What makes it particularly different and a must watch series??
Here are the ten reasons that in my opinion make this drama stand out from the rest:1. *A very appropriate length*
Length is very important..considering the stamina to focus...Unlike usual Chinese dramas that are mostly 30-50 episodes long, draining energy...this drama unbelievably has just 14 episodes ..but the content is so precisely and comprehensively packed with all the essential details that you can't resist watching it all at once...
2. *A slice of life story*
Unlike other dramas that for the sake of happy ending or justification of their genre pack all kind of ridiculous happenings...where you can't imagine yourself anywhere in the impossible plot...this drama is very believable with respect to story telling... things presented in the plot are very much relatable to one's own self or at least to one's surroundings.... giving you a home-like or life-like feel...plus there are many life lessons to learn from ...
3. *Human-like characters, their presentation and development*
Like in other stories, here you won't see any Angels or Satans....no absolute black or white character...no good or evil determination...or the kind of utterly alien things...All characters portrayed in this series are in their own shades of gray....playing good and evil with different people in different circumstances... showing vulnerabilities and sometimes faking certain pretense...but evolving into better and self-awared beings ultimately...who realizes his purpose and path after diverse experiences.
4. *Power dynamics between Main leads*
This is very uncommon in dramas where most of the time one lead (mostly female) is shown in a miserable state...a common dominant-recessive character duo...though scale of this difference between leads varies in different plots but it commonly exists.
But here both the leads have been optimized to equal beings...By equals I mean not just apparently equal (handsome male, beautiful female), but also intellectually equal..(smart and wise), both career oriented.., both have unique aesthetics..., both are mature(their conversations, worldview)... are mentally and emotionally strong...both have ideals and both are kind of selfish... both have past stories...both have pursuers...and both are kind of geniune...
5. *Strong and impactful Dialogues*
You would hardly come across a drama that pays attention to dialogues the way this series did...heart warming...heart wrenching... pleasing ...painful...All kind of emotions are so beautifully backed by weighty dialogues.....that convey a lot in mini statements and then the delivery of these dialogues...(in the environment created by the chemistry of the leads)...made it irresistible...no cliches...no lofty confessions...or sloppy statements...just the honest heartfelt conversations that give the taste of true love and life.
6. *Work-love life importance and balance*
Mostly dramas are all about love or all about the topic they are based on....kind of unidirectional story.... but rarely you see a plot ... where work life is presented in this motivating way...aware of the fact that mostly career takes the front position in our life and everything else goes backward...this drama shows not just the choices made in competition, pressure, struggles and failures but also depicts the consequences of those choices.
7. *Gender neutral drama*
ML- apparently a playboy, a man who avoids responsibility, a man who takes things lightly, can't get serious, but inwardly a heartbroken person afraid of being cheated...
FL- apparently a hard to please girl, not take men or their flirting seriously, but inwardly an easily manipulated soft hearted girl...
So both male and female leads are hiding themselves under a certain facade fearing the same things...this drama if showed the non-seriousness, shallowness or callousness of man, it also showed the same of the women...same for disloyalty...both men and women cheat .. nothing is gender specified
8. *Inspirational and motivational push*
This is a potential story if you are looking for a drama that motivates you to work hard and keep improving yourself in attainment of your ideals....Also it makes you question your goals your ideals..and the importance of things and people in your life ...you will be directed to make order of your priorities...
9. *Uniqueness in humor and delivery*
This drama is not carrying absurd comedy that is a common trait of rom-com ...this series carries humor in a very decent way... you'll taste an active and truly satisfying humor... particularly in between the male leads
10. *Natural development of chemistry*
From strangers to fellows to friends and to lovers, the story development and romance is very organic and believable.... starting from plane and powerbank till the last confession... everything is on the line of true definition of love taking it as a verb...a continuous process... evolving all the time...
11. *If you don't care about above things and are looking for just one reason to watch this show...then here is the last and most important thing...*
Elvis Han-a fresh face but utterly handsome.....truly manly (not so common trait of Chinese actors)..having a contagious smile that unconsciously forces your lipcorners toward earlobes...his deep voice that carries a sense of seduction...and playfulness in his role... everything is utterly satisfying and a candy to the eye ...
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The creators probably searched all over Thailand for a long time before they found such a perfect representative of the main character Way, that perhaps they couldn't even find a greater innocence and purity. Many times I felt not like I was in college, but in eighth grade, but that's also why young Asians just look so "young" (or maybe mentally?).
The series is written completely decently, as if it should have been shown a hundred years ago, but that is actually its strength. Nice music.
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A few episodes before I really got into the story, fed up with the previous series 2 Moons, Sotus and Boundary Crossing, I have to say that this one was a hair weaker and this time I was more bothered by the disintegrating stories of the other classmates that distracted from the main line of the story.
However, the "beautiful" that these series are able to evoke so well, even if naively from the point of view of a European viewer, I felt a hundred times. It's just Thailand too, with blurry shots of a glass of beer or a person smoking (and I thought that here in the European Union we have the strictest regulations) and on the other hand Phun is calmly driving around Bangkok at 17 years old without he had a driver's license...
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This review may contain spoilers
Amazing until 9-10
until episode 10 they built the tension but Very poor acting by both lead actorsEnding was total let down
You built everything for end and then nothing really happened
Director wasn't able to fit all that in 12 episodes
There were no believable emotion in whole show
until Episode 10 Lee hayrun was noticing tension between Cop couple but after 10 Director decide to make her stupid fangirl who already noticed cop couple but suddenly she is too deep in love with Ji chang Wook
ji chang wook shows no emotion for Miss Lee at all and she wasn't able to notice anything after episode 10
Junmo was free to kill and former cop they don't even was able to catch
Whole show was about catching drug gang boss but our Murderer Cop Ji Chang Wook let him go
he kill an innocent investigator,
But since his wife still love her criminal lover he let him run away what nonsense logic is that
that wife cheat on her husband with a criminal in front of him by using work as excuse
his boss himself look like a gang leader then police, Acting level of Ji Chang Wook in this show drop to -99 {negative}
At the end they are back normal walking in there home after his cop wife told him that she will always love that criminal guy and he is her compromise who she can't divorce or leave for a criminal because it will taint her Cop family
Junmo shot a man who was about to shot himself, in both situation other person died
but junmo wanted credit for his second murder and after that what is left of his marriage ?
Junmo killed his wife's first love she still love and cry for in front of her husband
I give 4/10 for those 10 episodes in which this drama was logical, but at the end just throw the logic out
It was first time i see ji chang wook being this Lazy in his acting,
K2 was better and Empress Ki was the best of Ji chang Wook after that its all went downhill in his acting and choice of scripts.
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The more colorful stories of the individual couples develop mainly in the later episodes, but the fate of the couple Ae (Tanapon Sukhunpantanasan) and Pete (Suppapong Udomkaewkanjana) accompanies the viewer throughout the series, which are the civilian names of the young actors, from which we can only break the tongue, and I mention them because these the two main characters are not listed in the Cast in Details section. Above all, the character of Ae is written very beautifully and even more beautifully and tenderly played by the seventeen-year-old, likeable and athletic Tanapon, as he gradually realizes everything about himself and conquers the fragile Prince Pete step by step.
I see a beautiful Thai woman for the first time, because otherwise Thai students are usually depicted as toothy, bespectacled or lilliputian schoolgirls, so I'm not even surprised that the overall tone of such series is such that the viewer thinks that 90% of Thais are into boys. Even the character of rich Tino, another footballer Can and some others are well written.
In my opinion, probably the best Thai series from a school setting in 2019 so far, and I definitely recommend it to romantic souls who understand and don't mind tougher Asian conversational acting...
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Definitely Worth Giving a Try
Honestly, I went in with the lowest of low expectations. I do like MeenPing but AiLongNai kinda fizzled out halfway through for me. I've never seen a Thai adaptation for BL manhwa before and I know Korean adaptations of BL manhwa usually only cover half the story anyway so I wasn't expecting much, BUT HOLY DID THEY PROVE ME WRONG!I usually don't like action romance but this one seems to balance both very well, the set up of the characters was interesting and their interactions are really cute. They really stepped it up this time around and I have little to no complaints about the show so far other than the fact that this series is only 8 eps.
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A video game drama ? No A historical drama ? Maybe.
This drama had real potential in view of the first episode, which I found very amusing and in which the video game universe had a real importance (we see the character of Shen Nuo appearing several times because the program decided so), which is no longer the case afterwards. The humor is less present afterwards, and the video game is totally non-existent.The big problem with this drama, in my opinion, is that the video game universe is just a pretext, present only in the first and last episodes, and then disappearing. In my opinion, this is not a drama about a person testing a video game, but simply a historical drama with excerpts at the beginning and end of a person testing a video game.
The logic of the video game is nowhere to be found. Lian Man'er doesn't interact with the other characters as someone who knows that these are just lines of code should. From the very first second, she treats the characters like family, crying when a character dies. Everything is illogical in her approach to the game, even though she knows that nothing around her is real.
What's more, she doesn't act at all like she's in a video game. Everything that happens to her seems to be a personal attack, even though she knows once again that nothing is real. She takes things too much to heart that are only there to advance the game's story.
What's more, it's logical for a video game to be made up of several intermediate missions to reach a final goal and bring the game to a close - that's the logic of any video game. But not this one. Here, there's only one mission: to acquire 1,000 taels of gold. I find this so illogical and nonsensical, especially as, with the drama's scenario, this was a perfect intermediate mission for, say, the family to gain independence, or to obtain the restaurant that would allow this and that. The ultimate goal would be to defeat the big bad, made possible by the intermediate missions that allow us to get closer to him. What's really a shame is that the intermediate elements are there, there are these steps that allow this rapprochement, but there's no link made with the game, whereas if they were made necessary by missions, not only would it allow a real logic of this video game universe to be included, but also the drama would be much more coherent. There are certain events and decisions that make little sense, but if their origin were a mission in the game, everything would become coherent: this action occurs because it's necessary for the progress of the game. But here, the drama is full of inconsistencies, which is a real shame because if more video game elements were included, like more missions for example, this probably wouldn't be the case.
Furthermore, the character is testing a video game, that is, it's not yet fully functional, so I'd have found it interesting if there had been some bugs in the game, but the game still has to be present in the drama...
The drama itself isn't bad, but you just have to be aware that it's a historical drama and nothing more. You can't say that the drama is about someone testing a video game, since there's virtually nothing to show for it in the drama.
Regardless of the fact that the drama is supposed to be a video game, we can't say it's bad for a historical drama.
The actors are decent ( I was relieved to see that the lead actress played better than in "Wrong Carriage, Right groom", I had some misgivings), the ost is not bad.
Only, the inconsistencies in the story are inevitable, a real pity as they could have been avoided in my opinion. The inconsistencies with the video game universe are too present for me, so I don't really recommend the drama.
But it doesn't mean that the drama is really bad either, like I said, it is a decent historical drama.
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could have been amazing
Overall: imagine if Muffin was actually a police officer and we saw her beat up some baddies in one of her outfits, or what if the mafia boss was actually a secret huge romantic at heart? There were so many ways the writing could have been innovative with this premise, but the cliche writing really ruined it, especially in episode 6. It is based off of "The Ideal Relationship" which I have read but I reviewed the series on its own merits. 8 episodes about 45 minutes each. Aired on iQIYI.Content Warnings: deaths/murders, non con touching/attempted sexual assault, violence, drugging, manhandling, stalking, attempted murder, kidnapping, manipulation
What I Liked
- the intro credits style was an homage to the source material
- how Guy was set up as a queer character from the beginning
- the video gaming sequence, unfortunately we only saw 1 sequence
- cute/sweet moments
- Guy showed agency
- laughed a few times (although mostly at huge plot holes/nonsense writing)
- Wahl's girlfriend in episode 6
- (neutral) comedy noises
Room For Improvement
- cliched/nonsense writing (i.e. Tew's idiotic "plans", Guy probably had 6 bullets in his revolver but seemed to shoot waaaayyyy more than that in episode 8)
- Kenji's backstory makes zero sense, maybe if Tew had used him as a human shield then it would have made sense, they made him into a cliche cartoon villain with nonsensical actions/motivations, even episode 7 didn't make enough sense for his motivation, also way too much screentime taken by Kenji
- the voice over was a fast way to set up a character/beginning but not my favorite way to start a series
- the music was sometimes not what I would have preferred, also think they could have removed the comedy sound effects and just let the comedy come through on its own
- tropey (ie multiple accidental fall and catches)
- avoiding physical affection in episode 5 (although Guy was better by the end)
- cliche plot point in episode 6
- Wahl had way too much screen time, needed to devote some of that to Guy/Tew building their relationship
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This review may contain spoilers
This Time travel thing is okay, but the old Soon is stupid
I like the first episode abut after watching the 4th episode I am totally mad and annoyed on how the story goes. Old Soon is a stupid and selfish bastard thinking he should not let the younger couple meet to avoid accident! What kind of reasoning is that??!!! Accident happens one way or another, what made him so sure thay when he chanfe the future no further accident will ever happen. 2nd, He is only creating a time paradox!! Lets just say he is correct If he change fate and make their younger selves never meet, then he wouldnt know Ongsa, then he has no reason to go back in time!! then he cant warn young ongsa to meet Soon again , they will be couple again and the accident happens and if possible he will travel again to warn them not to meet again. and the loop goes on and on. I wish this series will not go to waste.Was this review helpful to you?
Becoming normal , I've come too far for that !!! - JCW
To begin this review let's all raise and stand in praise of all the actors (JCW oppa especially )!!The show belongs to it's actors and it's definitely one of the best career performance by everyone !
SYNOPSIS - JCW oppa sneaks undercover in a gang to trace the origins of a drug cartel and in the process becomes someone who he fails to recognize aswell.
Chaos unwind and soon everything is shattered to pieces. With a strong narrative
ACTING and CAST -
OMGGGGGG!!!!!!!! 200/100 performance ...
This by far is the best acting I have seen in any Kdrama and mind you even tho I haven't recieved my first time watcher badge I got a lot under my sleeve. JCW'S eyes speak for him his face is too expressive to be normal ...hence the headline lol".
ACTION AND VISUALS -
I would just say that it was too realistic and way believable bec even when you feel like this can not be happening it actually works bec you just get so immersed in their expressions. Visuals ...umm JCW oppa looks smoking hot and I didn't bother about other visuals lol .
WHY MUST YOU WATCH -
The story line has a soul of it's own even tho it's not a very new kinda story line but the plot is gripping enough and no useless side characters distract you all the time. Everything in the narrative serves a purpose which unfolds beautifully.
The show touches the darker side of human emotions and the ending brings a sense of satisfaction that is unmatched.
The most realistic ending the best of acting and a good narrative that maybe predictable but is definitely interesting and full of raw action sequences and swoon worthy JCW oppa is what this show offers.
MY FEELINGS AS A VIEWER-
As a critique I could easily say that the show is not new to drama world and stories like these are more often than not brought to the screen for spy dramas. Infiltrating in an gang is a very common drama-land phenomenon. But this show has a lot of emotions at stake. By the end you do not side with good or bad because the line that creates that distinction really just blurs out and that's what makes this an interesting watch !
----SPOLIER ALERT ---
For those who have already finished I got a few things to talk about.
I read a comment that said that "The biggest difference between ki chul & Eui Jung VS that of Joonmo & BIBi relation was that, in Joonmoo & Bibi relationship Joonomo never accepted her love but Eui Jung was somewhere looking for that love she did have a chance with." - To quote some examples Joonmo never said any affirmative words to Bibi and always had a wall up front every time they met. which even Bibi pointed out in the course of the show. While Eui Jung literally fell for him and tried to change him as a person through her love. By the end she became negligent of Joonmo's emotions and only cared about Ki Chul she did not do it to fulfil her husband's mission but rather wanted her love to walk the right path.
Ki Chul's character was a very fine written sketch where he constantly had this dilemma of who to trust and who to choose. He made decisions with his heart and brain and the way that the switch from heart to brain happened was so natural to me that I could easily see that things weren't his fault.
Joonmo's dilemma and pain that he went through was so evident in JCW's acting which I shall call shear brilliance. The way he felt when he couldn't be there for Eui Jung's mom's funeral the way he reacted to murder before him. the way he looked when he killed people trying to protect Eui Jung and the dialogue - "there's someone I want to protect in my heart". was a literal treat to eyes. !!!
I shall applaud Im Sae Mi for giving life to Eui Jung as she literally had us all in the process of falling for Ki chul ...bec even when we know she's not true to her husband and his cause she was true to herself and her love. Till date I have never liked a disloyal character but ig we have an exception now.
The side characters and BIBI have literally worked as good as the main cast ...Kudos to them !
but the Detective's role felt rather random and forced. His obsession with Ki chul was too much and he wasn't handled well by the writers but his story ended well ...
Music wasn't really the most memorable but it didn't become a bother so I'd give decent points to it !
OVERALL - MUST WATCH FOR JCW FANS AND PEOPLE WHO APPRECIATE GOOD ACTING !
ps . the name of the show didn't really fit tho !
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This review may contain spoilers
Solid first episode!
I’ve only seen the first episode so far but it’s super cute! I love Guy’s personality and even though he made me go ummmm once or twice I still like him and I love how Tew seems mean at first but is just a lil bean who also can’t seem to make friends easily. Kinda don’t like Wahl. He’s cute but then he was kind of an asshole for bringing his girlfriend along to the hangout when it was supposed to be only them 2 and not informing Guy. Also the intro was really cute I really liked it!!! Can’t believe they’ve left us on a clifhanger ON THE FIRST EPISODE.Was this review helpful to you?
THIS AINT YOUR USUAL KAMEN RIDER
okay imma give a simple and direct reviewstorywise if you are okay with some history and political stuff in the drama then go for it, but if you arent then you might get bored bc this series is mainly focusing on the goverment and the history of kaijin's organization (gorgom)
the acting from our main casts are good except izumi aoi (hirasawa kokoro)'s crying scenes um hurt my ears a bit ? ,and the scenes with her speaking in english (im not condeming her speaking skills) but without subs you wont probably understand at all what shes saying ,overall their acting are good
fighting/action scenes? if you think this is like your usual kamen rider pls hold that thought bc the action scenes here are underwhelming, during 44 mins duration you probably will get around 1/2 mins fight scenes only
level of gore and violence? dang i love it ,this is what im looking forward for an adult kamen rider version , TRIGGER WARNING it has LOTS LOTS OF BLOODS
i can see they put lots of budget bc of the quality in this production, i hope there will be more kamen rider series like black sun for adult peeps.
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Decent drama with sweetness overload
This drama has been in my watchlist for a while now but only managed to finish it today. Maybe because I am not into games or e-sport of any sort, that's why I tend to put off watching it.Admittedly, I find the first few episodes a bit dreary and has to fast-forward some of the scenes and episodes but once the story picked up and the romance becomes somewhat profound, thanks to the chemistry of both the main and second couples, I get to appreciate it.
The plot was uncomplicated, predictable in fact, and there was no toxic love triangle which made it a decent one in my books.
For a non-gamer like me, I have to admit that the special effects, especially the slow-motion portions of the battle games and its characters, was visually good, imho. If you're looking for a youthful romance, with little sweet kisses and cuddles here and there, this one's for you.
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Sweet and cute series
The series is super sweet and funny. The cast has great chemistry and relationships. I laughed so much with all the beautiful funny moments they had. The leads are great together, love the way the show expression throughout the series. Love how you can see all the feelings without them speaking. The side characters are amazing as well bring depth and development to each character. You see the growth of the cast as each episode goes. I only wish the series was longer to give more background. The series story was a lot of fun and has you going on a sweet trip of pure laughter and shyness. A joy of BL to watch. Hope to see the cats together again.Was this review helpful to you?
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