Night of Love With You (2022)

Since this is a 9-minute per episode mini series, I went into this drama with pretty low expectations. I was trying to find something to pass the time with, so I tried one episode and instantly got hooked. The episodes flew by and before I knew it, I had binged half of the drama in a single sitting. It also became my all time favorite short web drama!

The story is about comic book characters becoming self-aware, so right off the bat it reminded me of Extraordinary You and W: Two Worlds, but it still manages to be original. This drama occasionally pokes fun at C-drama cliches and never takes itself too seriously. In fact, the drama is an altered adaptation (kind of like a parody) of a very corny romance novel that actually exists in real life.

Story follows our FL who is a self-aware comic book actress. She has a lot of experience playing the female antagonist in different comics, and since she retains the memories of each comic, her actual personality is cunning, smart and anti-heroish. (Seldom do we see smart female leads in these kinds of Asian dramas, so this point alone is enough for this drama to score high!) She is tasked to play an antagonist again in a new comic, but when she is thrown into that world, a system error occurs and she ends up become the female lead instead, all the while retaining her self-awareness and villainous personality. Due to the mishap, the male lead (I denote him as OG-ML) which she is supposed to romance with is temporarily incapacitated, and she crosses paths with the male antagonist (ML in this drama) instead. Since both FL and ML have villainous personalities, they start playing 4-dimensional chess with each other and always correctly guess each other's intentions. Not only do they have chemistry, they're pretty much the same kind of person, like a match made in heaven. I really enjoyed their interactions. Feelings of love happen early on but naturally, unlike many dramas with rushed and half-baked romance lines. They even came up with a good excuse to add kissing scenes that can be explained by the plot.

In the later half of the drama is where the suspense kicks in and it kept me at the edge of my seat after every episode. I really could not predict what would happen next with all the plot twists. The drama ticks all the right boxes. And even though it's short, it never felt rushed or shallow. It probably told a better story than a lot of full length dramas.

I recommend this drama to anyone who likes fantasy romance. There's literally no reason not to try this - it's short so even if you end up not enjoying it, it's not a huge waste of time.

Positives:
- We get to see romance between two villainous characters, which is very uncommon
- We have a smart and cunning FL who can defend herself
- Plot makes fun of drama cliches (even FL points out how cheesy some of the plot is)
- Unpredictable twists and turns, engaging from start to finish
- Liu Xie Ning's acting really stands out

Negatives:
- Why in the world is this drama so short, when some way shxxier dramas get 30+ episodes?
- Characters are paper-thin, they have no backstory except the several lines of description given to them by the comic
- Certain plot points make no sense at all, such as the knife stabbing scenes in the drama
- The logic of the comic world is unclear and inconsistent, causing problems to arise and get resolved out of the blue without a convincing explanation. This is one of those dramas that are not to be taken too seriously.

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