I have tried a few Taiwanese dramas before, but I dropped them all. I found them to be very lakorn like, so I could not force myself to get past episode 1-2. Had I been watching this drama alone by myself I don't think I could have gotten past the first episode either.(I had a companion mesmerized by beauty, who wanted to give episode 2 a go) I could only describe the first episode as absolute trash. Fortunately from the moment we've entered the "overbearing ceo world" things immediately turned for the better. From episode 2 up to episode 14 most of the time is spent in that silly fantasy world and due to the book world's rules all the silliness that happens there kind of makes sense & I found things that would normally bother me in a regular drama very entertaining here. The drama is comedy gold really, the satirization of all the tropes has never been this much fun . Once we return to the real world things started to get a bit draggy for a while, but still it's been much much better than the real world snippets (all fast forwardable) we've had until that point. Although the result ended up being pretty similar to watching an amnesia plot in a normal drama. The show, or at least the romance is nicely wrapped up.

As I've said before the real world parts were pretty bad up until the ehm confluence of worlds. I could only describe it as Chaebol makjang at its worst. The family members & the uncle's motivations and actions made 0 sense and the whole thing got resolved in a boring unsuspenseful way. To sum it up all the time spent on these things had been wasted. This is the main reason why I'm only rating it at 8/10. Objectively I'm still being extremely generous here..

The love rectangle has been managed okay. Typically I'm an avid triangle hater, but the setting made these bearable.

I loved the OST. Though there were perhaps too many scenes without musical accompaniment.

I think the casting is pretty good, I liked almost all the acting performances, though I'm not entirely certain about the ML, I found his facial expressions a bit lacking.

I hugely prefer this one to W. W's plot is a jumbled mess, here we might still have an abundance of plot holes, but somehow the writer still managed to finish up the drama coherently. The end result is good enough & I'm not all that interested in the how, the inner workings of the magic is not over explained too much and that is how it should be. (over explaining magic after the original trilogy is what ruined Star Wars for me)

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I enjoyed the first 23-24 episodes a lot. Tong Yao's journey as a professional esport player & her romantic endeavors were fun to watch. Up until this point the show is a solid 9/10 for me. Yeah sure, the leads have room for improvement in terms of acting skill, but perhaps the criticisms are a little overblown. Even the gaming scenes were reasonably fun to watch, although I cannot be considered the biggest MOBA fan.

Unfortunately the episodes that came after were just bad. This was supposed to be an esport-romance drama, not a drama about celebrity scandals, but the last episodes were very heavily stilted in that direction. Once the leads have gotten together & everyone learned of their relationship their romance pretty much died in the sense that the leads had very few fluffy scenes together & all the time was spent with entertainment industry makjang stuff & gaming and even the gaming scenes were much less exciting than before. The last 6 episodes offered barely anything I would have liked to watch, this is how the low-ish rating has come about.
Also the Korean dub, good god what's the deal with the Chinese dubbing over all foreign languages, while also making sure that the voice over has a super thick Chinese accent? Koreans do this with English too, but it's super annoying nonetheless.

Luckily there are no unnecessary breakups, misunderstandings and the triangle is quite weak. So it's still a great drama, if you start to rely heavily on the fastforward button from episode 25 onward..

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Just watch the first 13-14 episodes and then drop it!

Based on the 8.4 MDL rating, I think this drama is extremely overrated. I mean sure the first 15 episodes were pretty good, a solid 8/10. As a procedural crime drama it was not the best thing I have ever seen, but up to ep15 it was at least decent. "Case of the week" is a nice well proven format and it was nice to see the crew working on different cases, they got the Sherlock-Watson thing down to a T.
The cdrama romance was fine too up to that point, totally my cup of tea. The triangle was handled well too, it was not too bothersome. There were all kinds of fun, cute and fluffy things. Up to that turning point the balance of romance and crime was about 50-50, they maintained a nice balance there..

Following episode 14-15 the total amount of romance that happens in the drama amounts to about 15 minutes. There is no breakup or anything like that, the OTP just doesn't interact with one another. I could swallow that with some difficulty, I am capable of enjoying pure crime dramas, I loved The Mentalist for example. Unfortunately the crime related story in the last 10 episodes is just completely silly. I'm sensing that the (script?)writer was trying to go for some kind of Death Note thing. First battle with L & then battle with L2 and lo and behold L2 is.. However the execution is terrible, these people are supposed to be highly intelligent waging a sophisticated battle of wits, instead the clue solving feels really arbitrary. Let's not even talk about the weird stereotypical foreign actors and their monotone super strange dubbed voice. (or how Chinese people talk to Americans in this show)

I gotta give it to the production crew though it's rare to see something like this on Chinese TV. I'm extremely surprised the censors let this go on air like this. People get shot, cut and just there is quite a bit of aggression overall. I thought cdramas like this one cannot be made.

If you have not seen this yet, my recommendation is to just watch the first 13-14 episodes (up until they get together) and then maybe watch the last 8-10 minutes of the final episode and after that if you are still not satisfied just read the webnovel, it has a much nicer ending, with many nice things that were omitted from the drama.

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Corona boredom made me watch this, but I had very little hope for this drama. The "love square tag", the political setting and the age of the drama were all red flags and I was fully prepared to drop it after a few episodes. The biggest surprise for me is that the political setting actually works. The production team did a good job delivering a pretty entertaining political satire, without going deep into schemes & the really dirty stuff. I cannot think of another kdrama of the top of my head where they succeeded with this.

The leads had great chemistry & their shenanigans were really entertaining to watch, also their romantic plot was awesome up until episode 15. So yes, this drama really delivers in the fluffy romcom department, it is actually funny too.

I really did not like the second leads, even if they had no romantic success their actions consistently annoyed me up until the last episode. The FL and second ML's backstory is especially bad, specifically it's the reason(s) why they couldn't be together, god I have no words for how stupid that was.
Ultimately the biggest problem with the drama is that it follows the standard kdrama formula with a year long forced separation preceding the 30 minutes long happy ending. (well could be 2 years, but I think the subtitles are potentially wrong here) The ehm "reason" behind said separation is a terrible cliche that I've seen before, but good god, it annoys me every time.



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Overall All About My Romance is a very enjoyable romcom with flaws, but still it's hugely better than most of its contemporaries. 8/10

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Out of the 16 episodes I wholeheartedly enjoyed 8 episodes. There were also 4 episodes which I really hated & 4 average mildly frustrating ones.
There is not a whole a whole lot of originality here. The only particularly unusual thing is how front loaded the show is with love triangle makjang. In the first 4 episodes all the bad stereotypical triangle things end up happening, like fist fighting, the 3way hand grab and a lot of possessiveness. The second ML is like a bloodhound for quite a while & the ML is not much better up until like ep6. (without Covid boredom I would've just dropped this at ep2-3)
The rest of the drama offers decent romance, but it has the most stereotypical and over-foreshadowed separation plot. (except it's even worse, because it's longer than the usual 2 years tenure) Anyhow the leads had good chemistry and plenty of sweet scenes together, so that was nice.
I can be considered a fan of Won Jin Ah, I don't see why people are bashing her. Her acting was great in this drama, the script, or her ridiculous hair/lipstick combination was not her fault. This is the second time I saw Rowoon in a drama. Based on his performance in Extraordinary You, I thought that he is a typical idol actor with no acting range. His acting may not have blown my mind, but he has improved a lot and largely succeeded at playing a completely different character, good job!

The one thing the production team really succeeded at is setting the mood. The unassuming, but surprisingly tasteful OST probably helped a lot with that too. I like dramas that have a slightly melodramatic mood, without going into an angsty direction. I guess this is one of the main reasons why I managed to somewhat enjoy this objectively bad drama.

I'm fine with gay supporting characters in dramas, but this drama had the blandest, most generic and overtold gay side story I have ever seen. Oh yes, there is one original thing in the drama after all. Song Ah's mother wanting her daughter to die alone is something I have not seen in a drama before, but personally I don't think that story was worth being told.

The office setting had some of the usual cliches, but it was bearable. They did not end up overdoing the workplace scheming/intrigue BS.

I can see why people taking the drama way too seriously wouldn't like the ending, but personally I think it was a well executed happy ending.

Overall 7/10 is probably too high, but against all odds the drama did end up entertaining me quite a bit, so I'll just roll with it.

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Not the best drama I have ever seen, but it could've been..

Le Coup de Foudre is a decent, but imperfect adaptation of one of the best romance webnovels of all time. The production team has totally nailed the essentials. The casting is almost perfect. (the actor playing Da Chuan is not as convincing as the rest) The leads were pretty much perfect for their roles, they've had wonderful chemistry as well. Zhang Yu Jian brought Mr. F's (Yan Mo) character to life just like how I imagined him to be. I only knew Janice Wu from silly romcom roles, but she really surprised me with her brilliant acting in some of the darker scenes this show had. I don't recall all that vividly how the parents were in the novel, but in the drama they were a breath of fresh air, Chinese dramas don't have parents like these two, once again I can only say brilliant acting, well done.

The biggest issue with the drama is quite ironically the writing. The screenwriter code named "Spoon" in her effort to adapt the novel to a drama has added a lot of padding, made some things unnecessarily more dramatic & there were quite a few cliche things added into the mix. I don't entirely blame her of course, the novel has a very unique storytelling style and it's really short, so I don't think it would have been possible to bring it to the small screen without major changes. She has succeeded brilliantly when it comes to the core story. What I found the most out place is the other two couples and their stories. I don't recall the novel having second/third couples. Even if I have just forgotten about them it doesn't really matter, I'm fairly sure that their ridiculous plotlines were not part of the original and those things just don't fit the mood of this drama and there is a LOT OF TIME spent on the two side couples.
Yan Mo's startup company is also probably a new invention with cliche plots like stolen intellectual property & factory fires. Quite a lot of time was wasted on running the company & I did not enjoy a minute of that.
I really liked how the novel defined the OTP's relationship. It was something along the lines of "we have just become lovers naturally". In the drama there was cohabitation, but it was emphasized again and again how they sleep in different rooms. I found that a bit strange, since the drama does feature premarital sex already, so was this some sort of "let's not have too much of that?" thing, I don't know.

I guess I shouldn't be too harsh on the writer though. Dramas cannot be made without sponsors and the sponsors will want the sponsored clothing shown, right? So the the story must have a semi important rich missy wearing all those ridiculous princess dresses and whatnot. Since we already have a character like this, might as well give her a loveline too, gotta fill up the 35 episodes somehow..

The characters must also catch the cold all the time, otherwise they cannot treat each other to all kinds of cold medicines. So yep, this drama is pretty heavy on the product placements, but I must praise the writer a little in this regard, because there were some borderline brilliant Nike & CocaCola related scenes.

I really hate forced separation plots, but the separation works fine in Le Coup de Foudre, because we know from episode 1-2 onward that the whole puppy love thing will fail & it's really gratifying to watch how they meet again. Plus it happens pretty early on too.. This is a great example how the time skip can be a good storytelling tool.

Qiao Yi 's one day in Cambridge reminded me of something that I myself have done in my youth, I too have tried to "coincidentally" meet my childhood "friend" by traveling someplace far, calling it me going on a photography trip. I'm sure many of you found or will find that short episode unrealistic & weird, but it resonated with me quite a bit.

The drama has one of the best happy endings of any drama that I've seen. Typically the last episode is about wedding plans, proposal plans & maybe in the last 5 minutes they show us a family scene and whatnot. But in LCdF we are shown their married life banter at length and it was beautiful. The very last scene is just perfection.

^
Despite the minor issues, every romance fan should pick up this show. It's pretty unique & it really gives one all kinds of feels.
I'm fairly sure that I'll be watching this again a few months from now.

edit: Out of curiosity and boredom I decided to reread the original webnovel. Most of the things I wrote in my review hold up, one notable exception is the Nike thing that I thought was a clever product placement, but I was wrong. The whole Nike/fake Nike/Adidas thing is in the novel almost word by word.
I should attribute more credit to the writer, because she did have some great ideas after all. (the day in Cambride, or the entire stepfather character)
I mentioned that the second couples were bad & probably not present in the original and I was right. What I think is a big shame how Qiao Yi has quite a few friends in the novel, but they have very little presence in the drama. The drama has that one chapter dedicated to Female Goddess, but there are others(Little C, Dorm Leader, Young Master) and they should've have focused on their lives, interactions instead of the second couple stuff that we have gotten.

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it's more than a cheap knockoff of Goblin, but not much more!

At the core of it the the show's concept is very similar to Goblin's, to the point that it could be considered a homage to it. I think the creators had homed in on the winning formula & even managed to gather the winning ingredients, but in the end they ended up overcooking the meal.

The three leading actors were excellent. They had great chemistry with each other. I always liked Hwang Jung Eum, but she used to get a lot of flak for her high pitched loud voice, but I feel that she did a good job at suppressing that here, objectively there should not be much to criticize about her acting. Yook Sung Jae improved a lot as an actor as well, that surprised me quite a bit. They main plotline was great, albeit a bit too predictable, though I would have preferred fewer Saeguk flashbacks.

The overarching storyline of the three main leads is only about 20-30% of the drama and that would have been fine really. The idea to make a Goblin-like show where most of the focus is on the ghost stories is a good one. Obviously in MPUB it's not entirely ghost stories, but the problem of the week format with great leading actors could have been outstanding.
The biggest problem with the drama is that production team failed paying attention to detail, there are huge problems with the casting for some supporting characters and also some of the mini stories are on the boring side of mediocre. Luckily there are 2-3 pretty decent ones. As for the casting blunders, Baek Ji Won and Tae In Ho are perhaps the biggest ones. They are both very skilled, renowned actors, however the casting director did a terrible job casting them for these roles.

And finally Na In Woo! I just dislike the actor, I'm not sure why really, It might be completely irrational too. I've seen him in 3 dramas before and there was not a single scene that I liked in which he appeared in.(scratch that, I loved him getting stabbed in Mr Queen!) The actor might not even be the main problem here. Kim Won Hyung as a character just doesn't work very well. We had so many Saeguk flashbacks in MPuB, but despite that his motivations were just not very well explained, resulting on the character becoming a two dimensional cartoon villain merely to be wasted some time on during the final showdown.

I mostly liked the ending, but once again they could have spent a little more time to explain how Guibanjang escaped punishment, instead of just arbitrarily ......

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I enjoyed watching this drama. I did not feel bored in the early episodes like many, in fact those were my favorites. The tone of the drama shifts a lot after that, I did not mind that too much though. I'm okay with gritty dark comedy & regular romcom like comedy as well, but certainly the writers did try all kind of things to lift the abysmally low ratings (0.3% nationwide average), it would be a stretch to call the resulting plot coherent, but to be honest I've seen much worse victims of live filming.
The finale is not great, it feels like they didn't give an eff anymore. That zip tie scene is more than just teribad, but I've seen worse endings & at least it ends on a joyful, albeit rushed note.

There are lots of good things too. There were some really great impactful, touching scenes, even though I'm not entirely sold on the OTP's chemistry, but they were great at their respective roles. In fact the entire cast was great. The show kind of reminds me of Be Melodramatic at times. It's obviously not nearly as good, but some of the same vibe is still present. The secondary couples were great, I wish they spent more time exploring those relationships. Then again I'm not sure what the original intent was with the single parent firefighter's story. It feels like too much ended up being cut for me to understand what the writers wanted to do (and there was too little screentime for the husband) Speaking of content being cut, the cartoon villain in the last episode feels way too arbitrary.

The average rating of this show as of writing this review is 7,7. I think that's more than fair, then again there are many in the 8,2-8,4 range that are hugely worse. Ultimately I think the drama is worth watching, it's more than just a meaningless filler show, despite me somewhat generously rating it only 7,5.


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Yoon Bomi is the best.
Even Noh Sayon shows up in the drama with her husband. (I remember seeing her NG a simple scene in a variety show 30 times in a row, I never thought she would ever try a cameo appearance in anything :-) ) I love her, but she has no acting talent.

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Stepping on banana peels all year round!

I'm sure by now everyone heard about this drama being a huge clichefest. That is naturally true. Sang Tian just kept falling into Wen Bing's arms. That "oh no I fell onto your lips" thing happened FOUR times in this drama and there were uncountable fall related hugs and whatnot throughout the entire show. Of course there were other miscellaneous cliche/corny scenes too, but somehow the second hand embarrassment levels were kept below my nerve threshold.
Despite the ridiculous premise and everything else the writers did a competent job at keeping my interest & they made the cliches bearable, the drama had soul, even at the story level. I'm no genderbender expert, but to me it feels like this is a new take in the genre. In typical genderbenders the girl keeps changing the disguise all the time & the ML gets to interact with the girl as if she were two different persons. In MUG however she is in her boy getup 95% of the time. The creators made her still look girlish intentionally. Obviously it's not realistic that no would realize she is not a boy with all that lipstick & visible breasts. However against all odds it just works. The drama never taking itself seriously certainly helps to keep the magic alive and finally when we reach the end it feels really gratifying to see her finally posing as a girl. (yep the ending is pretty great)
It's really nice that there is no real love triangle and even the OTP's only obstacle is dealt with fairly quickly and painlessly.
The casting choices were great, the leads had great chemistry & the supporting actors were on point as well.

My biggest gripe with the drama is the story flow. It just took way too long for the plot to progress. The second half of the drama is way better than the first half. Episodes 5 to 15 don't contribute much in advancing the story. I'm not saying those episodes are not entertaining, however there is certainly quite a bit of repetitive plot and I felt they were just draggy.
All the second couples were great, but unfortunately they had very little screen time.

I don't know much about hockey, but the matches & practice sessions seemed interesting enough. There are obvious problems that even I noticed, but I felt that those did not detract much from my enjoyment. (Sang Tian barely has arms, but she hits like supergirl; camera tricks to hide the fact that most actors are no skating experts etc)

The cinematography was just incredibly beautiful. In cdramas background obliteration is a recurring problem, but in MUG the beautiful sets were properly shown to us in all their splendor before going for that creamy close up shot and even those were tastefully executed. I've seen quite a few cdramas, but I think this one is the prettiest one yet.

And finally the issue of Elvis Li aka Huang Hao Ran is a bit baffling. I have not double checked this, but to me it seems he was only inserted into the drama at the halfway point in a really arbitrarily manner. He came out of nowhere, but suddenly he had a rather important role, he did overact as well. I don't know why they did this, but my theory is that perhaps My Unicorn Girl 2 is already in the pipeline & Elvis Li will be a significant character in that drama. (like what they did with Wu Bai in GGS1)

TLDR: The show may be a bit draggy early on, but overall it was very entertaining & there is zero angst, so 8/10.

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I don't like love triangles, so I picked this up after seeing it on the list of a like minded individual. I don't regret watching the show, it was entertaining enough. It's just that everything about the drama is somewhere inbetween good and mediocre. The comedy is present, but I felt that the show could've been much funnier. I enjoyed the romance, but I did not feel blown away by the main couple's chemistry. There is very little relationship related makjang in the show, they talk about the occasional problem like adults and there is no breakup or a forced separation so that's a big plus going for this drama. Even the "ohnoez he is a divorcee" mom & the semi psychotic ex-wife were bearable.

The quality of entertainment drops at around episode 12-15. All the office BS felt boring to watch and there were fewer romantic scenes & no progress in their relationship until the last episode. People like bashing Secretary Kim these days, however I believe that the office romance thing is hugely more entertaining there. WWWSK had just as many, if not more office related scenes, but somehow it was a lot better. The creators did not delve into scheming nearly as much in that show, nor did they have cartoon villainy adversaries etc.

The miscellaneous characters are great actors, I've seen many of them shine in other dramas, but most of their performances fell short in Jugglers. It's like they were collectively lacking enthusiasm and drive in this drama. It could be just me, but it felt that the scenes involving the "crew" could only be described as dull. Even the ever so brilliant comedienne Park Kyung Hye's character felt bland in this drama, I mean how is that even possible???

Obviously this show for the most part did not take itself very seriously & that's how it should be in a cheesy romcom like this, however Bona's character did not fit the show. Her sob background story & her actions felt out of place. (show not taking itself seriously vs. really serious Bona vs. cartoon villain boss of Bona )Let's not even talk about her redemption ark thing.

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This drama was great, at least for the most part. The leads had amazing chemistry and their romance is just beautiful. I really like the idea of innocent and healthy relationships like the one showcased here working out. Both lead actors were incredible, pretty much in every way. The OTP gets together at ep12 & they stay together until the end.

In the comment section multiple people asked if this show had a love triangle and I've seen quite a few ambiguous and misleading answers. Let me address that here. Yes, this show does have a love triangle, it's not a particularly weak one either in the sense that the second ML does not give up until very late in the series and he ends up doing quite a few pretty crazy & annoying things, while staring at our heroine with his teary eyes. Despite the Triangle lasting way too long, I gotta give credit to the writers for not making it purposeless. At least the the FL never wavered(wavering is the WORST) and it was nice how his efforts were clearly and straightforwardly rejected every time, that's very unusual in Asian dramas. Some of the rejections were quite entertaining to watch too. (In fact the love triangle here kind of reminded me of One Spring Night, but it was better executed here)

One minor problem I had with the show, that there were some really unreasonable side characters, having some really dubious / cartoon villainy motivations. (Ugly Betty roommate, roommate Senior, psychotic mom) It's really difficult to justify their actions, especially Senior's, I mean why would she help Lin Xi's rival in love, how does that make any sense?

The biggie is that episodes 22 to 27(the 5 episodes preceding the finale) were somewhere in between bad and boring. It's not that I got bored with the uncontested romance, far from it. It's just that the focus shifted to internship and then the startup related stuff later & all the corporate scheming & struggle just did not do it for me. This drama is undisputedly much better than Love O2O, however the company happenings in O2O were much more entertaining and relatable.

I'm displeased with how once again the writers went with the forced separation plot during the penultimate episode. Yes they did not break up, merely ended up going long distance thanks to mom McCrazy. The whole thing doesn't last much longer than a minute either. I understand why they went with a 2 year timeskip, but the separation was uncalled for & it did not fit the drama, I don't think.

I was mostly happy with the ending, but the mini redemption arks all the villainous characters have gotten are borderline stupid.

I am likely to watch this again, the rewatch value should be quite high, since I can just skip all the BS..

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Here we have another great Chinese romance+esport drama, China is really killing it lately in this genre. I had a great time from beginning to end, despite it being a very long series, sporting a whopping 38 episodes. Compared to Go Go Squid 1, they've fixed most of the problems. CTF might be a super interesting competition format, but in GGS1 the CTF fights were somewhat boring and out of place, also GGS1 had an incredible amount of flashback filler. GGS2 on the other hand addressed both of these problems. There were very few flashbacks in comparison & they changed CTF to robot combat. Naturally human controlled robots fights, at least as portrayed here don't make any sense. The laws of physics etc were not followed, but I gotta give it to them, at least it was entertaining & exciting to watch. (Kind of like Beyblade..)
Just like GGS1, GGS2 also has a 50/50 split between romance and esports, but It's hugely better in the sense that the fastforward button does not need to be used for full enjoyment. I already mentioned that there were much fewer flashback scenes, but they also dialed down on cringy interactions with foreigners. Perhaps even the Chinese patriotism/peptalk scenes were fewer in number, I felt those were overall more bearable. With that said they used a lot more China labels on clothing & the K&K uniform looked absolutely ridiculous, especially how the forearm part of those white long sleeves were often filled up with some ehm material to symbolize China's might more. Yi Tian is not Popeye, not even close, but it sure as hell looked like it in all those forearm closeup scenes featuring that huge red China logo.

The romance is very well written in this drama. The pacing is nice, the love triangle barely exists and the OTP's relationship is really wholesome overall. There weren't many missed opportunities. Maybe they could've revealed the K&K name's origins to the world, but there were more than enough gratifying reveals in this drama, really. Also it's nice how they officially get together at around episode 17 and then all the misunderstandings and problems that occur later get resolved quickly in a satisfying manner. The ending is really great too..

The reason why it's only a 9 is due to two reasons. Firstly just like GGS1 this one too has a really stupid scene, where XB forces AQ into the car in front of Wang Hao's house. I'm sure many western viewers agree with me about that scene being a huge black mark, however I know for a fact that Chinese romance webnovels have similar scenes all the time and the audience seems to love them, so it's not at all surprising that GGS2 would have something like that. (The scene that I similarly hated in GGS1 is how HSY promised TN's mom to forever leave TN)
The second reason is actor Hu Yi Tian and his lack of chemistry with Li Yi Tong. I'm not saying that they had no chemistry at all, but I've seen much better. The big problem with Hu Yi Tian is that more he talked the less convincing his acting felt to me. The OTP in GGS1 is just a hugely better fit. To me it feels like typecasting him to the exact same role what he held in "A Love So Beautiful" is a better choice for him..

As for making sense of the story continuity between GGS1 & GGS2, it's best not to think about it too much. Multiverse theory is the easiest explanation. Things are similar, but different. The story is the same & yet not the same. The chronology is kind of the same, but full of immersion breaking plot holes.

Despite GGS1 & GGS2 continuity being all over the place, I recommend everyone to watch GGS1 first(feel free to skip half of the flashbacks), it's gratifying to see Tong Nian & HSY appearing in GGS2 afterwards..

So yeah, GGS2 was a great show, I'm sure I'll eventually do a rewatch. In fact I'm ready for GGS3, I'm okay with the creators changing the featured Esport again too. They can put 97's sweet noona romance in focus, for all I care.. :-)

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Her Highness Squid goes on a hunting trip

I really liked this drama. It checks nearly all the boxes in the fluffy romcom genre. Despite the drama having 41 episodes the OTP's journey doesn't get boring for a second, almost every moment the two leads are on screen together is a joy to watch. Their chemistry is great & they have portrayed relatively unique personalities with a lot of charm. The female lead looks kind of like a chibi vampire, I found her visuals very amusing. The actor depicting the ML did a great job, Li Xian fits this persona well. It's also worth noting that the leads conveyed emotion superbly, they did not overdo what I call "super eloquent chill Mandarin speech", in other cdramas actors delivering their lines with almost robotic emotionlessness is a recurring problem..
There is no love triangle, which is always a huge positive for me. The way how Little Squid chased after HSY in the early episodes was really fun, albeit a little creepy.
The ratio between the Esports stuff & the romance is about 50/50 which feels just about right. There are fundamental problems with the Esports related content, but still it's hugely more interesting to watch than office politics, or God forgive court life in a Saeguk.
The drama is nicely wrapped up, the ending is fairly satisfying.

I've been super entertained, hence the 9/10 rating, however objectively it should probably stop at 7. The biggest problem with the drama is that there is only enough meaningful content for about 30 episodes. In the first half there are way to many flashbacks of past events and more than half of these are extremely boring, using the fastforward button is a must. In the second half the flashbacks become even worse, some of them are just 1:1 repeats of flashbacks we've already seen and some others are just present time scenes from earlier episodes.

There quite a few additional things I can quibble about, don't take these too seriously, but here we go. ⇊

Hu Yi Tian role in this drama is a bit confusing & meaningless. Other reviewers talked about how he is too big of a star for this role and I do agree, but to me it seems he spent less than 1 hour filming most of his scenes. He is not present in most scenes, not sitting anywhere on the bus, simply he is just not there whenever the camera is pointing at multiple team members. It seems like first they recorded the dialog without him being there & then later they just showed us a close up of him reacting with a similar enough looking blurred backdrop.

How the inevitable breakup occurred irked me a little. Specifically how ML promised mom that he would break off all relations & stay away forever, a conviction that only lasted at most like two weeks. I mean it sounded almost like he is making on oath and then.. In the comment section I saw recommendations that it's the best to just skip episodes 20-30. Personally I feel that would be a pretty big mistake. The official breakup only lasted from ep22 to 26 and there is not much angst there, I wouldn't even call this real separation. Arguably those were some of the better episodes and I did not even care about the YaYa couple's story all that much.

Product placements were a real problem, some of them were so separate from the flow of the story, that they can just be considered regular ad breaks. At one point the team went to some sort of luxury resort. The ML who is supposedly always low on cash stayed in a room that shared a transparent wall with a giant aquarium with sharks in it and later on he invited FL over to stay in the presidential suite. (they called it "her room") There is no way those were not honking product placements, right?

Every now and then there were some weird dubbed voiceover happenings. This did not bother me too much, but I'm mildly curious if it was related to some sort of microphone failure, or they just changed some of the dialog in post..

CTF is completely different from how it's described in this drama. Reaction time and APM are hardly relevant things, it's more like highly trained IT experts/programmers solve puzzles, some parts of CTF competitions involve speed, but it's hardly the deciding factor. This is related to another problem, how moms in the show don't see the value in what these kids are doing. CTF competitors can easily get prestigious jobs in the IT industry. To me it feels like the novel this is based off of is about gaming & the writers were just too lazy to replace the story and dialog that seems clearly League of Legends related. Like there is no way in hell that a top of the line CTF expert wouldn't "speak the same language" as Tong Nian.
People doing intense mouse movements in gaming chairs, while a group of commentators can barely keep up with what's happening makes no sense in the context of CTF.

There were a few cringy foreigner related scenes. People speaking Chinese in an environment that does not make any sense etc.

Lastly the Chinese patriotism was a bit too much, then again I've seen quite a few American sports movies where they went even further..

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For a really shallow school life romcom this one is pretty decent. It's very similar to a typical school life anime, considering I have not watched one of those in years, It's been a pretty nostalgic experience. It does not measure up to the best in this genre (Toradora, Golden Time?), but it was entertaining enough. Despite the entire cast being early 20s idols/idol trainees they were all pretty okay, I feel that criticizing their bad acting is a bit too harsh. The ML could have done without the lipstick though.
Luckily the triangle is really weak.

The reason why it's only a 7/10 is because the first 6~ episodes were just too cringy. Every second scene made me embarrassed to the point that I needed a lot of mental fortitude to not press the fastforward button. Luckily it's gotten a lot better later on, once they started dating. (the product placements were quite bad too)

I wouldn't hold my breath about a second season. The manhwa seems much darker and grittier (my Korean is not good enough to be absolutely sure, but..), the darker themes probably wouldn't work with the cast, the mini cliffy in the last episode is probably designed the arouse our interest in the ongoing webtoon, there is no reason to read too much into it.

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All of the episodes of this drama were supposedly released on Netflix the same day, despite that the script feels like it was written during live filming, the story is not entirely coherent & there are some character adjustments. Naturally it is for the best if one does not try to think at depth about the fake science present in this drama.

Outside of the above it's a cute little drama that doesn't have major annoyances. It's solid, fairly chill entertainment. The reason why it's only a 7 is that there is nothing outstanding either, nothing really stands out. It's just a standard kdrama with a scifi spin. (The love triangle is resolved in a fairly acceptable way and it never devolved to the swords and daggers drawn type. )

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