Love of Aurora (2017)

Dramas like these are tough to review. Really. It's not BAD so much as...lame. The story is lame, the acting is lame, EVERYTHING is lame. You could see that the director REALLY, REALLY wanted to paint this grandiose picture of the leads' life amidst the (admittedly beautiful) backdrop of the Shanghai skyline, but fell flat when a cold dose of reality set in: it isn't interesting enough.

Had the story fallen into the hands of a talented writer, it could have been so much more. The potential was there. I could see brief glimpses of it when they tried narrating how exactly the female lead ended up getting amnesia and forgetting our male lead (this isn't a spoiler, btw, the description is just half done.) But after the first few minutes of the first episode- poof! We have to wait for MANY, MANY more episodes of unnecessary yammering and plot fillers to get to the actual point. And when it does- it still doesn't.

52 episodes for what could essentially be condensed into a 10 episode drama is excruciatingly painful. Each scene, each event and each action is stretched like a rubber band pulled far apart by nothing but prayer. Each episode was 40 minutes. 40-freaking-minutes. At one point early on in the show, the male lead tries persuading the female to join the contest (yeah, that's another thing they don't mention in the description) for 2 EPISODES! Hell, screw the writers, I would get massively unimaginative if I had to fill 52 episodes of this thing.

The acting is Terrible. The capital T was intentional. Is Ma Ke supposed to be attractive? I don't know. All the female supporting characters in the show seem to think so. He certainly wasn't a good (or even decent) actor. Guan Gabrielle was good as long as she didn't do anything because, in many ways, she was a worse actor than Ma Ke. The supporting characters are so utterly forgettable and recycled from other dramas they aren't even worth a mention.

Lastly, the female lead is supposed to be like, the best dancer (or something?) in the university she attended in California but SUCKS everytime we see an actual performance of hers. One of the judges instantly takes a liking to her because she reminds her of herself and (even though she ruthlessly denies it all the time) gives SO much leeway to the stupid shit our female lead does. Heck, even during this 'really important performance', she chooses the female lead's team that performed some boring shadow act with minimal dance over an actually decently choreographed, power-packed team in a DANCE COMPETITION. Why? Because the her team had actual "heart" and understood "the value of a team."

Yeah, give me a break.

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Best idol drama genre

I can say this is one of the non-colossal dramas that I like. I don't know why the ratings aren't that good but I really like this story. there were some conflicts serious enough to solve the problem beyond my expectations. We should appreciate Guan Xiaotong here, I liked his acting during episode 51/52. This drama tells about idol life and romance which is quite complicated, and actually there are many annoying parts but it can train your temperament haha, one thing you need to know is that this drama is funny, organized and sad at the same time, I don't know what makes me love this drama to the point of giving it high ratings, isn't it because I'm a fan of Gabrielle? not. But the drama itself is very good. I love that the two main characters have chemistry, actually if you watch this UNTIL OUT you will definitely like it! I really liked when Xingzi was a trainee, the nature and character of the female lead like Xingzi I liked her. and so you know? throughout the episode, there are more male leads who sacrifice and pursue their love for female characters. isn't this very good? haha, I was even so moved in the last half of the episode that Xingzi lost his memory. I want to watch it again later hehe

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