My Girlfriend's Boyfriend (2017)

Great show

I absolutely LOVED watching this! I finished it in three days. If I didn't have school, I would probably have finished it faster. I can't wait for season 2!

Here are a few things I liked and disliked (in no particular order):

1 THE ACTING

LIKE: I really like the way Bai Zhu plays his character(A Zhai). His facial expressions and the way he brings his lines are adorable and unique. Some people seem to dislike A Zhai, which I kind of get when looking at certain scenes. Particularly the ones where he mistreats Adam or doesn't listen to his advice, which then results in problems that could've been avoided if he did listen. That aside I think he is a really fun character that brings life to the show.

DISLIKE: A ZHAI IS SUCH. AN. IDIOT! Seriously, I love him, but he is so stubborn, self-centered and in some moments pretty mean. Adam really didn't deserve the way A Zhai treated him in some episodes. Especially since Adam is the one who keeps saving and protecting A Zhai when things turn sour. Which is A LOT of times.

2 FRIENDSHIP

A Zhai and his best friend cracked me up everytime they were together. I loved it when they were scheming and going on missions together. You would think that two heads/two brains would be able to think of at least a simple, good working plan, but I guess that's not the case with A Zhai and Wang Fu Gui. They are also really bad at lying. It's funny to watch. Their friendship is really cute.

3 THE CINEMATOGRAPHY

The camera work is done very well. The set also looks great! The whole show gives you a comic kinda feel with all the sound/visual effects they've put in it. All this put together makes the show aesthetically pleasing.

4 STORYLINE

LIKE: The story is surprising and unique. There are a lot of turns and twists that make you want to see the next episode as fast as possible. The pace of the storyline is just right. Not too slow, not too fast. I also like how they sometimes break the 4th wall by talking to us (the audience) directly.

DISLIKE: One aspect of the storyline that gets dragged out too much is A Zhai's obsession with Eve. FOR REAL, MAN It just keeps going on and on and on and on and on. I rolled with my eyes a lot.

5 A ZHAI AND ADAM

I can conclude from the comments of some other people that they mainly started to watch the show because of these two. I wouldn't recommend watching it just for them. Except for a few cute scenes, there isn't much action. I can't even say ''just watch it for their friendship' because as I said earlier: A Zhai is pretty mean to Adam. Unless there are more scenes coming in season 2 that will build on their relationship. 80% of this show is A Zhai chasing after Eve.

CONCLUSION:
It's a really cute show and you should definitely watch it for the cool actors, the humor and fun scenes.

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STORY: This writing for this series was all over the place; it was sci-fi, dark, fantasy, romantic comedy, and more. What the synopsis didn't make clear is that Adam loves Ah-Zhai who loves Pei Ni (Penny) who loves Adam. There's a lot of humor and awkward situations because of this love triangle.

ACTING/CAST: Bai Shu (Ah-Zhai) is a very good actor, very expressive. Cai Wen Jing (Pei Ni) is a very good actress; she played multiple, and very different, personalities.

MUSIC: I liked both the opening and closing songs of this show.

REWATCH VALUE: I didn't have much of a reason to revisit Season 1 but Season 2 is so much better.

OVERALL: Read my spoiler in the comments section if you want my opinion about the BL in this show.

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Confusingly Progressive

This is a fascinating story just because of how weirdly good it is. It gets away way borderline gay and trans representation in a country where queerness is pretty censored. And there are a few reasons why it gets away with this.

The first is that this story relies heavily on it being inspired by anime. Because of the inherit bizareness in anime, its stories gets away with a lot of stuff that would otherwise be considered socially unacceptable. How else would My Girlfriend's Boyfriend get away with characters crossdressing for more than half of the time they show up on screen! Usually, the only way you can get a character to be cross dressing is by forcing them to hide their identity, or to be the center of a joke. But, in this drama, a character can crossdress just because they want to crossdress, and the excuse the show gives for being socially allowed to do so is that they're in anime club. They also excused gayness in a similar way by including a fujioshi amongst the characters. (If you don't know, a fujioshi is a woman who likes yaoi, a genre that is about gay men made for women to read/watch). This made it so the gay aspect was straight enough to be acceptable. I was impressed by how clever the show was in using stereotypes in order to get away with queerness. Is it the best kind of representation out there? No. Still, it's impressive in an odd way.

And it's not just stereotypes about storytelling. For the longest time it bothered me how much of an asshole the main character is. I could be reading into this more than I should be, but I started to realize, it's possible the show wouldn't have gotten away with as much as it did if the main character wasn't an asshole. Now, if you're queer, you probably already understand what I'm about to explain. Before you're ready to come out, sometimes you indulge in societal expectations for you. You might try to be super straight or you might try to be super cisgendered in order to cover up the fact that you're queer. Or maybe you do it in a desperate attempt to convince yourself you're not queer. In a similar way, the show has so many annoyingly toxic male tropes and ideas about sexuality! It bothered me so much.

At the same time, I realized that using those toxically masculine tropes is also a way to appease an audience (or maybe a television network) that is homophobic/transphobic. By indulging in patriarichal ideals of masculity that typically also encourage the rejection of gayness/transness, they imply that they also subscribe to the mainstream narrative about queerness. In doing so, the queerness is subverted, however it also becomes acceptable enough to be presented to the mainstream audience. When the show does become more queer, they start to dial back on other aspects of queerness (there's less crossdressing, and they make the more annoying parts of masculinity stronger in side characters). In a way, the show trades off queerness with mainstream masculine stereotypes. It's an impressive case of subscribing to societal standards and manipulating them to get away with what otherwise might have been censored. Kind of like kissing up to mainstream culture so they can be allowed to do what they want. In a way, it reminds me of politics and the idea of "give and take." Now I could be missing the mark compeltly, but if I'm not, then this show was actually more clever than I originally gave it credit for. The toxic masculinity still bothers me though. It's really annoying. Honestly, I just started skipping scenes after a certain point.

There's also a speech one of the characters gives that so obviously is about queerness while pretending to be about the anime club, that I literally gaped. I'm surprised they were able to get away with it, but again it's BECAUSE they take advantage of stereotypes. And it's so funny, because the story also very obviously doesn't care to belong to any societal stereotypes. I mean it ends with the main characters being in a committed long-term three-way relationship for goodness sakes! I'm a big fan of anything that manipulates tropes to tell a better story (which is why I'm a huge fan of the Reply series, especially Reply 1988), but now I realize that this can also be done in a way that manipulates stereotypes. What an intersting storytelling device. I'll have to look for it in the future as well.

In an ideal world, the writer wouldn't have to go through such lengths to tell a story as queer as this one. However, the amount of skill and cultural awareness that has to go into creating this story is impressive. I'm sorry I didn't realize any of this when I first watched it. I think I would have appreciated it better if I had. I remember thinking, if this show is going to be so gay, why is it also being so toxically masculine? I think I get it now. Sometimes I think of myself as a purist. If you're going to be pro-queer, go all the way! But, it isn't as easy to do so openly everywhere in the world. In the context of China's censorship, I do have to give it some respect. Although I think projecting toxicly masculine traits is a bad thing always and I honestly believe the story would have been better without being so toxicly masculine.

Also, I just wanted to say the main character is obviously straight, but it seems like he might also be panromantic (or something of that nature). Wow! I was not expecting that. Also I realized this is a queerplatonic relationship. I honestly didn't understand the concept very well until I watched this show.

Anyway, I'm a sucker for anything that subverts societal standards (especially in the name of love). I don't know. What do you think? Do you agree with my interpretation, or do you think I'm reading too much into it? Also if you know any storys that manipulate tropes and stereotypes in a clever way, please recommend them!

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I loved every second of the show. I thought it was great. It made me feel happy, mad, sad and so much more but in a good way. The show was fun to watch. It was very boring not even for one second. I liked the idea of the story. After watching the series I feel like the director did a great job on the show. There was no disappointment by the end of the show which is always good. The hair, makeup, and outfits were all super nice looking they did a good job on them. The actors and actresses did a good job. The script that they wrote was well done. they out there great into the show and it shows. the translation that was on this show was well done too. The setting and scenes were all very pretty. I liked that it was set during college time in the character's life. There was lots of character development. I like the fact that they owned a restaurant in the show. I like any show that has a thing to do with food. I liked the fact that two of the characters were robots. I even liked where the girl robot looked like the girl the main dude in the show had a crush on. At least he had a crush on her at the beginning of the story. How the romantic part of the show turned out was good. The ending was done so super well. they just did a great job on the show as a whole.

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In interesting twist on the average "absolute boyfriend" or "chobits" type storyline

This show is both better and worse than I expected. I was expecting it to be really silly and dumb, but it has a LOT more cringe comedy in it than i expected. That being said they played that comedy MUCH better than any other production I have seen making a good bit of it watchable. There are a lot of jokes and gags you can get away with in an anime that if you try the same joke in a live action series its just painful to watch or just too stupid to watch, but you let it slide if its a cartoon. They actually managed to pull that off in a live action series and made it almost acceptable a lot of the time (which is quite a feat). They made the characters likeable and made the story addicting so its almost impossible not to binge watch (though i did find myself skipping a few seconds ahead if it got TOO cringe-worthy i still couldn't stop watching). This show is both more painful and more fun than i was expecting.

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De longe um dos meus preferidos. Pode não ser uma das historias mais criativas, porém com certeza é muito divertida. Tudo é bem colorido e bem humorado, com certeza sendo capaz de tirar boas risadas. Algo ruim é o egoísmo e a arrogância do personagem principal, que de certa forma traz um desanimo em certas partes, mas faz parte da personalidade do personagem, o que seria estranho se ele fosse de outra forma. As músicas são bem animadas e nada enjoativas. Já os atores eu creio que foram os melhores e se encaixaram no enredo, todos são marcantes de sua maneira e a atuação combina demais com tudo que está acontecendo ali. As vezes pode ser exagerado demais, mas isso que torna mais divertido.

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Within the first few episodes, I could tell that this series won't have a proper happy ending, either it would be sad, incomplete or just complete bonkers. I was very curious to know the ending of this series, as I thought the makers would have found a way to get a proper happy ending but the ending was just felt incomplete to me.

What I liked about the series
* bromance and cuteness
* starting of the base story
* complicated chemistry and relationship development

Scope of Improvement
* ending of the base story
* Series wasn't picking the direction it was supposed to go to.

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This is my first time to watch Chinese tv series. I am so impress with everything about it. Specially the video editing, lighting, and special effects. Leon Li is also very handsome. I keep rewatching it because its making me happy and laugh. This is the the first drama for me that I become so addicted and keep rewatching it over and over again. I wish I could find more dramas like this in the future. It is just a very light drama, a very good stress reliever. And the presence of Adam keeps my emotions calm. I am just kinda disappointed with how the story goes. I just wished that Adam and Ah Zhai become couple in the end but it doest happen. I makes me hanging up in the end. I respect it after all. I still love this drama anyways. Must watch! Must rewatch!

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I love the series! ...................................................................................... ...................................................................................... ...................................................................................... ...................................................................................... ...................................................................................... ...................................................................................... ...................................................................................... ......................................................................................

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