I haven't laughed this hard at a drama in a long time — and it came at such the right time because I was getting so sick of slapstick humor. All the characters (the main leaders, and especially Zi Rui) had the most amazing comedic timing.

This has my favorite type of female lead — you don't have to be the best at everything and physical fighting to be smart and make good decisions, and of course, it has my favorite type of male lead that's lowkey a badass but goes soft for her.

The chemistry between the main leads was so good and I just love the relationship that the two of them had together. The sidekicks were hilarious as well and worked so well with our main characters and with each other. And it really felt like all the characters had their own personalities no matter how small their roles were.

I do think I enjoyed the first half a little better when it was our main character trying to navigate the new world and all the subplots that were going awry. I felt like some of the magic was lost a little near the end (especially after the goddamn noble idiocy!) because it was reduced to the main plot around government control. It also seemed to reduce a lot of characters to their cliches, and I had loved that they subverted the tropes in the beginning.

Nevertheless, I really like how this show's plot turned to a darker tone without ever really losing its style of humor. Sadly I can't really say if it surprised me — I'm still mad at myself for obsessively watching clips on YouTube before I decided to binge it in a day — because I knew the scenes already. But overall the plot is still really clever.

Overall, I still had a really fun time watching this — I cannot wait for season 2 even though I have to wait an entire year!