halfcactus

TV/Movies:

Ballerina

Link Click OVA (Bridon Arc)

I love that this is a prequel AND a sequel and I love alllll the Lu Guang feelings (especially in the first half of episode 1... and the OP...), but this series really has a gendered violence issue and I've never truly liked anything that came out after S1... They do have some truly emotionally charged bangers so I suspect that in spite of my grumbling I'll watch S3 as long as daisydiversions wants to watch it lol.

Plot-wise it feels like nothing really happened here, other than establishing some backstory with Cheng Xiaoshi's parents? I didn't care for any of the new characters.

Nuer Hong

Comics:

MANGA:

Though I Am an Inept Villainess: Tale of the Butterfly-Rat Swap in the Maiden Court (ongoing)

Bodyswap court politics manga about a talented, good-natured, and universally beloved but chronically ill heroine who trades places with a reviled and spiteful villainess. It is surprisingly gen! There's one male character who seems like he could be the love interest, but the manga doesn't really give any indication that romance is in the horizon. Rather, it's focused on the women in the palace, framed in the PoVs of the protagonist and antagonist who learn more about each other's plights, and consequently, the systems and structures around them. I put it on hold at around 15 chapters in, but both the manga and the novel it's based on are still ongoing.

When I Became a Commoner, They Broke Off Our Engagement! (ongoing)

Another "trading places" manga, this time playing with the concept of changelings: A commoner and a noble are swapped at birth by the hand of a mischievous fairy, their circumstances to be revealed when they come of age. This takes a more thoughtful approach about class differences and social change than expected. Although I'm not sold on any of the relationships involving men (be it siblingly or romantic), it's really interesting to see two women connect with each other without ever interacting directly, and motivated to improve the lives of ordinary people through their shared perspectives.

MANHWA: I started a lot (and also dropped a lot) so I'll just limit this post to the ones I either finished or read at least one season of, with a note that some of these comics are much better than the titles make them sound. Of this list, I'd put The Fantasie of a Stepmother / A Stepmother's Märchen and Your Eternal Lies on top in terms of overall writing.

Being Loved for the First Time (ongoing)

Reincarnation + childcare manhwa where:

the MC is on her 100th life and on her first good reincarnation (she always has awful family circumstances and dies at 20 to save the world)

the MC's mom is ALIVE and not evil

the MC has a brother AND a sister

the dad has pink hair, and the mom and the MC have black hair and red eyes (usually it is the other way around, so this is a cute subversion)

Father, I Don't Want This Marriage

Miscommunication: The Manhwa.

True to its character-inclusive title, the FL's dad and the ML have an equal ratio of scenes, which is hilarious. This is part regression romcom (the ML, contractually dating the FL behind a different identity, is trying to convince the FL that the crown prince isn't that bad, actually!), part self-sacrificial tsundere father-daughter angst. Both parts are super tropey and the chapter endings are simply THE BEST and are in fact the reason why I keep reading.

The Fantasie of a Stepmother (also known as A Stepmother's Märchen) (ongoing)

I've only read S1 and I love it so much but where do I begin? The MC enters a non-sexual/non-romantic marriage as a prodigious teenager, groomed by her dying husband to become the acting matriarch until the eldest son comes of age. All of the kids act their age, initially resenting her but eventually forming different flavors of ride-or-die for her, and any woman who supports the MC does it through her own motivations and is liable to withdraw her support when their interests are no longer aligned.


In this manhwa: angst, family of convenience to family of choice, gorgeous art, competent MC, loyalty kink, fealty, complex women, politics

Flirting with the Villain's Dad

VERY CUTE (romcom / Bellecourt chapters) until it wasn't (plot). The main pairing was highly shippable and the FL kept accidentally calling the ML "dad" which I thought was fun! But to my disappointment, the comic completely neglected to develop the FL's other close relationships, and the plot was meh. And the politics made no! Sense! At! All! I would happily reread S1 though.

For Better or For Worse

Regency romance with isekai/regression elements and a tenuous stance about "fate". This was a nice little romance story focusing on the leads' romantic chemistry, but it falls off from the moment the ML realizes his feelings because characters start behaving in unrecognizably irrational ways. There's a weird Raeliana and the Duke-esque twist at the end that renders the plot completely nonsensical and undercuts all of its themes, which is a shame because it was otherwise very enjoyable! There's a cast of women with distinct, interesting personalities and protagonist energy, ie. cute tsundere remarried MiL, introvert BFF, and the "original" FL who in this version of the story is no longer in love with the ML now that she's in a healthier state of mind.

Ginger and the Cursed Prince

Non-isekai fantasy-romance where the FL receives a book that foretells her future as the antagonist, and the ML is a mindreader who's endeared by the FL's stupidity. IDK, it works! But the secondhand embarrassment is kind of strong in the first few chapters... Still, it's a self-contained story with no transmigration OR regression, which is a plus for me. XD

I Married the Male Lead's Dad (ongoing)

Interesting case of bait-and-switch: Gets you with the trashy transmigration romance premise and animated prologue, but S1 ends with a genre shift that reveals that it's all just an artifice. I dropped it after S1 because I didn't feel invested enough in the characters, but the "real" story has the potential to push my buttons with messy reincarnation drama.

I'm Unmarried with a Time-Limited Lover (ongoing)

Contract dating with reincarnation elements and a talking sword. The FL is a self-made businesswoman who can foresee misfortunes through touch, while the ML is the world's unluckiest human being, knowing no joy, doomed to die early, and just trying to tick off his bucket list. Following this for now because I like how the ML's character design makes him feel like a more unique flavor of black-hair-red-eyed protagonist (his eyes, for instance, are a different shade of red).

My In-Laws Are Obsessed with Me (ongoing)

I'm not sure I love this, but the art is great and I really like it when webtoons get to take their time telling the story (...as long as I'm in the position to binge instead of waiting for weekly chapters). S1 was a nice slow burn where the regression storyline folds into the plot in interesting ways and is bound to the magical worldbuilding and mystery. You have to get to the end of the season to see what it does with the tropes, and I think it spins an interesting story out of them, I just can’t talk about the good parts without spoiling. ^^; The supernatural elements (regression, magical poison, the MC's multiple actual DEATHS) are considered factors for the FL's worsening cramps too, which was nice to see in fiction! Planning to continue this for sure.

The Perks of Being a Villainess (ongoing)

Isekai rofan that's quite focused on the leads' business partnership. The FL wins the ML over with her competence and capitalistic villainy (eg. tax evasion and predatory subscription schemes) and everyone else with her innovations and math genius (as math is an integral part of magic). SO far, it's a relaxing take on "business genius" protagonists, with identity porn comedy as the ML has dual identities as noble and overworked information broker.

The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine (ongoing)

Plot: Korea is suffering a transmigration epidemic, and the MC is the first to avail of the transmigration insurance package...

S1 was fun, up to a point. S2 was mostly skippable until the last few chapters where tutorial mode ends, the regular difficulty is restored, and the time loop plot starts moving forward. Will probably pick up S3 if I'm still into manhwa when it ends! IDK how long this canon is supposed to be.

Your Eternal Lies

Pseudo-historical post-war romance about two people who exist at opposite ends of state propaganda--the decorated war hero, and the infamous witch from his hometown. The parallels are beautiful, each finding solace in the other’s image as renowned savior and notorious survivor in the time before they met. It does start out a bit rocky with the veterans' inflated sense of self-importance and confusing flashbacks in the earlier parts, but once it gets going it proceeds beautifully and reaches an ending that feels satisfying because prices have been paid. The FL is a lying liar who lies and is very consistent about putting herself first for an endgame known only to herself, and the ML is a bundle of unaddressed trauma and self-deceptions.

In this manhwa: domestic abuse, social critique, PTSD, witches, propaganda, and found family

Songs: 一蓑煙雨 by Zhang Xincheng & Waltz About Death by Angela Autumn

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My computer is broken again so it's gonna be another exciting weekend of troubleshooting attempts. I'm not optimistic that reinstalling my OS or restoring from backup will help. :( The silver lining is that I finally managed to send off a long-overdue family photobook for printing a few days ago, and I laid everything out on Canva, so the draft file is on the internet and nothing of value will be lost if I have to restore my computer from the last backup point. (I'm still worried that it will turn out so ugly it's ungiftable but at least it's theoretically reworkable in the future!)

In other news, the new Link Click donghua OP just dropped:


And this is what the band has to say in response to the mass wailing:

Link Click

Overall thoughts about the donghua

Season 1 was pretty great and well-paced. It had a case-of-the-day format for the first half, with filler cases between the heavy ones... The noodle girlfriends were sweet... And the entire basketball arc was so well done! But I wouldn't have finished this on my own because it's just too stressful for me.

Season 2 is almost purely plot-driven, but the plot wasn't that great... Without the time to breathe or the thread of emotional logic it had in season 1, the gendered violence and weaknesses in writing women were much more prominent. To be fair I don't think any of the characters are written well here (the main villain was cartoonishly bad), but the women definitely got the shorter end of the stick for me. It had a lot of missed opportunities with the lesser villains' motivations and character arcs, and one of the episodes had an extremely extended domestic violence scene.

AND episode 9 is a total waste of time. It was meant to be a "three stories" episode playing with different art styles, something that is normally my favorite kind of episode, but it ends up only showing us 1) nothing we didn't already know 2) information about the main villain that would have been better off revealed much earlier... The entire episode was like 26 minutes, and I was so annoyed by it I almost left the groupwatch ajskdl;ja;fdja;fa

First impression on manhua + live action adaptation

I checked out the manhua and live action afterwards to 緩一緩, and I'm really enjoying the manhua! Volume 1 has an opera troupe case set in the aftermath of the basketball arc, where you can see the emotional fallout and Lu Guang's attempt to give Cheng Xiaoshi some time travel therapy... Will definitely continue.

As for the live action adaptation... the Slam Dunk props are inconspicuous reminders that I'm watching a Sugarman Media production. :P The setup is also quite different, as Cheng Xiaoshi is superhuman in more than the specific time travel way... and he and Lu Guang meet as adults, with Lu Guang purposefully seeking him out to presumably set things right. (I haven't watched past episode 1, so it's still unclear what Lu Guang wants.)

热辣滚烫 YOLO (2024)
Chinese movie adaptation of 100 Yen Love.

Thoughts

I never saw the original, so I went into this assuming it was a sports movie, only to find out it wasn't as sports- and FL-centric as I initially thought.

The most interesting part about this movie for me is how it carefully avoids bodyshaming the main character, who for most of the movie is thirty years old, depressed, and fat. She ends up losing weight when she decides to get serious about boxing, but the focus is on how much better she feels when she pursues a goal and learns to do things for herself. The movie acknowledges her as not being conventionally attractive, but it also portrays her as being desirable, in a way that I found pretty natural and realistic.

That said, I don't think this was a very good movie... it uses that one cinematic gimmick that I've come to HATE in cmedia, in which scenes are omitted and then shown as "reveals" in the end, to purposes I don't understand... The main character's emotional arc would have been far more compelling from the get-go if it had been told in a regular, linear fashion!!!!!!!!!! The little 小紅花 montage would still have worked, I promise!!!!!!!

Anyway, I enjoyed the last 30-ish minutes (which had the training montage + ending), but I watched most of the middle bits in the fastest speed Netflix would allow me to watch it in.

The Double eps 1-20
DNF, but sometimes I go back to rewatch the music battle scenes (ep 11).

PS. Netflix appears to do this weird censored words thing where it avoids offensive language? Sometimes to ludricous effect. "Xiao jianren" got translated as "you cow" and "hellcat", which... okay...


Also saw other movies I saw when I was rooming with my parents (due to ant problems)! I think they were Oppenheimer and a recent Matt Damon heist movie (it wasn't great). Did another Kung Fu Hustle rewatch too, since it's apparently on Netflix, and yeah... still a classic. :) Curiously, I get more stressed watching this as an adult, in anticipation of the "painful" scenes (mostly in the first half, a.k.a. the best parts) which is funny because this movie is also now "comfort movie" status to me... Landlady with hair rollers you will always be a legend. ♥


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Other recents:
( August life updates )