#vanished name

I recently started watching a great cdrama called Vanished Name. I originally started watching it because of its potential for yuri. We'll see if we ever get that, but there's at least close female friendship.

However, I haven't let that bother me because it's a female-centered series, its story is interesting, and the acting is excellent across the board, especially from the teenage characters.

This series is essentially a multi-generational family drama closely intertwined with a criminal investigation. I especially like how it starts as a family drama and gradually ties into the investigation. The non-linear storytelling, which jumps between different decades, may divide opinions, but I think it suits this slow-burning series, gradually offering clues to the criminal investigation. If I were to describe what this series is about more broadly, it deals with:

complicated family relationships

toxic family

friendship in general and friendship between women

borrowed dreams

stolen dreams

the courage to pursue one’s dreams

motivating characters

the right to privacy in personal correspondence

social class differences

More info here and here.

Where to watch Vanished Name:

WeTV

TencentVideo (Chinese)

TencentVideo channel on YouTube (subscription required for eps > 5)

Vanished Name 隐身的名字 from 🐧 Tencent. 📣🗓️ Airing on March 18, 2026 at 9:30 pm. Starring Ni Ni, Yan Ni, Cya Liu, Liu Mintao, Bao Jianfeng and Dong Jie. New trailer.

Ni Ni is gorgeous, and I'm waiting to find out how she went from the angry, somewhat insecure teen she was, to this gorgeous, but slightly difficult to read woman she is now.

Liu Mintao is scary as the psychotic mom in rigid control of her daughter and her life, over the decades, but teen Bai Shu, played by Na Yi, is holding her own so well, I need to see her in more stuff.

Yang Yang is doing such a great job of showing everyone's lives through the small details: Bai She's room being a literal cage, with the shades being the bars through which her mother watches her whenever she wants (the blinds are operable from the outside); the panic Xiaoming goes into when she gets her first period, and her mom - with whom she has such a prickly relationship - noticing and quietly taking over.

And lots of other such stuff.