That's wild if true! I have seen a few videos of her in some variety television show, she came across as quite a sweet person. It would be something if how Noda talks about her is really her true personality.
wait is that like a compliment?? bc i was just about to watch her movies and dramas
I meant it as a compliment but don't take it as a serious recommendation to check out her filmography since I have only watched only one film with her in it.
This is definitely a show of two halves. It is amazing how quickly the show went from a run-of-the-mill YA TV show to a pretty good coming-of-age story.
First things first, the first half of the show drags so much. There is so much filler in the first half that I am quite sure that at least three to four episodes worth of content could have easily been cut out and that would result in an improved show. Honestly, I considered dropping it more than a couple of times, but after finishing the final episode, I am glad that I kept up with it to the end.
I started watching this right after With You —which I enjoyed quite a bit but felt the ending could have been handled better— and struggled to form a connection with any of the characters or care about their problems. In the earlier episodes, I kept thinking how With You did everything so much better. My Huckleberry Friends just couldn't match with Class 2 the camaraderie that With You was able to conjure between the members of Class 5 and their homeroom teacher. So many other things felt wrong: the character interactions didn't feel earned but merely exigencies of the plot, the drama seemed too hamfisted, the show relied a bit too heavily upon sentimentality, and the direction and the story didn't seem to mesh that well. It seemed the director was filming an indie coming-of-age story but the writer/s wanted to narrate a melodramatic high-school love triangle.
But something changed around the second half of the show. Suddenly, I found myself heavily invested in the lives of all the characters. The soundtrack started to bang big time. I even got moist-eyed more than a couple of times and by the time the show ended I was completely in love.
Now, I think it is probably better than With You in more ways than that show is better than it. This show's ending is definitely stronger and many times more satisfying than that of With You. When it comes to characters, I believe this show might have the upper hand there as well. Don't get me wrong, nothing here overtakes or even matches the camaraderie that the members of Class 5 share with each other and the audience by extension for me, but I don't recall thinking any character was wasted here as I thought about Lu Xing He from With You. Overall, I would say this is the finest high school drama on this website for me so far.
Hmm, actually when I was reading With You, the leads here and in Unrequited Love were mentioned quite a lot. It…
Thanks for your response. So, it is true that she is his aunt! Is With You the first book in the series?
It just doesn't make sense to me. Initially, I put it down to them not having planned to adapt the rest of the novels when they adapted With You for TV and, hence, deciding against mentioning characters from the other books. But, then, how come the With You TV adaptation included characters from Unrequited Love (admittedly, with different actors) but not the ones from this show who definitely must have had more interactions with characters from that show. In fact, Zhou Mo and Xu Yan Liang from With You pop up on a few occasions throughout this show. I just don't get why they didn't include any interactions between the characters of this show and With You in either of the shows. Heck! Lu Xing He is literally Lin Yang's classmate and Yu Huai and Zhou Zhou are related and in the same year at Zhen Hua but yet we don't see them interact anytime. It would have been better if they had just excised this plot point from the show altogether. I know it's such a small issue to get worked up about but it just slightly bothers me.
I just finished the first episode and wanted to seek clarification about whether the female lead here is supposed to be the aunt of the male lead from With You? If that really is the case, then it seems quite an unnecessary plot point to include. Did the author not think through how this creates unnecessary plotholes? They are in the same year but never meet up during their time at Zhen Hua. None of the characters mention the other to either of them. Even Zhou Mou who is close to both the male lead from With You and the female lead here never brings her up in With You. Very strange!
I really wanted to love this show more than I do because the production, the acting (Tan Songyun, especially, was a revelation to me), the characters, and the direction were generally very good. I just loved the characters and the way they navigated the challenges in their school and personal life, but damn! Why did they have to include an extra male character who goes above and beyond for the female character numerous times even when knowing she is obsessed with the other male character? I was not a huge fan of this aspect of the show. I had the same issue with A Love So Beautiful— the only other Chinese high school TV show I have seen so far. Maybe, this is just a trope in Chinese TV shows, and if it is, then it is a really unnecessary one. It only caused the show to lower in my estimation. Additionally, the ending was rushed and did not feel fully earned. A decade is a very long time, especially when you have just come out of high school and are beginning college. The feelings of the characters and the repercussions of their actions should have been explored more and handled thoughtfully. I can not help but think that if the show ended with them taking their college entrance test and the rest was left open-ended for the audience to ponder, this show could have been among my favourite coming-of-age stories.
At the end of the day, these are just opinions, either yours or mine. A show can engage you even if it is deficient in some way. At least, that is how I feel about JoL. It could very well be that you and I expect different things from a show and maybe I am just nitpicking, but there were some moments in JoL that really stretched credibility too far and my suspension of disbelief vanished. I also found myself rolling my eyes at a few moments because either the direction was lacking, the editing was subpar, or the delivery of lines by the younger cast in certain moments didn't sell the dialogue or they resorted to overacting. But, regardless of all this, I genuinely am looking forward to the next season and believe the first season of the show ended strongly. Coming to NiF, I find it to be a superior show because I find its lack of reliance on melodrama very tasteful. I also think the direction and acting is very mature and subtle. I can not remember any moments where I found the show overly dramatic. Additionally, it's also not fair to compare the ratings on this site with that of Douban's. For example, The Untamed has a rating of only 7.7 there compared to its 9.1 here. MDL ratings are always inflated because mostly only fans tend to vote on TV shows here.
I understand it's just opinions, but I think you are seriously underrating NiF by calling it "ok". If nothing else, it should be abundantly clear the direction and acting in NiF is of a superior quality than JoL. It has a rating of 9.4 with 564,267 voters on Douban, after all. As good as JoL is, it certainly has a lot of moments which make you roll your eyes. Maybe a director of Kong Shen's caliber could have made it better. Anyway, JoL is definitely one of a very few good C-Dramas of the last five years.
Late to comment but– since NiF 3 is also produced by Daylight Entertainment, there's every reason to believe…
I want Daylight Entertainment Productions to put their best people on this project. Kong Sheng is one of the best Chinese directors and without him, I fear the show won't be the same.
This news confirms my belief that East Asians are some of the most jingoistic people in the world. TV/movies set in any historical setting in the US/Europe often use costumes with a mix of styles from different nations and people enjoy watching them. Even when there are naysayers, never do they clamour for cancellation, just change. But what do we have here? A bunch of race/culture supremacists getting their knickers in a twist just because some character in a harmless TV show is dressed according to a close neighbouring nation's culture, with which there have been plenty of cultural exchanges throughout history.
Can someone tell me whether the two directors and the screenwriter from the previous seasons are going to reprise their roles? NiF is the reason I joined this website, and even though NiF 2 isn't held in that high a regard, I still loved that very much. I am looking forward to this new part so much.
First things first, the first half of the show drags so much. There is so much filler in the first half that I am quite sure that at least three to four episodes worth of content could have easily been cut out and that would result in an improved show. Honestly, I considered dropping it more than a couple of times, but after finishing the final episode, I am glad that I kept up with it to the end.
I started watching this right after With You —which I enjoyed quite a bit but felt the ending could have been handled better— and struggled to form a connection with any of the characters or care about their problems. In the earlier episodes, I kept thinking how With You did everything so much better. My Huckleberry Friends just couldn't match with Class 2 the camaraderie that With You was able to conjure between the members of Class 5 and their homeroom teacher. So many other things felt wrong: the character interactions didn't feel earned but merely exigencies of the plot, the drama seemed too hamfisted, the show relied a bit too heavily upon sentimentality, and the direction and the story didn't seem to mesh that well. It seemed the director was filming an indie coming-of-age story but the writer/s wanted to narrate a melodramatic high-school love triangle.
But something changed around the second half of the show. Suddenly, I found myself heavily invested in the lives of all the characters. The soundtrack started to bang big time. I even got moist-eyed more than a couple of times and by the time the show ended I was completely in love.
Now, I think it is probably better than With You in more ways than that show is better than it. This show's ending is definitely stronger and many times more satisfying than that of With You. When it comes to characters, I believe this show might have the upper hand there as well. Don't get me wrong, nothing here overtakes or even matches the camaraderie that the members of Class 5 share with each other and the audience by extension for me, but I don't recall thinking any character was wasted here as I thought about Lu Xing He from With You. Overall, I would say this is the finest high school drama on this website for me so far.
It just doesn't make sense to me. Initially, I put it down to them not having planned to adapt the rest of the novels when they adapted With You for TV and, hence, deciding against mentioning characters from the other books. But, then, how come the With You TV adaptation included characters from Unrequited Love (admittedly, with different actors) but not the ones from this show who definitely must have had more interactions with characters from that show. In fact, Zhou Mo and Xu Yan Liang from With You pop up on a few occasions throughout this show. I just don't get why they didn't include any interactions between the characters of this show and With You in either of the shows. Heck! Lu Xing He is literally Lin Yang's classmate and Yu Huai and Zhou Zhou are related and in the same year at Zhen Hua but yet we don't see them interact anytime. It would have been better if they had just excised this plot point from the show altogether. I know it's such a small issue to get worked up about but it just slightly bothers me.
Additionally, the ending was rushed and did not feel fully earned. A decade is a very long time, especially when you have just come out of high school and are beginning college. The feelings of the characters and the repercussions of their actions should have been explored more and handled thoughtfully. I can not help but think that if the show ended with them taking their college entrance test and the rest was left open-ended for the audience to ponder, this show could have been among my favourite coming-of-age stories.
Me: Yes!
Douban Score: No!
It could very well be that you and I expect different things from a show and maybe I am just nitpicking, but there were some moments in JoL that really stretched credibility too far and my suspension of disbelief vanished. I also found myself rolling my eyes at a few moments because either the direction was lacking, the editing was subpar, or the delivery of lines by the younger cast in certain moments didn't sell the dialogue or they resorted to overacting. But, regardless of all this, I genuinely am looking forward to the next season and believe the first season of the show ended strongly.
Coming to NiF, I find it to be a superior show because I find its lack of reliance on melodrama very tasteful. I also think the direction and acting is very mature and subtle. I can not remember any moments where I found the show overly dramatic.
Additionally, it's also not fair to compare the ratings on this site with that of Douban's. For example, The Untamed has a rating of only 7.7 there compared to its 9.1 here. MDL ratings are always inflated because mostly only fans tend to vote on TV shows here.