This drama aired with little notice and initial commentary online says this is a dark horse drama. I’m personally having tons of fun watching this drama so far, primarily enjoying Li Qin for her swift and clean martial arts fighting. She just looks so badass in episode 1 where everyone is calling her super “Shuai” and “Sa” which are different ways of saying handsome but in a powerful way due to her fighting scenes. I would definitely recommend checking out episode 1 (though it is a little bloody). 

While the story follows some similar tropes from other dramas, what’s different about this drama is that romance is entirely on the backburner. In the first 3 episodes, main male lead Feng Sui Ge captures and beats the living crap out of the main female lead  Fu Yi Xiao to interrogate her because she is a key member of the enemy army. Because, YEA that’s what you’re supposed to do with an enemy and not go easy on her because she’s the main female lead and pretty. Don’t worry though, when she gets the opportunity in the next episode, she captures him, strings him up and beats the living crap out of him as well as revenge. That was super satisfying to watch because it shows that they see each other as equals and not romantic interests out of nowhere.  All you want to say here is HELL YEA. 

Additionally, Fu Yi Xiao loses her memory, but not her intellect. She is immediately wary of Feng Sui Ge when they happen to be at the same place and she maintains her wits about her. She doesn’t just easily believe everything he says because he’s the main male lead and forget that she has the skills of a battle tested archer. 

Fu Yi Xiao and Feng Sui Ge are the best parts of this drama and their chemistry is better than I expected. There’s some back burner political machinations happening, and an overly naive princess in the mix that causes a bit of annoyance to the viewing experience because everyone else is operating on a much higher intelligence level. Otherwise, this is a fun watch for October.

Sadly, while Li Qin has garnered quite a bit of popularity over the last few weeks due to her appearance on Season 7 of Diva’s hit the road, it has not translated into viewership for this drama. Fated Hearts has done only middling in terms of popularity. It breached 7500 on iQiyi’s popularity index by it’s 3rd day of airing and that’s it. I personally do think it deserves higher ratings but alas, it’s unclear if it’s due to people being on vacation due to China’s long holiday break right now so they’re not watching TV or if it’s because the marketing team doesn’t have money to spend on marketing. And I’m not even kidding about the marketing team being poor. The official Fated Hearts Dou Yin account even changed its name to add in parenthesis that it’s a “Poor Ghost That is Working Hard to Promote the Drama” to indicate that no, it doesn’t have money to spend on buying popularity. I actually am dying laughing at this name change. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen before for a drama’s official account and it’s becoming a meme now. We’ll see if popularity picks up for this show. If it does, it’ll be entirely due to word of mouth (unless the production company suddenly drops a ton of marketing on it).