This was SO satisfying. It goes directly into the rewatch list... Lee TaeVin must be the best crier I've seen in a long time. Every time he teared up, my heart did a heartbreak sound. He is precious and must be protected! I hope he gets plenty of great main roles in the future, I'd LOVE to watch him again.
Hopefully now somebody really takes the time to seriously TL the novel, more YeoWoon and MyungHa are needed in this world!
I think it's happening cos of the system error, you know he's in a game. The game is glitching, hence the weird…
Yeah, well, did you ever get reaaaa~lly close to a good save point in a game and then the game froze? That's what it's like for him. He's glitching all over the place and since he is IN the game - I think he's accepted he can't get out before solving the mission - losing his place in the game is pretty scary. It COULD mean never getting close to YeoWoon again for the rest of the remaining time, and dying. So yeah, he's panicking, and for good reason. Time's getting away from him, not even for his own mistakes (like when he got -99 appreciation from YeoWoon and was debuffing all over the place), but because the server isn't working right...
That would be the time when I'd start panicking myself, were I in his place.
As for why everybody else didn't dig deeper in... they're game characters (supposedly). They're not aware of their situation, as MyungHa is.
We'll have to see how deep the game/real world connection goes, though. There were some snidey comments in that memory restore MyungHa got that sound kind of threatening...
My only complaint is that YeoWoon is practicing too little, LOL. After all, practice makes better! Go practice,…
OMG is the game making TMH choose between erasing his grandma or his relationship with YeoWoon?! (I mean, he can't erase YeoWoon himself, he's the game's object after all).
I still can't understand who the novel/game author is. Maybe MyungHa is remembering wrong, but he doesn't look like either SangWon or YeoWoon. Who could he BE?
And is the game's object actually MyungHa? What with those sly remarks of how "he doesn't/never did know how to accept love for himself"?!
My only complaint is that YeoWoon is practicing too little, LOL. After all, practice makes better! Go practice, YeoWoon-ah! :D
Also, I couldn't love MyungHa more. And I think it's the actor, not just the character - I've read most of the manhwa, and I like drama TMH way better. This guy is going to go places!!
PS I'm really appreciating how carefree both of them are with the skinship and all. It feels perfectly natural and makes everything way better. This is really shaping up to be the best short BL kdrama ever.
16-17 is where you'll either get hooked or give up. (Don't you want to see WWX going from bratty but well-liked…
He's the best as Yiling Laozi :D (dark but still handsome, cruel but deservedly so. LWJ will despair for his descent into the demonic arts - see, I'm not even embellishing it :) )
I also LOVED He Peng (playing Wen Chao, the evil - but kind of dumb - Wen scion LOL). He had a total blast with that character. He's almost everyone's favourite villain to hate, though there are bigger (huge) villains around to choose from LOL.
A lot of the initial eps are used to set up all the tiny threads of the later events. You've already been given lots of hints of what is to come, and why, and insights into characters' personalities. There will be reveals, and they'll be worth the wait. Though if you watched the whole donghua already, you're probably aware of some of them.
The novel is structured a bit differently - there are many more shorter flashbacks inserted amid the present timeline, and also, much, MUCH more gore. But since the novel IS danmei, there'll be a lot more hints of romance, and oh, they're also worth it (initially because WWX is shameless. And then because he's also pretty clueless all the time. Join us in pitying poor LWJ for choosing such an idiot to love). Being censored, the drama did have to change things, and TBH, some of the changes make it better IMHO - a lot more time is given to the female characters, who are also very important to the story.
You haven't even met Madam Yu - she is a badass (was in the donghua, too). Give it time to grow. Long cdramas do that all the time - spend a lot of time on seeding the plot, and then let it grow :)
This was my first cdrama after a very long time-out (the last I'd watched before was some 80s or 90s wuxia - movies not included.) Those were... not really good. But cdramas really threw a switch sometimes around the mid-2010s and they've been releasing a LOT of very good stories, and their success happily motivated producers to make even more of those :)
Other than Xiao Zhan, actors I've seen and I'd recommend (obviously I haven't seen them all) - Luo YunXi (his xianxia best special effects high-budget drama of the year is Till the End of the Moon, but he's really good in plenty other costume or modern dramas - and good looking, too, LOL), Zhang RuoYun (he's ML of Joy of Life, Under the Microscope, Sword Snow Stride, among others), Cheng Yi (of Mysterious Lotus Casebook - a delightful wuxia story), Hu Ge and all the rest of the cast for the two (so far) Nirvana in Fire dramas (watch them for great historical heartbreakers with a vengeance), Xu Kai (for Wonderland of Love, amazing story and great storytelling), and basically the whole cast of I Am Nobody (a superpowers story that looks GREAT!) Check out some of the trailers when you're in the mood, they're worth at least a try :)
Beginning to loath this.Loved the first 10 episodes, bored stiff through the last 3 as the story drags so much…
16-17 is where you'll either get hooked or give up. (Don't you want to see WWX going from bratty but well-liked character to the evil Yiling Patriarch deserving of fratricide? It's a long ride). The second half of the flashback is my favourite, TBH. But obviously, each watcher can decide for themselves :)
Special effects were never the point of this drama, true. It was a web drama, good budget but not for the FX, and I don't think they really expected it to get as big as it did (though a lot of prep went into it before it started filming).
I beg to differ on Xuan Lu - she really does act the perfect YanLi. YanLi is the quiet homemaker type, always in the background, meek and mild (and that's why her intended doesn't care for her so far). She's even supposed to be a bit homely, too (the actress is beautiful, though, LOL). Watch her character subtly change, if you will. She might yet surprise you.
Why oh why are there so many cdrama titles that include "Legend of..." Kind of cheapens them, IMHO. They all become a a mass of "legend this, legend that" that I can never remember.
From the list above, I am not much interested in any, LOL. Legend of Shen Li looks interesting because of the ML, but then there's ZLY next to him, and (no hate) I kind of didn't warm up to her in Legend of Fei (which I didn't pick up after the first two eps because of the FL's acting. It might've been the script, but then maybe not). The ML does look a bit like a younger Hu Ge and that would normally be enough, LOL, but I haven't seen him in anything yet so I wonder.
As Beautiful As You has XK in it, but it's a business tale, much like StartUp... and I don't care for it. I guess I'll just have to wait for something else from him.
Immortal Ascension sounds interesting, but then... I seriously don't like YY. I know he's a favourite of many people, but he can't act - IMHO. I'm basing this impression on Love O2O and some Jackie Chan movie he was in - please tell me he improved in the years that passed. (I know he was ML in a lot of successful cdramas, but sometimes it's the script and the rest of the cast and a wet noodle or dry, boring stick as lead role would have the same success, with that kind of scripts. I mean, improvement in his acting, if any.)
My Boss sounds like a total copycat of Love is Sweet, and I've already seen that, LOL.
I'd watch Legend of Rosy Clouds (because of Zeng ShunXi and Deng Wei, but *sigh* it's a legend show. And it's based on freaking SAIUNKOKU MONOGATARI and yes I did watch that, and yet it doesn't have a definite ending (the anime, that is), and YES I wanted more but dammit was it slow moving!! Also, I really don't like reverse harem, sorry, I've grown past that. I guess they'd change that aspect for the cdrama... but heh. I had my favourites in there and can't watch with an unbiased eye.
I'd rather have all the shelved censored danmei release all at once, LOL (Immortality, Winner is King, Seizing Dreams, Eternal Faith, and so on, and so forth) and also NiF3 (only if Leo Wu is the villain *fingers crossed*).
If you want to see a version that's a bit closer to the novel - though also not completely the same as the novel…
Like, WWX posing it up for the lulz LOL, rubbing his scent ALL OVER LWJ after the reunion, telling JC he is into everything (hey, pansexuals welcome hahaha~) BUT HAS STANDARDS, and won't - for example, you see - be attracted to the village's cow OR JC (I was already dying at that point) but instead he'd totally hit up LWJ?! and LWJ - just as in the novel - telling him "Better remember that"!
And then the actual Lan ribbon thing also happens as in the novel - WWX ripping it off the very much shocked LWJ and only after realising what he's done...
Or LWJ yearning for WWX each and every time they're apart - actually, when they're together too, LOL, OR the actual drunk-as-in-the-novel LWJ stealing jujubes for WWX because he wants him and wants to live freely as the little brat, too...
The donghua managed to bust the ending though, what with the core reveal being out of order and hitting completely different, but they did right by the actual horror aspects and the Burial Mounds scenes, too - and quite a lot of the danmei. They did get a bit reined in, it looked, from the carefree and open first season to the third, but then, I guess the censors got scared a bit LOL.
I haven't read the manhua (because I like XZ as WWX the most, and the actors' faces are nice to imagine when reading the novel), and the novel is obviously the standard, LOL. But the donghua is good. In my line-up, it's the novel, the audio-drama (I'm telling you, they do SOUND effects for the *censored* parts, LOL), then the donghua and then the drama, in order of climbing censorship. But the drama - TBH I like it as a bromance more, because all the *censored* parts would spoil the love-by-glances-and-sacrifices story and atmosphere they built.
But - just sayin' - it wouldn't have KILLED them to let in the kiss in the forest. I like the scene we got... but seriously. A kiss would've made it perfect.
How the hell is this supposed to be rom-com, with such a setting?! I am kind of enjoying it - mostly because of…
PHS looked a lot better in Happiness, though, TBH, he looks kind of markedly older now. Which makes the highschool parts not really work out, IMHO - for PSH either, actually. Or all the other guys.
But seriously... he had a patient DIE under his hands, dramatically so, even if he's not to blame (but shouldn't he had checked the patient's medical records?! I mean, if she DID take warfarin, it would have had to be there, wouldn't it?!)
(Sidenote - not a doctor or pharmacist here - is there no way to decide WHICH anticoagulant was she on?! I mean, there have to be some ways to decide if it was the original warfarin or the heparin he "supposedly" got her. I know it's a subplot and the anesthetist will probably be revealed as the culprit... but still, isn't there some blame to be given to the actual doctor doing the op?!)
WHY is he being so overdramatic in his antics with HaNeul?! If I were him - and a serious/professional doctor - I'd be wrecking my brains every second trying to figure out what the hell went wrong.
I like HaNeul, instead. She took it until it broke her BUT she did stand up for herself, eventually.
I guess we'll see them working for/with the SML in his clinic, probably. I'd like some friendship/bromance antics. Just - at least in the beginning... I wish they were more serious about the death of the patient. Most of the comedy aspects hit a wrong note in these two eps because of it.
How the hell is this supposed to be rom-com, with such a setting?! I am kind of enjoying it - mostly because of PHS's looks, TBH, and because it looks like the second pairing will be wholesome as f, but it's still jarring. Not to mention these two guys are the fakest drunks I've EVER seen in kdrama, and that's telling a lot. At least the crying-setting-other-drunks-crying is real, LOL.
Seok-Hui+HyunWook=LOVE. Had they had started the insta-BFFs bromance sooner, I would've lived to see it each week, LOL. They are PRECIOUS.
EDIT WAIT THE FINAL EPISODE DOESN'T AIR THIS WEEK?!! I even post-poned the penultimate ep watch just to see it together with the finale!! *Darth Vader yell*
OMG they almost already covered most of the webtoon TLed. I wonder how much of the novel that would be. That being…
Tak JonHo's face though LOL. He was thinking SO HARD. Did I like it?! Did I not like it?! Damn, this is hard to decide :D
So... It's also hard to decide who the Sunbae who's written the novel, is, though. His face MIGHT look like an older's SangWon, but he could also be YeoWoon... Who IS the mysterious writer?~
3 
Hopefully now somebody really takes the time to seriously TL the novel, more YeoWoon and MyungHa are needed in this world!
Why am I doing this to myself? T_T
That would be the time when I'd start panicking myself, were I in his place.
As for why everybody else didn't dig deeper in... they're game characters (supposedly). They're not aware of their situation, as MyungHa is.
We'll have to see how deep the game/real world connection goes, though. There were some snidey comments in that memory restore MyungHa got that sound kind of threatening...
I still can't understand who the novel/game author is. Maybe MyungHa is remembering wrong, but he doesn't look like either SangWon or YeoWoon. Who could he BE?
And is the game's object actually MyungHa? What with those sly remarks of how "he doesn't/never did know how to accept love for himself"?!
Also, I couldn't love MyungHa more. And I think it's the actor, not just the character - I've read most of the manhwa, and I like drama TMH way better. This guy is going to go places!!
PS I'm really appreciating how carefree both of them are with the skinship and all. It feels perfectly natural and makes everything way better. This is really shaping up to be the best short BL kdrama ever.
I also LOVED He Peng (playing Wen Chao, the evil - but kind of dumb - Wen scion LOL). He had a total blast with that character. He's almost everyone's favourite villain to hate, though there are bigger (huge) villains around to choose from LOL.
A lot of the initial eps are used to set up all the tiny threads of the later events. You've already been given lots of hints of what is to come, and why, and insights into characters' personalities. There will be reveals, and they'll be worth the wait. Though if you watched the whole donghua already, you're probably aware of some of them.
The novel is structured a bit differently - there are many more shorter flashbacks inserted amid the present timeline, and also, much, MUCH more gore. But since the novel IS danmei, there'll be a lot more hints of romance, and oh, they're also worth it (initially because WWX is shameless. And then because he's also pretty clueless all the time. Join us in pitying poor LWJ for choosing such an idiot to love). Being censored, the drama did have to change things, and TBH, some of the changes make it better IMHO - a lot more time is given to the female characters, who are also very important to the story.
You haven't even met Madam Yu - she is a badass (was in the donghua, too). Give it time to grow. Long cdramas do that all the time - spend a lot of time on seeding the plot, and then let it grow :)
This was my first cdrama after a very long time-out (the last I'd watched before was some 80s or 90s wuxia - movies not included.) Those were... not really good. But cdramas really threw a switch sometimes around the mid-2010s and they've been releasing a LOT of very good stories, and their success happily motivated producers to make even more of those :)
Other than Xiao Zhan, actors I've seen and I'd recommend (obviously I haven't seen them all) - Luo YunXi (his xianxia best special effects high-budget drama of the year is Till the End of the Moon, but he's really good in plenty other costume or modern dramas - and good looking, too, LOL), Zhang RuoYun (he's ML of Joy of Life, Under the Microscope, Sword Snow Stride, among others), Cheng Yi (of Mysterious Lotus Casebook - a delightful wuxia story), Hu Ge and all the rest of the cast for the two (so far) Nirvana in Fire dramas (watch them for great historical heartbreakers with a vengeance), Xu Kai (for Wonderland of Love, amazing story and great storytelling), and basically the whole cast of I Am Nobody (a superpowers story that looks GREAT!) Check out some of the trailers when you're in the mood, they're worth at least a try :)
Special effects were never the point of this drama, true. It was a web drama, good budget but not for the FX, and I don't think they really expected it to get as big as it did (though a lot of prep went into it before it started filming).
I beg to differ on Xuan Lu - she really does act the perfect YanLi. YanLi is the quiet homemaker type, always in the background, meek and mild (and that's why her intended doesn't care for her so far). She's even supposed to be a bit homely, too (the actress is beautiful, though, LOL). Watch her character subtly change, if you will. She might yet surprise you.
I have hope. I mean, they did pour a LOT of money into 2ha, it won't go silent into the dark... *keeping fingers crossed*
From the list above, I am not much interested in any, LOL. Legend of Shen Li looks interesting because of the ML, but then there's ZLY next to him, and (no hate) I kind of didn't warm up to her in Legend of Fei (which I didn't pick up after the first two eps because of the FL's acting. It might've been the script, but then maybe not). The ML does look a bit like a younger Hu Ge and that would normally be enough, LOL, but I haven't seen him in anything yet so I wonder.
As Beautiful As You has XK in it, but it's a business tale, much like StartUp... and I don't care for it. I guess I'll just have to wait for something else from him.
Immortal Ascension sounds interesting, but then... I seriously don't like YY. I know he's a favourite of many people, but he can't act - IMHO. I'm basing this impression on Love O2O and some Jackie Chan movie he was in - please tell me he improved in the years that passed. (I know he was ML in a lot of successful cdramas, but sometimes it's the script and the rest of the cast and a wet noodle or dry, boring stick as lead role would have the same success, with that kind of scripts. I mean, improvement in his acting, if any.)
My Boss sounds like a total copycat of Love is Sweet, and I've already seen that, LOL.
I'd watch Legend of Rosy Clouds (because of Zeng ShunXi and Deng Wei, but *sigh* it's a legend show. And it's based on freaking SAIUNKOKU MONOGATARI and yes I did watch that, and yet it doesn't have a definite ending (the anime, that is), and YES I wanted more but dammit was it slow moving!! Also, I really don't like reverse harem, sorry, I've grown past that. I guess they'd change that aspect for the cdrama... but heh. I had my favourites in there and can't watch with an unbiased eye.
I'd rather have all the shelved censored danmei release all at once, LOL (Immortality, Winner is King, Seizing Dreams, Eternal Faith, and so on, and so forth) and also NiF3 (only if Leo Wu is the villain *fingers crossed*).
/running away to hide.
And then the actual Lan ribbon thing also happens as in the novel - WWX ripping it off the very much shocked LWJ and only after realising what he's done...
Or LWJ yearning for WWX each and every time they're apart - actually, when they're together too, LOL, OR the actual drunk-as-in-the-novel LWJ stealing jujubes for WWX because he wants him and wants to live freely as the little brat, too...
The donghua managed to bust the ending though, what with the core reveal being out of order and hitting completely different, but they did right by the actual horror aspects and the Burial Mounds scenes, too - and quite a lot of the danmei. They did get a bit reined in, it looked, from the carefree and open first season to the third, but then, I guess the censors got scared a bit LOL.
I haven't read the manhua (because I like XZ as WWX the most, and the actors' faces are nice to imagine when reading the novel), and the novel is obviously the standard, LOL. But the donghua is good. In my line-up, it's the novel, the audio-drama (I'm telling you, they do SOUND effects for the *censored* parts, LOL), then the donghua and then the drama, in order of climbing censorship. But the drama - TBH I like it as a bromance more, because all the *censored* parts would spoil the love-by-glances-and-sacrifices story and atmosphere they built.
But - just sayin' - it wouldn't have KILLED them to let in the kiss in the forest. I like the scene we got... but seriously. A kiss would've made it perfect.
But seriously... he had a patient DIE under his hands, dramatically so, even if he's not to blame (but shouldn't he had checked the patient's medical records?! I mean, if she DID take warfarin, it would have had to be there, wouldn't it?!)
(Sidenote - not a doctor or pharmacist here - is there no way to decide WHICH anticoagulant was she on?! I mean, there have to be some ways to decide if it was the original warfarin or the heparin he "supposedly" got her. I know it's a subplot and the anesthetist will probably be revealed as the culprit... but still, isn't there some blame to be given to the actual doctor doing the op?!)
WHY is he being so overdramatic in his antics with HaNeul?! If I were him - and a serious/professional doctor - I'd be wrecking my brains every second trying to figure out what the hell went wrong.
I like HaNeul, instead. She took it until it broke her BUT she did stand up for herself, eventually.
I guess we'll see them working for/with the SML in his clinic, probably. I'd like some friendship/bromance antics. Just - at least in the beginning... I wish they were more serious about the death of the patient. Most of the comedy aspects hit a wrong note in these two eps because of it.
The ending there is definitely closer to the novel, too (and quite a LOT more of the danmei parts made it through) :D
But yes, this drama - and the novel it was based on - are a whole different league than the usual censored Chinese danmei.
EDIT WAIT THE FINAL EPISODE DOESN'T AIR THIS WEEK?!! I even post-poned the penultimate ep watch just to see it together with the finale!! *Darth Vader yell*
So... It's also hard to decide who the Sunbae who's written the novel, is, though. His face MIGHT look like an older's SangWon, but he could also be YeoWoon... Who IS the mysterious writer?~