Weak Rehash
The good:- The main character gives a great performance.
- The music is well suited to the rich emotional themes of this series.
The bad:
- Most of the charm of S1 is left behind. No mc fight strategies. Characters are not very unique. Conflicts are not interesting.
- Netflixification: 8x 30 minute eps is just not enough time to flesh anything out at all. To make it even worse, most scenes feel like they are intentionally milking the clock. You wont see anyone even reach for their phone until it rings 3 full times. Everyone talks incredibly slow, which at first seems to be for dramatic effect but at some point its just not done well, and gives the impression they are just filling time.
- Nothing new or original at all. Especially if you watched S1 and Study Group and any other basic bully dramas then there is absolutely nothing new in this, and nothing done especially well in comparison to other dramas.
- A new friend group is just inserted without much premise, and immediately just have the same camaraderie as S1 friends, which feels forced. Nobody in this season feels real/interesting.
- Highschool students played by fully adult actors is jarring.
- Bullies and thugs are all flat cardboard cutouts.
- Not a single female character in sight, other than his mom.
- Relationship with his mom is touched on but not explored at all. Barely any backstory or context for any of the characters.
- Most new characters are terribly overacted, somehow both cartoonish and also bland.
- The new friend played by a major actor is very forced to try to fill in as Suho vibes, which just feels derivative. We are also supposed to believe he is some kind of powerhouse, but he just looks like an idol.
- The fights are all just brawls, where everyone keeps their hands at their sides and just trade hits to the face while refusing to even try to block. I guess they don't need to block since punches to the face barely faze anyone
- This whole season feels like its mocking the mc whenever he fights. He will grab so many pens and just get them taken from him and endlessly whiff. He actually seems to have gotten much worse at fighting, so the entire season we just watch him get beat down. I don't think there was a single satisfying "hero" moment in this entire season.
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Cute FL and nothing else
Take the short episode length and number of episodes as a warning.The good:
- The FL is great
- The visual and music production is actually pretty strong
The bad:
- The plot makes no sense. It is really really bad in how much you have to turn your brain off
- The ML is an actual bad person. He does multiple actually bad things and treats people badly for no reason. He has no redemption arc at all, not that you can really redeem some of the things he does. And the writers just force a sudden romantic arc out of nowhere, but of course even when he's being portrayed as romantic, he's still treating the FL like an object as if you can just kiss away her objections to actually evil things he's doing
- The plot jumps around as if there are tons of missing scenes and editors just didn't care. This makes the pacing absolutely terrible, and the continuity regularly falls apart.
- The premise is never fleshed out at all, dont come here looking for anything interesting about a girl trapped in a tv show, it is used a little and then has almost no bearing on the plot at all
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Average Rom-com
This is a pretty standard kdrama romcom. Personally I felt like it was only okay, though to some degree that may be because I am not a big fan of comedy and this has a lot of pretty silly stuff in it.For me though there were still a few standout aspects:
- Uhm Tae Goo (ML) portrayed his character with more depth and nuance than many male leads bring.
- Yang Hyun Min (ML friend) brings a huge amount of comedy to the show, while also a lot of heart. The writers really gave him stuff to work with and he made it work.
- Im Chul Soo (antagonist) also brough tons of depth and nuance to his character. He was very vibrantly portrayed.
- All the gangster friendships are very wholesome and nice to see male friendships handled like this.
- Moon Ji In (2FL) is a character I enjoyed though she doesnt get that much screentime, I felt like her character was very realistic and had character
To be a bit critical of some things:
- The female stories are largely brushed aside. In a lot of ways, the FL is just a centerpiece that the actors revolve around, and doesn't actually get to be the focus of the story very often
- The FL and her main antagonist get their resolution basically off screen, another failure to focus on the female stories going on
- Way too much slapstick stuff for my tastes. The ML not being able to handle drinking was utterly absurd. The main antagonist (while entertaining) was also hard to believe he could maintain his position or power while behaving the way he was.
- The romance didn't feel warranted, they mostly just like each other because they have history together, they don't really have anything in common or vibe that well together, which in a situation like this makes it feel like he only likes her because her innocence represents something he lost. Which would be a pretty shallow reason to love someone.
- The final episode was a very weak ending, just a lot of filler and checking boxes
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Lovely quick binge
The episodes are very short, which makes the show an easy binge. The short eps definitely let to a more brisk pace and maybe less depth to be explored along the way, but it still managed to be of a quality level only slightly below a full length drama, and still a large step above other "short ep web dramas".The lead, Gia Ge, is absolutely fantastic in this. The camera loves her and her gaze can just hold its attention in a very powerful way. The plot has beats of romance, revenge, melancholy, beauty; and the show handles each with vividness and care and emphatic emotional impact.
The only criticisms I have are there were a few plotlines that get kind of dropped, or at least not as resolved as I would have liked. But everything still made sense in the end, so it was mostly just the short length not having a lot of room for more, and the writing decisions to be only... somewhat bloodthirsty ;)
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Fun and beautiful fantasy movie
I really enjoyed this film, it is saturated with high fantasy and wonder. The setting is very much xianxia, with sects of cultivators and flying on swords and the whole works. They really portray cultivator magic much more than most shows in this genre.The main 4 actors are all amazing, giving strong performances and making me want desperately to have more time with their characters.
Unfortunately this is a film and not a show, so the time passes much too quick. Also it seems that this is only a part of the story it is based on, but they never made the rest of the films, so the ending is pretty abrupt and not entirely satisfying.
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Charming Cozy Ghost Drama
This drama was very enjoyable. A lot of it is a very typical ghost drama plotline, there is not anything very unique about the plot. But in many episodes I found that the writing was very well polished, an attention to detail that many dramas do not have. Many dramas just force in a trope even when it does not make sense, but this show seemed to care that everything makes sense. The twists and emotional arcs are very well thought out. The performances are also very good. The side stories are especially rich.One criticism is that the final arc has some odd pacing. I am not sure if it was "bad" pacing, but they make some strange choices to reveal things before going back and showing stuff leading up to it. In a way, a lot of surprises are not a surprise because they show you the reveals so early before building up the tension. I am not sure if those were bad decisions, but I would say this is not a drama where you will be guessing a lot. There is some suspense, but it is pretty light.
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Okay drama but paced for web
Pretty straight forward drama that gives you exactly what you would expect from a light romance drama.Unfortunately for me, shortened web dramas like this just don't have the depth to really dig into emotionally. It feels more like an outline of a story that just hits the main scene beats, rather than taking the time to flesh out the characters.
Also, "web drama"ness quality-level, means a lot of the plot points or situations don't make sense if you think too much. Does it really make sense that a CEO is renting an apartment right next door? A lot of things like this the audience is expected to handwave because "well its possible and it sure would be cute if it happened!"
In the end, the show isn't bad if you accept what it is, and it presents itself as exactly what it is, a light short web drama. If you turn your brain off its a cute show.
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Amazing Female Lead
The female lead is amazing in this.The male lead is terrible in this. Just very flat performances combined with writers making him the most useless character.
Some of the other characters are good but for nearly every single one, the plot will ruin any investment you have in them.
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Great characters and disappointing writing
The characters in this are really enjoyable; vibrant and expressively portrayed, I really found myself caring about so many of them. We get something like 4+ romances so we get an assortment of types of couples. Unfortunately the writing and pacing are just really rough and the vast majority of time is spent avoiding real plot and just circling misunderstandings and lying and hiding from each other.Was this review helpful to you?
Mediocre Fantasy
Very mediocre drama. Watched ~11 eps, may put it on in the background to see where it goes, but spent more time being confused and frustrated by the writing than enjoying myself.The good:
- As a fantasy production it is pretty decently put together. Not poorly produced, decent effects, decent filming angles etc
- There are some characters with charm, though a lot of this falls apart when the writing muddles their personalities and motivations. I feel like the actors were probably good, but the scenes and arcs that were written for them just failed their characters
- If you want to watch a show with intention to heckle it, turn on comments and there's a stack of people just laughing at it or tearing it apart
The bad:
The writing is really frustrating in its lack of consistency and its lack of respect for character motivations.
The FL:
Her characterization jumps all over the place, is she clever or an idiot, is she strong and willful or a baby. She doesn't feel consistent at all. In theory she starts out as having grown up on the streets among younger street kids who she takes care of, but as soon as she is off the streets she becomes the ultimate spoiled child. There is no sense that she has street smarts, she is completely gullible, and she acts like a total dependent child - there is no sign at all that she used to shoulder all the responsibility for a group of kids. She is shown to have never relied on anyone when she was homeless, but immediately just becomes completely dependent on every man we encounter once the show starts.
To that point, the FL is regularly portrayed as child-like when around any men, while they are almost universally portrayed as interested in her. It really gets to be pretty creepy with the grooming and possessive vibes, to a degree that even many xianxia "cutesy" FL's don't come across this bad.
Eventually as we forget that she was ever a street kid, and accept her new baby persona, the writing still can't stay consistent. Will she suddenly be willful or will she just let people push her around? Will she suddenly inexplicably be competent and powerful or will she just be mowed over? Will she make the absolute dumbest decisions just because the writers need to set up a misunderstanding plotline, or a persecution plotline? It all just jumps all over the place, and it makes it really hard to stay engaged and invested.
The ML:
Is a wooden block at best, but seems to just be grooming and keeping the FL isolated and we are meant to take it as romantic? Ew.
Other characters:
Too many love interests, basically every man we encounter, and almost all of them give no reason to care or root for them. Personally the most annoying is these romantic interests are regularly just totally disregarding the FLs autonomy. Tons of wrist grabbing and talking over her and "pushy flirting" which is really gross.
Basically no women anywhere. The only other woman in this show is the "bully" who also will be portrayed just as inconsistently in power and authority just suddenly ramping up, despite her also being new to the cultivation world.
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Great lead, terrible show
This show was very disappointing, especially since the female lead just outclasses everything about this production. Her performance is excellent, but everything else about this show ruined any attempt to push through just for her.The direction and the writing are both so flawed that it really became unwatchable. It was actually very odd that every episode begins with a recap "last time on this show" and ends with "next time on this show" (which would spoil the whole next episode), both of which are a level of handholding that I have never seen used since like shows from the 80s or something.
But despite the choice to coddle the viewer with these episode framings; the actual scenes just start abruptly with no explanation of what happened since the previous scene. Many times the show just starts a fight scene and we don't know how the people fighting encountered each other or why they are fighting or where the other people that were present just seconds ago went. The continuity feels completely slapped together.
Along the lines of the jarringly poor continuity, the character motivations are also handled with similar lack of care. Characters take inexplicable actions that make no sense for their character for seemingly no reason other than the writers need to move the story to some specific plot beat, usually with some contrived conflict. To some degree, many shows do this, but this show does it to a degree that feels like it has no respect for the audience's intelligence.
Ultimately, I keep wanting to push through because the main character is such a pleasure to watch, and the core concept of good and bad "heart" cultivators is really interesting, but in the end the quality level was just too low.
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Decent comedy but weird choices to make her a groomer
Maybe not bad, but not my tastes. Personally I found it too heavy on the comedy, it might even be considered slapstick. But if you like a lot of comedy and only a splash of romance then maybe you will like this, if you can overlook the next issue.People trying to reduce this to an age gap show are missing a fundamental issue. The gap isn't the issue, the problem is the grooming that is heavily emphasized and treated as romantic. She was literally his teacher and idolized by him. They emphasize how much he has put her on a pedestal because he was going through such a rough time in school at the time and was super vulnerable. This is not a background part of the plot, it is a core part of his character that dominates multiple episodes. This is actually text book grooming, so to give it the kdrama sparkle of romance is really uncomfortable.
Weirdly they also just show her desperately clinging to men, at least from what I could see, she just clings to whoever is in front of her, which made it hard to feel like the character had any dignity or the prospective romance had any value, since she's just willing to settle for anything.
Beyond those issues show was decent, the characters and acting are good, and the broader plot about the historical preservation people is really interesting.
Though I found it weird that his character is supposed to be a devoted historical reenactor type, but has a modern haircut? I am by no means an expert, and even I expected him to have his hair tied up on the top of his head, especially wearing that hat, it was jarring to have short hair under it.
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Interesting premise, great lead, mediocre writing
The good:- Zhao Lu Si is always a joy to watch perform. She definitely is the best thing about this show.
- The setting and concept are interesting and not very common. Combining the early 1900s with fantasy has tons of potential for a fun an interesting story
- Focusing on healing magic / skills is interesting. While there is some fighting, this is a rare chinese fantasy that isn't just focused on wuxia or xianxia themes, it develops its own fantasy ideas.
The bad:
- The writing is very bad. Plotlines don't have internal consistency. Scenes make no sense, or are clearly forced just to have a specific story beat whether they work or not.
- The characters are dumb and not very likable. With maybe the exception of the 2 leads, especially the antagonistic characters or just peripheral characters are just really annoying. It goes beyond "they are making trouble for our MCs" and more to a degree of "why is everyone letting them be clearly and overtly evil and then acting like they're not. This gets back into the above point about continuity consistency. Every bad thing someone does is immediately forgotten about for no clear reason.
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Very weird to frame as a romance
The age gap for the actors is very concerning, but also the age gap within the plot is also very uncomfortable. The basic premise that a 15 year old has been essentially living in isolation for her whole life, means that her mental age is even lower than her physical age. A full grown man swooping in and developing a relationship with such an inexperienced child is really disgusting to portray as a romance genre show.Beyond that, the actual plot starts with some interesting supernatural ideas, but it jumps away from them very fast and then it loses the thread on most of the interesting plot points.
It is really a shame that this drama made so many bad choices, because Jang Hee Jin gives a strong performance, but it is not enough to warrant giving this drama a full watch
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Only if you really want to watch fantasy
Overall I would say that this was not very good. You would have to really really just want to watch a fantasy show to watch this.The good:
Honestly there is not much. One lead female actor tries to give a good and dignified performance, and does really well. The other lead female actor gives a fun and charming performance, and does really well. They both do well but just are not enough to salvage the rest of the show being so rough.
The bad:
Personally my main issue is that the main character seems like something a 14 year old boy would think is cool. Just a lot of unearned swagger, and everything always works out for him just because.
The other main issue, and the one that probably everyone will struggle with, is the pacing. The story is indecypherable for multiple episodes. We bounce between character arcs without any real idea of who they are or why we should care. The story momentum randomly seems like its picking up and then just flounders and resets, multiple times. If you watch on Viki and turn on comments, you will just see a stream of people being frustrated and giving up on the show over the course of the first 6 episodes.
The other thing about the writing is that plot points are written exceptionally badly. Like really badly, to the point I was regularly confused how it even made sense that a character would say or do things. Do not expect any character's to behave in any consistent way, or to do things that make sense.
Beyond those main issues, there are more issues, just generally very bad and cheap looking costuming. The fights are not filmed well. These points I personally did not care about that much, and would have forgiven if the story was better, but alas failing on all fronts really has me questioning how much I have to just want to watch a fantasy show to stick with this one.
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