DISCLAIMER BEFORE YOU START: Forget everything you know about Dong Hua and Fengjiu’s story in Eternal Love/TMOPB since that was entirely made up due to lack of copyrights. This drama actually depicted what happened in the novel Pillow Book!!!

I loved TMOPB so much so I was very excited to watch this sequel! And boy, I can say that it really delivered! A 1000000000 out of 10 in my book :).

- FIRST AND FOREMOST, Dilraba Dilmurat and Vengo Gao’s chemistry, starting as a red nine-tailed fox & the almighty Dijun to being the true power couple at the end, was palpable and heart-fluttering! Their chemistry alone, with expressive eyes, facial expressions and subtle movements, made this drama a win for me. We got a Fengjiu who courageously follows her heart through many realms, non-hesitantly sacrifices herself for that one and only love and bravely proves her worth to not only be the head of Qing Qiu but also as his Imperial Lord’s partner. Then we got a Dong Hua who unexpectedly falls hard in love, surprisingly becomes a puppy sick in love and boldly shields her from any trouble that comes her way. Together, they made the perfect OTP: they fought, misunderstood, hurt, made up, trusted and loved each other ever so strongly in this “nonexistent” fate. After all, age is just a number (hopefully this is also true for their off-screen relationship as well - praying hard for this ship to sail and dock) and fate is truly what people make of it.

- The cast itself is nothing short of amazing (huge props to the production company for keeping original FJ)! I definitely think Reba and Vengo have personally grown as actor/actress since their TMOPB performance and truly perfected their characters (most of the time, you won’t even feel that they were acting at all and you’ll see A LOT of real life, intimate ear rubs, hand caresses, waist hugging ?). And believe me when I say the chemistry try is sizzling here - being a diehard fan for each individual actor for so long , I haven’t seen Reba and Vengo have ever come close to having this kind of “chemistry” with other leads in their long experiences of acting haha. All the supporting actors, esp Xiao Yan and the Third Highness Lian Song, were a bunch of hilarious love-stricken idiots that provided much needed comedy relief during sad times. The villains were still formidable in both annoyance and tenacity levels (*cough cough* I’m looking at you Ji Heng ?). All together, each character had time and playground to develop their own stories and each was perfectly orchestrated into the storyline. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that most of them were pretty nice eye candies (even the evil ones lol).

- The plot itself is definitely a lot more well-paced and well-developed compared to their story in TMOPB. It had fun, suspenseful, heart-wrenching as well as heart-warming moments packed with a lot of actions! I really liked how the whole story mainly revolved around FJ and DH without feeling too overbearing - you’ll learn about DH’s background, his perseverance (and his thick-skin) to be the respected person he is today, FJ’s growth and maturity which often excludes jealousy but includes self-acceptance of who she is as a person and how these two polar opposite characters crossed paths in different realms.

- Amazing cinematography with excellent OSTs (one of our main OST was sung by Reba herself!). Film sets looked more polished in this drama and outfits were nicely put together that matched with the setting and the scenes!

- Excellent adaptation from the book! This is one of those scenarios where the drama adaptation stayed pretty true to the book and explained some of the details sooooo much better and more concise. The drama weaved a lot of the plot holes together and made the story so much more flowing!

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this sequel (even better than TMOPB *gasp at myself for saying this* even tho TMOPB was my top fav for a longgg time) probably because I can now ship the OTP in real life lol. All jokes aside, I felt the plot was more focused, leads have an AMAZINGLY REAL CHEMISTRY, it had a lot more funny moments that I didn’t expect, enlightened the book to another level of excellence and the angst was, if not more, painful (however rewarding) compared to TMOPB. I went into watching this as a filler for my TMOPB withdrawal and ended up binge watching it for the 10 million time today so I highly recommend this series for everyone!

COMPARISON TO SIMILAR FANTASY ROMANCE CHARACTERS: It’s actually really hard for main leads, one being thousand years old and stoic/indifferent vs the other one being extremely young and innocent/sheltered, to pull off toe-tingling, believable chemistry on screen (Watch Love & Destiny with similar aforementioned characters for comparison since leads there didn’t quite accomplish what our Vengo & Reba did). That’s why ELOD still stands FAR apart from other xianxia dramas! So let me forever be trapped in this Dream of Eternal Love ❤️