Meese

Yeah, I was surprised when I heard Shine On Me was 36 episodes since it’s another modern drama and I think modern dramas focused on romance can get draggy.

For SaL, I think 1-3 more episode to give a bit more background earlier and the wedding scene would have been perfect.

Yes, she acts cute and will lean more into a “baby” voice at times. Her character, JM was written to be childish and cute around JZ in the novel. For her, it means giving him some levity in his otherwise too serious life while for him, indulging her childish antics was a way for him to feel like she was reliant on him. She does grow throughout the show, but she can come across cringey in the beginning. I’ve seen comments from non Esther fans say they didn’t mind her/liked her in this show while other people found her too cringe, so I would say if you do want to try it, go in knowing this and aware this might not be the show for you and you can just drop it.

Sometimes, the way they talk about her/her family's wealth, you would think they were all powerful and had unlimited money. As far as I know, her family doesn't have direct ties to the film industry so I don't know why they would want to throw a bunch of money in the entertainment business if that's not their background and if they were really that powerful/had enough money they can just be throwing it around to buy her roles/production, you would think she would have had the opportunity for bigger productions. I think I read LGIEF was her first and only S+ drama.

If you're talking about the Moon Cafe, MDL creates separate pages after every X number of comments. You can navigate through them at the top right of the page.

If this is in part directed to my comment down below, I didn't mean any harm by it. I was excited to see some more critical discussion coming from a well intentioned place and wanted to add my 2 cents in because I do see a lot of potential in her and she is growing as an actress. I like her in general and want her to continue to improve and keep giving us memorable dramas. As you pointed out, all actors/actresses have room to grow and I think fans who want her to succeed should be able to recognize where she can continue to improving while also acknowleding where she did well. I also did that for HY too to be fair in the comment.

For the people that come in here just to be miserable about her, it is tiring to see the same complaints over and over regarding her voice and the type of role she plays. Can it be said she is typecasted to play the cute roles? Sure, but if there keeps being characters written to act that way and she is chosen for the role because she has had success in the past with that type of character, why are people so pressed when she acts that way? Just skip the drama if that style isn't for you. Women seem so quick to put down other women as soon as they find the slightest thing they don't like and it's sad to see.

Lin Sui was great! He was a character they created that didn't exist in the novels. Mike did a great job playing him! I think his character did a great job in supporting the story, especially the way they portrayed him in the end.

Glad you liked the show!

I agree with this a lot. On my rewatch, I thought YSX had a bit more emotion than I initially thought in the beginning when I sort of knew more where JM's character was coming from (not to say it was great, but I could at least see the effort/intent), but yeah, I think her continuing to work on her microexpressions and even be better about using her arms/work on full body language will help a lot. When she did seem more self concious about looking pretty, I thought sometimes her arms got a bit limp at her sides while when she was in the more bubbly role, she was super comfortable with using her whole body to convey the bubbly character. To your point, I agree in general the concern for female idol actresses to "look pretty" is part of the reason for a lot of the "stiff" acting they are accused of because haters are going to use anything to hate so why not make sure you don't look "ugly".

I think in the accident/Nanjing arc when she stepped up more in the emotional scenes, she was more confortable with her arms and was also able to connect more to the story which helped her deliver the emotions better. The potential is definitely there. But yeah, I agree she can definitely deliver emotion through her voice which makes sense since she trained for voice acting.

And yeah, HY is definitely captivating to watch most of the time with his microexpressions and how he carries himself, but sometimes, the emotions via his voice seemed slightly off. I also noticed that usually he had more of a deeper, serious voice for JZ, but would sometimes slip into his more higher pitched, normal voice that in some scenes worked like when he got upset at LS for his review, but in others felt slightly off.

These are adorable cartoons: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8ytmhjX/

No, but he’s working undercover for some sort of law enforcement agency unofficially.

A romance drama should never be so serious that you are organizing a censorship takedown over a review 🙃🙃🙃.

Thank you Eve for being a positive light in this thread! I hope you know for us fellow SAL fans, your words in that review are beautiful and you are appreciated here!

The show definitely isn't for everyone and the two things you listed are some of the reasons why some people don't enjoy it. If you don't like it, it's totally ok to stop watching and find another drama you enjoy!

I will be interested to see what Tencent does with BOP in terms of when they release it. It definitely makes sense to release it sooner rather than later to capitalize on everything.

I'm sure HY has plenty of offers for other projects after DM while it sounds like MZY is the most likely candidate for a drama with WHD, so schedule alignment will be interesting to really get all the promo they can out of it.

Based on how it seems like HY and MZY already have done variety shows for BOP after filming wrapped (and it looks like BOP is Tencent), I would guess there would be a lot of promo for that one, especially now with HY's stocks being up so much as long as the release doesn't overlap with his current drama he's filming.

I think with YSX's next dramas also being IQIYI, that will be interesting to see how the promo is handled.

I will forever be low key annoyed all we got were lives in terms of real time promo with the cast.

I did lowkey think it was funny they wrapped up his entire storyline in one episode via a flashback within a flashback and he was never mentioned again after everything in the first half.

If IQIYI wants to do some more official promo content/release those wedding scenes to launch it more officially overseas, I'm not going to complain 🤣

Someone said down below this a fandom page for SAL instead of a review page and it's true at this point 🤣🤣

While SAL didn't seem to be a "hit" in terms of the metrics they seem to like to use in China, I thought from the beginning it had everything to make it an international hit and I think HY's follower count definitely reflects that.

It almost seems impressive they were able to create 6 characters in one drama that were able to make you that mad 😅

That looks crazy. I saw a video where it looked like he had like 4 bodyguards and some other people around him. Hopefully he protects his privacy and mental health from having to deal with all this. I've seen other traffic stars talk about the toll this sort of behavior can have when it starts getting too invasive.

It will be a shame he may not be able to ride his motorcycle as much anymore. I remember seeing clips where he would ride it to/from set, but with those sort of crowds, that seems dangerous to leave you and your stuff that exposed.