ShortCircuit

Episode 12, OMG. Did the loop end?! But there are 3 more eps... I'm gonna spoil myself with the raws.

I just finished ep 12 (it's on YT, on YoYo TV), I'm not so sure any more. Unless Mr. Ma was on the bridge and hit her there - but I had this impression he was in prison for longer than 5 years. Might be a coincidence he did kill another kid in a hit-and-run. But maybe not...

Mr. Ma is the guy with the watermelons (they checked him out in a previous episode). He killed a kid - I'm assuming the attacker and the driver's kid at this time - in a hit-and-run accident, hid for a few years then was apprehended and sentenced to jail. His family left him after he was imprisoned, and he was alone when he was released. He's traveling the bus because he wants to give some watermelons to his son, working in the city, and has found out where the son works.

The bomb was set off manually, remotely and because of crashing into the fuel truck. I guess that when the phone connects, there's a timer or switch on the bomb to make it explode. When she pulls the plug manually, they never get to hear the sound, or when the bus hits the fuel truck, either.

So she was a chemistry teacher, now a chemical factory worker. Makes sense she would eventually be able to build a stable enough chemical bomb. Plothole closed for me.

The target is definitely Mr. Ma, who killer their child. And theory no. 3: the phone call tone that sets off the bomb (when it's remotely activated) is the one that the dead phone (that I'm guessing is their child's) would play if it would still be working. Wanna take my bet on that? :D

I see no obvious way to get more info from Cpt. Zhang - though the police will definitely find out LSQ and XHY checked out the driver's personal history. Maybe if they tell Cpt. Zhang about the loop this time, he'll trust them enough to tell them the details - and they get to learn about the dead kid.

XHY was so cool drawing the plan to the police station, LOL. Cpt. Zhang thought he had him in a bind then - and so did I - but he definitely has a good memory and he's been to the station a few times already, LOL. I could SEE the tension going off their stances when he was so accurate.

This is one great series - I just hope nobody dies in the end - or that they get most of the people off the bus and the loop ends then for them. Keeping fingers crossed!

Argh the ending to episode 11!!!!!!!

Also, does anyone know the title of the new OST song playing at the end of the episode? I loved the singer's raspy voice, sounded a bit like XueRan Chen, but can't be him, can it?

Halfway through the series, and I'm craving Chinese food something fierce. And I've never had Chinese food.

This might be a sign. (Or I might be hungry, who knows. But it sure looks delicious, each and every plate of it.)

The best thing I ever watched dealing with baseball is an anime - Ookiku Furikabutte (Big Windup) https://anidb.net/anime/4923

I guess there are many other series (live action, anime or even movies) about it, but I came out of that anime knowing the rules of the game, LOL, and thoroughly entertained. Most of the plot was set around the game itself too, with some splashes of management, but as the MCs were the teen players, not a lot of managing.

As I look back, it feels like it was a billion years ago, LOL. But still, if you like the game and haven't watched it, and you're okay with teen players, this is one to watch (even if you don't usually like the game too much) :)

Myself, I like ice hockey (that's probably why Pride hit so well with me :D) and ice figure skating (but in real life, not through dramas. I mean, watching Plushenko do a spin or Yuzuru Hanyu defying gravity is a work of art in itself and doesn't need any plot :D)

I come a bit biased about American football (in Europe we call football a completely different game, that the Americans call soccer and I'm not a fan of that either). To me it looks totally uninteresting - a lot of running, and hitting the opposing team's player for no good reason (why hit them?!), and lots of desperate teenagers trying to make it big because it could save them from poverty or ensure their access to college? That's dystopian already, by European standards :( I'd rather watch some good old rugby (not that my country's national team has any results any more, LOL, but it definitely looks a LOT more interesting than "football". No offense intended. )

As for watching more sports dramas, I recently started a SK teen sports drama, Racket Boys, about badminton players. But I got stalled because I discovered Lee Jun Ho, LOL. I'm making my way through his dramas, I'll eventually return to RB, probably :D

Thank you for the recommendation!

I'm not one for US shows either, any more. They've become too formulaic since quite a long time ago, and I can almost always see what's going to happen from a distance. And then there's the (usual) HEA with not really much of an effort on the part of the MCs... US shows are the reason I've come to appreciate Asian dramas. At least here I can't always guess what's going to happen next.

I'm also not one really for sports dramas, usually. My go-to is Pride (JP), though I've watched some, here and there. It's just that this one is kind of not showing the sport much, instead showing over and over bureau talking and political maoeuvring that's already bordering on the unbelievable at times. Not a bad drama, in the end, but not as gripping as I imagine it could have been.

I might take a look at that US show, though, sometime in the future :)

For a few repeats, the police didn't even know they were dealing with a bomb, only when ShiQing called them did they check beforehand. Then they had a hard time finding proof of explosives every time the bus hit the gas tank truck. (That's why it's surprising to me it's even a pressure cooker bomb, I thought the results from that would be relatively easily found, as opposed a gas cylinder being set off.)

Mr. Ma's son wouldn't even begin to have an idea what the family of the victim would do, would he, though? He didn't even keep in touch with his own father, and neither did his mother, really, especially in the later years of his sentence. Mr. Ma had to dig around social media to even get some kind of news about his family. I think the victim's family definitely changed too - this is from the time of the one-child policy, right? So that child would probably had been their only one. Even if there wasn't such a thing, losing a child would be an immense wound (under yet not really explained circumstances too - imagine if the child was still alive after being hit, and quick aid would have saved them, but Mr. Ma just left and let them die alone? If I were their mother, I'd have stored huge amounts of hatred and a wish for revenge, too.)

I think if she really is the victim's mother, she just doesn't give a damn about anything else but getting him for sure, no chances for him to escape. She could try and knife him (maybe that's why she's carrying the knife, too?) but she has the bomb as a secondary option and she keeps using it, I think she just went off the rails in those hours riding the bus together with him being so "normal" while her kid is dead.

I keep thinking of the kid in the car, too. I read somewhere in this comment section that the loop might eventually be cut, but two more persons will be caught in another loop of their own. I hope it's not the kid and his father, the kid is too cute with his demands LOL. (Well, as I'm not in that car with them being assaulted with frequent and changing demands anyway LOL).

I could see HeYun completely in shock and mad at the same time - the previous iterations they would have both ended up dead even if the bomb hadn't gone off. And with a knife, too, I guess they are still in shock - after all, this is reality for them every time. At this time, if I could still function, I'd be spitting mad myself - because "why them"? Why would they have to die over and over again in a time loop and never manage to stop it in time?

I expect - still didn't spoil it with the next episodes' raws - they'll sit out at least one or two iterations, if they can escape the police for a while. Just to clear their heads.

The bomb seems pretty heavy - the bomber herself could barely move it. ShiQing and HeYun couldn't move it fast either, before she gets a chance to pull that plug. And I think HeYun decided the loop shouldn't end here, with him a killer and just let it proceed to get another chance at solving it. Or it might be he just suddenly went IDGAF mode and just wanted out. After all, these people who were looking at him as if he grew two heads suddenly are the ones they came to know and they're sacrificing themselves for, over and over. Lu Di included (I so wanted him to come into the loop, LOL, his mind works in mysterious ways :D )

So theory no. 2: obviously the bomber is the mother of the teen whom Mr. Ma killed in an accident. How would she know he'd be on the bus that day, though?

So now the bomb still exploded, so the loop will rewind sometime soon. But when the police gets them next, Xiao HeYun is going to be so much more suspect than ever before - people saw him get off the bus that immediately exploded, covered in blood. Even if nobody survived to tell what he was doing on the bus before getting off, the videographer was still sending out a live, wasn't he? So the whole world could have seen what happened.

Will the police finally tell them something workable to use in the next loop? I think the only way to stop it is to have Mme Bomber not set off the bomb.

Also, how did she know how to make a pressure cooker bomb and do they really explode so powerfully?! I first believed she had a gas cylinder set up with some sparky thing, which would explain the whole huge firebomb, but a pressure cooker exploding seems to be based on shrapnels (if one loads it with pieces of metal beforehand). Or so I read on wiki. Maybe that's where she read how to make one, too. Would she have spent all those years preparing for a chance to kill her child's killer?...

3 more days til the next subbed ep... I'm probably going to crack and spoil myself on the next raw episode at least T_T

Wow, that was an awesome cliffhanger for episode 8!

The famous Happy Ever After (or at least a HFN - Happy For Now :D)

I can't find a movie made in HK with that exact title, is it Love in the Time of Twilight (1995)?

Is there a HEA? I like a bit of suffering, but not complete, devastating tragedy, particularly for good people...

Happy Birthday, cutie :)

I only (randomly) watched a scene in the later episodes, when he's toasting the ghost of his old friend/mentor. Just for that random scene (I have NO idea what the story is about, and I won't look it up - though I do know it's just season 1, so there's supposedly more to come. Sometime. Who knows) - but just for that random scene, I'll be watching the whole drama (or season).

It's been days and I keep thinking about it. That's how I know I'll like this one.

DHS's cracked voice asking abour EunHa's fate in Flower of Evil.

HaeYoung asking SooHyun to save his brother, in Signal, and what happened next. I was so broken by that scene I was in tears each time I remembered it, for a while. It's the worst to have hope and have it crushed.

The Nameless showing the Emperor he really understood what Under Heaven meant, and the Emperor also understanding what he had to do anyway, in Hero. (That's a masterpiece, if you haven't watched that movie, do so!)

KangDoo learning about his problem, keeping it all together for the sister, and then breaking down when he's alone, in Just Between Lovers. I am a complete fan of Lee Jun Ho for that drama, and I haven't gotten to The Red Sleeve yet, either.

SeonHo waiting for SeoHwi outside the palace's door, in My Country The New Age. Actually, both of them coming there, all prepared to do what they had to do, fully knowing how it would end. But mostly SeonHo waiting there, all bloodied, being a living shield for his friend. Dammit, onions.

And so, so many scenes from My Mister have the mysterious property of affecting the tear ducts. Like DongHoon wanting to lay there and just die, but deciding he couldn't, because he didn't have good underwear on (related to an earlier discussion with his brothers). That drama is a minefield for people who get emotional easy.

But yeah, as I said, I get tearful when seeing the Brachiosaurus in Jurassic Park for the first time. Or when The Gael starts in the last few minutes of The Last of the Mohicans (and particularly when Alice makes her choice). Or when the soldiers shoot Two Socks in Dances with the Wolves. And even when Frodo looks sadly at Sam and (I READ THE BOOKS, I KNOW IT WON'T HAPPEN BUT STILL!!) he seems to decide to let go...

My nickname is ShortCircuit and I'm a crybaby :(

I'm one who gets teared up with the swell of music to remember scenes that really impressed me - happy or sad. Like for just one example - Merlin's (1998) Age of Magic intro - by Trevor Jones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1L8_zQAkKs I've watched that miniseries eons ago, and it still never fails to bring a tear in my eye when it's used again in the ending - "There is no more. This is the end of magic."

That said, there are some drama scenes when despite the set up and music and build up of the scene, I remained unmoved (appreciative of the effort, but not really in tears.) And then there are the others... SPOILERS AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

There's a whole list of places you can watch it, and most of them are using their own TL. The Netflix one (Chinese - to - English) doesn't seem that bad, except that I first watched it in a fan TL and the Netflix one tends to skip over some language details (like titles being descriptive, and some words are just used differently - like the famous 畢生知己 line; Netflix has it as lifelong confidante, fan TL has it as soulmate, and neither manages to get the whole nuance - that one person who knows you better than you know yourself, the one who inspires you to be better just by existing close to you.)

I'd say the Youtube WeTV version sounds pretty good, though, at least in English. Haven't seen the Viki one. (Edit: also, the Chinese voice dubbing is PERFECT, this shouldn't be watched in any other dub than the original language.)

RE: the drama. It's based on a novel (a danmei/BL novel, that is) and the novel is uncensored, whereas the drama is. You won't get more than strong hints at the true relationship between the main characters, but yes, it is what you already glimpsed. There is an animation version (donghua) too, that has a bit less censorship, and if you want the whole story, the novel is the way. But the drama is plenty revealing, if you can read between the lines.

I don't know how far ahead you are already, but the first few episodes are the ones setting up a lot of the following plot. The darker and more epic side of the story develops from around episode 12 to 15 onwards, and doesn't relent once it gets going.

The gore & horror - well, it could be worse :D There's not a lot of it, anyway, considering the original source, and it's pretty cleaned out because some types of subplots aren't allowed by Chinese censorship. But there'll be some, and there's a lot of heartbreak coming with it, too. And it's all worth it.

The story and characters are what will grip you, if you're so inclined, Though I have to say, the cinematography and music are also amazing. It definitely doesn't hurt that most of the MCs are good-looking people either, or that the sets and costumes are gorgeous. As a fan of the book, I can tell you the drama does deserve all the accolades it received and respects the true heart of the original story (despite some changes and the sometimes not great CGI. Which reminds me, there'll be sword fighting too soon enough :D)

I hope you grow to love it in the end, as most of the commenters here did. Have fun with it :D