Hello, you're watching AvenueX and today let's talk about a recently aired chinese web drama
Dang Wo Fei Ben Xiang Ni, When I fly towards you,
this is a 24 episodes web drama that's been aired on the platform Youku
directed by Mao De Shu,his real name is Yuan Shuang and his rather young born in 1991 director,
it is written by Yue An and Tao Kaixin, based on a novel by the author Zhu Yi
called Ta Bing de Bu Qing,a mostly focused on high school campus romantic novel.
The drama is led by Zhou Yiran, Zhang Miaoyi, Bian Tianyang, Jiang Zhinan, Guo Zhe,
and it had gone through many obstacles during its filming.
It started filming on August 26, 2021 in the city Qing Dao
but due to some unforeseen sudden changes,
they had to move the whole crew to Xia Men to shoot this drama.
Then it came across quite a few other obstacles such as the originally decided at the open ceremony,
male second and male third role both got changed to different actors during the filming.
Given the 2021~2022, there were sporadic lockdowns happening in china due to covid situation
could be something to do with that. I haven't found very reliable information source
about exactly what happened to this production.
Resulting in this unfortunate drama not finishing shooting until 2022 October.
So its actual shooting time ran across 2 years, 13 months.
But eventually this drama did get born and we see it now in 2023 June.
This is not a very long drama. It will finish airing for the vip subscribers of youku next Thursday,
I have watched the first half of this drama.
I don't see a very big potential or possibility of this drama crashing towards the end.
so I think this is already a good point to talk about it.
Let you know as soon as possible that if this might be your cup of tea,
i'll give this drama right now a 1.5 gold mine rating,
quickly introduce you to story as usual and then let you know
what are the things worth watching and different about this drama.
This is, like I said earlier,a very typical high school campus focused romantic story,
at least by this point halfway, it's still focused on high school
and it will feature mainly our main couple and an secondary couple
and a couple of other side rolee, so it's a very specific type of drama that happens very frequently in chinese dramaland.
And most of them are based on popular web novels that are within this genre.
If it's a genre that completely doesn't interest you,
then this drama is not gonna provide you any unusual element, for example,
that shining just for you or only for you, that drama had time travel.
It is definitely more than the usual campus drama.
Whereas this one is a very typical, normal human, no special abilities,
no fantastical stories involve teenager love story.
Our male lead character is someone who comes from a family that compares him constantly to his younger brother
who is in every way better than him, although he is already a really good student
resulting in him being a very quiet, withdrawn and often not very confident person.
And he's very good at mathematics, physics,that side of stern subjects.
Whereas our female, comes from a family where it's filled with love.
She's very adored by her parents, although she's not a greatest student out there,
she has this ease with herself, and she's very good at English,
but very bad with math and physics. You see the pairing?
so they're gonna come together, help each other out at their academic studies.
And at the same time, female lead's natural bubbly, very warm energy
is going to help the make lead build up his confidence.
And it's HE ending for sure.
Now let's talk about good and bad of this drama.
I really don't see a significant shortcoming of this drama.
So i'll talk about things that are not perfect or ideal or making me rate this drama higher parts first
The first point is, as a drama, it is not a strong plot drama
meaning things happen, of course, but they are not jacked up with dramatic twist turns energy.
It's like a diary and our female will use her camera recorder in this drama.
And it comes from her perspective, she narrates a lot of the things.
So the whole drama can be looked at as her diary and you know what happens in diary,
boring stuff that happens every day.
So this is the overall tone of this drama.
May not appeal to a lot of drama watchers who want more exciting stuff.
Second point is the main pack of the actors.
I am happy with their performance, they really do feel like teenagers,
but overall the acting ability of the main group is good enough, but not excellent.
Certainly by this point halfway, I haven't found one scene that really hit me hard.
If I have to compare campus dramas, I would say dramas such as (Suddenly this summer) would deliver you
much stronger performances from both leads.
That may be also a reason why this drama may just reads to you a little bit bland
last thing is within this category of high school campus dramas from chinese dramalanfd
it may only stand out in certain things that I don't think becomes consequential to the overall performance of a drama airing
as a story the most important thing is the script, that part.
It doesn't stand out from other good ones we've seen such as (With You)
such as (My Huckleberry Friends) or (Suddenly this summer)
these couple of in the last 5 or 6 years that has made an impression
and got quite good responses, campus high school drama, in comparison to those ones.
This one wouldn't stand out in its storytelling quality
for people who've discovered it, they probably enjoying it to an extent,
but it wouldn't leave a very strong impression.
so these are the points that are on the negative end, in my opinion of this drama.
Now let's talk about then what is good about it and why it may still be worth watching for you.
Point number one, the texture of this drama is so much better than I expected.
When I first heard about this project, high school drama led by these not so well known young actors,
particularly the male lead actor. I do know he comes from certain background in his previous works.
I have no hope for it to be watchable in any way
and it airs on Youku, let's be honest, Youku, landmines everywhere
particularly in its aesthetics of color grading, skin smoothing just looks
usually the worst among all the platforms.
And when this drama starts running, I was shocked about how good it looks.
The type of look that the camera gives, it's more on the cinematic end
without being the iqiyi super green and yellow graded style color.
It's still very Youku color, but the texture, the refinedness,
the slightly grainy quality and definitely using very cinematic lens to pull
the foreground and background quite far away from each other almost in every shot.
It gives you a very beautiful impression that Youku's dramas usually don't give you.
So I got quite shocked about how good this drama looks.
And it also is very careful in the designs of things, such as each episode title,
how it gets presented to you, the title song, the ending song,
the visual and the sound that goes together are all very beautifully designed,
particularly I think everybody noticed the title song when the song is running,
it is also the female leads perspective, holding her camera recorder,
recording her high school snippets as this drama is set in 2010s time.
So right before things got super, super advanced with phones,
that framing gives you the particular quality that I really enjoy.
So this drama overall has this really refined, carefully worked out beautiful look,
that's super suitable for a high school innocent, pretty in a way that's not super dressed up way drama,
the way it looks, the way it's designed and the story is telling and the people it's describing are very coherent,
makes me actually really curious about the makeup of the team because this drama
is produced by Youku and it has multiple other smaller drama production companies in the play.
So it's a collaboration drama with many different companies.
I wonder who is the person who actually had the most say in the looks
and the designs and overall vibe or what this drama should look like.
Who is that person? Because this person has taste if in any way possible.
This person should have more say in Youku's dramas.
The second thing about this drama is like I said in the negative parts,
no great outstanding performances, but on the positive end,
I love the cast, the main cast of the male lead female lead male second female second
another sort of male third and then preferral people,
everybody is so well cast and they really fit their role,
fit the age and what the story wants them to be.
Usually when you see a high school drama if the age of the actors don't quite feel right,
it can get really weird,
although these actors are not necessarily that young as the characters they play,
oh they can totally pull it off. You believe 17 year old, 16 year old,
that's an 18 year old, totally, convincingly.
And I love the fact that the drama doesn't beautify them.
There's no skin smoothing using on these young people. I mean you don't need too.
And they are not overly made up, often they look completely without makeup
and it just feels really real and quite adorable.
I can totally sense that teenager youthful energy from their performances
then on the peripheral ,for all the supporting parents, eachers roles
so many familiar faces, for example him,
he's in ALL of those high school dramas either as a parent or as a teacher
ou know this face, You've seen him 10 times already in all kinds of chinese high school dramas.
You will also see this guy who also was in many many such dramas
you even would meetI haven't seen her for a long time and I really enjoy
her presence and performance in this drama, actress who was Cao Gui Ren Empress in palace
Zhen Huan Zhuan, totally in their comfort zone playing those roles.
Therefore the whole drama just flows.
You almost kind of believe it's real because so many supporting roles are such frequenters
in the whole imaginary space of high school dramas.
Therefore it just feels right.
The third great thing about this drama is I briefly ran through the original novel
very quickly going through what it looks like, what types of story it is.
I do feel in the process of adaptation they really made it much more fuller and richer
designing each character whether they're the main or the supporting roles.
With a lot more details.
The novel was written with very economically language and even the lines,
it barely has a paragraph.
Everything is just one line, one line. If I write an essay like that,
when I was back in high school, i'm gonna get so criticized by my teacher.
She would say, are you trying to waste pages?
So the visual adaptation did spend quite an effort to make the story more interesting
and making every character more three dimensional.
And I highly appreciate that, does not happen to every adaptation.
Usually it's the reverse, it's the book is better in the drama's crap
the final thing that I would add on a positive thing in my opinion,
although this drama is not a page turner,
although this drama is not super outstanding compared to other dramas in its genre,
it is quite pleasurable to watch.
It flows very nicely, the editing, pacing, the camera, visual quality,the performance,
it's just all overall super smooth and enjoyable.
It's like just the right temperature, right breeze summer day
when it's bright, clear, crispy,but not hot or humid,
the right amount of cloud, the right amount of sunshine, the right amount of blue sky and the green leaves,
and you're walking on the lawn and you're breathing it in, it just feels light.
and Nice,
I know nice is often not so nice a word, but this drama is really NICE
I think i've watched Zhou Yiran performance in another drama previously
and I say he is better in this drama than the one i've watched before.
I haven't watched that many, but this one does come across as the character he plays.
That is pretty much everything I wanna say about this drama,
my halfway point review of Dang Wo Fei Ben Xiang Ni, When I Fly Towards You,
hope that's useful for you to decide whether you should check it out yourself.
Thank you for watching AvenueX, i'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.