Delight and fantastic

Apparently I read the novel in 2019 and forgot all about it until I saw the news that the last few episodes of its drama caused Tencent’s servers to crash when netizens rushed to watch it. I was like "What is this drama?" and then "Hey, then I watch the drama."

Qiao Jing Jing (乔晶晶) is a famous celebrity who stands to lose her endorsement deal with popular mobile game 王者荣耀 (Honor of Kings) and her carefully constructed image as the game's ambassador when footage of her poor gaming skills were leaked online. To salvage the situation, the game company proposed to host a friendly match with Qiao Jing Jing playing. Spending all her free time training for the competition, a chance meeting ingame reunites her with a former classmate and old crush, Yu Tu (于途). An aerospace engineer, expert gamer, former school legend, and also the guy who rejected her in high school, Yu Tu gets roped in to become Jing Jing’s gaming coach.

Like Gu Man’s previous drama, this drama is quite little on gaming and I speed watch through some of the gaming parts because game terminologies in Chinese are hard to grasp.

This drama highlights some of the difficulties celebrities face, especially when netizens don’t respect their privacy and leak their pictures and/videos online. And how everything has to be carefully worded or you might land in hot soup. It’s really important to be kind.

The romance. In a genre commonly populated with male protagonists who are overbearing, rich and powerful, it was refreshing to see a guy who struggles between his dreams of being an (underpaid) aerospace engineer and providing for his parents with better earnings in the financial sector. And when faced with a female protagonist who holds her own, Yu Tu also struggles in thinking what exactly is it that he can provide for her?

I was initially quite annoyed with Yu Tu for reasons I shall not expound on because, spoilers. But after some episodes, I kinda understood why he behaved the way he did. And afterwards, the romance just became sickeningly sweet.

Overall, the drama is delight and fantastic.

Read More