L13

No, I totally get what you're saying. The progression of his feelings renders the first part of the drama kind of pointless; if he was always going to like a girl like Sang Zhi if he met her as an adult, why does it matter at all that they used to know each other or that she loved him as a child?

A more complex relationship between them as adults where Jiaxu works through the fact he used to view Sang Zhi as a younger sister instead of immediately turning on the charm would have been more interesting AND romantic. Because SZ's past does matter and forms the basis of their relationship, so JX not caring about it at all is kinda weird.

My take on the debate over Jiaxu’s feelings for Sang Zhi in the first part of the drama is this: it’s undeniable he flirts with her at times—there are many times he treats her in a way he wouldn’t treat a younger boy, like when he writes her a letter about how happy he was to see her or when he tells her she looks like a puffer fish when she’s eating and asks her to give him her lollipop (hello?!)—but it’s a totally safe and purposeless flirting. The fact he doesn’t even realise she likes him when she’s so obvious about it and he always comes up with a benign explanation for her behaviour shows the thought of them actually doing something together hasn’t occurred to him. I don’t even think he knows he’s flirting with her at times, and he certainly sees her as a child, not a prospective romantic interest. But the subconscious beginnings of an attraction are there.

ENOUGH

This sounds like When the Weather Is Fine meets a 50-episode family drama from 2017.

The first episode was pretty draggy and empty. Fewer flashbacks and more scenes with side characters would have been nice; a TV show has the time to make the world of a webtoon feel lived in (since romantic webtoons tend to focus on the main characters and not flesh out background characters, settings and motivations or have complex plots and relationships), but they didn’t even try to do that here. ML’s dead mother, check, FL’s deadbeat father, check, ML’s childhood trauma, check, FL’s conveniently loyal and obedient guardian figure out of nowhere, check. Every plot point and character is established so hastily, without any emotional depth. For an episode in which nothing really happened, it actually rushed through the important stuff in a way that prevented me from getting emotionally invested.

Also I like the heroine, but after reading the webtoon I was really hoping the drama would infuse the ML’s character with some charisma to match the FL, but instead they toned down his already bland personality and made him a complete cardboard cutout of a love interest. I’ll keep watching for now, but I can already tell I’m going to lose interest in the drama before it ends.

A deadbeat cheating father who was a burden to the one child he raised and didn’t even raise the other one and a mother who left her baby are not a real family.

Yeah, he’s slaying in the set photos I’ve seen. He looked great in Pledge of Allegiance too! It cracks me up that people are saying he doesn’t have enough star power for LSS when he’s both hot and talented, which is a rare combo in cdramas.

I think he’ll grow on many sceptics over the course of the drama.

This trailer makes it look like the two love triangles will be big parts of the plot, which I'm not in love with... I hope they're kept to a minimum, but I know I have no chance of getting what I want in a Taiwanese drama.

That's practically guaranteed IMO.

OK, Weiting is a scumbag for filming their wedding night without telling Xin Xing, but he’s totally right to fight her over her handling of the debt situation in episode 1. And her telling him it’s her problem to deal with, so he should stay out of it pissed me off. One, this is the kind of issue you face with your spouse, and two, the loansharks came to WT’s workplace (which is surely illegal and could be referred to the police, as most of their tactics could, but anyway)! Basically, I get why he divorced her. Sure, he’s a coward and didn’t love her enough, but taking on millions of debt right after you get married for a spouse who doesn’t even want to discuss measures to mitigate the situation with you and has no plan for paying off the debt is too much to ask of most people.

Yes, that family has enough money to raise a kid. The way he was just removed from the plot to make way for XYS and XY’s marriage life sucked.

The person who named him and took him to the doctor as a child is not the legal guardian? As if! When both your biological parents abandon you and your older brother takes care of you for 10 years, he’s your legal guardian. The law is not stupid about these things in other countries, so I assume it works logically in China too.

Right, that’s XYS’s kid and both his biological parents suck? We’re just supposed to accept that XCL going to live with them is a happy development because it undoes some of the “damage” XYS has suffered and makes him more marriageable, but it’s a really jarring plot point and I have zero confidence XCL’s parents are going to raise him well. The way Xiang Yuan didn’t take any interest in Chengli’s wellbeing or Xu Yanshi’s feelings about their separation and made the whole situation about XYS not trusting her enough to tell her when he’s sad was really off-putting too.

I'm still on ep. 27-28, but like... do they get Xu Chengli back at any point? The way their dad showed up and just took him really took me aback.

Sorry for your loss! It's so awful to lose the people we love. My heart goes out to you.

There's no reason to suspect anything. A 4-year gap is not an obstacle to a long-term relationship, and whether they're only getting married because of the baby or not is something we can only guess at. In any case, even if the baby influenced their decision, that doesn't mean their relationship will be unsuccessful; they wouldn't be the first happily married couple to speed up their relationship timeline because of something like a pregnancy or visa requirements. But again, we don't even know if that's what happened.

In any case, if they're "only" getting married because Cha Seowon would stop getting work otherwise—I see no proof of this given how the kdrama industry treats known rapists, by the way—why were they dating for so long before that?

I think it's much easier to wish them happiness than to speculate about the inner workings of their relationship.

I’m not sure how licensing works, but I just requested this show from Viki and I suggest others do the same. If Viki picks it up when it comes out, we’ll get real subtitles instead of Mango’s usual gibberish.

Here’s the form:

https://support.viki.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034633713-Request-a-TV-Show-or-Movie

Holy shit, Lingyue's storyline escalated quickly in ep. 12! She left the academy, turned evil, erased her sister from her father's memory, blamed it on Wei Zhi somehow, whored her sister out to the imperial advisor, became the emperor's favourite and supplanted the Phoenix as the guardian of the realm in the common people's minds.

Meanwhile, Yan Yue was sleeping.

No, what *you* wrote is absolutely nuts.

I'm guessing they'll hold off on releasing this because it's very similar to A Date with the Future, which is airing right now. However, based on the trailer, the popularity of the novel and Yang Yang's track record of picking solid projects, I expect this drama to be quite a bit better than A Date with the Future (which is still fun but pretty childish IMO).

I hope we can see it ASAP.