WK1

Dilraba and Yang Yang are true professionals. We know that Reba has done many kissing scenes before, so it is clear that her fans would not mind. I do not know much about Yang Yang fans, but I am told some of them can be quite possessive.

But the fact that Yang Yang did not mind all these kissing scenes means that he is not too worried about their opinions. Either that, or Reba's lips are just too tempting to resist. After the first kiss scene during rehearsal, he may have secretly told the director, "No problem, I can do more of this. You can have as many takes as you want."

If you can watch it where you are, it does show that there is a difference

Which just goes to show how insignificant the international audience is to Tencent. When the Wetv app crashed a few weeks ago, they fixed it within an hour. There was money to be made from the fast track people. Now that it is completely free, they are just taking their sweet time to fix it. Good thing I have the Viu platform at the my location. Else, I will not be able to support this drama by doing my rewatch on an official channel.

I am afraid I will have to agree with Birdlady. This video does show that he was rather uncomfortable being next to Reba. But this video was made in 2019? It was before they collaborated on YAMG. They had little reason to be close to each other. Their respective fandoms may misintepret their behavior if they were too close.

Things may be different now. If they are friendly toward each other in any public event, they will just be actors who became friends after collaborating on a project. What will be interesting will be to see Reba standing between Yang Yang and Wu Lei in a public event, and see how the three of them interact.

Same thing happened to me. But I have access to another platform called Viu, which also has all the episodes completely subbed. Do you have Viu??

How is your command of Mandarin/Chinese. If you have good command, I can recommend you something that is fairly similar.

What some of us are hoping is that at the end of 2021, when Tencent ranks all its drama from Jan to Dec, YAMG may finish in the top five. If not by total views, then, at least by views per episode. This will be a kind of achievement indicator for this drama that has graced our summer.

Edit: I just wish to add, doing this comparison has been very educational for me. It helps me to have a deeper understanding of viewers in China. That in the last 5 years, the variety of modern dramas has grown. Viewers now have far more choices. And the gaming genre has lost its charm or novelty.

They are different. But when Tencent ranks it top 5 list, they will not care too much about genres. They will just rank it either by total number of views, or even by views per episode. Right now, view episode, CC already outperformed YAMG. And soon, even its total views might be more than YAMG.

I did the comparison merely to let people here see the variety of genres that are appreciated by viewers in China, that in the 5 years since Love020, for modern dramas, there are now many choices. The gaming genre no longer dominate the market. There have been so many dramas/novels based on gaming. If writers wants to continue to use gaming as a plot device, they had better be extremely creative, or risk falling behind crime related storyline.

Yah. Tomorrow we will hit 3.6.

You click on the Tencent Video app above, open it, look at the screen, right below the screen, you can see the number of views. Try it

I put my answer in spoiler above, so that others who do not wish to see my answer can avoid it. You click the reveal spoiler icon, you can see my answer

Ok. Here is my advice for you. If you find the early episodes boring because you are not very interested in the video game the two leads are playing, you can watch Epsisode 5 to E13 in fast fforward mode. This way, you save some time. E14, is the game competition. That is quite fun to watch. E15-E20, you can also fast fast forward some of it. From E21-E32, will all be very cute and fluffy. Every episode from E21 onward will be very sweet.

Every episode of this drama has been watched by an average of 111 million people in China. The early episodes sets the context of the meeting between the leads after not seeing each other for the past 10 years. Keep watching. Their amazing chemistry and cute and fluffy romance will come in later episodes.

Small circle, and Dilraba is so friendly. she can get along very easily with all these veterans, and they do recognise her acting abilities

YAMG now has 3.57B view. Yesterday around this time, 3.54B, increase of 30M views.

Crime Crackdown now has 3.29B, yesterday 3.19B. It increased by 100M view

Fair comparison, as both dramas did not have any new episodes yesterday. Single platform, Tencent Video

I watched that clip sometime back. It shows that she is good enough to have easily dubbed her own voice in TLB. But I don't think she had the time for that. Shortly after filming TLB, she had to cross over to film YAMG.

In terms of being a commercial success, yes, YAMG likely made a lot of money for Tencent. A few Mondays ago, about 30M people in China bought fast track to watch the final 6 episodes.

I do not know how much they paid, but assuming each person paid US 1.50, that means they collected US $ 45M just from those payments. Assuming total production cost is US $ 20M, the rest is pure profit.

Then add all the advertising dollar made they made, plus new people who were drawn to play that video game or current players playing that game more often because of YAMG, they will also make lots of money, plus people who paid VIP membership just to watch this drama, etc. All in all, it must be quite profitable for Tencent. Not sure about its profitability versus these other dramas that you mentioned.

Yes. Not all actors can be versatile across historical and modern dramas, as they are rather different genres. He has already proven his acting abilities in historical dramas, so now many people are keen to see how he performs in a modern drama.

He is playing a doctor. It is a role that is quite familiar to viewers. Very easy for us to assess his performance. And if we can see the view counts of that drama as easily as we see YAMG's view counts, after the few episodes, we can already judge its performance in China.

Lay only made guest appearance. He was not heavily involved in the drama. They 'used' him as a promotional device, and it did work. And yes, a romance drama like YAMG will probably not work on older folks They are way pass the age of looking at sweet kisses and bed scenes, while crime solving will be more appealing to them. But YAMG did miss some opportunities to make the plot 'heavier'. Each episode is only 30 minutes. If the plot is heavier, each episode will be about 45 mins. Viewers will China will still like it.

We shall be able to see that very soon, as TOOL will be shown in just about a week's time. I do want to watch that drama, if nothing else, to compare the plot complexity and acting of the two leads there, versus Yang Yang and Reba.

I suspect TOOL will be less romance heavy, compared to YAMG. They are going to add more pain, because the FL's father's health issue. So, they are going to use a slightly 'heavier' plot compared to YAMG. I understand there will also been a misunderstanding of some sort between the ML and FL.

Coming so soon after YAMG, it will nice for us to watch and compare.