Roll that Review: Rebirth of the Film Emperor’s Beloved Wife

Just then, a palm-sized golden tortoise trembled and tumbled off the branch it was on, plummeting down towards her head. Sadly, Su Yanyi’s quick reflexes caused the little tortoise to land pitifully on the ground instead. Its four teeny walkers reached towards the sky, exposing its golden tummy. No matter how long it floundered for, it just couldn’t turn back over.

 

Hello! Surprise! This isn’t a joke! Since I technically missed the release meant for the week before last (that is the Friday, May 10th, 2019), I’ve decided to be kind and do this review this week to keep with good faith! And as a sort of reward! I actually rather enjoyed this series and was a giggling mess. While it can be a little infuriating to some, it’s surprisingly right in my strike range of sweetness and subtlety! So! Here! We! Go! Enter Roll that Review!

---

Title: Rebirth of the Film Emperor’s Beloved Wife

Author: Mei Ye Shui Cao

Series: Stand Alone

Rating: ★★★★★★★ (7 of 10 stars)

Su Yanyi: The president of Resplendent Entertainment, the legendary Entertainment Queen, and the support pillar every artist wanted.

She lost everything to one scheme, and only then did she realize that the man she had always treated with coldness and indifference was actually deeply in love with her. At the end of her life, she was left with endless, irreparable regret.

“If I am given another life, I will make all those owed me pay me back a hundredfold, and I will do everything within my power to ensure you a safe and happy life!”

Maybe her persistence was simply too impressive because, in the twinkling of an eye, she returned to a time three years ago and obtained a very special System—The Virtuous Wife System.

Was this telling her that she had been the Entertainment Queen for too long, so she should try something new and become a virtuous wife instead?

Qin Jiran: The new generation Film Emperor, handsome and domineering, a lofty male god in the eyes of countless fans.

In his entire life, he only ever loved Su Yanyi. It was a pity that she did not love him back. After three years of marriage, it was all still just a contractual transaction to her.

“Yanyi, do we have to divorce?” Hidden within the man’s cold, hard expression was deep sorrow and despair.

In the previous life and in the new life, their fates crossed, and Su Yanyi was reborn back to the day they were supposed to divorce.

Will she adhere to the choice she’d made in her past life, or will she embark on a different road?

With the help of the Virtuous Wife System, the dense and stoic Su Yanyi sets out to pamper her oblivious husband, stumbling over her own inexperience as she tries to convince him that no, he is not having auditory hallucinations, and no, she is not feeling ill!

Just, why is the first task —make him smile genuinely ten times— already so difficult?

---

Positives

 

Characters: To be fair, comparing this and I’m Being Chased by a Perfectionist Man is like light and day. The characters in this story are lively and for the most part incredibly consistent with their designated personalities. Despite the fact that both the Female Lead Su Yanyi and Male Lead Qin Jiran are both cold, somewhat aloof and low on EQ, they match well. While in privacy, and on occasion with other characters of the novel, they slowly let loose a different sort of environment than the typical icy persona.

Rather than the two rushing through their feelings, they think through them methodically with sometimes being too much, to the chagrin of the reader. Qin Jiran, in particular, is one who over-thinks his actions to the Nth degree. Such an interesting, often times contradicting, set of opinions by the iceberg-like couple is heartwarming whilst a little embarrassing.

The Author and Translator did a good job in trying to keep the feel of the characters somewhat novel without there being too many cliches, of course, there were still some cliches involved.

 

Plot: A stern, unfeeling woman, who is narcissistic and unrelenting falls in love with someone who is very similar on the outside, while being soft and mushy on the inside is cute; adding on the twist of her rebirth it amplifies her personal attachment to said ‘cold man‘.

The focus of the novel is meant to be on how she is a virtuous wife, but she gives off the feeling more of being an overbearing tycoon raising a loving wife husband. I will give it points for its attempt at being a unique existence, but it’s following a similar process as a few other novels with a different cast.

Even though I say that I still enjoyed the plot for what it was because of the process to get from point A to point B. The actions, as well as reactions to each plot point, wasn’t as forced as some novels. It is important to note, however, that while it tried not to be, there were some cases of “Because A was said, A happened shortly after”.

 

Evolution: Evolution? The Evolution of the characters of course! This deserves to be mentioned all in its own. How the characters, or rather how Su Yanyi, evolved was something very amusing to me. The first instance you meet Su Yanyi she is describing her past situation of how she had become a vegetable due to a car accident, and her unbridled excitement over being able to move. She even mentions how she wishes to help and stay with the cold Qin Jiran, who cared and tended to her in her comatic state. 

In the beginning, she chastised herself for not noticing how Qin Jiran‘s expression changed, even how stupid she was for not realizing his affections while claiming it was his fault for being so stone-faced. As the story moved along she opened up more of her life, of her world for him, while still being overbearing and arrogant.

Softness slowly started to enter their sphere of influence, however, as they learned new things about each other. From Su Yanyi’s jealousy of a tortoise to Qin Jiran‘s penchant for liking black underwear, you see how they evolve to fit each other better and how they come to love each other more. Su Yanyi may be narcissistic, overbearing, beautiful and distant but for Qin Jiran, her countenance changes to add a slightly skewed doting and even teasing feel. Where Qin Jiran had been standoffish, insecure, and a little unwilling to disrupt Su Yanyi he eventually started to be more confident, much more doting and affectionate; he, however, has a long way to go before he can succeed in claiming not just her heart.

 

Environment: The environment, while much of the time being left to the imagination, is not completely neglected. The area’s that are described are simply done, not too much detail but enough to grant you the imagined domain of Su Yanyi and Qin Jiran. Their personalities being that they prefer a more mature, simple and elegant atmosphere it is to be expected that their rooms are as I mentioned; exactly simple, exactly mature and exactly elegant.

Those moments where we do get a described room, it’s not too far from what I’d mentioned. Which makes it rather pleasing that neither of them would have a room outside the expected.

---

Negatives

 

Virtuous Wife System: While this is meant to be one of those ‘reincarnated with a system helper in order to help host accomplish their designated task‘ stories, the Virtuous Wife System, has thus far had very little actual interaction with the cast. I do enjoy those types of stories on occasion but… Not only has it had very little to do with the story, but there’s also actually very little she’d actually done with it. So far from chapter 71.1 she’d used the system…. 6 times? Two times to find Qin Jiran, one time to find suitable actresses for Qin Jiran‘s business, at least 1 time to learn how to make coffee, and another two times to access her storage space.

Even then it seems sort of like the system might be auxiliary but borderline useless as it is now. She could have so many more uses, and if Qin Jiran is so tired and busy she could learn how to cook him a meal instead, granting major points. But she prefers having him cook for her anyway. If she’s going to have a system I’d like to see her interact with the actual system and not the system assistant far more frequently.

 

Cliche: The biggest cliches are the fact that the ML is the illegitimate child of one of the 4 great families, there are dumb ‘villains’ who think that harming the target they want helps them get the target, and also the ‘overly doting sibling’. The villains and the female lead’s family seem rather out there, and they are probably the least consistent of the bunch. For being a light novel character though, they are rather solid anyway.

Other than how Wang Zhilin is insistent on Qin Jiran, to the point where she’s absolutely mad and keeps causing him more trouble to make Su Yanyi leave him, the rest of the Wang family seem idiotic for greed. They even join forces with the Qin family so they can try and cover up Qin Jiran, despite him having no desire for relations. It’s quite a few hoops and Su Yanyi‘s anger towards them, while understandable, is most of the time petty. For someone so smart, rather than taking one fell swoop to defeat them, she decides to instead wait and bide her time in order for there to be a bigger, heavier fall when they crash down.

Su Yanmo is also a special case. He follows the sis-con trope that borders on yandere, imho. Upon meeting his sister for the first time in a while he speaks to her privately….. and hands her a pistol. Not for her own protection for the outside world, but rather so that she may injure/kill Qin Jiran if he dares to harm or bully her. I understand they have an underground connection, but if she was trained by an assassin -which is described to be the truth- she can handle herself without one. Especially since Qin Jiran has to actually put effort in blocking off her hits when they spar later in the story.

 

Translation: As expected, sometimes I mention the translation. This translation was neither excellent nor poor, but sometimes it was a little messy. Not to where it ruined the series of course.

---

Personal Impression

 

I enjoyed this story and spent the few hours I have read it giggling or smiling. On some sections, my smile broke and I was left confused, but more or less this was a welcome change. Su Yanyi is a rather strong female lead who doesn’t immediately back down and does think through her actions with level headed responses… most of the time. She may be a spoiled heiress in some situations but she tries to make up for it with hard work. The only downside is that I’m not sure whether she will actually become a virtuous wife in actions or let Qin Jiran do all the work for her.

So far with the translations, there’s no exact backstory for why Qin Jiran is so devoted as of yet, but it was apparently a ‘love at first sight’ scenario. I would like to see more of their past and perhaps even more about their marriage life before she had come back from death. No loose ends to tie up that I can immediately think of -other than the virtuous wife system and how it works, off the top of my head.

Anyway. If you’d like to read it, please do. If you’ve not got any interest in it, then that’s just fine too. The translator herself got rather bored and irritated with the female and male lead, so It’s obviously not everyone’s cup of tea.