Ice Hockey Girl (2020)

Light and Sweet

I liked this drama very much. I usually get bored when the confession takes forever to happen but i didnt mind in this drama because there are many scenes with the main couple and we witnessed them bonding. There is no major misunderstanding which i also liked very much. I also enjoyed how darren chen protrayed his role and wasnt afraid to smile even when acting angry. I would like the FL to be a bit of a "fight back" character mainly to not be pushed around that easily by ML's mother but i guess it was needed for the plot. The drama also had many funny scenes. Overall its a light and sweet drama. I recommend it 100%. The music fits the drama well.

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Sweet and fluffy with a suspension of belief

This drama was a nice, sweet, and fluffy drama! But of course, this definitely needed to be watched with a suspension of belief/go with the flow type of vibe. I feel like throughout the drama there were times that I was thinking that things didn't really make sense. So, as long as you can sit back, relax, and watch the sweetness unfold, this drama would be great to watch. Definitely a light-hearted youth drama full of clichés. I also wish they didn't take so long to get together and I wish we had more sweet moments with the two of them finally being honest with each other. But overall, it was still an enjoyable watch.

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Disappointed

I had high expectations for this drama based on the reviews and high ratings. Unfortunately it didn’t meet those, perhaps unrealistic, expectations. I thought the plot would have been much better with some adjustments to the timing of things and if they had done the latter half a lot differently. This drama could have been significantly shorter and told the same story.

It bothers me in most of these cross-dressing/disguise dramas that the guy that knows the other person is actually a female, but doesn’t tell them that they know the truth when they have developed feelings for said person. Just tell the truth and that way both of you can be yourselves and develop a relationship nicely instead of the guy playing along with the secret, the girl tells the truth, and then they’re like “I already figured out you were a girl” leading to a very stereotypical scene of the girl acting shocked that they knew and when did they find out. It would lead to much better chemistry between the leads as well, which I felt was somewhat lacking.

The acting I felt overall was rather mediocre. A lot of it was meant to be over the top, which I can appreciate in many cases, but in this case everything just seemed too overdone or silly. The accidental kiss scenes -I’m looking right at you. The male lead was definitely a stronger actor than the female lead, and he being eye candy was the best part about this drama.

I liked the side characters in this drama and I felt a lot of them were developed nicely, and it seemed like their stories would make a better plot than the main one.

Will I watch this again or recommend it to my friends? No, because I feel there are better dramas with disguised female leads to enjoy such as You’re Beautiful or Sungkyunkwan scandal. I’d rewatch those any day over this.

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I adore this series for a number of reasons. Darren Chen and Sabrina Chen have fantastic chemistry and play off of each other beautifully. This was only the second series I'd seen Darren in (after Meteor Garden) and I loved him just as much in this one. There is a LOT of silliness, but unlike many other dramas, it's very well placed and helps the story move along. Often times I will skip an episode here and there when things start to drag, but that never happened with this drama. Even the secondary relationships were well done and very entertaining. Definitely rewatchable.

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Cheesy but watchable

Plot: A female student who accidentally needed to play ice hockey as a boy due to circumstances. It was full of cliché and cheesy scenes yet some are done in a cute/humorous way. There were some flat scenes in the middle and the last episode was full of cheese.

Acting: Main leads are pretty decent despite having awkward or forced smiles from time to time. The rest of the characters were cute too, although I did quite find the girl who kept calling ‘bing gege’ annoying 80% of the time.

Music: Nothing memorable except that there’s an English song. Also, the ending song is too mellow for a romcom. Sound effects of the cat were random as well.

Rewatch Value: I don’t think I’ll be rewatching but if you are likely bored or doesn’t have anything to watch, this drama could help pass the time.

Overall: 6.5-7 because it was quite entertaining and well-paced. The reveal of her gender to the right people was understandable and it helped me to click next episode. It was also cute that Sebrina gave a reminder that this plot is possible in drama world but not in real life so I lowered my expectations plot-wise. This is my first drama of Darren and I find him really charming and good looking most of the time. Both leads have sweet and cute faces that they could also pass as siblings. The chemistry wasn’t fire but still believable.

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CUTE AND CLICHE BUT STILL WATCHABLE

What's wrong with the female lead? She was pretending as a boy and still expressing cuteness or "aegyo"? It does not make any sense, to be honest. She had eyeliner, and her voice was too cute and soft. And in the end, she was surprised that some characters knew she was a girl; of course, you were too obvious, girl.

However, this drama was not bad. It was enjoyable at some parts, while some were too unbearable thanks to the female lead. Fortunately, I started this because of boredom, so I didn't have any expectations.

Watch this if you like...
Cliche story
Prosopagnosia
Narcissist male lead
Kisses, slight tension
A girl pretending as a boy
Figure skating and hockey
Male leads fighting and making up--repeat.
The female lead acting cute, but she's cute. Too cute.
Misunderstanding but will quickly resolve by the end of the episode
An Overly handsome male lead that can weaken your knees
An overly cute female lead that is sometimes weak and strong depends on the mood of the scriptwriter.
A handsome second male lead that frequently misunderstood the situation and was kind of in denial of his feelings, but whatever, he's cute.

Or just watch this if you are bored maybe you will enjoy it more than I did.

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Great for escapism

I WILL MARK WHERE SPOILERS START

This really is one of the finer escapism pieces I’ve watched this year. There’s no SLS frustrations. Main plot conflicts roughly last about 1-2 episodes. There’s plenty of crack. There’s plenty of swoon-worthy, butterfly feeling moments. It’s funny and fun. There’s Darren with his fringe up. Sebrina’s on her cross-dressing streak. It’s an entertaining piece to watch and just escape reality. It made me so happy while watching. I really suggest giving this a try and watching the first 3 episodes before thinking about dropping. The first episode is really rocky which episodes 2 and 3 fixes, chances are once you get past the rocky bits, you won’t be able to stop.

The OST has quite a few English tracks in the list. It's slow, mellow, and cutesy. Sometimes the English tracks can be distracting from the show, because it's not always fitting for the scene and the track's beat is much slower than the speed of the scenes.
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SPOILERS BELOW
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Darren plays a mischievous rich boy (Wen Bing) who loves playing hockey. He meets our female lead Sebrina (Sang Tian) while she’s dressed as a guy. Eventually she ends up at the same school as him, but she has to stay dressed as a guy to join the men’s hockey course/team because she got her enrollment for the women’s figure skating team revoked. He literally figures out that she’s a girl by the 3rd episode and all the shenanigans begin. He’s got plenty of annoying but loveable rascal-type scenes, where you will find yourself screaming about how annoying he was.

He has a weird form of face amnesia where faces are hard to recognize and the surroundings are also hard to see (but apparently his perception is top notch -- again no logic). If you need some explanation or something more tangible, just pretend he is extremely nearsighted and refuses to wear correcting glasses or contact lenses in order to keep his cool guy looks.

I have a lot of love for the side couple Cheng Min Jun and Coach Ma. Their relationship was really cute and entertaining. Coach Ma is one of those stronger female characters, she was in the hockey team when she was younger, so she was very much a tomboy and her love life was so sad that all the students knew. Cheng Min Jun is very cheap and mostly broke, he originally went after Coach Xue, but that fell out (I enjoyed their friendship and bonding over getting dumped as well). Coach Ma and Cheng Min Jun end up together and it’s announced that they got engaged at the very end.

Meng Na and Sang Zhan was a hit or miss for me. I mostly 2x-d Meng Na’s solo+ scenes because it was very much filter information you don’t need. I enjoyed this couple because every time they are together Meng Na is under some type of magical gravity, where she falls and lands in his arms or some other cutie’s arms (I want magical gravity).

There is no SLS, our second male lead was not potent at all. Wei Lian is very cute and I adore him but his SML script was not there to make us ship him and Sang Tian.

This is high in my rewatch pile, I will most likely rewatch this before or after my exams to relax and break the stress.

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If you want cliche, this cdrama is full of it

I'm gonna start by saying how much I love the main couple. They have the most amazing chemistry, I felt myself vibing everytime they looked at each other. Darren Chen is a cutie too, just putting this out there.

This drama is so cliché, but that's exactly what I was hoping for. I enjoyed every single second & cringed the whole time, everybody deserves something light like this. We don't have that toxic disrespectful male lead, because Wen Bing is fun and caring, it'll elevate your ultimate boyfriend standards even higher.

The side characters are also very cute and relatable, we - cheesy romance lovers - have everything we could possibly want & I felt very satisfied with the whole story. When it ended I kinda felt a hole in heart, and I'm sure gonna fill it with another Chinese rom-com, yes. I don't know if it's healthy, but I do love it here. It's a yes from me.

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a lot beneath the cover / trailers

i wasnt looking enthusiastically forward to it, and did just only watch because ive watched Darren Chen in Meteor Garden 2018, and enjoy his works. the trailer and promotional posters werent particularly appealing either, and i was expecting it to be a typical love story in the sports world, with a bit of Mulan's twist to it. it was definitely beyond expectations.

story:
story-wise, the plot was very different then whats portrayed in synopsis and. while i understand that the cross-dressing was the main plot here, i throughly enjoyed the prospects of bringing in prosopagnosia, a gamer-lover plot and symbolisms. there were plenty of deep meanings inside the story, all representing luck, passion and love. while yes, i do agree that there were a lot of cliches inside the story, they were written out well to a point where it seems naturally possible for them to happen in the real world. the story doesnt solely emphasis on romance, which i can respect as many romance films do overdo in that aespect. it mixes in the beauty of friendships, family love, and siblinghood. i think that many of the plots are usually overdone in this film, such as a typical "rich mother doesnt approve of the poorer girl" storyline. but this show is more realistic and shows a more understanding reality of such over exaggerated plots.

casting/acting:
this is a casting i personally, am more familiar with, which i throughly enjoyed. there is plenty of chemistry between the main leads, and the second leads, as well as the hockey team themselves. you could really feel the passion within friends, couples and siblings. most scenes were acted beautifully and realistically as well, such that you wouldnt feel like you are watching a show, but in the show yourself. i think for the actors ive watched before, all of them have improved tremendously and there wasnt actors distracted or what i would consider "bad acting".

music:
its a pity there arent many tracks in the playlist, but the music indeed varies to suit many different scenes, and ere suited well! there are tracks which amped up the hockey games, and pnes which portrays the blossming feelings of a young couple. there were also sad music for sad scenes, and joyful ones for such. the music compliments the entire show very well, emphasising the emotions and immersing the viewer into the various moods more and more.

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I really like drama that have good story line which includes complicated relationship , struggle and etc . Most probably I dropped drama which which is too cringy and fluffy kind of story.

But this drama change my opinion because of following reasons

1) this story was simple and beautiful
2) there is no negative roles so that is a plus point
3) they focused more on main couple story line
4) they didn't dragged the plot for no reasons
5) like other cross dressing drama , they didn't reveal the true identity till last episode to main lead


Both Darren Chen and Sabrina Chen gave full justice to their roles. But my only problem is only in 23rd episode , everything was revealed . I mean everything they did look too childish in the end .

But surely it is a one time watching cute drama ,if you want light hearted drama

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Okay

Nothing new concept in this drama ,this drama somewhat resemble to skate into love . The level of excitement and connectivity skate into love maintain was not in this drama .
It is a simple love story ,best part of the drama was that there was not any conspiracy, easy going ,not much hard struggle between the character . Lead actor's mother didn't bias on rich and poor concept . One thing I didn't understand the hated story among the brothers ( Shen Wei Lian and his elder brother)...
I expect more with this drama .
Onetime watch . Lead actor is the best ...

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