Reviews

Saddly, I watched this lakorn first without realizing it was a sequel, but that didn't spoil the experience. I can say it stands well enough on its own as a short comedy. However, this installment didn't captivate me quite as much as the first one (Me and Thee). There were moments that felt rather awkward. The first and last episodes struck me as the oddest, whereas the second and third were genuinely interesting and solid. The show has its merits and is perfect for a light, relaxing evening watch, though it's really a one-time thing, unlike the first part, which makes you want to watch it again.

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An incredible love triangle.

That was powerful. It's been a long time since a series stirred up so many emotions in me. I cried at least three times while watching the final episode. Personally, I found the ending unexpected. All I'll say is that Jira and Koh are red flags, while Pheem is the best (green flag). But I'm really glad they weren't afraid to give us complex, morally ambiguous characters. That allowed me to truly feel what they were feeling and to agree or disagree with their actions and behavior. I'm genuinely grateful for characters like these, placed in such circumstances.
I also want to express how much I admired the musical score and the visuals. I loved the cinematography: the backgrounds, the framing, and the art. It really conveyed the right atmosphere. As for the music - I'm absolutely delighted. I rarely add music from series or movies to my playlists, but in this case, I saved the entire playlist because the songs are incredible. Some of them have become favorites that I listen to now and plan to keep listening to. Overall, the music selection was superb. I really appreciated the moments the songs appeared and how perfectly they fit the scenes.

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10/10? Questionable. Did I enjoy it? Absolutely.

This is one of those dramas I've wanted to watch since the trailer came out. I was so interested that I even renewed my Youku subscription just to watch all the episodes. So yes, I definitely came into this drama with expectations. 😂

And after finishing it, would I say it's a perfect drama?

Probably not.

There are honestly a lot of things that are questionable. The storyline isn't exactly the most sophisticated, the setting isn't anything extraordinary, and there are definitely moments where I had to sit there and think, "Okay... we're really doing this?"😂

But here's the thing: I don't really care.

I picked this drama as my entertainment space, and it did exactly what I wanted it to do.

It made me laugh.

Sometimes I'm not looking for a drama with an amazing storyline, incredible world-building, or performances that make me rethink life itself. Sometimes I just want to open my laptop, watch Ao Ruipeng being Ao Ruipeng, laugh at whatever nonsense is happening on screen, and forget about my stress for a while.

And Pull Strings gave me that.

So maybe my 10/10 isn't a rating for every single element of the drama. It's more like a rating for how much I enjoyed watching it.

Was everything good? No.

Was everything logical? Absolutely not. 😂

Did I have a good time? Yes. And that's enough for me.

Sometimes a drama doesn't need to be fancy to become one of your favorites. Sometimes it just needs to make you laugh at the right moment when you really need it.

For me, Pull Strings was exactly that kind of drama.

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The hook made me watch, but the emotional investment didn't make me stay

The hook made me watch, but the emotional investment didn't make me stay

This is actually my first drama review here, even though I've watched quite a lot of dramas before. I usually just finish them and move on without writing anything. But this one made me want to write a review because I have mixed feelings about it.

First of all, I think this drama has a genuinely good storyline. The acting is good, the characters make sacrifices, and there is definitely character development along the way. The beginning especially has a really strong hook.

I mean, where else can you find the ML and FL already married in the first episode, except in a short drama? 😂 It really has that short-drama-style hook that immediately makes you want to know what happens next.

And that's what kept me watching at first.

But as I watched more episodes, I realized something: the hook made me want to watch, but the emotional investment didn't make me stay.

There are things happening in the story that should feel meaningful. The characters go through struggles, make sacrifices, and change because of what happens to them. I can understand why those moments are important to the story, but somehow, I didn't feel emotionally connected to them as much as I expected.

It's not that the drama has no emotional moments. It's more that the emotional depth between me and the drama never really had the chance to build.

As the story continued, there were also quite a few episodes where I felt like the characters were just running here and there without the story moving forward enough. Some episodes were worth watching over and over, while others honestly felt like something I could skip and still understand the story.

So, overall, I do think this is a good story, and I would still recommend it if the premise interests you. Just don't put your entire soul into watching it. 😂

For me, it was a drama that made me curious enough to continue, but not emotionally attached enough to make me deeply invested.

And maybe that's why, despite all the good things it has, I finished it feeling a little less satisfied than I thought I would.

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Just Cutting a Check

‒Review‒

No Pain No Gain is a show with the absurd premise of an investor paying Pei Qian (homonym of losing money), our ML, to start money losing ventures. And whatever the loss will be PQ's take-home pay. With such a setup, the ML starts all sorts of businesses operating in ways completely contrary to conventional logic. Moreover, PQ implemented corporate culture and rules that are lavish benefits on employees, and recruited castaway professionals downsized for their incompetence. Consequently, the show ends up as a wishcasting device for customers and workers alike, which is all of us. Yet, despite the ML's utmost efforts to sabotage his companies, his ragtag team or sheer luck ends up saving a day‒leaving the companies profitable, the employees happy and well compensated, but the ML in undisclosed torment as he remains the only person relegated to poverty. Eventually, the ML must make a key decision choosing between the wellbeing of his employees and his own rewards.

The show definitely seems to have resonated and received high marks on Douban and decent ratings here on MDL despite the lack of eye candies or romance. Unfortunately for me, the show felt like a star talent straitjacketed by corporate bureaucracy. NPNG had the excellent opportunity to lampoon the ordeals and absurdities of the modern workplace while crafting touching stories about the dreams and tribulations of modern professionals. Yet despite the boundless free material available, the show failed to Zuckerberg into a workplace satire that ruthlessly exploits the viewers for laughs. Instead, we get the Zuckerberg AI Edition, where despite the massive potential from mountains of user data, we get a string of mediocre AI releases that are usable but also mogged by LLMs from Meituan (a company that does food delivery).

What I liked

✅ The topic potential. Everyone hates the rat race, everyone hates the corporate ritualism, and everyone wants to fantasize about mysterious moneybag investors that will toss you briefcases of money not just on a whim, but on the explicit condition that you fail. Such a massive addressable market, such untapped potential.
✅ The demo potential. Finally, a more male-oriented story in an ocean of female-centric dramas. This is differentiation.
✅ The casting potential. Peng Yuchang is a terrific actor that effortlessly dual-wields comedy and dramatic acting. He's a great fit to play the forgotten and underestimated every-man. Chang Long, Jelly Lin, and the rest of the cast are also plenty suitable.

What I didn’t like

❌ The script performance. So much potential wasted. It was as if the writers were just going through the motions ... fire up the Zuckerberg LLM, copy-paste the setup, prompt for a complete script, no mistakes.
❌ The comedic performance. The idea was there, the execution wasn't. It was as if the jokes were written by Sam from HR and delivered by Dario from IT. The edginess, the subversiveness, and the zippy timing just wasn't there.
❌ The acting performance. Having seen Peng Yuchang in I Am Nobody, I know he can deliver a hilarious and compelling character. But everything felt low-energy. Jelly Lin seems to be trying, and I don't have an issue with her performance, but the script is not giving much material to work with.
❌ The ABSENCE of romance. This might be the only occasion where I'm calling for more romance. The setup was there, it wouldn't have been obtrusive, yet it was just abandoned.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, or maybe NPNG just needed to rebrand for the AI era. So here's the setup for comeback sequel: the rules have been updated so that you must simultaneously lose money, lay off workers, and ravage society. With such a sadistic trifecta, Pei Qian forms OpenAnthro, racks up billions of annual losses, pirates then gatekeeps all the knowledge in human history, and threatens 90% of humanity with job loss and permanent serfdom.

Luckily, the story will have a happy ending. Pei Qian will dump his loss-making startup on society in a trillion-dollar IPO🔥; the company will be bailed out 🔥🔥by central bank money printing that further exacerbates runaway inflation; and PQ will be honored by the President with his likeness on Mount iRushmore, alongside Dario, Sam, Elon and Mark🔥🔥🔥.

--Category Ratings--
- Overall - 6.5 ⇒ 7 MDL
- Plot - 6.5
- Theme / Concept / Impact - 6
- Acting - 7
- Visuals - 7
- Audio / Music - 7
- Rewatch - 6
- Cultural/Topical Accessibility - 8
- Subtitle quality - 8

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It was cute, but it was average ?

To be honest if you were going to ask me after watching this final episode what was the plot of the story I will probably think long and hard about it—because to be honest I feel like I lost the plot somewhere in the middle of the series.

It's a cute story with a bit of skin here and there, but I guess that's what you get with hormonal high school boys in dormitories. There were actually a lot of nice moments worth the watch but if you look at it at the bigger picture, it just doesn't make sense? I feel also like we have too many characters but not much time to flesh out who they are and how they all tie up to the story.

Overall, it's a good watch but it's a general "one and done" kind of series.

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Corporate Clichés Disguised as Technical Jargon

Irreplaceable is a classic example of how a Chinese melodrama tries to project narrative maturity by flooding its episodes with consulting terminology, contracts, meetings, and business decisions, while underneath it operates on one of the genre’s most worn-out formulas.
Xu Chi’s motivation begins with a textbook childhood trauma: her mother’s suicide following a divorce, used as a dramatic shortcut to justify her obsession with never becoming replaceable in any aspect of her life. Opposite her is Ye Xin Zhi, the typical cynical executive betrayed by his former boss early in his career. From the very premise, their relationship begins as a utilitarian arrangement: he recruits her as his assistant while pursuing his own revenge against the corporate hierarchy.
The biggest flaw in the premise is that the script undermines its own message of professional growth. It wants to sell Xu Chi as a brilliant young woman from an ordinary university, yet from the beginning it narratively subordinates her to the all-knowing mentor. He repeatedly appears as the experienced authority, providing advice and lessons on how to survive the ruthless corporate world. Xu Chi’s supposed independence and exceptional ability are therefore trapped inside an infantilizing dynamic: a woman determined to prove that nobody can replace her while an experienced man keeps teaching her how to play the game.
Then there is the suffocating amount of procedural filler. Entire stretches are devoted to fictional consulting cases, meetings, and technical jargon that add little meaningful conflict or thematic depth. They mostly function as pretentious background noise, giving the appearance of complexity to what is actually a very simple story.
The premise itself even telegraphs the central dilemma: while he continues dealing with the consequences of his professional war, she must decide what to do when her own career and her relationship with the man who mentored her begin moving in different directions.
And that is where the series completely lost my interest. Irreplaceable does not feel like a story too complex for a mini-drama. It feels like a mini-drama story stretched across twenty episodes. The business jargon, consulting cases, and endless procession of executives add runtime, but not necessarily complexity.
Ultimately, this is a corporate drama that mistakes an accumulation of corporate fluff for genuine narrative depth.

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What in god's green earth did I watch...

As of writing MDL has this at 8.3 and I repeated to myself 8.3... 8.3... what the heck people.

I'm just going to say if you want to be gob smacked at the most ridiculous explanation of the entire story basically how some shows get really convoluted then go "oh it was a dream" well guess what people join on up and give this a 10/10 for how stupid the story is like I rather they walk into the line of fantasy than whatever this is.

These ratings have to be troll at this point like ain't no way there's real human beings watching this and being like "yea 10/10 story" like what on earth is going on like there cannot be an "ah wow the mystery is solved that really caught me off guard moment" like I swear by episode 4 I was like if they do some stupid "we were all dreaming" concept I'm going trash this show.

Trash show.

Watch it because it's actually unique since it's been a long long time since I saw this much plot holes all explained because the script writer literally has a episode to explain why all the plot holes now make sense because the actors are verbally explaining to you what everything that doesn't make sense now makes sense because now everyone realises why nothing makes sense and now it make sense because magically everyone figured it out why it doesn't make sense to make sense.

It's like they tried to make it like inception but someone gave their kid the homework.

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Irreplaceable, zeer actueel

Mooi verhaal en sterk gespeeld. De hoofdrolspeelster heb ik ook in andere series gezien. Leuke actrice.
C-drama’s beginnen nu net zo leuk te worden als de Koreaanse series. Het is leerzaam hoe de werkcultuur, carrière, concurrentie zijn, het vertrouwen hebben en jezelf staande houden.
Hier zie je ook hoe mensen elkaar beïnvloeden op de werkvloer:
* Macht en hiërarchie binnen een bedrijf
* Het verschil tussen iemand vertrouwen en iemand nodig hebben
* Hoe je jezelf kunt ontwikkelen zonder jezelf kwijt te raken
* Strategisch denken en onderhandelen
* En ook: hoe belangrijk het is om niet voortdurend goedkeuring van anderen nodig te hebben

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These overly-cliche romances were never for me, but I wanted to give it a try, anyways.

Perhaps I was expecting something better than the Thai original considering I'd dropped the aforementioned, however, the Japanese remake manages to be just as painfully cringey, in my opinion.

Fukuda Ayuta's acting was somewhat believable and not too hard on the eyes, but Aihara Isshin's was really, really painful. Painful in the sense that there was no expressions on his face (I got war flashbacks of Eunwoo's 'tsundere' characters, so) and there was barely any disparity within his limited range to sell the concept of Sora being down bad for Hinata. Most viewers would want to be convinced by the LI's character enough to want to vouch for them, and I couldn't find it in myself to do that at all.

Vasayegh Hikaru definitely did his job as the only opp of the story (with more variance in his expressions and personality despite them being overly exaggerated in many places), though the encounters between Oji and Sora weren't as fulfilling as I personally wanted them to be. The other side characters are barely given a role beyond eagerly following up on the main characters' developing love story, and the progression of Da On and Riku's relationship was way too abrupt to be enjoyable. If anything, I probably liked Makoto and Yu's relationship the most (though that 'drunken' kiss was incredibly uncomfortable both visually and as a plot point).

Overall, a super difficult watch.

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Sometimes being free is the real love story

Hold on, Harutora-kun is such a genuinely sweet and thoughtful series — but what stayed with me most wasn't simply how cute Sui and Harutora are together.

It was how much the series cares about what it actually means for a queer teenager to live openly.

Sui has learned to survive by hiding. The mask isn't just something he wears on his face; it's become a way of keeping people from getting too close. He laughs along with the teasing, makes himself the easygoing one and tries not to let anyone see how much the homophobic comments around him actually hurt. Harutora slowly gives him something Sui has never really had before: a relationship in which he doesn't have to constantly protect himself.

And I absolutely loved Harutora for that.

He's affectionate, attentive and almost painfully sincere — a genuine green flag. But what I liked most is that the series doesn't make him into some magical person who “fixes” Sui. He simply creates a space where Sui can gradually learn that he doesn't have to hide anymore.

That's why Sui saying that he is finally free at the end worked so well for me.

Free from the mask.
Free from pretending the homophobic comments don't hurt.
Free from having to hide his sexuality.
Free enough to finally tell his mother who he really is.

And then seeing the two of them holding hands, openly and without trying to hide, made all the sweetness of the series feel much more meaningful.

This is actually something I wish Your Summer, My Storm had explored more. I loved that series for its realism and its questions about what romantic feelings actually mean, but I wanted more of the specifically queer experience around its romance. Hold on, Harutora-kun puts that much closer to the centre.

That also makes the series feel particularly meaningful to me in a Japanese context. I'm not going to pretend this is some brutally realistic depiction of queer life, because it isn't. There are moments where the tone feels very much like a Japanese BL: everyone is incredibly polite, everyone smiles a little too perfectly, and some of the intimacy feels almost painfully restrained. The intimate scenes in particular can feel awkward enough that they sometimes pull me out of the romance.

But somehow, those weaknesses mattered less and less to me as the series went on.

Because underneath all the sweetness, Hold on, Harutora-kun is telling a story about a boy who has spent a long time believing that hiding himself is the safest way to exist — and who eventually gets to choose something different.

And honestly? Watching Sui and Harutora walk through the world holding hands was enough to make me smile.

Not because it was particularly spectacular.

But because for Sui, it meant everything.

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