Jaden

This became one of my fav (if not my fav) revenge/tragedy drama. It compares well against other drama of similar genre. What I liked about it is that it's very revengy/tragic but at the same time it doesn't make the mistake of going so deep as to lose the integrity of the main character. Unlike most revenge drama that start out intense and becomes either too relaxed or too repetitive over time, this one stayed consistent throughout, and got even better near the end. The ending was beautiful yet realistic, it's a bit open-ended so some people may not like this.

However, after thinking about it I can come up with 3 complaints:

1. Main character did not abuse his "superpower" enough, he showed off at the beginning of the drama but afterwards it was non-existent, he succeeded based on his wit, rather than his power, which may sound good at first, but it's very inconsistent from the beginning of the story and would be cool if he used his power more. It also contributes to the theme that having a power comes with a cost, or the "with great power comes great responsibility", which is popular in most stories about heroes, but I guess the drama wasn't trying to label him as such, and it was more of an internal struggle to take revenge for his father. Arguably, maybe he didn't use the power in order to prevent his disease from progressing, but this should've been explained to the viewer.

2. Main character's disease had little to no impact on the outcome of the plot. Every time it had affected him, it was only a minor setback, i.e. court was paused for a while and resumed normally. In relation to 1, if the symptoms were worse, we could see YooSeung Ho get pushed to the limit as he uses his power and tries to retain the necessary memories to tackle the cases. This would be so much more dramatic and heartbreaking :D, and keep you in suspense for how the good side will win if their leader is in such a condition. Keep in mind, I agree the memory loss had a huge impact on the characters, but I'm talking about plot right now.

I find this really bad because the drama is called "remember", so the theme of memory loss could have been emphasis more so with the memory loss of the main character as the events unfolded.

3. The villains didn't take advantage of Lee In Ah's relationship with YooSeung Ho despite the heavy foreshadowing. It's easy to miss this.

Zheng Shuang's dubbing was obvious and I think it was necessary to fit her character's personality, but someone please tell me Er Xi's voice isn't dubbed..

You make really good points, the drama is actually poorly rated on chinese sites for many of these reasons, other reasons may include not following the novel properly in terms of story or characters. MDL seems to have higher tolerance for overly unreaistic romance drama, I'm not exactly sure why but I've seen it a lot.

The drama is basically an idealistic portrayal of online to offline relationships, and it would be kindof a downer if the main characters were too flawed. Reality is harsh, the highest ranked players on mmo games would never be like this, and I'm not sure why they had to make the main leads the "best" players on the server, but my guess is that it brings more attention to them, and the surprise value when people discover who they are in the game. From what I can see, it's a similar reason for why the main characters are also perfect outside of the game, it creates this exciting scenario that can be recognized by the entire university, so that they can add in the gossip/rumors part of the story.

You can think of it this way: If they were lacking in good looks, then they wouldn't be as popular and as we said, that was necessary for the plot, if they were lacking in intelligence/personality, then it would go against the theme of the drama, the idea of liking someone online that you don't know, can be very meaningful because it's about liking them for who they are. Sadly, the male lead actually knows the female lead before they met in real life, so that kinda ruins the integrity of this theme.

That said, I find this to be one of the more down to earth ones, despite being way too sweet.

You mention this is a fangirling drama, I'll have to think about why I like it..

This is so heartwarming, refreshing, I can't exactly describe it, but there just seems to be a feeling that only chinese/taiwanese romcom can bring.

Anyone know which mmo they are playing?

I thought this was going to be something like Five Fingers (I actually enjoyed this) or even better, Bridal Mask, but this one seems to have a bit too much comedy, like if it's going for the revenge plot, it needs to be a bit more serious but it lets loose too often, imo characters are too playful for this type of plot. Aside from that, the chemistry isn't great, and the plot with company hiring process and spies, so ridiculous.

I ship the younger versions of the main characters.. or rather, would've preferred if they were the mains, felt a lot more chemistry from them. Also the beginning of drama had a much more serious tone which kept you at the edge of your seat but this didn't transition well later on where there's a scene of them enjoying vacation on a tropical island, yes it was part of the "training" but it just feels so out of place. The older version of the main character doesn't fit at all with his teenage self, he seems like a family-man, or just too mentally stable to be the future self of someone with such a tragic/messed-up past, sure people grow up/mature, but this guy seems too perfect.

Probably going to drop unless someone can convince me otherwise, though this sparked my interest again in this genre of drama, the extreme tragedy + revenge.

This drama took a while to ramp up, but that seems to be an attribute of most great historical/period drama as it must get you invested into the characters before all the dramatic events occur. If you ever get a bit bored in the first half, please don't stop, it keeps getting better.

I didn't think there could be any chinese drama that could rival Nirvana In Fire, but this is probably it. It's not really better, but it was a lot more emotionally impactful and meaningful, especially given the fact that it was going for the realism. There was no absurd glorification of the chinese military (or civilians) and it showed all the ugly side of things. After watching this, I really feel like I got a good chunk of the actual experience from this historical period.

It feels like I'm getting trolled but I'll answer your questions anyways.

If you care so much about this, is it really that hard to look for a chinese drama/movie database site? You can always use google translate, or you might even get something by searching NIF (in chinese). If you can't find anything, try movie.douban

As for why the rating is so low, have you ever thought that other MDL users simply don't watch Chinese drama as much? There are various reasons for this, but let's keep that a separate topic.

It's popular and highly praised in China, no question about that, but it's your choice if you want to care about that. A large group of people clearly think it's amazing, but let's assume chinese people's opinions are worthless and focus on MDL.

Low number of viewers is only really inaccurate for <100 or <300 at most, unless you're comparing this number to the most popular kdrama, the majority of drama are only in the thousands, so 700 isn't that bad, but who uses popularity as a measure for quality anyways?

You're clearly butthurt that you're opinion isn't the same as most people so you're trying rationalize, just because it lacks ratings doesn't make it overrated, what if more ratings made the rating higher?

It only gets better after ep 17, so try to finish it, you won't be disappointed, this is coming from someone who also struggled to get through the earlier episodes.

Characters is largely a preference thing but I think this drama is very plot-based, this is not saying characters are not important but you should still be able to enjoy it even if the characters are not to your liking. Ep 15-30 is when I started growing attached to the characters so I found it very slow too, but it's a clever build up. This is truly one of the best chinese drama and comes with little flaws, whereas almost all other chinese drama I've watched have severe flaws in one way or the other.

Unless you're really clever, I don't think NIF's plot is predictable, maybe you can predict how it will end up, but the details are not so easy to predict. I have not watched a drama with stronger psychological aspect than this, the main character is a genius when it comes to reading/analyzing people/situations and playing around the social hierarchy within the palace. As audience, you are actually given more information than him, but he manages to outsmart you anyways. There are many stories where the main character is made to be smart, but rarely do you actually feel that way, I was completely sold on the main character's intelligence in this one.

The fact that I dislike police drama but still found Signal enjoyable means a lot, so yes I will be watching season 2.

When I saw the rating and read the synopsis, I thought it would be amazing, so my expectations may have been too high.

Maybe watching Nine time travels made this less exciting for me, definitely check it out if you liked this one, it's funny cuz it's supposed to be a worse drama, but it meets my preferences: non-episodic, romance, past and present are more closely in contact with each other.

Thanks for addressing my concerns, I guess part of the reason why I don't like police drama is because it's episodic, so it's just not for me.

My problem with it wasn't only the lack of communication between the main characters, but also that the communication wasn't being taken advantage of as much as I'd like, for all we know, Park Hae Yeong was often there to simply motivate Lee Jae Han to solve the next crime.

Also, there was a bit too much "fate" involved for my liking, it's okay to rely on fate sometimes but it seems like that's all there was near the end, a lot of time isn't spent actually doing work, but rather praying. As I said previously, I may be wrong, but it feels like things just work out due to some abstract cause-and-effect caused by their communication. I understand the walkie talkie time-limit but isn't that a decision made by the people who wrote the story? They could have extended the time limit, which may make it more compelling.

Has anyone played the game for this?

As someone who has never liked police dramas, this was quite enjoyable, but I had a few problems with it unlike most people, bear with me. I felt it was too episodic at times, and the villains were a little too one-dimensional. Also, near the end, there was a lack of communication between the 2 main characters, the drama is supposed to be about 2 detectives solving cases together by coordinating the past and present, but sometimes it feels like they just do their own thing and it just works out by some abstract cause-and-effect. Lee Jae Han was the best part of this drama.

This reminds me of Nine Time Travels, which uses the exact same "time model", where the present and the changes in the past are moving at the same speed, so changes in the past don't propagate to the present until events happen that lead to a direct result in the present, only difference is this is not time travel, but merely communication to the past.

The ending felt nice and suits this drama very well, further exploring the time travel would probably become stupid so it's good that they left that as a mystery. If they continued, it would've had to show everyone meeting zhen zhen again, which would cause problem since it would have to explain what happened and it would create a situation where people see someone from the past come to the future. What we need to understand is that the focus of the story was not the time travel but more so the characters and their affection for each other.

That said, overall the latter half of this drama was very lackluster, it feels like once Zhen Zhen and Chen Che got together, it became stagnant, and the time travel plot was weak, or just too predictable. I still greatly enjoyed the drama due to the first half, the idea was cool, it was suspenseful, and the chemistry was great (though they didn't do much with it later in the 2nd half).

Weird that I forgot about the criminal guy, lao ge/big brother was trying to hide who it was by saying it was himself, but it would be weird that he was covering for the criminal guy, but aside from that it's in the realm of possibilities, if you saw the clip of the next episode, you would see that Ya Juan was planning an abortion, which leads me to believe something must've changed her mind (if Chen Che ends up still existing).

If Chen Che's father turns out not to be someone favorable, then the story can always go with the approach of Ya Juan keeping the child when she finds out it's Chen Che, but that would be really weird, OR Chen Che has to come to terms with his existence and settles for death if that brings those dear to him happiness, and thats the theme of sacrifice, OR he goes back to the future but in an alternate dimension and lives happily ever after with Zhen Zhen

@ episode 15, I predict the story will either go one of two ways:

1. the rapist was Li Jin Qin and lao ge was trying to hide that fact and they find out later, hence why his mother kept him.
2. (less likely) his dad was a stranger, Chen Che has to cope with the harsh reality and he survives either because the past finds out about his identity and wanted him to live, OR he accepts death/not being born and wishes the best for the friends he's made in the past, OR they somehow travel to alternate dimension in the future, similar to what is depicted in the ending segment of each episode.

Correct if I'm wrong, I believe it was hinted lao ge lied to Ya Juan about being the rapist, so it can't be him.

I'm not sure if the ending followed closely the historical context, but it was very unique in a way. The character development in this drama was amazing, they didn't just develop, they matured into complex characters. It feels like a long journey and near the end, unlike most dramas that will just let go and give an ending that attempts to please all viewers (usually a happy one) OR kill off every character for no reason.. I won't spoil the ending, but it is a great one, there is a purpose and follows along nicely with the rest of the story.

The plot is hardly perfect, there were many times when the story did not capture me, but overall, it never loses sight of itself, even despite it's length (51 episodes). You get a lot more from watching this than pure entertainment, in fact, some may find it bad because it sacrifices entertainment for substance and a deeper story.

Couldn't get into Scarlet Heart due to the qing dynasty hair (call me shallow), so I'm really excited for this one.

It was very enjoyable overall but the theme of fate was really poorly depicted. In the beginning we know the prince will die, but how did his fate change? Zheng Er faking his death. I was really excited to see what clever way the characters will change the prince's fate. Instead, we are given some cheap reason for why he didn't die. Instead, it's Xue Wu that dies out of trying to help the prince. Maybe it would've been better if he did die, even after Xue Wu's attempt to save him, and the story could be about what he did before he died, and how he lives on in her or something cheesy like that. Either way, this part was not very clever and the ending was quite weak.

It was Lan Ling's fate to die, but it was almost as if he wanted to die, either through self- sacrifice or doing something completely reckless. He doesn't value his own life, and while that may seem heroic, it's almost selfish considering his wife and friends. One would think that he matures over the course of the story and does not try to "escape" by sacrificing himself.

Nonetheless, I still rated this very high thinking back at all the good things it had to offer, and the only truly mediocre part was the ending.

Nine Time Travel main girl is really similar to this one's (Zhen Zhen), if you like that. I highly recommend it, and not just as a similar drama to this one, I think it caters to the male audience better than most romance drama.

The premise didn't seem too promising (guy going back in time to interfere with his mother's love life), but this has been incredible so far, you can feel the chemistry between the characters.