Till the End of the Moon with Bai Lu and Luo Yun Xi Premieres to a Surprisingly Sane Plot Start and Engrossing Acting from Both Leads
Today April 6th is the premiere of xianxia C-drama Till the End of the Moon (Chang Yue Jin Ming), much anticipated due to a combination of big name big budget xianxia drought and also leads Luo Yun Xi and Bai Lu remain super popular and this pairing was a big deal when announced. I’m traveling today but managed to squeeze in the first episode and going in with rock bottom expectations I was impressed and quite enjoyed it. Leads Bai Lu and Luo Yun Xi are perfectly cast and deliver natural and charismatic performances right off the bat. He’s so IDGAF as Demon Lord Tan Tai Jin and she’s all earnest and worried as Fairy Su Su trying to save the world from his destruction. Then she goes back in time and finds out she’s in the body of a rich, spoiled, mean second daughter married to then tormented and abused Tan Tai Jin and woah is there a lot to unpack there. I wish the first episode shorted all the xianxia fighting and her return to the past to half the time cuz I don’t care about any other character but these two. With the story shifted to the past it looks equal parts fish-in-water unexpected falling in love and fated to still kill each other destiny.
The ml is just perfect for this role. He is nailing the character as ****! I’m hooked…
LITERALLY LIVING for this drama!!!! Wheeewwww the main leads are amazing!!!!
I didn’t know what to expect and went in mostly for the costumes. But this is actually good. Interesting premise and characters. And I agree about the acting, very impressive. I kinda really dig how the male character’s body language,mannerisms, expressions ( and even voice) somehow resembles a snake😅 strange, but charismatic and creepy. Truly embodies the aura of the character. The actor is definitely on point.
So true, he is sly and wicked like a venomous snake. Good spot!
So this turned out to be a pleasent surprise. For once they’re not making the male character a fake evil, who actually never does anything evil in the screen and only shows cute cat claws. But this is something I can get around. There’s something legit haunting and creepy about the guy from time to time, which works well with this story. I hope they won’t mess up his developement process in the future.
Yeah, was surprised when he actually kills. Finally a show that really blur the line between good and bad instead of clearly defines it.
Bai Lu is so gorgeous! And her make up and costume here really compliment her beauty. All the other ladies are also pretty. The fox demon is very sassy and interesting.
I was at first distracted by the male lead’s exceptionally lean physique and face ( nothing wrong with it ofcourse as long as he’s healthy, I was just not visually used to it) but now 6 episodes in not only I’m used to him, I’m actually starting to find him quite sexy in his own way. I guess that’s because of how amazing his acting is. Can not wait for more!
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I liked it because I liked the original novel. The drama had all the major plot points from the novel so it’s not a bad adaptation.
One thing that I had a weird time reconciling, though, is how Tan Tai Jin was born without feelings and many people mentioned he doesn’t have a heart, but yet he developed emotions to cry.
If he was crying without understanding why tears were coming down, that would at least hint to me that he is on the verge of developing feelings. But no, the drama version showed Leo already has feelings, just not a lot, and while he is opportunistic and vengeful, maybe slightly sadistic, he is not a bad person and can develop emotions normally in the right environment. I just never got to see that development from emotionless to emotional.
So it begs the question – was he or wasn’t he born with ability to develop feelings?
This is my take on it having read admittedly the MTL of the novel. His several conversations with the Shadow devil about how’s he’s destined to experience trials, tribulations of suffering + resentment before he can turn into the devil god tells me he’s able to feel hate/suffering except only when it’s soul-deep & that gut wrenching. This is going to take form through his turbulent relationship with Bai Lu’s Ye XiWu. It appears as a kid he wasn’t born with the ability to feel emotions, but that’s to be developed over time as an adult, for which Ye XiWu’s the trigger to the start of these realisations of emotions.
I won’t go deeper on this without risking spoiling the drama, but I feel it’s exactly his ability to feel emotions in this version of him from 500 years ago that he’s able to redeem himself 500 years later…
I read the original novel in Chinese, but I had to skip over some parts when the wording became too complicated for me.
I guess it’s the fault of the novel too, for never making a clear distinction for why he has feelings for YXW. If they are even really love – because it felt more like obsession and need/craving for love from someone who is so pure and unblemished from darkness of the world.
Well I don’t know about this character, or details about the source novel, but in clinical setting, for those who have a certain condition that affects their various emotions, we never say they don’t have the ability to develope those emotions, but the developement,expression or/and regulation of various feelings is different from the others. Their brain just works in a different way, some of these more unusual pathways are known and many of them are not. Also, the human brain almost never freezes in a constant state, so in the face of a strong stimuli, it might be able to learn or develope an ability which was lacking before.
I like the story so far after she time-travelled back. The beginning of the first episode where they were the demon lord and fairy nearly had me dropping this drama off my list because the CG looks fake and uncanny plus their acting look unnatural there. The scenes were choppy and didn’t flow smoothly, it looks like they re-edited the script after filming finished, and the demon lord just doesn’t have that badass aura that Dongfang Qingcang from Love Between Fairy and Devil has.
With that said, I will still be continuing with this drama because the story plot is interesting and both leads’ acting are passable and even above average in certain scenes after the time-travel. The 7-tailed fox demon is very pretty too, one of her scenes at the gambling den reminds me of Tang Yan’s Zi Xuan in Chinese Paladin 3.
Another moron that doesn’t know anything about acting 🤭
I don’t watch much cdrama but I did happen to watch both love between fairy and devil and the 1st 10 episodes of this drama. My own opinion, this drama is better – this male lead certainly have a slightly alien look which I will attribute to makeup to fit his character, not the typical pretty boy look. The characters and storyline are more engrossing and the heroine isn’t some helpless do-gooder always waiting for hero to rescue her
I think Leo can still be badass, but he doesn’t have the powerful background yet to be that badass. Dylan was powerful from the very outset.
I will say though, that visually, Dylan is more of a hawt, marble-carved demon while Leo is more of a sinisterly beautiful demon. They each have their strong points.
As for storyline, I find both engaging, but I like LBFAD better because it’s a happier, brighter storyline. TTEOTM is visually stunning, but very dark. It is absolutely angsty. This drama has more similarity with AoL than LBFAD, because of that reason.
Also, there is some confusion for me around why Leo has feelings for Bai Lu when he’s supposed to be unfeeling. If we accept that he’s human with some demonic influence which only dulls his feelings, but doesn’t make him unfeeling, then I can understand why he likes her. Though, why he made her the exception when she’s betrayed him many times (and also saved him many times) makes me very confused.
It seems to be because she is his hope or something for me. Is it like stockholm syndrome (idk) she hurted him a lot as ye xiwu, so when she starts being nice, he started to rely on her. But even then he still makes plan to kill her, the first time he hesitated and decided to give her one more chance. He was going to kill her when she pointed the sword at him but she ended up saving him. I don’t know after that, maybe he then started to develop feelings for her?
In the novel, it’s like having a pet snake. It’s different than having a dog or cat.
“Although your pet snake may not physically love you, they still feel a lot of pleasure whenever you provide them the necessities for survival, such as food, water, and a safe place to hide.”
That the nightmare flower managed to bloom on him shows he actually could feel, but only one flower bloomed on him which meant there wasn’t enough emotion.
At some point, he took the body of a functional person inside a dream and experienced love during this period.
Loved the chemistry and natural acting of the leads. Most enjoyable drama this year. Am hooked.
This drama has become everything I did not know I needed in my drama watching life. Like it’s so odd sometimes, but in a good way. It takes my emotions on a roller coaster ride and in the end I’m still conflicted about how I really feel about the characters, there is just something haunting about the overall vibe of this show thats powerful and effective. Also, it’s been a long time since I saw such commanding performances in a xianxia. Hats off to the cast!
LITERALLY LIVING for this drama!!!! Wheeewwww the main leads are amazing!!!!