yeou_bi

This is until this day the only drama I'm glad I didn't drop because the ending was great. I literally can't remember what happened, just that I was glad hahaha

1) I figured Tatsuya would be sick but I still think the last scene was really well-made.
2) whyyyyyyy did they have to have the hero meet the actress? I love Narumi Riko and I loved their interactions and I hated that they dropped her character.

That's what I also keep thinking every time they show the night sky in front of the Shanghai skyline. I live in a much smaller city and even here I barely see any stars.

I mean, the movie is definitely nice to look at. Also, compared to Three Kingdoms (2010) which had a great story but almost only middle-aged to old actors, it's nice to see a youngish cast haha

That's really nice for you and I agree, many people don't look their age. But I still stand by what I said. We do have certain ideas of what someone looks like at a certain age and when a woman in her 40s is casted as someone in their 30s, that skews that image. I mainly care because this is a woman and because there is this idea that women in their 30s immediately lose value. Also, why not just make her like 38? What would have been wrong with that?

I'm only at ep 13 but so far, there's barely anything that could count as romance. It's largely social commentary (women's role in society, marriage, women in the workplace, ageism, the difference between being native to Shanghai vs having moved there,...). The love triangle also seems largely like she will have the choice between a socially acceptable guy (= rich, older but doesn't accept her choices) and a not so acceptable guy. But seeing that she literally broke up with another guy who seemed perfect but was too controlling for her liking, I don't see how could genuinely fall for the rich guy.

Small issue but that keeps bothering me.... Qin Lan is beautiful but she's 42 and her role is 33. She looks like she's closer to 40 than 30 and that's perfectly fine but if she's sold as 33, people who aren't that age will end up believing that that's what 33 looks like. Why is that bad? It's like when actors in their 20s are casted as high school students. It sets false expectations. In this case it adds to the belief that women spontaneously age when they hit 30.Like, I'm not saying she's to old for the ML. She isn't. But I don't know if it because they wanted to make the age difference visibly more obvious or if the real age difference is too icky, but I would have liked it more if she was portrayed as at least late 30s.

Yeah, I get what the rule is for from a dramatic standpoint but I just think the way it was introduced wasn't great. As someone mentioned in another comment, it just happened way too quickly, so we had barely any time to process that. It was like, "bam, I'm your new boss, I don't even care about your names but don't you dare date!". And that was it. And that's imho poor writing. I like the drama the rule creates but I just can't get over the fact how poor the introduction was. It's just there as an obstacle but that's like when someone suddenly has amnesia in a makjang. Is it entertaining? Sure. Does it give the actors a chance to deliver some really great performances? Absolutely. Is it good, cohesive writing? Nah.

This drama is incredibly wholesome and uplifting and I can't stop thinking about how different the premise would have been as a kdrama. This is about a woman who gave up on her original future plans to raise her little brothers and a man who went to prison because his fiancee denied that he saved her from rapists and made it look like he assaulted a guy for no good reason. That could be super grim if done differently. But this was done by Japan and the whole point of it is to not to dwell on the past but look ahead. Conflicts are resolved by people just sitting down and sharing their feelings and that's beautiful.

That's a good point and that absolutely makes sense. If they had taken two or three more scenes to introduce the rule and where everyone is coming from, it probably would have felt less like a gimmick they slapped on the plot.

Yeah, I absolutely get that. I get where the rule comes from and that most stories have plotholes (I mean life itself has moments that make zero sense, too). But that's what I feel torn about. I like the drama, I really do and that's why I keep watching but I can't just turn off my brain and the central conflict is so weirdly constructed. That just personally bothers me.

I feel torn about this because it is enjoyable and the chemistry is great and some scenes are really beautiful but..... Man. The plot. I just can't ignore how nonsensical that is. Like, SL confronting JYZ about his stupid rule and JYZ totally panicking? Great cinema, A+. But the stupid rule itself? Wtf. Any normal person would either sue him or be like "haha, cool, anyway, here's my resignation". And I know it's romcom and romcom doesn't have to make absolute sense but that keeps breaking my brain little by little.

What I like is that, since Ye Zhao usually has a stereotypically male hairdo, we get an idea of what those would have actually looked like on men. The wigs on male actors usually have such weird hair lines that it's honestly nice to see a topknot that always is a liiiitle messy because that's how hair works

Honestly, I wondered how Jin could possibly redeem himself because he was super creepy in the first couple of scenes with Xiao Mei. And truth to be told? The only reason why he did is because he was played by Kaneshiro Takeshi who is just super likeable.
Liu also was creepy as fuck for being like "you made me kill you because you don't love me". Wtf. She owes you nothing, my man. I also couldn't stop thinking about the age difference because Andy Lau is almost 20 years older than Zhang Ziyi, so like... When exactly did Liu start preying on Xiao Mei?
Idk. It's probably because I saw the movie now and not when it came out that a lot of scenes came off as predatory/misogynistic to me. Storytelling has improved in the last 20 years but idk.. It was beautifully made but some points bothered me a lot.

The cinematograpyh was great and there were some beautiful scenes but I'm not sure if I can say that I enjoyed the plot.

Ahhh, okay. Yes, it was very much that. For me his dramas are always very hit or miss because, as you said, especially towards the end it sometimes get pretentious. I liked the first episodes of this and then it got weirder and weirder. It kind of reminded me of Koinu no waltz where in the beginning I thought it was interesting and by the end I was just super confused.

I'm sure that's not final but just a placeholder until we know the number of episodes :)

Man, I never thought I'd be one of those people (since I barely ever read manga) but I'm equally pumped and worried. I love the manga but the best part about it is the humor and I wonder if that translates to the screen. Like, the story is riddled with clichés and the age gap is uncomfortable if you think about it too much (Issei is literally only 17) but the manga is suuuuper hilarious and that's 100% the thing that makes it work and oh man, I hope this drama is going to be good

It 100% is!

Nothing bad in particular (that I can remember). Tbh, I stopped paying close attention at one point though. Idk if you've seen stuff written by Nojima Shinji before but it was very much his typical style: very dialogue-heavy, about pretty awful/weak people and all in all pretty depressing. In the beginning it was interesting when the wife tries to deal with her sex addiction and when the husband finds out about her and tries to deal with with but then it kind of got convoluted. I can't even remember the details. I know hat she accused him on abusing her at one point? And then there were all the side stories about equally awful people.