Kannadin

I've caught up with the last episode on Viki (currently ep 19), so yeah since my last comment, she did get better. I wish she apologized for her past behavior... but maybe that's asking for too much.

Thank You!

SPOILER REQUEST:

I've been avoiding the comment section to avoid being spoiled but I need to ask:

In which episode does Shi Qian Lu finally die (hopefully in excruciating pain)?

I'm sick and tired of this character, I just need to know when he'll stop parading around and spreading lies everywhere. Btw, I mean his REAL death, not fakeout death.

I don't want the details of what happens to him. Just the episode (I'm behind Viki releases so needless to say, compared to others watching on Youku I'm WAY behind).

Thank you in advance!

Yeah that's what I did. I love Kim Jae Yeong but most of his dramas are hit or miss for me... Hopefully Idol I will deliver... But I'm probably gonna wait until it has fully aired before giving it a try... I've repeatedly disappointed with K dramas this year so I'm not gonna risk my time. I wait for reviews and comments.

SO... Are 16 to 24 ep K dramas officially dead and buried now? I remember a time when SK knew how to make addictive 16 episodes shows in which you didn't feel like they were dragging things out.

Now every any drama that has 16 episodes usually contains 8 episodes of meandering nonsense going nowhere with repetitive and flat stories so most dramas have been shortened to 12 episodes to hide how empty, uninspired and flavorless K dramas have become but shouldn't they add some limits to that dwindling episodes count?

Keep on going on like this, and "K dramas" are gonna turn into 1 episode shows.

Well thank you for this comment. I watched 3 episodes then felt I wasn't in the mood to watch this one and was thinking of picking it up later... but my main draw was Kim Jae Yeong.

Well contrary to what I had planned, I'm not gonna bother then. Slice of Life is not really my cup of tea most of the time but if Kim Jae Yeong is only here for some 10 seconds cameo per episode, it's not worth my time.

The couple is really cute together... BUTTTTTT the kisses are all fake. It's all camera angles and mouth moving in the emptiness even when it's supposed to be passionate.
Not enough to remove most of the cuteness but given how everybody was saying there's lots of kisses, I was expecting REAL kisses and not the usual C drama fake kisses.

Can't have everything I guess. I can see Cheng Jing Ke is really trying but the actress clearly doesn't want to do the job.

I think they should add a clause for "real kisses" in actors' contracts.

When I first started to watch C dramas, I thought it was because of censorship they couldn't have passionate kisses on screen... BUT THEN, I saw Bai Lu in "Love is Sweet" and "Till the End of the Moon"... Also saw some kiss scenes from "Story of Kunning Palace" which I've yet to watch... And guys... This is what REAL KISSES look like.

Now, I'm not expecting that level of dedication from all actors to be clear... But there's a minimum that's not there. Like in Legend of the Female General, it was pretty tame, but you could see the actors weren't faking it even if they weren't "eating each other out".

It's a pet peeve of mine... Takes me out of the scene every single time when actors are obviously faking it.

HAHAHA!

That explains it then!
Well can't do it I guess since I'm already working so >_< ( and also doing other things on the side).

Not a huge fan of watching things speeded up though. I know lots of people are doing this now but I can't understand it for the life of me. I mean I personally think the pace is also part of the experience and it's you know, "leisure time".
I'm already struggling with all the things I have to do in a day, when I sit down to relax, I don't want to feel like I'm rushing again if you see what I mean.

Still pretty impressive though... You'd probably need to divide this list by two if you were watching at normal speed but that would still be a very very long list.

Also you're right to keep track of things... When you've been watching shows for a long time, you tend to forget what you saw. Happened to me several times, even recently. I didn't check on MDL. Watched a movie. Felt like I'd already seen it... But wasn't sure. Finished it... Was about to give it a ratings of 8.5.

Turns out I had already seen that movie when it came out 12 years ago... Gave it the same rating. It was not a bad movie, but not a movie worth rewatching so waste of time. Should have watched another one which I had never watched.

The only issue for me is "dropped shows" which I don't keep track of for a variety of reasons, most notable FOMO and being tempted to give another try to a show I hated but that everybody loved. So far I never made the mistake of rewatching a show I dropped... but given how long my list has gotten ( and that's not counting my Anime list either), this is bound to happen at some point.

Just dropping a comment to say that it's the first time I see somebody with a "Currently Watching List" as long as yours and who is REALLY watching everything listed with keeping tracks of the episodes seen and everything. Usually it's just a long list of shows on hold or shows people are planning to watch with only 1 or 2 shows that are truly being watched by the member.

All that to say... I don't know how you do it. But I'm impressed!

Yeah I know that's everybody's opinion. But again, if you read my review, I explained that for me, it's more a matter of how old you were when you watched it.

On episode 13 and so far the biggest flaw of this show ( apart from the censorshit ending) is how Zhou Shi Yun is just utterly unlikable.

Like Ming Ze is an idiot who doesn't care that Shi Yun has basically done her best to ruin his little sister... That's a big one to swallow... but OK. Apart from that he's not a bad sport to watch. He's a bit of an idiot but the good hearted kind... but with absolutely NO TASTE and NO SELF-ESTEEM.

But Shi Yun? Gimme ONE THING that is likable with this character. She's just terribly written, period. I can't fastforward for the life of me but MY GOD do I want to, she's just a dirty stain on an otherwise very cute drama.

The ex is okay I guess. Obviously he's a selfish ass*** but I doubt he's even aware of how he is in reality. If Xue Jiao hadn't experienced firsthand how utterly selfish he is, she obviously would have fallen. Who wouldn't? He's cute, handsome and athletic. Knows how to do grand gestures to impress. I mean any girl that age would have fallen.

I feel you! I usually don't bother with Chinise shows as they are airing given how many episodes come out in such a short amount of time...

But there's so many shows that I wanted to watch that came out at the same time, I ended up in this mess >_<

His voice does sound deeper in the link you gave. Well the only explanation I see, is him making his voice deeper for the role.
I'm also watching on Viki... But since I've started too many shows anyway ( I usually only watch 2 to 3 dramas in different languages with eventually 1 anime at the same time at most and right now I'm watching 5 in literally the same language..., not counting LOTFG that just finished on Viki), I feel a bit overwhelmed and don't feel like rushing. Quite the contrary. Next time I'm back to watching only one show at a time in Chinese because otherwise I feel like I have to rush from one show to the other and I don't like to feel "obligated" in my leisure time, especially since Chinese shows are pretty long..

If I'm too curious, I just check previews on Youku... I wish I didn't because sometimes it's too much spoilers but I can't help it.

Nah not his voice. I checked some interviews and his voice is clearly higher. Also the actor dubbing him is clearly older, sounds more like somebody in his mid thirties at least.

Well that's the downside of dubbing... I wish they would stick to one voice per actor because sometimes switching from drama to drama it sounds weird. I actually have the same problem with The King's Avatar which I'm currently watching. The only Yang Yang drama I'd seen before is "You Are My Glory" so when I started The King's Avatar and noticed his voice in it was higher... Well let's just say I'm not a fan. I'm past a quarter of the series and I still can't get used to it.

For WDBTD... Well I think I'm gonna struggle until the end of the series... It's particularly difficult because he's got such a youthful face and yet the voice is clearly way older.

Plotwise though, he's supposed to be 500 years old, so it fits... But the dissonance is real.

Oh Well. You know sometimes you read a book or you watch something. You're very invested and then the end it SO DISAPOINTING that it makes you regret investing a single minute in the whole thing.

Happened to me several times so I totally get it.
But yeah. The bad ratings is mostly due to that. For most people, there was a better way to handle this so that you could still bypass the censorship and get a satisfying ending...

Though personally, I don't really see how you can bypass the censorship and get something satisfying except getting rid of the whole premise in the first place.

Like in the Double and Legend of the Female General, the whole reincarnation thing has completely been erased from the plot... It actually gives something way more satisfying plotwise in my opinion. In Blossom if I remember well, the FL basically "dreamt the future" and correct the trajectory in the present...
Works as well.

However in RESET, the whole premise of the plot is the characters being stuck in a time loop... so according to Censorship, you can't travel in time, yet the whole plot is all about being revived repeatedly, so personally I didn't even know that travelling back in time was a no-no given I had watched this drama and I honestly don't get it.

Here...
I think it would have been more satisfying for viewers to remove the whole reincarnation plot all together.

You can just say, both characters went to see some priestess or took the same weird drug medication for their headaches which made them dream about the future and after they saw what was going to happen, they changed the course of their life... Only the first episode would have been different and at least viewers wouldn't have to feel betrayed by the end of the show.
BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT again...

If it hadn't been done before... Maybe it's because there's another censorship rule I don't know about and maybe the safest bet would have been to go the Blossom route.

Honestly, there's some things that I like about the censorship personally: Not too much graphic violence, not too much sex ( I'm looking at you America: lots of sex, no buildup, no romance, no real sexual tension), main characters who can be harsh or morally gray but usually uphold strong moral values ( not gloryfying characters selling drugs or whatnot). In my opinion, writers have to really craft good stories to create emotions in their viewers instead of relying on shock value like in Western shows...

But on the flip side, sometimes you get across these ridiculous rules that are difficult to understand from a Western standpoint even taking into account cultural differences. I read somewhere that they had a wave of suicides in China from teenagers wanting to "reincarnate" hence the censorship but I'm a bit skeptical about it to be honest. It's not like the idea of reincarnation doesn't exist in East Asia overall, how come other countries weren't touched by the same phenomena?

The CCP is not too fond of religion overall so for me it's more a matter of cracking down on religious beliefs. Having several lives for "mystical beings in xianxia seems ok, but not with "modern characters" I guess.

Anyway that's a vast subject.

Exactly! You were mentally prepared for the worse given the strong reactions and therefore the blow was less strong. It would have been a different story if like the top reviewers, you had invested your heart, soul and time into these characters only to get punched in the gut by the end 🤣

I think it depends on whether you were mentally prepared or not. Personally I started this drama late and am watching it on Viki so by the time I watched episode 6, I had already been spoiled the ending by people who had just finished it and who did not put the spoiler tag...

I'm glad for it though because I think I'd probably have the same reaction of downrating it if I invested as much emotions in these characters only to feel cruelly betrayed by the scenarists to the point of regretting investing my feelings in any of these characters.

But since I know what to expect, I can appreciate the show for what it is and no sense of betrayal since I know what's to come, so I'm definitely not gonna downrate that one ( otherwise I'd have already dropped it anyway) once I reach the end.

Personally I think EVERYBODY should be spoiled the ending before starting. The ratings would probably be higher then.

It's a really cute show... And I love the main couple... though the side couple is pretty meh.

Don't forget that Viki's translations are done for free by fans. It's normal that members who translate give priority to the most popular series which among all the Chinese airing shows right now is When Destiny Brings the Demon and Moonlit Reunion.

Don't forget that until today there was literally 5 airing Chinese shows they were translating: ABO desire, LOTFG, WDBTD and, MR and this one.
That's a LOT of shows and that's not counting old shows that are translated in the background without being apparent on the website.

There's tons of great shows available on Viki, I'm sure you can watch something else while waiting.

That or it's just a writing kink ^^

When you're in the mood, give it a go ^^

The only reason I'm not binging is because I've got too many shows on my plate so I've stopped at a "resistable place" in order to focus on all the other shows I'm watching ( including the Double... which is just insane so I had to stop because the TENSION is killing me and I've got a weak heart). Hopefully, by the time I'm back to WDBTD, Viki will have released most episodes.