Kannadin

A 2nd Season that doesn't stand well on its own... Unless there's a 3rd season

I feel conflicted...

The Romance aspect was better in this season imho.
I was never sold on the romance in the first season because it went too high too fast. These two people just didn't know enough of each other to fall in love. Yet on the other hand, here, we start the story knowing these two characters' pasts and hence can easily root for their reunion since we understand their longing for each other especially knowing how tragically their story ended.

However, it lacks the emotional punch of the first season, the sociopolitical context, the fight for liberation, the discrimination and mistreatment Koreans went through under Japanese rule, the tough choices, betrayals, the heartbreaking love of a mother for her daughter and the desperate quest of said daughter and her father to rebuild their family. Tae Seong also had a character trajectory that went full circle from a rich dandy who only cared about money to full fledged resistance fighter who stood by his fellow countrymen… and I’m mentioning him because he was one of the lead but other minor characters also had their own arcs.

But Here? There is absolutely NO character trajectory apart from the usual memory loss from one character. They end as they started except for one… Unfortunately not in the right direction.

Apart from the romance, the rest feels flat. Maeda is just evil for the sake of being evil... and honestly we had seen enough of her in the first season, I really didn’t want to see her character again… She hasn’t changed. She’s still the same crazy b*** Tae Song obsessed lunatic, no evolution whatsoever… WHY NOBODY had yet killed her is beyond me.
If there was time to spend with vilains, I’d have prefered more time with Captain Kuroko who was way more layered and interesting than her.
Tae Song had a special bond with Seung Jo but the drama never shows how this hyeong/dongsaeng relationship was ever built, how they met etc. We're not told what are the big company's villain's aim except in cryptic quotes that I forgot as soon as I heard them and in a fudging post-credit scenes that hints at a third season we see what they’re about to do in the next season that has yet to be announced BUT WHY OH WHY are they doing this is anyone’s guess.

There's a lot of action scenes so if you're a fan of that I guess, you'll be happy... IF you manage to see something because my GOD this was DARK AS HELL. Can't see sh*** for the life of me…
Who the hell directed the photography? I want to know so that I can avoid their dramas in the future, I’m not a fan of black screens. Sometimes I could tell the fighting scenes were probably well choreographed and looked awesome but since I couldn’t see anything, I’d just spend a couple of minutes trying to see something until I finally gave up and decided that I didn’t care anyway.

In short, I’d say this season was very much an American show filmed in South Korea. Removing every nuance, every quiet moments that make K-dramas so unique and pack in a lot of action and violence but without rooting it strongly in emotions and human connections.

With only 7 episodes it’s a quick watch that raises more questions than it answers leaving viewers thoroughly dissatisfied. Without a 3rd season, this season just cannot stand solidly on its own feet because everything is rushed and nothing is properly explained.
It’s action without substance and I’m sorry but I’ve been accustomed to MUCH MUCH MORE from South Korea.

I’m VERY tired on the Americanization of K dramas. And the worst offender is Netflix’s push towards creating franchises instead of giving us complete well-rounded series that ends in one season. I fled from US shows more than 20 years ago because of it and now my K dramas are being invaded by this shitty American custom and it is RUINING the genre.
And hence like many early K drama fans, I see myself year after year watching an increasing number of Chinese dramas because I find in them what South Korea is slowly stripping away their shows in order to appeal to a global audience instead of sticking to what made their shows so unique and charming in the first place and brought people like me watching them.
If you had decided to make the 2nd season that way, the LEAST you should have done is to announce a 3rd season but NOPE! As I’m typing these line, the second season has aired almost a year ago and yet still no news of a third season.

By the time they might decide to announce one, people who have watched this will probably have forgotten season 1 and 2 and won’t even want to bother...

Anyway, with only 7 episodes it’s a fast breezy watch but I find it difficult to rate. It feels incomplete. Is it good? On it’s own… no… But can I say it’s bad? Well… no.
It’s like you’re asked to give a grade to an essay which some pages are obviously missing.
It’s not terrible but quite frustrating.

So… Since I don’t know how to rate this… That’s a 6,5…
I initially was planning on a 7… but since they didn’t even bother to give me a satisfying ending on the romance aspect, here it is.

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Great Story bogged down by a VERY DRAGGY AND IRRITATING MIDDLE ( from ep 12/13 to 37/38)

I DID IT!
I swore to myself I would finish this show before the end of the month and I did.

As written in the title, this series would have been way better without that veryyyyyyyyyyyyy draggy middle which ruined the experience in my opinion. I struggled not to drop the show for more than a third of its run and that's saying something.

The last 20 episodes were way better especially the last 10/15 episodes which were fast paced in particular when you compare them to the rest of the series.

The end was pretty lackluster, a stapple of Chinese wuxia, and as much as I though both the FL and ML depicted pain and longing well, I honestly though they had little chemistry together. But since they weren't together for most of drama except when the FL was a brainless idiot, that didn't bother me that much.

Anyway, final personal rating 7. I can't get past the draggy pace. If they had kept the quality of the first 10 episodes and the last 20... That would have been a 9 ( 1 point for the lack of chemistry of the main pair + blood pressure running high) but they had to drag down the story with too much episodes that served nothing and the emperor and empress that were just hateful from start to finish. 30 to 40 episodes at most would have done wonders.

Visually... the CGIs were uneven. The budget just wasn't there. It was particularly obvious for all the backgrounds that were mostly matt painted. Matt painting ( the process of using real pictures joined together and then painting on top to blend these pictures together into a single coherent image) is something I've seen a lot in C dramas and when done well can really create enchanting universe... But here, it was cheap, often several images were not blended well especially in terms of saturation and tones... colors not matching together etc. I could even tell when the resolution of the images they used in the background was just too small and they had to resize them big and didn't bother to add some detail to hide the process.

Sometimes the atmospheric perspective was put on the wrong elements i.e when you superpose elements on top of a background, the farthest these element are from the front, the more their colors are closer to the desaturated background. Most of the time, the farther the object is from the front, the more its color is light and desaturated ( that depends obviously of the background and light but you get the drift)... They were many times when characters were placed in front of a background, but they put some atmospheric perspective on them ( i.e a desaturated filter or whatever) when in fact they shouldn't have had any additional filters. That gave an uncanny look in some scenes. Anyway that's pretty technical talk, and English is not my first language, but the bottom line is... as an artist myself who does use that process on a daily basis... My eyes BLED quite often watching that messed up artistic work.... A little bit more time given to the artists to do their work properly would have done wonders.

Still the main story was brilliant. I'll never forget the confrontation scene between Jin Mi and Run Yu at the end of episode 55... That was painful to watch and hurt in all the right places.

Run Yu had the best arc and in a better world, would have been the main character. I'm sorry for how we was pushed to become the way he turned out.... but he's not completely innocent in his demise.

Getting rid of the Heavenly Empress and Emperor ?
I’m glad he did, they were both scum anyway. As a Heavenly Emperor, he’s way more fair than both and is certainly way better than Xu Feng. The latter was too soft-hearted and straight forward. You need a cunning mind to deal with scheming people and Xu Feng just isn’t that man.
That doesn’t mean Run Yu was a bad man, just that he understood how the game is played and acted accordingly unlike Xu Feng whose mindset was too rigid for his own good.

BUT

Where Run Yu turned evil was regarding his obsession with Jin Mi. I was never convinced he loved her. But when I saw that despite how much she outwardly showed how much she loved Xu Feng, and still he wouldn’t let her go, it confirmed my opinion. He was obsessed with the idea of possessing Jin Mi. He didn’t truly love her. I’m sure there was some affection mixed in at some point… but at the end of the day, if he’d truly loved her he would have let her go… just like Xu Feng did when Jin Mi told him he brought her pain.

Regarding what he did to Jin Mi, he’s 100 % in the wrong and he knew it… which is why he kept making these huge sacrifices to inwardly justify that he deserved her love and she was being unfair to him. But love is not something you can buy with grand gestures and no amount of rights can correct the wrongs you've done if you don't resolve the problem at its root. He knew her heart never belonged to him and still, obsessed with being able to possess the only thing Xu Feng ever cared about, he hurt the person he supposedly loved the most.

Knowing that what he did to his half-brother was unforgivable.

Still unlike the former Empress and Emperor… As much as I hated his behavior regarding Xu Feng and Jin Mi… I couldn’t 100 % dislike him.
He was pushed to the edge by his father and adoptive mother who only dotted on his younger sibling. He was initially a kind soul. In a way, he made Xu Feng pay for the crimes of his parents.

Xu Feng didn’t deserve anything that happenned to him… But Xu Feng had it easy from birth. Who knows how he would have turned out faced with the same challenges as Run Yu ? Even Jin Mi ended up making a huge mistake when she thought Xu Feng had killed her father… And she didn’t suffer even a 3rd of what Run Yu had to go through.

Ultimately, he turned out pretty ok given the circumstances.
He deserved what he got... and I feel a bit sorry for him... probably because Jin Mi and Xu Feng got their happy ending in spite of his meddling, I'd have felt very differently otherwise... still in my imagination, after a couple of years, he'll be able to see that he's not that alone. He's just blind.

Anyway, that's one classic checked off my list. I'll never rewatch this one again due to its terrible pace but I can understand why people were raving about it. If I only rated this on all the feelings and the deep impression it left me during the last 10 episodes... I'd probably would have rated this a 10.

Suggested Rating: 6.5
Personal ratings: 7

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The One and Only: A political LIFE-TRAUMA as the name doesn't implie.

Rave reviews and it was highly recommended by somebody on my friends list. I tried hard but this show is not making it for me. I don't dislike it but it's too heavy on politics and too light on the romance. For a 24 episodes show...We only get crumbs of torturous romance here and there... I understand that's the point of it but I can't with that pace...
I wish I liked it as much as everybody else but unfortunately no...

I have a tradition on making sure that any drama I watch should be finished under a month... except if the number of episodes exceeds 40. This show being 24 episodes, which is pretty short for a C drama, I thought it would be an easy feat but... not so much in the end. I put that drama on hold and ended deciding to binge the remaining 11 episodes just to finish the show because I knew I wouldn't be able to finish it if I didn't force myself ( and I couldn't even do that in the end since the last episodes were only politics, politics and more politics, and mental torture and no romance whatsoever except to provide you with additional emotional trauma). Bottom line, I almost didn't make it had it not been for force-watching alterning with a very gooey thai romance drama.

This is IN-SA-NE-LY S-L-O-W.

Like literally. When people say it's slow-burn romance is IS SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW-burn romance.

I also find the title pretty misleading. "One and Only" suggests a drama focused on romance but it is hardly the case. Yes, it's at the heart of the story but NO it's not the focus of the drama. The drama focuses not on the forbidden romance of the main leads but rather on all the political back-stabbings and plotting shenanigans that forced them ( and other couples for that matter) to not be able to love freely and choose their own lives.

It is a genuinely good show... but that's not what I signed up for. I was aware of its sad ending so I knew what to expect when I started this... But given how much people were raving about this show and the romance, I was expecting more romance as subtle as it is. There's a good chuck of the drama that focused on it but I'd argue that more than half of the drama focuses only on the political side... I'd say for the romance... It starts around episode 7 and ends around episode 16 so you get 9 episodes focused on the romance with a bit of politics but all the rest is just POLITICS (and the leads missing each other of course in a couple of scenes here and there) and I honestly didn't care even if I understand the background is important.

I've been spoiled by many C dramas that I felt managed to balance romantic angst with political context without focusing too much on the political story all the while making sure viewers are given enough information to understand the context in which the story happens ( Love Like the Galaxy is a perfect example) and it is actually the first time I feel things were just not balanced properly.

The show is gorgeous, the actors are excellent, the romance, as subtle as it is, is great... BUT I was watching for the romance not for all the backstabbing.
Also by the time I reached the end, this drama turned out to be extremely depressing. It reminded me of the K-Drama "My Dearest" which I didn't bother to watch the second part because of its pretty grim nature. I don't watch shows to get depressed, I watch shows to provide a bit of happiness in my life and this one didn't do it.

Now. I have no issue with sad endings. Let's be clear about that. As long as I'm provided with enough happiness on the journey, I'm ok with a sad ending... But I was fed crumbs of happiness and a depressing ending... Well actually not so depressing since, I've got to say - and I can't believe I'm writing this - I cheered when Shi Yi committed suicide. That was the best vengeance ever. The only thing Zi Xing truly ever wanted was her and he didn't get her at the end. Should have kept his greed in check. Zi Xing had the best "character trajectory" out of all the cast... Yes, it wasn't in the right direction but he turned from a character I truly empathized with at the beginning to one I truly loathed and wished death by way of an extremelly painful and s-l-o-w fire all the while being-alive. Too bad we didn't see him suffer more by the end. We know he remained alive for 3 years all the while seeing his kingdom falling apart ( well, you were greedy, jealous, stupid and detestable enough to kill the best and most faithful soldier of your shitty kingdom so, you deserved it you piece of sh***) but it would have been nice to see him SUFFER MORE in order to quench part of my ANGER and RAGE. Ahem. Sorry. Got too emotional. I have to remind myself that this is JUST a drama.

The young Emperor was completely useless. He was too young. As I was watching the show, I was thinking Sheng Chen, wanted to remain the faithful soldier, but he should have done what everybody expected of him: Rebel and take the throne. He was the only one who had the charisma, people's support and intelligence to endorse the role and yet he turned his back to it... Only to be rewarded by being framed as a traitor.

He literally sacrificed his life to defend a kingdom, didn't marry the woman he loved and all of that for NOTHING. In the end, he was betrayed, died injustly , the kingdom he defended fell apart once he was gone (because duh! you should have rebelled and take the emperor's position, being rightful at a time where nobody else is, is literally like planting a target on your back but I digress) and the only woman he ever loved and wanted to protect got (almost) married to the man who betrayed him, got heart-broken and committed suicide.

#real_life_is_not_depressing_enough_I_wanna_get_depressed_watching_dramas_now
#life_sucks_and_there's_no_hope_left_in_this_world
#marriage_sucks
#at_least_the_empress_lived_the_good_life_screwing_six_packed_soldiers_before_jumping_to_her_doom
#she_was_a_nasty_piece_of_work_for_sure_but_she_knew_she'd_get_ejected_at_some_point_so_she_went_YOLO
#most_useless_emperor_in_history
#Good_Never_Wins_Evil_Always_Triumph
#At_least_they_died_looking_good
#f**** escapism in your romance drama.

To be completely honest, by the time I'm typing this, I've finished 21 episodes, still 3 to go. Dunno if I'll have the courage to watch them now or if I cut with "lighter" dramas before the finish line... But since I've really spoiled myself the last episodes, I feel pretty confident I won't need to rewrite this review by the time I finish the show. And I'm going to finish it... since there's only 3 episodes left.

EDIT: In the end, I had to "cut" episode 22 in 3 parts... I knew what was coming. I had prepared myself mentally and STILL the BITTERNESS WAS OVER THE ROOF. No amount of preparation could help me get over the utter feeling of BETRAYAL I went through. This is NOT the type of feeling I want to experience in my free time UNLESS it ends on a good note... and if you've been reading this and have not watched this drama yet... You know it doesn't end well.

In short:

Is it a bad drama? NO

Did I enjoy myself? NO

Probable ratings by the end: 7.

Genuinely good show that I just didn't like for a variety of reasons , main ones being:

1. I avoid politics in real life, it's not to be force fed it in a drama that is supposed to be about ROMANCE.

2. Like most people, I don't have lots of money. Dramas are supposed to bring me happiness not making me need a therapist when I have no money left to pay for one. BECAUSE MY GOD DO I NEED THERAPY NOW. It's not even because of the doomed love story. NO. This, I knew before even starting it. What REALLY made me lose my marbles is the way Sheng Chen, Senior Sister, Conselor Xie and anybody with a good heart ended up dying miserable and UNFAIR deaths.
EVERYTHING WAS PAINFUL IN THIS F*** DRAMA. I'm NEVER WATCHING SAD ENDINGS EVER AGAIN!!!!
It's THE BETRAYAL. The "I gave my life for a great cause, and I was thanked by the most painful, unfair and cowardly BETRAYAL of all".

F*** that show! I gave you almost 24 hours of my life and you only gave be bitterness at the end. Good Job! I have LOTS of emotions, none of them positive.

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WTF was that?

I have a new synonym for "Complete Waste of Time" ==> Funouhan aka Impossibility Defense or as I'd rather call it "Impossible Crime" which is the literal translation of the title and makes much more sense. It's been years I haven't watched something so terrible or random or... I don't even know what to say... Just that I'm flabbergasted that I've sat through this whole ordeal with the hope that this would lead somewhere...

Anywhere.

I'm PISSED because I usually only manage to have a bit less than 2 hours to watch anything per day (basically when I'm eating) and today's treat has been wasted on this dumpster fire.

Watched it on Viki where the Ratings is incredibly low for the platform (8.4) but I naively thought that since most viewers on Viki are women... they tend to lean more towards romance and crime/thrillers usually have less audience which might explain the ratings.

Haha. My Bad. I should have checked the comment section.

I think the best comment I read for this movie is from:

@KuroSteve "I guess most of the actors were young and needed the money ... –_–"

Will I ever bother to watch the prequel ( not available on Viki for now): NO
Will I ever bother to read the manga: NOPE

Terrible as a stand-alone and even worse as something supposed to make you interested in the original manga.

To you, poor naive soul who has gotten lost on MDL and want to find a good Japanese thriller... This is NOT the one. Do yourself a service and find something else.

If you're still curious, well, at least I've done my duty. You've been warned.

If I could rate this show below 0, that would be a minus 10.

PS: Yeah I know the suggested rating is higher... but no way in hell am I giving this more than 1.

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Terribly Formulaic.

So I wasn't planning on writing any review for this show... but since the only review currently available is in French, I thought I'll make the effort for those of you who don't speak the language. If you speak French, I direct you to read Kenseiden's review which is way better written than what you're about to read. For the record, I'm also French... so don't expect my prose to be as compelling as his in English.

So this is a live action adapted from a 22 volumes manga. Now. I'm personally not familiar with the manga itself. Never heard of it before so given the title I was expecting some form of puzzle game à la Liar Game ( of which I've read the manga and watched the 2014 K drama adaptation but not the Japanese one). This review is hence solely and purely based on the live adaptation itself.

The first episode started great. It looked good and it felt expensive... I thought I was in for a high budget wild ride.

...
My... Was I mistaken.
This feels very cheap... All the budget must have gone to produce the first episode, the last 3 minutes of the show and the demons/devils CGIs.

Very quickly this shounen adaptation fell into a very repetitive formula which very flat and boring directing didn't help and led me quickly to a state of ultimate boredom. 1 episode = 1 game + 1 new friend or friendly foe. This is a genre that I usually enjoy. Japanese are usually pretty good at turning something pretty boring on the outside, into something exciting... particularly when it comes to mind puzzles. Unfortunately not this time.

If you manage to get past the 4/5 first episodes ( so HALF the drama), things pick up a bit and though the formula is still the same, there's enough new plots thrown into the mix to keep things mildly more interesting. But not that much.

The series must have stayed pretty faithful to its source material because unfortunately we also get the usual shounen manga style acting that don't always match well with live actions. I'm still not really sure it worked well here but I'd say it's 50/50. By the time I reached the end, I was no longer as annoyed with the over the top anime like acting of the actors as I was when I started the show.

More importantly, good adaptations require sometimes that you let go of some of the shounen clichés such as: revelation no jutsu, talk no jutsu, family trauma no jutsu, the power of friendship no jutsu, the final useless talk no jutsu, the blahblahblahblah no jutsu ( to fill the minute and create some tension in the cheap background that looks like my garage, if I had a garage), the let's be friends forever even if we've met only once and you're an asshole no jutsu, the friendship/rivalry no jutsu, the useless butler no jutsu, the I'm better than you back-and-forth-useless-dialogues no jutsu, I'm turning evil so I change my clothes and haircut no jutsu, the power of friendship is the only thing you need to save the world no jutsu, the savior syndrome no jutsu, the sacrifice no jutsu AH I forgot the I-tell-you-my-life-sob-story no jutsu because I need you to understand where I'm coming from because it would be too long in a manga to draw and too expensive in a live action to film... no jutsu.

Of course this ACMA game... has err.... Games. And as usual in the genre, comprises of lots of strategies that are easier to follow in written format than on TV. I tried to, but as per usual at some point the strategies got so convoluted ( and the characters remember everything because... err Shounen no jutsu, inhumane memory no jutsu and shut up it's a manga no jutsu), I switched my brain off and kept on reading my subtitles mindlessly... no jutsu.

And yeah you might be irritated to read my review no jutsu... But seriously this live action oozes "shounen" from every single pores of its body if it had any. And I get it. It's a live action... But a good live action is an adaptation. What works in a manga/anime doesn't necessarily work with live actors. You ADAPT. And I struggle to see where they adapted anything except for the budget and removing a lot of the original story.

Most of the plot twists were expected though I didn't see the "BIG" plot twist in episode 9 coming. Arguably most people would have seen it miles away but it was just too big a cliché for me to predict. Should have kept my guard up. No amount of plot twists could save this live action though.

In conclusion:

Was it a bad show? Err... I honestly don't know. I don't see it as bad because it is a shounen. Shounen are made to be exciting... But if you're already very familiar with the genre... this one doesn't feel fresh, it's an old recipe that's been done and done again except that it is without directing flair so even its most exciting parts felt either boring, bland or both. Some of the clichés will make you roll your eyes. The final episode ends as it started: with a lot of predictable plot twists which you probably have seen coming miles away and hence just felt like lazy writing.
Reaching the final ten minutes, I started to wonder if this wasn't a shounen parody.
It felt like a manga that was literally riding on a popular trend at the time it was written without any effort to bring something original to the mix and a live action just as lazy, which didn't bother to adapt it well to fit its format.

Would I recommend it? NO

Did I have fun watching it?

Err It depends... I was bored for the first 4/5 episodes but once I understood that this would be filled to the brim with clichés, I started to enjoy making fun of the show... Do you know? It's the feeling you get when you're watching what we call in French a "nanar" : a show that's so bad, it's good.

So my final rating will be a 7. Don't trust the individual notes I gave because I just made it so that it reached 7. The best rating that was suggested from the ones I had originally entered was a 6... But honestly the show got so fun in its ridiculousness that I think it deserves a good 7 for the laugh.

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A Fun Ride but skip it if you're only interested in the Romance

That was such an entertaining show ^^

I wouldn't call it best of the year, but it definitely did its job well... There was a couple of plot holes due to writing convenience at times... or lack of time (especially the last 2 episodes) such as Hae Seong being fired from NIS than being cleared and reinstated God knows when since everything happened in a very short timeframe.
My biggest complain would be the chairwoman... Kim Shin Rok was terrific in her role but too cartoonishly evil for my taste. I wish we knew a bit more about her background, because that would have made her evil behavior not more acceptable but at least understandable. We were given crumbs of explanations here and there but nothing to fully empathize with her character and which Ye Na "accepting" her mom just... I don't know?

The epilogue felt a bit lackluster... due to time constraint... But I was psychologically prepared. There was no way I'd be satisfied unless the final episode was at least 1h and a half but this wasn't that show.

On a shallow note, Seo Kang Hoon was an eye candy from start to finish EXCEPT for this awful hairstyle in the final scene. I don't understand why they had to change HIS hairstyle when Soo Ah's wasn't changed. The Fudge?

Anyway, a solid 8.5. Thoroughly entertained in spite of some flaws. I doubt we'll ever get a second season... and I' d rather we stayed on this high note... But if they ever do one I'll be tuning in ^^

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A draggy Thai Makjang with a lot of useless meandering nonsense.

NOTE : This was originally a comment I edited which I decided to erase and post in the review section since as of now, there’s only one review about this show and the comment was overly long.

Note 2 : If it’s too long for you, skip to the conclusion.

LONG A** REVIEW AHEAD

Apart from the very draggy middle (a staple for Lakorns apparently) , I think this drama's biggest flaw is how cartoonishly evil the Uncle is. He's so one-dimensional, at some point my irritation level got so high, I had to remind myself, this was a drama, and I could drop this if I wanted.
After all no one held me at gun point, there was no need to subject myself to voluntary raise my blood pressure IN MY FREE TIME.

BUT, since I’m an idiot, and I’d already dropped ALL the thai dramas I tried to watch since last December, I held on. As mentioned, I am an IDIOT after all.

Otherwise it's actually a pretty good show compared to most lakorns I've attempted to watch. Notice that I’ve wrote “compared to”.

I think their storylines are interesting as long as you're not allergic to toxic MLs but they always include some draggy meandering nonsense in the middle.

The ML is not toxic here but let's just say, there's quite a number of romanticized problematic behaviors in lots of Lakorns (to be fair MOST romance in fiction almost always include some problematic behaviors especially in Asian media, it's just that I find it's even more the case for Thai content compared to their Chinese/Japanese or Korean counterparts)...

I'm a sucker for toxic MLs IN FICTION ( gotta stress that one really) so fine by me but I have more trouble with the draggy additional useless plot points that often comes with the genre.

I think this explains why the overall ratings here is 7.5.

Also, the romance aspect is mostly during the first half of the series... Once Mind learns the truth, the series has a tonal shift and the romance just takes a huge step back. The Lakorn only focus on how they bring down the villain but almost all the romance is out the window... Which is too bad because both actors had great chemistry in the beginning, and I think most people would tune in for the tension between the lead especially during the period where Mind doesn’t know who he is…

They could have made such a great enemies to lovers story there… With Mind being attracted in spite of herself to her nemesis, believing he’s her mother’s murderer and the son of her fiance’s killer, as well as Pat believing the love of his life betrayed him for money and had decided to join his murderer’s family when he literally crossed the ocean to get her back. It could have been SUCH a powerful inner conflict (to be fair, the drama gloss over it… when it should have been the most important conflict – and appeal - in my opinion).

SUCH.WASTED.OPPORTUNITY.


It could have been a great thriller with romantic tension... and instead we spend most of our time with the evil uncle and his evil assistant so it ended being a poor attempt at both genres.

I love Film though and it was my first time watching Min. Both were great in their roles… which is why I’m really saddened we didn’t get more of the sizzling tension of the first 4 episodes.

The character of Emika… was very well written up to episode 15… and then she took a turn for the worse. While given the circumstances, one can understand why she made that choice… needless to say, the Uncle and his right-hand man Phasu were already irritating enough, I don’t think we needed a good character to play against their own team for some last ditch plot point to lengthen this overly long series especially when this choice of hers led to heavy consequences which could have easily been avoided if she hadn’t acted so selfishly.
There’s nothing wrong with a good character being flawed… but the way she’d been written by that point, guilt should have driven her to quickly change her stance as soon as faced with the heavy consequences of her action… But contrary to how she’d been portrayed i.e a caring and loving wife who’d stand by her husband no matter what even if she didn’t understand his choices, she felt no guilt and kept on her charade. Funny how she turned as controlling of her husband’s nasty piece of sh*** of a father once she understood things would not go her way. Again she had a good reason for it, but it ran contrary to her character. Fortunately, the drama was almost finished by then so that last ditch nonsense was quickly resolved before they had the chance to make her stray too far.

#You_ruined_Emika_but_I’m_so_tired_already_I_don’t_care

This character deserved better. But I guess, they needed to ruin her image a bit so that we could root guilt-free for the main pair to get together by the end… as if they needed that for us to root for them but whatev.

Ah yeah, almost forgot… There’s a second couple nobody gives a fudge about. I don’t even understand why they tried to force some romance between both these characters if it wasn’t to deliver on it after but whatever… I guess it made the episodes longer. These two had literally NO chemistry whatsoever. Maybe they wanted to add another couple to try to justify the romance tag… Because I sure didn’t get my dose.

It's quite a stressful watch though albeit predictable. Some stuffs made me raise my eyebrows to my hairline as well (such as one character being hurt at the head and being shown being "operated on" [the whole intervention looked SO FAKE]… on his belly with no head wound visible) but as the first reviewer wrote “It’s a Lakorn so why not”… so errr. OK I guess.

Not like this series was really aiming for coherency in the first place. It’s a “just watch, enjoy the ride and don’t ask too many questions” type of show.

Pretty reminiscent of early K dramas of the early 2000s ( I remember Memory loss being so overused back then, it became a private joke between K drama aficionados)

I wouldn't recommend that one unless you're the type of person who doesn't mind fast forwarding episodes.
I’m not… so I’ve watched every single second of that show at normal speed, and I can tell you, past episode 6, it starts to slow down and after that It’s a draggy journey to the finish line.

By the time I finished the drama I was just exhausted of the whole ordeal with none love left for the show.

Also not the kid's fault but I hate whenever he had to talk. It's very obvious he was reciting his lines. When you have to make such a young child act, it's better to avoid making them talk too much. He's supposed to be endearing, yet he just comes out as being irritating and whinny…

The whole “Mommy” and “Daddy” thing... when It’s obvious, this kid doesn’t speak a single word of English, was reaaaaaaaally awkward. That didn’t help the ordeal either. He speaks entirely in Thai anyway. Let him call his parents แม่ and พ่อ like every Thai, that would have been way less cringe.

I almost skipped his scenes all together.


In spite of me writing more about the bad points, the show had this going for them: It definitely was not boring. Most episodes were around 50 minutes instead of the usual 1hour 10+ minutes episodes I’ve seen in quite a lot of Lakorns so that made the series more easily accessible.

It’s not that there was nothing happening. Rather TOO much happening, for absolutely NO overall progression plotwise. As written above, it was a whole lot of meandering nonsense which only point was to show how evil and manipulative the Uncle is… but the main conflict which was… how to bring down the villain, goes round and round 13 episodes out of 18.


CONCLUSION


So… Would I recommend that one?
NO.

Not even to pass the time. Main issue is: It’s too draggy for a suspenseful thriller and there’s not enough fluff for romance lovers.

It fails at both.

The only reason I would recommend this show is if you’re a die-hard fan of Film or Min or you’re really into Korean Makjang.

You know the type. Old family dramas of the 2000s, with secret births, lots of twists and turns that go nowhere for 50 episodes, villains getting away with literally everything and a whole lot of suspension of disbelief needed. ( I assure you though… the main culprit here get what he deserves… BUT some characters who contributed to his ascension literally get a free pass… and one who was especially vile even get some form of sympathy pass from the drama [YEAH… SURE]).

Makjangs are not necessarily bad… But the issue is if it’s a lot of twists and turns only for the sake of shock value but without any or little progression plotwise for too long, the audience can grow tired and end up disconnected from the show… Which is what happened to me here.

This being said, there’s efforts made to keep viewers entertained… I haven’t seen enough Lakorns yet to judge how it fares compared to others… but compared to K dramas (not the makjang type)…

Well… Even being generous… It’s difficult for me to rate that one above 6,5 . AND… I don’t feel generous at present. So that’s a 6 because of how I got a whole bunch of nonsensical plotpoints and not enough fluff between the leads to make this whole ordeal worth the 18 hours of my life I wasted.

If it was a K dramas… I’d probably rate this between a 3 and a 4.5… Or rather I’d probably have already dropped it by episode 11/12. Only reason why I hung on was because of my “language quota” (long story).

But Thai productions, albeit for a few exceptions, are not yet on par with China, South Korea or Japan… so I feel it would be unfair to rate them based on the same criteria…

Also I have read it somewhere else but somebody suggested an "enjoyment" bar should be added to the ratings on MDL because you don't need a masterpiece to have a good time and while I found this show overly draggy, I still enjoyed myself enough to finish it because both main actors really made me root for their characters.
That's the only reason I ended up not being too harsh on this show. The overall suggested ratings here is 5... But considering the most important criteria for me which is "enjoyment", that's definitely a 6... There were times when it dropped to a 4... But no matter how much I think about it, I don't want to give it less than 6... because yes it was draggy, but at least they tried and resolved all the plot points they threw at us by the end of the show... Something, lots of dramas fail to do betraying their audience.

I’d probably would have rated it a 7 or 7,5, if we had 10 less episodes… But I guess it wouldn’t be a Lakorn otherwise.

THIS BEING SAID, I hate Makjang in general (unfortunately there’s no « Makjang » tag on MDL otherwise I’d have avoided this show). If you’re the type to appreciate the genre…
You’ll probably enjoy this so don’t let my long rant deter you for giving it a try…

However if you’ve started this and you feel the same as I by episode 7/8…

Well, just so you know. It doesn’t get better, so trust me, and save the remaining time for a better show.


PS: Also... Dunno who is the stylist, I usually really don't pay attention to fashion overall but I did notice that Min's clothes were just all the time pretty gorgeous and fitted her figure pretty well. Gotta give credits when it’s due.

PS2 : As per usual in most Thai dramas I’ve watched… the sound quality was awful especially when characters were shouting. I don’t know the expression in English but the sound felt « saturated ». There were even times when when characters talked, you’d have some additional parasitic sounds on top which was even more noticeable when you had music in the background.

PS3: Also Thailand… Can you please stop casting dark skinned actors only in negative roles? My God, I’m so tired of all that Colorism nonsense.

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Intriguing story, horrendous pace and Censorship galore.

[NOTE: Some parts might feel disjointed, I had to remove some things]

Before I start, this drama is the adaptation of the first volume of a science-fiction trilogy I’ve yet to read, so although I’ll make some conjectures regarding said novels, this review is solely based on the drama.
I’ll try to be as concise as possible since there’s already a fair number of reviews written and MDL limits reviews to 10 000 characters (unless you’re a VIP member maybe, I don’t know).

I’ll be dividing this review in 3 parts : Spoiler Free, Thoughts with Spoiler and a a brief conclusion (spoiler free).

Now without further ado. Let’s dive in.

SPOILER FREE

The best way to watch this show is to avoid spoilers altogether and discover the story as it unravels, so I won’t talk about it, but it’s fair to say that it’s pretty confusing in the beginning. It’s intriguing, strange, you don’t know exactly where this is going but in spite of everything the story is fascinating enough that it keeps you hooked… until we get to around episode 10 and the past of one specific character is developed.

This is when, things start to get a bit more… tedious for watchers. Some viewers don’t seem to have been bothered by it, but I’ve seen a fair number of comments from people who either dropped or put this show on hold because of this draggy middle. I can’t make any comparison with the Netflix adaptation, but one comment mentioned that the Netflix version butchered the novel, while this version was a drag.

Now, I think there’s two main explanations for that draggy part one due to censorship and the other for plot-reason. BUT I can’t speak about those without spoiling so I’ll talk about this in the second part.

I can’t blame people for dropping the show at that point. It’s not that it’s not interesting, but honestly it’s such a drag that I myself had to pause with other shows on several occasions. If you’re patient enough though, by episode 18 things are back on track (though we still get some flashback for said character) and the story goes to its finale…. In a relatively good pace though leaving some inconsistencies and questions unanswered by the end.

I found the scientific explanations interesting, they tried to make them as understandable as possible for the non-initiated but let’s be honest, this is one instance where I feel books are better. I personally can’t wrap my head around complicated concepts unless I see them on paper.

Overall, it’s one of the most fascinating and intellectually challenging series I’ve seen in a while, but it needed some serious trimming in my opinion.
Censorship also removed some of the emotional impact of the story which I personally find extremely sad.

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THOUGHTS WITH SPOILERS

There’s lots of things worth discussing regarding Three Body and it’s just impossible to talk about them all, so I’ll be focusing on a couple of things here, those who marked me the most.

Ye Wen Jie’s Past, Censorship and thought on this character

There’s a fairly good chunk of the story that goes into explaining Ye Wen Jie’s past. Some of these explanations appeared pretty pointless to me until I started to wonder about some key events that are glossed over in the series. Upon looking it up online these “glossed over parts” that are talked about but never really showed in details in the story belong to a dark part of recent Chinese history. I haven’t read the novel, but it seems to be that there’s a probably a good chunk of it that talks in more details about what Wen Jie went through which explains why she ended up making the choices she made.

By not showing the full cruelty of what she and her father endured, it removed a lot of the emotional impact it should have had on the audience and made it difficult to empathize with her as a character.
All her talk and all the draggy episodes that ensued appear as needless meandering that breaks the show’s pace and play against its narration.

This being said, I do feel there’s a second reason why they’ve made that choice. We go through Wen Jie’s story as she’s telling it to our main character Wang Miao. It’s later revealed she’s a key member of a certain group she wants Wang Miao to join, hence all that storytelling felt in hindsight as a way of manipulating our main character to empathize with Wen Jie and make him understand her ideas…
The more we spend time with her past, the more it seems we were supposed to understand what she did…

But at the end of the day, that part was poorly executed and just didn’t have the desired effect on most viewers, me included.


Another small censorship comment


At the end of the drama, our good guys are supposed to get back some data on a boat. In order to get those, they cook up some complicated method to literally cut a whole boat in several slices, people onboard included. That plan of theirs came about 3 days BEFORE they had to execute it.
At some point Wang Miao who is behind the invention to slice the boat is raising concerns regarding the workers, he basically doesn’t want any harm to come to people who just don’t know who and what they’re working for. One US general ( or country Letter thing – no country is named in this drama… again for obvious censorship reasons) tells him not to worry since they’ve looked into it and all workers are the scum of the earth who have all committed atrocious crimes ( in 3 days?)…

This is blatant censorship playing again. China doesn’t want to show innocents being killed for the “greater good” and so the “enemy” has to be made “evil” for the sake of political propaganda (also no matter how shitty these people were supposed to be, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they would agree to doom humanity for money. Even the worst criminal on earth has a line they wouldn’t cross and I think dooming humanity fits the bill).

Again, this removes a strong emotional impact this could have had on the audience. Given the size of the threat, it would be understandable that if needs be, innocents are killed in the process of saving humanity from its impending doom, that would have highlighted the scale and moral dilemma of saving the world by killing the innocents… JUST LIKE the villains have doomed humanity, the guilty and the innocents alike, in the hope of saving LIFE on planet earth.

There was an interesting parallel to draw here, but the drama missed the mark due to censorship reasons. I have absolutely 0 doubt that the novel features a scene in which innocents are butchered on that boat in order to save humanity and I wish that parallel had been clearly shown here.


Ye Wen Jie and Mike Evans.

Coming back to Ye Wen Jie, her gesture of literally dooming humanity is explained by what she went through and what she saw which can be resumed as Humans lack of empathy and respect towards anything but themselves and endless greed that leads them to not only destroy their planet but also themselves. Mike Evans’ overall reasons for pursuing her agenda is the same, Humans are a lost cause…

And as much as I agree with the fact mentioned above ( and Trump’s reelection on top of the very alarming rise fascism, genocides happening in various countries without any coverage and those covered being basically “justified” by utter mass media manipulation, the fact that basically a billionaire made a nazi salute and is still able to parade everywhere without any politician or mass media saying anything and the environment going to shit without any major worldwide measure taken to save us and the upcoming generations from complete doom), I think the drama made it a point to show that these were just pretexts for them to vent their anger and resentment towards humanity as a whole.

Wen Jie can tell her story all she wants and try to pretend what she did was for LIFE, that it was for a greater cause, but at the end of day, she’s just a bitter old lady who took revenge on humanity as a whole for the wrongs she endured condemning the innocents and those who work behind the scenes to do good in spite of adversity. She’s never known warmth, neither from her mother and sister who betrayed her and her father, she went to some reeducation camp which from the few things I read were horrible places where lots of young people were sent, forced to work in poor conditions, with close to no pay, little medical care, little food and enduring physical abuse and torture, NONE of which were shown in the drama which only show people working as if it was “normal work”.

This is proven by Mike Evans who, clearly learned way more than Wen Jie, yet upon learning the aliens weren’t any better than humans, kept on going with his plan to ruin Humanity.

As far as I’m concerned they both should have their arms, legs, eyes, ears and tongue removed, put in a tiny space just tailored to their size and be fed through intravenous drip until they die. Sounds cruel? Well, when you’ve betrayed HUMANITY for your selfish reasons that pretty mild. Yet Wen Jie is having a nice walk in the park before going to prison for dooming us all.

Both Wen Jie and Mike Evans crossed a line that nobody has any right to cross. No amount of explanation can justify committing such a sin against humanity… and other species. Can they even guarantee these aliens will even respect other forms of life when their own world has always been shown as being barren in the first place?


I’m reaching the 10000 characters limit so I’ll be wrapping up things here.



______________________________________

CONCLUSION:

There’s LOTS of things that are worth talking about this drama. It’s flawed and suffers from a serious pacing problem but its such an interesting story that it deserves its accolades. I initially rated it 9 but ended up giving a 8,5 though for its horrendous pacing issues.
Not bingeable though.

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Another great one from Be On Cloud but this is NOT A ROMANCE.

WARNING : NO SPOILERS But some mild comments which will be separated by lines from the rest of the review.

There was no way they could have given this series a satisfactory ending if not for that one. Although it's bittersweet and a couple of threads could have been better tied up.
One thing I'd like to warn about however is, if you're looking for romance.... this is not the right show. Not that there's not any but it's honestly not the heart of the drama... though they did give some fan service here and there esp. in the final episode in spite of the lack of NC scenes (in the final episode).

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Great was never great but by the time we reached the end of this journey, he had learned to be better. I'm mostly sad for Tonkla, but he crossed a line he should never had. At least Korn redeemed himself though not by choice but because he was driven to it.

____________________________________________

The show was made confusing on purpose and it's one of those that it's better not to know anything about before you start, but at the same time, that confusion is probably what the character we mostly follow felt.

"Why Don't You Stay" was my favorite song in Kinnporsche so it was pretty nice to hear it sung in another voice in the final episode.
Overall a great watch. I personally don't mind NC scenes as long as there's no violence involved ( BDSM or whatever is a BIG NO), some are relatively graphic so it might have hurt some people's sensitivities but personally I watched it for the story so whether there were NC scenes or not didn't make a difference... though I do think some of the earlier scenes with Tonkla felt too gratuitious.

Honestly, I still feel a bit overwhelmed, so I don't know how to write anything coherent apart from that I loved that show from its very first minute and that it kept me on the edge of my seat throughout its 8 weeks long run.
I have nothing but praise for the actors and for the whole crew who worked on this little gem which are SO SO SO RARE in Thai BLs.

Bible delivered but I was confident he'd pull it off, but Jes, Fuaiz, and Bas were nice discoveries. I'll keep on following their next projects whether they act together again or not.

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Strong Start, draggy middle, brilliant Finish.

I... don't get the hype.

Almost dropped it but had invested too much time to, so I persisted to the end.

Too many game scenes which ultimately becomes pretty boring at some point ( If I wanted to watch e-sport... I would watch e-sport, I'm here for the story not the competition though obviously featuring some scenes is necessary) but more importantly, characters all repeatedly make the same mistake which is ruining their team's hard work due to their inflated ego... and this is something that I find not only extremely ANNOYING but which I just can't understand.

If you want to play games to brag that much, maybe switching to SOLO games might be better instead of dragging everyone's effort through the mud.

On one side that makes for good character growth... on the other, it becomes REALLY repetitive when all characters have an ego issue... Except for the character of Yi Fan, who basically has the complete opposite problem and the nerd who sucks at playing but is a good tactician.

We spend quite a lot of time with each member joining the team. A stapple of any sport anime/drama/movie you name it... except here I feel it's too long and it ultimately becomes boring at some point.

But the final nail in the coffin is the character of Ye Qiu. Basically he's perfect. Not one single flaw. He's supposed to be the main character, yet there's no character progression at all during the whole drama. He's only the best and that's basically it... And since he's the best, there's absolutely nothing interesting about him... and hence we spend most of our time with EVERYONE BUT him, which is err... WEIRD considering the drama's name is based on HIM or rather the character he plays.

This being said, at least Ye Qiu is just bland.... because my GOD the number of irritating characters is just ridiculous in this drama. From the good guys to the "bad guys", everybody is annoying as Fudge, starting from Chen Guo, team's Happy's boss to Tao Xuan, Ye Qiu's former boss and Team Excellent Era's manager who remained basically a major a**hole from start to finish and a whole lot of others in the middle. That jerk couldn't even apologize for his behavior even once. He got what he deserved, but a simple "Sorry" to both Ye Qiu and Mu Cheng would have gone a long way.

Sadly, Ye Qiu being how he is, i.e very cool-headed and not particularly vengeful, they was never any punchline or him hitting the nail on the coffin of his former boss.
My petty self was waiting for it, but sadly it never came. I'll have to be happy with him being utterly ruined by the end of the show without time given to revel in his misery.

There's also some philosophical talks about LIFE through playing GAMES... And I'm not saying it's bad... But when You've watched as many sports anime as I did... it just feel like rince and repeat, though that's not the drama's fault...

This being said the buildup to the final showdown was really well done and the last 4 episodes and 1/3 really flew by. I wish the whole show had the same intensity or at least something closer to it but sadly nope...

CONCLUSION

The beginning was nice but not outstanding, the middle long and boring and the finale as brillant as it was just wasn't enough for me to forgive the draggy middle.

I really don't get why it's such a loved show, I was really happy when it came to Viki, because I heard a lot about it... But I guess it's one instance where the Anime version is probably better.

Chinese drama tend to take their time in telling stories and I just don't think it fits the genre. Also Yang Yang is really handsome, but the face card alone is not enough sorry.

It's not a bad show per say... but it's not as good as advertised imho.

Final Ratings: 7.5

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A likable but frustrating timeless Classic.

Well it was better in my memory I guess...

I can't deny it's a gripping series in spite of the overly LOUD music, barely audible dialogues, grainy images, endless ad cuts + repeats of the 10 last seconds before said ads ( It’s on STREAMING PLATFORMS NOW, REMOVE them for the online version for God’s SAKE!) and really ROUGH editing…

Yeah I know it’s a long list of technical issues but my GOD all of the above is pretty terrible especially since HD series already existed back then. This series looks like it’s been filmed in the 80s and for the life of me, if it wasn’t for the subs, even if I spoke mandarin, I wouldn’t have been able to understand over half of the dialogues because of the repetitive OVERLY LOUD MUSIC.
And it’s spite of AAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLL of that… It’s still a series worth investing some time.

BUT Mu Cheng's character is one of the worst case of noble idiocy I've ever seen even by 2009's standard.

The first time I came across this series years back, I remember I found Guang Xi pretty obnoxious before and after his memory loss (couldn't find over half of the episodes since it was fansubbed so had to drop it back then).
Now more than 15 years later, I was just as frustrated as him with Mu Cheng. It must be hell falling desperately in love with somebody who always keeps things to herself, apologizes repeatedly for nothing, never stands up for herself and keeps on lying repeatedly even when begged to be honest. If I was Guang Xi, I wouldn't bother anymore but dramaland must force this poor man to bear this stoopidity so here it is.

Honestly, only nostalgia made me bear her character. She had her reasons but my understanding only goes so far. She had plenty of chances to explain herself yet, she never bothered even seeing how much it drove the man she loved crazy. Thus she repeatedly ends up in an awkward situation to explain herself while her wishy-washy attitude is the main reason why she always drives herself into a corner. It literally takes her the WHOLE series to learn to fight for what she wants and open her mouth.

I HATE people who always assume they know better, instead of letting the people concerned make their own decisions.

The little kid playing Xiao Le, is just perfectly adorable. He really knows how to portray his role to perfection... BUT WHY OH WHY doesn't he call his mom "Mom" or "Mommy" but always calls her by her first name ?
The kids obviously knows how to deliver his lines so why the HELL doesn't he call her properly? This is NEVER explained in the drama and it's rude as fudge, completely out of character and REALLY ANNOYING. That’s basic respect to adults. Something that the kid shows in spade to every single adult… EXCEPT when talking to his mom.

The whole final arch with the drug lord was overly long. Too much screentime given to secondary characters when only what happens at the end of episode 30 is truly relevant to our main story.

Mu Cheng is very in typical of Asian drama FLs of the 2000s… Naive, Innocent, Hardworking and Selfless. In short, a complete doormat albeit an infuriating likable one.
But I like my female characters, even when naive and pretty innocent to have some spunk. Guang Xi on the other side, has a fiery temper, but don't be mistaken. This is not a walking red flag. Guang Xi is a kind misunderstood green flag, who just ended up fed up with people making decisions for him and hence lashes out at everyone. He's the one I could relate to the most.

Ultimately I’m left pretty frustrated at the end of the journey. I found myself binging the episodes past the University phase, but also found myself equally frustrated by most characters. Guang Xi’s fiancee for instance, was depicted as this naive, hardworking, loving girl… Yet as bright as she was, she never guessed that the sole reason why Mu Cheng left is because Guang Xi’s mother and her father wanted Guang Xi and her to be together, and thus pressured her to leave in order for Guang Xi to get that treatment… In what way exactly could she allow herself to be that judgmental of Mu Cheng when she clearly knew, at least inwardly, that Mu Cheng left so that SHE could get with him? I just can't understand how she could believe for one second that Mu Cheng was this evil, selfish girl, who left a man who loved her more than his life, helpless to die.

Guang Xi was my favorite. At least he didn't take any sh** from anyone.

In spite of all my frustrations… I’d probably have rated that one a 8,5 if it weren’t for all the technical issues I mentioned above. The story is timeless but the series has aged like milk visually. Vanness Wu was perfect though apparently his Chinese is broken in this one… Dunno, I’m not used to the Taiwanese accent so personally I thought it sounded fine next to the other actors… But again it’s not like we could hear most of the dialogues anyway so who cares?

CONCLUSION

Suggested Rating: 7
Personal Rating: 8

Story-wise I think it deserves a 9, but I’m just too frustrated with how Mu Cheng’s been written, the terrible sound management, the repetitive music and the kid calling his mom by her first name to give more.

But I can’t give it less, because that would enter the “not worth your time” in my rating system, and I still feel its one of these all time classics, with very classic tropes of that period, that deserves to be watched if only for all the actors performances. I used to watch quite a lot of Taiwanese dramas back then (most of which, I ended up dropping), most of them idol ones, and the acting was terrible, so I remember vividly this one standing out for how good all actors were.

Also, you won’t help but finish this drama with a big smile on your face, and isn’t that the most important thing?

Lately, I’ve been feeling pretty nostalgic about Asian Melos from that period especially K dramas… So I’m glad I finally was able to rewatch this series from start to finish this time. It reminded me of how addictive they were but also about how frustrating they could be with their typical misunderstandings due to obvious lack of communication ( and here let me tell you Guang Xi DOES want to talk, but Mu Cheng, since she always knows better, does not) and interfering parents.

Got rid of my nostalgia right away. I still miss these types of melos with their overused Amnesia trope though… I wish we still could get those but modernized, with more spunky FLs and way less miscommunication.

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CUTE and RELAXING

CONS:

1. Series feel very slow at the beginning.
2. Fake kisses with mouth moving in the emptiness, no tongue and not-so-clever use of camera angles. The KISSES SUCK. I'm sorry. I like to have good kisses when watching my ROMANCE.
3. Some very irritating characters. They get better but you do have to "suffer them" for quite a number of episodes before they turn around.
4. Shitty ending. As mentioned by everybody just skip the last 10 minutes or so if you want to forget it... Honestly I watched it and it's easily skippable. You won't be missing anything, but it's not as terrible as people have made it out to be, if you're mentally prepared.
5. Useless and unfair breakup in ep 19. FL lied as well, I still don't understand in what way exactly the ML was more at fault.
6. End of Ep 20 to beginning of episode 23. The Show is turning all dramatic for no good reason. It feels like, like in many C dramas, they don't want us to have even the slightest of slightest of second lead syndrome so they had to completely ruin Yi Tian Yu's character. SML deserved a better treatment.

PROS:

1. Adorable and easy to root for leads.
2. Lots of skinship in spite of the fake kisses.
3. Both leads bring the best out of each other, though the FL benefits more from the ML than the opposite.
4. Relaxing show. Not too much angst, but not nothing happening either.

CONCLUSION

I would say the pros count double in my book. Not extraordinary compared to other dramas in the genre... If you don't watch it you won't miss much... But if you do, it's a very relaxing show. As far as Modern drama MLs go, Lin Zhi Hua is top tier.

Best watched without binging at a leisurely pace. Watch this after a shitty day at work/school, it will bring a smile to your face.
Worth the time invested.

Suggested rating: 7.5
Personal rating: 8

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Nice to pass the time but forgettable

Hmm... Well again I'm not the target audience so... Here's my 2 cents:

Story 1: Honestly the weakest story of the lot. Maybe young male teenagers can relate but an almost 40 year-old woman I find the whole thing barely watchable. That would be a 3.5 from me.

Story 2: Cute romance but pretty flat. Acting from FL and ML was pretty good. I had already seen Ryeo Un in previous projets before that one and was pretty surprised when he got cast on such a "small drama". Nothing new though. I think this story will probably appeal to female teenagers and early 20 something but it failed to resonate with me... Probably because there's no nostalgic feel or whatever. Still average cute. Not bad, but not extraordinary either. So Okayish... 7

Story 3: Strangely unlike most comments, I found that story much more engaging. Probably because at the core, it's more about a slightly overweight girl who has to learn self-love before seeking to be loved from an outsider and seek validation from it... Something that lots of people fail to do even way after their teenage years.

This being said, from the very first minute you could tell this is not really a fat girl. Sure, she's got weight... But you don't have legs like that unless you're a fairly active girl. This girl has very strong and firm muscles under that layer of fat, this is the body of a sporty girl who just happens to be overweight. On the other side, her "nemesis" is just skinny with no muscle mass. I've drawn a fair share of naked bodies so I could immediately tell, than there is that dance in the last episode which confirmed what I thought.

Asia has an obsession about skinny bodies but skinny doesn't necessarily equals "healthy". And while having too much fat is obviously unhealthy... in the case of this girl, she doesn't belong in the unhealthy category... although she'd probably better lose a few pounds just for her joints. Your body won't mind the extra fat when you're young, sporty and active.... but past your prime, your joints are going to give you hell.

Anyway, I met the same type of b*** in middle and high school but from shared experience with lots of people I've met in life, the general conclusion is people who were really popular in high school rarely end up having the best lives once into adulthood. Probably because they spent too much time chasing popularity instead of real skills.

Anyway, that's a solid 8.5 for the last story...

Rounded it up that's a 6.5 overall.

Last story best of the 3 which is surprising given everybody was more into the 2nd one... But again, I think one's appreciation of this will really depend on how old you are.

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EPIC

Really enjoyed it but I don't think I would have if it wasn't for the first movie.

I didn't care much for Kyoukai's life story. As ridiculous as it was ( I mean literally Shin is running around everywhere fighting here and there with barely any sleep nor food for days and the guy is still as pumped up as when he started his journey) and as obnoxiously LOUD Shin was (typical of MANY Male manga characters), it was EPIC.

The battles were impressive but my brain couldn't switch off the fact that all these generals are literally sending people to the slaughterhouse in order to get brownie points from the King. It's all in the name of uniting Qin, but the truth is, they all want the glory, the fame, the personal army, castle and money that comes with it.

I usually flee from war stories because they're just pretty sad overall, for me it's just mindless killing for this or that King. People at the bottom honestly don't care about who rules but they sure pay the price whenever a new lord wants his own little kingdom...

This being said, it is refreshing to see a show that focus on the big lines in history book. Forget the deaths count, just enjoy the ride through the lens of those at the top and a nutcase who has a big dream. I wish I had seen this in a movie theater though. The scale of the battle and the insane castles are worth the investment. A small screen just doesn't give it justice.

Anyway. Count me in for Movie Number 3.

A solid 9.

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A Great introduction to a grand story

Kingdom is based on of the many manga I've bought and which... I haven't gotten around to read due to lack of time. Seriously there's 70 volumes already published in my country, I have all of them and I haven't read a single one.

By the same token, from what I remember the anime already has 5 seasons... and I haven't watched a single one yet.

Only bought the series because it is apparently popular so I didn't know anything of its story.
Since I've been burned by Japanese live actions I don't know how many times before, I was really wary about this one, but I was pleasantly surprised.

I thought it delivered an entertaining story with lots of action and a hero easy to root for. The fighting scenes were a bit too long for my taste. We get a useless "comic relief" in the character of Ten that I just couldn't care about and it was honestly a bit weird to have subtitles in which the names were spelled in Pinyin when characters are pronouncing them the Japanese way. Sometimes the Japanese and Chinese pronunciations were pretty close, and other time not at all, but I got used to it at some point.

I've seen several projects by Yamazaki Kento, all live actions and didn't think much of them because honestly... well they sucked. But checking my list, I realized all the projects he acted in which I hated were from the beginning of his carreer. I haven't seen a single project of his in the last 5 years that I disliked. He seems to be choosing his projects more carefully now and I'm starting to feel, he's slowly but surely becoming my favorite Japanese actor.

Anyway it had some minor flaws but I was thoroughly entertained and it made me want to finally take the time to read these freaking 70 volumes accumulating dust in my library. Not gonna do it because I don't have the time but you never know....

A solid 9

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