surio

ML rocks! hero's arc is well fleshed out. cute office romance with VC investing backdrop

There's nothing new in concept or execution in this story. Age old, rich entitled guy "ill-treats" girl. girl vows to make him eat his words. Girl achieves her goal. Falls in love with guy in the process after discovering that the boorish act is just an act to hide the nice guy. Turns out guy was always in love with her and was denying it. All this over 32(!!) episodes of one hour each!! Help!

One thing to hate about contemporary c-dramas is that the plot tries to force fit "muh china greatest and bestest" at drop of a hat. Here, in the context of angel/VC investing all this is parroted by various actors.

The actor playing the hero Lu jin ming was a great cast! He plays boor, cad, comedy, ineptness, smartness, hopelessly in love exasperated man, tough guy, good friend, etc etc., all on cue. His acting range is great. This serial is his show in the end, and he carries the show squarely.

The script is really well written in consistently showing the hero in a 3-dimensional way. He was always shown to be a thoroughly professional and meritorious when it comes to professional dealings. His tantrums towards the heroine in the beginning were later shown as an awkward attempt to protect her from the dirty investor politics and a subconscious mimicry of his own father's personality which he starts to overcome by himself after realising how it alienated the FL among others.

All of the ML's interactions with the FL are well written and acted out.
Actually kudos to the screen writers for a consistently portrayed character study in all 24 episodes.

Heroine is dressed and presented as way younger than IRL and they do the reverse for the hero, even though they are only 2 years apart. Make-up & costume department was great on this show. Also director does a good job of framing the heroine very pleasingly. Interestingly, the heroine has played a similar role in Flight to You, also released in same year as this one.

The romance b/w ml and fl itself didn't play out sufficiently. The FL actually spends far too much screen time with the SML/villain in romantic settings than with ML. Very disappointing. The SML scenes took far too long and the resolution also ended up very tedious and unbelievable. My low rating comes from this complaint.

The SFL and ML arc took far too long to resolve. The SML arc was a total washout - wasn't needed at all. Totally bombed for me. Big meh. The second couple OTOH were cute scene stealers. The office supporting crew were overall very likeable. Again, the romance angle itself was a big missed opportunity due to all the story resolution taking far too long.

Like many others, I also loathed how much time the SML arc took up on screen, down to the last episode. Good lord, no one cares. The show could have easily given 15-30 mins extra time for the ML to proclaim his love, and then the FL to go doe-eyed on our towering hero and bring him to his knees.

As my wife pointed out the way the last kiss played out could have been done much earlier (at the expense of SML!) and we could have had more romantic interactions post love declaration b/w ML-FL. After all the FL has been pining for the guy since much earlier in the show and that pent up feelings could have been easily channelled through different scenes (her being the first to lovingly lead and plant the first kiss on the hero was totally in character with this picturisation)

Anyway, it's worth a watch. Feel free to use FF button and also the 1.5x play speed button.

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this is a shameless tourism brochure simpfest tumblr BS. misled by high review scores

Holy crap, what did I go through. This one is a classic case of fooled by review scores due to unfair bias of viewer fantasy romance fanfic clouding their judgements.

First 16 or so episodes is just a shameless finland tourism paid propaganda. They don't even try to make it subtle. the actors/acting/lines are filler for this nonsense.

This brain dead cr*p is supposed to be a hero's journey to redemption. Bratty teenager who threw a tantrum, refused to apologise and ran away for decade. We are supposed to sympathise with this POS. As another reviewer mentioned, his "love language" is trying to stuff the heroine with food or forcing himself for physical intimacy and kisses. heroine pouts nicely on cue and turns up the "cute girl" act to high. The entire cast is used very poorly. No one is even trying to act, Each episode of this braindead nonsense is 45 min long.

By episode 20 both me and my wife unanimously felt like we have lost enough time of our lives to this torture and abandoned it. No regrets. Shame on people falling for some blatant simpfest and giving this cr*p high ratings.

Watch anything else over this nonsense.

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B grade production, barely passable, catchy title song, spirited FL

tldr; OTT acting all around. passable plot, FL is not passive but shown taking lead in romantic scenes. Can get through with 1.5x and help from FF buttons. If you want something cozy with your wife/GF, this one will work because the romance will work for the girls and unintended hilarity will work for the boys.

There's a barely passable excuse of a plot. Undercover policeman infiltrates a shady business group. Tries to turn the bad guy brothers against one another, evil mob boss wife has own scheme & FL's aunt was murdered by her to tie all characters' motivations. It ends well. They tie all loose ends together and managed well in the time/budget they had

As many viewers have pointed out, the FL is written as a spirited girl who knows what she wants and will take steps towards it. Once she takes an interest in the ML she's shown to be doing most of the pursuing and initiates the romantic encounters more than once. Had they made her a damsel in distress along with all the cliché tropes they added here I would have rated it a 1 or 2. It's the only "special thing" this run-of-the-mill B grade web drama has going for it. The acting is so OTT it's hilarious. You end up laughing even in supposedly dramatic/suspenseful scenes too.

The acting from all parties is in the "so bad it's good" category. It's one of those mini 15 min web dramas where if you deduct the two title sequences, the story is +/- 8 mins. At 1.5x-2x speed you can get through.

The title song's catchy/hum worthy and subtitling is hilarious ("deducting like Sherlock Holmes" while the term never comes up in her song! LOL, really!?). The OCR they used for transcribing english titles for chinese film crew was unintentionally hilarious "Pedolicer" for Producer, "Propaganda" instead of "Publicity and Stills" and so on.

Watch if you have nothing else to do.

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Thinly veiled "TOURIST BROCHURE" Watch it for villain character's OTT ham acting.

LOL what is this even! This is a barely disguised tourist brochure for Hezhe/Fuuyaan, China

tldr; skip - watch only for the villain's antics in the first 10-12 eps in 1.5x speed. skip both titles to gain time.

This show was popping up in recommendations everywhere. Ended up watching it in .5-2x speed. The excuse of a plot is that our ML is a photographer on a mission to capture all the albino variants of wildlife across China to hold a celebratory exhibition. He's missing the last one, albino brown brear reportedly sighted by FL, known online as "hezhe's treasure". They get off on the wrong foot. ML mistakes "villain" character's harassment of the FL as some viral "proposal" moment and shares it on social media. Hijinks ensue. ML and FL pair up over several adventures. ML dutifully "supports" our "awesome" FL on all her achievements. Villain changes heart and helps our hero get the girl in the end.
PS: There is no plot.

Luckily, each 15 min episode is less than 7 mins of content. Long start &end title scenes make for the remainder. The "albino bear" plot comes and goes as it pleases while the hero spends all his time solving heroine's home town problems. The first half is mostly fending off the advances of the "villain" - the richest man in the province who is set on marrying our heroine against her will. Plucky girl isn't going down without a fight. Fair hero plays his part in rescuing the damsel.

The real MVP of this drama is the villain character Mao Kuan Ren who lights up the scene with his OTT antics, self-aware villainy and is the most amusing character on screen throughout. This 24 ep tedium is made bearable mostly through him. The actor went above and beyond what he was paid for our entertainment's sake. My acting rating is high only for him.

There is a funny side plot where our hero dresses up as a woman to help heroine's brother avenge the villain's russian femme fatale planted in their team to cause havoc. He strongly resembled Aamir Khan's cross dress appearance in Baazi. They played the whole thing straight for laughs.

The plot device serves to showcase the monuments and scenery of the province/area and is a thinly veiled tourism brochure.

No one in the cast stand out. Heroine (Hezhe's treasure) plays cute, pout, tough, etc as demanded in script. Once the villain is "defanged" this meandering mess becomes a chore to watch.

Meh!

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no frills, straight forward romance that actually shows happy marriage ending

This was showing up in my recommends for some time and decided to give it a go in 2025 :D . (I have turned on spoilers flag just in case)

Overall I found the entire serial enjoyable. The four leads were all easy on the eye and could act reasonably well. Producer, director, writer and composer were all female. You can see the influences in various facets of the final product. The lead actress seems very popular, going by her prolific catalogue of work.

The story itself isn't earth shattering. Part slice of life, part existential angst (all too common in story telling in last few decades). The tropes surrounding the leads are relatable too: For the FL, a put together life for "best social media appearances". The ML has been burnt out by "quick success followed by crash and burn" so now he's covering it up playing "edgy cool". Antisocial female artist and metrosexual man bring up the rear.

What I liked
First and foremost, unlike majority kdramas, they resolved the arc by showing the hero and heroine had married soon after and having a cute 4-5 year old daughter in the end. It was a literal breath of fresh air. Much appreciated! The side leads resolving the side FL's tantrums and marrying in thr end!

1. Pacing was great. kdramas could learn this some more from jdramas. Story ends in 10 episodes!
2. Most loose ends were resolved fairly quickly.
3. For all the "trauma" they've gone through, the leads are shown as fairly emotionally grounded.
4. The dialogues were fairly mature - not too many cliches.
5. Lovely use of the dog as a plot device and eye candy. It was beautiful.
6. Good use of slow-motion and hero's athleticism in scenes where he chases after the heroine. Overall the framing of the shots, the camera following were done well.
7. Outdoors filming was also tastefully done.
8. Featuring some actual artwork for the second heroine. They looked nice. The finished cherry blossom, the art gallery, the finished painting of the model, etc.
9. The cooking scenes were well filmed too. I liked that aspect of the presentation.
10. Fan service showing the ML putting all the effort for the FL
11. All the leads taking an active interest in at least resolving the misunderstanding in the relationships and putting their love lives on track. All 4 of them were equally shown doing it as well as the landlady character's husband.
12. Heroine shown as not averse to the idea of following the hero in his career. This is so uncommon nowadays that it was a very pleasant surprise. Going by the hero's immediate reaction to her, it was clear the writer was likely pandering to some "audience demography survey" and not present reality for what it is.
13. I hated the way the president opportunistically inserts himself into shun's place in the french restaurant scene. Shun not calling Kurumi from the restaurant to announce his delay was also idiotic. However hero redeemed himself like a champ the next day (smooth moves pro maxxed) and the girl didn't seem stuck up on it which was a relief. So, I liked the ending while I still dislike the beginning. The more I think about the scene it was just unnecessarily added drama at multiple levels.
14. Haru-chan's character portrayal as a counselor and as a human was super well fleshed out.


Disliked
1. The "president" character didn't click for me at all. He took the girl for granted (almost treated like doormat, a few compliments notwithstanding). He could see she was in awe of him harboured a crush) and as using her mostly to prop his own ego. In office settings it is common to see someone in a powerful aura due to being in their presence for 8+ hours but when that setting is taken away, the aura dies too. At least that much was shown. It was scummy move of him to proclaim his own love for her to her after she gets with the main guy and gives him her farewell speech (and confesses her feelings which was also odd for me too, everything else she said was fine). Specially since he was already bailing out like he did in the beginning. The whole usurping shun's place in the french restaurant date by him also puts him in a very negative light. If he hadn't shun would have joined late.
2. The landlady (including the whole "angry with ex-husband") arc really put me off. It felt like a self-insert by the writer whether it was playing cupid, sometimes totally wrong way, or playing "saviour" to the tenants. All the scenes featuring ex-husband in person or being referenced was 100% self insert. The more the ex-husband was emasculated and made to grovel, the more you realise someone was playing out their on fantasy of how they wanted it to be. The resolution towards the end "more then friends, less than family" was total nonsense. Anyway, I didn't like her nor her arc with the husband etc.
3. Not a fan of "stealing another man's girlfriend" arc implied in the case of Mashiba's subordinates. they could have avoided that nonsense. Sullied an otherwise nice story.
4. the "healing and moving on" resolution. Her opening a small shop in the end and "pursuing her dreams" was nice and all, but could have easily been done in hokkaido. Him wanting to be a "japan travelling food cart savant" was stupid in every sense. That the two of them went along with each other's proclamation with a lame "I will support you" was so out of character to how level headed they had been portrayed totally took me off the immersion. This resolution was playing to someone's fantasy clearly and was idiotic and unrealistic in every sense of the word.
5. Showing important scenes in a post title epilogue. If I hadn't read one reviewer pointing this out, I might have missed important scenes. Bad move.
6. Kurumi's mother was altogether too air-headed for my liking and suddenly being all mature when it suited the writer's whim
7. The "eat play love" cliche reflected in both drama genres "eat well, be happy" said too often by too many people
8. The sea shell lamp arc procurement resolution was ridiculously done.

Final thoughts:
1. Straightforward girl meets boy, sparks fly, then girl falls for boy, boy transforms a lot for the girl (the timeless girl tames the boy trope). Just what majority look for in entertainment.
2. Relatable leads for the most part. Realistic portrayal of people's situations.
3. ex-husband putting in some effort to get back and be given another chance (and should have been given one imo, as he was very sincere)
4. No unnecessary drama to drag out two extra episodes! Western entertainment - take note!

Thanks for reading. Appreciate it.

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