My three 2019 favorites from Taiwan, Korea and China respectively appearing on Viki together. Won’t call it a great drama year because there were hardly any shows watched but those that I did get around to watching were amazing.



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    That is awesome!!

    2019 was def the year of Chinese dramas for me. I am fairly new to its industry as I just started last year with Meteor Garden 2018, but I definitely enjoyed what it showed me when I was once again not impressed by Korean dramas.

    As per my MDL – I finished 6 Kdramas this year so far (7 if SKY Castle included) vs 10 Kdramas in 2018

    I have finished 7 C-Dramas that aired this year, but I have also watched older series such as As Love So Beautiful, Because of Meeting You, Suddenly This Summer, Unexpected to name a few…. As per MDL, I saw 15 C-Dramas (a couple TW-dramas including) between post-Meteor Garden 2018 to now. And I can see myself leaning towards C-Dramas more in the future.

    Hopefully 2020 will give us more interesting K-dramas that don’t go downhill halfway the show -___-

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      I don’t know how many kdramas or cdramas I’ve seen this year, but I am definitely more into cdramas lately. At this point in time I’ve not seen a full kdrama on my own for months. I only watch them with my mom when I visit her every other weekend. If I wasn’t watching with my mom I probably wouldn’t have seen any kdramas.

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        Does your mom like what she’s seeing with K-Dramas? Perhaps convert her too to watching C-Dramas! Huehhehe but then again you won’t be watching kdramas at all if that happens. 😖

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          Arg. I wrote a huge reply and it got erased because of an ‘inappropriate word’. No clue what word it was because I didn’t use anything wrong.

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          Ok. Let’s try this again 😣

          We actually watch both together, we just watch more kdramas than cdramas because of the shorter length, it makes it easier to finish series when you only watch every-other-weekend, plus we’ve been watching kdramas together for years. But we have seen Ashes of Love, Bloody Romance, we rewatched The Untamed, and Go Go Squid. She also watches cdramas on her own. She actually started watching The Untamed before me and has now rewatched it about 6 times and read the book. I am not even kidding.

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            Your mom’s amazing. C dramas are crack, sometimes also no brainer crack. So it kind of helps to get entertainment from them. Kdramas have been lacking the entertaining fa tor recently. Maybe because they are going for realism, which I absolutely adore but sometimes you need to run away from that too.

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            Your mom is amazing! Mine doesn’t know anything about the drama world. Wish I had somebody irl sharing this madness for dramas.

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      Ikr. Looking at a list of kdramas in 2019 made me realize that many had lackluster second halves. Other than Be Melo I only watched Kingdom, Sky Castle and Extraordinary You fully. I enjoyed Sky and Kingdom and first half of EY but Be Melo is better than them all for me. I unintentionally (i.e. I wasn’t willing to drop them but sth came and I forgot about them) dropped Tale of Nokdu and WWW and intentionally dropped MotA and Top star yoo baek. However, I caught up on many c dramas and ventured into T dramas. Also started a J drama right now to fill the void of Arsenal but it’s hard. C dramas are crack. It’s harder to marathon the others but the 40 min episodes of a cdrama are easily binged even if I have to stay in bed for 5 days 😂. You are lured by the 40 min to watch “one more episode” leading to 5 more by 4 am. But I would say I didn’t like the overall story of Arsenal that much. It was good but patriotism is done better in many shows so the comparison remains, still it was cracktistic. Not to forget obv, there is hardly a male lead like Gu Yanzhen in dramas. Either they are straight up jerks or the nice guys like Shen Junshan but not a wacky, silly but loveable male lead like Yanzhen. It still surprises me how I came to like him despite the first 3 episodes showing him a proper harrasser, the writers and Xu Kai did some magic there. Still trying to look for another probably c-drama to get over Arsenal. Only crack beats crack.

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        Ikr. I’ve watched the modern drama Bai Lu was in and I kept comparing the main lead to Gu Yanzhen. I kept mumbling to myself that ‘Gu Yanzhen would have done this done that if it was him’ >.<

        I started When We Were Young but the female lead isn't grabbing my attention so I'm not sure if I'll continue it. How do we move on from the Gu Yanzhen spell???

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          Huehehe You watched the World owes me a first love, neener???

          Gu Yanzhen is one of a kind. I’m glad Xu Kai played his role. I couldn’t see anyone else playing this role. He was a natural. It maybe hard to top this role too for Xu Kai. I liked his character, Mo Qing, too in the legends but it’s not the same! I still go back to Gu Yanzhen for my fix. I can’t believe he used to have criticism before about being a green actor. He improved so much in a short amount of time when he is still a rising actor!

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            I saw it in one of the comments and was trying to get over AMA, I finished it with a few skips. Male lead couldn’t beat Yanzhen. He’s the best. He actually on par with Joon-young from Weightlifting or probably better. But different times, nonetheless, Yanzhen is awesome and we both know the reasons why he is the perfect man for XX.

            I’m not a fantasy fan even on Kdramas so I’m still thinking if I should watch The Legends. Maybe the next drama that they will do? I also want to check out how Xu Kai acts other than Yanzhen.

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            Xu Kai played him quite well. I was checking the bts and it seems like there have been several times he has ad-libbed the expressions. When you’ve got an ott character to play, you can go anywhere with that. I wish they used his real voice ( his real voice seems more husky and deep, the one in the show has a higher pitch but I’m wondering if it isn’t dubbing all over just auto tuning the same voice). He must have been green in the beginning of his career, as much as I know he is still new in the industry. But his and Bai lu’s micro expressions were great here. I think he still needs to tone down a little in emotional scenes but that was also Gu Yanzhen’s character to be extra emotional. Now YouTube has been recommending me his clips, they clearly know I have a celeb crush but idk if it’s on Xu Kai or Yanzhen 😂

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          Gu Yanxhen is hard to forget. I watched 2 to 3 hours of him yesterday, going through episodes finding all the cheeky scenes.

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        It still surprises me how I came to like him despite the first 3 episodes showing him a proper harrasser, the writers and Xu Kai did some magic there.

        Wapz I was appalled too by how he manhandled a woman and wondered if I should keep going. I wish his “jerk” phase was written differently, but what made Gu Yanzhen an amazing character was we did see him changed over the course of 48 episodes. Compared to his old self, Yanzhen wasn’t controlling over Xiang Xiang; he loved her the way she is, doesn’t matter how wore her clothes or how she acted. We also saw him very patient in turning Manting down even when she wasn’t listening to him. He was never an a.hole to Manting since those early episodes. And since then, he also had gained respect for people in general.

        The patriotism story in this drama wasn’t that great, so yeah we come back to AMA because of these characters who felt so real and who saw their journey to their growth. It def feels like we were there with them as they go through life changes.

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          The growth in this show for each character was amazing. But yes I still think his jerk character in ep 1 to 3 was just way too much. Due to which maybe many people wouldn’t have gone beyond the first episode.

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    Those two are definitely good! I’m gonna start watching the first ep of Yong-jiu Grocery Store since the Cdramas I’ve watched haven’t caught my attention. I always go back to AMA rewatch >.<

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      Yong Jiu is great. I’d say probably the best slice of life drama I have seen. But idk if it’s the right mood rn. YJGC does rope one in but Arsenal was very crack and addictive. Yong Jiu isn’t but you’ll keep coming back to it hopefully. Give the 1st episode a try and maybe you can see if it’s the right thing to get over a crack drama. Otherwise watch it when you might be in a slice of life drama mood. I am saying this because I tried to beat Arsenal crack by slice of life J drama. Even if that show is good, I feel that, though great and my favorite genre, slice of life is hardly addictive so I keep rewatching scenes from Arsenal as well.

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        I just finished the first ep. I’ve never watched a slice of life drama outside Jdrama since they do it so well. The first ep and I’m assuming the rest have the same feels as how Jdramas are handled. I’m in a mood for romance or like AMA right now but I feel like I can watch this drama one ep at a time. I liked what I saw 😉

        I do have a question, what language are they speaking in? It sounds Mandarin but not really hihi

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          Yes Yong Jiu is like Japanese slice of life shows and is done equally well. It is also long and heavy so it’s watched best one at a time. I actually used to watch it before sleep because it was calming but it does get some thought process triggered so might affect sleep as well lol. It is the same language but different dialect. The dialect is unique to the place Haichao village I suppose. I’m not sure though, I read this somewhere. But again i think this dialect is way more calming that the usual language.

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            Yes, it needs to be one ep a day or one ep a week. I’m in a mood for fluff and crack these days >.<

            It does sound like a dialect. It's interesting!

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            I’d suggest you put it off for now. Because I get how after Arsenal we’d like to watch an addictive fluff show. Slice of life dramas in general and Yong Jiu too is watched best when one is in the mood to see sth heavy. That way we can get to appreciate them more too.

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            Yes, it’s definitely on the list. Thank you~~ I’ll definitely give an update once I finish or start the drama

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