5 years. However, after reflecting his words and decisions, Yu Yu decides to let Shen Wu work solo and open his own studio so that he can continue to grow in this field. Shen Wu eventually ends up working in the same studio building as Yu Yu again, thanks to Lin Sa's arrangement, only that this time, he comes back as a full-fledged designer.

— Lin Sa, played by Zhang Yao :

Lin Sa is Yu Yu's manager who is responsible for taking up and rejecting any potential projects at Yu Yu's discretion. She also acts as the intermediary between Yu Yu and their clients, often able to negotiate successfully, considering Yu Yu's tendency to unintentionally be rude due to his bluntness.

Lin Sa and Yu Yu go way back since their trainee days at a design company (or probably college days? I wasn't very clear on this), and thus Yu Yu trusts Lin Sa a lot and depends a lot on her for their projects. When Lin Sa decides to leave Beijing for a better career prospect, Yu Yu is torn between asking her to stay or letting her go for her own good. While he initially kept quiet about her decision to leave, Yu Yu ultimately decides to tell her that he wants her to stay (after getting advice from Gu Yejia on how to approach this matter) — showcasing his need for her presence and support as an important friend and partner to continue growing in his life and career.

Things that bothered me/I don't like/feel that there's room for improvement

— The lack of banter between Yu Yu and Gu Yejia :

Not to say that they don't have scenes where they banter, it's just that I feel it's not as much as in the original version. From what I can remember of the original (and from what I managed to re-watch recently), Kuwano-san and Hayasaka-sensei's bantering scenes felt more solid and a lot of the scenes fully focused on them, giving room for both characters and their relationship to grow on the audience.

— The fact that they removed the short trip part with Yu Yu and Gu Yejia :

In both the Japanese and the Korean version, there is a scene where both leads coincidentally meet on a bus that takes them for short trip to a historical site, where the male lead demolishes all of the tour guide's explanation, leading to him being seen as an insufferable know-it-all by the female lead and unintentionally making the tour guide cry and having a breakdown. This version did include the part where Yu Yu and Gu Yejia meet each other on the bus with a bit of Yu Yu showing off his knowledge but they didn't show the rest of the trip following that scene. I think it's a shame that they removed the whole trip because it's one of the scenes where it actually focused on only the male and female leads together besides being a hilarious scene.

However, this series did make an effort to mention what happened during the trip by having Gu Yejia recounted her experience of the trip to Xiaoman in which she simply said that Yu Yu was being mean (unintentionally) and showing off his knowledge during the whole trip and eventually caused the tour guide to cry (which made me happy that they at least mentioned it in this way so that I know the trip played out the exact same way as the original. I just wish that we could have seen it. I would love to see how that scene plays out with Yu Yu's hilarious remarks).

— The sunrise scene :

This scene was actually quite sweet as we have Yu Yu and Gu Yejia waiting for the sunrise together, just the two of them. Gu Yejia eventually fell asleep on Yu Yu's shoulder and missed out on the sunrise altogether (thankfully Yu Yu recorded it for her). The only thing that bothered me about this scene is that the background looked obviously CGI. I don't mind it being CGI, but I wished it didn't look so shoddy because it distracted me quite a bit from the scene.

— The final 4 episodes which feel a bit flat for me :

I think this is actually more of a me problem as I probably had been sleepy or sleep-deprived or just tired when I was watching these episodes. The final 4 episodes are quite dramatic and supposed to be emotional that even the tone of the drama shifted a bit (or so I noticed). From Lin Sa contemplating on leaving Yu Yu's studio and moving to Beijing for a better career prospect, to Shen Wu arguing with Yu Yu for his right to go solo, to Xiaoman realizing her feelings for Yu Yu but is ultimately let down after she realizes the truth, to Yu Yu backing out of a kiss with Gu Yejia at the BBQ place and ended up leaving her alone there because he was afraid of messing things up and finally to the final scene with Yu Yu and Gu Yejia confessing to each other.

Emotions run high in these scenes for the characters involved and normally I would at least feel something for them in their emotional moments but I just didn't feel much during these scenes. I don't know if it's because those episodes actually felt draggy or maybe I was simply too tired to feel anything when I watched those scenes.

— Yu Yu's and Gu Yejia's confession scene :

I don't actually hate this scene, I just think it didn't quite capture my heart. The whole scene itself is good when you look at it objectively. It is essentially a good confession scene filled with nuances. It starts off with Yu Yu inviting Gu Yejia out for BBQ to make amends over what happened previously (Yu Yu backing out of a kiss with Gu Yejia and basically ditching her there afterwards) — only this time, he asks her to have BBQ over at his place, something that Yu Yu would never have easily done before, showing that he's comfortable enough to invite her over.

Gu Yejia comes over only to see that he has set up a table filled with the BBQ stuff in the hallway, making Gu Yejia disappointed and ready to leave the place when Yu Yu comes out and asks her not to go. The two had a heartfelt conversation where Yu Yu apologizes and expresses his concern about them getting closer in their relationship because he's afraid of messing it up. Gu Yejia responds in kind, telling him that a love relationship isn't just one-sided, it needs both sides to overcome any challenges and to shoulder any burden together.

Yu Yu then responds by asking her for her help to get the soy sauce from his kitchen — another thing that he wouldn't have done so willingly. The scene cuts to Gu Yejia entering his house (which is a really big deal because Yu Yu almost never lets anyone inside his house), where she notices the dinner table set up for 2 people and the clay fish Yu Yu added to keep his goldfish company as well as the garden Yu Yu made for his clay animals. Yu Yu then shares an anecdote from his childhood with her, on how the words from his late father actually inspired him to take up interior designing. He then finally shows that house model that he had been assembling for the both of them and asks if Gu Yejia would be willing to move in with him once it's completed, to which she said yes and they ended the final scene with a kiss.

Ok, after writing all this, I realized that this scene does have a lot of thought put into it. But somehow, Kuwano-san's confession of "I think...I'm in love with you." feels impactful to me despite it being so simple (though of course he ruined the moment after that by unintentionally saying the wrong things). It felt impactful to me because it's one of those moments when he said what he really feels directly instead of being sarcastic, considering the awkward and eccentric person that he is.

Things that this drama made me think about

I didn't really have deep thoughts when watching this drama because I was pretty preoccupied with comparing some familiar scenes from this series with the original version and also because this drama is a rather light-hearted slice of life story, so there's not much to ponder about here, at least for me.

If anything, it would probably have to be about :

— Marriage vs Single life :

Everyone has their reason for desiring either life. Some might choose marriage for religious reasons, to expand their family or maybe finding a newer, greater purpose in raising children. Some might choose staying single because they prefer a solitary life, or want to chase other dreams, or just don't necessarily see marriage as something compulsory to do in life. Either way, there is nothing wrong with either choice, what matters is that we live fulfilling lives.

Things that I absolutely love!

— The cast, all of them played their respective parts so well, especially Wallace Huo as Yu Yu

— Yu Yu's blunt and sarcastic remarks that make up a lot of hilarious moments in this series

— The fact that they re-enact most of, if not all, the scenes from the original drama :

There were a lot of scenes that I remembered from the original drama being in this series though a lot of the time they re-enact them with a twist and changed some elements accordingly to be more aligned with the current times and their culture. The changes make those scenes feel fresh despite its familiarity and sometimes the changes done made some scenes turned out better and funnier than the original version.

I was especially glad when they decided to simply close the curtains when Gu Yejia attended Yu Yu for the hemorrhoids and proceeded with the anoscopy instead of having his pants pulled down like in the Japanese and Korean version. Like, I'm glad I didn't have to see the protagonist's backside for a 3rd time.

— Everyone's fashion style :

The cast looks so fashionable in this compared to the original drama that I wonder if that is really just how everyone in Shanghai dresses. The original drama had their cast dressed in the most casual clothes (usually in T-shirts) but honestly, it makes that version feel more homey and I dig that too (probably because it reminds me of simpler times in the 2000s, which is the time when the original drama came out).

All in all, Why Is He Still Single? is a faithful adaptation of the Kekkon Dekinai Otoko with a new twist. I really enjoyed watching it for the most part. I initially wanted to give a score of 9.5 but due to the issues that I had , particularly with the final 4 episodes, I decided to leave it a score of 9/10.

I planned to watch Lose My Heart to You after this but I also feel tempted to make a slight detour and watch Matori to Kyoken first (I kinda miss watching Japanese dramas). But watching Matori to Kyoken first would mean pushing The Princess's Gambit turn back again. Oh well, I'll just check them both out and see which one suits my fancy for now.

That's all for this entry. See you in the next entry!

Finally finished watching Life is Strange : Reunion's playthrough...and some other stuff

2026-03-31T05:24:13Z

I have just finished watching LiS : Reunion's playthrough yesterday. It really is the end of Max's and Chloe's story and while I have a lot of things to say about it, I don't think I can write it all down properly, mainly due to the timey-wimey stuff that's happened in the game. All I can say for now is that LiS : Reunion's story is a lot better than Double Exposure and even managed to fix some of Double Exposure's flaws — though not without having flaws of its own. The montage for one of the endings made me teary-eyed as they showed us moments from both Life is Strange 1 and Before the Storm, sprinkled with a bit of scenes from Double Exposure. So, I may or may not write about my complete thoughts on this game. We'll just have to wait and see.

What I do want to write though is my interesting experience yesterday at The Chicken Rice Shop at a mall near where I live. It was around 11.30am when I went to the restaurant to buy some food to take away for lunch. After ordering, I sat down at a table while waiting for my order to be ready. And that's when I saw an older Malay guy, probably in his 40s or early 50s, with his long hair dyed a copper colour mixed with gray hair tie in a ponytail, sitting 2 tables away from me.

He caught my attention because I unintentionally saw that he was watching a Chinese costume drama on his phone while doing his paperwork. Now, I'm relatively new to the C-drama scene, having only started watching them in 2023, so my default mindset has always been that women are the main target audience of C-dramas (mainly due to the amount of romance there is in C-dramas). I understand that this isn't true as there are genres that are more aligned with men's interests such as wuxia and whatnot and ultimately, anyone can watch anything they like no matter who they are. It's just that, that fact hasn't really sunk in until I saw that person yesterday.

Having saw that he was watching a costume Chinese drama on his phone, I can't help but made repeated glances at his phone from where I was sitting because I wanted to make out which drama is he watching. He was around 2 to 3 meters away from me so the images from his phone is quite small but I could see Zhao Jinmai and the Youku logo at the top right corner of the screen in the scene that he was watching. My brain was trying to connect the dots with these 2 information until I saw Su Rongqing afterwards in the following scene and I knew that this person is watching The Princess Royal. Gotta love how our brains can sometimes remember random stuff like this.

I was tempted to approach the guy and make a conversation but...small talk isn't really my strong suit. In the end, I just waited until my order is finished and I simply left the place.

Now that I'm done watching LiS : Reunion's playthrough, I can resume watching Why Is He Still Single?. It's been a short while but I already miss watching C-dramas. I did watch Lose My Heart to You in bits and pieces during the time that I stopped watching Why Is He Still Single, but that doesn't really count because I wasn't watching it properly and sometimes I watch it on mute, and most importantly, I wanted to save it for after I'm done with Why Is He Still Single? (sorry The Princess's Gambit, but your turn has been pushed back...again.)

Anyway, that's all that I want to write for this entry. My next entry will probably be about my thoughts on Why Is He Still Single? See you in the next entry.

Blessed with good things that came out this week

2026-03-28T02:00:02Z

I think there are a lot of things that I had been waiting for that came out this month such as Lose My Heart to You, Love Beyond the Grave and Life is Strange : Reunion. Then unexpectedly, the first teaser trailer for HBO's Harry Potter TV series came out last Wednesday. Honestly speaking, I'm fine with how it turned out and the cast looks great especially the main trio. I just still couldn't fully wrap my head around Snape's casting though. 😅 I heard that Paapa Essiedu is a good actor, so I hope that he will own the character and make it iconic in his own way just as the late Alan Rickman did. Oh yeah, here's the teaser trailer for those who wants to watch it. I'm actually excited to watch it. :D

Moving on to the next point, I think I won't be watching any C-drama for the time being - at least not until I have finished watching Life is Strange : Reunion's playthrough. I only managed to watch around the first 40 minutes of the playthrough for now and I think the story is interesting so far. I'll probably write an entry about it after I have finished watching it.
For now, I'm just in love with the launch trailer and the song used in it.
Just gonna leave the trailer here so that I can revisit it whenever I feel like it.

Parts that I love in this trailer :

— The song! It sounds so nostalgic that it brought me memories of the first LiS game and BtS. It has that note of finality to it but also feels hopeful

— The moment when Max snapped and talked about having had made tough choices. Sometimes I forget just how much she's grown as a character, and that scene definitely shows that as she seems much more assured in facing any challenges now.

— The moment when Chloe says that she will fight for this timeline and for the both of them also shows character development on her part in my opinion, because she is willing to fight back the odds and find a solution that can save the both of them, instead of leaving the final decision to Max, just as she did in LiS 1.

Well, I'm off to finish watching the rest of the playthrough now. See you in the next entry.

Quick update

2026-03-25T04:14:04Z

I had another 4 days leave over the last weekend up until Tuesday for the Hari Raya festivities. I must say that I don't exactly feel as well rested during this holiday as compared to last time when I had a 4 days leave around 2 weeks ago. It's probably because of the recent heatwave in my country and because my family and I had to host some of our relatives who came for the festivities (which is a bit of an energy-consuming process for me). I am happy and thankful that I get to enjoy a lot of good food during this festive season though.

Besides eating and meeting my extended family, I spent a lot of time watching the Detective Chinatown movie series (which is chaotic and fun) and a bit of Why Is He Still Single? (review coming soon, after I am finished with it. I have only watched the first 2 episodes). Yes, I know I said that I would watch The Princess's Gambit first after I completed No Pain No Gain but my brain and heart are just pulling me towards different dramas at the moment.

Anyway, I'm happy that Love Beyond the Grave is finally releasing on the 28th and of course, Lose My Heart to You finally releases on the 23rd. I remember feeling restless waiting for Lose My Heart to You's release date because I was worried that the low number of reservations would be a factor for it to not air but it miraculously made its release on the 23rd of March (with a sudden surge of up to 12k to 14k reservations near the time of its release). I took the liberty of watching Lose My Heart to You in bits and pieces, and I feel like I mostly enjoyed only Xu Haiqiao's parts for now, but I will watch the series properly once all the episodes are available and I will write my thoughts on this drama after I'm done watching it.

Oh, and there's also Life is Strange : Reunion releasing soon on the 26th of March and I'm looking forward to watch the playthrough (I haven't got a console of my own, and I don't think I'll buy one soon mainly due to time constraint). Well, that's all I want to write for now.

See you in the next entry!

My First Impression of Prince Duomi from Go East (contains spoilers from episode 18!)

2026-03-20T16:00:06Z

I haven't actually watched Go East yet, but I was just searching for scenes with Prince Duomi in it because Xu Haiqiao is playing him and also because I wanted to know just what kind of relationship that he has with Yuan Mo (played by Tan Jianci) and just what sort of character he is.

And thus, I stumbled upon his first scene in episode 18, where Yuan Mo was trying to treat Ah Shu to a lavish meal at Inebriation Restaurant, only to receive a rather judgemental remark from someone sitting nearby.

Understandably, Yuan Mo gets annoyed with his remarks. I would too, if I were in his shoes, but as an audience, I find Prince Duomi's introduction somewhat charming probably because it wasn't what I expected at all. I mean, I thought their encounter would be under serious circumstances or something but instead, we get introduced to a prince who is actually a foodie, in a rather chill setting.

The next scene cuts to him actually joining both Yuan Mo and Ah Shu at the table, where he starts critisizing on their food choices like it's nobody's business, much to the annoyance of both Yuan Mo and Ah Shu. 😂
At this point though, I started to wonder why is he being such a food critic. Like, let people order whatever they want, right?

Ah Shu is clearly annoyed by now and retorted indignantly, only for Prince Duomi to throw shade at her tastes, particularly regarding her liking for the cherry cheese. Luckily, he conceded when he was proved wrong about the roasted lamb leg being best paired with grape wine. When he started to write his comments on that little book of his, it started to dawn on me that he might actually be a food critic after all.

The next scene confirms that Prince Duomi is not just any random food critic - he is actually the most famous food critic in Changle city whose recommendations are heeded by those who know his reputation. If this series had been set in the present time, I bet Prince Duomi would have owned a food vlog channel or something and became viral. 😂
Meanwhile, the whole scene of the chef begging Prince Duomi to leave a good review just somehow reminds me of Ratatouille for some reason.

Honestly speaking though, when I first realized that Prince Duomi is a foodie, I just can't help but think of Samo Duoluo. I mean, are we sure that Prince Duomi isn't an alternate universe or perhaps a revised version of Samo Duoluo? They both have rather unconventional names as characters in a Tang Dynasty setting due to that fact that both of them hail from another kingdom, and they are both royalty.

And despite having different backgrounds with Duomi still living as a prince into adulthood while Samo Duoluo grew up an orphan since childhood, they both can be deeply troubled by the problematic issues of their respective kingdoms in spite of their usual carefree exterior most of the time.

This gesture is also another reason why I got reminded of Samo Duoluo.

So I just can't help adding these GIFs together, haha.

If I were to entertain the thought that Prince Duomi is an AU or revised version of Samo Duoluo, then perhaps this is what Samo Duoluo would have become if his kingdom didn't fall when he was a child - still a foodie but rather refined and elegant, even if he is just as carefree as ever - which is a contrast to his child-like and mischievous self in Detective Samoyeds.

But anyway, I know that they are two different people and any similarities between them are coincidental besides the fact that they are both played by Xu Haiqiao. I also just want to add that I love Xu Haiqiao's performance as Prince Duomi just as much as I love him as Samo Duoluo. He's just charming in both roles.

Ultimately, this is just something that I write for funsies. I like the vibe of Go East though, so I might try to watch it soon. Oh and happy Eid Mubarak to those who are celebrating!

See you all in the next entry!

Dramas that I kept thinking of recently in the past month

2026-03-20T03:34:29Z

The fasting month is almost over this year and we're going to celebrate Eid Al-Fitr tomorrow where I live. For this past month, I find myself often thinking about Detective Samoyeds and In Blossom, both of which I watched during the fasting month of previous years (Detective Samoyeds in 2023 and In Blossom in 2024 respectively).

I don't know exactly why they would pop up in my head in the last month but I'm guessing it's because I'm just reminded of the previous fasting months as I go through the current one and somehow my brain has associated these dramas with them. It's like my brain has put them as a marker for those times and in a way...it makes me happy and fond of those times, I guess.

The main cast from Detective Samoyeds : (from the left) Liu Guan Lin as Huang Sanpao, Zhang Xin Yuan as Gongsun Siniang, Xu Haiqiao as Samo Duoluo, Ju Jingyi as Shangguan Zisu, Herman Li as Li Zhi and Cheng Xiao Meng as Tan Shuangye

I actually kept thinking about Detective Samoyeds more than In Blossom and had even rewatched some episodes and scenes recently. It's been a while since I last saw Samo Duoluo and the gang so I'd forgotten what a fun group this was when I watched it.

Detective Samoyeds is a fun series with a charming cast. While the CGI may sometimes get a bit distracting and shoddy, the strength of this drama lies in its lovable cast and interesting cases. To me the main cast really carried the whole series and their bond and shenanigans are what really make this series so rewatchable for me because sometimes I would search for a specific scene of them just bantering or something and I would still find it funny.

The episodic nature of the series is also another reason why it's highly rewatchable for me because you can just pick up any episode and just be done with it there and then after you're finished with it. There is, of course, an overarching plot regarding a fallen kingdom but the drama didn't make much room for that plot to develop properly.

So if you're looking for a light-hearted mystery drama, I suggest you to check out this series and give it a try. This drama is also one of Xu Haiqiao's older works but I think it's also one of his best characters to me (besides Ronghao) because whenever I watch him in this drama, I can only see Samo Duoluo and not Xu Haiqiao acting as Samo Duoluo. You can also see a totally cute and different side to Xu Haiqiao in this drama.

Here's the link to the full episodes, the Youku channel was kind enough to make all of them available on YouTube :

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIPiKkS-FpK8sjPSH4KV5Y_AUUdIYRqXG&si=fwphtCTrxzY5dAsn

In Blossom poster, featuring Liu Xueyi as Pan Yue and Ju Jingyi as Yang Caiwei/Shangguan Zhi

In Blossom is another drama that I kept thinking of recently this month, though not as much as Detective Samoyeds. However, I kept remembering how engrossed I was in the series that I finished it in just 11 days, a few days away from Eid Al-Fitr in 2024.

I remember watching it initially just for Liu Xueyi but its gothic aesthetic and the story just captivated me, though the whole face swapping thing is far-fetched. However, ignoring the face swapping part, I just adore the series in its entirety. Now, I don't remember everything in detail but I do remember that it's a drama with a good mix of romance, mystery and martial arts. And Liu Xueyi as Pan Yue is just a treat to the eyes. So, this drama will always remain a fond memory to me...and I hope I'll be able to rewatch it in the near future.

Other dramas that I think I will think about and remember in future fasting months would be Starlight and No Pain No Gain - mainly because I watched and completed both of them during this year's fasting month.

And it's funny but I have no recollection of what drama that I watched during last year's fasting month. I think it's most probably because I didn't watch any drama at that time. I do remember that I watched Filter a couple of weeks after Eid Al-Fitr 2025 though.

So yeah, that's about it. These dramas will remain as fond memories to me, especially Detective Samoyeds and In Blossom (though I guess my fondness for both Starlight and No Pain No Gain will be just as strong in the future.)

That's all from me for now. See you all in the next entry.

No Pain No Gain - One Man's Journey to Lose Money for Riches Gone Hilariously Wrong (spoiler alert!)

2026-03-17T07:24:34Z

Drama title : No Pain No Gain
No. of episodes : 26
Duration of watching : 6/3/2026 - 14/3/2026

I initially watched the first episode just to check out the story but immediately got hooked after the first 2 episodes and ended up binge-watching the series almost every day until the end. No Pain No Gain is my second workplace comedy C-drama after Never Give Up. This drama is charming, hilarious and witty with a colourful cast, almost similar to Never Give Up, which probably explains my strong liking for it.

What's the drama about?

After being dismissed from his exploitative company for writing and circulating a job-security survival manual, Pei Qian meets Mr. Sima, a mysterious tycoon who offers him a startup capital to build a new company with one important condition — Pei Qian must lose money through the company's projects in order to get his bonus (equivalent to the amount of loss) or he will only receive a monthly base salary of 5000 yuan if the projects are profitable.

Pei Qian accepts Mr. Sima's offer despite the restrictive conditions contained in the 1GB softcopy version of the contract, thinking that the conditions are reasonable enough and that he really has nothing much to lose if he breached the contract. Hence, he founded Tengda Games, works as its general manager and pulling out all the stops to lose money through questionable projects, high-cost learning exchange trip, generous salaries and excessive bonuses for the staff.

His efforts to lose money, however, is often backfired due to his staff's dedication and gumption, who quickly revered Pei Qian as a conscientious and hardworking boss due to the generous work system of the company. As Pei Qian is repeatedly disappointed at his staff and company for making profits, he starts to struggle surviving on the monthly base salary of 5000 yuan and went through trials and tribulations that are funny but also eye-opening.

Who should watch this drama?

— Fans of workplace comedy or comedy in general

— Fans of Peng Yu Chang

Characters

This drama boasts a colourful cast that made me care for each and every one of them — be it from the main cast or the minor ones.

— Pei Qian, played by Peng Yu Chang :

Pei Qian is a young man who initially gets dismissed from his old workplace for writing a job-security survival manual before he met Mr. Sima. Despite his unassuming appearance, Pei Qian is smart, adept at business, witty and resourceful. He uses his experience, knowledge and understanding of the business world to lose as much money as possible. However, he is tested time and again when his staff unknowingly thwarted his plans, causing him to gradually question his life choices as he sees his friends and staff earning more than him while he could just barely survive on the monthly salary and ended up having to work another job as a designated driver for extra income.

While he initially wanted his staff to fail at their assigned jobs so he could lose the money to gain his own bonus, as the series progresses, Pei Qian slowly becomes aware and considerate of his staff's dedication and efforts, making him determined not to let their hard work go to waste. He was put to the ultimate test when he finds out the truth behind Mr. Sima's intentions as well as facing Sima Wan's offer. While he did accept Sima Wan's offer of declaring bankruptcy of Tengda Games so he can finally earn the rest of the company's money, Pei Qian finally realizes that the most important asset of a company is its people, rather than the wealth itself. He ultimately becomes a boss that puts his people first and lets them thrive in their own way after cancelling his deal with Sima Wan and revising his contract with Mr. Sima for good.

This is my first drama of Peng Yu Chang and I really like how he carried himself as Pei Qian. Knowing that he's also the main character in I Am Nobody has convinced me to finally check that drama out.

— Lin Wan, played by Jelly Lin :

Lin Wan, heiress to Shennhua International where both her parents are its founders, is a passionate and driven young woman whose main wish is to create her own dream game. She is firstly introduced as an employee of Sky Fire's (a rival game company) and appears to not fit in with their working methods. After being in charge as Sky Fire's representative for Tengda Games during their company learning exchange program, Lin Wan decides to leave Sky Fire for Tengda Games, thinking that the latter's working system is more aligned with her interests and goals — much to her parents' chagrin as they both wished for her to inherit their business. Pei Qian takes her in thinking that her background and headstrong personality are a perfect recipe for failing a project. However, true to her goal, Lin Wan pushes through with determination, hard work and willingness to learn and becomes a rather level-headed department head (but still headstrong when necessary) as time progresses, which contribute to her game's success.

— Ma Yang, played by Wang Tian Fang :

Ma Yang is Pei Qian's best friend and housemate. In the beginning of the series, he is a carefree young man who only helps out at his relative's fruit stall, lacking certain experiences and qualifications for a good resume and is mostly clueless about the business world. Regardless, Pei Qian hires him as the vice CEO for precisely those reasons, thinking that Ma Yang's lack of experience will contribute to the company's loss. Hence, Pei Qian makes Ma Yang dabble in managing the company's internet cafe project and later on the DreamForge Capital — both of which Ma Yang is able to manage successfully, much to Pei Qian's disappointment. Through his experience in both of these projects, Ma Yang eventually becomes a very skilled influencer and someone reliable as he works with his own methods to make other people's dreams come true through the DreamForge Capital.

— Huang Sibo, played by Liu Guan Lin :

Huang Sibo is an earnest, honest-to-goodness and hardworking man who values a good working environment where colleagues respect each other. He is initially shown as a hopeful man who is badly affected by the toxic work culture of his previous workplace, making him become a bit of a pushover due to his willingness to bargain his salary to the bare minimum and working overtime without hesitation as he believes that would secure him the job (which happened at his old workplace). Under Pei Qian's leadership, Sibo finds himself in an ideal work environment and manages to grow into his own person though it's not without a lot of challenges and stressful downward spirals. Nevertheless, he eventually becomes someone who learns to say 'No' while still remaining the kind and hard-working man he is.

— Bao Xu, played by Vinnie Yao :

In Pei Qian's own words, he's a full-time net cafe camper with zero work experience. He is hired by Pei Qian as the company's game tester. Bao Xu is essentially a shut-in who cares about nothing but games. While he mostly played games to his heart's content during work hours at the beginning of the series, he becomes moved by Sibo's earnestness to fix Divine General Pact (one of Tengda's games) in time before launch and starts working hard too. Ever since then, he is often seen diligently working together with Sibo, Lin Wan and Lv Mingliang whenever they develop a new game project, showcasing his dedication and effort for the company.

— Lv Mingliang, played by Wu Jun Ting :

A young programmer who seems like he likes to slack off but is actually only keeping a low profile so as to not be taken advantage of. Lv Mingliang appears mostly dispassionate to his work in the beginning and would be the first to leave work at every opportunity. However, he is clearly taken by Tengda's good work environment and eventually works in earnest, sometimes even working overtime despite clearly being opposed to doing so in the beginning. His love for Tengda and its people clearly shows in episode 24 when he, for the first time in his life, didn't feel like leaving the office on its day of closure.

— Xin Hailu, played by He Rui Xian :

Xin Hailu's role in this drama is mainly as the silent observer of Pei Qian and his progress with the company. She works as a special assistant to Pei Qian and reports directly to Mr. Sima. Hailu initially doesn't think highly of Pei Qian but over time grows to admire and respect him and his decisions. In the end, after Pei Qian revised his contract with Mr. Sima, Hailu decides to work under Tengda Games instead of returning back to Mr. Sima's Jinghong group, showing her support to Pei Qian.

Things that bothered me/I don't like/feel that there's room for improvement

— The final four episodes :

These episodes felt rather packed with multiple storylines that I feel it would have been better if they had expanded the final arc a bit longer. As a result, the final four episodes also felt somewhat rushed.

Things that this drama made me think about

— A healthy work environment will naturally produce a dedicated working team that will work earnestly for their company/organization, contributing to their success :

The reason Tengda is usually successful with each project is the fact that the employees are grateful for the benefits that they received as well as the good working environment. As a result, they push themselves to do good work equivalent to the benefits, bonuses and payments that they receive. Of course, in real life, there will bound to be those who basically freeload off these benefits.

— A company's asset — Money vs the People :

In the final episode, Pei Qian makes the decision for Tengda to branch off from Mr. Sima's Jinghong group influence and wealth, stating that he wants the company to be independent and that he realizes that it's not the wealth that is a company's most important asset but it is its people. In Tengda's case, it is feasible because all of its core employees are dedicated and takes initiative, making it a self-sustainable company. In my opinion though, a bit of wealth is still needed to develop a decent company because without enough money, you would struggle to give at least a decent environment for the employee and this would probably affect the outcome of the company because the employees then wouldn't be motivated enough to do a good job for the company. Thus this issue does become a bit of a chicken and egg situation for me.

— The rich just keeps on getting rich :

I initially thought that the reason Mr. Sima was willing to invest in Tengda was because he was laundering money. As it turns out, the Sima family may possibly be just that wealthy as Pei Qian finds out from Sima Wan that he is but one of many candidates that Mr. Sima approached, essentially being a lab rat to Mr. Sima's experiment in order to revive his Jinghong group. With Sima Wan's explanation, Pei Qian realizes that he is just one of the pieces on Mr. Sima's chessboard, just a pawn under Mr. Sima's influence and wealth. In the final episode, Mr. Sima revises the contract with Pei Qian though he wants to remain as the major investor so he could reap the profits — which Pei Qian ultimately opposes as he realizes the true value of his friends and colleagues and does not want to become like Mr. Sima who only manipulates other people for his own gain.

— How the final four episodes packed an emotional punch for me :

The final four episodes made me feel emotional because of all the things Pei Qian and his friends and staff had to go through. The cast was so likeable together that I just can't help feeling sad for them when Pei Qian declared to close Tengda for good and the staff had to leave such a good workplace filled with good memories behind.

— Bonus, Huang Sanpao becomes Huang Sibo :

Frankly speaking, I discovered this drama because I was looking up at Liu Guan Lin's latest works since I was wondering if he had been in any dramas lately. This action is triggered by the fact that I saw him in a snippet of Lose My Heart to You with Xu Haiqiao and I just remembered how I love their dynamic as a duo in Detective Samoyeds and how funny he was as Huang Sanpao in Detective Samoyeds. To my amusement, he becomes another Huang in No Pain No Gain. And now my headcanon is Huang Sibo is Huang Sanpao's descendant or simply a reincarnated modern version of Huang Sanpao.

Things that I absolutely love!

— The colourful cast

— The humour :

I laughed at every episode because the humour and the timing of jokes were well placed, even during the final 4 rushed episodes.

— The OSTs and BGMs :

They were relaxing to listen to, making it a relaxing drama to watch on weekends or when you simply want to wind down. I especially like 'You Can Have Every Little Bit' by Skye Emanuel, because it brings such weekend/holiday vibes.

- Favourite funny scene :

The vertical drama scene in episode 7! That part was really unexpected and hilarious! I love the details that they put into that scene, from the over the top acting, different way of dialogue delivery (like they do in vertical dramas) as well as the timer shown on screen (because it was actually supposed to be a video recording.)

Overall, I love this drama very much and I think it's highly rewatchable, so this is definitely going to be another one of my comfort dramas. I decided to give this drama a 9.5 rating. I'm glad that I discovered this drama.

That's all from me for now. See you in the next entry.

Having another earworm...again...

2026-03-14T04:33:31Z

Yeah, I haven't been able to finish the remaining episodes of No Pain No Gain the other day because I was busy with work. And now I find myself having another earworm, this time in the form of In Blossom's ending theme - Door by Zhou Shen.

I suppose it is some kind of an earworm... though it's not as strong or playing as repetitively in my head as the previous 2 earworms that I've had in the past few months. The thing is, this song was already an earworm to me when I first saw In Blossom back in 2024. That drama is one of my favorites and is probably the first C-drama that I finished in such a short time (took me only 11 days to complete the whole series). I was just so engrossed with the story when I was watching the drama that I would watch at least 4 to 5 episodes a day and sometimes reaching up to 7 episodes a day.

Liu Xueyi is the reason that I knew about the drama in the first place and I decided to give this drama a try because I first saw Liu Xueyi as Wuxin in the Blood of Youth and he caught my attention because he translated Wuxin's personality that I loved so much in the donghua so well on-screen. Hence, I was happy to find out that he will be a male lead in In Blossom and wanted to see how he will fare as the male lead back then (I didn't know that he already played some lead roles in the past at that time).

I hadn't really thought about his looks back then but boy was I mesmerized by his looks as Pan Yue in In Blossom. I mean, looking back, he was good-looking even when he was bald as Wuxin but that long hair on him when he became Pan Yue just made me realized how handsome he is 😂😅. Ever since then, I became a fan of him, though I still like him for his acting chops first before anything else. His good looks are a bonus.

Anyway, as usual, I'm going to leave the ending theme clip here just for the memories.

P.S : I noticed that around the time of its airing there was like a war between fandoms and whatnot mostly focusing on Ju Jingyi (I mostly got to read hate comments on her) as well as her chemistry with Liu Xueyi (the haters said it's bad, of course). In my opinion though, Ju Jingyi's acting got a lot better since her days as Shangguan Zisu in Detective Samoyeds (which is really the only other drama of her that I've watched so far 😅) and I think her acting as Yang Caiwei/Shangguan Zhi throughout the whole series was quite good though there were some scenes where her performance didn't quite match with Liu Xueyi's because Liu Xueyi is just that amazing. However, their overall chemistry and performance together are good that they at least managed to convince me that both Pan Yue and Yang Caiwei are estranged childhood sweethearts who later truly fall in love with each other as adults. Anyway, looking back at this ending clip just makes me want to rewatch the drama again. And I just might do so in the near future. I would really love to write a review on In Blossom soon.

I guess that's all from me for now. See you all later.

Just a quick update

2026-03-12T04:44:45Z

I recently had a 4-day leave over the last weekend up until Tuesday due to a family matter. So over those 4 days I was mostly at home and was finally able to catch up on Genshin. Apparently, Varka's story quest and the whole Mondstat event didn't take up as much time as I thought they would (though it's probably because I was able to go through the content without much interruption at home.) And I also ended up watching No Pain No Gain. Yes, I know that previously I said that I will watch The Princess's Gambit first after I'm done with the Genshin stuff.

The thing is, I was just checking out the series out of curiosity so I thought I would only watch the first episode. However, the first 2 episodes had me hooked and before I knew it, I've already watched 21 episodes as of now. There are only 5 episodes left and I think I might be able to finish them by today. So, my next entry will be about No Pain No Gain, though the review might not be that in-depth because the series is somewhat whimsical to me so it's a bit tough to write down about it in detail. Anyways, that's all from me. See you in the next entry!

Losing my mind over the wait for Lose My Heart to You + other stuff

2026-03-05T08:00:46Z

Now, where do I start?
I guess it all happened when I was searching for more works of Xu Haiqiao after I finished watching LBFAD in 2023. During that time, I found his list of works in MDL and stumbled upon this title. Someone had shared a few teasers from this drama in MDL back then and I really like the visuals. Despite this drama is yet another modern romance drama, I was eager to watch it for Xu Haiqiao. Furthermore, I would love to see him be the mean CEO in a typical romance drama for once, since I've seen him in so many costume dramas already at this point. 😅 (Nothing wrong with him being in a lot of costume dramas since I like watching his performance no matter what anyway, but seeing him as the male lead in a modern drama feels like a treat to me.) 🤭

However, I found out that while it was scheduled to release in 2018, it never made its way on any streaming platform or TV channel since the announcement. When I found out about this drama, it had been 5 years since the production wrapped up. Hence, I decided to just forget about it ever being aired due to the fact that it has been shelved for 5 years since then

Things changed around 4 days ago when I saw a YouTube channel, which covered updates on Xu Haiqiao, suddenly sharing clips from this drama. I then found out from them that Tencent Video is currently opening reservations for this drama, which means that this drama will probably be aired soon. This news obviously makes me very elated because it's such a miracle to me that this drama, which had been shelved away for around 8 years now, is finally going to get aired. I'm sad that I couldn't press on the reservation button though since I'm not from mainland China (the app they're opening the reservation on is only available for mainland China users). So I resorted to looking at the reservation number from time to time at their site, hoping for the best.

After half a day or so though, I started to think that this drama might not see the light of day again due to the slow increment in the reservation numbers. After seeing a bit of how their entertainment industry works in Starlight, I began to worry that because of the low reservation numbers, the higher-ups will think that it's not worth it to invest any more time and money on this old drama. It's something that could happen, right? However, over the past few days, the numbers, though still low, shows increment bit by bit — a sign that more and more people are interested in this drama — so I'll try to be positive about it and hope for the best.

I can't deny though that this matter did make my mind spiral a bit as I repeatedly watched the few preview clips that they recently released and keep thinking whether a drama opened for reservation is actually a sure sign that they will be aired or not. I mean, I really want to watch this drama badly. I tried to make a comparison with My Destined Consort which is on the same streaming platform but couldn't find any data related to it. Oh well, I guess only time will tell.

On another note, I will be busy with Genshin Impact for the next few days. I still haven't started with Varka's story quest and the new Mondstat event and there are only like 11 or 12 days left before the event ends. I've been so absorbed with watching C-dramas and writing reviews here that I haven't spent much time on Genshin and reading. So I may not watch a new C-drama until I'm done with those things in Genshin. I did take some time to watch a bit of A Moment but Forever and The Princess's Gambit last night, just to get a feel for each drama. I thought I was going to pick A Moment but Forever, but surprisingly, my brain is leaning more towards The Princess's Gambit for now. I guess my subconscious has a thing for historical political dramas for the time being. So, The Princess's Gambit will likely be the next drama that I'll watch soon. Can't wait to watch Liu Xueyi in another costume drama!

Well, that's all for my entry this time. See you later.

Starlight — a dramatized look on the inner workings of the C-entertaiment industry (spoiler alert!)

2026-03-04T13:04:37Z

Drama title : Starlight (aka My Starlight/The Starlight That Belongs to Me)
No. of episodes: 20
Duration of watching: 21/2/2026 — 4/3/2026

Modern romance drama isn't my cup of tea usually but I watched this drama mainly for Xu Haiqiao as well as taking advantage of my fangirling phase currently. However, I think I got pretty absorbed with it as I kept watching one episode after another continuously. I must say, I'm rather pleased with how well the drama turned out for me. I guess the fact that I don't usually watch the modern romance genre probably contributed a lot to my enjoyment of this drama.

What's the drama about?

Su Yan, after getting fired for the umpteenth time in the past year since graduation, decides to contact her childhood friend-turned-actor, Fu Da, to get a job at his talent management company. Initially thinking that she would work for Fu Da as his assistant, Su Yan is instead assigned to become an assistant to Shen Junyi, the company's top star — as well as someone whom she had publicly embarrassed in a press conference while posing as a reporter a few days prior. Having no previous experience working in the entertainment industry, Su Yan tries to learn the ropes while working for Shen Junyi, who reluctantly takes her under his wing.

Unbeknownst to everyone else except for his agent, Vicky, Shen Junyi is in fact Shen Junyao, who has been posing as his older twin brother ever since he fell ill 2 years ago. Amid the current events in his life, actress Yin Meng, Shen Junyi's ex-girlfriend, comes back to China after working for 2 years in Korea and is returning to their company — evidently unable to move on from past events with Shen Junyi 2 years ago but wouldn't disclose the details when Shen Junyao, posing as Shen Junyi, tries to investigate. Meanwhile, Fu Da becomes increasingly jealous of Shen Junyi's successful career and his growing relationship with Su Yan. Hence, begins the tale of Su Yan, who works hard to find her footing job in the unpredictable entertainment industry and Shen Junyao, who navigates through the ups and downs of the same world and trying to find out the truth of his brother's past, all while maintaining his disguise as Shen Junyi. In the midst of this, love blossoms between Su Yan and Shen Junyao.

Who should watch this drama?

- Fans of Xu Haiqiao and/or Meng Ziyi
- Fans of modern romance drama
- Anyone who's looking for a simple and straightforward story

Characters

— Su Yan, played by Meng Ziyi :

Su Yan is an intelligent, strong-headed and somewhat socially inept (initially) young woman who is very honest with her ideas and opinions which sometimes border on the point of tactlessness. Starting off as an assistant's assistant, as Shen Junyao puts it, Su Yan works hard in her new environment, learning something new about the entertainment industry and its people almost every episode. Despite initially being rather inexperienced to the point of cluelessness in certain situations, causing her presence to feel somewhat incongruous in the entertainment field, Su Yan adapts quickly and often improves a lot in her work. Over time, through interactions with fellow colleagues and learning from her own experiences and mistakes, Su Yan becomes noticeably more considerate, understanding and adept at her work, traits which eventually helped her get promoted as an acting agent in the short time she joined the company.

Out of all the characters' storyline, I like Su Yan's storyline the best because it feels like the most well-written storyline and is very relatable to me. I think it's because we can see her journey from the beginning where she initially loses her job due to her somewhat formalist attitude, to unintentionally being Shen Junyao's assistant's assistant and finally becoming a qualified acting agent. Throughout the story, Su Yan faced a lot of challenges, made a lot of mistakes but always came back stronger and more determined than before, which made her parts endearing to me, because it feels like I learn a lot watching her journey and her character growth. And while she's trying her best every day at work, she slowly gets to know Shen Junyao as a person and starts to understand him bit by bit (even if she didn't know that he was posing as Shen Junyi for the most part) and eventually realizes that she does, in fact, love him for his real personality. This is my first drama of Meng Ziyi and I think she did a great job as Su Yan. I'm looking forward to watching her in the Princess's Gambit soon.

— Shen Junyi/Shen Junyao, played by Xu Haiqiao :

Xu Haiqiao is the main reason that I watched this drama. This time he plays twin brothers Shen Junyi and — for the most part of the series — Shen Junyao. Now, I really like Xu Haiqiao for his acting chops and cute looks, so my thoughts of him here may seem pretty biased due to how much I like him.

Shen Junyao is the younger twin brother to Shen Junyi, who is an actor recently rising to popularity. 2 years prior to the series, Shen Junyao finds Shen Junyi hospitalized for PTSD when he visited him. Shen Junyi's agent, Vicky, pleaded for Shen Junyao's help to step in as his brother in order to settle Shen Junyi's acting deals lest Shen Junyi himself has to pay astronomical compensation fees if he didn't keep the end of their deal. Hence, Shen Junyao assumes Shen Junyi's identity, excellently playing the part of his twin brother, living life as Shen Junyi but still sees the world that his brother lives through his own lenses — which sometimes gives off the vibe that he is, after all, an outsider to the entertainment world. Shen Junyao, while initially seen as arrogant in his first few interactions with Su Yan, is generally a very nice person who loves to help people in his own capacity with a bit of boyish charm.

I like that they already laid out the fact of Shen Junyao's hidden identity earlier on the series, because it made his reactions and some things he says all the more poignant sometimes (eg : the walk by the beach at night in episode 6). Because of this knowledge, we can clearly see a brother who went above and beyond to salvage his older twin brother's situation, but at the same time we see Shen Junyao clearly wishing to live life as himself and most likely thinking how much longer can he keep up the charade without anyone else finding out first or without the whole burden of the situation taking a toll on his own mental health (because it was obvious that he feels like he's losing his own self, due to how he sacrificed 2 years of his life living as Shen Junyi).

His storyline focuses a lot on him keeping his identity a secret while trying to find out the truth of 2 years ago from Yin Meng. I like his character setup but I feel like it wasn't executed very well as a result of it suffering from Yin Meng's slow storyline pacing. Hence, as the male lead, I do like his character for his personality and eventual romance storyline with Su Yan, but the payoff for his main storyline with Yin Meng wasn't that satisfying. But bonus points to Shen Junyao for his visuals — Xu Haiqiao looks pretty cute in this as Shen Junyao. :3 (I can't get enough of it for now!)

— Yin Meng, played by Wang Si Chan :

Shen Junyi's ex-girlfriend who left him 2 years ago. She harbours a traumatic secret from 2 years ago which caused her to develop a type of PTSD with depression. Despite being the one who broke up her relationship with Shen Junyi, she still cares about him and is unable to live on her life without him. Due to her condition, she is often shown brooding alone, being bothered by her thoughts and breaking down in tears from her negative emotions, especially when her trigger appeared later on in the series. Her scenes felt a bit draggy to me because while I understand that this is just how her character is and how the drama wants to show it, I feel like they could have improved her scenes by adding just a bit more clues and hints about the past or maybe just include less of her brooding scenes. Instead, we are shown a lot of scenes of her brooding alone, trying to move on with her life but repeatedly fail with very little to no payoff from those scenes almost every time. As a result, even Shen Junyao's storyline suffers from Yin Meng's rather slow and draggy storyline, since their stories are interconnected.

Fu Da, played by Ray Liu :

Fu Da is Su Yan's childhood friend who has feelings for her. He is a fellow actor working under the same company as Shen Junyi. Fu Da's story focuses on his dissatisfaction towards Shen Junyi — whom he feels had suppressed his career growth as an actor — and his unrequited love for Su Yan, who ultimately chose Shen Junyao over him, causing Fu Da to retaliate in jealousy and hatred by using devious schemes to destroy Shen Junyi's career. His character setup was good but then he gets a bit more annoying to me each time he makes an appearance due to how whiny he becomes throughout the series. Yes, he was somewhat treated unfairly by the agent manager, but that doesn't really justify his approach to the situation.

Things that bothered me/I don't like/feel that there's room for improvement

— Yin Meng's slow and draggy scenes

— The last 5 episodes felt rather rushed (especially the final 2 to 3 episodes) :

In general, the last 5 episodes did answer the mystery behind the events 2 years ago but I feel like the whole thing was handled in a very hasty manner, especially in the final 2 to 3 episodes.

— Mr. Fang never got punished for exploiting Yin Meng 2 years ago :

It was rather obvious before the true reveal that Mr. Fang is the cause of Yin Meng's trauma, so I thought he would eventually be punished when the scandal was out. However, he got out totally unscathed and it's like the series suddenly forgot about his bad deeds or they just don't know how to conclude his end.

— Underutilized Shen Junyi :

Shen Junyi is mostly used as a plot device for Shen Junyao's storyline, but I think they could also have developed Shen Junyi's character a lot more through the flashbacks, which might make both his and Yin Meng's story more impactful.

— How Yu Tingting got her scoop on the truth about the twin brothers :

Yu Tingting is Su Yan's high school classmate who now works as a reporter for Qiankun Entertainment. Throughout the series, she's shown to be very persistent in getting the latest scoop for their entertainment news magazine. She's very adept in her work, stopping at nothing to get her hands on the best scoop possible. However, I'm still stuck on how she happened to go to the hospital where Shen Junyi was hospitalized without any explanation and eventually saw both twins with her own eyes and later on released the story in their magazine, causing an uproar in the entertainment world. The whole thing happened very suddenly that it felt like a plot hole.

Things that this drama made me think about

— The fact that this drama was released in 2018

2018. Two years before COVID-19 became a global pandemic. It's also the year I got my first job placement and became a working adult. How different my life was back then. I was extremely busy with my work during that period of my life, so much so that I almost completely back out of the things that I enjoy which are gaming, anime and J-drama. To think that this drama that I enjoyed now came out while I was toiling away at my old workplace feels kind of surreal. It's similar to how I feel about Tantei Gakuen Q live-action drama being released in the year when I started going to a boarding school. I wonder if I had known about this drama back then, would I have enjoy it as much as I did now? Most probably not, because I hadn't seen Xu Haiqiao as Ronghao yet (which is the performance that made me notice this actor and love him for his acting chops), hence I would never even think about picking this drama to watch then based solely on the fact that it's a modern romance drama.

— The work that goes into being an actor and an acting agent :

While I do sometimes think about the possible challenges and struggles of being an actor, this drama and Scandal Eve just opened my eyes to the actual happenings behind the screen, albeit a dramatized and fictional version of it. Even though it is a fictionalized version of events, I do believe that the events depicted in this drama are based on true incidents that have happened in the Chinese entertainment industry, if not internationally. Through this drama, I learnt about the effort and work done by the respective actor's staff. While an actor has to shoulder the responsibility of keeping up a good image and reputation while doing their best work for any drama, endorsement and movie deals, it is up to their acting agent's effort to pursuit suitable opportunities for their actors and promote them, pushing their image and reputation to the best level possible.

— Scandals and how they are weaponized to destroy other actor's career and reputation, similar to how it's done in Scandal Eve

Things that I absolutely love!

— The OSTs and BGMs:

This drama's OSTs reminds me a lot of some K-drama songs I've heard in the past. All the songs used in this drama are suitable for each scene that they are used in. I especially love the ending theme and the instrumental version of one of the songs.

— The character setup (especially for Su Yan and Shen Junyao) :

I like the fact that they made Su Yan a newbie in the entertainment industry as this allows us to see her learning about her new work environment from scratch, making mistakes, improving on them and eventually understanding the people around her, especially Shen Junyao, better. This makes her more relatable for me and gives her a very nice character development.

The fact that Shen Junyao is set up to be someone who has taken up his twin brother's identity adds a nice layer to his character. So instead of getting only the charming and sweet green flag of a boyfriend material for a male lead (which can be pretty generic and bland at times), we also get a male lead with a clear purpose and motivation who went above and beyond to help his brother by posing as him but ultimately wishes to live life as himself.

— The calm and quiet moments between Su Yan and Shen Junyao

Well, these two characters obviously have a lot of these moments since the show clearly wants them to end up together and a lot of dramas approach their respective endgame couple with this tactic, so it's actually nothing new. Despite I found it funny with how frequent they keep bumping into each other while taking a walk just so that these moments can take place, the conversations and companionable silence that they shared together made the progress of their relationship felt natural. It seemed natural to me because it was just two people who are getting along very well and enjoying each other's company, without immediately pushing the possibility of love in their way. It wasn't until Su Yan's accidental love confession to Shen Junyao during her argument with Fu Da that the both of them take their relationship to the next step. And even when they did become an item, they still spend similar moments like this, which I appreciate a lot.

— The struggles of both the actors and acting agents, which humanizes the characters related in the story.

— The scenes by the beach and some of the scenes in the city at night :

It's probably because I haven't been on a vacation, let alone to a nearby beach in a long time, but I feel calm and there is a sort of comfort from watching the characters walking by the beach. And I've always liked seeing scenes of a city at night and this drama always shows the best views of the city at night.

TLDR ; this drama is a tale of Su Yan who finds her calling and love in the entertainment industry, of Shen Junyao who poses as his brother Shen Junyi to salvage Junyi's reputation and find out the truth of 2 years ago, of Yin Meng who is traumatized by the events of 2 years ago and tries desperately to recover from the trauma and of Fu Da who, feeling dejected by his current situation in the entertainment industry and unrequited love for Su Yan, sabotages Shen Junyi and the company.

All in all, I actually enjoyed the series very much, up until the last 2-3 episodes, that is. I had considered giving it 8.5 or even 9.0 due to how addicted I was with watching it halfway through the series, but the final 2-3 episodes somehow ruined a bit of the pacing. So, after much consideration, I'm going to settle on 8/10. However, I do feel like this drama can be one of my comfort shows, just like Filter, so there's a chance that I might re-watch it soon whenever I'm up for it.

That's all I'm going to write for now. See you in the next entry.

Currently watching Starlight

2026-02-24T15:42:05Z

Also known as My Starlight or The Starlight That Belongs to Me, it's a drama that came out in 2018, starring Xu Haiqiao and Meng Ziyi as the leads. It's basically about Su Yan, a former accountant-turned-artist's assistant learning the ropes of the entertainment industry while working for Shen Junyi, the company's top artist. The genre is actually a modern romance drama, which is a genre that I'm usually averse to watching just because the majority of the local dramas of the same genre in my country left a bad taste in my mouth due to the overused tropes, poor character development and weak execution.

I'm currently 5 episodes into the series and I like it so far since it currently focuses on Meng Ziyi's character trying her best to learn the ropes as an artist's assistant and Xu Haiqiao's character with his own conflicts and secrets as an actor, which make for nice character development for the both of them (though there seems to be more development for Meng Ziyi's character for the time being). And I think this is what's lacking in a lot of the local dramas in my country - character development and a good character arc. I only hope that the romance in this drama is well done once I reach that point of the story. I may say I don't like the romance genre but I actually don't mind if it's well done with an interesting story.

Anyway, I'm having another earworm and this time it's this drama's ending theme. So I'm just gonna leave it here for the memories and for when I want to revisit the song.

That's all from me, see you in the next entry.

Scandal Eve — a fight for change in the entertainment industry (contains spoilers!)

2026-02-21T08:57:38Z

Drama title : Scandal Eve
No. of episodes: 6
Duration of watching : 17/2/2026 - 21/2/2026

Frankly speaking, I initially watched this drama for Yokoyama You, but I'd read the synopsis and definitely stayed for the story in the end. A J-drama in the thriller or mystery genre is something that's definitely right up my alley as I enjoyed a lot of those way back when I was a fan of only Japanese media. And as expected, Scandal Eve delivered in its engaging storyline full of twists and turns with an overarching mystery unraveling as the story progresses towards its end.

What's the drama about?

Ioka Saki — president of her own talent agency, Rafale, had just secured a leading role for one of her contracted actors, Fujiwara Kuryu, when reporter Hirata Kanade of Weekly Buncho approached the agency, informing them that a cheating scandal involving Fujiwara Kuryu will be published in their weekly magazine soon. As both sides clash over the publication of the scandal, new information and hidden truths surfaced, revealing that the scandal was actually a ploy by rival agency company Kodama Productions to cover their main star's sexual assault scandal. In the midst of revealing the truth and bringing justice to light together, both Ioka Saki and Hirata Kanade soon find themselves uncovering the secrets of the dark underbelly of the entertainment industry.

Who should watch this drama?

— Fans of the thriller or mystery genre

— Someone who doesn't mind watching a drama about talent exploitation and unpleasant truths in the entertainment industry

Characters

— Ioka Saki, played by Shibasaki Ko :

Ioka Saki is the CEO of Rafale, a talent agency company that she created after leaving Kodama Productions 4 years ago, following the death of Hara Yuri, an actress whom she was in charge of during her tenure as a talent manager there. She believes that the age-old custom in the entertainment industry where an agency's influence determines every outcome for an actor is outdated. Hence, she strives to make a change in the entertainment industry in her own way through Rafale.

Her character strikes to me as a reserved person initially but it's evident as the story progresses that she's pretty headstrong albeit being burdened by the pressure of Kodama Productions' actions and the incident with Hara Yuri years ago. True to her word, all of Ioka's actions in this drama — from supporting Fujiwara Kuryu when he was down from the cheating scandal to finally putting out the truth of the sexual assault scandal in a press conference — were done ultimately because she wants that change that she hoped for to come true.

— Hirata Kanade, played by Kawaguchi Haruna :

Hirata Kanade is a reported for the Weekly Buncho, a weekly magazine that is well-known for exposing scandals from the entertainment industry. She was the reporter who published the cheating scandal of Fujiwara Kuryu and hence started off a rather antagonistic relationship with Ioka Saki initially. As a reporter, she is very efficient in her job and also seemed ruthless in the beginning when she was out getting more information on the follow-up article of the cheating scandal. As the story progresses and Hirata see the full picture of the reality in the industry, it dawned on her what a reporter's duty should be and that the people in news stories aren't just stories. Driven by the fact that her own sister was involved with the scandal and she could no longer let fabricated lies to become the truth, she decided to work together with Ioka Saki to uncover the dark reality of the entertainment industry's underbelly.

— Hirata Riko, played by Kayashima Mizuki :

I actually just want to write about Ioka Saki and Hirata Kanade since their actions are what mainly drives the plot forward. However, I feel like Hirata Riko deserves a special mention here because she adds an interesting layer to the story. Hirata Riko is Hirata Kanade's younger sister. She left home at a young age, opposing her parents to chase her dreams of being an artist. All because deep down inside, she just wants to be accepted by her family. With these aspirations, she determinedly sets off to Tokyo and tried relentlessly to get signed in officially with a talent agency. Unfortunately, being young, inexperienced and naive, the people in the industry manipulated her and she ultimately becomes one of the sexual assault victims of the actor from Kodama Pro. Her character basically represents the hopefuls who are betting everything to make it in the volatile world of the entertainment industry, only for their expectations to be shattered by the dark reality of the industry.

Things that bothered me/I don't like/feel that there's room for improvement

Honestly speaking, there's not much for me to comment on because I think this story is very well done. But if I had to nitpick about it, it would be :

— The predictability of Episode 5's ending :

This is not the drama's fault though, because how else could Hirata Riko have reacted after all the accusations of her lying for publicity and settlement money came bashing her online in spite of her telling the truth and not being listened for it for years? It's just that I'd seen a similar plot played out in Link Click live-action drama, so it came as no surprise when Hirata Riko tried to end her life at the end of the episode.

— The Weekly Buncho's editor-in-chief changing sides too easily :

He is shown to be in cahoots with Kodama Productions' CEO, Kodama Yoko, mainly for his own benefit for the majority of the series. Apropos of this relationship, he is essentially the main deterrent (besides Kodama Pro) for the actual scandal case to be published and make known to the public. In the end, he readily agrees to let Hirata Kanade publish the truth in the Weekly Buncho, mainly because there are now multiple testimonies, which made the case stronger with supporting evidence, and because he had his retirement plan already laid out for him in the event that he gets implicated from the story. I'm just bothered with the fact that if he knows that such a story could have been published in the magazine, why couldn't he push the story further by getting multiple testimonies back then? Why only now?

Things that this drama made me think about

— Influential parties manipulating the situation and bullying the underdogs :

This is applicable to real life too, since we do see similar things happen at some workplaces, communities or organizations. The drama focuses on the entertainment industry though, which to me can be a rather volatile environment. All the issues in this drama stemmed from the fact that Kodama Productions, a highly recognized and influential talent agency, refused to handle the core problem truthfully — all because of Kodama Yoko prioritizing the company's reputation above all else, causing her to stop at nothing to cover up for their talent's criminally unacceptable behaviour. Abusing their position and taking advantage of their influences and connections, Kodama Yoko has time and again, orchestrated plans that help her twist the truth and manipulate the situation to her liking. The parties related to Kodama Productions usually bow down to their request, due to the fact that the agency is influential and each one of them wants to gain Kodama Pro's favour — causing an underdog like Rafale to affected by their manipulation of the situation.

— "This industry is special. Once you enter it, it's not easy to return to a regular life. Some people get a lucky break, while others find no success despite putting in great effort....because you yourself ARE the product." — Ioka Saki to Hirata Kanade :

This line resonated with me for some reason. I'm no artist nor am I remotely involved with the entertainment industry. However, there are times when I think about an artists' life (mainly when I'm fangirling and see videos of my favourite artist). I thought about how little privacy they have, how they have to present themselves a certain way to the public, the odd working hours, the uncertainty when they are not taken for any jobs, etc. As a working adult, I see them as normal human beings, trying to make a living in their own way, just like the rest of us. But as an artist, just like Ioka pointed out, you yourself are the product, so you need to have the looks, the talent and you need to hone those features to meet the demands of others. You'd already been judged before you even make it big. And even when you do make it big, there will always be haters, no matter what you do. So, to me, this industry can be really tough and unpredictable, especially when you're not up for it and if you don't have the right connections.

Which makes me sad sometimes when I see artists being treated like objects instead of real human beings, considering all their effort to get to where they are now. Just because they are presented in a certain way and we know them through their works, it doesn't give us the right to carelessly leave nasty comments about them. But it is after all part and parcel of this industry, and I guess most artists know what they are getting themselves into when they decided to pursue this career.

— The exploitation of young talents in the entertainment industry :

In this drama, we see how some of the young women aspiring to be actresses are exploited. Young hopefuls like Hirata Riko trusted their agency, believing that they will one day be officially signed into the company, only to scammed out of their pockets with exorbitant fee for acting classes and never actually get to be part of the agency. There's always networking, right? But then they get inadvertently get involved with a big name superstar who happens to be a sexual offender, who abuses his superior position to manipulate these girls. And he easily gets away with his offenses while the women had to suffer silently, all because they were gaslit into thinking that it's their fault or that they were probably lying to get attention and settlement money. It's sad how cruel and evil people can be, taking advantage of hopeful young talents.

— Fabricated facts becoming truths and how easily people believe it just because it's from an influential source

In today's hyperconnected world, this issue is becoming increasingly common. A lot of us take a lot of info at face value, without trying to research deeper, all because it's from maybe a popular site or person. This is something that we need to be careful with because some fabricated facts, when they become the truth, can very well change the reality of our lives as we know it. It's the sort of thing that sinister people weaponized to twist the facts and to control the situation to their liking.

Basically, all the points above are also the things that Ioka Saki takes note of and wants to change, particularly the age-old custom of other companies bowing down to an influential company.

Things that I absolutely love!

I think I loved everything about the drama. It's just perfect *chef's kiss*.

Scandal Eve is overall an interesting drama touching on the darker side of the entertainment industry. The strength in this drama for me lies in its suspense and significant reveals in each episode, which makes it engaging and interesting. The drama, in its entirety, seems to be really well done. I'm giving it 10/10 though I probably have to wait a long time to re-watch it again since I already know all its twists. That's all from me, see you in the next entry.

I think I'm having withdrawal symptoms after watching My Destined Consort

2026-02-17T07:20:23Z

And it's not the first time this has happened to me... it's just that I didn't expect to have it after I finished this drama. I suddenly find myself missing it badly and I feel like watching the drama all over again 😅. A part of me is hesitant about re-watching it so soon though. I guess maybe I've just grown rather attached to the drama without realizing it. As for how and why I got attached, I think it's simply because of the setting of the drama which mainly focuses on the family's life in the Prefect's mansion.

So, while it's really about the court and inner chamber politics, the family aspect in that drama is something that went through subtle changes initially and blossomed into a beautiful and happy family. And watching the ending clip in its entirety after the last episode really hit me in the feels.

Well, I know that this feeling will go sooner or later...but I just want to put this out here just because..and I'll focus on Scandal Eve for now.
Meanwhile, I'm leaving the ending clip again in here... because it hits different now that I've finished the series and seen all the scenes shown in that clip and also because I just love the song. :)

Currently deciding on the next drama to watch

2026-02-16T12:54:19Z

Hi there everyone. Man, I didn't expect my last entry would be that long 😅. I guess I was looking way too deeply into My Destined Consort. The funny thing is, I started writing that entry while I still had 8 more episodes left to finish it and I think I managed to describe the four important characters quite accurately. I think this just shows how well-written they are especially for both Wang Danling and Shen Qilan, but that's just my opinion in the end. I don't know if I'll ever write about a drama in the same style again for my next review. I guess it'll depend on the drama and my mood.

Now, I'm currently deciding on which drama to watch next. I'm thinking of watching Scandal Eve because the cast piqued my interest and I usually try to alternate between C-drama and J-drama nowadays just so that I could at least get through the backlog of my J-drama watchlist as well. However, since I'm still in my fangirling phase for Xu Hai Qiao, I'm thinking of checking out Starlight too. But I also feel like watching A Moment but Forever😅. It's been a while since I watched Liu Xueyi in any drama. Man, at this rate, it will be a while before I finally watch SOKP, which is supposed be the next drama in line in my drama roadmap but let's face it, I hadn't been following it almost all the time anyway. So I'll just follow where my mood takes me. I think Starlight takes priority right now since it's another genre that I would avoid if possible but wouldn't mind watching if it's just to appease my fangirling excitement. So I thought I'd take advantage of my fangirling phase right now just so that I could be done with the drama soon because there's no telling when the feeling will come back again and there's a chance I will never watch the drama in the near future after that if I'm over the fangirling feelings.

But I think I'll check out Scandal Eve first, and then move on to Starlight after I'm finished with Scandal Eve. It should be doable since Scandal Eve only has 6 episodes after all. So Scandal Eve it is then. See you in the next entr