Just finished watching episode four, and,,, I’m really liking the changes.
Athy being an actual child has her interest in Diana come off much more strongly, so you’re actually attached and invested in Athy and her feelings for family and both her parents. When Athy is a reincarnated adult, she has no interest in her parents and no attachment in Diana other than “well, she’s this pretty lady I dream about sometimes, but idrc”, which makes any ‘emotional’ scene with Diana later on so,,, fake, because she never showed an interest in her parents’ relationship or Diana personally. But the donghua has a very natural longing for family, which makes little Athy discovering Diana’s burnt portrait heartbreaking. If Penelope’s portrait was of Diana instead, I guarantee you novel and manhwa Athy would not care or if anything be irritated or “waa, scary”.
Also, the donghua makes Claude so much more likeable. Not with many big changes, but it changes the things I was always ticked off about—like how he never personally seemed invested or tried to make an effort in his and Athy’s relationship, how he’d be cruel enough to threaten to torture his kid if she didn’t sing, etc.
But in the donghua, he’s communicating—though it’s awkward and simple, he’s communicating and verbally telling her to spend time together, which makes his somewhat avoidance of her more obvious and heartbreaking because she’s looking forward to the time they spend together. The removal of the “I wanna see Mom’s face” doodling scene with Lily and Felix, while sad, makes sense because originally that scene was very lazy. It was a scene of an adult just going “I’m curious”, whereas the donghua shows she’s taking the interest to heart so it hurts when she comes to the conclusion that Claude hates her mom so much and will hate her. Also,,, the new scene of Claude fixing Athy’s family drawings she burned out of the remains,,, that’s so cute, and makes the later scene (if they include it) of Claude preserving the drawings so much more meaningful. Because Athy thinks she burned them! They’re gone to her! So in the later scene when she discovers he has them and has been preserving them, that’s gonna be so much more sweet than the OG scene of her being surprised that he kept them at all. And little Athy walking up to him? And verbally telling him she wants to know what Diana looked like?
Th donghua straight up. Fixed my problems with Athy and Claude’s relationship/Claude in general. I didn’t like them because it felt one sided and no one actually communicated or was truthful with eachother, but the donghua is showing the communicate clearly and how they both care subtly in their own ways. This makes the time skip so much more smooth—because I can actually see them getting close in five years, whereas the OG the leap in their relationship felt so abrupt.
I could never imagine I would ever call Claude, or Athy and Claude’s relationship, cute. Hell, I abhorred it—but the donghua has somehow made the impossible, possible.
