Thai low comedy taken to the extreme

In Italy we have the so called "cinepanettoni", films that usually come out during Christmas time based on low comedy and sexual innuendos. You need to like this genre to enjoy them or to be in the right mood. This series is like a loooooong cinepanettone taken to the extreme. At times I almost wanted to scream for how silly some scenes were. Only the story between Tutor and Fighter kept me going on and a few scenes between Zon and Saifah that were less cringy than the most of the series.
Whatching a thai drama for me is always challenging because I never know if I'm going to stand their low comedy or not and in this case I barely could.
I gave an overall 6 just for Tutor and Fighter and for the wonderful songs.

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Rating may depend on if you have already seen the other adaptations of the orginal manga..

If it's your first adaptation of Hana yori dango manga..then...it may be a 7..the story has its flaws, sometimes it is unrealistic, there's a lot of gratuitous and unjustified violence, but the acting is good and, in the end, it is a classic impossible love story between two people belonging to different worlds. The "everything is possible if you hold on and really believe"-feeling is always catchy.

If you have already seen other adaptions as I did (started with Chinese Meteor Garden, passing through Korean Boys over flowers and Japanese Hana yori dango before this one)..well...for me it's a 10..the focus is more on the main couple and their personal struggles, less space given to side stories and therefore less wasted time. Gorya and Thyme are better described and also their thoughts and reasons are better explained. This couple is also the one with the best chemistry and they seem not to be stuck in some simple stereotypical character.
Special mention: Gorya's best friend..finally she has some dignity and, even if she appears a little less than in the other adaptations, she is not a simple naive teenage girl passing by and falling blindly in love for the pretty and rich one.

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A standard cdrama with all its flaws, but...

As may cdramas, useless scenes and a lot of product placement make it too long and sometimes boring or annoying, but the develpment of the love story is so good!
For the first time we witness the growing of a credible relationship. You never ask yourself why they are together or why they love each other.
They go from being strangers meeting by accident and disliking each other to love in such a natural way. Sport is the common ground, most of their dialogues are about this, they share passions and difficulties how a real boy and a real girl would in the same situation. Common experiences lead them to become friends and then lovers for a reason and not "just because" as many kdramas tell us.
Unlike many cdramas, the whole cast is so good and the only weak point (bedised the ones mentioned at the beginning of this rewiev) are close-ups on "action" scenes..a bad slow motion in front of a just as bad background.

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It hit me so hard..

Far from being perfect, this drama hit me so hard.
As most thai dramas, there are a lot of useless scenes, scenes in which dialogues are so nonsense and only product placement would have saved them, given them a reason to exist.
Then there are all those staring scenes in which chatacters look at each other motionless for what it feels like hours...
Despite this and the entanglement of the plot, I could feel every single emotion displayed..joy, sorrow, anxiety...I found myself wishing for their happiness and suffering for their struggles.
I wish there was a Taiwanese version of this drama...I think it would be a masterpiece!

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The triumph of non-sense

I think I've never seen anything so wrong before...starting from the plot, to the way characters treat each other and their problems...until the final acknowledgment of #metoo and menthal stress affecting athletes, while every single person is putting tons of pressure on main leads that are basically teens on their way to growing up.
I was quite bored by the first part of the drama, but starting from the winter training storyline everything turned so incredibly weird and bad that I started to enjoy it somehow, like "wait, now I want to see if they can do worst than that"...and they could!
I found so much psychological violence in this drama that I couldn't believe that all this mess was a mean to convey some positive message.
Yet, as I said, somehow I found it interesting to watch and I don't regret finishing it.

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I wish I had watched only the last 5 episodes or so

I read a review under another drama stating that often the issue with kdramas is that they tend to be complicated just for the sake of being complicated, and that's exactly the case. I wish I had watched only the last 5 episodes. Boring and slow at the beginning, just the acting of Lee Jun Ho and Lee Se Young kept me from dropping. I started to enjoy the show as soon as they stopped adding more and more characters and intrigues.
In the end I felt like nothing was resolved (but actually it was, it's just me that couldn't thoroughly follow all the scheming and plot twisting) but the story left us with a bittersweet ending which wasn't completely sad in my opinion.

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Came here for the BL and stayed for the straight couple

Lately Thai BL are really disappointing me, but I wanted to give this a try.
Well, I slept throughout most of the episodes (surely missing a lot of important pieces of the story) and endured only for the "straight couple" secondary plot.
No chemistry, no feelings, no credibility.
I felt akward and a little irritaded every time Solo called Gui "Guitar". It should have been a meaningful and sweet way to address him, but to me it felt only annoying.
The classic clichés typically used to trigger the action here feel just boring and seem to be used without sense, just put there to justify 13 episodes.
At least the characters were boring, but not completetly stupid like other Thai BLs.

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A drama to be seen without biases or high expectations

This was a nice drama to watch, a plot that merges comedy and more serious parts. I found a lot of food for thought but the funny scenes made the drama enjoyable and not too heavy or boring.
By the way, talking about the balance between funny and serious parts, PHS acting reminds me a lot of Jim Carrey and his versatile talent.
What bothered me were the too many drinking scenes (I don't think that drinking so much alchool is suggested when dealing with depression and taking drugs) and the fact that a lot of subjects where brought up without really focusing on one or the other remaining on a shallow level.
Lastly...the sub-plot of the friend betrayal was really unecessary.

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Deceiving from the start..

At the beginning of the show Yoon Jae Gook says something like "let's love while we are breaking up"...the phrase should have been "let's struggle and suffer by ourselves while breaking up". They had more chemestry in the first episodes while they were not together rather then when they're a couple. They never really face their problems as a team, but they seem to leave one another out of their struggles, like they need to face everything on their own.
And the plot is so frustrating! All the world is against them and their love in a way that is unreasonably fierce. Maybe the cultural gap between Western and Eastern culture makes it hard for me to understand completely why they act like this, but only in Itaewon Class I found a similar harshness. I mean, ok, ok being mean at the beginning, but at a certain point it all becomes unbearable and unjustifiable.
Thank God we had the secondary couple lightening up the scene.
Anyway, despite many reviews stating the contrary, I found the acting of Song Hye Kyo very good and credible most of the time, above all when portraying both the happy and the sad moments of the relationship with her friends and family.

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Why r u so short?

The biggest flaw of Korean BLs is their lenght. They put a lot of stuff on the table but don't take the right time to develop anything.
The scenes pass from one to the other without a real connection just to speed up the plot and that's a real shame. I hope to see a 16-episode K-BL soon with episodes lasting at least 45 minutes like classic kdramas.
If you have already watched the thai version you can't help making comparaisons and, even though the basic story is the same, there are a lot of differences in managing the plot that almost make of them two completely different series. The lack of sexual tension in the Korean version is balanced by the astonishing acting when it comes to showing the feelings.
While I watched the thai version only for Tutor/Fighter storyline, in this Korean version I enjoyed Jung Lee Won story the most because it felt like the K versions of Zon and Saifah did justice to their relationship and somehow filled the gaps of the thai plot.

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The many faces of Yang Yang

The first time I saw Yang Yang was in cdrama "You are my glory". I was blinded by his beauty, entertained by the story, but I found him and his acting a little stiff. It seemed like he had just one or two expressions and kept using them over and over again.
Then I started this drama and found a versatile actor, able to portray the different stages and attitudes of a boy growing up, facing hardship and finding his way in the world despite everything.
FL was very good too and I really appreciated her duality: strong and resolute in her job, fragile and insecure in her private life.
Leaving aside action and hospital scene, which weren't so realistic (and the toxic mother which we are unfortunately used to), the relationships portrayed are quite realistic and engaging.

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Why didn't I have it on my watch list before?

When I find a masterpiece like this one I wish I started watching kdramas before.
Although I am usually more into funny rom-coms, sometimes I need something more serious and that's when I find the true worth-watching series.
No flaws, no useless content or scenes. All characters follow their path, find their way and development.
The plot is so perfect that I would have been ok even with a sad ending, but the authors gifted us an unexpexted happy ending giving way to pure romance.
If I really want to find a defect, the few kissing scenes were not so passionate, but I could live with that.
Lee Jun Ho astonishing...almost beyond the acting of Seo In Guk in "The smile has left your eyes" (which I found a materpiece as much as this drama, but at times pissed me off a little more).

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