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Always Home chinese drama review
Completed
Always Home
3 people found this review helpful
by scenophile
Mar 1, 2025
30 of 30 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 7.5
Story 8.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Music 7.5
Rewatch Value 8.0

Comfort show

This was a fantastic watch! As a gigantic fan of WIFTY and similar youth dramas, this one hits a similar spot. The combination of romance, friendship, family, and the theme of following your dreams all make for a really comforting coming-of-age show. The conflicts are all quite realistic and relatable, and all handled with great communication and not dragged out. Even in the younger years, the show never shies away from really intense and serious conflicts, and the characters handle everything with surprising realism.

I think the strongest episodes in this drama were probably the high school years, but that's what I've noticed about a lot of youth dramas. I know 30 episodes is already pretty long, but I would've loved a few more episodes to pace out the post-college years. We speed pretty quickly through a few romantic developments for the side characters, and even some moments of the leads deepening their relationship or pursuing their careers. I feel like the college and post-college years didn't have the same heartfeltness, though it did get really close.

Overall, I don't think the "friendship" theme is as strong as it has been in other youth cdramas, but maybe that's inevitable when you establish a love square within your friend group. I know Qiqi's character was frustrating to some people, I actually found her self-sabotage and loneliness extremely relatable to my own high school years. We also have a few side characters who had potential but were never quite "integrated" into the group, which I was hoping for. Still, we get a lot of great one-on-one friendship moments.

The romance is just really cute as well! This was one of the most natural romantic developments I've ever seen, probably. It was not a "I noticed you at first sight" or even a "we didn't get along at first;" instead, the leads were genuinely just family friends who got along, and gradually grew to care for each other as more than friends. Everything just felt so down-to-earth, and I'm happy to say there were no drawn-out misunderstandings and break-ups.

The drama wraps everything up pretty nicely, and we have a really heart-warming and nostalgic final episode with the full main cast. This became a comfort watch for sure.
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