General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Imperfect Love (不完美的她)

Imperfect Love (不完美的她) is a 2020 Chinese web drama directed by Liu Biao (刘飚), adapted from the 2010 Japanese television series Mother, starring Zhou Xun as Lin Xuzhi (林绪之), a woman who rescues an abused girl and searches for the truth of her own childhood. It premiered on March 27, 2020 on Tencent Video and iQiyi, ran 22 episodes, and won the annual quality web drama award at the 2020 Shanghai International Film and TV Festival Internet Film Summit.¹^•² Despite a cast led by three award-winning actresses, its Douban rating fell steadily during broadcast, and it became a widely discussed case of the difficulties of localizing Japanese drama remakes for Chinese audiences.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Original title	不完美的她; international listing title Imperfect Love¹^•⁵
Format	22 episodes, mainland China, urban, crime, drama; premiered March 27, 2020 on Tencent Video and iQiyi¹^•²
Source material	Remake of the 2010 Japanese drama Mother by screenwriter Sakamoto Yuji, rated 9.4 on Douban⁶
Main cast	Zhou Xun (Lin Xuzhi), Huang Jue (Tian Fang), Kara Wai/惠英红 (Yuan Ling), Angie Chiu/赵雅芝 (Zhong Hui), Jin Shijie (Li Ze)¹^•⁷
Production	Jointly produced by Penguin Pictures, Dongshen Film (东申影业), and Guangmang Pictures (光芒影业); Liu Biao directed, Lu Yi (路怡) was producer and screenwriter²
Reception	Douban score fell from 7.3 at launch to 6.5 at the finale by one report (another gives 7.5 to 6.7); over 280 million effective views per Yunhe data³^•⁶
Award	2020 Shanghai International Film and TV Festival Internet Film Summit annual quality web drama, August 6, 2020²

Spoilers

Story and characters

The drama is told from the perspective of Lin Xuzhi, a successful professional woman haunted by a fragmented memory of domestic abuse and by having been abandoned as a child by her birth mother. From the start of the story she is asking "who am I"; this unresolved identity question leaves her sensitive and closed off from others.⁸ When she meets Mu Liansheng (穆莲生), a seven-year-old girl beaten by her mother's boyfriend and treated as a plaything, she recognizes a kindred hurt, takes the girl with her despite the criminal risk of kidnapping, and eventually decides to become her mother.⁸^•⁹ In one of the story's crisis points, the boyfriend Shang Wu (尚武) tries to burn the girl alive, and Lin Xuzhi rescues her at that moment.⁹

Three mothers. The series builds its emotional structure around women in different maternal positions. Zhong Hui (钟惠), played by Angie Chiu, is the birth mother who endured an abusive marriage, at first submitting and later resisting her ex-husband's harm.¹⁰ Yuan Ling (袁玲), played by Kara Wai, is the adoptive mother, decisive at work and defiant toward a husband who valued sons over daughters, yet unable to win her adopted daughter's openness.¹⁰^•⁸ Mu Liansheng's own mother Mu Jing (穆静), living under economic pressure with her abusive boyfriend, wrongly believes that discarding her child will free her.⁸ Tong Yao plays Gao Shan (高山), Lin Xuzhi's independent-minded friend.¹⁰ Jin Shijie plays Li Ze (李泽), Lin Xuzhi's biological father, whose storyline the adaptation expanded into the series' suspense focus: he appears wrapped in darkness from the first episode and works with Shang Wu to track the fugitive pair.¹¹

Adaptation from Mother

The source, Mother (マザー), was written by Sakamoto Yuji (坂元裕二), the screenwriter of Tokyo Love Story, Quartet, and The Best Divorce, and aired in 2010. It uses a case of child abuse and abduction to examine motherhood, with women's mutual salvation running through it.⁴ The Japanese original ran 11 episodes with a comparatively single narrative line centered on the child, and it earned a Douban rating of 9.4.¹¹^•⁶

The Chinese version made substantial changes. The main viewpoint shifted from the little girl to Lin Xuzhi, the emphasis moved to women's self-growth and independent personhood, and the protagonist was given a fuller portrait as a career woman, with the emotional bonds recast toward mutual support among women.⁴ The production team described the intent as a "she power" message of independent, resilient women, with characters of different ages, backgrounds, and social positions.¹⁰ The remake also gave much more background on Lin Xuzhi's childhood and her relationships with her adoptive mother, birth mother, and birth father, which some viewers of the original felt made the causes too explicit and weakened the suspense and the tragedy of the Japanese version.¹² The title itself was changed from Mother to Imperfect Love, a name the critics linked to the female characters' flaws: Lin Xuzhi's personality damage from abandonment, Yuan Ling's incomplete family, Zhong Hui's thirty-year-old secret, and even Mu Liansheng's missing front teeth behind her perfect smile.¹¹

Mother had already been remade internationally. Nippon TV licensed a South Korean remake to CJ ENM; the Korean version won Best Drama and Heo Yool won Best New Actress (Television) at the 54th Baeksang Arts Awards on May 3, 2018, and Korean, Thai, and Chinese versions all aired between 2018 and 2020.¹³^•³

Themes

The series touches on subjects rarely treated in Chinese drama: child abuse from a female viewpoint, non-blood-related motherhood, domestic violence, single motherhood, and mental illness.⁸^•¹⁴ Commentators noted that it tried to cover family violence, parent-child relations in the original family, childhood trauma, marriage and childbearing, and the balance of power between men and women in a single series, using multi-thread narration and a female ensemble, and that it sacrificed some logic in secondary plots to present these "imperfect women."⁸ The opening title animation mapped real domestic-violence criminal cases onto a map of Chinese provinces, an effect praised as striking before it too drew plagiarism accusations.³

Reception

Ratings decline. The Douban score started at 7.3 and ended at 6.5 according to Lianhe Zaobao, while the People Daily app gives 7.5 falling to 6.7; both agree the score slid throughout the run and marked the lowest Douban rating of Zhou Xun's career since she became famous.³^•⁶ Yunhe data put the series' effective views above 280 million, but in its first nine days it produced only five trending topics, all on the March 27 premiere day, and on March 31 its effective-play market share was 1.62 percent, seventh across platforms.³^•⁴ On the Maoyan all-network heat chart it never rose above fourth place during its first four days, behind Skate into Love and other concurrent series.¹⁴

Criticisms. Negative reviews concentrated on plot logic and editing. Viewers cited stiff dialogue, poor dubbing, scattered themes, chaotic pacing, and adaptation choices that felt implausible or poorly localized.³ Soon after launch, viewers found that a plot point in episode 7 resembled the 2019 British series Flack (公关危机), and the title animation was also accused of plagiarism; together these accusations put the series in a credibility crisis from the start.³ Critics also faulted the film-style technique: the reverse chronology and fragmented dual timelines demanded that viewers reconstruct the plot themselves, and the heavy use of Zhou Xun's voice-over monologues to "elevate" themes about domestic violence and female independence was judged preachy rather than dramatic.¹⁵^•¹⁶ A People Daily commentary concluded that the imported story core neither fit Chinese reality nor let the Japanese version's high-emotion scenes keep their force.⁶

Positive assessments. Reviewers consistently praised the performances of the three lead actresses and the production quality.³ The Qilu Evening News commentary argued that although the series fell short of expectations, it went further than most in widening women's stories and raised questions worth thinking about.⁸ On August 6, 2020 it received the annual quality web drama award at the Shanghai International Film and TV Festival Internet Film Summit.²

Place in the remake wave

The series belongs to a broader wave of Chinese remakes of well-regarded Japanese dramas, including Midnight Diner, Proposal Daisakusen, Tokyo Women's Portrait, and An Jia (from The Woman Who Never Lies era hit Ie Uru Onna lineage of property-themed drama), whose Chinese versions varied widely in quality and often suffered from poor localization.⁴ Industry figures cited in the discussion noted that remakes are favored because the story and characters are pre-tested and attract major actors, while original scripts take one to three years to develop with a survival rate of roughly ten to twenty percent.⁴ Against this backdrop, Imperfect Love became a frequently cited example that a strong cast and film-grade production cannot substitute for a coherent script.¹⁵

The 2025 short drama of the same name

A separate work uses the same Chinese title on iQiyi: a 2025 short drama (短剧) of 100 episodes directed by Zheng Hui (郑辉). Its heroine Li Shengxia (黎盛夏) is betrayed by her husband and her closest friend, dies and returns to live again, and plots revenge against the betrayers.¹⁷ It is unrelated to the 2020 Zhou Xun series beyond the shared title.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles Cr to In

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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