Be real for once, how do you think they passed it through censorship?! They needed a reason that they couldn't be lovers.
Not that it matters, since it is fiction and hey the stigma of cousins marrying only came because of the repeated family marriages that led to kids with very problematic genetic diseases. And no, that doesn't count as incest, again, not that it matters, since if it's a hetero marriage that could result in children, the consanguinity forbids it indeed in most countries (not in all, though). Even so, around a tenth of the worlds' kids come from a consanguine marriage.
Do not assume people are into incest stories just because they happen to ship two beautiful fictional persons who might be ~cousins.
PS And just for the sake of the discussion... EVERY male main character in The Untamed is Jin Ling's uncle, LOL, Are they also incestuous?! (We're not even going to touch on Meng Yao and his wife).
Yeah, those light touches definitely are just bromance. *wink*
I think this is maybe going to be a BE, since XiaoXi will turn out to have killed his own bio dad. And then Li Yan too will be heavy underwater with the guilt for causing Lil' Walnut's death.
Then again, they could always comfort each other. Just sayin'.
It was Lan Zhan / Lan WangJi. WWX only smiles like that for LWJ.ETA Also, watchers with much better vision than…
Want to hear something more beautiful? In their first dialogue - the opening scene - their first exchanged words are WWX calling for Lan Zhan. And their last dialogue, the final scene, has LWJ calling for Wei Ying.
This drama demonstrated that no matter what the censors think... you can't really censor this love story.
Also, please be aware this is based on an (uncensored) danmei novel and that there are also an audio drama, a donghua (animation) and a chibi donghua based on that novel, aside the live action :D
lo_ve, dearie, this is a drama site, right? I guess talking about KPDH makes sense, given it involves some actual SK actors too, but otherwise who cares that much about kpop here, unless a group member or soloist makes a drama or movie appearence?!
Like, this is barely a half-drama and we're already a quarter in - what is the main plot?! There's not a lot of…
That's kind of a lot left to presumption, right? I know the producing team maybe thought people would have read the manhwa (maybe that was the target public) IF the manhwa explained those things... but also maybe not.
What I meant is that there's a very limited time to make a dent in a serious plot (who these people are, why there's no actual outcry for the missing children - it's not just the 5 who were smuggled out, but all the others TaeSik and his boss killed because they definitely didn't save them all.) And for an 8-ep drama there's a lot of time being lost in a maybe pointless burned car investigation, on how many times the boss sings that oldie while going to kill returned kids (and then the boss gets dispatched with a headshot and his line in the story ends, so that time might have been better used IMHO).
I'm not looking for a reason to nitpick the drama, seriously. It's just that it's short already, IF they're not aiming for multiple seasons maybe they should spend less time on things that don't really matter and make it make reasonable sense.
For example, the one who really gripped my attention through the first two eps is the older returned boy, I'm still unsure of their names. He's the one who put himself in danger by carrying the new kid, holding his hand, generally ensuring he was also safe. The others knew they should do it - but he was the one who actually did it. And it's his story that I want to know more about, not re-run scenes of the pedo school director. Yet the preview for ep3 goes on in the pedo plot, with trying to save the mom and then getting chased by DEX's character - who's also an enigma and I guess he'll mostly stay that way.
I'm not sure why, but while it works in some aspects, it seems a bit too pieced-together in others.
Like, this is barely a half-drama and we're already a quarter in - what is the main plot?! There's not a lot of time to discover the big bad boss villain and take her down. If this is a conspiracy, which the drama so far implies, how come there's no outcry yet? These kids were all adopted in VIP families (who at least had the money to get them).
How come nobody's asking where are these kids?!
And then there's the police investigation of the TaeSik's burned down car - why do we waste the little time we have on that? Is it going to become important later? And why is there DEX's character, I didn't get his name, involved with everything but apparently FAILING to recognise the original (lost/discarded) daughter of his boss?! (If he too was a refunded kid, he'd have been around the family for long enough to see her - he looks like he's in his 30s, she was almost 18 when discarded. The new girl came around after, so he should be able to remember the first one.)
I know it's based on a webtoon and action webtoons don't always make sense, and it might be because of the shorter run... but it does feel a bit lacklustre. Like DEX's character seems to be the main villain so far, LOL, he's not.
So yeah, I don't know. I might keep up with it, since it's short... but it better start congealing around a main storyline sometime soon. I'm not really into abuse storylines (for those who are, you're welcome to try Namib, it's the worst of that genre I've managed to watched so far.)
Just started... Is that a priest in the beginning? Who's crucifixing a guy?
Yes, it seems it's a flashback to the past of one of the refunded kids. Each of them have trauma from their adoptive parents, and this one indeed seemed to be a priest or at least some religious fanatic torturing his adopted son.
Why does this drama's c/rights claim for it to have been made sometime in 2022 or maybe 2023 at most?! Did it spend so much time being re-edited or finding a network?!
He also played a (perverted but not really all that smart) villain in the first season of The Good Detective. He's one of the good actors - the kind who disappear into their characters every time.
Every time he's in a drama, you know HE at least will give his 100%. I almost want to watch TGB for him, LOL. But that first half of the first ep that I did watch was... off-putting (and he wasn't even in it yet IIRC). I don't know. Maybe I'll try again.
Replying to the title question - to quote Chen QianQian, the heroine of The Romance of Tiger and Rose, it's because the ML belongs to the heroine/FL, the second lead is for everybody else LOL. So we invest all the time and interest in someone who's more accessible.
To add to that - they usually make the leads pretty monochromatic, LOL, whereas the SMLs aren't so simple all the time. The really good dramas/stories that involve SMLs make them equally important and give them reasons to be in the picture for more than the FL's love, so we also invest in them a lot.... But that kind of drama is pretty rare.
Welcome to the battlefield, errr, the shooting scene. LOLA kind of filler ep (with some extra action, I mean kissing,…
Another paralel to the danmei novel of Rebirth of a Movie Star - the whole attack sequence reminds me very much of the whole Chaos Street debacle in the novel, up to and including the jealous Thada/Qiu Qian for the kissing-the-heroine-scene, LOL.
I think Pond would do wonders were he to play Bai Lang. He already has it down, maybe someone in Thailand looks over that novel and gets the rights... *keeping fingers crossed*
3 
Not that it matters, since it is fiction and hey the stigma of cousins marrying only came because of the repeated family marriages that led to kids with very problematic genetic diseases. And no, that doesn't count as incest, again, not that it matters, since if it's a hetero marriage that could result in children, the consanguinity forbids it indeed in most countries (not in all, though). Even so, around a tenth of the worlds' kids come from a consanguine marriage.
Do not assume people are into incest stories just because they happen to ship two beautiful fictional persons who might be ~cousins.
PS And just for the sake of the discussion... EVERY male main character in The Untamed is Jin Ling's uncle, LOL, Are they also incestuous?! (We're not even going to touch on Meng Yao and his wife).
Then again, they could always comfort each other. Just sayin'.
This drama demonstrated that no matter what the censors think... you can't really censor this love story.
Also, please be aware this is based on an (uncensored) danmei novel and that there are also an audio drama, a donghua (animation) and a chibi donghua based on that novel, aside the live action :D
What I meant is that there's a very limited time to make a dent in a serious plot (who these people are, why there's no actual outcry for the missing children - it's not just the 5 who were smuggled out, but all the others TaeSik and his boss killed because they definitely didn't save them all.) And for an 8-ep drama there's a lot of time being lost in a maybe pointless burned car investigation, on how many times the boss sings that oldie while going to kill returned kids (and then the boss gets dispatched with a headshot and his line in the story ends, so that time might have been better used IMHO).
I'm not looking for a reason to nitpick the drama, seriously. It's just that it's short already, IF they're not aiming for multiple seasons maybe they should spend less time on things that don't really matter and make it make reasonable sense.
For example, the one who really gripped my attention through the first two eps is the older returned boy, I'm still unsure of their names. He's the one who put himself in danger by carrying the new kid, holding his hand, generally ensuring he was also safe. The others knew they should do it - but he was the one who actually did it. And it's his story that I want to know more about, not re-run scenes of the pedo school director. Yet the preview for ep3 goes on in the pedo plot, with trying to save the mom and then getting chased by DEX's character - who's also an enigma and I guess he'll mostly stay that way.
Oh well. I guess we'll see.
How come nobody's asking where are these kids?!
And then there's the police investigation of the TaeSik's burned down car - why do we waste the little time we have on that? Is it going to become important later? And why is there DEX's character, I didn't get his name, involved with everything but apparently FAILING to recognise the original (lost/discarded) daughter of his boss?! (If he too was a refunded kid, he'd have been around the family for long enough to see her - he looks like he's in his 30s, she was almost 18 when discarded. The new girl came around after, so he should be able to remember the first one.)
I know it's based on a webtoon and action webtoons don't always make sense, and it might be because of the shorter run... but it does feel a bit lacklustre. Like DEX's character seems to be the main villain so far, LOL, he's not.
So yeah, I don't know. I might keep up with it, since it's short... but it better start congealing around a main storyline sometime soon. I'm not really into abuse storylines (for those who are, you're welcome to try Namib, it's the worst of that genre I've managed to watched so far.)
ETA Also, watchers with much better vision than mine were ready to swear they can see LWJ's reflection in WWX's eyes.
Bromance, for sure, I'm convinced hahaha~
Every time he's in a drama, you know HE at least will give his 100%. I almost want to watch TGB for him, LOL. But that first half of the first ep that I did watch was... off-putting (and he wasn't even in it yet IIRC). I don't know. Maybe I'll try again.
To add to that - they usually make the leads pretty monochromatic, LOL, whereas the SMLs aren't so simple all the time. The really good dramas/stories that involve SMLs make them equally important and give them reasons to be in the picture for more than the FL's love, so we also invest in them a lot.... But that kind of drama is pretty rare.
I think Pond would do wonders were he to play Bai Lang. He already has it down, maybe someone in Thailand looks over that novel and gets the rights... *keeping fingers crossed*