ataraxy

Duoduo is his kindred spirit. Wan'er is his soul mate.

I feel as if people really don't recognize why Wan'er is so important to him. She's basically his happy place away from the world of intrigue. She represents the calm and "joy of life" he desperately wants.

Duoduo is basically a female version of his personality. They basically have a BFF sort of relationship whereby he's able to feel comfortable enough to call her a friend.

Yes he's really good in that role and it's an unconventional one where he's super sensitive (despite being this hardcore athlete) and basically cries on demand. She (Jin Chen) is also really good in that role as you'll come to find out. Their chemistry by the time it hits e17 is among the best you'll see in a CDrama.

So I haven't watched this yet since I'm waiting to binge it when everything is done, but Wang An Yu is a fantastic actor of his generation and I have little doubt that he'll become more and more popular in the future.

NiF1 is the #1 CDrama on A LOT of peoples lists for a good reason so it's definitely worth watching and can be considered a masterpiece. NiF2 is 50 years after the events of 1 and it's a different type of a story set in the same world. It's not really a sequel but it does have some common elements that you would appreciate more only if you watched 1 but it's not necessary. It's also very good and worth watching.

In terms of production quality they're both as good as anything released today. There's some janky CGI in the first episode of NiF 1 but it's really no big deal. The cinematography, costume design, set design, sound design, acting, story, etc more than make up for any of its short comings.

NiF2 suffers even less from this. In fact both of them are better than anything released this year in my opinion.

The synopsis here is pretty sparse but I can infer that it will also be fairly independent of the other two since this time it takes place in a different state from the first two.

Bai Jue was literally the smartest person in the drama ALP. That is to say, everyone was dumber than him.

That's just it...they actually used the source material but they changed characters around and/or event ordering. Of course they also just straight up added new things as well (like that cliffhanger).

FBS was basically bad fan fiction. That isn't to say it's awful on its own merit but it did itself no favors with changing the story in bizarre ways only to leave a cliffhanger that won't ever be resolved because they invented it.

I actually liked FBS on its own, especially since the genre in CDrama is super underrepresented. However, it butchered the actual BTTH story for no apparent reason.

I haven't tried watching this one yet but from reading these comments I suspect that it's not doing the story justice either which is a shame because there are no actually good novel->donghua->drama adaptations even though they make them every now and then.

Which is kind of odd considering that as a child he was clearly more clever and intuitive than even adults. I guess the kid got spoiled rotten by all of the True Gods and became a trust fund baby lmao.

S1 wasn't really canon to begin with so don't feel too bad. They really changed the story pretty significantly as well as characters (and for the worse). For example the cliffhanger in S1 never actually happens.

Most of these comments are talking about potential actors but this director is the dude that made House of Flying Daggers. It's kind of insane he's doing a LoL drama of all things.

It's a happy ending.

Oh yeah this looks legit

This is reasonable for such an adaptation if that's the case. I think that's just around the end of Book 3 before the "Across the Sea" arc. Of course this far in he's nowhere close to becoming an immortal at that point.

In the donghua they reunited like half way through it once he got strong enough to take them back by force on his own.

I liked it. I thought it was one of the better ones.

I'm not a big reader so I've only watched the donghua and read up a bit on what happens after. I also tend to look up how far into a novel adaptations get.

From where it currently leaves off the ML is basically close to becoming a demigod. Eventually the ML becomes the most powerful type of god and the FL a step below that more or less. This is how most of these cultivation sort of stories go though.

I wonder how much of the source material this will cover. Technically, with 40 episodes, if they really wanted to they could cover up to what the donghua currently covers but I would be really surprised if they go at that pace.

For perspective the donghua has left off at the point where the two leads get married which is like chapter 270ish or so out of like 1400. It would make a reasonable ending point for a season 1.

Given some of the characters listed like Pu Yang Bo and Si Tu Hong it may actually get to that point.

This is easily my favorite donghua ML character. I hope they do it justice.

Despite the age gap, she's also a student. She's a post graduate student and he's an under graduate student. She's a coach's assistant studying to become a coach and he's her first athlete.

As for his characterization it's a little weird how they demonstrate it. He's basically a giant immature man child when it comes to being an athlete (although an incredibly determined one). Yet the moment that isn't at the forefront he does a complete 180 and becomes an incredibly mature man beyond his years.

The story is kind of weak. They had the makings for a good one but it didn't hold together when it started heavily leaning on the totally forgettable romance arc and her over the top naivety.

The writers had to constantly remind the audience that the Choi Yoo Jin character was almost entirely void of morality with the exception of her soft spot in her unrequited love for the ML (and eventually the FL to a degree) in order to not empathize or even root for her too much sinnce she lived a pitiful existence.

Every villain was a cartoon except Choi Yoo Jin.

The "who did it" revelation felt completely unsatisfying considering who it was.

Ji Chang Wook's hand to hand combat choreography was good.

In spite of all of this it's probably worth a watch at some point if you have nothing else better but the show definitely started off a lot better than whatever it ended as.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the Anna character but I can't understand how this super capable ML fell for someone so dumb and naïve to the point they're basically a child. Yes I get that she's a product of her environment but it's like he fell in love out of pity for her. It feels super out of the place.