castawaydish

Prince of Tennis is the best sports drama I've seen in a long time and it's still unbeaten in my book. As someone who has read the manga and seen the anime I was very happy that it was almost by the book adaptation and was super faithful to the source material. While as someone who plays Tennis, it is very campy, it adds more flavour to the show than anything else. I enjoyed it very much and I just wish they'd renew it already because the National competition arc is even better in the manga than the Regional tournament arc.

What I like about Chinese Sports drama is that it finds the right balance between being a Sports drama and being a life drama. Like you mentioned Go Go Squid is VERY much focused on the e-sports itself while it also revolves around their personal life without sacrificing the e-sports elements. Korean Sports dramas falls short on that count imo. For e.g let's take Racket Boys, while it is indeed a Sports drama, it does struggle to find the right balance between Sports and personal drama and most episodes there's almost no sports elements in it unlike PoT or GGS.

I've not seen Fight for My Way (not a fan of Park Seojoon tbh ) so I cannot comment on it. But agreed about Run On, it's not a sports drama. It's a romantic slice of life. Calling it a Sports drama would be the same as calling it a linguistic drama because it's just a profession, they never focus on it. The ML is barely shown competing and running and even that completely evaporates by midway through and it completely sheds the sports elements.

Chinese sports dramas are so varied. There's one based on Diving, Swimming, Speed Skating, Table Tennis, Tennis, Boxing, Baseball, Shooting, etc. there's even numerous dramas based on e-sports.

Oooh someone knows Short! I was gonna mention Short but completely forgot while typing up my comment lmao It's a nice hidden gem focused on speed skating, a very little known niche sport. It was great for a 4 episode miniseries but it could've been even better if it was full length.

Another Sports drama that is barely known is "Our Baseball" it's a miniseries from 2019 and has great focus on Baseball.

I play Badminton (almost pursued it professionally), Tennis (almost pursued it after giving up on badminton), TT, Football and I practise Taekwondo & Muay Thai (15 yrs+) so sport is right up my alley. So I LOVE sports dramas, although Kdramas are great. Some of the best Sports drama I've seen are Cdramas. An example would be Ping Pong Life and the Prince of Tennis. I'd call them both highly underrated as they flew under the radar of many people.

I actually would not call Run On a sports drama on the other hand. Sure the ML is an athlete, but sports is far from being the main focus of the show. In fact for most of the show he isn't even shown running whatsoever. I still love it and I agree, one of the finest dramas of recent times in fact. It's a high quality slice of life.

Racket Boys is a better example of a recent underrated sports drama. While the main focus of that drama is teamwork, friendship and life lesson there's also a nice focus on actual matches unlike Run On which gives it a decent balance of being a "sports" drama.

Are you sure? I think Ryo might end up with her sister instead. The romance implication leans heavily towards the doctor (same with Michi x Ryo), like way too heavily lol plus they're way too adorable together to not end up together.

Omfg when tf is this even coming. This is pissing me off.

Crash Landing On You wins this for me. It's a mediocre garbage but people act as if it's the best drama ever. It's full of cliches, full of cringy tropes and moments that feels right out of a Bollywood borefest. Not to mention 80% of the drama feels like a filler, there's almost nothing good about this garbage.

A close 2nd would be DoTS. Outside of the second couple, I can't find anything positive to say about this show. It lacks direction and feels like a vignette of random mediocre stories.

3rd would be True Beauty. An underwhelming, mediocre rehash of Gangnam Beauty which lacks any of the charm present in the latter.

Honourable mention would be Hospital Playlist. As a huge slice of life fan who loved Prison Playbook, Hospital Playlist fell so flat that nothing can save it. The characters are mediocre and lacking in charm. And the whole show as a whole feels devoid of any soul and charm.

You have to give credits to the actress playing the FL. She did so well portraying characters in two extreme end of the spectrum. There's the doe eyed Xiao Mu with her innocence and the devil Meng Gui.

lol Suganami teaching Mone about evaporation and condensation was so cute. I think this is my fave episode so far. I hope there's a romance storyline between these two, they're adorable! Suganami is such a cinnamon roll.

I didn't like either of them as well. Both were very messed up character, one was a sadist (Meng Gui), the other was a masochist (Song Ci). The drama would've been miles better without either of them. Meng Gui especially was a ridiculous character to watch and ruined the drama for me.

It's not a romance drama.

I started this because of your article basically. I'm loving it so far. The episode count was a turn off at start but now after watching 20+ episodes, I'm hooked.

Lee Byung Hun is an excellent writer but his script requires his actors to be incredibly dynamic (for e.g Chun Woo Hee in Be Melodramatic, Ryu Seung Ryeon in Extreme Job etc.). Cha Eun Woo from the dramas I've seen so far is nowhere near that level and he is rather wooden, so IDK about this. There are actors his age who could do a better job at this role.

Ha Joon and Krystal in 1 drama? OMG YES!

https://kisskh.at/people/7678-sakaguchi-kentaro

I thought Kentaro Sakaguchi would be here tbh :o

It gets even worse (spoiler alert: r*pe). It's soo mindlessly toxic it makes me wanna poke my eyes out.

People liked the drama because of its toxicity, because let's face it people are into toxicity otherwise Penthouse wouldn't be raking in #1 viewership.

So much toxicity. I CAN'T CHOOSE! More shows I'd add:

Addicted , another BL. In fact the ML of this is possibly the most toxic BL ML I've ever seen.

Secret (the one with Jisung and Hwang Jung Eum). This drama's soooo excessively toxic ohmagad. There's a Thai drama with the same premise (Kleeun Cheewit), which is also sooooooooooo toxic oh lord. Seriously if Lakorns are counted, they'd fill this whole list up.

HIStory Obsessed. The name itself should explain how toxic this BL is.

The twin sister ruined the drama for me. Till she came back, it was a very good drama but after she came back I just couldn't feel motivated to watch more than once every few days. She was such a despicable character and Xiao Mu's a spineless idiot for doing nothing do defend herself. Ruined the whole drama for me.