Dont do this to yourself
Okay, so it is 2020, I watched this because I wanted to check out more stuff from Zheng Ye Cheng. I think this was a green era type of webdrama where the cast essentially just started their acting career/getting more early parts (I dont know much about the casts, but it feels this way). This is really what that notion about idol dramas really means. The stereotypical idol drama isnt really a piece that has all of these beautiful idols in it doing whatever in a weak way (essentially the mainstream idea about it nowadays when negatively critiquing pieces), it is actually a piece that fails in almost every category and is only surviving/existing post production because of the beautiful idols in it (definitely a more true idea for pre-2018 ish works, but should adhere to today's stuff too imho).
I'll start off with something good for now. The OST. That is a pretty solid OST, their voices worked really well together, it was easy on the ears and wow the boyish charm that Zheng YeCheng possess? 100/100! It's a nice song, I probably wont get tired of it for a while. The very basics of the story line: traveling throughout time to collect allies as part of a worldly game that can include life and death, victories and losses, love, hate, and regrets. Sounds really solid and entertaining, has a touch of possibly causing heartache, I'm all for it. It sounds like a manga/anime based thing (I'm not really sure if this webdrama is based off of anything though, cant see to find much credible information on it elsewhere). There is definitely some good comedic parts.
Onto the negatives.
Acting is a complete mess. Zheng Ye Cheng really carried a lot of the scenes because his acting wasn't as stiff as everyone else, and was written a lot more reasonably (like the actions, lines, behaviors, and mannerisms are all shown in a much more believable way; yknow as a main character and all). Some of the acting overall was executed in an okay way (pretty close to good, but a good couple of blocks from it). There was also a lot of hype and fawning over JUN (on youtube), but that character was just.... for why imho, I couldn't see what they wanted to with that character at all, considering it is listed as a main character instead of support/guest. All of the supporting casts' characters gave me more questions than I expected because the scenes weren't executed well and that won't be placed on them because they showed up for like 2 minutes. The dry acting and execution of the jokes were also done pretty badly by these supporting characters (about 10secs of comedic relief stuff was great in most episodes).
Onto production value. I don't recall reading much about this at all but I'm guessing they had money management problems and didnt know how much of their budget they shouldve invested into any aspect. They tried to fit all of the content of an average drama's 45mins into a 10-12mins slot (not counting the credits). This resulted in sonic escalation with editing and acting scenes in general. They cut so much and pasted everything together that each episode stays consistently confusing or causes whiplash because there was no introduction to the big event, it went straight to the big events. The lighting was also really bad? I think they used sunlight, because you could see the actors were actually pushing through not closing their eyes/squinting because the sun was shining directly at them. This is definitely not a polished piece, if they were able to extend the episode time slots to maybe 20-25mins/episode (without credits), I think this piece would be completely different and much better than it is now.
I'll start off with something good for now. The OST. That is a pretty solid OST, their voices worked really well together, it was easy on the ears and wow the boyish charm that Zheng YeCheng possess? 100/100! It's a nice song, I probably wont get tired of it for a while. The very basics of the story line: traveling throughout time to collect allies as part of a worldly game that can include life and death, victories and losses, love, hate, and regrets. Sounds really solid and entertaining, has a touch of possibly causing heartache, I'm all for it. It sounds like a manga/anime based thing (I'm not really sure if this webdrama is based off of anything though, cant see to find much credible information on it elsewhere). There is definitely some good comedic parts.
Onto the negatives.
Acting is a complete mess. Zheng Ye Cheng really carried a lot of the scenes because his acting wasn't as stiff as everyone else, and was written a lot more reasonably (like the actions, lines, behaviors, and mannerisms are all shown in a much more believable way; yknow as a main character and all). Some of the acting overall was executed in an okay way (pretty close to good, but a good couple of blocks from it). There was also a lot of hype and fawning over JUN (on youtube), but that character was just.... for why imho, I couldn't see what they wanted to with that character at all, considering it is listed as a main character instead of support/guest. All of the supporting casts' characters gave me more questions than I expected because the scenes weren't executed well and that won't be placed on them because they showed up for like 2 minutes. The dry acting and execution of the jokes were also done pretty badly by these supporting characters (about 10secs of comedic relief stuff was great in most episodes).
Onto production value. I don't recall reading much about this at all but I'm guessing they had money management problems and didnt know how much of their budget they shouldve invested into any aspect. They tried to fit all of the content of an average drama's 45mins into a 10-12mins slot (not counting the credits). This resulted in sonic escalation with editing and acting scenes in general. They cut so much and pasted everything together that each episode stays consistently confusing or causes whiplash because there was no introduction to the big event, it went straight to the big events. The lighting was also really bad? I think they used sunlight, because you could see the actors were actually pushing through not closing their eyes/squinting because the sun was shining directly at them. This is definitely not a polished piece, if they were able to extend the episode time slots to maybe 20-25mins/episode (without credits), I think this piece would be completely different and much better than it is now.
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