Tanky Toon

The poster had me. I saw it and thought, “Yes, finally, a knee-slapping, high-energy satire that knows it’s ridiculous.” Instead, I ended up chuckling awkwardly into my sleeve while checking how many minutes were left. This drama promised a wild ride and delivered... a cautious pedal down nostalgia lane with training wheels. Was it funny? Occasionally. Was it dramatic? Only in the way watching paint dry in slow motion is—you're aware something's happening, but you don't care enough to blink.

If not for Jin Zi Xuan, I would’ve bailed halfway through and written it off as clickbait in costume. She carried this show like an unpaid intern dragging a malfunctioning printer up five flights of stairs. Her character had depth, charm, and a pulse. Meanwhile, the rest of the cast were so one-dimensional and wooden I worried a forest had died in vain. Instead of allegedly drowning in devotion, Hao Fu Shen as Huai Jin looked more like he accidentally wandered onto the set and decided to stay out of politeness. I didn’t feel tension, passion, not even a spark.

I powered through mainly because I wanted to know how it ended. Big mistake. It felt like the script didn’t trust me to retain anything for longer than thirty seconds, so it lobbed flashbacks at me like I had the attention span of a goldfish. In a short-format drama, that level of recap is less “thoughtful reflection” and more “previously on… every five minutes.”

After finishing, I didn’t feel enlightened or entertained. I felt like I needed my own Dramatic Self-Help Strategy to recover from the show I just watched.