noonecaresaboutu
This review may contain spoilers
Plothole central and censorship
The show starts off interesting, aspiring actress meets her idol through particular circumstances, and it just goes haywire.
ACTORS:
Bi WenJun plays ML, and I have to say it suits Jim pretty well, though the fake blond hair is horrible to look at.
Other actors are well cast, I like Gu QiaoBei's actor, Guo XiaoTian the most as both his real self and videogame self are different yet similar and he did a really good job on a shifty character with bad character arcs.
One actress that was totally out of place, was the FL, Zhang XueYing. She did her role well as an assistant, but when it came to her being an actress, it didn't suit her. She didn't have that spark of an actress nor did her looks fit the role of an actress that would become famous very quickly.
STORY: (THIS PART HEAVY SPOILERS)
Along the way, more and more plot holes appear in the series that never get explained nor talked about (might be censorship, but I'll talk about that later).
First of all, why would FL, who's been a hard-core fan of ML for many years, just completely hate him over a minor misunderstanding? Especially one as stupid as water dropping from a ceiling. They created conflict out of nowhere to give us that "ennemies-to-lovers" storyline but failed miserably.
The endless jealousy, especially with the random actresses that show up to get together with ML. There are atleast 3 characters used for this same role, all that give no depth to the story or the relationship.
Moving on, we have the blatant queerbaiting between FL's brother and ML' bestfriend. You can see they try to create a sort of bromance that could lead to romance if it were not for China's guidelines, but they keep on creating baseless conflict (the acting jobs, the videogame identity) that force the characters out of their roles.
Not only that, the storyline between the ML’s childhood friend and FL’s fake brother is completely out of place. We don’t even know how they met (must be cut scene). But the MLCF still obsesses over this useless man that could be better off not being in the story.
Also, the whole videogame part of the story was useless to the relationship. I know they adapted this from a novel, but I imagine that the novel must've done something more than just an immature fake break-up. There was also a big faux-raccord problem (when images and scenes don’t match up.
For example, there was a scene where both leads were shown in-game playing, but when they cut to the real life characters, only one of them is shown in their phone. This happens quite a lot and their are mostly problems concerning the online/offline plot line.
Lastly, despite this show being about shooting movies and TV shows, it has nothing realistic about it. It is possible for all of the actress scandals to happen, but the fact that they paired ML and FL a second time, that's not credible, then they almost paired 2ML aswell, that's even less possible. Nevermind the lack of staff when the director's shooting or just giving a bad image to cinema.
The only realistic thing was the nepotism.
CHARACTERS:
Already talked about the useless female characters only used to induce jealousy, but there were some characters that were worth diving into more.
For example, the FL's brother and ML's best friend. They could've been super interesting if not for the bad storyline.
The ML's assistant that comes out of nowhere? Same for the mother that comes out of nowhere in the last few episodes?
What about the ingame friend they make but never meet? He’s seen once in a video call near the last episodes, but we’ve waited all 24 episodes to have a bit more communication. A simple dinner or hangout would’ve sufficed. What about the other ingame friends? We only meet one of them.
The older actor that we meet once to make ML jealous, where does he come from? We see him again at the award show, but he was introduced for no reason.
CENSORSHIP AND EDITING:
Now I don't know what happened; if the series was censored or if they just had to cut scenes because of the budget, but these cuts made us lose important parts of the storyline.
The CONFESSION! they cut the confession. We know they shot it and it exists because of the flashback and dialogue, but we don't even realize their change in relationship: it just happens and we don't know it.
Other scenes seem to be cut, like the ML finding out FL and FL's brother's link and other small scenes that would be crucial to the viewer's understanding of the show. Some things they talk about in dialogue but we’ve never seen it.
COSTUMES:
One big positive point were the costumes for the in game characters. They were nice to look at flowy, not too many accessories. Overall I really enjoyed the outfits, even for the secondaries. The colors all matched the characters and their personalities as well as importances and the hats were really nice!
CONCLUSION:
Mess of useless characters and storylines and censorship that create a nonsensical show that could've been good. Also, show probably very much inspired by Love 020 but disappointing.
ACTORS:
Bi WenJun plays ML, and I have to say it suits Jim pretty well, though the fake blond hair is horrible to look at.
Other actors are well cast, I like Gu QiaoBei's actor, Guo XiaoTian the most as both his real self and videogame self are different yet similar and he did a really good job on a shifty character with bad character arcs.
One actress that was totally out of place, was the FL, Zhang XueYing. She did her role well as an assistant, but when it came to her being an actress, it didn't suit her. She didn't have that spark of an actress nor did her looks fit the role of an actress that would become famous very quickly.
STORY: (THIS PART HEAVY SPOILERS)
Along the way, more and more plot holes appear in the series that never get explained nor talked about (might be censorship, but I'll talk about that later).
First of all, why would FL, who's been a hard-core fan of ML for many years, just completely hate him over a minor misunderstanding? Especially one as stupid as water dropping from a ceiling. They created conflict out of nowhere to give us that "ennemies-to-lovers" storyline but failed miserably.
The endless jealousy, especially with the random actresses that show up to get together with ML. There are atleast 3 characters used for this same role, all that give no depth to the story or the relationship.
Moving on, we have the blatant queerbaiting between FL's brother and ML' bestfriend. You can see they try to create a sort of bromance that could lead to romance if it were not for China's guidelines, but they keep on creating baseless conflict (the acting jobs, the videogame identity) that force the characters out of their roles.
Not only that, the storyline between the ML’s childhood friend and FL’s fake brother is completely out of place. We don’t even know how they met (must be cut scene). But the MLCF still obsesses over this useless man that could be better off not being in the story.
Also, the whole videogame part of the story was useless to the relationship. I know they adapted this from a novel, but I imagine that the novel must've done something more than just an immature fake break-up. There was also a big faux-raccord problem (when images and scenes don’t match up.
For example, there was a scene where both leads were shown in-game playing, but when they cut to the real life characters, only one of them is shown in their phone. This happens quite a lot and their are mostly problems concerning the online/offline plot line.
Lastly, despite this show being about shooting movies and TV shows, it has nothing realistic about it. It is possible for all of the actress scandals to happen, but the fact that they paired ML and FL a second time, that's not credible, then they almost paired 2ML aswell, that's even less possible. Nevermind the lack of staff when the director's shooting or just giving a bad image to cinema.
The only realistic thing was the nepotism.
CHARACTERS:
Already talked about the useless female characters only used to induce jealousy, but there were some characters that were worth diving into more.
For example, the FL's brother and ML's best friend. They could've been super interesting if not for the bad storyline.
The ML's assistant that comes out of nowhere? Same for the mother that comes out of nowhere in the last few episodes?
What about the ingame friend they make but never meet? He’s seen once in a video call near the last episodes, but we’ve waited all 24 episodes to have a bit more communication. A simple dinner or hangout would’ve sufficed. What about the other ingame friends? We only meet one of them.
The older actor that we meet once to make ML jealous, where does he come from? We see him again at the award show, but he was introduced for no reason.
CENSORSHIP AND EDITING:
Now I don't know what happened; if the series was censored or if they just had to cut scenes because of the budget, but these cuts made us lose important parts of the storyline.
The CONFESSION! they cut the confession. We know they shot it and it exists because of the flashback and dialogue, but we don't even realize their change in relationship: it just happens and we don't know it.
Other scenes seem to be cut, like the ML finding out FL and FL's brother's link and other small scenes that would be crucial to the viewer's understanding of the show. Some things they talk about in dialogue but we’ve never seen it.
COSTUMES:
One big positive point were the costumes for the in game characters. They were nice to look at flowy, not too many accessories. Overall I really enjoyed the outfits, even for the secondaries. The colors all matched the characters and their personalities as well as importances and the hats were really nice!
CONCLUSION:
Mess of useless characters and storylines and censorship that create a nonsensical show that could've been good. Also, show probably very much inspired by Love 020 but disappointing.
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