I've been out of the drama game for some time, and when I saw this on Netflix I decided to give it a try given how accessible it was. I did some reading and saw raving reviews to boot, so I went in with some high expectations. A Love So Beautiful has a very simple, cute premise of a young girl (Xiaoxi) being in love with her neighbour (Jiang Cheng) and trying everything she can think of to get him to like her back. They're neighbours, they go to school together, their families are friends. Everything sounds great, except Jiang Chen doesn't reciprocate Xiaoxi's feelings, and does a bad job of showing anything at all. Cute hijinks ensue and I'm all for that.

The series follows them through elementary school and there's a crew of supporting characters who really save the show. They're great friends (Jingxiao is just so good), and the chemistry is believable. The characters together are the best part of the show. The worst part of the show is when it's busy checking off its list of drama tropes and not doing anything remarkable with them. It all feels very tepid, and eventually the cute hijinks between Xiaoxi and Jiang Chen start to get frustrating, with Jiang Chen's stoicness going from amusingly cute to almost sociopathic in nature with how he almost seems to enjoy leading on the poor girl. The times where he shows to actually care (or even show personality when he's not just playing off of his more charismatic friends) are few and far between.

Eventually, the show starts doing some timeskips. Note the plural. This is where A Love so Beautiful starts to drop the ball on one of its more interesting aspects. The show spent so much time developing the characters and their friendships in their school days, but the episode count after the timeskip simply isn't enough for the transition into their adult lives to be handled properly. It's a shame, because what could have been a very gratifying payoff ended up feeling rushed at best and awkward at worst.

Still, the show was a fun watch! The friends are cute and I do admit that a little part of me loves to hate on a drama that pulls out all the usual tricks that we're used to, especially after I hadn't watched a drama in such a long time. So while the show was certainly entertaining, it's hard for me to say that it's good.