Could have been better but not unwatchable

This drama could have been done better with a more rapid growth of relationship and emotional maturity on the part of the ML character, he really had to have things explained to him repeatedly before he understood and changed. I blame the writers for repeatedly making male characters soooo out of touch with their feelings that it takes a brick to the head sometimes to break their shell open. (the first half of the drama especially!)

The actor and actress can only do as good as the script lets them do, and you can see the potential that XZL has an actor if he can just break out of these roles that don't suit his range. When he's paired with a good leading lady he can make it work, but this isn't his strong suit and when he's paired with a mediocre one it shows.

Thankfully the kisses were on fire because Bai Lu can match the energy of her co-stars intuitively and it makes them both give a better performance. Their chemistry towards the second half of the series picked up steam but kept getting knocked back down by the writers putting up ridiculous roadblocks.

Hey writers, we don't want to just see them get together and that is the end, we want to go on the first dates, we want to see them hold hands, we want to see them struggle to juggle work and romance balance...ie sometimes he is the boss and has the final say and sometimes he's your boyfriend and you are equals and how to make that work for you both happily. We want the mushy 15 minute dates you have to cram in to keep the romance going in between important business issues, staying up late together to finish one last big project before launch ect.

Give us the life that happens in between the "we are finally a couple" and the "I want to marry this person and have my happy ever after" finale.

My finale opinion is that this is a 6/10 that could have been a solid 8 or 8.5 if the first half hadn't had the FL start with zero experience and just jump into a random "relationship" because of nonsensical reasons that only made any sense if you thought about it from a plot point instead of "this is something real humans would do" point.

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It's not just about the game of Go or the Romance

This was an amazing show and I'm sorry I didn't give a try earlier. I was vaguely familiar with some scenes in the first few episodes so I must have seen clips when it first aired but for some reason never put it on my watchlist, maybe because I didn't know literally anything about the game of Go and I didn't think a 41 episode drama that centered around that would interest me?

Now I have actually watched it I have to say this is one of my favorite recent Cdramas in its genre. It really brings all the emotions out, there are times you are laughing, sometimes you're rooting enthusiastically, you find yourself immersed in their world effortlessly, when they suffer a loss, or a setback you feel it too.

Without posting a spoiler, there's the final 2-3 episodes that resonated with my personal experiences in life and I was expecting the final few episodes to be pure fluff but this dealt with something we will all to differing degrees deal with and I felt it elevated the show quite a bit to be realistic and not just fairies and pixie dust lalala happy ending for everyone....don't get me wrong, I love a good fluff drama, but this one, I felt, kept the spirit of the original intent from the first episode all the way to the very end. A great, realistic, and sweet romance between our leads dealing with life as it's thrown at them even if it's setting was heavy handed with some common c-drama tropes, somehow those never overshadowed the story and the real emotions.

To address the concerns about the drama focusing heavily on the game of Go, even if you know nothing about this game (like me), you will find the drama very interesting. There are times where the games are very important to the plot, but you aren't just watching two people put a white or black stone on the board...in the most intense moments, you are transported into a visual metaphor for the actions of the game. Sometimes it's an old style video game, sometimes it's two assassins battling it out, sometimes it's magical warriors fighting in a bamboo forest...each time is unique and manages to capture the essence of the emotions and the meanings behind the moves on the board. I really enjoyed that part and I love the writers for creating an opportunity to bring the game of Go to life in an interesting and new way.

There were several times where the sismance and bromance was strong in this drama. One thing that really stuck out for me was a few moments of real conversations between men about life, love, loss, and emotions. I like to see that expressed and shown more in dramas. Men have emotions just as much as women do, and it's healthy and good to show normal interactions...men don't always have to be smashed drunk out of their minds to open up to each other, sometimes you can sit across from each other and play a game of Go/chess or whatever and just talk to each other about life. It was amazing and I hope more dramas show men like that.

I would have given this show a perfect score except that I wish the writers would have dealt with Kao Ye a little differently, I felt his actions were undetected for too long and his very deep and overwhelming suffering wasn't seen by either his Shifu or his fellow apprentices or at least they didn't see it as something they need to make an effort to interfere or intercede with like they did when the ML had issues. The show wasn't about Kao Ye, so maybe that's why he was allowed to go into an inescapable spiral of obsession but his actions really had far reaching consequences and I wish someone had noticed him a little sooner. He was the root cause of his problems but still, I wish the writers had given him a little of a break once in a while.

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a not so simple slice of life drama that is well worth the watch

First I want to let people know that there should be a warning of some kind before you start the drama if you are depressed or suffer from SI, this is not a show you can probably safely watch. I think it could be very triggering for people if they have zero clue that there are multiple scenes dealing with those issues and not really any warning that it's going to happen before they start watching it. Literally the first scenes of the first episode starts and the final scene of the first episode ends with that issue.

This drama really was a small clip of a year in the life of these people, it made me feel like we were a part of their friend group by the end of the series. Very well done and I really felt connected with their lives, emotions, dreams, and pains.

Each episode is about an hour and 15 minutes long, but to me they sped past incredibly fast, so much that I needed to pause and take it all in instead of bingeing it rapidly like I normally do. There are only 12 episodes but there is so much story packed into each one that it feels like you've watched a movie and a half by the end of each episode.

There was only 2 things I felt could have been done differently. The first episode or two included some flashbacks that were a little confusing and I wondered it the whole show was going to be like that, jumping forward to the present and then a scene later jumping back. It wasn't like that, just they needed to fill in some of the background and that's what the writers chose to do, it did feel a little out of place at times but thankfully that feeling only lasted a brief time in the overall drama. The second thing was in episode 10 or 11, there was big fight between two different couples that was basically occuring at the same time. The director chose to jump from one scene to the other, one couple to the other. The two couples were fighting about different things, so it didn't make sense to me why they kept jumping so quickly back and forth. I had a hard time connecting emotionally with the feelings of the couples because I was trying so hard to figure out what was happening between each set. I think this probably didn't feel jarring or out of place for those who speak the language, but for those of us who have to read the subtitles and then look up at the character's faces to gauge the emotions ect, it felt there wasn't enough time to read and then look and then suddenly we were at the scene of the other couple. Maybe it was just me that had that problem but I did have to pause the big arguing scenes to break it down and figure out who was mad at who and why and if they were or weren't justified...that was a little bit that took me out of the drama and more focused on the editing choices.

Even with the heavy topic and the 2 editing decisions I might have chosen differently, I still have to give this a VERY high score and also highly recommend that you give it a try. It's worth the emotional investment in my opinion.

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The elephant in the room

I don't have a huge problem with people who have a big age difference falling in love with each other in real life as long as the relationship starts once they are both consenting adults and they don't have a prior relationship with an imbalance of power, ie teacher/student, family friend ect.
However, I think what works against this drama is the fact that the two leads are 20 years apart in age, there IS a power imbalance in their relationship, he is her boss, and the Female Leading Actress looks even younger than her character is supposed to be.

Shen Yue is 24 in the drama but looks like she's 16-18 years old and Jerry Yan is very handsome but he looks every minute of his 44 years of age. If he looked to be late 30s and she actually looked to be mid 20s, I believe the audience would have been more forgiving and not really spoken about it much...but the way it is, too many focused on that to the exclusion of everything else about the drama.

IF you can manage to get past all that, the drama itself isn't that bad. It has some good lessons about life, there's some good give and take between the couple, and though it's a bit too long it still manages to hold your attention for all 34 episodes.

I've watched this but I don't think I could rewatch it except in clips. I would give it a 7 and if they had managed to make Shen Yue look her age I probably would have given it a higher rating.

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Save your time and skip this one, there are a lot better dramas out there

I ended dropping it before I hit the half way mark.


Minor Spoilers ahead:


The ML is a coward, the SML would have began dating FL who was willing AND interested in him except the ML kept interfering and ruining it.

The only reason ML never dated her before was about a dozen missed confessions that he wimped out on waiting for the "perfect" timing, and by the time he was ready to go for it for real then his father stepped in and said "You can't date FL because your mother left us and she also was in the entertainment industry. Obviously I did nothing wrong and your Mom was at fault therefore ALL women in that career must be awful human beings so you can't date her despite knowing her for TEN YEARS and knowing all about her...obviously now that she's a successful singer she's going to end up leaving you like your Mom left me". AND the ML agreed to that logic?!?!? He promises his dad that he'll never ever ever date the FL and then just acts all wounded puppy when she moves on from what she thinks is a one sided crush on him that he refuses to return the love. Just a weak script and the ML character as written is ugh, pathetic.

The actors on the other hand did as good as they could with a poor script. I still gave this a 5 out of 10 just for their efforts.

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Just awful

Be aware that in the first episode the ML forces himself on the FL after murdering her whole family. She then revenges him and offs herself. Then they both restart three years in the past.
From that point we're supposed to root for them to have a redemption in their time loop second life?

I tried to give this the benefit of the doubt, but even several episodes in, he's trying to act like he's drawn to her and can't help himself and she tries to keep a distance but somehow still gets tangled with him?

The acting is awful, the script is nonsense, the makeup is horrible.
0/10 do not waste your time on this.

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ML is the worst kind of romanticized character

I had to drop it, they keep masking super red flag behavior on the part of the ML and try to play it up with cute scenes with the kid to make up for it.

Yes there are some cute moments, but I will never forgive a character who told a mother her child was DYING just so he could get some confirmation, there are a million other ways he could have gotten that information. This is a DROP and earns a solid F minus grade for the writer from me.

I think the worst part is that his behavior is constantly presented clearly to the audience in the worst possible light and then immediately shown as he's "justified" because of X Y Z happened in the past. You have the right to be angry about things that happened, but you do not have the right to use your power to make an emotionally charged decision that will affect thousands of people because you're mad at your ex.

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