I’ve just finished watching The First Frost of the first time (almost a year after it’s release), and I wanted to share my thoughts on my experience.
While there were moments that would make my heart flutter, my overall feeling was one of discomfort. This was not due to the difficult subject matter of Wen Yifan’s life (although I do find that she had too many things stacked against her…i’ll return to this in a sub-point). My discomfort was due to the very one-sided care and affection she was receiving from Sang Yan. In fact, the more they showed their history, the more confused I was. Thankfully, Wen Yifan also liked him because without that important detail, it would have been another male character fixated on her purely for her looks. I keep wondering if they intentionally chose to not show the ways that she showed love to him to make me understand why he would stay on the hook for so long. We see her towards the end of the series feel extreme guilt, but I wish she would have openly expressed (and not just to him privately but publicly) how she intends to treat him better moving forward. Even hi proposal left me feeling sad, because everyone seem to be focused on telling him to treat her well…based on their history, I would have wanted people to also say to her to treat him well. His whole personality/life purpose was to be the one good thing in her life. I feel like I know nothing about who his is which makes him seem like an incomplete human. Now I understand that she could just be more reserved but there are still ways in writing and directing to show the love and care a reserved character has for the one they claim to love. I wish it seemed a bit more reciprocal.
Back to all the terrible things stacked against her. I’m actually someone who enjoys seeing a bit of trouble and difficulty, but for a character portrayed as weak, fragile and timid, this was too much for me to see. I saw no way of her getting out of the awful events of her life without outside help. This is a girl who was simultaneously so beautiful people fall in love with her immediately yet so “unloved” and alone and weak that she had no way or avenue to protect herself. As a female viewer, this was soooo rough to watch. I kept dreaming that she learnt self-defense or something to keep herself safe since she also preferred to self-isolate as her defense mechanism 😓😓😓.
Anyways, maybe I’m too critical and I’m probably not the target audience as I’ve lived away from home from the age of 19, and I’m now in my 30s and believe highly in self-sufficiency. I’m happy they seem happy at the end, but I also want both of them to go work on themselves as individuals so they are 2 complete persons in the relationship.