Owl-woman
This review may contain spoilers
This may hopefully help the psychology geeks like myself to digest the show
This is not going to be a typical review and I might get boring by focusing on the psychological processes of the characters since this is the only thing that keeps me busy in the love dramas like this one (and I am not by far a love story person, tbh, but rather a xianxia lover and you can hardly split those two categories apart).
Ok, so what I understood the legend is:
A young mother to be, as a result of all the mess she went through and her being completely lonely and no one to share with (which is strange since she’s got her great teacher, a Lord Dou Mu), and needing to protect her loved ones makes a totally wrong decision about her daughter by blocking some of her essential abilities. And that is how she creates the future events she wanted to prevent from. Hadn’t she given her the pill, nothing of the crazy mess would have happened, her daughter would be raised with her perfect gender awareness. She would probably fall in love with our brilliant Xu Feng like all the rest of the girls of the 6 realms and by this sole fact she would be “just another girl” for him.
Xu Feng is a guy who had been loved and spoiled by giving him everything he wanted and much more than that. As a son of a pushy and controlling mother (in her own ways), he had been obviously overwhelmed by female attention and perceived all the love signals of women as another way to control him (hello, mother). Jin Mi seems to be the first and the only one (Liu Ying doesn’t count since she is busy with her own romance) who shows no interest in him as a man and this is exactly what allowed him to include her into his close circle, as his servant in the first place. She was the only woman he felt safe with, the only one who doesn’t need anything from him, doesn’t push him, doesn’t make him feel suffocated. Since she is not aware of her gender and wasn’t trained the eternal love routine of flirting and getting a guy’s attention, she admits touches and words that don’t look really appropriate but still excite our heavily counterdependant Xu Feng and he later interprets it as “her innocence” (not the case). And guess what! Of course he falls in love with her. And now he’s inverted roles with his “inner mother” (always the case) and starts been pushy and controlling towards Jin Mi up until the 40ish episodes where the story culminates in its heaviest twists (you can see (and be freaked out by) some of that in the intro and it looks so messy when you just start the show and believe this is an innocent comedy). This whole process is poorly portrayed and Xu Feng is predictably interpreted by scrupulous viewers as an obsessed underdeveloped character. This contrasts to his beautifully elaborated older brother, The Night Immortal, who’s been given a lot of screen time to unfold his life story and his processes, who is just as much obsessed with Jin Mi but it looks OK because we know the nature of his obsession. No wonder I (and a good half if not the majority of viewers) stayed emotionally connected to and supportive of this guy even in his worst shadow times. The role of Night Immortal is a blessing for every actor to get and Leo Luo used it to the max capacity and showed his great acting skills.
I didn’t see any particular chemistry between the main couple. Even Xu Feng and Sui He looked much better together in those few episodes when they had a nice romantic interaction.
I don’t like the Pill thing as a major plot device since it looks artificial, thus reducing the value of the show for me. The creators catch up with almost everything else though, making the show still exciting to watch and throwing in some precious gems like amazing pieces of dialogues with beautiful (if not sacred) formulae and good comic vignettes.
The music is poor. I’ll leave the three tracks to the matter of individual tastes but having just three of them for such a bright and epic show is a pity. Mu Ci and Liu Ying deserved their own love theme, to say the least. I don’t want to name other similar shows with superb collection of OST but the obvious comparison comes to mind.
I did rewatch a number of scenes to unfold the taste and get a better sense of the details. The show is quite complex and you might need that.
Ok, so what I understood the legend is:
A young mother to be, as a result of all the mess she went through and her being completely lonely and no one to share with (which is strange since she’s got her great teacher, a Lord Dou Mu), and needing to protect her loved ones makes a totally wrong decision about her daughter by blocking some of her essential abilities. And that is how she creates the future events she wanted to prevent from. Hadn’t she given her the pill, nothing of the crazy mess would have happened, her daughter would be raised with her perfect gender awareness. She would probably fall in love with our brilliant Xu Feng like all the rest of the girls of the 6 realms and by this sole fact she would be “just another girl” for him.
Xu Feng is a guy who had been loved and spoiled by giving him everything he wanted and much more than that. As a son of a pushy and controlling mother (in her own ways), he had been obviously overwhelmed by female attention and perceived all the love signals of women as another way to control him (hello, mother). Jin Mi seems to be the first and the only one (Liu Ying doesn’t count since she is busy with her own romance) who shows no interest in him as a man and this is exactly what allowed him to include her into his close circle, as his servant in the first place. She was the only woman he felt safe with, the only one who doesn’t need anything from him, doesn’t push him, doesn’t make him feel suffocated. Since she is not aware of her gender and wasn’t trained the eternal love routine of flirting and getting a guy’s attention, she admits touches and words that don’t look really appropriate but still excite our heavily counterdependant Xu Feng and he later interprets it as “her innocence” (not the case). And guess what! Of course he falls in love with her. And now he’s inverted roles with his “inner mother” (always the case) and starts been pushy and controlling towards Jin Mi up until the 40ish episodes where the story culminates in its heaviest twists (you can see (and be freaked out by) some of that in the intro and it looks so messy when you just start the show and believe this is an innocent comedy). This whole process is poorly portrayed and Xu Feng is predictably interpreted by scrupulous viewers as an obsessed underdeveloped character. This contrasts to his beautifully elaborated older brother, The Night Immortal, who’s been given a lot of screen time to unfold his life story and his processes, who is just as much obsessed with Jin Mi but it looks OK because we know the nature of his obsession. No wonder I (and a good half if not the majority of viewers) stayed emotionally connected to and supportive of this guy even in his worst shadow times. The role of Night Immortal is a blessing for every actor to get and Leo Luo used it to the max capacity and showed his great acting skills.
I didn’t see any particular chemistry between the main couple. Even Xu Feng and Sui He looked much better together in those few episodes when they had a nice romantic interaction.
I don’t like the Pill thing as a major plot device since it looks artificial, thus reducing the value of the show for me. The creators catch up with almost everything else though, making the show still exciting to watch and throwing in some precious gems like amazing pieces of dialogues with beautiful (if not sacred) formulae and good comic vignettes.
The music is poor. I’ll leave the three tracks to the matter of individual tastes but having just three of them for such a bright and epic show is a pity. Mu Ci and Liu Ying deserved their own love theme, to say the least. I don’t want to name other similar shows with superb collection of OST but the obvious comparison comes to mind.
I did rewatch a number of scenes to unfold the taste and get a better sense of the details. The show is quite complex and you might need that.
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