A Moment But Forever Review

I don’t know why but it took me a while to finish A Moment But Forever (念无双). Somehow, there wasn’t great motivation to continue from where I left off each time. I know some people see this as a masterpiece but I find it to be average. It is not a bad drama but I wouldn’t rewatch it either. The leads offer a good reason to keep going and that is how I made it past the boring parts. You can check out my review of A Moment But Forever below for more details.

My rating: 7.5/10
Episodes: 36
Type: Xianxia Romance
Aired: March 2025
Images credit: iQIYI Facebook

The Cast Of A Moment But Forever

• Tiffany Tang Yan as Ji Tan Yin / Goddess Wu Shuang
• Liu Xue Yi as Yuan Zhong
• Cristy Guo Xiao Ting as Zhi Dai
• Wang Hong Yi as Tang Hua
• Daniel Zhou Ke Yu as Xia Qian Lin
• Zhang Li as Han Nv
• Xiu Qing as Ding Xu
• Ma Qi Yue as Zi Fei
• Yumiko Cheng as Li Chao Yang
• Wang Ruo Lin as Zhi Yue
• Zeng Qi as Ah Xue

Main Characters

Ji Tan Yin / Goddess Wu Shuang

Tan Yin is a goddess from the Divine Realm. She is a craftswoman of the Divine Race. Tan Yin has a strong sense of justice and fairness that is tempered with compassion and understanding. She is a kind and patient goddess. Tan Yin has 2 friends in the Divine Realm, Mr. Loong and Han Nv.

Yuan Zhong

Yuan Zhong is the High Priest of the Youhu Clan which is made up of immortals. He is the host for the Divine Left Hand which is a powerful hand belonging to Deity Tai He of the Divine Realm. Yuan Zhong is a conflicted immortal with his own secret agenda. He has a darkness within him that he hides deep within.

Supporting Characters

Zhi Dai

Zhi Dai belongs to the Human Race. She is an instructor for new handmaidens at the Youhu Clan. Zhi Dai’s father is the governor of the Human Race but she keeps her identity a secret. Shen Ying, the Foreign Affairs Scribe of the Human Race, reports to her. Zhi Dai has hidden feelings for Tang Hua.

Tang Hua

Tang Hua is an immortal of the Youhu Clan. He is the clan’s Commander of the War Division. Tang Hua is righteous and tries to do the right thing to make amends for a past mistake towards Yuan Zhong. The 2 immortals used to be friends when they were young.

Xia Qian Lin

Qian Lin is from the War Demon Clan. He is a stubborn immortal who is adamant about looking for his mother. He has secret feelings for Tan Yin.

Han Nv

Han Nv is the Goddess of Embroidery of the Divine Race. She seems to have deep feelings for Deity Tai He who is in a slumber after a war between the gods and demons. Han Nv is elegant and appears as sisterly towards Tan Yin.

Ding Xu

Ding Xu is the Grand Elder of the Youhu Clan. He leads a group of clan elders that include Xin Yao, Lv Cheng Shi, Lord Wen Ying and Baili Xiang. Ding Xu is a sly and manipulative elder with his own personal agenda.

Zi Fei

Zi Fei is one of Yuan Zhong’s weapon spirits. The others are Kai Shan, Lu Chen, Ah Xiu, and Ling Yao. They are all tied to Yuan Zhong and serve him with loyalty.

Li Chao Yang

Chao Yang is the leader of the War Demons Clan. She is a ruthless immortal who wants to rebuild her clan and regain past glory.

Zhi Yue

Zhi Yue is Zhi Dai’s younger brother. He helps to manage the Human Race affairs while his father is in seclusion. Master Yan is his teacher.

Ah Xue

Ah Xue is of the Human Race. She is working as a maid onboard a flying ship and becomes a good friend of Tan Yin. Ah Xue is a kind and down-to-earth woman.

Synopsis

500 years ago, the war between the gods and demons shattered the celestial ladder that connects the Divine and Mortal Realms. The Divine Left Hand of Deity Tai He also fell into the Mortal Realm while he went into prolonged slumber. The hand ended up being wielded by Yuan Zhong, the High Priest of the immortal Youhu Clan years later. With the hand’s power, Yuan Zhong helped Youhu Clan to defeat the War Demons Clan and drove them into hiding.

However, Yuan Zhong was manipulated by the clan’s Grand Elder Ding Xu to be in seclusion to attain divinity after the war. He pretends to be submissive but bides his time to free himself from being restrained. In the meantime, Tan Yin, who is the Godess Wushuang, is tasked to retrieve the Divine Left Hand. But she is sympathetic towards Yuan Zhong and convinces the Divine Council to give Yuan Zhong a chance to live his life rather than killing him for the retrieval. She promises to protect him and will retrieve the hand after Yuan Zhong’s natural demise.

Both Tan Yin and Yuan Zhong begin to develop feelings for each other after spending time together. But Tan Yin is unable to tell Yuan Zhong her real identity while he has his own dark thoughts and agenda which he wouldn’t share with her. This creates frequent conflicts between them while a hidden hand is at work to kill Yuan Zhong.

A Moment But Forever Ending & Recap (Spoilers Alert!)

A Moment But Forever has an ambiguous ending. Tan Yin manages to awaken Yuan Zhong after entering his consciousness in Episode 39. She did so by telling him the whole story of who she is, why she was sent to retrieve the Divine Left Hand, and the 3 promises she made to the Gods Council. She also confesses her love for him. After Yuan Zhong awakened, he used the power of salvation to kill off the Demon Lord to retake possession of his body.

With the Demon Lord’s death, Han Nv has no chance of defeating Yuan Zhong and Tan Yin. But she refuses to listen to Tan Yin’s advice to repent and surrender. Instead she kills herself by turning the Youhu Clan mountainous base into an embroidery and embroidering herself in it.

6 months later, the 3 clans are at peace and prospering. Tan Yin and Yuan Zhong have been spending time traveling together. But she eventually dies and dissipates as she had broken the oath she made to the higher gods by falling for Yuan Zhong and revealing her identity. But she promises that she will always be by his side in a different form.

After her death, an elder from the Divine Realm comes to see Yuan Zhong to invite him to ascend to become a god. He gives Yuan Zhong hope that he could see Tan Yin again and confirms that she is still alive but may appear in other forms. The drama ends with Yuan Zhong believing that he will meet Tan Yin again.

When Did The Leads Get Together?

Yuan Zhong is hostile towards Tan Yin initially as he thinks that she is a War Demon due to her ability to keep coming back from the dead in Episode 8. But his heart softens after she shielded him again from harm in Episode 11. Yuan Zhong tries his best to suppress his growing feelings for Tan Yin who makes him envision the possibility of a happy family life in Episode 18.

Yuan Zhong learns Tan Yin is a small town goddess in Episode 19 based on the clues he has gathered while they were in the town that she had once lived in. Their different values and positions then become a source of conflict between them. He doesn’t want her to change him and his thoughts while she has also been hiding her real identity from him. But Yuan Zhong still gets jealous when another man approaches Tan Yin in Episode 24.

Yuan Zhong and Tan Yin get together in Episode 26 after she manages to convince him to give up on his plan to destroy the Human Realm. He wanted to cleanse the world of resentment and evil after what he had been through. But Tan Yin makes him realize there is something worth looking forward to in life. He asks her to be with him and she agrees. Yuan Zhong proposes to Tan Yin in Episode 32.

Is There Any Breakup?

There is no breakup after Yuan Zhong and Tan Yin became a couple. But Yuan Zhong found out that Tan Yin is Goddess Wushuang and the creator of the Divine Left Hand in Episode 33. Han Nv had possessed Zhi Dai’s body and used her to reveal Tan Yin’s identity to Yuan Zhong to make him hate Tan Yin just before their wedding. As such, Yuan Zhong thinks that Tan Yin doesn’t love him but only wanted his hand. In his depressed mood, he cuts off his hand and collapses in front of Tan Yin.

Tan Yin breaks her oath to the higher gods and confesses her feelings for Yuan Zhong to awaken him in Episode 35 after his body had been possessed by the Demon Lord. He then awakens to kill the Demon Lord before reuniting with Tan Yin.

The Divine Left Hand

In Episode 27, it is revealed that the Demon Lord had invaded Deity Tai He’s body during the fight between gods and demons. Both were about to perish. The Demon Lord’s body was shattered while Deity Tai He’s primordial spirit was dispersed. So, the Demon Lord tried to take possession of Deity Tai He’s body. To stop him, the deity cut off his own hand and drop it into the Human Realm. As a result, the Demon Lord’s primordial spirit was split into 2. Half of it is residing in the hand and the other half is in Deity Tai He’s body.

In order to survive, the Demon Lord has to feed on people’s resentment and Yuan Zhong’s past makes him an ideal candidate as host. But if Yuan Zhong becomes a good man, there will be no more resentment and the Demon Lord will also cease to exist. That is why Yuan Zhong must be killed and the Divine Left Hand retrieved.

The Villain

The villain is Han Nv and she is revealed to be controlling the Old Granny witch of the War Demon Clan in Episode 12. Tan Yin realizes Han Nv is the antagonist in Episode 19 after Han Nv had unsuccessfully used Tan Yin’s birth details in a ritual to possess her body to kill Yuan Zhong.

Tan Yin forces Han Nv to tell her the whole story by threatening to destroy the Divine Left Hand in Episode 34. She has pocketed it after Yuan Zhong cut it off in his desperation due to Han Nv’s scheming. Han Nv reveals that she doesn’t love Deity Tai He. In fact, she hates him because he advised her to let go of her resentment and revenge towards her younger sister, Ah Chu. Han Nv doted on her sister but the latter betrayed her and framed her for seducing men. Han Nv was burned to death as a result. After Han Nv ascended to become a goddess, she believed Deity Tai He’s advice that Ah Chu will repent. But Ah Chu continued to be vicious until her death.

Han Nv feels that Deity Tai He had took away her chance of revenge and hence, became resentful. When she found out that Deity Tai He also had suppressed desires and malice, she released them. The Demon Lord was created from Deity Tai He’s malice. The deity is already dead and the Divine Left Hand is needed to revive the Demon Lord.

Second Couple

In Episode 13, Tang Hua learns Zhi Dai was the one who saved him many years ago based on the sword she gifted him. She tells him her side of the story when he asks her about it. However, she is ready to let go as she is a human while he is an immortal. She feels that she has spent enough of her life being willful by chasing after him. When Tang Hua learns that Zhi Dai’s father is the governor of the Human Race, he becomes suspicious of her feelings for him in Episode 18. This is because Tang Hua is wary of the cooperation between the Human Race and the War Demons Clan. However, Zhi Dai’s angry reaction stuns him.

Zhi Dai softens towards Tang Hua after he shielded her from an attack by the War Demons Clan and became seriously injured. She takes care of him while he slowly recovers. Tang Hua saves her again from her brother’s schemings to cooperate with the War Demons Clan in Episode 28.

However, Zhi Dai owes Han Nv for giving her her youth. Thus, Zhi Dai was threatened by Han Nv to cooperate in Episode 32 which resulted in Yuan Zhong’s body being possessed by the Demon Lord. Zhi Dai makes amends by shielding Tang Hua from Ding Xu’s attack in Episode 35. Tang Hua forgives her and understands her situation.

But 6 months after the Demon Lord’s and Han Nv’s deaths, Zhi Dai has turned old and refuses to see Tang Hua. Tang Hua knows Zhi Dai is avoiding him. So, he writes her letters and tells her stories about the places that he has visited together with his thoughts. He is traveling the path that Zhi Dai took when she was looking for him years ago.

A Moment But Forever Review – Long Subplots

Personally, I find A Moment But Forever to be a little boring. It starts off well with the male lead’s situation being kind of mysterious. He is supposedly a war hero but is being restrained by his own clan. He might give you an initial impression that he is dumb and being brainwashed but that is certainly not the case. After he got his freedom, the adventure of unsealing his weapon spirits begin. This will take about 20 episodes or so whereby he has 4 weapon spirits to unseal. 3 of them will end up being long subplots.

I think this is where I find it lacking direction. While there is a good reason why he needs to unseal his weapon spirits, the overarching plot only gets bits of attention here and there before finally taking centerstage in the last quarter. And his weapon spirits kind of faded into the background after all the time spent on their stories. In other words, once you take away the weapon spirits subplots, there is not much left in the overall story of 36 episodes to tell.

As such, I feel that A Moment But Forever starts to fall flat after the first 8 to 10 episodes. It might be great if you like the subplots and the interactions between the leads. There are certainly still some positives from this drama to keep it far from being a total wreck. Chief among them would be character growth especially for the male lead.

Character Growth & Complex Emotions

This drama is good at fleshing out the evolution of the male protagonist from being a resentful immortal to a kinder one. He starts out on a destructive path but is influenced by the female protagonist to view the world from a different perspective. So, he is no perfect hero but one who is grappling with hate, resentment, and revenge. He can be ruthless, possessive as well as clingy.

Hence, the character has a complex array of emotions rather than a one-dimensional hero. Together with the female protagonist, they will embark on an adventure that will bring out emotions in the viewers. The romance is layered with no strong passion that defines most idol dramas but thrives on simple but enduring concepts of love, loyalty, and trust. It is about keeping promises and always being there as agreed.

This is partly why A Moment But Forever is a highly watchable drama for a lot of people. The romance has a more matured vibe with the woman leading the man to be a better person. There is also no toxic third wheelers that are common in xianxia romances. But it does suffer from a substandard ending that could have been easily avoided.

Ending Could Be Better (Spoilers Alert!)

The drama has an open ending that will not make everyone happy. To me, the female protagonist’s death is expected after she broke her oath when she falls for the guy. But what is not so great is what is implied – that her spirit is still alive and she could be a tree, flower, leaf, bird, or even a breeze. The fact that she can be anything can sound philosophical but also annoying to me. I think making the ending more concrete that is easier for viewers to grasp would be far more satisfying.

The other poor handling of the ending involves the lack of accountability or explanation for the other characters. For instance, we are not told what exactly happened to the male lead’s weapon spirits. They supposedly sacrificed themselves to protect the male lead but one of them appears towards the end. The why and how are missing. It is as if some scenes have been cut out.

Similarly, the reattachment of the hand and the Demon Lord’s possession of the male lead’s body is not well-explained. Neither does the antagonist’s motive sound convincing enough to have such deep hatred for a deity just because he gave her “wrong” advice. Therefore, the whole ending and the story leading up to it just aren’t persuasive enough to give us a truly engrossing drama.

Acting & Chemistry

Some people might see the leads as being a little old. After all, Tiffany Tang made her film debut back in 2007. So, she is past 40 by now. But to me, she suits the role of Ji Tan Yin. Being a goddess that have been around for a thousand years or more, it wouldn’t be practical to cast a young actress to play such a role. The character needs someone more matured to look convincing. Hence, I’m okay with Tiffany Tang’s portrayal of Ji Tan Yin.

Liu Xue Yi is definitely adept at playing complex characters like Yuan Zhong. He stood out in The Blood Of Youth as well as a cruel lunatic in the beginning part of Kill Me Love Me. As Yuan Zhong, the actor has to show a wide array of emotions as the character grows. From anger and resentment to insecurity and clinginess, he nailed them all.

As both Tiffany Tang and Liu Xue Yi are experienced actors, they would know how to make their onscreen romance look compelling. While I wouldn’t label their chemistry as top notch, their interactions and the dialogues are funny at times and serious at others which give the romance an adequate amount of sparks.

My Verdict – An Okay Watch

Overall, A Moment But Forever is an average production to me. I just find the oomph factor to be missing. Perhaps if the story is better executed, the drama would be much more engrossing. For instance, the subplots could be better integrated and shortened. Then, the pace could be quickened rather than languishing for long periods on mere subplots. Many characters also come and go throughout the drama with a few notable ones simply fading away without a proper closure before the story ends. There are simple weaknesses that could have been avoided for a better viewing experience.

Nevertheless, they don’t mar the drama to the extent that it becomes awful to watch. In fact, you might totally enjoy it if the male lead’s darkness and his inner struggle to choose goodness over evil resonate with you. This makes him a morally grey hero which is something different for a xianxia genre. The heroine is a kind and loving goddess who is always there to prod him onto the right path. But you still can’t run away from certain xianxia cliches like reviving a Demon Lord and possessing a body.

For this A Moment But Forever review, I would give it a score of 7.5/10. I don’t find it to be superb as I feel that it is a bit too slow-paced with long subplots that take away the excitement of the overarching story. But it is okay to spend your time on due to its emotional depth and experienced actors. Be forewarned that the drama’s appearance does seem a little dull with plainer costumes and sets that make it look like a low to mid-budget production. But that shouldn’t stop you from giving it a try for its solid acting and character growth.