Pathetically Entertaining

It Started With A Kiss is a very cute drama with a well-paced story line and satisfying ending. The music was suiting and catchy. It is also the third highest rated drama series in Taiwan. With that said, the main character is the most frustratingly insulting female lead I have ever seen. The basic idea of the series is a very dumb girl who falls in love with the smartest boy at school.

[As a side note, apparently schools in Taiwan divide students based on intelligence. All the smart kids are in the A Class while the most troubled students are in the F Class - I don't quite know how I feel about this system, so I won't debate it at the moment.]

Back to the story. The male character is conveniently perfect in every possible way...all except for his arrogant demeanor which often leads to some rather harsh interactions with the girl. Normally I would pity the girl (which is the reaction I think they were trying to go for), but they made her so incredibly pathetic that I was having a hard time rooting for her after awhile. So she is mind-numbingly dumb...ok, that's fine. I can handle that, but one would usually expect that she would have SOME other sort of admirable quality. Maybe she's creative. Maybe she's athletic. Maybe she can cook, clean, be hard working, be coordinated, make a decision, have a spine or do something...anything! What DOES she do in the series you ask? She throws herself at this guy who constantly rejects her and is, at times, quite mean to her (I feel kinda bad saying this but rightfully so). She has no talent, no aspirations and spends most of her time day dreaming about how to land him for a husband. Basically, she shamelessly followed him around for four years while I counted the endless number of steps backward she takes for all women kind.

They say the lesson to be learned from this series is persistence. What a bunch of hoo-ha.

Corner With Love: A Barbie Show

I actually finished this series awhile ago, but I've just put off writing anything about it because I'm lazy. For those of you monitoring this blog and are not obsessive with Chinese music and movies, I apologize in advance for flooding it with these posts. However, if you know me well enough to follow this blog then you probably already expect this. I'll liken it to Reid's numerous American Idol posts of which I do not understand.

Getting back to the series...It's a romantic comedy called Corner With Love starring Barbie Xu and Show (Alan) Lou. Barbie's character is a spoiled rich girl who's family goes into bankruptcy. Her filthy rich fiance is forced to dump her, her stupid parents flee, and all she has left is a poor boy who makes delicious oyster pancakes. The series is cute, the leads are gorgeous, and that's usually enough fuel to keep me satisfied through the 15+ hours. I also appreciate the lack of a super evil, super cheesy villain, but they weren't really able to fill the hours with much diversity in terms of obstacles. I sorta got tired of watching Show chase Barbie on a bike and juuuust missing her EVERY time after the first 10 attempts. This usually follows an annoying argument where neither of them are able to admit their true feelings even though they've sent each other a million "go" signals. I want to scream at them for being so gutless and dense, but then I get over it soon because they're so pretty.

The best part of the series is the music. Lots of nice songs that are now part of my collection of Chinese music. I didn't give Show's album a chance when Evan suggested him to me, but I'm a fan now so here's a plug.

Artist: Show/Alan Lou
Album: SPEShow

Favorite Song: Love's Corner (Ending theme from the series)

You can watch the series here: http://www.mysoju.com/corner-with-love/
Thank you for your attention.

So Much Drama

My recent craze is spending an absurd amount of time watching Chinese dramas -- specifically Taiwanese dramas since they are particularly good at producing teenybopper fairytale romances. In lieu of having an actual life of my own, I immerse myself into another world filled with girly fantasies and the oh-so-perfect man. I must say it makes going into work in the morning a total drag.

I've had my fair share of Chinese drama exposure growing up. The love probably sprouted from late night sessions with my family watching 80's TVB period/wuxia series (worthy of its own blog post in the future). So this recent surge was caused by stumbling upon a drama post that named a drama that broke Meteor Garden's record of highest viewership in Taiwan. I was a definite fan of Meteor Garden so I felt that this new series was a must-watch. I went off to eBay, bought a horribly English-subbed version, and literally spent a whole weekend watching episodes back to back. In English, it's called The Prince Who Turns into a Frog. I'm happy to say I was not disappointed. The lead couple was so charming, in fact, I went searching for their most recent drama together, Ying Ye 3 + 1.


Joe Chen Qiao En + Matthew Lin/Ming Dao: Qiao En is part of the girl group 7 Flowers while Ming Dao is part of the boy group 183 Club...both under the same label. They are both talented actors and have really nice chemistry together, but I have to admit I'm mostly a big fan because Ming Dao is quite dreamy :)

The Prince Who Turns into a Frog

Girl runs over rich boy. Boy loses his memory and falls in love with girl. Boy regains memory then...uh oh. This story gives hope to all materialistic girls who dream of nabbing a ridiculously rich man that sees past her materialism, but it doesn't really matter because he is still ridiculously rich.

Ying Ye 3 + 1

A group of kids who grew up together, fight together, and fall in love. There are two distinct stories. Part 1: The girl's father is a policeman who loses his gun. The four friends work together (using their kung-fu skills) to solve the mystery, fight off bullies, and uncover their feelings for one another. Part 2: A mysterious guy shows up from their past to cause more drama and tear the couple apart. Note: If you've ever thought of having a TV show where lovers fling themselves off of an eight story structure to prove their love, you're apparently too late.

If you don't want to actually buy the DVDs, you can watch both of these series for free with ok quality and English subs at mysoju.com and/or crunchyroll.com -- so glad I found these sites.