Earthquake Relief, the Motherland stands with us!

I had nothing else to watch & needed something for my workout sessions. That's the reason why I picked this up against my better judgement. As an experienced cdrama watcher I expected very little from a drama about firefighters & firefighter plus a journalist's romance. Unfortunately `A Date with the Future` is worse than I thought. Saying that everything's wrong with it is a bit hyperbolic, but there is so much wrong I won't be able to get to everything with my rather dispirited review writing here...

The comment section talked a lot about FL being a stalker, I think my fellow MDLers do have a point, though I thought this was not too bad compared to Go Go Squid, or what's worse the second ML(the firefighter, not gege) in this very drama! Since he is the real stalker here & he has done so many absolutely horrible things to chase the clearly uninterested girl that he would have deserved a restraining order or more. However this is a Chinese drama and so the stalkerish behavior plus the insane amount of forcefulness won him the girl..

The workspace related things were pretty bad for both leads, the firefighter department had an incredible amount of posturing & various direct propaganda related speeches in every single episode. The TV station did not have too much screen time, but of course they went completely off the rails there too.

Then there is the usual surgeon is good at every medical disciple, the firefighter is good at fighting not only fires, but criminals with knifes as well & the reporter is also extraordinarily multitalented being a better dog trainer then the professionals at the rescue team and she gets promoted to team leader at the TV station just by doing nothing but reporting on her boyfriends firefighting activities etc etc..

There are several really boring, silly and to me uninteresting action scenes of course, home made bombs, getting locked into the cold room, earthquakes plural.. (plentiful time spent in the hospital of course)

There was this scene when the ML & FL were hugging each other to sleep while having a burning candle in a glass jar close to them on the floor. I found it ironic how bad of a messaging that is in a show about firefighting.
Let's talk a bit about the dogs too. I generally don't like dogs as a cat person, but I have some doubts about animal handling & safety in this show.
Also at one point the team was called to "quickly" help with earthquake relief, but before going they held an effin parade in front of their buses. Like what the heck, people are dying, but you all are just parading there spinning left and right saluting to this or that, reciting speeches about unity..

Admittedly the main couple had some good moments, but I don't think the actors had particularly good chemistry & overall I wouldn't call this very good. There is an absolutely super annoying teary eyed `ge` second love interest for the FL & he only gives up in ep30. At least all his scenes are very fastforward buttonable, since he is not at all integral to the story. There is also a noble idiocy breakup, at least it happens early enough on & it's not very long, but jeez it was so awful.

Frankly I'm a bit surprised this passed censorship. Firefighting -and to a lesser extent even the military- is portrayed as an absolutely shit job that nobody should sign up for. Then again what do I know, perhaps in China they have the problem that there are too many people aspiring to become firefighters or even soldiers.

It goes without saying that I feel I have wasted my time, should have rewatched something instead for the nth time.

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I cannot recommend this drama!

What a weird drama, oh my god I don't even know where to start..

Alright about the premise, the whole way the relationship/marriage started is completely insane. I kept watching, because Perfect and Casual had a similarly insane first 2-3 episodes & after that it turned out to be one of the better cdramas I've seen.
In all honesty around e7-8 I started thinking this show will be like that too, before the secondary love interest shows up most of the episodes were a work of art. There were several episodes in a row where there was no plot, but only very chill, cozy and a bit moody romance & I felt I could keep watching content like this for a hundred more episodes.

I think our leads look great together, in an attractively misfitting way. They had slowly developing, but good chemistry & if I focused exclusively on their romance, then that was quite good up until the finale. They had their ups and downs, but there were no serious problems or misunderstandings that took too long to resolve.

This is a visually stunning show, it's really high up there in terms photography & the sets, sceneries are just amazingly beautiful..

To me this drama feels a bit like they hired the best possible actors, the best possible cinematographer, procured some great background music inserts and gotten an amazing director too. Unfortunately as it often happens the writer did not work out. I already talked about the premise, but I'm almost at a loss of words about the things that go down in the second half of the drama. There is big twist too & that is indescribably absurd & once that is resolved ridiculous business problems crop up & suddenly the money required to solve problems shoots to the stratosphere, they start throwing around numbers that make no sense..
There is some propaganda related messaging as well in the final episodes, though I'm not sure how much of it is intentional.
Unlikely coincidences sure happen a lot in dramas, but good gawd in this one the unlikely chance meeting trope sure is overused & that's an understatement.

One thing that is not writer's fault is the puppies on the show. What the characters describe as "stray dogs and cats from a nearby village" are specimen of incredible pedigree. To me that was extremely immersion breaking, similarly to when in other dramas they adopt and raise randomly found imported hedgehogs that look like $2000. Though in this show it's worse, because the meaning & messaging associated with strays is very significant & then showing dogs that are worth more money than my car is just absurd.

Just to reiterate, the plot twist shocked me more than anything else I can remember in cdramaland, the egregiousness of it, not because it was so impactful.. I'm even suspecting that a large chunk of the drama failed censorship, so they quickly filmed that birthday scene & moved on from all family conflicts with a single stroke.. (the 23 episode length does support this theory) I'd be happy to read your opinions about that under this review :P

5.5 may seem like an unnecessarily low rating, but I don't have it in me to go any higher!

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This is basically the reboot of My Girlfriend Is an Alien 1. It's just as silly and the plot just as juvenile as before. A romcom of this genre does not really need a sensible plot, at least as long as the entertainment is steady and up until the last 25% it mostly is, though I did feel it drag and repeat itself, but it's not too bad. ML's acting & chemistry with FL has improved tremendously from before & I found the love triangle less annoying, since the second ML is a straight up cartoon villain in the final episodes & has very inconsequential, skippable scenes until then.

There is a tremendous amount of fluff & fun bickering in this show. What annoyed me though is that the romances -even by cdrama romcom standards- are just too shallow.

The final episodes preceding the 30 min long happy ending were basically trash, but since the entertainment value until then was decent, I decided to rate it at 6.5.

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Enjoyable, but not amazing.

The Good
⌲ The leads look great together visually.
⌲ Puff executed the aloof female lead persona very well.
⌲ The cute second lead noona romance
⌲ The workplace banter up until e9.
⌲ The relatively well executed fight scenes
⌲ Effectively speaking the villainous characters don't get any screen time. (I cannot emphasize how great that is compared to the cartoon villain galore that we normally get in dramas)
⌲ There are no love triangles worth mentioning.

The Average:
⌲ The main romance. (there is just unusually little fluff overall)
⌲ The supporting characters at the company felt too average, kind of like they were drawn from a template or something like that.
⌲ The mom is horrible, but on the flip side she has very little screen time, as such causing fewer than average annoyances.
⌲ Recording conversations left and right.
⌲ The weird 13 episode format, did the bad ratings lead to premature cancellation? (then again it's better then dragging the story to 16..)
⌲ There is very little fun banter & main romance after e9, the focus shifts to other things.

The Bad:
⌲ ML keeps hitting on FL, who does not notice for half the drama & then suddenly they are dating.
⌲ The separate bedroom.
⌲ The plot flows strangely. (it's difficult to explain. There are a large number of very emotionally satisfying scenes, but the whole drama feels a bit disjointed.)
⌲ The final episode is fan fiction tier for a variety of reasons, it's really not a well thought out episode plot wise.
⌲ Redemption arc, redemption arc, everyone gets a redemption arc, yay. (no way forgiveness is justified for these people!)
⌲ Friend & exBF ...

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I have recently watched `It Started with a Kiss` for the first time. While it's been a bit of a lukewarm experience, I had nothing better to watch and so decided to give the sequel a go.

If I only look at the journey and not the destination** than the sequel is tremendously better. It's still a bit repetitive, but ML had real character progression over the course of the 20 episodes & the various plots were more interesting & better written. The leads also warmed up to each other much more, reaching near perfect chemistry. Though `They Kiss Again` is far more of a slice of life/romance drama than comedy, the comedy is still omnipresent though & is rather okay. This one also has a love triangle, but It's rather short lived, it's not nearly as egregious as before. Overall the romance in this one is strong & very enjoyable, with increasing depth as we reach the final episodes. It's good stuff.

**The biggest gripe I have with this drama is the ending, it basically does not have one, not counting a 2 minute long something something inserted into the ending credits. Episode 20 is like any other episode, it's a good one with lots of emotion etc, but it really feels like the team planned for season3..
Endings are really important to me, so this contributed a lot to why this drama did not break the 8.0 barrier in my overall score.

Also I really disliked Christine. Her character is not only really poorly written, but also the whole alien in Taiwan thing is really unnaturally presented. Foreigners are often incredibly annoying supporting characters in Asian dramas in general, but good gawd. (and when I thought it could not get any worse, then her father made an appearance .. )

Overall I enjoyed this, It's really decent for 2007.

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Let me start with quickly summarizing the plot: (I may have made minor mistakes with the numbers here, but the ballpark is correct)

⌲ep1-3: The leads meet and them plus their families start living together.
⌲ep4-25: Nothing happens. (Lighthearted comedy with about as much romantic progress as about 3 normal kdrama episodes would have today in 2024.)
⌲ep26-28: Makjang, SUDDENLY everyone wants to marry someone else. (this is like what the plot of ep10 to 15 of a 2005 era kdrama would be like, but fast tracked)
⌲ep29-30: Happy ending.

So basically anyone who is fine with enjoying an aimless & progress-less and a bit lukewarm comedy for more than 20 episodes straight will enjoy this and this mostly applies to me as well. Though I have been rather annoyed by the final conflicts & how suddenly things devolved into THAT.

This is based on Itazura na Kiss, which I have consumed either in Anime or Manga form almost 20 years ago, I'm not even sure anymore.. Anyway the point is that while I'm not sure how accurately this resembles the original work, I can certainly recognize the plot "progression" of a nineties manga/anime from this. The nostalgia has helped alleviating the feeling of boredom for me, but I somewhat doubt a young person that never experienced that era of j-culture would feel the same way..

Oh I almost forgot, the mom in this drama is an extremely adorable character, at this moment I cannot even think of a cuter mom that I've encountered in a modern Asian drama, it's almost worth watching this just for her shenanigans.

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This show is very 2005 kdrama like, especially the first half. (The Taiwanese flavor does not feel very strong.) In those ancient classics though the final 20-40% always tends to be very makjangish with absolutely insane Brazil soap plots. Luckily in this one the crazy is toned down a lot, so while they set up quite a few of those, they fizzled out every time, the drama does not even feature a breakup. The love triangle starts out as the very annoying friendly `ge` type, but discounting one (or two) three way handgrabs, it's far more tolerable than what you would normally see in a drama of its ilk.
The romance & the main characters are super juvenile as is common in this genre, though 28? yo virgins acting like preteens is understandably not going to be everyone's cup of tea..

Overall this has been solid entertainment for me, though it does get a bit draggy near the finale. (the plot has some really stupid things in it too, like the gangster's redemption ark, I mean what to fork was that?)

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The repeated anime dancing is so silly that I could just not look away, even after seeing it 20+ times.

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Disclaimer: I have not watched the so called season1, because I have been warned about the terrible plot twist beforehand. (which makes it a 2/10 drama from the get go)
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This is basically a rather generic cdrama romcom. There is almost not a single new thing here, maybe with the exception of checking marriage license authenticity with amnesia. The chemistry is average, the comedy is average, the acting is average and the plot is average too (which means it's bad objectively speaking). There is also a rather typical semi-weak love triangle, though it ends very peacefully.

What makes this drama stand out a tiny bit from mediocrity is that it's a bit shorter than normal (12ep kdrama length) and so the plot is progressing rather quickly & there are no big annoyances anywhere. It's basically 70% fluff n sugar, which is something I always appreciate, even though the romances could not have been any shallower. While the villains are really poorly written and all, the fact that they barely have any screen time & fail to cause any big upheavals is pretty great.

One thing that somewhat annoyed me is that the drama has several very forceful kisses, but it's played off as successful seduction or something along those lines..
Oh I almost forgot, some of the product placements are just direct ad breaks basically, they start talking about certain brands directly & unnaturally. (Adolph Shampoo & whatever sanitary pads)

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Not as amazing as the original, but it's still one of the better localized adaptations I've seen.

I Hear Your Voice is one of my all time top 10 Asian dramas. Up until a few days ago I did not know this adaptation existed, so I quickly lined this up to watch during my daily workout sessions. Overall I'm glad I did. It may not be as good as the original, but I would say it's about as good as watching that for the 3rd time would be like, still plenty great.

Cdramas are inherently less intense than kdramas, but since this came out back in 2019 it's still far more intense than what we are used to today. So the general mood of the original kdrama is quite nicely transferred over. The writer made some changes, from the second case onward the cases are different, but with one big exception* most of the iconic scenes, moments and even the annoying love triangle (the only bad thing about the original) is there. The casting is good, but of course not nearly as good as in the original, but they picked fitting actors.
There is one thing the adaptation did much better than the original, which is FL is not trying to push away ML nearly as much and she completely accepts ML as her future partner. I'm not a big fan of open endings, this felt nice.

*My favorite part of the original drama was when ML pretended to have a memory loss & that is essentially completely missing from the adaptation. Sure ML does get a memory loss, but the pretending part only lasts for 5 minutes & has no romcom relevance.

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A-

This is a very decent Chinese romance drama. Overall it's quite similar to You Are My Glory, but it has more comedy & the setting is different. (entertainment industry vs. corporate environment in this one) Janice Wu is always 10/10 in romcoms & this paring's been quite fantastic. Also I like "faceslaps" in Chinese fiction & this drama has plenty of that.
One big positive in this drama is that the high school flashbacks are quite well done. There are not overly many of them & have proper child actors, which is always nice to see.

So why is it only an 8?

Well, for starters the final 4-5 episodes were quite difficult to get through. The crises were not too serious or anything, but the whole "company's in dire straits" thing was really unfun to watch & then a rocket had been launched & we got fed an incredible amount of Chinese propaganda stuff before the ending credits.

There is also the matter of ML's younger brother. To me it feels like the writer thought the leads are ready to get married, so let's fix the ML's "big problem" before then, I'm quite disappointed with this, the kid was comedy gold, would have much rather watched him bicker with FL, over whatever corporate shenanigans that went down.

Also I really disliked most of the songs. Mainland Chinese rock that gets to be on TV almost always sounds really weird to me, but this drama has been perhaps the worst offender so far.

Oh I almost forgot, the drama is full of insane product placements.

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I have conflicted feelings about this movie. While I -a fan of the drama- have somewhat enjoyed watching it, it did feel redundant & a bit messy. In all honestly I have extreme doubts that someone who has not seen drama could even understand let alone enjoy this. The plot is about as complicated, if not a bit more so than the original drama's main plot (it's the same with complications basically), but all that is presented in 100 minutes, It's a bit like imagine Back to the Future 1-2-3 as one 100 minute long movie, would we even root for our heroes with that little buildup to the various time travel events that happen there.

Oh well, Wu Bai is still a legend & Last Dance is still one of the best songs I have ever heard!

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It's on the cusp of greatness, but the writing has ruined it.

To me it feels like this drama had most of the ingredients to become something really special. Namely, we've had amazing actors and an absolutely amazing production team. With a better writer this could have almost been a Goblin. To me everything outside of the plot is working really really well. The lead couple I think had great chemistry & the actors did a phenomenal job creating some really touching scenes, to some extent letting the audience feel that emotional roller coaster in a good way.

But of course the plot has almost ruined everything. In the comment section I remember reading someone criticizing that most romantic progress in the drama is conveyed by side characters trying to convince the leads that they have something going on. I can kind of agree with that take, the romantic plot just meanders aimlessly, even in the final episode. I cannot believe that anyone would think this show has wrapped up nicely! Is this even a happy ending, is it even an ending, what the heck has happened?
The biggest problem of course is that this is a time travel show and the plot is completely random. Deus ex machina is considered by most people a writing tool that should be used very sparingly if at all, in this drama though it is everywhere. In general it's quite difficult to write a time travel plot that makes sense, oftentimes the audience is expected to turn off their brains, but this is perhaps the least consistent time travel story I have ever witnessed.
Of course the pacing is totally off as well. So much time is wasted on meaningless stuff like that delivery guy's story, but when it comes to important stuff everything is so condensed. For example the title has saved 10000 times in it, then why is that important plot point so rushed , why are the events that led to this standing on such a shallow footing?

The show has a love triangle, it's not a very offensive one, but at the same time the second ML keeps popping up, he confessed in the final episode as well.. I very strongly dislike love triangles, this is close to the limit of what I can still endure.

(This is supposedly an adaptation, but it barely resembles the kdrama & only does so very early on..)

The OST is quite good, the song "慢慢走吧 Man Man Zou Ba - 王梓赫 Ray " is really really great. (you can easily copy paste the Chinese name and find it on Youtube)

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Twins separated under oddly mysterious circumstances is a very popular trope in Chinese pulp novels, as such I was kind of looking forward to watching this, despite knowing full well in advance how bad some of the plot is going to be. As far as this genre goes the setting could have been far worse, it's pretty bad of course, but due to a lack of explanations the parts that are told the audience are honestly not nearly as outlandish that I've seen, or rather I've read before. With that said most of the drama is very enjoyable, the fluffy romance is quite up there, the leads look great together and have good chemistry. While the children are not very skilled child actors compared to what's normal in a cdrama of this budget, they are of course very cute & adorable making the drama even better.

So why is this only a 7?
The big one is that the ML has made some questionable choices that made me dislike the character a little. Also the episodes (4-5) preceding the finale are quite bad, but stuff like this ALWAYS happens in this genre, so I suppose I should've known what's coming.

Can triangle haters watch this?
I think yes, because the ex is only present for a couple of episodes and she is rebuffed with resolve, for me at least this much is bearable.

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A simple and warm show

So basically this is an extremely warm, but at the same time very simple show, which is quite remarkable, when considering the CEO + Cinderella setting. In fact I cannot recall a single other cdrama that was this chill & conflict free during its entire run. (despite the the semi corporate setting)

So why is it not 10/10?
It's true that there are no major flaws, but at the same time the show feels way too lacking in complexity, like a Hallmark romance flick and I'm saying this is an avid Asian drama watcher, without expecting any significant mental exercise. Also it's not just the simplicity, while there were some decent humorous moments, the comedy is not exactly top tier. While the leads do look good together, I've not been entirely sold on the chemistry either.

Well I lied, there is one major annoyance & that is the OST. The "You are part of my life" song is rather horrible & they kept playing it seemingly all the time..

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It's basically a 170 minute long movie.

There is nothing revolutionary about the plot or the narrative, but for a Chinese movie, it's more than just highly unusual. The subject matter & the narrative are both something I would maybe expect from an artsy Korean movie, but never coming from mainland China. This is really a production that is very much like a western indie movie prepared for the festival season..

Anyway, I liked the black comedy & I hugely liked the ending. It's also worth noting how the rather melodramatic events that happen, or get revealed in the drama are presented in a way that makes it very tolerable even for people that hate angsty content. The romance is good & at times borderline magical..

So why is this not 10/10? Well, episode 7's plot with the sister in law is strongly out of place. Black comedy or not, that alone taints the show quite a bit.

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