PeachBlossomGoddess

This is completely on point!!! It is the number of 5 star ratings that look suspect. It’s not imo a 5 star drama either.

I don't understand - why are only 1 star reviews more invalid than 5 star ones?
The platform decides when to open ratings - TLP was on Tencent it has nothing to do with VOA on Youku.

Yes exactly. I thought the drama was good but my mom thought it was illogical and boring. There has been persistent cyberbullying on this page so all we get are fan posts gushing over Cheng Yi and how great he is yada yada yada. Anyone with anything critical is immediately bullied as a hater blah blah blah. And then these same people are shocked when the rating is not what they want bc they suppressed discussion so much that they think everyone loves it as much as they did. When that is never the case. For every drama I love, there are people who don't like it just as much and vice versa. The rating Douban is what it is. I thought it would be over 7.0 and 7.5 is fair. But I can respect and understand why others felt differently.

I never said it was a small number - just that it is normal for a big drama targeted to huge audiences. It also opened weeks after airing was completed. But whatever, I am tired of people bending backwards to try to say the rating by 300k people was manipulated. It is a very good drama, one I enjoyed. The rating to me is a bit low but I can totally understand why Chinese viewers don't want to rate a drama where no one dies from stab wounds the gut that high. You should also be aware that Youku is owned by Alibaba which is not only one of the companies at the forefront of tech in China with more money, power and technology than God and Douban. This is their IP and if you think they can't protect it from fake votes then I have nothing to say. If you guys want to persist in crazy ass conspiracy theories go for it. I don't have time to waste on this kind of nonsense. It is days like this that make it obvious to me that the bots are coming and they are much smarter than humans omg.

Did you try to match the video to what you see on Douban? Does it match? How do you know they asked the authorities to check it? Where???

You don’t need a Douban account to check if my links worked. I don’t know where you are but I logged out of MDL and the link still works so I am confused as to why it doesn’t work for you - maybe try again? If Douban wants to change the rating there are way easier ways - beyond the fact that many of those reviewers on that fake weibo video are people I follow regularly and chat with . What you describe makes no sense.

The Weibo video is fake. Compare the very first review on your video - on Douban it is 5 stars both on the Douban summary page and the actual expanded review. There are more... they are not what appears on your Weibo video. I just checked out a couple. Anyone who checks can easily see what is real and what has been faked. Weibo has been trying to compete with Douban on ratings credibility for years with no success bc of nonsense like this that they don't clean out of their site.
https://movie.douban.com/subject/36782453/
https://movie.douban.com/subject/36782453/
I have a Douban account and occasionally I rate dramas on it. I can confirm it is impossible to give half stars. If you just scroll down the real VOA summary page on Douban you will see that NONE of the reviews/short ratings have half stars, unlike what your Weibo video shows. I would not trust anything I see on Weibo. Its a garbage pit of fake news.

😍😍😍🤗

Yes exactly - a good Douban score gives longevity to the drama in terms of revenue generation. Most of them are behind paywalls so even latecomers who want to watch have to subscribe. People in China work long hours, only teenagers with not much spending power have time to chase airing dramas and even then most watch the free version with ads. Well rated dramas get both IP development and broadcasting deals for years across many different TV networks, including those in other countries. NIF is still printing money its very hard to watch it legally without paying. The MDL audience mostly is aware of traffic dramas with idol actors. There are many hit CCTV dramas that never get subbed into English with high viewership and high scores.

Awww - thank you for your kind words. I am a bit behind this year but will try to get everything up.😅

Happy New Year and many blessings in 2026 my friend!

Ah yes Yin Zhusheng was amazing in this. I agree wrt Cheng Yi - it just wasn’t his best performance. But can’t really say that on here without getting spammed by his fans.😅🙄

It depends on what you consider a hit - commercially or critically. SOM definitely broke even but it didn’t win enough ad dollars to be considered a hit commercially. Topping viewing charts does not by itself qualify as a hit bc it always depends on what else is airing. There is nothing but junk on air at the moment so it’s easy to top viewing charts but that doesn’t mean it won ad dollars. And I won’t comment about critically bc the reviews speak for themselves. VOA was a hit commercially with good enough reviews but not critically acclaimed either. Over time the most profitable dramas tend to be the ones with high ratings even when they don’t top viewing charts bc they gain viewership and licensing deals for years after they completed airing. All the other stuff if they don’t break even while airing they never really generate much return afterwords. They more or less peak while airing. So when you talk to the platforms and production studios they care a lot about the Douban rating and not so much the short term viewing charts and counts .

I said the 300k vote count is not the highest and it isn’t exactly that comparable to other hit dramas bc Youku waited a long time to open the score whereas many others open while still airing. And omg who has time to waste looking up the old opening scores and votes for you. What I know is what I remember from the time i watched those many airing dramas - if you need proof go waste your own time looking it up yourself. I really don’t give two hoots whether you want to take my word for it or not.

It’s quite common for big budget dramas to open with over 100k votes - I named a few already. You can go look up the rest yourself usually the opening scores are posted online. I am quite sure The Knockout, JOL, LYF, Shen Li, MLC etc opened with over couple hundred K votes and probably Zanghai as well but I am not positive on that one as I dropped it. Silly romance dramas like Shine on Me with B / C list actors don’t do well with Douban audiences so if you watch lots of that kind of stuff then yeah don’t expect many votes - even after years. In any case the opening votes also depend on when the platform opens the score. Some stuff opens very early with under but close to 100k votes bc they are all concentrated around a certain score that mathematically won’t change much with more votes.. If there is lots of dispersion in the scores the platform waits for more votes. For VOA it’s quite obvious now that Youku waited a long time to open it bc there was a lot of dispersion and they were hoping for a higher score after the finale aired.

Again, not true. Lots of big dramas open with a few hundred thousand votes.

Yes, this was a huge hit in China - even NIF doesn't have over 1mm votes but that is probably bc when it aired Douban was not as established. I didn't really get why this was rated so high either- the acting is fantastic but I found the ending too dissatisfying. I liked The Bad Kids a lot more.

True but for high budget drama like this, 300k is arguably low - the real hits have high scores and votes easily over 1mm. Popular dramas like LLTG had 600k+ and ADOS 900k so 300k is quite a lot of votes but nowhere near the top. Sorry but Shine on Me is so totally not a hit - its just one of many meh run of the mill romance dramas that is in no way comparable. There are 300mm Douban users/subscribers. "Huge hits" have votes in the millions. Something under 100k votes is a nothing burger. Vendetta of An was commercially successful, as in Youku made lots of money on it but Chinese raters, esp on Douban are very picky and discerning - I didn't expect a high rating for this considering all the plot holes. But I expected it to be over 7.5.

Douban 6.9 ~310k votes.
Seems a bit low. I thought it would at least break 7.0.

Yes me too.

Lots of international viewers use Douban and other Chinese sites like Xiaohungshu nowadays. HK, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand even the US all have large Chinese speaking populations. These are all audiences Netflix is targeting with Chinese content. They are competing ferociously with iQiyi for these viewers which is why iQiyi never licenses content to Netflix. They have even been poaching staff from each other. So I would be shocked if Netflix doesn't know about Douban and doesn't use it as a resource to consider what Chinese content to acquire.