Reset / 开端
Feb. 27th, 2022 20:56![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
superborb(These two reviews were going to go into a media diet post, but they're both a little long for it...)
Time loop of a bus explosion, as the main characters struggle to find out how to stop it when they have limited time and resources before the event. Our main characters are Li Shiqing, a college student, and Xiao Heyun, a game developer, and it explores the sometimes complicated histories of the other passengers on the bus.
I'll say the pacing and tension was quite uneven, though it's always going to be a struggle to balance stakes in a time loop show, especially, ashalfcactus pointed out, when we know the episode count. (I did spend most of episode 15 suggesting more and more outlandish points when the male lead could die to make the "romance under threat of death" convincing.) As a result, I thought it could have easily been tightened up.
The time spent exploring the other people on the bus was mostly interesting, but all the time on the cops and their ~feelings~ landed quite flat and broke the pace. (The loyalty subplot with puppy policeman would have been way more compelling if he weren't so fond of unnecessary aggression.) Shame, because objectively, the actors playing the cops were some of the best, they just weren't given enough material to work with and too much time for the pieces they played (maybe they wanted to get their money's worth from the actors lol). The main characters did get to learn and get better over the course of the series, but tbh, any character consistency sometimes lost in favor of The Story.
The self awareness with which it dealt with the genre sometimes worked--I especially liked the moment when even though the Xiao Heyun is a nerd, he isn't familiar enough with /this particular/ genre--and sometimes ended in some weird moralizing about video games. There were some moments where the writers were good about addressing potential plot holes (ep 11 had a great moment where male lead's genuinely good memory allays suspicion about why he knows so much), and sometimes... not... (IP addresses do not work that way, except for plot convenience). I'd say ep 11 and 12 were the peak of the show, and then the final episode's solution on how they fix everything was a bit too pat, after they spent eps 13 and 14 trying to raise the stakes One More Time!
That all makes me sound like I didn't like it, but overall I did, I'm just a hater lol. But more seriously, it was a solid mystery, had good characters with interesting motivations (a strength of cdramas generally IMO), and was primarily let down by the tension issues.
CW: cop interrogations, trauma from undergoing interrogations, surveillance state, bombings, permanent death (both adult and child), groping on public transport
Time loop of a bus explosion, as the main characters struggle to find out how to stop it when they have limited time and resources before the event. Our main characters are Li Shiqing, a college student, and Xiao Heyun, a game developer, and it explores the sometimes complicated histories of the other passengers on the bus.
I'll say the pacing and tension was quite uneven, though it's always going to be a struggle to balance stakes in a time loop show, especially, as
halfcactus pointed out, when we know the episode count. (I did spend most of episode 15 suggesting more and more outlandish points when the male lead could die to make the "romance under threat of death" convincing.) As a result, I thought it could have easily been tightened up. The time spent exploring the other people on the bus was mostly interesting, but all the time on the cops and their ~feelings~ landed quite flat and broke the pace. (The loyalty subplot with puppy policeman would have been way more compelling if he weren't so fond of unnecessary aggression.) Shame, because objectively, the actors playing the cops were some of the best, they just weren't given enough material to work with and too much time for the pieces they played (maybe they wanted to get their money's worth from the actors lol). The main characters did get to learn and get better over the course of the series, but tbh, any character consistency sometimes lost in favor of The Story.
The self awareness with which it dealt with the genre sometimes worked--I especially liked the moment when even though the Xiao Heyun is a nerd, he isn't familiar enough with /this particular/ genre--and sometimes ended in some weird moralizing about video games. There were some moments where the writers were good about addressing potential plot holes (ep 11 had a great moment where male lead's genuinely good memory allays suspicion about why he knows so much), and sometimes... not... (IP addresses do not work that way, except for plot convenience). I'd say ep 11 and 12 were the peak of the show, and then the final episode's solution on how they fix everything was a bit too pat, after they spent eps 13 and 14 trying to raise the stakes One More Time!
That all makes me sound like I didn't like it, but overall I did, I'm just a hater lol. But more seriously, it was a solid mystery, had good characters with interesting motivations (a strength of cdramas generally IMO), and was primarily let down by the tension issues.
CW: cop interrogations, trauma from undergoing interrogations, surveillance state, bombings, permanent death (both adult and child), groping on public transport
no subject
Date: 2022-03-01 07:36 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-02 01:44 (UTC)If SOMETHING happened to ML, it would justify that pacing/plot of the final eps!!