Dawn Is Breaking (2024)

Romantic, Angsty, Cliche, Nonsensical

I had high hopes for this drama as I absolutely love the main leads but the scriptwriting left much to be desired. This drama is about the love story between a sexy, poisoned Prince seeking revenge and a courageous, beautiful girl caught up in between the chaos. Imagine, a republican era angst but in a historical style, that’s the drama you are getting here. The main leads are the star of the show and the only reason you want to watch more. The plot and writing is bad even for a mini drama and yet this is still an entertaining mindless watch (at least in the first half).

POSITIVE:
- Sexy blindfold scenes and beautiful main leads.
- Morally grey male lead (he appears to be a red flag but is more green flag).
- Feisty female lead.
- Lots of nice kiss scenes, wrist grabs and sensual vibes between the leads (definitely the best part of the drama).
- Angst with lots of tension with over the top dramatic scenes.
- Romantic scenes and aesthetics.
- Enemies to lovers.
- Mystery plot. At the start you have no idea what’s going on which makes it intriguing.
- Second couple stole the show for me as they are better written than the main leads. Their story was short but heartbreaking and realistic for that area.
- Fantastic acting from the main leads Richard Li and He Xuan Lin. Seriously, these two need main roles in full length dramas at this point.

NEGATIVE:
- Cliche. My biggest complaint is that the writers have literally put every cliche ever known to cdrama watches here. There is nothing original and nothing you haven’t seen before. In fact, I suppose you could give them an award for putting the most cliche tropes and situations in one drama (there are literally in every single episode). But actually, it's not even the cliches that are the problem as much as that those cliches were put together in a way that made a lot of the emotional scenes feel very fabricated and the characters not real.
- Nonsensical. I usually don’t care much about logic and especially in short dramas as they have limited time but the world building, fantasy elements and basically the whole plot makes zero sense. You really need to completely turn off your brain for this one.
- Too dramatic. The characters turning into maniacs/psychopaths as a cheap and fast way to create tension and angst.
- Visuals. The main leads and costumes are great but the filter/colouring/lighting sometimes appeared too bright and made them look washed out. I feel in later episodes this gets better.
- Too fast-paced. Yes, short dramas are usually fast paced but here everything looks like it’s shot at 1.5x speed. People coming in and out of frame, people talking etc. The drama needed a breather especially at the start. Although this did improve in the later episodes.
- Second half is a snooze fest. Literally, the ridiculous situations, overused cliches and psychotic characters made me want to drop this but my NDD (Never Drop Disease) made me pull through the end.
- (MINOR SPOILER HERE) Unsatisfying ending of the Emperor. This guy. You will want to burn him, skin him alive and then feed him to the pigs. It’s been a while since I’ve hated a character so much I literally wanted to start throwing furniture in my room while watching his scenes. You will want this disgusting grandpa to suffer. But what happens to him in the end is NOT satisfying.

OVERALL:
If you want to see sexy main leads in a very cliche romantic story with many nonsensical but entertaining parts, oh and lots of nice kiss scenes, watch this drama.

TRIGGER WARNING:
This drama is heavy on abuse so bare that in mind (multiple attempts of r*pe, multiple scenes leading up to actual r*pe shown).

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