PeachBae
Sky Kingdom
This review may contain spoilers
POV is EVERYTHING!
How many dramas have we seen where the fl's family is framed or wrongly accused and punished to death while the fl escapes narrowly and vows to avenge? Well that's the story of our 2fl Muyao here. Then there is a girl who drugs the guy she loves just to marry him, schemes and harms the other lady love of her beloved to get her out of her way, physically assaults a girl for revenge, colludes with enemies etc. Villainess, right? This mastermind behind everything going awry in the 2fl's life is our fl hua qian.
Even so, we as viewers are mostly sympathizing with hua qian for what she went through and bashing mu yao for her actions, including me, because the story is from her perspective entirely.
Story and characters: Let me start with hua qian's redemption arc. She does everything she can to prevent her family from being massacred again, assuming that she has got a second chance at life after doing countless evil, losing everything and dying once. Unfortunately, her redemption isn't real. The past cannot be changed, the dead cannot be revived unless it is a dream, which is exactly what it is. There, she goes back in time to when she has done whatever evil was to be done, and now she has to deal with the aftermath to prevent what happened before from happening again. We see in her pov, how she tries to do whatever possible to save the day, without doing further evil, to the point where she didn't even avenge her brother's murder. Now onto her brother's character, he is crap. He sexually assaults women, has countless concubines taken by force, a useless good for nothing. But, he is very sincere to his family, to the point where he takes the fatal arrow meant for his sister just to protect her. Her small family of four is tightly bound, with deep love for each other. Her character's biggest saving grace is her love for family. Even most villains sacrifice their families and close ones for their own benefit. She did everything to protect them in this second chance after knowing the outcome. But does that mean that she is a good person? No, she regrets losing her family and everything else so she tries to repent after making mistakes. She is a grey character at most.
Onto the men in this drama, Zhong yelan is the root cause of for everything to begin. It was to get him that hq did evil to get my out of the scene. But he still chose my both times. Albeit in the second chance, she chose to divorce him. And also, zyl is a very trashy 3ml. When hq drugged him or her father framed her family it was evil. But when his beloved my did evil, like when she caused her brother to die, caused her to fall off the cliff, those were justified to him. A duplicitous hypocrite is all that i can say about him. Next i don't know who is the 2ml and who is the ml. So first i will say about hua rongzhou. He is a dog for real. Loyal, ferocious, protective, possessive, all for his only master, the fl. He is willing to do absolutely anything for her, even despite all morals. But he overestimated himself often, didn't know his place considering the era and his position as a servant, proud and very rude to everyone else. I know why she would choose him over the one she possibly loved, the one who came with burdens, because she wanted love from zyl which led her to do the evil, so if she had someone as devoted as hrz already, perhaps she wouldn't do that. Alas he was just an imagination born from this exact sentiment in her "second chance", who doesn't exist in the real world. Onto the last male, zhong xiwu. He is not perfect but in the second chance, his love for her was intense but she didn't reciprocate it. The most important point to be noted is, since the second chance that spans over 28 episodes is just a dream, so we don't get to see the real povs of anyone else. Whatever we see is in the fl's pov, so i doubt its credibility and are led to believe that nobody did the fl right since that's how she feels. So all the men are rather twisted and seemingly not good enough for her. Coming back to reality, i think zyl's actions were justified as he hated her for what she did. She really caused 2fl's family to die, drugged him to marry her, tried to separate them, etc. Even so, that doesn't make muyao any good, she is still a bitch. In any other drama shown from the victim's pov, we would have been elated to see this happening to hq. As for zxw, i have to commend him for being this kind and patient. He saved her in the 1st ep, he slowly nursed her back to health all the while she was living her perfect life in that dream. But i also think he is quite foolish to like a woman like that. I believe he must have done his part in reality too to protect her as much as he could although we aren't shown much of that part. I wonder how pure and true his love has to be to save this kind of person. Must say that the dream was dragged out for way too long and ep 28 was unnecessary. In reality, she was not good enough for zxw. But didn't she deserve love? Yes of course she did. She knew what she did was wrong and was repentant and wanted to turn things around. Also losing her whole family and everything else was a pretty big punishment already. I won't spoil the final ending. But this really needs a s2.
Cast: That young man is fine af. First saw wang xingyue in one and only, he was good there. And he has even improved manifold since then here. He looks way more mature than his age. If he takes good projects and is in a good agency, he is going to shine real bright in the future since he is so young now and already so good. His acting as zxw was perfect as a conflicted man in a difficult spot. I first saw zhou ye in back from the brink and knew that she was good and here i wasn't disappointed too. She did her role perfectly. About zhang yajie and peng chu yue, i found the former too stiff considering his intense character, and the latter did good at the micro expressions that were needed for his character. As for others, nobody particularly stuck out.
Production: decent production. Didn't like the costumes and styling of the women. They just looked weird with those hair scarves. The soundtrack was so good.
Overall i would 100% recommend watching this. I was this close to crying so many times while watching this, that's how emotional it was. A hidden gem of 2023. It has a message being conveyed too. I got the rating down for its stupid pacing, useless filler ep, incompleteness, ending, misleading description and i really hate 2fl. I will rewatch this someday too.
Even so, we as viewers are mostly sympathizing with hua qian for what she went through and bashing mu yao for her actions, including me, because the story is from her perspective entirely.
Story and characters: Let me start with hua qian's redemption arc. She does everything she can to prevent her family from being massacred again, assuming that she has got a second chance at life after doing countless evil, losing everything and dying once. Unfortunately, her redemption isn't real. The past cannot be changed, the dead cannot be revived unless it is a dream, which is exactly what it is. There, she goes back in time to when she has done whatever evil was to be done, and now she has to deal with the aftermath to prevent what happened before from happening again. We see in her pov, how she tries to do whatever possible to save the day, without doing further evil, to the point where she didn't even avenge her brother's murder. Now onto her brother's character, he is crap. He sexually assaults women, has countless concubines taken by force, a useless good for nothing. But, he is very sincere to his family, to the point where he takes the fatal arrow meant for his sister just to protect her. Her small family of four is tightly bound, with deep love for each other. Her character's biggest saving grace is her love for family. Even most villains sacrifice their families and close ones for their own benefit. She did everything to protect them in this second chance after knowing the outcome. But does that mean that she is a good person? No, she regrets losing her family and everything else so she tries to repent after making mistakes. She is a grey character at most.
Onto the men in this drama, Zhong yelan is the root cause of for everything to begin. It was to get him that hq did evil to get my out of the scene. But he still chose my both times. Albeit in the second chance, she chose to divorce him. And also, zyl is a very trashy 3ml. When hq drugged him or her father framed her family it was evil. But when his beloved my did evil, like when she caused her brother to die, caused her to fall off the cliff, those were justified to him. A duplicitous hypocrite is all that i can say about him. Next i don't know who is the 2ml and who is the ml. So first i will say about hua rongzhou. He is a dog for real. Loyal, ferocious, protective, possessive, all for his only master, the fl. He is willing to do absolutely anything for her, even despite all morals. But he overestimated himself often, didn't know his place considering the era and his position as a servant, proud and very rude to everyone else. I know why she would choose him over the one she possibly loved, the one who came with burdens, because she wanted love from zyl which led her to do the evil, so if she had someone as devoted as hrz already, perhaps she wouldn't do that. Alas he was just an imagination born from this exact sentiment in her "second chance", who doesn't exist in the real world. Onto the last male, zhong xiwu. He is not perfect but in the second chance, his love for her was intense but she didn't reciprocate it. The most important point to be noted is, since the second chance that spans over 28 episodes is just a dream, so we don't get to see the real povs of anyone else. Whatever we see is in the fl's pov, so i doubt its credibility and are led to believe that nobody did the fl right since that's how she feels. So all the men are rather twisted and seemingly not good enough for her. Coming back to reality, i think zyl's actions were justified as he hated her for what she did. She really caused 2fl's family to die, drugged him to marry her, tried to separate them, etc. Even so, that doesn't make muyao any good, she is still a bitch. In any other drama shown from the victim's pov, we would have been elated to see this happening to hq. As for zxw, i have to commend him for being this kind and patient. He saved her in the 1st ep, he slowly nursed her back to health all the while she was living her perfect life in that dream. But i also think he is quite foolish to like a woman like that. I believe he must have done his part in reality too to protect her as much as he could although we aren't shown much of that part. I wonder how pure and true his love has to be to save this kind of person. Must say that the dream was dragged out for way too long and ep 28 was unnecessary. In reality, she was not good enough for zxw. But didn't she deserve love? Yes of course she did. She knew what she did was wrong and was repentant and wanted to turn things around. Also losing her whole family and everything else was a pretty big punishment already. I won't spoil the final ending. But this really needs a s2.
Cast: That young man is fine af. First saw wang xingyue in one and only, he was good there. And he has even improved manifold since then here. He looks way more mature than his age. If he takes good projects and is in a good agency, he is going to shine real bright in the future since he is so young now and already so good. His acting as zxw was perfect as a conflicted man in a difficult spot. I first saw zhou ye in back from the brink and knew that she was good and here i wasn't disappointed too. She did her role perfectly. About zhang yajie and peng chu yue, i found the former too stiff considering his intense character, and the latter did good at the micro expressions that were needed for his character. As for others, nobody particularly stuck out.
Production: decent production. Didn't like the costumes and styling of the women. They just looked weird with those hair scarves. The soundtrack was so good.
Overall i would 100% recommend watching this. I was this close to crying so many times while watching this, that's how emotional it was. A hidden gem of 2023. It has a message being conveyed too. I got the rating down for its stupid pacing, useless filler ep, incompleteness, ending, misleading description and i really hate 2fl. I will rewatch this someday too.
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