Reviews

It will keep watching

This drama was profoundly heartfelt as it captured the struggle of trauma. The focus on the various relationships was well-articulated, keeping viewers entertained and eager to know more, while also adding suspense with the company's challenges.

I really enjoyed the storyline, and the casting was spot on, right down to the cameos. Great drama from Japan and Korea! Historically enemies, now allies. It's beautiful to see how nations are slowly but surely coming together through media and other means. Despite the past, growing together is as sweet and delightful as chocolate.

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Travel Adventure

This is a truly enjoyable show to watch. I found the show because I saw Liu Yuning in so many YouTube videos while the show was filming in Europe. I was intrigued. I began to wonder about his clothing choices, Lemon printed Hawaiian style shirts didn't match his style. What's up with that?

Not only do I get to travel vicariously through the cast and learn about other countries, we get to experience a different side of the actors just being themselves. While some of the content is lost on me due to a culture gap (popular Chinese songs in games) the spontaneous comedic moments often have you laughing so hard you're brought to tears. It was heart warming to watch the actors genuine interactions, cooking together, playing, their reactions to local cuisine and building camaraderie. Great show ❤️ When JunJun has to leave to shoot a series, get out your box of tissues. He brings a joyful warmth to the show, the shark song 😂, so his departure brought some vulnerable moments with genuine emotions. He's adorable.

I hope this show has many more seasons, (hopefully with Liu Yuning) there are so many countries to explore with excellent cuisine. I'd love them to visit some of the amazing locations in South America like the ancient ruins of Peru, Lake Titicaca, Cuzco, The Mexican Riviera, Puerto Vallarta, etc. Cheers to more travel adventures.

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I think about this show every single day

It's been months since I watched Lovely Runner and I cannot stop thinking about it. Every drama or romance I watch, I immediately start comparing it to this show and nothing comes close 😭 help.

I dropped this show after watching 2 episodes the first time. It was cringe over the top and I don't like cringe. But my friend made me hear a song from the ost "Spring Snow" and I was absolutely smitten- It was so cute and the lyrics were so comforting.

So I listened to her and gave this show another try. And I am so thankful for that.

As I said, this is the best romance I have ever watched. The stealing glances at each other, not knowing how to behave around the other person, stuttering and stumbling over your words- it was so cute that I actually blushed- Like my face actually really turned red as a tomato. And it wasn't even overtly spicy- It was the little things. The way they looked at each other. Their history- It's just THE STANDARD. 😩🤌🏼✨

And then Spring Snow did not even end up being my favorite song! There's this sort-of-flashback scene during (ifykyk 💜) which 'I think I did' by Kim Hyung Joong plays and that hands down is one of the best things I have ever watched in my entire life. The cinematography? The story? The way that scene was built up? Immaculate- perfection- Oscar.

I literally think about that scene EVERY SINGLE DAY. It just touched me in a way i did not think what was supposed to be a lighthearted romance drama could. I still have goosebumps ever time I watch that scene. Truly the best scene in a romance drama I have EVER seen.

The way Sunjae and Sol always put the other person before themselves is so touching. Their love is never grand confessions or swooning kisses but the way they put everything away for the other person. I have no words. 🥲

I will say that the plot is not as strong but that is not the point and the romance compensated more than enough!!! I will never get over this drama truly. 🫠😭💕

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Sweet romance cdrama

This cdrama is the very thing for the genre of romance! Sweet and not overloaded, it's very easy and interesting to watch, especially when you want to watch something sweet, and it’s also about student love!
An incredibly beautiful and harmonious couple emerged from the main leads! So they also raised the topic of lies in relationships in the drama, which is why misunderstandings most often occur and people drift apart from each other. I was really proud of Xiao Do! Because she finally gathered the courage and revealed the truth to everyone, because it was extremely difficult for her, she lived this way for several years and plunged into a veil of lies more and more, but loyal friends and love became the light at the end of the tunnel for her.
I definitely recommend this one to fans of youthful love dramas!

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Inspiring story, even if at times seemed bogged down by unnecessary angst

# Some background on the drama

The creative team spent nearly three years preparing for this show. They visited over 10 colleges, and interviewed more than 300 teachers and students.

"Tsingbei": The characters mention this work a lot. Think "Ivy League" or "Oxbridge". Tsingbei refers to Tsinghua and Peking Universities, China's two most prestigious institutions. Only about 5 in 10,000 gaokao candidates (0.05%) get into either school (so says Chatgpt, do tell me if that's wrong). A degree from these universities is seen as a fast track into a prosperous future as an elite member of society. Yup, it's China's imperial exams all over again, but modern version and everyone has to do it.

Educational inequality: The Hope mentions how despite the lauded "meritocratic" gaokao, there exists deep inequalities still. The rich has access to better educational resources, the poor had to often do without. Interestingly, The Hope aired after the Chinese govt tried to deal with this issue. In 2021, Beijing launched the "Double Reduction" policy which devastated the $100-120 billion private tutoring sector that employed over 10 million people. However, wealthy families simply shifted to expensive private tutors while poorer families lost access to affordable help, actually widening the education gap. Alas.

# What I liked

The young actors are fantastic! They're not whiny or bratty but the complete opposite. I find the individual students' stories compelling and want them to succeed badly.

I also appreciated the nuanced picture of the intense pressure Chinese students face. (It brought me back to my schooling days where the pressure was also intense, though I'm pretty sure my country's version of gaokao is 50% less pressure than China's!) Even though the gaokao is considered a meritocratic examination, it's really not because not everyone starts at the same point. Some people are ahead due to life's privileges. Despite the nuance, some parts of The Hope is very idealistic and probably will never happen in an actual school in China.

The nuanced view of academic success. Just because you get into Tsingbei doesn't mean your life will be successful. Life is what you make of it. Good results give you a leg up but don't guarantee a good life.

# What I didn't like

To be honest, it could have been 20 episodes instead of 30. I used the fast-forward button a lot with this drama.

There were a few instances where Sang Xia's tactics would have gotten her barred from working as a psychologist. I couldn't believe her character did those things!
# Thoughts about the ending

The ending is satisfying but odd. On one hand, it ends as expected with Class 11 graduating from top universities and leading successful lives. It's satisfying to watch them rise from the bottom to the very top.

However, I would have been happier if they did without the strange romantic subplots the writers wrote for them.

The worst part is that their love stories were left hanging unresolved or happens off screen.

They tease us with these characters romantic plot lines, but it's a tease that never ends, basically. If you're into romance plots, this would probably exasperate you.

Perhaps they wanted to show that life is like that - you don't always get everything you want? I don't know, but I wished they'd removed the subplots altogether. Does it serve the story? Not really. Does it derail the story? Not really either.

But human beings want closure in their entertainment, so creating an open loop towards the end of the drama is baffling unless they're aiming for a second season. (Which I don't see happening.)

Still, this is a good drama overall. Although some parts were heartbreaking, it was deeply satisfying watching these underdogs overcome obstacles and become Tsingbei graduates.

## Final verdict: 8

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.  A small change can have  a big effect.

Surprising good for it manage to make a remake of the classic " My Fair Princess" with a blend of moral and mockery  in it. From epi. 1, the script-writer was so subtle in in his dig at " green tea" type of actresses who are all smiles and cutesy in front of fans but  headache to directors with their big egos of unreasonable demands made in dulcet voice but actually an order.  In this drama, FL was signed on as just a guest star but she wanted to be the main star with her own ML thereby changing the original classic. Leaving the set she had a fall and was transmigrated into the script as a palace maid who has the mission of making the original classic come true, to return to the real world. For viewers who don't know the original classic, it's not a problem as the drama followed  it. In the process of correcting it, the FL, has self-growth from being selfish and self-serving in which the whole world revolve around her to being caring for others welfare even to the point of enduring many tortures so that others are safe.

Suffice to say the main leads were the surplus hence this way it's easier to understand the alternative ending of epi. 31. The script-writer and production are  very rare breed types , for they made 2 HE. They practice what they preach that is caring for the well being of  others, wanting viewers to leave the drama in a  happy mood. In epi.31, there were butterflies . It can mean  the Chinese concept of butterfly lovers or the Western concept of the butterfly effect. A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil  could  set off a tornado in Texas. 
Historical fact that  Kokura  was the original site but  got  cloud cover  which made Nagasaki the 2nd dropping of A bomb. A small change can have  a big effect.

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Unfair show

1. This show does not feature my nation.
2. I don't like or support any nation. All I want is a fair game; I'm simply an ordinary person.
3.If you like Thai song and J-pop and have a preferred country in this program. It doesn't mean you have to condone injustice for your favourite nation. 😔💗
Accept that your favourite country may lose; it's just a game. If you want to win a game, you don't need to start cheating. ~ Korean team 🫶🏻🎀

How about other players who play fairly????? Feel bad for them 😞 💔

Proof Korean team receives help :)))

1. Country: South Korea 🇰🇷
Creator & Production: Korean team
( So chance of favoritism is high )

2. At least select new members 😔 give them chance
•Kim Dong-hyun — Season 2
•Amotti (Kim Jae-hong) — Season 2 (winner)
•Yun Sung-bin — Season 1
•Jang Eun-sil — Season 1
•Kim Min‑jae (New Member)
•Choi Seung-yeon ( New Member)

3. The captain of the Korean squad once declared, "We don't need to participate in this game." Following the defeat, he declared, "I hope our decision is good." They abruptly declared that the preceding player could not participate in the death game, and this turned out to be advantageous for them. They seem to be aware of it.

4. In the Thailand and Korean game, we clearly see that Thailand wins, but in the end, they say Korea win. I just want to say, how??. In Thai, James carries one box at a time, while the two Korean players carry one box. Other Thai players carry a small box, which is their main focus. The same Korean player does. It's common logic; Thai should be win.

5. They probably wanted Korea to win so they wouldn't have to pay them money😂😅 The Korean celebrity system is well known to us.😔💔 If another country won the game and money. Physical asia need to pay them, and they don't want to give them.

The Korean team receives a lot of support. When Western countries organise sporting events, they do so fairly. They do not favour anyone, and we are confident that the winner deserves the position.

My writing motivation is not to dislike anyone or spread hatred.🫶🏻❤️ I'm only exercising my right to express my opinions, and I only write what I feel when watching the show.

If I'm wrong, I'm SORRyyyyyyyy 👉🏻👈🏻💗
If I'm correct, I hope they won't do it again😔💔

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The overall message.

When I first started this show I wasn’t too sure about it simply because I thought it was just going to be another cheesy romcom that ends up lacking near the end like so many others this year. However it was quite the opposite this show had a great approach with a simple plot and great characters to follow, but with an underlying message through it all. You see following the main character some may not realize she showcased exactly how it feels to be a teen girl wishing you were someone else, and honestly I feel that a lot of views can agree with how she felt ( I definitely could). And I don’t want to throw out spoilers but the last two episodes showed her family dynamic, and internal struggle without knowing how to deal with it exactly which once again I loved. Then of course overall all the side characters are super fun, I surprisingly didn’t feel bored with any of them which props to the writers since there’s so many characters. I would say my only negative would be in how the close off a certain part of this show felt a tad rushed a certain character being forgiven too easily, but honestly it’s not too serious because we got some great stuff out of this show! Romcom writers please takes notes!

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Easy watch

If you have low expectations you might be into that kind of movies.
It could had have some potential but they missed the mark. Surface-leveled movie without gravitas. So many things are missing. That movie lacks skills in script-writing, directing, acting…even the set design has nothing remarkable.
The acting sorry is merely there so poor…women and men equally. The story might have been written by 2 left feet. Nothing is deep enough to make it special, nothing is witted enough to make it fun. Did Sung Hoon lost himself ? because I cannot remember any good from him lately.
To wrap it up, if you have 2 hours to spend when you have an hungover on a rainy Sunday afternoon you can watch this.
If you are missing the late and beautiful Jeon Mi-seon it can be another reason to watch this one…but she has no lines

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Chemistry died and it's body was never found.

It started out good alright. There was an interesting mystery, interesting conflict, interesting magic and fantasy elements. It was fun. But then what I thought was going to be the central conflict got resolved in like episode 3 and the next plotline that got introduced took everything to shit.

The starting of this drama was VERY intense. There are mentions of heavy heavy child abuse, cannibalism, casual murder, gore, ptsd, and lots more. All things I do not mind if they serve a good purpose. They did seem to in the beginning, but it quickly devolved into 'look how tortured this guy is' and it was....icky. For all the complex backstory the ML had, the FL had NONE. No backstory. She just got truck-kuned into this fantasy world and she just wants to eat well sleep well and "vacation" all the time. Which, fair irl but really?

She also had no ambitions or purpose or motivation and he just falls for her BECAUSE she's so bland-- like 💀 really? I felt weirded out by how truly girl give us nothing she was. No human should be THIS bland I feel like Water has more variety and flavour than her. Her most interesting personality trait is that she talks in modern slang and no one can understand her- isn't that so funny haha-- 💀💀 That's one of my biggest pet peeves. At one point they use mirrors to communicate and she goes "omg a video call" to which the ML says 'What's a video call' and she goes on to describe it 🤦🏻‍♀️. I was cringing so hard the entire time 🫥. No normal person should be this bland. Like was she a blank slate in her modern day life?? Does she not have anyone she misses? She did not seem like a real person to me. Just a "teeheehee i'm so quirky" cardboard cutout for the ML to smooch.

And of course because she wasn't a fully realised character, they had NO chemistry. None. I waited for the kiss scenes cause I thought it would get better but it got worse??? The kiss scenes looked so forced & awkward. They jumped out of nowhere and I was like alright I guess they're in love now. Literally the 13-15 episodes go like 'he goes and does cool things and returns home and they kiss omg isn't that cute'-- NO IT'S NOT. What does she even do when he's not around?? DRAW EMOJIS WITH MAGIC IN THE AIR, seriously. And then of course she goes ahead and describes what emojis are--- 🥴😭

The acting wasn't particularly good either. So many scenes looked awkward af. Mostly because of bad writing but I wasn't impressed with the acting either. Nor the Main Characters nor the side characters. Especially the serpent character I felt so taken out because his acting was SO awkward. i think they did the best they could with the writing they were given but yeah. It was BAD.

Also they just forgot their own magic rules ALL THE TIME. At some point two characters go 'omg look blood but the trail stops here that's so weird why did the blood trail stop" Did you all forget you can FLY when you were having battles in the air 5 minutes ago???????? 💀

I am astonished by how SPECTACULARLY this failed. It was so bad that I stopped procrastinating and started studying 😭 So I guess I recommend it if you want to stop watching dramas Lmao

Don't waste your time in here. There's nothing. Till the end of the moon scratches the same itch and it was much better.

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The whole series felt like a “dump your head into an aquarium” experience.
All girl-disguised-as-a-boy trope dramas are a bit illogical anyway… and Taiwanese dramas just seem to have their own unique filming style, I guess.

The good part?
Well, there has to be something good, because I watched it twice over a span of six years.
I guess this trope is one of my favourites, even if it wasn’t executed very well here.
I also found the SML interesting (not perfect but okay)— it just didn’t make sense to make him suffer when we know she can’t love him.

The bad part?
There are so many issues that it becomes hard to even list them.
I don’t want to compare it to billion-dollar-budget K-dramas/C-dramas, but the actors could’ve been a bit more sincere at times.
Especially the ML — his slow running and swimming in the first few episodes were way too obvious, just to highlight her “strength.” Either use better editing or train the actors properly for the role.
The FL is often frustrating… but that’s nothing new for drama watchers.

Overall:
It’s a light, fast watch. It’s a bit of a burden to sit through, and it’s also not something amazing that you’ll regret missing or feel like you’ve never seen before, but if you might enjoy at least a few parts ..it wont feel boring as long as u skip here and there some scenes..

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Stormy love

Rain is so childish and self absorbed with a bad attitude and all the more ridiculous when his best friend was gassing him up about his looks in a way that didn't make any sense until learning that outside of the show, the actor is actually half Korean. He's indeed really slow on the uptake as Payu as well as his own friends tell him, which makes him so initially frustrating to watch. Rain not understanding the signals could be chalked up to his inexperience, especially only just freshly discovering that he's also bisexual like Payu, but all his other actions are ridiculous and really as a result of his unable to accept his own attraction to Payu. Payu for his part is into this annoying freshman, because for some reason it's cute, but he also tries to mentor Rain as an architecture department alumni that just graduated the year before, which is lucky for Rain. Once their relationships kicks in, Rain shapes up a bit, even learning to care about someone other than himself and becomes more easier to watch. The rich people bathrooms with the large exposed windows is always weird, but a bath while it rains outside looks looks so cozy outside of the what the characters are doing. The nc scenes are daring comparatively to other shows, but surprisingly tasteful and mostly works because thes actors for Payu and Rain have no awkwardness about it. They have good commitment and team work to actually convey the character's connection and even character development through the intimacy. I do appreciate the other displays of affections are also straightforwardly presented without the annoying romance slow motion and music effects. Both the couples have some questionable moments at the start of the relationship with the older guy's actions, but compared to the other bl adaptations from the same author, this is has way more consent involved.

The story feels grinded to a halt when it suddenly shifts to the second couple as the main story. It's not that Sky's story isn't interesting, but the pacing takes a big hit to suddenly literally play the exact same scenes of Rain and Payu again for some reason along with the new Sky POV. The reveal of Sky's bad relationship past and then the misunderstanding is also dragged out for too long. Payu and Rain pretty much disappears from the story aside from occasionally showing up as a sounding board for Sky and Pai respectively, which is a shame because Payu is the most interesting character with a unique personality in the whole show and therefore his relationship with Rain is the most interesting. The second couple is not well acted enough to take on the amount of screen time that is demanded of them for their storyline as well. I did like that one scene of Sky lying through his teeth to hurt Pai enough that Pai has tears streaming down his face. Psychologically, Sky's story is pretty tragic, even his initial one night stand with Pai is partially because of his lack of self esteem from his trauma conflicting and overlapping with his desires combined with the flirting and the threat that Pai's request in exchange for leaving the illegal event is. The resolution doesn't feel really complete like any justice was to be had for Sky who was sexually and mentally assaulted and abused by his ex once again. I'm glad Sky got some kind of catharsis though.

It's such a disjointed feeling that the series just wrapped on on Sky and Pai like Payu and Rain was just tertiary characters the whole time rather than the main characters. It seems to be two different books adapted at the same time and the script definitely should have just intertwined them instead of telling them one at a time for better pacing. It feels like such a waste of Payu's character who has the potential for more story there was in the show.

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This is a really good drama.Human should lost trust in people because of some toxic people.

In this drama, the ML lost his trust in humans because of the trauma he experienced in childhood. That’s why he chose a robot as his companion instead. He spent years searching for a “human-like robot,” but somehow the FL disguised herself as a human robot and went to his house. Eventually, the two of them fell in love, and they became each other’s comfort zone.

The ending is beautiful. After 15 years of struggle, the ML finally gets a peaceful and happy life. And the FL — whose talent everyone used to call useless — ends up becoming truly successful.

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