Simply superb

I put off watching this drama when it was released because fantasy is not a genre I normally enjoy. I now regret waiting four years, this drama was outstanding.

When it was first released, the creator of the drama was reported as making comments that astounded me, and that have always stuck with me. They said that they created this drama specifically and explicitly for Ko Chia Yen. That is a remarkable tribute to her as an actor. I have heard of individual movies that were created with a particular actor in mind, films that the writer and/or director have said could not have been made without that specific person in that particular role, but I have never ever heard of a 15.5 hour runtime drama that was created specifically to give a vehicle to one particular actor. Having completed the drama, it makes perfect sense that the one particular actor was THIS actor.

Ko Chia Yen's performance was phenomenal. Not just in playing characters at different ages, but playing two completely different characters at different ages. Because of the nature of the storyline she was at times playing an unstable introverted teenager who was playing an outgoing adult who was playing as that unstable introverted teenager. Layers upon layers, and she nailed it every time.

Of course, as exceptional as her performance was, the drama would not have worked if she had been carrying substandard performances from the other leads. Hats off to all those involved in the casting of the other main roles. Greg Hsu and Patrick Shih rose to the challenge of their roles superbly. A special word of praise has to go to Patrick Shih. The layered, Inception-style nature of the storyline meant that his was a distinctive and different kind of a second male lead role, full of nuance and complexity. His delivery of the role was moving, conveying the pathos of the characters situation perfectly.

The romance at the heart of the drama also would not have worked had the casting been off. The on-screen chemistry between Ko Chia Yen and Greg was palpable. The brief little thank you BTS they hastily put together after the drama aired was a wonderful glimpse into the professionalism of all involved - Ko Chia Yen being bleeped out when she commented on having to refer to the six years younger Greg as "Li Zi Wei gege" was funny, but it was also a nice reminder that this was a performance by highly skilled and trained professionals who told a well-written story exceptionally well.

There were a couple of flaws that prevented this from getting a score of 10 from me. The first were the 'comic relief' characters featured prominently in the early episodes, especially Kun Bu. I felt sorry for the actor playing that character because the role was superfluous and tonally grating. It was interesting that her character was easier to take later in the drama when she was playing a younger version of herself, she was less clownish at 19-20 than 26-27.

The other and more significant flaw for me was the "big bad" arc. The deranged psychopath was a plot device to generate tension and danger for all four of the leads – both of Ko Chia Yen's characters, and the two male leads. However, I felt that it was unnecessary, or at the very least excessive and over-emphasised. It was obvious right from episode one that the biggest danger to Chen Run Yu was internal, not external. The stunning performance in the penultimate episode when Chen Run Yu and Huang Yu Xuang went head-to-head really demonstrated that. Their interactions showed that there was little need for a somewhat crudely cartoonish external villain to generate an existential threat, when Chen Run Yu carried the biggest threat inside herself.

The prominence given to that external villain seemed to be a nod to a tradition in Taiwanese dramas, the apparent need to include elements of Makjang. It also contributed to the drama suffering from a very common flaw with Taiwanese dramas, that of being longer than it needed to be. Reducing the prominence of the role given to the psychopathic villain and perhaps reducing or eliminating the comic relief roles could have shaved one whole episode of the drama and would have made it even better than it was.

A somewhat controversial opinion here – the ending was just a few seconds too long. At the VERY end of the Drama, the creative team made EXplicit what had been made IMplicit seconds earlier, and I thought was a bit of a shame. Ending with the child actor would have been absolutely PERFECT, imo. Less is more. A very minor niggle, though.

That it was a little longer than it needed to be made me think of the Korean remake, which is 25% shorter. It was the airing of the remake that prompted me to finally get around to watching the original. I wanted to watch the original before I watched the remake. Having been blown away by the original, I will not now be watching the remake.

I hope that all who do watch the remake enjoy it, and I'm sure that this will be especially true for those who have not seen the original, but there are two reasons why I think it is fundamentally impossible for the remake to match the original.

First, the casting. The fact that this drama was created specifically for one particular actor, who was obviously the very core of the entire drama from beginning to end, means that any remake is missing a certain something. When the remake was first announced, long before it was filmed, it got a black mark in my scorebook for the fact that they went out of their way to cast the male lead first. This was a drama that was created specifically for the FEMALE lead, she was the reason the show existed at all, the fact that the Korean production chose to prioritise the casting of the male lead said to me that they had missed the fundamental point of the show's existence.

The other reason why I don't think the remake could ever be considered as good as the original is simply that - the original was ORIGINAL. It was inventive and creative and put well used elements like time travel and love triangles and internal conflict together in ways that, at least in my 600 dramas, I've never seen. That creativity and originality is something that no remake could have. No matter how good any remake is, it's working with pre-existing material. The bulk of the really hard work has already been done. And, of course, no remake would have Ko Chia Yen in the role.

This drama reminded me why watching East Asian dramas has been a major hobby of mine for 10 years. When they are good they are very good, and few come better than this one. I hope others try it, and I really hope they try the original first.

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