Guardian (Chinese Web Drama)
This one is based on the popular web novel, Zhen Hun written by Priest. Set in a world where most of the humans are ignorant of the fact that they are sharing their planet with two other alien species, our hero (Bai Yu, Memory Lost 2016) is the head of a special department tasked with investigating any cases that are “unusual”. Intrigued by a seemingly normal college professor who somehow always gets pulled into the cases he is investigating, our hero can’t figure out why a total stranger would feel so familiar to him. Unbeknownst to our hero, the college professor has a secret identity AND is someone he knows very well in his previous life. (It is especially fun to watch the college professor having to switch between his identities so our hero doesn’t catch on.)
With this one being a web drama I am afraid the show will probably not get pick up by the big sites for translation, which is a real shame because I am really enjoying Guardian quite a bit. The individual supernatural cases have been great and I love the bromance between our two male leads.
Unexpected (Chinese Web Drama)
For fans of K-drama W (2016), this one should be fun to check out since it has a similar premise of our protagonist being pulled into a book. After getting into a car accident, our hero wakes up to find himself in the comic world he had personally created. Informed by an NPC that he needs to stop the tragic fate of the female villain or lose his own life when she commits suicide at the end of the book, our hero has no choice but to accept the mission. As the author, our hero of course knows everything that will happen to the female villain/our heroine but he will also quickly find out that it is not exactly a cake walk when it comes to derailing a story…even if it’s a story he wrote.
Unlike W where the story had a very serious tone, the comic book in Unexpected is a fluffy love story so that means the show is a romantic comedy instead of the scary killer on the loose sort of story like W was.
Befriend (Taiwanese Drama)
Our hero has a problem. A big one. Working as a debt collector for a loan shark, our hero wants to be tough, scary, relentless, shameless, cruel even…but what is a guy to do when he turns into a giant teddy bear whenever someone gives him a sob story of why they can’t possibly pay their debt. Meeting our heroine and a few other eccentric characters when he was sent by his boss to collect an outstanding debt from our heroine (who dreams of marrying a rich chaebol so she borrowed money to look the part), our hero is soon convinced by his new friends to open up a human relation consulting business.
The first episode was pretty quirky and fun but I have a poor track record when it comes to sticking with episodic stories so I will probably only check in on this one from time to time. By the way, for those who enjoyed Teenage Psychic last year (whose heroine was played by the same actress Kuo Shu Yao as in this one) Befriend also has the same rich Taiwanese culture feel to it.
Legend of Fu Yao (Chinese Drama, New)
Yang Mi and Ethan Juan’s long awaited fantasy historical period drama. This one is based on a popular C-novel of the same name. I am going to write a first impression on this one soon.
My Story For You (Chinese Drama, New)
The drama adaptation of a novel written by a very popular web novelist. This modern romance will follow our hero who met great success in the tech field at a young age only to lose everything during the dot.com bubble burst. Unwavering in her love for our hero through thick and thin, our heroine remained a staunch supporter of our hero until he finally found wild success as an author. The story was based on the author’s own life and his romance with his wife. The scriptwriter and the director are the same as the one that did My Sunshine (2015) so I am pretty excited…as long as the show doesn’t end up pulling the same draggy stunt (TONS of flashbacks) as My Sunshine.
The Way We Were (Chinese Drama, Finished)
I think this is probably the first drama I have watched where the two second leads’ romance was given almost the equal amount of attention (in terms of character set up and screen time) as the two leads’. I would usually get extremely impatient with any show that would ignore the two leads so much but I actually didn’t mind it in this case because the second leads’ romance was done extremely well. Again, this is probably the first drama with a love square where I love all four characters equally and want all four characters to have their own happy ending. While the show did have some flaws (draggy at some parts and some glaring plot holes in certain places) I did like The Way We Were overall and found it a very easy watch…especially if you fast forward the draggy parts. Dramafever has all 50 episodes of The Way We Were.
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