halfcactus

Had to go on hard quarantine for virus-shaped reasons, but will be unofficially free to wander around the house tomorrow. \o/ I managed to speed-rewatch Love O2O and then marathon the entirety of Young Blood before my lights died and I started going to bed at 8 in the evening. :P

Lupin (S1)
I groupwatched the first 3 eps with friends when it came out and didn't have the chance to finish it until now. If I'd known there was gonna be a dog, I would have watched ep4 sooner. XD I really enjoy the heists, but the stakes in episodes 4 and 5 were too high for me—I basically skipped most of ep4 because I was expecting death at every corner and it was stressing me out. I don't think I can continue this show as the plot's intensity only seems to be escalating and my threshold for stress is too low. /o\

Young Blood (大宋少年志)

This was recced in relation to Imperial Coroner, a drama I recently finished and enjoyed (

superborb wrote a good summary here). Young Blood is similar in that it's about a group of youths with uncompromising trust in each other going on a series of missions that end up unveiling the truth behind the war in Qichuan Village two years ago. It's def not as OT6/shippy as Imperial Coroner, though there are 2 canon het ships and 1 slightly less canon m/m ship. XD

WHAT IT'S ABOUT:
Young Blood is about a group of youths in the Song Dynasty who are recruited into a spy agency. The first story arcs are about them getting together and fighting each other in spy school, trained by their teacher to trust no one, even each other, but what happens is that they just learn to distrust their teacher as they get to know each other better lol.

CHARACTERS:

Yuan Zhongxin, played by Steven Zhang (the ML in Skate Into Love and The Day of Becoming You): He is the central character, and son of a concubine and brother to a legendary warrior. Due to his family situation he basically grew up on the streets, and is a known rulebreaker and gambler. He's the type of character who's smart enough to play dumb to shirk his duties, and is super annoying and tactless because it serves his purposes.

Zhao Jian (pictured above): Incredibly smart and incredibly driven, she is a noble-born woman who joined the Secret Repository to avoid getting married and losing her freedom. I like how the drama portrays her as absolutely no less clever or competent than Yuan Zhongxin, and her level of skill remains consistent through the show.

Wang Kuan: Yuan Zhongxin's roommate in college, he simultaneously ~~tells on~~ keeps watch over Yuan Zhongxin and looks after him. Wang Kuan is the kind of uptight and upright character who doesn't expect others to share his moral conduct, only that they expect him to be impeccably righteous and never tell lies.

Pei Jing, played by Su Xiaotong (Chu Chu in Imperial Coroner): A sweet but bumbling girl who's basically bad at all the spy things, but loyal and likeable and pure of heart, and always second-guessing her value to the group. She's definitely not the smartest but she also definitely learns from everyone else's smartness and develops a pretty steely backbone.

Wei (Yuan????): Not sure what his real name is, they just call him Yanei, which I'm pretty sure is a title ajskdja;f. He's the son of the Grand Commandant, and very used to solving problems by either throwing money or his weight around. His growth arc is centered around ~~falling in love with~~ befriending Xue Ying and using his reputation in creative ways.

Xue Ying: He comes from a soldiering life, but is ashamed of his father's cowardice. Extremely quiet and bad at people, he is good at fighting and sneaking around and expects everyone else to do the thinking.

OVERALL IMPRESSION:
It's a good cdrama that maintains its quality to the end. I think either the director or the scriptwriter was also responsible for Joy of Life? It has a similarly tight plot and an annoying male protagonist played by a charming actor lol but it's a more ensemble cast which makes ZXY less annoying as a central character. There's also more room for various iterations of hurt/comfort in Young Blood, which is what my brain is fixating on right now. XD I think the Joy of Life cast is generally much stronger all around, though. Both shows are definitely more plot-driven than character-driven, but both are excellent in handling emotional storylines.

The Day of Becoming You (变成你的那一天)

Groupwatching this right now and we're up to ep 8 (well, 9, because we couldn't stop—inexplicably this show has a condom sponsorship and we all collectively lost it at the mid-episode advertising).

The Day of Becoming You is a 26-episode drama starring Steven Zhang as Jiang Yi, an idol who happens to be a social recluse, and Liang Jie as Yu Shengsheng, an entertainment reporter. The premise is that they don't like each other, but due to ~~science~~ magical shenanigans they get trapped in each other's bodies. So far it's been a nice low-stakes drama with solid acting and a likeable and familiar supporting cast (including Leng Yue from Imperial Coroner!). This was produced by the same people who made Go Ahead, a drama that I also quite recently bingewatched and loved for all its flaws, and filmed in Fujian, a place that I have never been to but have an instinctive soft spot for because of ancestral reasons. XD

WHAT I LIKE:

I have a huge bias for Steven Zhang/Zhang Xincheng, most especially Steven Zhang in comedic and deeply emotional situations, so this is feeding me in all the ways.

They have the same child actors as in Go Ahead. :D

Because it's from the team that gave us Go Ahead, the show is also giving us a lot of food porn* with which Jiang Yi gets a literal taste of family in Yu Shengsheng's body.

The bodyswap was executed really well, with both actors clearly working with each other!

WHAT I DON'T LIKE:

Children and children getting sick used as a plot device. >:[ It turned out fine, but the adults' choices were questionable, and hopefully that's it for this type of storyline.

Yu Shengsheng being obsessed with weight gain. It comes up a bit too much for my comfort.

Yu Shengsheng's job situation where she keeps taking leaves? And she absolutely does not have to, since she's a reporter and can just say she's following up a lead? (Also Jiang Yi could at least compensate her for her days off if she's doing him a favor.)

* In the paraphrased words of