If this was a romance about Dao Ming Si and Shancai, it made no sense that the two of them maybe got about 60 minutes of screentime, with half of that all being in the first episode before everything went to crap.

It's all been said before, but there was absolutely no reason we had to wait 13 episodes for Shancai and DMS to meet again, and then ANOTHER 11 episodes for him to get his memory back, all for nothing to come of it until a 10 minute reconciliation at the end, all without any sort of meaningful communication between them before that.

I could write an entire thesis about why I hate the amnesia trope, and I know the source material is to blame for this arc even existing, but with that being said, I absolutely could not bring myself to care about anything that happened during the amnesia, much less any scenes between Ye Sha and Dao Ming Si. It was refreshing, sure, that she wasn't a manipulative mean girl like in the other versions, but amnesiac DMS was basically scrubbed so clean he wasn't himself. Most of their love story occurred in a world without familial or financial pressures, which made it feel low stakes. And all of that doesn't even compare to the fact that we, as the audience, knew how the story would end anyways and all the wishy-washiness just felt very dragged out.

We also get to see a little bit of Meizuo's romance and Ximen's family arc in this one. I didn't realize that Ximen's romance arc wouldn't get a conclusion (which is slightly disappointing as it was my favorite part of the Korean version), but overall I don't think I had the patience to appreciate either of these side stories because they took up screentime while the main story was still being frustratingly slow.

On the other hand, think my favorite part of this drama has to be Lei. He's come so far since the start of the show, and he got all the meaningful conversations Shancai should've had with DMS. I didn't have SLS in every adaptation of Hana Yori Dango, but this one...oof.