WILL WATCH AGAIN/CHINESE

This is a very real, very gritty street view of life and one of my favourite productions regardless of language and country.  I would welcome a series with the same writers, cast and producers.

Heart-wrenchingly beautiful.   This story was so well written and portrayed that you cannot help but invest every particle of your emotional self in it.   I'm not overly emotional, nor am I a crier, yet this production routinely stabbed at my heart and had me sobbing most of the way through it.  I am grateful that I watched it alone; I would have been angered by and viewed anyone else as an intruder into a very personal event.

I will let a year or two pass before I brave it again.

Well then, another production to add to my very tiny list of Chinese anything that I enjoyed all the way through. 

It still had the cliche crap (one star off for that) ...evil, controlling matriarchs and everyone forgiving them in the end, regardless of the damage and hurt they caused...how come it is expected/demanded of children to be blindly filial but the generations above them get to behave in ways that make nightmares seem a pleasant pastime? I am so not a fan. 

Also included were the horribly rude and or spoilt children and that one person that started out being loyal and then turns into a total douche. NOTE: I've no patience for these behaviours or mindsets so I fast-forward through them.

 All that aside, I loved the female lead's portrayal of her character; such a fluid, expressive and believable presentation. The rest of the cast also played their parts well so kudos to casting also. 

The writing...except for the cliches, I truly enjoyed most of every episode. A shout-out to everyone else who participated in this production, well done. 

I'll watch this again next year.

Things I found annoying: 

-Some of the dubbing is cringy.
-CGI is obvious and repetitious.
-Some of the episodes were sooooo slow, but still managed to have something important happen in them so I'd have to go back if I skipped one...sigh!                                                                                        -The last episode! The writing was ridiculous compared to the rest of the series...an incredible letdown...to the point that I'm angry and want to through this series onto my 'Won't Watch Again' list.

Things I found not annoying: Everything else.

You don't have to think a lot while watching but it's still intelligent enough that it will suit a wide range of demographics...except the last episode.

Time will tell if I'll watch this again...except for the last episode, I'm not disappointed with the first time through.  I'll leave it here for now.

Well done writers, well done.   I'm not familiar with any of the cast but I look forward to seeing each of them in their subsequent endeavours.  

What I really appreciated was the calmness of this production...most of the characters were quietly strong rather than ridiculously loud and annoyingly aggressive.  

This is a story about tenacity, loyalty, friendship, living honourably and love.  While this is primarily a love story, I am impressed with how the writers incorporated an understandable and realistic life around it.  This gives the viewer an experience that is  accessible and easy to connect with.

The title is misleading, in English anyway, so I will give viewers looking for a good watch a heads up...Sweet Games is the name of the central company that develops gaming apps.  This movie focuses on just one game, but not the game itself, rather, the challenges faced by those involved in it on it's path to release.  

What a beautiful story...both heart warming and wrenching...if I could pick my dad, he would be  very much the character in this story.

I started watching this a while ago and abruptly stopped during the first episode, I don't recall why, but typically, I wouldn't stop this early unless it was so awful that it surpassed my capacity for annoyance at record speed.

However, having forgotten everything about it, I started again...I was only mildly annoyed through out.    I did skip a few episodes here and there because the story lagged in both content and activity.   I did make it to the end.

I think this is my first time seeing the FL act, I rather enjoyed her work and will look forward to more of it.

The ML I am familiar with, he is quite talented but dammit people, give the man some intelligent scripts, he really is wasted as the brooding jack ass boss turned the all round nice guy cliche...just saying.

Ha, this is a blast.   The little kid (Finn Han) is brilliant, I think I'm kind of biased though,  so much of his stature, looks  and character reminds me of my youngest grand daughter...

I'm only part way into episode 1, if it stays like this, I'll re-watch at least once a year.

I've watched the entire series without skipping even one episode, I am a regular 'skipper' when I'm bored, or too impatient and need to know outcomes NOW.  

Unfortunately we only see the young Fan Xian in the first episode, this was VERY disappointing, however, the rest of the series is as good, but differently.

Kudos to EVERYONE involved in this production, well done!

There are some very scathing reviews about the beginning of season 2, I understand their points, however, I also understand the logistical nightmare of doing the second season of series 5 years later.  Some of the characters were changed, which affects each viewer differently,  I was not overly affected by this because the mains remained unchanged.   

Of the two noticeable changes,  Ye Ling'er and Yan Bing Yun, the transition from the actress who played Ye Ling'er in Season 1 and the one who played her in Season 2, was not smooth.  Of the upwards of 1.5 billion Chinese people on this planet, casting couldn't find someone that at least looked like the first one?  As far as Yan Bing Yun goes, they do not look alike, but to me, the acting styles are not far apart so it took me a while to even realize the actor had changed.

If the mains had changed, I wouldn't have even bothered with the second season.  We invest a part of ourselves in the things in life that affect us at a level deep enough to warrant emotion.  This investment forms a bond.  When the primary factors that made the bond are changed, it shatters the core of the relationship that drew us to invest in the first place.   

That's me for now, I'm at episode 24 of 36.   I'm am impatiently waiting for the last 12.  I'll add my final 2 bits then.

Well, this was unexpectedly good. 

  I watched this series because it came up in my suggestions after watching two seasons of Joy of Life, which was my first encounter with Zhang Ruo Yun who has now cemented his place on my list of favourite actors.

Casting did and exemplary job of pairing actors with characters, there isn't one that I thought would have been better suited to a different actor.

While this story does have a power struggle at the level of the royal children, it is a part of it rather than being the foundation of the plot, nice change.

One of my pet peeves is when a scene/script is written to accommodate some part of the plot with complete disregard for the character/nature of the character...like when a person who doesn't trust anyone, suddenly trusts some random...or an otherwise consistently intelligent person, who has all the facts of a situation and still makes a ridiculous choice... ARRGGGHHH!  This happens in this series a few times...which is a few times too many.   This is the reason there is a star off.

The series ends with a million loose ends, so I went down the rabbit hole known as Google and discovered a lot of wishful thinking, but no set date for production.  There were hints that it would be this year (2024) but there were also hints saying that the next series of Joy of Life would also be this year.  Unless they've figured out a way to clone Zhang Ruo Yun, I can't see how that is a possibility.  

These nine stars are to be viewed as 10 for all parts of this production except the lazy writing and the management that allowed it.

I'm not sure I've seen a series as underrated as this one.  I was hooked by the humanity almost as soon as I started watching.

It's about life and how we each struggle to find a way to live it, to find our own path, also a true coming of age story because every step in our journey between birth and death is in it's own way a 'coming of age'.  

It can be raw and gritty, if that's not your gig, don't watch, however it is tempered with so many examples of what a broken soul can accomplish when given the tools and shown how to build a strong foundation of its' own...when given hope.

My only real gripe is that whole filial thing...AGAIN.    Just stop that shit.  If your parents loved and nurtured you, you damn well better be filial.   If your existence went unacknowledged or you were constantly reminded of your lack of worth, or a multitude of other crimes...NO, you do NOT have to be filial and no one has the bloody right to say you must be.  

HOWEVER, regardless of how angry that makes me, the rest of the series is brilliant on all levels.

I will watch this again in a few years...I will also force friends and family to watch it...it's that good.

Watch on YouTube.

This is a story about ordinary people living ordinary lives in the best way they can.   It is a very calm slow burn of everything and utterly refreshing.

Watch on YouTube.

There are reasons to take off a star or two, but the reasons it deserves a 10 star rating far out-weigh them. 

The lead characters are always the calm in the storm, even when they have caused or are caught up in the storm. This calm keeps the viewer quietly anchored to their importance as well as maintaining a fluidity throughout production.

 The intelligence of the writers and their care for the characters as well as the production is evident by the absence of constant cliches, the evolution of the characters and the nuances of the relationships between them. 

The CGI dolphins...really? Who okayed that crap for the last scene. CGI is too advanced for that to be acceptable and you've left that as the image we say our goodbyes with???? GRRRR!

I can't truly express how surprised I was by this series.  I went into it with very low expectations and came away remarkably impressed.   For the most part, it was written with an intelligence that allowed a logical path from beginning to end.    The times that I questioned the necessity of an action or comment were few and far between so really not worth the time to point out.

This is not a cheery production as there is a level of 'darkness' hanging over it that keeps it strangely calm.   

Kudos to everyone involved in its' creation.  I am eagerly awaiting season 2.