It's okay!

The Good
⌲ There is a lot of quality fluff in the second half.
⌲ The good OST
⌲ The pretty picture
⌲ The ending is fairly good, though it's not anything I have not seen before. (the special episode is included in this)
⌲ FL's parents were quite wholesome.

The Average
⌲ The chemistry between the leads
⌲ The side couples were not all that interesting.
⌲ The comedy is not the strongest.
⌲ The triangle/square is not very offensive, but it could've been even better.
⌲ The early episodes were quite mediocre.
⌲ ML's parents
⌲ The badminton training sessions (the competition was better)

The Bad
⌲ The third worst separation plot I have ever seen
⌲ There are three and a half absolutely trash episodes.
⌲ The plot involving ML's hereditary mental disorder is wrong on so many levels.
⌲ ML's robotic acting in the early episodes
⌲ Pathologist doctor has done a c-section to help a cat giving birth.
⌲ The wasted potential that is the Detective Club.

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If Hyperion was a low-budget kdrama romcom filmed in France (alternatively, Red Herring Country)

As far as travel fling stories go, this one is pretty good. Not only is the OTP couple fun, but also all the main characters, everyone participating in the package tour were very interesting (at least interesting after a while) & well acted. Also I found the realistic portrayal of sex for a 2017 kdrama quite unexpected. The only love triangle in the drama is more of a Red Herring than anything else, so yes love triangle haters can safely watch this.++

It would have taken minuscule effort to fix the script & create something remarkable. Unfortunately for a pre-produced drama the story sure doesn't seem to be particularly well written, or consistent. Just a minor change in the timeline would have removed the completely unnecessary ugliness from the OTP relationship. If I look at this realistically, it sure looks more than a bit horrible. At the early episodes ML is still in a relationship with the supposed love of his life that may have betrayed him, but he DOESN'T YET know that, they are basically in a quarrel. If I wanted to be mean I could say, that the whole plot is kind of like "We were on a break & then I fell in love with the copy-place girl, BUT IT'S FINE, because LATER I've learned that Rachel is Hitler." it's okay to completely fall for your rebound, but not like this, I don't think.

France sure is beautiful & luckily The Package works fine as a travel show as well. Though the cinematography is a bit strange. It's like the crew had no time to properly set up the scenes & think about how to effectively use some of the prettiest landscapes in the world. The end result is still gorgeous, but the photography is just whelming.

There were some very - ehm - creative product placements. As dumb as the "my friend needs these, he's lonely" sounds for a Peepee enlarger product placement, it's still better then the usual "everyone being sick all the time feeding each other cold medicines mouth to mouth" & whatnot.

#rant on
I'm sick and tired of the whistleblower cliche. I mean sure okay, whistle-blowing about embezzlement & then getting burned, because Korea is a corrupt sh***ole is not fun to watch, but that's at least somewhat in the realm of reality, right? However using African citizens as guinea pigs and then tens of random white collar workers covering it up like this is just too much. You need to be a special kind of psychopath to cover up potential mass murder this way.
Also have you guys noticed the trend how in kdramas completely unreasonable love can succeed, but whistleblowers never do. It's almost as if BigChaebol is paying for these educational lessons, as unlikely and stupid this conspiracy theory appears to be.
It's just too difficult to justify why this plot is in the drama, there is no real benefit, it could've been easily replaced with something more realistic. (like she cheated, she was forgiven & then has not shown up at the airport, because reasons)
#rant off

The ending is not nearly as bad as I have thought it would be. Of course there is the totally dumb, illogical separation, but the presentation is somewhat beautiful, it's not a complete blowout like in most kdramas. Overall I would rate the final episode at 6/10, which is certainly far above average, there are countless far better kdramas with hugely worse endings.

This is the first time in my kdrama watching carrier that I liked Yoon Park in a role. He is typically the teary-eyed second lead that ruins the drama for me. I never though he is not a good actor, but he really drew the short straw as far as typecasting goes, I wish he had more roles like this!

7.5/10 is a bit high for this drama, but considering how unique it is, it's probably justifiable. Every kdrama addict should watch this, eventually.

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If you have NOTHING else to watch, you can use this to fuel your sugar addiction!

I enjoyed watching the OTP romance in this one. It was really cute, fluffy and the leads looked great together and had a reasonable amount of chemistry. Though it was certainly not without problems, such as there was a 2 episode long ridiculous breakup & reconciliation plot. Also the leads were so in love that the FL literally jumped in front of ML to protect him with her body, but apparently not in love enough to forgo the pillow barrier thing, when they shared a bed in a hotel room. So yes, there are all kinds of cliches, but all the wholesomeness & fluff made me forgive them. Also this is a safe drama to watch for love triangle haters such as myself.

Based on the main romance alone this would be a weak 8-ish drama, but there were side couples as well. The two other couples were quite alright to watch too in the last 10-15 episodes, but before they've gotten together, the men not yet in those relationships have done some REALLY silly borderline cartoon-ish things. Yuda's character was unwatchable in the earlier episodes, "luckily" he has received several character rewrites & by the time he has started dating the second FL he has become tolerable, but nonetheless jarring character adjustments are never okay. I would've rather had him killed & introduced another guy for Cheng Yi.

As for the non romance related plot. It was pretty weak. It's not nearly as annoying as in Love is Sweet, but it's an endless loop of minor annoyances & the Daoist interpretation of Go. Naturally there is a cartoon villain character as well. Honestly this plot is wasted on the excellent ensemble of actors.
There were 41 episodes, unfortunately out of those 5 are straight up trash. I'm talking about episodes 31-32 due to the stupid breakup thing & 38 to 40 due to the tragedy & the ML losing his mind. The short 10 minute long ending is basically ML regaining his mind. I would have much preferred the basic "proposal -> register marriage -> have kid" formula. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The visuals are good, but the photography is not out of the ordinary as far as 2021 cdramas go. As for the OST, it was fairly mediocre, I did not particularly like any of the songs, nor is the instrumental background music used to a great effect.

I'm not a hardcore feminist or anything, but Ding Lan's lack of ambitions as a Go player and her monologues about sentimental women such as herself being worse than men at Go was not a great listen. (I cannot be 100% certain about Go ofc, but in regular good old western Chess women are not inferior to men, at least when the conditions are the same, unfortunately that's almost never the case)

6/10. (if you want something similar but better, just go for the Go Go Squids instead)

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How do I even begin reviewing 20th Century Boy and Girl, how should I rate this? On one hand the drama has fairly little emotional impact, there is no angst whatsoever, but the romances are also not exactly overflowing with emotional charge either. There is not much plot, but it meanders in strange directions. It's fantastic that the love triangle is so tame & easily resolved, but at the same time Anthony's character is just a waste of screen time, he is not annoying, just boring. Also the whole setting has infinite untapped makjang potential, certainly it's awesome that the writer did not go in that direction, but when I realized that the two male leads are stepbrothers, I could not help, but roll my eyes. Also the way the ML kept telling the second ML that he is only only friends with FL repeatedly certainly caused me some minor frustrations.

Despite the above I had a great time watching the drama. The sismances are up there with the very best & Han Ye Seul's calming energy is something rarely seen. Also the leads had great chemistry & looked adorable together. Most things in the drama are unusually wholesome and it's super nice how quickly and easily the scandals are dealt with.

I cannot help, but feel that there were too many (interesting) characters to completely develop them in 32 half-episodes and the team has even wasted 2 full episodes worth of time on Anthony.
Still gotta give them credit where credit is due. How often does one watch a relaxed romcom like this without it becoming draggy? The episodes certainly went by really fast, I reached the finale in a flash.

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Is Avatar a good movie? This is one of those arguments that I'm sure everyone of my generation has heard before. I think Avatar is a great movie, yes the story is absolutely trash, but the great visuals & the incredible OST turned it into a very memorable experience for me. Rainless Love in a Godless Land is a little similar for me, the photography is far above the modern kdrama standard & the OST is absolutely phenomenal, perhaps the individual tracks aren't quite up to the summit that is the Goblin OST (or Wu Bai's Last Dance), however the mixing & even the audio effects are absolutely phenomenal, the best I have ever heard in any TV series.

I brought up Avatar, but objectively speaking the story of Rainless is actually okay too. Personally I think this is the biggest "weak" point of the drama.
I could talk about plotholes, but there aren't that many on the surface level, though it is advised not to think too deeply about cause and effect.
I'm frustrated how little actual romance we've had. I mean sure, a Tdrama does not HAVE TO BE a romance drama necessarily, however here the story was completely set up for romance, most of the big actions the main characters take are motivated by love, that is why I find it difficult to tolerate the lack of actual romance that has been shown. Someday or One Day is hugely & I mean HUGELY better in this regard.
Someone in the comment section compared the plot to a Matryoshka doll and this is a somewhat valid comparison, it's just that I could not appreciate the big reveals in the last episode all that much. It's like all these grand concepts were introduced to confuse and mesmerize the audience, but ultimately they did not have that much plot relevance.
I don't like the main villain's motivation for doing the things he did, feels like it was just an afterthought by the writer. Honestly, I think I would have preferred not knowing.
I'm not entirely sold on the ending either, how everything turned in the last episode felt quite arbitrary to me..
Still it's nice a that the writer managed to produce a complex, cleverly written & still somewhat coherent script, it's better than what most high concept shows have in Hollywood.
I really liked how the show is based on indigenous Taiwanese lore. The mysticism based on this paired with the aforementioned audiovisuals are the heart of the drama.
Overall the show is fairly original, however it cannot be denied that the writer has gotten a lot of inspiration from Goblin & a certain Japanese video game.

I talked about before how I'm not entirely happy about the romantic story, but that's not all, the chemistry between the leads could've been better. Even during the finale I could not really get into the mood to earnestly root for their happiness.

Alice Ke really stole the show. She must have had fun while filming. What a great adversary she was! Though perhaps in certain scenes her enthusiasm was a touch too obvious.

While watching the drama, during the early episodes I frequently felt that I'm watching a movie produced for children, such as the 2018 Little Mermaid movie. Xie Tian Di's character had many juvenile moments. It's fine to have juvenile adults in a drama, they exists in real life too, I'm totally one myself, but Tian Di had some ridiculous dialogs early on, similar to a cartoon mom explaining something to her cartoon son about dog poop. Did perhaps the producers try to make the drama more family friendly? I guess it's okay, this did not detract too much from my enjoyment.

Joanne's singing was a very nice touch. In the later episodes I missed the summoning ritual quite a bit. Obviously this is based on Goblin's candle blowing thing, but it was nonetheless lovely.

The episode previews were extremely annoying. Why, just why would anyone put the episode preview BEFORE the epilogue? A binge watcher does not need episode previews anyway, even if I'm watching a drama normally as it airs, I would like to have the option to not look at the previews.

TLDR: Rainless Love in a Godless Land is a wonderful audiovisual experience with an above average story, 9/10.

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原子邦妮 Astro Bunny is absolutely incredible, even outside of Rainless's OST. Her songs sound like Ivy songs, but better.


edit: I decided to give this another go, now in the year 2023. I think my review holds up quite well, but now I felt the chemistry between the leads being better than what I initially thought & also enjoyed the final half episode A LOT as well.

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Not exactly flawless, but the drama transcends the term "masterpiece" in mutiple ways.

I just finished watching this & I'm still in shock. I kinda sorta hate how the plot got wrapped up, but the last episode was not only objectively perfect & extremely touching, but I even lost the war against the onion ninja nation, I never had a chance.

If I really wanted to, it wouldn't be very hard to pick the story apart. (Chicken and Egg Paradox & other potentially not so minor plotholes come to mind) However ultimately this show is beyond cleverly written. In fact I'm yet to see an Asian drama with writing this good. There are some dramas that I consider as good as Someday or One Day, but in terms of writing none of them can compare. What I find especially shocking how the drama barely features any repetition. Whenever you expect something to happen, such as travel back in time to attempt to change something, to relive a scene, the end result is completely different than our expectations, with unique unexpected perspectives & no repetition. I cannot emphasize enough how brilliant the storytelling is. Mind blown!
Also it's worth mentioning that despite the relative complexity of the plot, it's still easy to understand what's going on & yet the "explanations" never feel forced, masterful..
(I barely remember the plot of Steins;Gate, but I think this one is easily superior)

So okay, we have established that the story is brilliant, but what about the romance? Well, it's one of the best, most touching romantic stories I have ever encountered and the OTP romance could not have resonated with me any more. (and naturally the romantic plots are also super cleverly written, paced & sequenced) There is some fluff, but this is hard romance for the sentimental soul.
As for love triangles? I'm not going to spoil that, but triangle haters can safely watch this.

The three lead actors did a phenomenal job. They had good chemistry with each other & they were pretty much perfectly cast for their roles.

The cinematography is low key perfection. It's not as exaggeratedly beautiful as modern kdramas, cdramas usually are, however it's the perfect fit for this show.

And finally we arrived at the OST. Objectively speaking the OST is just as repetitive as in Something in the Rain, but I guess Wu Bai's Last Dance is ehm a WEE BIT better than "Stand by Your Man". I think I've heard it like 40-50 times before the end credits rolled, but I still felt goosebumps even in the final episode. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AqfOhesl5U piano cover on Youtube, if someone is interested, though it's not as good when FL plays it on the Piano in the show) Devoted by X-Ray Dog is also a very impressive piece, though I think I've heard it before, still it worked great in this drama.
Of course the other songs are supremely good as well, though Goblin is certainly a bit better overall in this regard. (Goblin has like 10 top tier songs and the OST Album is a very coherent listening experience, versus the 3 in Some day or One Day)


Taiwanese dramas are typically horrible. I tried to watch quite a few actually, but I just couldn't get past the first 2-3 episodes trying to pick the ones recommended by community here on MDL. Some Day or One Day is the second one I managed to finish. (the other one is Last Romance & I'll probably try Rainless Love in a Godless Land soon) I'm strongly suspecting that this drama is by far the best one the Taiwanese entertainment industry has ever produced. Comparing it to Goblin, which I think is the best kdrama ever made, it holds up extremely well. It's incredible how the people that typically make 2005 kdrama era garbage could make something like this. It's like going from using aqueducts to colonizing Mars.

Just to say some negatives too. Some of the supporting actors are a hit or miss, Xie Zhi Qi?! Also there is only one thing in the drama that could've used some CG, namely the dream prison. It felt a bit immersion breaking to see the big pixels projected onto FL's face and the whole construction reminded me of a cheap hobo shack. It would have taken very little effort to fix this & admittedly in the final episodes they've improved on this a little. (by little effort, I mean that I could have personally fixed this at the cost of $2 while being physically present on set, or alternatively I could have edited the footage myself in an afternoon, applying some selective blur here and there)

15/10. Will I just keep rewatching this until the end of my days? How do I move on from this?

Watch https://mydramalist.com/61297-someday-or-one-day-extra-scene for that little extra closure. I wanted way more than this, but it's still more than nothing.


edit:
The rewatch value is FAR lower than expected.

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It's a cute show with enough substance to remain interesting till the last episode.

The Good:
-All three couples were interesting.
-Everyone had good chemistry with everyone.
-The lack of dental procedures (I hate seeing that on screen & I have delayed watching this solely for that reason)
-The near complete lack of conflict
-The fluff (though there could have been more of it)
-I liked how the characters joked about ML having mild prosopagnosia.
-There were quite a few epic scenes. (Cats that catch mice don't meow, haha)
-Second lead noona romance was totally awesome, wow.
-Fairly unoffensive product placements

The Neutral:
-The love triangle may have been resolved beautifully, but it was still arbitrarily conjured out of thin air & they wasted 2 full episodes on it.
-FL's annoying mom (as annoying as she was, luckily she had very little screen time)
-The Africa thing (I've read about this in the comments before, but it had very little plot relevance & it was not nearly as offensive as I thought it would be.)

The Bad:
-The pacing has not been adjusted for a 22 episode series. (Episode 17 felt like the 17th episode from a 40 episode long drama)
-There were so many missed opportunities, I wish this was at least 5 episodes longer, see previous point.
-The ending is really rushed, then again I'm just repeating myself now.

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This was better than expected, the relatively low ratings are probably due to Zheng Shuang's misdeeds. If you are capable of respecting the art instead of the artist, then this is a pretty good slice of life drama to watch.

My Story for You is a very long show, but I rarely felt it being draggy, it was maybe a bit repetitive at times, but considering that we went through 20 years worth of happenings over the course of 48 episodes it was alright. Zheng Shuang was pretty damn good in the drama, she did an excellent job portraying this entitled princess FL character. As for the ML the actor did a good job, but the character had some problems, he has made some decisions that made no sense to me. I liked most supporting characters, (except Hang Dong) but their bromances & friendships felt a little forced at times. The two main love lines were pretty enjoyable for me, the rest of them not so much. I hated the ending that Jia You has gotten, there was zero need for that.

The writing is okay for the most part, but the story lost coherence after the BIG time skip for the last 10~ episodes.

The drama does not have a single kiss scene, but I would have been okay with that. The problem is that the kiss scenes were completely set up, but they fizzled out every single time. Plus in my opinion it's better to not kiss anything rather then going for a forehead kiss. Does anyone even like that?

The show does not have strong love triangles, which is always a plus.

The product placements are no joke in this one. There is that koala doll that a 40 year old woman drags around everywhere & then we had straight up ad segments with various drinks, yogurts & more.

I have grown tired of Kong Lin. She plays the same kind, but narrow minded mom character in every second cdrama I watch.

Perhaps the 8/10 rating is a tad too high, but I felt sad upon reaching the end & I will certainly miss this show, though probably the rewatch value is low.

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The problem with family dramas is that they target every possible demographic and because of that 100% enjoyment is impossible. However in My Father is Strange many things that were clearly not targeted at me were still somewhat interesting. This show had really great couples, characters & a heartwarming family atmosphere. The overall package is pretty wholesome. The 2 main couples in Once Again perhaps packed more punch, but this drama had a much better family narrative & overall felt more joyful. I loved how this show barely featured love triangles, despite having so many couples. (there were secondary love interests, but it was not annoying at all)

The reason why this is not a 10/10 for me is that the second half felt quite a bit draggy, especially Mi Young's love line and the big secret thing.
Family dramas are silly and a little makjang-ish by nature and despite My Father is Strange having many tropes that normally annoy me greatly, the delivery was moderate enough to keep my nerves loose.

The acting is absolutely top notch, the actresses playing the sisters did an especially outstanding job.

The drama did a good job cheering my up over the past few days. 8/10

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This drama consists of two main parts, the first 14 episodes are about the high school years of our four leads & episodes 15-28 are about university life.

If I consider the first one a separate drama, then I would rate it at 9+, it's more than just great. I enjoyed the high school years much more here than in the recent hit cdrama Our Secret. If I imagined how my favorite high school anime romance would look like as live action TV, something like this would be the end result. In fact I don't think I have ever seen a high school drama with more anime-like leads, second leads. Usually Chinese high school dramas have very little romantic substance, because the censorship kills any chance of puppy loves flourishing, not in this one though. I feel the production team really pushed the boundaries of what a high school cdrama can be. I mean sure kisses, or a direct non confusable confession did not end up happening, but there was never a doubt about their relationship. Like the drama had "we'll be together forever" and (just) sleeping with & on each other multiple times, hugs etc etc. This whole introverted guy + outspoken girl story just really worked for me. Also it was really wholesome, like all the moms & even the head teacher were mostly turning a blind eye to the obvious affair. Special circumstances notwithstanding I'm really surprised this passed censorship.

The second half of the drama, the university years was not nearly as good. The leads went through the motions and while it was mostly still very enjoyable, but it was a bit annoying how slowly they progressed, despite starting cohabitation relatively early on. The leads have grown on me & I enjoyed watching them, but their everyday life did certainly not have enough substance for 28 episodes.

This is a drama where the leads (effectively) have gotten together in episode 3? and stayed together till the last episode without a single major misunderstanding, or love triangles. So of course the writers felt they have to find some tension to make the drama more interesting and with this I arrived at the worst thing about the drama, which is the relationship of the second leads following high school graduation. This entire theme of the guy not knowing how the girl feels & how he himself feels, while seemingly not having working male hormones either was extremely frustrating to get through. That's not even all, when he had finally figured out what's going on, the girl suddenly changed her mind, because ehm why not?

I just finished binging the drama, but I cannot recall any of the songs, the most mediocre OST of 2020 award goes to.. !?

If I had to recommend Meeting You to a friend, I would probably just say to watch the first 22~ episodes & then just skip to the finale. Coffee making competitions & plagiarism accusations are probably not worth the time, especially considering how there was much less sweetness in the OTP relationship after they started to officially date.

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For the longest time I’ve been looking forward to this show to finally finish airing. Having looked up some spoilers in the comment section, things seemed more than great, yay happy ending, yay no breakup, yay wholesomeness. As such I could not help myself and hopped on the hype train and so I ended up having too many expectations leading to some disappointment. Don’t get me wrong HomeCha is a great kdrama, but it’s not nearly as great as I hoped it would be.

About the Kim Seon Ho - Shin Mina OTP pairing, I can only say that I have seen onscreen couples with better chemistry before, but it was fine. The rest of the cast did a phenomenal job. I liked every single supporting actor with one exception and that exception is only due to my personal bias, so I won’t elaborate on that. Even the child actors were surprisingly good.

The story is typical romcom story, without the downright magical setting I don’t think I would have praised it, but It worked very well for the most part.
I have two major problems with the story. Firstly the love triangle felt very artificial. Yes it’s great how and how fast they wrapped it up, it’s also great how civilized the characters were about it and even the bromance aspect of it was decent. I felt the only point of the triangle is that Soompi could write an exciting article about how we should look forward to it. Oh well, I realize I’m probably being unfair with this statement. So feel free to ignore this point, overall this triangle execution is still above average. The bigger issue is episode 15, or more specifically the reveal of the main mystery, why is Hong Doo Shik living the life that he is living, why did he retire to his hometown. Frankly the whole explanation made me angry. It’s beyond nonsensical. Not only did he turn the other cheek again and again whenever someone blamed him, but he also blamed himself for such a stupid noble reason. I guess I could say that I had my concerns about his characterization before, but when the final reveal came I could only roll my eyes in frustration. I think the writer herself had no idea what tragic backstory she is going to go with up until that point, so she kept procrastinating as long as she could and in episode 15 she handled it like a technician, by then knowing that the show was already an unbreakable success. I wish I had known in advance, I would have just fastforward buttoned all those flashbacks, oh well.

The product placements were often pretty immersion breaking. The writing interns were not on top of their game, at least when it comes to the smart incorporation of product placements. PP should be out of the way, not directly influencing a main characters personality and that’s exactly what happened here. The whole explanation about Hye Jin liking brandname stuff, designer bags, designer shoes is just too much. There is also that scene, when she bought a 5 million Won necklace, despite being in the red. (and later on said necklace reappeared again in a comparably stupid way) So yes the drama is so full of product placement related content, that at times I felt I should be paid for watching it, not the other way around.

The most comparable kdrama that I’ve seen is When the Weather is Fine. The story is pretty similar overall, but I think that drama is much better up until the production team COMPLETELY ruined it somewhere near the end. Homecha despite not being quite as good in the early episodes at least provided us with a nicely wrapped up happy ending & I can grumble about ep15 all I want, but that’s not nearly enough to ruin the drama for me, so with that in mind I’ll go with the rating of 8,5.

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I have tried a few Taiwanese dramas before, but I dropped them all. I found them to be very lakorn like, so I could not force myself to get past episode 1-2. Had I been watching this drama alone by myself I don't think I could have gotten past the first episode either.(I had a companion mesmerized by beauty, who wanted to give episode 2 a go) I could only describe the first episode as absolute trash. Fortunately from the moment we've entered the "overbearing ceo world" things immediately turned for the better. From episode 2 up to episode 14 most of the time is spent in that silly fantasy world and due to the book world's rules all the silliness that happens there kind of makes sense & I found things that would normally bother me in a regular drama very entertaining here. The drama is comedy gold really, the satirization of all the tropes has never been this much fun . Once we return to the real world things started to get a bit draggy for a while, but still it's been much much better than the real world snippets (all fast forwardable) we've had until that point. Although the result ended up being pretty similar to watching an amnesia plot in a normal drama. The show, or at least the romance is nicely wrapped up.

As I've said before the real world parts were pretty bad up until the ehm confluence of worlds. I could only describe it as Chaebol makjang at its worst. The family members & the uncle's motivations and actions made 0 sense and the whole thing got resolved in a boring unsuspenseful way. To sum it up all the time spent on these things had been wasted. This is the main reason why I'm only rating it at 8/10. Objectively I'm still being extremely generous here..

The love rectangle has been managed okay. Typically I'm an avid triangle hater, but the setting made these bearable.

I loved the OST. Though there were perhaps too many scenes without musical accompaniment.

I think the casting is pretty good, I liked almost all the acting performances, though I'm not entirely certain about the ML, I found his facial expressions a bit lacking.

I hugely prefer this one to W. W's plot is a jumbled mess, here we might still have an abundance of plot holes, but somehow the writer still managed to finish up the drama coherently. The end result is good enough & I'm not all that interested in the how, the inner workings of the magic is not over explained too much and that is how it should be. (over explaining magic after the original trilogy is what ruined Star Wars for me)

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I enjoyed the first 23-24 episodes a lot. Tong Yao's journey as a professional esport player & her romantic endeavors were fun to watch. Up until this point the show is a solid 9/10 for me. Yeah sure, the leads have room for improvement in terms of acting skill, but perhaps the criticisms are a little overblown. Even the gaming scenes were reasonably fun to watch, although I cannot be considered the biggest MOBA fan.

Unfortunately the episodes that came after were just bad. This was supposed to be an esport-romance drama, not a drama about celebrity scandals, but the last episodes were very heavily stilted in that direction. Once the leads have gotten together & everyone learned of their relationship their romance pretty much died in the sense that the leads had very few fluffy scenes together & all the time was spent with entertainment industry makjang stuff & gaming and even the gaming scenes were much less exciting than before. The last 6 episodes offered barely anything I would have liked to watch, this is how the low-ish rating has come about.
Also the Korean dub, good god what's the deal with the Chinese dubbing over all foreign languages, while also making sure that the voice over has a super thick Chinese accent? Koreans do this with English too, but it's super annoying nonetheless.

Luckily there are no unnecessary breakups, misunderstandings and the triangle is quite weak. So it's still a great drama, if you start to rely heavily on the fastforward button from episode 25 onward..

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Just watch the first 13-14 episodes and then drop it!

Based on the 8.4 MDL rating, I think this drama is extremely overrated. I mean sure the first 15 episodes were pretty good, a solid 8/10. As a procedural crime drama it was not the best thing I have ever seen, but up to ep15 it was at least decent. "Case of the week" is a nice well proven format and it was nice to see the crew working on different cases, they got the Sherlock-Watson thing down to a T.
The cdrama romance was fine too up to that point, totally my cup of tea. The triangle was handled well too, it was not too bothersome. There were all kinds of fun, cute and fluffy things. Up to that turning point the balance of romance and crime was about 50-50, they maintained a nice balance there..

Following episode 14-15 the total amount of romance that happens in the drama amounts to about 15 minutes. There is no breakup or anything like that, the OTP just doesn't interact with one another. I could swallow that with some difficulty, I am capable of enjoying pure crime dramas, I loved The Mentalist for example. Unfortunately the crime related story in the last 10 episodes is just completely silly. I'm sensing that the (script?)writer was trying to go for some kind of Death Note thing. First battle with L & then battle with L2 and lo and behold L2 is.. However the execution is terrible, these people are supposed to be highly intelligent waging a sophisticated battle of wits, instead the clue solving feels really arbitrary. Let's not even talk about the weird stereotypical foreign actors and their monotone super strange dubbed voice. (or how Chinese people talk to Americans in this show)

I gotta give it to the production crew though it's rare to see something like this on Chinese TV. I'm extremely surprised the censors let this go on air like this. People get shot, cut and just there is quite a bit of aggression overall. I thought cdramas like this one cannot be made.

If you have not seen this yet, my recommendation is to just watch the first 13-14 episodes (up until they get together) and then maybe watch the last 8-10 minutes of the final episode and after that if you are still not satisfied just read the webnovel, it has a much nicer ending, with many nice things that were omitted from the drama.

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Corona boredom made me watch this, but I had very little hope for this drama. The "love square tag", the political setting and the age of the drama were all red flags and I was fully prepared to drop it after a few episodes. The biggest surprise for me is that the political setting actually works. The production team did a good job delivering a pretty entertaining political satire, without going deep into schemes & the really dirty stuff. I cannot think of another kdrama of the top of my head where they succeeded at this.

The leads had great chemistry & their shenanigans were really entertaining to watch, also their romantic plot was awesome up until episode 15. So yes, this drama really delivers in the fluffy romcom department, it is actually funny too.

I really did not like the second leads, even if they had no romantic success their actions consistently annoyed me up until the last episode. The FL and second ML's backstory is especially bad, specifically it's the reason(s) why they couldn't be together, god I have no words for how stupid that was.
Ultimately the biggest problem with the drama is that it follows the standard kdrama formula with a year long forced separation preceding the 30 minutes long happy ending. (well could be 2 years, but I think the subtitles are potentially wrong here) The ehm "reason" behind said separation is a terrible cliche that I've seen before, but good god, it annoys me every time.

I liked the ending, but it felt a bit rushed to me.

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Overall All About My Romance is a very enjoyable romcom with flaws, but still it's hugely better than most of its contemporaries. 8/10

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