L13

Yes, I understood all of that. It was nonsense!

Wow, Natsu's mom was so out of line in episode 5... "If you signed the consent form, that means you forced her to get an abortion!" No, it doesn't! Requiring a man's signature to authorize an abortion is patriarchal bullshit, but Natsu didn't make Mizuki do shit! What do you think he should have done, not signed the form when she asked for it? How would that have given her more freedom to make her own decisions? "I'm not saying getting an abortion is bad!" That's kind of what you're saying, lady. Your son just told you he has a 7-year-old child and you're going off on some incoherent rant about how he's a monster because he didn't push back when the mother wanted to get an abortion! "I won't let you force Yayoi into anything." Holy projection Batman! She's the one who's pushing to get involved with Umi. Do you seriously not know your child at all?

Speaking of which, the whole show is super weird about abortion, but I'm willing to overlook that because I guess it's trying to say something about societal pressure on single mothers/unmarried pregnant women, which seems to be a bigger problem in Japan than it is where I live. So while pressuring women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term is the abortion issue at the forefront of western feminists' minds, this drama is about women being forced to terminate pregnancies because having children out of wedlock is seen as taboo, and about the difference having the support of your loved ones makes (Mizuki's parents vs Yayoi's parents). So, like, whatever, that's interesting, I guess (and although I said it's a lesser issue where I live, that doesn't mean it's not an issue at all—men pressure women to get abortions all over the world). But still, the drama can get very preachy and anti-abortion-y... Give me more cute moments with Umi and her three parents and fewer lectures from annoying grandmas.

Natsu has his flaws, but he got shat on very unfairly here. I got so pressed when he meekly agreed it was all his fault just to pacify his mother and validated all her nonsense that I had to turn off the episode. (By nonsense I mean, for example, her insistence that he should have told her about Mizuki's pregnancy at the time...?!?!?! Bitch, for what? So you could find Mizuki and pressure her to become a parent at 21 under the guise of offering her support she never asked for? We know Mizuki's personality pretty well at this point and I think we can safely assume she didn't want Natsu's family all up in her business!)

It’s not that I think the age gap is “non-consensual” or that it doesn’t exist in real life; it’s that I find it gross to look at. Hope that helps.

There are too many things wrong with this drama to list, but while others may have remarked on how the leads and the SML all got inexplicable personality transplants that made them more unlikable halfway through the story, I don't think many people have noted the FL's styling, so I'll do it here. One episode she looks like a normal teenager and in the next episode she's a college freshman wearing head scarves, earrings, too many hair ties and heavy lipstick every day like a single mother from the 1980s? The fuck? Has the costume designer met any university students this century?

(The SML becoming a high-powered corporate shark at 22 or whatever and starting to wear suits and skinny ties on a daily basis also stretched credulity, but I was too busy wondering when he transformed from a wise, cool older brother type friend into a brainless rapey stalker to critique his appearance and the logic behind his career trajectory.)

It's called "incoherent garbage I wish I could filter out of the MDL calendar."

I agree the casting choice is bizarre, but to blame her guardians for endangering her like she was filming sex scenes left and right is crazy. It doesn't actually matter if a teenage actor is in a "young high schooler drama" or a historical romance; the job requirements and the adults around them are the same.

Will Love in Spring

Petch kinda pissed me off when he was half-heartedly trying to convince Lisa to marry him and had to be talked off the ledge by her. "Good intentions and goodwill can be as beautiful as love." Dude, it's episode 14, cut it out! You know Lisa has good friends and a caring family and they're all rich as fuck! One bad thing happened to her and a hundred powerful people flocked to her side to support her! Meanwhile the woman you claim to love has nobody on her side! If you marry Lisa with nothing but "good intentions" to take care of her, who's going to take care of Fah, who needs it more?

I know he wasn't serious about it and looked relieved when Lisa told him he didn't need to sacrifice himself, and to be fair Fah has gone out of her way to discourage his interest, so like, fair enough, but at this point in the story they're supposed to know better than to involve other people in their drama at least. The fact he needed Lisa to shut down that delusional marriage scenario instead of doing it himself was very annoying.

He deserved to feel bad at the end of the episode lol

Eh, I don't find that part inconsistent with Petch's character. He's a very proud man (which is part of why Fah likes him) and it makes sense that he'd react badly to getting rejected. Even the nicest people in the world have low moments when they say mean things, and from his perspective Fah has been sending him mixed signals while he's been all in and transparent about his feelings, which is a legitimate reason to get angry IMO.

I thought it actually added to my understanding of his character that Petch would be hurt and angry at Fah in private and tell his cousins not to mention her name to him, etc., but the moment he saw her at the company he switched to his usual courteous and calm demeanour. It was like he couldn't sustain the disrespectful attitude you describe when Fah was actually in front of him because Fah is so undeniably lovely he can't lie to himself when he's in her presence.

They could have handled Petch's development in episode 13 better. One moment Poom is telling him that Fah loves him and Petch replies that Fah is a liar who can't be trusted (because he already knows about her mother on top of everything else) and doesn't matter to him at all, then Fah leaves the company after helping him one last time, then Poom comes to him again and says Fah loves him, then Petch is like, no, she doesn't because she approached me under false pretences, then Poom says, but she didn't want to, then Petch says it doesn't matter if she wanted to do it or not because she still did it, then Poom and Vit say she didn't know the full extent of her crazy mother's history because her mother downplayed some details, AND PETCH SAYS, OH WELL, IN THAT CASE!!! AND RUNS AFTER FAH????

Like what the hell?

It's not like Poom and Vit said anything he didn't already know or guess, or anything Poom hadn't said to him before, so how did that convo trigger the big dramatic change of heart that should be the pivotal moment of the final act in every romance?

It would have made more logical AND dramatic sense to have Petch seek out Fah for one final confrontation after he had her mother's identity confirmed, telling himself he was looking for her 100% out of anger but obviously wanting to see her one last time, and then witness one of her mother's episodes or something and realise how difficult Fah's life really is (because he's seen less of Rumpa's abuse of Fah/craziness than either Poom or Vit), and then help Fah handle the situation and assure her he wouldn't run away in the future.

Sorry for the rant. This isn't actually a huge deal, but it's bugging me because it would have been so easy to fix this part of the script...

Sooo... do we know if there's a third series in the works, one that takes place in he present day? Because if a bunch of young couples got together in the early to mid-90s, their kids would be ready to star in their own romantic melodramas by the late 2020s?

The more time passes, the more convinced I am that this show only gained such a rabid following because of Duke Su/WXY’s portrayal of him/the fact the international cdrama community is full of overfixated spinsters who thirst after WXY in weird ways.

The direction was clumsy and massively over-the-top, there were too many cringe moments, the FL was far too perfect & never faced real trouble or inner conflict, Duke Su’s background and motivations were never explored and he remained a cipher throughout the show, XFF did so many selfish things while claiming to avenge Jiang Li and the narrative took her side uncritically, and worst of all, the romance had terrible payoff, and I’m not just talking about the ending. The leads built up some good tension in the first ~15 episodes and then became a totally different, much more boring couple (which is a common problem in cdrama). The scene in the rain was good, but like… what else was there?

The delusional virgins shipping the leads on the basis that they’ve done promo together also creep me out.

If the same director and production team had to shoot five shows, they wouldn’t be able to come out in the same year, let alone one after another.

What the heck are you saying lol. Yang Yang is not a good actor! He's handsome and he fits some roles better than others (You Are My Glory for example), but he can't make facial expressions, let alone brilliant ones.

I actually like him, but criticizing his acting is totally legitimate.

Honestly, I don't know how they're going to resolve the mother's subplot. So far Fah has been talking about taking her mother to see a doctor as a silver-bullet solution, but her mother's biggest issue is that she's a bad person who wishes ill on others and has no affection for her own child. I don't know if they had psychiatric drugs that could fix her personality in the 90s... Plus, people with serious mental health problems usually continue to struggle (and need care and patience from their loved ones) even after they start taking medication, and in some cases they refuse to cooperate/accept treatment. Realistically, there's no scenario in which her mental health issues stop being a burden on Fah.

So I expect they'll either give her a magical personality transplant after she goes to the doctor, which would be unrealistic, or they'll straight-up kill her off to get her out of the way of our leads' fairytale happy ending, which... ugh.

I don't think people are frustrated with Fah? Everyone gets that she's in a difficult position.

Each series can be watched on its own, but many characters recur in different stories.

Thank God Fah finally put Petch out of his misery because he was starting to lose his mind... But on the other hand, she let him off too easily IMO. Cousin-in-law this, cousin-in-law that—that's not even a real thing! Petch, stand up!

Either that or they're going to break up?

So I'm on episode 6 and I'm wondering if the show ever picks up the pace...? It's been one interrogation session after another for hours now. I'm getting tired of watching people get tortured in dark rooms, so I'm starting to think about dropping the show unless it introduces some new dynamics to the plot soon. The distortion of communist ideology and history to fit modern-day Chinese nationalist propaganda is also a bit too stupid, even though it's present in every single show about this time period to some extent.