Miss Fang's Love Secrets (2023)

Don't bother

At first I was intrigued by the premise. A woman gets trapped inside of her own game, that sounded like a fun premise. But the more I watched, the more I grew disappointed.

First things first, the pacing. Pacing in all of these short web dramas are always a problem, but here it was hard to ignore. The female lead falls for the video game main lead so quickly that it felt incredibly unbelievable. I understand the male lead falling for her - she was doing and saying all the right things - but she knew it was a game, she knew it was code she developed, and she still fell even faster than he did? Where's the internal battle of "he's not real but he is to me"? Also, the male lead didn't really do anything to truly make them emotionally and romantically closer. It felt like they fell in love within a week and were ready to risk anything and everything for their love. Bizarre.

Second, the real world. What I had originally liked about this is that Fang Xi Mu wasn't fully disconnected from the real world as is the norm in many of these types of dramas. Her shi-xiong, Yi An, was constantly in touch trying to figure a way out for her, as well as helping her succeed in the game. But once she made it back to the real world, things got even more bizarre. It makes not one lick of sense why the company didn't sue the team for breach of contract and stealing corporate secrets. I get they decided to let it go so that they could still create a game and benefit them, but they could do that with any game designer? I don't know about you, but I wouldn't keep working with people who tried to steal from my company.

And what a huge case of second-lead syndrome! But our female lead did not care one bit about Yi An. Even when she turned up ready to take the risk, it wasn't because of Yi An, it was because of Hao Tian. He deserved so much better.

Just when I was about to praise them for having the semi-believable ending of parting ways because they're from two different worlds, the last few minutes of the drama twisted that on its head (though it is a bit of an open ending). It's not that I didn't want a happy ending, don't get me wrong. It's that this show tried to convince me that there were severe and intense consequences to certain parts of the game, but in the end there weren't. And I think therein lies my biggest issue with this show: it's one thing when a show doesn't take itself seriously and is just shallow enjoyment. I can appreciate and enjoy that. But this show tried to take itself too seriously and then delivered on nothing but air.

I wonder if a longer runtime could have saved this, or if the writers and/or directors don't know how to write a well-balanced story. But honestly, if you're thinking of giving this a try, don't bother.

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Not that bad

I agree with a lot of points that the other reviewer (Ariel) made and I think her review is really well reasoned out, however I tend to grade a little more favorably when it comes to mini-dramas. I usually drop it or like it enough to watch to the end and this one I finished.

The plot is pretty is a little different from the typical stuck in a video game dramas, because the FL and SML are fully aware that it's a game and he is constantly trying to keep her for falling for a character and to safely return to the real world. Most versions of this plot don't have one character who can pop in and out of the game safely and help the FL. A lot of SML's NPC character jumps were funny and cute, I really appreciated the comedy it added.

There is some ambiguity on the ending, which some have interpreted to mean that the soul of the game character could actually have been another player but I disbelieve that because though they do look similar (the ML and the Investor), the code that the FL injected into the character is what made him different enough to base an entire other game around. This wouldn't be possible if he was actually another human who snuck into the game during development...so I believe he is just a character and they are forever separated by real vs game world.

I most probably wouldn't rewatch this or go out of my way to recommend this as "one the best things you'll ever watch", but if you're a fan of short format dramas and want something to watch on your morning train commute, this is a quick little watch that you could finish in one or two round trips and it's engaging enough to keep watching to the end.

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