SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

Meteor Garden (2018)
(流星花园 / Liu Xing Hua Yuan)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Okay, so it has been a long time! I was prepared for that when I started this, because Taiwanese/Chinese dramas tend to be quite long. I watched 50 episodes of this drama, and around 40 I switched over to Netflix, because it was easier and they also had subtitles in my own language.

I just want to say first that I am a big fan of the Hana Yori Dango series, and until now I’ve watched all the versions there are (as far as I know), the Japanese, the Korean, the Taiwanese, the Chinese, and now the Taiwanese remake. Interesting thing: although it’s a remake of the Taiwanese version from 2001, the story takes place in Shanghai, China.
I always find it interesting to see how with every remake, there are new interpretations of scenes and moments. In this remake, specifically, there were a lot of things done differently than in the other versions, and I’m mostly going to review those things.

I want to apologize in advance, because it took me quite some time to finish this series I may not remember a lot of details from the beginning of the series as well as I remember the more recent episodes I’ve seen and scenes toward the ending, so just to be clear on that.

First of all, a plot summary. The story is about a girl from an average family named Dong Shancai (played by Shen Yue), who goes to the prestigious Mingde University. In that university, there is a group called F4, which consists out of four guys, childhood friends, who belong to the wealthiest families of everyone on campus and are also considered the most handsome. Their leader is Daoming Si (played by Dylan Wang), and the other three members are Huaze Lei (played by Darren Chen), Ximen Yan (played by Caesar Wu), and Feng Meizuo (played by Connor Leong). They are privileged to do whatever they want because their families have so much influence, so they strut around campus as arrogantly as they wish. When people have a problem with them, they can challenge them to a game of poker and when they lose, they have to do anything F4 asks of them.
As someone with a strong sense of justice, Shancai is not impressed by this and finds herself become a target of the F4 when she starts standing up to them. At first it’s just the F4, but soon it’s mainly Daoming Si who takes a particular interest in her, first as someone who doesn’t know how to stop, but he gradually becomes more attraced to her and eventually falls for her completely.
The love story between Shancai and Si is the main part of the story. After things start developing between them there are many trials and tribulations that they have to face, including Si’s disapproving mother who does everything she can to break them apart, love rivals, misunderstandings etc. Meanwhile their friends also have their own stories that need to be covered. In the end, Shancai and Si’s love shows that it can conquer all and it ends happily ever after.

For the people not familiar with the characters, I will briefly describe the members of F4.
Leader Daoming Si is the son of a big hotel company run by his mother Daoming Feng (played by Wang Lin), who is an ice cold business lady. He has one older sister, Daoming Zhuang (played by Dee Hsu), who is very badass but her life has been manipulated by her mother a lot in the past. Their father, who used to be the company owner, passed away when Si was in high school and after that he became kind of a delinquent and it was hard to keep him in check. He hasn’t had a warm family upbringing with his mother and sister away all the time, but hanging out with his three best friends saved him. Because he’s used to getting what he wants without a lot of trouble, he has an arrogant nature, but this is also a frame to mask how lonely he truly is. He never really had any sincere interest in girls until he meets Shancai, who shows him that being rich doesn’t mean anything and it gradually changes him into a better person.
Si’s best friend Huaze Lei is basically the opposite of him personality-wise. He is a genius when it comes to playing music, and doesn’t say much. He’s the quiet artistic guy. When he was young, he was very autistic and the one person who helped him get out of his shell was Teng Tang Jing (played by Annie Chen), and she has been his love ever since. He is the first one to be nice to Shancai when she gets involved with F4, and she initially falls in love with him first, even though he claims to have no interest in her and still clings to Jing. However, because Shancai keeps supporting him after Jing and him separate, he starts looking at her too, invoking of course the anger and jealousy of Si, which jeopardizes their friendship tremendously. But of course in the end, after several tries, he too realizes that Shancai and Si are made for each other and steps back.
Ximen Yan is the playboy of the group. His family is in the tea business, and he is the star seducer among the four guys. However, he only has a certain type of girl that he likes and he never goes into real deep relationships. He used to like his childhood friend, but after she tried to confess to him, he ignored her and she left and he never deemed himself worthy of being truly loved. However, when Shancai’s best friend Xiaoyou (played by Li Jia Qi) starts making effort for his affection in her own brave but innocent and pure way, he eventually accepts that she may be his redemption.
Feng Meizuo is also a seducer, but he prefers the company of older women as he thinks they are more refined and elegant. He and Ximen are usually hanging out together surrounded by several women, and they often makes jokes about Si and Shancai together. At a certain moment, Meizuo falls in love with Zhou Caina (played by Liu Ye), a woman specializing in both cooking and classical music, but when he can’t win her heart it does hurt him emotionally. In the end, he is the only member of F4 who remains single (as Lei still claims he and Jing share a special kind of love/relationship), but he stays positive and says that ‘he just needs to wait a little longer’ (same bro).

All four stories coming with these four F4 members have a part in the series, some are a little more interesting to watch than others. Personally, I didn’t find the Zhou Caina arc very interesting because it took me very far away from the actual story with characters that weren’t even that relevant. We meet Zhou Caina for the first time in a cooking competition Shancai is also participating in (in the Japanese version, this is a Miss Japan Contest of some sort). Zhou Caina is the public favorite and she also wins the contest, and while watching the competition Meizuo already expresses admiration and interest. When he and Caina meet again by chance later, he starts pursuing her. Up until this point it’s good, because it’s nice Meizuo gets some story for a change (he is usually the only F4 member who isn’t established as much as the other three). But then another guy from Caina’s past appears and we get this whole insight in how they met and this really frustrating competition between this guy and Meizuo starts while Caina doesn’t want to talk about it… and I had to agree with a lot of the comment-writing viewers from the site I watched it on that this wasn’t relevant to the main story at all. It seems like a lot of viewers started skipping all the Caina parts. Anyway, eventually she chooses for the other guy and Meizuo is sad but has to move on with his life.

One of my favorite arcs however is the Ximen-Xiaoyou one. Because I just think they are such a cute pairing. A bit unoriginal maybe, but Meteor Garden is one big trope of stereotypes, so in this case I won’t criticize on that. Xiaoyou is this smol, cute, innocent, pure girl who is anything but Ximen’s type. Sure, he thinks she’s cute, but she’ll never be more than a cute puppy friend. So when she actually starts showing him that she likes him, he takes on the ‘girl, you really don’t want to get into this’ attitude. But when she keeps trying, and even (involuntarily) gets him back in touch with his childhood friend/first love, he realizes her true worth, both as a friend and a woman. I liked that in this version, they actually end up dating, because even though in the other versions he does warm up to her after what she does for him, he still keeps a distance from her romantically. I hated that they didn’t end up together in the Japanese version because they were so cute together. I remember they ended up in the Chinese adaptation, but Ximen’s character was very different there, and they went on and off a couple of times.
I have to say despite the occasional stiff acting, Caesar Wu made a very nice Ximen. Even though I didn’t really pay attention to him that much, at a certain moment they removed his glasses and did something to his hair and then suddenly it was like ‘okay wow this guy is actually super ikemen’. I think despite stereotypes the casting for F4 is very important because they need to be handsome and, in my opinion, whenever they need to cast people on being handsome/pretty sometimes they don’t really succeed. I still really love the Japanese version (because Matsuda Shota hello), but apart from that this version’s Ximen is the only one I really liked to look at (because yes, I am still a fangirl of ikemen sorry not sorry). Of course, the Korean version made a lot of hearts throb, but I still prefer the more manly ikemen than the flower boys.
What I really liked was that they kept the part from the Japanese version where Ximen’s childhood friend wanted him to show a scenery from the top of a high building to confess and Xiaoyou went around all the buildings to find it, to the point of exhausting herself. I don’t think any of the other versions took this. Although I would’ve liked Ximen to show a bit more emotion when seeing the building. I just can’t get over Matsuda Shota who started to sob shamelessly after seeing it because I liked to see that part of his personality. But this version’s Ximen kind of kept it to himself, which was a bit of a shame. But apart from that, he really did his best.

Lastly, Huaze Lei. Always a fan favorite, I remember fangirling over Oguri Shun in the Japanese version like crazy. In my imagination, Lei has to be a flower boy rather than an ikemen, so I think casting-wise, this was the best choice ever (I always thought the Korean version was a bit too plastic). Darren Chen fascinated me appearance-wise, because I had a hard time accepting that he was real (lol). His face is just so aesthetic. He has this doll-like, angelic boy face. I have to say I really liked Lei in this version because apart from his established personality, he was such a TROLL. When there were group scenes or scenes where he was just sitting/chilling in the background, he added this unexpected element of either sass or something else which made me laugh out loud time and time again. I love that he put in something more than just his character, which is written to be very calm and serene all the time. Honestly, I think all of the actors added something to the characters, which is hard because they have been played so many times before by so many different people. So good job there, guys.

One more thing I want to say about the character Daoming Si and his portrayal in this specific version: it doesn’t really matter to me who plays Si. Even though in case of all versions, I didn’t find the actor super attractive in the beginning, as long as they play the character well I always fall in love with Si in the end because he’s such a precious puppy.
Although Dylan Wang didn’t stand out to me the most appearance-wise, the more he established his version of Daoming Si, the more I couldn’t help loving his cheekiness.
I believe all of F4 (and others too) are new, young and inexperienced actors, so first of all very well done that these roles had to be one of their first. I can’t help but emphasize how difficult it must be to add something new to characters that have been portrayed so many times by different actors before already.

Now I have to say something about Shancai as well, don’t I? I have loved her character since the Japanese version (Inoue Mao for the win), and the Japanese version is still my favorite interpretation of the character up until now. It’s interesting how every adaptation portrays the character of Makino/Shancai. In the original, she has shoulder-length hair and is supposed to be plain-looking rather than really pretty. In that sense, I liked the choice of Shen Yue because she is pretty in a natural, innocent kind of way, but still passes for a regular girl. In one of the first episodes, a reference was made to A Love So Beautiful, another drama that she played in, but I haven’t seen it yet so I didn’t get it T^T It’s on my list, though.
Although physically she looks a bit immature (I always imagine her to look a bit more mature for some reason – I guess thanks to Inoue Mao mostly), she has a strong and firm gaze and holds herself with confidence despite her smolness. I think that’s the most important thing for Shancai, because she doesn’t let anyone walk over her and stands up for what she believes is right.
To give a brief summary of her background, her parents own a restaurant and for the sake of helping them out she decides to study nutrition at Mingde University. At a certain point, her dad is laid off and her parents decide to move to the countryside and start a fishing business there, leaving Shancai to live by herself. Shancai does come over at a certain point and helps them establish a popular new dish (something with barbecued squid I believe) before she moves back to the city.

Now that I’ve discussed the main cast and the actors, I would like to move on to some things that this adaptation changed for the better in my opinion. Yes, this series has 50 episodes so this will be a lengthy review which I spent quite some time on.
First of all, the original school/university (this also changes per adaptation) in the story is a site for the F4 to execute some serious glorified bullying. Students admire them until they become their victim, and as a result are singled out and victimized by the whole school. If they somehow managed to piss someone or whole F4 off, you received a red card and you were singled out by the whole school and had to face some torturous bullying from F4 and the entire student body, for that matter. Students would actually get beaten up by groups of other students, their desks would get thrown out of the window, garbage cans would get emptied over their heads, etc. In that sense, it’s a good thing this version got rid of that. They replaced the glorified bullying with an innocent game of poker with a prank/practical joke as a punishment for losing. The poker games in itself weren’t even forced on you, because you could choose whether or not to accept the challenge, although of course you were considered to be a bit of a scaredy-cat if you didn’t. Honestly when watching earlier versions (Japanese, Korean etc.), seeing how this school works I would honestly start worrying, thinking ‘how the heck is this a legit school’. So replacing that with just giving those four guys some fun but not letting them take it too far was a good choice.
However, one thing that the bullying did which was kind of taken away by this choice of getting rid of it, was I think an essential part of Shancai’s personality. Because standing up to bullies to protect her friends and herself when she was younger, and especially having to stand up to four big bullies in the F4 in high school/university, is what makes her the tough cookie that she is. That’s what makes her brave enough to stand up to the F4 in the first place, not just because of her sense of justice. I think in the original versions the bullying was needed to create an urgency for Makino/Shancai to step up and show how badass she is. But in this version, because there was no real urgency and it was just some guys playing pranks, it kind of took away a little of Shancai’s character for me.

One small detail, I did very much like the start of the first episode, which showed a frozen frame of Shancai doing a flying kick mid-air, her shoe on Si’s face, and his expression full of shocked agony. Starting with that, I just thought ‘yess Hana Yori Dango here we go again’.

As I have mentioned several times already, I’m always interested in the different interpretations of both scenes and characters in every version. And there’s a couple of arcs in the story that are always a needless evil in every adaptation.
I need to mention something here that did bother me a bit. Of course, it’s a given that the relationship between Shancai and Si takes a long time to establish. It takes Shancai a long time before getting over Lei and realizing/admitting her true feelings for Si. But I think in this particular version it took her an EXTREMELY long time. Because in other -shorter- versions, for example the part where they go on a ski trip and Shancai is tricked into believing her friend is out in a snowstorm and goes after her and Si comes to save her and they spend a night in a barn together, warming each other up (and warming up to each other), this is supposed to be a period where Shancai is already starting to like Si. She even has a vague vision of marrying him before she passes out, thinking ‘I don’t want to die, I still have someone I want to marry’. I should say that’s evidence enough, and that part is always one of my favorites because it’s so darn sweet every time when they cuddle up together. Heck, in the Korean version they even kiss in this scene. But in this version, even though Si has told her he’s in love with her already more than three times, even though they’ve already KISSED more than three times, she was still like ‘uhh what do you mean Daoming Si likes me?’ and in this scene is bothered me so much. He was taking off his own clothes to give to her because she was freaking hypothermic, and wrapped her in his arms to keep her warm under the sheets and all she was thinking was ‘omfg this is so awkward, why is he hugging me like this ugh’. At that point, I was kind of done with it, because this is supposed to be the scene where she starts really looking at him and admitting her feelings for him. Honestly, I think she took way too long to admit her feelings, even though she already realized them a long time before that. I can imagine Si becoming desperate, because seriously how many confessions, hugs and kisses does it take for someone to finally get that you’re interested in them?? I mean, she even kissed him back in all cases, so you’d think she must’ve admitted SOMETHING.

Despite this, when she does finally admit she’s in love with him, they become the most adorable couple of the whole series. Because bickering is one of Shancai/Si (Makino/Domyouji)’s main couple traits, I did feel like they stopped making them fight after they got together as a couple. They fought a lot before, a LOT. To the point where I was like ‘okay now it’s enough, just get together already this is taking to long’. But what I like in the Japanese version is that, even after they get together, they still bicker as though nothing’s changed, although of course they love each other to bits. But with that extra depth in their relationship, to let the bickering continue is actually really sweet in my opinion. Because from the outside you’d think ‘why the hell are they together when they’re fighting all the time?’, but actually the fighting in itself is just their way of expressing affection to each other. And I felt like in this version, they became a bit too lovey-dovey. Which is not a bad thing, but just looking at what’s realistic for Shancai and Si, I think they could’ve imported a little bit more of their old way of dealing with each other in their relationship. Because, as it gets, from some point on things will inevitably get cheesy.
There were two adjustments that I really liked.
The first one was, again, a terrible scene where Shancai’s friends’ families are endangered by Si’s mother and she decides to protect them, even though that means separating from Si. They have one last date together and then there’s this terrible scene in the pouring rain where she says that she can’t be with him and when he asks her whether she actually liked him at all, she just apologizes and leaves, although bawling her eyes out while he can’t see it. What I really liked in this version was that they started out the scene with a ‘how it should have gone’. Because she doesn’t lie to him saying that she never loved him, she actually tells him the truth about the situation. She tells him that his mother has threatened to fire the fathers of two of her best friends so that they would have to move away, and that she meant everything that she has said to him, but that she doesn’t have another choice. Heck, she even hugs him while saying it. In the end she still leaves saying that she’s not confident that the two of them can truly stand up to his mother. This is how it should have gone from the beginning (not the separating thing, but the ‘telling each other the truth’ thing in these kind of situations). So despite the break I was still satisfied with that adjustment.
The other one is when Si is taken to London by his mother and she reminds him of the importance of the company. When Shancai decides to bravely come to London to find him, he pushes her away, saying that he has been too immature with her and they can’t see each other again. Now from this point on, this version takes another route than all the others. In all the other versions, this cold behavior of him continues for quite a while until he finally decides to stop it after all because he still loves her no matter what anyone is trying to tell him. But here, after telling her to go away once, they have added a wonderful episode in which he gets back to her right before she returns to Shanghai. They decide to have one last day date together before they have to break up and this is the most heartbreaking part of the series (apart from the scene where Si just bursts into tears during the whole Shancai and Lei teaming up together thing). They go out to eat together and start reminiscing about how they acted towards each other when they first met. They start enacting that, yelling at each other but all the while smiling broadly and tears streaming down their faces. This part was absolutely heart-wrenching. Also, when they have that last hug on London Bridge.
But then, it starts to go weird. They just had that wonderful last moment, and then suddenly Si is tasered and Shancai faints too and they wake up again on some random beach in the middle of nowhere. Now this part where they turn up on an island together is originally from the special of the Japanese version, which takes place long after their relationship is established and turns out to be some test. In this case, it’s also some practical joke by their friend who wants them to be together (I will get to her later), but the fact that they decided to paste this part to this particular moment in the series was a bit random to me.

I will explain a little bit about Xiaozi first before moving on to my other point of confusion.
Xiaozi is the girl that Si is supposed to marry. It’s the girl from another rich family that the Daoming Group desperately needs to keep up, and Si’s mother is determined to make them marry. Xiaozi, full name He Yuanzi (played by Sun Qian), isn’t interested in Si in the beginning either, but after discovering some things about him she starts liking him. She also forces her way into Shancai’s life as a friend, unaware of the tension in Shancai and Si’s relationship at that moment. However, when she finds out about them, she pulls back and makes an effort to still have her family help out the Daomings despite there being no marriage. My favorite part in the previous versions is when they are actually standing in front of the altar about to get married against their will and she is like ‘no actually I don’t want to marry him’ and leaves him there. She is supposed to be a really cool character, even though she temporarily forms a threat to Shancai. But she cares about Shancai a lot as a friend. In the previous Taiwanese and Chinese versions, they have combined her character with the girl Si meets in the hospital after having lost his memory – the evil girl who uses his memory loss to convince him that she’s the girl he keeps remembering and that he should stay away from Shancai. However, I’m glad that in this version they turned her into the nice person she is in the Japanese and Korean versions. Although she does have feelings for Si, she gives up her own feelings for him and Shancai to be together, and that takes a lot of strength.
Anyways, so she’s the person who fakes a kidnapping and takes Shancai and Si to an island to enable them to be together for longer than just that extra day in London.

Okay, now to the main part, and I cannot deal with this enough but METEOR GARDEN 2018 SKIPPED THE AMNESIA PART. They actually SKIPPED the AMNESIA part.
The amnesia part of the series is one of the harshest parts, because Si gets in some sort of accident where he lands in a coma and when he wakes up he remembers everyone and everything except Shancai and everything they’ve been through. It only creates extra strain on their relationship and makes room for yet another love rival, the beforementioned girl Si meets in the hospital who takes full advantage of his memory loss.
But this only happens after he hits his head in some way or another, so I was already wondering how they were going to get away with getting him amnesia after he doesn’t even hit his head. He only supposedly gets stabbed by a Daoming Group-hater amidst a group of persistent press.
It starts as usual, he wakes up and sees Shancai and says ‘Who is this?’ and you think ‘oh no not this again’. But the fact that he didn’t actually hit his head and that the series was almost over did confuse me. Were they really going to fill the last five episodes with the amnesia again? Well, it’s an inevitable part of Hana Yori Dango so I GUESS. And then came the wonderful surprise. He keeps doing it until Shancai breaks and bursts out ‘dude don’t you forget about me, you can’t forget about me because I love you so much’ and then he’s just like, ‘hey, you finally said it :D’ and it all turns out to be a joke and of course only Lei suspected it. I was so confused but so relieved in a way because I can’t say I disapprove of getting rid of the amnesia part. I always just tolerated it as a necessary part of the story, but HEY. It’s actually not! So a big YAY for that adjustment in this version.

My biggest confusion was at the very end of the series. We had this whole ‘Si’s mom is still forcing him to marry Xiaozi so we’re going to starve ourselves in protest’ that only the previous Taiwanese version did before, and then somehow Si’s mother finally cracks and they are allowed to see each other. Shancai goes up to Si’s room and they’re both exhausted (Si from refusing to eat and drink for a week or something and Shancai for the same PLUS standing in the rain without sleep for a couple of days) and then Shancai collapses. When she wakes up, for some mysterious reason everyone is telling her that she and Si broke up and he married Xiaozi and went back to London with his mom. I was as confused as Shancai as to what was going on, although I was suspecting something of a marriage proposal/surprise wedding. But the whole thing preceding it was hella confusing. She was suddenly teleported to some dark room where she was suddenly wearing a wedding dress and Si came and acted as he did in the beginning, all spoilt and stuff, then a blackout, then suddenly Si’s sister appeared as a three-member girl group doing some random dance number and telling Shancai that if she wanted Si back, she would summon him. Then ‘something went wrong with the summoning’ and only Lei, Ximen and Meizuo appeared, each asking Shancai to marry him. After Shancai establishes that she still chooses Si over anyone else, they try summoning him again and suddenly there’s a whole group of people behind them and Si appears and proposes (sort of). But the whole thing was so random and confusing, I didn’t really understand why it had to be like that.

And, as I was also confused to the Japanese version of Domyouji Mama suddenly deciding to accept Shancai after all, Daoming Mama decided in the end to turn a new leaf as well and start travelling by herself, still wanting to grow as a person. Another random, but not necessarily bad adjustment. And then suddenly Shancai and Si were living in this big house in London and Lei came over and happy times and Ooh suddenly there’s a meteor shower going on and we see all the characters that have passed watching this meteor shower and happy ending.

Oh and I really liked the ending sequence where the guy who sang the original theme song for the 2001 Meteor Garden was playing the song on the street and Shancai and Si stopped to talk to him and everyone ends up singing along. They used this song a lot in the series, a nice reference to the old version. As things were random already in the end, I would have liked the 2001 version Shancai and Si to turn up as a random couple being like ‘hey, this sounds familiar’ or something. (They did something similar in Itazura na Kiss, when an actress who played the main lead in another version made a cameo appearance and referenced to her own version.)
I think they did one reference, because the woman working in the Chinese restaurant in London remarked that she knew Shancai’s name and Shancai was like ‘Yeah there was a series a long time ago and the heroine’s name was Shancai, so my parents named me after her’, and the woman was like ‘Yes, I know that series! People always tell me I look a lot like that’s girl’s mother in the series!’ which made me wonder if she was the woman playing Shancai’s mother in the 2001 version, but I can’t really remember it. But it was another nice reference.

I think I covered most of the story and the new adjustments with this. I just want to give one last shout-out to Dee Hsu, who played Si’s sister Zhuang. As it turns out she’s the younger sister of Barbie Hsu, who played Shancai in the 2001 version. I think I like her portrayal of Si’s sister the most out of any of the other versions. She gave just that extra umph to the character, she was a bit more extra and badass and I loved her. Plus she’s gorgeous.

I want to make two final comments on production-related issues of the series.
First, and this is something I will always comment on with Chinese series: dubbing is awkward. Like many other Chinese series (the only example of no dubbing I’ve seen until now was Rush to the Dead Summer), Meteor Garden 2018 is dubbed. This means that there are voices (not even sure if it’s the actors’ own voices) recorded over the footage. And this makes everything sound really unnatural and fake, especially when it’s laughing or crying or things like moans or yawns. Everything sounds really awkward and I really wished I could’ve heard the original film recordings without the additional dubbing over it. I’m still not sure why they do this. My Taiwanese friend told me that it’s all because they have to record the dramas in a short time, so they don’t have a lot of time to rehearse and actors aren’t even expected to learn all their lines. They can just move their mouths, because there will be dubbing anyway. For me this takes away the whole point of being an actor, though. Why be an actor if you’re not even going to have to learn lines? Is it really just about the looks? But after she told me this, I started paying attention, but I think that in this series, the actors were actually speaking their lines, because the dubbing did correspond with how their mouths moved. Anyways, it’s still a mystery to me. A very unnecessary mystery.
Second, as is common but still very typical of Chinese dramas, the way dramas are used for commercializing products. I swear, many times it’s like they’re filming a commercial within the series. They will just hold out their drinks or products they used so you can see the brand-name and say, ‘Hey, have you tried this? It’s really good for your health and made from organic products’ or something like that. A little more and they would look into the camera while saying it, as if to the actual consumers/viewers. I don’t know, they try to keep it subtle but something it’s just really obvious. Still, I can laugh about it mostly.

They must have had a pretty big budget for this series, as they also filmed in London and used foreign actors as well. When I first read about that there was gonna be a new HYD adaptation it already seemed like people were making a big deal out of it and I can see now that it must have been a pretty serious and big project, also financially. I have to say that made it look really pretty, not just the actors, but also the scenery and shots of Shanghai by night and stuff. All in all, it looked like something which they spend some serious money on, but I think it was worth it in the end.

Although I was excited to watch this and had been looking forward to it for a long time, I am glad it’s over. Long series take a lot of time to watch and process and review. I hope this review didn’t get too boring, I tried to stay as objective as possible even though I have been comparing 5 different versions of this drama in my head while writing this. But now I can work on the rest of my still incredibly long list of dramas-to-watch and honestly I really feel the urge to watch some more Korean to make up for so much Chinese these past few weeks.