phanero

This drama started off interesting. It had that old school Cdrama feel that we don't get so often now. Things were well paced.

However, the story soon became very heavy on the romance, of the Mary Sue variety. The politics was a background story, but specifically what irked me was that our main character was so involved in the entire story without having much of an impact on anything.

I normally don't like romance dramas, and I came into this drama hoping it would have some politics dramas. As a politics drama, I would not recommend it. As a romance drama, the Mary Sue stuff kind of put me off.

Spoilers.

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This was a pretty good drama! I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I thought it would be kind of boring but I thought it was pretty mature and interesting. The writing wasn't totally perfect as I did have some pet peeves, but overall I would recommend this drama.

Spoilers.

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In general, this drama was pretty good. The pacing was excellent, the acting was terrific, and the costumes and set were amazing. However, there are some inherent flaws in the direction of the storytelling, which ultimately made this drama less than perfect. I'd still highly recommend it as a very easy watch because of its excellent pacing.

Spoilers.

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This was a really fun drama! The cases were a little gorey due to the main characters being forensic scientists, but it's balanced with the humourous and light-hearted interactions between our three main characters.

The draw was definitely the acting from our three main leads. They pulled off the dynamic that a lot of Cdramas can't do because they always try to jam in a romantic subplot or they push the characters into archetypes without reflecting on their relationships with each other.

Spoilers.

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I hadn't realized that this was a mini webdrama, so I was waiting for it to be available on Youtube or other websites, only to find it here, which seems to be Li Xian's account on this video site call iXiGua. It is subtitled in both Chinese and English.

11 Left was a short mystery/science fiction drama, made up of six episodes of approximately 5-10 minutes each. This story was a little too short, as there are clearly some things that are yet to be explored. Nonetheless, I still applaud this drama for doing something different. The quality of the set and direction was relatively high for a drama so short.

I thought this was interesting, but it's clear that it's an unfinished story, so proceed if you like thrillers, but be wary of the incomplete feeling.

Spoilers ahead. In fact, I don't think I could explain the gist of this show to someone who hasn't watched it ^^;;

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This was a pretty good drama! Overall it was very good. I wouldn't say that the story was absolutely tight, because I think that it did drag at some spots, but overall, most things made sense. I think I would appreciate this even more on a second watch because I would be able to catch and understand the clues.

I would put a trigger warning on this show for the last episode, trigger warnings for sexual assault and suicide, though of course, this being a crime show, there is a content warning for death and suicide throughout. But the trigger warnings in the final episode are a bit more graphic and did make me uncomfortable. I will briefly talk about the trigger warnings in my write up too.

Spoilers!

(Obligatory messy writing warning because this is a word dump and it is now evening.)

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This was a cute and refreshing drama.

I enjoyed the shorter stories in this anthology drama. As we know, many Cdramas are rather long and draggy, and this was a nice change from that formula. Because the stories were short, the writing was more concise as well.

Most of the actors in this drama were relatively unknown to me, but I felt that most of them did a good job of bringing their characters to life, which I think is part of the actors' skills, and part of the charm of the writing.

I would definitely recommend this drama as kind of a "palette cleanser" drama, something cute and relatively light-hearted.

Spoilers.

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This was a good thriller drama. It wasn't perfect, but it had a lot of things going for it.

What impressed me right off the bad for this show was its incredibly fast pacing, but at the end, the story slowed down considerably and there wasn't really much to keep me hooked. In addition, there was a lot of extra backstory that didn't really factor into the main story line. The fast pacing would've worked really well with an incredibly focused story, and there was just too much fluff that lowered my impression of the drama.

Otherwise, the acting was really good, and the cast was kept very small, which suited the thriller story.

Overall, I would still recommend this drama for its fast paced story telling and its good acting, but after doing some thinking, I find that the story isn't as good as it could've been.

Spoilers.

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This was a really good drama. It's one of those dramas that I would recommend to people who weren't into Chinese dramas.

This drama is important in a lot of ways. If you are into Cdramas, you may know that in recent years, dramas have been dragged out for the sake of more revenue (as dramas are sold per episode). Though this was hardly the first short drama in recent years, the attention it garnered probably encouraged a lot of other production companies to consider shorter dramas with high quality episodes.

After the release of the Bad Kids, we had a flurry of 12-episode thriller dramas that followed. Like I said, The Bad Kids was hardly the first. For one, Burning Ice had a very similar format, but it hadn't garnered the attention that the Bad Kids had. But I do appreciate what it's done, showing the world that Cdramas can be action packed and high quality.

This drama was excellent, but I don't think it's perfect. There are some things in the story that I think weren't as tight as they could've been. But I mean, it was still very good. I think my favourite part of this drama was probably the acting. The child actors exceeded my expectations and Qin Hao performed his role in a way that I think not many others could do.

Anyway, on with the write up! Before I started writing, I did watch the two videos by AvenueX that discussed hidden details and changes from the book. It did give me a lot of important background information, and a lot of commenters had really good theories too. I will definitely be bringing up some of the things I read and heard here.

These are just my initial thoughts fresh after finishing the drama. I'm sure that as I think more about it, I might have more ideas popping up.

Spoilers.

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This drama was...okay. There were good and bad aspects of it and they didn't cancel each other out and thus cannot be ignored.

The story was okay, and I see what they were trying to go for. I think the acting from the main cast was one of the biggest selling points.

In terms of the shortfalls, I had some issues with some of the production choices including casting and dubbing, and just everything to do with the atmosphere once the story moved to the US.

I'd recommend this drama if you like Ma Sichun or Wallace Huo, but don't expect anything spectacular. You can just consider this a run-of-the-mill drama.

Spoilers.

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