This review may contain spoilers
Suspend All Your Disbelief, And Then Some More
This... is pretty awful. There's not a single character or plot point that is believable.
NONSENSE PLOT AND MALE LEAD
The ML becoming super strong and well trained like an assassin after being left alone in a cage for 4 years where he was able to observe and imitate drug cartel training is... entirely unrealistic to say the least (you mean to tell me that he became an expert in hand-to-hand combat without every sparring with another human being? And he learned how to quickly assemble and aim a gun in record time without ever holding a gun - just by imagining it?). And then after the memory loss, every time he gets into a fight (and there are sooooo many of them), his fighting abilities download in memory form like a video game - way too cartoonish and surreal.
And then there are the villains who are completely irrational; they seem nerfed, petty, and appear to have endless free time. There were way too many fights in the first few episodes simply because the ML thwarted their plans once and they kept trying to gang up on him in a fight and vent/get their revenge (like once okay maybe, but they went after him like twice per episode for a while there to no avail, as if the only purpose for their stubborn revenge was to create circumstances for the cops to arrive and cross paths with the ML, and paint him in a negative light in their eyes).
NPC SIDE CHARACTERS
And then some characters do some completely out of left field stuff, and the way that the others just brush it off as if it is not a big deal is alarming. Like an heiress climbs to the top of a skyscraper building complex because she's sad she got dumped, then she nearly falls off the building and the FL and ML rush to save her in the nick of time (and their reflexes, upper body strength, and defying of time and gravity in this scene is totally unrealistic and unbelievable to say the least). BUT THEN - they just bring the girl down and take her to the police station casually, and only the FL feels like this suicidal girl needs to be dealt with or lectured in the slightest - everyone else thinks that she should just go on her merry way, no contacting her family, putting her on suicide watch, obtaining medical/psychological examinations. Her friends are not worried for her either, but are instead like, "let's throw a party, we heard you found a new love interest!" Like HELLO??? Was this scene really that inconsequential? It can only be so if these major plot points are only done for the sole purpose of making the ML look like a hero and giving the CP more chances to interact. All other side characters are 2-dimensional, so of course none of their actions are met with the amount of gravity they deserve.
BAD ACTION SCENES
Another gripe is the unrealistic action scenes (the girl loses her grip on the FL's hand and begins to fall before the ML lunges forward, yet he has time to jump down to a lower beam, THEN jump across to the adjacent beam, AND THEN grab the girl's waste before she can fall even TWO FEET... ok, sure. ).
POOR VISUALS
Then the last thing is the OVERALL UNATTRACTIVENESS of everything I'm seeing on screen. Many of the scenes have poor color grading, and the characters end up looking super pale but also super green, like they are sickly (or aliens). And the ML is styled TERRIBLY. The actor himself is already not good-looking, and then in the first few scenes he has long hair, but not a cute long haircut. And its evenly long around the head, so that the front strands are longer than the back, and the hair falls to the sides of his face in a middle part, looking like an emo teenager who wants to hide his face. And on top of that, with the thin facial hair, the best way I can describe it is looking like Vasco from Lookism (which is not attractive, but more like creepy, doofus ahjusshi). So I thought he could only look better once he cut his hair after returning to China - AND I WAS WRONG. They give him this hideous bowl cut (what's with these "mom cut my hair" teenage boy looks - are they doing it to make him look younger because his character is supposed to be 27 but he looks like he's 40). I think he looked best in the flashbacks of him celebrating his dad's birthday when he was a teenager, he needs to LOSE THE FACIAL HAIR and style his hair up, not down. And when you look that unattractive, you should at least be a great actor to make up for it. The ML's portrayal is very wooden, no emotion, no expressiveness with the eyes, no sub-context, no micro-expressions, - his acting is like watching paint dry. Ma Si Chun looks BEAUTIFUL AS ALWAYS (like her eyes, her nose, her lips, how can one look so angelic?), and even though they over did it with her whitewashing (she and ML straight up look like they are different races), I can't deny how beautiful she is. And of course her acting is good too, the only cringe moments the FL has are when they give her an excessive amount of flashbacks (but that's not her acting, that's the post-editing, making her character more lovesick than is believable).
flashbacks, Flashbacks, FLASHBACKS
Also the LAST last thing - TOO MANY FLASHBACKS. Every fight scene is filled with flashbacks galore, and every time the CP parts ways with each other, they have to give them at least one flashback scene to show that "I've been thinking about you", "I'm probably falling in love right now".
CONCLUSION
These writers are so bad at writing a convincing plot, and the producers are even worse at cutting the scenes together in a way that produces good storytelling. I kept trying to find comments on the Youtube clips for each episode hoping someone else felt the same way I did, but all the fans are clearly delulu. I'm dropping it after episode 9, I'm giving it a 4.5 because I can't bare to give one of my most favorite actresses (Ma Si Chun) a low rating, but if it weren't for her this would probably be a 1.0/2.0.
NONSENSE PLOT AND MALE LEAD
The ML becoming super strong and well trained like an assassin after being left alone in a cage for 4 years where he was able to observe and imitate drug cartel training is... entirely unrealistic to say the least (you mean to tell me that he became an expert in hand-to-hand combat without every sparring with another human being? And he learned how to quickly assemble and aim a gun in record time without ever holding a gun - just by imagining it?). And then after the memory loss, every time he gets into a fight (and there are sooooo many of them), his fighting abilities download in memory form like a video game - way too cartoonish and surreal.
And then there are the villains who are completely irrational; they seem nerfed, petty, and appear to have endless free time. There were way too many fights in the first few episodes simply because the ML thwarted their plans once and they kept trying to gang up on him in a fight and vent/get their revenge (like once okay maybe, but they went after him like twice per episode for a while there to no avail, as if the only purpose for their stubborn revenge was to create circumstances for the cops to arrive and cross paths with the ML, and paint him in a negative light in their eyes).
NPC SIDE CHARACTERS
And then some characters do some completely out of left field stuff, and the way that the others just brush it off as if it is not a big deal is alarming. Like an heiress climbs to the top of a skyscraper building complex because she's sad she got dumped, then she nearly falls off the building and the FL and ML rush to save her in the nick of time (and their reflexes, upper body strength, and defying of time and gravity in this scene is totally unrealistic and unbelievable to say the least). BUT THEN - they just bring the girl down and take her to the police station casually, and only the FL feels like this suicidal girl needs to be dealt with or lectured in the slightest - everyone else thinks that she should just go on her merry way, no contacting her family, putting her on suicide watch, obtaining medical/psychological examinations. Her friends are not worried for her either, but are instead like, "let's throw a party, we heard you found a new love interest!" Like HELLO??? Was this scene really that inconsequential? It can only be so if these major plot points are only done for the sole purpose of making the ML look like a hero and giving the CP more chances to interact. All other side characters are 2-dimensional, so of course none of their actions are met with the amount of gravity they deserve.
BAD ACTION SCENES
Another gripe is the unrealistic action scenes (the girl loses her grip on the FL's hand and begins to fall before the ML lunges forward, yet he has time to jump down to a lower beam, THEN jump across to the adjacent beam, AND THEN grab the girl's waste before she can fall even TWO FEET... ok, sure. ).
POOR VISUALS
Then the last thing is the OVERALL UNATTRACTIVENESS of everything I'm seeing on screen. Many of the scenes have poor color grading, and the characters end up looking super pale but also super green, like they are sickly (or aliens). And the ML is styled TERRIBLY. The actor himself is already not good-looking, and then in the first few scenes he has long hair, but not a cute long haircut. And its evenly long around the head, so that the front strands are longer than the back, and the hair falls to the sides of his face in a middle part, looking like an emo teenager who wants to hide his face. And on top of that, with the thin facial hair, the best way I can describe it is looking like Vasco from Lookism (which is not attractive, but more like creepy, doofus ahjusshi). So I thought he could only look better once he cut his hair after returning to China - AND I WAS WRONG. They give him this hideous bowl cut (what's with these "mom cut my hair" teenage boy looks - are they doing it to make him look younger because his character is supposed to be 27 but he looks like he's 40). I think he looked best in the flashbacks of him celebrating his dad's birthday when he was a teenager, he needs to LOSE THE FACIAL HAIR and style his hair up, not down. And when you look that unattractive, you should at least be a great actor to make up for it. The ML's portrayal is very wooden, no emotion, no expressiveness with the eyes, no sub-context, no micro-expressions, - his acting is like watching paint dry. Ma Si Chun looks BEAUTIFUL AS ALWAYS (like her eyes, her nose, her lips, how can one look so angelic?), and even though they over did it with her whitewashing (she and ML straight up look like they are different races), I can't deny how beautiful she is. And of course her acting is good too, the only cringe moments the FL has are when they give her an excessive amount of flashbacks (but that's not her acting, that's the post-editing, making her character more lovesick than is believable).
flashbacks, Flashbacks, FLASHBACKS
Also the LAST last thing - TOO MANY FLASHBACKS. Every fight scene is filled with flashbacks galore, and every time the CP parts ways with each other, they have to give them at least one flashback scene to show that "I've been thinking about you", "I'm probably falling in love right now".
CONCLUSION
These writers are so bad at writing a convincing plot, and the producers are even worse at cutting the scenes together in a way that produces good storytelling. I kept trying to find comments on the Youtube clips for each episode hoping someone else felt the same way I did, but all the fans are clearly delulu. I'm dropping it after episode 9, I'm giving it a 4.5 because I can't bare to give one of my most favorite actresses (Ma Si Chun) a low rating, but if it weren't for her this would probably be a 1.0/2.0.
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