The Legend of White Snake (Chinese Drama, New)
The latest remake and drama adaptation of the classic Chinese folk tale, The Legend of the White Snake or Madame White Snake. In the classic tale, a white snake transforms into a beautiful girl, falls in love with a human man and marries him. Blissfully enjoy her new life with her husband in a small town, the white snake’s happy life is torn apart when a monk shows up and locks her away in a tower. Thanks to her faithful friend (a green snake) and her husband’s unwavering love, the monk was eventually defeated allowing our heroine to reunite with her husband.
Like all the other previous versions, this newest one will follow the general gist of the story but has added quite a bit of detail and its own flavor to the classic love tale. One thing I liked about this version right away is how pretty the cast (even the monk is super good looking!) is and the playfulness of the green snake’s character. For those who are interested in this C-fairy tale, Viki has it.
My Poseidon (Chinese Drama, New)
Despite having her life saved multiple times by our hero, An Fei wants nothing to do with our rich hero nor believe his crazy assertions of how she was his wife in their previous life. A student of marine biology, An Fei’s dream is to become a top researcher and work alongside her crush who is developing a daring project named Poseidon. Paying no heed at first to our hero’s warning that her crush’s project could bring dire consequences nor the fact that she is somehow his wife in a different lifetime, our heroine is stunned when she eventually realizes our hero might actually be telling the truth all along…especially the part that he is Poseidon and she is his wife, Amphitrite.
I only had time to check out the first episode but I liked our two leads’ chemistry right off the bat and it was also really interesting to see a C-drama centered around Greek mythology. I am not sure if you can find this one subbed yet but for those who are willing to brave without it you should be able to find the show on mgtv.com
Beautiful World (Korean Drama, New)
A seemingly ordinary happy family with doting parents and two kids, the story begins with every parent’s nightmare as they get a heartbreaking phone call informing them their son has been in a terrible accident. Despite being overwhelmed with grief to see their precious son in a coma, the two parents and their daughter must fight to find out the truth of what really happened to their son.
The show’s method of diving into the topic of school bullying is very creative with an almost artistic flair…if one can say that while dealing with such a serious issue. I read a few online comments that compared this show to Sky Castle and it does feel similar as the story does focus not just on the victim’s family but also on the perpetrators and their families. Often times it is easy to just think of the bullies as spoiled brats or as monsters so it was interesting to have the background story on the perpetrators and their parents’ reaction upon finding out their child’s involvement in the bullying.
If I Can Love You So (Chinese Drama, New)
Cecilia Liu’s (Lost Love in Times) new romantic melo. After 10 years of marriage, our heroine becomes a widow after her husband commits suicide with another woman. Disliking our hero on sight- the late husband of the woman who died with her husband, our heroine discovers much to her dismay that she can’t avoid running into our hero as they both try to piece together the puzzle that caused their respective spouse to end their own lives. Somehow through their mutual intense dislike of one another, our two leads will eventually fall in love just as intensely… even if fate will do all it can to tear them apart.
Spoilers ahead….
I don’t believe the story will focus too much on the two leads’ dead spouses’ past since it was more of an interesting way for our two leads to meet instead of the core of the story. The show is based on a novel so the general gist of the plot is not much of a mystery. Let’s just say our two leads’ romance will be pretty epic with our hero having to make the difficult choice at some point if it would hurt our heroine more if he breaks up with her or have her face the grief of losing him to illness. Fortunately, if the show decides to follow the novel, the ending should be a happy one.
What Did You Yesterday (Japanese Drama, New)
A very capable lawyer in a small firm, our hero is well known for his love of cooking among his co-workers who all speculate that he must use the most expensive ingredients to cook for his rumored girlfriend. Unbeknownst to his co-workers, our hero’s other half is actually a man and instead of buying the expensive ingredients, our hero works very hard in keeping his monthly food budget under $224 (25000 yen).
This one is based on a Japanese manga of the same name. I was quite charmed by the first episode. The food in these sort of shows are always great but I found the relationship issues between our two male leads heartwarming as well.
Radiation House (Japanese Drama, New)
This is another J-manga live action. Determined to keep the vow he made to his childhood playmate years ago, our hero could hardly contain his excitement for his first day on the job as a hospital radiation tech. Practicing over and over again what he would say to his childhood crush after he finally sees her (she is a doctor at the hospital), our hero stares in disbelief when his childhood friend fails to recognize him!
As you might’ve guessed from the show’s name, this one is actually a medical drama that showcases the radiology department so of course our hero is someone who is very talented in this area. I am usually not interested in J-medical dramas, but I found our socially awkward hero’s one-sided crush so cute that I am planning to follow this one for a bit.
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Thanks for these reviews! You help me decide what to watch 🙂
Hi,
Watching The Legend of White Snake. Inspite of being uber pretty, ‘m not feeling the leads chemistry. Also, considering this is only a 36 episode show, I’d expected the series to be fast and slick. Instead it’s slow and draggy.
Sorry to say this, but I liked the lovelines and the actors more in Destiny of White Snake than in this show.
I’m interested in both Dramas.
The White Snake is one of my favorite folk tales and 36 episodes sounds good since Destiny of WS with its 60 episodes was a snore festival after the first third of the series who I really loved. Let us hope this team did got a better script and director.
And thanks Anonymous and Usi — what to do what to do?? I guess I’ll have to watch everything and form my own judgment.
Btw, any comments on The Legends? I’ve watched some 20 episodes subbed and ‘m on 32 now and watching it raw coz no subs after that.
But the thing is, I read that this show is based on a novel that lasted for 40 episodes only. The novel writer then had to ‘create’ a new story to fill the rest of the episodes and that they even changed the happy ending to a sad one!!
My question is….is this true? Should I break my heart now and stop watching it or should I brave it till the end?
The Legend of White Snake hasn’t risen in my esteem and I have watched till ep 16. I haven’t watched any previous versions so I went into this with great expectations. But alas, ‘m doomed for disappointment.
Agree with Usi, Destiny became hogwash midway, but it at least had some substance, some draw, and some pull and an interesting storyline and characters. Whereas, Legend is just so bland. Demons are like case of the week in a crime drama. One goes another comes and so on and so forth….
‘m just vert dissappointed with this drama that’s all!
While the drama ending is different from the novel but it’s still a happy one…at least for the main characters. It’s totally true that the novel is SO much shorter. The novel really was just a cute and short story but unfortunately, they somehow felt the need to add a bunch of boring details to an otherwise good story. I kinda wish I didn’t read the story before I started watching the drama since it really made me impatient and I had to watch it with a finger on the fast forward button. Sigh, it really is such a shame because the show actually did a great casting job and would’ve been a solid drama…if it didn’t drag the story on so foolishly.
Thank you for letting me know!
Yeah, the FF button is my fav. I skip straight away to scenes that contain our lead.
And you are right about the leads….such amazing chemistry!
They should have kept the drama short or if couldn’t do that, they should have at least keep alive some of the pairings! They literally chopped off all the pairs in half!! How moronic!
Yes, it was really odd what they decided to do with the secondary characters especially since that’s not their ending in the novel. I guess I will have to put together a drama novel comparison post but it will be pretty short since a lot of stuff in the drama didn’t happen in the novel.
I didn’t minded the side stories since I really liked the characters, even the evil ones. I even wished QQX had an own sidestory too and JW was more than a sidekick. I know everyone is gaga about XuKai but for me Dai Xu was the way better actor. He owned his role. Probably I’m biased since MQ was such a boring character. Besides mooning over LZY he didn’t really had something to do.
In that way, the Drama could have been so much more. Even though I really loved the side stories I understand why people don’t like the focus switching. I think for the most it would have been the best when the focus stayed on OTP and the LMX story arc. The characters were interesting and the actors are good. Since that arc may be to short for such a long series they should have given the second half to JW. His character was very interesting. He was an antagonist without being evil, he was totally devoted to LZY without mooning over her and he was clever. That would made him such a good love rival. That all didn’t happened and I’m not sad about since I really liked the series how it was.
Ooh that’s great! Thank you!
Can’t wait to read…small or big…doesn’t matter!
It’ll give me an understanding of what the actual characters and their story was than what was shown in the show.
Thanks once again!
I should be posting that on Wed.
I watched My Poseidon till episode 18! I like the leads a lot! This is set sometime in 2025 where the technology is more advanced, so the research part was confusing. But the leads have a good chemistry going. Zhang Yun Long is doing a great job at being a big flirt who does not come off as being too much, and Li Kai Xin is amazing at sassing the hero. Haha. She has lots of thoughts that she will reveal to the hero, but she generally appears normal to most people so it is quite hilarious. Hehe. Zhang Yun Long’s character Ye Hai is somehow linked to Poseidon and the man himself sometimes make an appearance (so he looks like Ye Hai but acts completely different) and he is the most hilarious ever.