BEST show I've watched (out of many other dramas and films) this year!

Interesting storyline, good use of humour and mystery/suspense, and convincing acting made it not just entertaining but also quite IMMERSIVE and inspiring (from a viewer's perspective at least). Beyond the humour in story arcs and the great micro-expressions in the acting of the cast, it's also a good piece of work that's EMOTIONALLY ENGAGING and REFLECTIVE.

As a viewer you feel like you are not just watching the story from the screen but actually feel like you are in those scenes, JOURNEYING with the characters as the story progresses.

This drama is both IDEALISTIC and REALISTIC: it *shows* the interests, behaviour, and aspirations of youth while they face the stresses of friendships, crushes, and academics. The realistic aspects of the drama makes it relatable to real life, while the idealistic parts of the drama make it very encouraging and inspirational. Also, love how the drama weaved in various references to other songs/dramas/anime/films in the drama itself - it was coherent and also made me curious about some of these other mentioned shows.

I loved the main characters (the youth of the class) and their homeroom teacher (their acting are so NATURAL and CONVINCING) but *Special Mentions* to the FL's parents - they are extraordinarily interesting and entertaining characters that you rarely see in any other drama or film and it's quite a refreshing take on how parents have been portrayed in dramas.
Also, love the MUSIC/OSTs of the drama (esp. the opening and ending theme songs sung by the ML and FL respectively) - *but the feels listening to them only sinks in more deeply as you watch the story unfold - and also that the dialogue in the drama are not dubbed (as it usually is in Cdramas) but are the actual voices of the actors and actresses.

[On a side note, if anyone's confused about NAMES because both the FL and the 2FL are written as Xu Jing Jing in the subtitles, their names are pronounced differently in Mandarin (and spelled differently in hanyu pinyin romanization) -- the FL is named xǔ jīng jīng (许晶晶) while the 2FL is xú jìng jìng (徐婧婧).]

P.S. I know there has been some discontent over the ending (which I myself can't quite get over too - if the ending was better my rating might have been a 10) BUT it largely does not affect how great this drama has been.
*Perhaps in the production team's defence, (if you can read chinese and look up chinese social media) the director gave comments saying that the filming was limited by budget but also weather (there was a impending typhoon/cyclone when they were filming the series). -- Actually this gives me hope that there is POTENTIAL for a SEASON 2 not just to fill in stuff but also to further develop and expand on some of the side characters.

**AND please don't fast forward or skip when watching this drama - if you would like, I'd suggest you pay attention to the *details* in the expressions of the cast (even the side characters in the background of any particular scene) or the props/setting used in various scenes (there are a lot of interesting hidden/implicit meanings for you to realize).