God Is a Girl (2025)

Forbidden thirst

Loved it. Obsessed with it. Could write a thesis about it. Fearing I will find everything bland after it. ZZD and Zuo Yi are completely immersed in their roles. I wish I knew who directed and wrote the drama because there was some really standout work done here, as usual for verticals you have to work with limited means (sets, extras, music, costumes, time, etc.) to sell your story, and they achieved quite a feat of magic, creating this fascinating, enchanting piece of drama set in an exotic, lush bubble.

The ambitious story is about the 10-years long tragic, love/hate, push/pull relationship between an immature, self-destructive teenage HK heiress and her ex-criminal guardian running away from his violent past, trying very hard to keep the word he gave to her mother to raise her without touching her, while being desperatly in love with her (mission : impossible). ZZD ad Zuo Yi lit my screen on fire with their raw chemistry, and their romance gave me strong vibes of 90's/00's angtsy melo shoujos like Fuyumi Soryo's Mars, or Saito Chiho's messed up love affairs (he even wears a frilly open-neck chemise, a staple of even older golden era shoujos). She's in a hurry to grow up, he's torn between lust and his duty to see her live her youth without burning steps. Of course she has no idea how much her playful, abrasive and curious behavior is cruel to him until he starts losing control and she finds herself overwhelmed and scared of what she aroused. It's perfect, and then it becomes even more complex as they start to involve other people in their toxic relationship. Complaints were made against the drama for being too confusing, but I think this is half due to brutal edits (some scenes are clearly missing parts) and half the case of a drama that is not overtly explicit, needing you to pay more attention to implied meaning, frame composition, and physical acting/choreography than any telling (they even repeat like a mantra that love is about action, not intention, or something like that according to the subs, I think that's the gist).

For example, they use a TON of water imagery because the story is all about...thirst, and pent-up lust (also water is one of the first visual or sound clue used in dramas to imply desire). There is also the idea that the heroes need each other like they need water to drink or air to breath, combined with the very delicious (yet again kinda old school) plot of the tragic couple that everything pulls apart (danger, age, distance, family ties, generations, engagements, class, even country as he's given a stranger vibe with blond hair and can speak italian). I don't think we need to understand precisely what is going on with the mafia (he's running from a very shady past, thinks he's cursed to cause doom to every woman he's close to : that explains most of his actions until the end). I also think that it's a drama you can re-watch to understand better, as many scenes are quite rich in symbolism (I watched it three times when I discovered it, have since watched it two more times, and know I will come back to it).

Finally, I will fight for the idea that the ending is 100% a true HE : the final arc fell victim big time to obvious limitations in costumes and sets, but there are some definitive clues that it is not a dream (the necklace, the phonecall, the change of scene), at this point of the story she has risen to his level, confessed her feelings (great scene by the way, all done without explicit words) and what he tells her in their little eden is going full circle with their first meeting. Language is very important to the show (love language, foreign language and dialects, body language, what can't be said, the gap between adult's and kid's words, between what you say and what you feel), and I don't know why they would put such an obvious reference to what she first said to him if they didn't intend that precise scene to be his belated, real answer. There is also the fact that he was no stranger to disappearing from her life with no warning, and the way he reappears (while they play the "prove love with your actions" line !) is coherent with the idea that he had to be "reborn" and shed his past to be with her, fully and without pretense (also a staple in romance and dramas in general, using bodies of water all the time to mean the death of an old self and the birth of a new one). Also note how the drama starts at night in dark, troubled waters and ends with them basking in the sun in clear waters after what felt like a never-ending damp, rainy season (I can go on forever with the water symbolism).

So yeah, She's Trouble (hate the "god is a girl" dumb english title that has nothing to do with anything) is getting on my vertical pantheon with National Husband, and it has ruined me : give me all the pretentiously artsy, indie-like romantic verticals that have deep messages, SYMBOLISM, and the hottest, most talented actors of the vertical industry drowning their existential crisis and sexual frustration in cheap whisky and cold showers while looking fabulous. I'm desperate for a director's cut of it or at least a version with all scenes intact and a solid translation.

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