Fortunately, it only has 12 episodes

I watched this because it stars Qin Lan and dramas starring her are often good. This is not the case this time. As for comedy it is kind of watchable but the romances in this drama are completely absurd.

The romance of the lead actors ( Zhang Fan and Lin Sen ) is the worst of them all. A middle aged woman falls in love with a "teenager boy" who acts like a puppy begging for attention. Intoxicated by love, she begins to cover up the rape case of her subordinate that the boy's father committed earlier - Just so the boy wouldn't feel bad - such a motive makes no sense - but on the other hand, not much else in their relationship makes any sense either.
Second couple is not much better - A normal girl has been in a relationship for 7 years with a "zombie" whose EQ is zero.
Luckily the third couple/couples are kind of funny - thanks to them I managed to watch all the episodes.

The acting is mostly good and the music is not bad either.

Read More

Sometimes all the pieces fall into place

The performances of the actors, the story, the music and the CGI are all really high quality in this interesting drama.
Ni Ni is simply amazing in this role and Bai Yu's performance is also commendable. In addition, when none of the actors failed in their performance, the result was surprisingly realistic even though the theme and events of the drama are fictitious

The drama completely lacks the common stumbling blocks of a typical c-dramas, i.e. gender chauvinism and naive, childish female characters.

One of the best C-dramas I've seen and I hope that future C-dramas will develop in this direction.

Read More

Not as good it could have been but still worth watching

This drama had a lot of potential - good story-line, amazing female lead ( Wang Zi Wen aka Olivia Wang ) and well acting male villain ( Cheng Men Qi ) also most support role actors performed well. They succeed ti create an livid illusion of magical world which keep you hooked. And then there is also the Little Scoundrel...

Unluckily the male lead ( Peter Scheng ) shatters the illusion every time the story focuses on him. His acting is totally expressionless and his "acting" is basicly walking around and reading his lines monotonously. From about episode 20 onwards I completely ignored him. With some capable male lead I would have rated this drama 9 or 10 - but now I can only rate it 8.

Anyway this drama is worth watching

Read More

Waste of time

In the beginning ( episode 8) ML for completely selfish reasons is actually trying to kill the totally innocent SL who has fall in love with him . Afterwards, viewers should then forget about it and believe that he is a "good guy" and that SL still loves that selfish and murderous jerk. I think it's absolutely ridiculous.
ML's character is boring and actor's bad performance and total lack of charisma makes it even worse - the result is a faceless wax-statue walking around in his silly boots.
SL's is supposed to be intelligent and badass girl and Li Qin delivers that nicely. Later ( apparently to emphasize her love with ML) , her character is changed to be a silly and scared little girl. It seems completely strange and ruins the only interesting character in this drama.
There is no chemistry between main leads and when they have scenes together it feels like being in Madame Tussaud's wax museum and watching a lively and beautiful girl to flirt jokingly with a wax-statue.

Read More

Female lead Jung So Min ( Mu-Deok) will not return in season 2

The first season of this drama had everything right:
- good story,
- brilliant Female lead Jung So Min as Mu-deok/ Naksu
- sympathetic Male lead Lee Jae Wook as Jang Uk
- well written characters
- impressive villains

So watching Season 1 was a really pleasant experience ... until it became known that for season 2 they will replace female lead Jung So Min with Go Yoon Jung. She is the actress who appeared as Naksu for a few minutes in the first episode ( Lake scene ). To put it mildly I think her performance in that episode was expressionless and emotionless with no charisma.

Indeed I was not at all impressed of this drama before Naksu's soul shifted to Mu-Deok and Jung So Min game along. She is talented and charismatic actress who is also able to express all needed emotions.

I suppose that season 2 will be a big disappointment for me.

Read More

A good drama that could have been excellent

When I started to watch I expected it to be excellent because the plot is based on the "Bandits" novel and FL ( Zhao Li Ying ) is one of my favorite actresses and she delivered now too .

Even though the drama was good, it didn't quite live up to my expectations because there was some unfortunate flaws. The worst shortcomings were related to ML's (Wang Yi Bo ) character - both for his character and actors performance.

ML's character was supposed to be intelligent, thoughtful and charming but what he delivered was a smug and stupid teenager. Most obviously, this was far too difficult a role for Wang Yi Bo.
After watching a few episodes, I wished the drama didn't have a male lead at all - he could have had some kind of supporting role. The problem was made worse by the fact that there are a lot of conversation scenes between FL and ML in the drama. This became annoying because the ML's lines and visual expression were completely contradictory - at the same time, their romance became completely implausible.

PS. Why there nowadays are so many Chinese dramas witch are spoiled by poorly performing male leads and / or by poorly written male leads characters ?
Can't writers really come up with other types of male characters than manipulative narcissists or poodles ?

Read More

A Promising setup - miserable result

I started to watch this drama because Female Lead is Zanilia Zhao who is an really charismatic and talented actress. She is particularly good at portraying strong and independent female characters - maybe she herself is a natural born hero. At the beginning everything was promising, main plot seemed to include military, fashion design and business aspects. Lin Qian ( Zhanilia ) is a talented designer with great ambitions. However immediately when she started getting attracted to male lead, her characters behavior degenerates to a silly little 11 year old girl. This kind of role development is annoyingly common in C-dramas even it has no basis in reality. On the contrary Studies show that women act more rationally than men when it comes to love.
It was sad to watch Zanilia to waste her talent with this ridiculous character.

In the first episodes we saw action scenes which were like a copy of American special forces movies. Sorry, but different variations of these scenes has already been seen hundreds of times, so they are totally worn out. Watchable but not impressive at all. After some 10 episodes writers seemed to totally have forgot the original plot and the drama become a silly collection of borrowed scenes eg. accidental kisses, hugs, embrace and whatnot.

Overall, this drama combined almost all the bad aspects of Chinese dramas. Worn out "classic romantic scenes", patriarchal males, male chauvinists, submissive women who fall in love with men who treat them badly and on top of all that we can watch women degenerate to little girls when they get attracted to men. Oh, and as usual male lead is a "super-hero"

Some actors and actresses were pretty good - but the characters were so bad that their skill was just wasted

This drama can only be recommended to viewers who only focus on whether the Male Actors are handsome or not. Although this might be disappointing for them too

Read More

Even Yang mi can't resque this drama

I wonder why many of reviewers praise this drama.
Partly it is a story of two conceited men ( Emperor and Fang Zhu ) who like each other too much. In their own opinion they are the most important people in the world - all others are pawns to be exploited and sacrificed.
In addition to that they both wallow in self-pity all the time. sarc- What a lovely bromance

When all ready ca. 20+ years old Fang Zhu meets ca. 10 years old girl ( Hai Shi ) and begins to raise her as a foster father. As her "Master" he teaches her HIS OWN RULES - such as for example that she must always obey and do as her Master wants. In practice, Hai Shi is thus being brainwashed throughout her childhood.

Second part of this story is a "romance" between Hai Shi and Fang Zhu. Watching this drama just makes me feel sorry for Hai Shi. I think it's not a romance but abuse of her.

So no matter how much I like her acting, watching this drama is too disgusting

Read More

If you like dramas where a narcissistic 187cm tall male lead pulls a 165 cm tall petite girl by the ear, drags her around and dominates her by using force, then you might like this drama. Some people apparently think that this kind of behavior is cute, but I find it disgusting

From this drama you will also learn what abilities make a person a genius businessman and a leader in a C-drama:
- one must know how to ask one's father for money
- you have to know to ask your mother for help to get contacts
- you must know how to take credit for others' achievements and blame them for your own mistakes
- you have to study the "business management for dummies" course in the West
- narcissistic nature is a necessity and you have to constantly tell everyone how excellent you are
- you have to drastically overestimate your own intelligence, skills and appearance
- and above all, the gender must be male

This drama also shows that it doesn't matter how stupid, uncivilized and obnoxious the ML character is, the FL character will fall in love with him anyway.

Dropped after 22 episodes

Read More

Garbage produced of good resources

FL and ML are both good actors (especially Wu Jin Yan) and perform their roles excellently.
The basic idea (screenwriter and police) is an interesting setup, but it is the only positive thing in the entire script.

ML's behavior towards FL is totally worthless: bullying, dominating, subjugating and derogatory speech ( C-dramas male archetype )
FL, on the other hand, is the female archetype of C-dramas: stupid, helpless and lovesick.

The age difference between the characters is actually about 20 years, but visually it's about 30, so the so-called "romance" mostly evokes pity for FL.

The writers could finally ditch such silly characters and produce something worth watching. Currently, more than 90% of C-dramas are patriarchal garbage.

Read More

The basic idea of this drama is interesting

Apart from the basic idea, it's hard to find anything good about the drama. During the first two episodes I thought this was a bad parody of spy movies - I was wrong - this is just a very bad spy drama.
The plot and events are full of contradictions and lack of logic, and both the authorities and the spies often act so illogically and stupidly that the drama should be called "Spy Games for Dummies".

The bad script is probably partly to blame, but all the actors perform poorly, even Li YiTong who usually performs excellently in all her roles is uninspired in this drama. Wei Da Xu's "performance" as Huang Zi Cheng is a complete flop.
The VR scenes are also completely unrealistic, for example everyone who uses VR will surely notice how ridiculous it is to "teeter" on roller skates when the movement is made with a controller and the person is actually sitting.

One example of illogicality in this drama ( there are dozens ):
An Spy organization draws up a multi-part plan to steal something. The route of the courier carrying the object is planned so that at a certain point he disappears from all surveillance cameras - and after that he can no longer be located. However, the handover is planned to take place a few hundred meters BEFORE this disappearance. In addition, the handover takes place directly to the car visible in the surveilance camera.

Read More