Lan Er-Gege

What started with Tan Tai Jin ended with Tan Tai Jin...or did it

Just finished watching a few minutes ago and decided to write my thoughts while they are fresh.

When this started airing I already saw the great potential just like all the trailers showed me. The CGI is on a whole different level, the costumes are absolutely phenomenal and so are the actors (will get to that later)

STORY:
Alright so the story had an interesting premise however just as it is the norm for Chinese dramas it got very intertwines lets say (was gonna say complicated but everything was actually explained very well). I personally find the Immortal arc the best because its where the real show begins, everything else was kinda setting the scene. However after around episode 35, everything fr took a turn. We learned how all the different lives of the characters intertwines with each other (especially Mo Nv, I fr wasn't expecting the twist of her being a devil from the beginning). I have to say that during the Bo Er arc aka dream arc, I thought that the quality of the drama was going down, and many people were complaining about that arc haha. It just felt rushed, but after finishing the show I thoiught: well yes they could have made it longer but at the end of the day the character roles of that arc are more important than the relationship between them. I mean how the Bo Er life connects to the real life world 10,000 years ago. Only complaint is that there was no continuation to Pian Ran and Qingyu's story :(

ACTING/CAST:
Not much to say really, all of the actors were absolutely phenomenal. Well....LYX kinda blew me away again, he just keeps getting better and better. And his duality at playing multiple characters is fr terrifying. Bai Lu was as always scarily good. I was actually not familiar with any of the other cast (CDL, DW, SZN, GYT) But wow they surprised me. CDL slayed her bitch roles. If her character got me infuriated t hen her acting got across haha.

MUSIC:
I am not gonna say anything except for: THE OST AND SOUNDTRACK ARE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING I FREAKING LOVE THEM AND AM STILL MAD THAT THE SOUNDTRACK IS NOT RELEASED, THE OST ISNT ENOUGH FOR MEEEEE.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
Another thing that was done the best in this drama, above the story, is the character building. The characters were SO well built and thereafter SO well executed (this show would've flopped if the cast wasnt as good in my opinion) that the small plot holes, rushed parts were compensated for

And well yea this is kind of it.
Solid 10 for me. This drama went from meeting y expectation to falling a bit on them and at the very end COMPLETELY GOING BEYOND EVERYTHINGN I EXPECTED. It was the Immortal arc for me.........Will rlly miss this show and ABSOLUTELY RECCOMEND IT. oh and do bring some tissues, you will need em.

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HYX changed my life forever

This show is literally the most beautiful thing I have seen in my entire life. After watching it I felt like the luckiest being to ever walk this planet, I have now ascended. Not only did this satisfy my daily craving for eternal peace and subdue the beast inside me begging for live danmei content with lyx but I now truly understand the beauty of the world.

The acting is truly phemomenal but with lyx and cfy I wouldn't have expected less. Everyone else was amazing as well. I actually felt like I was watching IRL Moran and Wanning, impeccable.

The music is like bliss to my eardrums, I feel exalted each time any of the soundtrack comes up. 127656/10

Rewatch value? HA that funny. I've already watched this over 50 times and somehow I just can't stop myself from rewatching again!

HAHAHA DEFO RECOMMEND THIS CAUSE YOUR LIFE WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!

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Friendship isn't always expressed in words

I suggest you check it out for yourself, words cannot properly describe this drama. as everyone else said, binge it.
I myself am not so good at writing reviews but I decided to still summarise my thoughts as this drama left quite an impression on me. I just finished the last episode and everything I have to say is....wow, I did not except this going into the drama.

I do not typically watch these types of dramas so it was honestly quite different from my usual romance. One thing I should say is that there should be more dramas like this, I do not see a lot of great depictions of friendship like here. And although it m,ight not seem like a friendship drama, deep down it is.

STORY:
I did not have any specific expectations going into this show and at a certain point I just thought that it was about teenagers learning about friendship and fighting. And although it wasn't boring, the same actions starting repeating, but I quickly came to realize that it was intentional and helped properly set the ending. Bullying is like a chain.
But overall I really cannot properly describe how well the story was done, it smoothly avoided clichés, the directing of this drama as a whole was very original and unique.
I already thought that this drama was good but when I saw the last episode, the bars that I set for it were raised by so much.

ACTING:
tbh this was my first time seeing Ji Hoon acting so I was not familiar with him, in fact I was not really familiar with most of the cast except for Hyun Wook and Seung Ho. Through the story I of course noted everyone's incredible acting skills but that was until I saw the scene in ep 8 when Si Eun was walking out of the classroom. I was stunned, shocked and most of all impressed as hell. I have not seen such expressive acting in a while.

MUSIC:
I will stay silent for this topic. I am a highly musical person, I love music and I ujst have to say that while this drama did not have so many OST's they definitely checked the boxes for me. IT is impossible to explain how well they compliment the story and the acting, whoever was in charge of the music thank you so much!

As a small warning......do not be fooled, you WILL need tissues.

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Relationships aren't perfect

!!!!! This review was written 10 months ago!!!
I just realised I never posted it on the review page also this was my first review so it is kinda repetitive. also I don't remember what I wanted to put for the rating so don't trust that.


I watched ITSAY a while ago and have been holding this series off because of all the hate on it.
With the main factor being the cheating, I must say that this sequel was not perfect. However it was still portrayed well and was one of those series that ignored the typical fairytale stories and really showed the problems that real life couples face.

I have been preparing myself too much for the cheating factor and now I realise that it was very unnecessary as it was not as bad as I expected. I'm not saying it was ok NO NO it WAS NOT but I was happy to see the Jai was very understanding toward the whole situation and towards Teh who was already confused as hell.

Now I would mainly like to comment on the ending:
I understand why many people have different opinions toward the ending and would have rather preferred another ending where Teh and Oh went their separate ways. At first I was very focused on the cheating aspect when going into this but I quickly realised that it was just a tiny aspect of the whole meaning portrayed, especially toward the ending.
A lot of people were mad at Teh and Oh ending up together which I totally understand because I also felt like that throughout most of ep 3, 4 and 5...however there are a few things I would like to point out.
Let's face it Teh fucked up real bad and we all wanted to punch the hell out of him. I was fucking happy when they broke up but here is why I think that them getting back together wasn't specifically bad:

Ok so remember when Teh met up with Bas again and Bas gave out the words of absolute wisdom. Well those words conveyed the outcome actually. bas said that for some couples it's better to try to get back together and for some it would only toxify the relationship (words of wisdom my guy) and Oh answered "How will I know?", well here is the thing you don't. So Bas basically said that you will never know unless you try and that is exactly what Oh decided to do.

To be honest, the ending that we got is just one of many. In this story Oh decided to try again, knowing that it might hurt him, but he knew that nothing would ever clear the confusion up if he didn't try. Some may say that he shouldn't have done that and some may think that it was a good move,...that really comes down to the person since you really will never know unless you try.

A lot of us did not get the ending we wanted but really the ending can be considered an open ending if you think deeply. Oh and Teh chose to walk their path in the end and that path just happened to be the same one.

If they never met after the breakup, maybe they would be walking different roads. If Oh never went back to Teh they would probably also be walking different roads. If it comes down to it, if Teh didn't cheat on Oh....they might of still ended up going different paths. Again, the ending that we got is just one of many. If you never got the desired ending, just pretend that Oh made a different choice. We also don't know if they even lasted after getting back together since their relationship was already very shaky.

Thanks for reading!

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Catching theme broken by bad production

OK so I was very hyped to watch this show, mainly because of FirstKhao and the premise itself looked quite fun and interesting. I feel like all the signs were there midway that the show just wasn’t going to get progressively better. I’m trying my best not to sound like a hater, I was eagerly waiting each week for a new episode and it was very fun to watch but at some point my adrenaline ran out and I kind of started seeing the boring parts of the show. This review is on the harsher side just because I wanted to outline some negatives I found in the show. Idk what to write for positives like…”that was quite nice” moving on😭😭😭


I was rlly excited in the first half of the show, but for the other half I just sort of had this constant zoning out feeling when watching (I’m sorry I don’t know how else to explain it 😭). The show is turning off my braincells idk what’s happening anymore.

Ending: I was honestly so confused in the last few eps….I literally lost the plot HAHAHAHA.

Ok so one more thing, this is completely my own opinion but I do not think that the comedy of the show mixed well with the supposedly suspenseful theme. Ok so let me unpack that. The comedy I don’t mind, I think it adds a nice touch to the show and if you want to turn your brain off completely and just enjoy the for the laughs then don’t finish reading this section :D. Especially in the later episodes I saw more serious themes trying to be presented but I couldn’t properly feel that darker vibe because the aloof comedy outshined it (mainly in the joongdunk scenes but I could feel it in the rest of the show too). So overall the times sort of clashed, so again im not saying there should be no comedy but rather I don’t like how the serious themes were presented amidst the comedy.

Ok so the most debated topic for this drama for very well known reasons. It’s like I’m waiting two entirely different categories under one umbrella. So as we all might have noticed, Dunk is very much “disliked” by some for his acting. I have to just say bluntly that I’m not a JoongDunk fan, in the sense that I have never watched any of their shows nor really searched them up for any other reason. They just sort of weren’t there in my mind, so going into this series I fr did not know what to expect (so I didn’t lol). The first few episodes I was just interested in the plot and comedy to really start analysing everyone’s acting, but at a certain point I started seeing many comments about Dunk and yes off I noticed that his acting is not the best per se. Thankfully in this case it wasn’t really a disaster in my case cause his character was aloof and carefree so I did not even notice anything with him in the first few eps. As the theme got a bit darker and more serious he did start standing out more but yea I have not seen any of his other shows so I have nothing to compare to other than the rest of the cast but many do say that his acting has improved so I will trust y’all on that. I just don’t rlly like how he dealt with the more serious scenes.
Guys I am not shitting on any JoongDunk lovers we can all love the ships that we want to, I won’t object. Just for me personally they aren’t the brightest cookies for my liking, so my view of them in THK was a bit, how do I say this…I did not think much of them. Yes they were funny but nothing spiked me as wow. Pls no one come for me Joong is rlly hot I don’t hate either of them.

Ok so moving onto FirstKhao…yea well I just wasn’t worried for their acting because I knew they were going to do an amazing job they pretty much always do. I rlly love them and I think many came into this series for those two (I did too haha). I only want to say one thing, I rlly don’t think it was them cause it looked more like a filming and production thing but there were just a few scenes which felt a few seconds too dragged on where First and Khao were kinda just staring at each other awkwardly. Idk if anyone else noticed this tbh idk why I did but it stood out to me, I was kinda just sitting there there like 👁️👄👁️ “uum ok…” And overall FirstKhao’s acting sort of outshined the intensity of the scene (I’ll get to that in the production section that I added of the purpose of this review).


OK I can shit on other things as much as I want but the soundtrack was done AMAZINGLY. I’ve seen a pattern of really good music being presented in the latest BL series. The first show that made me really wow at the score was Not Me, I gotta say after the music in that show I was simply not the same being. Yea so music means a lot to me as a person so a good soundtrack drop me to my feet and make me ascend. And well this show had a good selection I must say. A lot of songs added to m Spotify after the last few months HAHAHA. But sadly for me this wasn’t enough

Overall: Production quality:
Sighhh… welp. I’m not very happy. Not mad or anything just kind of indifferent. I think that the plot had much more potential than what the end result came out to be. My thoughts on this might overlap a bit with what I wrote about the plot but yes, the events and scenes did start getting a bit repetitive that I sort sort of felt like I was watching the same episodes but in different fonts. I suck at putting my feelings onto paper so the best I can explain it is that the start was quite impactful

Maybe the problem partially lies in building...bob the builder rlly has is work cut out for him but jokes aside going back to there being potential comment; the story, characters and world building was not done extremely well in my opinion. I couldn’t fully sympathise with any of the characters well enough because there just wasn’t enough backstory to them. There was just a lack of depth on many things, I would have liked the story to be more coherent.

I mean idk if I would rewatch it tbh, the show wasn’t that memorable for me but It was funny and lighthearted at times so I could see why people would come back to it.

I don’t think I’m ready to be giving this lower than an 8 so I will leave it at that rating. Also guys I’m not very good with words and have only written a few reviews so my apologies if something doesn’t make sense. Anyway this was still very fun to watch a lovely day cuties <3

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