✒Pineapple ⚜️ Persuasion °7.4° °VG°
Shen Yue (A Love So Beautiful, Be Yourself) is Dong Shancai. She's just an ordinary girl. Some even call her ugly, though this actress is a cutie. She's been accepted at Ming De University, and that's a big deal. That's where rich and privileged kids go. It's not long before Shancai learns that “rich and privileged” is a term interchangeable with monsters. There's some mean guys that are at the top of the school's hierarchy (they really aren't that mean, however). Shancai has a run in with one of them right away. She doesn't care who they are, they should be brought down a peg!
Dylan Wang (The Rational Life-7) is the worst one as Dao Ming “Si”. Don't misunderstand: Mr. Wang is an excellent ML. He isn't everyone‘s type. He regularly plays the tortured guy who's chosen to become the torturer. Toxic, angry, and bitter seem to come naturally to him. He can also express intense love and desire, and he cleans up well. I'm a fan. In Love Between Fairy and Devil-8.9 he's fabulous. You guessed it, Wang's the DEVIL. The two leads in that show must role-reverse, and it's shocking to see him act the innocent girl ~ He's fantastic. In MG, he gets cuter with every episode ~ All because of Shancai. In the beginning, he tells his friends that their idea of the perfect date sounds “gross”. He's childish and has some growing up to do.
Darren Chen (The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty) is Hua Ze Lei, Si's best friend. Shancai falls for him first. Most women do. Lei is genuinely kind and sincere. At times, Lei's character is ill-defined and often difficult to u/s. He is actually boring. He makes some mistakes along the way, too. The other two friends are more on the periphery and fodder for 2ndary romances. Caesar Wu (Strange Tales of Jiang Cheng, General's Lady) plays Xi Men Yan, and Leon Leong (Definitely Not Today, My Love, Enlighten Me) portrays Feng Mei Zuo. For the record, Qinge (Liu Yin Hao from Swordsman's Romance) is caustic. His character is awful.
Based on the Japanese manga series Boys Over Flowers written by Yoko Kamio, MG is a 2018 release that is a remake of the 2001 Taiwanese show. Other than Japan, Korea did it first in 2009. Their production of Boys Over Flowers-8.3 hit the international scene and took the world by storm. That show not only changed Korean culture, but it started Kdramas’ climb to world domination. They're just about there, now.
Si, not accustomed to hearing the word “no” falls for Shancai. Falling for him would never occur to her; she hates him too much. However, he starts to adjust to her. His sister is on board. She can see how good Shancai is for Si. But Si's mother will not stand for this riff-raff influencing her son.
Back to sis. SIS-a-Li-cious! I love her. She notices Shancai's talent for cooking and starts working with her. (Her first step? POETRY! 😅) Shancai enters a contest and wows them with a recipe she devised based on the oh-so-common everyday dish, 8 treasure noodles. She did it with a 🍍 sauce. Si's food favs are: Kung Po chicken, braised eggplant, sweet and sour pork ribs, and DanDan noodles. ME TOO! Don't watch this hungry.
Why doesn't somebody tell Shancai that what's happening with her friend is none of her business? She can't be there to protect her friend from life. That doesn't do her friend any good, anyway. Shancai is taking on a friend's problems as if they're her own, and as if she can fix them. We are supposed to support our friends but there's a thin line between altruism and arrogance, sometimes. Furthermore, Si deserves to have her priorities on him. I know of what I speak. Relationships are optional. No one should enter one unless that person is willing to make adjustments and sacrifices in order to have a successful love life. It's a big adjustment, melding your life with someone else's. We have to be able to whittle down some parts of our personality, however, we shouldn't do too much of that. It's a delicate balance.
Si has fallen for a practical girl. He buys her 520 roses. She counts them and comes up with 519! She counts again a couple times. And then she lets him know: They gipped us one. Can't she just enjoy herself? Si is adorable, but he is inclined towards tantrums. Early on, it's: “If I'm a stupid pig, you're the stupidest pig ever!” He's just passionate, and Shancai is no shrinking violet. He has justifiable anger that he expresses in wrong ways, but he loves fully and completely. It takes awhile, but he starts to cuddle her and she starts letting him. Si won't waiver, and he's never boring. What more can a woman ask for? You have to wait until ep33 for their first kiss, but it's swoony.
“I'm very frightened of your fighting spirit.” Shancai is tough. She's going to need every scrap of her scrappiness. The show is comprised of them falling in love and then Si's mother trying to rip them apart. Mom's ruthless. But, I don't think Shancai knows that quitting is an option. Eventually, the four boys begin to acknowledge Shancai's unyielding personality that is like her namesake: a weed that can never be destroyed.
Eps48&49 are loaded with flashbacks & dreams. It's too much. However, the last half of ep49 is wrap-up and pay-off. We get dividends of warmth and glimpses of life going forward for many of the characters. After so much drama, pay-off is nice.
That the bones. When it comes to the filmcraft, there's 50 episodes, so lots of the show is just living life with these folks. It's intermittently clunky and then smooth. It's mostly nice, but some stretches are slower than others. There's a bar in the show where people tell the bartender what mood they're in and what they want their drink to represent, and he brings them something. That's actually inspired… in-spirit-ing😉. There's a Casablanca reference that is pretty impressive writing. The filming of the Ep1 kick is great. Their parties look like a fun time. I was wishing they could have spared us the BOF amnesia motif, and God bless them, they did. I'm downright jealous of some of the fashion. Many of the women are gorgeous, but there's just as many a female character who is not looking her best. Oh my. That outdoor house. It's one of the swankiest structures I've ever laid eyes on.
So, let's Compare MG to BOF, one of my gateway Kdramas.
BoF feels like a pageant or a stage production compared to MG. They are each unreal, but in different ways. BoF feels more alive. MG feels ,more like a dream sequence. They ask much nosier questions in the Chinese version, but much of the dialogue in pre-2019 🇨🇳modern-day dramas is unrealistic and wooden. MG is much better than the average from that era and modern-day Cdramas have come a long way.
Cdrama men are more masculine. They're not as pretty. They are much less emotional. It seems more culturally conservative than BoF, except it's more forward, sexually. There's a comment that these 2 are both adults and what they do is up to them. That would have scandalized our BOF crew.
Kdramas tend to glorify wealth too much, while Cdramas project unease over wealth. It's too close to capitalism, apparently. Si describes to Shancai what her benefits are by becoming his gf. It's pretty tame. Just in trying to woo Jandi, Jun Pyo spends 20k on a makeover. On the flip side, I love Si's house. It's just a touch industrial with muted shades, soft lighting and beautiful artwork that blends in perfectly. MG shows rich people with a fraction of the service staff that the Gu house has in BoF. In MG, rich people fix their own leaky pipes. The F4 gang in BoF are ridiculously 💲wealthy💲. The Chinese dudes are described as men who are very accomplished in their studies. They have money, but the focus was more on their accomplishments. The BoF boys are much meaner - mainly Gu Jun Pyo. He's a monster.
MG is adorable. Bof is melodrama at its best. It starts funnier but turns into more of a tearjerker. MG didn't tear me up much until around episode 30. Jun Pyo is a more needy ML and there's more love triangle tension. Korea just can't get enough of it for some reason.
MG has better 2ndary romances.The one with Zoe Cana is outstanding. MG's warmth radiates more. Some especially warm scenes are when Shanghai has dinner with one of the housekeepers. It's very sweet. They spend more time dedicated to the side romances and there's much less drama. I love the extra time with the rest of the gang. It's nice having more time to breathe with the characters. It would have been nice to see a little more of Jun Pyo & Jandy having fun together.
The story, in all of its iterations, is for romance junkies. I like it enough to watch it in all of its iterations. I do think BOF's execution is superior to MG's but they are both great watches.
QUOTES🗣
Some things are only meaningful if they happen right then and there.
It's so hard to face my own feelings
Even the spring wind wants to chase your smile.
The dark circles under your eyes accentuate the beauty and sadness of a broken heart.
You have to learn to express your emotions in order to {see things clearly,} face reality and make the right decisions.
〰🖍 IMHO
🎬 7.5 🖊〰7 🎭7.5 💓8 🦋7 🌞7 🎨8.5⚡5 🎵 8.6 😅7 😭5.5 😱2 🤢0 🤔4 💤5.7 🔚8
Age 13+ violence and blood dating adult situations (tame)
Re-📺? Doubtful
In order of ~lite & trite~ to ~heavy & serious~ you may also like:
🌐💓 -
C🇨🇳:
A Little Thing Called First Love 8.5;
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1;
Wait, My Youth-8.4
Romance junkies only: Accidentally in Love-6.5 ‘18 B-level scripting, acting, and directing, but still fun/strangely relaxing to watch,
Well-Intended Love-7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine but many object to an outrageous stunt the ML pulls,
Boss & Me-7
When I Fly Towards You-7.8,
You are my destiny-6.8 cute and sweet and 1/2 padding,
Hidden Love-7.8
Dylan Wang (The Rational Life-7) is the worst one as Dao Ming “Si”. Don't misunderstand: Mr. Wang is an excellent ML. He isn't everyone‘s type. He regularly plays the tortured guy who's chosen to become the torturer. Toxic, angry, and bitter seem to come naturally to him. He can also express intense love and desire, and he cleans up well. I'm a fan. In Love Between Fairy and Devil-8.9 he's fabulous. You guessed it, Wang's the DEVIL. The two leads in that show must role-reverse, and it's shocking to see him act the innocent girl ~ He's fantastic. In MG, he gets cuter with every episode ~ All because of Shancai. In the beginning, he tells his friends that their idea of the perfect date sounds “gross”. He's childish and has some growing up to do.
Darren Chen (The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty) is Hua Ze Lei, Si's best friend. Shancai falls for him first. Most women do. Lei is genuinely kind and sincere. At times, Lei's character is ill-defined and often difficult to u/s. He is actually boring. He makes some mistakes along the way, too. The other two friends are more on the periphery and fodder for 2ndary romances. Caesar Wu (Strange Tales of Jiang Cheng, General's Lady) plays Xi Men Yan, and Leon Leong (Definitely Not Today, My Love, Enlighten Me) portrays Feng Mei Zuo. For the record, Qinge (Liu Yin Hao from Swordsman's Romance) is caustic. His character is awful.
Based on the Japanese manga series Boys Over Flowers written by Yoko Kamio, MG is a 2018 release that is a remake of the 2001 Taiwanese show. Other than Japan, Korea did it first in 2009. Their production of Boys Over Flowers-8.3 hit the international scene and took the world by storm. That show not only changed Korean culture, but it started Kdramas’ climb to world domination. They're just about there, now.
Si, not accustomed to hearing the word “no” falls for Shancai. Falling for him would never occur to her; she hates him too much. However, he starts to adjust to her. His sister is on board. She can see how good Shancai is for Si. But Si's mother will not stand for this riff-raff influencing her son.
Back to sis. SIS-a-Li-cious! I love her. She notices Shancai's talent for cooking and starts working with her. (Her first step? POETRY! 😅) Shancai enters a contest and wows them with a recipe she devised based on the oh-so-common everyday dish, 8 treasure noodles. She did it with a 🍍 sauce. Si's food favs are: Kung Po chicken, braised eggplant, sweet and sour pork ribs, and DanDan noodles. ME TOO! Don't watch this hungry.
Why doesn't somebody tell Shancai that what's happening with her friend is none of her business? She can't be there to protect her friend from life. That doesn't do her friend any good, anyway. Shancai is taking on a friend's problems as if they're her own, and as if she can fix them. We are supposed to support our friends but there's a thin line between altruism and arrogance, sometimes. Furthermore, Si deserves to have her priorities on him. I know of what I speak. Relationships are optional. No one should enter one unless that person is willing to make adjustments and sacrifices in order to have a successful love life. It's a big adjustment, melding your life with someone else's. We have to be able to whittle down some parts of our personality, however, we shouldn't do too much of that. It's a delicate balance.
Si has fallen for a practical girl. He buys her 520 roses. She counts them and comes up with 519! She counts again a couple times. And then she lets him know: They gipped us one. Can't she just enjoy herself? Si is adorable, but he is inclined towards tantrums. Early on, it's: “If I'm a stupid pig, you're the stupidest pig ever!” He's just passionate, and Shancai is no shrinking violet. He has justifiable anger that he expresses in wrong ways, but he loves fully and completely. It takes awhile, but he starts to cuddle her and she starts letting him. Si won't waiver, and he's never boring. What more can a woman ask for? You have to wait until ep33 for their first kiss, but it's swoony.
“I'm very frightened of your fighting spirit.” Shancai is tough. She's going to need every scrap of her scrappiness. The show is comprised of them falling in love and then Si's mother trying to rip them apart. Mom's ruthless. But, I don't think Shancai knows that quitting is an option. Eventually, the four boys begin to acknowledge Shancai's unyielding personality that is like her namesake: a weed that can never be destroyed.
Eps48&49 are loaded with flashbacks & dreams. It's too much. However, the last half of ep49 is wrap-up and pay-off. We get dividends of warmth and glimpses of life going forward for many of the characters. After so much drama, pay-off is nice.
That the bones. When it comes to the filmcraft, there's 50 episodes, so lots of the show is just living life with these folks. It's intermittently clunky and then smooth. It's mostly nice, but some stretches are slower than others. There's a bar in the show where people tell the bartender what mood they're in and what they want their drink to represent, and he brings them something. That's actually inspired… in-spirit-ing😉. There's a Casablanca reference that is pretty impressive writing. The filming of the Ep1 kick is great. Their parties look like a fun time. I was wishing they could have spared us the BOF amnesia motif, and God bless them, they did. I'm downright jealous of some of the fashion. Many of the women are gorgeous, but there's just as many a female character who is not looking her best. Oh my. That outdoor house. It's one of the swankiest structures I've ever laid eyes on.
So, let's Compare MG to BOF, one of my gateway Kdramas.
BoF feels like a pageant or a stage production compared to MG. They are each unreal, but in different ways. BoF feels more alive. MG feels ,more like a dream sequence. They ask much nosier questions in the Chinese version, but much of the dialogue in pre-2019 🇨🇳modern-day dramas is unrealistic and wooden. MG is much better than the average from that era and modern-day Cdramas have come a long way.
Cdrama men are more masculine. They're not as pretty. They are much less emotional. It seems more culturally conservative than BoF, except it's more forward, sexually. There's a comment that these 2 are both adults and what they do is up to them. That would have scandalized our BOF crew.
Kdramas tend to glorify wealth too much, while Cdramas project unease over wealth. It's too close to capitalism, apparently. Si describes to Shancai what her benefits are by becoming his gf. It's pretty tame. Just in trying to woo Jandi, Jun Pyo spends 20k on a makeover. On the flip side, I love Si's house. It's just a touch industrial with muted shades, soft lighting and beautiful artwork that blends in perfectly. MG shows rich people with a fraction of the service staff that the Gu house has in BoF. In MG, rich people fix their own leaky pipes. The F4 gang in BoF are ridiculously 💲wealthy💲. The Chinese dudes are described as men who are very accomplished in their studies. They have money, but the focus was more on their accomplishments. The BoF boys are much meaner - mainly Gu Jun Pyo. He's a monster.
MG is adorable. Bof is melodrama at its best. It starts funnier but turns into more of a tearjerker. MG didn't tear me up much until around episode 30. Jun Pyo is a more needy ML and there's more love triangle tension. Korea just can't get enough of it for some reason.
MG has better 2ndary romances.The one with Zoe Cana is outstanding. MG's warmth radiates more. Some especially warm scenes are when Shanghai has dinner with one of the housekeepers. It's very sweet. They spend more time dedicated to the side romances and there's much less drama. I love the extra time with the rest of the gang. It's nice having more time to breathe with the characters. It would have been nice to see a little more of Jun Pyo & Jandy having fun together.
The story, in all of its iterations, is for romance junkies. I like it enough to watch it in all of its iterations. I do think BOF's execution is superior to MG's but they are both great watches.
QUOTES🗣
Some things are only meaningful if they happen right then and there.
It's so hard to face my own feelings
Even the spring wind wants to chase your smile.
The dark circles under your eyes accentuate the beauty and sadness of a broken heart.
You have to learn to express your emotions in order to {see things clearly,} face reality and make the right decisions.
〰🖍 IMHO
🎬 7.5 🖊〰7 🎭7.5 💓8 🦋7 🌞7 🎨8.5⚡5 🎵 8.6 😅7 😭5.5 😱2 🤢0 🤔4 💤5.7 🔚8
Age 13+ violence and blood dating adult situations (tame)
Re-📺? Doubtful
In order of ~lite & trite~ to ~heavy & serious~ you may also like:
🌐💓 -
C🇨🇳:
A Little Thing Called First Love 8.5;
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1;
Wait, My Youth-8.4
Romance junkies only: Accidentally in Love-6.5 ‘18 B-level scripting, acting, and directing, but still fun/strangely relaxing to watch,
Well-Intended Love-7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine but many object to an outrageous stunt the ML pulls,
Boss & Me-7
When I Fly Towards You-7.8,
You are my destiny-6.8 cute and sweet and 1/2 padding,
Hidden Love-7.8
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