Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung
(신입사관 구해령 / Sinipsagwan Gu Hae Ryeong)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hi everyone! It’s been a crazy two weeks for me, so I took my sweet time finishing this drama. I won’t go into too much detail of what happened but it involved a sprained back and an infected housemate so I was pretty distracted and not always in the mood for certain things I was watching at the moment. But I really wanted to finish this one this weekend, so here we are! I hope everyone is taking care of themselves!
So as I said I took my time finishing this, not just because I wanted to move on with it but because I was genuinely interested in how things would turn out. I believe it’s a while since my last historical drama, but for some reason I always find it very refreshing, so I make sure to keep putting them on my to watch list. This one was a bit longer than the previous K-Dramas I watched on Netflix, so it definitely took some more time, but I’m glad I got around to finally watching it. Since I didn’t watch it in one go, I really hope that I’ll be able to write down my thoughts on it as properly as possible.
Now, without further ado, let’s go!

Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung is a 20-episode Netflix K-Drama, with each episode about an hour long. It takes place at the beginning of the 19th century in Joseon and centers on Goo Hae Ryung (played by Shin Se Kyung), a 26-year old woman from a well off family who loves to read. In the beginning, she takes jobs to read books aloud to court ladies and women from other noble families who can’t read – as it was unusual for women to be able to read and write at that time. However, when the rare opportunity rises for her to become a female historian at the royal palace, she takes it with both hands to get out of being forced into marrying and becoming a typical housewife. Hae Ryung lives with her older brother, Goo Jae Gyung (played by Gong Jung Hwan) ever since her father passed away when she was still little. Her brother has a governmental position as Third Inspector.
On the other hand, we have Yi Rim, also known as Prince Dowon (played by Cha Eun Woo), the youngest son of the King, who has been isolated to live all by himself in Nokseodang, at the far end of the palace grounds where no one is allowed to come. The truth about why he was sent there is clouded in rumors about him having some sort of sickness, but this isn’t true. Anyways, he lives there only with his personally assigned eunuch, Heo Sam Bo (played by Sung Ji Roo) and two court ladies to escort him. Even though his father dislikes him, his older brother, Crown Prince Yi Jin (played by Park Ki Woong) is very fond of his younger brother. Unknown to anyone, Yi Rim really likes to write stories. As he was forced to live at Nokseodang his entire life, he longs for the outside world and secretly writes romance novels under a pseudonym which is very popular amongst women, not only in court but also outside. One day, after publishing his latest volume, he manages to go out into the village for himself to see how his book is received. It is there that he meets Hae Ryung for the first time, in a book store.
While he is initially taken with her appearance, he is put off by the fact that she openly yawns while reading his book and even tells him how boring she thinks it is. After this first encounter, they meet again a couple of times, and it is only after Hae Ryung becomes a historian that she finds out he is actually a member of the royal family. Still, she keeps going to Noksaedang to work and while Yi Rim initially sees her as some kind of rival and wants to tease her, he gradually becomes romantically fond of her and vice versa.
As Hae Ryung passes the exam, she is one of four to enter the palace for the first time as a female historian. The other three are Song Sa Hee (played by Park Ji Hyun), Heo Ah Ran (played by Jang Yoo Bin) and Oh Eun Im (played by Lee Ye Rim). All of them are from wealthy families and have their own reasons for wanting to become historians, but their first couple of weeks don’t go as smoothly as they’d hoped. They are bullied relentlessly by their male superiors, sent on bothersome errands, and are kept away from the real, important work. However, as they gradually start proving their worth to everyone, they eventually also gain the respect from these seniors and the Office of Royal Decrees becomes a place filled with decent historians who all really respect their work.
Besides the budding romance between Hae Ryung and Yi Rim and the daily events in the life of a historian in the royal palace, there is another major storyline. The one about Hae Ryung and Yi Rim’s true backgrounds. As it turns out, Hae Ryung is not really Jae Gyung’s sister and Yi Rim not really King Yi Tae’s youngest son. Also, since the beginning there is this book that keeps being mentioned, The Story of Ho Dam, but this book is strictly banned from the kingdom, along with anything else that traces back to before the dethronement of the previous King, which is a forbidden subject. It’s like the current King has a secret that he desperately wants to keep hidden, but what could it be?

First of all, let me just say that I found it very interesting to learn about the real purpose of historians. I’ve never really noticed them in previous historical dramas, they were never really mentioned or pointed out, but now my view on them has changed completely. Historians are basically people who have to record all that happens in the royal palace, from recording meeting between officials and the King to recording the daily lives of the people living at the royal court. This has always been a task for men, as any government official position used to be only for men, but in this drama four women are given the chance to be the first female historians, and they are also stationed at different places around the palace grounds to record all the conversations that take place, for historical archiving purposes. Therefore it is of the utmost importance that the historians record the truth. In a sense, you could say that the historians have more power than the King. It is also mentioned in the drama, I believe, that ‘a good King should fear his historians’. And the way this drama played out, it definitely ended with a victory for the historians. I just wanted to comment that I really liked to get more insight in how these historians were working in these times. They have to carry around their sachaek (I believe this is their notebook in which they record their daily records) with them, and no one besides historians are allowed to read what they have written. It is very confidential work and it always keeps the higher ups on their toes when historians are present, because they know whatever they say will be stored in the royal archives and traced back if necessary. The power of writing and books was one of the most present themes in this series.

This was a very satisfying historical drama for me to watch since it didn’t portray the female characters as meek and submissive as women are often portrayed in historical dramas. On the contrary, Goo Hae Ryung is one of the strongest female lead characters in a (historical) drama I’ve seen so far. She is ahead of her time in intelligence, and she has her emotions under control at the right moments. She’s unbelievably mature, and always manages to stay calm and brave in even the most dire situations.
It was really interesting to see her dynamic with Yi Rim, who was like a puppy blinking his eyes into the sun for the first time. He wasn’t just younger than her in years (they had a 6-year age difference), but also in experience, and she manages to fascinate him with all her knowledge of the outside & Western world that she’s learned from books. She could also be really witty and mischievous with her humor, especially when it came to making Yi Rim flustered. Yi Rim is very naive and pure in the beginning of the series, but the more he discovers about his own family’s history, the more mature he becomes. He remains very pure in his feelings for Hae Ryung, though. Hae Ryung knows what and what not to do and when it’s safe to do it, but Yi Rim would sometimes forget his own position in his longing for her presence and attention.
What I kept finding interesting was that they both committed fully to their secret relationship, completely aware of the fact that they were prince and historian, which equalled = not possible. From the beginning they both should have known that this would not be allowed. And I was also kind of impressed with how well they managed to keep it between them. Only the servants around Yi Rim knew about it since they constantly saw them together, but honestly I was expecting this whole drama to happen – when the royal family would find they were romantically involved. This didn’t happen, though, and I’m partly grateful for it. Hae Ryung only backed off the moment that Yi Rim suddenly had to get married and they went in search of a bride for him, when it became a real issue. Before that, it seemed like she didn’t even care about who he was, although she knew that she didn’t want to marry into the royal family. It was difficult for her, but here too she was more realistic and mature than Yi Rim, who even went to see his grandmother the Queen Dowager to tell her he was in love with someone else and didn’t want to get married. But at some point it felt like Hae Ryung was trying to prove to herself it didn’t bother her and that was really painful to watch. She actually took the job of recording the potential bride candidates while they were reciting how they would make the perfect bride for Yi Rim. At this point I was really just shaking my head to the screen, mumbling, ‘Why are you doing this to yourself, girl??’ And of course, she found out she couldn’t take it, after all. But her feelings were very complicated. As much as she loved Yi Rim, she didn’t want to become a princess herself because that was the kind of life she absolutely did NOT want. On the other hand she also didn’t want Yi Rim to throw everything away for her, and she knew that he was certainly prepared to do this since he told her multiple times. So she decided to be the bad guy and push him away. While I usually hate this kind of trick to push someone away in order to ‘protect’ them, it did make sense to me why she did it. And I think Yi Rim, besides being a little heartbroken, also understood why she did it, and that it wasn’t that she didn’t love him back. Because even when they were ‘apart’, they were still able to get along just fine. As the storyline unfolded, they even teamed up to help each other in their respective quests to find out what had really happened to both their fathers.

The plotline of Hae Ryung and Yi Rim’s respective origins is gradually built up throughout the series. I think this was very well done. They mixed important clues with the daily happenings in the palace, and made it so that the final pieces really fell together in the last couple of episodes.
Throughout the series, there are a couple of ‘arcs’, as I’ll call them, that one by one bring the two closer to the truth. I liked how everything that happened had something to do with the big reveal at the end. Even if it was just some information they learned through this ‘arc’, or some person they met, every tiny thing gradually brought them closer. The banned book is already mentioned in the first episode, and at that point we don’t know anything about it yet, but the names from the book and the secret organization keep popping up, and as more people start reacting suspiciously to those, it becomes clearer and clearer that they have a bigger role in the story than we initially thought. In the end, everything seems to revolve around the dethronement of the previous King, who has become a taboo because his dethronement involved rumors about high treason and very inexcusable actions from the King’s side.
The first important ‘arc’ would be the smallpox epidemic. When news of an epidemic spreads, the King decides to send Yi Rim out on his first official mission as a prince, to visit an area that has allegedly been struck by the illness to show his face and comfort the people. Excited for his first mission, and therefore acknowledgement by his father, Yi Rim decides to go. Hae Ryung travels along with his delegation as their historian. This is when they come upon one major case of governmental corruptness: they are keeping the severity of the disease a secret of the capital. While the royal family thinks that the disease is already subdued and the people are well taken care of since they send so much medicine and food their way, other officials have interfered. They have actually barricaded these villages so no one can get in or out, trapping all the sick people inside without any medicine or food. The people who know about it are just trying to exploit the situation and make money out of it, for example by charging extra for medicine since people are desperate for it. Hae Ryung and Yi Rim discover this as they manage to get into one village, and here they meet Mo Hwa (played by Jun Ik Ryung), a female physician. We have already seen this woman before a few times, as she seems to be an acquaintance of the Queen Dowager, Hae Ryung’s brother, and Eunuch Heo. Her true identity isn’t revealed until later, but what’s clear is that she studied medicine under an organization called Seoraewon. This organization also seems to be linked to the previous King, and is therefore also a taboo. Their meeting with Mo Hwa is an important event.
The second major ‘arc’ is when a foreigner is suddenly captured in Joseon. A Frenchman called Jean Baptiste Barthélemy (played by Fabien Corbineau) suddenly appears and is questioned at court, but then he escapes. While he hides at Nokseodang with Yi Rim and becomes friendly with him, his servants and Hae Ryung, the King is paranoid with the rumors that he is here to spread Western (and therefore barbaric) Catholicism to Joseon. This leads to the discovery that there are actually quite some Catholics living in the Joseon, even in the palace. One of the historians Hae Ryung works with, Song Seo Gwon (played by Ji Gun Woo) turns out to be a Catholic and barely escapes beheading by agreeing to be exiled. Anyways, this Frenchman also turns out to be linked to Seoraewon, as he was actually on his way to meet with Mo Hwa when he got caught by guards. He manages to escape Joseon safely in the end.
The notion of Catholicism being spread to Joseon seems to be a very big thing to the King because this was also one of the rumors of which the previous King, his brother, was accused when he was dethroned.
It was nice to see an actual foreigner appear in a historical K-Drama, and I liked that they did him and his character justice. He just really looked like he belonged there for some reason! He spoke Korean very well, and I also liked how naturally Hae Ryung and Yi Rim took to him.
For me personally, the funniest thing was when they were trying to figure out from which country he was and after first speaking to him in Chinese and Japanese (yes, because he looks real Asian, guys), they suddenly started speaking Dutch! I was not prepared to suddenly hear my own language in a Korean historical drama, haha, so that was definitely a funny moment for me.

To get closer to the big reveal at the end, I need to explain a little more about the royal family and Mr. Bad Guy. So at the top of the Royal Family there’s the Queen Dowager (played by Kim Yeo Jin). She had two sons, Yi Gyeom and Yi Tae. Yi Gyeom was dethroned because of his alleged treason and now Yi Tae is King. So the King I’ve talked about until now is Yi Tae.
King Yi Tae (played by Kim Min Sang) can be described as a kind of grumpy, stubborn man who doesn’t like to be contradicted. He is very paranoid about comments that lead to people doubting his authority and is quick to punish people for it. Compared to him, his son Yi Jin seems to be a much juster and kinder person, who cares about justice and fairness and sees the good in people. When things kept happening and the banned book kept popping up, the King became so antsy that I kept on wondering what was going on. At one point he kept interjecting people at the slightest comment with, ‘Are you saying I don’t deserve this throne??’ as if it was some sort of panicky response. It made perfect sense in the end of course, but at first I just kept thinking that they should just make Yi Jin King already.
It just seemed like he wouldn’t give anyone a chance, everything/one that even slightly questioned his authority had to be beheaded or thrown in jail. This is also exactly what he tried to do with the people he discovered were Catholics, but luckily Yi Jin managed to avoid many of these punishments by stepping in, only to be reprimanded by his father for being ‘too weak’.
Moving on to Mr. Bad Guy, King Yi Tae was very close with the Second State Councillor, Min Ik Pyung (played by Choi Duk Moon) and together they often shared a drink as friends outside of their close work relationship. Min Ik Pyung climbed up from being a respectable historian to a position of power that he didn’t want to yield to anyone else, he became very greedy. His daughter is now the Crown Princess, Yi Jin’s wife (which made her completely miserable life since they both don’t have any real feelings for each other and Yi Jin keeps putting off having to sleep with her) and his son, Min Woo Won (played by Lee Ji Hoon) is a First Historian at the Office of Royal Decrees and Hae Ryung’s direct superior.

I have to address Woo Won properly since he can officially be seen as the second male lead of this drama even though he wasn’t in any way romantically involved with Hae Ryung (and thank god for that).
Woo Won and Yi Jin were childhood friends, they are of the same age and grew up together in the royal court and they are still very friendly with each other, even in their professional work relationship. Woo Won was initially very admiring of his father, but he is also very aware of how corrupt his father is becoming. At one point it is revealed that Woo Won used to be happily married, but when his bride’s father was suddenly convicted of treason and beheaded, his young wife took her own life shortly after and this event has completely changed Woo Won. He has become very stoic and dedicated to his work as a historian and rarely goes against his principles. As a First Historian, one of the higher up historians, he sometimes clashes with his juniors (including Hae Ryung) when they consult him about something that would be the right thing to do but that would go against the rules. He also argues with Song Seo Gwon when he discovers that he is a Catholic in secret, and is baffled by how devoted his junior is to this faith. However, he ultimately relents when they discover the big secret of the banned book and find out that the work of historians has been meddled with in the past – that’s when they all decide to stand tall against the royal court officials and even the King himself.

Let me go back a little to the life of the Royal Family, starting with the Queen Dowager, who was one of my favorite characters. She was the mother of the King, and therefore the grandmother of Yi Jin and Yi Rim. I have to say I sometimes got a little mixed up on how exactly the whole family was related since the King occasionally said things that just confused me. He said something to Yi Rim at one point about how his roots were filthy from the start (which made me go ‘uhm aren’t you part of his roots, sir?’), and at another moment he also said something to the Queen Dowager that made it sound like they weren’t fully related. This confused me because it seemed that she was definitely his biological mother. Anyways.
The Queen Dowager cared more for Yi Rim than anyone else seemed to, she was constantly worried for his health and wanted to make sure his future was secured. She was also the one who started executing the plan for him to get married and picking out the right bride for him, much to Yi Rim’s own dismay.
Yi Rim gets increasingly curious to his backgrounds when he starts having dreams about the dethroned King Yi Gyeom and when the Queen Dowager suddenly takes him with her to visit Yi Gyeom’s grave, people start to get really aggrevated with him, since the dethroned King is still a taboo and they were not allowed to publicly visit his grave like that. Also, Yi Rim can’t find any kind of record about his own birth, and no one wants to tell him anything, even the Queen Dowager.
In the end, it turns out that his birth, the dethronement of the previous King, and the fall of Seoraewon are all linked to each other and are therefore all in the same records, which have disappeared. The historian who kept these records was beheaded when he refused to yield them over to King Yi Tae and they have been missing ever since. However, with their amazing team work, Hae Ryung and Yi Rim manage to figure out it’s hidden in Nokseodang, Yi Rim’s living quarters.
When they find it, Hae Ryung brings it to the Office of Royal Decrees to examine it with the other historians and this is where the real battle begins: the historians against the King and his officials.

As it turns out, Yi Gyeom and Hae Ryung’s father, under the pseudonyms Ho Dam and Yeongan, set up Seoraewon together. Seoraewon was an educational institutation that enabled peasants and women, in all unprivileged people from lower ranks to learn about Western cultures, languages, and medicine. Mo Hwa and Jae Gyung both joined this organization when they were teenagers, and they both studied medicine under Hae Ryung’s father. The unusual treatment for the smallpox also came from him. Hae Ryung, officially named Seo Hee Yeon, was only 6 at this time. They also invited foreign guests to help with the lectures, such as Jean Baptiste’s older brother Dominique (played by the same person).
For some reason, with the help of Min Ik Pyung, false rumors were spread about Seoraewon. He managed to convince Yi Tae that people were being experimented on, killed and tortured at the organization, and that King Yi Gyeom was trying to get foreign people to spread Catholicism to Joseon. He managed to capture young Jae Gyung and his friend and after killing his friend, he forced Jae Gyung to change the contents of a letter from the King to Dominique in which he bid him a good journey. Jae Gyung was forced under sword point to write that the King asked Dominique to bring Catholicism to Joseon so that this could be used as ‘evidence’ for the dethronement. With this false proof, they attacked Seoraewon, slaughtered everyone there and in the end Min Ik Pyung even pierced King Yi Gyeom with his sword.
This was all on the same night that Yi Rim was born. Mo Hwa, who was attending the Queen Dowager at the time, was there when Yi Rim was born. Eunuch Heo helped her escape the palace with the baby.
Yi Tae was standing next to him, but from his shocked expression when Min Ik Pyung killed Yi Gyeom, I had the feeling he didn’t know he was going to do that and he must have probably felt guilty. Guilty enough to keep at least Yi Rim alive.
After this coup and betrayal, the Queen Dowager has been forced to live in the same palace as the man who killed her oldest son, hearing him call her ‘mother’, while fearing that he might one day get rid of Yi Rim. That’s why she’s been so protective of her youngest grandson all this time.
The messed up thing is, that King Yi Tae also starts manipulating Yi Jin, saying that if he brings out the truth about the forged documents, it will cost him the throne as well, as Yi Rim would be the first legitimate heir to the throne as Yi Gyeom’s oldest son. This does make Yi Jin waver a little (I felt so bad for him >__<) and he initially disapproves of the historians’ petition, written by Hae Ryung, to re-examine the documents they found.
During that night 20 years before, just before the attack on Seoraewon, Jae Gyung comes back to the house, admits to Hae Ryung’s father that he had to forge the King’s letter. Hae Ryung’s father tells him to take his daughter away, and so Jae Gyung takes little Hee Yeon and flees. From then on, she has been living as his little sister Goo Hae Ryung, not even remembering what really happened to her father.
As it turns out, Jae Gyung is the one who ended up writing The Story of Ho Dam, and when I think back about this, this kind of proved my theory from the beginning of the series. I had a feeling he had something to do with this, purely because of his response to mentions of the book, but it really turned out to be him in the end.

The most powerful scene of the whole series is the one in the final episode, when they are holding a banquet for King Yi Tae’s 20 years of being King. Here, all the confessions that were left unspoken are laid out on the table. Jae Gyung confesses how he was the one who forged the King’s letter as he was threatened by Min Ik Pyung, and then Yi Rim, Hae Ryung and the rest of the historians, plus the few official people on their side, all start pleading. I got goosebumps when Hae Ryung, while being held at sword-point, looked the King right in the eyes and told him that even if he should slash her throat, the historians would keep writing. No matter how the King yelled, all the historians kept writing. It was such a powerful moment. In the end, even Yi Jin joined them in pleading to right the wrongs. This final scene made a very big impact on me, because it really showed how much power the historians had, just by writing things down.

The series ends with a jump to three years later, Min Ik Pyung has by now died (either naturally or by punishment we don’t know), Woo Won is invited back to the historians’ office after finishing his father’s mourning period, his sister is no longer married to Yi Jin. Yi Jin still became King, because Yi Rim had no intention of taking the throne from him and is now in a very happy and free relationship with Hae Ryung.
I really liked how the show ends with a shot of Hae Ryung going back to work, because that showed all the more that this was the story of how she got through this, how she made her own path, and how even her relationship with Yi Rim didn’t necessarily define her. She was just Historian Goo Hae Ryung and she got there all by herself. It was a nice and powerful ending.

Now that I’ve covered the main story, I still need to discuss a couple of other characters before I go on to some cast comments.
First of all, Song Sa Hee. I’m kind of sorry I didn’t bring her up in more detail earlier as she was also one of my favorite characters. It seemed like she would be a kind of second female lead, but again, not involved in any kind of romantic triangle or square with Hae Ryung and Yi Rim (again, thank god).
She was the daughter of one of the higher government officials, someone at the same level as Min Ik Pyung, and everyone was surprised as to why she decided to become a historian, because she would be able to live very comfortably as she was. But she felt trapped. One thing she said that really hit me was that she didn’t want to live as a flower or a beautiful painting, as was expected of higher rank daughters. Becoming a historian would enable her to make her own way, her own life. She was the most serious one of the four female historians, the other three were drawn a little closer together by their love of gossip, but she always joined them for a drink when they had some time together away from their superiors. I was really glad that she didn’t become Hae Ryung’s enemy, even though she didn’t really open herself up to be friends exactly either. In the beginning, it seemed like she was even kind of spying for Min Ik Pyung, but she soon got sick of his tactics and wanted to stop. She was definitely on the historians’ side and also acknowledged her own father’s corruptness when it emerged. The most heartbreaking thing was when she was suddenly selected as one of Yi Rim’s bridal candidates. Min Ik Pyung had endorsed her and it was so sad when she came to him begging to let her out, because this was exactly the kind of life she wanted to avoid. Also, for another reason. As she was often stationed at Crown Prince Yi Jin’s quarters to record, the two of them had build some sort of bond. Sometimes it even seemed like there was a really tender thing blossoming between them (I definitely shipped them). Anyways, I believe she even admitted having some feelings for Yi Jin to the Crown Princess when she was spotted leaving his quarters early in the morning. They had been talking all night, but of course it was interpreted as that they had been doing more than that. After that, Sa Hee disappears for a while and only rejoins the historians later when they find the missing records.

I really enjoyed the two other female historians, Ah Ran and Eun Im. They were the moodmakers of the bunch, especially Ah Ran was a lover of gossip and occasionally shot off her mouth. The two of them are the only ones that bust Hae Ryung and Yi Rim together, but they manage to keep it a secret. In the end, I don’t really know exactly how necessary this was, that these two know, except that it made for some fun scenes where they kept interrogating Hae Ryung about their progress. But I would have expected it to become an issue when for example Ah Ran would shoot off her mouth again about it. In the end, nothing happened, and shortly after they found out, Hae Ryung and Yi Rim were forced apart by the marriage talk anyway, so I didn’t think it would’ve made a big difference whether they had found out or not.
It was funny to see them get into a fight with Yi Rim’s two court ladies, and Hae Ryung’s attending maid Seol Geum (played by Yang Jo Ah) was also a very funny character in that she couldn’t keep her mouth shut whenever she heard a juicy rumor. There were a lot of gossip lovers among the ladies, that’s for sure!

Let me get on with the cast comments!
So not long before watching this, I watched Run On, also with Shin Se Kyung, and I’ve seen other dramas with her but this was the first historical one I’ve seen of her! I have to say, this might be my favorite role by her so far. Shin Se Kyung has a knack for playing witty characters, and from her first appearance on I felt that she was a modern mind stuck in the Joseon period. She pulled it off really well. And I also liked how many different emotions she was able to portray, because despite her ability to keep her composure, she definitely cried and she definitely got angry. I really liked her in this drama!

This is the second drama I’ve seen with Astro’s Cha Eun Woo after My ID is Gangnam Beauty and I have to say I was kind of shocked! He was SUCH a different person! Now I know that acting is supposed to be like that, but I was really impressed with his versatility. Seeing him smile so much after watching My ID was almost kind of alarming, haha. I liked his character development a lot. In the beginning he was such a baby, every experience opened up a whole new world for him and seeing him fall for Hae Ryung was the cutest thing ever. He would just be completely dazed for the entire day after she’d snuck in a peck, it was so adorable. I definitely spurted out my drink when he was waiting for her in the final episode with that rose in his mouth, lol. I liked seeing this new side of his acting that I hadn’t seen before.

Now I have seen some series with Lee Ji Hoon, like School 2013, Legend of the Blue Sea, Gogh The Starry Night, even Blood (although I don’t remember much of that), but he’s always been kind of a minor side character or the second male lead who didn’t even stand a chance. It was so nice to see him in a main-ish role and I was VERY impressed with his acting. When he acted out that flashback scene where he found his wife who’d hung herself… My goodness, his expressions and acting were just amazing. I’m glad I got to see this side of his acting and it’s definitely made me more aware of him. I’m very glad that they didn’t make him fall in love with Hae Ryung because that would’ve just been very unoriginal and weird. I was actually glad to watch a drama without this typical quartet of people, it was refreshing!

I hadn’t seen anything with Park Ji Hyun yet, but I really liked her performance. I thought her character was very layered and I’m glad she wasn’t just a one-dimensional rival character or anything like that. In general, I liked how every character in the show had depth and showed growth. I was really rooting for her and Yi Jin to get together somehow, haha, even though I knew it wouldn’t happen since Sa Hee didn’t want to live that kind of life, just like Hae Ryung. I would like to see more of her acting in the future!

I kept wondering where I knew Park Ki Woong from, because he looked so familiar. And I figured out the only other thing I’ve seen him in was The Musical! Which is ancient! It’s been a really long time since I saw that and remember that it wasn’t a very good drama ^^” Anyways! I really liked him in this. He was a very likeable character, and even to the point where he was manipulated by his father, led to believe that his younger brother which he adored so much would actually take the throne away from him, I felt for him. You could see that it all went against his morals, and he handled it as well as he could. Also, I really liked his scenes with Sa Hee, he seemed so relaxed with her and he has a great smile! I liked him.

As I mentioned, the Queen Dowager was also one of my favorite characters. I have seen Kim Yeo Jin in previous dramas like Sassy Go Go, Moonlight Drawn By Clouds and lately in Itaewon Class, and she’s the typical mother kind of actress, but I loved seeing her as such a powerful and relentless female character in this drama. And when you learn about her side of the story, about having to live with the son that partook in killing her other son, it just makes her so strong, because she never once acts like a victim of what happened. I was really impressed by her acting since I haven’t actually her act so elaborately before, she was always just someone’s mom in other dramas with not a lot of personal screentime. Now I want to see more! I see that there are at least some more dramas with her on my to-watch list, so yay!

I’m sorry, I realize I haven’t said anything about Eunuch Heo Sam Bo yet! He needs to be mentioned! He was the most loyal person to Yi Rim, he was always with him and while he was mainly a comic relief character, his intentions were incredibly pure. He had been taking care of Yi Rim ever since he was born and had been nothing but a friendly figure to him. The scenes with him were always enjoyable because he was such a ‘good’ character. I didn’t know Sung Ji Roo from anything else but I kind of expected him to be a comedian or something! He certainly pulled off the comical scenes very well, haha.

Of course I knew some of the middle-aged man actors from several series as well. There were a lot of familiar faces in the Officials and the historians as well. I recognized the actress who played Eun Im was also in My ID is Gangnam Beauty because I remember writing in detail about her character since I liked her there as well.

There were also several actors and actresses that I didn’t know, so that was also nice. I like it when there’s a balance between people I do and do not know, haha.

Okay, so, to get to the conclusion of this review: I actually already rewrote stuff as I was writing it because I started out very incoherently. I hope it turned out for the better! Anyways, I enjoyed watching this drama. For a historical drama, it was very refreshing and unlike other stories as it focussed on strong female characters and the power of the written word. I really like the theme of the historians and how important they were. At the same time, it also tackled the issue of how women were looked down upon, in general, but all the more at the royal court. The starting period of the female historians was sometimes hard to watch since they were harrassed by literally anyone, just because they were rookies. I liked how all the events contributed to the final plot, how it gradually revealed little bits of the final truth. The build-up was really nice, also in the relationship between Hae Ryung and Yi Rim. I wondered at first what the whole side story of the banned book would bring to the story, as the other storylines were moving along just fine, and I guess I was worried that that additional storyline would be add too much extra drama to the story, but I think it was just the right amount. And they really wrapped up each plot before they started on to the next, so it didn’t feel like a mix of too many dramatic storylines happening at the same time.
It may not have been the most exciting historical drama I’ve seen, but it kept me interested and curious as to what would happen and what Hae Ryung and Yi Rim’s true origins were. I was positively surprised how it ended, and how they were able to become free together, just as they’d once only dared to imagine. I still can’t help but admire how they managed to not get busted while they were secretly dating around the palace grounds! That part went very smoothly indeed, haha.
I don’t have a lot of criticism, so it may have turned into a more analyzing review than a critical one. There were a lot of interesting events and the final message was very good in my opinion. I can’t emphasize it enough, but I found it really fascinating to learn more about these historians, especially since they appear to be so in the background, but they actually have so much influence and power. To think that we currently have access to this kind of information because of what they wrote back in those days!

I’ll be moving on with the next K-Drama on my list, I believe this will be a very dramatic one again, so I’ll be back soon with a new review! I hope this was at least a little bit enjoyable to read, I’m still trying to get back into a rhythm after these past few weeks. In any case, until next time! 🙂

Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Master Devil Do Not Kiss Me
(恶魔少爷别吻我 / E Mo Shao Ye Bie Wen Wo)
MyDramaList rating (for both seasons): 6.5/10

Hiya! Back with a new review. It actually didn’t take me as long as I’d expected to finish this, but it turned out the episodes were really short and this made it very easy to binge it. I watched the whole thing on YouTube, since the quality was better on there. My first confusion with this one was that I thought the first season alone would be 46 episodes and then there would be another season, so you can imagine my surprise when suddenly at episode 23 it said ‘Final’. xD Anyways! I don’t remember why exactly I put this on my to watch list, but I’m a sucker for romantic comedies so that was probably the biggest reason. I do have to say that it was really different from what I expected, so even though the story itself won’t be so difficult to discuss and analyze, there were some things that I found peculiar or that I didn’t really get at the end, so I’d like to mention those. Also, I didn’t know any of the actors, which doesn’t occur often! I usually know some people from other series by face at least, but this time I didn’t have any reference to use for any of the actors, which was kind of nice, in a way! Really made me able to watch it with a clear and open mind. Well then, let’s get to it, shall we?

Master Devil Do Not Kiss Me is a Chinese drama consisting of two seasons, with a total of 46 episodes (23 per season), every episode about 20 minutes long. I will be talking about the two seasons as one, so I won’t make a big distinction between the first and second season since there really wasn’t a difference in flow of story between the two season. The only things that changed were the opening and ending themes, and several dubs.
The main storyline is about An Chu Xia (played by Xing Fei), who suddenly loses her mother and gets ‘adopted’ into the household of the rich Han family. When Chu Xia’s mother passes, she agrees to donate an organ to Mr. Han, and this saves his life. Mr. Han’s wife visits Chu Xia’s mother to thank her for this, and agrees to take care of Chu Xia and raise her like her own daughter – that’s the final agreement between the two women and so Chu Xia is taken into the Han’s household. Making this whole experience even more unpleasant than it already is, Han’s only son, Han Qi Lu (played by Li Hong Yi), is not very welcome to Chu Xia. They’ve already met once before and that encounter didn’t go very well. And now they have to live in the same house. More than that, Chu Xia has to start going to the same school as Qi Lu, where he publicly announces to everyone that she is his maid. Chu Xia, partly glad since this school is where her mother also studied fashion design, has to deal with a lot of bullying from schoolmates since Qi Lu has quite the reputation – whoever crosses him goes on the blacklist. Besides that, there’s also Mo Xin Wei (played by Zhang Xiao Wei), a girl with a big crush on Qi Lu, who decides to make Chu Xia’s life a living hell together with her faithful sidekick Wan Zi (played by Li You Tong/Sunday Li). The only people on Chu Xia’s side are her best friend Meng Xiao Nan (played by Qie Lu Tong), who even transfers schools with Chu Xia so she won’t be alone, and Feng Shao (played by Li Cen Yi), a guy from Chu Xia’s former neighborhood who is like a big brother to her. Two other people that become her friends are Ling Han Yu (played by Zhang Jiong Min), Qi Lu’s best friend, and Jiang Chen Chuan (played by Fu Long Fei/Jason Fu), who transfers to their school at the end of season 1 and starts pining for Chu Xia’s romantic attention, later revealed to be Xin Wei’s cousin. And then finally there’s Xiang Man Kui (played by Yang Zhi Ying/Katherine Yang), Qi Lu’s ex-girlfriend who returns from abroad suddenly after leaving Qi Lu a year earlier, wanting to get back with him.
The series in its entirety shows how Chu Xia copes with life in her new environment, both at home and at school, while facing many obstacles from petty people who are for some reason determined to ruin her life. In the end, of course, Chu Xia and Qi Lu fall in love with each other.

Let me say right from the start that the first episode was a MESS. It doesn’t happen often that after just the first episode I was like, ‘What the heck did I just watch?!’. First of all, to the end I never understood the whole getup that Chu Xia and Feng Shao were donning in their old neighborhood, with their weird wigs and all that. We see Chu Xia leave for a milk delivery, but then she bumps into Qi Lu (their first accidental kiss) and her pendant slips into his bag. Qi Lu and Han Yu are on their way to their school bus, since their class has a military training field trip. Chu Xia goes after them on her scooter to get her pendant back, but then gets involved in a whole hostage situation – the school bus is hijacked. In the meantime, Chu Xia’s mom gets a phone call that customers are not getting their milk delivered and she can’t reach Chu Xia because her phone was confiscated by the ‘hijackers’ and when she runs out into the street to search for her daughter, she is hit by a car. Chu Xia doesn’t find out what happened to her mom until she gets back from the fake hijacking incident. Because, yeah, the hijacking is fake. It’s part of the military training, which already explained why the hijackers were not being very intimidating despite the fact that they were pointing weapons at their students (seriously though, what kind of a messed up military training is that?!). Plus the hijackers were making a big deal about Chu Xia being the milk delivery person, and they let her go quite easily. Anyways, it was a BIG mess. There was already SO many dramatic things happening from the start, and it took a while for things to settle down. Like, I know they had to create a situation in which Chu Xia would be forced to start lodging at Qi Lu’s house, but this premise was quite extreme and far-fetched in my opinion. Especially when later in the series, things tone down a lot and the craziness from the beginning really disappears to make way for just Chu Xia’s storyline of surviving her new life. But really, the hostage situation AND her mom dying, all in the same first episode… I can’t lie because it did draw me in, in a strange way, but I still found it pretty extreme.

For me, this series was a kind of messy combination version of Hana Yori Dango and Itazura na Kiss, even though they still managed to not copy everything from those classics. But they combined the ‘enemies to lovers’ trope with the ‘FL ends up living at ML’s house’ trope, so a lot of things happening felt kind of familiar to those prior series. Chu Xia comes from a poor background, she’s been living with her mother ever since her father ‘disappeared’ when she was a baby. Even though her mom had been a genius fashion designer, she ended up owning a milk delivery business in a backstreet neighborhood called ‘Cat Ear Alley’. This is where Chu Xia grew up, between the hoodlums and street people. She grew up with Feng Shao as they both had to learn how to fend for themselves, and Chu Xia helped her mom deliver milk. After her mom’s accident, Chu Xia is suddenly pushed into this rich household, where she gets to wear fancy dresses and where she’s fed and cleaned and where she’s allowed to follow her dream to become a designer herself. It’s a really big turning point and she’s constantly struggling with it, because she doesn’t have a background to be ‘proud’ of like most other students, and certainly not like Xin Wei, who’s constantly out to make her feel bad about that. But she keeps going, continues to be proud of where she came from and where she’s headed, constantly positive and looking forward, and that’s really admirable.
Honestly, I was so glad with Chu Xia as the female lead. She wasn’t a pushover, she stood up for herself and for things that went against her justice, even when everyone else turned a blind eye to it. Even though her classmates betrayed her time and time again, she never held a grudge, and she really saw people for who they were based on her instinct. It was so satisying to see her look at all the BS that was happening around her and be all like, ‘People, honestly, aren’t you tired of this?’ I think, in all the Chinese series I’ve seen so far, Chu Xia was by far one of my favorite main characters. She just responded so logically and realistically to everything around her while a lot of other characters were kind of stuck in their stereotypical ways of responding to situations.

I mean, the characters were pretty stereotypical, in general. Chu Xia was the strong and independent girl from a poor background who fights her way through the social class system to prove her worth (reminiscent of Makino from HYD). Qi Lu is the cold and mean son of a rich household, until we find out this was caused by his ex leaving him heartbroken and he has a hard time getting back to normally express his feelings again when he falls for someone new, so he’s the typical cold on the outside, warm on the inside type of person. Xiao Nan is the typical best friend who’s a complete romantic and falls in love every day with another guy, until Chen Chuan appears and she settles on him. Even when she finds out Chen Chuan likes Chu Xia, she never turns on her friend, she’s the most loyal person Chu Xia has by her side, although she’s kind of a ditz. Xin Wei is the classic bitch character, and even to the very end she doesn’t show any kind of reflection on her actions, even when her friend Wan Zi finally exposes her at the end. I had the least understanding for her, she was just rotten to the core. Of course, she must have had a lot of insecurities, she constantly felt like she had to use backhanded tricks to humiliate Chu Xia in front of everyone in order to win from her, but I never once had a shred of empathy for her. She just went about it the wrong way, making herself a worse and worse person with every step. Chen Chuan is the second male lead of whom everyone knows he’ll never stand a chance, but we still kind of support him. He was just a very likable character, even though he was very competitive when it came to Chu Xia and sometimes he didn’t know how to leave her alone, when he saw that Chu Xia and Qi Lu were really going for each other, he took a step back and left them alone. Same went for Han Yu, even though he was also romantically interested in Chu Xia, he kept making way for Qi Lu when it became clear that his friend liked her as well. He never passed on a chance to tell Qi Lu off for treating Chu Xia badly though, at one point he really went more to her side than to his, but he was a loyal friend to both of them to the end.
Man Kui is the initially mysterious ex-girlfriend who comes back and keeps her intentions a bit ambiguous for a while. In season 1 she only appears in Qi Lu’s flashbacks up to the point where she leaves him after winning a designing competition and being offered a chance to go to study fashion design in France. She returns at the end of season 1, and then we first don’t really know what to think of her. She seems nice enough to Chu Xia at first, but then she does become a little petty because she also wants Chu Xia gone from Qi Lu’s side. She teams up with Xin Wei for a while, but then ditches her and Xin Wei responds to this by trying to frame both Man Kui and Chu Xia, and this finally puts things in perspective for Man Kui. I think that, even though Man Kui only really appeared in season 2, she still had a lot of character development because at least she was able to reflect on herself and decided not to stay selfish like Xin Wei. Even though I didn’t really like her character that much, that much I could respect about her. What was funny to me was that the adult characters were all the most animated characters, like the young people were the ones going through real things, but the adults were mostly there for comic relief, especially the teachers. They just showed how frustrating it could be for students to go their own way, even if that meant going against school rules, for the sake of expressing their creativity and personal skills. There was this one teacher, the one everyone hated, who kept treating Chu Xia like a bad student, accusing her of cheating and stuff, just because she thought outside of the box a little, and that was really frustrating.
Something that kept happening which I felt really uncomfortable with was the ‘adults’ around Chu Xia making decisions about her life, and then I primarily mean in terms of marriage. First of all, while Qi Lu’s mother, fondly called Sister Yuan (played by Hao Yang) was the best substitute mom Chu Xia could wish for, reminding me also of the mom from Itazura na Kiss, she decided that Chu Xia would be Qi Lu’s fiancée without asking either of them for approval. It was in a protest against this that Qi Lu started going around telling people Chu Xia was his maid instead. Afterwards, when Han Yu’s grandfather discovers her as he also knew her mom, he basically already starts preparing her marriage to Han Yu. At the same time, Chen Chuan is going around telling everyone Chu Xia is going to marry him. That scene where those three people were discussing who Chu Xia was going to marry and she was just standing there, blank-faced, it was SO uncomfortable! It’s so weird to think that it still goes like this in some cultures, that young girls really have no say in what their future is going to be like because the older people will arrange everything for them. I don’t know, that part just really pissed me off. Just, any part in which people started talking on behalf of Chu Xia, I was like ‘SHE CAN SPEAK FOR HERSELF THANK YOU VERY MUCH’. -__-”

While I found the series in itself enjoyable enough, it lacked a lot in structure and build-up. One of the biggest example of this was the build-up in Chu Xia and Qi Lu’s relationship. Of course, we know, that the enemies will become lovers eventually. But their build-up was so confusing at times that in the end, I’m even wondering about the drama’s title, because it didn’t really make sense to me anymore. I thought that it was because Qi Lu told Chu Xia to call him ‘Young Master Han’ as she was his maid, and even though she refuses this she does call him that occasionally as a joke. In the summary on DramaWiki it says that Qi Lu’s nickname at school is ‘Master Devil’ because no one dares to oppose him, but I can’t remember that being explained clearly in the series. But okay, that explains the ‘Master Devil’ part, also because he is very unpleasant to Chu Xia in the beginning. But I don’t really get the ‘Do Not Kiss Me’ part, even after finishing the series.
They have two accidental kisses, where they literally bump into each other and their lips accidentally touch. When this happens in the first episode when they first meet, Qi Lu immediately finds it strange that he doesn’t have an allergic reaction to being ‘kissed’ like that, since apparently he’s not been able to take that kind of intimacy ever since Man Kui left him. Anyways, so there’s two accidental kisses, one time Chu Xia kisses Qi Lu in a game of truth or dare (which was super weird because their lips were kept out of the shot?! Like you only saw their eyes which made the ‘kiss’ look really fake), Qi Lu kisses her one time in a fit of passionate rage but this was just really bad timing because they were fighting and it was not consented (Chu Xia also pushed him away immediately). And then there are multiple scenes where it’s just the two of them and they’re about to kiss but are interrupted at the last moment. Even when they finally officially ‘confess’ to each other, there is not a single mutually consented, both on the same page, romantic kiss between them. It literally ends with him hugging her after dramatically telling her he likes her, which we all already knew because he’d already told her that several times before. So yeah, bit of an anticlimax. And it was such a pity! Because they had a really nice chemistry! I was constantly excited when they had scenes together because I felt like their feelings would just be piling and piling up until they’d finally have that long-awaited kiss…. and then it didn’t happen.
Also, the timing between them was kind of off. Qi Lu is the first one to realize his feelings for Chu Xia, and then he immediately starts preparing to confess, even though Chu Xia really isn’t there yet. Like, at one point, he tells her this whole confession (the one where she’s in the shower and doesn’t hear it), but I was really like… even if she did hear that confession, I figure her reaction would be a legit ‘what the fuck’. Because at that point, even when he wanted to publicly tell her through a megaphone at the end of season 1 that he liked her, Chu Xia at that point was not looking at him romantically yet AT ALL. She only really decided she liked him when she found out he was the person who’d been rooting for her through messages on that wall back in Cat Ear Alley. He took one of the stray cats home and she discovered this and, recognizing the cat, she knew it had been him. Only then I felt like she finally realized her honest feelings for him, before that, it would’ve just been awkward if he’d confessed, because she just would’ve said no. So yeah, even though it happens a lot when one lead character realizes their feelings before the other one does, it felt like Qi Lu really didn’t think about how Chu Xia would feel if he suddenly told her his feelings out of the blue like that. Like, when he first asked her to date, it just felt so awkward because it was kind of ‘Hey, who are we kidding, we know this is happening, let’s date already’ and Chu Xia was like ‘???the heck you talking about bro???’
What I really found really shitty of Qi Lu was that he just started flirting with Man Kui in front of Chu Xia, like he’d suddenly bring her into the house to cook and make comments about how happy he was to have Man Kui because Chu Xia couldn’t cook for the life of her, and all that was just really mean of him. And then they’d go out for dinners with the three of us, while Chu Xia knew she was going to be a third wheel, and they’d just reminisce about their past together and Chu Xia was just like CAN I LEAVE PLEASE?! Especially because this was when she was actually finally starting to like him. This just made her really confused, for good reason. Like, first he tells her he likes her, pushes her to be his girlfriend, and then this?
I was SO happy when she told him off for acting like a jerk there I even wrote down what she actually told him because it was so spot-on. xD She said, “Don’t speak to me in that tone, like I did something unforgiveable to you. What do I know? I only know that you and Man Kui are being all lovey-dovey and that you’re treating me like air. I also know that you two had a candle-lit dinner in which you burned me like a candle to lighten your mood. Han Qi Lu, face your inner heart already. If you like her, then get back together. Don’t eat from your bowl while looking at the pot. I am not a buy-one-get-one-for-free item in your relationship.”
After this quote I applauded. I was so happy she saw how he treated her for the exact BS that it was instead of acting all pitiful and butt-hurt about it.
The second shitty thing he did was to reject her so heartlessly when she was finally ready to confess back to him. She finally gathered the courage to tell him she liked him back, and he was like ‘nahh I don’t want to be in a relationship right now’ and I legit went BITCH WHAT. Even when he ‘justified’ himself because he wanted to let her go follow her dream and he didn’t want to cause her to miss out on that, he gave up on his own selfishness when it came to her, the way he told her was just mean and not okay. He made her CRY, I can’t forgive him for that. Team Chu Xia all the way!
So yeah, even though I like the enemies to lovers trope because it always adds in that little spice and aggressiveness which I secretly kind of dig, this series made a bit of a mess of how their feelings were communicated to each other.

I really liked the story they added in season 1 about their teacher You Tian and his hidden desire to pursue a career in art. The part where they made the whole exhibition from all his work for him and all that. You Tian (played by Feng Xiao Tong) was the nicest teacher in school, and I also liked his relationship with the school nurse Maria who kind of disappeared at some point. In season 2, when he comes back to teach after finishing his art school classes, they suddenly added this weird and unnecessary part where he suddenly had a foreign fiancée and that caused more tension between him and Maria because they were obviously into each other. But then the fiancée found out about You Tian and Maria and ran out crying and bumped into the other teacher and suddenly told him he was very handsome — and that was it. After that, both Maria and the fiancée completely disappeared from the story! Which was a shame because Maria was kind of an important side character who helped Chu Xia out a couple of times as well.
(By the way, I can’t seem find any information about the actress who played Maria, she’s not added in any cast lists on DramaWiki or MyDramaList, and I can’t even find this series on AsianWiki, so if anyone has any info on this, please let me know so I can at least credit the actress!)

In the last part of season 2, Chu Xia gets to participate in the same designing contest as Man Kui a year earlier, which will give her a chance to study in France. It is during this already tense period that the final big plot twist is revealed: Chu Xia’s father. Worst of all: he is also Xin Wei’s father. Which means that not only Chu Xia and Xin Wei are half sisters, but Chen Chuan and Chu Xia are also cousins. Chu Xia of course wants nothing do it with him anyway, she’s never had a father and even though she’s been curious about his disappearance, she doesn’t want to joing the Jiang family. When Xin Wei finds out, she loses it. Feeling like Chu Xia is now even trying to take away her family from her after stealing Qi Lu away from her, she puts in motion her most extreme plan. Frame both Chu Xia and Man Kui during the final round of the competition, by having Man Kui kidnapped so she can’t come to prove Chu Xia’s innocence. This is where it just got really messy and even her friend Wan Zi decides that she’s going too far. In the end, everything is solved, luckily, but it still was a really nasty event. And all Xin Wei could do was just scream at Chu Xia, calling everyone a liar and she even repeatedly badmouthed Chu Xia’s mother. She was just being SO disrespectful that I actually didn’t flinch when her dad slapped her because honestly, she deserved that at the least. She was completely crazy. And then it was like ‘Okay, well, I guess it was a misunderstanding, in that case Chu Xia is the winner!! :D’ and everyone went like ‘Yaaayyy’ and Chu Xia was like ‘Hello?! That’s it?! Anyone care to explain wtf just happened?!’ Like, the transitions between happenings and scenes was really weird and unnatural sometimes.

Another storyline that was introduced but then completely ignored again was the one about Gao Gan and his crazy girlfriend. Gao Gan was a very unpleasant classmate of Qi Lu’s, also from a rich background, with a big grudge towards Qi Lu and, consequently, Chu Xia. The girl that he was in love with was obsessed with Qi Lu, and she was kicked out of school by him just before Chu Xia came. The crazy girl even came back to school once to threaten Chu Xia with a knife, she was nuts. Anyways, we find out that Gao Gan (played by Bai Cheng Jun) loves her and wants to get back at Qi Lu for driving his girl nuts, even though she just really had some serious issues. But hey, petty people be petty, and they blame everything on someone they can actually blame and hurt. So he even kidnaps Chu Xia in the beginning of season 2, and he helps Xin Wei in her final scheme by kidnapping Man Kui before she can get to the competition to vouch for Chu Xia. I called him crap-bag in my head for the entire series, because he was just such a lame douchebag. And yeah, he only showed up one more time, all bad-guy like, look I’m cool because I’m kidnapping girls now. But there really wasn’t anything more to his character besides that, they just made him come back when they needed a bad guy. And the crazy girlfriend also didn’t appear anymore after making such a dramatic scene.
Wan Zi was also a character that I deeply disliked, even though she did come around in the end when she found out Xin Wei’s plan to frame Chu Xia like that, then she finally got a conscience. But honestly, Xin Wei had been treating her like trash as well, so I can understand. What bothered me mostly about Wan Zi was the actress though, and in particular her acting. She was like a robot doll, completely not communicating with other actors while she was doing a scene with them, she just said her words straight ahead while pulling the continuously same startled facial expression. She was just as petty as Xin Wei in the beginning, until Xin Wei took over with her madness. They kind of reminded me of the bad girls from Love O2O, even though there the ‘friend’ was worse than the ‘bitch character’.

I’ve seen this comment a lot while watching the series, and I have to agree it’s kind of funny and that they should’ve called the series ‘High School Gossip Please Don’t Kill Me’ or something like that. It was CRAZY how the gossip escalated. They made it funny to include this same flow of rumours being spread by the same group of people, and with each person the story was pulled more and more out of context until it became pure nonsense. Like, Chu Xia is in school for 1 day and there’s a rumor that she’s pregnant with Qi Lu’s baby. This also reminded me a lot of how Makino was bullied in HYD. Like, I get people can be petty, but you know it’s serious when they start putting tacks on your chair, that just goes too far. I was so proud of Chu Xia how she kept herself going through all that. And I love that at least she had Xiao Nan with her in class. That time when she came into class and her books were all shredded and ripped up and then Xiao Nan came in and just calmly replaced all her books because she’d already gone to the bookstore to buy new ones for her… Friendship goals, to be sure. And there were these three people in their class who also called themselves Chu Xia’s friends but whenever she was facing new rumors, they just shut her out again because they were too scared to stand up for her and get in trouble themselves. Those were not friends, they were only nice to her when they figured Chu Xia actually stood a chance against the higher power, then they suddenly started flocking to her side. Before that, they really only wanted her to help them out but they never did so in return.
So I guess you could say ‘friendship’ is a very important theme in this series. Chu Xia certainly found out who her real friends were, and in the end they really had a nice group of people who would always help each other out.

I would like to make some character and cast comments now before I move on to my conclusion.
As I mentioned before, I really didn’t know any of the actors from other series before, so I’m basing my opinions purely on what I saw from them in this drama. I’m not going to pay too much attention to the cringe-worthy dubbing in this, only that I believe they actually changed some of the voices for season 2. I remember wondering why Chu Xia and Xiao Nan suddenly had completely different voices. Honestly, is it too much to ask to just let the actors act with their own voices? What’s the point in always adding this over-extreme mismatched dubbing to it? Anyways.

To start with my favorite girl, Chu Xia. I really liked Xing Fei’s performance. She made me really feel for her character, all the more because she seemed to be the only character that just responded normally to the weird situations around her. She had a really natural attraction to her, like, she seemed really fun to hang around with and that’s probably what attracted all these guys to her as well, even though that was never her intention. It was just impossible to hate her, unless you were Xin Wei and you just looked for reasons to blame her for literally anything bad that was happening in your own life. Even though she was kind of over the top in the first episode, as soon as she took that weird wig off, she became a really likeable person. She had really good views on what was right and wrong, she didn’t hold grudges, she knew how to mind her own business and just couldn’t understand what made it so hard for other people to do the same thing. She thought outside of the box, knew how to apply her knowledge instead of just following the rules in how to use it. She showed everyone how strong she was in her mind and soul, and that was really nice to see. I can’t emphasize enough how happy I was with a female lead like her.

I just found out that there’s actually a 5-year age difference between Xing Fei and Li Hong Yi! Xing Fei was 23 at the time this series came out and Li Hong Yi was 19. I see on his DramaWiki page that he’s been doing a LOT lately, so maybe I’ll get to see some of his other more recents series in the future. Even though his character was kind of stereotypical in that he was supposed to be the cool and jerkish guy who actually had a tiny heart and just wanted to be loved, I did enjoy his performance. I really loved his eyes, especially in the way he looked at Chu Xia, he really showed his emotions through his gaze very well. He really was like a little child sometimes, getting all petty when he couldn’t immediately get what he wanted. And this also made him a bit endearing, despite the fact that he kept saying really insensitive things to people. I’d actually expected his character to be way more predatory, for some reason. I thought he would be this kind of dangerous guy who would really constantly treat her as his maid and claim her to be his possession. But maybe that’s because when someone is called ‘Devil’ in a Chinese drama, I always think of ‘Devil Beside Me’, and Qi Lu really wasn’t as bad as Mike He’s character there. Anyways, I’m kind of curious to see more of him now that I see he’s doing a lot of dramas lately.

Qie Lu Tong was really good as Xiao Nan, I really loved her character, even though she was kind of ditzy in the whole romance thing. She was the daydreamer who would just create romantic scenarios out of nothing, which was in complete opposite to Chu Xia, but still they were like sisters. I loved how she just transferred to Chu Xia’s new school, how she just got her dad to do that, plainly so Chu Xia wouldn’t have to be alone. And even though she pouted a lot through rather than take action by herself, she was the most loyal person to Chu Xia, up to the very end. Even when Chen Chuan didn’t like her back and she had to watch him make advances on Chu Xia, she never started envying her friend, she never turned bitter. She still tried to be a good friend to Chen Chuan, and in the end it rewarded her when he finally started noticing all the things she’d been doing for him ever since he found out Chu Xia was his cousin. So yeah, I see that she hasn’t done a lot of dramas, but I hope to see more of her, because she played a very likeable character.

In the end, Han Yu didn’t have as big a role as I’d expected, because in the beginning I thought he and Qi Lu would be like the two friends from Love till The End of Summer. But he kind of disappeared for a while, and then when he came back his place as the second male lead was kind of taken over by Chen Chuan. But anyways, he was a really likeable character. Even when he didn’t hide his true feelings for Chu Xia, he never forced himself on to her, he always respected her feelings and stepped back immediately when Qi Lu started showing interest in her, even though he didn’t like it. He was a real good friend, and I felt like he actually became more Chu Xia’s friend than Qi Lu’s, as it seemed that he and Qi Lu got out of touch a little when he went away. But I liked that, even when his grandfather started pushing them together, he never seriously went along with it and he really didn’t want Chu Xia to be bothered by it, either. I see on DramaWiki that Master Devil was the first show he did, and that he’s also in some more recent dramas, so I hope that I can watch something with him again!

I don’t know why exactly, but Li Cen Yi gave me Kim Young Kwang vibes! I really liked his character, he was like the big brother-type of friend that you could always depend upon. It did seem in the beginning as if he also had a crush on Chu Xia, but then all of a sudden he had a girlfriend, and it looked like this was a big relief to Chu Xia. I think she would’ve been worried how to face him after she heard someone imply that he liked her. Anyways, he was a really cool guy, always jumping in to help Chu Xia out. I liked how him, Chu Xia and Xiao Nan were already friends from before Chu Xia transferred to that school. Even though Feng Shao couldn’t attend school with her like Xiao Nan, he did find other ways to stay close, like for example he was suddenly helping out with gym classes and stuff? And I also liked how Chen Chuan and he got their sort of bromance bond. Feng Shao really tried to think about what would be best for Chu Xia, and that’s why he support Chen Chuan in his pursuing of her, because he didn’t like Qi Lu (with good reason). But yeah, in the end it was all up to Chu Xia, no matter his good intentions. He was a good friend throughout, and just a very likeable character to have in the series. I liked his performance a lot, how calm and casual he always was, but still oozing that subtle ‘don’t mess with me or my fam’ coolness.

Although I did find Chen Chuan a little bit annoying at times, there would always be a moment where he corrected himself and always made me go ‘Ahh, okay, now that was nice of him’. He is initially attracted to Chu Xia because she treats him like no other girl has treated him before, and he gets reeled in by her gutsiness and determination. He does tend to be a bit clingy, especially starting from season 2 when he’s just determined to stay by her side, but Chu Xia makes it very clear to him that she doesn’t like that. I think he knew from the start that she wasn’t into him, but he still believed that if he’d put in effort, he could make her look at him. In the end, the plan failed mainly because he finds out they’re actually related, but she’s still really important to him and he finally pushes Qi Lu to her, in his own words ‘I just want to support my cousin’. I would’ve liked to see him noticing Xiao Nan more, though! She stuck by him whenever he was in a ditch, I secretly hoped that they’d start dating when Chu Xia went to France, but then the series was suddenly already over. xD Anyways, he was a likeable character, without a doubt, even though he could’ve been a little more respectful at times, especially in moments where he was just really greedy for Chu Xia’s attention. I thought it was really mature of him to help Chu Xia and Qi Lu out in the end, even though it hurt.

Even though I hated Mo Xin Wei, I can’t deny that Zhang Xiao Wei is really pretty. I almost found it a waste that they casted someone so pretty as such an unlikeable character. I’d really hoped to see some maturity from her in the end, like in Love O2O and Love till the End of Summer where the bitchy girl characters all came around in the end to apologize for their immature behavior to the female lead. None of that here. I really tried to get some understanding for her character, but she really was a lost case.
The actress did a great job portraying her like that though! It’s a whole different kind of challenge to portray a character that the viewers will have to hate. She really lost the right to any kind of redemption with her last scheme, that just went too far. And all I could think was how little she must actually think of herself, that she felt like the only way she could ‘win’ from Chu Xia was to use these kinds of tricks to make her feel bad. All in all, I’d have to compliment the actress for portraying the character so well. Let’s not forget that the actors are not their characters, haha.

I personally found it kind of a pity what they did with Man Kui. I mean, she was established to be this amazing girlfriend to Qi Lu in the past, but then when they found it necessary to suddenly bring her back and act like nothing had happened between them, they suddenly started making her really pitiful and kind of petty at times as well. She would fake being in pain in order to get Qi Lu to pay attention to her, and then she took advantage of the fact that people were starting to speculate about them dating again by making Chu Xia feel like the third wheel. I’m glad she came around eventually after what Xin Wei did at the end, because just before that she’d also still been determined to hurt Chu Xia. Her character was just really ambiguous to me, like even though I wanted to like her, I couldn’t because she was being so fake. I was glad Chu Xia started noticing this at well, realizing that the pot lid that had supposedly burned Man Kui’s hand wasn’t hot at all, etcetera.
But anyways, I can’t deny that her character was interesting, even though I was really confused as to how much she was exaggerating about being sick and in pain. In the end it all just became kind of unimportant, and this also took away from the credibility of her character, so that was a pity.

It was really nice to watch this after finishing such an emotional cookie like Move to Heaven. Agreed, as I said, this wasn’t a very ‘good’ series in terms of structure and storyline build-up, but I found it very enjoyable nonetheless. Sometimes you’re just in the mood for something light and weird, that just makes you laugh out loud and make you forget about the weight of the real world.
I’m glad I gave it a shot, and I also saw that they have a lot of Chinese dramas on YouTube, so that makes it very easy to watch. I have several more Chinese dramas of similar genres on my to watch list, for a fact I know some are also with Xing Fei, so I’m looking forward to those! I’m also glad I took the time to write a serious review on this, even though I went through it so swiftly and there wasn’t a lot to really take seriously in the story. I actually liked that it was a mixture of all kinds of classic romance stories combined because I really like those, no matter how cliché they are. Even if it’s just for light entertainment, it will do.

I’m going back to some K-Dramas now that I’ve also really been looking forward to. I hope to be able to finish my batch of 10 dramas in 5 months before the end of this year and still write some worthwhile reviews as I go through my neverending list. 🙂
Bye-bee~! ^^