Sinasina

1. Epi 25 or 26
2-3. There is no romance worth talking about for 18 episodes of high school & following that there is a 5 year separation. When the romance actually starts in adult life, there the love triangle is extraordinarily weak & fizzles out.
4. happy & not last minute

I think the lowish ratings are totally deserved. The lack of romance is certainly a problem, but it's not the biggest one.

I suggest to -If you haven't already- watch the Chinese `A Love So Beautiful` ,which came out before the recent censorship reforms. Look at how much more lively & vibrant everything is. Plots, friendly interactions & everything else. To me this show is really bland at the close to 20 epi high school part. It's not just trying to be blatantly educational, but also it feels extraordinarily fake, but without the glamor that often makes these fantasy high school settings interesting. To iterate on this more, by fake I mean it's written by adults that seems to have mostly forgotten what high school is like & how people in that age group behave in China too btw. Also Hu Yi Tian cannot pull off acting as a teen anymore, he has many awkward & immersion breaking scenes. News flash, a 10th grader looks different from a 32 year old middle aged man.

Sure this show is not trash, the cast is really talented & some parts are quite touching, but let's keep it real, this is not an outstanding high school drama. Even this very leading actress's earlier high school show is much more interesting. `Lovely Us` had way more ehm teen spirit.

I have not written my review yet, but it will be in the 6-7 range most likely.

It's quite alright, the best part of this show for sure.

There has been very little of it for 20 epis.

We can agree to disagree I think. The boys clearly liked the FL & you can call that romance I suppose, but up until the adult phase, FL not once considered Yu Bai anything but her best friend. Imo talking about romance with someone when they keep emphasizing that they want to be your best friend forever is not it. Even trying to navigate censorship, this is not it.

My point is that You Are My Lover Friend can be rightfully being criticized for being slow, with the writer pulling the breaks arbitrarily to make it longer than it needed to be. In this drama there is no need for breaks, because the engine has not even started.

"You Are My Lover Friend" is super slow burn, here there is no burning at all for over 20 epis. Even for a high school show this is ridiculous.

>. But up to this point I've been watching another generic C-drama childhood school theme, and not a very convincing one either.

I agree with this 100%. I feel like a relatively talented cast is let down by the pool of things censorship allows & even demands from this genre. I fear a school life drama similar to `A Love So Beautiful` is no longer in the cards, not in this decade.

I think there is an over 70% chance that it's the usual jealous outburst trope. So I wouldn't be too worried just yet.

Not saying it's bad, but it's almost certainly Ai, but well prompted I suppose.

We could maybe for real argue if it's a metaphor, but anyway in real life that specific anglerfish would probably immediately die in that aquarium.

Remember Wu Bo Song? Let's hope he gets sidelined asap, because to me it really feels like they could be setting him up for something awful.

3 days of one episode / day & then all at once with express

Using AI for special effects is fine imo, but they are overusing it for unnecessary things & it's not just AI, the quality is very low compared to the best possible video generation options.

The model they are using is like 3 years out of date. Though I wouldn't mind too much, but the deep sea anglerfish in the tank was crazy.

It's hard to say how much this is his fault. Typecasting is a bitch.

thank you

Can someone please respond to this comment when they are finally out of high school. I don't want to bother with the show if that happens too late!

Are you sure, I just looked this up & the uni freshman registration seems to be chapter 65 out of 185.

Never mind, I checked it. It's chapter 65 out of 185.