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The Ideal City chinese drama review
Completed
The Ideal City
3 people found this review helpful
by mayhemf
Sep 19, 2021
40 of 40 episodes seen
Completed 2
Overall 8.5
Story 9.0
Acting/Cast 8.5
Music 6.0
Rewatch Value 5.5

Gripping workplace drama!


I loved the whole corporate setup. It depicts corporate workings, politics and the inner workings of holding companies and subsidiaries exceptionally well. It was hard to define right vs wrong as there is never a solution that pleases everyone in a company. Is it shareholders? Is it employees? Do employees matter when the company will shut down if it doesn’t make profits?
Due to this, I could never tell which character is good vs bad. They all seem to work in what they believe to be right in their own way.

The biggest strength of the drama is casting, in addition to writing and screenplay. This is my first drama of Sun Li and she really made me believe in her journey. An idealist straight shooter working her way in a corporate world. I could relate to her. Extremely smart and hardworking but very rigid as she struggled with networking and people skills.
And then there is Xia Ming, played to perfection by Mark Chao. An extremely smart engineer who is a class A genius in manipulation and working the system. He is ruthless when it comes to others and works on his agenda.

OTP: There is hardly much romance. But the slow burn romance makes you crave for more. When they finally get together the kilig moments were worth all the wait. Even the angst was well done. As professionals with polar opposite beliefs and conflict of interest they handled this as mature as possible.
The ending felt a bit rushed. Would have definitely liked a few more episodes.

And Mark Chao is ???
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