What the heck was this? It started off strong, and I was waiting for each episode, but it slowly devolved into absolute nothingness, along with all the characters.

I can't tell you exactly when things came undone, but slowly, a prince murders everyone who knows about his medical condition, but we are supposed to forget about that and pretend that never happened, even though he almost killed the FL. The ML literally melts someone's mind so they won't give him away (seriously, just puts his fingers on either side of the guy's head, at his temples, and melts his brain!!!). A character we come to know is an antagonist, is hinted at having real human feelings for the FL, but later, it turns out he is just a robot of a character (not literally) with no discernable human feelings, thereby making him a completely static and largely irrelevant character to the story. The... I guess... SML, is introduced to us as a rounded character, only to have everything that made him a rounded character taken away from him. Why?? Why take rounded characters and take away their human nature to turn them into robots? They pretty much introduced us to the most interesting characters near the beginning, then forgot about them till the end, whilst focusing on introducing more and more less interesting side characters, like the ML's evil queen step-mother, the insufferably gullible teenage daughter of the FL's shifu, the FL's shifu, and that random old shifu guy that lives inside a mountain, which they only introduced us to in order to force the FL and ML to do a ridiculous dance together (seriously). They needed to stop introducing more and more characters, and to focus on the ones they gave us in the first few episodes. The FL and ML "dating" and "bonding" scenes were so dull and drawn out, it was ridiculous.

What I really mean is that when we first met the FL, the ML, and the SML, they all had an intriguing introduction that made me excited to get to know them better, but as the story went on, they all proved to be quite empty characters with little to offer.

The FL wasn't the heroine I thought she would turn out to be, the ML just smirked the whole time, so I thought for sure he was going to be an interesting character once I got to know more about him... but no! He just got less and less interesting! Same with the SML, though at least the SML held on to a bit of mystery about him, which made him slightly more interesting than the rest of the characters.

I couldn't care less if all the characters died after the first 8 episodes, they were so bland, so utterly boring, stiff, vacuous.

Zhao Lu Si can't do anything but comedy. As a person, she isn't a serious person, and it translates to her roles, though I'm glad she toned down the cuteness for this one, because her usual level of cutesy is downright saccharine. She isn't even pretty, for an actress, not that I want one of those wooden Chinese Barbies to get cast instead *cough* Gulnazar *cough*. She is an average looking actress with average acting skills (except for comedy). I hope that the industry will stop casting her in roles that don't suit her at all as they have been doing.

An Yue Xi is a wonderful actress, who lights up the screen no matter which role she gets cast in. Even her character in this drama was quite boring, but like the SML, she did the best with what she was given. It drives me a bit crazy that An Yue Xi isn't given the roles Zhao Lu Si is, yet An is not just a much better actress, but also a very, very beautiful woman. Actually, if you took Zhao Lu Si out of all the main roles she has been given, and replaced her with An Yue Xi instead, all those dramas would have ended up way better than they did. An can do both comedy and drama exceptionally well! Do better, China, start hiring actresses by ability, not by popularity, then less costume dramas would crash and burn.

4.5 melted brains out of 10.