Review of Exclusive Fairytale / 独家童话

If you’re new here and found this blog through the mysterious powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I’m a dedicated reader and movie watcher who thought to turn this website into a little digital archive of sorts.

I was watching and reading so much that I wanted to keep track of it all, so I began blogging as a way to keep these books as memories somewhat forever.

That said, I recently fell into a period of unemployment, and this blog was a solace for me. Not only was it a way to make a little bit of money when there was nothing else coming my way really, but I found, after getting my finances in order, that I enjoyed sitting down to write blog posts when I had nothing else to do in my day.

Because I suddenly have more free time in-between job hunting and working on my blog, I’ve been catching up on all the books, movies, and television I’ve been meaning to get to throughout the years. And trust me, my list is huge, so I probably will not that big of a dent by the time I get to a new job.

That said, I have been meaning to watch more Chinese shows, as I find they require more time investment than the Korean and Japanese ones do. I didn’t have that time before really, especially when a show is almost 40 episodes long.

I’ve been wanting to watch Exclusive Fairytale because of Junhui. I finally decided to bite the bullet and watch the show on Viki after I saw Seventeen on tour. He wasn’t there, which made me really sad, but I was glad to see the group because I liked them when I actually listened to K-pop.

But watching the show seemed to be a consolation, and I watched all of it over the course of two weeks. This review is going to come out a lot later though due to the backlog I have of posts to publish, so I’m looking more at May 2025 before this comes out.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

Two childhood friends slowly fall in love with each other during their coming of age.

When I first saw the premise of this show, I thought I could predict the ending of this and how exactly we were going to get there. Chinese shows, to me, tend to be formulaic. A lot of East Asian shows can be formulaic, but the Chinese romance ones tend to be copy + paste sometimes to me.

This show was one of those shows. Our main characters are Xiao Tu and Ling Chao, who are childhood best friends. These two know each other like the back of their hands, and at the beginning of the show, they’re not really seen without each other in high school.

They even go over each other’s houses and spend time with their parents, which makes it more obvious when something happens between them romantically. The first chunk of the series takes place when they’re in that high school period, but eventually they pack up their belongings and head off to college later in the show.

Ling Chao is someone who is more stoic throughout the series, and he plays the role of the cool guy who kind of doesn’t say much but has an obvious liking of Xiao Tu. We learn he’s this way because his mother wanted a daughter, he has a bit of a perfection complex, and he doesn’t really have a relationship with his father.

Xiao Tu plays the classic bubbly girl who can be a bit of an airhead at times, which is fine, but she can be a little grating sometimes with how naive she can be. She’s the perfect foil for Ling Chao, as she’s kind of everything he isn’t.

The romance picks up when they’re in college. Despite sharing a room with three other people each, which seems to be the standard in Chinese dramas (not sure if it is in real life, I’ve never looked it up), and it’s the roommates who help push them to become more of a couple.

Until then Ling Chao is trying his best to show his affection and Xiao Tu doesn’t get it. But we know what we’re here for in these kinds of shows, so we have to watch them awkwardly stumble into that phase where they’re more direct with each other and evolve into a couple.

Overall Thoughts

If we’re going to be honest, I was kind of bored with this show because of the copy + paste formula. I can watch formulaic shows, but they have to be compelling in the way where I don’t want to give up halfway through. I wanted to give up, but pushed through because of the time I’d already invested in it.

I wasn’t a fan of the acting, which is probably why I was also struggling to get through this. The side characters brought the most interesting edge to this, with their B plots, as well as the humor. I liked the humor a bit in this show; it was one of the few writing elements that I actually nodded along to.

I don’t want to be pretentious. I could see how someone could and would really like this show, but it simply was not for me. Neither of us are wrong, as taste is subjective, and I’d love to hear why you loved it more!

It’d also be a good form of escapism for the humor and lightheartedness, so perhaps I watched it at the wrong time. Give it a chance if you’re interested.

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