Overall pass for me

I went into this drama based on the premise and have not previously watched the first "Thumping Spike". It sounded like something I would be interested in. The story does contain the standard FL, ML, SML triangle you find with many K-drama romance stories. As I continued to watch it, I found that the romance storyline was much more of an afterthought and the story should have been listed as a sports drama.

I didn't find the ML/FL/SML chemistry at all romantic. As the romance felt like more of an afterthought, the romance was rushed between both MLs. The story could have dropped the whole romantic aspect in general and just focused on a sports drama about a former professional volleyball player, the main male lead, leaves the pro team to go back to university. Ultimately, he joins the university team, that isn't a very good team, and helps them become a winning team. During his time in university, he meets the female lead and falls in love with her.

The side characters weren't very memorable, especially the 2 females who were obsessed with the main male lead, to a point where one of them stabs the main male lead in the hand creating the "drama" if the main male lead will gain use of his hand back and play volleyball at university and possibly moving back into the professional team. There was even a plot point of the main female having a twin sister, who was definitely a side character and was just used for stupid plot points. The sister tries out for the dance team because the main female lead hurt her ankle. The sister also was used as a device to have the second male lead accidentally kiss her as he couldn't tell them apart.

I became bored halfway through and by episode 15, I was skipping through the chunks of the volleyball games to lead to the romance scenes. The episodes aren't very long, so when a good 2/3 - 3/4 of the episode is focused on the volleyball, the romance scenes definitely were rushed.

I can say for certain, I will not rewatch this show and most likely not watch the first "Thumping Spike". Nothing was very memorable and as I move on to the next show, will completely forget about it. My recommendation is a skip, unless you want to watch a show about a university men's volleyball team and very little romance involved.

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