Reviews

Love this series ♥️

To be honest, I wonder if I will ever watch this drama no I did not like the trailer of the drama. That's why I thought the drama would not be good to watch. The main reason for my opinion was that I had never seen their drama before. That's why I thought the play would not be good.
But not in words, the geniuses show their skills through their work. That's what happened here. Aqib and Aqib introduced their work through their perfect acting skills.

Their laughter, mischievousness, conversation are all perfect in one word Their chemistry is simply amazing. For such a pair of them You will be bound to fall in love with them. No one else will make the same mistake I made in the first place

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Story of Pearl Girl: A Tale of Resilience and Lost Focus

Review of Story of Pearl Girl

Story of Pearl Girl is undeniably a visual and auditory masterpiece. The acting, cinematography, costumes, and soundtrack are some of the best I’ve ever experienced. Every frame is meticulously crafted, and the performances of the cast bring a depth of emotion that truly captures the essence of their characters. The soundtrack beautifully complements the scenes, enhancing the story’s emotional impact and immersing the viewer completely.

The first few episodes are especially raw and gripping, setting a strong tone for the series. These early moments pull viewers in with their intensity and showcase the promise of an extraordinary journey. However, the portrayal of the female lead (FL), Duawuan, fluctuates throughout the series. At times, she’s a mastermind and an impressive genius, while at other moments, the male lead (ML) and second male lead treat her like a fragile Cinderella. There isn’t a clear learning curve to her intelligence; instead, her decisions feel erratic, ranging from brilliant to inexplicably foolish, as though the story is playing roulette with her character development.

While the central plot holds promise, the drama becomes repetitive and stagnant due to its over-reliance on familiar themes of killing, revenge, and corruption. These elements dominate the narrative, making the story feel monotonous and dragging the pacing. By the end, side characters continue to overshadow the main storyline, leaving the viewer yearning for a stronger focus on Duawuan and the core narrative.

Adding to this issue is the sheer number of supporting characters. While some add depth and intrigue, many feel unnecessary and detract from the main plot. This excess of subplots involving side characters dilutes the emotional impact of the main storyline, leaving pivotal relationships and developments underexplored. For example, Secretary Kang and the FL’s friends—those who left before the journey in the desert and her widowed pen pal—had potential for significant impact but were ultimately sidelined.

That being said, Duawuan’s story remains one of resilience and success against all odds, delivering an inspiring message to women who strive to stand on their own. Zhao Lusi’s portrayal of Duawuan is a highlight, showcasing her unmatched ability to convey both toughness and vulnerability. Her performance shines in emotional moments, whether crying or laughing, and solidifies her reputation as a skilled actress. This dark, angsty, female-centric narrative captures the essence of resilience while exploring themes of empowerment.

The Pearl Girl’s character is another strong point, starting as a bright and bold individual who immediately captivates the audience. However, as the story progresses, her presence becomes muted, and she retreats into a more withdrawn, somber version of herself. While this aligns with the darker tone of the narrative, it feels like a missed opportunity to further develop her character’s vibrant personality.

The relationships also suffer from inconsistency. The bond between the FL and ML escalates abruptly, going from 0 to 100 with little development or buildup. While some plot twists are engaging, they could have been more impactful with subtle foreshadowing. The ML’s acting is strong, but his casting feels slightly misaligned as a supposed native of a specific region, creating visual inconsistencies when compared to others from the same area. Additionally, the inspector character often overshadows him, further affecting the balance of the story.

The bittersweet ending is another divisive element. While Duawuan’s story ends with heartbreak, the choice not to show his death spares the audience from greater emotional devastation. Conversely, the Pearl Girl’s story concludes on a more satisfying note, offering a glimmer of hope amidst the darkness.

Ultimately, Story of Pearl Girl feels like a show of missed opportunities. While it dazzles with its artistry, compelling themes of empowerment, and Zhao Lusi’s stellar performance, its lack of narrative focus, repetitive themes, overabundance of side characters, and unresolved subplots hold it back from being truly unforgettable. That said, if you’re looking for a female-driven, angsty drama full of great dialogue and rich details in its mysteries, this is the show for you. Despite its flaws, it leaves a lasting impression and is a testament to the power of resilience.

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Same Old

In a word- boring, very slow paced. I’m halfway through all the episodes that have been streamed and not holding my interest. There naivety and innocence is dragging the story down. I’m really disappointed and might come back to speed through it but for now I’m done!
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This show hates all the women in it

The writing hates the female lead and all the other women characters too, even the men to a much lesser degree. Hong Jo starts off dealing with work place bullying with an unfair amount of work assigned to her and that is absolutely all her teammate's fault. I know it's a cultural thing for the team to eat together or get drinks together, but these people are not obligated to spend time with her on their breaks and after work with her, especially if it's not on the company dime. Her constantly trying to friends with these truly mean spirited, shallow, selfish people is really pathetic. None of her work co-workers do anything meaningful that redeems them by the end of the show. The show treats the two women getting gossip about Hong Jo's office scandalous relationship or imposing on Hong Jo to skeeve on Jae Kyung as heartwarming "friendship". She's also later falls for Shin Yu who also treats her with near the same level of disdain. Hong Jo herself is a walking red flag, literally putting a weird drink to make someone unknowingly consume without their consent. The security officer had footage of it, but no one was watching or was concerned that some weirdo is pouring liquid into the glass from her own thermos before the meeting starts.

Jae Kyung after learning about this was fine with it, but this is much after he's gotten time to know her and more of his personality has been shown. Jae Kyung and Hong Jo match each other's freak, while Hong Jo and Shin Yu enable the annoying parts of each other. They are either annoyingly arguing or just doing lovey dovey moments later. They don't get to know each other as people like Hong Jo and second male lead Jae Kyung do. They actually balance each other out, bringing her cartoonish over acting down to being a real person while you can see his introvert layers peel back the longer they know each other, bringing out his warmth and quirks. Her moments with him are the only time she gets to have a personality. They build an organic relationship throughout the series. It made sense he would reject her confession when he had barely met her a few times and gradually fell for her once he actually gets time to know her. He's always there for her and never forces his feelings on her. It's a bummer that this is the healthy relationship that can never happen in this show. Jae Kyung is also the only one that has the most complete and interesting arc in the show, with him seeming like he's tempted to corruption which seems to be confirmed when it shows his role being a court enforcer chasing down Hong Jo's past self Aeng Cho. Jae Kyung turned out to be collection information as a whistleblower all along and brought down the corrupt mayor and he moves out of the house for a better life. Good for him.

This series also undercuts every single one of it's good or interesting ideas and doesn't bother to develop the main characters nor their main romance, choosing to brute force with tropey moments rather than build the connection, leaving a hollow feeling every time Hong Jo and Shin Yu are together. There was such potential to the work place bullying storyline when Manager Ma comes back to work and shuts down that behavior from all of the team members, but then totally annihilating her cool character by making her and the head bully Seo Gu be in love with each other and she ends up fighting another otherwise very capable leader whose brains are also scrambled by Seo Gu for no reason. He forcefully does a public proposal to Manager Ma who kept saying she doesn't want to marry and ends up marrying him. This creepy guy also felt entitled to drink from Hong Jo's thermos that she brought to work, just like the murderous stalker did. I hate how this show hates women having agency so much.

Of course Shin Yu happens to be dating Hong Jo's school bully Na Yeon who slaps Hong Jo for messing around with Shin Yu. And Hong Jo 100% deserves it for making both Jae Kyung and Shin Yu drink that nasty homemade liquid, intentionally to roofie a man without consent. Shin Yu fighting the effects of the love curse was a pretty good illustration of how creepy it is at first. She had the gall to be annoyed at him from being upset. Deserved more slaps. They make Na Yeon to be cheating (as well to what the main couple is doing) to try to lessen to how absolutely awful Hong Jo and Shin Yu's magically co-erced and stockholm syndrome relationship is. The spell work suddenly stops and never plays into anything that gives Hong Jo power or agency to help herself at all, it's only the impetus to force Shin Yu to be obsessed with Hong Jo. The set up where she offers the get rich spell to her co-workers goes nowhere. Hong Jo has zero survival instincts, choosing to open the apartment door because someone out of frame of the door video rang the bell even though she was strangled through the second floor window grates like an hour before, then choosing to go to the trap set by her stalker knowingly to "catch him" but with zero plan to incapacitate him and nearly gets murdered by him before she's saved like the useless damsel she is. They randomly let her have a backbone in the last episode, standing up to Na Yeon for the school bullying at the reunion, which again also had to be the guy in the situation to film and leak the video for Na Yeon to truly receive any repercussions, just to have her willfully put her own life in danger so male lead can be the hero. They didn't even let her shoo off the playground bullies on her own. They could have just had the male lead observe and be proud, but nope.

It turns out it was Shin Yu's past self Mu Jin that killed Aeng Cho and didn't even bother dying with her as it's revealed he's very much alive and fine burying the Aeng Cho's spell books in a scene at the end. It follows through to his current life where he doesn't let her choose how she wants to do, he just makes that decision for her and his current life follows that pattern of being that macho guy who will withhold information, be territorial, put her down then love bomb her echoing how his father treated his mother etc. The show tries to have it both ways with his self admittedly unhinged behavior caused by the spell and later having the characters suddenly come to a conclusion that the spells were fake even though we see that the magic is real, so his unhinged obsessive behavior is just him then if the magic is not real. The show also has her messing up the curse breaking spells and Seo Gu never being obsessed with her. The show should just have a clear stance on whether they want it to be real or not.

The other healthy and cute relationship that could have been was Shin Yu's bestie Lawyer Kim with Shin Yu's mom Yun Ju who was sick of years of being belittled and mentally put down by her husband which legally constituted the verbal abuse grounds for divorce which she has consistently wanted for a long time. She even says she kept having to postpone it for various things happening to her family and ultimately she gets back with her husband after he love bombs her into staying and she gets pregnant, which will most likely impact her career that she just re-started again. She was happy and free with a lot of commonalities with Lawyer Kim who respected her as a human being first and foremost. This drama is really terrible at actually seeing what is a good ending or how to get there except by accidentally Jae Kyung, though he also doesn't get to be with the woman he's got fantastic chemistry and genuine connection with.

The show feels like it was just weakly built around the striking initial imagery of ghostly dirty and bloody hands groping the male lead, without any connective tissue to give it a heart or soul.

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Pretty Solid Psychological/Profiling Drama

I think this is a pretty solid season (up to ep 15). After reading other reviews, I realised that if you only enjoyed the 2 leads' chemistry and/or the mysterious syndicate which caused the death of Du Cheng's ex-colleague in 1st season, you're likely to be disappointed by this one. However, if you're into psychological/profiling genre and the criminology context, you might like this one.

Below contains spoilers, read at your own discretion.

It's pretty clear that this season's plot and characters development are advancing in a quite different direction than the previous. Below are some points about this season (might change with EPs update) which I like.

Point 1.
While S1 is mainly focusing on using forensic artist and their sketches to apprehend suspects, S2 is advancing the police force into venturing ways of preventing crimes instead of investigating crimes that's been done.

This is evident with Superior Zhang supporting Shen Yi's passion and research into using profiling to determine the potential suspects, preventing them to commit crimes. This theme is similar to Psycho Pass (anime) and The Mouse (kdrama) where you're judged guilty once you're assessed and predicted to have possessed the intention and/or the ability to commit a crime. However, this leads to the critical moral dilemma, which is my Point 2.

Point 2.
Moral dilemma for the legal system: instinct vs logic.

Shen Yi realises that his sharp instinct and deep understanding on humans' psychological aspects allow him to determine suspects of crimes up to a certain degree. Failing the prevent a potential crime in the past caused him guilty and more determined to use his skills to prevent any crimes in future. However, this method is flawed with the current justice system and by law of humanity - innocent until proven guilty. Which is why Du Cheng is against of this method as he believes in logic and science when solving crimes instead of apprehending yet-to-be suspects using instinct. This flaw is evident in later case, where the suspect did not commit the crime in the end, showing there's a line between intention vs commitment of crime.
***(This point is supported by the leads' recent interview)***

Point 3.
Working as a team vs duo.

As their professional roles are different in the police force, it's reasonable for them to work with other team members on assigned tasks to ensure the efficacy of their investigations. I like the diverse dynamic between different combinations of team members they're showing us. Hence, I don't think the 2 leads should be stick together in a single frame for most of the time. And, I think both leads have fair share of screentime and presence. Hence, I'm confused with comments that mentioned about screentime/presence issue for another lead.

Point 4.
As I mentioned before, this season focuses on psychological, induction, hypothetical (what-ifs & predictions) vs last season's evidence-based, deduction, science (if so then so). I like psychological and crime genres. Hence, I enjoy the exploration on the individuals and their contexts. The environmental and personal factors that structure their behaviours and mentality. Of course this does not justify their actions but it gives a critical perspective on crimes prevention. This exploration is helpful for formulating effective interventions for treating the root cause of crimes instead of the symptoms.

This drama also has some room for improvement. E.g.

1. The ranks and orders in the police force is not as systematic as I expect. They seem to be able to take up whatever cases they're interested in even though some presented conflict of interest. Regarding some simplified procedures to gain approval (e.g. part timing in entertainment company), I'd take it as part of the drama nature, to keep up with the pacing. And I really like how they keep each case to 2 EPs max.

2. Like some comments had mentioned, I'd prefer to have some focus/pick up on the main case (the secret syndicate in S1) on earlier EPs. At least foreshadow something or provide clues in the background of some cases would have kept the balance between the day-to-day case and this primary plot.

3. I also felt some gaps in S2 due to missing of characters, e.g. the female friend/art student who was with Shen Yi in S1. As Shen Yi hasn't relocated, some mentioning/brief reveals of communications would've been more natural in terms of characters' life. I do like the developments of some characters relationships in this season, showing how time flows.

That's my personal review so far. Looking forward to the next ep and expecting on how the story will unfold.

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An Original -Good Outweighs the modest flaws

I'm not a big fan of fantasy so despite the high ratings I put this off. First time I stopped at the beginning of the second episode. However, after several months I gave it another try and this time ended up binging both seasons. Despite some obvious borrowings from other fantasy sources this story comes across as very original and fresh.

The first season was well thought out so despite a few questions about the rules of this fantasy world the story, acting, and execution kept me engaged through to the end. The plot points follow believably more often than not.

Jung So Min's performance stands out. Her charisma dominates every scene in which she appears.

In this first season the writers weren't timid about consequences i.e. characters do die.

There was no question about jumping into the second season as the first one ends with a major cliff hanger.

However, the second season was not up to the first. The maturity level was deliberately lowered. There are a few mutilations of characters to achieve some sort of comedic effect and I often felt the plot getting bogged down by contrived situations, and several occasions in which an odd solution was injected to resolve scenes. These didn't stop me from enjoying the story journey, but I suspect the writers either did not have enough time to plot things out more carefully or more likely the suits put pressure on them to inject new elements to broaden the audience.

The first season Naksu character had a fierce introduction early on and ended up trapped within a weaker body without magical powers, and that challenge she faced - to achieve her goals without her usual powers - was entertaining. She had some interesting conflicting feelings emerge as her original desire for revenge ran into new facts that didn't reconcile with what she had been led to believe about the fate of her family.

In the second season that old fierce Naksu personality and that conflict were submerged behind an amnesia leaving a meek mild young girl with minimal magic and little agency, and the whole dilemma that season 1 was so focused on just disappeared. There were new dilemmas but these were not handled as well as the plot at times lurched forward.

Finally, I like a happy ending, but sometimes need one on the dark side because the story and characters demand it. The first season delivered. The second season really fudged on any consequences and we get a just so ending. Characters and story are set up to force hard choices, suffer the consequences, but then get bailed out. And when we see via the spirit of young Jin Bu Yeon that there is a major Devine entity at work this telegraphs a just so ending is coming for the lead couple.

Despite these flaws I found the whole very enjoyable and will rewatch again.

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MY NUMBER #1 GRRRRRRR

Like most, this was the drama that introduced me to this world. I still remember the scenario - 2020, beginning of the pandemic, i sit on sofa with my cousin and we started this masterpiece. I wish I could go back just to watch for the first time. I JUST LOVE SO MUCH WANGXIAN THEY'RE SO PRECIOUS TO ME I LOVE MXTX SO MUCH THIS WOMAN IS AN ANGEL IN OUR LIVES FR I WISH ALL THE GOOD THINGS N BETTER IN HER LIFE OK. grrrrrr this just simply created my personality, i know i would be nothing today without wangxian and mo dao zu shi..... i introduce mdzs and The Untamed to ALLLLLL my friends and and I hope that one day i find someone as obsessed as i am with mxtx's works. dito isso quero o live action de tgcf na minha mesa ja.

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Short yet the slow-burn tension and romcom vibes were everything.

The only downside to this mini-series? It’s just a mini-series.

The romcom vibes were on point, with comedy bits that were genuinely funny and super entertaining. The acting was amazing, and the pacing worked really well despite the short episode count.

The slow-burn longing between the store owner and the interior designer (I think that’s what you call her in the show?) was so good (all thanks to great acting by the leads). The little bit of angst from the misunderstanding, where the store owner thought she was engaged or married was exquisite. The way the store owner held back because of it? Had me absolutely losing my mind. The tension was off the charts.

This mini-series gave me all the feels, and I’m just over here wishing for more episodes or even a season 2.


My Top 10 GLs of All Time: https://mydramalist.com/list/4vGQqnb1

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GREAT CAST, GREAT ACTING, GREAT PLOTLINE, TERRIBLE NARRATION

i feel like this had so much potential, great cast, great acting and great plotline but the narration was soooo over the place, i was so confused the whole time. They made the earlier episodes so confusing and vague and I know it was for the plot twist (that they were dead) but it just felt so forced. the story telling was so bad jumping from multiple characters every episode that they failed to really show the unique stories of each character until the later episodes. i think they werent given that much attention which was such a shame because their back stories were actually good and touching. maybe they couldve just focused on one character per ep. idk man. this was a little disappointing, coud have been directed and written better this could have been so good

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Soft, dreamy, and full of high school sapphic vibes.

Let’s start with the good stuff. This show is such a beautiful experience, especially for women who love women and can see themselves in Ongsa or Sun. It was so much fun to watch. The focus on communication and having a support system was really meaningful, the high school moments were adorable, and the overall vibe was soft and dreamy.

This is such an important sapphic show because it’s set entirely in high school, making it a safe and sweet space for viewers. It was pure cuteness overload, and honestly, my early high school self would’ve been obsessed.

Now for the downside: it felt kind of empty. I get that it’s a simple high school love story, but simplicity shouldn’t mean the show feels like it’s missing something. It just didn’t hit me with enough feels, and I found myself struggling to finish it.

On the bright side, 23.5 has the best soundtrack of any GL ever. Seriously, go listen to it.


2024 GL Ranking: https://mydramalist.com/list/Ln8MOBO4
My Top 10 GLs of All Time: https://mydramalist.com/list/4vGQqnb1

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