Skibbies

there are actually fair few dramas that's not romance focused, more than bl dramas for sure. friendship ones/school ones are more likely to be translated, historical it's kind of rough since it's either serious politics or romcom, even more friendship-ish dramas like Young Blood have het romance in it (but people just ship the whole cast however they want anyways), so it's rough if you want ABSOLUTELY no het.

As someone that doesn't care for romance most of the time, I don't find it super hard to find cdramas to watch, but I also don't need subs so I think that helps quite a bit. The thing is, ensemble dramas are actually pretty hard to write, and ip adaptations are all the rage, ensemble historical ip tends to be those really really long novels and they often don't adapt well (see fight break sphere and martial universe) They do better as donghua and you still need a really good production team for it (like douluo continent's donghua).

I think the most well received one recently was Love in Between from last year? It had too much angsty romance somewhere in the middle for me though. then it's Legend of Condor Heroes 2017. Last year also had new Handsome Siblings that apparently stuck fairly close to the novel, which is a first for Gu Long LOL.

Not quite classic wuxia but still fit in the general vicinity somewhat (so more background setting), Bloody Romance and Ancient detective? and then it's like 2011's https://mydramalist.com/2747-the-vigilantes-in-masks which is more wuxia than the two i mentioned lol. The rest I know/have on my to watch are earlier than that and probably don't have subs.

it's 3 ep on friday (it's just watching sat, sun and mon ep in advance) and 5 ep next tuesday (1 regular update + 4 on demand), regular vip/english subs will end on 27th, next saturday.

LOL does Beijingers know that other people find the Beijing accent out of place for characters that come from a completely different place? Jackson Yee's diction and other things could use more work (and I heard he did improve in the movies he filmed later) but lol picking on his accent. A lot of people don't want to watch dub dramas thank you! cos they keep using the same people and sometimes the voice actors don't always fit super well (also the voice actors are paid measley amount and they are better off voicing donghua.....)

Young Blood for fun group adventure drama with lot of plot twists! Hikaru no Go for fantastic friendship drama and coming to love an old sport. Cross Fire for great camaraderie with dash of scifi and mystyer. Die Now for awesome concept. We Are All Alone for ace female lead and getting to know c-ent. Romance of Tiger and Rose for fun historical romcom. They should all be reasonably light watch since i don't know how well you do with thrillers and serious political dramas lol.

As a fan of all three, MHH is a comedy first and foremost, the romance and schemes are secondary. RoTaR is a romcom heavy on the romance, the entire plot serves the romance, the comedy just makes it easier to watch, and little substance it does touch on merely scratch the surface. JoL's comedy is mostly a facade to draw in the audience, the political bits are its core.

MHH and RoTaR's more equal relationship are result of recent societal trend, cnetizens are much much more likely to slam something for gender inequality these days. RoTaR actually feels like a combination of bunch of tropes and ideas from jjwxc webnovels, and MHH is a string of jokes built one after another.

MHH feels similar to JoL because it's made by the same production company, with many of the same cast, with intention to ride on JoL's success (and it worked pretty well). MHH's source novel is vastly different in tone and themes from my understanding and its IP level was never JoL's level.

NiF is pretty different in tone, but yeah OP protagonist is similar I guess, that goes for most male protag webnovels though.

lol but WoH finish 2 weeks (both on-demand and vip) before Immortality starts. I thought it'd be quicker since tencent have a slew of them but guess they couldn't get it through any faster.

I'm aware all three big platforms lost massive amount of money, only mangotv made a profit, but that;s because mangotv is a smaller platform and it actually relies on its variety shows and close relationship with hunan tv (so its dramas could easily air on hunan tv if they have slots) for profit. I think the big platforms lost out because they were expanding earlier to grab all the potential customers, a lot of internet giants in China tend to use free whatever to attract customers (thus all the gacha games...).

Individual dramas generally make money since platforms and tv stations pay quite a big for them, but tv stations are refraining to buy big budget stuff since tv isn't as popular and they just aren't doing well. The platform lose out because not only do they spend lot of money for exclusive rights (exclusive gets them subscribers, even though for dramas non exclusive dramas like Rattan is better than just airing on youku. exclusive also mean you get banners + better promotion), and also produce a lot of in-house dramas and invest in various dramas they have close relationship with.

The platforms are now actively training people to get used to their price discrimination and it's working pretty darn well. I really wish they would price discriminate according to quality of video and behind the scenes stuff, rather than how many episodes you unlock because it kind of tank drama discussion and popularity.

As for streamers, that's a whole different story, and I'm super unfamiliar with it so it's hard to really talk about it tbh, the censor do tend to crack down on them, but they tend to be real quick on changing and toeing the line. They are also far far far lower in investment compared to dramas and movies.

I'm mostly hoping they stop coming up with new and weird rules that no one is really clear on and everyone self censor, I think dramas in general stop going after the big and popular actors + stop going for super long episodes with fillers so they can sell more, so it's positive change for now. cnetizens complain all the time that there aren't as many good cdramas to watch and i'm always confused since i watched massive amount of them in last few years.

oh right right! you did mention your job before.

It took me half a minute to realise new classics is xinli LOL. Yeah I know about yuewen and xinli because of JoL. They should have made a profit in the second half of last year, since they sold bunch of their dramas to cctv near the end of the year (the new deer and cauldron, my best friend's story, douluo continent, upcoming zhu yilong drama), I know cctv dramas doesn't pay much but neither do the provincial tv stations these days. Anyways, yuewen and xinli had a deal about that writeoff, there's target for its profit for the last 3 years (500mil, 700mil, 900mil i think) and it failed them, rumour has it they extended the target for 3 more years but I didn't see numbers.

short form videos and just social media in general definitely lowered everyone's attention span, i don't think the trend of 60 ep dramas in last couple of years helped either. I'm glad that the new dramas are mostly around 40 ep or less now, and the drama industry isn't so fanatic. It was really chaotic when everyone swarm in to invest, but had little idea in what kind of stories they were investing around 2016/2017.

I think the platforms adapted relatively fast to be honest, consider that both wetv and iqiyi are product of 2010s (youku is bit earlier), vip system started in 2015?, and on-demand episodes started in 2019, people that actively watch dramas regularly have gotten used to paying for vip at least. Non-vip are still majority, and I know that in last year, catching dramas on douyin or weibo watching is popular, but a lot of these people weren't the type to pay for vip to begin with, the platform lost out mostly on non vip members ad revenue.

I actually think tencent started to cash out on untamed and the king's avatar (yang yang is massively popular oversea due to love o2o). I specifically remember TKA having atrocious machine subs on both wetv and netflix because I think they hastily dumped it there, the series was still ongoing domestically. (I can't believe netflix just used wetv's shitty subs, did nobody look at the subs...? they fixed it 2 or 3 weeks later i think LOL) iqiyi is fairly quick on the uptake so I think they followed soon after.

A couple years back, I think 2018, so a year before wetv was a thing (to my knowledge anyways), I was explaining to someone on MDL why subs are slow and there's little incentive for them to cater to international audience. I guess they learnt rather quickly.

Youku has a rep on cnet for being slow and only seem to be good at being paparazzi, there's even a rumour/joke curse that they make everything entertainment related that they touch wilt. They have a few excellent dramas every year but they often fade to oblivion because their promotion tactics aren't that great, and they are really bad at following up with similar content. I think they want to go big this year, they seemed to have gotten in some sort of arrangement with hunan tv so they got most of their dramas, but tv dramas aren't that great at pulling audience as they used to be. *sigh* Youku membership often come with taobao membership, and people just use it to watch old hk dramas, but not everyone subscribe for old dramas yknow.

Great idea about emailing their investment relations team! It's nice to know what would get to actual decisions makers. Also woooo again at connections :P

Thanks for the rec! I'm mostly hesitant towards republican dramas since they tend to be depressing due to time period, and I literally just finished an astoundingly good one, last year's winter begonia. I'll have a look when I'm less swamped with all the dramas I started hahaha.

idk if they read their weibo PM (since I assume they get a lot of them) but I PMed them! I also told them they could merchandise and consider releasing dvd, and mentioned they should tell youku to either release international platform or partner with youtube, hope it works!

it'll depend on the production company basically, keep your fingers crossed i guess.

China doesn't really do dvds or blurays anymore, especially since you need a dvd/bluray player to play it, it's more streaming these days. Movies are in theatre for about a month, then they hit the streaming platform a month after that. iirc, I know some people wait for the series to hit Japan, and THEY release dvd box set, and some dedicated fans might buy those.

edit: I looked it up on taobao, and I do see dvd for some popular dramas but idk if they are just ripped videos or legit authorised from production companies. it's really hard to tell LOL.

more edit: some dramas have merchandise and stuff, i think you could support them that way? Legend of Fei had group orders for them on twitter iirc (for int fans who are unfamiliar with taobao). I'll wait and see when youku realise they could just release merchandises to cash out.

i think iqiyi's vvip thing is new, on demand episodes started with...JoL for iqiyi and vvip started sometime last year (looks like late May) where you can watch the on demand episodes too, I assume international iqiyi followed after, so it's like half a year old? Youtube premium could definitely work for youku, partnership with youtube shouldn't be that difficult should it?!

4 days/week is definitely much better for retaining audience. Both iqiyi and wetv have been fiddling with update schedule in feburary to try and retain the audience, and 4 days is a much better viewing experience compared to 3 days.

It's incomplete, 10 years and ongoing. (dude updates slow lmao. the other writers complete 5mil char novel in about 2 or 3 years usually)

youku is hilariously slow as a platform, I suggest people keep tweeting at them or dming them at twitter to let them know. They are known to change update schedule for vip members domestically, so I think it's very possible to at least get them to go back to 4 days sub episodes if they can't quite keep up with daily updates. I don't have much expectation for them to push for international platform, but I'm happy to see they at least have a twitter presence now!

The idea for the 3 days schedule sort of make sense for chinese audience, it's for you to get used to using a platform, subsequently watch their other shows OR get impatient and pay for vip. But since sub episodes follow the chinese non-vip schedule, you are just stuck waiting for the episodes. (to be fair, i think everyone else does it like this too? iqiyi and wetv, it's only if it gets licensed on viki it might be different) Mhmm maybe they want to milk the drama for all its worth? It's a great way for international audience to get to know youku, and with longer airing time, there's more time for buzz build up.

cdramas have always been consumed by massive amount of female audience, massively popular dramas tend to have to break out of that target audience (joy of life have a lot of male audience), OR you capture most of it (yanxi palace). you are correct that BL dramas are sought after due to its popularity with female audience, but it's actually a subset of them. A subset that's rather fanatical and willing to spend a lot of money on merchandising and events closely tied to BL series they love. Some of them then turn into fans of actors through series of semi guided fanwars and other fandom bs that's too long to get into.

As for how WoH got pass NRTA, it's basically what you said, but I want to add that previous BL dramas all got passed it, but were subsequently reported by competitors (or really easily offended homophobes). It's more unlikely for WoH simply because the stack of BL dramas waiting to be released, they all have investments from the online platforms (tencent, iqiyi, youku and mangotv). If they report WoH, their own dramas will suffer.

Side note on how flimsy NRTA can be, last year's popular thriller Bad Kids managed to get pass NRTA with its rather dark story. Likely due to its producer being a very prominent one that likely have some connections. Subsequently the rest of the thrillers from the same slot had to go through another round of checks which was real rough. It's unclear if the series was reported or if the infamous meme "taking you to climb mountains" (euphemism for murder) alarmed them, afraid that someone might do copycat murder.

Chinese government kind of overworry itself sometimes, but its citizens also blame the government for stuff you wouldn't in US. I mean transmigration/time travel drama caused someone to copycat suicide, it's probably "oh damn that sucks :(" whereas China is "ban transmigration dramas". Then there's also those really bored parents that report a donghua/anime for "the girls have orange hair! that's unrealistic!" so they had to change it, like maybe you could explain to your kid that stuff in tv aren't real? There's no age restriction system for media in China, so stuff are often done in the name of "protect the kids". When kids in 90s and 00s watched much more scandalous dramas with little issues.

it's a harem in the novel and it's far more serious in tone, the novel is very different from the drama.

it's all to cash out actually, it tends to lower popularity of dramas because people watch it at different pace and pirated videos are everywhere. Under the announcement of the new update schedule, the fans are all screaming at them, saying merchandising would be much much better way to cash out, which is totally true. Youku is much more likely to succumb to yelling (per experience with Rebel Princess and other dramas), but there's only two weeks for it to change, and it's not like it can just go i'm not doing on demand anymore! lol

As for the original concern, I wouldn't worry too much about this getting taken down, all three big platforms have upcoming bl dramas so them reporting this would just cause their investment go down the drain.