Short Josei stories, bittersweet

Finally completed the 3 seasons. Each season has alike pace&story&OST the thing that changes is mostly the mood, this one was bittersweet and has more episodes.

Episode 1: When FWB goes south & skinship is no longer enough
Episode 2: The awkward road from Friends to lovers
Episode 3: The Jerk new employee brings new feelings to introverted teammate
Episode 4: Childhood friends and something more
Episode 5: Fairytale App date&Christmas night
Episode 6: Rekindle an old flame while vulnerable

Second season is as good produced as the other two, no major problems with the acting either. From this season I liked more episode 2, the friends whom grown fond of each other, they look natural together, and episode 3, It's was funny how ML is energetic and moody and FL is introverted and also moody, the ending was a bit rushed for this one and the one least likable is episode 6, I think FL deserves better, and it was a dumb decision-making.

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Short Josei Stories, slight dark

I actually started this by season 3, cause it says it's the best one, and in comparison with this one, s03 is really better. This one is dark&bitter.

Episode one: Stamina Tomboy tries to fix her age crises & need the wrong way
Episode two: Age gap. Nice boss, Nice employee, Nice relationship.
Episode three: Flexibility&her relationships, bitter ending
Episode four: Youngsters goes Halloween, she changes but still herself.

The pace here is faster but not in a good way, felt senseless in many moments. Episode two and four has some slight fluffy vibe while episode one and three has more subtle meaning, both FL has unhealthy mindset towards romance: at ep 01: She goes to skinship when she's troubled with something instead of deal with it. ep 03: She adapts too much when in a relationship, losing her friends and her sense of herself.

I suggest do what I did, start by season 3, their stories are a better warm up for this ones. Overall the production, OST and acting are still good here, just the mood is different.

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Short Josei stories - Romance is still alive

I watched this series in totally random order, let's go!

Ep1: She's married and finds again an old flame, he's beautiful and has a nice personality, who she will choose?

Ep 2: Workmates learns more about each other real feelings behind the daily politeness

Ep 3: Neighborhood meeting each other's with better light in the eyes, without prejudice

Ep 4: Stressed Fiancee rethinks her marriage in the chaotic ceremony planning, temptation is in the corner

For this part my favorite episode was the neighbors(ep3), they did great with the few screen time they had, the first naive misunderstood meeting, till planning their future, the least I liked was ep 2, felt a bit rushed, a workplace spice fanfiction, very cringe. Ep 1&4 is about cheating with opposite ending, I like the fiance decision better(ep4)

Overall the episodes are well produced and the ost is nice, good enough acting, the pace for all the 3 parts are alike, fast paced, but very specific expectations of each women.

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Mecha Live Action

This felt like one live action adaptation of a sci-fi & mecha manga, the plot is all over and only briefly explained in the last minutes of it. The plot is a family broken inside, in the midst of a torn world, torn by wars and environment damage, the politics are more on the communist side, with strong control over the media and nation best wishes narrative.

As people get sick by the dead nature consequences, scientists try to come up with solutions, one of them, Azuma, create one substance that by mistake brings dead people to life, they are called Neo-Humans, some of them gather to fight against the humans whom tried to get ride of them. Casshern is a Neo-Human.

The photography is chaotic, going from dark, game(ish) to strong red, yellow etc and the cgi is all over, as they try to show us the war machines, the surviving society & the contaminated nature. The characters has the anime aesthetics with colorful hair and quirky clothes. The editing and direction are very lacking, we have very little talking going on and the mindset is hardly perceived and only once again in the last minutes of it. It's hard to actually care for them if the edit goes from here and there in a chaotic order, add to this the extremely changes in the background cgi and the result is not the best. The ost is good and feel fit to the scenes.

Even tho the many bad points, once you start watching you just feels like keep watching, it's interesting enough, it has some action and mecha scenes with fair charisma and the sci-fi content is also good enough.

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Short & cheerful Romance

Short&cheerful romance with lots of *product placement, even a J-Pop group promotion, beware before start it.

Mayumi is a driven workaholic, whom works not only for the company, but also for her own pleasure and to be helpful to her fellow work colleagues, frequently working overtime. Director(Teiji Osamu) is also devoted to his job and was a company slave as Mayumi in the past, but he changed his politics, and now leaves work on time. After a fight in a Pub caused by Mayumi drunkenness, things stars to change between them. Both works in the same company, Orient Hope.

The first episodes are spicy,as a Josei manga in general is, but as soon as their relationship progress other plot and issues become the focus. Mayumi is the classic cheerful lead in most J-Dramas, but the Director has also a cheerful side that is showed to us, as he mentally set his plans in their relationship, his insecurities, how he finds her cute(fangirling over her) etc. In resume they are more alike than actually divergent. they love their job, are diligent and also loves to write files. Even though the drama has a love triangle, their screen time is little. The other characters, as the 3rd wheel, the J-Pop fan, the boss whom likes to watch over the employees, was not a bother. As their relationship stars both of them becomes insecure and starts to jump to conclusions, in this we have most of the comic plot in the drama, the other source of comedy is their working eagerness (Sailor Moon costume, cough cough).

The acting was fair good for both leads and side actors. The OST is more like a J-Pop group promotion as I said. I have no problem with the filmography, the office scenes was well done and the city scenery was also beautifully set down. The romance is fast paced but nothing over-the-top. The subject of being a company slave, a ricework (work to survive) or a lifework (work as life goal) was soft portrayed, as in real life people actually dies from overwork in Japan, as result of their eagerness or suicide. The thing is, they don't abash people who loves to work, but since you have to work why not try to like it and do it properly, not forgetting to live a healthy life.

*Parody Product Placement

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Retro Horror

Mother and Daughter running away from domestic violence and trying to restart their life meet new and dubious neighbors as she finds a cheap leasing apartment from a nice real state agent, but why the leasing is cheap?

I don't know where they record the drama but it feels like an old, low budget, New York horror movie. The plot was full of possibilities, specially in the supernatural side, when they change content by the end of the drama it would be really surprising if they have done a better job in set the mood (and if you haven't watched that many horror movies).

The photography and directing was the main source of the lacking, sometimes the camera focus was hard to deal with, how they set the scenes with the "scary" parts was a joke, for example. The acting was also lacking for the main actress(Barbie), the child acting was just okay, Hu Ge was probably the second character with most lines, but we barely see his face expressions, once again I say, the directing and photography was awful during the movie. The makeup is bad too. The OST was doable. I don't think I should recommend anyone to watch this, feel free to choose to do or not. You can find the subs on opensubtitles . org page and translate them online for you favorite language.

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A brother is born for a time of adversity

There is a time test when you rewatch something you liked in the past and verify if you still like, the drama is a non survivor of my time test, even tho that's the first time I've watched it, the drama probably was hot when it aired in 2010, but the plot, OST, acting style all felt outdated. We even has a scene where the female creates courage to kill a chicken so to prove her lover for the guy. Money to get ride of the poor female lead etc.

Naive and bubbly HongGuo(Subbed as Red Summer Fruit) comes to big city with the desire to work in a fashion magazine Femina, in her way she meets FeiFan(subbed as Extraordinary) a "pro-labore" lawyer (defend rights of poor workers) summoned by his father to work in the same magazine. In the city she meets model & gold-digger Sasha, ruthless reporters LingJie and Wenxue, sad photographer shentian and Tenant Dehua(Fatty) who has a big apartment where everybody lives and support each other.

The drama has fair time screen sharing with the multiple couples and personal stories. HongGuo is the main focus, as we see her perceptions of this new world, but they smooth too much her story, a little more hardship and failing would've been better. One of the personal stories is about mourning, but it felt a cringe fest. The romance here is scatter and all over the place at the same time as we have many couples but all them are slow romance that starts with unrequited loves. Second leading couple was dreadful to watch, not found of nothing with them, he is an "oily" womanizer and she is the anger&snobbish type. The main couple took forever to get together, but they are kinda cute together, yes cute, that's the word for them(sry).

Overall the drama is not bad, as I said the time test was a fail, but if you feel like watching some old school drama, that's for you, most characters are likeable, the pace is good, except for the couples making, the OST is listenable, you have plenty of type of relationships too, such as the friendship bound.

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Revenge wearing an expensive suit & tie

First I need to tell, it's an advertisement drama, Clear shampoo produced it and made it clear through the episodes, as everything will have their product placement. Second the subtitles available are not perfect, some quotes are almost unintelligible and some parts of the subtitles are missing too.

*Beware, spoilers from the first episode:

Xu Ran is a driven man whom has a successful career and is about to get married, sudden his fiancé dies in his arm's, later he finds out that she actually is still alive and a powerful and mysterious society called Alliance is behind his downfall.Eight years later, he is now working in an advertisement company, behind his actions is a plan to find the truth behind the old incident and fight his enemy The Alliance. As Ye Rou faces personal problems the characters life gets entangled, then Xu Ran meets carefree reporter Tang QiQi and Feng Lu fei an entrepreneur and daughter of a billionaire CEO.

The plot is about revenge, the revenge here is serve in small doses, as Xu Ran deal with Alliance and Alliance fights back by hurting his success the story keeps being about daily life of an advertisement company. The romance follows the same modus operandi, almost all couples are mixed up with business matters. Second leading couple Ye Rou and Cop Wei Xiao has great chemistry, main couple QiQi,Lu Fei and Xu Ran only has a closure in the last episodes. The action here comes in small doses too, with some car racing here, some cop routine there and money moves on the laptop. The production is good, less office scenes and more fierce fight scenes would've been better tho. The OST didn't catch my attention.

I have no complains about the acting, Hu Ge has deliver as He always does. Tiffany Tang was a bit shadowed here as her character is a bit bland, seeing this drama feels like a warm up for Blossoms Shanghai(2021) drama, as they will play once again(again: Xuan Yuan Sword) a couple in it. Stephy Qi was great here too, she knows how to play a really strong woman.

The ending was not bad, but weak as we don't see nothing major happening with the villains, and even the couples conclusions are lacking, even tho one of the last scenes was kinda adorable.

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Love is dirty

The only thing that I really liked here is Baby Tangyu and Nu couple the rest I can barely watch. Hu Ge is good here too tho. The female lead is one of the worst I ever saw in dramas, clingy and dumb.

So many obscene side couples, the side stories were always something l u s t related.

Everybody is always spelling nonsense theories about life. The villain is ridiculous as the actor acting. The first episodes were almost good, but the plot was scarce with too many monster hunting episodes.

The last episodes finally was plot related and brings the classic wuxia characteristics, so I will rate this 8/10.

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Sismance

Two dramas brought me to this drama, first Chinese Paladin 5,cause the same actor Joe Cheng (I like his acting style of cold and distant male lead), second it is on the recommendations list of The Untamed . Tip 1: A Bromance drama that has much more Sismance content. The relationships here are very chaotic and all over the place. We have sworn bothers, sisterhood, sismance, bromance, father-daughter relationship, villains who kill together stays together and goes on, but the main focus here are none of them but Lord and Disciple relationship and how such system started and the plot behind it (Tip 2:Minority Report Tom Cruise's movie). The Lord and his disciples need to help the Silver Priests in fighting the monsters created by the Gold fog and both have their own monster helper.

Yin Chen Lord VII, (is) sent by the Silver Priests to Blessings Town to adopt Kynil as his first disciple (I will keep the names used on iQIYI), Kynil is a young and Lively tavern worker, he enjoys his life living freely(Scamming people tho, cause he loves money) and dreaming of become a magician. As soon as his town starts welcoming more and more real magicians, Kynil dream of making money go fast south, that's when he meet Shen Yin(a corrupter magician disciple) and Yin Chen find him. The first episodes are mainly to create a bond between Yin Chen and Kynil and almost all comic relief are in the fist episodes. As I already said the drama has much more sismance than bromance, so enjoy the (Very)silly bromance first episodes.

Neon and Shen Yin, Specter and Reya, The Silver Priests, Rosemary and Lotus, Gemy and his three disciples, Lotus brother, Qi La and his disciple and many other will sometimes got more screen time than Yin Chen and Kynil, specially Rosemary and Lotus. The drama definitely is not a BL and the "couples" here has some slight melodrama feel to them, the plot never gets much angst. The figth scenes were cool but felt like slow motion in some moments(not on purpose). The villains are a disgusting messy (Chinese Paladin "episode couple" comes to mind) the mastermind and his plot was not original (very shallow must add). The revenge tag shows no result too. The end lets a hope of a second season.

About the other topics: the OST is a bit random and lacking, the CGI is not great only doable, the openings, from time to time they change the opening, was artsy and pretty. The acting was nothing much. Overall is a good drama, they stick to a genre would make the drama way better tho.

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Call on me

Yi Shu works in the office of a Funeral Home Company, She is a bit dense, unlucky and nice, her name has a meaning related to being unlucky. In a wave of celebrities phone numbers turning public, her phone number is by mistake listed as of the singer Tian You, and a wave of calls and phone messages comes to her (Remember: it's 2006 phone technology). Meanwhile young, but sick/ill Xiao Wen calls the number in hope Tian You sings his own made song, but Yi Shu is the one to answer the call.

The plot about the singer is very cliché, She is a Pop singer, but she says I want to make art, yeah, feels cheap for me, pretty sure there is some Pop singers who cares about art, but in the movie its feels fake. She got depression cause her company wants her to do her job, we can't rush "Art" She says. Her company has sickly employees tho.

The only good thing in the drama is the call interactions between YiShu and Xiao Wen, since both are having a hard time in their life, tho his situation is worse. I remember seeing the MV of the movie on Youtube last year (I'm a newbie actor Hu Ge fan)I don't like the song, but they did a good job in the last song scene. Overall is a nice and short movie to watch on a Sunday noon. Youth, soft and dramatic.

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Rebelling is a family Business

[Review written originally in December 2020]
That was an interesting Spy drama, the whole family "Business" and each of the family member being unfolded to us piece by piece or scene by scene, was the main tag here. The older brother is already pretty far in the game, so they introduce to us Ming Tai the youngest brother as a start point. We see him as a newbie till he became a skillful man in the hands of the Revolution, rebels against Japan. Ming Tai is loved by too many characters in the history and spoiled by some, so that bothered some watchers, but not me, make mistakes as a newbie is normal, him being recklessly is part of whom He is, and makes the story more realistic, BUT yeah, He acts like a 5 years old brat form time to time, let's deal...(He is about 25 years old tho)

Ming Lou was in another level of Calm Male Lead. The older sister could have had more scenes. Ah Cheng is always there, but we see few action scenes with him in the beginning, it gets a little better by the end. The interaction inside the family and how the power goes between hands are cute, funny and strong many times. Ming Tai girlfriend received too much hate online toward her looks, that was unfair, she is okay, for a communist (I'm joking)!

There is no Bromance in here, is really a family regular brothers interaction and the little romance that has here are just some kind of convenient plot inserted. Must add: Too many gunfire scenes , the death and murder tag is all over the place. There is just too many things to comment here....Ming Tai mission friends and the communist part for example!

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Introductory drama

I totally understand why people gang up to hate this drama, the flaws are pretty visible, but none bothered me, I enjoyed almost everything here and I will wait for the second season.

While I was watching this in hiding I felt what I used to feel when I read a Young Adult Novel , the dynamics is very alike, how the characters meet and interact with each other.

The drama has many Japanese animation aspects, such as the sausage guy whom has a gadget who spells cold wind just like Nami from One Piece anime. You can see fight competitions like Yu Yu Hakusho, when you need strategies to win, not only power.

The plot is very simple, the drama is very introductory to their fantastic world, the characters going from newbies to powerful ones, the family relations affairs, sects enmity etc. They are always showering us with information about their powers, once again, just like One Piece anime.

Let's see if the next season will be more plot and less couples, families and powers data/info.

Note: The most visible flaw here was the sudden editing scenes, they sometimes would just jump one scene to other in abrupt way. The OST sucks too, but the main title is okey.

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A Jackie Chan mainland drama

I have watched The Myth, Jackie Chan movie years ago, I can't remember the movie, so I won't compare them, but I think is a good advice tell you, the drama has many Jackie Chan old movies characteristics, if you don't like his 90's movies you will hardly like this drama, especially the present parts of the drama.

Starting from the present 2010: A family with divorced parents, two opposite brothers, the younger and carefree(but he graduated from Art or something like that) and the older who follows the father archaeologist path. The Mother cares a family secret. The carefree and womanizer younger brother, Yi Xiao Chuan has a girlfriend, Gao Lan.

Now the historical Qin Dynasty: when Yi Xiao Chuan enter this new reality he find new friends and allies really fast and is inserted in the plot of Qin Dynasty last years. Trough his journey he meets historical figures and gets involved in more than one court affair, but most part of the time he is only a watcher, seeing the tragic historical scenes happening or a backstage figure who did what he could but could not defy fate, even though he is always the narrative focus.

The Romance here did not captivated me, the drama has little romance anyway. I can't name the couple, cause the ML meets many women. The drama has many side couples too, sometimes their story is romantic, sometimes is not attracting at all.

The Present story has less content than the historical and it was pouring in the 50 episodes in a homeopathic way, if you don't like the modern scenes with the family and the gangsters you won't suffer much, beware both realities are connected you might lose plot context.

The expected conclusion was not well done here, I felt nothing that I was supposed to feel, cause the way the couple felt like a random and small piece of the dense plot did not help. Aside from actor Hu Ge(great acting as always), the majority of the actors here are lacking in their acting.

Overall is a very dynamic drama, with action, adventure with few doses of melodrama, there is always something going on! Is up to you if this is enough to go trough all 50 episodes, for me the main reason to watch was fill a more slot in my Actor Hu Ge watched drama list, it wasn't hard and I quite enjoyed part of the plot and even watched the opening many times! The drama is not that bad as the comments made it look.

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He wants a normal life?

Mr. Long is an experienced and skilled murder, his boss tells and he goes and get the person dead, highly confident he goes, but things won't go his way, running away he get stuck in an abandoned neighborhood in Japan,while he tries to came back to his place he meets a young boy, the boys mother is a drug addicted. The others neighbors starts to meddle with his life since he does not speak Japanese, then we start to know more about the neighbors and the mother history.

The history in itself is not original, there are many like that, a guy with a dark past that gets regular people involved with them, but the way is played here is very soft and the director took his time in delivering his view, but as a regular watcher of mafia movies, I must say the first scene was slight better than the last, may be I expected more violence? or stronger choices? My favorite scenes were the first and the last one.

The nice content here just didn't caught my attention, but the ones who likes loving things, there is some good content here, like the friendship of the neighbors and the fatherly relationship Mr. Long has with the kid.

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