Not great, unless you starving for GL
I found this watchable after it found its groove, but a lot of this is pretty rough as far as production value and continuity.There are times where it seems the editing is rushed or unpaid. There was a whole sequence where an actors "leaves the room and the time passes" but they dont use any transitions, so you can clearly just see they had the actor walk into and out of the frame multiple times without giving the actual time in between or using any transition effects to communicate that time passed.
Stuff like that is sprinkled throughout, which is disappointing / jarring. But if you just accept that this is a very low budget or student film, then you may be able to enjoy the main couple. They have good chemistry, so if you are just here for GL vibes, then you may find it worth a watch.
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Another juicy melodrama from my favorite team
So, if you are reading reviews for a "sequel" I am going to assume you already watched the first one. The main thing you probably want to know is that this is not a sequel, it is the same team telling a similar but different story.This is a modern melodrama about a rich family. The set up is probably common for melodramas, but the actual characters are so unique and richly portrayed, as always with this team, I find myself very engaged with the characters and how they are all unique.
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Fun melodrama from my favorite team
They really went into this and said, let's make a melodrama and just have fun with it. Another production from this team where you can tell that being an indie production let someone focus on writing the plot that they wanted, and not worry about forcing it to be excessively curated. It is well written and you can tell someone really put time into considering how to peel back the layers of the story.Modern melodramas aren't usually my thing, but this was engaging and interesting. I feel like all the characters were complex and unique individuals.
Also there is a "sequel" but it is unrelated, just the same team telling a similar but different story. It is also fun.
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A Practical Guide to Being a Superstar's Assistant
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Cute short GL
This is a very short drama speedrun of a GL. It is cute and has some nice moments and some interesting characterization and tension. The main plot serves more as a gesture drawing of the story, and instead the focus is on portraying the significant moments, more like vignettes.Wang Xue Xi as a skittish but determined assistant is really cute; I would love to see more work like this from her.
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Surprisingly strong hshort
I was pleasantly surprised by this one. It feels more like a proper drama than an hshort. It was a pretty quick watch but they still managed to flesh out a few characters with depth and interesting characterization.The main lead is a strong person with agency and competence. She is intelligent and is proactive -- she isn't waiting to be victimized by the usual villain shenanigans.
Many of the plotlines have an impressive amount of complexity, characters are not flat and sometimes a villain isn't just evil, and has room for growth. Even with some "redemption" it never feels too easy -- there is still accountability for people who do bad things. But they aren't just written off either.
All around, glad I watched it.
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Cute office romance
Nothing special nothing too bad. Pretty straight forward office romance. It's cute but nothing is particularly striking. In general it feels like a web drama, and it is fine for that.As is pretty common with these, the romance is rushed "at first sight" and not well supported other than longing gazes.
For the most part the leads have a cozy vibe and deliver interesting performances, despite things often feeling a bit "off" in that web drama way, that it can feel like they are acting or expect a scene to have more emotional weight despite the actual show just not spending/having enough time to provide context why we should interpret something as tension and not just a lingering shot.
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Strong leads in a writing mess
Overall I would call this a mediocre drama -- nothing terrible, nothing great.THE GOOD
- The leads
- The setting is magical
...
- The soundtrck is pretty strong
- Some plot / side characters are cute and fun
THE BAD
- Way too much angst
- Many plotlines will repeat over and over
- Villains are flat, uninteresting, and cartoonish
- Heavy handed filial piety propaganda
- Side characters (all characters other than the leads tbh) are often overacted and have their characterization so over emphasized that they become insufferable. Especially the 2nd and 3rd male leads
- Brain off writing. Don't expect plots or character motivations to be believable or even consistent.
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Uncanny valley ruins the potential
The biggest issue for me, is the uncanny valley being so jarring and prevalent that I couldn't get invested in the actual good parts. Maybe some people are less sensitive to that, and if you are, you may be able to enjoy this drama more than me.BAD CGI & DUBBING
I guess one of the second leads is using an CGI filter on her face? It does not look good, especially when speaking or emoting. Her partner also frequently has an eerie effect on her, it seems like her face is real but her eye movements have some weird smoothing or something, idk.
It actually feels like the "filter" use may even be broader than that, but sometimes it isn't clear whether the uncanny feeling is from a filter making faces look weird, or just the dubbing being bad / the actors lipsyncing poorly because they know it will be dubbed? (I don't know if that is a thing, but it would explain a lot, because it often doesn't even look like they are actually speaking)
GOOD EMOTIONAL BEATS
The primary story for the main couple is actually pretty strong. If you can ignore the other problems, this actually could have made it a pretty good watch.
Even the secondary couple has good ...writing. But saying that their arc is good would be difficult when they look like 1.5 animatronics.
BAD CONFLICT WRITING
Okay, I normally don't like to criticize actors. What do I know, I am sure I would be worse than the worst actor. But in this case, the combination of acting/directing/writing for the 2 main antagonists was actually painful enough to make me dislike the whole show (a second time, even if the uncanny valley hadn't been ruining it enough).
The villains just act incredibly cartoonish. Like way beyond even shows where the genre expects a villain to be cartoonish. These 2 characters act like they are in a vshort and honestly many vshort villains are more believable than this.
Many of these conflicts also have writing that is barely coherent. If you have your brain on even the slightest bit, many of the scenes will not even have internally consistent logic. They really do just throw some tropes at the wall to fill out the plot. :(
DISAPPOINTING TONE
Okay this one may just be my preconceived notions, but I felt like this show was trying to be a combination of Thai GL and Chinese vShort and did both poorly. If you actually combined them well I would probably have enjoyed it. But what I had REALLY hoped this would be, was for it to be a new style distinct to better quality Chinese dramas.
China already has some stuff like this with its own tone that are really great! Very disappointing that this one failed to focus.
Examples of Chinese GL tone already being distinct (and good to me!):
Indie films (Actual GLs)
- https://kisskh.at/749131-fireworks-of-yesteryear
- https://kisskh.at/700737-fragrance-of-the-first-flower
Historicals (Sismance)
- https://kisskh.at/62355-couple-of-mirrors
- https://kisskh.at/788444-be-her-resilience
- https://kisskh.at/777852-shuang-shu-mei-tan
Fantasy vShorts (Sismance+, these have vibes but are often chopped up)
- https://kisskh.at/764425-shuang-tu
- https://kisskh.at/716845-the-fox-spirit-and-the-little-priest
- https://kisskh.at/764425-shuang-tu
- https://kisskh.at/726937-the-vampires
- Pretty much anything with https://kisskh.at/people/35259-yang-fu-yu
- Pretty much anything with https://kisskh.at/people/79893-sheng-wei
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Cozy but serious period drama
For me this drama exceeded all of my expectations. I personally am not big on crime genres, but this show balances the stories it is telling against that framework well, so that I never felt like it was just "procedural".I found the characters all very interesting and likable. This gave me a "the crew" vibe, where the team is also kind of like a family, each bringing a different flavor to the ensemble.
The cases themselves were pretty interesting and tackle some pretty complex issues. Also it has been a while since a show has actually surprised me with a reveal, and a couple times I was pleasantly surprised that I had been taking certain things for granted in a given plotline. I guess this quality feels to me like someone really thought through each individual plotline and plot point so that they *really* make sense. And to do so for complex intrigue plots is extra nice, tbh these days many dramas just take for granted that tropes are all they need for a plotline, but if the audience gives it more than half a thought then the whole premise of a given plot point doesn't hold up to scrutiny. This show did not have that problem.
The leads are interesting and we get to spend a bit of time with them "living their lives" which was really nice to kind of flesh them out more beyond just showing them solving cases. I definitely would have liked to see more of this, but I thought what there was, was pretty good in this regard. The last "sismance" crime show I watched, did not do this as well as Duet of Shadows did.
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- Good chemistry
- Doesn't rush the couple to be together
- Interesting characters with flaws and unique character traits
- Very satisfying romance arc
THE ???
- tbh I expected this to be way more toxic based on the title. There are definitely still some IFFY things in this, but for the most part I think it handles them well? Or treats them as toxic, so it doesn't just pretend like being toxic is okay...mostly?
THE BAD
- Pace sometimes drags.
- Way too much lingering on love scenes to fill time and just gazey fan service.
- Way too much lingering on homophobia and each antagonist plot in general.
- Doesn't resolve antagonist plots well -- rushes the wrap up after dragging them on too long. Weirdly some are granted forgiveness (way too easily) and others are vilified even in the end (when maybe they deserved some sympathy?)
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Chinese fantasy GL
It is rare enough to find chinese GL but to find historical/fantasy is even rarer. This not only is both of those things but also has a very interesting plot and characters. Someone put a lot of love into writing this and putting together a production for it.The 2 real problems are:
1. The production quality is very low, bad editing and a very limited amount of footage makes this feel more like a broadstrokes gesture drawing of what would have been an amazing show
2. It is really hard to find a clean copy of this online. Most copies are either chopped up, or have had their audio tracks changed
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Not great but actually some good comedy
First off, this is barely a GL, though it has women loving women, it just isn't structured like a romance drama, if that makes sense? It seems to be structured more like a sitcom.Also it is overly focused on giving the large number of actors time to use the screen. It feels like MGI used this as a vehicle to test a bunch of potential actors?
As long as you go into it understanding those aspects, and managing your expectations, you may have a lot of fun with this.
Where it shines is the comedy and honestly even the acting is surprisingly good. Engfa and Charlotte show way more range in this than we got to see in Petrichor, this actually gave me renewed interest in their work.
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An amazing premise and start...
Overall an interesting magical story, however I personally enjoyed the first half way more than what they actually cooked.THE GOOD:
- The premise is very interesting. The magic. The moral dilemmas.
- The vibes are on point. From how things are shot to the music to the lighting. Everything is put together really well to create a very cozy and magical vibe.
- The leads fully deliver. Pitcha holds most of the screentime focus, and she uses it amazingly, delivering a very emotional and rich performance. Natt has less focus, but still has a strong aura and some nuance.
- The second couple actually tackle some complex issues and take them seriously. Some rare representation.
THE BAD:
- The romance was nice, but personally I would have liked to watch them fall in love. It goes from "i dreamed about you" to "we are engaged" in 0.000001 seconds which feels like a big rip off to be in love because of visions of the future? Unearned romance.
- All antagonists are handled in an absurd way. Writers have no teeth as usual. By the end I feel sick about how much it wants to gloss over actual crimes.
- Repeated uses of the same tropes that didn't even make sense the first time. This seems to be a pattern when dramas want to use "crime" to spice up a series, but don't bother to make criminals actually behave like they are real people instead of just behaving in ways that are convenient for the plot device the writers want to force in.
- Age gap is pretty significant and never even acknowledged.
- The "rules" of the magic are arbitrary multiple times throughout, especially when it matters. This unfortunately robs us of any sense of stakes and really flubs what was very interesting moral dilemmas and tense conflicts by just handwaving the established rules.
- A lot of the plot that feels mysterious and interesting in the beginning is never developed. Maybe the novel had more to explain this? There seems to be an implication there are entire other lives or something?
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Interesting. Toxic but interesting.
Very short, this is very much a web series; just a few short scenes to jump into a story and follow a specific arc. Typical for the style of these korean GLs, they are all more like vignettes than dramas.Actually explores some pretty interesting and complex emotions and situations. Focuses a bit heavily on some pretty toxic stuff, but I think in the end it isn't just fan service for that stuff.
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A beautiful start and then terrible writing
First, a warning. The summary is completely misleading about the tone, and is completely missing major, core parts of this premise.This is a very hard show to just give a rating. I got like halfway through and it was sitting at 9+ in my mind. A show that makes me that invested in the characters, and has me crying at how powerful the moments are, normally has a guaranteed MINIMUM rating of 8+.
Shows that make me angry enough to think about dropping, normally get a MAX 7.
My spoiler-free advice is, if you get to a point in the early-middle of this where it feels like "this is actually a nice place to wrap the story" -- JUST DO IT. There are 2 big points where I had this thought, and I wish that I had. Everything that comes after is just so dumb and disrespectful to the characters, while adding NOTHING to the story. There really is no loss to dropping early.
THE GOOD:
The leading actors give amazing and rich performances.
There is a trauma aspect to this plot, that is handled better than many... until its not.
hrm, thinking about what else to say, it really is just the leading actors and their (initial) characters that make this good to me, it seems
THE BAD:
Major, plot altering decisions are given no basis in character motivation. It is so jarring that it (more than once) seems like entire scenes are missing.
The men in this are completely controlling and end up being a large focus, and despite them being bad and harmful in their decisions, they never receive any consequences or even are portrayed as their actions having been bad. They are literally thanked and apologized to instead. Gross.
The bad people (except 1) receive absolutely no consequences. This is actually disappointingly typical in this genre, but this show is notably worse about it. Actual horrible person who does horrible things never even apologizes, and just suddenly becomes trusted and relied upon. I still get sick even thinking about it.
And the things that make me want to be sick go on. Just idiotic plot choices, forcing characters into situations just for angst or whatever. The entire second half is both gross and poorly written.
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