Rules of Zoovenia (2019)

Expectations vs ....

For this drama I have waited for almost a year and I finally had a chance to watch its subbed version. At first the title intrigued me as I found it similar to the movie title Zootopia so I had thought it would maybe be related to animals. But it wasn't, it was just a normal entertaining Chinese rom-com.
The OST was a bit different from the usual fluffy kind I generally find in most romcom dramas which was a highlight I paid attention to. There is not much more to say about the music to go into detail . These are the two OST's they used from what I found out.
- Qing Kong (晴空) by Zhou Rui (周锐)
- Chi Dao De Yao Ding (迟到的约定) by Chen Yi Han Estelle (陈意涵Estelle)
The story, as I told earlier, is a regular Chinese rom-com. There were places were I felt the plot was a bit unnecessary and also felt that few of the characters's sketch was though entertaining was a bit childish. It was cute in some ways whereas the more I got into the drama it made it a little tiring.
The acting and the performance was quite artificial in a few scenes which brought down a lot of expectations I had for the drama, it didn't give that realistic feeling but rather gave a vibe of people(actors) just acting out the script than giving a real emotional performance if that made any sense. This maybe because of the script being quiet cliche and that I have heard most of the lines before( this is just my opinion) or also because of most of the actors are newcomers.But as I went further into the episodes it turns out to be a quite nice story. It didn't have too may unnecessary misunderstandings or twists and they kept the storyline quite simple.
But from what I saw overall it is a watchable drama, nothing to dislike about. If one likes these types and genre dramas then I'm sure they would enjoy it. if you haven't watched this type before then I'm sure you would like it.

Characters:
Pan Youcheng as Bi Zhanlang
Melek Zhao Zhaoyi as He Xiaoqing
Luo Zheng as Bi Xiwen
Estelle Chen Yihan as Dong Xin
Tian Yitong as Qiao Lingling
Wang Xudong as Dong Fangyu
Xiang Hanzhi as Ye Zi
Zhou Rui as A Xu

Supporting cast:
Yuan Yuan as Bi Yeye
Chen Mingjun as Zhu Shuo
Liu Sichen as Cai Yin
Hua Yujie as Qian Anren
Cheng Lei as Qiao Junhui
Wang Zhenyi as Xu Yao
Liu Qinshan as Xia Youyou
Pan Yueer as Zhou Yun
Jia Shuyi as Ye Zima
Long Xinyue as Lin Shu
Li Jie as Bi Hengze
Zhang Lei as Ye Ziba

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Full of cliches

I seriously wonder if this wasn’t written with the sole purpose of filling a timeline or to promote the actors
The story is full of cliches and therefore boring and predictable.
- poor, hardworking girl full of dignity and handsome, popular, rich heir trying to get to her level
-rich, pretty spoiled childhood friend of the male lead who likes him and therefore becomes stupidly jealous of the female lead
-the fact that she eventually admits she didn’t really like him and finds comfort with the male lead’s rival who first had an unrequited love for the female lead
-the rich brat’s friend who does plenty of nasty things in the name of helping her rich brat’s friend but is actually secretly (or so they pretend : it’s obvious for an experienced viewer) sabotaging both her friend AND the female lead out of jealousy
-the annoying dad or grandfather who opposes the leads’ relationship because the girl is poor and finds flaws with her even when she’s wronged and tries to arrange him a marriage
Moreover, the writing is nonsensical. There’s no real triggering factor to the story :they enter college but that’s about it.
Plenty of their actions don’t really make sense : for example, why do they, at some point, make a crusado about fixing the relationship between both of their seniors, played by Chen Yi Han and Luo Zheng ? NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS, KIDDOS, IF YOU HAVE SO MUCH FREE TIME, GO AND STUDY !
Or the fact that the second male lead agreed to the second female lead’s request to « distract » the female lead from the male lead because she somehow used her brother’s business and his career. Hum, really ? You wanna make me believe that A college student can use her older brother’s business for her love affairs ? And that a superstar who got nothing to do with this s*** would just gladly accept ? Alright then, rich heirs’ ways of spending time…
The female lead eventually, always conquers everyone with her « bravery » and her kindness but to the viewer, it kinda feels flat as she really has nothing special. Moreover, she always comes out perfectly of every situation, without almost doing anything, as if the show tries to present her as a Supergirl we’re supposed to admire but again, it feels flat and you don’t get why everyone is crazy about her, even girls.
Also, even the dialogues and writing feel so cliche. Obviously, the screenwriter didn’t try to make it original.
So you can watch for some of the actors who have gained some fame today and we’re still pretty unknown when this dramas was released (which makes it one of their first) but that’s it. Don’t expect anything grandiose. Even more annoying is that the so obvious dubbing and the over use of image filtering makes it hard to enjoy the actors’ performances

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