Randomly stumbled upon this drama and thought it decently well done. Horrible title though...I am also confused as to why it's called "Lovely Swords Girl". It's a light hearted drama with a little bit of wuxia backdrop and a very inconsequential political involvement. First of all the Chinese title is lianlianjianghu (恋恋江湖) which means "Romance in Jianghu(martial art world)", which in itself isn't a great title either but at least describe the drama better than Lovely Swords Girl. Because ,for one, though the female lead is part of a medical martial art sect and that she knows how to use the sword, she actually uses her medical skill far more than her martial art...which is also unremarkable compared to like ten other people who has better martial art than she does. As for "lovely", I guess she has a lot of love interest but she's pretty headstrong and stubborn. Despite people finding her frank and outspoken personality attractive, "lovely" isn't how I would describe her. So the "Girl" is probably the most accurate part of the title. LOL

Summary:
Yu Shengyou is a daughter of the Holy Medicine Sect, whose father decided to marry her off to the esteemed Gong family, well-known in the martial art world. One of the reason for this is that father know people are hunting down a secret manual related to elixir of immortality or something and he wanted to sent his daughter to a safe place. Yu Shengyou was once saved by Gong Yuxiu a few years back and was surprised to find out he the eldest son of the Gong family, so she was really happy when Madame Gong allow her to chose one of the three sons as a husband after seeing the second son in wheelchair and third son with massive pimple breakout. She chose Gong Yuxiu and married him but on the wedding night found out he's actually a fool with the mental capacity of a child. Turns out he went "mad" two years ago due to being "poisoned" or something and became what he is now. She was mad and realize she had been set up to marry the Gong's family idiot son after finding out the second son is in fact not cripple and third son did something that cause himself to break out on the day she chose her husband.

So obviously she tried to immediately annul the marriage saying it's not done in good faith. However, Madame Gong convince her to stay for at least two years and if she still want a divorce two years later, she'll grant it to her and at the same time hoping she would change her mind. He did. Despite Gong Yuxiu being a fool, he absolutely dotes her, stick to her constantly, and showered her with affections. Then her family got into trouble so she left the Gong family to help her father and then was eventually kindnapped by the Ghost Tribe leader, Aide Yude. Ghost Tribe was a foreign tribe whose people are fat and where food and obesity are favored. However when he was young, he accidentally meant Yu Shengyou who showed him kindness whereas all other kids teased him for his obesity. They became friend and he made a promise to her that one day he'll marry her. Aide Yude also treated her as well as Gong Yuxiu did. Although she had greater affection toward Gong Yuxiu at the time, things changed when in desperation to save her Gong Yuxiu "reawakened" his former self who was a prim and proper gentleman with superior martial art skill. Now overnight he's like a completely stranger to her. Despite going back to his former self. Gong Yuxiu, still retained memory of the last few years when he was a fool. However, he feigned memory loss...I think it's partially because he was totally acting out of character and thus don't want to think about them. Still he actually still loves her but he's no longer showing his affection the same way he once did which made Yu Shengyou really sad. Now caught between a love triangle between Aide Yude, who absolutely adore, and Gong Yuxiu, who desperately want to go back to his former self asking her for a new start...she has to decide who she actually wanted to be.

There are other aspect of the story like the secret organization that's hunting various sect because they all have pieces of the secret manual including the Holy Medicine Sect which the female lead was part of. I actually barely pay attention to this part of the story. It guess it's a good distraction to keep this from being a purely romance drama. There was the second brother, who although clashes with the female lead early on but was sympathetic to her when his brother returned to normal. He also secretly harbored feeling for Yu Shengyou but he eventually got along with Lu Ren Yi, Aide's cousin who also like Aide himself, and eventually they got together. Then there's also the third brother who clashes with Yu Shengyou's very dorky ditzy maid...and they very cute chemistry together.


Cast/Acting:
Yu Shengyou - I thought she did well for most part. Somehow I thought she reminded me of the lead from Goodbye My Princess. I see some people thinks her character is annoying. I guess I can see that but she the frank and outspoken type that is sometimes careless with her words so she could be reckless. Yes she seems very outrageous and unreasonable at time but it's not without reason. In the beginning, she's thrust into a situation she didn't want so she acted out on everyone who she thinks schemed against her including her innocent husband. At the later stage, she felt her true love suddenly disappeared and now forced to be with someone who she thinks didn't love.
Gong Yuxiu - He did both character well. He's a lovable fool in the beginning and though his antic is bizarre he was very easy to like. As the gentleman act stoically but express his conflict well when he knows the person she love is not the real version of him. Even worst, he's lousy at expressing his feeling in which his inhibited and foolish self have no problem of doing.
Aide Yude - a typical second male lead where at times seems more deserving of the female lead than the actual male lead himself. He willing to go through great extent to protect and make the female lead happy...including going on a diet which affected his body greatly because the type of martial art he practiced which required him to be obese. He was always there for the female lead, always trying to cheer her up...to the point where he swayed her enough for her to consider actually being with him. However, he realized that no matter what he did she will never love him the same way she loved Gong Yuxiu...so finally he made the ultimately sacrificed....he decided to let her go...which finally ended the love triangle. Again he's like the ultimate good guy who's willing to think about the one he love instead of himself. And like he said his biggest regret is not looking for and finding the female lead before she met Gong Yuxiu because honestly she wouldn't been with him easily had that happened.


Pros
- I think there are great chemistry between the cast. I thought the ML/FL has good chemistry in the beginning and at time FL had good chemistry with the second brother (who tried to comfort her especially right after Gong Yuxiu recovered and was lost as to how he should approach her) and Aide Yude (who always try to be there with her)
- Great relationship with all the character. There were no animosity between them...even the villain wasn't detestable despite killing so many people. So there are really no unlikeable characters.
-Story tied together fair well even thought it's pretty basic.

Cons
-Amnesia plot used not once but three times. Like literally everything pretend to suffer amnesia after getting injured :/. The only one that was reasonably was Aide Yude who did it to finally separate himself from the ML/FL. The most annoying one was Gong Yuxiu who not only did a lousy job of pretending to lose his memory as a fool but that one act probably cause most of the conflict in the latter half. All the FL wanted was the reassurance that despite how he changed he is still same Gong Yuxiu she fell in love with and that part is still within him. Instead, he constantly refused to admit he still has his old memory because...I guess he wants her to love who he is instead of who he was (i dunno). However he took the drastic effort to pretend to be the idiot version of himself when he felt she's slipping away from her. Only for her to get angry at him for trying to lie to her. Then he started crying and she started crying because all she want was for him to be honest with her about his feeling and that he'll love her no matter how much he had changed. So...yea...
But to be fair, I guess conflicts makes the story because if they didn't do that...the drama could've probably ended in 15 episodes.

Overall
I thought it's a decent drama. Not saying it's the best. I've seen better and I've seen worst. It did wrapped up nicely overall though.