luckz

While I don't know in how far "Chinese censorship" really killed this, it certainly feels like the poor, poor writing often has to replace some other planned (or even filmed) content that suspiciously went missing.
Chemistry is... let's say on the lower end of the scale here.
The OST is very boring and a lot of the background music is bad or even bothersome.
Besides the FL's sassy and sometimes violent character, I'm not sure what I could even be praising here.

Since someone else complained that the treatment of animals in various scenes was dumb and nonsensical, let me say that the same applies to the game development and computer stuff here. They even have the standard scene where the ML remotely crashes someone's PC "just like that" to make them stop talking that no pre-teen hacker movie can do without.

Unless you are a Lin Yi super fan, want to see Zhou Ye in something MUCH worse than 'Love Me, Love My Voice', or just need to watch every gaming-related show there is no matter what, you can easily find better shows to spend your time on. Maybe in a parallel universe there's an uncensored director's cut of this that doesn't suck...?

Wouldn't describe Hidden Love that way.

... I actually just posted https://mydramalist.com/702917-really-miss-you#comment-16941441 and praised it for not killing me with adverts, but that is because I thought the characters feeding each other milk tea every two minutes was supposed be charming...

✅ leads take center stage and are never rivaled in relevance
✅ no villains, or characters trying to ruin others' happiness
✅ no misunderstandings
✅ no harmful emotions
✅ lots of little details, cast interactions, and tons of scenes/shots include plenty of actors at once
✅ all the 10+ main actors are really natural in their roles, rarely degraded to pure comedic relief, and when someone like Yang Dong Qi appears and intrusively over-acts, it only reinforces how good a job the cast is doing
✅ reasonably few bothersome adverts – they definitely exist, but for me it was within tolerable limits
✅ "comedy noises" are only used very rarely
✅ plenty of music (includes several concerts/performances)
✅ plenty of food
✅ so very much friendship on display
✅ above-par cross-China travel with some really nice landscapes (and again: quite a lot of food)
❌ some viewers might be turned off by the ML being too perfect and the FL sometimes not having more to her personality than "likes to eat & does not gain weight"
❌ after the very strong first third, filler content slowly begins to appear (but does not get overwhelming)
❌ some of the background music is murky, contrasting with the otherwise good to great songs
❌ since the drama is very long, even the nice songs can end up feeling quite repetitive
❌ the second, third, fourth, .. couples are not handled in a very satisfactory manner
❌ some viewers might find this ultra slow

Due to the scene details, food details, performance details, and landscapes I'd perhaps vote for watching this in 4K.

With "anything dramatic like" in it I truly would not have enjoyed this show.

There are tons of kisses.
Secondary couples are unfortunately not resolved until very late.

What do you mean they were only disclosed at the end? You saw little extra snippets at the end, but pretty much everything in there was also expressed throughout the show. The background summaries were nice, but besides the shot that showed SML's other business, I believe the rest was told several times throughout the show.

There is no conflict in this show and nothing has negative consequences.
Technically, twice, someone throws a punch. But again, it does not matter.

It really depends on how you define "dating". Essentially they only have eyes for each other for almost the entire show, and most of the screentime includes or revolves around the leads. While watching, we couldn't even decide who the second, third, fourth (potential) couple would be because all other characters pale in importance so very much.

The (as usual spoiler-heavy) intro also doesn't even show anyone else but the ML and FL.

What is Meco and how can they be worse than Rio?

I still wake up drenched in sweat sometimes, deeply traumatized by the many Rio bottles in some dramas. (Not really, but...)

Because somehow this 'nothing happening' is really well-crafted, with tons of small details, pleasant interactions, etc.
In the middle (where you stopped watching) or after the first third I guess it indeed starts to drag a bit more.

I liked this show specifically because it did not throw poorly written problems into every episode.
Contrasting to another show where nothing really happens and there are no particular obstacles, in something like King The Land they throw fake business obstacles into the male lead's path that he easy clears because he is 1000/10 good at everything. In this show, the 1000/10 at everything ML does not have any 'trouble of the week' to overcome, and thus it isn't annoying how easily he overcomes any trouble.

I can see how your complaints fit the "SFL"'s relationship (giant age difference, and that she is a college student with "nothing interesting about her whatsoever").

For the leads' though, gotta disagree hard.

P.S.: What is wrong with standing right next to a loved one ("way too close") as they cook? I honestly don't get it.

I've rarely seen anyone pull off "I enjoy limitless eating and because I'm this week's Cinderella, I won't ever gain weight" so well. Can't say I found her particularly beautiful/attractive, but she has a lot of chemistry with the ML and 95% of the time she is just convincingly getting along well with the rest of the cast. She does seem as you say 'deficient' in some of the more serious scenes, but there are so few of these in this particular show (which definitely is its core strength)...

Is there a list of things C-viewers complain about?

Pros:

The mockumentary style can be entertaining, usually when blending one clip into another, or when a character responds to what the previous one said in their clip.

The vast majority of the time, the complaints expressed between characters are convincing and the viewer can sympathize.

Most of the runtime and viewer attention is wisely allocated to peeling the main couple's onion rather than trying to explore all characters equally.

The chemistry between the leads is decent. Romance is portrayed more "like in the real world" than being the usual implausible (supposedly) heart-fluttering 'catching her fall' or 'stumbling into each other, lips on lips' stuff with overdone slow-motion. Basically in that regard it is the opposite of JCW's previous drama Backstreet Rookie, which has a lot of slo-mo teasing but virtually zero skinship.



Cons:

The mockumentary style follows no rules, which often breaks immersion. Sometimes character get to hear others live and have a back and forth dialogue, other times they get other's views as phone text, and very often only the confusingly defined audience is given some piece of information.

Characters often exist to do the writer's bidding rather than staying true to themselves. They often do things just to delay the plot and frustrate the audience. Especially the various plot resolutions towards the end gravitate somewhere between undercooked, unconvincing, and unnecessary. Every single couple pairing is resolved poorly. (This isn't just due to insufficient time budget since many things in the middle could easily have been cut. There's a bunch of filler material despite the short length.)
For how much the main couple torments the viewer (maybe 40% of The Red Sleeve?), their resolution in particular was incredibly arbitrary and flat.

While there is a lot of more or less appropriate older commercial music, some of the original music is straight up awful in the way that the viewer actually takes notice when the music doesn't suck.

Do you have an episode / timestamp for that?

It is either attempted second-degree murder (she decides on the spot that she will kill them to prevent them from exposing her) or attempted voluntary manslaughter (she wants to stop them by any means, even if that means risking their live).

However, FL's parents have to die either way at exactly that time because those are the terms of their supernatural contract with the ML. While the behavior of the grandma sets the place (where the car flips over), it does not cause their death. The ML effects their death.

It's much better than the 4.4 IMDb rating would suggest, with both some decent acting and uninhibited film-making creativity (for better or for worse). However, beyond disjointedly adapting a lengthy work into little runtime, it's also filled with content that really didn't need to be there – from the involuntarily comedic to the potentially disturbing.

I personally thought the classical music was quite fitting, whereas any other attempts at incorporating music were a train wreck.

Kim You Jung is fantastic in this, much better than in My Demon.
Everyone and everything else is somewhat between okay and pretty decent.
A bunch of the comedy is far better than the average k-drama. The first four episodes in particular are really good.
Unfortunately, various plot arcs keep going on and on and on without being interesting or ever getting anywhere, and a lot of resolution happens last-minute, or in an unsatisfactory manner, or not at all.
Han Sun Hwa's completely boring character takes up what feels like 6-8 hours of this and adds very little to it.