Out with a Bang (2022)

A Building of An E-Sport Team, Plus Romance & Bro-Ship

Out of all of the E-sport dramas I've seen, this is probably my favorite by far. Story plot was pretty good, enjoyed the action scenes from the e-sport, loved the actors, loved the silly but cute romance between the leads, and the amount of bro-ship between the group of guys. Let me break it down what I experienced when watching this.

E-Sport
* The E-sport part of this drama is a little different than the other E-sport dramas. This drama showed lesser number of tournaments, I believe 2 in all, first one when they compete as a new team and the second one towards the end of the drama when they understood & learned how to work with each other. This E-sport is more focus on their team building, getting along with each other, learning each other's weaknesses and improving on it. It also shows the struggles & strengths of building a new team.
* Instead of showing multiple tournaments, there are a lot more e-sport training in this drama. There were a lot of in person game scenes from the actors and I appreciated this a lot because seeing the behind the scenes, this was a lot of work to do. Their work paid off though because I enjoyed those game scenes. They were action packed!

Romance
* It's the typical bickering of the ML & FL who eventually finds out they were each other's crush. Even a little misunderstanding in the beginning but you don't have to wait too long for the misunderstanding to get clear out.
* A funny but cute chemistry between our main leads: Lots of disruptions when it comes to kissing and the numerous times ML's character Yi Chuan fail on being romantic. Like, seriously, I just love watching their scenes. It makes me so happy and I laughed so much.
* A love triangle: SML likes the FL, who you do feel bad for. He does move on from it and becomes close bros with the ML afterwards. There's also this one girl announcer who likes the ML as well but her role, while annoying, is very minor. She doesn't play a big role so not much of an annoyance from her thank goodness.
* Secondary couple (Dong Shi & Girl Chu Tian): Not the best secondary couple I've seen but not the worst either. I just couldn't sense the chemistry as much compared to Yi Chuan & Jiu Jiu.

Other things I enjoyed:
* Best bro-ship: I love Bo Yu. He is so funny, the goofball of a friend but also a very caring bro to Yi Chuan. We also see the building relationship of the bros between Yi Chuan and boy Chu Tian.
* The reality aspects of building a new e-sports team: Some members don't get along, new players, pressures, struggles, & not much support in the beginning but then you see how things turn around with not giving up, dedication, and hard work.

What's missing for me:
* FL's character Jiu Jiu didn't really have much of a story. Focus seems to revolve more around the ML's character Yi Chuan.
* As part of the secondary couple, I expected a bit more about girl Chu Tian but the way she was presented, it seemed like she wasn't important at all.
* The ending was good but with all the focus on the Yi Chuan's injury in so many episodes, I felt like they miss details on this towards the end. Like there wasn't really a good conclusion on Yi Chuan's issue.

Overall, I enjoyed this E-sport drama. It was a different approach from the ones I've seen. The ending was not what I expected or preferred, but it was enough to leave me satisfied with it. The lead's chemistry, the bro-ships, & the in game battle scenes are why I enjoyed this drama the most. Definitely will re-watch again in the future.

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All the gaming dramas mashed into one

If you've seen other chinese drama's on e-sports, it's basically a mash-up of most of them (particularly rom-com gaming dramas). So don't expect anything new...but it's still a good drama.
I've written out more specifics in a spoiler comment on this page so I won't write it out again. But expect to see bits of a range starting from the OG Love O2O to the most recently released Falling Into Your Smile.
This drama is really light: many funny moments, good bromance, cute flirting. Romance is a bit slow...takes over half of the eps for ML and FL *officially* get together (ngl I thought they were already together before it was official). Definitely not the slowest burn but with context it is a bit slow. No break ups or unreasonable misunderstandings in the relationship (other than a single one...I won't say spoilers, but guarantee no angst from it).
Overall, a solid mid-range drama.

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