Mengfei Comes Across (2018)

Sit com in salsa antica Cina

Più ancora di molti altri, si tratta di un drama peso piuma. Inizialmente pensavo si trattasse di uno slice of life ma, nel progredire degli episodi, mi sono resa conto che è praticamente una sit com. Mancano solo le risate a scena aperta, e per fortuna. Sostanzialmente l’azione si svolge per il 99% a palazzo, e di questo 99%, per buona parte nelle stanze del gruppo di consorti ultra-secondarie che formano la cricca della protagonista.

Si ride parecchio, a tratti anche fragorosamente, specie nella prima parte della serie. Inizialmente si ha, per quanto lento, uno sviluppo della trama, che vede la protagonista Meng attrarre, suo malgrado, l’attenzione dell’imperatore. Cosa ancor più grave, dal suo punto di vista, comincia ad esserne attratta pure lei. Siccome vuole evitare il rischio di essere perseguitata dalle altre consorti più favorite, l’evolversi della situazione non può che allarmarla e far sì che cerchi di opporvisi con ogni mezzo.

Poi, come spesso accade, si è cercato di allungare troppo il brodo. Lo sviluppo della relazione fra il monarca e Meng ha cominciato a stagnare e si sono susseguiti diversi episodi di puro filler, che hanno esplorato le vicende di buona parte dei protagonisti secondari, mettendo in freezer la coppia principale, che non è più stata scongelata nemmeno nel finale. Non è che un sorriso e tenersi a braccetto siano una dichiarazione molto audace, via.

Questo tradimento dello spettatore non mi è andato giù. Dopo 36 puntate avrei almeno voluto vedere i due protagonisti formare una coppia più dichiarata. Diavolo, sono sposati da un’eternità e si amano, forse si sono scambiati non so se uno o due baci, la relazione resta completamente platonica. Di più, benché in principio si vedesse il monarca scegliere le targhette delle compagne per la notte, si ha l’impressione che poi la passassero a giocare a scacchi. Non ci sono bambini, le consorti non gli interessano e nemmeno nell’ultima puntata il poverino va a segno.

Questo per dire che è una commedia, sì, ma non molto romantica. Per quello che han fatto vedere, una decina di episodi in meno non avrebbero guastato. Non mancano i lati positivi. E’ stato bello vedere lo sviluppo della sorellanza delle quattro consorti che abitano il cortile secondario. Il cast ha lavorato molto bene, in linea col tono dell'opera. Come già detto, gli sviluppi della prima metà sono stati piacevoli e molto divertenti. Gli ambienti sono gradevoli e così i costumi, le musiche azzeccate. Mi è piaciuta moltissimo l’opening. Da segnalare l’uso svergognato di terminologie e concetti moderni e addirittura l’apparizione di Cesare (Giulio?). I vari episodi filler non sono stati comunque sgradevoli e tutto sommato si arriva alla fine senza troppa noia, seppure un po’ delusi dal poco tempo dedicato alla coppia principale.

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This drama is very light-hearted, unlike most Chinese dramas. The romance takes until episode 15 until it actually starts to progress, but the first 15 episodes are with Bu Meng and her friends.

I recommend watching this drama if you are looking for something light-hearted. The bad news is that there are only a few episodes that have been subbed, so for those who don't understand Mandarin, you won't be able to understand; however, I still encourage people to watch it for fun and I hope that more subs will be out soon so everyone can give this drama a try.

** EDIT: The ending was kind of disappointing. It was a HAPPY ending though so I'm not completely dissatisfied with it but it was very underwhelming.

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The drama started off with a more unconventional story - a concubine avoiding being noticed by the emperor to avoid the evil schemes in the palace. The story had a modern touch to it and had unrealistic parts so it's hard to take it seriously as a historical drama. However its saving grace was the comedy. This drama had many hilarious moments and it was a fun and light hearted watch. The romance progresses slowly but the friendships between the female lead and her close consort friends were great to watch.

The starting song was not my cup of tea and the osts weren't memorable. The cast was pretty great and suitable for their roles. Rewatch value isn't too high because there wasn't a lot of content.

Overall this is a great show to watch if your in need of comedy and funny dramas.

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If you're sick of cliche chinese dramas, this is why you MUST watch this:

to anyone who's sick of the typical annoying FEMALE LEAD, i totally recommend this drama. She's tastefully childish and quirky at times (sometimes on purpose as she tries to make the emperor not like her) but she actually acts her age, likes to help her friends, is kind but not unreasonably so to the point it makes her look stupid or a pushover. It's so refreshing, she's cute without acting 5, realistically clumsy (but not annoyingly so) and doesn't run away from her problems (thank the heavens)

the ROMANCE. They are so cute. It doesn't just start immediately because this is a romcom and theyre the leads . There's an actual buildup, and its super cute, heart fluttering and realistic. They take their time to get to know each other. they become friends first. They actually get along and have things to talk about. The king notices her because of her "uniqueness" but that's not why he falls for her. I like this the most about it. I feel like even the romantic tropes used are uniquely done and never go where you expect.

the MALE LEAD is not a jerk. He messes with her as enemies do (and later as friends), but it's nothing extreme (eg. making him a purse - which he just wants cause he likes her anyway) In fact, I'd say he's very careful about being too abrupt with his feelings and scaring the female lead away, especially as he funnily enough becomes friendzoned in a way. But hes the most reasonable person in this drama, and an actual good ruler.

Also the PALACE DRAMA AND POLITICS is very few and totally tasteful. Also all the concubines/escorts are BFFs instead of trying to kill each other, the main character's squad is the best and they get along like you're watching some youth drama with all the shenanigans they get up to around the palace and gardens.

The PLOT is well written, nothing that drags. It's short. 36 episodes that are about 30min when taking away intro/outro songs.

SIDE CHARACTERS are likeable, cute. everyone in the palace gets along like family. I think it's stylised this way. I think if it was more realistic, the servants wouldn't be able to behave like that, but that's its charm, it's very warm.

I 10/10 recommend if you're bored with the typical progressions of both modern and ancient dramas. I feel like this one has a lot of heart with the romantic relationships and the friendships.

Also the COMEDY is really unpredictable, is it only me who thinks this?? the jokes never go where i think they'll go, and I have watched.... a heck load of dramas.

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I must admit that I was very sceptical in the beginning but as soon as the opening song started (it's called: Stop loving me please) I was sold. This show is so much unlike anything else I'd seen so far, especially in the field of period drama. The leading lady does not have a caries inducing sweet voice (her name literally means "not cute"), she is not an innocent little lamb that beckons anyone male in her immediate surrounding to protect her, and she most definitely does not want a man in her life – not even in a "I-really-(not-really)-don't-want-a-man"-way; she actually means it! Because in her mind, being loved by the emperor equals imminent death in a cruel and horrible way; and let's face it, we all know the stories about the badass backstabbing concubines in the palace – she's right!

The only issue I had with this show was the transition from short and complete storylines per episode to long and continuous ones later on. It was not very smooth and a bit jumpy which can lead to confusions but still overall okay (therefore only 8.0 out of 10 credits).

Here are my top 3 reasons why I recommend this show:
3. It deliberately breaks all stereotypes usually associated with period dramas which is very fun and satisfying to watch.
2. The main character is absolutely lovable but also wonderfully flawed which makes her more relatable than those disturbingly perfect Mary Sue characters.
1. The show constantly makes cross references to the present world, like pop culture as well as current political and social issues (mainly in China, but also reliable in the rest of the world). For those of you who don't use subtitles, the language is also very modern and therefore easy to understand – you don't need to be fluent in ancient Chinese poetry and prose to enjoy this period drama. Also, I'm not sure why, but watching people in historic costumes talk modern urban language always cracks me up. It's probably the Hamilton-effect.

Thanks for reading; hope you'll have as much fun with Mengfei and her entourage as I did. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to practice my bird-calls now (you'll get this after watching the first episode ;) ).

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If you are looking for a chinese historical drama that is about the love story between a quirky concubine and the Emperor, don't watch this: the summary is basically telling you what happens in the first two episodes, after that the story gets completely stuck.
The romance is NOT the focus of this drama: every episode is about a certain character and his certain problem and on how the heroines try to help with it. There is no real plot, or rather: the one that seemed like it was going to become a real plot abruptly ended in the middle of the series. After that, the relationship between Mengfei and the Emperor doesn't develop or change anymore, and it's not like the drama had really been about the romance before. Sometimes the Emperor doesn't even show up in the episode or only for a couple scenes.

I really liked the concept, so I sticked till the end hoping that thing would started to move at some point, but no, it didn't happen. I liked the characters of the concubines, especially Meng Fei, but I was so pissed at the summary that it completely ruined this drama to me.

Anyway, here is the real summary to this drama:
"Witness the life of four unconventional concubines and their friends in the inner palace, while they create problems and encounter problems, but always stick together and overcome the little nuisances of life. Meanwhile, one of them may have a couple of cute scenes with the Emperor."

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This show is good as long as you set your expectations accordingly. Although romance is a part of it, this show actually focuses a lot on female (consort) friendships and supporting characters. The show breaks the 4th wall several times and is satirical at many times. It's very episodic and there are some plots that carry for several episodes, but no overall arching long plot to tie the entire series. Take this show very lightly. It's more fun than serious.
The comedy and endearing characters carries this show more than the romance. However, the romance is very nice. Bu Meng & the Emperor's bickering dynamic and them falling in love is pretty well-paced. They just lack a lot of screentime (read for possible reason below).
So, if you're here to only care about the romance, you'll be let down tremendously. (At certain episodes, they do focus more on the romance, but I'd say 70% of the entire series is not on romance.)
If you're here to laugh a lot at the shenanigans of the inner palace and from our main character Bu Meng (and how she gets involved in a lot of people's businesses), you'll have an enjoyable time. I laughed so much throughout this series. Gina is great as Bu Meng--her comedic timing is great--and I also love her voice (I heard it's her real one and not a dubbed one? I love it because it's not super soft and high pitch but it's deep). Jiro matches well as the Emperor and I adore his character. He may seem petty as first but he is a pretty kind emperor considering that they are living during peaceful times.
The supporting casts are all so great. I love all the Consort friends--they are so great and complex. I even enjoyed most of the side characters' stories, such as Bu Meng's brother and his love story.

PLEASE BE PREPARED: apparently this show was cut a lot, from its original intended 45(?) episodes to just 36. It was cut down a lot, so it's suspected that some plots got cut out and the romance got cut down as well. For why it was cut/censored, no one seems to know why and at this point, we have no luck of finding an uncensored version sadly.

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Longer please

So, I accidentally found the english subs in youtube so I decided to watch. I was at episode 4 when I get curious and googled it.

I am always a sucker for Jiro Wang - I mean, duh! I haven’t seen his drama for so long but I don’t regret watching this.

The story line is very entertaining. It didn’t mainly focus only on the love of ML and FL, if you’re here to watch only Jiro (like me) you’ll be a bit disappointed but his appearance will make up for it.

It focused totally on Consort Meng and people around her. This is a very refreshing drama compare to other costume drama that I’ve watched so far. It totally highlighted on how the emperor have so many wives and the life in the harem.

It was an eye opener to me tbh. But overall, this drama was really comedic. You can’t stop laughing in all of the episodes. They’ll have comedic scene here and there. The concubines are all super cute and funny too - being that they’re consorts for young emperor, most of them were said to be as young as 17 yo. But don’t worries, no illegal shit highlighted.

If you are in for a new kind of rom-com drama, this can be the one for you. It is very light, fluffy romance, unpredictable story line and every episodes does highlight different issues.

I saw few comments and reviewer that said this was supposed to aired for 45 eps but was cut to 36. To be honest, it shown.

**spoiler, please don’t read if you don’t want to**

However the ending was really, I feels like it was abruptly cut. I wish to see the emperor maybe grand marriage to our dear MengFei and make her the empress despite being she’s not the princess consort status.

Their love story is really refreshing, from please don’t love me to please don’t leave me, there was nothing to hate. The side story also is really good, the friendship in the harem - which is kind of unbelievable being that they all fight for one D but well, it’s really amazing how some of them enters the harem just to be ‘save’d.

I wish there will be special series to this to continue it until the real ending that we well deserves.

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What an absolute waste of time!

The premise of this story was initially interesting. I kept waiting (hoping) for the characters to develop. They never did. The only one who was worth watching and who was not a complete airhead was the warrior woman who had the most tragic end to her story. I had such hopes for her. The FL was underwhelming - neither intelligent nor independent - just vapid and shallow. The businesswoman/inventor was boring and predictable. The other spoiled brat concubine obsessing over the emperor was a wailing ninny - irritating as hell! Most entertaining character in this show? Eunuch Wu! I kid you not!

There really wasn't any point to the story - the characters were doing the same silly things: crying, screaming, eating, being childish and just plain annoying. The ML was complacent and long-suffering. There was no romantic value to lead couple's story at all - they were almost like siblings. This story was very disappointing because of the absence of romance.

This isn't even worth a second look let alone a rewatch. What a waste of time, money, and actors.

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LIGHTER THAN A FEATHER! A DRAMA IN WHICH I CAN BOTH RECOMMEND AND NOT

SHORT REVIEW: This drama goes both ways, and my individual rating doesn't really reflect my overall feeling to the drama..


Story: First of all. don't expect this drama to have a solid story.. it's even lighter than it's usual low budget, humor centric drama counterparts, The Story mainly revolves around Bu Meng and her group of Consort Friends. Rather than the usual low budget series that we often have nowadays, it's even more like the old SitCom Slice-of-Life series, although the story intertwines, each episode has a different story that it revolves into..

Acting: Well this is a humor centric drama.. usually this types of dramas are often plague with cringy acting, but nonetheless. if you don't expect that from these types of series, your really stretching your expectations.. overall the acting is not that bad imo and the cast did well given that the story is basically non-existent..

Music: N/A, no complains and no praises! as these types of dramas doesn't really boast decent music scores but the usage of sound effects and audio editing doesn't suffer much compared to other low budget dramas which should be the norm, but some CDRAMAS just can't escape this kind of bad audio editing sometimes..

Overall: A slice-of-Life drama mixed with friendship and romance. watch it if you don't have anything to watch, don't expect anything grand, if you find it cringy might as well skip it as this drama is mostly just for the humor.. I CAN BOTH RECOMMEND IT as WELL as NOT..

SPOILERS : The Drama Peak at around the time Bu Meng and The Emperor get together as during that time, the drama's pacing and storytelling although already leans on the Slice-Of-Life genre, still revolves around the two Leads, but after the episode in which the New Girl that the empress liked, was kicked out of the Palace, it instantaneously shift to a FULL-SCALE Slice-of-Life, in which every episode revolves around a different character around Bu Meng, heck the emperor rarely have any scenes after that. I would've liked it a lot better if at least they give Bu Meng and the Emperor more scenes near the end.

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Light as a feather ^o^

I find the story funny and light on everything, and I did enjoy watching it.

However, I might have enjoyed it more if it was light on the number of the episodes like 20 episodes would have been great. For the romance part I find it a bit lacking , and the words that best come to mind are too light, too short, skimmed through, move on to the next event. In short, it was here and there just to say it was there, it was cute and nice, but not quite enough on screen romance.

I loved the music and the actors did a great job for being funny and serious at times. The music was cheerful and upbeat ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

The rewatch value would be more for some of my favourite episodes.

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wish it was longer please in the year 2022 a 2nd season

The show was funny the cast had great chemistry the Opening theme and ending themes were good.
I pray that this 2018 show gets a 2nd season sometime in the future or a special episode the last episode left a
lot to be desired and felt like a rush job so many questions about the future of the characters?

I understand that the cast and crew went to other projects or restrictions placed upon them by their higher ups but like i keep saying it felt like the last episode was a rush job and left on a what feels like a cliffhanger and we the viewers are wondering about the journey of life for the characters. A lot of the the rewatch value is wanting to see the characters again but that leaves an ache of knowing that the show is 4 year old and we still dont know if it will or ever get a 2nd season.

Now i want to find the novel in a English translation that it is based off to see if it end like that

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