This drama started with the FL saying she was in a shameful relationship with the ML for so long and still she…
Exactly! I haven't read the novel so I've been waiting to see the toxic relationship she described, and I'm confused because we're past the halfway point and they haven't even had the breakup yet. I saw some comments describing this as a second chance romance, but I don't think that's accurate. It looks like it'll be a standard "they love each other but miscommunication makes them separate and get back together in the third act".
I'm really curious to see where the writers take the story because so far I feel a bit misled by the premise.
At least Popular Serizawa tried something different by making Serizawa a golden retriever. This is just straight up copying School Trip, and I'm sorry but they're not as cute as Hioki and Watarai to me ...
Our Dazzling Days is one of my highest rated 2026 dramas, and I think it's a shame that it's not as popular internationally. It was such a beautiful story.
How is this similar to School trip except for the popular group of friends ?
Everything the other commenter already said. Plus in episode 1, he apologizes and says he'll do whatever to make it up to Serizawa, which is exactly what Hioki tells Watarai in School Trip episode 1 or 2. The similarities are striking
🤣🤣🤣🤣 oh lord. ngl 5 minutes I was very frustrated but I actually really like you and it was fun talking to you. I hope I see you again ... but next time I'll be the one putting you in the hot seat looool making you explain every little thing
I guess the difference is that I don't feel the need for you to understand me, and having to explain every single thought in the detail that you want feels unfriendly.
I get your need to understand everything and I don't think you're being malicious. But at some point it feels like an interrogation and it's like, why do you care so much about what I think about this show? Just leave me to dislike this military arc in peace, lol.
This is really funny because you're very nitpicky, and you don't seem to realize it.
First I had to define what an idol drama is. Then I had to define the word generic. Then I had to define what a tropey character looks like, with detailed examples. All of those things take time!!! So now it's an hour later and your response is "well, it looks like you just have a couple of points. It's a shame you're making such a broad generalization when you just have a couple points"
No, friend. I have more to say!!! LOL. But talking to you is challenging because of how you pick apart every single comment. If I had shared more, you'd have just asked me to define and overexplain more and more and more. That's exhausting, lol. It makes me share less, not because I don't want to share, but because I only have so much energy.
Oh, no. There are other reasons for why I don't like the show. I mentioned Lord Yu in other comments to someone else that perhaps you haven't seen. I haven't even started talking about the pacing, which was the first sign to me that the show was starting to go downhill compared to the first arc.
But to be honest, this conversation isn't fun for me anymore. I don't hate this show enough to spend hours talking about why I don't like it - I'd rather be spending this time in a different comment section gushing about something I love. Catch you around another time, hopefully then we'll spend the same amount talking about something in a positive light.
I truly feel you're committed to misunderstanding me and/or trying to find holes to poke into my argument, which I expressly asked for this to not become a debate about who's right or wrong. We don't have to agree on whether the writing is good. You can love it and I can be disappointed and we can both enjoy ourselves.
But anyway, to answer your question: I'm criticizing the drama from going from realistic, human antagonists to rivals who are much more tropey. I asssociate tropey characters with idol dramas, which is why my original comment says that I had high hopes (when we were dealing with human, complex characters) and I'm now disappointed by what the show has become.
A simple example is Lu Dahiu (Dahu? idk) who plays the stereotypical jealous boss. He clearly suffers from an inferiority complex (this is the trope), but we don't get to really see those seeds being sown in the story. We don't see his brother-in-law looking down on him or making him feel inadequate. We see him struggle with a bow for a few seconds, and that simple scene is supposed to set up his whole arc of extreme jealousy. Same thing goes for his pursuit of Tingyun: he sees her for all of 5 seconds, makes one comment about "why does Zhao Ling get such a pretty woman?" and then he's now suddenly obsessed with getting her and it becomes his sole motivation.
People don't just act like that out of nowhere: there's usually a seed that's been planted that creates jealousy at that level. Here the story fails to plant the seeds but knows that we'll understand anyway, because we're familiar with the tropes.
The same goes for the Concubine. Her obsession with humbling Tingyun isn't really set up. Yes, she's petty and vindictive and jealous. But the story relies on the trope of the petty female rival instead of establishing her as her own person with in-world motivations. Why does she care so much about Tingyun? Why is she willing to risk her social standing to mess with her? Good writing makes characters feel real, to the point that you understand why they do what they do even if you hate it. This doesn't pass the bar for me.
A good example of a small character who's NOT tropey is Fan Ke. Even if her screentime was limited, we got to see that she felt overlooked by society and even looked down on by her own best friend (with the whole magnolia pot situation). She had a tiny storyline but her motivations were well-established in the plot and you could understand why she was acting the way she did. She felt real in a way that the Concubine just feels like a TV character.
This is just my feeling. Someone else may very well feel that Fan Ke was badly written, same way someone else may be satisfied with Commander Lu's characterization. I'm not trying to convince ANYONE that this writing is bad; all I've been doing with you for the past hour is explaining why me personally, Ter22331, is disappointed in what the show has become. I fear no answer I give you will ever be adequate because you don't feel that it should be disappointing, and you're not willing to concede that other people may have different interpretations that are just as valid as yours. :)
I didn't say the tropey characters are unimportant. I'm more so criticizing that they're written in such a tropey way. I'm also not criticizing the existence of the military arc - I'm criticizing that it felt so unrealistic compared to the earlier half of the show.
All the elements should be in the story; they should just be executed better in my opinion.
Ep 17, 18 were disappointing for me too, I'm anxious now how they'll handle the overall 2nd half (the previews…
I'm sorry, did you mean to respond to me? Because my complaint is that Lord Yu needed *more* screentime for his arc to be established. And that Ganlin needs to be a *bigger threat* with *more serious rivals* who won't just be defeated in the blink of an eye.
I'm not sure you fully comprehended my comments so far 🤣
Generic means bland, average, typical. Superior means better than the rest.
I'm using the word generic in a way that's different from what you originally interpreted. That's all. Hopefully now we're on the same page.
About the writing, I've addressed this in another comment elsewhere, please search and read. Just to add on: The military town arc was a disappointment after the carefully crafted stakes built up by the earlier portion. Good writing to me doesn't mean introducing a problem, solving it 10 minutes later, and then introducing a new problem that'll be solved just as fast. That kind of writing lessens the emotional stakes, doesn't really allow the characters to experience tension or angst, creates a sort of wish fulfillment fantasy land where nothing real enough to be a serious threat, and makes the antagonists into caricatures who just raise problems here and there to keep the plot moving. It's not bad by any means and here it's executed in very entertaining ways - but it is the kind of writing I've come to expect from average (ie generic) idol dramas where threats are waved away in the flick of a hand. Compare this to the earlier arcs with the Old Madam and Madam Yu, where the stakes were real and you felt the characters were playing a complex game of chess (sometimes even for their lives), and that seriousness and realism is what I expected the whole show to feel like.
And just to be clear: I have no desire to get into debates - this is just providing context for why I'm disappointed in the 2nd arc compared to the 1st. Feel free to disagree, but I hope this doesn't turn into a 'you're wrong and I'm right' thing cause that's so boring.
I'm really curious to see where the writers take the story because so far I feel a bit misled by the premise.
I get your need to understand everything and I don't think you're being malicious. But at some point it feels like an interrogation and it's like, why do you care so much about what I think about this show? Just leave me to dislike this military arc in peace, lol.
First I had to define what an idol drama is. Then I had to define the word generic. Then I had to define what a tropey character looks like, with detailed examples. All of those things take time!!! So now it's an hour later and your response is "well, it looks like you just have a couple of points. It's a shame you're making such a broad generalization when you just have a couple points"
No, friend. I have more to say!!! LOL. But talking to you is challenging because of how you pick apart every single comment. If I had shared more, you'd have just asked me to define and overexplain more and more and more. That's exhausting, lol. It makes me share less, not because I don't want to share, but because I only have so much energy.
But to be honest, this conversation isn't fun for me anymore. I don't hate this show enough to spend hours talking about why I don't like it - I'd rather be spending this time in a different comment section gushing about something I love. Catch you around another time, hopefully then we'll spend the same amount talking about something in a positive light.
But anyway, to answer your question: I'm criticizing the drama from going from realistic, human antagonists to rivals who are much more tropey. I asssociate tropey characters with idol dramas, which is why my original comment says that I had high hopes (when we were dealing with human, complex characters) and I'm now disappointed by what the show has become.
A simple example is Lu Dahiu (Dahu? idk) who plays the stereotypical jealous boss. He clearly suffers from an inferiority complex (this is the trope), but we don't get to really see those seeds being sown in the story. We don't see his brother-in-law looking down on him or making him feel inadequate. We see him struggle with a bow for a few seconds, and that simple scene is supposed to set up his whole arc of extreme jealousy. Same thing goes for his pursuit of Tingyun: he sees her for all of 5 seconds, makes one comment about "why does Zhao Ling get such a pretty woman?" and then he's now suddenly obsessed with getting her and it becomes his sole motivation.
People don't just act like that out of nowhere: there's usually a seed that's been planted that creates jealousy at that level. Here the story fails to plant the seeds but knows that we'll understand anyway, because we're familiar with the tropes.
The same goes for the Concubine. Her obsession with humbling Tingyun isn't really set up. Yes, she's petty and vindictive and jealous. But the story relies on the trope of the petty female rival instead of establishing her as her own person with in-world motivations. Why does she care so much about Tingyun? Why is she willing to risk her social standing to mess with her? Good writing makes characters feel real, to the point that you understand why they do what they do even if you hate it. This doesn't pass the bar for me.
A good example of a small character who's NOT tropey is Fan Ke. Even if her screentime was limited, we got to see that she felt overlooked by society and even looked down on by her own best friend (with the whole magnolia pot situation). She had a tiny storyline but her motivations were well-established in the plot and you could understand why she was acting the way she did. She felt real in a way that the Concubine just feels like a TV character.
This is just my feeling. Someone else may very well feel that Fan Ke was badly written, same way someone else may be satisfied with Commander Lu's characterization. I'm not trying to convince ANYONE that this writing is bad; all I've been doing with you for the past hour is explaining why me personally, Ter22331, is disappointed in what the show has become. I fear no answer I give you will ever be adequate because you don't feel that it should be disappointing, and you're not willing to concede that other people may have different interpretations that are just as valid as yours. :)
All the elements should be in the story; they should just be executed better in my opinion.
I'm not sure you fully comprehended my comments so far 🤣
I'm using the word generic in a way that's different from what you originally interpreted. That's all. Hopefully now we're on the same page.
About the writing, I've addressed this in another comment elsewhere, please search and read. Just to add on: The military town arc was a disappointment after the carefully crafted stakes built up by the earlier portion. Good writing to me doesn't mean introducing a problem, solving it 10 minutes later, and then introducing a new problem that'll be solved just as fast. That kind of writing lessens the emotional stakes, doesn't really allow the characters to experience tension or angst, creates a sort of wish fulfillment fantasy land where nothing real enough to be a serious threat, and makes the antagonists into caricatures who just raise problems here and there to keep the plot moving. It's not bad by any means and here it's executed in very entertaining ways - but it is the kind of writing I've come to expect from average (ie generic) idol dramas where threats are waved away in the flick of a hand. Compare this to the earlier arcs with the Old Madam and Madam Yu, where the stakes were real and you felt the characters were playing a complex game of chess (sometimes even for their lives), and that seriousness and realism is what I expected the whole show to feel like.
And just to be clear: I have no desire to get into debates - this is just providing context for why I'm disappointed in the 2nd arc compared to the 1st. Feel free to disagree, but I hope this doesn't turn into a 'you're wrong and I'm right' thing cause that's so boring.