"If I love you, what business is it of yours?" (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

“Luo Zhi loves Sheng Huainan. And no one knows about it.”

You’ve been warned. This is a long review.

Within the first few episodes, you’ll notice that the show’s stylist didn’t particularly love Luo Zhi enough to give her a memorable style. She’s a brilliant character - committed to her ambition, clever, meticulous, sincere, composed, and yet full of secrecy, shame, longing, and regrets, but she is dressed so...poorly and forgettably. And honestly, I could care less, if I weren’t using this bit to make my own little clever joke, because the juxtaposition of Luo Zhi’s beautiful depth and terrible fashion is exactly how I feel about this adaptation of 八月长安’s (Ba Yue Chang An) web novel, 暗恋橘生淮南 (Unrequited Love.) It has so much potential, gets certain things right that 99% of dramas miss, and yet...suffers from so many flaws. The team behind this show had the right intentions and chose the right story, but dressed it inadequately.

My relationship to this drama is quite mixed. There are elements that I absolutely adore, and yet, elements that frustrate me. But because it gets certain pieces of romantic storytelling right that most Chinese dramas (Asian dramas in general) completely miss, I also keep it close to my heart. The best I can do is to give a sincere review of what I love & hate about Unrequited Love (2021). This review is full of spoilers btw. Beware :)

Elements I Adore:

I. Sheng Huainan & Luo Zhi.
For the first time in Dramaland, I am fully aboard this ship. I am genuinely convinced that if there were a Sheng Huainan and Luo Zhi in our reality, that they would fall for one another. This element is the sole redeeming factor of this drama for me. I’ve found myself watching drama after drama, wondering how both characters fell for the other, and why the story needed to contrive reasons for the couple to come together (cue the usual person falling and the other main character catching them and then...they’re in love! How? We don’t know! But they are…)

In the beginning, we’re told the story of this romance framed by Luo Zhi’s shame and regret. She feels like a ghost beside Huainan, forever chasing after his shadow, but is unwilling to make herself visible unless he sees her first. This pining follows her from high school into her college career. In Luo Zhi’s heart, her yearning for Huainan’s attention isn’t just rooted in the affirmation of a childhood promise, but also in her self-actualization. She’s convinced herself that the best version of herself will undoubtedly catch Huainan’s eye. It’s cringy for us as the audience, because we know this narrative is self-defeating and reeks of shame. But the story’s unwillingness to hide this narrative of Luo Zhi humanizes her. Beside this secretive yearning for Huainan to fulfill his childhood promise, Luo Zhi is an individual who will work as hard as she must in order to achieve the goals she has set for herself. Sure, she’s a softie for Huainan, but she is as tough as it gets outside of her secret yearning. And I love that about her.

Huainan, on the other hand, is both thoughtful and simplistic. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that he’s idealistic to a fault. This man is exactly the albatross that he and Luo Zhi talk about. In terms of academic performance and popularity, he soars in the sky, full of ambition and potential, but his only aim for landing is to find a soulmate. He pines for someone who can share a telepathy with him. Yet when he lands on ground level, he becomes the Big Clumsy Bird he describes the Albatross as. These ideals he crafts in his mind are incomprehensible to most people and highkey irrelevant to most people’s lives. People see him for his looks, his family’s wealth, and his popularity, but he sees himself differently. It makes him feel isolated, invisible, and wary of others.

When you bring the two together, their shared fascination for one another is what makes this drama shine. Their conversations are endless, and I loved seeing that portrayed on screen. Luo Zhi’s shyness and Huainan’s persistence feel natural and painfully realistic. And I adore their initial dates. The surprise gift of Gibran’s poetry? Has my whole heart. Huainan saving the leaf they serendipitously grabbed at the same time, and Luo Zhi finding it as she peeks into his journal -- and Huainan SEEING her find it? I was embarrassed AND blushing for them.

II. Reframing “Missed” Love

I think we can agree that this show isn’t truly portraying “Unrequited Love” when it comes to Huainan & Luo Zhi. It’s portraying missed love. We’re shown this from the very beginning in terms of Luo Zhi’s self-inflicted pain of an “unrequited” love. The truth is, Luo Zhi’s suffering came directly from her own shame. She planted that seed of rejection all on her own and ironically created the distance between her and Huainan, because she never opened any opportunities for their meeting.

I love that the show sets up expectations for us, and then shamefully misses it. Because it’s this same shame that has kept Luo Zhi both resenting and perpetuating the 0.6cm distance between her and Huainan. The drama reveals to us that this distance between her and Huainan is self-forged. Luo Zhi herself has yet to let go of all the shame and self-hatred she developed in her secretive admiration for Huainan, and because of that, she sabotages most of their initial interactions.

The whole merry-go-round of the show is an unwinding of Luo Zhi’s shame. There’s an incredible scene in the movie Saving Face where one character confronts her lover in an airport and says, “You're too scared to look the world in the eye...and let it watch you fall in love.” Which fits perfectly with what Luo Zhi heartbreakingly inscribed on the rooftop wall: “Luo Zhi loves Sheng Huainan. And no one knows about it.” At this point, Huainan doesn’t even know of Luo Zhi’s existence. Her heartbreak is a whole narrative she has spun all on her own. And I think some of us might relate to that - the feeling of ending something before it even has the chance to begin, because we’re scared of the risks involved in putting ourselves out there. And she sets up these conditional requirements Huainan has to meet in order for her to finally reveal their childhood history, but those conditions are deceptive. The truth is that Luo Zhi is not ready to meet Huainan in her fullest vulnerability. Her ambivalence is fueled by her shame and fear.

When Huainan meets Luo Zhi, it’s as if his lonely lil Albatross self has finally found a place to land. It’s lowkey unfair to him that Luo Zhi comes in with so much reservation and secrecy, but we’ll save that conversation for another day. A part of me loves that though, because it’s painfully human. How many of us aren’t secretive and wary when it comes to love? I’ve been a partial Luo Zhi before, and I’ve also been a partial Huainan. I’ve been an admirer, and I’ve also been an overly cautious person. I’ve been the person full of shame, and I’ve also been the person who wants to risk losing my societal mask(s) in order to grow closer to someone.

I dislike the way they framed the eventual 5-year wedge between Luo Zhi & Huainan, but I respect the reasoning for it. The romantic in me loves and is in tune with how Luo Zhi describes their love: It is rooted in mutual, shared belief. Both of these clumsy Albatrosses believe that they will land in the same place, but for now, their ambitions are diverging. Their love is a commitment to the belief that they will come together without reservations, without shame, without secrecy standing between them. If I were to call myself a believer of love, I’d be in agreement with Luo Zhi. I think my truest belief in love is where choosing myself is already choosing the other person, because becoming who I am will naturally lead me to someone who is most compatible with me (granted that they too feel as if they are becoming closer to their ideal self).

And the irony is that even during this period where they are far apart in both time and distance, they are the closest they've ever been to each other at heart. They’re often in the same places, by coincidence, and even peruse the same book. And yet, when they were closest in terms of distance and time in college, they were farthest at heart, because they were clothed in shame and secrecy, which bred miscommunication after miscommunication. I guess the winding of this drama is meant to show us that Huainan & Luo Zhi had to come so close and yet spend so much time apart because they were the ones closing the door on one another. They were rejecting each other, or rather, rejecting themselves from fully accepting the other. And thus, as Huainan says, “isn’t it the absence of a thereafter that makes something romantic?” Now that they’re in agreement of a shared belief in love, there really is no “Aha!” moment the show owes us. They are in sync, and time and distance no longer reduce what is already shared between them. A true meeting of heart and mind.

“Sheng Huainan loves Luo Zhi. And the whole world knows about it.”

III. Zhang Mingrui
I loved this character & the actor's portrayal of him. His bond with Huainan was both believable & heartwarming. I also appreciate how his relationship with Riqing unraveled -- and how he was honest about not having any lingering feelings for her. I honestly think Luo Zhi & Mingrui were compatible all on their own, and wouldn't have minded if the show-writers decided to give us a "Luo Zhi's first love is Huainan, but her second love is Mingrui" kind of ordeal. My all-time favorite moment of Mingrui in this show was the scene where the uncomfortable classmate takes Huainan's bag of chips, and Mingrui says, so candidly, "Excuse me?" It was one of those scenes that felt so natural -- as if these characters really were just college students in a library, completely caught off-guard & bewildered by the actions of a *strange* classmate.


What Fell Short:

The. Side. Characters.
I’m going to be brutally honest and tell you that I skipped past most of the side character storylines. The dynamic between Bai Li and Ge Bi? That’s a big ~nope~ for me. I pretty much only watched Bai Li when she was with Luo Zhi. I will say one character that I passionately abhor in this show is that one boundary-breaking, fear-inducing, unreasonable stalker of Huainan. And I don’t abhor her, I abhor the characterization of her. She was so contrived. I won’t spend my words on it further than that. If they took out the side characters and focused more on Huainan & Luo Zhi's period of separation, I would give this series a higher rating. But these unnecessary & pathetic villains are not it.

The Misunderstandings
Scrap the entire feud between Luo Zhi and Huainan’s families. It was unnecessary and barely fleshed out. While we’re there, scrap Huainan’s family downfall too. And that bit about Huainan giving Luo Zhi the raincoat as a test? It was weird and off putting. It felt like tacky story writing. It’s what I mean when I say the show had heart, but was poorly dressed.

I’m definitely going to come back & edit this review, because I’m still contemplating how I feel about the show. But I still treasure the feelings it gave me because it reminded me of my own belief in love.

The Initial Daydreams
I have a strong dislike for any show that uses this technique. Showing the audience a scene and then revealing to us that it was all the character’s imagination is both uncomfortable and unnecessary. We KNOW Luo Zhi is pining after him, and we KNOW he doesn’t know her yet. Please spare us the trickery.

I don’t have much to say about where I feel the show fell short because I feel as if they were problems in the show’s exterior -- that’s not where my heart is at. My heart is in the interior of the show - the crafting of Luo Zhi & Huainan’s love - of which I’ve already penned a gazillion words.

If you’ve gotten this far, I do recommend the show. Just skip the side romances. And give space for Luo Zhi to grow on you, because she will. If you liked this show, I’m recommending you Nana (Japanese Anime), Ao Haru Ride (Japanese Anime), Whisper of the Heart (Japanese Anime), "A Love So Beautiful" (Chinese Drama), and “In Time With You” (Taiwanese Drama).

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