Belinda
This is a feel-good sports story with surprisingly good CGI for a Chinese drama, but the writing and acting let it down a bit.
As the main character, the majority of the show rests on Yang Yang's acting chops, and as attractive as he is, I just don't find him to have the emotional range and subtleties of expression to carry an entire drama. I simply didn't feel any of the emotion that he was supposed to convey in his scenes, other than thinking, "he's very pretty." (In Love O2O, his character is similarly meant to be this perfect male "god," but the main character in that drama is the female lead and the story is set from her perspective, so it's more understandable that he was a somewhat blank and inscrutable Prince Charming.)
Some of the other performances were ok, some were not great. I loved some of the minor characters (Huang Shaotian and the other team captains) - they had interesting characters/personalities that were more fun to watch and added more life to their scenes. I found the antagonists' acting a bit over-the-top, almost straight-up "mwahahaha" which seems out of place in a modern drama that is meant to be more grounded.
Story-wise, it was a fairly standard sports "group of misfits come together to become a winning team" kind of story, which I love, so all the story beats are familiar, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if you like these tropes. However, storytelling-wise, the tropes are all a bit too generic to be really compelling and each member of the main team has a very predictable character arc and backstory. It kind of drags in places with filler episodes as well, so I fast forwarded through most of the "emotional" and "character" scenes in favor of the team and game/competition scenes, which were more fun to watch. While I had to suspend my disbelief on some of the plot points and how the game worked, the CGI was actually pretty good and I always enjoyed seeing the gameplay and everyone working together.
I quite like the songs in this drama, but it does use the same 2 songs for every "exciting" and "sad" scene, which gets a bit noticeable after a while. To be fair, though, lots of dramas have this same problem.
I'll probably still check out the second season when it comes out if only for the gameplay scenes.
As the main character, the majority of the show rests on Yang Yang's acting chops, and as attractive as he is, I just don't find him to have the emotional range and subtleties of expression to carry an entire drama. I simply didn't feel any of the emotion that he was supposed to convey in his scenes, other than thinking, "he's very pretty." (In Love O2O, his character is similarly meant to be this perfect male "god," but the main character in that drama is the female lead and the story is set from her perspective, so it's more understandable that he was a somewhat blank and inscrutable Prince Charming.)
Some of the other performances were ok, some were not great. I loved some of the minor characters (Huang Shaotian and the other team captains) - they had interesting characters/personalities that were more fun to watch and added more life to their scenes. I found the antagonists' acting a bit over-the-top, almost straight-up "mwahahaha" which seems out of place in a modern drama that is meant to be more grounded.
Story-wise, it was a fairly standard sports "group of misfits come together to become a winning team" kind of story, which I love, so all the story beats are familiar, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if you like these tropes. However, storytelling-wise, the tropes are all a bit too generic to be really compelling and each member of the main team has a very predictable character arc and backstory. It kind of drags in places with filler episodes as well, so I fast forwarded through most of the "emotional" and "character" scenes in favor of the team and game/competition scenes, which were more fun to watch. While I had to suspend my disbelief on some of the plot points and how the game worked, the CGI was actually pretty good and I always enjoyed seeing the gameplay and everyone working together.
I quite like the songs in this drama, but it does use the same 2 songs for every "exciting" and "sad" scene, which gets a bit noticeable after a while. To be fair, though, lots of dramas have this same problem.
I'll probably still check out the second season when it comes out if only for the gameplay scenes.
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