The Starry Night, the Starry Sea

In the modern Chinese fantasy-romance TV series The Starry Night, the Starry Sea, merman prince Wu Julan (Feng Shaofeng) travels onto land in search of his spiritual pearl, an object of magic and healing, and without which he is slowly dying. The pearl was stolen from Wu Julan over a century prior by a friend that betrayed him. His search takes him to an island where he meets Shen Xiao Luo (Bea Hayden), a descendant of the man who stole the pearl.

Believing that Shen Luo is the key to finding the pearl, Wu Julan stays close to her. As for Shen Luo herself, she is a cheerful young woman who doesn't believe in love and is uncertain about the direction of her life. Through various shenanigans, Wu Julan ends up living in Shen Luo's house, doing chores for her and helping with her money-making schemes. Feelings get involved, too, which is made complicated by Wu Julan's mission to get the spiritual pearl back. There's also another party, a black wizard, who is after the pearl for his own agenda.

It's a light-hearted though melancholy story told in 32 episodes, strongly focused on Wu Julan and Shen Luo's falling in love with each other despite themselves, the various antics they and their friends get up to, and a knotty tangle of love triangles. The story takes place almost entirely on land, and we don't see other merfolk, but Wu Julan has a network of human allies who know his identity and have been helping him for centuries. Wu Julan has special abilities as well, including super strength, super speed and enhanced hearing, though he also has weaknesses to the moon phases and the lack of his spiritual pearl. The love story itself features plenty of interspecies shenanigans, with Shen Luo having to grasp what it means to love a merman with a long lifespan.

Wu Julan is mainly seen in his fully human form, but he has a merman form with blue claws, heads fins and tail. There are a few brief underwater scenes towards the later part of the show after Shen Luo has learned about Wu Julan's true identity, and though Wu Julan's merman tail is CGI-enhanced, the scenes are dark enough and/or filmed far way enough that it's pretty decent for what it is.