magnumopusofacoffee

Story thrives part because of nostalgia and part because of the high school romance setting

I remember being obsessed with wattpad back in the day, particularly with books that had stories like this (The Bad Boy's Girl FTW). this story is old and wattpad back then used to be problematic but the director could have tweaked the story a little to make keifer lesser red flag and be more suitable to today's audience. in this day and age when everyone is very aware of boundaries and what behaviour counts as red flags, how am i supposed to ship the FL and the ML when the ML has literally broken her nose? and the acting of the ML is so bad, even scenes where he is supposed to be feeling emotional and stuff, it's difficult to believe it.

The SML, according to the ones who have read the book, is supposed to be a horrid manipulative guy and I waited patiently till ep 16 to start hating on him. But I couldn't. How can I? Till the end he has been portrayed as a guy who is just trying to protect the woman he loves from the bad guy. After the last episode, one can't even root for JJ for uniting (somewhat) with the guy she loves. It looks more like she is an idiot and that Yuri was wronged and since Yuri's acting is better, it's more easy to feel bad for him because you can feel the emotions somewhat.

Andres somewhat redeemed himself in the last episode and his acting was a bit more convincing but absolutely nothing will erase the way he said "are you deaf? leave" in the initial episodes. Acting as bad as that can make anyone turn in their graves.

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Good story, bad acting

I have watched the first 2 instalments of the univerkada series and I liked them both mostly because of their plots that took me back to my wattpad era. The highschool/ college love, something going wrong, separating because of it only to find their way back to each other cooks up a very nice story. It's sweet and light to watch why is why I love stories like these.

while the story is good overall, the plot didn't deal properly with how ely handled her grief. Her father was violent and abusive and he is shown as the bad guy, rightfully so. But her mother had an affair with a married man. from what we know, she is part of the reason that a family broke. i don't understand why she is given such a clean slate at the end. ely constantly saying that her mother was a pure heart etc. etc. seemed like the character just swept all of the mother's mistakes under the rug because she can't handle the idea of a grey personality. a person according to her is either 100% good or 100% bad.

i liked how they didn't fix everything between ely and her dad. this closure was much more realistic. apart from that, when ely talks about the worst thing that happened to her after what her father did, she just says "i had to go to therapy because of you". in my opinion, a very awkward choice of words. the point of even saying the dialogue was to show the impact of her father's actions on her, and the entire impact was just shoved into the dustbin by summarising it with therapy. if someone has an accident, the gravity of the situation is better explained when you say "i fractured my rib and broke my arm" not when you say "i had to go to the doctor". it's almost as if the writer didn't know what might happen to a traumatised person and were too lazy to do any research.

The moments between ely and sevi were very cute and i think that those moments were probably their best acting? because most of the acting sucked. the dialogue delivery was painfully slow. or is that just how rich people talk? idk. every syllable spoken by ely was stretched for some reason. also, the crying was just...awful. there was water all over the face which looked very comical. and as much as i like hearing a character's thoughts, it was so awkward to hear ely's thoughts. it was like reading lines from a script. i preferred sevi's dialogue delivery over ely's but like her, he too doesn't know how to cry properly and his expression for most part of the series was him looking at something/someone with an eyebrow raised.

Overall, the love story is very cute and was the only thing that made me look forward to the episodes. the ost was also great. but everything else is unimpressive if not horrible.

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Huge Let Down

Acting has never been the forte of the Viva One cast. The only reason for their popularity is the nostalgia train that they ride on. With the univerkada series so far- Rain in Espana, Safe Skies Archer and Chasing in the wild, even though the acting was not great, the plot was interesting. Had a lot of interesting moments that makes you wait for the next episode. Avenues of the diamond (AOTD) just didn't have it. Lance Carr was a terrible cast choice and with Aubrey, the chemistry was just not there. Heaven Peralejo (Luna) and Gab Lagman (Sevi) had more chemistry in Rain in Espana than them and they didn't even have any romantic moments!
Because of the fizzled out chemistry, this drama couldn't even ride the nostalgia train properly. The freshness, cuteness and sillyness of a romance that starts in college was simply not there.
There's a scene in Chasing In The Wild where Elyse calls Sevi babe by mistake. Just that 10 second scene is more interesting than the 16 episodes of AOTD combined.

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Overhyped

Boys over flowers was my first ever korean drama and my 7th grade self loved it. I tried to look for the same giddy feels in the chinese adaptation but couldn't find it. The Thai version was recommended by a lot of people which I watched it but honestly, it was pretty overhyped.

Likes-
-Thyme's character development was the best in this adaptation. In most scenarios they were able to differentiate between the right and wrong and give a clear messaging to the audience that everything you do comes with consequences. If I recall correctly, this bit was not addressed well in Boys Over Flowers. They were too busy bringing out Gu Jun Pyo as the hero/ saviour/ messiah whenever Geum Jan Di needed saving.
- This version is much more realistic. It doesn't have the weird island vacationing bit and the bit where Jun Pyo is almost marrying the girl his mother picked for him.
- Gorya is a much better version of the female lead than Jan Di. Ofcourse there's the useless screaming and hitting for no apparent reason bit. But I kind of feel that her character didn't over do "oh look i am so cute, oink oink" bit. (sorry if i sound bitter, but i really dislike even the slightest manic-pixie-dream-girlification of female leads.)

Dislikes-
- THEY ARE IN SCHOOL!!!! Did these rich brats ever go to a university WTH?
- How does Kaning not know where her bestfriend's parents live? I know it when my bestfriend's parents even go for vacation!
- I know I said that Gorya's character is better than Jan Di but her character is still not great. In my opinion, she is very physically harsh. Like imagine a person who recently had brain damage and you are just forcing your love (or whatever the fuck that is), asking him incessantly to swallow a pill. What happened to all the love, kindness and delicateness which you were preaching throughout the entire series?
- Our boy Kavin liked a girl, never admitted it to her and never came to visit her when she called him to meet, went on with his life, meets this another girl, who is now going to every rooftop in the city and showing her sincerity, love and what not. WHY? WHAT DID THE GUY EVEN DO TO DESERVE THIS? WHY ARE WOMEN CHARACTERS ALWAYS WRITTEN WITH A "SHE IS GOING TO FIX HIM" ATTITUDE IN THEM?
- Gorya was on a sports scholarship? Did we ever see her do any sports????? Did she ever talk about sports????? Any sports metaphor atleast????

Having said all this, maybe I am too old now for a series like this. Maybe if I had seen this back in 7th grade this would have appealed to me. It's a better adaptation than Boys over flowers korean and much better than the chinese version because I couldn't even sit through one episode of that one. However, there are much better watches than this one in the market.

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Was not expecting much but was still let down

Cheer Up is soo... infuriating. I watched it till the 7th episode till I couldn't anymore. I hate hate hate FLs who act like that-the constant confused face, drops and loses things all the time, is honestly just ill-mannered and gets passed off as "quirky". The writers gave her the story of a mature, responsible sister who is always looking to make an extra buck but asked her to act like an idiot who doesn't know any better.
I know who she is going to end up with and the guy is so uninteresting, I would rather look at a wall instead. Usually, I wait atleast till the 8th episode to decide if a drama is worth it. But here, I am giving up. It's not worth it. This drama is terrible to say the least.

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