I had fun watching this!! For context I am in the very specific demographic of being a hardcore Pokemon fan that has not been happy with the direction of the franchise for years, but I stick with it for the two primary reasons of 1) I play the TCG competitively and 2) I am an absolute sucker for getting my hands on every side media I can find, especially those which will pretty much never be officially localized in English like this
Yes, the show is formulaic and overdramatic, but it's not to the point where I had an actual problem with it? I thought it was cute seeing how all of Madoka's adventures in her game correlated to real life. It gave me some sense of whimsy. Special shoutout to the beautiful rearrangements of RGB's OST and how it was incorporated into the show, that was all really well done. I'm the first to complain over how much TPC/TPCi/et al wants to shove Kanto down our throats nonstop, but I genuinely didn't feel any of that here. It's still nostalgia pandering, sure, but it was for a good reason this time!
I also want to highlight how I thought Madoka and Sora's relationship was very cute. I think it would've been so easy to write him as someone that has only ever played SV and thinks of the Gameboy games as primitive, but no this kid has played every generation, and knows everything about them at that! So there's this little kid going around mentoring an adult woman and it's the kind of bond that would rarely make much sense in the context of something that isn't Pokemon!
I think my biggest takeaway from the show however is "oh my god someone not only looked at red and green's relationship and went 'but what if it was YURI' but also they made it into a real, official piece of media"
if i'm correctly understanding what this prompt is,
dear missy: there's a scene where there's an outright crossover with hikaru no go. aside from one, every actor in said scene was in both shows
octogenarian and the 90s: there's a scene where guo sanshuang (played by bai jingting) watches an episode of ordinary glory, one of bjt's other works :p
hikaru no go- entire plot revolves around how our protagonist finds an ancient go board in his grandpa’s attic, stained with tears only he can see (it was blood in the source material). then from that day on his life is completely changed in ways he couldn’t have ever imagined!
back in time- qiao ran’s character song he sings during the credits of one episode is titled 一朵, it does require some context clues but the first line of the song is 盛开的一朵两朵三朵四朵幻玫瑰 to make it clear the measure word is supposed to be referring to a flower
our beloved summer- it’s an instrumental remix but one of the songs is entitled “christmas tree - cherry blossoms version”
uwaaaa happy birthday xiaobai!! i can’t believe i finally get to call you a thirty year old man lmao. i can say so much about you but above all i can clearly tell that in every single role you play, there is so, so much overflowing genuine heart put into all of them.
qiao ran’s utterly selfless love in spite of everything, sun yiqiu’s way of finding just that tiniest little spark to believe in himself when he thought all was lost, xu tan’s determination to never let the ball hit the floor, xing kelei’s reassurance to mi ka that whenever he was here everything would be alright, xiao heyun going from someone who was prioritizing saving his own skin to finding someone he would risk it all for over and over again, yin zheng being hilariously petty but also so full of adorning love for his family, gu jiusi’s relentless rage at how you do NOT disrespect his wife, and more. every emotion they go through i feel like i’m right there with them.
I'm on ep 5 now and I just can't get into this show. Can someone please lmk if this is worth continuing? I'm not…
the entire premise of the drama is how the leads influence each other as they rely on each other through the drastic situations they're put through, so they both massively grow and change as a result
This drama hit incredibly close to home in so many ways, as someone who also had one life passion that didn't…
Sun Yiqiu offers a toast to Wu Kezhi as a thank you. Yes, of course Sun Yiqiu is incredibly thankful for everything he's done for him, for how he went from someone who was telling him he would never make it to becoming someone who was willing to fight for him to stay. Wu Kezhi, who is currently drunk and passed out in front of him.
More than anything? Sun Yiqiu is essentially talking to himself. He's offering the toast to *himself*. Thanking himself, for being the person to not give up on himself. Wu Kezhi might've been the person that taught him to just nearly pinch his fingers together, tell him that the smallest spark of hope is enough. But it would all be for nothing if Sun Yiqiu didn't genuinely take that to heart, and overcome the difficulties in believing in himself and his own self worth. <3
This drama hit incredibly close to home in so many ways, as someone who also had one life passion that didn't quite work out as a career. I love it dearly. I want to gush about that scene in the second to last episode in particular, and why I keep replaying it in my head a year after I've watched this.
there's no female love interest, don't worry! there is a character that sorta has a one-sided crush on the ml…
generally, yes! despite everything that was changed/added, overall it's mostly a pretty fateful exact-plot-point-by-plot-point adaptation of the original through the whole way through, so it's easy to make direct comparisons (though the live action did add in a ton of bonus bickering scenes and i adore every single one lol)
i was going to reply to this with a comparison of one scene in particular in episode five that i believe highlights both the similarities and differences the best, but then i ended up realizing i have way more thoughts about this scene that it was turning into an entire essay haha. i'll have to post it as a discussion thread here when i'm done!
can i ask what does ‘meow meow’ means? ive been seeing it a lot and im confused 😭
it’s a term that’s hard to put an exact definition to because it’s more of a feeling but! the full term is “my poor meow meow”, and is usually followed by the phrase “was born in a wet cardboard box all alone.” it essentially means a character that is a bastard, but that’s why you unapologetically love them. though, admittedly, it’s more about characters that have committed war crimes but also have a tragic backstory, so i’m probably stretching the definition by calling gu jiusi a meow meow but in my heart that’s what he is to me!!
there's no female love interest, don't worry! there is a character that sorta has a one-sided crush on the ml…
nah, hikaru’s classmate akari (jiang xueming’s counterpart) does have a crush on him but hikaru never acknowledges this. although it is important to note that the characters were aged up in the drama (they were originally middle school age instead of high schoolers)
I hope someone replies to me(tho chances are very low loll) i just wanna know: I'm into bl more than non-bl so…
there's no female love interest, don't worry! there is a character that sorta has a one-sided crush on the ml but their friendship is sweet. (i'm a lifelong fan of the animanga, and iirc her crush is actually way less apparent in the drama than it is in the source material. it's to the extent where i can't even really remember if it was brought up in the drama at all. every character did receive characterization changes, imo pretty much everything changed was for the better)
as for it being bl, Well, i'll just say that the source material was already incredibly infamous for its gay subtext. the drama kept all of that (hikaru/shi guang's initial motivation for wanting to pursue akira/yu liang being "i want to understand your intense gaze and have it directed at me", etc) and somehow added even More onto that in such a way that i did not expect to even be possible lmaooo. for one thing, the whole six year time skip at the beginning was a change made to the drama (i'm assuming it was partly due to the logistics of filming live action), so to have yu liang go "i upended my life to move to south korea for six years because i made you my goal" sure is... something! and that's only the start! if you ask me, it's not even subtext, it's just... text.
Yes, the show is formulaic and overdramatic, but it's not to the point where I had an actual problem with it? I thought it was cute seeing how all of Madoka's adventures in her game correlated to real life. It gave me some sense of whimsy. Special shoutout to the beautiful rearrangements of RGB's OST and how it was incorporated into the show, that was all really well done. I'm the first to complain over how much TPC/TPCi/et al wants to shove Kanto down our throats nonstop, but I genuinely didn't feel any of that here. It's still nostalgia pandering, sure, but it was for a good reason this time!
I also want to highlight how I thought Madoka and Sora's relationship was very cute. I think it would've been so easy to write him as someone that has only ever played SV and thinks of the Gameboy games as primitive, but no this kid has played every generation, and knows everything about them at that! So there's this little kid going around mentoring an adult woman and it's the kind of bond that would rarely make much sense in the context of something that isn't Pokemon!
I think my biggest takeaway from the show however is "oh my god someone not only looked at red and green's relationship and went 'but what if it was YURI' but also they made it into a real, official piece of media"
dear missy: there's a scene where there's an outright crossover with hikaru no go. aside from one, every actor in said scene was in both shows
octogenarian and the 90s: there's a scene where guo sanshuang (played by bai jingting) watches an episode of ordinary glory, one of bjt's other works :p
our beloved summer- it’s an instrumental remix but one of the songs is entitled “christmas tree - cherry blossoms version”
qiao ran’s utterly selfless love in spite of everything, sun yiqiu’s way of finding just that tiniest little spark to believe in himself when he thought all was lost, xu tan’s determination to never let the ball hit the floor, xing kelei’s reassurance to mi ka that whenever he was here everything would be alright, xiao heyun going from someone who was prioritizing saving his own skin to finding someone he would risk it all for over and over again, yin zheng being hilariously petty but also so full of adorning love for his family, gu jiusi’s relentless rage at how you do NOT disrespect his wife, and more. every emotion they go through i feel like i’m right there with them.
wishing you a lifetime of happiness ❤️❤️❤️
More than anything? Sun Yiqiu is essentially talking to himself. He's offering the toast to *himself*. Thanking himself, for being the person to not give up on himself. Wu Kezhi might've been the person that taught him to just nearly pinch his fingers together, tell him that the smallest spark of hope is enough. But it would all be for nothing if Sun Yiqiu didn't genuinely take that to heart, and overcome the difficulties in believing in himself and his own self worth. <3
i was going to reply to this with a comparison of one scene in particular in episode five that i believe highlights both the similarities and differences the best, but then i ended up realizing i have way more thoughts about this scene that it was turning into an entire essay haha. i'll have to post it as a discussion thread here when i'm done!
as for it being bl, Well, i'll just say that the source material was already incredibly infamous for its gay subtext. the drama kept all of that (hikaru/shi guang's initial motivation for wanting to pursue akira/yu liang being "i want to understand your intense gaze and have it directed at me", etc) and somehow added even More onto that in such a way that i did not expect to even be possible lmaooo. for one thing, the whole six year time skip at the beginning was a change made to the drama (i'm assuming it was partly due to the logistics of filming live action), so to have yu liang go "i upended my life to move to south korea for six years because i made you my goal" sure is... something! and that's only the start! if you ask me, it's not even subtext, it's just... text.