Recently I’ve started watching a couple xianxia romance dramas and have a few things to say about them. I started with Ashes of Love, which I never got around to watching back when it first came out. I like Yang Zi but hadn’t watched any of her dramas (meaning I liked her cause she’s pretty lol) but I’m a bit hyped for Immortal Samsara (whenever that’s coming out), so I thought I’d watch Ashes of Love first. Then I decided to give The Blue Whisper a chance. I’d seen a lot of tweets about it recently but I’m usually not into these kinds of shows to be honest, so I just went on. Anyway, I did give it a shot and I’m already hooked.

So let me talk about The Blue Whisper first, since I like it a lot more. The acting is too hammy in Ashes of Lovel; not a fan of the cutesy voices and everyone has their acting dialed up to eleven. Especially that celestial realm empress. Looks like her eyes are going to pop out of her head. Back it down a few notches, fellas.

The Blue Whisper is more to my taste. I have no idea where the English title comes from because the Chinese title has nothing to do with that. Maybe it will become clear later. The Chinese title is 驭鲛记之与君初相识, which I would translate as A Tale of Merman Taming: When I first Met You. 驭 (yu) means to control or to drive, as in drive a carriage or control an animal. Ride dragons. Control swords (sword kinesis). In the drama they use the word 馴 (xun) to talk about taming the merman, and tame is precisely what it means. So the “control” in the title to me has a more domineering feel to it than “tame”, which fits the tone of the drama, in my opinion.