A Female Student Arrives at Imperial College (Chinese Drama, Youtube)
Actress Rosy Zhao plays a spirited young woman who became the first female student at the imperial college. Going against her better judgment, our heroine ended up agreeing to a bet where she is to get the famous 1st gentleman of the capital to accept an embroidered pouch from her (giving and accepting of a personal pouch is a show of affection). Dismayed to discover the famous 1st gentleman is actually a master teacher at the imperial college, our heroine begins her long fruitless journey to get our hero to accept her pouch.
This one is super cute! It’s also a bit refreshing to have a girl in an all-male school…NOT dressed up as a boy. I have to admit I went into the show sort of expecting a more serious tone, probably because Rosy Zhao’s last historical drama The Long Ballad was an epic super serious story so for some strange reason I kinda expected the same thing from this one as well. It took about two episodes for me to reorient myself that this show is more on the cute and fluffy side but once I did, I was off squealing with joy over the great chemistry between the two leads.
Fall In Love With a scientist (Chinese Drama, YouTube)
Carrying the responsibility of her grandmother’s hefty medical bills, our heroine’s life goal is nothing more than graduating from college so she can get a job to start earning money. Our heroine’s graduation dream is destroyed when our hero walked into her thesis defense and pointed out an error she had made on her paper. Immediately putting our hero on her hate list, our heroine is clueless that the “despicable stranger” is none other than her online crush that she has liked for the last 6 years. Dismayed and stunned when he realized he has somehow made it onto our heroine’s most hated list, our hero embarks on a long path of finding a way to win the heart of the girl he has liked for the last 6 years.
The first episode was painful to watch. I am not sure what happened, but everything from the story and the acting was embarrassingly bad especially for two seasoned lead actors. Out of my trust that the two leads actors must be able to turn the show around somehow, I gave this one a second chance and was glad I did. Now, the show still has plenty of flaws (the male second lead comes off a bit odd, the heroine’s character is not very likable sometimes) but I found myself marathoning the show anyway. This one is one of those I might scoff at its flaws the whole time I am watching it but I keep watching one episode after another.
Dear Diary (Chinese Drama, YouTube)
On the day our heroine turned 24, a man proclaiming to be a prince suddenly popped into her life and claiming eternal love for her. After some bewilderment, our heroine eventually realized the characters in a story she wrote way back when she was 12 years old has somehow all come to life.
This one is hilarious if you are willing to suspend logic and be ready to go along with the show’s silliness. I am four episodes in and while there really is no chemistry to speak of between the two leads (which actually make sense because at this point of the story the hero is really just a fictional being behaving according to the very superficial character set up our twelve year old heroine gave him), the story is simply laugh out loud funny. I am assuming as the story goes along the show will eventually give our hero a chance to develop his own personality and develop the romance between our two leads… but honestly, the show is hilarious enough that I probably wouldn’t even mind if that never happened.
Fall in Love with Him (Chinese Drama, Viki)
This one is a supernatural romance between our heroine who is constantly in danger and our hero, who is part of a four men group of immortals titled “Mr. Time” that collects an essence right before people die. Catching our hero and the other “Mr. Time’s” attention when they discover our heroine is somehow immune to their superpowers (ie. being able to see them when they should be invisible or being able to move when everyone else is frozen in time), the four “Mr. Time” and our heroine will eventually team up to battle against an evil force that wants to control their world.
Hmm…that synopsis sounded a bit cheesy…but the show it’s not that bad. I wouldn’t necessarily call it great either but if you are the type who likes supernatural romance then this might be worth checking out. I would strongly discourage you from comparing this one to Goblin (K-drama) though…that would be setting yourself up for disappointment.
Once We Get Married (Chinese Drama, Youtube)
Our heroine is a fashion designer shopper who ends up getting entangled with our hero, a CEO of a mall that leads to them entering into a contract marriage. Obviously, a show with a pretty cliche plot but the two leads do have great chemistry together and the show is an easy watch if you go in with the appropriate expectations. The secondary couple’s romance feels a bit forced but the show has kept their screen time fairly minimal (at least in the first few episodes) so I don’t mind them right now.
Rainless Love in a Godless Land (Taiwanese Drama, iQIYI)
Wow, a T-drama! It’s been a while since I have had a T-drama on my watch list so I was super glad that the first episode of Rainless Love hooked me right in. This one is yet another drama that will probably remind you of K-drama’s Guardian simply because it is a supernatural romance between an immortal being and a human girl. Again, I will freely admit it’s super unfair that all shows with this kinda premise are automatically compared to Guardian…but I can’t help it. I guess that’s the power of Gong Yoo.
Anyhow, back to Rainless Love. There are several things I simply love right from the getgo in Rainless Love. I love how the show built its world around the Taiwanese indigenous Amis tribe’s mythology. The song our heroine sang in the first episode to summon our hero was simply beautiful and mesmerizing. I was also impressed with the solid A-lister cast the show managed to gather. Interestingly, the one actor I was not familiar with is actually the actor playing the hero but any doubt I had of his acting chops was gone by the end of the first episode.
By the way, this one is only 13 episodes long but since this is a T-drama, the show only airs one episode every Sunday.
Rebirth for You (Chinese Drama, Youtube)
Raised in the palace as a princess, our heroine’s path in becoming the next empress seemed certain and unavoidable. Determine to fight against her fate of forever doomed to be trapped behind the walls of the palace, our plucky heroine uses her wit to navigate the politics of the inner palace. Our hero is an Imperial Palace Guard who had purposefully entered into the palace to uncover a mystery but will, of course, end up falling in love with our heroine.
This one looks very promising! I was a tad disappointed at first that the show had decided to make some important core changes to the story that cause it to differ from the novel the show was based on and essentially taking away much of what would’ve set this show apart from others. Fortunately, while I still wish the show had stuck with the novel’s premise I ended up liking the show anyway. It probably helps that the chemistry between the two leads is super cute and the show itself is quite pretty.
Ps. For those of you who might be interested in the novel’s setup: The novel starts with our heroine waking up after she had died by poison at the hand of her adopted son- the 10 year old emperor. Finding herself suddenly in the body of her much younger self, pre-marriage to the emperor, our heroine is determined to NOT marry the emperor again. After spending a decade as the grand-empress who had to learn the art of taming rebellious officials and power greedy lords, our heroine is no longer the innocent naive girl she should’ve been. Strangely harboring little anger towards her adopted son or her no-good husband (the emperor), our heroine is instead full of resentment towards our hero who in her previous life, had been a thorn that she can’t shake off. Meeting our young hero again as her younger self, our heroine is no longer fooled by his friendly and seemingly harmless facade. Yet, no matter how much our heroine tries to remind herself to not trust our hero, she can’t help but let down her guard whenever he is around. (From the flashbacks of our heroine’s previous life, it is obvious our hero was also deeply in love with her then but was forced to pine for her from afar due to the differences in their stations.)
So as you guys can see, instead of the rather plucky innocent heroine the drama went with, our heroine in the novel has all the maturity, wisdom, and emotional baggage her previous life had given her. Our hero in the drama comes off very sunny and righteous but that’s actually not the vibe he has in the novel. In the book, our hero’s father actually used to be a robber baron who controlled a large mass of land but eventually gave up his robbing ways in exchange for a government post that comes with military authority. Thanks to his background, no matter how friendly and harmless our hero appears to others, our heroine has first-hand knowledge of how calculating and formidable he really is under his facade.
All text copyright @ www.Ninja-Reflection.com
I’m enjoying it too!
Dear Diary is so campy but it’s so much fun!
I just know got access to YouTube tv so I’m excited to check it out!! I really like Zhao Rosy – but I admit I had to drop her last drama “Please feel at ease Mr Ling”. I held out for as long as I could but couldn’t get over the male lead’s toxic version of love ( control) that never really seemed to phase her in the least. I have watched a lot of k drama and c dramas so I know to adjust my viewing lens for different cultures approach to dating/love. It especially irritates me though that it was a contemporary setting and yet some of the attitudes/actions were just…. Aggravating.
Anyways I really excited that she has a new show though! Can’t wait to check it out! She definitely excels at the rom /com genre
Hi Ninja. Just wondering if you’re still doing K-drama first impression. Checking out Yumi’s Cell and Hometown Cha Cha Cha and was just checking your site to see what you think of it.
Sigh…I should. For some strange reason, I haven’t been in the mood to watch K-drama lately. It might be because the sheer amount of C-drama shows are just staggering right now. The two K-drama you mentioned are the two I have been tempted to check out though. I was a bit scared off by the cartoonish cutesy promo of Yumi’s Cell. Which one out of the two would you recommend I watch?
I’m a little biased with Yumi’s Cells because I read the webtoon a couple of years ago. The cells are hilarious and lust cell is a riot. They did well balancing the two scenes. It takes a few episodes to get use to the format.
I’m also enjoying Hometown. It’s a breath of fresh air with K-drama. Like you, I’ve been watching mostly Cdrama the past two years and I want to watch something different at the moment.
I watched Once we get married since it was recommended so much from several people despite the classic cliche plot. It is only an okay Drama for me despite such plots usually don’t irk me. Too many scenes were just cringeworthy and too unrealistic and unfortunately the acting is just mediocre for me.
Even though there were many sweet scences and the chemistry was not that bad, it just didn’t click with me or warmed my heart at all. It was like watching a play where I never could forget it is just a play.
I think I will try Dear Diary next.