This review may contain spoilers
The most okay series ive ever watched
Love Game in Eastern Fantasy was such a genuinely mid series its hard to write a good review on it. The bad parts balanced out with the good parts and left me feeling conflicted on whether or not I should finish it until literally the very end.
Acting: Shockingly subpar. The character writing was all over the place with some characters getting such genuinely bad writing, like the literal main character Ling Miaomiao, that no acting could save them but even then most of the main performances felt pretty weak. I literally watched the show for Yu Shuxin and felt like it was arguably her worst performance to date. Ding Yuxi was actually quite good, his character definitely allowing for more emotional range but the other main actors never stopped feeling stiff in their performance. If the entire show was actually framed like they were supposed to be acting as book characters the performances would have made more sense but they were supposed to become more human and their acting alongside that never really got better. However, I do think a bunch of the side characters had spectacular performances and really made it up for me. Gou Xiu, Lu Huai'an, and especially Luiniang's actors all had phenomenal performances.
Characters: The characters were all pretty one note outside of Mu Sheng. Like all their supposed character growth from the storyline's being changed kept happening with such little fanfare that it didn't actually feel like growth. And you had to keep being told they were changing or why what they were doing was so important to the character, it did not add any life into these people. Mu Sheng/Ziqi having all these growths and changes was literally the entire plot of the show so he was well developed but very much at the expense of everyone else. Ling Miaomiao did not escape this side-lining either. Like her character changes were never really about her, they were more about how she felt towards someone else, so you can't call that growth either. I wouldn't say I disliked any of the main characters but they were all kind of boring.
Writing/storyline: STOP PUTTING RANDOM CHILDREN AS A MAIN CHARACTER. I do not care if they were in the book stop it! Its never not annoying! Outside of that the writing was weird. The show was oddly paced and there was a lot of twists/resolutions that had absolutely no build up to them. The overreaching plot of LMM trying to complete the game was disappointingly sidelined like a bunch of times but that may just be my preferences for isekais butting in. The in-game plot of fixing the bad endings and finding the Resentful Woman was decent and well focused on, with the sideplots actually supporting it well even if they dragged a bit. I can see that they wanted to have a "everything is connected" moment in the last couple of episodes but it did not have a strong impact when you weren't given any lead-up to it. The very final twist of Fu Zhou would have been better if there was literally any foreshadowing but it wasn't a bad twist and I like happy endings so I'm not complaining about that. There was also some really poorly utilized plot points that I am guessing came from the book that they just wanted to pigeonhole in. LMM losing her memory of reality was done terribly, as the prime example. They also stopped really incorporating the "game" element of the show after the first episode. There was also weirdly good comedy in it.
Directing/Editing: Terrible editing, like distressingly bad all the time. There were so many cuts in so many scenes that did not need them, with scenes also cutting off at awkward times or starting at random places. All of the fight scenes were also super weirdly edited but that may have been the directing instead, but yeah bad fight scenes. The choreo was uninspiring and with so many cuts it was clear they were not doing anything impressive. The special effects were nothing special despite them trying to be funny about it and I think the director needs to be wacked for some of his choices. There was a scene were there was multiple lines of dialog back and forth between MS and Luinian and Luiniang was not in focus once. Visually the show was fine, nothing special but not ugly.
I realize i wrote a lot for a show I said was mid but it really did have such an odd mix of good and bad that there was a lot to comment on. Would not rewatch and kind of regret actually putting in the time to finish instead of just looking up the ending but oh well. Not the worst show I've ever seen, not even the worst I've watched this month so good for them.
Acting: Shockingly subpar. The character writing was all over the place with some characters getting such genuinely bad writing, like the literal main character Ling Miaomiao, that no acting could save them but even then most of the main performances felt pretty weak. I literally watched the show for Yu Shuxin and felt like it was arguably her worst performance to date. Ding Yuxi was actually quite good, his character definitely allowing for more emotional range but the other main actors never stopped feeling stiff in their performance. If the entire show was actually framed like they were supposed to be acting as book characters the performances would have made more sense but they were supposed to become more human and their acting alongside that never really got better. However, I do think a bunch of the side characters had spectacular performances and really made it up for me. Gou Xiu, Lu Huai'an, and especially Luiniang's actors all had phenomenal performances.
Characters: The characters were all pretty one note outside of Mu Sheng. Like all their supposed character growth from the storyline's being changed kept happening with such little fanfare that it didn't actually feel like growth. And you had to keep being told they were changing or why what they were doing was so important to the character, it did not add any life into these people. Mu Sheng/Ziqi having all these growths and changes was literally the entire plot of the show so he was well developed but very much at the expense of everyone else. Ling Miaomiao did not escape this side-lining either. Like her character changes were never really about her, they were more about how she felt towards someone else, so you can't call that growth either. I wouldn't say I disliked any of the main characters but they were all kind of boring.
Writing/storyline: STOP PUTTING RANDOM CHILDREN AS A MAIN CHARACTER. I do not care if they were in the book stop it! Its never not annoying! Outside of that the writing was weird. The show was oddly paced and there was a lot of twists/resolutions that had absolutely no build up to them. The overreaching plot of LMM trying to complete the game was disappointingly sidelined like a bunch of times but that may just be my preferences for isekais butting in. The in-game plot of fixing the bad endings and finding the Resentful Woman was decent and well focused on, with the sideplots actually supporting it well even if they dragged a bit. I can see that they wanted to have a "everything is connected" moment in the last couple of episodes but it did not have a strong impact when you weren't given any lead-up to it. The very final twist of Fu Zhou would have been better if there was literally any foreshadowing but it wasn't a bad twist and I like happy endings so I'm not complaining about that. There was also some really poorly utilized plot points that I am guessing came from the book that they just wanted to pigeonhole in. LMM losing her memory of reality was done terribly, as the prime example. They also stopped really incorporating the "game" element of the show after the first episode. There was also weirdly good comedy in it.
Directing/Editing: Terrible editing, like distressingly bad all the time. There were so many cuts in so many scenes that did not need them, with scenes also cutting off at awkward times or starting at random places. All of the fight scenes were also super weirdly edited but that may have been the directing instead, but yeah bad fight scenes. The choreo was uninspiring and with so many cuts it was clear they were not doing anything impressive. The special effects were nothing special despite them trying to be funny about it and I think the director needs to be wacked for some of his choices. There was a scene were there was multiple lines of dialog back and forth between MS and Luinian and Luiniang was not in focus once. Visually the show was fine, nothing special but not ugly.
I realize i wrote a lot for a show I said was mid but it really did have such an odd mix of good and bad that there was a lot to comment on. Would not rewatch and kind of regret actually putting in the time to finish instead of just looking up the ending but oh well. Not the worst show I've ever seen, not even the worst I've watched this month so good for them.
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