A Straightforward Story, Told Well

I enjoyed this drama a good deal more than I was expecting to. The story is relatively straightforward -- romance, competition, and the pressures of publicity -- but it goes through the familiar beats with a sense of professionalism and respect for the audience that I really appreciated. It's not about, for instance, if the main team will win the championship at the end, but about the theatricality and execution of the match.

Things I particularly appreciated. The show has a minimum of contrived fake-outs (no mid-term breakup for the main couple, no bizarre twist at the end, no angst about whether a happy ending is OK), and focuses rather on watching a sweet relationship develop, and a fun sports competition play out (with economical use of montages and result summaries to let us focus on the interesting matches). The supporting cast was also pretty good, and in particular the dynamics of the main sports team was fun -- a lot of great banter, spiced with just a bit of drama. And the music was really outstanding: there was no overused ballad for the main couple, instead just really effective use of songs in context (Naomi Wang's pre-match song gave me goosebumps the first time it was used).

That's not to say it's a perfect show. If you want a more original plot, this isn't the place to look: it's comfort food. And there are some of the usual cliches of romances (FL trips and is caught by the ML at least three or four times). Sometimes I thought this sat a little awkwardly with the characterization of the FL, though overall I appreciated very much that they didn't feel they needed to make her 'manly' in order to portray her as an outstanding e-sports player.

I had a few other miscellaneous complaints, mostly fairly minor. There's a lot of product placement, of the same brands that keep showing up in other shows, and when this is too blatant it can be a bit exasperating. Some of the material with online harassment and publicity was overegged a bit. I don't think making the ML so super-rich added much, and just felt like trying to cram in one ML cliche too many. All of these criticisms are just my opinion, of course, and didn't seriously get in the way of my enjoyment of the show.

To sum: If you want a fun show that's very professionally put together, and won't hit you with a lot of emotional manipulation, this is a good choice.

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