Reviews

Story
The story was slow paced & really boring. It did progress, but it progressed quite slowly which was a drop for me. There wasn't even much of a story. I usually do love music genre dramas but this one didn't intrigue or interest me in any way which was disappointing. I really wanted to like it, but I just couldn't find myself to sadly.

Acting/Cast
As many know, Joy is from Red Velvet and this was her first drama. I didn't really have any high expectations because I do know some Kpop idols aren't really experienced in acting. Joy, however, was quite decent in her role. I don't get the hate that was being thrown at her for her "rubbish" acting - It wasn't that bad. Lee Hyun Woo was also adorable in his role. The problem was the chemistry between both of them. I didn't find the bond exciting or anything, it was merely boring and unrealistic.

Music
The OSTs for this drama are really sweet to listen to. I just finished the drama & I will definitely download them. I guess for me, this was the only good thing about the drama itself.

Rewatch Value
I hardly rewatch dramas unless they were exceptionally excellent. So in this case, I definitely won't.

Overall
If you are struggling whether to watch this drama or not, I'll say give 1 or 2 episodes a try. If you don't like it, I suggest dropping it because it doesn't get better. But if you do like it, keep going! Don't let my review discourage some of you because everyone has different tastes :) Hope my quick review helped! x

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Can't wait for season 2

I am someone who has little faith in Xianxia genre. Most of the time they ruin the whole story with unnecessary fillers if it's an adaptation. Plus they change the major part of the story that ends up into a cliched, stupid and predictable storyline. Another thing is annoying stupid female that we usually find in such dramas. And the most important part- Rushed ending!!!!

What I loved:
- WHAT A CAST. No over the top acting. ( Special mention for kids). Yangzi killed it with her acting skills here. The actor who play Cang Xuan, man he might not be my favourite character but his acting and the subtle emotions that he portrayed throughout the show is undoubtedly the best. What an amazing actor. Another special mention is for the grandpa. What an outstanding character. Every actor from a maid to all the rulers and side characters behaved like the real person not just some extras.
-Female lead is not annoying ( was not a fan of Yangzi as I have always seen her in bubbly, hyper and stupid girl sort of role.) I didn't know she will become one of my favourites.
- Finally all of them have their own voices. (No dubbing).
-Loved the songs especially the one sung by the actress herself. Background music just adds more beauty to the fantasy world of this drama.
-Only few episodes and you won't be able to stop yourself from watching. The story is really good and connects you right away with the characters.
- Three male leads are there and believe me you will find it hard to choose a favourite. All of them acted so well that you just can't ignore their presence.
- Set design, costumes and overall production is really good. CGI is...okay in some scenes but they utilised the money at the right place and those scenes looked mesmerizing. It again proves that an amazing director can bring so much out from the actors and made sure people could connect to the characters.
I was planning to read the novel (if I could find it somewhere) but it is good I went into it without prior knowledge about the novel. I can't believe we all have to wait for a long time for season 2. But this season satisfyed my thrust for an amazing well paced, edited and acted Xianxia drama. It deserves all the praise. :)

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Romance is a bonus book uses books to paint the story of a woman who didn't give up and tries still to survive. The drama at first, was really sweet and "cozy", as we watched the leading lady strugle to get by after her life has turned upside down after her divorce. The friendship dynamics were top notch and the subtle romance was just enough to ignite one's imagination. Also, the office story was really good as well. So, if you like books, you'll probably love the first part. However, halfway through, it was clear that the drama didn't have anything else to say. You'll just watch the characters live their lives with nothing interesting happening to them. The small twists were blunt and the romance lacked intensity. Also, I really hated the fact that the leading lady was always thinking of her daughter at first, but she just forgot about her after a while and it was like she never existed. I mean, what happened to her? Why wasn't she part of the story anymore?
On a more positive note, the performances were good and the bookish refrences nicely done. The side characters' stories were interesting as well. So, 6 out of 10, because I loved the first part, but the second one was boring.

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FL ruins EVERYTHING

I watched up until Ep2 then dropped the show , the FL completely ruined the experience for me , the way she gets in between their friendship which was the highlight of the show.

like come on she was no needed , like I physically can't stand her charater at all

so after the friendship was ruined by her I dropped the show and could no longer continue watching...






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It was worth to watch.

I think this drama is worth to watch. I instantly got super into this drama since the trailer came out. Definitely a hands up especially to the characters. I just hope that the release of episodes are early and consecutive...
Bai Lu suits the female lead really well. Her voice is natural as well as Dylan's. Her natural beauty and elegance are on point based on the description from the novel. I understand that since the story is also modern, the flow is kinda slow and careful.
I think this drama is worth to watch. I instantly got super into this drama since the trailer came out. Definitely a hands up especially to the characters. I just hope that the release of episodes are early and consecutive...
Bai Lu suits the female lead really well. Her voice is natural as well as Dylan's. Her natural beauty and elegance are on point based on the description from the novel. I understand that since the story is also modern, the flow is kinda slow and careful.

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Not extraordinary but it's interesting.

I really enjoyed this one. It was a wholesome movie with both emotional and hilarious scenes together and it was a good blend of it. It's definitely different cause it first Korean production related to space. As its name suggests it's the story of space sweepers who do the cleaning of space debris in the year 2092. We all have wide imagination of how our future will be and actually they did a good job cause it seems like future.

As I said the story isn't extraordinary but it's entertaining. It does have many plot holes and answered questions in the last but we cannot expect to show it all in the duration of 2 hours. The actors did a good job in acting I guess the cast was good for their roles. I would really like to appreciate Park Ye Rin she's such a cute girl and did a great job portraying Dorothy.

The best part is its graphics and cinematography it's the real strength of this. The beautiful scenery and realistic graphics are really great.

Overall I really enjoyed it, don't expect too much from it but still, it's worth watching so give it one chance if you really love sci-fi and space you won't regret it watching.

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Twenty Five Twenty One Alternate Ending

5 years later:
Back in New York, Yi Jin is sitting at his desk with a view of Manhattan. He stares at a beautiful rainbow and smiles thinking of Hee Do. The rainbow is a good sign. Every time a rainbow appears, he knows that Hee Do is wishing him well and erasing whatever gloom that is hanging over him. Due to his detailed reporting of the aftermath of 9/11, he was able to help locate and reunite many Korean citizens with their family. He is now a critically acclaimed news reporter. He’s excited about returning to Korea because he just accepted an offer as the anchor of a Korean news station.

Hee Do’s mom is planning to retire and asked the news station to give her position to Yi Jin. She nonchalantly delivers this news to Hee Do while stating that Yi Jin is arriving today at the airport…probably about - now. Hee Do in shock drops everything, fumbles around for her keys and rushes to the airport. She frantically scours the airport for a glimpse of Yi Jin. She spots him in a distance and raises her hand to wave and yell his name…but she sees…

Being the hot shot reporter that he is, Yi Jin brings back Samantha, his assistant. He hands her some paperwork and tells her to wait for him at the hotel. He has someone very important to see. Knowing exactly who Yi Jin meant, Samantha leans up to fix his collar to make sure he is the most presentable he can be when he reunites with the love of his life.

Hee Do sees an attractive blond woman lean up and kiss Yi Jin! Shocked, disappointed, and upset with herself for being so excited to see him after all these years, she slowly lowers her hand and leaves the airport fighting tears.

Yi Jin hails a cab and tells the cab driver to rush to an address. He sees Hee Do’s house from a distance and he sees Hee Do! He smiles and is about to run to her when a child yells, “Oma.” Hee Do wipes the tears from her own face and puts on a brave face, “Kim MinChae, how was your day?”

Sadness seeps into every part of his body. Hee Do is married and has a child! He stumbles backwards and walks away aimlessly.

It is nighttime and Hee Do puts MinChae down to sleep. MinChae asks Hee Do to tell her more stories about her dad. Hee Do tells a love story of a heroic fencer and a beautiful ballerina.

With MinChae asleep HeeDo reflects on MinChae’s parents. MinChae’s parents both passed in a tragic accident. When Yi Jin and Hee Do broke up, Hee Do almost couldn’t move on. It was Kim Eunsu and his girlfriend at the time that helped Hee Do refocus on fencing. Because they were a huge support for Hee Do, when they perished in a tragic train accident, Hee Do stepped up and adopted MinChae.

Months pass and Yi Jin has thrown himself into his work. In these months, he’s discovered that the father of MinChae is also a fencer.

“Of course. Of course she would go ahead and marry another fencer,” he thinks to himself. Jealousy made him to dig deeper into his work. He’s digging up missing files of the tragic train crash. In it he see’s the name Kim Eunsu. Yi Jin reads that Eunsu was survived by a 3 year old daughter. The timeline didn’t make sense. This puts MinChae’s birthdate to be before Yi Jin even left for New York. Everything falls into to place and Yi Jin takes off. He runs out of his office, not noticing the rain. Half way through he notices a rainbow beyond the tunnel and runs into the tunnel for shelter from the rain.

Hee Do receives a package in the mail. She carefully opens it and it’s her diary. Outside, rain pours down and hits the window panes. Not wanting to remember Yi Jin anymore, she sets her diary aside but it drops and she realizes that it’s not her handwriting. In it Yi Jin wrote about how he thought of her everyday when he was in New York and that no matter how far he falls in life, she’s always able to bring him back to a better and higher place. Hee Do tears up and grabs her umbrella to go for a walk. Halfway through her walk, the rain stops.

Yi Jin enters the tunnel soaking wet. He looks up to see Hee Do at the other end of the tunnel. They stare at each other motionless and Yi Jin makes the first move. He slowly walks to her, stopping about 2 feet away. They look into each other’s eyes and he says, “You’ve always been my rainbow.” Hee Do smiles and they stand looking at each other with the rainbow in the background.

The End.

Hope you guys like this ending.

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I liked it until it lost me

TRIGGER WARNINGS of this series: Infertility issues, illness, death.
Comedy is on the thinner side and there is also melodrama.

Looking at the ratings of this drama I feel like I watched a different one than everyone else.
I really wanted to like this series because the premise and the start had potential and there are things I liked in the portrayal of flawed characters that don't do the best of things, but sadly this just progressively lost me as episodes went on and things started to annoy me.

Overall my main two issues here are:
The execution of the plot is a mess at times, it wants to do too many things at the same time but none are necessarily solved or are just there for the pure chaos of it, it got kind of boring. I certainly didn't expect to find this show boring considering its length and how much I wanted to like it because the characters are not presented as perfect like in many other dramas. At points I felt kind of disappointed in myself for not finding it engaging enough but I literally fell asleep a few times, and I never fall asleep with series or movies. Funny enough is how I didn't even bother in going back and I don't feel I missed anything even though I missed in total probably about an hour and a half or a bit more of the total series.
Until the later episodes most of it it's just going and coming from places without enough of a substance to me, felt like a lot of padding. They're just looking for the potential father while he's dragging the girl around and the other two are following them, and the scenes with SML's mother and all that I still don't know what they added to the plot.

The second worst thing in this drama is once again the obsession with the bloodline. At points I thought it was presenting different ideas here because of the main characters and the plot in general, only to fall into the same silly ideas with the blood and how once you see your parents "you know" just because and unconditional love and blah blah blah. Equally silly was the expectation that some dude that might be his potential father would care about him just because he gave the sperm once, this is when they were theorising what that potential father might do or not for him as well as potential inheritance. And then only in the end to go back to a father that was a piece of s*** and abandoned him back in the time. "Oh, but he did go to the school though!!" someone might say, yeah, and after he was missing he didn't move a finger to find him, and apparently didn't care about her blood daughter either. I get ML needed the closure so to speak, but he said it more in the line of getting back some kind of relationship with him again, what falls again into this korean idea that parents don't do wrong and that at the end of the day everything needs to be forgiven because they're your parents, blood and "unconditional love" again.
The whole series revolves too much around "daddy issues" and I'm not a fan of this plot device.

I get it wanted to be comedy at some points but at times it was simply bad taste to me, like how FL wanted to take that baby in the beginning or when she takes ML from the hospital towards the end.
I also didn't appreciate much the duality of going from comedy to melodrama from one scene to another. I don't like melodrama in general either but I think that the comedy bits fell even more flat at times when straight before or after everyone was having a melodramatic moment. One second they're crying about something and the next it's like it never happened and everyone is happy to then remember and cry again.

There are quite a few side characters for such a short drama and I don't feel any of them was explored in depth what it would be fine if it wasn't because it feels they wanted me to care more about them than I did. SML is explored more but it could have been better in my opinion, his whole personality is more or less following the girl all around for most of the drama and it's progressed quickly to have his ending as it is.

I liked the ML for the mess he is, but I would have liked a tiny bit of growth, why is everyone still following him around when he's trying so hard to push everyone away? just leave him get lost then. It's funny that of all the things he did that was the worst for me, because as a viewer this dynamic got repetitive. He's a bad person but a good character, but I wish there had been some progression and that we didn't get the same dynamics of him rejecting people to then leave to then the others try and follow him, it got old quickly.
FL was ok for the most part until she started annoying me with her extremely childish tantrums, she spends half the show screaming. So she might be a good character again but in her case I didn't enjoy watching her.
Her side of the story is never explored enough anyway, we're given some pieces but there is never more exploration about it. She didn't even ask the bio mother anything either, she just spent the time screaming once again. We're also not given any other answer or even conclusion to her menopause thing, because it's not a black or white topic that it's how they presented it here, she's told, that's the end apparently. Her character in general revolves too much around ML and she's just a girl with two personality traits.

The ending was expected considering how the show starts and still was a bit anti-climactic in my opinion, even more that credits scene with the car driving, it's that FL with ML's body inside or what? It also felt a bit rushed since we got so many bits of their trip in a few scenes, I really wished this had been a good chunk of the drama instead of the thugs pursuing them in the first half for example.

Overall it's not an awful drama and it can be watched. I wouldn't rewatch it personally and I wouldn't recommend to people that wants happy endings, perfect characters nor to those that might be triggered by some of the topics.

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Started off well, but lost it's way. Overrated drama, just because of famous leads

Many people will disagree, but I feel this is just so overrated, Okay, so what if the cast is renowned and they act well. There is hardly any script inn here. I mean nothing really happens. Initial few episodes, which revealed how 2 teens of very opposing nature keep bickering, and eventually fall in love, through those videos and flashbacks, were cool, and had a good thing going. The moment t hey got back together, which was no surprise, the show turned super cheesy and then there was nothing left in story at all, but still it dragged on like forever. The subplot with NJ was kinda cute but unnecessary. The side-plot with the other Woong was boring and unnecessary as well. More so was his subplot with his mother, and the love interest from his assistant. All these plot points were complete fillers for a stale drama. The subplot with the protagonist being adopted, and about his art being criticized was also unnecessary and did not contribute to the plot in any way. The female lead was shown as such a strong character in the beginning, but towards the end was insufferably cheesy and a waste of character. At the end, the leads get separated as they focus on their respective careers but immediately get back together because they just so "missed each other".. the whole thing felt forced, as if they wanted to put in some dramatic moments before they ended the drama. I was utterly bored in last few episodes. Sorry to anyone who finds this drama likeable and disagrees with my review, but I hope this will help someone save their few hours of life by skipping this drama.

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I don’t need a prince to save me, I need an executioner to join the hunt.

Delicious, compelling, manic, obsessive, infuriating and sensual- this drama gives you all the thrill and more. This is Song Hye Ko like you’ve never seen her before.

Yes, her robotic frozen in time acting is still there but this time it suits the role. Gone is the fluffy Mary Sue rom com female lead she always plays and in its place is a revenge driven, blood thirsty anti-heroine who’s taking no prisoners. I think she did a pretty solid job here- equal parts graceful with just enough madness to make her the right kinda crazy.

Throughout the drama, she has this internal monologue going on where she talks so very affectionately with her worst enemy as if it were a dear friend. Her voice is a mix between poetry and a pretty song if they contained thinly veiled promises of retribution and vengeance.

The acting over all is pretty smooth aside from Lee Do Hyun who is just one of those trendy actors that are cast cause of their looks/hype and nothing more. He is a glorified support role so his lack of talent stings less.

The antagonists are an absolute delight to watch. They are gorgeous on the outside and plain rot on the inside and the actors have done a great job showcasing that.

The bullying is visceral and the heroine’s revenge is 100% believable. You want every single one of these muffuckers to pay with their lives.

The best thing is that the drama doesn’t shy away from gore, sex and profanity which gives it the maturity and darkness that it needs to be convincing, all the while balancing it with a blooming sismance that warms the soul.

Beautifully shot, with incredible OST and an excellent take on your typical revenge story, “The Glory” is equal parts compelling and binge able.

Oh and we have a hot daddy in the house as well. I have one solid ship and I’ll sink with it if I have to. ⛴⛴⛴

Overall, it’s definitely Jeana approved.
I am biting my gorgeous fake nails for season 2~

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Overdo: Too Much Pain, Too Little Payoff

Honestly, Overdo was not an enjoyable drama for me. Even though the drama had a cast with actors who have already shown strong performances in other projects, the story itself was full of flaws. The plot felt weak, overly negative, and emotionally exhausting. Many events happened in a way that felt forced rather than natural, and instead of creating meaningful tension, the drama often relied too much on sadness, stress, misunderstandings, and darkness.
One of my biggest disappointments was the role given to Wang Churan. I personally think she shines much more in lively, clever, warm, and charming characters. In dramas like How Dare You, Are You the One, and Love Has Fireworks, her roles suited her much better. Those characters allowed her to show a fun, bright, energetic, witty, brave, loving, and kind side. She has a natural charm when she plays characters who are emotionally expressive, smart, playful, and full of life.
That is why Susu felt like such a poor fit for her. Susu was written as a dark, depressed, and emotionally heavy character who kept making wrong decisions. Instead of feeling deep or tragic in a meaningful way, her actions often became frustrating to watch. Her so-called love and care sometimes felt suffocating rather than touching, and her choices often caused pain for the person she loved. This made it very hard for me to connect with her character or support the romance.
Wang Churan is a talented actress, but this role did not highlight her strengths. In her better roles, she can be funny, smart, brave, sweet, and emotionally engaging. Here, however, the writing forced her into a gloomy and exhausting character who lacked the warmth and spark that usually make her so enjoyable to watch. It felt like the drama took away the qualities that make her stand out and replaced them with constant sadness and poor decisions.
I was also disappointed with the role given to Zhang Linghe. He has already shown in dramas like Pursuit of Jade and Story of Kunning Palace that he can handle strong, charismatic, and emotionally layered characters very well. In Pursuit of Jade, his performance had charm, intensity, and a natural heroic presence that suited him much better. He was able to show both strength and emotional depth, and his character felt far more engaging and believable.
In Story of Kuning Palace, he was even more impressive. His role had power, intelligence, emotional restraint, and a captivating kind of darkness. That character allowed him to show his strong screen presence and the kind of quiet intensity that makes his performances memorable. These roles fit him because they gave him complex, purposeful characters with emotional tension.
However, in Overdo, the character Murong Qingyi did not suit him at all. Compared to his previous roles, this character lacked impact, charm, and proper development. Instead of giving him a role that could show his strengths, the drama placed him in a poorly written character that felt flat and frustrating. Zhang Linghe is at his best when his characters have intelligence, emotional tension, dignity, and depth, but Murong Qingyi did not have enough of those qualities.
Another major issue was the writing. The story was full of plot holes and unnatural conflicts. The negative events felt excessive and sometimes unrealistic, as if the drama was trying too hard to be painful and dramatic. But darkness alone does not make a story deep. Without strong logic, believable character development, and emotional balance, it only becomes tiring.
The ending made everything worse. Instead of giving the story a satisfying or meaningful conclusion, it ended with a heavy feeling of sadness, frustration, and resentment. After watching so many stressful and painful events, the final impression was not emotional depth, but disappointment.

Overall, Overdo had potential because of its cast, but the weak writing, overly dark atmosphere, frustrating characters, and unnatural conflicts made it a disappointing watch for me. I would rather remember Wang Churan from her bright, clever, and lovable roles in How Dare You, Are You the One, and Love Has Fireworks, and Zhang Linghe from his much stronger performances in Pursuit of Jade and Story of Kunning Palace.
Rating: 4/10
Mostly for the actors, because the writing really did them no favors.

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Movie just made to "compete" against Solo Leveling's anime

As someone who read the novel, and was, in a way, saved by it, Orv holds a pretty important place in my life, which makes this live adaptation even more disappointing.

While at the very beginning, I was really disappointed when I saw who was going to act as Yoo Joonghyuk, one of the main protagonists, in this live adaptation, it seems like he is actually the best actor out of them all ?

Not only has the director butchered, spit, stomped, shat, burned the original story, but he took everything that made Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint so iconic and important in the eyes of the readers, and just swapped it out for some generic, stupid, male-main lead of any random isekai, and didn't even bother to try to do something decent with it. The main actors don't seem to understand even the most superficial things about their own characters. I'm not going to delve into how the use of gun is also going against what the author, SingSong, wrote in the novel, but damn the CGI was utterly trash too, but the script sounds AI made and has a few plot holes too, which makes the whole movie unbearable to watch.

Here's a few examples:

-Kim Dokja was a lonely reader who kept living for THIRTEEN YEARS just to be able to see the ending, even though TWS was literally the most boring novel in the world, so much that KDJ was the last and sole reader of the novel. It's explicitly written a the beginning of the novel that he was disappointed that the novel was ending but he was really grateful to the author tls123, and was very polite to them. SO WHY WOULD HE READ THE NOVEL FOR 13Y IF IT'S JUST TO TELL THE AUTHOR THAT IT WAS ASS. It doesn't seem like Kdj appreciated the novel at all ?

-Kim Dokja was, again, a very lonely guy who didn't have any friends, and he basically hated life smh. Anyway, he's not someone that really looked forward to living, and is a morally (very) gray character, which made him a lot more relatable that the typical mc. Why would he start to want to save the world ? Out of pure compassion ?? Compassion he doesn't have ??????

-KDJ has a few skills that are extremely important to the plot but they don't seem to exist (like omniscient readers viewpoint, yk the name of the WHOLE STORY)

-The name of the movie doesn't make any sense since kdj says he ISN'T a prophet in the novel

-Kdj straight up lies by saying he's a prophet (which he isn't btw, he's just a READER) FACED WITH A LIE DETECTOR

-Constellations weirdly enough don't exist so the whole plot can't actually be called an adaptation ?

-Butchered the characters of JHW, YSH and everyone basically.

-KDJ trying to save the character he hated the most in TWS and that he killed in the original novel lmfao ?

-Kim Dokja and Yoo Joonghyuk whole interactions, of a reader and his favorite protagonist, being weird, unnatural, unnecessarily homophobic (they're not gay, but you can feel that they REALLY wanted Kdj to be "straight")

-Missed the whole central point of the story of friendship

While the movie had an enormous budget, the results are more than disappointing, be it from the directing, the acting, the CGI and everything from start to end. The movie can only leave the readers upset after watching the movie, and the non-readers confused, about the plot.

Even by forgetting the misogyny that's hidden in the LA, the directing team made Kim Dokja (a lonely and pitiful reader who only wanted to discover the epilogue of his favorite story) a writer. By doing that, they entirely missed the whole point of the story, that was thought and written for the readers, for them to be able to relate to the main character.

I'm not going to keep trashing the story because my review is in fact very long, but I'll say, the story left me in tears, not because of how good or sad it was, but because of disappointment and anger.
The utter lack of respect from the directing team is truly maddening, and I hope, I really hope that SingSong-nim isn't too disappointed by this.
Because it can be felt that this LA was made just to compete the anime of Solo Leveling, made with money in mind and not the audience.

Thank you a lot for taking the time to read this, and please DON'T watch the live adaptation of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, it's a waste of time.

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Highly overrated

I have to preface this by saying one thing - I like both Zhao Lusi and Chen Zheyuan and I’ve watched several of their shows. This is the show I couldn’t like either of them in.

I didn’t intend to watch this show at all- the premise and trailer didn’t interest me, but I thought I would give it a shot anyway. Even though there was an uncomfortable age difference between the characters (not generally, but just because she’s a minor at the beginning), I thought the first 9 episodes were handled pretty well. There were some sweet moments and the episodic nature of the show made it look a bit like a story about growing up.

Till about ep 14, the show was still kind of sweet and funny. It’s after ep 15 that I found this absolutely juvenile and boring. I know most of the comments here will praise the “love story” and so on and how great these characters are, but I actually couldn’t root for the couple at all. From ep 15 to the end I was hoping it would get better but it never did. It was like the writer put some effort into assuaging fears of the story seeming creepy in the beginning when Sang Zhi was young, but once she was “older” all of those efforts went out the window.

My main issues:

When did Jiaxu fall in love? For someone who had been through a bunch of trauma and had a difficult family situation, he has no hesitation or thought about getting into a relationship with Sang Zhi. I didn’t like how CZY played Jiaxu as a cocky, overconfident guy (I’m guessing that’s what the script required him to do). It seemed like such a bizarre decision. We are told that he somehow blames himself for what his family got into (the accident and all that)- at least that’s what we hear Sang Zhi saying- but we never see it from Jiaxu. He has no trauma that we can grasp - his father gets shown only twice in the drama. Once when he’s about to pass away. This is where we learn that Jiaxu doesn’t drink because of the accident his dad caused. None of these traumatic events are even touched upon until the story demands them to be there. Without them it would make no difference. Instead this trauma should have been a big reason for Jiaxu to hesitate or to believe that he’s worthy of being loved.

The other issue- Zhao Lusi playing a 19 year old like she’s 13. Initially when ZLS was playing a 17 year old like a kid, I accepted it. I thought it was cute and endearing in a way. But when she’s a supposed adult, she continues talking in a baby voice. I don’t see the difference between this version and the younger one. It became rather annoying after a while.

I also don’t understand why they cast a 10 year old kid to play 14 year old SZ. With all the comments about grooming and all that going on, you think the makers of this drama would’ve been extra careful. Instead, this didn’t help the case.

The love story did absolutely nothing for me. We are somehow supposed to believe that these two have an amazing love shared between them. They never have deep conversations about things like a real couple would. Instead there are just lots of kissing scenes inserted randomly. Where are the long and deep conversations? Where is the friendship and banter in a relationship? For two supposedly smart people, they surely don’t have any smart, intelligent conversations.

I think all of these are easy fixes. Firstly, SZ and DJX could’ve met once again probably 8 years after she gives up her crush on him. At this time having both of them as working adults, having meaningful lives outside each other would have been interesting. From a slow friendship it could’ve eventually grown into love. This would’ve been much better as currently there’s no friendship stage on this show. They go from “you’re my brother/sister” to “I want to woo you” within one episode.

The supporting characters could’ve been interesting and could’ve had their own stories but their lives mostly revolve around the leads. I liked SZ’s brother the most but even he doesn’t get as much to do outside the leads.

This show is just so disappointing. It’s not a horrible show by any means- the beginning was rather nice- but it is so superficial and lacks any depth. I’m rather shocked at the immensely high ratings for a show that has nothing to say or contribute.

I’m really stumped that the rating on MDL is this high, beating out masterpieces such as Nirvana in Fire, the Untamed, etc. Actually even ZLS’s other dramas like Love Like the Galaxy and Who Rules the World are so much better. To put it into perspective, a show with a simple story - such as Reply 1988 - is so brilliant that it could do so much with the time it had. It built multiple storylines with multiple characters and everyone had their own story to tell. HL missed so many of the important elements that makes for good storytelling, so yeah, I am indeed shocked by the ratings.

EDIT:
I forgot to mention how unrealistic it is that by 24, Jiaxu has paid his father's debts and medical bills, etc, owns a really fancy car, gets a house soon after, quits his job to move to SZ's city, all in just 2 years of working. Is he a millionaire or what? Another example of the writer not having had any experience of adult life.

I also completely dislike how this drama pushes the idea of a perfect romance to very young people. SZ is only 19 when she gets into a relationship and I guess she gets married 3 years later? That’s a really terrible idea when an individual’s brain doesn’t fully develop until they’re 25. I wouldn’t have had any problems if these two were actually above 27 (ideally late 20s), but this feels like it’s telling youngsters to find “the one”’ immediately after they become legal adults.

All that said, I’m happy that Chinese dramas are getting some popularity through this show, even though in my opinion this is an average Chinese show and far from the best. However, I guess it has made some people happy and I can appreciate that.

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