![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
superborbI think I'm going to DNF this, unfortunately. There were enough fun scenes and little moments to get me to the end of ep 15, but at the end of the day I just don't like the characters enough to push through.
I went in without reading the synopsis, and so was highly startled at the end of ep 1 when it was revealed to be ~time travel~ allowing the two main characters to communicate across 11 years. Past!MC is Xiao Feng, in the year 2008, when e-sports are not yet a Big Deal, and he is set to become a famous e-sport player. Present!MC is Lu Xiaobei, who has a tragic dead big brother. Both are at the points where they're struggling to put together or keep together a team in order to win championships.
Things I liked:
I watched this with my bf, who has played counterstrike a lot. It was therefore quite hilarious to me as he pointed out such things as, crossfire is a blatant ripoff of counterstrike, complete with an ancient map that was accidentally very well balanced and so still used today. He did keep complaining about how all the tactics were totally wrong and would get the charas killed immediately though.
When the interpersonal scenes were good, they were quite good. I have in my notes that in ep 7, Xiao Feng and Xu Wei's emotional hugs and declarations of being each other's ~most important person~ were A++. I also do love ensemble casts and when there are five members of each team, that does come naturally.
There were a few scenes that I thought were /really/ well shot. The one that's coming to mind right now is in ep 15, which cuts together Xu Wei's present and past actions in a really compelling way. (And yet... after that ep I still decided to DNF...)
I also loved the punny gamer names. Su Jiayi = S+1 bc "jia" sounds like plus and "yi" sounds like one.
The female characters were given their own distinct roles, so the show did pass the sexy lampshade test. I wouldn't go in expecting many good female characters, but they weren't just token additions. (There were definitely scenes that made me roll my eyes though.)
Things I did not like:
I am getting a little bored of the "strict dad who treads the line of abusive behavior but realizes his child Really Loves something and becomes supportive" storyline. So predictable from the beginning and so overdone.
The depiction of mental illness was ... better than Guardian and other cdramas, but what a low bar. The show brings up interesting societal issues and then just drops them or doesn't treat them with any nuance. It handled the physical disability better IMO (and obviously I didn't see whatever resolution they reached there), but it still didn't land super well with me.
It also really felt like the show could have been more tightly cut. There's a lot of filler about things that are uninteresting to me, and the plot points are sometimes out of nowhere. Even as ep 15 is clearly about to start the major plot, it just isn't motivating bc I'm dreading whatever nonsense filler is about to come up next.
At the end of the day, all the side characters were interesting, but it never felt like they were being explored that much and the main characters were less interesting to me. I figure if I don't love the characters by midway through, and the plot is clearly about to start rolling, it's probably a lost cause.
I went in without reading the synopsis, and so was highly startled at the end of ep 1 when it was revealed to be ~time travel~ allowing the two main characters to communicate across 11 years. Past!MC is Xiao Feng, in the year 2008, when e-sports are not yet a Big Deal, and he is set to become a famous e-sport player. Present!MC is Lu Xiaobei, who has a tragic dead big brother. Both are at the points where they're struggling to put together or keep together a team in order to win championships.
Things I liked:
I watched this with my bf, who has played counterstrike a lot. It was therefore quite hilarious to me as he pointed out such things as, crossfire is a blatant ripoff of counterstrike, complete with an ancient map that was accidentally very well balanced and so still used today. He did keep complaining about how all the tactics were totally wrong and would get the charas killed immediately though.
When the interpersonal scenes were good, they were quite good. I have in my notes that in ep 7, Xiao Feng and Xu Wei's emotional hugs and declarations of being each other's ~most important person~ were A++. I also do love ensemble casts and when there are five members of each team, that does come naturally.
There were a few scenes that I thought were /really/ well shot. The one that's coming to mind right now is in ep 15, which cuts together Xu Wei's present and past actions in a really compelling way. (And yet... after that ep I still decided to DNF...)
I also loved the punny gamer names. Su Jiayi = S+1 bc "jia" sounds like plus and "yi" sounds like one.
The female characters were given their own distinct roles, so the show did pass the sexy lampshade test. I wouldn't go in expecting many good female characters, but they weren't just token additions. (There were definitely scenes that made me roll my eyes though.)
Things I did not like:
I am getting a little bored of the "strict dad who treads the line of abusive behavior but realizes his child Really Loves something and becomes supportive" storyline. So predictable from the beginning and so overdone.
The depiction of mental illness was ... better than Guardian and other cdramas, but what a low bar. The show brings up interesting societal issues and then just drops them or doesn't treat them with any nuance. It handled the physical disability better IMO (and obviously I didn't see whatever resolution they reached there), but it still didn't land super well with me.
It also really felt like the show could have been more tightly cut. There's a lot of filler about things that are uninteresting to me, and the plot points are sometimes out of nowhere. Even as ep 15 is clearly about to start the major plot, it just isn't motivating bc I'm dreading whatever nonsense filler is about to come up next.
At the end of the day, all the side characters were interesting, but it never felt like they were being explored that much and the main characters were less interesting to me. I figure if I don't love the characters by midway through, and the plot is clearly about to start rolling, it's probably a lost cause.
