MareAzurre

I watched this for Mi Jin as I loved Kill to Love, but it did positively surprise me, and it was very good 80% of the time. The FL character is really strong and it is good to see this in Chinese c dramas. It is also morally grey which make her more interesting too. Jun Wi as the ML is a cute presence, no the best c lead actor, but good enough for this role. The ending did not make much sense and there were "romantic" fillers scenes. These were cringy. Overall, a good effort. I liked Mi Jin acting (ML's second in command), another of his supporting roles in which he put his heart on it. He never disappoint.

I did not know Joo Bin, the FL, and she is lovely and a sound actor, so just for this I am grateful. Bo Hyun has such annoying character to play and at moment I felt like stop watching in the first ep, but I wanted to see FL how she was going to navigate awful life circumstances and I am glad I did. Bo Hyun character is evolving for better. His look here is so unpleasant to the eye that I feel like turning my face when he first appeared, like in a horror film, but I can tolerate him now. He is good for the role, is just the character is too cartoonish and obnoxious. Ju Young as the nephew is beautiful and his acting is sound, but his CP in this drama is so unpleasant, I cannot say any positive neither about the female actor nor about her character. I doubt it they are going to reverse that. The other secondary actors, particularly the female actors, are amazing and great characters too. Another k drama to watch if you don't have anything else to watch. It has good fun moments for sure.

The best point of this drama is that is a vast improvement in relation to the manga. The manga is atrocious, so anti-feminist, so there is a great effort here to make it more balance. Additionally, this is not in a school setting which would have been bad. It is entertaining so I am looking forward to the next episodes. The leads are alright, not the best actors in the k acting scene, but enough for this. Jin Hyuk is cartoonish, but is alright for the role. Very visually attractive man overall. He is making the most of his assets as he is not the best looking k lead actor. Yeon Soon has an awful wardrobe so that part is not helping her. Still is it a good presence. I would say, if you are bored and don't have a better drama to watch, watch this. It is good fun.

This is not good. I keep persevering as to comment in an informed way here, but it is not a positive watching experience. I am even struggling to make sense as the reason why the production decide to go ahead with this plot . Maybe something positive is showing a bit the reality of alcoholism? but it is very wishy washy. I don't have any sympathy for the characters they don't have any redeemable qualities. Performances? the same k drama troupe. I am more comfortable washing Wo Ji An despite that her character does not make any sense. I never thought Seo Joon is great actor so in that sense I am not surprised but his character is even more annoying here. It is a miss for me.

No NC but really deep kissing. It is a very intense passionate love story.

Excellent podcast! 🙏

Thank you so much for such enlightening and well informed comment. I think some of us have had a "side job" of some sort in the art "scene" or even we can call ourselves e.g. part-time musician (🙋🏻‍♀️) . As unknown as I have been, I have always been paid for presentations. I totally appreciate your both side of the arguments referrring to AI. However, there is a lot of good on it. Recently, I know about a composer in Mexico, he was so poor that he did not have any money to hire even half an hour of a recording studio or hire musicians, so he taught himself producing a song using AI, even the voices were AI generated. He wrote the melody, the lyrics that were beautiful and his song is now well known. Now, he has the chance to go to the studios and ask for support, before it was impossible. The same happen when social media platforms appeared. Everybody looking down in people earning money from it. Where would be Justin Bieber or Shawn Mendes without YouTube? they were unknown kids in Canada. Kill to Love is just showing that they could bridge the gap of the lack of money with one minute (or even less) of CGI (I am not even sure if they use AI in the strict sense). In terms of extras, my partner was "pulled from the street" by a company recording a promotional video, and was paid more than his job daily rate for a couple of hours of work!? 🙂

Thank you for your support @River. It means a lot. Totally agree, the series is not perfect, precisely for the lack of money, and yes, it is not easy to keep calm with some comments...😅❤️

Edits and fan arts - all these months there have been such amount of amazing edits with songs that the bloggers love. There is also an amazing artist called Hiroro, but she is RedNote based, so many people have not see her fan art. I am looking at my bookmarks. For the loyal friends in the forum, have you kept any edit/fan art that you like and would like to share? Today I found this, with the music of Adele 😊I will keep adding more here:
https://x.com/meihanxues/status/2011097708401181107?s=20
Edits that call attention to the first episodes where the bath scene and the most sensual hand wash happen:
https://x.com/wizcrizzz/status/2009266219438805376?s=20
https://x.com/meihanxues/status/1994084863960592388?s=20
ZiAng rage has inspired few of these edits
https://x.com/JEONALTY/status/2003050464259219789?s=20
who likes the ones mixing ShuHe /ZiAng and XuJin? This is so lovely
https://x.com/meihanxues/status/2002703558102356392?s=20
based on the confession scenes, of course lots:
https://x.com/vegasbibs85/status/2001174621572472937?s=20
This is one of my favourites:
https://youtu.be/T8I0DE2oPWQ?si=AWoz7ILV9DQ0wGiz
All kisses:
https://www.tiktok.com/@minoa38/video/7585068478151822612?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
Hiroro fan art in Red Note, is magical:
http://xhslink.com/o/6ljtZDo7QCY
https://x.com/januarystyle/status/2011803372324864226?s=20

Red Note edits
http://xhslink.com/o/7AivWxuyLkn
(re-watching all of these has really cheer me up!!!)

This is @Yerisina collection (I have not watched some of these - thank you so much 🙏):
https://youtu.be/XCRqzZqFjp4?si=aXpI9hmWYTgVeLPr
https://youtu.be/Qimfr7ySMxI?si=sx9xJhSFOzkwR9jN
https://youtu.be/T8I0DE2oPWQ?si=XCs21NmjiF8vRdY6
https://youtu.be/F4WiT98Pnwo?si=SDZ8fCmjRxeLbK0S

😂

So kind of you @Yerisina, this is why you are the most valued commentator here in the forum 🙏❤️ We do feel so strongly about people unfairly bashing on this beautiful series, such a labour of love. Everybody involved hardly has any economic reward from it. Director, camera people, screen writers and of course the actors, so talented. Let's keep having fun talking about what really matters.

Something that I meant to ask you and I only took your work for granted is how do you know that the images that we see when ZiAng is taking territories are AI generated? I was left with this doubt so I looked at it and there is a difference between AI and CGI and Visual effects that have been used for more than 50 years already. In Chinese productions is mainly CGI that is used. AI is a vast subject and create a visceral reaction from people who are against it. The central debate with AI is that the ideas are not copyrightable only the expression of the ideas, in this sense, does not infringe intellectual property. The other issue is environmental damage, but it has been proved this only happen in large high performance models and only if they are taking energy from fossil fuels. I do acknowledge there is a polarisation of opinions in this subject and if you feel strongly about it, you are in the right to do so. What I am going to put my foot in the door is about that what you described is considered exploitation. Asking people to work for free is considered exploitation, that simple. I am not inventing anything here. It is against the Human Rights Declaration and very much against 🇨🇳 1. Labour Law of the People’s Republic of China. Volunteering only could happen if the organisation is registered as a charity and even though stipends should be paid as minimum.

Chinese labour laws are really strict. Your position is to be against AI, but you agree to people working for free? So: no to AI, but yes to exploitation? I don't want to give away what I do, I am in an educational institution. Everything that we do is AI supported. As @Yerisina wrote AI is a tool, is based in acquired human knowledge and is activated by human input. The creativity is in the design. in the questions. In relation to composers, AI is a strong tool to avoid plagiarism. It can suggest a couple of notes to change a written melody to avoid that problem. Returning to Kill to Love, some of the wardrobe was borrowed from their performing academies. They not even had budget for this, and in China clothing is really cheap.

....is beautiful...we know! 😍

Yerisina, I admire your capacity to trying to explain....you know how much I celebrate your post.

So glad you came forward DreamHi. Somebody needed to say it as it is.🙏 I just don't understand some negative posts...honestly.....as you say each to their own 🙄

If it is of any consolation, we have cried waterfall of tears in this forum, but they are good tears. So glad you liked the series as much as we do. Maybe you could consider rating each episode with a 10 to counteract the random negative "visitors" that from time to time appear, and, at least keep the rating as it is. This series deserves much more recognition. Many thanks 🙏

I am glad that overall you enjoyed the series. I only would like to say that I am an avid viewer of all kind of c dramas, and all of them are heavy in the AI. This is a low-budget production and the AI only appears when ZiAng is invading territories. So I genuinely do not understand your objection to the use of AI here, when all Chinese productions, including and I would say, above all, the top-tier productions use them extensively.

Kill to Love where to watch, official channels, supporting XuJin-
Lately, in MDL forums, we have seen more and more people gingerly promoting pirates websites -wrong in all accounts. There are also people that just come an spit the most random negative comments and one wonder, did they even watch the series? With some comments you can start a constructive conversation, with others it is not even worthy to try... 🙄
In relation to Kill to love, I would like to remind everybody that the first 6 episodes are free to watch in the official YouTube channel and then the other 6 costs less than a cup of coffee and it is only a matter of paying one month and cancel the sub. You won't be charge again. I can guarantee you this.
Kill to Love is an excellent series, with mesmerising performances. It was a really small project with young graduates from the best performing academies in China. They did an amazing job with a very low budget. They only could filmed 12 episodes this is why in the first episodes the narrative is not easy to follow. We have this lovely clip of XuJin in full attired cuddling to each other studying their lines while there was a dispute of money with the police involved.
https://weibo.com/6715744133/Q7qrBkcCc
It is also very important to follow all the official accounts of the actors. ZheXu and MiJin have given us so much joy. I have lost count of how many vblogs they have filmed. They are very giving to each other and to the audience.
Mi Jin is signed to Huayu Films, a very prestigious production company in China, and slightly slightly is getting better roles, but still very much supporting roles. ZheXu is struggling to find any acting job in this very competitive market. We have recently knew that he was dropped in the last minute (literally) from a lead role in a production. Actors jobs is hard everywhere but particularly in China with so many excellent graduates and where nepotism and influence are also an issue . So they are really relying on the support of their followers who are almost in the totality shippers (Lagogos) for earning a living. They have had brand presentations, managers day jobs and fan meetings. You can find a lot of post in X. So please follow them I will add their RedNotes and Weibo accounts too:

ZheXu and MiJin Instagram, RedNote, Weibo accounts
https://www.instagram.com/adrian.xxuu?igsh=MXRqbTJudWd0dGUzMA==
https://xhslink.com/m/509tk9EtfAd
https://weibo.com/u/1872760363

https://www.instagram.com/mijin_0416?igsh=MmVnMXZ4OG10NTNy
https://xhslink.com/m/4jUSxZhlt0U
https://weibo.com/u/5651648571

National Drama League - official YouTube channel to watch the series
https://youtu.be/P12OjrBkjtw?si=bM32G-EGUtdXiAei

Kill to Love in Instagram and YouTube (vblogs)
https://www.instagram.com/killtolove_video?igsh=MThidmd2M3l5amhwYg==
https://youtu.be/1nsMTgdC5Ow?si=cUMNJbFuzZhJSoa1

The Weibo account for the doctor, Li Yixian, he was also the screenwriter:
@李一想爱吃夺夺粉's personal homepage - Weibo

Think of Romeo and Juliet ending with a happy after life