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Direction and FL great, everything else just OK
This stared off as an addictive, pretty, bingeworthy drama, but by the middle of the story you can feel that the actors just don't have that chemistry with eachother that makes some romances so special. Even so, that's not anything to totally bag a show for, because you can't expect actors to just keep temporarily falling in love with eachother over and over their whole career for the sake of their dramas. Chemistry is something you can't fake, and two people can't be blamed for not clicking with eachother sometimes. These two both made the best of it anyways, and so it was passable sort of.The plotline starts out promising and engages the viewer, even if it is fairly cliche. The FL's character is written very well, in that she does things the viewer would want to do, like if someone tries to slap her she stops them and slaps them back, and she gives people a piece of her mind, she takes her revenge when she feels wronged, etc. But then the auxiliary characters start coming in and taking more screentime as the story unfolds, and they are not great performances. At the same time, the sparseness of the settings, props and clothes start to become more prominent. The director and the stylists did a good job of making every penny of the budget count, but combined with the cheapness of the side-character performances it starts to drag down the show a little bit. This also is something I could look past if the other elements of the drama are there.
But then you take this somemwhat flat chemistry and somewhat flat acting and somewhat flat backdrop, and somewhat tired plot devices, and combine it with a sky-high cringe factor from the last 4 episodes being just a giant sermonizing session about progressive feminism and ccp atheism, punctuated by strange injections of 'humor' that are more disturbing than funny, combined with aughhh these awful awful intimate scenes that the main couple don't have the chemistry to justify -- and they are complete with smacking kissing sound effects placed in post-production dubbing that sound asmr gross, and I had to MAKE myself finish this one. So much cringe packed into such a short amount of screentime, wow.
The good parts about this are the direction, which is pretty good all things considered,. and the FL WHO IS AWESOME!!! I love her so much, and she did such a good job in this drama, she was really fun to watch.
So I'd recc this to progressive feminists, and people who want to follow Fang Jin's career. But although it was somewhat decent, I'd never rewatch this.
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These actors deserved so much better...
Wu Bo Wei is an AWESOME actor, and I hope this drama just goes down as his 'first lead ML role' in what I truly wish is a great future acting career. The FL Wang Zi Fei needs some more acting experience, but she has solid natural talent and she's so cute and sexy.I see some comments knocking their acting, but I say it's not their acting that sucks, it's everything else about this drama that sucks. Don't believe me, watch it with the sound off and pretend the production value and styling were given more care, and their dialogue was intelligent and interesting. And it's not just the ML/FL that have natural onscreen ability, the 2FL was very very decent. The 2ML needs more confidence and experience, but when it comes to their "hot" scenes, he can turn it ON like the flip of a switch and it's so sexy.
The suckage that was this drama came from literally everywhere else *except* the main actors. The dubbing and sound were atrocious. The production value was bargain basement low. The stylist really phoned it in. The script.... I have to say the basic storyline was good. It had a lot of promise, and a lot of satisfying elements to it. But the way that storyline was fleshed out was really really bad.... you have a super generic snoozer boilerplate "business plot" with deals, shares, bidders, projects, none of which are the least bit interesting.... and you have a love story that tries to convey depth, but with inane and uninspired dialogue that a middle schooler would write. The story outline is built all wrong.... the sexy love scenes between the characters are HOT, and they are overwith by the halfway mark. The rest of the drama is taken up by shares, board of directors hijinks, liver cancer hospital visits, healing emotional rifts between characters. It drags and there's no reward at the end at all.
If you're watching for the HOT factor, you only need to watch the first half and then you can just ditch. If you're watching to catch Wu Bo Wei's first big role, he's good here but hasn't really come into his own as an actor. He's far better in Close To You, where the production is a step up, the role is a more complex one, and he has built more confidence as an actor. And if you're actually watching for the story itself, then godspeed because justwow on that whole script thing.
A semi-intersting watch for someone interested in following the careers of ML/FL/2ML/2FL. The first-half spicy scenes were really electric but WAY too short, and too few. The overall drama itself was straight dumpster fuel. I really wholeheartedly wish the best for these actors' careers... they have a lot of promise.
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"Feelgood" romance with half-baked script, but decent chemistry and acting.
Theres not much substance to this mini-episode series. It seems promising at first: FL rents ML as a stand-in boyfriend, and ML warns FL not to fall in love with him. We are kept wondering about what mystery the ML holds that makes him want to keep her at arm's length 'for her own good'.But then instead of getting more interesting or deep, the story veers off course and becomes trivial and loses its original focus, turning into something you might find as the plot to an episode of Saved By The Bell.
The characters are not well developed, but the actors play them well considering they dont have much to work with. The highlight of the show is the absolutely beautiful FL, who I hope has a promising future in c-dramas... and a 2FL that is very charismatic and pretty in her own right as well.
There is decent chemistry among the cast members, and the styling and wardrobe is good enough for me... its just the story and screenwriting that seems so slapdash.
It wasnt horrible... but once youre done watching, it does feel like a waste of time. I would recc this as something to watch, say, in a hospital waiting room or on a train/bus trip where maybe you just want something topical to fend off boredom, and not get too deep into a show.
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Good premise, bad final product.
An underwear designer and a breast doctor with a secret crush are about to become step-siblings. That concept could have been taken in so many different creative directions. But nothing about this drama was spicy, funny, angsty, nothing. Its just a Hallmark-tier snoozefest.FLs acting was terrible, and ML wasnt much better. Supporting cast also riddled with half-assed performances. Aesthetic was uninspired with a stiff dose of chic-tragique (why did FL have to spend so much screentime in a half-tucked mustard yellow tee with dumpy black houseshorts and weekend lazy hair?)
The original missed-connection between ML and FL isnt properly explained. The kisses between them are good, but there is a distinct lack of chemistry between the leads, and FL is way too good at acting like a prude and a shrew, its a big moodwrecker.
The deepest flaw this drama has is a complete and total lack of creativity. A waste of time. I would only recc it for people suffering from grief or panic attacks who just need something "on" to help calm them down, as it is claustrophobically fluffy.
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If you like Luo Zheng, worth a watch. If you don't know or care about Luo Zheng, not worth it.
It might have been worth a one-time through for a causal watcher, were it not for the fact that it's a season 1 to a season 2 that never happened. It's a half of a drama, basically. If you're not somehow into this ML, then this drama is a total skip. It'd be for if you literally have nothing better to watch. It's at least good for a few laughs, and FL's unique performance. But that's it.If you like Luo Zheng, this is yet another chance to see him in historical costume with long hair, and he does not disappoint (although his historical drama 'Cry Me a River of Stars' is way better). The FL he plays opposite is a cute and interesting actress. Not the best at conveying kilig or passion, but passable. But she is kind of quirky-funny, and I found her entertaining if nothing else. She's not great in her kiss scenes, but she's by no means bad. The side characters were either giving likeable or passable performances.The plot was easy to follow, and progressed well until about the 2/3 mark and then the pacing started to get all messed up.
It's kind of hard to rate half a drama, but even if we DID get the second half, I'd never give it above a 7.5 because it just doesnt quite have the depth or passion/chemistry that I think makes a show re-watchable. I gave it a 6 because it IS a half a drama, and it can't escape that cheesy, rushed, cliched feel of most short-length c-dramas. It just isn't hi-quality entertainment. It's okay for what it is.... *IF* you're in it for Luo Zheng. The first half has some pretty funny moments , but then those kind of fall by the wayside as the plot-to-nowhere progresses.
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She was a green Subaru to his black Porsche...
I want to treat this show kindly because I basically liked it...But I can't. Because I saw greatness in it that never manifested properly. And I hate to say it but some travesties occurred. So I'm going to shred it. But that's not out of hate. I don't hate this show, I don't hate anybody that worked on this show. Okay, that's a lie, I hate the hair stylist. But I digress. I was saying, I don't hate anyone on the show. I say these critical things that I'm about to say from a place of love. Just remember that.
Now the biggest problem (and I mean of course ASIDE from the hair) is the FL. Jade Cheng is not a terrible actress... at least I don't think. Not really sure. But her approach to her role was all wrong for the script and the co-starring ML's energy. She went into this like it was some Sherlock Mystery series, or Dr Quinn Medicine Woman or something. She had lines ALL OVER THE PLACE that could have been delivered in a VERY sexy way, that the ML could then have played off of with his next line. She missed her opportunities, and instead sat there with a placid, bright smile on her face, her bodylanguage and her responses to him, her line delivery, showed that she was not tempted or unsettled by him in a spicy way at all. He could have been the effing mailman and she would have acted the same towards him. She stomped all over ML's cool and his sexy vibe. She was a green Subaru to his black Porsche. And there's just a hint of 'psycho-eyes' vibe in her acting, like it's too performative. Maybe Jade and Jerome got in a fight offscreen or something idk. But whatever it was, she strikes a distinct note of 'Oh yes I love you so much, imma go comb my hair k bye.'
Because of this, we did not get to see Jerome Deng shine in a dark sexy role, because FL refused to let the vibe go dark sexy. Great, now he needs a do-over. Smh.
Hair was stupid. Costumes okay. Sets were done on a serious rush job, but not too horrible and this one's got excellent snow. Love the snow guys they should get a bonus on their paycheck. Direction was mixed feels. Not mid. But just all over the place with some shots very beautiful in a sort of 90's mtv video kind of way (and i mean that in a good way), and other shots lookin like he told his 10 year old cousin to take over for a half an hour while he went to eat a sandwich.
The ost/bgm/sound/dubbing was all total TRASH. This is literally one of those one-in-fifty shows I watch that I freakin make a playlist of songs myself, turn the entire show's audio OFF, and listen to music of my choosing as I watch. What this does for me, is preserve my ability to watch the ACTORS the way they MEANT the performances to be given. Without the cracked out bastard input of the audio department getting involved and wrecking everything. Zero is not a low enough score for the sound on this one.
The screenplay itself is really kind of cool, lots of good lines and good side quests and a good plot, good pacing... interesting but not confusing.... it deserved so much more than what it got. Same goes for the ML. He also deserved a better shot than this to really spread his wings and show what he can do. FL sucked all the energy out of the room, I don't know what she was thinking here, as far as her interpretation of her role and the love between the two characters. She was flat and boring. Snow Kong would never have played that role like that is all I have to say.
But all that having been said. It was fun. It was entertaining. And the story held up all the way through. Not a bad effort, I think this is worth a one-time watch.
7,5/10
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Just not top-shelf goods.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me be frank.It's mid.
God knows it tried. And god knows I tried. The vibe is pretty good. Not as good as My Journey to You, but better than (pick literally any Aaron Deng drama).
But for the god-tier levels of complexity this plot has, there should be moar vibe. It starts off engaging, and then by the middle I feel like I'm getting flashbacks to Mr. Kenning's 8th grade world history class, like goddddd staring at the ceiling and waiting for the bell to ring listening to him drone on and on about Beowulf or Medieval banking or some sh*t.
Then you get a snow sequence for maybe 2 episodes, where ML gets brutally frame mogged by this guy dressed all in white who looks like Ling He in SoKP but with white hair, and a dragon egg appears. And it's like YAS finally something fun to watch. But then the dragon egg hatches, and out pops this absolute facepalm cgi dragon whelp with maxed out cringe stats that looks like it was created by the ccp entertainment division to be the cartoon mascot for the next CCTV spring festival gala. Fortunately this little cringelet gets ditched with the hot white-haired babysitter, and neither of them are ever seen again (goodbye sexy white haired snow hottie! *sobs in justwhy*). The whole thing was so random. But it's only a brief vacation, and then it's right back to plotslogging.
This is the kind of drama you normally would give to Kai Soso because of his Herculean ability to pull a heaping cart of bullsh*t across the finish line all by himself. The ML we do get is good, but he's fighting against a weak script and an existentially confused director and he just doesn't quite have the visuals or the charisma to contend with that level of adversity. ML is sexy as hell and way good at fight scenes, and this drama did not bring out his best, and it's NOT his fault.
And all the main actors' performances are occasionally marred by the bgm being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not to a criminal degree, but all I'm sayin is someone in the sound dept needed to be fired. They got this bigass bird right, I mean a HUGE bird, and when he flaps his wings in the sky, it sounds like a large silk fan. Bi@tch, that bird is enormous, the sound effects when his wings flap should be like a big deep LoTR booming noise. Or someone giving a straight and subtle performance, and here comes the whimsical music like wot.
Now I know I just bashed the drama pretty hard, but despite that I still say: "Give it a try."
That's because it will vibe with some of you. Kind of like how Lost You Forever or A Journey To Love really did it for some people. and for others it totally did not. By no means is the show bad, in an overall sense. So it can't hurt to try it out and see if it grabs your attention or puts you to sleep.
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This review may contain spoilers
Mind-numbingly predictable CEO romance with hideous aggressive OST and no chemistry.
First let me say that the best part of this drama BY FAR, was He Rui Xian's incredible performance as the 2FL. She's so amazing and deserves high caliber 1FL roles.The rest of this was, to put it bluntly, total crap.
While it would take a dissertation to fully enumerate the ways in which this was crap, I will do my best to keep it brief.
*No ML/FL chemistry. I dont know where the problem lies. Maybe Kai keeps getting handed FLs that dont mesh well with him. Maybe he has a really hard time letting go in front of the camera. Maybe hes RL gay. But whatever it is, this is another flat Kai Soso performance, lacking sexual chemistry, passion, and depth.
*Flat ML performance. Kai is good in some situations and dramas, but this isnt one of those dramas. Its impossible to distinguish the difference between his "straight man" character, or just his limited acting ability.
*FL is not sexy and has a bad haircut and boring clothes. Shes cute. And she is a good actress. But shes not sexy. She should be playing roles other than romance FLs
*Kiss scenes are tame
*Moderately high cringe-factor
*Slow slowwwww pacing. This should have 10 episodes shaved off
*Tired, cliche storyline. The actual business story is good. But every other aspect of it is insultingly cliche.
*Mediocre dialogue all the way from beginning to end.
*Background music is stupid and out of touch
*OST is so aggressive it should be arrested and tried for assault.
*Characters are simplistic and too perfect, like a teens dream of what life is like and what people are like, and a teen's dream fantasy.
*They take an indoor cat, in a cat carrier, to the park for its birthday. They lay out a blanket, and put a TINY HAT ON THE CAT. The kind with an elastic chin strap. Then they let the cat out of the carrier. And the cat stays on the blanket. It stays on the blanket, and just... sits there. Mkay. This is the kind of show we are dealing with here. If any one scene could sum up how I feel about the show, its that one.
I would recc this to mushy romantic sentimental people whose favorite color is fuscia/magenta/hot pink, and who still have at least one stuffed animal on their bed.
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I just don't know who this is for
Jesse Ren, right.But no. I'm here to tell you, this is not the drama you're looking for.
The first kiss scene is at about the 3/5ths mark, and it comes with no lead-up at all. Like none. I wondered if the part of the scene where they got to that point just got left on the cutting room floor. I actually re-watched the episode thinking I must've missed something. I didn't. The kiss itself is mundane. There's like one or two other kiss scenes besides that one, and they're really flat-feeling. Like the kissing scenes only serve the plot and that's it. It's weird. They feel lackluster and badly timed.
They do this thing where they leave off an episode on a tense, climactic moment. And the beginning of the next episode is a totally different scene. So you don't ever know what HAPPENED between the two episodes. This makes it feel really REEALLY chopped up and confusing. There is NO flow here. It's horribly horribly disjointed.
The love between the characters feels unearned. Relationships are not fleshed out. There's not a lot of emotional investment for the viewer to get behind, so you watch the whole show not totally caring what happens.
The plot is the intriguing part. But the way the story is told has no natural feel to it at all, and the eps are 10 mins long.... with many eps where there's no forward progress, just more stringing you along. So the price you pay to watch this plot idea is kind of higher than the show is actually worth.
Who was this show written for? A romance watcher? But there's no romance written into it. A kilig lover? There is ZERO kilig. A suspense or mystery lover? Why would they watch this when there's tons of GOOD mystery productions to watch? No one is going to actually have a good time here.
If you must watch "literally everything Jesse Ren has ever been in", then go ahead, it's not THAT bad. And thankfully not that long. But no one else is missing anything by skipping this one. It was lowkey terrible.
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It's bubblegum.
You chew it up till it has no flavor left and then you spit it out.It's a transitory amusement, devoid of caloric content or nutritional value. Cheap, pleasant, and disposable.
It is MOSTLY as-advertised: Stylish, yet vapid and implausible on nearly every level, in a way that reminds me of BoF the K-version only somehow even dumber and more shallow. The J-tropes are there. Our FL has a rock bottom EQ and a martyrdom streak a mile wide. ML says he loves most about her: Her smile and her hard working attitude. Wowwww okay then.... But this statement just tickles the FL pink. So happy to be noticed for her grace under slavery! Awww.
The emotions of the viewer just are not evoked. Saved By The Bell is more emotionally engaging than this. I watched a documentary about a honeybadger that was more emotionally engaging than this. The music department held up it's end of the bargain, and did it's best to evoke emotion without clobbering the B-tier-at-best performances of the actors. The bgm was subtle, pretty, and probably the most emotionally intelligent aspect of the drama. Scriptwriter seems to have been on quite the cocktail of prescription meds to think this was something worth attaching their name to, and producer seems to have had one too many mimosas when agreeing to pick up said script.
All this is - if you watch j-dramas - basically surmisable by the thumbnail photo, title, and synopsis. Nothing there would be a surprise, you kind of already know what youre getting into.
BUT what is NOT as-advertised, is the TOTAL AND COMPLETE LACK OF SPICE. There is no romance, there is no kilig, there are no butterflies, there is no chemistry, and there sure as sh*t aint no spice. So with THAT being said, then WHAT THE F*CK IS THE POINT OF THIS SHOW. There is no point to this show. NONE.
Much like a piece of bubblegum.
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Deng Kai in this is like Niki Lauda riding around in a 1989 Ford Fiesta.
Deng Kai.We know he has charisma to burn. He has star power. But his range and depth - while improving all the time - can only get better with practice. He needs to keep working, keep working, keep taking new roles. No job is too small or too large for Deng Kai. But in a bad production, he's about as inconspicuous as a giant tiger trying to hide behind a fake palm tree.
The discerning reader such as yourself has probably already ascertained that I'm calling this a bad production. And indeed I am. That 7 is plus about 2 points just for Deng Kai alone.
What's wrong with this thing.
First off, the story is A) just dumb and B) it doesn't follow an emotionally logical chain of events. And therefore, it's not emotionally believable. That right there is the death knell for a romance drama. So you can just close the book on it before you even start.
But there's more. We got a few good outfits, but there's also a lot of drab clothes. And there's nothing lyrical, profound, poetic, or elevated about the dialogue at all. Not even during confessions. Daisy Li was unable to keep up with the demands of the FL's character, and **honestly who can blame her**. They ask too much of her, and of the viewer. So the performance came out looking passable at best. And same goes for the extras who apparently were chosen because they all just happen to be nearby that day and were just pulled off the lighting and sound crews and the food truck or somethin. 2ML ---aishhhhhhh idk. He's young, and needs experience, but --- let's just say he's not attention grabbing and he has to overcome the mid-tier face card the Creator bestowed him with. And the bgm/ost volume vs dubbing is way way out of whack, some of the notes the female singer hits sound like a cat yowling and your ears are like WHOA, bring it down.
Makeup.
On the good side. This stylist was working with the philosophy that you should enhance a person's NATURAL beauty. And I do like that very much.
But on the bad side. This entire drama looked like a BB cream sales convention. I have no idea how much BB cream was used in the production of this drama, but somebody should have taken a credit card and scraped it off everyone's face at the end of the day and put it in a big pile and then sent it to Guinness world records to have it officially weighed. And this stylist likes to pat - not lightly dust, but pat - powder into the surface of the BB cream. The effect is not great. The lighting and rez are unforgiving to the makeup techniques that were used.
Between that and the stupid hairstyles, they managed to age Deng Kai for the screen by like 10-15 years. Good job, guys.
Without Deng Kai in this drama, there is nothing to watch it for. So I'd recc it ONLY to people interested in following his career. Even as a red-flag romance, there's dozens of dramas that have done the same thing, only with far more style and sophistication.
Do you want a ride in an old piece of sh*t Ford Fiesta? No. Do you want a ride in an old piece of sh*t Ford Fiesta but only Deng Kai is driving it?
That's the only question you have to ask yourself here.
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Epic yandere romance disguised as heartbreaking tale of dysfunctional love.
This story brings yandere love down to a street-level, where it doesn't feel like the mythical obsessive character of anime, but rather like someone you might brush with in real life. It tones it down and explains it, without attempting to justify it. This is - at least to my mind - a heartbreaking tale of 3 people who are all to one degree or another yandere. It all seems so innocuous at first, but by the time the movie is over, you can see the outline of an epic, twisted tale lying beneath it that was never really shown, and yet there it is.I say 'a heartbreaking tale' because I have a fairly healthy psyche, and it just pains me to see victims of child abuse grow up into such confused people with so much pain, trying to cope with no one to rely on. It's not that the story itself is heartbreaking, just that the characters are.
There is a lot more going on psychologically than what the movie shows you, and you have to infer or extrapolate it. For instance someone is talking to cops, and they are describing a violent act that occurred. But the movie never shows it. In this sense, there are deeper inferences in this story than just what you get on the surface, and some pieces you have to put together yourself. Other things are shown in greater detail, such as piercings, fights, or certain intimate scenes. But though there are several intimate moments between the characters throughout the story, you aren't shown all of them like a smut film. You are only shown certain moments, so it's not as gratuitous as it seems at first. The explicit nature of some intimate scenes are done in a way to portray sensuality and pain being two sides of the same coin.
As an S&M romance this isn't my cup of tea. But as an occasional student of abnormal psych, I can at least understand it. However, aside from being a romance, this is also a sort of mystery plot (I suppose you could say?), and that part was fun to me. The story needed a great deal of depth coming from the characters for it to work, and these actors did a really great job. With lesser actors this probably would have been unwatchable.
And then there's the ending. For some people who are really really in love with truly yandere ML, this might be seen as an HE. Other people are only going to see the OE that it shows you on the surface. Or think that the HE is just way too sinister and mentally back away from actually calling it an HE or seeing it as one. I personally didn't like the ending because I view the idea of penning some poetic/mysterious/vague lines and slapping an OE on a story a copout. I really do. I know it's a distinctly 'Japanese' thing to do and is not that uncommon an ending in a Japanese tale, but I'm sorry I don't like it. I find it very low-effort and too simplistic. But that is what they did here, and I was mildly displeased with it.
This IS worth a one-time watch at minimum, so I gave it a 7.5 because it's decent. The direction and production were spot on, the styling was great, the actors were excellent.
The basic story is awesome af, but I don't like the way that story was fleshed out by the original novel author. The novel did win awards and receive critical acclaim, but it was written by a very very young adult and to me that shows. I think the story would have been a stronger one if it had had a stronger author with more experience and weight. But the fact remains that the plot itself - which is truly artistically awesome af - was penned by that very same author so it's a take it or leave it situation. I think this story would absolutely SLAY with a good solid rewrite.
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Not spectacular but highly watchable, with awesome breakout performance by Wu Bo Wei
The strengths of this drama:❤️ Brisk pacing and good story flow makes it highly binge-able. Direction, camerawork, production value all of higher caliber than most stories of similar episode-length.
❤️ Actors and actresses brought their A-game to this. Some performances are stronger than others, but no one was actually bad in their role, there is no "weak link" that ruins the continuity of the drama. I'm really impressed by the cast that they were all fully invested and tried to make this story shine.
❤️ Absolutely AWESOME performance by Wu Bo Wei (the "villain" ML). I tend to shy away from comparing actors to other actors, but Wu Bo Wei is the chinese Zo In Sung, and I mean that as a compliment. He has those sexy deep eyes, strong handsome facial features, onscreen confidence, and most importantly imo... he has this "shimmery" quality to his acting where he's not just acting, he's acting down to the level of microexpressions where you can see huge range of emotion coming through from just his facial reactions.... and he has FIREY chemistry with his female love interest, like burn down the whole drama level fire. With the right career breaks and the right directors, he could be a huge powerhouse actor that could easily co-star or lead in a major production drama.
❤️ Styling is often a c-drama's weak point, but not here. Here the styling fits the story very well and helps build some of that "seamless watch" energy it has going for it. It could be better, but hey. Budget restraints are a thing. At least no one had truly crappy hair. I could see the care that went into styling each character, and appreciated it.
The weaknesses:
💥The ending. Super disjointed and confused, ruins the sense of continuity they had built up through the whole drama and just drops the ball. Big cop-out energy.... (and speaking of cop-out energy, the way they wrapped up the "villain's" character arc was so absolutely AWFUL it was laughable)
💥The lack of depth. Much of the story is cliche and trope. There are creative and refreshing aspects to the drama, but those threads aren't really pulled on and teased out like they would have been in a winning script. The emotional depth is sounded out a little bit with some of the characters, but there is not the masterful depth of human understanding some Chinese writers have, so the final product is a little bit flat-feeling.
💥Some are gonna disagree with me but OST/BGM was a net negative for me. The mood of the songs was fine, I didn't think the musical direction was tone-deaf, it matched the storyline. But it was intrusive and persistent, and all in all I think it would have been better without an OST at all if they're gonna be so aggressive about it. Somebody thought this production was a good opportunity to showcase some musicians and singers. But I wanted to watch a romance drama, not a music video. I get that that whole folk-indie-pop-Mazzy-Star sound might be just what some people like. But I listen to EDM and speed/thrash metal and hiphop. So for me sitting through this OST was like a form of torture, and ruined many scenes for me.
All in all, I think worth a one-time watch. Fast paced, major eye candy factor, great acting by the whole cast. But to me, not really "rewatch" caliber.
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Excellent drama to pass the time as you wait for something better to watch.
I cant rate this any higher than a 7.5 because imo it lacked any profound depth, and lacked romantic chemistry. I find it dissappointing - yet somewhat understandable - that a show where the main AND secondary couples are toeing a line of incestuous taboo, is so very very devoid of spicy magnetism between leads!I can't rate it lower than a 7.5 because I DID have fun watching it, despite its flaws. The story flow was excellent. The acting performances, while not stellar, were very passable.
I would recc this to someone who is profoundly bored and waiting for something truly GOOD to come out. It passes the time nicely.
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This review may contain spoilers
I love Richard Li, and I almost never drop a drama halfway, but the story is just too heavy.
Started this drama for the ML, and because I have nothing left to watch rn.I liked the ML and FLs performances. The story pacing was brisk and smooth, it had a nice spicy kick, and I thought I was going to love it....
....but then theres some r*pe scenes, and thats not something I enjoy in my entertainment. Im not talking about some red flag ML feistiness, I mean 2FL actually gets tragically r*ped. She also has a beloved whos off in the army, so it impacts them both that this happens to her. And I'm like okay.... Ill just try to overlook that....
....until 2FL gets pregnant with a r*pe baby. Her beloved is totally distraught. She is trapped in a forced marriage with her r*pist, and the r*pist forces 2FL's beloved to live as her servant to shove his face in it. And I'm like, well maybe it gets better. So I continue....
But then the FL has to cut 2FL's baby out of her belly because of a dangerous labor. And then the 2FL dies in her arms, leaving her beloved a haunted, tortured, ruined soul.
So yeah.... I'm done here. This is just way way too heavy for a romance. Dropped at ep 18.
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