Eternal Love of Dream (Pillow Book) – Honest Initial Thoughts

This post is a follow-up to the Basically video of Eternal Love of Dream.

First things first, I won’t be comparing this drama to Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms because every drama deserves a chance to be judged as an individual production. I also do not base my opinion on the original novel (which… I still haven’t read). Good or bad, a drama/movie should stand on its own. If you have to rely on the source material to understand what’s being conveyed on screen, then maybe the drama’s directing and writing need some work.

Let’s begin.

*WARNING: this post mostly is humor-free (meaning: I’ll try to be more serious than usual).

THE GOOD

1 – Dilraba – As far as casting goes, I believe Dilraba Dilmurat is a fairly reasonable choice. Yes, her acting as a young and overly bubbly female lead might have gone overboard sometimes, like… this, for example…

(What even is this?)

But respectively, every actress kind of overdoes it once in a while. In retrospect, not everyone is Ni Ni and not everyone has the perfect look for the “innocent girl” part as Zhao Liying or Yang Zi, so… I’ll say that Dilraba doesn’t do it anymore excessively than any other actress before her has, at least not yet.

And her mature moments are certainly believable. So as far as the character goes, she does strike a balance.

2 – Donghua’s character – Donghua is a retired god who appears bored, but privately enjoys watching others making a fool of themselves. He is arrogant and does not hesitate to take a risk to offend other people if he thinks they need a lesson – his interactions with the Demon Lord whom he tricks into doing servants’ work, for instance. Donghua appreciates well-made food, tries his own hand at cooking and, so far, cares more about his tasters’ reaction than his skills.

If you can say this much about a character this early in without mentioning his love interest, you can conclude that he has a promising start. He is not independent enough to have a single storyline, but he definitely doesn’t rely on another character or any external factor to define himself, either.

As for the acting, I cannot vouch for Vengo Gao yet because he… Well, we’ll just let those eyebrows speak for now.

3 – The Liansong and Si Ming duo – These two have as much chemistry as you could ask for in a comedic duo. Their jokes may not always be funny, but the actors certainly carry out their parts well with their interpretations of whatever’s written on the script.

THE BAD

1 – The Female Lead – Now… I have nothing against naive characters. But there is a difference between naive and nonsensical, and Fengjiu crosses that line most of the time she is on screen. Perhaps she will grow out of this phase in future episodes, but as of now, her leaps of logic are mainly there to create trouble and get the male lead’s attention.

Secondly, Fengjiu currently has very little to distinguish herself except her worship for Donghua and her desire to “repay his kindness”, which makes her character not easy to sympathize with. Unless you also like Donghua the same way Fengjiu does and can slip into her shoes completely, it might be hard to relate to her problems.

2 – Cartoon Villains – As the most recent drama of this genre, this story has nothing new to offer with its lines of predictable villains that exist mainly to bring trouble to the ROMANCE and the WORLD. We have a Demon Lord who is on the verge of breaking out…

A princess whose only personality is: I hate anyone who comes within ten feet of Donghua.

The princess’ maid who is even worse than her mistress. And by ‘worse’, I don’t mean more evil, but more unnecessary.

And… maybe more like this in the episodes I still haven’t gotten to.

3 – The romance’s development –  As the leading couple, Donghua and Fengjiu do not have that much of a believable start. Their interactions seem to have been written with the assumption that the audience is already on board with the ship. The supposedly important scenes where Fengjiu decides to repay Donghua’s debt, learn about Donghua, and ask for Si Ming’s help to get into the Heavenly Palace are surprisingly mediocre in their execution.

And speaking of which, there is no build-up to Si Ming and Fengjiu’s friendship to make the former’s agreement to help her believable. Yes, we have seen their friendship in Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms. But what about the viewers who have NOT? One drama shouldn’t rely on another’s world-building to explain its own characters (unless they’re sequels).

Later on, when Fengjiu and Donghua come face-to-face, he is ice-cold and she is rather jumpy, which is an appealing contrast of personality. But Donghua is shown to have no reason to need Fengjiu in his life and Fengjiu, aside from her debt, also doesn’t seem to be complemented by Donghua’s character. This leads to a void of connection between them and so far, the ship is sailing purely on Dilraba and Vengo’s chemistry.

4 – Uhm… this guy

Baron Chen isn’t a bad actor, but in terms of his character – Zheyan – it is a struggle to understand what he is trying to be, and his ACTING eccentric is obvious. This may either be due to the effort to create the same Zheyan from Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms or the neglect of his characterization altogether. So far, he serves only as a source of information and offers very little to the personality pool in this story.

BOTTOM LINE: the comments above are only based on our initial impression of this drama. Some of these things may change as we move further into the story, at least let’s hope the bad ones will.

In the meantime, share your thoughts and have a blast with this long-overdue drama 🙂