Drama Review - Lost You Forever
Chinese Drama ·
Now that it has been a few weeks since school ended for me and I started my internship, I have slowly begun to integrate into my new schedule and find time for me to do things I want, such as learning Korean or writing blogs. So hopefully I can fire these drama reviews out faster (maybe every week?? :0). Most of these drama reviews will be a little bit shorter because, one, it has been a while, so I might have forgotten some things about them, and two, there weren’t many standout dramas that I have seen over the last semester. This blog will also be exceptionally short, as I didn’t really like this drama, and it will probably just be me ranting about why I didn’t like it, so it’s not going to be a real review.
Lost You Forever was one of the most popular dramas in China last year. As of me writing this blog, the drama rates a 7.8 on Douban with over 400,000 reviews. It stars Yang Zi as Xiao Yao, our main character. Then, there are three male characters: Zhang Wan Yi as Cang Xuan, Deng Wei as Shi Qi, and Tan Jian Ci as Xiang Liu, all of whom have some sort of attachment to Xiao Yao and either want to pursue her romantically or protect her. However, while I was watching the drama, I couldn’t see why it got that high of a score. I thought that the drama was bizarre and weird and was a great replacement for rain sounds when you are trying to fall asleep. So Lost You Forever is like a reverse harem drama, which I think is really cool and thought I would really like before watching. However, I have never seen a worse selection of male characters in my life – all of their relationships with Xiao Yao were bad and felt extremely toxic, and in my honest opinion, Xiao Yao is better off getting together with a cave rat than any of the male leads. All of them had unhealthy obsessions, and it was just painful watching them talk. It really irks me when shows try to normalize toxic relationships or anything else negative, so this show became increasingly difficult for me to watch as time went on.
As a heavily political drama, I think that the plot moved so slowly, and in fact, I found this drama to be so boring that I fell asleep a couple times while watching it. And the thing is, I usually enjoy watching slower-paced historical dramas, such as Story of Yanxi Palace or Goodbye My Princess. However, something about this Lost You Forever just made it unbearable to watch for me. Looking back, I think I would have rather watched water evaporate than watch this drama, so I have no idea how I made it through all 39 episodes of this drama. I really do feel like I wasted so much of my time for a whole lot of nothing to happen. You know how some dramas create problems out of nothing, and it’s really cliche? Well, this drama somehow creates nothing out of nothing, and if people acted like normal people, this drama wouldn’t even happen. I would probably be happier if people in this drama went through their daily lives rather than whatever dull action they were trying to put on my screen. All the characters had such weak motivations that I had to try really hard to justify the actions that they take, and even then, they don’t make sense. Then, the drama tries to create some emotional scenes, but it never has that feeling. I think I must have watched this drama with a stone face in its entirety.
One thing I also really don’t like is when the leads of the drama are defenseless and groveling at other people’s feet, and the female lead, Xiao Yao, was the embodiment of that. Then, when she became a princess again, she changed into a completely different person – so much so that it felt like the director combined two separate dramas. And I think that someone who went through what Xiao Yao did cannot change their personality or way of acting in such a short period of time, something that bothered me whenever she did something kind. Furthermore, many weird or gross things that just really didn’t strike me well kept happening in this drama. For example, one of the characters constantly sucks the blood of another, and that was just really repellant for me.
But I guess I do have to give credit where credit is due. The director built up the town from scratch, so scenes of the town were really nice. I also really liked A Nian, also known as the Haoling Princess. She wasn’t the typical snobby angry rich spoiled princess (actually kind of spoiled), but it’s nice to see her become friends with Xiao Yao. I also thought the actress who played A Nian, Dai Lu Wa, acted well. If Xiao Yao and A Nian were enemies, I definitely would have fallen asleep more. Something else I guess I really liked was that when it turned into the new year, the drama took the time to show everyone (legit everyone) celebrating and having a good time, representing that things can be set aside and forgotten if there is something worth celebrating for.
In conclusion, don’t watch this drama unless you want to inject your life with 39 episodes of straight nothing. A score of 6.5 seems high, but it’s on my scale, so it’s not even a passing score.
My rating: 6.5/10