Master Devil Do Not Kiss Me 2 (2017)

It’s been a solid period of time since I decided to allow this confused mess of a drama sink into my nerves, and seeing how the reviews are scarce in number, I thought I’d give potential viewers a rather large piece of my mind.

If you’re here and considering watching this, I’ll assume that you at least somewhat enjoyed the show to which this is a sequel. Master Devil Do Not Kiss Me sits somewhat high on my rom-com list despite being littered with Asian drama tropes (my favorite of which has to be "cohabiting rich guy and poor girl who refuses to take his crap but sometimes takes his crap anyway because dramaland"). It was youthful, cliched, yet endearing.

This sequel, though, was absolutely terrible in comparison.

There are cliches like in the prequel, which the writers delivered as cute and gave you some giggles. And then there are cliches like in this one, which will have you laughing psychotically as you sharpen your metaphorical knives and prepare to hunt down the people who turned the plot into absolute - for lack of a better word - horseshit.

It’s important to compare this sequel with its predecessor because it is a direct continuation from where MDDNKM left off. There are many problems to be resolved, particularly the one where the relationship between the two main characters remains very ambiguous. Yet, frustratingly, the second season never delivers satisfying closure to any of the questions you may have and instead piles on dilemma after dilemma that don’t serve any real purpose other than pissing you off.

If you have disdain for any of the following cliches (contains spoilers; but who’re we kidding, this show isn’t worth watching anyway): lying ex-girlfriends, clingy third wheels latching onto the male and female main characters, a lead couple whose most effective form of communication is giving one another the cold shoulder, ridiculous birth secrets, "the girl you like is actually blood related to you", etc.; ditch this drama now. It’s pathetic how bad this all became. Every single episode of this show became the longest 20 minutes of my life and I just about wished that I would spontaneously have responsibilities to attend to so I’d be put out of the misery of sitting through them.

The acting is okay. I liked the actors way more in the first season; which might have had something to with the characters’ quirks. Some aspects of them were endearing in the first season, but rapidly became extremely annoying in this one. See reference: Qi Lu deciding that every single time Chu Xia gets pissy with him, he’ll call her stupid or some other variation instead of asking “what did I do” like any normal human being would. Gets old when it happens every episode for 20 straight episodes, boy.

Also, I’d like to mention that the editors confused the hell out of me. Why on earth would you play fun, happy background music during a scene in which two antagonists are plotting how to get rid of their rival? Whenever this happened, I half-expected a squirrel to jump out and maul them or something else that would be entertaining, but nope. It would just be a possibly suspenseful scene, ruined by a playful little jingle in the background. It seriously ruins the mood.

In a way, I consider it intelligent that none of this content was included in the first season. The quality falls so short that it’d be a real shame to drag down the fun of the first season with this trash.

tl;dr: did the director hit his head during production and decide to continue being the director?

Lire davantage

Ok lemme get this straight. I LOVED this drama.
I don't understand how anyone can start it thinking it's going to be a heavy, drama-filled series, which requires an important emotional involvement from the viewer. It's not; if that isn't clear by the plot summary, then it should be by the end of the first episode.
This show is full of imperfections that make it perfect. In fact, I completely disregarded those multiple small flaws because they naturally flowed with the story. There were no "wait - what ?" moments. Unlike many viewers, I never thought of banging my head on my keyboard because of incomprehension. I think those people think too much. There are dramas that simply don't require you to think about anything while watching them. "Master Devil Do Not Kiss Me" is one of those dramas.
It IS cliché-filled, but you can get that from the summary. Basically yet another Itazura na Kiss x Boys over Flowers adaptation.
The mood here however is different. First, because it's Chinese: it's a whole other culture. Second, because the episodes are short. A lot of things are bound to happen in a short span of time; we might leave an episode with X event and resume with an event Y, while only just lightly bushing the precedent subject.
Some cuts are really unprofessional and too obvious. But it takes nothing from the enjoyment away. The female lead is super cute, and, believe it or not, refreshing. She's not easily swayed by her lovers or feelings, she's cute without being over the top or too girly, and stands up for her values.

As for the so-called "chauvinism" and "sexism" in this drama.. I don't know what the people who said that are doing on this site ?? Violent hand grabbing, "you're mine" lines and such are an entire aspect of most Korean dramas and many other asian dramas. There IS a traditional conservative view of women. It's China after all. Personally, I've been more shocked throughout my life here in the West with the treatment of women, who are constantly over-sexualized in the media and society, than in China (from my limited view in dramas) At least they don't resort to stripping down a woman to get high audience rates ;-))

To conclude, an excellent (and by excellent, again, I don't mean it's perfect or flawless, just really good for what it is -) light drama, that I will most likely rewatch because it's fun and not too complicated to help with my learning and understanding of Chinese, along with the likes of dramas like Shopping King Louis or Sassy Go Go.

Lire davantage