Mixed Feelings
This is an adaptation of a novel, so I will review this donghua both as an independent work and as an adaptation. Plot Summary: This donghua takes place in the Wu Dynasty (a fictional version of the Song Dynasty). Our MC was a very successful self-made business tycoon in the modern world, but failed in being a good partner (husband). After working for so long, he falls ill and is hospitalized. Since he will soon pass, he cleans up some of his past by turning in his brother(?) and gets murdered by his brother in a rage, only to wake up as Ning Yi in theWu Dynasty (approx. 1000 years in the past) as a marry-in husband. Originally in disbelief, he intends to immediately get divorced, but encounters events that trigger his nostalgia and make him reminisce about his previous failed relationship. Once he meets his wife, Su Tan'Er, for the first time, he decides to redeem himself in this "second chance" by joining the business world and being a good partner (husband).
The plot of this donghua is nice on the surface, but if you think a little harder you start to notice all sorts of problems. The plot points all seem to flow well, however, some of the things that happen are just too convenient to the overall development of the plot. For example: day 1 night, MC enters world and witnesses an attempted assassination, day 2 daytime negotiates a business deal with a FuMa (man married into the royal family), day 2 night MC arrested for being an "accomplice" to the assassination, day 3 gets "acquitted" because of his relationship with the FuMa. The timeline for these events are just too conveniently beneficial to the MC. There are also some disjointed parts to introduce "harem" members. Comedic/romantically awkward moments is randomly intermixed offsetting any serious moments in the plot. There is also random soccer/quidditch-like competition, with a forced big "high stakes" fight at the end that really doesn't feel necessary. All these points make it hard to accurately grasp what this donghua should be; is it a serious story, action-packed political showdown, or romantic tale?
There are a plethora of characters in this donghua, to the point where the cast seems a bit bloated. The focus is clearly the MC and his relationship with Su Tan'Er, the wife and clear female lead. But there are a bunch of named females (harem members from the source) that show up, but don't do much (more details in adaptation section). Those extras don't get much development making them feel unneeded. The men, while supposedly educated, smart, and wield enormous power and influence, feel dumb because they get no background development.
The animation and character models of this are gorgeous. It really is a sight to behold. The action is fluid and dynamic, the environments and scenic shots are beautiful, the character movements are well animated, and the designs of both the characters and scenery fit the time period they are in. The fights/competitions are mostly exciting, at least one well-choreographed ones between martial artists (not our MC's amateur fights). I have no complaints about the animation and designs, they are beautiful and enjoyable; I might even recommend this purely based on the animation quality.
Overall, this donghua is a mess. While the donghua starts off strong, with its appealing aesthetic, unique premise, and attention-grabbing opening, it quickly starts to unravel as the story gets sidetracked, and immersion-breaking elements pop up. The cell phone in a transmigration was particularly egregious, as it made no sense how it crossed over and played both consequential and inconsequential roles. There are parts that seems serious, but get overshadowed by some weird comedic scene soon after, distracting from any plot holes that are in the story. Finally, while the animation and scenic shots are beautiful, they cram some in for every episode, even when they could have progressed the plot without doing so. By the episode 8, I could no longer really engage with the story or take it seriously anymore. I'd give this season a final rating of: 5/10.
Adaptation Review (contains spoilers for novel and donghua):
This adaptation is quite the unfaithful one. If I had to describe it, it feels like someone read the novel, listed all the major characters and plot details from the major events, then created a new storyline with the same characters while cramming in details from the novel so that it feels like an adaptation and can trigger "nostalgia" from novel readers.
Plot Summary (from novel):
Prologue (one chapter)- The novel opens to a scene where the MC (name unknown) is reminiscing on his life with an "old friend". He was once an idealistic young man who wanted to build up his community, and to this end, he went into business and eventually built a massive conglomerate business empire. However, in this pursuit, he never went back to do those things he originally intended. Now, he has become rich and powerful, and become embroiled in all sorts of aspects of business, including the dirty and political stuff. He is reminiscing because he has been set up as a murderer by his closest friend and business partner (the "old friend"). They talk about their old friends before he is eventually killed by the police who have come to arrest him.
Rest of the story - After dying, the MC wakes up in the Wu Dynasty as Ning Yi, a failed scholar and bookworm, who has married into the Su Family as a marry-in husband so that Su Tan'Er doesn't have to get married off and so she can take over the family business. After coming to terms that this is not a dream, the MC, now Ning Yi, decides to accept his position as a marry-in husband (with no responsibilities), having grown tired of managing a business, especially the darker side. And so Ning Yi does whatever he wants, whether it be associating randomly with others or performing random experiments. However, due to the friendships that he slowly builds, the ideas he randomly gave out, and crises in the family, he is slowly drawn back into the vortex of business and conspiracies regarding politics.
This donghua adaptation changed so much from the source (novel) that it feels like an entirely different story. While the beginning made it feel like it was just hitting the fast forward button, by eliminating much of the slower slice-of-life stuff in favor of advancing the more exciting main plot; by episode 6, it became very obvious that this was no longer an adaptation, and by episode 8, I could no longer take the plot seriously anymore. The plot was darker and more realistic, touching on subjects and topics that were not very clean (brothels, politics, war, psychology/psychological manipulation, etc), whereas this adaptation mixes in lots of comedy and weird antics. This "adaptation" feels like a story using the original characters where many of the source references feel like Easter eggs. The genres, direction, atmosphere, and focus are all changed. In the end, it feels like the plot points and characters lifted from the novel are bait to keep novel readers invested, while all the changes are made in an attempt to attract new audiences. The novel had all the hallmarks of a story that targeted male audiences, while most of the changes seem like they are geared toward female audiences. Harem was present in the original novel, which is something women tend to hate; instead, we have a story where the romance is mostly focused on MC and Su Tan'Er with the convoluted romance across time (since Su Tan'Er is now the reincarnation of Ruo Ping, his apparent previous lover, not so in the novel). The new main antagonist seems to be his brother who now reincarnated into a female body, who will be a new hinderance to their love (another female centric change). There is also the weird transmigration with the cell phone; it feels so out of place.
There are many more changes which I will quickly go over:
Change of Genre/Focus: The novel started as a slice-of-life that could be quite slow and boring; the donghua adaptation decided to skip all of this in favor of moving to the "meat" of the plot, the business and political stuff, which they use as a vehicle for the romance between the MC and FL. However, in removing all the slice-of-life, all of the slow world building and relationship and character development from the early parts gets removed; how the MC is seen in the family, how he met Lu Hongti, Yunzhu, Yuan Jin'Er, etc is basically simplified into a "don't think about it" plot point.
Characters/Harem: The cast feels either not very smart or like bloat because all of the slow burn relationship development and world building has been cut. Yunzhu and Yuan Jin'Er (original harem members) don't really serve much purpose in this adaptation, the are like easter eggs for novel readers; how Yunzhu meets MC, becomes friends and eventually falls in love with him, how Su Tan'Er's arm's length relationship with MC caused that, why does Yuan Jin'Er hate MC, all of these are excluded from the adaptation. Next, the FuMa and Official Qin (the two older men that sometimes talk about the state of the country and stuff), feel a bit dumbed down because none of the MC's original internal monologues are included; the MC's proposals seem revolutionary, because he incorporates management techniques from 1000 years in the future, but he also carefully modifies them so they don't seem radical for the time period, etc.
Romance: Romance is now focused on MC and Su Tan'Er with other female members added as bloat to bait novel readers. Given the love-across-time romance between MC and Su Tan'Er, it is unlikely that harem will happen in this "adaptation", though all the harem members that should have shown up have shown up at "this point" of the story.
--Food for thought about character changes--
-MC or Ning Yi - In this adaptation, he's presented as wanting to actively advance his relationship with Su Tan'Er (his wife) as a kind of redemption for his previous failed relationship. He's also active in participating in politics and business, IN CONTRAST TO THE NOVEL. In the novel, he rose from a poor commoner to CEO of one of the largest business conglomorate in the world before being betrayed by his best friend and business partner. After crossing over into this world, Ning Yi wanted nothing to do with business or politics, since he had been involved in all aspects of business in his previous life, both the good and the dark dirty side. Having grown tired of it, he intended to be the "useless" and "lowly" marry-in husband with no responsibilities and doing whatever he fancied at the moment.
-Ruo Ping (his past life wife) - this character was a nobody in the novel, she only got brought up in chapter 1 as someone who once had a crush on the MC, but because he never proposed to her, she moved on and got married while the MC worked his way up in business; now in the donghua, they used her to induce a sort of romantic subplot and redemption for why the MC chooses to be with Su Tan'Er (and Su Tan'Er is also Ruo Ping reincarnated(?)).
-Su Tan'Er (main wife) - in this donghua, Su Tan'Er seems to care quite a bit about the MC even though they had just met and she chose him as the marry-in husband "randomly" by lottery. She was even prepared to give up everything in order to get him out of jail, which was in complete contrast to what she would have done in the novel. She is also quite accepting and intimate with him, which was not the case in the novel. In the novel, she actually ran away for about 2 weeks because she didn't want to get married to someone who was chosen for her (leading to Ning Yi getting assaulted), and it took months before she even began to actively interacting with him. In the novel, it took an entire year and a major crisis in the family that the MC actively worked to resolve that she finally accepted him. It also took 1.5 years for the two to consummate their marriage (she had to handle to fallout from the crisis before settling down). All this was basically skipped over, and was very important development for the two characters.
-Yun Zhu (stall shop owner, shows up EP4) - in the donghua she was randomly introduced by the assassin and when Ning Yi showed up to her stall, he saw Gu Yanzhen threatening her. He ended up saving her and that is how they got acquainted here. However, in the novel, the MC randomly encountered her when going on his morning run. Yun Zhu was the daughter of an official who committed a crime, which resulted in her being sold to a brothel. But because she was educated in the arts, she was able to serve as a courtesan who sold her skills (arts) rather than her body and was able to remain pure, eventually redeeming herself to live a self-sufficient life (after which she never got involved in anything related to her previous line of work, unlike in the donghua where she performed). After meeting Ning Yi, they continued to interact when he went on his morning runs, which allowed their friendship to develop naturally over months. Ning Yi gave her advice on how to create and run the business she owns, Zhu Ji, and is even responsible for the preserved egg recipe that is mentioned in the donghua. The donghua skips all these character and friendship development details to bring her into the story quite artificially.
-Lu HongTi (assassin) - In the donghua, Ning Yi coincidentally encounters the assassination and helps her escape, which is similar to what happened in the novel; however, the details are wildly different. In the donghua, they basically become friends right after the incident; while in the novel, Ning Yi, wanting to learn martial arts, carefully and subtly manipulated the situation with pursuing troops and her escape routes so that he would have a "chance" encounter in helping her escape. The manipulation of the overall situation and planning into how to get close to her in the least suspicious way was very interesting, but all of this was left out.
Yuan Jin'Er (friend of Yun Zhu) - she pops out of nowhere in this donghua (well I noticed she shows up in quite a few scenes before her introduction), and hates the MC. There really isn't an explanation as to why. In the novel, she's kind of lesbian for Yun Zhu and hates the MC for taking her away.
My final thoughts on this as an adaptation are: this is very different. While it starts off looking like a typical adaptation (with some changes like any other would have), it quickly branches off to do its own thing, making any similarities to the novel look like easter eggs or bait references to keep novel readers engaged. The attempt to draw in new (female) audiences while trying to retain the original novel fans end up making this adaptation a mess. I will likely only continue to watch this to see what the other yet to appear characters look like, since the ones who appeared were nice (it helped put a face to novel characters). Other than that, I'm not optimistic about this continuing as an adaptation, it will likely spin off into its own storyline similar to Yuan Long/Carp Reborn.
Adaptation Score (how faithful to the source): 2/10.
