I Belonged to Your World (2023)

All love is the world is for reunion. Only the love between parents and children is for separation

Pros:
1. The cast:
- Liu Yitong as the dedicated and filial sacrificial Qi Shou who perfectly struck the balance of loveable but tragic. A desperate son fighting a war in which his mother can only win if he loses.
- Judy Qi as Qi Yue. split between two timelines. an imperfect but loving mother that raises the perfect son in one timeline and a young ditzy lonely teenager who yearns for familial affection in another timeline. she is sweet, bold, feisty, stupid, kind, and loving all in one. she was fun to watch and struck the right emotional notes in many scenes
- Wu Di Fei as Lu Xiao, a nerdy gentleman who Qi Shou has chosen as his father's replacement and his mother's future husband

2. The relationship dynamics
- Qi Shou and Qi Yue: one of the most refreshing, funny, heart-wrenching mom-son duos in c-ent. Qi Yue is estranged from her family and living alone even though she is just a teenager. She is clearly yearning for familial affection. she has nobody. that is when she bumps into a grown man who claims he is her son from the future. Pushing through initial denial and awkwardness, the two embrace their roles as mother and son. most of the scenes have a touch of refreshing whimsy as we watch a man in his mid 20s casually calling a teenage girl his mother. Through a series of flashbacks we see that even tho Qi Yue was considered an incompetent and unreasonable woman by many, she loved her son to death and poured all the love and care she could give to raise him. Even tho she was suffering through an abusive marriage she puts it aside and chooses to spend her life on loving her son. She raises a great son who in turn goes back in time and raises her into the kind of woman who can live a better life. Qi shou and Qi yue are stuck in a loop where both are simultaneously the child and the parent. its a complex and deep relationship that draws to a tragic and heart wrenching end coz Qi Yue's happiness comes at the cost of her dearest son's existence.
but regardless this mother-son relationship is the core, most significant relationship of this show and it is showed in the end where Qi yue begs her would have been abusive husband to marry her even tho she is married to someone else who she loves and is loved by because at the end of the day, her greatest love was not her husband or her potential husband, it was her son.

- Qi Shou and Xu Zhaoyang: it is not a relationship that is explored as much as the relationship between the mother and son. for most of the show we are left guessing as to whether or not if xu zhaoyang is the original father of qi shou and qi yue's original husband. in the beginning, the only interactions we see between the two is those of qi shou threatening his father to stay away from his mother and beating him up because while it hasnt happened in this world, in the world he comes from his father is abusive at worst and negligent at best. Lu xiao even notices that the bright and cheerful qi shou who is usually like his mother becomes uncharacteristically violent when it comes to xu zhaoyang. as qi shou draws closer to his father he finds out that his father was also a victim of domestic violence and like qi shou, he too was only a son trying to protect his mother from a terrible situation. we also find out that all the mischiefs xu zhaoyang does is only to protect and provide for his mother. but from the way qi shou is unfamiliar with xu zhaoyang's mother ie his paternal grandmother we can assume that she like qi yue also passed away early due to the stress and threat of constant violence
This really shakes up the foundation of Qi shou's relationship with xu zhaoyang as he now understands that perhaps his father as a victim perpetuated the same violence he faced onto him and qi yue. In one of the biggest character development moves, qi shou selflessly gives up his savings to help move xu zhaoyang and his mother out of their violent household. using this money xu zhaoyang is able to save himself and his mother and seems to have stopped all the exploitation he used to do like scam girls. perhaps being able to save himself and his mother from this violent situation has made him less likely to continue the toxic cycle of domestic abuse.

this way Qi shou not only changed his mother's life but also his father's life. he didnt only save his mother from an abusive situation he also saved his grandmother from the same. he saved two mothers with his sacrifice.

-Lu Xiao and Qi Yue: for most of the show i didnt get that invested in this relationship since it is not the main point of the show. Lu Xiao is kind of like an unsuspecting pawn that Qi Shou constantly manipulates into the right place at the right time so he can change his mother's fate. so some aspects of their relationship can come across as manufactured because it is. it is a relationship that did not originally exist in either Lu Xiao's or Qi Yue's life and in the initial scenes there is a calculated nature to Qi Yue approaching Lu Xiao coz originally she treated wooing Lu Xiao as the assignment her son has given her. but by the end you realize that Lu Xiao is probably the kindest and loving person coz even when he becomes aware of being manipulated at least to a certain extent to fix Qi Yue's life, even tho he is warned by his future self to not let qi shou change the past, he understands the depth of the love that causes Qi shou to even sacrifice himself for his mother. he chooses to validate qi shou's sacrifice and love and also chooses the real love and affection that has bloomed between him and qi yue. in the end even tho his pregnant wife is broken and begging someone else to marry her coz she cant deal with the grief of losing her son, lu xiao understands her and supports her.
we also get a few tidbits in the end from qi shou who reveals that lu xiao spent a lot of time caring for him and qi yue in his original timeline. it brings up a lot of questions like whether or not lu xiao originally liked qi yue but wasnt able to do anything about it coz of qi yue's marriage to xu zhaoyang. this makes qi shou's initially random decision to pair his mom up with her high school classmate a lot more meaningful. at the very least lu xiao and qi yue were friends. perhaps qi shou wanted to give them a chance to fall in love before his father made an entry and ruined his mom's life.

lu xiao you are NOT the father, nor are you the step father but you are the father who stepped up


Cons:

1. editing: truly horrible. its like this show was originally made to be a full length 24 ep show but for wtv reason iqiyi decides to run it as a 20 ep 35 min drama. its edited like a low budget mini drama with random cuts that makes the audience have to connect the dots coz it feels like entire scenes have been cut. sometimes even entire plot details are ignored and swept under the rug. like how lu xiao of the future was able to send young lu xiao a message warning him against qi shou changing the past. we dont see him get this message. we assume lu xiao ignores this message as he is moved by qi shou's filial piety and his romantic love for qi yue but its so bizarrely inserted and then ignored
2. lack of original timeline tidbits of qi yue qi shou and lu xiao. qi shou reveals that in the original timeline lu xiao is his professor and often took care of him and his mom. such scenes would have been a great addition to the show instead of qi shou simply saying it
3. logical issues: regular time travel plotholes like the grandfather paradox. also why qi yue never asks him why she has to woo lu xiao again if she is going to end up with him anyway, or why qi shou doesnt disappear till after the wedding even tho qi yue is already pregnant with lu xiao's son before the wedding. perhaps the last one was done for dramatic value but there are many moments when u think logically speaking qi yue should ask this question or be more suspicious about certain things.
4. ending- very obviously a censorship problem like mr bad and the day of becoming you. the ending is confusing and weird. although i have my theories this is honestly just a sad and tragic ending as expected

Overall it is a tragic, moving tale of a son crossing the bounds of time and space to rescue his mother from a terrible fate; even at the cost of his existence even though it is presented as a comedy.

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