Judging from internet's response in china,
Zheng Wu Yang Guang
succeeded.
Hello, you're watching AvenueX
where a junkie on good storytelling shares her thoughts,
knowledge and occasional weird ideas on stories and how they're told.
Kai Duan, Reset is a 15 episodes.
Web drama that's been aired on the platform Tencent.
It is produced by Zheng Wu Yang Guang
Daylight Entertainment,
directed by Sun Molong, Liu Hongyuan, Lao Suan
led by Bai Jingting, Zhao Jinmai, also Liu Yijun, Huang Jue
And many other very familiar people.
If you watch a lot of ZWYG productions,
the drama is based on a web novel,
called Kai Duan, the same name written by Qi Dao Jun
It comes from Jin Jiang
which is a female female reader oriented website
that has produced many very well known web novels
such as Guardian.
This original author is a lady and she is also
one of the four credited script writers
The drama started production in the city Xiao Men
June last year
took them exactly 2 months to film,
so 60 days to 15 episodes that means 4 days per episode
which is super slow for chinese dramas.
If you average out production time in chinese dramas,
particularly contemporary dramas,
often you get less than 2 days per episode.
So this means the production team spent a lot of time
figuring out the details and make sure they have a high quality production
since this drama is really short.
It will finish airing next week.
I did argue again whether I should wait till the end,
but I can't
I have to make it now to be able
to catch people who haven't watched it yet.
and I would highly encourage and recommend you chase this drama
as it airs
I think it will feel different if you're chasing it.
Instead of you wait till the end,
everything is wrapped and internet is filled with spoilers
wouldn't be the same experience.
I'll give it a 2.5 (goldmine) rating right now,
leaving that 0.5 to the
let's see the next 7 episodes
and hopefully the ending doesn't crash.
If the ending is good enough,
satisfying enough.
This would be a three goldmine drama.
Also,
I will not spoil this drama for you as i'm going
through every point I need to make in this video.
I'm only gonna tell you the setup and how it starts
because that's in the trailer
you kind of have to know what it is to watch it.
Then all the details i'll leave it
for you to discover
this is a very rare drama in chinese dramaland
wu xian liu,
that's the current popular word to describe it in chinese
literally means indefinite flow
time loop
and we have a lot of films and television series and all kinds of novels
in this genre globally speaking
and it's been a long tradition actually nothing new such as groundhog day.
And you obviously have the Source Code which people talk
about most because its set up is quite similar to Reset.
But for chinese dramaland
you almost have nothing that's ever been done in this genre
There was a web drama previously,
couple of years ago that has this similar concept of time looping thing,
but it wasn't very well known.
This is a rare thing for chinese dramaland
and particularly been done by Zheng Wu Yang Guang.
So ever since day one of this production announcing its existence,
I was curious to see what will come out of it,
seemingly old fashioned, traditional,
professional production company with a very popular web novelish,
young people oriented and often used in anime type of story.
Judging from internet's response in china,
Zheng Wu Yang Guang succeeded
and they really showed people when
you know how to tell good stories and you have a proper,
strong team and you have experiences and you have enough respect.
For your story.
Really, there's no limit of genres
without spoiling it for you
only talking about what shows up in the trailer.
The two main leads played by Bai Jingting and Zhao Jinmai
are two young people in the early 20s,
ended up on a bus.
They've never met before.
And then they both died in an explosion that happened on this bus
They realize where they die.
They come back over and over again.
So they figure their task is to find out
what happens on the bus and how to stop it.
Because no matter what they try,
even if they get off the bus,
if they didn't manage to stop the explosion,
they will restart it when the clock strikes 24 on the midnight.
So that's everything about this drama,
okay?
not gonna say anything more about it.
Let's talk about the good things about this drama.
First, starting from the most obvious thing,
this is a very good production quality overall production.
It comes from ZWYG
you know it's not gonna be problematic in pretty much every.
And any department, no skin smoothing, actors' own voice, no dubbing
mostly sounds like live recording and may have some
kind of adr cleaning up later or changing couple of lines,
because you know censorship and stuff.
It's the type of production that because
every department does its professional job,
when you're watching the end product,
you don't get irritated or distracted by obvious,
bad professionally done work.
You just only focus on the story.
Second good thing, casting choices and good acting.
They know exactly who they are looking for
to be able to shoulder the storytelling,
the perfect actor actresses for each role
whether it's the main leads Bai Jingting and Zhao Jinmai
or the main supporting roles
such as Huang Jue, Liu Yijun
occasionally showing up Liu Tao
who really doesn't have that much screen time,
but still does the role pretty well
or the more peripheral supporting roles
such as all the passengers on the bus.
They make every role convincing for you
with the actors's own ability, good enough
and then a director just making sure
They get what they want for each scene
and each milestone of the storytelling
such a smooth and comfortable watching experience.
The third great thing about this drama is when they
adapted it from the text version to the drama version,
they changed a lot of details
in the original story.
The most important thing obviously is for the two leads
to figure out how to stop the explosion.
And most of the other supporting roles involved
are used as tools to get to the end goal.
But once it got adapted to the screen version,
to avoid making every other passenger looking like a tool,
just for the narrative purpose,
they expanded greatly for each individual and their background story.
Each time when they loop different things happen,
you get to know more of those people's background story.
It just enriches the story so much more and give the
main characters more motivation for them to decide
to suffer over and over dying in an explosion
so that they can save these people,
people who they've never met.
So this definitely is an added thing for the
drama only that doesn't exist in the book.
and in terms of adaptation,
a well done adaptation.
4th thing, most importantly,
this definitely qualifies as a rather well
written story of this genre
time loop,
having a mystery, having imminent threat,
trying to figure out who is the bad guy,
logical thinking, a lotanalyzing
a lot of adventure and thriller, all that
if you've watched this drama up to episode six,
you may think it's okay, pretty good,
but hasn't had that moment that's gonna hit your heart
like that
by episode eight you'll get it.
Once you've watched that many episodes,
if you go back and re-watch,
you will start to see how many clues they've laid
already and never really told the audiences.
It's really up to you to find out and it all makes
perfect sense in their story setup
for chinese dramas.
When it comes to logic,
it's one of its greatest weakness,
but in the hand of daylight entertainment,
you are safe as an audience member.
So is there anything that's not good about this drama?
well If I have to force myself to say,
I wish they could do even more daring thing with this production,
adding a little bit strong look or vibe
to it.
They're telling it as a very normal story with their camera language.
Its style.
It feels very "normal"
Whereas when you have this very edgy and unusual and not sci fi,
but you know time loop,
it's not normal.
Okay?
If they can be more daring in terms of visual style
atmospherical things,
basically that can come from a production
if we only use chinese dramaland productions as comparison.
For example, TienTsin Mystic
it has a very strong style, very unique,
and you don't see it in any other dramas pretty much.
Would be really cool if they can be
more daring in the style of the storytelling,
not changing the essential things of the plot,
but just adding a little bit extra flavoring,
which can play on the psychological level of the audiences
is not being very strongly,
let's say,
explored and exploited potentially from this topic.
Maybe it is to do with Zheng Wu Yang Guang really is a
company that does mostly very realistic grounded
serious, whether it's contemporary or historical period drama.
They are very,
really old school story tellers.
but it's just like I force myself to add this point on,
and if it had that,
probably it will be even more
sexier.
But without it,
it's still a great story.
It's not that essential.
So I hope by this point,
i've convinced you to check out this drama now
like NOW
don't wait till next week when it finishes airing.
Now,
one extra point to add at the end of the video,
there is an interview online about the original author and the
process of how she got involved in making this production.
It shows good story happens because first,
it's done by professional people who know what they're doing.
Second, they really respect the story.
So the script writing team that got credited have four people involved.
One of them is one of the three directors, Lao Suan
The other two are script writers who have worked
on previous projects from ZWYG
such as Shan Hai QIng (Mingning Town)
Yu Huan Shui (If There's no Tomorrow), Da Jiang Da He (Like A Flowing River)
most of the well known projects.
Then it is the original author who wrote the novel
while they were working Pre production on the script,
the rest of the crew live in a normal standard hotel
while she was given a five star hotel room,
because they were like you are the script writer.
You need to be living in a good environment
and you know get all those things sorted out.
So you can focus on your work and they have intense meetings
trying to figure out all the details of this drama,
because logic and things linking together
making sense is so important for this project.
And also because this author only wrote novels before
she never wrote scripts.
So when you adapt text to screen,
there's a lot of things you need to be aware of
certain things you cannot write it in the same way as you write novels.
If it's all internal monologues
it's not gonna work on screens.
You have to externalize it,
and then think about editing,
think about pacing,
and all those things.
And she's never taught in that
So literally, the production taught her step by step,
and they have all those meetings and talks
about how we take this chunk to the screen,
what we need to make change on.
Because now it's visual.
She's super happy that she's taken part in this project.
Had her story,
turned into a visual production in the process.
She got money,
she got treated very well.
She learned how to write script and got really impressed by how
professional entire production team of ZWYG is.
They literally have storyboard for every scene for every episode.
It doesn't happen for most of the chinese dramas,
particularly really crappy contemporary dramas.
When you read that interview,
you just feel
wouldn't it be nice if every drama production company in china
is like this,
imagine how many better dramas
good dramas were gonna have
in a way.
This is how proper production should be done.
but it has become almost extinct in chinese dramaland
how sad
I've said a lot already.
If you haven't watched Kai Duan, Reset, go and watch it,
catch it before it ends.
By the end of it, you probably will really like the two leads.
If you haven't previously fallen for Bai Jingting and Zhao JinMai
It also shows, even though today chinese dramaland
environment is really bad.
There are still very talented young people out there
Zhao JInmai for example,
I think she is number one when she got in Zhong XI (中戏）
which is central academy of drama in beijing.
Great young actress
Bai Jingting
I think he finally got a really good drama
in the last couple of years.
He's been in all kinds of dramas that didn't
really go as far as people hope they would.
And he's been very hard working.
And this time he got picked by Zheng Wu Yang Gunag
and it's a tiny drama in terms of length,
but I think this would be his first super explosion drama
in his career
for people who do not already know him.
This is the point they are gonna cut in and start to be aware
of his presence.
And also because of the case solving nature of this drama,
sometimes he does remind you of what he does in
the mango television variety show Who is the Murderer
in which he's been a detective for a lot of times.
It will remind you of his performance in couple of episodes,
i'm rambling again, go and watch this drama
Thank you for watching AvenueX
I'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.